Killer Gourmet (11 page)

Dirk turned to Savannah, reached out, and took her arm. “What do you figure, darlin'? About time for you and me to skedaddle?”

“I reckon we should be making some tracks. Call it a hunch, but something tells me we've just about worn out our welcome.”

Eileen grinned. But it wasn't a smile that warmed the heart. “Gee,” she said. “You think?”

“W
hat's the matter, babe? You okay?” Savannah closed the driver's door of the Mustang and leaned on its roof. For a moment, the ground under her feet rocked and rolled, and she had to struggle to keep her balance.

It felt like a five-point-two earthquake.

But having lived in Southern California for years now, she had experienced a hefty share of seismic activity, and she knew the subtle difference. This rocking and rolling was within her head. She wasn't sure if that was good news or bad. Was losing one's personal equilibrium preferable to a minor temblor?

“Van, are you okay?” Dirk asked again as he made his way around the front of the car to join her.

“Yeah, I'm okay,” she said, her tone far less convincing than her words. “Why do you ask?”

“Because you're all pale and sweaty.”

“It's a hot day.”

“It ain't that hot.”

Of course, he was right. Even in her driveway where there was no shade, it couldn't have been over 75 degrees.

Since when did a Southern belle, raised in the heat and humidity of inland Georgia, feel the heat of a typical, perfect day in Southern Cal? Especially for a tough gal who didn't consider herself the swooning type.

“I'm fine,” she told him as she took a couple of tentative steps away from the car and toward her house. “I'm just tired, that's all. Not enough sleep. Not enough food.”

He slipped his arm around her waist. “Not as young as you used to be.”

She gouged him in the ribs with her elbow. “Boy, you could've talked all day and not said that.”

He laughed and squeezed her harder. “Now that's my girl. We're gonna get you some food, a little bit of rest—”

“ ‘Rest' meaning ‘talk about the case.' ”

“Knowing us, it'll probably come up. But then it's off to bed for both of us. We'll get a long night's sleep and wake up rarin' to go.”

At that particular moment, Savannah felt so bone-deep tired that she couldn't imagine being “rarin' ” to go anywhere or do anything. And that worried her a bit. Since when did the loss of one night's sleep make her feel like this—too tired to breathe?

Lately she had been feeling a level of fatigue that she had never experienced before, and she couldn't help being concerned. Okay, so she wasn't twenty years old anymore. But what was with this business of feeling like she was eighty?

While Dirk's supporting arm around her waist should have given her comfort, it actually heightened her concern. The last thing that she, or he, needed right now was for something to go wrong with her health.

Dirk had been absolutely devastated when she had been shot. And he had worried himself sick throughout her convalescence, neglecting himself terribly as he cared for her day and night.

She had been quite relieved when he had finally stopped fretting over her every sneeze and sniffle. Under no circumstances did she want to return to that dark place.

Forcing a bit of jauntiness into her step, she said, a tad too brightly, “You're absolutely right. There's nothing wrong with me that those fried chicken leftovers and eight hours of sleep won't fix.”

Unfortunately, her detective husband was a bit smarter than was convenient for her. He gave her a searching, suspicious look as he unlocked the front door and ushered her inside.

Sometimes she envied those wives who complained about their husbands being clueless as to what was going on with them. Living with a guy like Dirk, she sometimes wished for a bit more “clueless.”

As they stood in the foyer unstrapping their holsters and stowing their weapons, they overheard giggling coming from the living room area.

She had seen Tammy's bright pink Volkswagen Beetle and Waycross's orange General Lee Charger wannabe parked at the curb. So she knew that she and Dirk had to proceed into the living room with caution.

Tammy and her brother's romance had passed the adoring friendship stage and could now be classified as bona fide “hot and heavy.” Both of them were incredibly shy, and they never would have indulged in public displays of affection. Their definition of “public” was any place with people other than themselves—and maybe a couple of cats.

