Killer Reunion (10 page)

Savannah knew it cost Dirk a lot to make that offer. He might be Aquaman in the water, but he was deathly afraid of two things: chickens and heights. Undoubtedly, he had to be terrified to “scramble” down that cliff for any reason. But she knew he was trying to ingratiate himself to Tom at any cost. For her sake.

She made a silent vow to think of some kinky new bedroom activity to reward him.

Early in their marriage she had discovered that positive reinforcement and all that good stuff worked on husbands, too. That was how she'd gotten him to be more careful about hitting the center of the toilet and not the surrounding landscapes.

It was surprising what a man would do in exchange for some bedtime adventure.

“How do I know you're not just trying to get me down there so's you can drown me?” Tom asked him, ever the suspicious cop.

Dirk laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “In front of two of your deputies and my wife? Get real. If I was going to do you in, I'd probably just wait until a dark and stormy night and throw you off a cliff into a lake somewhere.”

Nobody spoke.

Nobody breathed.

Finally, Dirk said, “I'm kidding. It's a joke. And here I thought you Confederates had a sense of humor. Sheez Louise.” He reached over and slapped Sheriff Stafford soundly on his big, broad shoulder. “Let's get down there, Sheriff, and see what we can find.”

Once the course of action had been decided, it didn't take long for Tom to remove his own shirt and for both men to climb down the cliff. At the bottom, they took off their shoes and socks, stuck them on an outcropping, and dove into the water.

Tom had left instructions for the other two deputies to keep an eye on Savannah, but neither of them dared to stop her when she stepped to the edge and watched the activities below.

She, too, could see the purple vehicle submerged in relatively shallow water only a few feet from the base of the cliff. But the area was in the shade and was dark, so she couldn't make out any details of what lay below. Most importantly, she couldn't tell if the car was inhabited or not. And she wasn't altogether sure she even wanted to know.

She could feel her heartbeat increasing by the moment as she watched Tom and Dirk take deep breaths and plunge beneath the surface over and over again. Each time the two men stuck their heads above the water, they spoke to each other, but Savannah couldn't tell what they were saying.

Finally, it was Tom who came up for air and shouted out to those standing above. “She's here. Send down a body bag.”

Jesse scurried away and returned a few moments later with a bag and some heavy ropes. He tossed down the bag, and Dirk, who had come up for air, caught it.

Savannah felt as though she was living some strange, awful dream. The worst was true. Jeanette was in the car, after all. At least her mortal remains were.

Savannah couldn't believe it. Not even when she saw Tom and Dirk struggling to balance the body in the water and place it in the bag. The limp, sodden mass didn't look like Jeanette, in spite of its purple dress. But then, dead bodies seldom looked like they had when inhabited by living beings.

Savannah had come to accept that as a fact, though she had never come to terms with it emotionally. For her, death was and, she suspected, always would be the most perplexing of life's mysteries.

Once the body was inside the bag, and the zipper was securely closed, Jesse tossed down the ropes, and Tom and Dirk tied them tightly to both ends.

“Okay, haul her up. Careful like,” Tom shouted to his deputies.

They did, but even with Savannah helping, it wasn't easy. Although Jeanette was a fairly petite woman, it was more difficult than Savannah had anticipated to deliver the body to the top of the cliff in a gentle, respectful manner.

But once the deed was accomplished and the bag was lying on the ground at the top of the cliff, Martin and Jesse busied themselves by loosening its ropes. When those bindings were free, the deputies tied the ends of the ropes around two trees and passed them back down to Tom and Dirk.

Dirk and Tom put on their socks and shoes and, aided by the ropes, began the arduous climb back to the top.

With the men all occupied, Savannah stood next to the bagged body and felt a strange moment of connection with the woman she had once known all too well.

For some reason, she felt as though she should say something to her. But what? “I'm sorry you're dead. I'm sorry you were such a jerk when you were alive.” Neither comment seemed adequate or appropriate, so Savannah let the moment pass in silence.

