by GA McKevett
Dirk stood, too. “I guess it’s time to call that taxi service again. We’re gonna spend a king’s ransom gettin’ around this island before all’s said and done.”
“Don’t bother with that rubbish,” John said, rising and reaching into the pocket of his linen slacks. “Our friend said we’re more than welcome to use the three motorcars in the garage. We’ve no use for more than two.”
He pulled out a set of keys and handed them to Dirk. When Dirk took them, he glanced down at the distinctive logo on the key chain. “Holy cow! A Jaguar?”
“You’re trusting him with a Jag?” Savannah asked as she wondered whether she could snatch the keys from Dirk’s hand while holding a cup and plate. She decided she couldn’t. Taking the keys to a luxury vehicle from any male was a risky venture, at best.
“Not just any Jag,” Ryan said. “A perfectly restored 1972 E-type coupe. Red. Black interior. Smokin’ hot.”
“I’m sure Dirk will show all due diligence while operating this wonderful piece of machinery,” John said, his steely gray eyes boring into Dirk’s. “Any sort of careless accident in our friend’s fine vehicle could prove fatal.”
Dirk chuckled. “If not at the scene, then later, huh?”
“Precisely.” John turned to Savannah. “You should fare well on these roads. No lorries or jam sandwiches.”
When John returned to his tea drinking, Dirk leaned down and whispered to Ryan, “Lorries? Jam sandwiches? You wanna translate that for us?”
“Trucks and highway patrolmen,” Ryan replied, smoothing on more sunscreen. “What’s the matter, Coulter? Don’t you speak British?”
Dirk shook his head and sighed. “Hell, it’s not enough I’m bilingual and speak Southern?”
As Savannah passed through the main cottage, heading for the garage and their newly acquired transportation, she found Granny lounging in the living room in a large wicker chair, her feet propped on an ottoman, her favorite reading material in her lap—the Bible and a supermarket tabloid magazine.
That combination had always puzzled Savannah. They seemed like opposite ends of the reading spectrum in so many ways. But who was she to tell an octogenarian what to read? Granny considered both publications the absolute, gospel truth, and wasn’t ever likely to believe differently.
Savannah glanced at the tabloid cover and found its headline most informative: MAJOR MOVIE STAR HAS ALIEN BABY.
To prove their story, the publishers splashed across the cover a picture of the greenish baby in the arms of its glamorous mother.
Yes, Savannah thought, Granny’s a complex, multifaceted woman.
“We missed you at the meeting,” Savannah said as she leaned over and kissed her grandmother on the top of her silver hair.
“I figured I’d done my do, supplyin’ the rolls,” Gran said, turning the page of the magazine. “I’ll see if I can help Tammy on the computer later when she’s lookin’ up your bad guys for you. Yesterday, she taught me how to do something called ‘browse.’ You should try it yourself.”
Savannah smiled lovingly down at her. “I’ll have to do that sometime, Gran.”
Granny flipped another page, squinting through her glasses at the print. “Yep. You can find out all sorts o’ stuff on that-there Internet. They got directions to places, recipes, stories about everybody you ever heard tale of, all sorts of things.”
“They do, at that.”
“But you can’t believe ever’thing you read on there. Some of it’s made-up hogwash.”
“Do tell?”
“Yessiree. Why, one article I run across said that the North Pole’s gonna plumb melt away one o’ these days if we don’t stop sprayin’ too much o’ that underarm-deodorant stuff.”
“Hmmm.”
“Now, who in their right mind would believe a bunch of hooey like that?” She turned the page and snapped to attention. “Hey! Look at this! They finally got a real honest-to-goodness picture of Bigfoot! Wanna see it?”
Chapter 12
As Savannah drove the Jaguar up yet another of Santa Tesla’s steep-and-twisting hill roads, the automobile purred like a giant red panther hugging every curve. She shivered with delight, feeling the sexy surge of adrenaline race through her bloodstream.
