Corpse Suzette (7 page)

“Since when?”

“Since he promised me a big
ol’ bundle of bucks if I find her before you do.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeap.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe because she
absconded with a ton of his money. Or maybe not, I’m not at liberty to say.”

He sniffed. “Good thing
you’re so discreet.”

“Ain’t I though?”

“Did he give you any good
leads about where you might start looking for her?”

“Nope. But he gave me the
keys to her house and permission to search it thoroughly, no warrant needed or
any of that messy legal stuff.”

“It’s
her
house, not
his.
Where does he get off giving you permission to search her
property?”

“Don’t know, don’t care too
much. I’m not planning to hoist any flags up the pole announcing I’m there...
when I do my searching, that is.”

“In the dead of night.”

“You betcha.”

“You gonna start tonight?”

“Just waiting for the sun
to set and the moon to rise. You want something to eat or drink?”

“No. I want a lead on where
this gal is. The captain threw me a real homicide, a drive-by over in the east
end. Some druggie’s momma got herself shot, sitting and watching TV, eating a
pizza and minding her own business.”

“You figure they were
gunning for him and got Mom instead.”

“Ain’t that just the way it
always happens. Some innocent kid sitting on a porch, behaving themselves, some
guy walking with his baby down to the corner store for a quart of milk. And
then,
blammo.
Anyway, I don’t have time to mess with this Du Bois thing,
when we don’t even know for sure if it’s foul play or her taking an unscheduled
trip to Vegas.”

Savannah studied her old
friend and noticed the dark circles under his eyes and how he seemed to have no
energy at all. Maybe he was getting burned out. He couldn’t pull all-nighters
anymore without paying a price.

And if he refused free food
and beverages, he might be worse off than she had thought.

“You okay?” she asked, her
voice soft with affectionate concern.

“Who me? Yeah. Sure. Why?”

“You look tired.”

He shrugged and grunted.
“Hell, Van. I’ve been tired since 1990. What else is new?”

She tried to remember.
“What happened in 1990?”

“I don’t know. Just made
that up. Lemme talk to that Abigail chick so that I can go get a nap before I
go back to the drive-by scene.”

“She’s out in the backyard
with Tammy. I’ll get her.”

He started to hoist himself
off the sofa. “I’ll go out there.”

“No you don’t. You stay
here.”

“I’m not
that
tired.
You’re sweet, but you worry too much.”

She sniffed. “I wasn’t
offering for
your
sake. I want you to question her in here, where it’s
easier for me to eavesdrop. In fact, move in to the kitchen table. I’ll pretend
to make chocolate chip cookies while you squeeze her.”

“Pretend? Just pretend?”

He looked interested. She
started to relax; Dirk wasn’t ready to go toes-up on her any time soon.

“Do I need a lawyer here?
Is this a real interrogation or what?” Abigail wanted to know as she faced off
with Dirk over Savannah’s kitchen table.

“Naw,” Dirk replied, “if it
was a real interrogation I’d have you handcuffed to your chair and I’d be
smacking you with a telephone book. This here is just a friendly chat.”

For once, Tammy had decided
that she would help Savannah bake, even if it meant touching the toxic white
substances— sugar and refined flour. She stood next to Savannah, stirring the
sugars and shortening together in a mixing bowl.

Savannah leaned over her
shoulder and whispered, “How’s it going there, Betty Crocker?”

“Sh-h-h. I want to hear
this.”

Savannah chuckled and went
back to measuring the dry ingredients.

“So, what do you want to
know?” Abigail asked, her arms crossed over her chest, an ugly frown on her
face. “Whatever it is, I don’t know anything about it.”

“I want to know how your
day went yesterday.”

“Minute by minute?”

Dirk returned the sullen
look. “For right now, I’ll settle for hour by hour.”

Abigail sighed and rolled
her eyes. “Savannah got me up about seven-thirty and gave me breakfast. Then
Tammy took me to Emerge.”

“Did you go inside with
her?” Dirk asked Tammy.

“Yes, for a few minutes,”
Tammy replied.

Dirk turned back to
Abigail. “And what happened when you got to Emerge?”

“We went in and that trashy
blonde receptionist, Miranda or Maria or whatever her name is...”

“Myrna,” Tammy supplied.
“And she was really sweet, even though she... well, you know.”

“Looks like a tramp.” Dirk
nodded. “And Myrna did what?”

