Sugar and Spite (2 page)

“There’s something else you need to experience firsthand,” she continued in that cold voice with the deceptively soft, feminine accent. “You need to find out how much fun it is to scrub paint off your bare skin, to get it out of your hair once it’s all dried and matted. Oh… yeah… and then there’s the humiliation.”

She lowered the barrel of the pistol, and for a moment, Corey was relieved. Until he saw she was pointing it at his crotch.

“Pull out the waistband of those baggy breeches of yours,” she told him. Her nasty grin widened. “Do it now.”

Corey couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Didn’t want to believe it. “What?”

“You heard me. You’ve got enough room in those pants for you and the jackass you rode in on. Now do what I said and hold the waistband out in front of you.”

Corey shook his head. “No. I won’t. What are you, some sort of pervert?”

“Maybe I am.” She laughed. “Now there’s a scary thought, huh? If I’m a real sicko, heaven knows what I’ll do to you before I’m finished with you. Pull those pants open, now!”

Corey was afraid to. But he was more afraid not to. He did as he was told.

“Your underwear, too,” she said. She took a step closer to him.

“I haven’t got any on,” he replied, feeling four years old.

“How unsanitary.”

She closed the small gap between them. Pressed the barrel of her gun against his neck. Pointed the spray can directly down the front of his opened pants.

“You’re not gonna… you’re not…!” he shouted.

“Oh, yes-siree-bob,” she replied in that silky Southern voice. “I most certainly am.”

* * *

“I don’t quite understand this,” Tammy Hart said as she watched Savannah add three eggs to the skillet and several slices of bread to the toaster. “You help
him
nab the bad guy and
he
rewards
you
by letting you fix him breakfast?”

The “him” she was referring to was sitting at Savannah’s kitchen table, a satisfied smile under his nose. Dirk was always happy when food was imminent. Especially if that food was free. And in keeping with her Southern heritage of hospitality, Savannah made sure that everyone in her presence was stuffed like her Granny Reid’s Christmas turkey. Heaven forbid anyone should feel a pang of hunger. It wasn’t to be tolerated.

“So I’m a sap for a pretty face,” Savannah said.

“And what does that have to do with Dirk?” Tammy shot a contemptuous look toward the table and its occupant, who was still dressed like a street bum.

Savannah chuckled and took a sip of the hot chocolate she had poured for herself… laced with Bailey’s… topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Savannah suffered few hunger pangs herself, as was evidenced by her ample figure.

Tammy, on the other hand, was svelte, golden tanned, golden blond, the quintessential California surfer beach beauty.

Savannah loved her. Anyway.

So the kid was scrawny and ate mostly mineral water, rice cakes, and celery sticks; everyone had their faults.

Savannah retrieved several jars of homemade jams and preserves from the refrigerator and shoved them into Tammy’s hands. “Put these on the table,” she told her.

The younger woman took the jars and looked at the labels disapprovingly. “Gran’s blackberry jam… probably full of sugar.”

“I’m fresh out of sea-kelp spread,” Savannah muttered under her breath, and swigged the hot chocolate.

Tammy sashayed over to the table and plunked the jars in front of Dirk, who gave her a cocky smirk. “Now I have to cook for him, too?” she complained. “It’s bad enough that you’re his slave, but now I have to—”

“Oh, stop… enough already.” Savannah snapped her on her teeny-weeny, blue jean-covered rear with a dishtowel. “I’m not Dirk’s slave, but you
are
my assistant, so assist. Butter that toast.”

“With real butter?”

Savannah sighed. “Yes. Cholesterol-ridden, fat-riddled butter. I’m fresh out of tofu.”

“I’ll go shopping for you.”

“No, thanks.”

“Why are you having breakfast at four o’clock in the afternoon, anyway?” Tammy dipped only the tip of the knife into the butter and made a production of spreading the one-eighth of a teaspoon over the slice of bread.

“Because we didn’t eat this morning,” Dirk replied, watching the meal’s progression with the acute attention of a practiced glutton. “We were working, remember?”

“Spraying the genitalia of youthful offenders,” Tammy said with a giggle. “That’s work?”

“Savannah did that all by herself. Thank God, or I’d be up on charges. You shoulda heard that guy screeching when they were scrubbing him down in the emergency room.”

He and Savannah snickered. Tammy shook her head, pretending to be appalled.

“There are advantages to going freelance,” Savannah said as she dished the eggs, some link sausages, and thick-sliced bacon onto the plate, then ladled a generous portion of cream gravy beside a scoop of grits. Where she came from, grits might be optional, but gravy was considered a beverage.

Dirk’s eyes glistened with the light of hedonism as he picked up his fork. “Van, you’ve outdone yourself. This looks great.”

“Yeah,” Tammy said as she sat down to a bowl of long-grain rice across the table from him. “She’s good at CPR, too. And if that doesn’t work, I’m pretty good at angioplasty.” She hefted her knife and punctuated her statement with a skewering motion.

Savannah was reaching into the cupboard for a box of marzipan Danish rolls for herself, when she heard a buzzing, coming from Dirk’s leather coat, which was draped across one of her dining chairs.

“I see you’ve got it set on
vibrate
again,” she said, digging through his pockets and handing him the phone. “Your love life in a slump?”

“Eh… bite me.” He flipped it open and punched a button. “Coulter here.”

“He’s sure grumpy when somebody gets between him and his dog dish,” Tammy whispered to Savannah. “Reminds me of a pit bull I knew.”

