A Body To Die For (13 page)

It was one of Savannah’s favorite spots.

“Are you a cop?” Sharona asked as she fumbled in her purse and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Nope.” Savannah noticed that Sharona’s hands were still shaking. For just a brief moment, Savannah thought about all the people she had seen shivering with fear over the years. Too many.

Her heart went out to people living in that much fear. It wasn’t much of a life.

“You feel like a cop,” Sharona said, drawing long and hard on her cigarette.

“Feel like a cop?”

“You know—you give off that kind of cop energy.”

Savannah chuckled. “Yeah? Well, I was one for a long time. I guess it never completely goes away. Now I’m a private investigator.”

“And you’re investigating what happened to Bill, right?”

“That’s right.”

The redhead’s eyes filled with tears. “He was murdered, wasn’t he?”

Savannah studied her face closely, watching every expression. She saw only pain, sorrow, and the ever-present fear.

“Yes, he was,” she told her. “I’m sorry. I gather he meant a lot to you.”

“I’m in love with him. I mean, I guess I
was
in love.” She started to sob, her hands over her face. “I just can’t believe that he’s gone.”

Again, Savannah reached into her purse and produced a bunch of tissues. It occurred to her that she went through more tissues than a marriage counselor.

“I’m sure it’s awful, losing someone you love like this,” Savannah said, “especially in this way.”

“Are you sure somebody killed him?” she asked with a pathetic, hopeful look on her face. “It couldn’t have been some sort of accident?”

“No, I’m sorry.” Savannah reached back behind her seat and pulled out a bottle of water. She unscrewed the top and handed it to Sharona. “And we’re trying to find out who did it.”

“We?”

“My cop friend and I.”

Sharona took a long drink of the water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I haven’t always gotten along that well with the cops.”

Savannah smiled. “I’ve heard. I’m not interested in whatever run-ins you’ve had with the law in the past. I just want you to tell me about Bill, about what he was up to lately, about anybody who had it out for him.”

“Bill had a lot going on,” Sharona said. “He was getting ready to make some big changes in his life. People don’t always like that.”

“Tell me about it.”

“He was getting ready to run away with me, leave that bitch Clarissa, and start a new life, just the two of us. We were supposed to leave a few days ago for Las Vegas. He was going to get a quickie divorce, and we were going to get married in one of the chapels there.”

She flashed a sizable engagement ring under Savannah’s nose.

“See?” she said. “He was serious, or he wouldn’t have bought me a rock this size, huh?”

Savannah nodded. She had to agree a diamond the size of a doorknob could have indicated a serious commitment—or a pretty toy to keep his mistress happy and quiet.

“How sure are you that this was really going to happen?” Savannah asked her. “I mean, a lot of married guys say they’re going to leave their wives, but when push comes to shove—”

“He meant it! We’d already rented a house in Vegas, a really nice house with a pool and everything! Bill was all excited about it. He said he had one more thing he had to do, and then he’d have lots of money to take care of us until the divorce became final and he got half of all of Clarissa’s stuff. She’s worth millions and millions with all those clubs of hers and the vitamins and the diet meals and the exercise DVDs.”

“Yes, I’m sure she is. Tell me more about this thing he had to take care of.”

“He didn’t say what it was exactly, just that it was going to happen four or five days ago. He said he was going to score, big-time.”

“Do you think it had anything to do with his gambling, like a big win, or…?”

“Bill? No way. Bill was an awful gambler. He loved it, but he never won anything worth getting excited about.”

“Was he into drugs?”

“Not at all. Bill was superclean when it came to that stuff. He was into health and fitness and all that. He didn’t have much of a choice about it, being married to the Queen of Fitness.”

Savannah wasn’t particularly surprised by the amount of venom in those last three words. If Clarissa provoked hostility in most of the people she met, you couldn’t really expect the “other woman” in her marriage to hold her in high regard.

It was Savannah’s experience that the mistresses of married men usually looked for the worst in the wives’ characters to help ease their consciences. And with Clarissa, there was just so much to work with.

“How did you and Bill meet?” she asked.

