Their partnership worked so well because they firmly believed in delegation of duties. He was in charge of scowling, whining about little aches and pains, and moaning about slow-moving traffic. She handled all eyelash batting, dimple deepening, and hip-swinging sashaying.
Each went with their strengths.
“Anyway,” Wellman continued, “once Gina got killed and those news crews were all over the place here, the whole world found out where I live. So, I figure even if it wasn’t Gina’s ex who killed her, he knows where I am now.”
“And you figure he’ll show up?” Dirk asked. “If he was mad at her for leaving him, why come after you?”
Wellman picked up his empty Bloody Mary glass and went through the motions of taking one last sip. Savannah suspected his mouth was pretty dry, considering the line of questioning.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I never liked Gus, and he knew it. He probably figured I’d encouraged her to leave him.”
“Did you?” Dirk asked.
“Yeah. I did.”
“How long ago was all this?” Savannah said.
“About three years.”
Dirk drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, thinking. “And you believe that he’s still mad enough about her leaving him that he’d travel here from Las Vegas, murder her, and then wait around and kill you, too?”
“He might be.”
“Okay.” It was obvious that Dirk didn’t buy it. “How about we talk about a couple of suspects a little closer to home. Like Brian Mahoney and all that hush money you paid him not to turn you in for having sex with your patient.”
“Or, should we say ‘patients’?” Savannah said.
When Wellman didn’t reply, Dirk added, “An open book, my man. Remember? That’s what your life is now.”
Savannah waggled one eyebrow. “Steamy sex scenes and all.”
“I like the ladies,” Wellman said with a shrug. “There’s no law against that.”
“Actually, when they’re your patients, there is,” Savannah said. “You could lose your license for something like that.”
“You do have a license to lose, right?” asked Dirk. “You’re not like one of these television doctors who has an honorary doctorate from some Caribbean ‘university’ for cat juggling, are you?”
“Dirk!” Savannah gasped. “Cat juggling! Please!”
“Sorry. What was I thinking?” He turned to Wellman. “Tell me where you went and what you did after you left the ball the other night. The truth this time.”
“I told you. I came home.”
“Eventually, yes, you did. But I want to hear about where you stopped along the way, who you met, what you did. You can abbreviate the ‘what you did’ part. Some details I can live without. I doubt you know any tricks I don’t know.”
Savannah stifled a snicker. It could be argued that anybody with as active a sex life as Wellman might actually have a few tips for a guy like Dirk, whose idea of a big date was spending the night staking out some scumbag’s apartment building with Savannah.
Wellman wasn’t an attractive man by any means. Both his face and physique were quite mundane.
Then she reminded herself that money was quite the aphrodisiac to a lot of women, and, of course, it never hurt to slip the word “doctor” into your pick up line, either.
“I’m telling you, I came straight home,” Wellman said. “Once I got here, I looked around for my wife and then went to bed.”
“But you’d already been to bed…a hotel bed…with another one of your patients,” Dirk said.
“No!”
“That’s what Karen Burns says,” Savannah told him. “Does the Island View Hotel ring a bell?”
Wellman sat there, saying nothing, with perspiration starting to pop out on his forehead and upper lip.
The morning fog had burned away, and the sun was warm, to be sure. But for a guy sitting there in wet swim trunks, his hair still damp, Savannah decided he was doing an abnormal amount of sweating.
But when she glanced over at Dirk, she noticed that his face, too, was strangely flushed, as though he’d spent the day at the beach—not just a matter of minutes on Wellman’s back patio.
Must be hotter than I think, she told herself. That or these guys are pretty worked up.
“Look,” she said to Wellman, “I can understand why you’d hide the fact that you were at a hotel with a woman who’s your patient. Especially since you were pretending to be married to your sister—which scores pretty darned high on the ick meter, too. But the gal’s giving you an alibi on a night when you bloody well need one. You’d be pretty stupid not to take it.”
That seemed to click with Wellman. He slowly nodded his head. “Okay. I stopped by the hotel on my way home. Spent most of the night with Karen. But nothing sexual at all happened….”
“Of course not,” Savannah said. “You two probably just held hands, sipped tea, nibbled ladyfingers, and chatted about politics there in your favorite suite.”
“All that tea sipping.” Dirk snickered. “That’s probably how she got pregnant, huh? Dude, you should’ve slipped a condom on your ladyfinger.”
Chapter 14
“Are you feeling all right?” Savannah asked Dirk when they got back into the car.
“Yeah, why?” he replied.
“Because you’re looking pretty flushed to me. Do you have a fever?”
She leaned over and placed her hand on his forehead. He felt cool to the touch.
“No, I’m okay.” He glanced at his reflection in the mirror and frowned a bit. “What do you mean, ‘flushed’? Do you really think I look…you know…red?”
“Not red exactly. More like a weird shade of orange.”
He reached for his sunglasses that were lying on the dash, and she caught a good look at his hands.
“Dirk! Your palms! Holy cow, boy! What have you done to yourself?”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” he said, curling his fingers into fists and trying to tuck them under his thighs.