From Savannah's position in the foyer, she could see the front living room window where Diamante and Cleopatra sat on their perch. She could tell by the ill-natured twitching of their tails that they disapproved of whatever was going on in there.

Di and Cleo couldn't bear to be ignored.

What was the point in having human beings around if they were focused on each other and you weren't being petted or fed?

“Boy, I don't know about you,” Savannah said to Dirk, quite loudly, “but I can't wait to sink my choppers into those leftover chicken legs.”

“Yeah, me too,” he practically shouted. “You got any of that potato salad left?”

More snickering from the living room.

“Okay, okay,” they heard Waycross say. “We know you're here. Sheesh. We got ears.”

“And you can come in,” Tammy added. “We're going over some figures.”

Dirk waggled one eyebrow at Savannah and whispered, “No kidding. And we know whose figure your little brother's concentrating on.”

They walked into the living room to find Tammy and Waycross cuddled on the sofa. But to their credit, they both had electronic tablets on their laps and appeared to be doing some sort of work.

“What figures are these that we're perusing?” Savannah asked. “My business bank account?”

“Afraid not,” Tammy replied. “I hate to mention it, but there's not much in your business bank account to peruse at the moment. We haven't had a case—at least not a paying case—for a long time.”

Savannah collapsed into her comfy chair and prepared herself for the onslaught of attention-starved felines. In three seconds they had filled her lap, a purring mass of glossy, ebony neediness.

“And this case isn't going to be any different,” she said with a sigh. “It's not that I'm not happy to work for love rather than money. It's just that the electric company stopped taking love as a payment. Let this be a lesson to you two young people: self-employment, following your dream, fulfilling your life destiny. . . . It ain't all it's cracked up to be.”

Tammy giggled. “Now you don't mean that, Savannah, and you know it. What would you do if you couldn't sleuth for a living?”

Savannah sighed. “Well, before the past twenty-four hours, I might've said that I'd like to be a chef. But after that mess last night, I'm put off by restaurant kitchens for the rest of my life.”

“Me too.” Waycross shuddered. “Did you guys find out anything worth tellin' there at the morgue or the lab?”

“Nothing to write home about,” Savannah said. “Kinda feel like we spent a hundred dollar bill's worth of energy and got a nickel in return.”

Waycross gave her the same searching and concerned look that Dirk had given her earlier. “What's up, sis? You're lookin' a mite peaked around the gills, if you don't mind me sayin'.”

She did mind him saying. If there was anything worse than having your husband fret over you, it was having the whole family fret at once.

“I'm fine,” she snapped. “I'm just worn to a frazzle. Once I catch my second wind, I'm going to go scare up some dinner.”

“No, you aren't,” Dirk said. “You're going to sit right there while I scare it up—whatever the hell that means. And then you're gonna sit right there and eat every bite of it. Then you're gonna go to bed, point your toes to the ceiling, and snore for hours on end.”

As Dirk stomped away into the kitchen, Tammy and Waycross watched, their mouths open, eyes wide.

“Wow!” Tammy said. “Get a load of ol' Dirk-o, taking charge like that.”

“Boy, howdy,” Waycross added, chuckling. “Who died and made him Captain Domestic?”

Savannah would have chuckled along with him, but with her world spinning around her once again, the humor of the moment was lost on her. Having Dirk wait on her hand and foot might have been a lovely luxury had it not reminded her of her former convalescence.

Yes, Dirk's words had been light, even mildly humorous. But she could hear the fear in his tone. The last thing she wanted was to have her husband worrying about her.

Dirk was a practical guy. And if he was worried about her, she had to at least consider the possibility that she should be worrying about herself.

 

Once their impromptu living room picnic was finished and the dishes cleared, Savannah, Dirk, and Waycross sat, enthusiastically munching on what remained of Dr. Liu's chocolate chip cookies. The ever-health-conscious Tammy nibbled, rather than gobbling like her companions.

Savannah couldn't help noticing that Tammy's scruples in that department had slipped just a wee bit since she had fallen for Brother Waycross. He, in typical Reid family tradition, had never met a dessert he didn't like. Therefore, most meals ended with some sort of decadent culinary delight.

