Savannah Reid 12 - Fat Free and Fatal (22 page)

W
hen Savannah arrived back at her own house, her first clue that all wasn’t well on the home front was Tammy sitting on the front porch, a miserable look on her face.

Savannah got out of the Mustang and walked up the steps, dreading anything that might even smell like bad news.

Where was that delicious, peaceful feeling of “homecoming?” Where was the serene sense of returning to one’s haven from the world’s raging madness?

“I hate you, hate you, hate you! I never should have married you! You just suck!”

“Yeah? Well, well…well, you do, too! You suck worse!”

“No, you suck worser than I ever did!”

The screams echoed from the interior of Savannah’s haven of refuge and drifted out across her lawn to pollute the serenity of her neighborhood, as well. From the corner of her eye, Savannah could see Mr. Viola washing his car, a less-than-cheerful look on his face. And next door, Mrs. McDermott was weeding her flower bed and shooting Savannah looks of disapproval.

Yes, the world’s raging madness had come home to roost right there in her own little henhouse.

“Trouble in honeymooner paradise?” she asked Tammy as she climbed the steps onto the porch.

Tammy was sitting on the porch itself—no chair, cushion, or blanket beneath her—leaning against the wall. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and had her hair pulled up in a ponytail, but from the spreadsheet on the computer’s screen, Savannah could see that she was working on their accounts. Tammy sighed, readjusted the computer on her lap and grimaced as she stretched her long legs out before her.

“Oh, it’s nasty in there,” she said. “They’ve been going at it all morning. I had to come outside just so that I could think.”

“Why aren’t you in the backyard, sitting in a comfortable chair, sipping some lemonade while you do that?”

“I was. But they were going back and forth from the house to the backyard and back to the house. I figured it would be easier to just—”

Another volley sounded from inside. “I can’t believe I married a sucky guy like you! What was I thinking?”

“What were
you
thinking? What was
I
thinking? I can’t believe I married you either!”

Tammy shook her head. “It’s not that they’re arguing. That could even be entertaining, but they’re just so…so…inarticulate and redundant. It stopped being interesting two hours ago.”

Savannah glanced back one more time at her neighbors. She could tell that her status on the street was plummeting by the moment. Any minute now she and her unruly clan would be classified officially as “white trash.”

And no granddaughter of Granny Reid of McGill, Georgia could abide that!

She charged into the house, threw her purse onto the side table in the hallway, and stomped into the living room where her sister and brother-in-law were standing nose to nose in the middle of the room, still debating who sucked the most, longest, and worst.

“That’s enough!” she roared. “In fact, that’s way more than enough. Have you two just gone plumb crazy?”

“He started it! He said that I—!”

“It’s your sister here who’s crazy! All I said was—!”

“Shut up, both of you! I will not have this low-class screeching and carryin’ on in my house. You two either make up right this minute or get out of my house. I mean it. Decide what you’re gonna do right now.”

Jesup and Bleak glared at each other, eye to baleful eye.

Savannah glanced toward the sofa and saw two long black tails sticking out from beneath the pillows. “Now look at that,” she said. “You’ve scared my cats half to death. And they live with
me
; they’re not all that easily scared. You oughta be ashamed of yourselves, frightening the pee-diddle out of innocent creatures like that.”

She walked over to the sofa and uncovered Diamante and Cleopatra, who looked up at her with nervous, blinking eyes. Scooping one under each arm, she carried them into the kitchen, where she dumped some of their favorite treats into their bowls.

When she returned to the living room, Jesup and her husband were each sitting on opposite ends of the sofa, arms crossed over their chests.

Marital bliss at its best,
Savannah thought. She walked over, sat down in her comfy chair and propped her feet up on her cushy footstool. Ah, the comforts of home, or at least, it would be without the spitting cobras in her living room.

She wondered if they had any idea how ridiculous they looked, dressed and made up like demons from the bowels of hell—with their bottom lips stuck out like those of pouting two-year-olds.

“Just out of curiosity,” she said, “how long does it take you two to put all that crap on your faces and hair every morning? Most days, I don’t even have time to swipe on some lipstick before I’m out the door.”

