Survival Clause, стр. 12
“But you were in the way,” Charlotte said, “because he was getting involved with you.”
I nodded. “First she killed Marquita Johnson—you know, Cletus’s wife—because Rafe hired Marquita to take care of Mrs. Jenkins. Marquita was living in the house with Mrs. Jenkins, and with Rafe when he was in town, and Elspeth thought Marquita might be poaching, so she killed her. And then she came after me.”
“And Rafe killed her.”
“Jorge Pena killed her,” I corrected. “Rafe killed him. And I owe her for that. She planted herself in front of Rafe and refused to move even though Jorge said he’d shoot her. If she hadn’t, Rafe might be dead.”
Or not. He might still have gotten the drop on Jorge. But the chances of him surviving that encounter would have been much fewer.
“Anyway,” I said, as I lifted Carrie to my shoulder and patted her back. She was already asleep, her head lolling. “The last thing I want, is another experience like that.”
“No kidding,” Charlotte said.
I got to my feet. “I’m going to put her to bed. I’ll be right back.”
Charlotte nodded and reached for her phone. I carried the baby up the stairs to her crib and headed back down. “Let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll make some lunch. Anything new?”
Charlotte shook her head. “More hearts and comments on the video she put up two hours ago, but nothing else.”
“Do you think I’m overreacting?” I glanced at her over my shoulder as we traversed the hallway down to the kitchen in the back of the house. Pearl had already greeted Charlotte when we first came home, and had spent the time while I was feeding Carrie curled up on a pillow in the corner of the parlor. Now she lead the procession, her stub of a tail jauntily raised.
“Go outside?” I asked her, and her tail gave a wag. I headed for the back door and pulled it open while Charlotte answered my question.
“Hard to say. You said it yourself, most women are attracted to Rafe.”
And then some. It’s a curse.
“She might just be some lonely woman who thinks he’s hot, and after spending a couple of days following him around, she’ll stop.”
Yes, she might be. “He pointed me out last night, though. Both me and Carrie. ‘That’s my wife and my baby in the car.’ Isn’t it weird that anyone would go that gaga over a married man?”
“Most women lust over married celebrities,” Charlotte said with a shrug. “It might be something like that.”
It might. I peered out the window to where Pearl was squatting in the grass. “So you think I shouldn’t worry?”
She hesitated. “I think it’s probably going to be fine. But I understand why you’re concerned.”
“Maybe I should just give it a day or two before I start freaking out?”
Pearl was up again, and on her way back toward the house. I opened the door for her.
“It can’t hurt to do a little investigating,” Charlotte said, and got comfortable on one of the stools in front of the island. “We may not be able to discover who she is. But it can’t hurt to look.”
Pearl bounded up the couple of steps into the kitchen and stopped to look at me, tongue hanging out of her mouth.
“Good girl,” I told her. “Sit, and I’ll give you a cookie.”
She thumped her haunches down on the floor and brushed the little bit of her tail that was left back and forth. I fished a dog treat out of the jar on the counter and held it out to her. She took it daintily from my fingers and proceeded to chomp it into bits.
“Good girl,” I said again, as she trotted over to her water bowl for a couple slurps of water. “Go on and lie down on your pillow. We’re going to be in here for a while.”
Pearl headed for the pillow, and Charlotte arched her brows. “She understood that?”
“I’m not sure she understood anything more than ‘good girl’ and ‘pillow.’ But it got the point across.”
Pearl circled twice and settled down with a sigh, and I turned back to Charlotte. “Let me throw some sandwiches together, and then we can get to work.”
“I’ll just get started while you cook.” She hunched over the phone. I started dragging containers of cheese and lunchmeat out of the fridge.
Two hours later, by the time Carrie woke up, we had eliminated several hundred of the commenters on the original video. Some because they were male—Jessica Rabbit didn’t sound like a guy—but most because they listed their location as somewhere other than Middle Tennessee.
“I’ll keep going at home,” Charlotte told me, as we both got up from the loveseat in the parlor (it was a lot more comfortable than the stools in the kitchen, so we had moved in there after the sandwiches were devoured). “After I relieve my mother of babysitting duty and spend some time with my kids.”
I nodded, as I headed for the stairs to rescue my squalling daughter. “Let me know if you find anything. I’m going to arrange to get the house photographed and back on the market in the meantime.” Since we’d forgotten all about that in the excitement of a possible stalker.
“Deal,” Charlotte said. She let herself out the front door, and I twisted the lock behind her. We live in the country, outside a small town, and random crime is pretty non-existent, but it never hurts to be careful. Especially since we both, Rafe and I, seem to attract trouble.
That done, I headed up the stairs to take care of Carrie and give her tummy time on the floor while I focused on real estate for a while.
When Rafe came through the back door and into the kitchen, it was after seven, and dinner had been pushed back to accommodate a late arrival. He hadn’t let me know why he’d