Savannah didn’t reply. She was watching the play of emotions over Dirk’s craggy face: irritation, fading to surprise, softening to… she wasn’t sure what, but she was fairly certain the party on the other end was female.

“Ah, yeah… hi,” he was saying. He turned in his chair, his side to her and Tammy. His voice volume dropped a couple of notches. “I’m… ah… here at Savannah’s. No, not like that. We were working together this morning. No, really.”

Savannah didn’t like the sound of that. Why, she wasn’t sure. She and Dirk weren’t anything “like that,” but she didn’t like to hear him saying so… so clearly… to another woman.

Another woman?
Where did that thought come from?
she wondered. To
hell with that
, she quickly added to her mental argument.
Who is he talking to?

“Yeah, I was going back home right after…” He looked wistfully down at the plate of goodies on the table in front of him. “… actually, I was leaving right now if you want to… Yeah, that’s good. Sure. See ya.”

He flipped the phone closed and rose from his chair. The look on his face reminded Savannah of a sheep after an embarrassingly bad shearing. “I… ah… gotta go,” he said. “Sorry about the”—he pointed to the food—”ah, breakfast. But I really should—”

“No problem,” Savannah said as she snatched the plate out from under him and carried it over to the cabinet. “If you gotta go, you gotta go. Obviously it’s an important meeting.”

“Ah, yeah, it is… kinda.” He slipped on his jacket and fished for his keys. “I’ll see ya later, okay?”

Savannah nodded curtly.

He grunted a good-bye in Tammy’s direction, then headed toward the front of the house.

“Don’t let the door slap your backside on your way out,” Savannah called after him.

Another grunt. The sound of the door slamming.

“Well,” Tammy said, recovering from her shock. “I never thought I’d see the day that Dirk Coulter would walk away from a free meal… especially one
you
cooked,” she told Savannah.

From the kitchen window, Savannah watched his battered old Buick Skylark as it pulled out of her driveway. He was practically spinning gravel.

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully as she took his heavily laden plate from the cabinet and carried it back to the table. She sat down, picked up his fork, and dug in.

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Tammy asked her. “Hmmm. That’s it?”

“I’m thinking.”

“And eating.” Tammy watched disapprovingly as Savannah shoveled in a mouthful of grits, dripping with butter.

“I think best when I eat.”

“That explains your mental prowess,” Tammy mumbled.

“Shut up. I’ve almost got it.”

“Got what?”

“The plan of action.”

“You’ve gotta know, huh?”

Savannah snorted. “Only if I intend to sleep tonight.”

She downed a few more bites, then jumped up from her chair. “Be back later,” she said as she snatched her cell phone off its charger base.

“What’s the story?”

“He forgot his phone.”

“That’s
your
phone.”

She shrugged. “We bought them at the same time. They look so much alike. It’s an honest mistake.”

“Going out there is a mistake,” Tammy grumbled as she followed her to the front door. “There’s nothing honest about it.”

“I don’t recall asking for your editorial comments. Go on the Internet while I’m gone. See if you can drum up some business for me so that I can continue to pay you that high, minimum-wage salary you’ve grown accustomed to.”

Tammy sputtered, stood between her and the door, then moved aside with a sigh of resignation. “That’s it? The phone story? It’s a bit thin.”

Savannah grinned and tossed her purse strap over her shoulder. “Yeah, well… Dirk’s a bit thick. It’ll work.”

As Savannah pulled her 1965 Camaro into Dirk’s trailer park, she grimaced at the cloud of dust that was settling on her new red paint. There was a nice mobile-home park down by the beach, but Dirk was far too tight to spring for that. He had parked his ten-foot-wide in the Shady Vale Trailer Park fifteen years ago, and once Dirk was parked anywhere, he tended to stay until he rusted.

Shady Vale was inappropriately named. Flat as a flitter, without a tree in sight, the property’s picturesque description must have been a figment of some developer’s imagination.

Dirk’s neighbors were mostly transient, and more than once he had been forced to arrest one of his Shady Vale-ites for everything from armed bank robbery to blowing up half the park while cooking up a nice batch of methamphetamines in one of the trailer’s kitchens.

The only residents who had been at Shady Vale longer than Dirk were the Biddles. They were a cantankerous, nosy old couple who watched the comings and goings of everyone in the park, as though they owned the dusty, gravel road themselves. From their #1 spot at the entrance, they saw every arrival and had an opinion as to whether that person had legitimate business in Shady Vale.

Their trailer was right next to Dirk’s, which was parked in spot #2, and Savannah was hoping she could avoid her usual argument with Mr. Biddle or an interrogation from Mrs. Biddle. If luck were on her side, she might be able to recognize Dirk’s mystery visitor’s vehicle and find out who his guest was without having to use that ridiculous cell-phone ruse.

But the new silver Lexus parked beside his Buick didn’t ring any bells. Since when did Dirk have a girlfriend… let alone one that could afford to drive a new Lexus?

Looks plumb out of place in this neck of the woods
, Savannah thought as she slowed down to see if the car had vanity plates. But the series of random letters and numbers told her nothing.

She saw Harry Biddle sitting in his broken-down lawn chair, swigging a beer, scratching the roll of hairy belly that was protruding from beneath his gray undershirt. As she drove by he watched her with a lascivious gleam in his eye that made her want to crawl out of the car and slap him goofy. Half a slap would probably do the job.

Feeling like an adolescent whose curiosity was about to land her in trouble, Savannah parked her Camaro behind the Lexus and got out. Harry perked up when he saw her walking in his direction, until she turned toward Dirk’s trailer.