Dirk, on the other hand, wasn’t so happy.
He was sitting in the passenger seat, his arms crossed over his chest, a pout on his face. He hadn’t said more than three sentences since they’d left. And those three sentences had been: “Give me back those keys, woman! Damn it, Savannah, I never got to drive a Jag before!” And . . . “If you don’t give them back to me in the next five seconds, it’s gonna put a serious damper on this honeymoon.”
Reckon I’d best throw him an olive branch, she thought, or this is gonna be a long, gloomy day.
“I’ll let you drive when we leave, okay?” she said. “Just help me find this address. We should be there soon.”
Dead silence.
“Come on. Don’t be a sourpuss. You got to drive the golf cart first.”
“You can’t compare a stupid golf cart with a 1972 Jaguar E-type!” he spat out, breaking his vow of silence. “And you nearly broke my hand jerking those keys outta it. That’s gotta be the rudest thing you ever did to me, Savannah. And considering our rocky relationship, that’s saying something.”
“Okay,” she muttered under her breath. “Just throw my olive branch in the wood chipper, would ya?”
She decided, then and there, that she wouldn’t utter another word to him until Satan took up ice-skating....
“Since when is our relationship rocky?” she snapped back. “This morning, I was the love of your life.”
She had never been good at the “Silent Treatment.” Mostly because it required being silent.
“That was before you broke my hand.”
“Your hand isn’t broken. A manly man like yourself doesn’t break that easily. And stick your bottom lip in before I roll it up like a window shade.”
She glanced down at the bit of paper in her lap and compared the number written on it to the brass numbers mounted on a stone mailbox beside some wrought-iron gates.
“This is it, 667 Vista Del Mar,” she said.
“It’s gated. Don’t ram the Jag into the gate and blame the damage on me.”
She looked up at the seven-foot wooden barrier, with its hammered-iron hardware. “I see the gates, Mr. Smarty-Pants. They’re a little hard to miss. Sheez.”
“You ran into the back of a donut shop one time.”
“I was wearing weird new cowboy boots, and when I went for the brake, the edge of the sole hit the accelerator.”
“So you said.”
“I also told you a long time ago that I never wanted to discuss that incident again—not for the rest of our natural lives.”
“If you can snatch keys out of my hand, I can discuss donut shop rammings if I want to.”
“Boy, you are getting on my last nerve.”
She drove up to the gate’s security access panel, rolled down her window, and pushed the intercom button.
“You pulled pretty close to that thing,” Dirk said. “Don’t scrape the side of the car when you pull away.”
As she wondered how hard it would be to remove all traces of blood from Jaguar seats, the intercom buzzed and crackled. A woman’s voice said, “Northrop residence. May I help you?”
“Yes, hello. My name is Savannah Reid. I’m with Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter, and we’d like to have a word with Mr. Northrop.”
There was a long, long wait, and Savannah was just getting ready to push the button again when the woman said, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Northrop isn’t receiving visitors today.”
“Please tell him it’s extremely important,” Savannah told her. “We need to speak to him about Mrs. Northrop . . . about his wife’s . . . passing. He really, really needs to hear what we have to say.”
Again, there was an insufferably long wait. Then the giant gates began to swing away from the Jaguar, openi
ng wide.
“Hurry up,” Dirk said, “before they close. You don’t want them to close on the—”
“Dirk, darlin’,” she said as she drove through the gates, “if you say one more word about this car or my driving, I swear, one of us is gonna be sleeping on the sofa tonight. And if that doesn’t strike fear in your heart, let me tell you that I’ll also eat the rest of that carrot cake all by myself.” She shot him a stern look. “You know I can do it.”
He mumbled something that sounded like, “That’s for sure,” but she wasn’t certain, so she decided to let it drop. For now.
They went only a short distance before they saw the house—the strangest house Savannah had ever seen.
