Savannah Reid 12 - Fat Free and Fatal (14 page)

She reached over, put her hand on his forearm and squeezed. “I know it was awful for you, buddy, that stone attack. And I’m sure this is terrible, too. But you’re doing it, and I can’t tell you how strong and totally sexy I think you are for taking this stand and conquering this demon of yours.”

He turned toward her on the seat and stared at her, incredulous. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” She gave him her most serious, no-nonsense, level look. “You’re hot, Dirk. The epitome of a truly manly man.”

His chin lifted; his chest swelled visibly. “Wow! Cool! Thanks, Van.”

“Just tellin’ it like it is, good buddy. Just tellin’ it straight.”

He sat for a long time in silence, staring out the windshield at the moonlit surroundings. Finally he said, “Wanna go for a walk? Check out that hill where we think the shooter stood?”

“Sure. Let’s.”

He got out of the car first. She sat there for a moment, shaking her head, snickering. “Men,” she whispered. “Tell them a pile of hooey about themselves, they’ll believe it every time.”

She swung the Buick’s door open and stepped out. The fragrant dampness of the evening air surrounded her, and she breathed it in. No cinnamon, but sweet all the same. The full moon overhead lit the Papalardo mansion, coloring it with a silver patina that made it look like something from one of Dona’s beloved black-and-white movies.

Being a hopeless romantic herself, Savannah could understand the diva’s love affair with the silver screen. The glamour created by those old-time stars and those bigger-than-life sets had no equal in contemporary filmmaking.

“Nice digs, huh?” Dirk said, nodding toward the mansion.

“Eh, put some iron rails on my balconies, my house could be its twin.”

They walked slowly, arm in arm, up the steep trail that curved along one side of the property. The path had a relatively steep pitch, and they had to lean into it as they climbed.

“How sure are you that the shooter was up here?” she asked.

“Pretty sure. I questioned the limo driver today. He was actually helping Kim into the vehicle when she was shot. He had hold of her arm.”

“Wow, close call for him.”

“And he knows it, too. He’s really mad and wants us to catch the dude.”

“And he was pretty helpful?”

“He was. He was very clear about the position she was in when she was shot. And when Dr. Liu showed me the trajectory of the bullet into the body, it was clear that the shooter was high, shooting from above and behind her. That would have put him up here.”

“And,” she said, “we had a long talk with Jack the gardener at dinner tonight, and he said he heard the gunshot. He placed it up here, too.

“Any luck on running down that footprint, the hiking boot?”

He shook his head and looked disgusted. “I left it up to that bimbo at the front desk to check it out on the Internet, and she didn’t get to first base.”

“I’ll put Tammy on it tomorrow. She’s going to bring her laptop computer here so that she can work from it.”

“The kid
is
good at that stuff. Way better than anybody at the station.”

“She’ll be glad to hear it.”

“Don’t tell her I said anything good about her. Next thing, she’ll want to be my friend or something.”

“Not
that
! Lord help us.”

“Exactly.”

Savannah scanned the thick sagebushes that lined the path on either side. Most of them were low-lying, but one patch, about twenty feet away from her, was slightly taller than her waist. “If I were going to take a shot from up here, I’d do it over there,” she told him.

He took a penlight from his pocket, turned it on, and pointed it to the dirt beneath the bushes she had indicated. “Good guess,” he said. “That’s where they found one of the hiking boot prints. The other one was about thirty feet away.”

“This direction, right?” she said.

“Yeah, right over there. Lucky guess.”

“
Educated
guess.”

“Hey, it’s fifty-fifty. This way, down the hill, or that way, up the hill.”

She cleared her throat. “Excuse me. If you were the killer, which way would you go to make your exit? Down the hill, where the sagebrush is lower and thinner? In clear view of the house? Where the people you just shot at can get a long, good look at you? I don’t think so.”

