Murder à la Mode

by G. A. McKevett

  He said nothing for a long time. But he unlaced his fingers from hers and brought her hand to his face. And after several moments, he placed a sweet, lingering kiss into the palm of her hand.

  “I understand, Savannah,” he said. “And I didn’t ask you to spend time with me tonight just so that I could get lucky.”

  He glanced down at her bosom, grinned, and added, “Not that the thought didn’t cross my mind, but….”

  “But?”

  “The bottom line is: I’ve been feeling really awful about what’s been happening around here, and I just really didn’t want to spend the evening all by myself.”

  She quirked one eyebrow. “And Roxy, Kit, or Mary wouldn’t do?”

  “Uh, no. If they were my only choices, I’d be perfectly content to be alone right now.”

  He released her hand, stood, and reached for a jar of honey. Again, he pulled the heating pot toward him and away from the fire. Then he scooped out a spoonful of the thick, golden liquid and allowed it to drip down into the pot.

  She had to admit that it smelled divine. And she also had to admit that sitting there by the fire covered with soft throws, reclining on pillows, and having a hunk serve her wasn’t too bad, either.

  Maybe being a private detective wasn’t so awful after all. If she’d still been on the force, this little adventure never would have happened.

  But as she watched him pour the steaming hot wine into the pewter goblets, she reminded herself that she had work to do here tonight.

  Someday, she might kick herself for passing up a night in that giant bed with its exotic throws with this man whom a million women desperately wanted. She might wonder why it was more important to nail a killer than to be plundered by Raff the pirate.

  But she doubted it.

  Passion came in all forms.

  “How’s the investigation going?” Lance asked, as though reading her mind. He handed her a goblet with a small white towel wrapped around it. “Careful, those metal cups look good, but they aren’t very practical for serving hot stuff. Something my sister-in-law neglected to tell me.”

  “It could be going better,” she admitted. “If we knew who killed Tess and hurt the other girls, it would definitely be going better.”

  “Anybody in particular that you’re looking at?” he said as he poured his own mug full.

  She could hear the pseudo-casual interest behind his words. She saw that his eyes were avoiding hers as he performed his task.

  And for that moment, she would have preferred to be deaf and blind, or at least nearsighted and hard-of-hearing.

  “I really can’t say,” she replied evenly, but with as much stress-producing insinuation as she could pack into four words.

  “Whoever’s doing it,” he said as he sat down again beside her, “it’s a horrible thing. Those two girls maimed.” He stared down into his wine for a moment, then added softly, “Tess dead.”

  She watched as he took a long, deep draught of the hot liquid. She sipped her own and felt its heat steal through her, soothing and comforting, as the spices filled her head.

  But this wasn’t the time to be soothed or comfortable, she reminded herself. This was the time to do some digging. As unpleasant as the prospect might be.

  “Lance,” she said, “I know about you and Tess.”

  He didn’t look surprised. And he didn’t look her way, but continued to stare down into his mug. “I figured you’d find out sooner or later,” he said. “I was hoping for later.”

  “Were you in love with her?”

  He glanced up for just a second, then back down. But in that brief instant, Savannah saw a hatred so raw and intense that it startled her.

  “No.”

  His one word answer said little, but his eyes had said it all.

  “So, it was more of a physical attraction?” she prodded.

  “Are you kidding?” She could hear the rage now in his voice, and she had to admit that she was glad she had her gun under her skirt. “You saw Tess,” he said. “Do you think I was attracted to her? Do you think anyone would be attracted to her? She was a bitter, nasty woman and it showed…it showed all over her. That’s not attractive.”

  “No, of course not. I was just thinking, she might have been different when you first met her, ten years ago. People change.”

  “Yeah, Tess changed all right. She mellowed. She used to be worse.”

  Savannah toyed with her goblet, took a few more sips of the sweet, hot wine, and chose her words carefully. “Then why, Lance? Why the ongoing affair?”

  “Because I’m a whore.”

  Whoa, she thought. I wasn’t expecting that.

  Again, she considered her next question before asking it. “Do you mean, you performed sexual services for her? She paid you to…”

  “Yes. She paid me. Not like an escort service. Not three hundred an hour. It wasn’t that honest.”

  “Then how?”

  “She paid me by passing my name around at parties and getting me gigs, by making sure I got enough book covers to pay my rent and car payments, by including me in some project of hers from time to time, seeing to it that nobody forgot who Lance Roman was in the industry. She paid me by not hurting my career with a dropped word here and there, a rumor started, a lie told, those careless little comments that can destroy you overnight.”

  Savannah reached over and laid her hand on his arm. “She was abusing her power. And abusing you. I’m sure that must have made you very angry.”

  Did it make you angry enough to kill her, Lance? she added in her mind. Did it get to be too much for too long and you let her have it over the head with a medieval mace?

  Again, he seemed to read her mind. His eyes met hers for a moment, searching and evaluating. Then his demeanor changed to defensive.

  “I was angry,” he said, leaning slightly away from her, “and I might have thought she deserved it, but I didn’t kill her.”