“At one of Pinky’s poker games. Pinky’s this guy I used to work for.” She took a drink of water and turned her face away from Savannah, looking out the passenger window. “I used to be in some bad stuff, but that was before. Since I met Bill, I’ve only been with him.” She choked up. “I was really looking forward to…to only being with him.”

“Tell me about Pinky,” Savannah asked, trying not to sound too wildly interested, trying to look nonchalant when she was mentally shaking cheerleader pom-poms and jumping up and down.

“Pinky’s a really bad guy. He’s a bookie, but he does a lot of other stuff, too. He’s got a lot of girls working for him. You know, like an escort service. And he’s into the drug scene. He doesn’t use, but he finances a lot of big deals.”

She tried to set her bottle of water on the dash, but she sloshed some of it onto the console. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. Really.” Savannah put her hand on the redhead’s forearm and gave it a comforting squeeze. “What were you saying about this Pinky guy?”

Sharona turned toward Savannah, her eyes haunted and frightened. “I think Pinky killed Bill. I know Bill owed him some money, and Bill said that once he had this other money, the big score he was working on, he would pay Pinky off. That way we could go to Vegas with a clean slate and not have to be looking over our shoulders all the time.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“Six days ago. We were going to be leaving right after he took care of this business of his and once he’d paid Pinky.”

“So, what happened?”

“He was supposed to call me, as soon as he’d made his big score and settled things with Pinky. But the days came and went and he never called. That wasn’t like him. I was so afraid that something was wrong, really bad wrong. And then today I was watching the news on TV, and I saw that they’d found a red convertible and a body up there on Sulphur Creek Road. I just knew it was Bill. I knew it.”

“I’m sorry, Sharona. It’s terrible to lose anybody you love, but especially this way.”

“It
is
terrible. And now I’m afraid that Pinky’s going to come after me, or send somebody after me.”

“Why?”

“Because they all know—everybody on his crew—that Bill and I had a thing. If he’d kill Bill over some money, he won’t give it a second thought, getting rid of me because I might know something. That’s why I was hanging out over at The Keg. Aldo’s an old boyfriend of mine. He’s a bad guy, too, but he hates Pinky. And he wouldn’t let him hurt me…at least, not in his place.”

Savannah thought of the safe house a few miles out of town that the SCPD kept just for these occasions. It wasn’t much, a little cottage out in the middle of some orange groves. But it smelled a heck of a lot better than The Keg, and Sharona Dubarry looked like she could use some fresh air and a stress-free environment for awhile.

“If I could arrange for a place for you to stay, until this whole thing is settled, would you like that?” she asked her. “It would be better than running from one bad guy to another, trying to choose the lesser of evils.”

“You mean like a hotel room?”

“A little better than that. It’s a house, old, small, quiet. You can take walks among the orange trees and smell the blossoms. There’s a porch with a swing. You can sit there and listen to the birds chirp. Not exciting, but restful.”

Sharona started to cry again, but Savannah sensed they were tears of relief. And she had stopped shaking. That was a good start.

“Then we’ll do it. I’ll make a phone call to my partner and get him to okay it. Then I’ll take you back to your car. We’ll go to your house together, and I’ll wait and keep watch while you pack a bag. Then I’ll drive you out there.”

“Thank you,” Sharona said. “I really appreciate this.”

Savannah gave her a reassuring smile. “I know you do, sugar. I’m glad to help.”

But she wasn’t all that glad. As she made the call to Dirk, then drove Sharona back to the gas station, she had mixed emotions, mulling over all that she’d just heard.

On one hand, she was elated to have this lead that sounded like a hot one. But at the same time, she had a nagging disappointed feeling, deep in her gut.

She didn’t have to do more than two seconds’ worth of soul searching to know where that was coming from. She wanted hot leads, but she wanted them to lead her to Clarissa Jardin, not some wiseguy bookie.

And how sick is that?
she asked herself as she followed Sharona Dubarry’s blue Honda to her house near the beach.
Sometimes self-awareness just…well…sucks
.

U
sually, when Savannah returned home, it was a tossup who was the most excited to see her, Tammy, Cleopatra, or Diamante. But when she walked into the house in the late afternoon, the only interested parties were the cats.

