“Just in time for dinner,” I told him when he’d reached me, since the buffet had just been unveiled and that was why I was sitting here mostly alone. Most of the other guests had lined up for food. It was just me and Mother sitting here—she’d informed me that she was too worried to eat—and nobody else within hearing distance.

  “Any news?” she wanted to know.

  Rafe looked grave. “We found the truck. Down the side of a hill on the other side of the county.”

  “Up on the Devil’s Backbone?”

  It’s a hilly area that runs alongside the western edge of Maury County and the eastern edge of Lewis County, adjacent. It’s really only the foothills and the approach to the Devil’s Backbone that’s located in the sheriff’s jurisdiction, but it’s a wild enough area that we’d managed to find plenty of trouble there in the past. Just last year, the entire Skinner clan had been murdered on their various homesteads up in the hills, and before they were killed, they’d managed to both run dogfighting rings and establish a huge marijuana operation with several large greenhouses up there on the ridge. And it was less than six months ago that the investigation into all those crimes had turned up the remains of Katie Graves up there, as well; a girl who had gone missing the year I was twelve.

  So the area is rural enough that all sorts of things can go on, and have, up there, with no one the wiser. The fact that the sheriff’s transportation had been found in that area—abandoned, I assumed, or Rafe would have mentioned that the sheriff had been with it—wasn’t a particularly good sign.

  “You suggested that,” Mother said, “didn’t you? Earlier? That he might have gone to the Devil’s Backbone?”

  He nodded. “But only ‘cause there are areas up there with spotty cell service. Cletus followed the radio signal in the truck and was able to locate it.”

  Cletus is one of the deputies at the sheriff’s office, and probably the guy most likely to take over the job whenever the sheriff retires. He and Rafe had never gotten along particularly well, but they seemed to have been able to bury the hatchet well enough over this. “Did you go with him?”

  “It’s public property,” Rafe said. “He couldn’t keep me away. Although I think he figured that if something had happened to Bob, he’d need help.”

  And Rafe not only works for the Columbia Police Department, which is located within Maury County and which has a much bigger footprint and more resources than the sheriff’s department, but he’s also the local representative for the TBI, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.

  “Is there any reason to think this is going to turn into something bigger than just a missing person?”

  “When it’s the sheriff who’s gone missing, and on a call like this, it’s already big enough,” Rafe told me. “The border to Lewis County isn’t far away from where the truck was found. Less than a mile as the crow flies. That’s a different jurisdiction from this one. It’s likely we’ll have to cross it. And since it’s the sheriff’s truck we’re talking about, and it has some indications of foul play, it’s just as well to kick it up a level. Especially since I’m here anyway.”

  Of course.

  “What do you mean, foul play?” Mother wanted to know.

  Rafe turned to her. And although he obviously wanted to reassure her, I noticed he was careful not to say too much. “Not a lot more than we already knew. Just the fact that he missed his son’s wedding is a huge red flag that whatever happened, wasn’t on purpose. He didn’t have any problems with Todd marrying Marley, right?”

  “Of course not,” Mother said with a sniff. “At the time of the little boy’s disappearance things were different. Back then, we all thought…”

  She trailed off, before trying again, more firmly. “But now we all know what happened, and that Marley had nothing to do with it. Bob liked Marley. And he adored Oliver and was—is—excited about the new baby.”

  She shook her head. “No, he had no reason to stay away from the wedding. He was looking forward to it.”

  Rafe nodded. “So that’s an indicator that something happened to him between the time he left his house at ten o’clock, and when we found the truck at around three-thirty. There’s also the fact that there were no skid-marks on the road where the truck went over. No signs that he tried to brake before the truck left the road.”

  “What does that mean?” Mother wanted to know, still pale.

  I unlatched Carrie and switched her over to my other side. Rafe watched for a second, distracted—either by his lovely daughter or the flash of his wife’s breast—and then he turned his attention back to Mother. “Could mean a lot of things. He had a medical issue or passed out, so he didn’t realize the car was going off the road. Are there any medical issues I should know about?”

