Wicked Craving (12 page)

As soon as she got into the car with Dirk, she pulled her cell phone out of her purse. “I'm calling Social Services,” she told him. “They need to do a thorough inspection of that place. And if they find Gertrude Burns suitable to care for helpless little children, I'll eat my drawers.”

“T
his meeting of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agencyis hereby called to order!” Granny Reid declared, lifting her glass of lemonade in a toast. “All members, and us honorary members, too, are present and accounted for!”

“Let the revelries begin!” John shouted, hefting his glass of merlot to the stars. Ryan did the same.

Dirk, who was exhausted, simply grunted and raised a beer bottle. Tammy toasted with a glass of mineral water, and Savannah joined in with a mug of root beer.

Normally, she'd be having a margarita, frozen, with salt. But she never drank alcohol in front of Granny. That way Gran stayed happy and Savannah didn't get her ears boxed.

It worked out well for everyone.

The backyard cookout had been a wild success. Dirk's barbecued ribs and Savannah's potato salad, baked beans, and corn on the cob had been devoured along with Granny's deviled eggs. Eventually, they'd get around to the blackberry cobbler and homemade ice cream. But between dinner and dessert, while everyone waited for their belts to loosen just a bit, the Moonlight Magnolia gang had decided to do a little work.

They sat in a loose circle around Savannah's patio on her comfortable chairs and chaises, enjoying the ambient light of her colorful Chinese lanterns, some well-placed candles, and the glow of a full moon.

Appropriately, the magnolia tree was in full bloom.

“So, lay out your suspects for us,” John said.

“Yes,” added Ryan, “we have to know what we're working with here.”

“Okay.” Savannah took a deep breath. “Thanks to the fact that Dr. Wellman—or Bobby Martini, whichever you choose to call him—couldn't keep his slacks zipped, we have more than our share of possible bad guys…and girls.”

Gran nodded, a sage look on her face, her silver hair glowing in the moonlight. “Yeap, them sexual sins, they tend to be the ones that pay the biggest dividends. It'd be better for a fella to rob another man, even smack him in the jaw with his fist, than to step out with the man's wife.”

“That's true,” Dirk said. “Five minutes of fun'll get you a lifetime of troubles.”

“And a lot of times, the
fun
ain't even all that fun, if you know what I mean,” Savannah said.

Everyone but Gran nodded in agreement.

Gran just looked at Savannah with deep suspicion.

“Or so I've heard. I wouldn't know personally.” Savannah cleared her throat. “That's the word on the street, you know?”

Along with Gran believing that Savannah was a teetotaler, she also chose to think that her granddaughter was a virgin. That, too, worked well for Savannah. She was pretty sure she was too big at this point to get a “whuppin'” from Gran, but there was no point in taking chances.

“So, here are our suspects,” Savannah said, eager to guide the conversation away from fleshly sins…at least, personal knowledge of fleshly sins.

She started the countdown on her forefinger. “First, the killer could be an unknown suspect, a simple robber who followed Maria Wellman home in order to snatch the jewels off her. She had rented a diamond and sapphire necklace and earring set from a Rodeo Drive jewelry store for the ball. And those items and her wedding ring weren't on her body.”

“Could the jogger have taken them…the one who discovered her?” Tammy asked.

“Doubt it,” Dirk replied. “We checked him out thoroughly. He's a simple hippie-type guy who's antimaterialism. He doesn't even have a bank account. Lives in his mom's basement and smokes a lot of pot. Doesn't strike me at all as the violent type.”

“No alerts from any pawn shops or jewelry stores about the missing gems?” John asked.

“No, nothing at all,” Dirk said.

“As far as our known suspects,” Savannah continued, “we have Terry Somers. Terry's a compulsive gambler, in deep to loan sharks. They've roughed him up, even broken his leg, which he blames on Dr. Wellman. He threatened to kill Wellman in front of witnesses. He makes no bones about the fact that he despises him. He wasn't big on Maria Wellman, either.”

“On the other hand,” Dirk said, “Somers's leg is in a cast and has been since before Maria's murder. It's his left leg, so he could drive if he wanted to, and he was walking around on it okay when we talked to him.”

