Unfinished Business (8 page)

“I spoke to his mother,” I said. “Ginny said
he was here.”

She hesitated.

“She said he was on a hike this morning, but
that he’d be back by this afternoon. And it’s late afternoon
now.”

“I’m afraid...”

“She said she’d told you to call the police
if David’s biological father showed up and tried to take him. Does
any of us look like David’s biological father to you?”

“No...”

“David’s biological father is missing,” I
said. “He should have been at the courthouse at eleven today to get
married. He should have married
me
.”

Her eyes went from suspicious to
sympathetic, and then horrified. “He left you at the altar?”

“There’s no altar at the courthouse. But
yes, basically he did. I’d like to know whether he said anything to
David about leaving. If he didn’t, it’s possible something bad has
happened to him.”

She hesitated.

“All we want to do is talk,” Dix said and
stepped up next to me. He put one of his business cards on the
desk. “I’m an attorney. I assure you we have no plans of absconding
with the boy.”

The girl pursed her lips. “Are you David’s
biological mother?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “David’s mother’s dead. She
died last fall.” In that shootout in the Colliers’ trailer in the
Bog I’d been having nightmares about on the trip here. Rafe had
been shot, too, although not as badly. And the next day was when
Dix and I had first discovered David’s existence, when my brother,
Elspeth’s attorney, had gone over to her house to start the process
of handling the estate.

And incidentally, if Elspeth hadn’t gotten
herself shot, she would have been in prison now. For a couple of
counts of murder and attempted murder. One of those attempted
murders had been of me, although I wasn’t too upset over it
anymore, since the reason she’d died was because she’d refused to
move from in front of Rafe, who was the man with the gun’s real
target.

“David knows me, though,” I added. “And you
are, of course, welcome to stay while we talk to him. We don’t have
anything to hide.”

There was another pause. Then— “Wait here.”
She got up from the desk and brushed past us and outside.

“Looks like she might be getting him,” Dix
said.

“Or like she wants to call the police from a
different phone.” I shook my head. “It’s ridiculous of Ginny to be
so nervous. Nobody’s going to take David. I just want to talk to
him. And if Rafe were to show up, he wouldn’t take David, either.
He’d probably just want to say goodbye.”

Neither Dix nor Mother had anything to say
to that, so we ended up waiting in silence for the camp counselor
to come back.

When she did, she was trailed by two male
persons. One was roughly the size of a refrigerator—six feet tall
and built like a linebacker. The other was a boy with Rafe’s eyes
and Rafe’s nose and Rafe’s smile.

“Savannah!” He grinned, looking so much like
his father that it hurt. “Is my dad here, too?” He looked
around.

I forced a smile. “I’m afraid not. This is
my mother, and my brother Dix.”

David gave them each a curious look. “Hi,”
he said politely.

Dix nodded. Mother just stared at him, with
a funny expression on her face.

I turned back to David. “Have you spoken to
your... to Rafe recently?”

It was David’s turn to look confused. “Not
since I got here last Saturday.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“The week before that,” David said promptly.
“We went to a baseball game. Remember?”

I did. I’d spent the evening at home, in the
air conditioned comfort of my bed, reading a book. I’d fallen
asleep before Rafe got there, and he’d woken me up when he got home
to make love.

“Did he...” I hesitated, “say anything?”

“He said lots of things,” David said. He
tilted his head. “What’s going on?”

When I didn’t answer immediately, he added,
“You can tell me. I’m mature for my age. My mom says so.”

I smiled. “I’m sure you are. It’s just that
I don’t know what’s going on. I was hoping you did.”

“No,” David said and shook his head. “What
are you talking about?”

I took a breath. “Rafe and I were supposed
to get married today. Did he tell you that?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s cool. I get two
mothers and two fathers.”

“Last night, he and a couple of the guys he
works with went out for a beer after work. To celebrate and...
stuff.”

David grinned. “You mean, like a bachelor
party? With strippers and stuff?”

“No!”
God, no
. Was he even supposed
to know about strippers at his age?

Dix hid a grin, not very successfully. “No
strippers,” he told David. “Just a couple of guys drinking beer and
shooting pool and hanging out.”