“What in tarnation?” she said. “You have orange palms. Your elbows are this weird, dark color, and your face is starting to look like an Oompa-Loompa!”
“A what?”
“An Oompa-Loompa, one of those little orange guys in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory! That’s exactly what you look like…only older and taller and not as cute!”
He yanked down his visor and stared at his image in the vanity mirror. “Oh, shit! I do!”
Turning around in his seat, he reached into the back floorboard. He grabbed a bottle of water and a bunch of old fast-food napkins.
Most hadn’t been used.
He dumped half of the bottle of water onto the handful of napkins and began to scrub at his face with the sodden wad.
“Dirk, have you gone plum crazy out of your mind? What the heck are you doing, boy?”
“Rubbing this junk off before it gets any worse.”
“Ohmigawd!” she said. “You’ve got that fake tanning junk on you!”
“I do not.”
“Oh, don’t lie to me. I thought I recognized that stink. My sister, Marietta, uses that fake bake lotion all the time…the cheap crap. Makes her smell like a wet dog. A wet dog that rolled in cow manure.”
She started to laugh. And the louder she laughed, the madder he got and the more frantically he scrubbed.
“That’s not going to help,” she said between giggle fits. “It’ll make it worse…all streaky. You’ll be a striped, blotchy Oompa-Loompa.”
“Stop laughing. It’s not funny! I have to look good for—”
“For what?” She was instantly all ears.
“Nothing!”
“No, no, no! You almost said it. Now spit it out. What’s with all this dieting, working out, and now the fake tan?”
He put down the napkins for a moment and gave her a suspicious, piercing look. “What working out? What about me working out?”
She caught her breath. “I didn’t say a
nything about you working out. Have you been working out?”
Tossing the clump of sogginess onto the back floorboard, he said, “What I have or haven’t been doing is nobody’s business. And so what if I decided to do some stuff to improve my personal appearance? Since when is that some sort of crime?”
“What’s her name?”
His mouth dropped open, and he stared at her. “What’s whose name?”
“The girl who you’re getting all gussied up for.”
“Gussied? Who the hell’s gussied?”
“You’re dieting, going to a fancy hair cutter, putting on sunless tanning lotion, working out at a gym—”
“Who said I’ve been working out?”
“Um…you said something about it.”
“No, I didn’t. How would you know that I’ve—”
His cell phone began to chime, and the phrase, “not a moment too soon” raced through Savannah’s mind.
When he hesitated, she said, “You’d better shake a leg and answer that. Could be something important about the case.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket and looked down at the caller ID. “It’s Ryan,” he said.
“Well, find out what he wants, quick!”
He gave her a suspicious look but answered the phone. “Coulter.”
He listened, then frowned. “Really? Are you sure? Hm-m-m. That’s not what I expected. Okay, thanks a lot, buddy. We owe you one. Yeah, I’ll…uh…see you later about that…um…right. Bye.”
Dirk hung up the phone and turned to Savannah. “They weren’t there,” he said.
“Who wasn’t where?”
“Ryan and John just left the Island View Hotel. They know the manager personally, and they talked to him about Wellman and Karen Burns.”
“Okay, and…?”
“And the manager knows them well. Said they’ve come there a lot and always ask for the same suite. But they weren’t there the night Maria was killed.”
“Was he sure? They weren’t just in and out for an in and out?”
“Nope. Ryan said he swears he was on duty the whole night and didn’t see them. They looked over the hotel registry, even checked the security surveillance tape of the lobby. Not a sign of them.”
“She lied to us.” Savannah felt a hot wave of anger sweep through her. She hated being lied to. And no matter how often it happened—which was all day and all night when she’d been a cop—she never got used to it.
She was convinced that, someday, someone was going to tell her a whopper, and she was going to take off one of her loafers and beat them stupid with it.
“And we bought it,” Dirk said. “Well…you bought it. I had my doubts.”
“Oh, you did not. You believed her, too. And you know what that means.”
“That we’re going to make her pay.”
“Big time.”
Once again, Dirk dropped Savannah off at her house and turned down the offer of a free meal. And as before, he disappeared with a mumbled explanation that made no sense at all. Something about needing to “go talk to Ryan about something” and “having an appointment that the station house set up.”
No sooner had he pulled out of her driveway than she had called Ryan to see if he would confirm that Dirk was dropping by, as he’d said he was. If her guys all had some sort of secret, she definitely wanted to be in on it.
But Ryan didn’t pick up, and she couldn’t bring herself to leave a message on his machine that said, “If you know what’s going on with Dirk, you have to tell me, because I’m so nosy that I have to know absolutely everybody’s business or I’ll burst my britches.”
After all, the better part of virtue was being discreet about one’s vices.
Once she had greeted the kitties, she found a note from Tammy and Gran, saying they were gone to Santa Monica, as they had mentioned before.
Left alone to her own devices, Savannah nibbled on leftovers from the refrigerator, fed tidbits to the cats, and thought about the case. Mostly, she wondered about the fact that Karen Burns had covered for Wellman. Was she supplying an alibi for him or maybe for herself?
She recalled how reluctant Wellman had been to say he had been at the hotel with Burns. She found it a bit strange that he had “admitted” to something that wasn’t true.
