A Body To Die For (14 page)

Savannah said nothing, just let Ruby talk as the grieving mother sipped her beer and toyed with her pink and purple beads.

“I warned him when he told me he was going to run away with that one. I told him that if Clarissa found out what he was up to she might do away with him. Or hire somebody else to do it. I wouldn’t put anything past that woman. But would he listen to his mother? No. He told me to mind my own business.” She swallowed hard and said, “Like
he
wasn’t my business. Like I didn’t worship the ground that boy walked on.”

“I’m sorry, Ruby,” Savannah said softly. “So, he told you about her? About his plans to leave Clarissa and move to Vegas with his girlfriend?”

“Sure. He told me everything. My son and I were very close.” She sniffed. “And I know what you’re thinking, that I shouldn’t approve of something like adultery. But you don’t know what he went through, that poor thing, what that Clarissa put him through. She made his life a living h-e-double-1, yelling at him right and left, leaving him alone and lonely for weeks on end so she could run around, appearing on TV, promoting all that exercise baloney of hers. She was just asking for him to step out on her.”

“So, why, exactly, do you think Clarissa killed, I mean…took his life?”

“Because he was going to leave her and divorce her. California’s one of those states that splits everything fifty-fifty when a couple calls it quits. He would have taken half of everything she’s got. And that’s what she lives for, that greedy witch, her stuff. The houses, the cars, the money. That’s all that matters to her. Well, that and her celebrity. Being in the spotlight and thinking the sun rises and sets for her alone.”

She chugged down the last half of the beer and set her mug down on the small table between their chaises. Savannah wasted no time refilling it. She had always found that alcohol was a great lubricant when it came to keeping a fact-gathering conversation going.

Not that Ruby Jardin’s wheels needed to be greased.

“Although,” she was saying, “I don’t know that Clarissa’s replacement would have been that much better for him. She’s not exactly squeaky clean herself, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. I mean, we’ve checked her out, and I’ve talked to her myself.”

“Already?”

“Just a few hours ago.”

“Wow, you
are
good. When I saw you on TV and heard about you guys catching that pervert at Clarissa’s club, I had a feeling about you. I told myself that you were the one who could help me nail Clarissa.”

“Well, I’m happy to help you find out who harmed your son. We’ll have to see where the evidence leads us. It may very well point to Clarissa.” Savannah took a drink of her lemonade. “Mrs. Jardin, you say that your son frequently confided in you. Did he mention anything to you about him coming into a sizeable sum of money?”

Ruby looked away, suddenly deciding to study Savannah’s rose garden intently. She didn’t answer.

“When I spoke to his girlfriend earlier,” Savannah said, “she mentioned that he had said something to her about it. I thought he might have told you, too.”

“Well, of course he told me about it. And of course she knew about it, too. She was in on it. Has been all along. It was all her big idea. Bill never would have thought of doing something crooked like that, not on his own.”

Savannah gazed across the lawn at her rose garden, feigning interest, too. It didn’t do to appear too excited at a time like this.

“It was her idea, you say?”

“Sure. I mean, not that I mind them squeezing some money out of Clarissa. Bill deserved every penny he got from that miserable, messed-up marriage. But that other one—she’d been blackmailing Clarissa from day one, long before she and Bill ever started seeing each other.”

It didn’t do to appear overly confused in the course of an interview, either, but Savannah couldn’t help it. “What?” she said. “I know that she’s been in some trouble in the past, but blackmail? Sharona’s been blackmailing Clarissa? For how long? For what?”

It was Ruby’s turn to be confused. “What? Who’s Sharona?”

“Sharona Dubarry, your son’s girlfriend. Tall, slender, beautiful redhead…?”

Ruby laughed. “Redhead, yes. And I guess she’s okay looking, if that’s your taste. But she’s about average height and I don’t think anybody would call Rachel slender.”

“Rachel? Rachel Morris?”

“Yes. Clarissa’s twin sister. The one who posed for Clarissa’s ‘before’ shot, and who’s been blackmailing her for it ever since she got famous.”

Savannah nodded as a couple of the puzzle places clicked into place for her. “The one who’s also been sleeping with Clarissa’s husband. The one who thought that Bill was going to leave his wife and run away with her to Vegas…too.”

“Too?”

Savannah looked at Ruby Jardin, a grieving mother who thought she knew everything there was to know about her precious, recently departed son. A mom who believed that her boy was, basically, a good guy, tormented by one woman and led astray by another.

The last thing Savannah wanted was to add to her pain.

“What do you mean, ‘too?’” Ruby asked, unwilling to let it drop. “And who’s Sharona?”

