Wicked Craving

by G. A. McKevett

  Chapter 3

  As Savannah and Dirk left the beach and started to climb the stone steps, Savannah looked up and saw a beautiful Asian woman descending the stairs. Her long, glossy black hair spilled around her shoulders, and the snug, black miniskirt she was wearing seemed strangely at odds with her boxy, white, lab coat.

  She had exquisitely shaped, long legs, and she was wearing what appeared to be stainless steel, four-inch-high stilettos.

  “Okay, I stand corrected,” Savannah said over her shoulder to Dirk. “You can walk down these stairs wearing super-high heels.”

  But when she glanced backward, she saw that Dirk had barely heard what she’d said. He was transfixed on the sight above him, and she couldn’t summon even an ounce of indignation about his ill-mannered ogling.

  Dr. Jennifer Liu, San Carmelita’s first female coroner, was simply stunning.

  “Hey, Dr. Jen,” Savannah greeted her as they met halfway up the stairs. “You’re lookin’ perky today.”

  “Hi, Savannah,” Dr. Liu returned warmly. “Haven’t seen you lately. You haven’t dropped by with a box of Godivas in a long time.”

  Savannah chuckled. It was true. More than once, when she was anxious to get autopsy results, she had taken a box of truffles to the morgue under the pretext of “PMS bonding.”

  Dr. Liu was far too sharp to believe that the offerings were anything more than an excuse to drop by and finagle information before the coroner’s report was complete. But she was also smart enough not to admit she was being bribed.

  Savannah would do anything to learn the official cause and manner of death three hours before the murder was even committed. And if five pounds of chocolate enabled her to make a pest out of herself and get the jump on a case, she wasn’t above it.

  Besides, Dr. Liu usually shared the goodies, and that was endearing.

  “Sergeant Coulter,” the coroner said, giving Dirk a cursory nod.

  Dirk was as much of a nuisance at the morgue as Savannah, even worse. And he never brought chocolate, so he was low on Dr. Liu’s list of favorite people.

  They never brought out the best in each other.

  “The DB’s down there,” Dirk told her, pointing down the stairs and to the right. “You need me to go with you and help you find it?”

  She gave him a withering look. “I can find one stray blond hair on a brunette victim or a single carpet fiber and match it to a killer’s car trunk. I think I can find a dead woman on a beach.”

  “Then she’s all yours,” Dirk said, brushing by her and continuing on up the stairs.

  He passed a couple of young men, also wearing white lab coats with the coroner’s seal printed on the pockets, who were on their way down. He grunted a half greeting to them as he hurried by. They nearly fell off the steps trying to get out of his way.

  “Mr. Sunshine and Light,” Dr. Liu grumbled as she watched him go. “I don’t know how you stand him.”

  “Ah, Dirk’s all right,” Savannah said, thinking that, sometimes, it felt like she spent her life trying to convince people that Dirk really was a good person. After all, any guy who liked dogs, cats, and Elvis couldn’t be all bad. “You just have to get to know him,” she added for good measure.

  “No, thanks.” Dr. Liu gave Savannah a smile. “Putting up with him, that’s your job. And mine is waiting on the beach, so…I’ll see you later.”

  “How long you figure it’ll take you to process her?” Savannah asked as Dr. Liu continued down the stairs.

  “We’re a little backed up. I should be done with the autopsy by tomorrow around lunch time.” When she reached the bottom step, she leaned over and took her high heels off.

  Too bad Dirk had missed it, Savannah thought. He was a major hiney man.

  “So, if you’ll be done by noon,” Savannah said, “I’ll show up at ten…and bring chocolates?”

  “Exactly.” Dr. Liu stuffed the stilettos into her bag and stepped onto the sand with bare feet, her toenails painted bright red. “And this time, don’t eat any of the raspberry creams. Those are my favorites.”

  When Savannah reached the top of the stairs, she looked around for Dirk. He was standing at the edge of the yard, where the lawn ended abruptly, giving way to the sharp cliff.