“She greeted me;
congratulated me for winning the makeover.” Abigail made a face that looked
like she had just sucked on a wedge of lemon. “Then she led us down the hall to
a waiting room.”

“Yeah, it was really neat,”
Tammy said. “They had these really cushy couches with fancy pillows and a
fireplace going—a fake one, but it looked homey and cozy—and they had fresh
fruit in bowls for us to eat and a pitcher of water with ice and slices of
fruit and—”

Savannah shot her a “button
your lip” look, and Tammy went back to stirring. “Anyway, it was neat.”

Dirk sighed. “Now that
we’ve established how ‘neat’ the waiting room was, can you tell me what
happened next?” he said to Abigail.

“We waited for at least a
half an hour. I was getting pretty sick of it. You can only eat so much fruit
and drink so much water. Then a gal named Devon came in and introduced herself.
Said she was public relations, or something like that, and apologized for the
delay. She said that Dr. Du Bois was late, but was expected to arrive soon.
Then she gave us a tour of the place.” Tammy brightened and opened her mouth.
Savannah gave her another look, and she snapped it closed.

“I’m sure the rest of the
place was ‘neat’, too,” Savannah whispered. “But Dirk’s just not that big on
décor.”

“Gotcha,” Tammy whispered
back.

“How long did the tour
take?” Dirk wanted to know.

Abigail shrugged and looked
at Tammy. “I don’t remember exactly. Maybe an hour?”

Tammy nodded. “That’s about
right.”

“And then?” Dirk asked,
scribbling on a small notepad he had taken from his inside jacket pocket.

“And then I left,” Tammy
interjected.

“Good.” He gave her an
irritated glance, then turned his attention back to Abigail. “But you stayed?”

“Yeah. A nurse took several
vials of blood from me. They weighed and measured me. All of that sucked.”

“I’m sure it did,” he
replied.

“But after that, it was
sorta nice. They gave me a pretty good lunch and served it outside on a patio.
And Jeremy ate with me.” Savannah watched as Abigail’s face changed at the
mention of the style consultant’s name. She looked quite pretty when she
smiled. Her eyes had a dreamy quality, and as Savannah recalled Jeremy Lawrence’s
handsome features and quiet charm, she couldn’t really blame Abby.

“Jeremy?” Dirk asked. “You
mean Jeremy Lawrence, the hairdresser?”

“Yes, but he’s not a
hairdresser,” Abigail replied. “He’s a stylist; a person who helps you find the
best ways to express who you really are inside through the way you dress, act,
decorate... all kinds of things like that.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Dirk kept
scribbling.

Abigail bristled. “No, not
whatever
!
Jeremy Lawrence is a really classy, special person. He treated me with dignity
and respect. We talked for more than two hours about
me
, about what
I
like, about what
I
want from my life, about how
I
would like the
world to perceive me. We talked about clothes, among a lot of other things, and
the whole time he was making suggestions and giving me advice. But he never
once said anything like, ‘Wear this because it will make you look less fat’ or
‘Big women shouldn’t dress like this because it makes them look even bigger.’
He didn’t even mention my size.”

She paused to take a breath
from her outburst, and a heavy silence hung in the room.

Savannah broke it by
placing a pitcher of lemonade on the table. “I talked to him, too, and he
seemed like a very intelligent, charming person.”

“Eh, he looked gay to me,”
Dirk said with a sniff.

Savannah’s nostrils flared,
but she kept her tone even when she replied, “Now, Dirk... you think that
everyone
who’s intelligent and charming is gay. So, we can’t go by you.”

“I don’t think he’s gay,”
Abigail added. “He told me that I’m a beautiful woman and that he was going to
help me find new ways to reveal that to the world. And he had a certain gleam
of interest in his eyes when he said it. I think he likes me.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dirk replied.
“So we’ve established that Jeremy Lawrence is a peach. A straight peach. What
else?”

“Then that Myrna gal showed
up and said that since Dr. Du Bois still hadn’t shown up, I could just hang out
there at the spa for the afternoon. Get a massage, a facial, manicure and
pedicure... stuff like that.”

“And did you?”

“I skipped the massage and
went for the rest.”

“Then you came back here?”

Abigail glanced away,
hesitated a moment, then said, “Well, not straight back here. I took a cab
downtown and walked around a little. Looked in some of the antique shops and
boutiques. Then I took a stroll on the boardwalk and had dinner at one of the
restaurants there.”

“Which one?”