Although she had leaned on him pretty heavily, pointing out the value of an alibi for a guy who was under suspicion for murder.
Hearing the phone ring in the living room, she left her munching and mulling in the kitchen and went to answer it.
Tammy was on the other end.
“Hi, Savannah,” she said. “Guess what Gran and I just did!”
“You just rode the carousel.”
“Oh, how did you know?”
“I’m a detective. And I know you and my granny. How was it?”
“Wonderful, we’re going to ride it again in a minute. I just wanted to call you and tell you about Bonnie Saperstein.”
“Bonnie Saperstein. Hm-m-m…that rings a bell.”
“I told you about her before. I found all these articles on the Internet where she’s blasting Wellman for his so-called weight loss program. She’s a doctor in Twin Oaks who does the same sort of work he does, only she’s legitimate.”
“Wait a minute. Karen Burns told us that she’s going to her now. Wellman told her that it wasn’t a good idea for them to see each other right now. And apparently she’s trying to drop some weight to fit into a wedding gown.”
“Well, I did some more reading and found out that Dr. Saperstein really hates Wellman. It’s really obvious in her writings and some interviews she’s done about him. It might be worth having a talk with her. She might have some insights into him and what he’s doing.”
“True,” Savannah said. “And Dirk left me here at home, high and dry, to go run some mystery errand again.”
“Uh-oh.” Tammy giggled. “Dirk never misses work for anything. She must be a real hottie.”
“And do you think that’s funny?” Savannah asked, completely mirth-free.
“Um-m, no. Not really.”
“Me, either.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
“I think I’ll go ride the carousel again. Right away.”
“Good idea.”
A few miles inland from San Carmelita, nestled in the foothills, sat the small community of Twin Oaks. The town had been named for two large oak trees that grew atop a big hill to the east of the community.
But other than those landmark trees, a small museum dedicated to the Native Americans who had originally inhabited the area, and one exceptional Mexican restaurant, Twin Oaks didn’t have much of a reputation for anything. And the residents liked it that way.
The only crimes that were committed—at least, on a regular basis—happened once a year in the springtime. That’s when the graduating high school class would climb the hill by moonlight, all the way up to the trees, drink their illegally obtained booze, maybe spawn a baby or two, and stagger back down.
Savannah didn’t particularly like Twin Oaks, mostly because it was hot. Situated inland as it was, the town had no ocean breezes to cool its residents. The hills blocked the onshore flow. And that often made a twenty-degree difference in the two towns.
Seventy-six felt a lot better than ninety-six on a summer’s day.
And Savannah could feel the difference as she drove through the center of town looking for Dr. Bonnie Saperstein’s office.
Savannah had found the doctor’s number and address in the phone book, but she hadn’t called before coming. She had decided to just risk it and see if she could catch Saperstein at work.
If she called, she risked being told no. It was a lot harder to turn down someone who was standing in front of you, smiling a down-homey Southern smile and talking sweet.
And if the doctor wasn’t in, she was still better off having made the drive than sitting at home. There, she’d be obsessing about what Dirk was up to and feeling sorry for herself tha
t Tammy was riding the carousel with her grandmother and she wasn’t.
She found the building—a small but attractive structure with a distinctly southwest design. The plaster walls were painted a delicate terra cotta, and, like Savannah’s house, the roof had red Spanish tiles. The heavy wooden door was arched on top and stained a dark walnut. Geraniums flourished in pots hanging from the eaves.
Beside the building was a parking lot, and Savannah noticed that two cars were sitting there—a small compact and a large, black Bentley.
“Ah, maybe the doctor is in after all,” she said to herself. “And if the Bentley is hers, it looks like she’s sold a few CDs, too.”
Glancing down at her watch, Savannah saw that it was ten minutes till three. If Dr. Saperstein’s appointments began on the hour, she might be finishing with someone very soon.
Savannah decided to wait in the lot and watch.
Sure enough, she was right. In less than five minutes, a young woman, who was maybe in her early twenties, came out of the building, got into the compact, and drove away.
As Savannah debated whether to go on in, another woman walked out, closing and locking the door behind her. She was attractive, middle-aged, with salt and pepper hair held back at the nape of her neck with a silver barrette. She wore a simple white tank top and white slacks with a teal blue, gauzy wrap thrown loosely around her shoulders.
Once the door to the building was secured, she headed toward the Bentley and Savannah’s Mustang. Savannah got out of her car and met her midway across the parking lot.
“Dr. Saperstein?” Savannah asked.
The woman smiled, and as she walked closer, Savannah could see that her eyes were the same beautiful shade of blue as her shawl.
“Yes, I’m Bonnie Saperstein. May I help you?”
Savannah extended her hand, and the doctor shook it warmly and firmly. “My name is Savannah Reid,” she told her. “I’m a private investigator from San Carmelita. I’m looking into a matter—the death of Maria Wellman, Dr. Robert Wellman’s…uh…wife. Could I possibly buy you a cup of coffee? I’d love to hear your opinion of Dr. Wellman.”
Wicked Craving Page 15