  He was staring down at a flower bed that was overflowing with yellow marigolds and orange nasturtiums.

  “See something?” she asked as she walked up to stand beside him.

  So lost in thought was he that he jumped a little when he noticed her. “What?”

  “You’re looking at something. What is it?”

  “Why doesn’t she like me?” he asked, looking a little hurt.

  “Why doesn’t who…what?”

  “Why doesn’t Dr. Liu like me? I’ve always been nice to her.”

  “You’ve never been nice to her. Not once.”

  “Never? Ever?” He looked completely flummoxed. “Really?”

  “Really. You snap at her. You’re surly with her. You demand that she come up with results in the blink of an eye and solve your cases for you. You—”

  “So do you.”

  “Yeah, but I genuinely like her.”

  “So do I.”

  “You like her legs.”

  “I never noticed her legs.” He grinned broadly. “I’m always too busy looking at her rear.”

  Savannah sighed and pointed to the flower bed. “What’s here? What were you looking at?”

  But before he could even answer, she saw it…the area where the marigolds and nasturtiums were crushed, the soil trampled with numerous footprints.

  She stepped closer and squatted, studying the dirt and flowers. “There was a struggle here. And those are fresh,” she said. “The broken plants are barely even withered. And the footprints are clear, nice and deep.”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to tell Dr. Liu to have her lazy-ass assistants get up here and get some castings of those to—”

  Savannah cleared her throat.

  “Um…” He donned a saccharine smile. “…I mean, ask the CSU if they would be so kind as to get their lazy butts up here and take some castings of those prints, and then get the results to me whenever they damned well feel like it.”

  “Oh, much better.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s a beautiful thing—watching personal growth in progress.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Leaning down, until her face was nearly touching the flowers, she saw something strange sticking out of the loose soil. It was about six inches wide and looked like a gray butterfly’s wing.

  With one finger she pushed some of the nasturtiums aside and saw that it was attached to a fairy…or rather, a broken fairy statue, about a foot long, that was half-buried in the dirt.

  “You’ll want to tell the team about this,” she said, pointing it out to him. “That thing looks heavy enough that it might even be your murder weapon.”

  He studied it with interest and nodded. “Yeap, that would be a first in my career. ‘Cause of Death: Bludgeoned by a Tinkerbell.’”

  She stood up and shook her legs to restore circulation.

  Squatting in your forties wasn’t what it was in your twenties.

  “And, by the way,” she said. “Those are high-heel prints…the little holes there in the dirt.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that already.”

  “And Mrs. Wellman had dark soil like that on the heels of her shoes.”

  “Yeap. Saw it.”

  She bit her bottom lip and stared at him long and hard. “And the blood? You also saw the blood stain on her left heel?”

  She had him. He glared at her, slack-jawed for several long moments. She watched the mental battle register in his eyes. Lie? Or tell the truth?

  Finally, with his best poker face and most even, noncommittal tone, he said, “Blood. Blood on her left heel.”

  “Yeap.”

  More tense silence.

  He broke. “You saw blood on her left heel?”

  “Naw.” She turned t
o walk back toward the house. “I was just messin’ with you.”

  “I hate you.”

  She laughed. “No, you don’t. I’m the best friend you’ve got.”

  “And what a sorry commentary that is on my social life.”

  By the time they walked into the house, Dirk had stopped complaining, and Savannah had put aside all thoughts of teasing him.

  Few things were more important than tormenting Dirk, but talking to the deceased person’s family—who also just happened to be your primary suspect—was one of those things.

  Neither of them wanted to have to draw Dr. Wellman out of his bedroom seclusion at a time like this, but it had to be done.

  After examining the body and the edge of the cliff, they were both pretty certain that Mrs. Wellman hadn’t simply taken one step too many while strolling around her backyard in the dark. She had fought for her life before being pushed to her death.