  It was her turn to study, to search, to evaluate. And she didn’t see innocence in his eyes. As much as she hated to admit it, she saw guilt.

  “Are you sure, Lance?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” He set his mug on the floor beside him and crossed his arms over his chest. “I wouldn’t do something like that. You know I didn’t do it. You were with me when we found her.”

  “Yes,” Savannah said softly, “you were there when I first saw the body.”

  “And I can’t tell you how awful I felt, seeing her—someone I’d known, someone I’d been intimate with lying there dead, blood all over the place, that horrible gash in her skull. I’ll never get over seeing that. Never. It’ll haunt me till the day I die.”

  That part, she believed. His eyes were full of regret and sadness, guilt and horror over what he’d seen.

  His soul was open and exposed, and she could see all the way inside…whether she wanted to or not.

  “I believe you, Lance,” she said. “I know it was terrible for you, witnessing something like that. I hope you find some peace as time passes.”

  “That would be good,” he said, passing a hand wearily over his eyes. “But I can’t see it happening. I don’t think this nightmare is ever going to be over for me.”

  She set her mug on the floor beside his. Standing, she leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the top of his head. “I’m going to go now, Lance,” she told him. “Thank you for making mulled wine for me. I’ll never forget it. I’m never going to forget any of the time we’ve spent together. You’re very special, to say the least.”

  “So are you, Savannah,” he said, rising to his feet. “I’ll walk you back to your room.”

  “That isn’t necessary. Really. But thanks. Stay here and…try to find some peace, Lance. No matter what goes down, a body’s gotta find some inner peace if they’re going to make it through this life.”

  He bent his head and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Good night, Savannah,” he said as he opened the trap door for her and helped her down the first few steps
.

  “Good night, Lance,” she replied.

  “Thanks for everything,” he called after her.

  “Don’t thank me, Lance,” she whispered. “Don’t thank me.”

  When she exited the tower, she turned toward the keep, intending to go to her room. But she saw a movement in the shrubbery off to her left, then more off to her right. A moment later, four figures emerged from the shadows and came toward her.

  It was Tammy, Ryan, John…and Dirk.

  “We were just hanging around out here,” Tammy whispered to her, wrapping her arm around Savannah’s waist, “You know—just in case you needed help.”

  “All of you?”

  Ryan chuckled. “In case you needed a lot of help.”

  “At the first sound of a scuffle,” John said, “we were prepared to storm the tower.”

  “That’s nice,” she said without enthusiasm.

  Dirk stepped in front of her, blocking her path. “What’s the matter, Van?” he said. And for once, he looked more worried, more genuinely concerned about her welfare than angry and jealous.

  For some reason that she couldn’t explain, she rushed to him and threw her arms around his neck. She buried her face against his shirt and breathed in the old, familiar, comforting smell of him.

  “What is it, honey?” he said, pulling her away from him and holding her by the shoulders so that he could look down into her eyes. “What did you find out up there?”

  “Lance did it,” she told him, her voice breaking. “He killed Tess. I know he did, and I know why.”

  “Let’s go back to our apartment and talk about this,” Ryan said.

  “Yes, let’s,” John added. “I’ll make a strong pot of tea.”

  Savannah turned around and took one long look up at the round tower, a stately black silhouette against the moonlit sky. She closed her eyes and for a few seconds allowed the sadness to flow through her, as the warm mulled wine had only minutes before.

  Through her…and then out.

  “Okay,” she said as she turned her back on the tower and its lonely occupant. “Let’s go.”

  Lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders, she headed for the gatehouse.

  Chapter

  18

  “When did you really know for sure that it was Lance?” Tammy asked Savannah.

  The two women stood at Savannah’s bedroom window, looking down on the courtyard, where Dirk was having a serious, late-night conversation with R.R. Breakstone.

  “I was pretty sure soon after I got there, just from the way he was acting,” she told her. “He wouldn’t look at me when he was asking me about the investigation. I got the feeling he was pumping me for information, not discussing it with me as a friend.

  “But,” she continued, “I knew for sure when he explained how he felt when he saw her wound. The big, ugly gash in her head.”

  “He seemed sorry about it?”

  “Yes, but that’s not how I knew. He described the wound very accurately. And it was on the back of her head. When he and I looked at her there in the freezer, she was lying on her back, face up. We didn’t turn her over until later, when Dr. Liu okayed it. And he wasn’t around then. He had gone upstairs with Carisa.”

  “Could he have seen it later, when they were taking her out?”

  “No. Dr. Liu suspected right from the first that it was a homicide. And she had already zipped the body into one of the bags with a lock. No one saw that wound except the doctor, the C.S.I. techs, Dirk and me.”

  They watched in silence a few moments as Dirk and R.R. seemed to be ending their discussion in the courtyard below. From the body language of the two men, it was obvious that their exchange had been a tense one.

  “Are you okay about this?” Tammy asked as Dirk and R.R. concluded and parted ways. R.R. got into the rear of his limousine and it pulled away, while Dirk entered the keep through the front door.

  “I guess,” Savannah replied. “I’m just sort of surprised at myself. I thought I’d seen it all. I didn’t think somebody could pull the wool over my eyes like that. I must be losing it, kiddo.”

