Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs

by Charles Dougherty

  He joined a group of three obvious tourists for breakfast, making up a table of four. His tablemates were a couple, accompanied by the wife's younger sister. They were passing through Savannah on their way to Disney World. Dave had the view that the only reason to go to Disney World was to entertain your children, but obviously these folks found some attraction there as adults. The woman who did most of the talking seemed curious about Dave -- in the same way she might be curious about a talking dog.

  "You're the first southerner we've ever met," she said. "Where are you from, originally?"

  "Well, ma'am, I grew up here, in Savannah," Dave answered.

  "Have you always lived here? Why are you staying in a B and B?" she wondered aloud.

  "No, I left to go to college about 30 years ago, and I've just come back for a visit. I don't have any family left here, and I like the downtown area, so I picked this B and B because of the neighborhood."

  "So they have colleges in the South?" she asked. "What do they teach you?"

  "Well, mostly, you know, to read, and stuff like that," Dave said, unable to resist such an opening. "I took some courses on cotton field management in graduate school, but that's a pretty hard area to find a job in since we lost the war, so I had to move up north where I could get work. What are you planning to see in Savannah?" he asked, hoping to change the subject before he let himself get carried away.

  "Oh, we're taking a tour with this company we found on the Internet. We'll see the historic places and stuff and go to this open-air seafood restaurant for lunch. That's a low country boil, whatever that is. We didn't really plan to come here, but we needed a break from the driving. It's a long way from Tennessee to Florida, with not much to see."

  Dave was relieved when their breakfast came. His social skills were somewhat taxed by the effort to maintain a conversation with this bunch.

  At 9 o’clock sharp, Lizzie stopped her van in front of the Waving Girl. She let the engine idle as she sat at the curb waiting for her morning’s customers to come out. As early as it was, it was already hot enough so she wanted to keep the air-conditioning running. This was an all-day tour, which in some ways she didn’t like as much as the half-day tours she sometimes booked. If she got a stimulating group, the all-day tours were more fun, but stimulating groups of tourists seemed to be as rare as cool days in August. If she got a more typical group, she would have trouble keeping her line of patter going smoothly. Conversing with the typical tourist was like teaching a pig to sing.

  Her musings were interrupted as the door to the bed and breakfast opened and four people appeared. There were two women who looked enough alike to be sisters, and two mismatched men. One man was dressed like a tourist; he belonged with the sisters. The other man was well groomed, dressed in khaki slacks, a polo shirt, and deck shoes. He looked somewhat familiar, but Lizzie couldn’t place him. He chatted with the others for a moment, smiled, gave them a half-wave, and went back inside. Lizzie remembered then that this was a group of three, and shifted her attention to the people waddling and heaving as they came down the steps.

  The woman in the lead had a beehive hairdo of an unnatural orange color, the only other occurrence of which Lizzie had ever seen was in the other woman’s helmet-like coiffure. Apparently, the women shared the same drugstore hair dye, and Lizzie guessed that at some time in the past, they had been redheads. To Lizzie, they immediately became Beehive and Helmet-head. Beehive had on hot pink Bermuda shorts that clashed with her hair, and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. Helmet-head wore a pair of light blue cropped sweatpants that showed off her thick ankles, and a scruffy white tank top with "Princess" spelled out in rhinestones. Lizzie thought the woman looked like the worlds' oldest pre-teen, and she was thankful that at least Helmet-head wasn't wearing one of those tops that bares the midriff. Helmet-head paused in her forward progress to wait for Beehive to climb into the van, but it seemed to take a few seconds after she stopped walking for the tremors in her massive body to cease. Lizzie was sure she was imagining the aftershocks of wobbling flesh – they couldn't really be happening. Helmet-head mounted the folding step into the van with determination, and Lizzie felt the vehicle list to the right as the van's suspension groaned under the load.