David nodded. “That’s cool.”

“I’m sure it was. But Col... your dad didn’t
come home afterwards.”

David’s face immediately sobered.

“We thought maybe he’d mentioned something
to you about going away,” I said.

He shook his head.

“Nothing?”

“No. He said after getting married, you were
going away for the weekend, but that he’d be back next week. We’re
going to another game.” For a second, his face crumpled. “Or we
were.”

For a second, my face crumpled too. If Rafe
had done this on purpose, then damn him. Bad enough that he’d
disappointed me, but there was no excuse for disappointing his
son.

But he hadn’t done this. He couldn’t have
done this. The man I knew would not tell his son that he’d be back
to take him to another baseball game, and then leave.

“You haven’t heard from him since you got
here?” Dix asked.

David shook his head. “This is a no-tech
zone.” He made a face. “I only get my phone at night, when I have
to call my mom. But he hasn’t called.”

“And you haven’t seen him?”

“No. You think he’ll show up here?” He
looked around, as if hoping to see Rafe lurking behind the nearest
pine. I looked around too, automatically. There was no Rafe, of
course.

“I doubt it,” I said. “But if he does, I’d
appreciate it if you’d let me know.”

“Sure.” David nodded. “I’m sorry,
Savannah.”

“I am, too,” I said. “I’ll let you know how
it goes, OK?”

He nodded. “OK.” After a second, he
surprised me—and maybe himself—by giving me an awkward hug. I
hugged him back, my stomach—round and hard—between us. When he
stepped back, there were tears in my eyes, and I think they may
have been in his, too.

He turned away without a word, bodyguard on
his heels. If Rafe showed up and tried to abduct David by
force—something he’d never, ever do—he might have a hard time
getting through the refrigerator.

“Thank you,” Dix told the camp counselor,
while I was still clearing my throat. “We appreciate it.”

She nodded. “Is he in danger?”

“I don’t imagine so,” Dix said easily.
“We’re not concerned about David’s safety at this time. We’re
trying to track down his father, and thought David might know
something. That’s all. But I’m sure you always take
precautions.”

She sniffed, offended at the suggestion that
they might not. “Of course.”

“Will you call me if someone else shows up
asking for David?”

The counselor said she would, obviously
taken in by Dix’s professional demeanor and business card, and on
that note, we took our leave.

“So that’s Rafael’s child,” Mother said when we were back in the
car and bumping our way along the rutted dirt track from the camp
up to the main road.

From her tone of voice—flat—it was
impossible to guess what was behind the question. She had to be
thinking something, but I was damned—darned—if I knew what it
was.

So I did the only thing I could do, and told
the truth. “Yes. That’s David. Rafe’s son.”

“And Elspeth Caulfield’s,” Dix added.

Mother glanced at him. “The woman who died
last fall.”

“After shooting Marquita and Yvonne McCoy
and trying to kill me,” I said. “Yes.”

Mother was silent for a few seconds. “Your
child will look like that,” she said.

Again, there was no clue in her tone to what
she was thinking, so I didn’t know whether to bristle or not. I
wanted to bristle—because I assumed she was being critical—but I
forced myself to sound calm. “I’m sure he will. Or she. Whenever we
find out the gender.”

Mother didn’t say anything.

“For what it’s worth,” I added, “I think
David’s quite a handsome boy. He looks a lot like Rafe did at that
age.” Or so I assumed. I hadn’t had much to do with him until I
started high school at fourteen. And he was seventeen by then. But
David looks a lot like I imagine Rafe did when he was a boy. “Only
better fed with nicer clothes and fewer bruises.”

Mother chose not to respond to that one. “He
seems like a nice boy,” she said instead, primly.

“As far as I know he is. His parents are
nice people, who love him a lot. They live in a big house in West
Meade, and he goes to private school. And obviously he goes to
church, if he’s spending part of the summer at a church camp.”

Mother nodded.

“From everything I’ve seen, he’s a great
kid. I hope mine turns out as well.”

Mother might have said something to that—I’m
not sure—but that’s when the phone rang. We’d just reached the main
road, and Dix turned the nose of the car back toward Nashville. I
fished the phone out of my bag and put it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Ms.... Savannah,” Tamara Grimaldi said.

