Cereal Killer

by G. A. McKevett

  “I think you should stick around, Kevin,” Savannah called after him. “Detective Coulter will probably need to speak to you and...”

  But Kevin Connor already had the gate open and was on his way out. “I’m just going to walk on the beach for a few minutes,” he said, “and when I get back I want her off my property.”

  He slammed the gate behind him and the sound echoed across the patio. The pup whined again and plastered herself against her mistress’s leg.

  Neither woman spoke for a few long, tense moments. Then Savannah quietly said, “He’s distraught.”

  “He isn’t the only one,” Leah replied. Now that Kevin had disappeared, her façade began to crumble and tears filled her eyes. “Cait was more than my client; she was my friend. For years. I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Savannah told her, thinking of all the times she had uttered those words and how it never got any easier. Being with people in some of the worst moments of their lives had taken a toll on her. Sometimes she felt like forty-something going on ninety.

  Sometimes—like when a beautiful, vivacious young woman lay dead upstairs on her bathroom floor—it was hard to remember that the world was a good place to spend your allotted years of life.

  A sound from inside the house caught Savannah’s attention, and she looked beyond Leah Freed to see the technicians carrying a gurney up the steps. In a little while, they would be coming back down with Caitlin Connor’s body. And that was a sight that the victim’s agent and longtime friend should be spared.

  Besides, Savannah was pretty certain from the look in Kevin Connor’s eyes when he left that he meant it when he said that Leah had better be gone when he returned.

  Dirk wouldn’t be too happy about her hanging around a potential crime scene either.

  “You really shouldn’t be here, Leah,” she told her. “Did you see the yellow barricade tape outside when you came in?”

  Lean glanced uneasily over her shoulder and shook her head. “Ah, not really. I... ah...”

  “Or that big handsome police officer who shouldn’t have let you in?”

  “Um... well... he was busy with those guys in the white uniforms and a lady who I think might have been the coroner. I told him I was a friend of the family, and he said it was okay for me to come inside.”

  She was lying. After what seemed like a million years of being lied to at least fifty times a day by seasoned professional liars, Savannah didn’t need any sort of lie-detector equipment to figure out when she was getting the shuck put on her.

  Leah Freed had sneaked in. Pure and simple. And now she was lying through her teeth about it.

  Savannah’s cop radar registered a blip on her mental screen. “Why, exactly, did you drop by?” she asked the agent.

  “What?”

  Stalling for time,Savannah thought. When you can't think of anything to say, ask a question. It was an old trick most often used by wayward husbands. But occasionally women used it, too.

  “I said... why are you here? Why did you come by the house?”

  “Oh.” She toyed with the pup’s leash several more seconds before answering. “I was just out for a walk with Susie here. I live a few blocks over, and sometimes I take evening walks in this direction. I saw the police cars and...”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “And I was wondering if everything was okay, you know, with Cait.”

  “Hmm. I see.” Savannah did see. She saw the seven hundred dollar, high-heeled Italian sandals on Leah Freed’s meticulously pedicured feet and knew damned well that she hadn’t been out for an evening stroll up and down santly beach streets in those fancy clodhoppers. Not on your life.

  “I should probably be going,” Leah said, suddenly eager to disappear. She turned and headed across the dining area toward the living room, practically dragging the pup at the end of the leash.

  Savannah followed right behind her, watching to see that she didn’t touch or disturb anything.

  At the door, Leah paused and glanced over her shoulder at Savannah. “Are you coming, too?”

  “Yes,” Savannah said. “I need to speak to Officer Bosco about letting anyone else inside the house before CSU clears it.”

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat and shuffled her feet.

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on him. Like I said, he was busy and I sort of insisted, being a close friend of the family and all.”

  Savannah gave her a too-sweet smile. “Still,” she said. “I really should have a word with him.”

