Bitter Sweets (14 page)

Brian saw that she had noticed the bag and colored slightly. “For my kids at home,” he explained. “I miss my boys. I've never been away from them this long. I'd better head back home soon, or I'll go broke, buying out the gift shop downstairs.”

“I know how you feel. I love children myself.”

“Do you have any?”

“No.”

Suddenly, Savannah wanted to leave the room, leave this man whose presence reminded her of the part she had played in his loss. Besides, his love for his own family reminded her of what she had never had.

She stood abruptly and headed for the door. “I have to get going,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you what's been happening so far. As soon as I have other news, I'll let you know.”

“Maybe it'll be good next time,” he said, offering her an encouraging smile as he walked her out the door and into the hallway.

“One can always hope.”

T
he state of Dirk's living conditions had ceased to shock Savannah years ago. She had grown accustomed to the ten-by-forty-foot house trailer that sat off the road in a wooded area, called Casitas Maria, about fifteen miles east of San Carmelita. Besides, over time she had come to realize that the place wasn't really as filthy or disorganized as it appeared on first glance.

Although a thick layer of dust covered all surfaces and no attempts at decorating had ever been made, the trailer was free of dirty dishes, vermin, and human and animal wastes. In Dirk's mind, that constituted “basically sanitary.”

He had pushed his collection of periodicals and videotapes onto the floor, clearing the coffee table, for her visit. She had been deeply flattered.

Side by side, they sat on the antique gold, threadbare carpet, leaning against the sofa, examining the materials spread out before them.

“Look what I found,” she said, pointing to some articles of interest she had garnered from the boxes taken from the colonel's home.

She grabbed a black high school yearbook with silver lettering that said “Wolverines” and opened it to a page she had marked with the preaddressed envelope from her overdue electric bill. What the heck, this was just the yellow notice, and she knew she wasn't going to pay it until the red one came. It would have its own envelope.

“Here is Lisa's high school graduation picture,” she said, tapping her fingertip on the photo of a softer, sweeter version of the face she had seen over the plate of M&M cookies. Before Earl Mallock. Before the abuse and the heartaches.

“Looks like a nice kid.”

“I'm sure she was.” Savannah flipped back to the section reserved for the junior class. “And this is Vanessa Pearce . . . . without the purple hair.”

Dirk studied the face of the pretty blonde who, even back then, wore too much makeup for her delicate good looks. “Hmmm, that was Earl's girlfriend.”

“Was, being the operative term. She and Lisa Neilson went to the same school, one year apart.”

“Okay . . . . so?”

“They were more than just schoolmates.” She pulled out some snapshots of the two girls playing in a swimming pool, on the beach, at a school basketball game, at a birthday party where Lisa was blowing out candles on a cake. “Lisa Neilson and Vanessa Pearce were best friends all through high school and for years afterward.”

“And both of them wound up having the same guy?”

Savannah nodded. “Even back then. I found some letters . . . . right here . . . . that were written when the women were in their thirties.” She pulled the rainbow-striped stationery from her tote bag and spread the letters on the table. “These are from Vanessa to Lisa. It seems that at one point, Earl was dating them both.”

“Busy guy.”

“Extremely busy.” She pushed one particular letter into Dirk's hand. “He got both women pregnant within a few months of each other. Lisa first, then Vanessa. In that letter, Vanessa is begging Lisa to give him up so that she can have him.”

“Whoa, now
that's
messy.”

“Positively sca-a-andalous. If such a thing had happened in Georgia, some of the male relatives would have run Mr. Mallock out of town on a rail, wearing a fine ensemble of pitch and turkey feathers.”

“I wonder what the colonel had to say about it all?” Dirk took a long swig of beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“Well . . . . Earl married Lisa, didn't he? I'd say the colonel might have had something to say about that.”

Dirk checked the dates on the letters. “We know what happened to Lisa's baby; that would have been Christy. But what about Vanessa's kid?”

Savannah shrugged. “Don't know yet. But at least now I have somebody to move to the top of my board.”