“Detective.” My heart started beating
faster. It couldn’t be good news. If she’d found him, that’d be the
first words out of her mouth.

“I hooked up with Spicer and Truman when
they came back to town. We’ve been driving around.”

“OK,” I said.

“We stopped by Gabe’s Bar, to take a look
around, once they opened.”

“OK.”

“Have you ever been here?”

I hadn’t. Rafe is willing to expand my
horizons to a certain degree, but not to that one. “I know where it
is. And what it looks like.” A dive up on Trinity Lane, near the
interstate.

“There’s an old shed at the back of the
parking lot. They keep drums of cooking oil and grease in it.”

“I’ve seen it,” I said. “Driving by.” A
small structure even more dilapidated than the cinderblock building
that houses the bar itself.

“Truman decided to check inside, and found
your boyfriend’s bike in there.”

“Inside the shed?”

“Yes,” Grimaldi said.

“Rafe’s bike?”

“I ran the registration. It matched.”

Then yes, it was Rafe’s bike. “What was it
doing there?”

“As far as we could tell,” Grimaldi said,
“not a blessed thing. Track with me, Ms.... Savannah. Why would
your boyfriend leave his bike inside a shed at Gabe’s?”

“He wouldn’t,” I said. “He loved...”
Gah!
“He loves that bike. If he was planning to run away,
he’d ride away on it. If he was running away with someone
else—”

And wasn’t that a new and disturbing thought
I hadn’t had yet?

“—I still don’t think he’d have left it
there. He would have taken it home, or somewhere else where it
would be safe, first. But he wouldn’t leave his bike in the parking
lot of a bar in a not-so-nice part of town.”

I could feel Grimaldi nod, even if I
couldn’t see her. “That’s my thinking, too.”

“Is it possible that one of the staff put
the bike in the shed? That it was left in the lot after closing, or
something?”

“We’ll ask,” Grimaldi said, “but off-hand,
it doesn’t make sense. The staff wouldn’t have moved it during
business hours, since the owner might still be inside. And the
bar’s open until two. Mr. Craig said your boyfriend left at eleven,
to go home. That must mean Mr. Craig was still inside the bar at
that point. If he’d come out later and seen the bike in the lot,
but no sign of Mr. Collier, don’t you think he would have found
that strange?”

Of course he would have. He was a trained
agent of the TBI. It wasn’t like he’d overlook or disregard
something like that.

“Have you asked him?”

“I will,” Grimaldi said. “I want to talk to
the rookies, too.”

“Can I come?”

She hesitated. “I suppose that might be OK.
Under the circumstances.”

“We’re on our way back to town,” I told her.
“We drove out to Peaceful Pines to talk to David.”

“Peaceful Pines?”

“The church camp where David is staying. He
says he hasn’t heard from or seen Rafe since last week.” I bit my
lip. “I think I just rocked his world. And not in a good way.”

“If you told him his biological father is
missing, I’m sure you did,” Grimaldi agreed, but without censure in
her voice. “He didn’t know anything?”

“He said he didn’t. I believed him.”

In the front seat, Dix nodded.

“He promised he’d let us know if he sees or
hears from Rafe,” I added. “The camp counselor said the same thing.
Dix left them his card. And David has what looks like a bodyguard.
He’s almost as tall as Rafe and twice as broad.”

“Good,” Grimaldi said. “I doubt the boy’s in
any danger, but why take chances?”

Why, indeed?

“When are you planning to talk to Wendell
and the rookies? Are you sure it’ll be OK if I’m there?”

“If I say it’s OK,” Grimaldi said, “then
it’s OK. How about six-thirty? That’ll give them all time to get
there.”

I glanced at the dashboard clock. “We can
make that. At the TBI?”

“That seems easiest,” Grimaldi said.

“Do you need me to come to Gabe’s for
anything?”

“No,” Grimaldi said. “Spicer and Truman will
talk to the staff about the bike, just in case one of them did move
it inside the shed. And I’ve arranged for a flatbed truck. We need
to examine the bike for fingerprints. See if we can get some idea
who put it in the shed. If it wasn’t one of the staff.”