  “We’re both getting older,” Mother said, and sounded sort of apologetic about it, “but other than some slightly elevated blood pressure, and, perhaps, some elevated PSA levels, he doesn’t have any of what I’d call,” she hesitated delicately, “issues.”

  “PSA levels?”

  She gave me a stony stare. “Prostate, dear.”

  Ah. Of course. How indelicate of me to make her spell it out. “Sorry,” I said, hiding what was probably, under the circumstances, an inappropriate grin.

  She waved it away. “He’s a vital, healthy man. There are no issues that I know of, that would cause that sort of accident.”

  Rafe nodded. “I’d like a list of any medications he’s taking, if you don’t mind. Just in case any of them might have a bearing on what happened.”

  “Of course,” Mother told him. She had her mouth open to say something else, but I got in first.

  “Was there any reason to think he was in the car when it went off the road? Any indication that he got out of the car at the bottom of the hill, or anything?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “No footprints we could find. The car door was shut, although that don’t necessarily mean anything. Someone could have gotten out of the car and shut the door behind them. No reason why not.”

  Of course not. “But no footprints?”

  “None we saw,” Rafe said. “And no indications inside the car that anybody’d been there at impact. The airbags blew, of course. But there was no blood and no signs of anyone being injured.”

  “And do you think someone would have been injured, had they gone down that hill in that car?”

  “I’d’a guessed so,” Rafe said. “About halfway down the hill, the front of the car got crunched against the trunk of a tree. That musta been what set off the airbags. Don’t think nobody coulda walked away from that without at least a few drops of blood. Likely a broken arm or something, less’n they were very lucky.”

  I nodded. “So what you’re really thinking, is that someone drove the car to the edge of the road and then jumped out before it went over. With the engine running, I guess.” And apparently they had also managed to shut the door behind them on their way out.

  “That’d be my guess,” Rafe nodded. “Or at least it’s another good theory.”

  “Bob would never do that,” Mother said.

  I exchanged a glance with my husband, since of course neither of us thought he had. Rafe turned back to Mother. “D’you know anybody up on the ridge who mighta called Bob this morning, and that he woulda gone out there for? It was his son’s wedding day, so I imagine he wouldna done it for just anybody.”

  But Mother shook her head helplessly. “Bob knows a lot of people, all over the county. He’s been with the sheriff’s department for as long as you’ve been alive, practically. That’s a lot of cases and a lot of interactions with a lot of people.”

  “And he was a local,” I added. “Maury County was where he grew up. He probably knew half the population by name.”

  Mother nodded. “It could have been a lot of people who called. Although you’re right. I don’t know how many of them he would have gone to, on the morning of his son’s wedding. He wouldn’t have wanted to miss the ceremony, so it would have had to have been either someone who meant something, or something he didn’t think would take long.”

  “If he drove all the way to the Devil’s Backbone,” I pointed out, “he had to have known it would take a while. It’s… what? a forty-five minute drive from Sweetwater, at least, isn’t it?”

  “About that,” Rafe nodded. “At least to the place where we found the truck. That’s why it took me two and a half hours to get back here.”

  “So if he left at ten, and he knew he had to be at the church by two, and he had to change, and he knew it would be a forty-five minute drive either way… then he couldn’t have expected whatever it was to take very long.”

  “Less’n he wasn’t going to the Devil’s Backbone,” Rafe pointed out. “He coulda been going somewhere much closer to home. Just because his truck ended up on the Devil’s Backbone, don’t mean he was there.”

  No, it didn’t. “Maybe we were just supposed to think that.”

  Rafe nodded.

  “So what happens now?” Mother wanted to know, pale but composed.