Tammy had her nose practically glued to the computer screen, and she barely gave a grunt as Savannah walked by.

A glance over her assistant’s shoulder told Savannah that Tammy was slaving away on the luminol picture—the one Dirk had forwarded to her from the lab.

It didn’t look like much to Savannah, just a dark, charcoal gray screen with some white dots like tiny paint spatters…or a starry night sky in an Arizona desert if she were to wax poetic. And she wasn’t in a poetic mood. Twenty-nine hours without sleep could just sap the poet right out of a body.

“Anything new? Anybody call?” Savannah asked.

“Nope.”

“Bill Jardin’s mother? Marietta?”

“Nope and nope.”

“Okay.”

Worn out from that lengthy, scintillating, and complex discussion, Savannah went into the kitchen, poured some cat food into the ever-hungry felines’ dishes, refreshed their water, and got herself a glass of iced tea. No token slice of lemon but gobs of ice.

Leaving the cats to gorge themselves on Whisker Vittles, she returned to the living room and sank into her comfy chair. Her head spun for a moment and she realized that she was getting dangerously tired. If she didn’t at least grab a nap soon, she wasn’t going to be able to function.

“Did you find Sharona?” Tammy asked, her eyes still trained on the screen as she manipulated the computer’s mouse and worked the photo program, trying one type of enhancement after another.

“Found her, talked to her, took her to the safe house.”

Tammy whirled around in her chair. “The safe house? Why?”

“She thinks that dude Pinky killed Jardin, and she’s afraid he may be after her, too.”

“Whoa! Get out!” Tammy looked disappointed. “And we were hoping it was Clarissa.”

“
You
were? I thought it was just me who doesn’t like her.”

“Nope. Can’t stand her. I avoid watching her on TV or reading about her in the paper because she disturbs my inner peace. I have to meditate afterward, just to cleanse my spirit of her hostility.”

“Wow, I thought it was just people like me who felt that way. I didn’t think that folks like you…”

The hurt expression on Tammy’s face made Savannah swallow the rest of her words.

“Why did you think that?” Tammy asked softly. “Because I’m skinny?”

“Well, I…you’re…you know…into fitness and all that. You aren’t the kind of person that Clarissa would criticize or insult. You’re more like…”

“Like her?”

Savannah realized she was blowing it with her friend, but she was too tired to fully understand why. She decided to shut up before she made the situation worse.

“Savannah,” Tammy said, her voice tremulous, “I hope you don’t think that just because I’m thin, because I like to work out and eat a certain way…that I approve of what Clarissa Jardin does. I think she’s amassed a fortune by being cruel and sensational and controversial. She claims to be this health guru, but I think what’s she’s doing is wrong and unhealthy for our entire society.”

Savannah was surprised at the depth of her friend’s conviction and sorry that she had obviously offended her. “Tammy, I had no idea you felt that way.”

“But you should have known,” Tammy said softly, with no accusation, only hurt in her voice. “I try to be a good person, and good people don’t condone cruelty, no matter what size they are.”

Savannah got up from her chair, walked across the room, and pulled Tammy to her feet. Wrapping her arms around her, she said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. I really am. It’s so easy to slide into that foolish ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality when it comes to this stupid weight issue. And I don’t ever want to think of you that way. I always want you and me to be
‘us.’
No matter what size you are.”

Tammy returned the hearty hug. “And I couldn’t possibly love you more, whether you ever dropped or gained a pound. Even the thought that I might seems ludicrous to me.”

The office phone rang, and Tammy grabbed for it. “Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency. Tammy Hart speaking,” she said in a breathy and rather bad Marilyn Monroe impression that Savannah had always found humorous.

“Oh, it’s just you,” Tammy said. She mouthed, “Dirk-o,” to Savannah. “Yes, I’ve got the sister’s name and address and everything you asked for. That’s such old news. I’m working on the blood spatter photo now.” She listened for a minute, then said, “Well, don’t sound so surprised. We Moonlight Magnolia ladies don’t dillydally, you know.”