She pointed up the hill. “Or you could go up the hill, under cover of this dense, high sage and disappear on any one of those trails that interlace behind these fancy properties. All you’d need is a trail bike stashed somewhere up there and you could skedaddle before anybody says a ‘hi-de-ho’ to you.”

“Skedaddle? Hi-de-ho?”

“Oh, come on boy. Don’t act like you don’t understand me. You should speak fluent Southern by now.”

But Dirk was already halfway up the hill. Savannah caught up to him just as they crested the top.

In the moonlight, they could see the softly undulating foothills, spread out around them, looking as lush as silver velveteen. This area had burned in a massive brush fire a couple of years before, but nature had replenished the native growth until it was even thicker than before.

Savannah loved these hills. When life’s cares overwhelmed her, a hike up here, breathing in the rich aroma of the sage, listening to the wildlife rustling in the underbrush, feeling the Santa Ana breezes hot and dry on her skin, all worked together to restore her soul.

“I like it up here,” she said simply. “It’s good for me.”

“Yeah, well…do the nature girl routine some other time. We’re workin’ a case here.”

She turned to him, an instant scowl on her face. “I’m well aware of that, turkey butt,” she said. “I was just communing with the universe for a second there. If you’d do a little more of that, you wouldn’t have to have a crutch like tobacco to calm your antsy, impatient, nervous self down.”

He winced. “That’s a low blow to a suffering man.”

“Then don’t get smart with me when I’m enjoying a spiritual moment here. I’m recharging my batteries. And you’ll be one of the first ones to reap the benefits of having a newly energized me.”

He sniffed. “Don’t think much of ourselves, do we?”

She reached over and snatched the penlight from his hand. “Get out of my way, boy, and lemme show you how it’s done.”

“How what’s done?”

“I don’t know yet. But when I’ve done it, you’ll know.”

He sighed, crossed his arms over his chest and began to tap his foot.

Ignoring him, she continued up the path, sweeping the penlight from side to side as she went.

The beam was fairly feeble, but combined with the bright light of the full moon, it was enough. Reaching a fork in the path, she chose the one that would lead away from the mansion and turned to the right, going deeper into the foothills.

Dirk lagged behind, then came rushing up behind her, radiating impatience. “The CSI techs already went over this,” he told her. “You’re just wasting your time.”

“How far?”

“How far what?”

“How far did they search along this path?”

He shrugged, thought, then pointed to a curve in the trail ahead. “Maybe up to about there.”

“Okay.”

She continued to sweep, but more quickly than before, until she reached the curve in the path. Then she slowed her pace and made sure she missed nothing before she took another step.

About thirty feet from the bend in the trail, she saw something and dropped to her knees in the dirt.

Dirk was beside her in an instant. “What is it?” he asked. “What do you see? What did you find?”

“Oh, suddenly he’s curious. Suddenly he’s no longer bored and grousing.”

He knelt in the dirt beside her. “Don’t make me have to hurt you, woman,” he said.

She gave him a disgusted look. “Oh, right. That just happens all the time.”

“What is it?”

“Looks a heck of a lot like a tire print to me,” she said, pointing out the lines in the dirt. “A two-wheeler.”

He sniffed. “Big friggin’ deal. A trail-bike tire print on a trail. Who would have predicted such a thing? Whoopie-do.”

She turned and gave him a glare that could have started a fire in a pile of wet straw. “Watch it,” she said. “Don’t get smart with me, buddy, or I won’t tell you why this track is so special.”

“Sure you will,” he said. “Because you’re grinnin’ like you do when you’ve got something really good. And you’ve never been able to keep it in, not for a minute, when it’s good. You’re already just bustin’ to tell me.”

“Oh, shush and ask. Ask me why this simple, routine track is special.”

“No, ’cause you’ll tell me. You’ll tell me because you have no willpower and you can’t help yourself.”

She stood, dusted the dirt off her knees and reached into her pocket. Pulling out a tissue, she walked over to the side of the path and tied the tissue around the branch of a sturdy bush. “There,” she said. “That’ll mark the spot.”