  Leah shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She opened the front door, bolted through it, and hurried down the sidewalk, stepping over the temporary barricade. Briefly, she tangled the dog’s leash in the yellow tape, and before she could loosen it, the tall, good-looking cop in his smart blue uniform strode from his unit over to her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her as she frantically fumbled with the lead. “I’m sure sorry about your sister,” he added sweetly.

  “Ah, yeah. Thanks,” she mumbled as she finally freed the leash. In only two or three seconds, she was scurrying off down the road, a blur of red pantsuit and clicking heels.

  Savannah watched, a wry smile on her face, as the woman practically tossed the cocker puppy into a Porsche convertible that was parked half a block away and sped off.

  “Evening walk, my hind end,” Savannah muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?” Officer Bosco asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Too bad about her sister.”

  “Yeah, too bad. But she’s not her sister. She lied to ya, Mike.”

  Officer Michael Bosco looked like somebody had zapped him with a stun gun. “Really?”

  ‘Yes, really.” She draped one arm across his broad shoulders, briefly enjoying the closeness to youth and virility, before reminding herself that Officer Mike was about the same age as her baby brother, Macon.

  So she ended the moment and slapped him on the

  back. “As my Granny Reid would say, Mike, don’t believe nothin’ you hear and only half of what you see, ’cause the rest is nothin’ but bull pucky.”

  “Bull pucky?” Officer Bosco looked confused. “I thought the rest was bullshit.”

  “Nope, Mike. It’s bull pucky: Granny Reid lives in Georgia, and she’s a fine, upstanding Southern lady.” Savannah sighed and gazed out across the water at the last shimmering bit of setting sun. “Besides that... Gran’s a Baptist.”

  “Oh. right.”

  Chapter

  4

  By the surreal light of the yellow halogen lamps that illuminated the beachfront streets, Savannah and Dirk watched as Dr. Liu’s white coroner’s wagon pulled away from the glass house, heading for the city morgue. The CSU technicians were packing up their van, and Officer Bosco was removing the yellow tape from around the perimeter of the property.

  At least for the moment, the on-scene investigation into the untimely demise of supermodel Cait Connor was completed.

  Listening to the waves crashing on the nearby sand and smelling the salty sea air would normally have given j Savannah a peaceful, mellow feeling. But for some reason she felt restless, prickled by a sense of foreboding.

  She also felt sad, which she understood, but why she felt uneasy in her own skin, she wasn’t sure.

  “You going home?” Dirk asked her.

  ‘Yes,” she said. “You?”

  ‘Yeah, I think I got everything I need out of the scene and the husband. I think I’ll head back to the station to write it up.”

  ‘Just what you wanted on your day off. More paperwork.”

  “Yeah, well. What are you gonna do? When I’m done, I think I’ll go get a burger. Wanna come? My treat.”

  As much as Savannah wanted to take advantage of the rare offer of a “Dirk treat,” she wasn’t really in the mood for another burger so soon after lunch. Or anything else, for that matter.

  Now that was a scary thought! The fact that she had lost h
er appetite was a surefire sign that something was amiss. And, apparently, her subconscious and her stomach knew it.

  “Do you think it’ll be natural causes?” Savannah asked, as the taillights of the coroner’s van disappeared around a far corner.

  Dirk, too, stared down the now vacant street, his face screwed into a thoughtful grimace. Savannah knew Dirk all too well, and she knew the look. He had that niggling feeling, too, that all wasn’t well in the world.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “I guess it could have just been ‘accidental death, due to crazy-ass, starvation dieting.’ ”

  “That would be a shame,” Savannah said.

  Dirk cut her a heavy, sideways look. “It’d be better than the alternatives.”

  Savannah briefly considered the other choices: suicide or homicide.

  ‘Yes... accidental or natural. That’s what we’ll be hoping for.” She sighed. “Sorry state of affairs when those are your best choices....”

  Long ago, Savannah had decided that there were few times in life when a bubble bath, a glass of wine, and a box of chocolates couldn’t make a bad situation a heck of a lot better.