She picked up a piece of paper from the desk and read the pertinent information to him. “Her name is Rachel Morris. Up until last month, she lived in New York—Greenwich Village, to be exact. Then she and her son—age sixteen, named Tanner—moved to Yucca Mountain…a little town on Interstate 15 near the Nevada border. She’s never been married, doesn’t have a criminal record, and she pays her bills on time.” She grinned broadly. “Anything else you want to know?”

She held out the phone to Savannah. “He wants to talk to you.”

Savannah took the phone and walked into the kitchen, leaving Tammy to return to her computer work. “Did you at least say ‘Thank you?’”

“Of course I did,” Dirk replied, sounding moderately miffed. “I know how to talk to people.”

Since when?
Savannah thought, but she kept it to herself. With Dirk, she really had to choose her battles. If she griped about everything he did that drove her nuts, she’d be nagging him all the time…and then they might as well be married and filing joint tax returns.

“Speaking of talking to people,” she said, “did you get hold of that D. A., Wilcox?”

“Yeah. He’s got a pretty good case against Pinky, whose name, by the way, is actually Pinky—go figure.”

“No way.”

“I swear, that’s his legal name. Baldovino Pinky Moretti.”

“What? He didn’t want to go by Baldovino?”

“He’s mobbed up.”

“No kidding. Sharona already told me all about him, the drugs, the hookers, the gambling.”

“And murder. Wilcox is sure he’s gotten rid of at least three members of his crew by himself, and he’s thinking Pinky did Jardin, too. What Clarissa said about Bill going in to talk to Wilcox…it’s all true. He was supposed to give his deposition tomorrow.”

“So, where’s our man Pinky now?”

“Wilcox had him picked up this morning. They’re holding him in county jail.”

“For murder?”

“Assault. He punched a deputy sheriff when he got pulled over for a rolling stop at a red light.”

Savannah grinned. “Did that deputy provoke him in any way?”

“Naw, I’m sure he didn’t. But I foresee a promotion in his immediate future.”

“Are you going to question him? Can I be there when you do?”

Dirk didn’t answer.

“Dirk? Do you mind if I go along?”

After a few more moments of silence, she thought maybe they had lost the signal. “Hey, buddy…you there?”

“What? I…oh, damn.”

“What is it?”

“I think I just dozed off there.”

“I think you did, too. Are you driving?”

“Sitting at a light on Lester Street.”

“Pull off somewhere and take a nap. Right now. Go to the parking lot there by the pier, lie down on the seat, and sleep for an hour or so before you kill some poor, innocent person.”

“Yeah, okay…Mom.”

“I’m getting plum swimmy-headed myself. I’m going to go upstairs and crash for a little while. I’ll have Tammy call you to wake you up in an hour.”

“All right.”

“And darlin’, before you zonk out, be sure your doors are locked and your windows are up. There’ve been some muggings down in that neck o’ the woods lately.”

“Hu-u-rumph.”

With assurances from Tammy that she would wake her if anything important developed, Savannah retired to her bedroom to get a little sleep. The sight of the room with its lacy curtains, snowy linens, and vase filled with fresh roses from her garden sitting on the dresser nearly made Savannah cry. It felt like a week since she had last been here—the place where she retreated to refresh her body and spirit.

While Savannah usually wore slacks, simple tailored blouses and jackets, and loafers, she did allow herself total female expression in two ways: sexy lingerie and a completely girlie girl bedroom.

The handmade quilt on the bed had lacy accents with its rose and lilac print fabric—a recent gift from Granny Reid. And even the smell of the room was feminine, Savannah’s favorite floral perfume, mixed with the fresh flowers.

It was, indeed, a room to dream in.

Rather than tempt evil fate by actually undressing and getting into bed properly, Savannah simply kicked off her shoes, pulled the quilt back, and slipped beneath it.

Wrapping herself in the quilt, lovingly stitched by her grandmother’s own hands, it was as though Granny Reid herself was rocking her to sleep.

Less than ten seconds later, she was, as Gran would say, “snorin’ like a cartoon bear.”

She had been asleep two minutes—or at least, it felt like two minutes—when a soft knocking at the bedroom door awakened her.

“Savannah? It’s Tammy.”

