It didn’t take them five minutes. Dirk really stepped on the gas, and they were there in four.
When they saw the gatehouse, the first thing Savannah noticed was that the guard looked scared to death. He was a small, older man in a neatly pressed khaki uniform. He was backed into a corner inside the booth, blocked from any means of escape by the impressive bulk of Brian Mahoney.
Mahoney was screaming at him.
“Where is she? Where is my wife? Don’t tell me you didn’t see her. She couldn’t have gotten out any other way than through there! You tell me where she is or I swear I’ll break your scrawny neck!”
He was wearing a dirty, ripped T-shirt and torn jeans. But what distressed Savannah about his attire was the fact that his shirt was spattered with drops of blood.
And she saw no trace of any injury on him.
Somehow, that wasn’t particularly surprising. Brian Mahoney struck her as a guy who caused other people’s blood to spill more than vice versa.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Dirk yelled as he and Savannah scrambled out of the Buick. “Back off there, Mahoney!”
When Mahoney turned around and saw them, his rage level soared. “You? I’m sick of you two! Get outta here. I’ve got problems!”
“And you’re going to have even more if you don’t back away from that guard,” Savannah told him. “You can’t go threatening people like that.”
“Yeah? Well, you come on over here yourself, you bitch, and we’ll see if it’s a threat or a promise.”
“Oh, now you’ve gone and done it,” Savannah said, shaking her head. “You just stepped in a fresh cow pie with both feet.”
A smoldering Dirk hurried up to Mahoney, a pair of cuffs already in his hand. “Turn around,” Dirk told him, “and put your hands behind your back.”
“What?” Mahoney gave him a challenging little smirk. “You’re going to arrest me? You and who else?”
Savannah felt a shot of apprehension sizzle through her. The guy was big, really big, and all muscles and temper.
She glanced around the nearby shrubs, trying to see any sign of Lydia. At first she didn’t see anyone. But then she noticed an oleander bush moving slightly. Through the tangle of dark green leaves and bright pink blossoms she could see something that looked like human skin.
But before she could help Lydia, she had to assist Dirk with Mahoney. Resisters who were over six foot three often presented a problem.
“You better turn around and put your hands on that wall right now, buddy,” Dirk was saying.
“Or what?” Mahoney tossed back.
“You’ll be finding out what any minute now. Step away from that guard, and lift your hands. Do it now!”
Savannah walked over to Dirk, and the two of them advanced on Mahoney. To her dismay, he raised his clenched fists from his sides and positioned them in a fighter’s stance. And worse, the sick little grin on his face made it obvious that he was enjoying this encounter, rather than being frightened or intimidated as they certainly would have preferred.
Brian Mahoney was a pro at this sort of thing. And Savannah was determined that neither her nor Dirk’s blood would be mingling with the drops already on his shirt.
Dirk raised his own fists, cuffs tight in one of them.
She knew he wouldn’t draw his weapon unless he absolutely had to. Dirk always preferred wrestling to shooting.
“Look,” Dirk was telling him. “All I’m asking you to do is come out of that guard house, turn around, and put your hands behind you. Then I’ll cuff you, for your protection and mine, and we’ll have a little chat about whatever’s goin’ on. If everything’s hunky-dory, then I’ll uncuff you and we’ll all be on our merry way. Sound like a plan?”
Mahoney didn’t drop his fists or his nasty little grin. “Naw, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Okay, your choice,” Dirk said as he pulled a billy club from the back of his belt and strode toward him.
Savannah rushed forward with him. But when she got almost within grabbing distance of Mahoney, she looked quickly to the left, pointed at the corner of the guardhouse, and said, “Oh, hey, look! It’s Lydia!”
As she’d predicted, Mahoney’s head whipped around to see what she was pointing to, and a second later, Dirk had one of his arms, and she had the other. They turned him around and slammed him, face first, into the brick wall of the guardhouse.
She grabbed his right hand, while Dirk nabbed the left. And before Brian Mahoney could spit a plug of tobacco, he was cuffed.
“Where is she?” he yelled, seemingly more anxious to see his wife than he was worried about being in the hands of the law.
“You got him?” Savannah asked.
“Yeah,” Dirk replied. He pushed Mahoney onto the ground, where he sat down hard on the asphalt. “I’m gonna call a unit with a cage to transport him, though. I don’t want him in the back of my Buick.”
“Why not?” Savannah said. “He’d fit in with all the other moldy garbage back there.”
She leaned closer to Dirk and lowered her voice. “Turn him around so that he’s facing the other way.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Okay.”
Dirk did as she said. And the moment Brian’s head was turned, she hurried over to the oleander bush.
She found a shivery Lydia, crouched there, her arms folded over her bare breasts. She was shaking violently and blood was pouring from both sides of her horribly swollen nose.
All she had on was a pair of black lace panties.
She was crying.
“Oh, sugar,” Savannah said, crouching beside her. “He messed you up good didn’t he, darlin’?”
Lydia simply nodded and continued to cry.
Savannah took off her own linen jacket and started to put it on the woman, who was trembling so badly she could hardly slide her arm into the sleeve.