  So it was with great expectation that she slipped into the hot tub full of glistening rose-scented bubbles. Who said you couldn’t melt all your cares away? Or at least most of them.

  Probably some guy who only believed in showers.

  Ah, those manly men just didn’t know what they were missing.

  Along the countertop she had placed half a dozen votive candles, and on the wicker hamper beside the tub, comfortably within arm’s reach, sat a china dessert plate covered with a delicate chintz rose pattern and four chocolate truffles: raspberry crème, lemon chiffon, mocha delight, and peach parfait. Pure heaven. And a glass of merlot to wash them down with.

  Her wine connoisseur friends, Ryan Stone and John Gibson, might not approve of the combination, but it worked for her.

  Usually.

  But as she lay there, watching the candlelight shimmer on the bubbles, listening to them popping and feeling them tickle her skin, the typical magic wasn’t working.

  And when she bit into the raspberry truffle and didn’t experience the expected culinary orgasm in her mouth, she knew what was wrong: She was thinking about Cait Connor, her beautiful red hair spread out on the jade-green marble floor, her famous turquoise eyes staring up at... what?

  What was the last thing Cait had seen before her spirit slipped out of her body and made its way into the hereafter?

  Had she died alone?

  A sad thought, but like Dirk had said, maybe the best of other unpleasant choices.

  Savannah glanced over at the cell phone she had placed on the hamper beside the chocolates and wine. She hated having to get out of the tub to answer the phone. She hated having to get out for any reason. So she habitually brought it into the bathroom with her, just in case.

  Call Dirk, she told herself. Call him and tell him that you think....

  What? the more sensible of her multipersonalities asked. What do you think?

  That Caitlin Connor didn’t just up and die all by herself. Somebody killed her.

  You don’t know that. There’s no reason to think that.

  Yes there is. She was—

  Ding dong.

  The sound cut through Savannah’s brain waves, interrupting the domestic fight in her head. Also short-circuiting the problem-solving process that had just been on the verge of figuring out... something....

  Ding dong.

  “Go away,” Savannah said, knowing her unwelcome visitor couldn’t possibly hear her, but hoping they would somehow get the psychic message.

  Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.

  “Tarnation,” she muttered, rising from the sea of bubbles and stepping out of the claw-foot tub onto the plush bath rug... a treat she couldn’t resist from the latest Pottery Barn catalog. “You’d better not be selling window cleaner or magazines at this time of night,” she grumbled as she slipped on her ancient blue terry-cloth robe. “ ’Cause if you are, I just might feed you some of your own products.”

  The bell chimed three more times before she could make it down the stairs. As she stepped off the carpet and onto the hardwood floor in the foyer, her wet feet slipped and she nearly fell.

  “Hold on!” she shouted as she neared the door, the cats scurrying excitedly around her damp ankles.

  “Savannah!” she heard a female voice cry from the other side of the closed door. “Savannah, it’s me! Open up, girl. I ain’t got all day!”

  “Me? Who’s me?”

  Frantically, her mind searched its memory files for a female voice with a distinctly Southern accent. So many choices presented themselves. So few that she wanted to believe.

  As a former Georgian, the oldest of nine siblings, Savannah had plenty of female relatives who seemed to think nothing of dropping by unexpectedly—if you could consider a two thousand mile coast-to-coast trip dropping by.

  Savannah flipped on the front porch lights, looked through the door’s peephole and saw... big hair. Stiffly sprayed, meticulously styled, big, big hair.

  There was only one person, north or south of the Mason-Dixon line, who sported a hairdo that big.

  “Marietta!” she exclaimed, flinging the door open and taking her sister in her arms.

  ‘You’re wet!” Marietta cried as she pulled away. She laughed as she brushed her hands across the front of her shirt ‘You’ll ruin my clothes.”

  Savannah looked down at her sister’s shirt, which was adorned with a rhinestone-bespangled tiger’s face. The cat had particularly large eyes that were accented with bright green, marquise-shaped stones.

