Savannah sighed and whispered, “Oh, Lord, just take me now. I’m weary, and I wanna go home.”
She looked down at the two beautiful black cats at her feet. She had just fed them two kitty treats each, and they were still licking their whiskers. “You girls still love Mommy, right?” she said.
Cleo stuck her tail in the air and walked away, followed by her sister.
“That’s it. Eat my treats and then leave me to go sit on your perch and watch birds. I’m just a food supply and something warm to sleep next to at night. You might as well be men.”
She looked in the refrigerator and found Tammy’s bottle of organic green tea. She emptied it into one of her best crystal tumblers and added a lemon slice, ice cubes, and a sprig of fresh mint.
“What a major kiss-up I am. I’m pathetic,” she muttered as she carried her own sugared tea and the “healthy crap,” as she called it behind Tammy’s back, into the living room.
She set it on the desk in front of Tammy, next to the computer keyboard. “There you go, sweet cheeks,” she said. “And before you ask—yes, the ice cubes were made from filtered water.”
Tammy grumbled some unintelligible, half-syllable acknowledgment, but kept on typing…extremely vigorously.
Savannah winced, thinking that if she didn’t make up with the kid soon, she’d have to buy another keyboard. This one was taking a beating.
“Whatcha working on there?” she asked, looking over Tammy’s shoulder.
“Stuff.”
“O-o-okay.”
She walked away and would have sat down in her favorite chair, but Gran was sitting in it, her True Informer in front of her face.
Savannah strongly suspected Gran had chosen that chair out of pure spite. Granny actually preferred the rocker.
Savannah took a seat on the end of the sofa, nearest Gran, slipped off her loafers, and propped her feet on the coffee table.
She took a long drink from her tea, then said, “So, what’s it going to take to get you girls to speak to me again?”
Silence reigned supreme in the room…except for Tammy’s abuse of the keyboard and Gran’s rustling of Informer pages.
“Come on now,” she said to Gran. “I mean, really. We had to climb through the utility room window to get in. I’ve got a bruise on my hind end where I came down on the washer knob. You’re over eighty years old. Did you really have a hankerin’ to climb through a utility-room window?”
Without lowering her paper, Gran said, “If you can do it, I can do it. I’ll have you know I’m a mighty spry eighty. I still put in a full garden every spring.”
“I know you do. Everybody in the county knows what a fine garden you have every year and—”
“And I always put in twenty-four beefsteak tomato plants. How long’s it been, missy, since you tied up twenty-four beefsteak tomato plants?”
“Well, not since I left home back in—”
“You’re darned tootin’ you haven’t. It’s a chore. And if I can do that, I could go along on a measly little adventure with you…if I was invited that is, and not just left a stupid note, saying I wasn’t welcome ’cause I was an old lady.”
Savannah squirmed. “That’s not exactly what I wrote, but…”
Tammy stopped typing and whirled around in her chair. “And what’s your excuse for not inviting me? You can’t say I’m not physically able when you know I complete the Santa Barbara Marathon every year and can bench press my weight for three reps.”
Savannah held up one hand. “I know, I know, Tams. You’re a paragon of physical fitness.”
“Then why didn’t you invite me to come along? I sit here every day and do the boring stuff and never complain, while you and Dirk get to do all the cool, dangerous, scary stuff.”
“Dirk wasn’t along.”
“You know what I mean. It’s always you and some of the guys, and not me, doing the fun stuff.” Her lip protruded like a petulant toddler’s. “And this time was especially bad, because you found some really neat stuff.”
“Devil black magic stuff,” Gran interjected from behind her newspaper.
“Yeah…in an old chest in an attic. It doesn’t get any better than that, and I missed it!”
“How’s about I take both of you to Disneyland next week?” Savannah pleaded.
“You think that can make up for a chest full of spooky stuff in an attic?” Tammy tossed her head, blonde hair flying. “Not on your life.”