“A guy in a cast would leave a pretty distinctive print,” Ryan said. “Did you find anything like that at the scene?”

“No, not at all,” Dirk replied. “The only footprints they found were some in a flower bed at the edge of the cliff, made by the victim herself.”

“How nimble would a guy be with his leg in a cast?” Tammy said. “That would be a bit of a handicap if you were trying to murder somebody.”

“Don't forget, Ted Bundy put his arm in a cast as a ruse,” Savannah reminded her.

“That's true,” Tammy agreed. “Does Somers have an alibi?”

“No, he was home alone watching TV,” Dirk told her, “but as it turns out, so were most of our other suspects.”

“Like Roxanne Rosen,” Savannah said. “She had a fight with Maria Wellman a few days before the killing. A real fight. Dr. Liu found broken and repaired fingernails and old bruises on the victim. Plus we had witnesses to the altercation, some public road workers who came forward with what they'd seen.”

“But the witnesses back up Rosen's version of the story that it was Maria who struck first.” Dirk set his empty beer bottle on a nearby table and reached into the cooler for a cola. “And we got the idea that Roxanne won the fight and was happy enough with that. I don't know if she had enough anger left over to drive her to murder somebody.”

“And no alibi but the telly?” John said.

Savannah nodded. “That's right.”

“I think she might be trying to blackmail Wellman,” Dirk said. “There at the house on the beach, we overheard her demanding money from him or else she'll go to the authorities. She claims she just wants the wages he owes her, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's more than that.”

“Maybe,” Tammy suggested, “she knows that his name isn't really Wellman. She may even know why Bobby and Gina Martini changed their names to Robert and Maria Wellman, and why they were pretending to be husband and wife.”

“Most folks don't go changing identities like that without a good…or should I say, bad…reason,” Granny said. “They had some wickedness to cover up, or they wouldn't have done such a thing.”

“Maybe they were part of a witness protection program,” Ryan suggested. “Do you want John and me to check with our friends at the Bureau and find out?”

“That'd be great.” Dirk took a swig from his soda can. “I've got a call in to the FBI, but as usual, they're ignoring me. It's nice to have buddies who used to be feds.”

Savannah smiled and thought how far her friends had come in the past few years. The love of solving crimes created a strong bond among people who didn't have much else in common. Ryan and John drank fine wines, ate gourmet food, went to the theater, and supported the local symphony.

Dirk was a beer and hotdogs, Dodger stadium, and boxing on Pay-Per-View sort of dude.

But they all loved to nail a bad guy…especially if the bad guy, or girl, was a cold-blooded killer.

“Then we have Brian Mahoney,” Dirk said. “He's a big, nasty husband of one of Wellman's patients…a patient the doctor seduced. Mahoney actually caught his wife and Wellman in a compromising position—actually, it was his wife who was compromised—and he blackmailed Wellman.”

“You know that for a fact?” Ryan asked.

Savannah nodded. “His wife admitted it to me. She also admitted that her husband is violent with her. He even smacked Wellman around when he caught them together.”

“But if Wellman has been paying this Mahoney fellow,” John said, “why would Mahoney kill Mrs. Wellman? He was angry at Wellman, not her. And by doing something so drastic as murdering Wellman's wife—or sister, as it turns out—he could risk killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”

“Mahoney doesn't strike me as a guy who really thinks things through,” Savannah told him. “And who knows, Wellman might have decided to cut him off. Mahoney may have come back for more, and Wellman told him to forget it.”

“For all we know,” Dirk said, “the killer went to the house that night intending to murder Wellman, not Maria, and then things went wrong.”

“Then we have Karen Burns, who we interviewed today.” Savannah reached down and massaged her sore calf. “She says she's pregnant with Wellman's kid.”

“If that's true, she'd have a pretty powerful motive to kill off the wife,” Granny said. “It's not like it ain't been done before. Many a man's put his wife in danger by fooling around with an unstable woman.”

Tammy spoke up. “What if Karen found out that Robert and Maria were brother and sister? I'd think that would make Karen pretty mad, having him tell her that he can't leave his wife for her, and then to find out he's not even married.”