  Rafe glanced around the crowded tent. “Now I best report the news to Satterfield.” He caught himself. “To Todd, I mean. I’m guessing he’s next of kin, officially. Besides, he needs to know what’s happened.”

  Mother nodded.

  “Get Dix,” I told him. “He’s over there, in line, with Grimaldi. It probably wouldn’t hurt to bring Grimaldi, too. She’ll probably have to get involved, as well.”

  Tamara Grimaldi, the chief of police for the city of Columbia. AKA my brother Dix’s fiancée, and also AKA my husband’s boss. AKA one of my closest friends, for that matter, but this was one meeting I wasn’t going to horn in on, no matter how much I wanted to. Todd had a wife now, and would have the support of his best friend, and Mother needed my support, and probably Catherine’s. “If you see my sister,” I added, “send her over here, would you?”

  “’Course.” He got to his feet and looked down at me. “I’ll be back after I’ve had this conversation. I’m prob’ly gonna have to go back to work.”

  There was no apology whatsoever in his voice, and I hadn’t expected there to be. “Of course you’ll have to go to work. And what’s more, we all want you to. There’s no time to waste.”

  Whether Bob was injured and somewhere out there on the ridge, perhaps wandering around with a concussion or something, or whether—more likely—he had been the victim of some other sort of foul play, time was of the essence. I’m sure we’d all much rather Rafe was out there beating the bushes, trying to track down Bob and whoever had him, if anyone did, that sit here with us nibbling on roast beef and scalloped potatoes and cream cake.

  He nodded. “I’ll talk to you again before I leave.”

  “See that you do,” I told him, and watched him walk away to gather up Dix and Grimaldi, and then Todd and Marley. And then I took a deep breath and turned to Mother, to see if I could possibly come up with anything helpful to say.

  Chapter Three

  By the time Rafe came back to the table, Catherine and Jonathan had joined us, along with Cole, Annie, and Robert, their three children, and Marley’s Oliver.

  “What on earth’s going on?” my sister wanted to know, before she’d even sat down. “Rafe came and collected Dix and Tamara and Todd and Marley and took them away somewhere. Is it Bob? Did they find him?”

  Mother shook her head, looking pale and worried. “Rafael and Cletus Johnson found the truck, it seems. But there was no sign of Bob.”

  Catherine met my eyes across the table, even as she helped all four of the children get situated with their plates of kid-friendly wedding food: pigs in blankets and carrot sticks from the veggie trays and some crackers and cheese.

  “Apparently the truck went off the road up in the hills on the other side of the county,” I told them all. “Rafe suspects it was done on purpose, and that Bob wasn’t in it when it happened. Although to be honest, I’m not sure he and Cletus know anything for sure. I assume Cletus is still out there, probably with a crew that’s combing the truck and the area for any kind of evidence, while Rafe came back here.”

  Catherine nodded. Jonathan, my brother-in-law, looked shocked. Apparently, this was the first he’d heard of it. “When did this happen?”

  “He left home just after ten this morning,” Mother explained. “He received a phone call—we don’t know from whom—and he said he’d be back in plenty of time to get ready for the wedding.”

  “And then he wasn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I drove over to the church eventually. I thought there was just a possibility that he might have decided to go directly there. He wasn’t dressed for it, of course. When he left, he was still wearing his jeans and a T-shirt. But I thought it was possible that he’d been so late in coming back that he’d decided to go directly to the church, so he wouldn’t miss Todd’s wedding. But then he wasn’t there.”

  She looked helplessly around the room, as if hoping to see him. I did the same, but of course there was no sign of Bob. Nor was Rafe back, or any of the people he’d taken outside with him.

  “But that’s terrible,” Jonathan said. We nodded, because of course it was. “What’s being done?”

  “The sheriff’s office is investigating. Rafe is investigating, meaning the TBI and the Columbia PD is involved.”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “Beyond that, I’m not sure.” I shook my head. “I feel very ineffectual, just sitting here.”

