Unfinished Business (27 page)

“Yes,” Mother said, “but...”

“He’s just a boy. He wouldn’t know any
better. And once he was in the car, Hernandez could take him
wherever he wanted.”

“Darling,” Mother said.

I took a steadying breath. “Yes. I know. I
should look on the bright side. Maybe it didn’t happen that way.
Maybe he just had a flat tire. Or drove off the road, or got lost,
or something. Maybe he’ll turn up.”

“He did,” Mother said.

“Maybe... what?”

My foot accidentally slipped off the gas
pedal, and the car behind me came close to engaging my tailpipe.
The driver gave me an angry toot of the horn, and a raised middle
finger when she zipped out and zoomed past on the left.

“He’s here,” Mother said.

“David? But Dix went to the Bog and he
wasn’t there.”

“He isn’t in the Bog,” Mother said. “He’s
here at the house.”

“The mansion?”

“He was asleep on the porch when I came
home.” Her voice sounded almost jubilant. “Dix didn’t see him. I
didn’t see him immediately, either. Not until I got up to the door
and was trying to get my keys out. That’s when I noticed someone
sleeping on the porch swing.”

“And it was David?”

“Yes, dear,” Mother said. “Out cold.”

“But he’s safe?”

“Sitting at the kitchen table drinking milk
and eating a sandwich.”

“Oh, my God.” I could feel the tears
starting to prickle behind my eyes. “Thank you!”

There was a moment’s pause. Then— “Did you
think I would leave him on the porch?” Mother asked, with that
patented mix of hurt feelings and accusation only a mother can
manage.

If it had been Rafe
...

But I decided not to go there. She’d brought
David inside. She was feeding him. He was safe. I could afford to
give my mother the benefit of the doubt. Or a break. Or whatever
you’d call it.

“Of course not. I’m just excited that he’s
safe. And found. And there.”

“He’s fine,” Mother said. “Worn out from
riding his bike all night. Hungry and thirsty, since he didn’t have
anything to eat or drink. But relieved to get here, and to hear
that Rafael is back.”

Right. Um... “You didn’t tell him... what
did you tell him, exactly?”

Hopefully none of the gory details. Because
he didn’t need to hear those.

“Just the essentials,” Mother said calmly.
“That Rafael came back in the middle of the night and spent what
was left of it in the hospital. But that he’s fine now, and that
he’s at Peaceful Pines helping to look for David.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course, dear.” She sounded a touch
miffed. Probably annoyed that I’d felt the need to question her. “I
assume you’ll want to come pick him up?”

“Unless you want to drive back to Nashville
today,” I said, and immediately regretted it. She was being nice; I
didn’t need to be snarky. “Yes, Mother. I want to come pick him up.
I can get there and back almost before Ginny and Sam can make it
back to Nashville.” Especially if Sam was tramping through the
wilderness, and had to be brought back to camp before the two of
them could leave. And as for Rafe and the TBI bunch, they may not
even have made it to Peaceful Pines yet. “I have to call Rafe. And
Ginny and Sam.”

“Of course, dear. David and I will stay here
and wait for you. He might want to take another nap. It was a long
night.”

For all of us. “Just sit on him,” I said.
“Make him stay there. Don’t let him leave again.”

“Of course not.”

“I’m on my way. Thank you, Mother.”

“Of course,” Mother said. “Goodness,
darling. The way you talk, one might think you’d expect me to keep
him on the porch.”

She hung up without giving me a chance to
answer. I took just a second to shake my head, and then I dialed
Rafe’s number. Only to realize after a second that he didn’t have
his phone, that he hadn’t had it since last night, and that I had
to call Wendell instead. I’d remembered all day long, but now, in
the excitement, it had blown straight out of my head.

I dialed again, steering the car with one
hand and pushing buttons with the other, with one eye on the road
and the other on the phone. Dangerous, but it was a Sunday
afternoon, and the roads headed south out of town were, if not
deserted, at least fairly quiet. There were several car lengths
between me and the car in front of me, and no one in the next lane.
And with David waiting in Sweetwater, there was no way I wanted to
take the time to pull over to make my phone calls.

After the phone rang once, and then twice,
Wendell answered. “Craig.”

“Savannah,” I said. “I’ve got him.”