Savannah shook her head. “I don't think so. She's really gaga over him. And she's giving him an alibi. She says he was with her after the ball. Not at home the way he claims he was.”

“Yeah,” Dirk said. “I'm going to have to talk to Wellman about that.”

“When are you going to tell him that you know who he really is?” Tammy wanted to know.

“As soon as I find out why he's living under an alias,” Dirk replied. “If he was able to disappear once before and then establish a new identity in another area, he might do it again. I don't want to show him my hand until I'm sure what all my cards are.”

“Well, I'm sure of one thing,” Gran said. “Mighty sure. That blackberry cobbler is calling out to me from inside the kitchen. And I figure that homemade ice cream has seasoned just enough. I need a few scoops of each.”

“How true.” Savannah got up and tried not to limp as she headed for the back door. “Man…and woman…do not live by crime solving alone. We need empty calories to keep us going!”

“Here, here!”

“Now you're talking!”

“Go get it, girl!”

“Don't bring me much,” Dirk said. “Remember I'm on a diet.”

“Good,” replied Gran. “I'll have his, too.”

 

“Are you going out with your young man again this morning?” Gran asked as she and Savannah sat in the living room with their morning coffee and enormous glazed cinnamon buns on Savannah's best Royal Albert Old Country Roses china.

“I thought I'd tell him no today,” Savannah said. “I've been neglecting you awfully bad and—”

“Oh, stop it! That's just flat dab silly. I'm staying a long time this visit—probably till you kick me out….”

“It'll never happen.”

“And you've got work to do, and I understand that. Besides, Tammy's driving me to Santa Monica. I want to go walking on that pier.”

“We've got a pier right here in San Carmelita.”

“Yeah, but it ain't got a carousel like that 'un.”

“True.”

Gran licked some icing off her thumb. “Go call that sweet boy and tell him that you've got better things to do than babysit an old lady.”

Savannah laughed, got up, and walked over to the sofa where Gran was sitting. She leaned down and kissed her soft cheek. “I would never have anything better to do than hang out with you.”

“Well, I do! I got a carousel horse with my name on it. I was a little girl the last time I climbed onto a merry-go-round, and that's way too long in between rides. So, you scram, girl. Skedaddle.”

 

When Savannah got into the car with Dirk, she was already in a pissy mood. He had told her on the phone earlier that he was going to be a little later than usual picking her up. And he gave the same non-reason as he had before.

“I've got something I've gotta do first.”

That was all he had said. And that tidbit of non-information had been just meager and intriguing enough to stir her curiosity.

Savannah wasn't someone who needed her curiosity stirred. It was far too overactive already with no encouragement from anybody.

But as she settled into the Buick, her former irritation disappeared as new concerns flooded her mind. Or more specifically, her nostrils.

“What the heck stinks in here?” she exclaimed, rolling down the side window. “Did you leave old pizza on your floorboard again? Or Mexican food? Nothing smells worse than rotten re-fried beans!”

“I don't smell anything,” he snapped back.

“How can you not smell that? It's deadly.”

She leaned toward him, and a look of horror crossed her face. “Ohmigawd! It's you!”

“Is not!”

“It is, too. What the heck happened to you?”

He puffed up like a river frog getting ready to sing. “I didn't have time to take a shower this morning, okay?”

“No, no way. I know what you smell like when you miss a shower. Not that bad really, for a guy. But this isn't a missed-shower stink. You smell like a wet dog.”

He reached over and rolled down his own car window. Then he roared away from the curb and headed down the street.

“There, happy now?” he asked, quite huffy.

“It's better, as long as the air's circulating.” She looked him over. The flushed face, the clenched jaw, the eyes that wouldn't meet hers. “Seriously, Dirk,” she said. “What did you do to yourself today?”

“Nothing. And if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not discuss the way I smell.”

“If it's all the same to you,” she muttered, “I'd rather not
smell
the way you smell.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just drive to wherever we're going to. And this time, I don't even mind if you speed. I just want out of this car.”

“We're going to Wellman's again. I'm going to get in his face about the identity change and ask him about being with Karen the night Maria was killed.”