Unfinished Business (34 page)

“I didn’t hurt you,” I managed when I could
talk again, “did I?”

He rolled his head to look at me. “I was
hurt already, darlin’.”

Oh, God
. “I’m sorry,” I said
wretchedly. “It was supposed to be gentle.”

His lips curved. “It started out
gentle.”

“It didn’t end there.”

The smile turned to a grin. “No.”

“You’re incorrigible,” I told him and rolled
to a sitting position. “When was the last time you took a pain
pill?”

“They gave me something at the hospital when
they stitched me up.”

That didn’t answer my question. “Not a pill,
though. Right? A shot?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’ll get you one.” I got to my feet
and—after finally kicking off the shoes—padded over to where his
jeans had landed. The pill bottle was in the pocket. I’d felt it
earlier. “Here you go.” I shook one out and put it on the bedside
table. “Let me get you some water to take it with.”

I didn’t wait for him to answer, just walked
out of the room and up the hall to the bathroom. When I came back
into the bedroom a minute later, the pill was gone and Rafe was
asleep. His eyelashes fluttered when I put my hand on his cheek and
said his name, but he didn’t stir. I put the water down and walked
around the bed to where I could curl up next to him, and then I
pulled the blankets up over both of us and went to sleep, too.

Rafe slept all the way through the night, and woke up in the
morning looking a lot better.

I didn’t—sleep all the way through the
night, I mean. I was up a couple of times, hyper-alert for any
noise or movement, however slight. But every time I opened my eyes,
everything was as it should be. Rafe was there, next to me, and we
were both safe.

When I opened my eyes for the third or
fourth time—into daylight—he was already awake, lying on his side
looking at me.

“Morning, darlin’.”

“Good morning,” I said. “You look like you
feel better.” The dark pain from yesterday was gone from his eyes,
and the shadows were gone from under them. He was, perhaps, just a
touch pale still, but otherwise he seemed OK. And the bandages
around his arm and chest were still pristine, still white. No fresh
bloodstains.

“Amazing what sex can do for a guy.” He
grinned.

For a girl, too. I felt good, as well. When
I stretched, experimentally, the pain in my lower back and stomach
seemed to be gone.

It was still early—before seven-thirty by
the clock on the bureau across the room—but I could smell
coffee.

“I think Mother’s back.”

Rafe nodded. “Smells that way.”

“And we have places to go, people to
see.”

He nodded.

“If possible, I’d like to stop at home
first, before we go to meet Grimaldi, to change clothes. Everything
of Mother’s is tight, especially now that I’m pregnant.”

“I kinda like the tight clothes on you,”
Rafe said, and grinned unrepentantly when I looked at him. “Sorry,
darlin’. I’m a guy. We like women in tight dresses.”

“But I’m fat.”

He shook his head. “No, darlin’. You’re
pregnant. They’re different.”

“I don’t look pregnant,” I said. “I just
look fat. I don’t have that front-heavy figure yet. So it just
looks like I’ve gotten thick around the middle.”

His hand was back on my stomach, moving in
circles. “You’re not thick around the middle. You’re making a baby
in there. My baby.”

“Easy for you to say,” I grumbled. “You’re
perfect.”

Hard muscles, smooth skin, 3% body fat.

“Oh, yeah. Those scars are gonna look great
when they heal. I’m gonna be walking around with this fucker’s name
carved into my stomach for the rest of my life.”

I sat up, fast enough that my head spun.
“What?”

He stayed where he was, looking up at me. “I
guess you didn’t look at’em close enough to see that, huh?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t looked closely at
the damage done to him at all. One quick glimpse had been enough.
More than enough.

“Yeah. He carved his name in there. Called
it signing his work.”

My stomach flipped. “That’s grotesque.” And
stupid. How had he expected to be able to get away with murder if
his name was carved into the victims’ skin, for God’s sake?

“I don’t imagine he thought I’d leave,” Rafe
said.

“No. But still. That’s not very smart.”

He shrugged.

“Did he ‘sign his work’—” I made quotation
marks in the air, “when he killed Kelly, too? The girl in our
bedroom?”

Rafe nodded.

