Just Desserts (13 page)

However, their decision didn’t mean that they didn’t feel it from time to time, like now.

Dirk might be losing some of his hair, he might have gained a few pounds since she had first met him, and he would never be called pretty or cute. But he was still a handsome man, in a virile, street-rough sort of way. More than once Savannah had fantasized about what it might be like to hit the sheets with him.

As she stood in the doorway with him, so close that she could feel his body heat, a few of those choice fantasies decided to surface. She shoved them back down. Not now.

“There’s something I want to tell you, Van,” he said. The tone in his voice made her pulse rate increase substantially. “Something important.”

“What is it?” she asked, feeling a bit breathless.

“Always remember...”

“Yes?”

“The blue one.”

She stared at him, totally dumbfounded. “What?”

“The blue one. When you’re disarming a bomb always cut the blue wire first.”

“Really? Always?”

“Always. Hey, it’s a good bet. I’m tellin’ you, go with the blue. You’ll have a fifty-fifty chance every time.”

A
t approximately three-thirty in the morning Savannah woke to a shrill ringing in her ears. As she tried to reorient herself from the pleasantly erotic dream she was having to the less romantic reality, she ran through a quick mental list of what the horrendous buzzing might be. Fire extinguisher? No, fire extinguishers didn’t ring. Fire
alarms
and smoke detectors rang. No, not that. The alarm. She punched a couple of buttons on the clock, even knocked it to the floor, but the infernal noise continued, jarring the teeth half out of her head.

The phone,
she thought as the handsome lover in the sexy cowboy outfit faded into the dreamland horizon, lost to her forever.
Whoever it is, I’m gonna jerk a knothole in his butt. And what’s more, I’m going to enjoy it.

She turned on the bedside lamp and looked down at the clock on the floor.
Well what do you know; it does happen sometimes,
she observed when she saw the clock had been broken in the fall and had frozen at exactly 3:32.

“Who ... ? What... ?” she mumbled sleepily into the receiver.

She heard sniffling, then a voice with a Southern drawl even thicker than her own said, “Savannah, it’s me... Atlanta. I didn’t want to wake you up, but I’m really, really, really upset, and I have to talk to somebody. Please don’t be mad.”

Groaning, Savannah flopped back onto her pillow and shoved the phone between her ear and shoulder. It wasn’t easy being the oldest of nine kids. Especially when—other than going to a lot of effort naming them all after Georgian cities—their mother had decided that she had done her duty to her brood and pretty much allowed them to fend for themselves. Stepdad Number Three didn’t object. He drove a truck fifty-one weeks out of the year, so he wasn’t exactly around to arbitrate, discipline, or nurture. As a result, most of the responsibility had fallen on Savannah’s shoulders.

She hadn’t minded back then; now it was getting a little old.

“Atlanta, you know I love you, sweetie, but you and I have seven other siblings, all of whom live within spitting distance of you. Why don’t you call one of them for a change when you’re really, really, really upset?”

“ ’Cause you’re the oldest,” she sobbed. “You’re my big sister, and you’re the only one who understands. Macon’s cranky since he lost his job at the service station, Marietta’s miserable ’cause she’s pregnant, Vidalia’s fighting with Butch again and I think she’s going to leave him, and Waycross is still in jail for stealing those hubcaps ... they were off Judge Patterson’s Cadillac, you know.”

“Okay, okay.” Savannah sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, resisting the urge to pull out a hunk. If she were the only one who understood her sixteen-year-old sister, the kid was in trouble—because she didn’t see what was so horrible in the girl’s life that would cause such agony.

“So, what’s up?” she asked, steeling herself for the soliloquy that was inevitable. Atlanta’s sob stories could make Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech sound like a pep rally led by Norman Vincent Peale.

“It’s Mom again.”

“Gee, what a surprise.”

“She told me I can’t see J.D. anymore. Ever! She said if she caught me talking to him, even on the phone, she’d take a razor strap to me.”

“Mom won’t take a razor strap to you. Trust me. It’s just a quaint Southern figure of speech. Mom wouldn’t know a razor strap if one came up and bit her on the ass.” She paused, then added, “And if you tell her I said that,
I’ll
take one to you the next time I see you.”

