“So whoever sent the car down the hill, if someone did, was wearing gloves and made sure they covered up.”

  Rafe nodded. “Unless Bob did it.”

  “Do you have any reason to think Bob would have done it?”

  “Not other than that there’s no evidence anyone else did.”

  He headed for the closet, where he hung his jacket on a hanger and proceeded to unzip his trousers and let them drop. Normally, that’d interest me—when Rafe strips, good things normally happen to me—but at the moment I was too preoccupied with what he was saying to pay his nakedness the attention it deserved. While he hung the pants and then shrugged out of the shirt and wadded it up and threw it, with a level of anger that would have been very telling had I been paying attention to it, into the laundry basket, I watched without really noticing much beyond his words.

  “So no clues of any kind in the truck.”

  He shook his head. “If anybody other’n Bob was in it, they didn’t leave anything useful behind.”

  “What about Bob’s phone? Did you find that?”

  “In the truck.” He padded toward the bed on bare feet. “Where’s Pearl?”

  Our pitbull sleeps next to the kitchen door downstairs because it’s the closest she can get to where Rafe enters the house. If I’d let her sleep in the garage, I’m sure she’d be happy to, just so she could see him those few seconds sooner.

  And naturally he’d have noticed that she wasn’t at her post in the kitchen.

  “Mother took her home,” I told him. “When she dropped me and Carrie off after the reception.”

  When we first got her, Pearl initially attached herself to Mother. They may have seemed like a strange pairing—Mother is much more of what I’d call a Standard Poodle type of woman, not the kind to open her heart to a scrapper like Pearl—but they’d got on like a house on fire. The original Pearl had been a Chihuahua Mother had as a young girl, and the name transferred handily onto the pale gray pitbull.

  This all happened while Rafe and I were still living in Nashville, before Carrie was born. We’d found her during a case the sheriff got Rafe involved in—up on the Devil’s Backbone, as it happened; Pearl had been Robbie Skinner’s dog—and somehow she had ended up living with us. With Mother first, and then with Rafe and me—and Carrie—once Mother moved in with the sheriff.

  But now Mother had taken her back, at least for the night. “I think she wanted company,” I said. “I told her she could stay here—we’re not using the master suite; she’d be welcome to it—but I guess she’s hoping Bob’s going to show up in the middle of the night at home, the way you did.”

  Rafe nodded. He pulled the comforter aside and tucked himself underneath. And gave out a sound that sounded perilously close to a sigh when he sank into the mattress and high thread-count sheets. “I feel old.”

  “I don’t doubt that you do.” I curled up next to him and shut out the light. “How much walking did you do?”

  “More than I oughta have done, in dress shoes. If I’d have had any sense, I woulda gone home and changed.”

  “You were afraid of sparing the time,” I said. “But I’m sorry your feet hurt. Do you want me to rub them?”

  I could hear the smile in his voice. “No, darlin’. I’ll be all right. Likely feel better tomorrow morning.”

  Likely to. “What’s on tap for then?”

  “Hard to say,” Rafe said. “It’s hard to know where to start.”

  “You have the phone. Isn’t there anything useful on that? It’s where the phone call came in, right? So you have the number of whoever called?”

  “Showed up as Unknown. We’ll have to get with the phone company, see if we can squeeze the actual number outta them.”

  “You tried a reverse call, of course?”

  “’Course,” Rafe said, starting to sound drowsy. “No answer.”

  No, there wouldn’t be. “So do you think whoever called him did it deliberately? He wanted to hurt Bob, so he called him for a meeting, and then when Bob showed up, this person did whatever he wanted to do? Hit Bob over the head, or whatever?”

  Or she, I supposed. It needn’t have been a man, necessarily.

  “Dunno,” Rafe said. “Coulda been that, or coulda been that someone called ’cause something was wrong, and when Bob got there, they both got caught up in. Whatever it was.”

  “An unknown number, though?” Surely that indicated that the caller himself—or herself—had something to hide?