  Their man waited until both women were seated and the van had settled on its springs before he attempted to enter. Lizzie noticed he was attired in a manner consistent with his female companions. Blessedly, though, camera bags mostly concealed his clothes, except for his baseball cap, which bore the logo "Yankees". No shit, thought Lizzie. At least he wasn’t wearing it backwards. Lizzie braced herself for a long day. She said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t get so bored with the people that she told the same stories over and over again. It had happened to her before, but she didn't think her clients had noticed. It was time for Lizzie to turn on the Southern charm.

  "Good morning," she said brightly. "Welcome to Goodenevil Tours. I’m Lizzie Jones Carter, and I’m surely happy to have the chance to show you all my hometown. Savannah is called the ‘Hostess City of the South.’ People are friendly everywhere in the South, and when they meet you, they will always ask where you’re from. In Savannah, the next thing anybody will ask you is what you’d like to drink. If anybody’s thirsty, there are all sorts of cold drinks in the little fridge. You all just help yourselves."

  Beehive, obviously in charge, declined on behalf of the group, explaining that they had just finished breakfast. She introduced herself as Mabel, and explained that the other woman was her "baby sister, Maggie." Their cameraman was Elmer, Mabel’s husband.

  "Pleased to meet you all," Lizzie responded. "Where are you all from?" she asked, betting on Cleveland or Pittsburgh.

  "Cleveland," wheezed Beehive, leaning back into her seat, tugging at the legs of her shorts.

  Lizzie could see in her rear-view mirror that Helmet-head had pulled the bottom of her tank top up and was fussing with the drawstring waistband of her sweatpants. She caught Lizzie’s eye in the mirror and complained in a whiny voice that she was losing weight on the trip, because Elmer wouldn’t stop for food often enough.

  "I've lost so much weight already my pants keep falling off," she confessed. Lizzie fervently hoped Helmet-head’s efforts with the drawstring would be successful, as she engaged in a mental battle to avoid visualizing the result of failure.

  "What brings you folks to Savannah," Lizzie asked, hoping to change the subject as she pulled away from the curb.

  "We're on our way to Disney World," Beehive explained. "Me and Maggie seen this show on the cable about how they made a movie about a book of some kind that somebody wrote about a murder in Savannah, and there’s all these neat places and history and stuff in the show about the movie, so we decided to make a detour to see Savannah. You seen the show?"

  "Yes, I have. I was living here when all of that happened. I read the book, and watched the movie, and even saw the show about the making of the movie," Lizzie said.

  "So you've been here a long time," Elmer opined. "Have you lived here all your life?"

  "Not yet," Lizzie replied. "I grew up here, though, and I had just moved back when the murder the book was about took place."

  "It’s a true story, then?" Beehive wanted to know.

  "Well, the book described a murder that really happened. To say the book is a true story might be a little bit of a stretch," Lizzie said. "Lots of people have started coming to Savannah because of the publicity from the book, though."

  "Like us, huh?" Beehive asked.

  Lizzie thought to herself that most of them had actually seen the movie, and a few had even read the book, but she didn't say anything. By then, Elmer had spotted the box of books by Lizzie’s seat. He fumbled one out of the box and scrutinized the cover, looking perplexed.

  "I recognize the picture," he finally said, talking about the cover photo.

  Lizzie said, with no trace of her true feelings in her voice, "That’s the actual book from which the movie was made. I keep a few on hand as a co
nvenience for my clients. If you’d like it, it’s $24.95, the cover price. I just like to save people the trouble of trying to find it, because it's pretty old these days."

  "Neat!" squeaked Elmer, fishing in his wallet for $25, which he passed up to Lizzie quickly, as if he thought his wife might stop him.

  Lizzie put the money in the tray on her dashboard, thinking to herself that it really would be a nuisance for these people to have to stop at the outlet mall on Interstate 95 where she bought the books for $2.95. She thought of it as her contribution toward making America more literate. Most of the clients who bought copies of "The Book" from her wouldn’t set foot in a bookstore, she thought. Not even one in an outlet mall. Persuading herself that she had done her good deed for the day, she pulled out of a side street into the slow-moving traffic and started her spiel. As her mind shifted into automatic, she realized that her book scam differed only in the details from Donald’s effort with her brochures. Maybe that’s why she didn’t hold it against him.

