Survival Clause, стр. 54
He forked up another piece of broccoli.
“I guess that’s true,” I said slowly. “And speaking of thinking outside the box…”
“Yeah?”
“Grimaldi and I went to see Art Mullinax. He lives on the old Daffodil Hill Farm, up on the north side of Columbia. You should have seen it, Rafe. It was gorgeous. This big, white Victorian house, and flowers and flowering trees everywhere…”
His lips curved. “We got a big, white house and flowers and flowering trees, too, darlin’.”
I guess we did. Even if it wasn’t, technically, our house.
“He say anything helpful?” Rafe wanted to know, and I dragged my mind from architecture and landscaping back to the case—or cases—at hand.
“Mullinax said he hadn’t heard from Jurgensson for years, and he wasn’t sure whether Jurgensson had been in Tupelo or Tucson or Toledo or somewhere else the last time he wrote. He didn’t hang onto any of the letters or cards, of course.”
“No reason why he’d keep’em,” Rafe said.
“That’s what I thought. But Grimaldi was acting a little weird when we drove away, so I asked what was wrong. And she told me she was trying to figure out which part of the property she’d have to dig up to find Jurgensson’s remains.”
Both Rafe’s eyebrows elevated this time. “She got a reason for thinking that?”
“Nothing beyond an evil mind,” I said. “Or a lot of experience. And that might be enough. I didn’t hear Mullinax say anything suspicious. But she might have heard something I didn’t. And even if she didn’t notice anything specifically…”
Rafe nodded. “It makes sense. If anybody did away with him, it’d be the guy who claimed to have heard from him.”
“There’s no reason to think he’s not alive and well somewhere, though. Is there?”
“Not other than that his social security number ain’t been used in thirty years,” Rafe said.
Well, yes. There was that.
“Well, it’s a big property. And Grimaldi said she wouldn’t get permission to dig any of it up unless she had more evidence than she has currently. So she went back to the police station to read the file again.”
“She musta taken it home,” Rafe said, “’cause she was gone when I got there.”
“It’s not even her case. Or for that matter a case at all. You’d think she’d have enough to keep her busy between the serial killer and your stalker, and she wouldn’t need to invent more murders.”
“Speaking of my stalker,” Rafe said, and forked up another piece of chicken. “Vasim’s cleaned up the video. He’s spending second shift trying to match the license plate to a car.”
Great.
“Problem is, it’s Saturday night, and things can get a little rowdy. So he might not have time. But if we get lucky, by tomorrow we could have a name and address to go with the car.”
“That would be great,” I said enthusiastically. “It’s probably nothing to worry about.” Or at least I kept telling myself that, repeatedly. “It’s probably just some woman with a crush on you. But I’d feel better if we can figure out who she is and warn her off. I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, just in case someone’s trying to sneak up behind me.”
“You won’t have to. Another day or two at the most, and we’ll have her.” He plunged the fork back into the casserole. Now that he’d started eating he must have realized he was hungry.
“Just out of curiosity,” I said, as I picked at my own food and as Carrie kicked her feet in the bouncy seat and Pearl snored on her pillow, “what’ll happen when you figure out who it is? I mean… you can’t really arrest her, right? Is it illegal to take pictures of other people and posting them on social media?”
“Gray area,” Rafe said. “If they’re in public, you don’t need permission. There’s no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
“So someone could take a picture of us holding hands at Beulah’s because they thought we were cute, and that’d be OK.”
He nodded. “But anybody standing outside the house right now, shooting through the window, would be violating our privacy. We’re in our own home and have the right to expect to be by ourselves.”
Not an issue so far, although I cast a nervous glance at the back door. “You don’t think anyone’s out there, do you?”
“You’d see’em if they were,” Rafe said calmly. “It’s still light out. Besides, Pearl would be having a fit.”
And she was lying quietly on her pillow, napping.
“All of the pictures and videos so far were taken in public places. So it wasn’t illegal to take any of them. And I guess, if it’s legal to take them, it’s legal to upload them to social media?”
“More or less,” Rafe said.
“So she hasn’t done anything illegal.”
“Depends on your definition of illegal. And on the DA. I’m sure Satterfield’d be happy to charge her with something if you asked him to.”
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Todd wasn’t so enamored with me anymore, now that I was married to Rafe and he was engaged to Marley.
“What we can do,” Rafe said, “once we figure out who she is, is we can get a protection order and tell her to cease and desist. Once she’s been served, if she keeps doing what she’s doing, it’ll be felony stalking, and she can go to prison.”
“That’d work.” She’d be behind bars, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone trying to take my baby away.
“That’s unless she does something more now.”
Right. I grimaced.
We had finished eating and Rafe had taken Carrie into the parlor and was playing with her while I was filling the dishwasher under Pearl’s watchful eye when we heard the sound of tires on the gravel outside.
Or rather, what I heard—and saw—was Pearl’s ears twitch before she took off like a bullet across the kitchen and down the hallway toward the foyer, barking hysterically.
I grabbed a dish towel and