“It looks like a giant Rubik’s Cube, only made of glass,” she said as she stared at the building, looking right through it and out the other side. Every exterior wall was glass, floor to ceiling. And from what she could see, most of the interior walls, too.
Every room, every piece of furniture—all of which appeared to be white—was clearly on display for everyone to see.
“I guess the Northrops are those people you’re always hearing about who shouldn’t throw stones,” she added.
“No kidding. Can you picture yourself living in something like that?”
“Not on your life. You can see everything right now, in the daytime. It’d be way worse at night.”
“So much for running around in the buff,” he mused, “and there’d be nothing left to the imagination when you made love. Even worse when nature called.”
“Okay,” she said, turning off the key and handing it to him. “Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.”
“Gee, you’re too generous.”
“So, are we buddies again?”
“I wanna drive it the whole rest of the day.”
She leaned over and puckered up. “Every other trip. That’s the rule.”
He gave her a quick peck, then glanced at the house. “If we can see in, they can see out. We might lose some credibility if they catch us smooching.”
“Point taken.”
They got out of the car and walked up to the front door, which was, of course, also glass.
They watched as a woman wearing a white dress appeared from somewhere in the back of the house and hurried to the door to greet them.
She was a dignified, middle-aged lady, with long brown hair and very large brown eyes. She had a slight accent, which sounded German, when she said, “Hello. Won’t you come inside?”
She ushered them into the living room and gestured toward a large white leather sectional sofa. “Please have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Mr. Northrop will be with you in a moment. May I get you some refreshment? Something cold to drink perhaps?”
“No, thank you,” Savannah said. “We’re fine.”
But Savannah wasn’t fine at all, she decided as the maid left them and walked toward the rear of the house. In fact, she was really dreading this conversation.
It was never easy to speak with those who had recently lost someone close to them. That difficulty was compounded if the loss had been a result of violence. Then, to that terrible mix, was the additional misery that William Northrop himself had recently been a victim of an attack.
Savannah knew all too well what that was like.
But being aware of all these sad factors was little preparation for the emotional jolt she felt when Northrop descended the stairs and stood before them.
He was a tall, thin man, perhaps in his midforties, with hair that had once been dark but was now silver on the sides. It was cut in a gentleman’s conservative style, which made Savannah think of high-ranking politicians’ hairstyles.
He was wearing black silk pajamas, leather slippers, and a robe of thick, luxurious charcoal cashmere—the exact evening attire she’d imagined that Ryan Stone wore . . . that is, before she’d become a married woman and sworn off such fantasies.
He could have stepped directly from his exotic glass house straight onto the glossy cover of any men’s fashion magazine. Except for his eyes.
They were an unusual shade of pale gray that Savannah had never seen before. But that wasn’t what startled her.
What she found unsettling was how terribly red and swollen they looked. If the eyes were the windows of the soul, this man’s soul had been destroyed.
When he and Savannah looked at each other, she felt a chill sweep over her.
She could recall a few times—but only a very few—when, for a moment, she might have felt as empty and completely joyless as this man did. But, thankfully, those periods had been brief. Her world had righted itself and life was good again.
But as she looked into William Northrop’s eyes, it occurred to Savannah that the damage to this man’s life was too great for him ever to recover fully. The wound to his soul appeared totally devastating and permanent.
She held out her hand to him. “Mr. Northrop,” she said, “my name is Savannah Reid. This is Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter. We’re so very sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” he said, his verbal response as weak as his handshake. “I was told you might be coming. Won’t you sit down?” He motioned to the white leather sofa.
Savannah and Dirk sat as directed.
Northrop walked over to a chrome chair. He slowly, carefully, and stiffly sank into it. One of his hands was clasped against his belly, on his right side just below his waist.
Savannah knew the routine. She, herself, had moved exactly that way while recuperating from her wounds. As she watched him, it was as though she could feel every searing pain in her own body all over again.