Glancing over Lydia’s body, Savannah searched for other signs of injury. Most noticeable was her left ring finger. It was terribly swollen and dark blue. Savannah could tell just by its strange, grotesque angle that it was broken.
“He…he threw me out of the house,” Lydia was saying. “He beat me up and then he pushed me out the door, and I didn’t have any clothes.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Savannah told her. “But it’s over now. Sergeant Coulter has him in custody now, and he’s going to jail. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”
Lydia held up her hand. “He tore my wedding ring off my finger. It really hurts.”
Savannah was already dialing 911. “I’ll bet it does. I’m getting you medical help right now. An ambulance will take you to the hospital, and the doctors will set that for you. You’re going to be okay. The worst is over now.”
Lydia looked up at her with eyes that were filled with sadness, fear, and pain. But there was another little something there that hadn’t been before.
It looked a lot like hope.
“It is over, isn’t it?” Lydia said. “I can press charges against him, and you guys can send him to jail for hurting me.”
“Absolutely.”
“And then this whole nightmare could be finished.”
Savannah nodded and smiled.
But once she had given the 911 operator all the particulars and hung up, she got to thinking about all the other women—hundreds and hundreds of them—over the years who had been where Lydia was.
“You know, Lydia,” she said, her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “This will be over if you make it so. You have to testify against that guy, tell the court what he did to you, what he’s done to you all these years. You have to help the prosecution convict him of his crimes toward you. And then, once he’s behind bars, you have to guard your own life. Really be on guard. Because if you don’t, in a year or less, you’ll find yourself with another guy just like Brian—different name, different face, but the same situation.”
Lydia cried softly. “I’ve been hit before. By my dad. By other boyfriends. B
y my ex-husband.”
“So, make sure that this is the last time.”
Lydia nodded. “I will.”
“You have to. You’re the only one who can decide that it’s over. Never again.” She leaned down and patted the woman on the head. “Promise me, Lydia. Promise yourself—right now.”
“I promise.”
Savannah took heart.
Lydia sounded like she meant it.
Savannah, Dirk, and Granny sat in Savannah’s living room, relaxing amid the desolation of a major feast.
The empty glasses, dirty dishes, and serving plates that held only crumbs, all testified that some serious eating had recently been done.
The party was over, and Tammy, John, and Ryan had left, all groaning that they had major bellyaches and would never be hungry again for the rest of their lives. And that was the way Savannah liked her guests to leave. The more miserable they were, the better she, as a Southern hostess, had done her job.
“That must have done your heart good, knowing that woman’s going to pay for what she did,” Gran said.
“Not as much as you might think,” Savannah admitted. “Usually there’s a family who’s eager for justice for their loved one. But while we were investigating this, we didn’t come across anybody who really loved either Bobby or Gina Martini, or gave a hoot that their killer’s been arrested. It’s sort of a hollow victory.”
“Not for me,” Dirk said. “I was glad to lock up that sourpuss. Even if nobody liked those people, she didn’t have the right to kill them. She’s right where she belongs, and I’m happy about it, even if nobody else is.”
“I’ll tell you what did give me a heap of satisfaction,” Savannah said. She drained the last sip from her iced tea, then set the glass on the coffee table. “And that was getting that phone call from Lydia Mahoney this afternoon.”
“Mahoney…” Gran said. “That name sounds familiar. Isn’t she the one who’s married to that no-good bum of a cowboy who was blackmailing the doctor?”
“Yes, the one with the tricked-out pickup and the gun rack,” Dirk said.
“Dirk’s jealous,” Savannah said. “He wishes he had that truck.”
“I don’t want nothin’ that guy has.” Dirk sniffed. “Especially now. He’s gone from living at a Southern-style mansion with big white columns to an eight-foot jail cell.”
“You arrested him?” Gran asked.
“Yes, and it was the high point of our day,” Savannah replied. “That worthless maggot thumped on his old lady one too many times. He broke her nose and then her finger, ripping her wedding ring off her. Threw her outside with hardly anything on. She high-tailed it outta there and gave me a call. Dirk slapped him in jail and, once she’d given her statement, I took her back home.”
Gran smiled and nodded. “That’s a fine thing. I bet you that when that woman’s head hits the pillow tonight, she’ll get the best night’s sleep she’s had in ages.”
“And,” Dirk added, “she’s pressing charges on him, so we can keep him locked up for a while, give her a chance to resettle somewhere far away from him.”
Savannah looked over at her grandmother and saw that Gran had nodded off. She smiled and said, “I’m taking her to Disneyland tomorrow…make it up to her for neglecting her so much this past week.”
“Something tells me your grandma didn’t feel neglected,” Dirk replied as he got up from his chair, picked up one of Savannah’s afghans, and spread it over Granny’s lap, then pulled it up over her shoulders. “She’s the type who entertains herself. She’s a honey.”
“She is. One in a million.”
Savannah studied Dirk in the soft, golden lamplight, and thought that Granny wasn’t the only honey in the room. Though he wasn’t likely to own up to it.
“It was good to see you back on your feed again,” she told him, her voice soft and sweet.
“What?”
“Your diet. You seem to be off it tonight. You were chowing down, big time, on those ribs and that potato salad.”