Gran dropped her paper. “Disneyland? Hey, I’d call it even!”
Savannah’s phone began to ring. She reached over and grabbed it off the end table. “It’s Dirk,” she said. “And not a moment too soon. Hello.”
“Hi.”
She could tell from that one word that something was wrong. Badly wrong. “What’s up?”
“You know that strip club on Mission Street, next to Saul’s Pawn Shop?”
“Naughty Nonnina’s?”
“Yeah. You gotta get over here.”
“What’s up?”
“I have to go. See ya.”
Click. He hung up, leaving her looking at the phone and wondering.
“What’s going on?” Tammy wanted to know.
Even a pissy Tammy was a nosy Tammy.
“Dirk wants me to get over to Naughty Nonnina’s right away. Something’s definitely up.”
“Naughty Nonnina’s? Isn’t that a strip club?”
“Hm-m-ph. Fan dancers,” Gran said, her nose once again buried in her paper.
Savannah hurried into the kitchen and tossed her tea into the sink. When she returned to the living room, Tammy was on her feet and was wearing such a sweet, hopeful look on her pretty face that Savannah couldn’t resist.
“Would you two ladies like to come along with me?” she asked.
“Yes!” Tammy’s response was instantaneous.
Gran waited a couple of seconds. “No, I’m okay with the Disneyland bribe. You two younguns run along and have a good time. I’ll stay here and finish reading my Informer.”
She folded the paper just so and settled in for a nice, long read.
As Savannah and Tammy grabbed their purses and headed for the door, Savannah heard her say, “I just found out that one of my favorite actors is gay. I wonder if he knows Ryan and John?”
On the way to Naughty Nonnina’s, Tammy was happier, but still uncharacteristically quiet for her. As Savannah drove, she kept stealing sideways looks at her, and she could tell that something was still wrong with her young friend.
“Would you feel better if you yelled at me some more about last night?” Savannah asked her.
“No, I already made my point,” was her low-key reply. “I don’t have anything more to add…except that when you exclude me that way, I don’t feel like you respect me. You know, as a fellow investigator.”
Savannah reached over and put her hand on her knee. “Oh, sugar, don’t say that. I have enormous respect for you. You’re an amazing woman!”
“Do you really think of me as a woman?”
“Of course I do. But maybe, unfortunately for you, I think of you as a little sister. And that has more to do with me than you. I just step into that big-sister role out of habit. It’s a bad habit, I know. I don’t blame you one bit for being aggravated with me.”
Tammy put her hand over Savannah’s and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t apologize. I love it that you think of me as your sister. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Good, ’cause I don’t think I can change that part of who I am. Granny drilled it into me to ‘look out for the younguns,’ and I don’t think I’ll ever get that out of my head.”
“That’s okay…since you’re taking me along with you today.”
“So, we’re friends again.”
“No. We’re sisters. That’s better.” She squeezed Savannah’s hand. “Some sisters biology gives you; other ones, your heart chooses.”
“That’s for sure.”
“And now that we’ve made up, I’ve
got something good to tell you,” Tammy said with a sly grin.
“What’s that?”
“I found some stuff on the Web about Wellman, back when he was Bobby Martini.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“He was under investigation for fraud there in Las Vegas…him and his sister, and her husband, Gustav Avantis.”
“Really? Wow. You read that on the Internet?”
“Yes. They had a pretty successful business going there with that ghost-busting thing. Bobby—they called him ‘Little Bobby’—and Gus were supposedly the techno experts, picking up ghost voices on their equipment, measuring spirit ‘frequencies’ and all that. And Maria claimed to be a medium, channeling those who had passed on.”
Savannah turned onto Mission Street, heading toward the east end of town and Nonnina’s. “But there’s nothing criminal about ghost busting and saying you’re a medium…whether you really are or not.”
“The criminal part was—they started telling people that the ghosts would harm them if they didn’t pay big bucks to have them ‘cleansed’ from their houses.”
