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Authors: G. A. McKevett

Buried In Buttercream (18 page)

BOOK: Buried In Buttercream
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Casually, a smug little grin on her face, Tammy picked up her fork and began to play with her salad.
Savannah and Dirk watched, simmering with impatience, as she carefully cut a cucumber into four even, neat pieces.
Finally, Savannah snapped. “Girl, you better spit it out, or I'm gonna slap you upside the head with a French fry. With a big ol' glob of ketchup on it, too.”
Tammy laughed and put down her fork. “Okay.” She turned to Dirk. “You've probably already found out about the restraining order.”
Dirk looked at Savannah. She shrugged.
“What restraining order?” they both said in unison.
Tammy picked a cherry tomato out of her salad and popped it into her mouth. After chewing for about a year, she said, “The one that Madeline Aberson took out a couple of weeks before she was killed.”
“Madeline had an RO against someone?” Dirk said.
Savannah nearly choked on her iced tea. “Who? Who?”
Tammy laughed. “You sound like a hoot owl.”
Shaking a long, floppy fry drenched in ketchup in her face, Savannah said, “Cough it up, babycakes, or you'll be wearing this.”
“Threaten to do me bodily harm with trans fats! I'm sure that's a felony in forty-five states!”
“How would you feel about having some cod shoved in your right ear?” Dirk added, brandishing a piece of his deep-fried fish.
Tammy rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. Madeline took out a civil harassment restraining order against Celia Barnhart.”
Savannah and Dirk looked at each other questioningly. Then both shrugged their shoulders.
“Who the hell,” Dirk asked, “is Celia Barnhart?”
“Funny you should ask that.” Tammy fiddled with her tablet, then turned it so that they could each see the screen.
On it was a picture of a normal-enough-looking young woman. Conservative even. It was a simple, nondescript head shot, like the thousands used every day on Internet social sites.
“Okay.” Savannah deflated a bit, like the old Disneyland balloons in her living room. “What's that supposed to tell us?”
Tammy messed with the screen a bit more and came up with another picture of Celia Barnhart. This time she looked quite lovely in her wedding gown, standing next to her groom, who was decked out in a stylish tuxedo.
Though as attractively dressed as the couple was, neither wore the happy, beaming smiles that were expected of a twosome on their wedding day. In fact, they both looked quite disgruntled.
“Looks like they had the same sort of day we had,” Dirk grumbled. “What? Did their wedding hall burn down, too?”
“No,” Tammy said. “But you two and this two, you did have something in common.”
“What's that?” Savannah asked.
“The same wedding planner.”
Savannah quickly added two and two and came up with a couple of couples who hadn't had the stellar weddings of their dreams. “Don't tell me she died during their wedding, too.”
“No, of course not. But according to Celia Barnhart, Madeline ruined the most important day of her life.”
“A bridezilla, huh?” Dirk said. “I guess women are a bit temperamental at a time like that ... stress and all.” He shot a look at Savannah.
She said, “Watch it, boy.”
“Present company excepted, that is.” He turned back to Tammy. “But this gal took it so far that Madeline got an RO against her?”
“Yes. According to the court documents, which I found online, she threatened Madeline with bodily harm ... during the wedding itself, in front of all of her guests, and then daily for two weeks afterward.”
“I think we need to talk to this gal,” Dirk said, waving to the waitress to bring their check.
“Ah, yes,” Savannah said. “If nothing else, we can compare wedding-day horror stories. If hers is bad enough, maybe it'll make us feel better about ours.”
“Oh, please. Like anybody in the world has a worse wedding story than you two do.” Tammy laughed and put her tablet back into her purse. “When it comes to getting hitched, you guys have the worst luck of all time.”
When she had her chore done, she glanced up and saw they both had fixed her with stony glares.
She shrugged. “Well? You do.”
“And you, young Miss Prissy Pants,” Savannah said, “if you mention it again, I'm going to change your ring tone on my phone from ‘You Are My Sunshine' to ‘Rainy Night in Georgia.'”
Chapter 16
T
he next morning, Savannah and Dirk took a trip to Celia Barnhart's house. She wasn't home, but one of her chatty neighbors told them that she was a teacher's aide at a private day school in the neighboring town of Arroyo Verde.
As they pulled into the school parking lot, Savannah sized up the school. With its pristine green lawns, generously equipped playground, and scores of students running around in neat white shirts, blue and green plaid skirts on the girls and navy slacks on the boys ... it was obviously a place that cost the parents a few bucks.
A place that was a far cry from the small country school that she had attended in McGill, Georgia, with its dirt play yard, one broken teeter-totter, and a single swing with frazzled ropes.
She smiled as she watched the kids slipping down their safe, bright red slide—splinter free, no doubt.