“It’ll get better with time,” she told him, thinking how lame and trite the words sounded. “The physical pain, at any rate,” she added in an attempt to be completely honest.
“So my doctors tell me,” Northrop replied.
Dirk cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but a moment ago, you said you were told we might be coming around. May I ask who told you that?”
“Charlotte La Cross. Or, I guess I should say, Chief La Cross. It’s hard to call her by her title when we’ve been friends for so many years.”
Oh, great, Savannah thought. He’s bosom buddies with Dragon Lady. Just what we need.
“Did she mention that my wife and I saw your wife . . . saw what happened to her?” Dirk asked.
Northrop grimaced and put his hand quickly to his belly. “Yes. She said you were eyewitnesses.”
“We were,” Savannah added. “I’m sorry to say.”
“I’m sorry for you that you had to see it.” Northrop closed his eyes for a moment. Savannah wondered what he might be envisioning behind his lids. “But for Amelia’s sake, I’m glad you were there.”
He took a deep breath and struggled for his next words. “I don’t think I could have stood it if I’d heard she died alone. I’m glad you were with her when she . . .”
Savannah nodded. “If it’s any comfort to you, I believe she passed peacefully . . . under the circumstances. She didn’t appear to be in pain or in a lot of distress.”
A sob caught in his throat and he passed his hand over his eyes. “Thank you for that. I was wondering, but I couldn’t ask.”
“I understand. And there’s one other thing,” Savannah added, “it may give you comfort to know that her last words were about you.”
“Really? What did she say?”
Savannah decided not to tell him that she had been asking the woman for the name of the person who had killed her. Or that she had denied it was him. “Just your name. She spoke it several times.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,” Northrop said. “I should have been there to protect her.”
“You can’t protect somebody from bullets,” Dirk said.
A heavy silence hung in the air for a moment.
Dirk cleared his throat. “Hopefully, your good buddy Charlotte mentioned that your wife didn’t die by drowning, like they said on the evenin
g news.”
“Yes, she told me what really happened.”
“Well, it was your friend,” Dirk said, “or somebody from her department, who released that false story to the media. Why do you think she’s done something like that?”
“To protect me.”
Savannah wasn’t sure how she’d expected him to reply. But that wasn’t what she was anticipating. “Protect you? How?”
At that moment, the maid appeared with a crystal tumbler filled with water, along with a bottle of pills. “I’m sorry, Mr. Northrop,” she said. “I don’t want to interrupt, but it’s time for your medicine. The doctor said it was important for you to take it when—”
“It’s okay. Thank you,” Northrop said as he put a pill into his mouth and washed it down with the water.
He waited until the maid was well out of earshot before he answered Savannah’s question. “Charlotte told me that she’s sure you’re attributing evil motives to her actions, and you shouldn’t do that. Her intentions are honorable.”
“I don’t know what kind of law books she uses, but in my book there’s nothing honorable about covering up a murder,” Dirk said with his usual degree of tact.
Savannah gave Northrop what she hoped was a sympathetic, conciliatory smile, though she had to agree with Dirk. Some things you just didn’t lie about. And a homicide was one of them.
“Perhaps,” she said sweetly, “you can explain what you mean by that.”
“It’s complicated,” Northrop said.
“Why don’t you just spell it out and us dummies’ll try to follow along,” Dirk replied.
“What happened to me,” Northrop began, “and, of course, what happened to poor Amelia . . . those are only two chapters in a long, difficult saga.”
“Then why don’t you start with chapter one,” Savannah said.
“It started a couple of years ago when I came up with the idea of building a casino-hotel complex here on the island. Tourism is the lifeblood of Santa Tesla, but it’s been steadily declining in the past decade.”
With some effort, he stood and slowly walked over to an elegant accent table, which had pictures displayed on it. He picked up one of himself and Amelia and looked at it as he continued. “Amelia and I loved this place, ever since we honeymooned here five years ago. And we wanted to help the island and its people, if we could.”
