Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) (18 page)

 

 

As predicted, the gang began to pour into the tiny house at exactly the same time as the gravy was poured into the bowl. On the back porch, pillowcases bulging with laundry began to stack up next to the washing machine.

“Are we having a wedding today or not?” Vidalia asked as she herded her two sets of twins into the kitchen and in the direction of the table. “I called Mari last night, but she . . .” Giving Savannah a loaded sideways look, she continued, “. . . she wasn’t feeling like talking and said she didn’t know yet.”

Didn’t feel like talking, huh?
Savannah thought as she pulled the pan of biscuits from the oven.
Drunker than a skunk on a Friday-night bender is more like it.

Alma rushed through, a tornado dressed in her Donut Heaven uniform, and grabbed a couple of biscuits, wrapping them in a paper napkin. She bent over briefly to pet both cats. “If Mari wants me to stand up with her in that ugly peach dress, she’s going to have to call me at work and let me know in time to come home and change.”

“Yes, we’re all terribly worried about not getting the opportunity to wear those dresses,” Savannah said, swatting her on the rear with the oven mitt as she flew past on her way out the back door.

“I lo-o-ove that dress, and I can’t wait to wear it.” Vidalia sank onto a chair and looked around the table. “I’m going to wear mine again to the Sweethearts’ Cotillion over in Auburndale. Where’s the strawberry jam? You know I don’t like peach preserves.”

“Well, I don’t live here,” Savannah said, gently pushing Gran back down onto her chair, “but I’d bet the jam’s . . . in the refrigerator. Feel free to get up and help yourself.”

Jesup stumbled in from the bedroom, wearing men’s black boxer shorts and a gray T-shirt. “I told Mari point-blank that I’m
not
wearing that stupid dress. I refuse to be seen in public wearing that abomination.”

Gran looked her up and down. “But you don’t mind being seen at the breakfast table lookin’ like that. Go put some breeches on.”

With a deep sigh and an exaggerated eye roll, Jesup turned around and stomped out of the kitchen.

Cordele had just appeared, neatly dressed and tightly buttoned into her white blouse and navy skirt. “Personally, I don’t think any of us are going to be attending a wedding today. Marietta has serious commitment issues, stemming from her parental abandonment issues, and since Lester is a prime example of the Peter Pan Complex, it’s just as well that they—”

“Cordele, shove it—a biscuit, that is—in your mouth,” Savannah said, smiling sweetly. “Before they get cold, that is.”

“Where’s the butter?”

Vidalia smirked. “Let me guess . . . it’s in the refrigerator. Help yourself.”

Savannah slid a plate brimming with eggs, bacon, sausage, and grits in front of her grandmother. “There you go, Gran. Sunny side up, just the way you like them.”

She turned to the rest of the table. “And the skillet’s right there. Feel free to help yourselves.”

“But . . . but . . .” Vidalia sputtered.

“Gran is the one who always . . .” Cordele added.

“I like Granny Reid’s eggs,” Vidalia’s daughter, Jillian, whined, her lower lip trembling. “Mommy’s have those icky ruffles around the edges, and they’re hard to chew.”

“But Granny Reid is busy eating her own breakfast,” Savannah said, pressing down hard on her grandmother’s shoulders to keep her from rising from her chair. “And if your mama’s eggs aren’t quite as good as Gran’s, it’s because Mommy hasn’t had as much
practice
. The more she does it, the better she’ll get.”

The phone on the wall rang, and again Savannah held her grandmother down. “If you try to get up one more time before that plate’s empty, I’m going to superglue your backside to your chair,” she said.

Gran looked up at her, shocked for a second; then she grinned broadly. “Okay,” she said.

Savannah reached for the phone. “Hello, this is Grand Central Station, but it
isn’t
Granny Reid’s Country Café. May I help you?”

“Savannah?”

She recognized the caller instantly. “Tom?”

“Yeah. Come over to the country club. Right now.”

“What is it?”

“Maybe an accident,” he said. She could hear the misgivings in his voice. “But I think it’s probably another murder. Shake a leg and get over here as quick as you can. If you want to, bring that buddy of yours—Dirt, Kirk, whatever—along, too.”

He hung up before she could ask the obvious: “Who’s dead?”