These kids were blessed. They wouldn't have to work as hard as she had to climb upward in life. They had a head start. She hoped that at least some of them would grow to realize that and make full use of it.
“See her anywhere?” Dirk asked as they got out of the car and walked past a neat queue of children all lined up and waiting to march back into the building to their classrooms.
Savannah thought of her last visit to a local public school, where the teachers did well to keep the kids from harassing, pummeling, and mugging each other. And she mentally applauded the difference.
“No,” she said, as she scanned the crowd, looking for adults. “I don't. Are we sure she's working today?”
“Her sister said she is.”
One elderly lady with a whistle around her neck and a firm, no-nonsense look on her face was straightening the line, cautioning those who were overly energetic to calm down.
At the end of the line was a pretty redhead who looked to be in her late teens.
But they were looking for a thirty-four-year-old brunette ... possibly with a sunburn. According to Tammy, Celia Barnhart and her groom had recently returned from their honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas.
“Maybe she's inside,” Dirk said.
Then Savannah spotted her leaving the main building by way of a side door and walking toward a large structure that might be a gymnasium or auditorium.
“There she is,” she said, recognizing the woman instantly from the pictures Tammy had shown them. She was dressed in a baggy, dark dress instead of a well-designed, formal wedding gown, but she was wearing the same grumpy look on her face.
Savannah had a feeling this wasn't going to be particularly pleasant. “I'm not in the mood for drama,” she told Dirk. “I'm to the point where, if anybody spouts off to me about how bad life's been treating them lately, I'm gonna give 'em an earful about my own problems.”
“Nobody knows ... de trouble I see... .” Dirk sang, his voice deep and deliciously bass, though a bit flat here and there.
She laughed and felt a little better, though still resolved to keep the amount of bellyaching she would hear to a minimum.
Life was just too short to listen to everybody else's whining, cursing, and raging. If for no other reason than because it seriously cut into one's own time for whining, cursing, and raging.
They caught up with Celia Barnhart just as she opened one of the large double doors. Savannah caught a glimpse of the gloriously shined wooden floors of a gym.
That was something else the little school in Georgia hadn't had either. They had played basketball on the asphalt parking lot ... which had been a bit rough on the knees when a player took the inevitable spill.
“Celia Barnhart?” Dirk asked, showing her his badge.
“Used to be. I'm Celia Wynn now.”
“Yes. Congratulations,” Dirk said. “This is Savannah Reid. We'd like to talk to you.”
Celia placed her hands on her hips and the anger in her eyes flared to a new, hotter level.
Oh, goody,
Savannah thought.
And here goes my ocean pier Zen, swirling right down the john.
“What about?” Celia snapped. “That stupid restraining order?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Savannah replied. “That's a real good guess.”
“It wasn't all that hard to figure out. It's the most ridiculous thing in the world, and I'm sick to death of hearing about it. After all that woman did to
me
,
I'm
the one who gets an order of protection filed against her? Get real!”
Dirk pointed to a wrought iron bench that was strategically situated to take in the view of a statue of a woman in a long dress, holding hands with a child ... no doubt the founder of the school. “Would you like to sit down and—”
“No, I would most certainly not like to sit down. I'm on a break, the only break I get from these screaming brats all morning long, and I'm not going to spend it talking to you about some perceived threat I made toward that stupid bitch.”
“Actually,” Savannah said, “I'm more interested in hearing what
she
did to
you
.”
Yeah, right,
she thought.
Toxic dumping ground, that's me. Lay it on me.
“Oh, well ... in that case ...” Celia took a deep breath, and Savannah braced herself for the onslaught. “I don't know where to begin. Madeline Aberson is the wedding planner from hell! Don't let anybody that you know hire her! She totally ruined our day for us. It was a disaster because of her, and she won't even own up to it, let alone apologize!”
“Could you be more specific?” Savannah asked ... knowing she could and would.
“Oh, sure. First of all, she didn't even show up on our wedding day. I didn't see her face or get as much as a phone call from her. Come to find out, she'd booked two weddings at the same time. I guess the other one meant more to her than mine.”
“Okay. That's very unprofessional of her. What else?”
“Our flowers never arrived! She booked the vendor and placed the order, but she owed them a fortune, and they refused to deliver. My husband's father ran to the grocery store at the last minute and bought some supermarket roses, or my bridesmaids and I would've been empty-handed walking down the aisle.”
“Ouch.”
“And the hotel where she'd booked us for our first night together, before we took off for Cabo? We arrived only to find it was closed for remodeling! She should have known that! We had to spend our first night as husband and wife at my mother-in-law's!”
“Whoa, that's a bite in the butt!” Savannah said, forgetting, for a moment, her own wedding catastrophes.