It was all she could do not to reach down and unzip the bag. It wasn't that she wanted to view the body up close. But she was almost frantic with curiosity, wanting to see if there was any clear cause of death.

But with Dirk and Tom pulling themselves up and over the edge of the cliff, this wasn't the time to be interfering with evidence.

Dirk tossed the rope aside and walked toward her, drenched and covered with mud. In all the years they had worked together, she had seen him angry, worried, even traumatized. But she had never seen that particular type of fear in his eyes. He looked like he had just suffered some sort of horrid paranormal experience.

She hurried to him and took his hand. “Hey there. Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. I guess.” He wiped the water off his face with the back of his hand and shuddered. “Let's just say I don't wanna be a recovery diver when I grow up someday.”

Tom nodded as he walked over to the bagged body. “No kidding, huh? That was downright creepy. It never occurred to me that dead folks look a lot deader in the water.” Kneeling beside the bag, Tom unzipped it halfway. Savannah found that she had a much clearer look at her old schoolmate than she wanted.

Jeanette would not have been pleased with the way she looked in death. Her skin had a ghastly white, opaque appearance and was badly wrinkled. Her eyes were open. Her facial expression registered surprise and horror.

Savannah could tell just by looking at her that Jeanette had not died peacefully.

Her hair was plastered flat against her head, and some of the lake's grasses were intertwined with her ringlets, like so many tiny green snakes. She was no longer wearing her tiara.

“Maybe she was drunk and just drove right off the cliff,” Martin said. “We'd probably have found some tire tracks if it hadn't been for last night's awful downpour washing everything away.”

Tom was carefully brushing Jeanette's hair away from her forehead with his index finger. “We'll have Herb check her blood alcohol level, but this wasn't your average car wreck.”

“How do you know?” Jesse asked.

“Because she was buckled in her seat down there in that Cadillac,” Tom said. “Nice and tight.”

“So?” Savannah couldn't help asking.

“That gal never put on a seat belt in her life. The county's budget got balanced every year with the money we made from me writing her tickets. And . . . because she's got a bullet hole right here in the side of her head.”

Savannah caught her breath and peered down at the body, trying to see where he was pointing.

Sure enough, directly over her left temple area was a small, round, neat hole.

Something about the wound looked strange to Savannah. But when she leaned down and tried to get a closer look, Tom yanked the zipper on the bag closed.

“We'll know more once Herb's done with his autopsy,” he said.

“Mr. Jameson's going to do the postmortem?” Savannah asked. “Isn't that going to be a bit rough on him, what with him having been her boyfriend and all?”

Tom stood and shrugged. “That's the way it is in a small town. We don't have the luxury of having strangers do our dirty work for us. We've gotta take care of our own.”

“Yeah,” Dirk interjected, “but there's the little matter of him being under suspicion about his last autopsy. Wasn't there some talk that he might've rigged his findings to suit the widow here?”

Tom looked quite annoyed as he slipped his uniform shirt on over his wet, muddy torso. “Why don't you just let me take care of my own investigation, Detective Sergeant Coulter?” he said.

Dirk put on his T-shirt. “And you're most welcome, Sheriff Stafford. Anytime you need somebody to climb a cliff with you, jump in a lake, and fish out a gross dead body, you just feel free to kiss my lily-white ass.”

The two men stared at each other, and Savannah was disheartened to see that whatever recently developed camaraderie they might have built over the shared experience of the recovery had disappeared before their hair had even dried.

“Where's your weapon, Sergeant?” Tom asked Dirk, his voice hard and clipped.

Dirk waited a couple of beats before answering just as sternly, “Locked in the glove box of my rental car. Why?”

“I'll need to see it.” Tom turned to Savannah. “And yours, too. I assume since you ain't got a badge no more, your carry permit is all up to date.”