  Lovely, Savannah thought Understated elegance... that’s our Mari.

  ‘You got me out of the bathtub,” she said, pulling her unexpected guest into the house. “That’s why I’m wet.”

  She noticed a generic midsize car, which she surmised was a rental, in her driveway and a couple of oversize suitcases on the porch. Sighing inwardly, she walked out the door and picked up one case in each hand.

  They were unbelievably heavy. Must be all the rhinestones, she thought Too much to hope she'd just be carrying an overnight bag.

  Not that she didn’t welcome visits from her loved ones. Even impromptu visits were nice. But only for about two or three days. Experience had taught her that after a brief window of blissful familial communion, thoughts of homicide tended to dance in her head.

  “Are you surprised to see me?” Marietta asked, patting her poofy updo with one hand, the other hand perched jauntily on her hip in what looked like a silver-screen pose of some sort. In Savannah’s opinion, Marietta had watched far too many black-and-white movies where women with overplucked eyebrows puffed on cigarettes while leading good-hearted but hopelessly horny men astray.

  “Surprised?” she said. “Yes, I guess so. I had no idea you were coming out to see me. Maybe if you’d called or...

  Marietta left Savannah with the suitcases in hand and walked into the living room. She looked around, evaluating with the critical eye of a Fifth Avenue decorator. “Naw, I wanted to surprise you. Besides, I was in the neighborhood.”

  “In the neighborhood? What... you took a wrong turn on your way to Wal-Mart and wound up on my doorstep?”

  Marietta cut her a quick look that didn’t really reveal anything, but for some reason set Savannah’s nerves on edge. Miss Marietta Reid was up to something.

  But then, Marietta was almost always up to something, especially when it came to the men in her life, of whom there had been plenty.

  None for very long.

  “No-oo,” Marietta said. Another suspicious glance. “But I was coming to West Hollywood, and since that’s practically next door to you...”

  “Actually, it’s about an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the traffic.”

  “Like I said, nearby, and I thought maybe I could stay here with you, you know, rather than get a motel room that I can’t afford.”
/>
  “Sure. I’ve got a spare bedroom you’re welcome to. I’d love to have you. If you’d called first, I’d have dusted the room and changed the sheets.”

  Marietta shrugged. “That’s okay. You can do it later. I’m not ready to go to bed yet. I’m all revved up from my flight.”

  She walked around the room, checking out Savannah’s knickknacks, her bookshelf, the throw pillows on her sofa. Pausing beside the desk, she scanned the paperwork that Tammy had left beside the computer.

  Marietta had never truly understood the concept of respecting another person’s privacy. Unless, of course, it was her privacy that needed respecting. That was a different story altogether, Savannah had discovered over the years. On her forehead, Savannah still carried a small scar from the time she had dared to look into Marietta’s “private drawer” to retrieve the sweater her younger sister had borrowed more than two months earlier.

  “Boy, I sure hate to fly, don’t you?” Marietta said, picking up one of Tammy’s monthly reports on the agency’s financial status and squinting to read the fine print. “I mean, it’s exciting and all, lookin’ out the window, but once you’re up there, especially after it’s dark, it’s just so boring. I was trying to have a pleasant conversation with this good-looking guy sitting next to me, but he kept reading his stock market magazines. He practically ignored me, he did. Really just downright rude if you ask me.”

  Savannah grinned, imagining the horror some weary frequent flier must have experienced when Marietta had tried to engage him in “pleasant conversation.” The poor guy had probably looked forward to a nice, quiet flight where he could catch up on his reading, take a nap, commune quietly with his inner spirit. And then...

  Marietta.

  Chatty, always on the prowl for a man, big-haired, sparkly shirted... Marietta.

  Savannah walked over, took the paper out of her sister’s hand, and stuck it in a drawer. “Are you hungry?” she said. “I think I’ve got some leftover fried chicken in the refrigerator and some potato salad and baked beans. I’d be glad to dish you up a plate.”