  “It’s hard to say, darlin’.” He was definitely fading. The words were running together. “We’ll know more tomorrow. Gotta get the actual number from the phone company.”

  Of course. “Go to sleep,” I said. “You need your rest. It’s going to be another busy day tomorrow.”

  He didn’t answer. For a couple of seconds I thought he’d already fallen asleep, but then his arm came around me. “C’mere, darlin’.” He pulled me closer, into the warmth of his body. “We’re gonna find him. OK?”

  “Of course you are,” I said, even though I was nowhere near sure of it. “If anybody can do it, you can.” And that I absolutely believed. “Go to sleep, Rafe. You’re going to need to be alert tomorrow.”

  He murmured something. A second later, his breath was already deep and rhythmic. I lay in the comforting warmth, with the heat of his skin and the steady beat of his heart against my palm, and tried to do the same. But it took quite a while before I was able to turn my brain off for long enough to think about something else and force myself to sleep.

  Chapter Four

  He was up before me the next morning. He usually is. When Carrie started making noises a little before six, it was Rafe who went into the nursery and picked her up and brought her to me, so I didn’t have to leave the slothful embrace of the bed. I’d lain awake long enough that it was hard to get my eyes open this morning.

  While I sat there against the pillows, still half asleep, Rafe hopped in the shower and then pulled out a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the drawers on the other side of the room. It’s a pleasure watching him get dressed, too, just because there’s a lot of nice skin and some beautiful muscles on display, but of course it’s a little depressing that he’s covering it all up.

  “So what happens this morning?” I asked. “It’s kind of early to get going, isn’t it?”

  “First of all I’m gonna make sure he hasn’t shown up somewhere overnight. At home, at the hospital, at the—"

  He stopped before he uttered the word ‘morgue,’ but I knew he was thinking it. He pressed his lips together for a second, although it could have been because he was zipping the jeans, always a risky proposition for someone who often prefers to go commando.

  “All those places are gonna be open this early,” he added. “Your mama’s gonna be awake, I guarantee it. The hospitals stay open around the clock.”

  And the morgue never sleeps. Right.

  “If somebody had found the body,” I said firmly, “surely we would have heard by now. Someone would have called one of us.”

  “You’d think. But I’m gonna check anyway.”

  Of course he was. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Keep your mama from losing her mind?”

  “She’s got Pearl,” I said, “and I’m sure Audrey and your grandma will be much better equipped to do that than me.”

  Audrey is Mother’s best friend, and has been ever since Mother came here to Sweetwater as a young bride thirty-some years ago. Audrey is also Rafe’s cousin twice removed or some such thing: her mother was Rafe’s grandmother’s sister. And in addition to that, she’s my half-sister Darcy’s mother. (It’s a tangled web we weave.)

  But I digress. Under the circumstances I was sure Audrey and Mrs. J would be happy to keep Mother from going crazy. They would have heard what had happened now. I was sure Mother would have called Audrey yesterday, first chance she got. And besides, it was Sunday. Audrey’s clothing boutique on the square in Sweetwater was closed today. The three of them would probably go to church—what a better day for it?—and then to lunch, and they would keep Mother occupied and hopefully from fretting too terribly for most of the day. Long enough that I could do something else, if there was something to do.

  “Is there someone I can go see? Somewhere I can go check? Can I come with you? I’ll go crazy, too, if I just have to sit around here all day.”

  “It’s an official investigation,” my husband said.

  “Yes, but… it’s not like I haven’t gone with you on those before.”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “Although it doesn’t have to be that. I’m perfectly happy to go off on my own, too. Just give me something I can do. Somewhere I can go check out. Something useful I can do. Even if you don’t think there’s any chance at all that Bob will be there. I just want something to do so I don’t have to sit here all day doing nothing.”

  Rafe looked at me. I looked back, optimistically, like someone who was certain she wouldn’t be denied.