 

“S
tafford must figure he’s in way over his head, if he asked you to bring
me
along,” Dirk said as he pulled the rental car into the country club lot and parked next to Tom’s cruiser.

“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” Savannah replied.

“Do you suppose he’ll mind that I came along?” Tammy asked from the backseat.

“From the way Tom sounded on the phone, I’d bet that he’ll be happy to get all the help he can,” Savannah assured her. “You’ve got to understand, in this little town, a burglary is a catastrophe. I’ll bet there hasn’t been a double homicide since Lord knows when, if ever.”

They got out of the car and walked across the lot. “Tom’s got his hands full,” Savannah continued, “and I don’t know how much help Sheriff Mahoney is when it comes to investigations. He’s more the simple, ‘swing the nightstick and keep the peace’ type.”

Even from the parking lot, they could hear voices—loud and excited—coming from the direction of the pool.

“Well, that answers the question ‘Where?’,” Savannah said as they headed in that direction. “I guess we’ll be finding out ‘Who’ soon enough.”

When they arrived at the pool area, they saw a yellow police tape circling the chain-link fence that surrounded the pool. A dozen or so spectators stood, their fingers laced through the fence, chattering to each other as they watched the show inside.

“Good, at least he’s set up a perimeter,” Dirk said.

The ring of gawkers opened a space near the gate to allow them through, though several of them shouted warnings: “Hey, Deputy Stafford says you’re not supposed to go in there!” “You’d better not; you’ll get in big trouble!”

Three figures knelt on the side of the pool, examining a body that lay sprawled on the shiny blue and white tiles. Tom, Herb Jameson, the mortician, and the little pharmacist cum law enforcement officer, Fred Jeter, were bent over the corpse, deeply involved in a hushed conversation.

As Savannah and her cohorts approached, Tom was the first to notice. At first he looked irritated, then relieved when he recognized them.

“Who are those dopey-looking pinheads with him?” Dirk whispered to Savannah.

“A volunteer sometime-deputy and the local mortician who’s now the acting coroner.”

“Oh, man, we
are
in trouble.”

“Be nice, Dirko,” Tammy warned him.

“Shut up, bimbo-head.”

“Stop, both of you! Or I won’t take you out for ice cream later.”

Savannah craned her neck, trying to see the body’s face, but Herb Jameson’s backside was blocking her view.

Visual obstructions aside, she knew even without confirmation the identity of the dead person. That long, lean, muscular body and skimpy red swimsuit were all too familiar to her.

The short life of Pretty Boy Alvin Barnes had apparently come to a tragic end.

And, while Savannah certainly hadn’t been president of his fan club, she hated to see anyone taken so young.

“Thanks for coming,” Tom said as he stood and motioned them over.

Once brief introductions were made, the Moonlight Magnolia gang joined the others in a ring around the deceased.

“Who found him?” Savannah asked, carefully scanning the body for anything unusual that might point to a cause of death other than the obvious—drowning.

“The caretaker,” Tom said. “He came out this morning at seven to skim the pool and saw him floating facedown in the water. He called me and Dr. Fleming. Doc got here about the same time I did, and he pronounced him.”

“No chance of resuscitating him?” Tammy asked.

Tom shook his head. “Rigor was already present. The doctor took the internal body temperature and said he probably died late last night. But he wasn’t sure, because he didn’t know how the water would affect the natural heat loss.”

“Is that the doctor’s incision?” Dirk pointed to a small, bloodless cut on the body’s abdomen.

“Yeah,” Tom replied. “He said he needed to stick the thermometer into the body like that to get an accurate reading.”

“He was right. That’s how they do it,” Herb Jameson said with quiet authority.

Savannah looked down into the open, vacant, staring eyes and wondered, as she always did when looking at a corpse, at how empty the body appeared once the soul had departed.

Noting the Tag Heuer watch on his wrist, Savannah remembered how proud he had been of it. A lot of good the expensive jewelry did him now.

“Have you turned him over yet?” Dirk asked.

“Oh, yes,” Fred Jeter said, his eyes sparkling behind his thick lenses. “We flipped him over before, and that’s when we saw it.”

“Saw what?” Savannah asked.

Tom reached for the body’s arms and motioned Dirk to get the feet. “Let’s turn him, and you can see for yourself.”