  And that meant they were looking for a killer.

  But as they entered the living room, they heard voices. Angry voices. A man’s and a woman’s.

  The two were arguing in an adjoining room, so loudly that Savannah and Dirk could hear everything they were saying.

  “I want my money,” the female was saying, “and if I don’t get it, I’m going to make a lot of trouble for you.”

  “You’ve already made trouble for me,” he replied. “You’re nothing but trouble.”

  “When am I getting it? When?”

  “I can’t believe you’re hassling me at a time like this.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re just heartbroken. I’m sure. Give me a break. Like you give a damn that she’s dead. You’re probably happy. You probably did it yourself, just to—”

  “Shut up! Shut your mouth! You say something like that with the cops right outside my door? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’ll say a hell of a lot more than that if you don’t have my money to me by this time tomorrow. I mean it. If you don’t believe me, you just wait and see.”

  They heard quick, heavy footsteps as someone stomped through the house, away from them and toward the front door.

  Savannah rushed past Dirk, heading for the foyer, trying to step as quietly as possible.

  She was just in time to see an extremely thin young woman with lots of curly blonde hair, rush to the front door, jerk it open, and leave the house.

  Mostly, Savannah had seen her backside, but she was fairly sure she’d know her if she saw her again. Even in a culture where being stick skinny was the primary measure of a female’s worth, this one was exceptionally scrawny. Her tight jeans had displayed thighs that weren’t much thicker than Savannah’s forearm.

  Savannah hurried to the beveled glass sidelight and looked through it to the front yard. The blonde darted back and forth among the patrolmen, making her way to a little blue compact parked on the side of the road.

  As she sped away, Savannah caught the first three letters of the license plate. PLW. She pulled a notebook and ballpoint from her jacket pocket and scribbled down the letters.

  Replacing the pad and pen, she turned, intending to rejoin Dirk in the living room. But, instead, she found herself face-to-face with the man of the house.

  And Dr. Wellman didn’t look happy to see her.

  He was red haired with a ruddy complexion and a thin, auburn mustache, dressed in a violet polo shirt and sharply creased, beige slacks. His cheeks were brightly flushed, and he was sweating profusely, considering that the house was a comfortable temperature.

  That must have been a heck of an argument, Savannah thought. Or was it all because his wife’s dead body had been found at the foot of his cliff?

  She thought it over for a moment, then decided that he looked more mad than sad. And that little bit of info she would scribble in her mental notepad, to be considered later.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked her. His eyes were narrowed and intense, but his tone was slightly shaky.

  “Her name is Savannah Reid,” said a deep, authoritative voice behind them…without a bit of shakiness. “And she’s with me.”

  Dirk walked into the room and stood beside Savannah, hands on his hips, his best Clint Eastwood scowl on his face. And it was a pretty good face, because he practiced it regularly in his rearview mirror when he was supposed to be driving—much to Savannah’s consternation as his frequent passenger.

  She chuckled inwardly. She didn’t exactly need his protection from the good doctor in his purple shirt, but she appreciated the thought.

  “Did you find…um…the body?” Wellman asked Dirk. “Was it where the jogger said it was?”

  “Yes, it was,” Dirk replied.

  “And is she…I mean…is it for sure that she’s…?”

  “Yes.” Dirk softened his tone a bit and added, “I’m sorry.”

  Savannah watched closely as something that truly looked like grief flitted across Wellman’s face. But it was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by the stony stare that was giving her the creeps.

  In some ways, it was more disconcerting, this lack of emotion, than the more common outpouring of sorrow.

  “How did she die?” the doctor asked. “Did she fall off the cliff?”

  “She definitely fell off the cliff,” Savannah said. “We don’t know yet exactly why she fell.”

  Dirk cleared his throat. “Doctor, the last time you saw your wife, was she intoxicated?”

  Wellman shrugged. “She’d had a glass of wine during dinner. And maybe a couple more between dances.”

