Read Online A Cutthroat Business by Jenna Bennett - Free Book Online
Authors: Jenna Bennett
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bless her heart. We didn’t associate. And now she’s passed on, of course.”
I blinked at her. “Passed on? Dead, you mean?” Mother nodded. “But she can’t have been very old. If she was only fifteen when Rafe was born, and he’s three years older than me…” I counted rapidly on my fingers, math not being my strong suit, “she’d only be in her mid-forties. What happened?”
“It was quite a to-do, dear. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it on the news up there in Nashville .” Mother lowered her voice delicately. “She died of an overdose of some drug or other. At home. By the time someone found her, she had been dead for several days, or maybe as much as a week.”
“And nobody went looking for her for all that time? What about the neighbors? And where was Rafe? Didn’t she have a job?”
“She worked at the distillery when she was younger,” mother said, referring to the Jack Daniels whiskey distillery outside Lynchburg , some 45 minutes away, “but she has been collecting disability for at least ten years. And she lived alone. There’s no telling how long she was lying there. She might have called out, but if she did, no one heard her. The Bog is mostly empty these days, and I haven’t seen her son since he went off to prison.”
“Did it happen recently? LaDonna’s passing?”
Mother nodded. “They found her almost two weeks ago now, I’d say. With the heat and all, it can’t have been a pleasant task for poor Bob. Here, have some brandy, dear; you’re as white as a ghost.”
She poured some into a glass and handed it to me. I don’t like brandy, but I gulped some anyway. It burned its way down to my stomach and I coughed. “Oh, gosh!”
“What’s wrong?” mother asked, concerned.
I took a deep breath. “I chastised him — Rafe — because he didn’t seem very upset about Brenda. Like it didn’t faze him at all to see her lying there, bathed in blood. I told him that nobody deserves to die that way, alone and scared. And then it turns out that his own mother...”
I could still see Rafe’s expression when he turned to look at me, his gaze pitch black and threatening; and I remembered recoiling, away from the icy anger in his eyes.
We sat in silence until I had finished the brandy and was feeling more like myself again. “So tell me about the plans for the party,” I said, forcing myself to sound upbeat and normal. “You told me that Todd Satterfield is coming, but who else, except for the family? Who’s doing the food?”
We lapsed into small talk about the upcoming birthday party, and nothing more was said about LaDonna or Rafe Collier that night. But the next morning, after I had dropped mother off at the spa, where she was spending a half day being pampered for her party later on, I contemplated the hours stretched out before me, and the catering crew currently taking our house apart, and decided to go for a drive.
Rafe had been correct when he told me that I probably hadn’t come down his way a lot growing up. I’d never been to the area known as the Bog, but I knew where to find it: on the other side of Sweetwater from the Martin plantation. We’re on the north, or Columbia side; they’re on the southern road to Pulaski. And if the town of Pulaski sounds familiar to anyone, it’s probably because it was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. We have so much to be proud of here in middle Tennessee .
I’d driven past the Bog before, looking through the windows of dad’s Cadillac, but this was the first time I’d turned off from the highway onto the rutted one-lane track leading down through the trees.
For all that it’s in the South, Tennessee is not like Louisiana or Mississippi . We’re a rocky state, for the most part. Even in the flatter areas, there isn’t much in the way of wetlands. The Bog was not actually a bog, just a rather dank and dismal place. A small creek — or crick, as we say in these parts — ran through it, a tiny branch of
I blinked at her. “Passed on? Dead, you mean?” Mother nodded. “But she can’t have been very old. If she was only fifteen when Rafe was born, and he’s three years older than me…” I counted rapidly on my fingers, math not being my strong suit, “she’d only be in her mid-forties. What happened?”
“It was quite a to-do, dear. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it on the news up there in Nashville .” Mother lowered her voice delicately. “She died of an overdose of some drug or other. At home. By the time someone found her, she had been dead for several days, or maybe as much as a week.”
“And nobody went looking for her for all that time? What about the neighbors? And where was Rafe? Didn’t she have a job?”
“She worked at the distillery when she was younger,” mother said, referring to the Jack Daniels whiskey distillery outside Lynchburg , some 45 minutes away, “but she has been collecting disability for at least ten years. And she lived alone. There’s no telling how long she was lying there. She might have called out, but if she did, no one heard her. The Bog is mostly empty these days, and I haven’t seen her son since he went off to prison.”
“Did it happen recently? LaDonna’s passing?”
Mother nodded. “They found her almost two weeks ago now, I’d say. With the heat and all, it can’t have been a pleasant task for poor Bob. Here, have some brandy, dear; you’re as white as a ghost.”
She poured some into a glass and handed it to me. I don’t like brandy, but I gulped some anyway. It burned its way down to my stomach and I coughed. “Oh, gosh!”
“What’s wrong?” mother asked, concerned.
I took a deep breath. “I chastised him — Rafe — because he didn’t seem very upset about Brenda. Like it didn’t faze him at all to see her lying there, bathed in blood. I told him that nobody deserves to die that way, alone and scared. And then it turns out that his own mother...”
I could still see Rafe’s expression when he turned to look at me, his gaze pitch black and threatening; and I remembered recoiling, away from the icy anger in his eyes.
We sat in silence until I had finished the brandy and was feeling more like myself again. “So tell me about the plans for the party,” I said, forcing myself to sound upbeat and normal. “You told me that Todd Satterfield is coming, but who else, except for the family? Who’s doing the food?”
We lapsed into small talk about the upcoming birthday party, and nothing more was said about LaDonna or Rafe Collier that night. But the next morning, after I had dropped mother off at the spa, where she was spending a half day being pampered for her party later on, I contemplated the hours stretched out before me, and the catering crew currently taking our house apart, and decided to go for a drive.
Rafe had been correct when he told me that I probably hadn’t come down his way a lot growing up. I’d never been to the area known as the Bog, but I knew where to find it: on the other side of Sweetwater from the Martin plantation. We’re on the north, or Columbia side; they’re on the southern road to Pulaski. And if the town of Pulaski sounds familiar to anyone, it’s probably because it was the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. We have so much to be proud of here in middle Tennessee .
I’d driven past the Bog before, looking through the windows of dad’s Cadillac, but this was the first time I’d turned off from the highway onto the rutted one-lane track leading down through the trees.
For all that it’s in the South, Tennessee is not like Louisiana or Mississippi . We’re a rocky state, for the most part. Even in the flatter areas, there isn’t much in the way of wetlands. The Bog was not actually a bog, just a rather dank and dismal place. A small creek — or crick, as we say in these parts — ran through it, a tiny branch of
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