“I didn’t notice that, either,” I
admitted.

“I don’t blame you. It ain’t pretty to look
at.”

No, it wasn’t. “He might have ‘signed’ the
other women he killed too, then. If there’s enough left of them
when we find them...”

Rafe nodded and rolled away from me. “Let’s
get outta here. Get this thing done.”

I nodded. I’d been thinking that another
quickie might be nice before we got up, but this conversation had
effectively made me lose my appetite, so to speak. “Do you want to
take a shower?”

He shook his head. “Not for a couple days.
Can’t get the bandages wet.”

“I took one yesterday afternoon,” I said. “I
think I’m good, too. Let’s just brush and go.”

“We’ll have to stop and talk to your
mama.”

We did. Much as I just wanted to sneak out
of the house without facing her—and the fact that she’d spent the
night with Bob Satterfield—it would be rude not to thank her for
her hospitality.

“You can have the bathroom first,” I told
him.

He nodded. “I’ll be quick.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just take the time
you need.” I stayed where I was and watched him pad across the
floor to the door, naked except for the bandages circling his torso
and arm. As he passed through the door and into the hallway, I
giggled. Hopefully Mother was downstairs, where the coffee smell
came from, and not up here. I could just imagine my mother coming
face to face with my naked boyfriend in the hallway.

Then again, maybe it would explain a few
things to her.

Not that the way he looks and the size of
his equipment is all that attracted me to him. Far from it. But the
fact that he makes me go dry-mouthed every time I see him naked
isn’t exactly a bad thing.

And anyway, he’d seen Mother naked
yesterday. It seemed fair. As he’d told me once, ‘tit for tat.’

But there was no scream of outrage from the
hallway. Just the sound of the bathroom door closing. Mother must
be in the kitchen.

I rolled out of bed and dragged on used
underwear and the same clothes I’d worn yesterday. I will not raid
my mother’s underwear drawer—there are limits—and if we were going
home anyway, I might as well just wear the same clothes I’d
borrowed yesterday. No sense dirtying anything else. Both blouse
and skirt were wrinkled from spending the night crumpled on the
floor, but I shook the wrinkles out the best I could, and put them
on. By the time Rafe padded back into the bedroom, his body
somewhat less alert than when he’d left, I was already dressed. “Do
you need help with your clothes?”

He grimaced. “Prob’ly.”

Hard to bend, no doubt. I helped him with
the things he couldn’t do himself, and left him to handle what he
could while I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. When I
came back into the bedroom, he was buttoned up and ready to go. We
walked down the stairs together, along the hallway and into the
kitchen.

Mother was there, of course, also wearing
the same clothes she’d worn last night. They also looked worse for
wear, like she’d left them crumpled on the floor, too.

“Good morning,” I said brightly.

She turned to me, and looked me up and down.
“Good morning, darling.” Usually she would have mentioned something
about the rumpled way I looked, and would have been justified in
doing so, but she refrained. I was grateful.

Then she moved her attention to Rafe. Her
eyes lingered for a second on his shirt, and the bloodstains, and
her mouth compressed.

“We’re going home to change,” I said
defensively. “We didn’t realize we’d be spending the night here. If
we had, I would have brought a change of clothes.”

“Of course, darling.” She turned to the
coffee machine. “Coffee?”

“Not for me. It isn’t good for the baby.” I
headed to the refrigerator for the orange juice instead. And I was
just about to ask Rafe whether he’d like coffee, since Mother
doesn’t address him directly, when—

“Rafael? Coffee?”

I blinked. So did Rafe.

“Yeah,” he said after a second.
“Thanks.”

Mother poured coffee for him with her own
hands. “Sugar? Milk?”

“Just black. Thanks.”

She handed the cup to him with her own
hands, too, instead of setting it on the counter in front of him. I
watched, so intently that I almost over-poured the juice, and I
think it’s possible their fingers may have touched when they
transferred the cup from hand to hand.

“Darling,” Mother said.

“What?”

She nodded to my glass, about to
overflow.

“Oh. Sorry,” I tilted the rest of the juice
into the carton and put it back in the fridge. Rafe sipped his
coffee. I sincerely hoped it wasn’t poisoned. But Mother already
had a cup, it seemed, so unless she’d brewed his separately, I
didn’t think so.