Savannah swirled the ice in her lemonade a time or two before answering. “I spoke to a young lady named Sharona today,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “And she was in love with your son and seemed to think he was in love with her, too. Of course, I only have her word on that. She may have been mistaken. Time will tell.”

“Oh, she was probably telling you the truth,” Ruby replied. She leaned back, resting her head on the chaise, looking very weary and sad. “I always told that boy to keep his pants closed…that one of these days he was gonna get it caught in his zipper. But young people, they just think they know it all. You can’t teach them anything. Especially boys.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She closed her eyes and began to cry. “Did I tell you that he was my only boy? In fact, he was my only child.”

“No, ma’am,” Savannah said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Catch whoever did this. Will you do that for me?”

Savannah started to say, “I’ll try.” But she could hear Granny Reid’s oft-repeated phrase echoing in her head. “Never say, ‘I’ll try.’ ‘I’ll try’ is a weak person’s way of saying ‘no.’”

“I will,” she said, meaning it. “I promise, Ruby. I will.”

S
avannah had no sooner said “good-bye” to Ruby Jardin than another taxi pulled up in front of her house. Tammy saw it through the window and shouted up the stairs, “Don’t look now, but I think your sister just arrived.”

Standing at the bathroom sink, her toothbrush in hand and her mouth full of so-called super-brightening paste, Savannah tried to be thrilled. It had been nearly a year since she had seen Marietta, and she wanted so much to be happy about this reunion.

The woman in the mirror looked back at her with bloodshot eyes.

“It has nothing to do with Marietta’s vexing ways,” she told the makeup-less hag looking back at her in the mirror. “You wouldn’t be happy to see Brad Pitt right now.”

“Yeah, right,” the woman replied.

“I’ll be right down,” she shouted, spitting toothpaste all over the faucets—a particularly irritating occurrence, because spraying toothpaste everywhere was Dirk’s job.

He had equally disgusting jobs, which he also did well, but she decided not to dwell on them, in the interest of plastering a fake smile on her face and greeting her sister.

“Marietta!” she exclaimed as she hurried down the staircase and found a somewhat younger and much more made-up version of herself standing in the foyer. “Why, sugar! What a surprise!”

“Surprise, my foot. Don’t tell me that Gran didn’t call to warn you. She always ruins everything.” Marietta set her suitcases on the floor and hurried over to embrace Savannah at the bottom of the stairs.

Tammy had played hostess and let Marietta in the door, but she gave Savannah a guilty little grin as she ducked out of sight into the living room.

Savannah couldn’t blame her. Marietta had that effect on a lot of people. Even in their hometown of McGill, Georgia, folks were known to dive behind produce displays in the grocery stores to avoid Marietta Reid.

She wasn’t a bad person, just high-energy, and she had a lot to say even when there was nothing to talk about.

“Hey girl! Look at you,” Savannah said, surveying her sister from the top of her highly frosted, highly teased, big hair, to the sequined leopard-print sweater, to the black miniskirt, fishnet hose, and purple pumps. “Ain’t you just all gussied up. And for air travel, too!”

Marietta patted her oversized hairdo with one hand, and her hip with the other. “Well, I do believe in looking your best at all times. Rich men ride on those airplanes. It ain’t like takin’ the bus, you know. And you just might find yourself strikin’ up a meaningful relationship on a long flight like that one.”

“Did you meet anybody?”

“Naw. They sat me next to some old lady. And another gal was across the aisle with two noisy young’uns. If I’d wanted to spend five hours listenin’ to brats bawl and carry on, I’d have stayed home and spent the day with Vidalia and her bunch.”

“How is Vi these days?”

Marietta tossed her head, nearly moving her hair, and sniffed. “We’re fighting again, and I haven’t spoken to her in two days.”

“Two whole days. Sounds serious.”

“It is. She said some hard, tacky things to me, and I don’t think I’m gonna be gettin’ over it any time soon. Do you have something to eat? Because, you know, those tightwads don’t even feed you anymore on those airplanes.” She headed for the kitchen with Savannah trailing behind. “And they shove you into those tiny little seats that aren’t big enough for a gopher to sit in. Nope, air travel just ain’t as glamorous as it used to be when they served you those yummy smoked almonds…”

Dirk had always been able to tell when Savannah was putting food on the table. And no sooner had she and Marietta sat down to a bowl of beans and ham and a pan of hot cornbread than he knocked at the kitchen door.

“Oh, it’s Dirk!” Marietta said, brightening at the sight of a member of the opposite gender. “I swear, he’s cuter now than that last time I saw him!”