“You mean Vanessa Pearce . . . . that she had a motive?”

“Why not?”

“Because, if she was going to knock somebody off, it seems like she would have done it ten years ago, when all this was going down.”

“But what if she didn't do it back then? What if she finally got Earl—prize that he was—away from Lisa? What if, after she thought she had him all to herself for good, he started to obsess about Lisa again? What if Vanessa found out about it, and it was just one rejection too many?”

Dirk considered the possibilities for a while and sipped some more beer. “Well, you've talked to her. Does she strike you as the type of person who could kill two people?”

“No.” She sighed. “But I've been wrong before.”

 

When Savannah dropped by the house later to check in with Tammy, she opened the front door and received quite a shock.

Granny Reid was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing a bright red, one-piece bathing suit. Part of the shock was that she looked much better in it than Savannah would have expected.

“I never had one before . . . . not in my whole life,” she told Savannah as she twirled around the room, showing the suit from all its best angles. “I thought it was high time.”

Savannah began to laugh as she ran to her grandmother and grabbed her around the waist. “Just look at you! You look like Esther Williams!”

“That's what I thought when I tried it on at Wal-Mart today. I just had to have it. After all, I can't go wading in the big Pacific Ocean in one of my caftans or nightgowns.”

“You're absolutely right. There's a wonderful little lagoon over by the marina. I'll have to take you there as soon as I get a chance.”

Tammy walked into the living room, just in time to hear Savannah's last words.

“Don't wait until you ‘get a chance,' Savannah,” she said quietly, “or you'll never do it.”

“Tammy, I can't. You know what's going on around here, and—”

“Yes, I do. And I know that you aren't the only one working on this case. You have Ryan and John running their buns off for you, Dirk is busting his, and I'm doing everything I possibly can every waking moment.”

She nodded toward Granny and smiled a sweet, knowing smile that was wise beyond her years. “You can take two hours, Savannah. Even the president could take two hours under these circumstances.”

Savannah thought of Lisa, of Earl . . . . and, of course, of Christy.

Then she looked at her grandmother, so eager, a child eighty-three years young, who had never set foot in the Pacific Ocean, who, until today, had never worn a bathing suit.

“The temperature in that lagoon is really lovely this time of day, Gran,” she said. “But you'll have to wear a robe or something as a coverup on the way there and back. That red suit is just too-o-o-o risqué for public!”

“Oh, you're right! I'll go get one.” Granny Reid giggled as she hurried up the stairs. In record time she reappeared with her Victoria's Secret's terry-lined, satin robe over her arm.

Savannah barely had time to grab her own gear.

“I've made a very important decision, Savannah,” her grandmother told her as they walked to the car, arm in arm.

“And what is that, Gran?”

“I've made up my mind that I'm going to do something outrageous every year for the rest of my life. Last year I got my earlobes pierced . . . .
both
of them. This year it's the bathing suit and wading in the Pacific Ocean.” She lifted her chin a few notches. “And next year . . . . oh, hell . . . . there's no tellin' what I might do!”

Savannah laughed and made a decision of her own: With every passing year of her own life, to become more like her grandmother.

 

Lying on her back on the sun-warmed sand, Savannah allowed herself to enjoy the rare delight of doing absolutely nothing for a moment. The healing heat penetrated the stiff muscles of her shoulders and down her spine, loosening the knots, easing the tension. At least a little.

A few feet away, Gran was playing tag with the waves and some children who had recognized a kindred spirit and had lingered to wonder at the joy she radiated.

“How old are you?” asked the little boy. “Are you older than my mom?”

“I'll betcha I'm older than your mom's mom,” she replied.

“How come you have so many wrinkles on your face?” his sister inquired.

“Those are from laughing so much,” was the ready answer.

The girl considered her words, but still looked puzzled. “You laugh on your
neck?”

Savannah winced, but she heard her grandmother roar, far too highly evolved a soul to be hampered by mere vanity. Humor was, and always had been, far more important to Granny Reid.