“What do you mean ‘which
one’? I thought you wanted to know if I could give you any new leads on what
happened to Dr. Du Bois, but you’re actually checking
me
out here.
You’re trying to see if I have an alibi.”

Savannah stuck a panful of
cookies into the oven and set the timer. “Don’t get riled, Abby,” she said.
“Dirk checks
everybody
out. He’s sorta like you New Yorkers. He doesn’t
trust anybody.” Abby turned back to Dirk. “Okay. I ate at a Mexican restaurant
there on the beach. Maria de... something or the other. I had a beef tamale and
a chicken enchilada with extra cheese and two margaritas. Okay? So it wasn’t
exactly lowfat or low-carb, but—”

Dirk held up one hand. “I
don’t give a damn what you had to eat or drink. Cheez, chill out.”

“Are we quite done?”
Abigail rose from the table and pushed in her chair.

“Did you come back here after
dinner and stay here until you went to bed?”

“Yes, I did. Ask Savannah
if I didn’t.”

“I will.” He flipped his
notepad closed. “We’re done here. And thank you for your cooperation.”

Abigail turned on one heel
and marched outside.

Dirk shook his head. “Tammy,
I gotta tell you, kiddo, your cousin is one bristly bit—”

“Watch it. That’s my family
you’re talking about,” Tammy said.

“Yeah, and my houseguest,”
Savannah added.

He stood and tucked his
notepad and pen back into his pocket. “Can I take a couple of those cookies to
go?” he asked wearily. “If I don’t get horizontal soon, I’m gonna pass out.”

“Sure.” Savannah stuck a
few into a plastic bag and zipped it closed. She handed it to him as Tammy
walked out the door, following her cousin. “You’re right, you know,” she said.
“Abby is bristly.”

“And she’s a bitch, too.”

Savannah smiled. “Yes, she
is. But then, the value of good, honest bitchiness is highly underrated in our
society.”

He just grunted.

She slipped her arm through
his and guided him toward the front door. “Go home and take a nap, sugar,” she
told him. “You know you’re not worth shootin’ if you don’t get enough pillow
time. Go home, put on your Mickey Mouse jammies, crawl into bed and—”

“You know I don’t wear
pajamas! Real men don’t wear pajamas.”

“Yeah, yeah... or wipe
their feet at the door, or use a napkin, or drink wine, or...” She smiled. “You
bad, Dirk. We
all
know it. You ba-a-a-ad.”

Chapter

S
avannah stood in the middle
of Suzette Du Bois’s tumbled living room and closed her eyes. Unlike Granny
Reid, whom everybody knew had a psychic streak, or as Gran preferred to call
it, “the good Lord’s gift of knowledge,” Savannah didn’t claim to know anything
above what her five senses told her.

Yet, more than once, she
had stood in the center of a crime scene and felt something that her high
school science teacher couldn’t have explained. She had sensed the victim’s
fear, horror, and pain as palpably as any human touch on her skin.

But tonight, although she
closed her eyes and willed her mind and her own emotions to be still and open
to impression, she felt nothing out of the ordinary in the doctor’s home.

All she felt was a creeping
uneasiness at being in a place she wasn’t really supposed to be, doing
something relatively illegal.

Downright illegal
, she reminded herself.
There's
police tape over that front door and you crossed it, girlie. That's a definite
no-no.

Then she chuckled to
herself. Funny how the voice of reason and caution in her head always had a
soft tone with a strong Georgian accent... just like Granny Reid’s.

Savannah had left Tammy and
Abigail sitting on her sofa with a big bowl of popcorn and a couple of movies.
She had told Tammy where she was going and Tammy had begged to join her for a
bit of “sleuthing,” as Tammy-Wanna-Be-Nancy-Drew called it. But neither of them
thought it a good idea to share the details of their investigation with
Abigail, and they couldn’t think of any plausible excuse to leave her at home
by herself.

So Tammy was at the house,
pouting and watching chick flicks with her grumpy cousin while Savannah had all
the fun.

If you want to call this
fun
, she
thought, as she looked around at the mess that had once been Suzette Du Bois’s
home.
Still might be her home for all I know,
she reminded herself.
And
she might come waltzing in here any minute and want to know who I am and what
I’m doing he re.

But Savannah didn’t waste
much time thinking about that. She had lied her way out of far too many
situations in the past to suffer any serious pangs of conscience or angst at
this late date.

She did have to admit,
however, that she would like to have Tammy with her tonight. The silence in the
empty house was deafening. And even if she didn’t feel any spiritual residue of
recent evils committed inside the walls, the place was still creepy enough for
her to wish she had some company.