Savannah marveled at the fact that Marietta perked up even more at the sight of a man than she did at the smell of home cooking. Some women just couldn’t get it straight, what mattered and what didn’t in life.

As he walked over to the table and sat down, he hardly even seemed to notice Marietta, who was sitting directly across from him.

At the slight, her well-lined, ruby-red, heavily glossed lips protruded in a pout.

“Got enough food for me?” he asked.

“Always,” Savannah said. “I’ll get you a plate.”

“Where’s the kid?” Dirk asked.

“Tammy’s in the living room, slaving away on that photo you gave her. I don’t think she’s taken time to pee since you sent it to her.” Savannah slid a butter plate in front of her sister. “Marietta, help yourself to the cornbread before it gets cold.”

“Oh, hi, Marietta,” Dirk said, as though noticing her for the first time. “Savannah didn’t mention you were here.”

Dirk had never been particularly impressed with Savannah’s family members, except for Gran, whom he adored. And Savannah couldn’t blame him. Dirk had better taste in people than he had in clothes.

Having performed the minimal social courtesies, he turned his attention to Savannah and business. “The M.E. called,” he told her. “It’s official. The C.O.D. was a G.S.W.”

“What?” Marietta said. “What does that mean? I know that C.O.D. means you have to pay for a package when the mailman brings it, but what was that other one?”

Savannah set a plate and silverware in front of Dirk. Then she turned to Marietta, who could never stand not to be the center of any conversation. “We’re working on a homicide case,” she told her. “The medical examiner has determined that our victim’s cause of death was a gunshot wound.”

“Well, isn’t that nice?” Marietta slathered butter on the large square of cornbread that she had cut for herself. “I got new mirrors for my beauty shop. Did I tell you that yet?”

“No,” Savannah said. “I don’t recall you mentioning it.” She passed Dirk the butter. “Anything else?” she asked.

“And a couple of new dryers,” Marietta said. “Oh…and I’m hiring a new nail girl. The other one wasn’t good with French tips.”

Marietta stuck the cornbread in her mouth, and Savannah decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Dirk,” she said. “What else did Dr. Liu tell you?”

“I had a Dr. Lou once,” Marietta said, talking around the cornbread. “His name was Dr. Vickerson, but his first name was Lou, and after we slept together, I just started calling him that. It seemed disrespectful not to address him as ‘doctor,’ but ‘Dr. Vickerson’ is a bit of a mouthful when you’re in the throes of passion.”

Dirk stared at her for a long moment, eyes wide, slack-jawed, then he said, “Like Dr. Liu told us before, she can’t tell how long the body was frozen, so we’re not going to get a time of death. But she did find a couple of other things…”

“I like to have froze to death one winter when I visited my third husband’s mother in Peoria, Illinois,” Marietta added. “Did I ever tell you about that? Boy, howdy, I learned then and there not to wear a microminiskirt and no underwear when it’s ten below zero. You talk about a wicked awful draft! Why that wind came whipping off the lake and up my skirt and—”

“Mari, please,” Savannah said. “Do you mind?”

Dirk seemed mesmerized as he stared at Marietta, obviously lost in thought.

Savannah could only imagine those thoughts, and imagining made her want to smack both him and her sister.

“Dirk, yoo-hoo,” she said, kicking him under the table. “What else did Dr. Liu find in the autopsy?”

“Oh, right.” He cleared his throat and suddenly became busy buttering his own bread. “She said that Jardin was healthy, nothing remarkable…other than the G.S.W. to the head. But she did find something else interesting.”

“What?” Savannah wanted to know.

“Chicken shit.” He glanced over at Marietta. “I beg your pardon, Mari. I mean, excrement.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Marietta assured him. “Gran keeps a passel of hens, you know, for the eggs, and they’re always getting out of their pen, so we stepped in chicken shit every time we went in or out of the house when we was growin’ up. Why I remember one time when Danny Moore came sneaking through my bedroom window at night, after Granny had forbidden me to date him anymore, and he had this big gob of—”

“Where?” Savannah asked Dirk, getting more frantic by the moment. “Where was it?”

“On the bottom of his shoes,” Marietta replied. “And when he tried to climb into bed with me—”

“And a feather,” Dirk said, talking over her. “A feather and some poop were on the backs of his shoes.”

“The
backs?
” Marietta asked. “Are you sure she said the backs? I only ask because we had that mess o’ chickens when I was growing up, and I can pretty much tell you for certain that if you step in chicken shit, it gets on the
bottoms
of your shoes, not on the
backs
of—”

“Excuse me!” Savannah said, suddenly pushing back from the table and jumping to her feet. “I…I just have to…please excuse me, because I have to go…I think I’m going to have to go in the other room and…um…uh…scream or maybe hit something really hard. I’ll be right back. Help yourself to the beans.”

