Killer Gourmet (15 page)

Suddenly, the beach seemed to tilt sharply upward. And the next thing she knew, it had hit her on the right side of her face. Sand filled her mouth, and she could taste its salty dampness. She blinked, trying to get it out of her eyes.

Her vision blurred, and her lids stung.

Faintly, she could hear Dirk's deep voice shouting, “Savannah! Van, are you okay, baby? Savannah!”

Then she couldn't feel, hear, or see anything at all.

W
hen Savannah regained consciousness, she had no idea how long she had been out. But Dirk was shaking her, a circle of children surrounded her, and a black retriever was licking her cheek.

“Honey, what happened?” Dirk was asking. “Can you hear me? Are you unconscious?”

What seemed like one hundred thoughts raced through her mind. Was she unconscious? No, she could hear him. So, of course she couldn't be unconscious. Though she was pretty sure that she had been just a moment before.

But was she going to tell Dirk that?

She looked up at his face, bent over hers, and saw the abject horror in his eyes.

“I fell down,” she told him. “No big deal. I just tripped on something and fell down.”

She struggled to sit up, and he helped her.

“You tripped?” He glanced back over the path she had walked—a path that was relatively smooth and clear of any debris. When he turned back to her, he didn't look very convinced. “What did you trip on?” he asked.

She could hear the suspicion in his voice.

“Oh, I don't know. A piece of seaweed or something. No harm done, really.” She brushed the sand off her cheek and tried to smooth her hair back into place.

One of the little girls leaned down, peering at her. When they were finally almost nose to nose, the child's big blue eyes filling Savannah's vision, the youngster said, “Wow, lady, you've got sand in your mouth.”

“Yes, I do,” Savannah replied in a less than cheerful tone.

“Ew-w-w,” the little girl said, screwing her face into a grimace. “You shouldn't eat sand. My mommy says that sand is icky and dirty. Seagulls poop on it.”

Savannah spit out the offending grit. “Thank you,” she said, “for telling me that.”

“You're very welcome,” replied the well-mannered child as she backed away.

Savannah turned to Dirk and held out her hands to him. “I would really like to get the hell out of here now,” she said, “if you could maybe give me a hand up.”

“Good idea.” He rose to his feet, grabbed her hands, and hauled her up.

As Savannah turned and made her way gingerly across the sand back toward the parking lot and the Mustang, she heard the helpful girl behind her chattering away.

She was gleefully telling her companions, “I heard that lady say a ba-a-ad word. She said, ‘H–E–double hockey sticks.' My mommy says that's a bad word, and I'm not supposed to ever, ever say it. Nope. Not even if Daddy says it all the time.”

 

“I'm just gonna have to bite the bullet and get another car,” Dirk said mournfully as she pulled over to the curb in front of ReJuvene to drop him off. “And I can't stand to even think about it.”

“I know, darlin',” she told him. “But you live in Southern California, not New York City, and you're a grown-up. You have to own a vehicle.”

“I just want my Buick back.”

“Your Buick passed away, sweetie. It went to Automobile Heaven, where all good cars go when they die.”

His bottom lip protruded, and she could swear she saw it tremble a bit. “I don't want any other car. I could never feel the same way about another car as I did about my Skylark.”

“You just have to go to a used car lot and pick out something, honey. Anything. I'm not going to keep toting you around everywhere.”

Yes, the lower lip was definitely trembling.

She reached over and patted his hand. “You must find the courage to start anew, sweetheart.” Flashing him a sarcastically sweet smile, she added, “Don't worry. You can learn to love again.”

He bailed out of the Mustang and closed the door a bit too hard. Sticking his head through the open window, he said, “Yeah, yeah . . . make fun of me all you want, but heaven forbid anything happens to this jalopy. You'd have it buried outside your bedroom window and plant daisies on its grave.”

She sat, watching, as he stomped up to the restaurant door and disappeared inside. Through the windows she saw Ryan and John greet him.

The three men were going to search the kitchen for the mysterious cylindrical object that had felled Chef Norwood. Meanwhile, she was going to see if she could locate Manuel's wife, Celia. Tammy had done some research and told Savannah that Celia was performing maid service at San Carmelita's infamous Blue Moon Motel.

Savannah wasn't particularly looking forward to driving all the way out to the hot sheets establishment located in the boondocks on the edge of town. She would have preferred to have gone home, crawled into bed, and attempted to sleep off her headache.

But she did what she could for the man she loved. Even when he jinxed her car and she didn't particularly like him.

When the three men inside the restaurant turned in unison to wave good-bye, she fluttered her fingers at them, then turned to pull out into traffic.

Carefully.

Very, very carefully.

She made absolutely certain there were no cars or bicyclists or marauding skateboarders hurtling down the road that might sideswipe that glistening red paint.

“Dadgum his hide for even thinking something like that,” she mumbled to herself. She had decided, the moment he had uttered those fateful words, that if she was in any sort of accident, even a minor fender bender, within the next year, it would be all his fault.

“Hex me, will ya?” she grumbled.

Plant daisies on the red pony's grave, indeed. How dare he insult her that way!

If and when that sad day ever arrived, it would be roses. Great big red ones!

 

As a town that thrived on tourism, San Carmelita had more than its share of hotels, motels, and B&Bs. Most were charming and safe and enjoyed a good reputation in the community.

The Blue Moon Motel was not one of those.

It was definitely not what one would call a family establishment. Newlyweds did not book suites with fireplaces and whirlpool bathtubs for two at the Blue Moon. When a family's matronly aunt came to visit for a week, they would never consider treating Aunt Bessie to a room at the Blue.

