by GA McKevett
“No way. Dulls the senses,” Tammy said. “But I’ll take one of those herbal teas. They have ginseng. It helps me think clearly.”
“By all means, get her two,” Dirk whispered, low enough for only Savannah to hear.
Savannah kicked him under the table.
Ryan reached inside the refrigerator for the bottle of tea. “You got it, Tammy. Anybody else?”
“A Coke for me,” Waycross said. “Make it a Dr Pepper, if you’ve got one handy.”
Still bent over, his head inside the refrigerator, Ryan looked around the door, bewildered. “Say what?”
Savannah translated. “Down where we come from, ‘Coke’ is sorta a generic term for all soft drinks. You gotta specify which one you want.”
“O-o-o-kay.” Ryan closed the door. “I’m fairly certain that I speak better Mandarin than I do Southern. I feel like I need one of those pocket translators when I’m with the Reid clan.”
Ryan distributed the beverages, then popped his beer and took a long swig.
“Since when do you drink beer?” Savannah asked, watching him. “You’re more of a wine-sorta guy.”
Ryan pointed to Dirk. “Your hubby there wore off on me.”
Dirk grinned and shrugged. “What can I say? It was that hot day him and me were fixin’ the faucet on the back of your house. I offered him one, and that’s all it took.”
John walked up with his drink—an unusual-looking cocktail, with a spear of cucumber for a stirrer.
“What the heck is that?” Savannah asked.
“ ’Tis a Pimm’s, love. Would you like to try it?”
“She’s working,” Tammy interjected, just as Savannah had held out her hand to John.
Savannah pulled it back. “I guess not. I’m afraid I may have overtrained my assistant here.”
“Well, I’m not working, and neither is his nibs there.” John nodded toward Ryan as he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. “Though we certainly gave it the old heave-ho.”
Everyone looked to Ryan for clarification. “We checked around, like you asked, and found that your friend William Northrop hasn’t hired any protection of any kind. At least not for the past year. So we asked him if he wanted to hire us as bodyguards. It seemed like a reasonable proposition, considering all that’s gone on around him lately.”
“Wait a minute . . . you two actually went to see Northrop?” Savannah said, more than a little surprised.
“Knocked him up about half eleven,” John said.
Again, they looked to Ryan.
“Dropped by his house at eleven-thirty. Presented our case to him. He said, ‘No,’ in no uncertain terms.”
“Actually,” John said, “a few of the terms he used when addressing us were distinctly rude.”
Dirk cleared his throat. “I didn’t know you boys were that hard up for work. Things a little lean in the bodyguard biz right now?”
“Not at all,” John replied. “We just wanted to get inside—infiltrate, if you will—and find out whatever we could about him.”
“It’s just as well,” Ryan said. “I didn’t feel so great about the plan anyway. I’ve never offered to protect someone with the express purpose of spying on him.”
“True,” Savannah said. “I’m pretty sure that’s on the list of ‘Bodyguard No-Nos.’ Don’t spy on your client and try to collect damning evidence against him.”
“Here,” Tammy said, “I’ve got directions for you to the motel where that weirdo is.”
“What motel?” Ryan asked.
John set down his Pimm’s. “What weirdo?”
“A dude on the other side of the island,” Dirk replied, “who thinks it’s okay to bomb laboratories. Stuff like that.”
“We’re headed over to rattle his cage a bit,” Savannah told them.
“You want some backup?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t think he’s that weird, but thanks for the offer,” Savannah replied.
She heard the sound of shuffling, scurrying feet behind her and turned, knowing whose footsteps it was. That was a beloved sound—one she’d known since childhood.
“Granny,” she said as her grandmother walked into the kitchen, shopping bags in each arm. “I thought you were in one of those cottages taking a nap.”