As she ran out of the room, she heard Dirk mumble something to Marietta that sounded like, “It’s been a long day…. hasn’t slept…hours.”

And Marietta’s matter-of-fact reply, “Don’t pay her no mind. Savannah always was the high-strung, nervous type. Would you pass me some of them beans?”

Having regained her composure and consumed a considerable amount of beans and cornbread, Savannah was ready to take on the world—or at least perform one more task, pertaining to the case, before falling flat on her face and possibly never getting up again.

“I’m not being overly dramatic,” she told Dirk as they walked out of her house and toward their cars, which were parked in her driveway. “I feel as rotten as you look, and boy…that’s a bad, bad thing. We both have to spend some time with our toes pointed toward the ceiling or we’re gonna die. We’re too old for this crap.”

“I know. I don’t just bounce back from this kind of abuse the way I used to when I was young.”

Savannah decided not to mention that he hadn’t been all that bouncy as a young guy, either. He’d pretty much always been a grouch, young or middle-aged, sleepy or wide-awake.

But in her book any guy who groaned with orgasmic delight when sinking his teeth into her cornbread was definitely worth the air he breathed.

“I’ve arranged to go have a talk with our man, Pinky, over in county lockup,” he said when he got to his Buick.

“Wish I could go with you,” she said. “He sounds like a real character.”

“Yeah, but we’ve gotta spread out. We’ll get more accomplished separate than together. You go have your little chat with Clarissa about what her mother-in-law said about her. Then we’ll call it a night and start fresh tomorrow.”

“We’ll start, I don’t know how fresh we’ll be.”

He gave her an affectionate smile, reached up, and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Thanks, Van. I appreciate all the help you’re giving me on this.”

“Hey, it’s not for you anymore. Ruby Jardin gave Tammy a nice juicy check this afternoon. I’m now officially ‘on the case.’ Getting paid and everything. So you don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”

She glanced back at the house and rolled her eyes. “Besides, you know I would
pay
to get out of there. God help me, but I think if I spend too much quality time with my sister, she might wind up with hair rollers shoved up her nose and a curling wand up her…well…never mind.”

“I hear ya,” he said. “I’ll testify for you in court. Tell them it was justifiable all the way.”

She walked over to her Mustang and opened the door.

“No girl fights over there at the hacienda,” he said. “No hair-pulling, eye-gouging, or crotch shots.”

“You’re seriously crampin’ my style there, good buddy,” she said. “See ya later.”

When Savannah pulled up to the wall of Rancho Rodriguez, she felt as though this place had become her home away from home. And that wouldn’t have been a bad thing, considering the beauty of the estate, if it hadn’t been for the mistress of the manor.

She had to admit she wasn’t the least bit eager to see Clarissa Jardin’s face again, or, worse yet, to listen to her mouth. But work was work, and she had to keep the cats in Whisker Vittles and Tammy in celery sticks.

As she walked through the bell gate and into the courtyard, enjoying the fragrance of the garden flowers, enhanced by the evening dew, she experienced one of those brief, but beautiful, life-affirming moments.

Gran had always taught her to pause, at least a couple of times each day, and savor the pure joy of being alive. “I don’t care how busy you think you are,” her grandmother said. “Everybody has ten seconds to look around and notice what’s beautiful around ’em. This ol’ world is full of misery and suffering, but there’s good in it, too, if you’ve a mind to look for it.”

Sometimes, those moments were all too brief, though, as Savannah had noticed. And this was one of them.

Her ten-second reverie was cut to four seconds when she heard two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, speaking Spanish in low, whispered tones.

It was the gardener and the maid, Maria, huddled together over the bed of asters. They were working together, removing the offending plants, as they talked.

As soon as they saw Savannah, they ended their conversation, and avoided eye contact with her.

“Buenos notches,” Savannah said.

They both grinned, and—as always when using her limited and rather bad Spanish—she didn’t know it if was because the listeners appreciated her feeble attempt to speak their language, or if her accent was so terrible that they were trying not to laugh outright.

“Good evening, Señora,” Maria said.

The gardener simply nodded.

“Is Ms. Jardin at home?” Savannah asked.

The woman’s face clouded at the mention of her mistress. “No. She is not here now.”

Savannah couldn’t help being disappointed, but she had decided not to call ahead. She figured: Why give Clarissa a heads-up? Why give her a reason to lock the gate and post rabid rottweilers to guard it? Wasn’t life complicated enough?