Savannah glared at him, thinking that there was more than one lily-white butt in the vicinity that he was welcome to pucker up to. But her anger cooled a bit when she remembered that her Beretta was in her purse, and the purse was resting on the car's floorboard, right next to Marietta's cursed high heel.

“Of course my permit is current. Do you really think the airline would've let me fly with it otherwise?”

“Maybe,” Tom replied. “If you fluttered those big blue eyes of yours and grinned with those cutesy dimples, you could probably make a guy believe most anything. Like that you and your old man went right home after the reunion last night.”

Dirk started to offer a retort, but Tom was already walking away from them, heading for their rental car. Savannah and Dirk exchanged a quick look of alarm, then hurried after him.

“Just for the record,” Dirk said as they caught up with him at the vehicle, “neither one of us has given you permission to search anything.”

“Yeah, and I'm just gonna worry myself sick about that,” was Tom's reply as he yanked open the passenger door.

He pulled the car keys out of the ignition and unlocked the glove compartment. In a moment he had Dirk's Smith & Wesson revolver in his hand and was sniffing the barrel. “This weapon's been recently fired,” he announced.

“It sure has,” said Dirk. “I go to the range regularly. Went two days ago, in fact. Right before we left California.”

Tom handed the revolver to Jesse, then reached down to the floorboard for Savannah's purse. As Savannah watched his hand closing over her bag, she had the same sensation as when she dropped a glass and watched it fall to the floor, beyond her reach. A feeling of utter helplessness. A sense that fate was already in motion and beyond her control.

But he didn't seem to notice the shoe as he lifted the purse, opened it, and took out her Beretta. She knew what was coming next. As was their habit, she had accompanied Dirk to the firing range the day before their flight.

“This one's been fired, too,” he said.

She couldn't resist a bit of sarcasm. “I hope you aren't suggesting that we
both
shot Jeanette. There's only one hole in her head.”

Tom didn't reply, but he gave the Beretta to Jesse, as well.

It was when he tossed Savannah's purse back onto the floorboard that he saw the shoe. He froze, looking at it for what seemed to Savannah like one and a half eternities. Finally, he reached down, hooked his finger through one of the straps, and lifted it out. Dangling it in front of her face, he said, “Why, lookie here. Cinderella done lost her slipper at the ball last night.”

Don't put it together, Tommy
, she silently pleaded with him.
Don't figure it out. Please be a bad cop just this once. Not the smart, observant one you've always been.

“This is one of the shoes you were wearing last night,” he said. “Where's the other one?”

“Back at Granny's,” she replied. “That one fell off when I was getting out of the car last night. I just tossed it back in there.”

“So you got this shoe all muddy there in your granny's driveway?”

“Yes.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, as though he had just absorbed a sharp blow to the ribs.

Or a direct stab to the heart
, Savannah thought.

When he opened them, he looked at her with an expression that was as sad as any she'd ever seen on his handsome face. “Why, darlin'?” he whispered. “Why'd you have to go and lie to me? I would've given you every benefit of the doubt. I'd have moved heaven and earth for you, but, damn it, gal . . . you had to go and lie to me.”

Dirk stepped between them. “What makes you think she's lying to you? It's some mud on a shoe, not a fingerprint in blood.”

“It's
Lookout Point
mud . . . red as a clay flowerpot,” Tom told him.

Turning to Savannah, Tom said, “In the years you and me was keepin' company, how many times did we check to make sure we didn't have any Lookout Point mud on our shoes when I took you back home to your granny? With those eagle eyes of hers, I even had to make sure none of it was on my tires. Do you really think I'd forget a thing like that, Savannah? Never, girl. I've not forgot a thing about those years we was together.”

His words found their way to her heart, as she was sure he had intended them to. She said nothing, and the tension in the silence around them rose with each passing second.

Under no circumstances would it have been easy for her to listen to her boyfriend talk about the “good old days” in front of her husband. But with the added burden of her being under suspicion for murder, it was almost unbearable.