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 a glimpse of the car.”
“I would appreciate that,” I said sincerely. “Let me know if you discover anything.”
The tiny flyspeck on the map that is Damascus appeared on the horizon, and a minute later we were in the thick of town. A minute after that, we pulled up in front of a small rambler set on a postage sized lot. I looked around. “This is where Laura Lee Matlock lived?”
Grimaldi nodded.
“Yvonne’s house is over there.” I pointed across the street and half a block down. “And there is Millie Ruth Durbin’s house.”
“Who’s Millie Ruth Durbin? Another classmate?”
I shook my head. “Teacher. Science or something like that. Rafe had her, I didn’t. I think she retired in the couple of years between. She taught Dix and Catherine, I think, but not me.”
“But all this was much later than Laura Lee.”
“Oh, definitely. Rafe graduated almost fourteen years ago. I graduated almost eleven years ago. Laura Lee was thirty-three, you said, when she died? She would have graduated fifteen years before that, and that was sixteen or seventeen years ago…”
“She might know something,” Grimaldi said. “Which house?”
“Ms. Durbin? The little white one with all the flowers. She gardens. And has cats, I think.”
Grimaldi gave me a dubious look, but legged it down the street. I grabbed the baby and followed. On the other side of the white pickets, a broad figure started the process of getting from her knees and up to standing.
Millie Ruth Durbin is a dumpling. Short, round, cute, with swaying skirts and a demeanor much younger than her years. When she got upright, she put her grubby gloves on her ample hips and contemplated us.
It took a moment, then… “I know you.”
“Savannah Martin,” I told her. “Collier now. I married Rafe.”
She nodded. “I remember. And this is…?”
I made the introductions. “Tamara Grimaldi’s been the chief of police for Columbia since January.”
“Sad business about Carter,” Millie Ruth said, and stripped the dirty gloves from her chubby little hands. She slapped them against her thigh a couple of times while she contemplated us from under the brim of a ratty sunhat, her eyes bright in the shadows. “We’re outside Columbia here, though. Sheriff Satterfield takes care of us.”
“We’re just doing some legwork,” Grimaldi said easily. “Savannah’s husband is working with the sheriff of behalf of the TBI, and we’re just tying up some loose ends.”
Millie Ruth nodded. “Loose ends pertaining to what, exactly?”
“There was a body found at the truck stop down by the interstate a couple of days ago, and we thought—”
Millie Ruth nodded. “You thought of Laura Lee. Of course.”
“Did you know her?”
“From school,” Millie Ruth said. “And then later, she moved into the house down the street with Frankie.”
“Her husband.”
Millie Ruth nodded. “Always in trouble, that boy. I had him in school, too, and he spent more time in the principal’s office than in