Not unless Aunt Bess was in the habit of supplementing her social security check with a bit of hanky-panky for hire on the side.

At one time, Savannah might have considered luring her new hubby out to the Blue Moon and plunking down a few bucks for an hour of pseudo-sordid romance. It never hurt to liven things up on the home front with a bit of novelty from time to time.

But a few months back, she had been present when Eileen and her CSI team were searching for blood spatter in one of the rooms. They had used an ultraviolet lamp to illuminate bodily secretions. Seeing nearly every one of the room's surfaces light up with some sort of suspicious splattering, Savannah had hightailed it out of there and vowed never to return.

Since that day, she had not set foot in a no-tell motel.

For that matter, she hadn't felt especially comfortable in a five-star resort, either.

Romantic getaways were ruined for her forever.

When she arrived at the Blue Moon, there were only a few cars parked in the lot. Apparently, the lunch crowd had already come and gone. She wasn't all that sorry to have missed them, as she lived in mortal fear that she would run into someone she knew.

She could just imagine the awkward, stuttering, bumbling exchange that would follow.

“Oh, um, hi, Pastor Arnold. Fancy running into you here . . . you and your lovely, young bookkeeper. Yes, it just so happens that I'm here without my spouse, too. But I'm working a runaway teenager case. No, of course I wouldn't dream of mentioning this little encounter to Mrs. Arnold—formidable lady that she is. Then I'd be working a murder case, huh? Ha, ha.”

When Savannah parked the Mustang and walked across the lot to the office, she took her time. Her headache had abated a little, and the sense of dizziness was gone, but she didn't want to tempt fate.

No, she had a strict personal limit when it came to falling flat on her face in public: Once a day, that's it, that's all.

And she had filled that quota.

Once inside the office, she found a scraggly haired, shaggy-bearded fellow sitting behind the counter. He was staring with rapt attention at a TV set that was just out of her line of vision.

Judging from the moans and groans coming from the television, she was glad that it was out of sight.

She started to prop her elbows on the counter, then thought better of it and crossed her arms over her chest instead. “Hi,” she said. “You wouldn't happen to have a brother named Kenny Bates, would you?”

He turned his face toward her, but his eyes were still glued to the TV screen. “What? Kenny who?”

“Never mind.” Wanting his full attention, she decided to risk contagion and slammed her fist down on the counter. “Hey! Reckon you can tear yourself away from that fine movie classic you're watching there? Hell, it's not like you don't know how the story ends, right?”

He jumped. His eyes widened. “Yeah. Jeez, lady, chill out. You must be needing that room bad.”

“What I need is to talk to an employee of yours, a Celia Cervantes,” she said, whipping out her private investigator ID and passing it quickly under his nose.

She used the same casual, flipping motion that she had always used when displaying her badge. Only a bit faster. While she would never commit the crime of impersonating a police officer, she certainly didn't mind if Mr. Scraggly here got the wrong impression.

“I need to interview her,” she told him. “I won't take much of her time or interfere with her work.”

He started to shake his head. “No. I don't know what you think she's done. But Celia's a good girl, one of my best workers. And she hasn't done anything against the law. I think you'd better leave.”

Savannah shook her head and made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Now, now. Don't be like that—all contrary and prickly. There's no call for it. I've no doubt that you run a very classy, law-abiding business here. I'm sure that everybody you hire to change the sheets and scrub the toilets around here—they've all got green cards. And I'm sure you pay them at least minimum wage and do all that withholding employer paperwork that Uncle Sam requires. I'm sure if I was to check into all those particulars, everything would be in order and up to snuff. Right?”

He began to mess with the clutter on the counter, picking up some rubber bands and thumbtacks and stashing them in a drawer, putting away a stray key, tossing an empty candy wrapper.

Finally, he said, “Okay, she's cleaning room one-three-two. Go talk to her, if you just have to. But she needs to get that room ready in the next fifteen minutes. Somebody's asked for it, special.”

“Aw-w-w, now ain't that just plumb romantic? Somebody renewing sweet acquaintances?”

“Naw. The guy just comes alone and uses it by himself. He likes it 'cause the TV's a little bigger and the picture's a bit sharper than the ones in the other rooms.” He gave her a crooked smirk. “You know, not everybody comes here because they're needing company. Some people are just looking for a bit of solitude.”

Savannah quickly jotted a mental note to herself:
Do not touch anything in that room. Consider it a biohazard zone.

“Thank you,” she said far more sweetly than she meant. “You have a nice day now, hear?”

As she was going out the door, she thought she heard him say, “Hey, officer? I didn't catch your name.”

She ignored him and kept walking.

She found Celia Cervantes in room 132, as predicted, bent over a bed, stripping the sheets.

Probably in her early twenties, Celia was the epitome of a South American beauty with her glossy black hair and dark, exotic eyes. Although she was curvy in all the right places, a quick appraisal of her body told Savannah that her slender figure was not so much “fashionable” as it was the result of a lot of hard work and not a lot of food.

Savannah stuck her head through the open door and said softly, “Celia?”

The woman jumped, seeing her for the first time. It occurred to Savannah that Celia Cervantes's strings were strung pretty tight.

Not surprising under the circumstances.

Half an hour ago, Savannah had received a call from Tammy, who had told her—quite apologetically—that she had been mistaken about Manuel and Celia being in the United States legally. A bit of deep digging on Tammy's part had revealed that they were illegals who, like many others in their circumstances, were using the identifications of family members.

In their case, distant cousins—Manuel and Celia Cervantes on “Celia's” side of the family.