Once they had rotated the dead man, the gaping split in the back of his scalp was all too obvious.

“Ouch,” Tammy said. “That must have hurt.”

“Actually,” Tom added, “Dr. Fleming said the blow might have knocked him right out, so he may not have felt much of anything.”

Herb Jameson reached out and gingerly touched the edge of the wound. “I’ve been a member of the club for years,” he said. “And I often swim out here. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Alvin do a fancy flip off the board, showing off, you know. I’m not surprised he whacked his head like that.”

Dirk frowned, studying the ugly gash. “That’s what you guys figure happened? He did this himself, diving off the board?”

“And hitting his head on it, yeah,” Tom replied. “At least, that’s what Dr. Fleming and Herb here think.”

“It’s a common enough accident,” Herb said. “You’ve got to be careful with those dives. If you smack your head on the end of the board on the way down, you can be unconscious by the time you hit the water. If you’re alone and nobody fishes you out, you drown.”

“Was Alvin in the habit of swimming alone out here, late at night?” Savannah wanted to know.

Herb nodded. “He sure was. Sometimes he and Bonnie . . . well, you know, they liked each other and . . .”

“So we heard,” Tammy said.

“Have you spoken to Miss Bonnie yet?” Savannah asked, trying to make the question sound like an offhanded remark.

Tom gave her a loaded look. “Nope. I haven’t. I was looking for her and Alvin all night long. Well, now Alvin’s accounted for, but it seems that Bonnie’s still missing.”

 

“This here’s Alvin’s locker. I’ll get it open for you, right away.” The grizzled old caretaker gave them a yellow, crooked smile as he spun the combination on locker number 27. The lock released and he deftly removed it.

“There ya go,” he said proudly, as he threw the door open and stepped aside.

“Thanks, Zachariah,” Tom said as he took a giant flashlight from his belt, turned it on, and shone the beam inside the locker. “You’ve been a big help. You go along home and take a nap. It’s been a hard day, what with you finding him and all.”

“That
was
awful,” Zachariah agreed, his proud smile temporarily dimmed. “It’s been a long time . . . since the war in fact, that I saw a dead person. Outside o’ the funeral home, I mean. I’m bound to have a few nightmares about it.”

“Yeah, we’re all going to have those,” Fred Jeter said with a shudder. “Him staring off into space like that gives me the creeps.”

Savannah ignored the conversation and stepped across the long bench that ran between the two rows of dressing-room lockers. She moved closer to Tom and Dirk, who were peering into the late tennis instructor’s unit.

“What do you see?” she asked. “Anything interesting?”

Tammy wriggled her way in, too, standing on tiptoe to look over Savannah’s shoulder.

“Just a white shirt and pair of shorts,” Tom said, “hanging on the hook there.”

He gingerly lifted the garments out and held them up for all to see.

“No blood on them,” Dirk said, echoing what everyone was thinking.

“And some tennis shoes,” Tom continued his inventory, “and a shaving kit.”

When he unzipped the leather case, Savannah got a strong whiff of the musky fragrance that Alvin had been wearing when she’d questioned him.

“Nothing special in here that I can see.” Tom handed the case off to Dirk, who looked it over and passed it along to Savannah.

She searched the contents and realized that the potent, musky smell was actually from a stick of roll-on deodorant, not a shave lotion or cologne.

“Some travel information,” Tom said, lifting out a handful of vacation brochures, featuring luxury cruises to the Caribbean.

“Suppose he was daydreaming,” Savannah asked, “or coming up with actual ways to spend some ill-gotten gains?”

“What do you mean?” Tom gave the literature to Herb and turned back to the locker.

“I mean . . . he had put a substantial amount down on a Lincoln Navigator, and Bonnie had done the same on a matching one. I was just suggesting that they might be lining their pockets with somebody’s hard-earned money . . . not their own.”

“If they had any money,” Tom agreed, “it would have been from someone else’s efforts. Those two never had anything that somebody else didn’t give to them.”

“The Tag Heuer watch?” Savannah asked. “That had to cost a pretty penny.”

Tom, Herb, Fred, and Zachariah all traded smirks.

“What?” Dirk asked. “You guys got some idea who paid for that, too?”