“What spot?”

“The spot where your evidence is. You can come back tomorrow when it’s daylight and if you look hard enough, maybe you’ll find it.”

With that, she started back down the hill.

He followed at her heels until they were nearly halfway back to the mansion. She suppressed a laugh as she listened to him snort and mumble expletives under his breath.

But as they approached the midway point, he suddenly darted around her and blocked her path.

“Listen, you,” he said. “If you think you’re going one more step before you tell me what you saw back there, you’re wrong…just wrong, wrong, wrong.”

She took not only one step, but two, until she was nose to nose with him. “Oh yeah?” she said, grinning at him. Then, in a breathy and bad Marilyn Monroe impression, she said, “Whatcha gonna do to stop me? Huh?” She poked him in the chest with her forefinger. “Whatcha gonna do, you big, bad po-o-lice man?”

He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, then pulled her against him. She put her hands on his chest to push away, but he held her tight.

For a moment, a fleeting moment, Savannah was acutely aware of the moonlight flowing soft and silvery around them, his face so close to hers that she could smell the cinnamon on his breath, mixed with a hint of his Old Spice shave lotion. With her hands on his chest, she could feel the heat of his body through the thin fabric of his T-shirt. And she was all too aware of how broad and hard his chest felt beneath her palms.

She took half a step back and tried to get away from him, but he only tightened his grasp.

“Let go of me, boy,” she said, her voice low and husky.

“Not until you tell me what it was.”

“I could get away from you if I really wanted to,” she said.

He grinned, and even though she didn’t want to even think such things, she remembered what a really sexy smile Dirk had when he was happy—an event that happened only a time or two a year, but it was worth the wait.

“No you couldn’t,” he said. “You and I have never really gotten into it physically, but if we did, you know I’d win.”

She wanted to argue, but there was no point in lying. She was a very sturdy woman and a fierce fighter when she had to be. But she could feel the male power in his arms, hands, and chest. And there was no denying who would win in an all-out affray between the two of them.

“Okay,” she said. “You’d win. But you’d be bitten and scratched and kicked and gouged and bloody as hell, boy. It wouldn’t be worth it.”

He laughed and abruptly let her go. “What was it? What was so special about that stupid trail-bike track back there?”

Slowly, reluctantly, she lowered her hands from his chest. “That track was special,” she said, “because of what was beside it.”

He was instantly, fully alert. “And that was…?”

“A boot print. A boot print with a PM on the heel.”

“A Porter-Marceau hiking boot.”

She grinned, stood on tiptoe and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You got it, babycakes, a Porter-Marceau hiking boot.”

They continued on down the hill, and as they reached the bottom, Savannah decided to share the rest.

“One more thing,” she said. “That print in the dirt didn’t look to me like a track from a trail bike.”

He looked confused. “Well, it was too thick for any kind of bicycle, like a mountain bike or even a moped.”

“That’s right. I think it was wider than any of those. I think it’s a motorcycle tire. Not a big cycle, but a street bike of some sort.”

They stopped in the middle of the path and turned to look at each other.

“Like the one that Kim’s mystery man rides?” Savannah said.

“Maybe,” he replied. “Just may-be.”

“We’ve just got to lay eyes on that guy. We really do.”

“Lay
eyes
on him?” Dirk gave a little growl deep in his throat. “To hell with laying eyes on him. I wanna lay
hands
on him. And I want to lay them on him really, really hard. Several times if necessary. We need some answers here.”

“Amen, Brother Dirk. Amen!”

S
avannah knocked softly on Tammy’s bedroom door, trying not to disturb Mary Jo Livermore across the hall. A little bit of a drunk Mary Jo went a long way, and Savannah wasn’t interested in shooting the breeze with her twice in one evening.

She was about to knock a second time when she heard, “Who is it?”

Good girl, Savannah thought. Caution. An excellent quality in a private detective—or their assistant.