  Connie Barrera woke up to a loud, thumping bass sound, a monotonous melody, and a splitting headache. Her mouth felt like she imagined the inside of a homeless person’s running shoes would feel. When she was awake enough to identify the thumping bass as her pulse, pounding in her temples, she pegged the melody as her alarm clock. She thought today would be a fine day to stay home from work at the clinic. Besides, she was beginning to remember that she was pissed off at Rick, even though she couldn’t quite recall why.

  She dragged herself out of the bed, realizing as she did that she was still wearing yesterday's clothes. She felt her way into the kitchen and mixed a Bloody Mary, which she carried into the bathroom. She carefully adjusted the shower to a soothing temperature, and climbed in with the drink. After a few minutes under the spray and the better part of the Bloody Mary, she remembered her clothes. She finished the drink, reached through a small opening in the sliding door, and set the glass carefully on the vanity. She took off the sodden clothes, dropping them to the shower floor. She could deal with them later. She got out of the shower, dried herself off, took a handful of aspirin and went back to bed.

  Two hours later, she woke up again, feeling like she would live. She wasn’t sure yet if that was desirable, but she could tell her condition was improving. She made another trek to the kitchen, this time to get a container of yogurt out of the refrigerator. She put on a pot of coffee and sat down at the breakfast bar to eat her yogurt. When she got up to get her first cup of coffee, she turned on the little portable television over the counter, just in time to catch the end of a story about a hit and run accident in which a teenaged girl had died. That served to bring her hazy memories of the night before into focus. She remembered dancing at some bar, and then quarreling with Rick in the car. She could almost hear the sound of the skidding tires as Rick tried to miss the person who had stepped off the curb just as they rounded the corner. If he hadn’t been going so fast, he wouldn’t have hit her, Connie thought.

  Then she remembered arguing with Rick about going back to help the person. Now the girl was dead. She wondered if Rick remembered enough about being an M.D. to have been of any assistance. He’d been a charlatan for so long he’d probably forgotten what it was like to be a real doctor.

  Rick had been a minor rock musician when they had met years ago in southern California. She had been a beautician then, and had met him when he came into the shop to get his hair done. Rick once had promise as a musician. He even had a Master of Arts in performance. He had been making a marginal living with his little band, living in a garage apartment in his in-laws’ backyard.

  His wife was a ditz, whose father was a successful plastic surgeon. Rick's wife worked for her father as a clerk, handling billing and collections. That kept her busy during the day, and she was usually too tired to be able to do the late night bar circuit with Rick and his band, so he had been free to fool around with the groupies like Connie. He and Connie had a serious relationship that was only about a year shorter than his marriage.

  After a couple of years, Rick’s greed, combined with his in-laws’ insistence that he make something of himself, prompted him to apply to medical school. With his father-in-law’s coaching, connections, and financial largesse, Rick was admitted and managed to graduate. Connie had kept Rick entertained and given him emotional support when his wife and her family reminded him he was worthless and totally dependent on them.

  Connie understood how greed motivated Rick. After all, it was her own greed that led her to follow Rick to Savannah. He was fun, but lots of guys could be fun; most guys didn't offer the long-term financial security she had found in her relationship with Rick. She thought the relationship was worth a little effort, at least until something better came along.

  As the coffee, yogurt, and aspirin overcame the residual effects of last night’s debauchery, Connie began to reflect on how funny life’s twists and turns were. Rick had tried his hand at the more or less honest practice of medicine in California, but he found it far too demanding. He had eventually gone to work at a weight-loss clinic owned by a somewhat shady former car dealer. His function had been to sign whatever prescriptions had been put in front of him. The patrons of the clinic occasionally lost weight, but they invariably became addicted to controlled substances, if they had not been addicted when they started the regimen. The state finally caught on by the time the owner had 15 clinics spread over California, but the operation had sufficient trappings of legitimacy that the best the state could do was to shut it down. They tried and failed to suspend Rick’s medical license, but he got so much adverse publicity that he could no longer practice medicine in California. His wife and her parents raged at him.