“Oh, that is ugly.”
“Yeah, they’d tell these people that evil spirits had taken over their houses. And for the right price, they could set up these machines and send out frequencies that the ghosts wouldn’t like, and Maria would talk to them, and they’d leave.”
Savannah thought of the shoe boxes stuffed with cash. “And apparently, quite a few people believed them and forked over the big bucks.”
“How can people be that foolish, to believe something like that?”
“Folks are taught all sorts of things growing up,” Savannah said. “And believing something foolish doesn’t make you a bad person. Taking advantage of people who are a bit too trusting—that’s something else.”
“Will Dirk be able to go after him for it?”
“I doubt it. Dirk already checked to see if Wellman had any outstanding warrants, even as Bobby Martini, but he didn’t. Just because he and the others were being investigated doesn’t mean any charges were ever brought.”
“That’s probably why they closed up shop and left…to avoid getting prosecuted, I mean.”
“Could be,” Savannah said, “But I find it interesting that Gus didn’t come with them. Maybe Wellman was telling the truth when he said that Gina left Gus because he was a bad guy.”
Tammy thought that over for a while as they rode along. And Savannah watched her, thinking how pretty she was with the sunlight shining on her glossy blonde hair, her face screwed up in a certain childlike concentration.
No. No matter how much she tried, Savannah knew she would never think of Tammy as anything other than a beloved little sister, someone to watch over and protect.
“So, schnookums,” she said, “what do you think about this whole rigmarole?”
“I think,” Tammy replied, “that if I was under investigation in Las Vegas for cheating a bunch of people out of a lot of money, and if I was leaving my husband anyway, and he wasn’t a nice guy—that might be a good time to change my name and move to another state.”
“And I,” Savannah said, “think you’re right.”
Savannah pointed up ahead. “That’s Naughty Nonnina’s up there.”
“The pink building with the silhouette of the woman with oversized hooters painted on the front?”
“That would be the one.”
“Are the owners Italian?”
That one stumped Savannah. “Uh…I can’t really say. Why?”
“I was just wondering, because ‘Nonnina’ is Italian for ‘little grandmother.’”
Savannah gave her a startled sideways look. “Really? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Naughty little grandma? Yuck.”
“Really.”
As they drove closer, Savannah looked for Dirk’s Buick and didn’t see it. But she did see blue and red flashes of light coming from the space in between the strip joint and building next to it.
“You know,” she told Tammy, “I was hoping that maybe Dirk had found Gus Avantis and figured out some reason to arrest him.”
“That looks like a lot of activity back there in the alley for a simple arrest,” Tammy said, “unless he really resisted.”
Savannah pulled the Mustang over to the curb in front of Nonnina’s. She glanced in her mirror before opening the door to get out, and she caught sight of a large white van headed their way.
As it passed them, she saw the coroner’s seal on the side.
“Uh-oh,” she said. “Dr. Liu and her team are here. This can’t be good.”
Chapter 20
“Wow, déjà vu all over again,” Savannah said as she and Tammy ducked under the yellow perimeter tape and entered the area the police had cordoned off.
One handsome, young patrolman started toward them, holding his hand up in his best traffic-cop fashion. But when he recognized Savannah, he nodded and smiled.
She gave him a brief wave and a mouthed “thanks,” then turned her attention to the business at hand.
In the center of the protected scene was a new, black Mercedes sedan, and on the ground next to it was a yellow tarp. Savannah would have recognized the shape under the tarp anywhere. It was a body.
“Who do you suppose it is?” Tammy asked. Her voice sounded a little shaky.
For all her bravado and eagerness to be in the middle of the action, Savannah could tell she was nervous.
“I don’t know who it is,” Savannah said, although it was running through her mind that she wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Roxanne Rosen did a bit of moonlighting as a dancer at Nonnina’s.
“There’s Dirk over there,” Tammy said, “talking to that cop.”