“When is that going to be? I miss you. I want you to come home.”

“Atlanta, I can’t.”

“Yes, you could.”

“All right, I could, but I don’t want to. I have my own life here now, and I like it.”

“Sure you do. Who wouldn’t?” She sounded awfully bitter for only sixteen. “You live in California. I’m stuck here in stupid old Georgia, and you’ve got it all. Sunshine. Palm trees. Beaches and—”

“Earthquakes, brushfires, floods, mud slides ...”

“I’ve never even seen a beach!”

“You’ve also never been in a 6.2 earthquake or had to wet down your roof so that it wouldn’t burn. You’ve got it pretty good, kid. Don’t bitch.”

“Mom says you cuss too much.”

“Mom’s right. Do whatever she says. If she tells you not to see RJ.—”

“J.D.!”

“Whatever. If she says no, she’s got a good reason. He’s probably a punk.”

“That’s what she said. She thinks just because he wears black, heavy metal Tshirts and rides a Harley, that he’s a—”

“He listens to heavy metal and rides a Harley! She’s right; he’s a jerk. He’ll just get you drunk and knock you up. Don’t you ever talk to him again.”

“You’re my sister, not my mother. Don’t tell me what to do.” The sobbing began again, this time in earnest. “Now that you’re getting old, you’re just like Mom. You used to be so cool, Savannah. But now you’re getting all fucked up, too, and—”

“You watch your mouth, Atlanta Reid. A young lady does not use the ‘F’ word, and you know it! Mom
should
take a strap to you.”

“You don’t understand!” The sobbing crossed the line into hysteria. “Now you’ve let me down, too. No-o-o-oo-body understands!

“Oh, come on, ’Lanta. Things can’t be that bad. Maybe you’re overreacting just a little.”

Click.

Her sister had hung up on her.

Savannah couldn’t believe it. First, she woke her up in the middle of the night and dumped on her. Then, just because she didn’t play the poor-dear-poor-dear game the way she wanted her to, she hung up on her.

“You little shit,” Savannah said as she replaced the receiver and turned off the lamp. “Fuck you, too.”

No sooner had she begun to drift back into a nice dream—there was no cowboy in sight, but the Tarzan-type guy in a nearby tree certainly had possibilities—than the phone rang again.

“Damn it, Atlanta,” she shouted into the receiver, “I understand that you’re having a crisis of monumental proportions, and I don’t want to be the one to violate your basic trust in humanity by turning you away ... but do you suppose it could possibly wait until morning?”

There was a long, heavy silence on the other end. All Savannah could hear was her own labored breathing.

Then a soft, female voice said, “Excuse me?”

Savannah didn’t need to hear more to know that it wasn’t Atlanta on the line. Atlanta’s drawl, plus that special whining quality, made her voice unmistakable.

This woman was older and had an Eastern accent.

“I’m sorry,” Savannah said. “I thought you were someone else. Who is this?”

Again, a long pause. “My name doesn’t matter, but I’d like to help you.”

Savannah sat up, fully awake. “I would appreciate that,” she said slowly, carefully. “How can you help me?”

She heard the woman on the other end take a deep breath, as though collecting herself. “Tomorrow night, at the Stardust Pavilion, there’s going to be a charity fashion show.”

“Yes? And...?”

“And you should go.”

Savannah began to scribble frantically on the pad beside the phone. “The Stardust... okay. Why should I go?”

“Because I have good reason to believe that the person who killed Jonathan Winston is going to be there. I just thought you should know.”

Her tone sounded as though she was about to sign off.

“Wait a minute!” Savannah said. “If you really want to help me, tell me who it is.”

“I can’t. This is all I can do right now. You’ll have to take it from there.”

“Will you be there tomorrow night?” she asked.

But she could already hear the dial tone on the other end. She had been hung up on, twice in one night.

After staring at what she had written on the pad for a few moments Savannah turned out the lamp and settled into bed again, her mind churning.

Any chance of sleep was out of the question now. The king of the jungle had gone the way of the cowboy. When she closed her eyes the only man Savannah could see was a murdered Jonathan Winston. And the image was anything but romantic or sleep-inducing.