Tom chuckled. “Let’s just say . . . a lady who will remain unnamed. A rich lady in town who has nothing to do with this case, but kept Alvin busy on the side.”

“Are you sure she’s got nothing to do with this?” Dirk said.

“I’m sure.” Tom removed the sneakers from the floor of the locker, then trailed the beam of his flashlight over every inch of the now-empty interior. “She’s got more money than sense, but she’s no killer. The only law she’s broken is the law of matrimony.”

“There’s been a few of those kind of ladies here at the club,” Herb said, “who’ve kept Alvin busy. He’s kinda like Bonnie that way: Didn’t mind . . . getting his hands dirty . . . for a bit of extra cash or a pretty toy.”

“That’s it,” Tom said, sounding disappointed. “The shirt and shorts, which he probably wore today. These shoes . . .” He held them out for display. “. . . Which have his wallet and car keys in the right one and his socks in the left. The shave kit. That’s all she wrote.”

“Wait a minute.” Herb Jameson studied the shoes thoughtfully. “The socks and his wallet, but . . .”

“Yeah, so?” Dirk leaned over him, practically breathing down his neck. “Is there something you want to tell us?”

The mortician nodded. “Something’s different.”

“What? What’s different?” Savannah asked, resisting the urge to strangle the information out of him.

“The watch.”

They all looked at each other questioningly.

“What about the watch, Herb?” Tom said. “Tell us.”

“It just occurred to me. His watch is still on his wrist. He wouldn’t have been swimming with that expensive watch on.”

“Why not?” Savannah asked. “It’s a Tag Heuer. They’re water-resistant, believe me.”

“I know,” Herb replied. “I told him that when I saw him taking it off here in the locker room . . . several times in fact. I teased him about it, that he was afraid to wear it in the water. But he was obnoxiously proud of that watch. He had a ritual; he always took it off and stuck it in the toe of his tennis shoe along with his wallet and keys.”

“Well, maybe he got over his fear of drowning the thing this time,” Dirk said, sounding suddenly bored with the whole conversation. “There’s nothing here. Let’s put it all back and go. That body’s getting ripe out there in your hearse.”

“Hold on,” Herb said, excited. “Did you say those clothes, the shirt and the shorts, were hanging on the hook?”

“Yeah,” Tom replied. “The hook on the right. Why?”

“No, no way.” Herb was practically jumping up and down. “Alvin was a neatnik, really picky about the way he looked. And he always made a big deal about folding his shirt and his shorts just right and laying them down, all nice and neat, there on top of his shoes.”

They gave him a look that said they thought he was much too pleased with himself for making this mundane observation.

“Really,” he insisted. “I’m telling you, he had a routine, like a ritual. We all noticed it, even hassled him about it. He’d stick the wallet and the watch in one shoe, the socks in the other, then he’d make a big production out of folding his shirt and shorts and putting them right there on top.”

“Okay,” Tom said, “but the socks and the wallet are where they belong.”

“So whoever put those clothes in there must’ve known part of his routine, but not all of it.”

Tom shook his head and sighed. “Herb, I know you think you’re on to something, but—”

“Just a second.” Savannah did a quick mental inventory of the locker’s contents. “Something else is missing.”

“What?” Tammy asked.

“Underwear.” She waited while they all looked at each other and took stock of the clothes. “I mean, Alvin might have been one of those fellows who liked to just let things flop free in the breeze, but . . .”

“Oh, he wore underwear,” old Zachariah piped up. He had been standing, silent and forgotten behind them, leaning against the wall. “Yessiree, bob! Alvin was famous for his knickers!”

“That’s true! He was!” Herb said. “Everybody knew that he wore under wear!”

Savannah was almost afraid to ask, but... “How?”

Zachariah cackled and smiled a big, snaggly, gummy grin. “He was always wearing those thin white shorts, and everything showed right through ’em. Yeah, Alvin was famous for his leopard prints, and those red and purple paisley ones, and at Christmas . . .” He practically collapsed on the floor from laughing, and Savannah started to worry that maybe it was a hysterical reaction from finding the body earlier. “And at Christmas time,” Zachariah said between gasps, “he wore some that said, ‘Kiss Me Under the Mistletoe.’ And guess where the mistletoe was?”