Then she heard the lock turning, and a couple of seconds later the door opened a crack and Tammy peered out, wearing her pink Minnie Mouse pajamas and looking a bit tousled.

“Is everything okay?” Tammy asked, instantly awake and concerned.

“Everything is fine. Just fine.” She glanced up and down the hallway, but the rest of the house appeared to be fast asleep. “Let me in for a minute. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Sure, come on in.” She swung the door open wide, and Savannah hurried inside. “Sorry if I woke you.”

“You didn’t. I was just lying there in that beautiful bed, enjoying the room.”

Savannah felt a tiny pang of conscience. “Actually, I was wondering if you’d mind coming downstairs and doing library sofa duty for an hour or so. Dirk’s waiting for me outside. We thought we might go back to Kim’s house tonight and see if we can catch the guy who’s been living with her.”

“Tonight? It’s after midnight.”

“I know. We’re thinking if he spends the nights there he might be around.”

Tammy nodded, walked over to the foot of the bed and picked up her robe, which was spangled with Tinkerbells. “Could be. But why doesn’t Dirk go by himself? Not that I mind coming downstairs, but…?”

“We were walking around outside. We went up the hill and found more of those boot prints, the ones we think the killer left. And right beside another set of them was a motorcycle track.”

“Ah, and you think since Kim’s live-in rides a bike—”

“You got it.”

“And if the guy really is the killer, ol’ Dirko could use some backup.”

“He’d never admit it in a hundred years, but yes.”

Tammy grabbed a scrunchy, spangled with hot pink sparklies off the nightstand and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Then she slipped on a pair of penguin house slippers. “Should I bring my gun down with me, too?” she asked, reaching for her Dora the Explorer backpack on a nearby chair.

Savannah looked her over from head to toe, shook her head, and said, “Yes, the one that shoots bullets, not the Donald Duck water squirt gun.”

“What?”

Sigh. “Never mind.”

They walked downstairs and Savannah led her into the library. “I appreciate you doing this,” she said. “If the guy’s not there, we’ll be back directly. And if he is—”

“If he is, none of us are going to mind because the case will probably be solved,” Tammy said brightly.

Savannah looked at her with sweet affection for a long moment. “That’s right, kiddo. And then it’s pop the cork on a bottle of champagne time.”

Tammy settled herself on the leather sofa, then carefully laid her weapon, a Glock 9mm, on the coffee table.

Tammy carrying a gun was a new and big event in the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency. Previously, all of them, from Savannah and Dirk to Ryan and John, were routinely armed. Their experience in law enforcement caused old habits to die hard, and they all felt safer, considering their line of work if they kept their weapons close by at all times.

But Savannah, like a watchful mother hen, had been reluctant to arm Tammy. And it was only after months of Savannah training her at the local shooting range that the four other members had presented Tammy with her own weapon.

Savannah had given it to her on her birthday, along with a fervent, big-sister wish that she never even had to draw it, let alone fire it.

Savannah stood there, looking down on the weapon and, not for the first time, shuddered at the very thought of Tammy having to use it. But if there was anything worse than being in a situation where you would have to fire a gun, it was being in that same predicament and not having one
to
fire.

“Remember, Tams,” she said, nodding toward the pistol. “Don’t ever—”

“I know, I know,” Tammy interjected. “Don’t ever pull your weapon and point it at somebody unless you’re willing to shoot them.”

“Or else…?” Savannah prompted.

“Or else you’re just handing them the means to kill you.”

“And if you do shoot?”

Tammy stared Savannah straight in the eye with a look that was far colder and more determined than Miss Minnie Mouse Jammies ever exhibited otherwise. “If you shoot,” she said firmly, “aim for center mass. Double tap. Two shots in rapid succession. Then two more if you need to. Then two more—”

“Until?”

“The threat is neutralized.”

Savannah nodded somberly, closed her eyes for a second and whispered, “God forbid.”

“Well, if this gets any more exciting I just might pee my bloomers.” Savannah yawned and sank lower in the passenger seat.