“Oh, man…I didn’t even know how much I’d missed your food. I took that first bite of ribs and almost burst into tears.” He cleared his throat. “Wouldn’t wanna do that in front of Ryan and John.”
“No, absolutely not.”
Dirk glanced over at Granny. “You think she’s gonna sleep for a while?”
“Oh, she’s out. Why?”
“’Cause there’s something I’ve gotta show you, something about that diet I’ve been on and the trips to the gym and all that. And I don’t want her to see.”
Savannah sat up straight in her chair, all ears and eyes. “Sure. What is it?”
“I didn’t want to tell you about it at all, but I know if I don’t, somebody else will.”
She gulped. “Okay.”
“And it’s not the sort of thing that I want you to hear about secondhand.”
“I understand.”
He walked over to the desk chair, where he had hung his leather jacket when he had arrived. He fished around inside the inner pocket and pulled out an envelope.
Savannah felt time slow down, the way it had at times in her life when she was about to hear something huge, something that would change everything. She steeled herself for the revelation.
He said, “I want you to take a look and tell me what you think. And be nice. No wisecracking, okay?”
“Wisecracking? Me? You forget who you’re talking to.”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to. That’s why I’m warning you. I need you to be my sweet, understanding Savannah.”
He sat down on the footstool at her feet and held out the small manila envelope. When she reached for it, her hand was shaking. “I’ll be good,” she said. “If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”
She opened the envelope and looked inside.
“Pictures?” she asked. “Your big secret is pictures?”
“Actually, the photographer called them ‘proofs.’”
She pulled the stack out of the envelope and leaned closer to the lamp beside her.
At first, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. It was a shot of a man, from the waist up, wearing a snug, muscle-hugging, red shirt. He had quite a lot of muscles and was looking particularly good in his red shirt. In fact, he was looking extremely good in that red shirt.
“Oh, my god!” she said. “It’s you!”
Even in the dim light, she could see him blushing. “Yeah, yeah, it’s me.”
She looked at the next one in the stack. In this one, he wasn’t wearing any shirt at all. Just some red pants with a wide, black belt, and a red hat with white fur around its edges. His tanned chest and biceps bulged in all the right places.
“Holy moly! It’s been way too long since I saw you with your shirt off! You’re a hunk, dude!”
“Yeah? Really?”
“Smokin’ hot!”
The next picture was more of the same outfit, different position, a definite “come hither” look on his face.
“I don’t know if I’d have chosen that particular outfit, but man, you look great! You could be on the cover of a romance novel!”
“The outfit wasn’t really my choice. It had to be something Christmas-ish, and I told them no way I was gonna pose with nothing but a sprig of mistletoe over my you-know-what.”
“So, this is why you’ve been dieting and shopping at Ryan and John’s stores and working out? You were getting boudoir pictures taken?”
“What’s a boo-dwar picture?”
“Naughty pictures to give to your wife or girlfriend. But you don’t have a wife or a girlfriend, so…” She flipped to the next shot, which looked like he was nude but holding a gift-wrapped box in front of him.
“I told them I’d need an extra-large package for that shot. You know…to cover my…”
“Don’t say it.”
“My extra-large package.”
She groaned. “I told you not to say it.” The last was of him wearing a skin-tight, red t
ank top, again with all the muscles bulging in the right places. He was holding a giant candy cane at a moderately suggestive angle. “These are great. Really. But why the Christmas theme?”
She looked up and saw that he was grinning, all nervousness gone and smug satisfaction in its place.
“You,” he said, “are looking at Mr. December himself. In the glorious flesh.”
“Mr. December?”
“That’s me. Mr. December of the SCPD Charity Hunk Calendar. The proceeds go to disabled officers’ kids. It’s a really good cause, you know. I couldn’t say no.”
“They chose you for the Hunk Calendar! Get outta here!”
“Well, don’t look so surprised. There’re only thirteen guys in the department right now and one of them is Kenny Bates.”
“Yeah, I see your point.”
“And I knew that when the calendar came out, you’d see it, so…I had to tell you.”
Savannah sat quietly for a long time, looking at the pictures, her hands no longer trembling.
Finally, she broke the long silence and said, “I thought you’d got yourself a girlfriend. I thought you’d fallen in love with somebody el—” She choked a little. “I mean…with somebody.”
He looked at her for a long time, his eyes tender, an enigmatic half smile on his face. “Is that what you thought?”
She nodded, not looking at him.
He put out his hand, so she stuffed the photos into the envelope to give them back to him. But when she did, he didn’t take them. Instead, he caught her by the wrist and pulled her toward him.
A moment later, they were face-to-face, so close that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek.
“Let me tell you something, girl,” he said, his voice deep and low. “The day that I actually admit that I’m in love…you’re gonna be the very first to hear it. Nobody else.”
She opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out. So she tried again. “Okay.”
He smiled, his eyes searching hers. “And don’t you ever forget that.”
“Okay.”
He took the envelope out of her hand and stood. “I’ve gotta get going,” he said, putting on his bomber jacket. “Do you want me to carry Gran up the stairs to bed?”
Wicked Craving Page 23