Dirk was busy on his
drive-by shooting case. And when she had called and invited Ryan and John, they
had gracefully declined, having tickets to a dinner theater production that
they had been looking forward to for months.

So, she was on her own and
not particularly enjoying her own company.

As best she could, she
shook off the feelings and concentrated on the job at hand, which was hard
enough even when you didn’t have the heebie-jeebies. Trying to find something,
when you didn’t have the slightest idea what you were looking for, was always a
challenge.

She had already gone over
the living room, looking for anything she and Dirk might have missed before.
Finding nothing, she decided to check the bedroom next.

Down the hallway and to the
right, she found the master bedroom. She flipped on the wall dimmer switch,
then quickly lowered the light. There was no point in announcing to the
neighbors or passers-by that someone was home.

Especially if the “someone”
wasn’t the homeowner.

As Dirk had said, the
bedroom was a disaster, like the rest of the house. Originally it had been
decorated in a rustic but elegant old-Spanish style, with a mixture of dark,
heavy furniture, cream-colored plaster walls, and light, gauzy fabrics. The
four-poster bed was draped with a sheer white canopy and the floor-to-ceiling
windows were framed with the same delicate material.

The paintings on the walls
were of exquisite old-world gardens in the Mediterranean.

But that was where the
loveliness and grace ended.

Like the rest of the house,
the room was a muddle of clutter and confusion. As she walked around, she
distinguished between what was simply bad-housekeeping—the dirty dishes stacked
on the bed tables, the piles of books and magazines beside the bed, the
crumpled clothes tossed in the corner near the bathroom door—versus the results
of what she assumed was Sergio’s searching: dresser and chest drawers open with
clothing tossed onto the floor, the desk in the corner emptied, and the closet
doors opened with clothing and shoes piled in a heap just outside.

“Thanks for making my job
even harder,” she whispered to the unseen Sergio. If he had just left
everything as it was, she would have had a much better reading on what was
going on with Dr. Suzette right before she evaporated.

She walked over to the
nightstand that had a phone and alarm clock on it. Experience told her that if
you wanted to know which side of the bed the head of the house usually slept
on, look for the phone and alarm clock.

Opening the drawers of that
stand, she was somewhat surprised at the contents. There was the usual array of
reading glasses, antacids, and sleeping pills, an address book, pens, and a
couple of notepads.

What she wasn’t expecting
was the array of pictures, magazines, calendars, and other memorabilia, all
dedicated to one woman.

Marilyn Monroe.

While she might have
understood such a collection in the bedroom of a sixty-plus-year-old man, it
was unusual in a woman’s nightstand. Especially a woman who was born after the
actress’s death.

Two pictures in particular
interested Savannah. One was a close-up of Marilyn, dressed in typical silver
screen glam, a white fur stole around her bare shoulders and flashy earrings
with emerald-cut sapphires surrounded by diamonds.

The other picture appeared
at first glance to be a duplicate. But after taking a second look, Savannah
realized that it wasn’t Marilyn at all, but a very good look-alike. This woman
lacked the charismatic sparkle and sensual quality that Marilyn had exuded in
her prime, but the features were markedly similar and the clothing and jewelry
an exact replica.

Although Savannah hadn’t
been shown a picture of Suzette Du Bois, she didn’t need anyone to tell her
that this was the doctor, striving to look like her idol.

It struck Savannah as
somehow pathetic.

Suzette was obviously a
pretty woman in her own right. Why would she want to look like someone other
than herself? And why Marilyn Monroe in particular? Marilyn had been a
beautiful woman, but...

Savannah had heard of
people who sought out plastic surgeons who would cut and stitch them into a
facsimile of some famous person, and she had always thought such folks must be
sad, lost souls with little going on in their own lives. Who would have thought
a talented doctor, famous for her own abilities and accomplishments, would have
been tempted to do such a thing?

Savannah put the pictures
back into the drawer, closed it, and continued to look around. The small
wastebasket beneath the nightstand held only a small amount of trash. She
pulled it out and looked inside.

Some used tissues, a wadded
piece of paper, and what appeared to be an empty prescription medicine bottle
were all she found.

She uncrumpled the bit of
paper and saw a string of ten numbers, separated by several dashes. It looked
like a credit card number or maybe a bank account number. Beneath the number
was a single word:
rosarita.

A bank account number and
password?