“Oh, my Lordy, Savannah, did you hear that?” She plopped down onto the beach towel beside her and wriggled her toes into the sand. “Have you ever heard anything so funny in all your days?”

“Children do have a way of putting things.”

“Yes, they're wonderful. They're just the way the good Lord made them: pure and sweet and honest as the day's long . . . . the way we all were before the world messed us up.”

Savannah rolled over toward her and shaded her eyes with one hand so that she could clearly see her grandmother's face.

“Gran,” she said thoughtfully, “can you always tell, ahead of time, if a person is bad or not?”

Granny stretched out on her side, facing Savannah, and contemplated her answer carefully before speaking. “No, I can't say as I can. Because I don't really believe there's any such thing as a bad person.”

“But how can you say that? You've lived long enough to see people do horrible things to each other.”

“Sure I have. But I don't think there's anybody that hasn't got a smidgen of good in 'em. Course, with some folks, the good is as hard to find as teeth in a hen's beak. But that doesn't mean it ain't there. Just means you ain't looked hard enough to find it.”

Savannah shook her head and began to draw nonsensical lines in the sand to express her anger and frustration. “I guess you haven't seen the sort of things that I have, Gran. When you're a cop, you—”

“Now, don't go givin' me that bunch of hooey. A body doesn't have to be a police officer to see meanness. You think I haven't seen wickedness in my day, girl? I lived through two world wars, not to mention those messes in Korea and Vietnam. I was in the thick of the Civil Rights Movement, marchin' right there with the best of 'em. With my own eyes I saw horrors perpetrated on African-Americans and their little children by cowards wearing bed sheets. And I tell you now, I'll never forget it.”

She took a deep breath and rolled over onto her back. “I've seen evil and I've seen the suffering it caused. But I still don't think people are ‘good' or ‘bad.' We're all a combination of both. It's just that some are more one than the other.”

A couple of seagulls floated overhead, while sandpipers pranced on skinny legs along the lacy edges of the waves. Savannah watched, feeling mildly chastised as she considered her grandmother's wisdom. It was always so easy to assume that you knew more than your elders, she thought. So easy, and so foolish.

“That's why people are so surprised,” Gran continued, “when a ‘good' person does a ‘bad' thing. We go around thinking there are the heroes and there are the villains, and that everybody is either one or the other. But even the best of us and the worst of us play both roles from time to time. A person is capable of doing loving and noble deeds, and he's capable of doing hateful, hurtful things. He makes the decision every minute of every day which he's gonna do.”

Savannah thought of the trials she had attended, where the defense attorneys had presented evidence that their clients had given generous donations to orphanages, lovingly cared for aged parents, and supported the local Little League teams. But the prosecution had proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that those same individuals had committed heinous crimes with cold calculation and a complete lack of remorse.

“I guess,” Savannah said, “that in the course of a lifetime, we all do plenty of both.”

“That's right, sugar.”

“But that's a lot more complicated, Gran. It's so much easier to just think ‘we' are the good guys, and ‘they' are the bad ones.”

“Easy ain't always
right.”

“That's true, Gran. And right ain't always easy.”

 

When the petite, conservative brunette behind the bar at the Shoreline told Savannah, “No, Vanessa isn't working today,” Savannah could almost swear she looked relieved.

Past experience had taught her that it could be very enlightening and worthwhile to talk to your suspect's enemies. Their motives for spilling what they knew might be less than honorable, and you had to take what they said with a barrel of salt pork. But often they were more truthful than friends.

“I'm Zelda. What can I get you to drink?”

Savannah knew better than not to order anything. Bartenders didn't trust anyone who wasn't holding a glass in their hand.

“A Coke will be fine.”

Slender, physically fit Zelda looked Savannah up and down. “Diet?”

“No way.”

She drew her a cola and set it on the bar in front of her. “What do you want Vanessa for?” she asked, trying to sound casual, but not succeeding.

Aha,
Savannah thought,
Zelda is nosy, too. All the better.

“I wanted to ask her some questions about her boyfriend, Earl.”

“He's dead. Murdered, they say.”

“Who says?”