The moment Savannah stepped into the glittering gold-and-white ballroom of the Stardust Pavilion she knew she had committed a major fashion faux pas. So much for the theory that a simple black dress and a string of pearls were appropriate for all occasions. As far as the eye could see across the ocean of beautiful people, hers was the only black dress in sight. And pearls didn’t appear to be the rage this season either.

How was she supposed to know that classic formal was out and colorful weird was in?

As she meandered around the perimeter of the gathering, Savannah attracted a discomfiting number of curious and contemptuous looks from the female sector. On the other hand, the males appeared less fashion-conscious, and their attention seemed riveted more on her ample cleavage and nicely turned calves than on her dress.

When she had called this morning to inquire about the event she had been told that there would be a little cocktail getto-know-everybody party before the actual show. Apparently this was it.

Savannah felt as out of place as her funereal dress. High society held little attraction for her. She would have preferred to be down at Mike’s Bar and Grill, swigging a beer and munching an order of Mike’s famous onion rings.

But then, she was here to do a job, not party. Her presence was mandatory, her participation optional.

She took the better part of a half an hour to locate Beverly Winston, and when she did Savannah was shocked at the change. The councilwoman had gone through a metamorphosis. Her no-nonsense, totally business look had disappeared. Instead, she was a vision floating gracefully about the room in pale peach and ivory layers of the sheerest, most delicate fabric Savannah had ever seen.

Amazing what a trip to the beauty parlor, some face goop, and a haute-couture evening gown could do, Savannah thought, still not quite believing the transformation. And the diamonds dripping off her ears and fingers didn’t hurt either.

At her side stood a tall, strikingly handsome man—not the chief, Savannah noted. Blond, probably in his late forties, he looked deliciously urbane in his gray, loose-fitting designer suit. His hair had a meticulously mussed look, one of those “casual” styles that required constant attention. Savannah liked to call it “carefully cultivated chaos.”

He leaned close to Beverly when he spoke to her, too close to be a casual friend but not quite within a lover’s proximity.

For a moment he glanced in Savannah’s direction and saw her watching them. She looked away quickly, but she knew in the two seconds in which their eyes had met that he had realized that her interest was more than casual.

In her peripheral vision Savannah watched him bend his head to say something to Beverly, who immediately looked her way. The councilwoman appeared distressed for only a split second; then her professional mask slid effectively into place. She nodded a greeting to Savannah, who nodded back.

After saying something else to her escort Beverly slipped her arm through his and led him over to the edge of the room where Savannah stood.

“Detective ...” she said as she offered her hand to Savannah. “... how nice to see you here tonight. I had no idea you were interested in the fashion industry.”

“It’s a recent fascination,” Savannah replied smoothly, noticing that Beverly’s hand was cool but damp.

“I’d like you to meet someone who is extremely influential in the business, designer and manufacturer Paul Connors. Paul has been a friend of the family for years. I’m sure you’ve heard of his line, Elite, etc.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Savannah replied enthusiastically. “I have at least a dozen of your wonderful creations hanging in my closet, even as we speak.”

Paul gave her a quick once-over, from the simple strand of fake pearls to her $19.99 pumps. “Really?” he said with a half grin, accepting her sarcasm with more grace than she had expected.

“No,” she replied. “Not really. Most of us police types just buy right off the rack. Sad but true.”

His eyes softened and he chuckled. “We’ve all bought off the rack at one time or another, Detective,” he said. “There are some very nice choices available to the ... shall we say ... common man in department stores. I should know; I designed some of them. Under a different name and label, of course.”

“Of course.” Savannah decided to revise her initial opinion of Paul Connors. He was a snob, but he was a pleasant one, as ready to make fun of himself as anyone else.

“Paul is being modest,” Beverly said, looking at her escort with obvious admiration. “Every year he puts this event together and donates all of the proceeds to a local charity. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but he pulls it off beautifully.”

Savannah looked around the room with its quietly elegant decorations and had to agree. From the exquisite ice sculpture of a school of dolphin to the snowy white linens and soft touches of gold in the floral arrangements, everything spoke of understated grace and refinement. Savannah filed away the information in a mental drawer marked SHOWERS AND BIRTHDAY PARTIES—DECORATING IDEAS.