The door opened an inch and Tammy’s pert nose appeared in the crack. “I’m sorry to wake you, but Bill Jardin’s mom is on the phone. She’s here in California now. In fact, she’s in San Carmelita, and she wants to come over right away. Are you up for it?”

“Up? Up? Hell no, I’m not up. I just got to sleep.”

“Actually, it’s been over two hours. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.”

Savannah threw off the quilt and sat up so quickly that she nearly fell off the side of the bed.

Running her fingers through her mussed hair, she said, “Did you call Dirk and wake him up, too?”

“Over an hour ago.”

“Good.”

She knew she was in a pissy mood when the thought of Dirk getting more sleep than she’d gotten made her feel the need to box his ears and stand him in a corner.

Tammy walked into the room and held out the phone to her. She did her best not to sound like a groggy wolverine just coming out of hibernation when she said, “Mrs. Jardin, this is Savannah Reid. I’m glad to hear from you, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” said a soft voice with a gentle, Midwestern accent on the other end. “But I don’t want your condolences. I want you to put my daughter-in-law in jail for murdering my son.”

Savannah was a bit taken aback by the woman’s candor. The voice might be soft and sweet, but there was no mistaking the bitterness and grief behind those words.

“I want to help you in every way that I can,” she replied. “Let me give you my address. You come over here and we’ll talk.”

“Do you have any alcohol?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Alcohol. I need a drink or two at least to get through the next few hours.”

Savannah thought of the beers that she always had stashed in the back of her refrigerator, so that Dirk could have a cold brew on demand. Then there was the whiskey she kept for hot toddies and Irish coffees. Not to mention the triple sec for margaritas and the rum for daiquiris.

“Come on over,” she said. “We’ll see what we can do for you…on all accounts.”

The lady who appeared on Savannah’s doorstep ten minutes later reminded her of some of the women from her own hometown in rural Georgia. The pink polyester pantsuit, the floral print blouse, the oversized acrylic beads around her neck, and the silver-blue hair—they all made Savannah homesick for women with soft, Southern accents, gentle smiles, and very strong opinions about what was right and what was just pure-dee wickedness.

“Mrs. Jardin,” Savannah said, gently shaking her hand. “I’m Savannah. Come right in and sit a spell. You must be plum exhausted, considering all you’ve been through.”

Ruby Jardin turned back toward the street and waved away the cab that was sitting in front of Savannah’s house. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “I’m so mad and so hurt and so tired that I can’t see straight.”

Savannah led her into the house and considered seating her in the living room, but then she had a second thought. “Would you like to have that drink in my backyard?” she said. “You’ve been cooped up on a plane for hours. It might be nice to breathe some fresh air.”

“I’d like that. I was sitting next to some numbskull who reeked to high heaven. He’d taken a bath in cheap aftershave…like that’d take the place of good ol’ soap and water.” She shook her head, disgusted. “You’d think with all this airline security hooey these days, they’d be more discriminating who they let onboard those planes. I don’t know what this world’s coming to.”

Savannah looked into the woman’s dark brown eyes, which were swollen from crying, and saw the deep pain barely below the surface. She had just lost a child to murder, and that had to be the worst misfortune that could befall anyone. But, instead of screaming at the world, she was complaining about a guy on the plane wearing cheap cologne.

Instead of curling into a fetal position and wishing for death herself, as most people might assume they would do under the circumstances, she had just flown more than halfway across a continent to find justice for her son.

So, as Savannah directed the woman through her house—stopping in the kitchen to grab two cold beers, an icy mug, and a glass of lemonade, and then out to the backyard—she decided that she liked Ruby Jardin very much. And she was determined to help her any way she could.

Moments later, sitting on comfortable chaises beneath Savannah’s cedar arbor, draped with wisteria, Ruby let it flow—a flood of accusations against her now-former daughter-in-law.

“Clarissa never did love Bill. Not properly anyway,” she said. “She only married him because he was so good-looking and charming. He was so handsome, my Bill.”

Tears filled her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. “He could charm any woman,” she continued, “and did. Too many, I admit it. That was his downfall. Women.”

Thinking of Sharona and how heartbroken she appeared to be over his death, Savannah had to agree that Bill had at least one woman too many in his life.