There was a moment, I assume for him to sort
out the various male pronouns. Then— “David?”

“Yes. And I shouldn’t have said that. I
don’t have him. My mother does. But I’m on my way to get him.”

“Talk to Rafe,” Wendell said, and I heard
the sounds of the phone being handed over. Then Rafe’s voice.

“Darlin’?”

“My mother has David,” I told him. “He made
it all the way to Sweetwater. She found him on the front porch,
asleep, when she got home from lunch.”

For a moment he said nothing, then I could
hear him exhale. “Thank God.”

“I know,” I said. “I was afraid Hernandez
had gotten him. Malcolm—you know, the kid from up the street?—said
he saw a blue van with a Hispanic guy in it, sitting in the
driveway across the street this morning.”

There was another pause, and when his voice
came back, it had turned dangerous. “No kidding.”

“No. He seemed sincere. And it sounded like
it was Hernandez.”

I heard Wendell’s voice murmur something in
the background, and Rafe’s answering, “Uh-huh.”

“What?” I said.

“Prob’ly sitting there, waiting to see
what’d happen when you found the body.”

“That’s what I figured,” I said. Wendell
murmured something else, and I added, “What?”

“Nothing. You wanna call Ginny, or you want
me to?”

“You can,” I said, thinking that it might
give him a bonus point or two with David’s mother. She liked him
well enough, I thought, or at least she didn’t dislike him. But she
seemed a bit leery of him—afraid he was trying to take her kid
away—and also too quick to jump to conclusions, like when she
decided to have the local police arrest him on sight if he showed
up at Peaceful Pines. It was just as well he hadn’t ended up
there.

Unless he had.

“Where are you? You didn’t make it all the
way to Peaceful Pines, did you?”

“Just passed Watertown,” Rafe said. So no,
they hadn’t. “We’re turning around.”

“You might as well. He isn’t there. I’ll
drive down to Sweetwater and get him, and bring him back to
Nashville. Ginny and Sam can just go home. I’ll be there almost as
quickly as they will.”

“I’ll tell her. Drive carefully,
darlin’.”

“You, too,” I told him. “Any news on
Hernandez? Did you find anyone who knew him, or had some idea where
he might be?”

But they hadn’t. “A couple people noticed
the van coming and going. He was there for a couple days. But he
didn’t talk to nobody, and nobody talked to him.”

He hadn’t come across as the kind of person
you’d want to chit-chat with, I guess.

“What about the owner?” I asked. “Mr.
Lincoln?”

“Nobody’s seen him for a couple days,” Rafe
said. “We finally figured out why.”

“Why? Did Hernandez kill him, too?”

“Looks that way. Remember the John Doe the
Wilson County cops found? The one Spicer and Truman went to make
sure wasn’t me?”

“Don’t tell me,” I said, although he sort of
already had, “that was Judd Lincoln?”

“That’s what it’s maybe looking like. One of
the neighbors said he was a tall, light-skinned black guy.”

“Then that makes a lot of sense. I guess
Hernandez hooked up with him somehow, after he got out of prison.
Knew him from before, or maybe he just answered an ad for a rental
house in Woodbine. And when they got to talking and Lincoln told
him he lived in a cabin in Wilson County, Hernandez decided he’d
rather do his torturing and killing there.”

“Uh-huh,” Rafe said.

“But then Lincoln either realized what
Hernandez was planning to do and didn’t like it, or Hernandez just
decided to get rid of him. Maybe he figured he could use the
practice after spending four years in prison.”

“Could be.”

Outside the car, the southern end of
Davidson County flashed by. I crossed the invisible border into
Williamson, marked only by a sign on the side of the interstate.
“I’m in Williamson County,” I said.

“Good for you,” Rafe answered. “We’ll try to
dig up a picture of Lincoln, see if we can get a positive ID. If
not, I guess we’ll have to track down a relative, match DNA.”

“If Judd Lincoln’s missing and this guy who
matches his description turned up dead at the same time—after
associating with someone we know is a killer—that’s pretty
conclusive, don’t you think?”

“To you and me,” Rafe said, “but you go to
court with it, you ain’t gonna get beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Maybe not. “Anyway, it’s good to know.”

Rafe agreed that it was.

