Unfinished Business (11 page)

The boys turned back to Wendell for
approval.

“Just make sure they don’t shoot anybody,”
Grimaldi added. “We want him alive so we can talk to him.”

The boys all nodded solemnly. “Let’s go,”
Jamal told Wendell. “The sooner we get back, the sooner we can get
back.”

He signaled the others, and they all headed
for the SUV. We watched as they started divesting themselves of
guns and Kevlar vests.

“I’ll let the south precinct know they’re
here,” Grimaldi told Wendell. “That way, nobody’ll try to arrest
them.”

He nodded. “I appreciate that. Can’t have’em
sitting out here in an official vehicle, so they’ll either be in
Clayton’s Camaro, or Jamal’s souped up Buick, or José’s truck with
the Virgin Mary in the rear window.”

Grimaldi grinned. “Nobody’s likely to think
either of those is the TBI, anyway.”

Wendell shook his head. “I’ll be in touch.
Let me know if—”

The rest of the sentence was cut off by the
horn of the SUV. Guess Jamal was getting tired of waiting. Or one
of the others was, and had instructed Jamal to honk the horn.

“Goddamn kids!” Wendell snarled and headed
for the SUV.

Grimaldi turned to me. “FinBar?”

“That’s fine. We’ll see you there in about
twenty minutes.”

I headed back to Dix’s SUV and told him
where we were going.

“A sports bar?” Mother inquired, brows
raised.

“You’ll like it. I promise. It’s right down
the street from my office. Brenda Puckett used to take her
sixteen-year-old daughter there.”

She also used to take clients there for
shady deals, but that was another story. And anyway, the FinBar was
a very nice place, clean and full of ferns. Mother would like
it.

And indeed, she looked around with approval
when we walked in. At the ferns, and the clean floor, and the
gleaming dark wood, and the brass. There were big flat-screen TVs
on all the walls, but they only bothered you if you looked at them.
And since one showed baseball and one sailing and one some sort of
violent MMA fighting, I didn’t think Mother would be interested.
The last screen showed a bunch of people running around the
wilderness with sheets of paper in their hands. It was either an
episode of
The Great Race
, or that weird sport they call
orienteering. But it wasn’t violent, and there was no blood, so as
far as I was concerned, that made it A-OK.

Grimaldi walked in a minute or two after we
did, and joined us in a booth in the corner. “Sorry I’m late.” She
scooted in next to me, with her back to the wall. We’d taken the
same positions we’d had for lunch, except Dix sat across from
Grimaldi instead of at the end of the table. “Kansas State Police
called”

“They found the truck?”

She nodded. “He was somewhere near Topeka
when they pulled him over. Routine check, as far as he knows. The
cab was empty, and so was the trailer. Sorry.”

“It’s OK,” I said. I hadn’t really expected
Rafe to be trussed like a turkey, rolling around the cargo hold of
an eighteen-wheeler on its way through the heartland. It would have
been nice, but I hadn’t expected it.

“Spicer and Truman are still going through
the warehouse. It’s a big place. And here’s an interesting
coincidence.”

“What’s that?”

“It used to belong to Julio Melendez,”
Grimaldi said. “I guess it still does. Anyway, Julio’s still in
prison. I checked. But a company called Ibarra Imports is renting
it.”

That
was
an interesting
coincidence.

“Who’s Julio Melendez?” Mother wanted to
know.

I glanced at Grimaldi to see whether she
wanted to respond, and when she didn’t, I said, “He’s someone who
got swept up in my friend Lila’s murder investigation last fall.
Lila Vaughn, remember? The realtor who was strangled? The open
house robberies?”

“Of course,” Mother said, although I had no
idea whether she actually remembered or not. It hadn’t affected her
personally. Not the way it had affected me. So there was no real
reason she’d remember it.

“Julio Melendez’s import/export business
worked with Hector Gonzales and the open house robbers,” including
Rafe, “to store and move and sell the stolen goods. Julio was a
suspect in Lila’s rape and murder, and when Grimaldi found some of
the stolen goods in his warehouse, she arrested him.”

Grimaldi nodded.

“You’re mentioning a lot of Spanish names,”
Mother said. “Melendez, Gonzales, Hernandez...”