  “How many people would you say attended the ball last night?” Savannah asked.

  “Oh, a hundred. Maybe more.”

  “Did your wife spend her time talking to any one person in particular?”

  “Not really. She was quite comfortable in social settings. She liked to flit around the room, visiting with first one, then the other. I didn’t notice her talking to anybody special…other than me, of course.”

  “Of course,” Dirk said.

  “I know this is a difficult question,” Savannah said, “but, to your knowledge, was anyone upset with your wife? Did she have any enemies that might wish her harm?”

  He hesitated and glanced away, looking through the house to the rear windows and beyond that, to the cliff edge. “No, not really. Maria had a temper and spoke her mind, and that didn’t exactly endear her to some people. But nobody hated her enough to do something like that.”

  “I beg to differ with you,” Dirk said, watching the man closely, studying every nuance of the doctor’s facial expression, tone of voice, and body language. “It takes a lot of hate to push somebody off a cliff to their death.”

  Dr. Wellman stared at Dirk for a long moment, then at Savannah, his eyes searching theirs. And Savannah could feel a deep, gut-shaking fear radiating out of him.

  “And that’s what you think happened?” he asked.

  Savannah nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “It couldn’t have been an accident?”

  “We don’t think so.”

  Savannah waited for him to adjust to the news before she asked, “Dr. Wellman, your wife was dressed beautifully for the party. Can you tell me if she was wearing any jewelry?”

  “Yes! She was wearing a sapphire and diamond necklace and earrings that she’d rented from a jewelry shop on Rodeo Drive. Don’t tell me they’re gone!”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “And her wedding ring? She had a beautiful princess cut stone. I paid a fortune for it.”

  Savannah shook her head. “I’m sorry, but she wasn’t wearing any jewelry at all.”

  “Oh, man, that store’s going to come after me for that stuff. I can’t afford to pay for it. You’d better find it!”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Dirk told him. “I’ll inform all the local pawn shops and jewelry stores to be on the lookout for it.”

  Savannah noted that Wellman seemed even more perturbed by the loss of the jewels than by the loss of his wife. But then, you co
uld never really tell. Some people displayed their emotions quite differently from others.

  A lengthy, tense silence was broken by the jingling of a merry tune, coming from the vicinity of the front of Wellman’s slacks. He stiffened, started to reach into his pocket, then stopped himself.

  Again, he wouldn’t meet their eyes but fixated on the ocean view, as he shifted from one foot to the other.

  The song became louder and louder.

  “You can get that if you want,” Dirk said with a grin that was half a challenge. “We don’t mind waiting.”

  “It’s okay,” Wellman snapped.

  Discreetly, Savannah glanced down at her watch and noted the time: 5:46 P.M.

  No sooner had the phone stopped ringing than it started again, the same ringtone.

  “Somebody really wants to talk to you,” Dirk said. “You might want to pick it up. Could be important.”

  This time Wellman dug his hand into his pocket and took out the phone. But instead of answering it, he turned it off.

  “I’m a doctor,” he said, clearly annoyed and more than a little nervous. “I get nuisance calls all the time.”

  “And what sort of doctor are you?” Savannah asked. Of course, she knew, but she was hoping to irritate him further.

  One of her favorite theories was that an irritated person was more likely to show you who they really were. So, long ago, she had decided to irritate people as quickly and as often as possible.

  As Granny had frequently told her: “You don’t really know a person till you’ve had ’em mad at ya.”

  And the doctor was getting madder by the second. His already ruddy face flushed a few shades brighter. She could have sworn his mustache turned a bit redder. “I’m surprised you don’t know who I am,” he said, lifting his shoulders and puffing out his chest. “I’ve been on several national talk shows lately.”

  Savannah shrugged. “Sorry. I don’t watch a lot of daytime television. What’s your specialty?”

  He gave her a pointed and lingering look up and down her figure. Then, in a voice thick with contempt, he said, “I specialize in weight loss.”