  “Ah, you’re not losing anything. You’re better than ever. You just let starry-eyed love get in your eyes.”

  “More like lust. It was just an infatuation…nothing even close to love. Heck, I didn’t even know the guy. Obviously. He was killing and hurting people right under my nose, and I didn’t even know it.”

  “Speaking of ‘people,’” Tammy said. “How about the attacks on Brandy and Carisa? Do you think he did those, too?”

  “Probably. He can’t be accounted for during those times, so he had opportunity.”

  “How about motive? You think he killed Tess because he was sick of her sexual harassment. But what about the other two?”

  “I don’t know why he hurt them. Maybe they knew he had killed Tess. Dirk will find out, now that he knows who to look at.”

  A knock sounded on the door, and Dirk called out, “Hey, open up in there.”

  “Speaking of Dirko,” Tammy said, going to the door and letting him in.

  “Well, did you get R.R.’s permission to search the premises?” Savannah asked him.

  “I sure did. He wasn’t big on the idea at first, but I talked him into it. Told him that if I could pin it on somebody good and solid, he might not get his ass sued off for that statue falling on Carisa.”

  “Good thinking,” Savannah told him. “You always have been able to bring out the best in people.”

  “I like to think so.” He gave her a strange, probing look and said, “Do you want a part of this?”

  “No,” she said. “You go search his room on your own. Let me know what you find.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. “I’m sure. I’ll wait for you here.”

  “Okay.” He didn’t look happy with her reply, but he didn’t argue. “Me and John and Ryan are going to go shake his room up good and see what crawls out. I’ll see you in a while.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Me, too.” Tammy said.

  “You don’t have to baby-sit me. Go give him a hand.”

  Tammy’s face lit up. She lived for these moments.

  Usually Savannah did, too. So she understood completely. “Go,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “I’m sure as shootin’. Now get going before I take a stick to you.”

  Tammy didn’t ask a third time. She and Dirk were gone in a flash.

  This was the fun part of any investigation. After hours, days, sometimes even weeks and months of boring hours doing stakeouts, interviews that go nowhere, chasing down worthless leads, this was the exciting payoff: closing in on the bad guy, a person who thought he could hurt an innocent person and get away with it.

  A person with sapphire-blue eyes, eyes full of hurt and anger. A person who was used and abused and had simply reached the end of his rope.

  Savannah shook her head, hoping to clear the thought from her mind. Just because you like somebody doesn’t mean they get a “Get out of jail free” card for murder, she reminded herself.

  No, nothing justified that.

  And Lance had chosen to submit to Tess’s demands for whatever degree of success she had offered him. He wasn’t the victim here. The victim was the one lying in Dr. Liu’s morgue. And Carisa and Brandy, lying in the hospital.

  Savannah left the window, walked over to her bed, and plopped down across it. At least she had changed out of that miserably uncomfortable gown and into her street clothes. She would be glad to have her entire life back, as soon as possible.

  She was thoroughly sick of the Middle Ages.

  As she waited and Dirk searched, she thought of the man in the round tower, who didn’t know that his freedom could now be measured in hours or minutes.

  And she wondered if he would ever find peace.

  She doubted it.

  Less than an hour later, Savannah heard a soft knock at her door. When
she asked who it was, Dirk’s answer was as gentle as his knock. “It’s me, Van.”

  Opening the door, she saw him standing there with a look on his face that she knew all too well. It was the glow of deep, soul-felt victory.

  He had found something. Something substantial.

  Holding up three brown paper bags and a clear plastic one, he said, “Wanna see?”

  No, she didn’t want to see.

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  He hurried over to her bed and spread his bounty across it. She could tell he was trying to hold his excitement in check, but he was doing a lousy job of it.

  His eyes were glittering with barely restrained glee.

  But she was grateful for one thing: There wasn’t a smidgen of “I told you so” or “Ha, ha, I busted that dude you were kissing” in his demeanor. This was strictly a case of: “I solved a homicide. I got the killer!”

  She decided to be happy for him, and why not? Dirk was the good guy here.

  “Whatcha got?” she asked, sitting down on the bed beside his evidence bags.

  Just the sight of those paper bags with their official seals, Dirk’s writing scrawled on them: dates, locations collected, case number, and his signature—they all caused her own blood to pump.

  “He had this stuff hid good,” Dirk said. “Took us ages to find it, stuffed under a loose board in the floor of an old dresser thing, like that”—he pointed to the armoire in her corner.

  “That’s called a…ah, never mind. What did you find?”

  “Bloody jeans and sweatshirt.”

  Savannah’s stomach clutched. Bloody clothes. Yes, that was about as incriminating as it got.

  “How much you wanna bet the DNA will come back as Tess’s?” Dirk said as he opened one of the bags and let her look inside.

  Sure enough, there was a pair of jeans in there. And even without taking them out, she could see a bloodstained hem.

  He held the second one open, and she could see the cuff of a white sweatshirt, also bloody.

  “And, in here,” he said, holding up the plastic bag, “we’ve got support for that theory of yours about his motive. Check it out.”