They traveled on in companionable silence for a while, until Dirk said, “Savannah, you don’t ever have to worry about me doing something like that.”
“I know.”
“I want to make sure you know. I’d never be unfaithful to you. I’ll never break your heart.”
“I know.”
She turned her head, nuzzling her cheek into the palm of his big, warm hand.
“If for no other reason,” he said, “I wouldn’t do it because of that little girl in Georgia. I can’t stand the thought of her crying in her bed over crap she shouldn’t have even known about till she was a whole lot older.”
The road ahead got very blurry. Savannah blinked her eyes several times and sniffed.
“Thank you, Dirk.”
“You’re welcome, baby.”
“Wow, how romantic,” Savannah said as she and Dirk pulled over to the side of the road and parked in front of what looked like a miniature, abandoned trailer park out in the middle of nowhere.
For as far as the eye could see in any direction, the dilapidated mobile homes were the only structures, the only signs of humanity. An island of faded, rusting metal, baking in the desert sun.
Savannah thought she’d never seen such a lonely setting in all her life.
“I don’t think romance is an important ingredient in what goes on here,” Dirk said. “What were you expecting?”
“Oh, I don’t know. With a name like Monique’s Ranch, I guess I was picturing something with some French flavor. A bit of New Orleans charm, balconies with fancy wrought iron. Beautiful ladies standing on them, wearing feather boas and revealing evening gowns, beckoning ‘come hither’ to passersby.”
Dirk shook his head and laughed. “You’ve read way too many of those romance novels, gal. Let’s go inside and get a taste of the real world ... distasteful though it may be.”
They left the car and walked across the hard-packed dirt to the door of the trailer that was front and center in the haphazard complex. Over the door hung a hand-painted black sign with the name of the place spelled out in hot pink. On either side of the name was a pink circle with a red dot in the center.
“Are those supposed to be boobs?” she said.
“I reckon,” he replied. “I drew better ones than that when I was nine.”
“You drew boobs when you were nine?”
He grinned and glanced down at her ample chest. “I became a boob man very early in life and never looked back.”
“Apparently so.”
Dirk tried the doorknob, but found it locked. He rang the bell and a loud, annoying buzz like an electric shock sounded throughout the property.
A few moments later, the door was opened by a large, Slavic-looking man. With his blond hair and light blue eyes, he might have been handsome, had it not been for the coldness in those icy eyes and the numerous scars on his face.
Savannah had seen scars from accidents and scars from fights. And she knew, this was not the face of a peace-loving man.
He glanced quickly from Dirk to Savannah and back. “Yes,” he said in a heavy Russian accent. “What can I help you with?”
Dirk showed him his badge, though Savannah noticed that he flashed it a bit faster than he normally did.
No point in advertising the fact that he was out of his jurisdiction.
“I need to talk to the madam of this establishment.”
The guy’s eyes flickered over Dirk like a prize fighter checking out the competition before a bout. “You talk to me,” he replied.
“Inside,” Dirk replied, matching his gruff tone. “Now.”
The doorman didn’t exactly jump to obey. He stood there for several long, tense moments before he finally stepped backward just enough to allow them entrance.
Once inside, Savannah glanced around at Monique’s reception area and saw that this legal brothel looked like every other cheap, illegal establishment that she and Dirk had rousted when she was a cop. The cliché, dim, red lighting, crushed red velvet, dirty chandeliers, and pictures on the walls of nude or scantily clad females set the mood.
The place smelled like it could use a good airing out, Savannah thought. She would bet that it hadn’t seen a beam of sunlight or a whiff of fresh air in years.
“I need to talk to Monique,” Dirk said as he walked over to a small counter in the left-rear corner of the room and picked up a piece of paper that said “Menu” at the top.
“You talk to me,” the iceman repeated.
Dirk scanned the paper, then handed it to Savannah. She glanced over it and was mildly surprised at the simplicity of the choices. For the most part, there wasn’t anything on it that didn’t routinely occur in bedrooms of regular old married folks the world over.
It was hard to imagine what the big deal was.
“Are you telling me that this is your place?” Dirk asked him.
“It is.”
“Ah, well, then ... in that case, Monique, you’re the one I need some answers from.”
“My name is Vadim. You will call me Vadim, not Monique. That woman’s name.”
“Okay, Vadim. I would have guessed Boris, but ... whatever.”
Savannah stifled a grin when Vadim the Terrible’s nostrils flared.
At times like this, she often thought that maybe someday she could break Dirk out of his unfortunate habit of pissing off nearly everyone he met. It was a pleasant fantasy, a civil Dirk, brought into being under her gentle tutelage.
But Granny had warned all of her granddaughters, “Don’t marry a man expecting to change him. It’ll just annoy the daylights outta him, and wear you to a frazzle.”
No, she would probably never be able to change Dirk. She was lucky if she could get him to keep his feet off her coffee table.
“What you want with me?” Vadim barked, crossing his burly arms over his even burlier chest.
Savannah hoped that Dirk had noticed these burly qualities and was taking them into account when he was taunting him like this.
Dirk reached into his pocket and pulled out the photo copy of Ethan Aberson. He shoved it under Vadim’s nose.