  “There wouldn’t have been anything you could do, sitting somewhere else,” Catherine pointed out, and I had to admit that she was right.

  “I just feel kind of trapped here. We can’t leave until the reception is over, but none of us—none of us who know what happened—feel much like celebrating, you know? And I’m sure Rafe is out there, absolutely destroying Todd and Marley’s wedding day right now.”

  “Better that they should know,” Mother said firmly. “And perhaps Todd knows something the rest of us don’t. Maybe his father phoned him and told him he’d be late, and to go ahead with the ceremony.”

  Maybe so. I didn’t think it was at all likely, since it didn’t explain the truck at all—if he’d done that, surely Todd would have talked to one of us about sending a car for his dad—but I also didn’t want to upset whatever comforting dream-scenario Mother was concocting for herself. So I just smiled and said, “Sure," and went back to watching for Rafe to come back.

  * * *

  When he did, Todd looked absolutely shellshocked, like the carpet had been yanked out from under his feet and the foundations of his world had been shaken. Marley was clutching his hand, looking wide-eyed and scared, while Dix hovered, ready to step in should Todd collapse, I guess. Behind them, Rafe and Grimaldi were deep in conversation. Probably talking shop, and how the Columbia PD—the parts of it that wasn’t Rafe—could get involved in the investigation.

  He looked up and caught my eye over the heads of the other people, and nodded toward the entrance to the tent. I nodded back. He was leaving, and letting me know that he was. He and Grimaldi headed out without another word to anyone.

  I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow of the rest of the reception. It had all the usual parts, the speeches and the cutting of the cake and the first dance and all the rest of it. Marley and Todd did their best to make things appear normal, but of course we could all tell they weren’t. Things wound up rather earlier than expected, since, as word got around about Bob, nobody seemed very much inclined to celebrating. No surprise there, really. And at the end of the night, instead of heading off on their honeymoon to sunny Aruba or Paris or wherever they’d planned to go, they went home to Marley’s house, while leaving little Oliver to spend the night with Cole. I hoped they’d be able to enjoy their first night together as man and wife, but somehow I doubted it.

  Rafe didn’t come home until very late. By then, Carrie had gone down for the night—some of the time now, if I fed her late enough, she’d make it through the night without waking me up for another feeding—and I was just getting ready to go to sleep myself, when I heard the Volvo come up the driveway and then turn the corner of the house and head for the garage in the back. A minute later, I heard the key in the back door, and then after that, his steps on the stairs. A few seconds later he appeared in the doorway of the room we’d shared since we moved down here in January.

  It wasn’t the master suite. I’d grown up in this house, the Martin Mansion on the outskirts of Sweetwater, and the suite at the end of the hall was where my mother and father had slept. This room had been my room when I was a girl, and although Dad was dead and Mother had moved in with the sheriff, it still felt weird to contemplate taking over the owner’s suite. So here we were, in my old room, across from what had become Carrie’s nursery.

  Rafe pretty much always looks good, and rarely looks tired, even after a day like today. He’d certainly been through worse in his day. But there was no denying that he did look a little the worse for wear when he came through the door. His tie was tucked into his jacket pocket, the jacket was hanging over his arm, and his shirt was wrinkled. There was dust on his shoes, and grooves bracketing his mouth. His lips were tight.

  “Oh, no,” I said, involuntarily. “Tell me you didn’t find him.”

  He shook his head, and his expression softened just a little. “No. We didn’t find him.”

  I breathed out. For a second there, I’d been sure they’d found Bob and he’d been dead. But if not, then there was still a chance.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “We got the car up on the road,” Rafe said, “and towed it to the department yard. A couple of the forensic techs gave up their Saturday evening to work on it.”

  “That was nice of them.”

  He nodded, although I’m not sure what I’d said had actually registered. “There’s nothing helpful in the car. Lots of Bob-DNA, hairs and fingerprints and such. Nothing from anybody else.”