In an instant, Ryan and John slid their alcoholic beverages beneath the edge of the table. Gran was hell on “demon rum.” She felt pretty much the same way about beer, wine, margaritas, and daiquiris—even though she had been known to order a Shirley Temple served in a pineapple, with a little paper umbrella, when she was out of town. She would splurge and order one of those concoctions when she wasn’t in any danger of being spotted by her minister’s wife.
Well trained by Gran and Savannah, respectively, Waycross and Dirk jumped up to relieve Gran of her burden. They set the sacks on the counter and returned to the table.
Immediately Gran dug in and started taking out grocery items and putting them in the refrigerator and inside the cupboards. “Can you believe,” she said indignantly, “that there’s nary a box o’ grits on this entire island? I know, ’cause I had that taxi driver take me to all six grocery stores before I finally gave up the search.”
“You were out running errands in a cab?” Ryan asked. “You should have asked one of us to drive you.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “I made good friends with my driver. He was a nice feller. Named Jesus, but pronounced it ‘Hay-soos.’ Reckon you gotta be a decent person if you’ve got a name like that.”
“I thought you were out by the pool reading your paper,” Waycross told her.
“And I thought you were out taking a stroll somewhere in the neighborhood,” Tammy added.
“No time for that rigmarole when the kitchen’s got no grits in it,” Gran replied. “That’s not all I did either. Wait’ll you see what I’ve got for you.”
“The fixin’s for cornbread?” Savannah guessed.
“Oh, way better than that.”
Her groceries put away, Granny hurried over to the table and pulled her cell phone out of her purse.
She was grinning so broadly that Savannah knew her surprise was going to be something of consequence. Gran had lived too long to get excited or ruffled over trivialities.
“Whatcha got there, Gran?” Dirk asked as she held the phone between him and Savannah so they could see the small screen.
“Just some pictures I took.”
Savannah leaned over and squinted at the phone, half-expecting to see a touristy picture of seagulls or boats in the harbor. But it was of a car. A large black sedan. With someone in it.
“How do I send this thing to you so you can see it there on your computer?” Gran asked Tammy.
Tammy reached for the phone. “May I?”
“Sure.” Gran placed it in her hand.
Tammy’s thumbs flew over the tiny keyboard.
They heard a couple of beeps and a catchy five-note tune. Then Tammy handed it back to Gran.
Tammy turned back to her computer, brought up a new window, and clicked. There was Gran’s picture on the screen, large enough to see all the details.
“It’s that contrary chief of police, La Cross,” Savannah said. “I’d know her sour puss anywhere.”
“Yep. I saw her and remembered what you said about her. Figured it was her,” Gran replied, toying with her phone again.
“You spotted the chief and knew it was her, based on what little I told you about her?” Savannah asked, incredulous.
She was starting to think maybe she’d received some sort of “detecting gene” from the Reid side of the family.
“Partly that,” Gran said, “but it was also what she was doing at the time I took that picture.”
Everyone looked at the picture again. This time, Savannah saw that Chief La Cross had something in her hand.
“What’s that she’s holdin’ there?” Waycross asked, pointing to the screen.
Tammy cropped the area of the photo around the chief
’s hand and zoomed in on it.
“Yes, it’s definitely a phone,” Tammy said, “but she’s not talking on it.”
“She’s taking a picture,” Dirk added.
Gran chuckled and looked terribly pleased with herself. “She most certainly is. Wait’ll you see this other one.”
Having located picture number two, she handed the phone to Tammy, who repeated her process of sending it to the computer.
A moment later, they were studying the second one.
But it didn’t take Savannah long to figure out what she was seeing.
Chief Charlotte La Cross was still snapping pictures. And from this angle, Granny had captured the subject of her surveillance.
There was the coast guard station. There was Coconut Jane’s Tavern, in all of its shabby glory. And there, turning to go down the narrow passageway between the two buildings, were Savannah and Dirk.
“Holy sh . . . !” Dirk started to say. Then he shot a quick look at Granny.