Bleak lifted his chin—his chin that had a lightning bolt painted on it today—and said, “You take time for what’s important to you in life. And personal adornment and unique self-expression are high on my list of priorities.”

Savannah shook her head and thought,
This from a guy who can’t think of anything better to say in the middle of a domestic dispute than, “You suck worser.”

“Wow, that’s deep,” she said with a sniff.

He nodded somberly. “Thank you.”

“Now that we’ve all settled down a bit, do you want to tell me what started this little affray today? Jessie, you go first.”

“I made him breakfast, and I even brought it to him in bed, but do you think he appreciated it? No-o-o! He—”

“It was toast!” Bleak interjected. “It wasn’t breakfast, it was friggin’ toast! That’s all you know how to cook. Am I supposed to eat toast three times a day for the rest of my life? You never told me that you didn’t know how to cook!”

“Yeah, well, you never told me that you don’t have a friggin’ job! How are we even going to afford bread for toast if you don’t work?”

“Okay, okay!” Savannah held up one hand. “So it appears that maybe you two didn’t know each other as well as you thought you did. I mean, a day or two at Blood-Fest-Whatever-the-Hell, might not be enough to truly figure out whether or not you’re compatible enough for a lifelong commitment.”

“But, but…” Jesup started to cry, causing her thick eyeliner to streak black lines down her white cheeks. “…but we’re soul mates.”

“Even soul mates have to work at being married, Jes,” Savannah said. “Even if the Universe or whatever puts you together, you still have to work like the dickens to stay together.”

“But I don’t want to stay with him! He sucks!”

“So I’ve heard. Recently. Repeatedly. And apparently, he’s decided that you do, too.”

Jesup looked at her new husband with resentment and disappointment. “I don’t think this is going to work out. I think we should go back to Vegas right now and get divorced and forget this whole thing ever happened.”

“Good idea.” He jumped to his feet. “I’m going to go pack my stuff, and I’m outta here!”

He headed for the stairs, but Jesup was right behind him. “What do you mean
you’re
going to Vegas?”

“I’m going to go back home—by myself—and the first thing I’m going to do is divorce you.”

“And what am
I
supposed to be doing while you’re divorcing me?” she asked as she tramped up the stairs after him.

“Stay here with your sister. Go back to Georgia. I don’t care as long as I don’t have to be around you anymore.”

“You can’t divorce me! I’m going to divorce you. You suck!”

“No,
you
do!”

“No,
you
!”

Savannah sighed, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back on the chair. “I’ve got news for you,” she mumbled. “You both do.”

When Savannah finally opened her eyes, Tammy was standing nearby, watching her with a sympathetic look on her face. “You look exhausted,” she said. “Can I get you something, do anything for you?”

Savannah looked at her usually perky friend and noticed dark circles under her eyes, not to mention the marked lack of exuberance that she normally radiated in irritating proportions. “You look a little droopy yourself, darlin’,” she said. “Why don’t you sit a spell and tell me what’s going on with you?”

Tammy sat on the end of the sofa and laid her computer on the coffee table. “I guess I’m just feeling the aftermath of seeing those two shootings. One would have been enough, but two like that, right together. I think my circuits were overloaded.”

“I’m sure they were. Mine, too.”

“Then it’s not just me? I’m not just…” She blinked back some tears and her lip trembled. “…just weak?”

Savannah reached over and patted her hand that lay on the arm of the sofa. “You? Weak? Not at all, honey. You aren’t a weak person. I’ve never, never thought of you that way.”

Tammy didn’t say anything, but her tears began to flow in earnest.

Savannah squeezed her hand. “Tammy, there are all kinds of strength in this world. The ability to pull a trigger and take a life in the defense of other lives…that’s just one kind of strength. You’re strong in your own way.”

“What way? How am I strong?”

“In so many ways! Tammy, you amaze me with the intensity of your own personal power.”

“I do?”

