she’d been there, Yvonne woulda told me.”
“Fine.” His arguments made sense. “It’s not Lynn.”
“No,” Rafe said, and left the parking lot for home.
Back at the mansion, I said goodbye to David, since they were planning to head for Nashville straight from Audrey’s house, and kissed Rafe. “Drive carefully.”
“You too, darlin’. I’ll see you later.” He swung a leg over the big, black Harley-Davidson and nodded to David. “Get on. Hang on to me. Lean into the curves. You’ll be fine.”
David didn’t look like he needed the reassurance. He was wearing a big grin behind the helmet, and when the bike took off down the driveway with a spurt of gravel, he let out a “Whoop!” I could hear all the way back to where I was standing.
They took a right turn out of the driveway, toward downtown Sweetwater and Audrey’s house, and I carried the baby inside to change her diaper and feed her before it was time to head to Fulton Street and the open house.
I was a few minutes late, but nobody cared except Charlotte. She was there before me, but because she didn’t have a key, she had to sit in her Jeep and wait. When I pulled up behind her and opened my door, she flung her own open and stalked toward me. “You’re late!”
“Sorry,” I said. “I had to see Rafe and David off. He showed up late last night, in a rented Uber, after having crawled out his bedroom window.”
It was enough to stop her in mid rant, although it took her a second to switch gears. “Oh, my God. Is he OK?”
“He’s fine.” I reached into the back of the Volvo and pulled out the baby seat. Carrie had fallen asleep on the way here, and looked like a little angel, with long lashes shadowing her cheeks and her little pink pout. “It’s not the first time he’s pulled something like this. Last time, he was at camp up on the Cumberland Plateau, and he used a bike, and it took him hours to get here. We were all worried sick.”
Especially since we didn’t know whether he’d actually run away or whether Hernandez had grabbed him.
“He spent the night with us and came to brunch this morning,” I added, as I headed up the steps to the front door. “He and Rafe were going to see Mrs. Jenkins at Audrey’s before Rafe took him home. On the bike.”
I stuck the key in the lock and twisted it.
“How will his mother feel about that?” Charlotte wanted to know.
“I imagine she might have some things to say about it.” I pushed the door open and went in. “But as Rafe pointed out, by then it’ll be too late. Oh, shit. I mean… shoot.”
“What?” Charlotte peered around me, and came up with a more subdued, “Oh, not again!”
“It’s starting to feel personal, isn’t it?” I looked around for the baseball, and saw it lying over by the wall, in practically the same spot as it had been the last time.
Charlotte nodded. “Either someone has really bad aim…”
“Or really good aim.” I headed for the kitchen and the broom. “I’ll get the glass up. You can find something to tape over the hole. And one of us is going to have to go to the hardware store and get another piece of glass before we leave here tonight.”
Charlotte nodded, and went to look for a piece of cardboard.
She ended up going to the hardware store while I stayed. It wasn’t necessary for both of us to be at the open house, and I was the one with the real estate license. She was more expendable—in this case—because she couldn’t discuss price or any of the other official details with anyone who asked.
By then, the first rush of visitors—the one that shows up in the first hour—was gone, and I was waiting for the second rush, the one that shows up in the last fifteen minutes and often stays after the official end of the open house at four. Charlotte had left, and there was a young couple meandering around in the master bedroom. I had told them to give me a holler if they had any questions, but otherwise I was going to stay in the living room, between Carrie and the front door. I had tucked her into a corner of the dining room, below the broken and taped window, as far from the front door as she could get, so nobody would reach in and