“Yeah, that’s about what I thought, too, when I saw what she was up to,” Gran said. “If I’d had a frying pan in reach, I’d have been tempted to give her a good skillet smackin’.”
Tammy nodded, a serious look on her face. “Savannah told us about that, Gran. She says you’re known far and wide in Georgia for being deadly with cooking utensils.”
“Ain’t no big thang,” Gran replied, puffing out her chest a bit. “I just beat the tar outta one of my no-good neighbors after he beat the tar outta his wife and children. After that, my reputation was solidified for all eternity.”
But Savannah wasn’t listening to their chitter-chatter about past kitchen gadget glory. She was staring at that picture and feeling her blood pressure soar by the moment.
When she turned and looked at Dirk, Savannah could tell by the dark expression on his face that he was feeling the same way.
“I’ve had about enough of this,” she said to him, keeping her voice low and even, so as not to alarm the others. The last thing she wanted was for Gran to be worried sick that she was getting ready to confront the island’s capitan of law enforcement.
“Yeah. Me too,” Dirk replied.
Quietly they stood and gathered up their papers. Savannah picked up her purse. Dirk grabbed the Jaguar’s keys.
“We need to get going,” Savannah said in her best pseudo-casual voice. “We’ve got a handyman to talk to. Maybe we’ll pick up some lunch somewhere, relax a little, and pretend we’re actually newlyweds on a romantic island honeymoon.”
Gran fixed them with a long, concerned look.
Uh-oh, Savannah thought. Here comes the grandma speech about being careful, about watching yourself and not letting your temper get the best of you, about showing good Christian charity to all your fellow men, women, beasts, and fowl alike.
Gran put her hands on her hips. Her lower lip protruded just a bit. “Well, lan’s sakes,” she said in a slightly huffy tone. “You’d think, after what I just showed ya, that y’all would have more important things to do than that romantic-lunch nonsense.”
“I beg your pardon, Gran?” Dirk said. “What are you—”
“If I were you,” Gran replied with a lift of her chin, “I’d hunt down that nosy chief of police and ask her what in tarnation she thinks she’s doin’, takin’ pictures of innocent people on the street, who’re just goin’ about their business. Tell her I said to get some business of her own and mind it!”
Savannah smiled. “Yes, we’ll schedule that in, too.”
“Good. You might wanna do it before lunch. You gotta keep your priorities in order, girl. I always taught you that.”
As she and Dirk were leaving the room, Gran called out, “If she gives you any lip, you tell her to watch herself. I may not be able to find any grits on this-here backwards island, but I’ll just betcha I could lay my hands on a cast-iron skillet!”
Chapter 15
“You’re really lucky to have a grandmother like Granny Reid,” Dirk told Savannah as they headed up steep hills where no structures had been built, and very little except scrub brush grew.
“Truer words were never spoken,” Savannah replied. “The court taking the nine of us kids away from our parents and giving us to Gran, that was the best thing that ever happened to us.”
“You don’t talk much about that,” Dirk said, giving her a cautious, sideways glance. “It has to be pretty bad before the courts will actually take kids away permanently and change custody of them to their grandparents.”
“It was bad,” Savannah said. “With my ol’ man being a trucker and always on the road, and my mom’s butt glued to a bar stool, nine kids can get in a heap of trouble. We were no exception.”
“Did you play with matches and burn the neighborhood down?”
“Just one pine forest, east of town.”
“I was kidding.”
“I’m not. Then there was the time that Waycross and Marietta squirted glue in all the door frames of the school on Friday night. On Monday morning, when everybody showed up, well . . . you can imagine.”
Dirk laughed. “We won’t share that one with Tammy.”
“But some incidents weren’t so funny. Our mom thought it was just fine if her kids entertained themselves at night in the alley behind the tavern, while she was inside drinking. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent playing behind bars, but there’re a lot of broken bottles behind most of them.”