  Connie shored up his self-worth. She had moved on from twisting hair to making a good living as a color consultant. She worked for a franchised operation where she advised people on what color clothing and makeup would make them look their best, given their skin tone and hair and eye color. As Rick moped around her condo one day while she and his wife were both at their respective jobs, he read some of her literature on colors and perception and self-image. He recognized that Connie’s job and the weight-loss business had a lot in common. Both appealed to hopeless vanity. By the time Connie got home, Rick was well into developing a business plan that had as its basis the notion of a custom diet based on eating foods of the proper color to complement the patient’s complexion. He got Connie to help him couch everything in pseudo-scientific, new age terms.

  Before anyone around him recognized what was happening, Rick had found someone to finance his first clinic. He had worked through his old boss, the former car dealer, who had put him in touch with an investor. The investor already had a facility lined up. It was a bankrupt nursing home in suburban Savannah, Georgia. The building had a gorgeous view over the marshes southeast of town, and Rick had explained to Connie that the community was well suited to his plan, because it was a burgeoning vacation and retirement hot spot. Best of all, nobody had yet set up a spa or diet clinic in the area to take advantage of the rich, vain people who were moving there.

  Rick bought a mansion at The Marshe Landes, an exclusive, gated community not far from the clinic-to-be. He set his wife up with an unlimited budget for entertaining, so that word of the clinic would get around in the wealthy neighborhood, and he moved Connie to Savannah as the Director of Clinical Evaluation. Their plan was that she would do a color analysis for each patient. They hired a dietician to develop custom diets, and Rick himself was the General Manager and Medical Director. The clinic was enjoying phenomenal popularity, and Rick and his investors were already planning to open others in the area.

  Connie thought this success had made Rick much harder to live with. He was taking the whole thing seriously, as if he really believed in the concepts he was selling, and he was starting to treat Connie and everyone else in a highhanded manner. Connie felt badly for the poor old woman whose granddaughter had died in the accident, "… lef' to die, lak a dawg in the guttah,
" as the woman had told the television reporter in her heavy Geechee accent.

  In the townhouse next door to Connie, Kathy Owens had just turned off her own television after watching the same news broadcast. She sat at her kitchen table organizing her day. She hadn’t yet adjusted to living as a single woman since her divorce, but she was enjoying her new career selling real estate.

  It was so much fun that she was still surprised she could make a living doing it. So far, she was doing well. It was a good thing, too, because her sorry ex-husband wouldn’t help her even if he could. She often recalled her father’s words on her wedding day, when he told her she was making a terrible mistake not marrying "your own kind," as he had put it so many times. Kathy’s family had been in Savannah for seven generations and her father defined their "own kind" very narrowly indeed.

  Although Kathy thought her father’s reasoning had been flawed, it still irked her that his prediction had been so accurate. She wasn’t sure there had been a boy among her acquaintances back then who would have met with his approval, but the one she had chosen had not even come close. "An Army brat from nowhere with no people," her father had called Ken. Oh, well, she thought, snapping herself back to the present. Her father was long dead, and her ex was out of her life now, and out of Savannah. She thought it was a good thing they had no children. She was enjoying her newfound independence and didn’t spend much time reflecting on her matrimonial misadventure.

  Kathy had renewed her friendship with Lizzie Jones, for years now the widow Carter. She and Lizzie had been best friends in their high school days at St. Vincent’s Academy, and they had common ground in the present as well, since they were both single women making their own way. Lizzie’s husband had died of fast living years ago, leaving her with a then-struggling tour business, which had prospered after "The Book" made Savannah a must-see tourist destination. Tourism and the surge in retirees and other refugees from cold weather were lifting the economic fortunes of many of Savannah’s old families for the first time in several generations.