Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20), стр. 26

Eight

I tried to talk Grimaldi into taking the Volvo, since the base for the car seat was in it, but the idea of having someone else drive her around must have been too much, because she insisted we move Carrie’s car seat into the official Columbia PD SUV, where she could take the wheel. She did, however, and reasonably graciously at that, agree to stop by the house on Fulton so I could make sure everything was locked up nice and tight after the photographer had left. Everything looked fine, so I hiked my posterior back into the SUV and nodded. “All good. We can go do what you want now.”

“Much obliged,” Grimaldi grumbled, and rolled away from the curb. “Any reason to think things would not be fine here?”

I made myself comfortable against the gray leather. “When we got here yesterday morning, someone had tossed a baseball through the living room window.”

She shot me an alarmed look—like me, she remembered only too well the many mishaps we’d had last month, including the final one, when half the house blew off—and I added, “I figure it was just kids. But I’m a little more jumpy than usual, after everything that happened before.”

She nodded.

“Richelle and her son are still walking around, right?” They were the two people who had vandalized the house the first time. The second time it had been someone else, and I knew where they were: safely behind lock and key.

“Yes,” Grimaldi said. “The Tremaynes paid their fines and walked away. And I don’t think they’re going to bother you again. Both your husband and the DA’s office made it clear that they wouldn’t get off as lightly a second time.”

“That was nice of Todd.” Todd Satterfield, Bob’s son—my old boyfriend—is the assistant DA for Maury County. And he didn’t owe me anything, especially since I’d thrown him over for Rafe.

“He’s a nice man,” Grimaldi said, and kept the SUV zooming down the street.

“He and Marley are getting married this summer, I guess.”

She nodded. “Your husband is best man. He has all the details if you want to know.”

“I’m sure I’ll find out when it’s time. And if Todd doesn’t want me there, watching him marry someone else, that’s his prerogative.”

“I think he’s over you,” Grimaldi said dryly. “It all worked out the way it was supposed to.”

Good. And even if it hadn’t, I would have still chosen Rafe, so there was that.

“What happened with Sergeant Tucker after the other night?” I wanted to know, as we zoomed down the road toward the little town of Damascus, to the south and west of Columbia.

Grimaldi’s hands tightened on the wheel for a second. I looked for anything ahead of the car that might have caused the reaction—a squirrel, an oncoming car—and saw nothing. Her voice was even, anyway, when she answered. “He’s back at work. Showed up yesterday morning as usual. When I called him into my office and asked him about it, he said he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“I’m not sure he did,” I said. A little reluctantly, since I wasn’t a huge fan of Sergeant Tucker. “The store owner called the police. The shoplifters got away, but Curtis was still there, so it wasn’t surprising that Tucker grabbed him. And I don’t know what happened before we got there, but it’s not impossible that Curtis tried to fight his way out once he realized he was about to be arrested for something he didn’t do.”

“Or said he didn’t do,” Grimaldi said.

I glanced at her, but she was staring straight out the windshield, keeping her eyes firmly on the road.

“Yes. Something he said he didn’t do. It sounded like he was telling the truth, but what do I know?”

She didn’t answer, so I continued. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Curtis might have had a moment of panic and tried to get away from Tucker. I guess, to Tucker, it could look like resisting arrest. And he wasn’t doing anything to him, other than keeping him in place. Curtis wasn’t hurt.”

Grimaldi nodded. “Happily for Tucker.”

“He wasn’t very happy about Rafe coming in and ordering him to leave.”

She grimaced. “No. And I heard plenty about that.”

No doubt. “The optics—that’s what Rafe called them—were bad. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think Tucker really did anything wrong. It’s hard to know what else he could have done under the circumstances.”

“He could have kept the kid upright,” Grimaldi said. “That would have helped.”

Well, yes. But not having been there when it went down, determining whether Tucker had been out of line or not was above my pay grade. “There was no harm done, though. Curtis isn’t suing, right? And the only thing that seems to have come from the video, is that Rafe has picked up a stalker. It could have been worse.” Riots. Looting. Murder…

“You said there was another video this morning.”

I nodded. “The first one was that night. The next day, someone filmed Rafe outside the police station. So this morning, I went in with him, to see if whoever was still there. I followed a car out of town after he went inside, and that’s when I came back and the two of you were dealing with Leslie Yung.”

Grimaldi nodded.

“But it wasn’t until after that, that the new video was posted. Someone filmed Rafe kissing me when he walked me out.”

“So the car you followed wasn’t the stalker.”

“Unless she realized I was following her, and she decided to follow me back. I never did catch up to her, or see the car again after it turned off the main drag, so it could have happened that way.”

Grimaldi nodded. “There are cameras on the corners of the police station. I’ll have someone take a look. See if we can catch