“Vadim shoved the picture away. “No. I know nothing about him. I—”
“You look again,” Dirk said, shoving it back in his face. “He was here. We know that. I want to talk to the gal who serviced him.”
“My ladies do not ‘serve.’ They are companions.”
Savannah couldn’t resist the urge to enter the fray. She stepped forward and held the menu up to him. “Okay, then which one of your lovely lady companions provided one of these ... um ... tasty dishes for that man in that picture.”
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s too bad,” Dirk said, “because that means you’re going to have to blow your whistle, or whatever you do, to get your ladies to all come parading in here and line up so that I can show each one of them this picture and see who remembers him.”
“They shouldn’t mind too much,” Savannah said. “They do it all the time, day and night, for your customers. And we’ll even let them wear their clothes and retain their dignity.”
Vadim wrestled with his anger, staring at Dirk with those pale blue eyes that got colder by the second.
“You have some paper to show you can make me do this?” he asked.
“No, but I can get one,” Dirk lied. “And while we’re interviewing all of your women, we’re going to look them over really closely for any signs of bruising, any indications that they aren’t happy in their work here.”
“This is legal brothel.”
“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Savannah replied. “And I’m sure that you’re abiding by absolutely every single rule regulating its operation. There are so many of those pesky laws, I don’t know how you people can keep them all straight.”
“And I hear the penalties are pretty harsh,” Dirk said. He paused, letting their message sink in, then he said, “I need to speak to the young lady who was a companion to this gentleman at this establishment.
Now. We ain’t got all day.”
Stoically, Vadim stood, staring at them, a muscle in his massive jaw twitching furiously.
Dirk stared back. And so did Savannah.
The only sounds were of an old regulator clock on the wall ticking and the whistling of air that was rushing in and out of Vadim’s flared nostrils.
Finally, he whipped a cell phone out of his pocket and barked into it, “Come up here.” Then he snapped it closed.
Less than thirty seconds later, a pretty little blonde came rushing in, wearing nothing but a bikini bottom. She had a baby face, and Savannah would have guessed she was no more than fifteen.
On that sweet face was entirely too much makeup and an obviously fake smile. When she saw Savannah, she looked mildly surprised. She turned questioningly to Vadim.
“Both of them?” she said.
“No. He just wants to talk,” her boss told her.
“No,” Dirk interjected. “Both of us. Her and me. Both of us just want to talk.”
The girl motioned for them to come with her, but Vadim held up one hand.
“Stop,” he said. “Pay first. Both of you. You just talk, you pay, too.”
As Dirk forked over the cash, Savannah watched Vadim and the girl and saw a look exchanged between them. Having seen that look far too many times, Savannah was familiar with the subtext it contained. “Watch what you say, or else,” was the message, loud and clear.
Savannah wasn’t sure how much they were going to get out of this young woman. But she was sure of two things: This professional “companion” was terribly afraid of this barely glorified pimp. And the two of them had something to hide.
When Savannah entered the tiny room with its big bed, she had to breathe deeply to avoid an attack of claustrophobia.
The small, single-wide trailer made Dirk’s mobile home feel positively palatial by comparison. And the dark red walls and heavy drapes that blotted out all sunlight didn’t help.
Like the reception area, it was lit with red lights and dusty chandeliers. Apparently housekeeping wasn’t high on Vadim/ Monique’s list of priorities. Or his customers’ either.
“Do you want to shower first?” the young woman asked, waving a listless hand toward the narrow hall.
“No, darlin’,” Savannah said. “We told you we’re here just to talk and we are. What’s your name?”
“Trixie,” was the unenthusiastic reply.
Savannah gave her a sad smile. “I’d like to call you by your real name.” She held out her hand to her. “Mine’s Savannah, and this is Dirk.”
“I’m Charlene,” she said, awkwardly shaking Savannah’s hand.
When she turned to Dirk, he said softly, “You can put on some clothes, Charlene, if that’d make you more comfortable.”
“Thank you,” Charlene said as she hurried to the back of the trailer and returned with an old, worn, man’s flannel shirt that reminded Savannah of the kind that her grandfather used to wear.
She slipped it on, buttoned up the front, and then sat on the side of the bed. “You wanna have a seat?” she asked, waving toward the other side.
Savannah and Dirk glanced around, but there were no chairs and no place else to sit.
“No, we’re fine,” Dirk replied. “This won’t take long. I just want to ask you something about a man who visited you here last weekend.”
Charlene shot a quick glance up toward a dusty silk plant hanging in the corner of the room. “Yeah, okay. I don’t know how much I can tell you, but ...”
Savannah turned her back to the corner with the plant, reached into her purse and took out her note pad. She scribbled, “Camera?” on the paper, then held it against her chest so that Charlene could read it.
The girl glanced down at the notebook and gave the faintest of nods.
“You just do your best, Charlene,” Dirk said, glancing down at Savannah’s message. “That’s all we’re asking.”
He took the picture from his pocket and held it up for her to see. “Does he look familiar to you?”
“Oh, yes!” she said with far more enthusiasm than Savannah was expecting. “He was here. He came to see me on Friday, and we had such a good time that he came back again the very next day, on Saturday.”