No sooner had Tammy spoken than Dirk spotted them. He quickly ended his conversation with the officer and walked over to them.
He looked mildly surprised to see Tammy with Savannah, but he didn’t mention it.
“What’s up?” Savannah asked him. “And who’s that?”
Nodding toward the tarp, he said, “Take a look.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. Savannah walked over to the car and the body beside it, bracing herself, as always.
Having seen terrible sights when she hadn’t prepared herself, she had learned to guard her psyche as best she could. Although she had also learned that there wasn’t really any way to protect one’s heart and mind from the aftermath of violence.
She pulled a pair of surgical gloves from her purse and slipped them on. Then she knelt on one knee beside the tarp.
But before she raised the corner, she turned to Tammy, who was standing right behind her.
“You okay?” she asked her.
She nodded, looking a little sick, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Why don’t you go back and talk to Dirk?” Savannah said. “I’ll look first, and then I’ll tell you how bad it is.”
“No, that’s okay. Let’s just do it.”
“All right.” Savannah lowered her voice, “But if you think there’s any chance you’re going to get sick, run fast and get to the other side of the tape before you…you know…”
“Add my DNA to the crime scene?”
“Exactly.”
Savannah turned back to the body and raised the corner of the tarp. In her peripheral vision she could see several cops who were standing nearby moving closer to get a better look.
It took her mind a few seconds to process what she was seeing, because there was so much blood and the flesh of the face was so badly damaged.
She heard Tammy gasp, and one of the cops said, “Damn! Somebody sure made hamburger out of him.”
As she continued to pull the tarp farther back, she saw that it was, indeed, a male. He was wearing a purple polo shirt.
“He has red hair,” Tammy said. “Do you think it’s Wellman?”
“It’s Wellman,” Dirk replied. Savannah looked up and saw that he was standing next to Tammy, hi
s hand on her shoulder. “He had his wallet in his pocket. Several pieces of ID and quite a bit of cash, too.”
“Ugly,” Savannah said. “Looks like somebody hit him in the head with something long and hard…and a lot more times than necessary to do the job.”
“A rage killing,” Tammy added. Her pretty, young face, usually lit with a smile, registered her sadness and horror.
“Yeah,” Dirk said. “Somebody sure as hell wanted him dead.”
“And it looks like they enjoyed doing it, too.” Savannah glanced around. On the blacktop about a yard away, near the vehicle’s front driver’s side tire, was a large screwdriver. Next to it, someone had placed a bright orange, plastic evidence marker. And about two feet from the screwdriver was a hammer, which had its own marker.
The tire was flat, a deep puncture in its side.
“Well, they weren’t the least bit subtle about that, huh?” she said. “They give the guy a flat tire and make sure he knows they did it.” She turned to Dirk. “This is Wellman’s vehicle, right?”
He nodded.
Tammy was standing close to the car, sighting down the side of the front fender. “I think I see blood spatter there near the tire well,” she said. “It’s hard to tell on the black paint, but you can see it from here.”
Savannah looked at the area from the angle she had suggested and agreed with her. “Yeah, that’s spatter, all right. I’ll bet he was leaning over, looking at his flat tire, when he got the first blow.”
Dirk said, “I figure that’s why they punched the tire in the first place…to get him into position to get whacked.”
“You poke a hole in my tire and leave the screwdriver and hammer beside it in plain view,” Savannah said, “you’d have my attention. I’d be sure to lean over and investigate.”
“What do you suppose they hit him with?” Tammy said, wincing as she looked at the body’s ruined face. “The hammer?”
“I doubt it,” Savannah told her. “Not unless they wiped it down afterward. It looks clean.”
“My best guess…” Dirk said dryly, “…is the bloody crowbar we found laying on the ground halfway down the alley.”
“Ouch,” Savannah said. “That’s a nasty, I-mean-business sort of a weapon.”
Wicked Craving Page 19