The thought also occurred
to her that if Sergio had searched the house for his lost money, maybe he
should have been looking for something less obvious than the actual cash. She
reminded herself that, these days, one saw less and less of the real green
stuff. People were paid in direct deposits and often one’s money was nothing
more than a string of numbers on a sheet of paper or a computer screen. Gone
were the good old days of tossing a pound of cash onto the bed and rolling
naked in it.

Not that I ever had enough
to actually do that with
,
she reminded herself. It was one of those dreams of hers that would probably
never be fulfilled, along with getting naked—or even semi-naked—and rolling on
absolutely anything with Mel Gibson.

Wishing upon a star,
contrary to Jiminy Cricket, didn’t always work.

She took a small tape
recorder from her jacket pocket, turned on the record button, and read off the
numbers aloud, along with the password.

Then she reached for the
small, brown medicine bottle. Instead of some drug store chain’s logo, as she
was expecting, the label had the name and address of a local vet. In fact, it
was the veterinarian where she occasionally took Diamante and Cleopatra for
their checkups. Dr. Desiree Harney. The prescription was for Sammy Du Bois:
phenobarbital, half a pill, to be taken every twelve hours.

She noted the date on the
bottle and the quantity of pills and counted the days. If Sammy had been given
his meds faithfully, this prescription would have run out three days ago.

Again, she flipped on the
recorder. “Check with Dr. Desiree about Sammy Du Bois’s phenobarbital,” she
said, “if a refill was picked up, and by whom.”

She was just leaving the
bedroom, flipping off the light when she heard a sound, a rattling from the
front of the house.

She froze, her heart
pounding in her throat.

Instinctively, she reached
inside her jacket for the Beretta in her shoulder holster. The feel of the
rough textured grip against her palm was reassuring, but not enough to take
away the jelly feeling in her knees as the adrenaline hit her system full
force.

She eased down the dark
hallway toward the foyer, being careful to step lightly and not make a sound on
the marble floor.

She could hear muttering,
male voices, speaking low to each other, but she couldn’t make out any words.
And she recognized the rattle. Someone was picking the lock on the front door.

Just as she neared the end
of the hallway and the moonlit foyer, she heard the door creak open.

She pulled her weapon and
pointed it toward the ceiling.

Finger off the trigger,
she reminded herself.

Of course her subconscious
knew the drill. It had been second nature to her for years now. But where
firearms were concerned, you always reminded yourself. You took only conscious
actions.

The door was open, she
could tell by the change of light in the entrance. She could see their shadows
stretching long across the floor only a few feet away.

She remained around the
corner, wondering what to do next. She couldn’t exactly jump out, see who it
was, and demand they explain their presence. Not when she had no business being
there herself.

“Do you think she’s here?”
one of the voices said.

“She has to be. Her car’s
half a block away,” replied the other.

They were talking about
her! She had parked the Mustang down on the corner rather than directly in
front of the house. It had to be someone who knew both her and her vehicle. The
thought was more than a little unsettling.

“We’d better watch
ourselves,” said one of them. “She might shoot us.”

The other one snickered and
with a distinctly British accent replied, “We’d better use caution, indeed.
She’s an excellent shot, that one. Why only the other day, she and I were at
the shooting range and—”

Savannah reached over and
flipped a wall switch, illuminating the hallway where she stood. She stepped
out of the shadows and said, “You two like to have scared the piddle right
outta me. I thought you had a dinner theater to go to.”

Ryan closed the door behind
them, and John hurried over to embrace her. “Savannah, love, we were just
talking about you,” he said.

“I heard.” She reholstered
her gun and gave him a hearty hug.

John turned to Ryan.
“See... she had her weapon drawn and everything. I’m telling you, we had a
close brush with the Grim Reaper just now.”

She playfully shoved him
aside and gave Ryan a peck on the cheek. “You should have called me on my cell
and let me know you were coming. I would have met you at the door, and you
wouldn’t have had to pick the lock.”

“We thought about it,” Ryan
said. “But it’s good practice for us, picking a lock now and then, and besides,
an ill-timed cell phone ring can spell trouble. I’ll never forget, I was
sneaking up behind a suspect one time, my phone started playing Beethoven’s
Fifth and…”

He grinned down at her with
that breathtaking smile of his, looking fantastic in his evening wear, a
smartly cut black suit and white shirt with French cuffs. She grinned up at him.
“Oh, don’t worry, darlin’,” she said. “When I’m expecting a call from either of
you, I always set my phone on vibrate.”