“No kidding. And she never returned the money to us either. No matter how many times I called her. That's the so-called ‘harassment' that she accused me of to get that restraining order. I was just calling to tell her she'd better at least pay me what she owed me, or I'd sue her. What's ‘harassing' about that?”
Dirk cleared his throat. “Um ... I read the order. It says you made threats of physical violence against her.”
Celia shrugged. “I might have casually mentioned in passing that if she didn't fork over the cash, I was going to kick her ass so hard that it'd be up between her shoulder blades.”
Nodding, Savannah said, “Yep. That'd be it.”
“It was just a colorful figure of speech.”
Savannah chuckled. “I'm from the South, so I understand all about colorful figures of speech, but can you see how Ms. Aberson and the court construed that as a threat?”
“I guess. But what the heck are you here for? I haven't gone near her or called her or contacted her in any way since I was served that paper telling me not to.”
“We're working a case,” Dirk told her. “And we're here to ask you where you were last Saturday afternoon.”
“Why?”
“You answer my question, and maybe I'll answer yours,” he told her.
She seemed to think for a moment. “Let's see ... Saturday afternoon. ... My fianc—I mean, my husband—and I had just returned from our honeymoon. I guess I was home unpacking and doing laundry.”
“Can anybody verify that?” Dirk asked.
“No. Not really. My husband was already back at work. It was just me and the dogs there at home. Why? Why does it matter where I was?”
“Because we're trying to rule you out as a suspect.”
“A suspect for what?” She looked at Dirk, then at Savannah.
“Madeline,” Savannah said simply.
“What about Madeline?” An ugly, most unladylike grin spread across Celia's face. “Don't tell me ... somebody actually did kick her butt up between her shoulder blades.”
“No,” Savannah said.
Celia looked deeply disappointed. “Oh, damn.”
Savannah watched her closely when she said, “But they did stab her between the shoulder blades. Three times.”
Celia Barnhart-Wynn's face suddenly turned as white as the shirts her students wore. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, wow.”
Savannah nodded solemnly. “Oh, yeah.”
 
Later, they left Celia to return to her teacher's assistant duties, and as they walked back to the car, Savannah said, “Can you believe a person that hostile takes care of children? Scary thought.”
“Do you think she killed Madeline?” Dirk asked.
“I don't know, but one thing's for sure ... she certainly had motive. Listening to her story, I was wanting to kill Madeline for her.”
Dirk sighed as he opened the Buick's passenger door for Savannah. “You know, it's a lot easier when the victim's a nice person without an enemy in the world.”
“Except one.”
“Yeah, except one. It's a lot easier to catch a murderer if the whole damned state didn't want them dead.”
 
Once again, Savannah and Dirk were driving along the winding streets through Spirit Hills, the posh community where Savannah intended to live when she grew up someday.
That was also the day when she won the lottery, the Miss America Pageant, and married Prince Charming.
“Oh, yeah,” she told Dirk. “I'm going to have to revise my life plan. You've thrown a monkey wrench into the works.”
“What?” he said. “Are you talking to yourself again?”
“Of course not. I never talk to myself. You're the one who does that.”
“What were you saying about your life plan?”
“Only that I'd intended to grow up and marry a prince, so you're messing up my plans.”
“I feel really bad about that.”
He didn't look the least bit remorseful. In fact, he was giving her a little smirk that made her want to whack him and kiss him at the same time.
“How about just a prince of a guy?” he said. “A man among men. A studly stud. A hunk, a hunk of burnin' love.”
“Whose good looks and virility are surpassed only by his humility.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Okay, I guess you'll do.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Prince Charming's horse probably broke down on the way here.”
“Threw a shoe on the Golden State Freeway.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
They had arrived at Odelle Peters's house just in time to see an enormous truck backing into the driveway.
“Uh-oh,” Savannah said. “Moving day.”
“That's rough.” He pulled the Buick to the curb across the street from the house. “Moving's tough enough, even under the best of circumstances... .”
“Like when you're moving from a trailer into your new wife's cute little house?”
“Exactly. But to lose your house like that ... I don't particularly like this gal, but I feel for her.”
“A lot of people are in her shoes these days,” Savannah said sadly. “I feel for all of them.”
They got out of the car and walked up to the front door, which was standing wide open. Dozens of cardboard boxes were stacked in the foyer.
Farther inside the house, Savannah could see still more boxes and pieces of furniture swaddled in padded covers.
A couple of burly fellows had begun to carry the cardboard boxes out to the truck.
“You be careful with that stuff!” Savannah and Dirk heard Odelle shout from several rooms away. “Those are valuable antiques, and don't think I won't sue your boss to kingdom come if you break anything!”
A moment later she came stomping out of a room toward the rear of the house and into the entryway. “Hey, that's a mirror you've got there, buddy, and you'd better—”
BOOK: Buried In Buttercream
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