“I should get off the phone. Concentrate on
driving.” And on getting to Sweetwater ASAP, so I could put David
in the car and bring him home. “You need to call Ginny.”

Rafe said he would, and we hung up. I put
the phone down and focused on driving.

Sweetwater is a typical small Southern town, located about halfway
between Columbia and Pulaski, and a bit east of both.

It started out as a Native American hangout.
They called it
Cullee Oke
, which means Sweet Water in their
native dialect.

Middle Tennessee became officially settled
in 1779, with Fort Nashborough on the banks of the Cumberland River
in what’s now downtown Nashville. (A wooden replica of the fort is
still there, if you’re interested in seeing how the pioneers lived.
I usually drive by it and shudder.) Over the next fifty years,
progress crept south along the Antebellum Trail to Natchez and to
Atlanta.

The Martins came to the Sweetwater area
around 1830, and grabbed up a bunch of land for tobacco farming.
The mansion was finished in 1839. It sits on a knoll outside
Sweetwater proper, on the Columbia Road. At one time, it was
surrounded by Martin land, but these days, there are only a few
acres left. A thick band of trees, protecting the house—and
Mother—from the indignities of McMansion subdivision living beyond,
and a big lawn around the house itself, and around the few
outbuildings that have been preserved: one of the slave cabins, a
smokehouse, and a carriage house. There’s a small private cemetery,
too, tucked away in the woods, and a couple of times a year, local
school children come out to gawk at the slave cabin and the
graves.

The mansion itself is big and square: red
brick, two stories, with tall, white pillars out front, a porch on
the first floor, and a balcony that runs across the front face of
the building. As I’d already mentioned to Dix, Rafe calls it ‘the
mausoleum on the hill,’ and I have to admit there’s a resemblance.
I think he may have been referring equally to the stuffiness of my
mother when he said it, though.

At any rate, I got there just over an hour
after I left Nashville. Traffic had been light, and I’d been
driving a few miles above the speed limit the whole way. Eager to
see David, to make sure that he was indeed all right—not that I
thought my mother would have lied about it—but also somewhat
concerned about what might have happened in the last hour with the
two of them alone together. Mother had seemed strangely taken with
David at the camp yesterday, and had sounded almost mellow—maybe
even a bit indulgent—when she’d called me to say he was there. But
he
was
Rafe’s son, and twelve years old, so I didn’t want to
expect miracles. There was a good chance he’d worn her nerves very
thin by now.

Everything looked quiet when I crunched up
the gravel drive to the front door. The mansion has one of those
broad, shallow staircases up to the front porch: three steps, with
a big concrete urn on either side. The front of the house faces
south-east, and gets full sun until late afternoon, so at this time
of year, the urns were filled with a mixture of daylilies and
coneflowers. Each one comes up to my waist, and weighs at least
three times what I do.

I parked in front of the steps, and walked
up to the double front doors. David’s bicycle—blue—was leaning
against the wall next to the door, beside another planter full of
phlox.

I twisted the door knob and pushed the door
open, and raised my voice only about halfway. “Mother?”

I didn’t want to yell, since I thought there
was a chance David might be asleep again. If the poor kid had been
awake all night, pedaling his bike across half of Middle Tennessee,
he must be exhausted.

There was no answer. I closed the door
behind me and headed across the foyer. There’s a staircase on
either side, going up to the second floor, and a long central
hallway running all the way to the back of house. In the old days,
before air conditioning, they’d keep both doors open in the summer,
to get cross ventilation going. These days, thankfully, we have
artificial cold air to help us survive. A blast of it hit my ankles
as I passed one of the vents in the old, wide-plank floor.

Like in Mrs. Jenkins’s Victorian, the first
floor is made up of common rooms. Parlors, dining room, kitchen,
guest bath, butler’s pantry... Upstairs, there are bedrooms and
more bathrooms. If mother wasn’t down here, I’d check there, since
I figured there was a good chance she was exhausted, too. She
hadn’t been pedaling, but the stress of Rafe being gone—if she’d
felt stress over that; I knew I had—combined with the hours in the
hospital and then the dead body, must have wiped her out, as well.
It wouldn’t be surprising if she’d decided to lie down while she
waited for me to get here, especially if David was napping.