Unfinished Business Read Online Free PDF Page A

all of us, and with the exception of me,
she knew Rafe the best. In some ways she probably knew him better
than I did, since they had the law enforcement background in
common. When we got to the Germantown Café, I already knew Grimaldi
would take a seat with her back to the wall and her eye on the
door, just as Rafe would. She understood him on an elementary level
that I’m not sure I did, or ever would.
    Besides, she was a cop. And you never know
when a cop might come in handy. Especially when someone didn’t show
up for his own wedding.
    So we sorted ourselves into three
cars—Mother with Dix and Catherine with me, Grimaldi on her own in
her police issued sedan—and drove the half a dozen blocks to
Germantown.
    It’s a formerly industrial area just north
of downtown. A hundred years ago it was Nashville’s meatpacking
district. Now it’s a hip and happening urban neighborhood in the
downtown core, with the hip and happening bars and restaurants to
go with it, and a view of the Nashville skyline and the state
capitol. It was also the neighborhood where my ex-husband Bradley
worked up until he was arrested a few months ago.
    Indeed, when I walked through the door of
the Germantown Café, the first person I saw was Diana Morton, one
of the partners at Bradley’s former law firm, at a table against
the back wall, in conversation with a good-looking dark-haired man
in his early thirties.
    Diana, for your information, is a cool
blonde in her forties, and as far as I know, she’s happily married.
Yet here she was, having a tête-à-tête with a
good-looking— extremely good-looking—younger man.
    Of course, that was her business. I wasn’t
even sure she’d recognize me. I’d only met her a few times during
the two years I’d been married to Bradley, and it must have been
four or five years ago now. I did know I had no desire to talk to
her. So I pretended I had no idea who she was, and sat down with my
back to her, at a table by the window, on the opposite side of the
room. Mother sat down across the table, with Catherine next to her,
and Dix bowed Tamara Grimaldi into the seat next to me, leaving
himself the chair that had been hastily added to the short end of a
four-top table.
    “So,” my brother said, making himself
comfortable—and I’m sure his knee was touching Grimaldi’s under the
table, “now what?”
    It was a good question. I could go home—to
Rafe’s house, where I had no business being without Rafe—and curl
up in a corner and cry. It was what I wanted to do.
    Or I could eat too much food to try to fill
that gaping hole in my stomach—and for once, it had nothing to do
with the pregnancy. Then I’d get sick, and I’d have a legitimate
reason for curling up in a corner wanting to cry.
    No, scratch that. Having my boyfriend go
missing on our wedding day was reason enough. I didn’t need
another.
    Of course, if I started putting everything
in sight in my mouth, Mother would have something to say about it.
I couldn’t help it that my waistline was expanding, but she’d
remind me that whatever pounds I put on now, were extra pounds I’d
have to take off again after the baby came.
    God forbid I ended up a size bigger after
having a baby.
    Or I could pull myself together and try to
figure out what was going on.
    While I’d been weighing the options, Mother
had spoken. “It’s obvious,” she said. We all turned to look at her,
and without missing a beat, she added, “She’ll have to come back to
Sweetwater with us. She can’t stay here, in his house, after
being practically left at the alter.”
    She turned to me. “You don’t have your
rental apartment anymore, do you, darling?”
    “No,” I said. “I gave that up after the
prostitute was murdered in my bed last month.”
    There was a moment of silence. Not even
Mother wanted to touch that one. And in justice to her, it was a
tough act to follow. Also, it was true. A prostitute had been
murdered in what used to be my bed, and I’d