“Oh, stop your griping. If you weren’t here with me—”

“I’d be sleeping on a cushy leather sofa in a gorgeous mansion with a down pillow under my head and a soft, luxurious throw over me.”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t be with
me
.”

“O-o-okay. And your point is?”

He gave her a sideways grin. “And you’d rather be with me than anywhere on earth.”

“Uh, we don’t think much of ourselves, now do we?”

He shrugged and snickered. “Just telling the truth.”

She rolled the window down and stuck her arm out, feeling the moist night air on her skin. They were parked behind an old outbuilding, among some trees and brush. They could see the house well, but wouldn’t be obvious to anyone coming down the road.

When they had first arrived, they’d checked the house, but not only was no one there, but the leaf that Dirk had stuck between the door and the jamb was still there. No one had entered since they had left.

After an hour and a half of just sitting there, listening to Dirk suck the daylights out of his cinnamon stick, Savannah was wishing she had brought a bottle of nail polish. She could have at least gotten a manicure out of the deal.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “As delightful as this outing may be, I’d rather be in my claw-foot antique bathtub at home, basking in a rose-scented bubble bath with a glass of brandy, some really dark chocolate truffles and a hot steamy romance novel with some gorgeous hunk on the cover.”

He looked hurt and disappointed for only a heartbeat. Then he shook his head and laughed. “Nope, you’d rather be here with me.”

“And you think this is true because…?”

“Because you like the idea that you might get to tackle some bad guy and nail him for murder.”

“Oh, I thought you meant it was because I reveled in your scintillating conversation about last night’s heavyweight bout and how the Dodgers stunk in that doubleheader on Saturday.”

“No, the sports roundup is just the frosting on the cake of this experience.”

“Woo-hoo. Lucky me.”

She heard a chorus of coyotes begin to yip in the distant hills. “They sound like a bunch of Midwestern farmers at a Vegas floor show when they bring the strippers out,” she observed.

That was Dirk’s kind of joke. When he didn’t laugh, she knew that he, too, was getting bored.

“How much longer do you want to sit here?” she asked.

“I don’t know. You?”

She rolled the window up and rubbed her arms. “Well, it’s getting a bit airish out here without my jacket on. I didn’t think we’d be out here all night or I’d have brought a coat.”

“You want mine?” he said, starting to peel off his bomber jacket.

“Naw, thanks.” She reached over and pulled it back onto his shoulders and gave him a pat. “But we could sit here till dawn and still, most likely, come up empty-handed. And then tomorrow neither one of us would be worth shootin’.”

“Yeah, you and me, kid, we don’t recuperate from these allnighters as quick as we used to.”

She opened her mouth to argue with him, but closed it just as quickly. He was right. Fortysomething felt a lot different from twenty or even thirty. She didn’t dare think what eighty might feel like.

“So, this is just going to be a wasted trip,” she said, “unless…”

She turned on him, suddenly energized. “Do you still have that old fingerprint kit in the trunk?”

“I don’t know. I guess so. Why?”

“If the guy’s been staying there, he’s got to have left some prints. Let’s go dust some obvious surfaces and see what we can find.”

He looked at her as though she had turned chartreuse. “I haven’t lifted prints in ages, and neither have you. That’s Liu’s department.”

“Well, Dr. Liu isn’t here, and we are.
I
can still remember how to lift a print even if you can’t.”

“I could. I just don’t wanna.”

“Lazy.”

“Yep. And proud of it.”

She reached over and snatched the keys out of the ignition. “I’m getting that kit, and I’m doing some dusting. You can sit here and commune with the coyotes or howl at the moon if you want to. But I want to catch this guy.”

Wearily he hauled himself out of the car and met her by the trunk. “You know,” he said as she dug among tools, old clothes, empty beer bottles, and ancient copies of boxing magazines, “even if you lift something, it won’t be admissible in court. You’re not a cop no more. Any evidence you gather won’t count.”