“Absolutely. You manage to see the sunshine in the middle of the darkest day, every day of your life.” Savannah laughed. “I used to think you were a bimbo who just didn’t notice that it was cloudy and raining, but now I know you better. And I understand that you see the rain, you see the evil all around, the misery of the human condition, but you make a conscious effort to concentrate on the good, the love, the beauty that’s around you. I
try
to do that, but you actually
do
it. That takes a kind of strength that I don’t have.”

Tammy’s tears came even faster, and Savannah handed her a bunch of tissues from the box on the side table.

“Tammy, you’re my rock. You’re always here, ready and eager to help any way you can and for nothing but the pennies I throw your way when I can. You could have left here ages ago, got a real job, and bought yourself that little house on the beach that you want so badly. But you keep living in that apartment of yours, scrounging and saving, and for what? So that you can come here every day and do my books and search the Internet for ideas about how we can stay in business? That kind of dedication and daily discipline takes strength.”

Tammy sniffed and wiped her eyes and nose with the tissues. “I do it because I love the work.”

“I know you do.”

“And because I love you, Savannah. I love all of you guys. You’re like my family.”

“And you’re mine, too, honey. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Savannah leaned over to hug her, but someone pounded hard on the front door. A distinctive, all-too-male knock.

They looked at each other.

“Speaking of family members who we love but don’t always like,” Tammy said. “That’s gotta be Dirko.”

Savannah got up and let him in. But the moment he stepped through her door, she said, “Lord have mercy, boy. You reek to high heaven!”

“Well, nice to see you, too,” he snapped.

“No really. You smell like Gran’s hound dog when he’s been rolling in something rotten. Oh, no…a DB?”

“Yeah, a dead body, but not connected to this case.” He walked on through the living room, giving Tammy a concerned, but quick, glance. In the kitchen, he opened Savannah’s refrigerator and pulled out a can of soda. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for one of those beers in there,” he said. “They sent me up into the hills this morning on a suicide case. Some guy shot himself in his pickup there in the boonies, and he’d been there for days in the heat. Shit, that was an ugly one! Major insect infestation and—”

“All right, all right. Enough already. But since you handled the body maybe you should go shower and change clothes before you rejoin the land of the living.”

“I didn’t touch him, I swear! I smell this bad just from being in Dr. Liu’s wagon with him. I’m telling you, on a scale of one to ten for wicked nasty, that one’s a twenty.”

“Well, either way, why don’t you let me throw those clothes into the washer. I can have them washed and dried in less than an hour. You can shower and—”

“Stop with the hygiene nagging, woman. I just dropped by to tell you a couple things and then I’ll be out of here, okay?”

“Yeah, I reckon. But let’s go sit out in the backyard.”

He looked hurt. “Really? I’m that ripe?”

“Oh, sugar, my hair is curlin’, just standing next to you. Bring that soda pop out here in the fresh air, and Tammy and I will sit downwind of you.”

Once settled under her wisteria arbor, Savannah could stand to be close to Dirk, as long as she breathed through her ears. She noticed that Tammy was leaning as far away from him as possible.

But once he started to deliver his news, both girls temporarily forgot all about the stench of death.

“We found a rifle when we searched Field’s house this morning,” he said. “A really nice one, a Weatherby Magnum. The lab is checking it now against the slug that we dug out of the dirt there in Papalardo’s backyard, the through-and-through that killed the gardener. It was still in pretty good shape, so they should be able to tell if it was from that gun.”

“Chances are good it will be,” Savannah said.

“Yeah, the ammo that was in it was the same as the slug from the dirt. You’ll never guess where we found the rifle.”

“Where?” Tammy asked.

“Hidden in a tray underneath that damned lizard’s cage.”

“Oh, I always keep my gun in my cats’ litter box,” Savannah said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Only people who are trying to hide something would choose a place like that,” Tammy said. “The top of the bedroom closet wasn’t good enough for him, I guess.”

“The more I check into this guy, the more I don’t think he’s ordinary at all,” Dirk said.

“Really? How?”

“For one thing, he lived really well in that fancy house of his with the great view. That property’s pretty expensive for a guy who hasn’t had a job of any kind for the past five years.”