Okay, Savannah thought, that’s a new one ... a hooker who rats out her customers in a heartbeat.
“All right,” Dirk replied. “Thank you.” He gave Savannah a questioning look.
And she knew just how he felt. How strange, to have an interview go this smoothly. When did an investigator ever find out exactly what they wanted to know within a couple of minutes?
But if everything was going so swimmingly, why did she have this nagging feeling that all wasn’t the way it appeared?
“Honey,” Savannah said, “did he treat you right?”
“Oh, yes. He was nice. Very nice.”
“Did you catch his name?”
“Ethan. He said his name is Ethan Aberline or Aber-something. He said, I just can’t remember exactly.”
Dirk raised one eyebrow. “How many of your customers tell you their full names, Charlene?”
She shrugged. “Some of them tell me a name, but I doubt it’s their real one, you know?”
“Yeah,” Savannah said, “I can imagine. Did he give you a good tip?”
Something flitted across Charlene’s face. Just a brief little something that Savannah couldn’t categorize on the spot.
“Yes, he did,” she responded, nodding vigorously. “Like I said, he was very nice. Handsome, too.”
“I’ll bet you don’t get a lot of guys that good-looking in here, huh?” Savannah said.
“Guys are guys,” she replied with a tone of exhausted resignation. “You know, they are what they are.”
“Did he say anything or do anything out of the ordinary?” Dirk asked. “Anything at all.”
She thought it over ... or at least pretended to. Savannah wasn’t sure which.
“No,” she said. “He was just a regular, nice guy. Except that he came back the next day and asked to see me again. I don’t get that very often. In fact, I think he might’ve been the first to do that.”
She seemed to realize she was saying too much. She broke eye contact with them and crossed her arms over her flannel men’s shirt.
“What time was he here?” Dirk asked.
“I’m not sure, but sometime in the late morning. He bought a two-hour date the second day.”
She looked down, fiddling with the buttons on the front of her shirt, and the look on her face was one that Savannah had seen many times. It was the look of a liar. Someone who wasn’t very good at it because they hadn’t had a lot of practice.
“Sweetie,” Savannah said, “did anybody tell you to say this to us?”
Charlene looked startled and not a little unsettled by Savannah’s question. “No, of course not,” she stammered.
“Did this nice man, Ethan, did he pay you to say this to anybody who might come asking?”
“No. Not at all. Is that all you want to ask me, ’cause if it is, I’ve got stuff I’ve gotta be doing,” she said, shooting a quick look at the plant hanging in the corner.
“Yes, I guess so ... for now,” Dirk replied. He turned and walked to the door.
But Savannah hesitated, looking at the young woman on the bed with the lost look in her big eyes. “How old are you, hon?” she asked.
Again, Charlene looked up at the corner. “Nineteen,” she said.
“You don’t look nineteen. You look like a kid who needs to go home.”
Tears sprang to Charlene’s eyes. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, her fingers clutching handfuls of the soft, plaid shirt.
“You know he loves you,” Savannah said softly.
“Who?”
“The guy whose shirt that is. Is it your dad, your grandpa?”
The tears flowed more freely. “My big brother.”
“Well, he misses you and wants you back.” She dropped her voice to
a whisper. “Give him a call and get out of this hellhole. You can still have a life and you deserve one.”
Charlene looked down, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob.
Unable to resist, Savannah turned and glared up at the camera in the corner, then gave it her seldom-used, but skillfully delivered middle-finger salute.
As she and Dirk exited the trailer and made their way across the parched, cracked earth toward the Mustang, she said, “I hate places like that. I hate what they do to kids’ families, like mine. And I hate what they do to kids like that one in there.”
He reached over and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “I know, babe. Me, too.”
“And the whole legal-schmegal bullshit doesn’t change a thing. You can dress a pig up in a Sunday suit and take him to church, but he’s still a hog.”
“I agree.”
She looked up at him and saw that he was watching her with a mixture of humor, respect, and affection.
“I’ve done a bit of self-searching-type investigating and discovered that I feel strongly about this topic.”
He kissed her on her forehead. “Yeah, no kidding.”
Chapter 22
No sooner had Savannah and Dirk climbed back into the Mustang, than Savannah’s phone rang. It was Tammy’s sunshine song.
“Hello, Tamitha,” she said, thinking how different Tammy was from the girl inside that trailer. Given a bit of sunshine and light, Charlene might have been a woman like Tammy instead of a heartbroken child. “What’s shakin’, sugar?”
“Oh, lots of things,” came the weary but excited reply. “We watched him in the museum. He bought a creepy thing there in the gift shop where they sell all sorts of gross stuff, including antiques.”
“What did he buy?”
“An old traveling undertaker’s at-home embalming kit.”
“Oh, goody. I want one.”
“Really?”
“No. What else?”
“That’s all he bought, but we kept following him around. He went to a bar called Bloody Mary’s and had a—”
“Bloody Mary?”
“Yeah, how’d you guess?”
“I’m not a private detective for nothin’. What else?”
Buried In Buttercream Page 21