“It’ll count,” she said as she pulled a small black case from under the landfill materials. “Believe me, it’ll count.”

“How do you figure?”

“If that time comes, you’ll get up on that stand, hold your hand up and swear to tell the truth—and then you’ll lie through your teeth and take credit for what I did. Men have been taking credit for what women accomplish since the dawn of time,” she added with a smirk. “Why should you be any different?”

Two hours later, they left the farmhouse with tired smiles on their faces and twenty-two pieces of lifting tape with fingerprints of varying degrees of quality in an evidence bag.

“I think some of those are his,” Savannah said, running her fingers through her hair and sighing as they walked back to the car. “There was a definite size difference. I’m betting the bigger ones are his.”

“And that thumbprint you found on the beer bottle in the refrigerator, that one’ll be good enough to run through AFIS,” he said as he tossed the fingerprint kit back into the trunk. “Maybe we’ll even get a mug shot or DMV pic.”

They climbed into the car. Dirk handed Savannah the envelope and she locked it into the glove compartment.

“I have to admit,” he said as they drove down the dirt road to the house. “That was a pretty good idea.”

“And it was a bit like old times, us working a scene on our own like that,” she said, grinning at him.

“Yeah.” He snickered. “When you were bent over there, dusting the bathroom doorknob, I remembered how cute you used to look in your uniform.”

“Hm-m-phf. That was a lot of years and quite a few pounds ago.”

“You’d still look good in a uniform, if you was to put one on.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so. But then, you have a weakness for big butts.”

He laughed. “I do. It’s true. No scrawny-assed chicks for this guy.”

They pulled onto the main road, and Savannah reached out and grabbed his arm. “Wait,” she said. “Look at that.”

“Look at what?”

“That old busybody. She’s awake. Standing there on the porch, watching us. Pull over.”

He did, and she jumped out.

As she ran up to the house, the lady stepped off the porch and met her halfway in the middle of the weed-infested yard.

“Hi!” Savannah called out. “Remember me?”

“Sure I do,” she yelled back. “What are you doing out here at this time of night? I was about to call the cops on you.”

“Now why would you go and do something like that?” Savannah gave her a smile and in the moonlight she could see the woman’s face soften. Since she wasn’t wearing her sunbonnet, Savannah could see that she had a beautiful, thick head of silver hair. Again, Savannah thought of Gran and missed her.

“You don’t need to call the police,” she told the woman. “That guy sitting in the car down there, he’s a cop. And we’re here to try to catch that guy on the motorcycle who’s been such a torment to you.”

“You came out here at this time of night just to do that?”

“Absolutely!”

“Well, I do appreciate that.”

“We aim to please.”

“But you didn’t catch him, now did you?”

“No. Appears not.”

“Then you’re not a whole lot of good to me.”

Savannah laughed. Who was more delightfully candid than children at the beginning of their lives or older folks at the end of theirs?

“I’m sorry about that,” Savannah said, “but you know what? You could be an enormous help to me. You could help me and that cop over there catch this guy and put an end to his shenanigans.”

“How? What do I have to do?”

Savannah reached into her slacks pocket and took out her tiny notebook and pen. She began to write, squinting to see in the pale moonlight. When she was finished, she ripped off the sheet of paper and held it out to the woman.

“You’ve got sharp eyes, don’t you?” she said to the old lady. “You see everything that goes on up and down this road.”

The woman gave her a tiny smile. “I don’t hear really good anymore—thanks to all that damned motorcycle racket—but there’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Not much gets by me.”

“I’m sure that’s true. So here, take this.”

“What it is?” she asked suspiciously.

“It’s my cell phone number. I want you to take this into your house and put it right beside your phone. And the second you hear that guy coming, as soon as you know it’s him, you give me a call. Day or night.”

“So let me get this straight,” the old woman said, her small grin widening by the moment. “If I call you at, say, five o’clock in the morning and tell you he just came home…you’ll come out here and arrest him for disturbing the peace?”