Once in a while, Savannah saw Tammy sampling his banana split, tasting his pecan pie, or indulging in a lick of chocolate frosting.

Savannah had always respected Tammy's stoic self-control, but she couldn't help but think this was a step in the right direction. While she didn't think everyone needed to become a total dessert glutton like herself, she did believe a bit of culinary indiscretion from time to time was good for the soul.

Having been lectured for years by her young friend about the ills of sugar, flour, and salt, Savannah couldn't help taking a perverse delight in seeing Tammy walk on the wild side once in a while.

“Have another cookie, Tams,” she told her when she saw her lick the last bit of chocolate off her forefinger.

“No, thank you,” Tammy replied. “That half of one was more than enough for me.”

Oh, well
, Savannah thought with an internal sigh.
There's still room for improvement
.

Savannah reached behind her chair and took out the two-by-three-foot poster board that she liked to stash either there or under her bed, depending on where she was when working a case. After taking a pack of Post-its and a pen from her end table, she laid the board across her lap and began to scribble on the bits of paper.

“What are you doin' there, babe?” Dirk watched her, wearing his Concerned Husband face. “I thought you were going to bed right after dinner.”

“Why? So we can lie there and talk about the case?” She shook her head. “No, thanks. I want to get it all out—put it here on the board—so I won't have the details running around my head like a bunch of crazy, chattering monkeys when I'm trying to doze off.”

On one of the tiny leaflets, she wrote the name of the first suspect that came to mind. “Francia Fortun,” she said as she placed the paper in the upper-left-hand corner.

“She has an alibi,” Dirk said.

“Yeah, the same alibi as this other one that I'm writing right now.” Savannah scribbled the name “Manuel Cervantes” on another leaflet and stuck it in the corner next to Francia's. “When Francia and Manuel were giving us their alibis, I caught a whiff of something rotten, like a roadkill skunk. Both were lyin' to beat the band. I might not be able to prove it, but I know it. So they're up here in my Suspects Corner.”

“Be sure to stick Carlos Ortez up there, too,” Dirk told her. “He gave me the same story, word for word, as the other two. You don't get three versions of an event to jibe like that unless it was rehearsed.”

“Innocent folks don't need to rehearse nothin',” Waycross said.

“Exactly.” Savannah looked at the trio of posts in the corner. “But if one or more of them did it, we're not going to be able to prove it unless we can break that three-way alibi.”

“Who else do you have as a possible suspect?” Tammy asked, slightly wistful, as she watched Waycross down the other half of her cookie in one bite.

“Ryan and John seem interested in a couple of guests who were invited to the dinner by Norwood himself but didn't show,” Dirk observed.

Savannah nodded. “That's true. Ryan and John seemed to set great store by the fact that they weren't there.”

“Why?” Tammy asked. “If they weren't there, how could they have done it?”

“I don't know exactly what Ryan and John are thinking,” Savannah said. “Maybe that they snuck in the back way or something.”

“Is that possible?” Waycross wanted to know. “If those three people on your board really were out back smoking, wouldn't they have seen anybody comin' through the back door?”

“Not necessarily.” Dirk reached down, scooped Cleo up, and put her on his lap. “They don't claim to have been right by the exit. Supposedly, they were around the corner a bit, not in sight of the rear entrance.”

“Who were these people that didn't show up?” Tammy said. “And how are they related to Norwood?”

“The first one,” Savannah said, “is Yale Ingram—a superrich dude who was his business partner in another restaurant. Apparently Norwood left Ingram's establishment to work for Ryan and John.”

Tammy's fingers flew over her tablet's screen. “Right. I've got him here. You weren't kidding about him being rich. He's even got a place here in San Carmelita up on Milton Hill. And you oughta see this picture of it. It's gorgeous—an old Victorian beauty.”

Savannah turned to Dirk. “Isn't that the one you called ‘a creepy old monstrosity'?”