“Hector Gonzales ran an SATG,” Grimaldi
explained. “A South American Theft Gang. Some of the members were
black or white, but most were Hispanic. Interestingly, it wasn’t
until Mr. Collier ‘died,’” she made quotation marks in the air
around the word, “and took on the persona of Jorge Pena, that he
was able to penetrate to the inner circle of the gang.”

“Hector probably trusted his own kind more
than anyone else,” I said.

Grimaldi nodded. “Anyway, Julio Melendez is
still behind bars. I double-checked. But our second suspect works
for Ibarra Imports. In what used to be Julio’s warehouse.”

“Ibarra’s another Spanish name,” Dix said,
“isn’t it?”

Maybe it was. However— “Hector’s
organization is dead. Rafe cut its head off.” Although that didn’t
mean someone couldn’t be trying to start up another.

“There are plenty of SATGs around,” Grimaldi
said. “Most don’t ever achieve the size or scope that Gonzales’s
organization did. It’s probably another small outfit trying to get
in on the action. Someone will take care of it.”

Maybe José. Or Jamal or Clayton. “But it
won’t be Rafe.”

Grimaldi shook her head. “By now, everyone
knows who he is. He’s out of the game.”

And a good thing, too. Although being out of
the game seemed to bring its share of dangers, as well.

“You do think we’ll find him,” I asked,
“don’t you?”

Grimaldi hesitated. I didn’t like that.

“Alive?” I added.

Grimaldi glanced at the door. Then she
glanced at Dix. Then she said, “I think we can assume he didn’t
leave by choice. Not without his mode of transportation. Not
without letting someone know. If not you, then his boss. After more
than ten years with the TBI, I don’t think he’d just walk off the
job without a word.”

No. He cared more about Wendell than that.
“You do realize you’re not actually answering my question,
right?”

“Yes,” Grimaldi said. “And the truth is, I’m
not sure whether we will or not. He’s been in tough spots before,
and he’s always made it out alive. But it only takes once. And the
fact that someone may have managed to grab him means that he could
be dead already.”

I nodded. I didn’t like to hear it
confirmed, but I knew it. “But you think there’s a chance we’ll
find him alive?”

“With anyone else,” Grimaldi said, “I’d say
no. But I have a lot of respect for your boyfriend’s ability to
stay alive. So I’m not sure I’d give up hope just yet. I
haven’t.”

I hadn’t, either. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Grimaldi said, and
looked around for the waitress.

We ended up staying at the FinBar until almost ten. By then, Spicer
and Truman had finished their search of Julio Melendez’s warehouse
and come up empty, and had gone home to their respective beds and
significant others. They’d be back at it tomorrow, Grimaldi assured
me. The truck was making its way across Kansas toward the Colorado
border with an ex-con at the wheel, but no Rafe onboard. And the
TBI rookies, parked down the street from the house in Woodbine,
reported no activity whatsoever at that location.

There was nothing going on at the house when
we got there, either. Everything looked just as it had when we
left. The Volvo was parked in the driveway. Rafe’s Harley was still
missing—obviously, since Grimaldi had arranged for it to be
fingerprinted. I’d forgotten to ask when we could pick it up, but
if Rafe didn’t come back, it wasn’t like I’d need it, was it? I
enjoyed riding behind him—the vibrations were nice, and so was the
flex of his muscles between my thighs—but I had no plans, nor any
desire, to pilot the beast myself. Nor was it particularly safe for
me, in my condition.

No one had called or emailed while we’d been
out, and the mailbox was as empty as it had been last time I
checked it: this afternoon before we got into Dix’s SUV to make the
drive out to Peaceful Pines.

We separated ourselves into rooms. I stayed
in my usual bedroom, of course. Mother took Mrs. Jenkins’s lavender
room, and Dix Marquita Johnson’s yellow one. I dug up extra
toothbrushes from the linen closet and handed them out. Mother
always told me to keep things like that on hand, just in case, and
with her here, I was glad I had listened. If I hadn’t been able to
produce an unused, new, clean toothbrush, still in the plastic
wrapper, she would have let me feel her disappointment.