Savannah turned her head to the right and stared out the window, remembering all too well. She was seeing the magnificent, sunlit scenery of a Pacific island, but recalling a dark, chilly Georgia night. “Vidalia was running from Marietta, playing tag or whatever, when she slipped and sliced her leg wide open. It was about a six-inch gash.”
“Holy cow!”
“Yeah. I ran in the bar and dragged Shirley off her stool. She tried to drive us all to the hospital, which was forty miles away. But she was way too sloshed to operate a vehicle. So we all wound up wrecked in a ditch, and Vidalia gushin’ blood like Niagara Falls.”
Savannah stopped and drew a deep, regrouping breath. “That’s the way the cops found us. Shirley sitting on the edge of the road, bawling. Me in the back of the wrecked car, with Vidalia and the rest of the kids, trying to stop the bleeding with an old grease rag.”
“And that was the last straw for the authorities?”
“One of several. They checked out the state of the house, did an investigation like they’d done many times before. Finally they agreed that the welfare of the children was as important as the rights of their parents to maintain custody.”
“Sounds like it wasn’t a minute too soon.”
“It was years too late. But better late than never.”
“I notice you always call her ‘Shirley’ and not ‘Mom.’ ”
“She insisted on it when I was a kid. When I got to be an adult, I chose to just continue.”
They drove along in companionable silence for a while. Then Savannah decided to broach a topic that she’d always figured was off-limits with Dirk, and she assumed that because he had never opened up about it on his own.
“What did you call your mom?” she said, her voice gentle and soft.
It took him a long time to reply. “Nothing. I never knew her.”
“Oh.” Savannah swallowed. She figured his relationship with his family had been rocky. Maybe very rocky. But she hadn’t expected that. “So you were adopted when you were a baby?”
“No. I was raised in an orphanage till I was thirteen. The pretty, blond, blue-eyed kids got adopted. The ones who knew how to turn on the ‘cuteness act’ and be charming when the prospective parents made the rounds. That just wasn’t me.”
Savannah reached over and put her hand on his forearm. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. That must’ve been plumb awful!”
He chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “Felt a bit like being the ugly dog at the pound.”
“Oh, honey.”
“It’s all right. I got
along.”
Savannah fought back the tears as she thought of him there, being passed over year after year.
“What happened when you were thirteen?” she asked.
“I got adopted. This couple came around, looking at all the kids. I’d already had my growth spurt and was the size of most grown men. The guy didn’t ask me a single question, just picked me out, ’cause I was the biggest. A few days later, when they took me home with them, I found out right away why they’d adopted me.”
“Why was that?” Savannah asked, afraid of the answer.
“He had a small, one-man construction business. He needed some free labor, picking up the junk on sites after he’d finished working, loading and unloading lumber off his truck, crap like that.”
This time, Savannah couldn’t stop the flow of tears. Her heart ached for that little boy in a man’s body, finally getting adopted, only to realize that he hadn’t been chosen for himself, and would never be truly loved for who he was.
“How about your adopted mother?” she asked, dabbing beneath her eyes with the hem of her sleeve.
“She had problems of her own, dealing with him. He made her pretty miserable, so she just sorta moped around the house, getting through each day. Kept a low profile, you know?”
Yes, Savannah knew the type all too well. Invisible women, afraid to show who they were to the world because their man would object. So many lights hidden under so many bushels.
“You don’t have any idea who your biological parents were, then?”
“No. The guy who adopted me said my mom was a hooker. She didn’t even know who my dad was.”
Savannah’s jaw clenched and so did her fist. “Your adopted dad was a real piece of work, telling a kid something like that.”
Dirk reached over and patted the top of her head. “Don’t let it bum you out, babe. I stopped letting it bother me a long time ago. Johnny Cash said, ‘Close the door on the past. Don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.’ And you know what a great guy he was!”
Savannah laughed, in spite of her sadness. Dirk’s heroes were Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Ben “Pa” Cartwright. She decided he could have chosen far worse, for sure.