  His lips twitched. But then, before he could say anything, there was the sound of a car engine, and tires crunching on the driveway outside. Rafe’s brows drew together, and he headed for the window. But before he could get there, there was the slam of a car door, and then rapid steps on the stairs up to the porch. A second later, what sounded like a fist connected with the door.

  “Collier! Wake up!”

  The voice was vaguely familiar—male—but not so familiar that I could put a face to it. Rafe muttered something, and it didn’t sound happy.

  “Bob,” I said, trying to swing my legs out of the bed while still feeding Carrie. “Maybe they’ve found Bob.”

  He gave me a quick look on his way across the floor, while, downstairs, the bombardment continued. “Collier! Open the damn door! I wanna talk to you.”

  “Get some clothes on first,” Rafe told me. “If you’re gonna come down.”

  I hadn’t planned to arrive in my nightgown, but there was no point in saying so. No time, either, since he’d passed through the doorway into the hall, and I could hear him hustling down the stairs to the foyer. “I’m coming, dammit. Stop banging on the damn door!”

  I used one hand to wiggle into a pair of panties and a skirt—easier to get on than leggings—while I kept Carrie clutched to my breast with the other arm. Downstairs, Rafe had yanked open the front door—I didn’t have to see it to recognize the movement—and confronted the early-morning visitor.

  I’d hoped he’d use the man’s name, since I still hadn’t been able to come up with a face to go with the voice. He didn’t. It must have been one of those confrontational stares instead.

  The other man spoke first. “The boss said you were in charge of the investigation into Bob Satterfield’s disappearance.”

  Rafe must have nodded, or maybe not said anything. In either case, the man continued, “I want in.”

  I imagined another stony stare, and then came an additional, abbreviated explanation. “I’ve known Bob for fifty years. If something’s happened to him, I wanna know.”

  At that point, Rafe must have relented, because I heard a shuffling of feet on the hardwood floors of the foyer, and the door closing. “Kitchen’s down that way,” my husband’s voice said. “I’ll get some coffee going.”

  “Appreciate it.” There was the sound of their feet heading down the hallway to the kitchen. Or more accurately the sound of the other man’s feet heading down the hallway. Rafe was barefoot, and walks as silently as a cat the rest of the time, too.

  I popped Carrie off my breast—that’s literally the sound it makes when I break the suction—and put her on the bed for long enough to yank a shirt over my head and smooth my hair. She didn’t like her meal being interrupted, so she made some complaining noises, but she quieted down as soon as I picked her up again. “Sorry, baby. But I want to hear what’s going on down there.”

  I hooked her up to the other side, and then I headed down the stairs holding her there. Mother would have been shocked at the idea that I would consider greeting a visitor to my home in bare feet, with my hair undone and no makeup on my face, not to mention a baby at my breast—and under normal circumstances, so would I—but the circumstances weren’t normal, and I wanted to know who was downstairs and what they were talking about.

  I could hear the conversation as I came off the stairs and turned the corner into the hallway. Rafe was talking. “—and Cletus Johnson’s heading up the sheriff’s office’s side. Bob’s one of theirs, so it’s really their responsibility. But—”

  “But you’re TBI,” the voice finished dryly.

  There was a moment’s pause. I slowed my steps, so my arrival in the doorway wouldn’t derail the conversation at what sounded like an interesting point.

  “Figured that out, did you?”

  “Wasn’t hard,” the voice said. “What with everybody talking about what a hero you are, and you being teacher’s pet and all.”

  There was a distinct sneer to the tone, and that, too, was familiar.

  It didn’t seem to bother Rafe, and in the back of my mind, I recognized that it hadn’t had an effect the other times this person had sneered at him, either. Who was it?

  “Tammy and Bob cooked that up between ‘em,” he said calmly. “After Carter went to prison, they thought it’d be a good idea to see how far into the department the corruption went. Whether Carter had other crazies working for him, too.”

  “And have you found any?”

  “I found Enoch,” Rafe said. “I had a close look at Jarvis, but he seems to be all right. I looked at you.”

  Ah.

  There was an inhalation. Offense, maybe. “Listen, boy…!”