They went into their respective rooms. A
minute went by, and then I could hear murmurs from behind both
doors. Mother was probably checking in with Bob Satterfield,
telling him what was going on. And it was too late for Dix to be
talking to the girls—he’d excused himself while we were sitting at
the FinBar, to make a quick phone call to his daughters at
bedtime—so now he was either talking to Catherine, telling her what
the rest of the day had brought, or he had called Tamara Grimaldi
for some pillow talk before bed. Or perhaps he was talking to Todd
Satterfield, Bob’s son and Dix’s best friend since childhood.

But no, he wouldn’t be that stupid, would
he?

I could just imagine what Todd would make
out of this situation. Like Mother, he’d be convinced that Rafe had
walked away because he didn’t want to be shackled with a wife and
kid. The difference was, Todd would be determined to swoop in and
safe the day, and would no doubt offer to marry me himself.

It wouldn’t be the first time. He’d proposed
before he went to college at eighteen. But since I’d been sixteen
at the time, and still in high school, I’d laughed it off. He
hadn’t said anything more about it, and hadn’t married either; not
until I married Bradley Ferguson at twenty-three. That’s when Todd
found himself a wife, as well. A wife Mother swore he married
because she reminded him of me.

And no sooner had I divorced Bradley, than
Todd divorced Jolynn, as well.

He’d proposed to me again, last fall. With a
diamond ring and everything. And he hadn’t taken it well when I’d
told him no, because I’d fallen in love with Rafe.

With Rafe out of the picture—maybe
permanently—what were the chances that Todd would show up here
tomorrow, bent on rescuing me?

It was hard to know whether I should laugh
or cry. I compromised by turning on my side—stomach-sleeping was no
longer an option—and burying my nose in Rafe’s pillow. It smelled
like him. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. If I concentrated, I
could almost pretend he was here.

But maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea. I
might have to learn to live without him, and pretending he wasn’t
gone wasn’t going to help with that.

The only redeeming aspect of the situation
at the moment was that I was pregnant. I was carrying Rafe’s baby,
and if he never came back, at least I’d have that.

Although if I thought too hard about it, I’d
probably come to the conclusion that no, that wasn’t actually a
good thing either, since I was—or at least might be—looking at
becoming a single parent. But in this case the pregnancy worked in
my favor. It had been a long day full of stress, worry, and a lot
of activity. It was past my usual bedtime. I didn’t have the chance
to do much thinking, and just a small amount of crying, before I
dropped off into exhausted sleep.

It was still dark when I woke up. Quite unusual these days,
when—like this morning—I tended to sleep rather late unless someone
took the trouble to shake me, or otherwise make sure I opened my
eyes.

Yet there I was, wide awake in bed, eyes
open, staring into the darkness. The illuminated numbers on the
alarm clock announced that it was a quarter after two.

Water gurgled in the pipes, as if someone
had flushed the toilet. There was a squeak of bedsprings from Dix’s
room, and a muffled noise. Maybe a snore or maybe just a grunt.
Maybe a curse. I hadn’t ever tried to sleep in Marquita’s bed, so I
had no idea how comfortable it was. Or how uncomfortable.

There were no sounds coming from Mrs.
Jenkins’s—Mother’s—room.

Another side effect of the pregnancy was
that I had to pee all the time. I’d had a lot to drink at the
FinBar—sweet tea, I mean, not alcohol—and at a later hour than I
usually drink. Now that I was awake, I could feel my bladder
nudging me for relief. Maybe that’s what had woken me.

I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and
pushed myself up. And padded across the floor to the door, down the
hallway, and into the bathroom. Where I took a seat on the toilet
before I realized that the toilet wasn’t actually running.

But water was still gurgling through the
pipes.

Maybe Mother had woken up and gone
downstairs for something? A glass of water from the kitchen?

Or maybe she was feeling unwell, and hadn’t
wanted to risk waking Dix or me with any unpleasant noises she
might make. My mother is certainly well-bred enough to drag herself
out of bed in the middle of the night to stagger down a flight of
stairs in an unfamiliar house so no one else had to listen to her
vomit. Or—God forbid—have diarrhea.

Maybe I’d better make my way down to the
first floor, too, to see if there was anything I could do to help.
It was something she ate, most likely. The food at the FinBar must
have upset her delicate stomach. I can practically guarantee that
my mother doesn’t dine on hamburgers and French fries most of the
time. Too much grease, too much fat.