“What are the two of you up to today?” She
sipped from her cup.

“We’re going to meet Detective Grimaldi and
Wendell and the rookies to see if we can find the bodies of the
women Rafe thinks Hernandez murdered four years ago,” I said.

Mother swallowed wrong and coughed. I patted
her on the back until she stopped. “
You’re
going to do
that?”

“I know it isn’t particularly ladylike.” And
might be unpleasant. Being outside would be hot and sticky, and
human remains are gross. “But I feel sort of invested now. I’d like
to see the case through to the end. And we may not find
anything.”

I glanced at Rafe. He shook his head. And he
was still breathing—and still drinking—so that was a good
thing.

“And after that?” Mother asked.

I glanced at Rafe again. “I guess we’ll go
home and clean up. Get a new mattress and sheets for the bed.
Wendell and the boys will help us with that, since we can’t really
haul anything too heavy ourselves.” And since that reminded me, I
added, “We took the rug out of your room. We’ll throw it away once
we get home.” There was a dumpster up the street across from
Malcolm’s house, in the driveway where Hernandez had been biding
his time yesterday morning. We could toss it in there.

Mother blinked. “Thank you.”

“It was no problem,” I told her. “It just
took a few minutes. And we didn’t want you to have to deal with it
when you came home.”

“That was thoughtful.”

“We were happy to do it.” I glanced at Rafe,
who nodded. Whether he’d been happy to do it or not last night, he
made it look sincere now, anyway.

“Will you reschedule the ceremony?” Mother
asked, and for a second, I couldn’t think what ceremony she was
talking about. Then I remembered: the wedding. The one we should
have had two days ago, when she’d driven up to Nashville to see me
marry Rafe.

“I assume.” I looked at him. “You still want
to get married, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then we’ll reschedule. We’ll let you know
for where and when.”

Or maybe we’d just elope. Get in the car and
drive the four hours to the Smoky Mountains, and go to one of the
wedding chapels. We could have Elvis sing me down the aisle, and
spend our wedding night in a mountain chalet with a heart-shaped
tub. And we wouldn’t have to deal with any of our friends or
family.

Mother cleared her throat. “You could get
married here,” she said.

I stared at her.

“At the mansion.”

I blinked. And looked at Rafe. Mother did,
too.

“Rafael,” she said. And although it sounded
like she had a slight problem getting the word out, she did.

Rafe looked at her.

“Would you consider...” She gave her head a
little shake. “Would you consent to...”

But apparently that one didn’t pass muster,
either. “I would consider it an honor if you would marry my
daughter here. In Sweetwater.”

There was silence. I think we were both too
shocked to speak. I know I was.

I looked at Mother. I looked at Rafe. I
looked back at Mother.

I opened my mouth to ask who she was and
what she’d done with my real mother, but closed it again, since the
levity was misplaced. The thought did cross my mind, though.

Through it all Rafe didn’t say a word. Just
looked at her. I don’t know what he was looking for, but he must
have found it, because finally he nodded.

It wasn’t a ‘yes, I’ll do that’ nod. It was
more of an ‘I see what you’re trying to do’ nod.

“Savannah,” he said, without looking at
me.

“Yes?” My heart started beating faster.

“You wanna get married in Sweetwater?”

I hesitated, weighing my options. The honest
answer was yes, I did. I had married Bradley here, in front of
everyone in town. How could I do less for Rafe?

He’d been the black sheep of our hometown
for as long as I could remember. LaDonna Collier’s good-for-nothing
colored boy. While I’d been the town princess: Margaret Anne
Martin’s perfect younger daughter. I wanted to stand up in front of
God and everyone and promise to love and honor him for as long as
we both were alive.

But I’d never kidded myself that that’s what
he wanted. He didn’t like to come back to Sweetwater. He didn’t
have good memories from living here.

“It ain’t a hard question,” he told me.
“Just say yes or no.”

“If I say yes, you’ll do it because you’ll
want to give me what I want.”

“So you’ll say no cause you think it’s what
I want you to say?”