  “’Course, I had to be careful,” Rafe added, “so as nobody’d think I was trying to settle old scores. Everybody knows you don’t like me. You didn’t before Felicia Robinson died, and you definitely don’t now…”

  And that was the clue I needed. Felicia Robinson… and Sergeant Tucker. Tucker, who had arrested Rafe for assault and battery at eighteen, and who had never gotten over his low opinion of my husband, even after learning of the ten years of undercover work and danger Rafe had put himself in to do the right thing.

  Tucker, who blamed Rafe for the death of Officer Felicia Robinson, who had been shot during an investigation back in March. And for the record, it hadn’t been Rafe’s fault. Officer Robinson had been doing surveillance, surveillance she had volunteered for, on a suspect in a domestic terrorism case, and the suspect had gotten the drop on her and killed her. Rafe had had nothing to do with it other than being in charge of the case. But Tucker had been fond of Felicia Robinson, and that situation hadn’t improved his opinion of Rafe. He’d been taking swipes at him, verbally if not physically, for as long as Rafe had been working for Tamara Grimaldi and the Columbia PD.

  And now here he was, offering to help with the investigation into Bob Satterfield’s disappearance.

  And OK, his concern might be genuine. Tucker and Bob were around the same age, and might very well have grown up together. If they’d both been in law enforcement in the same county for thirty years, they had certainly come up against each other a lot. They could be friends, or at least friendly. Tucker might genuinely be worried and want to help.

  On the other hand there was Felicia Robinson, and Tucker’s generally poor opinion of Rafe. It was hard to believe he’d choose to work with Rafe if he had a choice. The idea of my husband going off alone with Tucker, who I knew for a fact despised him, to uninhabited corners of the county, was worrisome to me.

  While I’d been standing in the hallway thinking, the conversation had continued in the kitchen, and by now a nice aroma of coffee was permeating the air. My stomach grumbled, and Rafe, who also has ears like a cat, stopped in the middle of a sentence to look at the doorway. “That you, darlin’?”

  “It’s me,” I said, padding the few steps down the hallway and through the kitchen door. “Good morning, Sergeant Tucker. You’re up early.”

  “Ma’am.” The hardened cop took one look at Carrie nursing and turned as red as a beet.

  Rafe’s lips twitched. “Tucker’s come to offer his services in trying to locate Bob.”

  “That’s great,” I said, and pulled out the stool next to Tucker’s at the island. “The more hands on deck, the better.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He wouldn’t look at me, just kept his eyes on Rafe as the latter poured coffee into two mugs and pushed the cream and sugar across the island toward Tucker.

  “You want your daily cup of coffee, darlin’?”

  I did. Especially today, since I’d slept badly and it was early and I needed to be alert. “Yes, please. We were talking about what I could do to help.”

  “We were talking about you keeping your mama company so she wouldn’t go crazy,” Rafe corrected, as he poured coffee into a cup for me and slid it across the island.

  “I told you,” I said. “Audrey and Mrs. J will take care of Mother, and much better than I can. And we can recruit Catherine and Jonathan and the kids, and probably Dix and the girls, too, to keep Mother occupied. I imagine Grimaldi will be busy working?”

  “That’s something you can do,” Rafe said. “Tammy’s marrying Dix in a week. This is gonna put a crimp in things.”

  “You mean, she won’t want to get married if Bob’s still missing?”

  “He won’t be missing a week from now,” Tucker growled, but of course he couldn’t actually know that—not unless he had inside knowledge, anyway—and was just hoping it wouldn’t be so.

  “What I mean,” Rafe told me, without acknowledging Tucker, “is that there’s a lot going on this week. Prep for the wedding and the reception—”

  This wedding being the second of the season for our family, the union between my brother Dix and chief of police Tamara Grimaldi. Both the wedding and the reception would be taking place here at the mansion next Saturday.

  “—bachelor party,” Rafe continued, “bachelorette party, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner… And Tammy’s family’s coming in from Ohio, remember?”