Cereal Killer

by G. A. McKevett

  “Don’t tell her anything good.”

  “She’s paying me. Remember?”

  “Just remember that she could be mixed up in this, too.”

  “Dirk... not being a complete moron, I won’t jeopardize your case in the course of making a living for myself.”

  “Okay, okay. Do you wanna go with me over to that Dr. Pappas’s office in a little while? Looks like I’m gonna have to lean on them to get Montoya’s blood type.”

  “You’re just afraid of that nurse, and you want backup.”

  “So? You want to go along or not?”

  “Sure. I’ll meet you over there in his parking lot in a hour.”

  By the time she had finished the conversation with him, she was standing in the hallway outside Leah’s offices.

  She dreaded this meeting, hated the thought of telling Leah Freed that she wasn’t cut out to be the next shooting star on the plus-fashion horizon. If Leah wanted her to continue to investigate, fine, but this ridiculous subterfuge had to end.

  Steeling herself, she entered the offices and was quickly directed to a small room in the rear of the suite.

  Leah Freed sat in front of a backlit table, peering at some photo slides with a strange-looking gadget that looked to Savannah like a cross between a magnifying glass and a jeweler’s loupe.

  When Savannah walked in, Leah glanced up, sighed, and said, “I hate to tell you this, Savannah, but as pretty as you are, you’re not the least bit photogenic.”

  Okay,Savannah thought, so much for having to break the awful news to Leah.

  “I had a difficult time at the shoot, it’s true,” she said. “I can see that for myself.” She pointed to the slides. “No wonder Matt was upset with me for sending you.” Savannah felt the ruff on her back bristling. “If you’ll recall, when you suggested I go undercover as a model, I expressed my doubt that I could pull it off.”

  “And I should have listened to you.”

  She pushed back away from the table and stood, giving Savannah a full view of her teal pantsuit that was trimmed in bright yellow piping. Her high heels matched—eye-stabbing bright blue with yellow heels.

  For one satisfying moment Savannah allowed a couple of catty thoughts to float through her head: How many thrifts shops do you have to case to find an outfit like that? Just how far did you have to chase that bag lady to get that garb off of her? Wanna talk photogenic? Let’s take some shots and see if you look like a giant peacock.

  Then she remembered that, at least for the moment, Leah Freed was her employer, and she had bills to pay.

  Leah walked over to a more comfortable chair in the opposite corner and sat down. Savannah waited for an invitation to sit in the chair next to hers, but Leah didn't bother.

  Deciding not to be kept standing just because Leah Freed had apparently been raised among wolves, Savannah helped herself to the seat.

  “Speaking of Matt Slater,” Savannah said, “do tell me what you know about him and his relationships with his models.”

  A fleeting look crossed Leah’s face, but it was long enough for Savannah to note it... and interpret it. Leah was jealous. Whether she was jealous because she had been one of Matt’s part-time hobbies, too, or because she wanted to be, Savannah couldn’t tell.

  “Matt has a lot of relationships,” Leah said coolly. “Some of them have been with models.”

  “Is he doing the grizzly bear hump with Desiree at the moment?”

  “Probably.”

  Savannah couldn’t help noticing that Leah’s tone and mood seemed to be plummeting like a thermometer in a blizzard. She had gone from chilly to frosty in two questions. Might as well try for solid ice.

  “And how about the other girls?”

  Leah crossed her arms over her the front of her double-breasted suit. “I don’t think he’d gotten very far with Kameeka or Tesla.”

  “I see.”

  Savannah flashed back on Kevin Connor’s glowing account of his happy marriage and wondered...

  “Did Cait’s husband know?”

  “About Cait and Matt? I suppose he did. He knew about most of the others.”

  “The others?” Savannah could see her sterling image of the star model tarnishing right in front of her eyes.

  “Lots of others,” Leah said with the nasty smile of a gossip who thoroughly enjoyed dishing the dirt. “Caitlin never did anything halfway. She binged on everything... not just food.”

  “And did Kevin seem to mind—the others, that is?”

  “I’m sure he did. Who wouldn’t mind? But he was crazy in love with Cait. He overlooked a lot of things where she was concerned. We all did.”

  Savannah searched Leah’s face for signs of hate, anger, any motive for murder. But the woman was an agent; she played poker for a living, and she was good.

  “Why?” Savannah asked. “Why did y’all put up with her if she was all that bad?”

  Leah’s expression softened so much and so quickly that Savannah was taken aback. “Because we loved her. And if you’d known her, you would have, too. Cait was the funniest, most charming, intelligent, and generous person I ever knew. She could make you feel so very special about yourself and—”

  Her voice broke. She jumped up from her chair and ran to get some tissues out of a box on the table.

  With her back to Savannah, she quietly sobbed, the tissues over her face.

  But just as Savannah was about to rise and see if perhaps she could comfort her, Leah blew her nose hard, turned around, and returned to her seat.

  “Caitlin was difficult in some ways,” Leah continued, “but she was worth it. Let’s change the subject.”

  “Okay. Do you know about a guy named Ronald Tumblety?”

  “That sounds familiar, but I can’t place him. Who is he?”

  “A stalker who was interested in—”

  “Oh, yes. That creep. He kept showing up at our shoots, bothering the girls.”

  “How did he know the locations?”

  “From what I understand, he found out where Cait lived. He’d seen a picture of her beach house on the Internet, and he figured it out. Then he started hanging around outside her house, following her to the shoots. Then he followed Kameeka home, and Tesla.” Leah’s eyes widened. “Why? Do you think he might have something to do with this?”

  “We’re investigating him. It’s too early to tell.”

  Leah shook her head. “Wouldn’t that be awful, if it was a stalker?”

  “Maybe better that than someone close to them.” “True.”

  “Tell me about Jerrod Beekman.”

  “Like I told you before, Jerrod is a complete pain. He also owns one of the most successful ad agencies in L.A. At least, he does now. If this campaign falls on its face— which it just might, considering what’s happened to the girls—his company may fold.”

  “That bad?”

  “Oh, yes. Wentworth Industries is his largest client. And Charles Wentworth is furious about what’s happened. If Jerrod doesn’t pull this out of the fire...”

  “Charles Wentworth.” Savannah searched her mental files. “Let’s see... elderly cereal tycoon, lives in Mystic Canyon?”

  “That was Charles Wentworth II. This is his son, Number Three. Doesn’t have a fraction of his father’s business sawy, morals, or work ethic. Wentworth Industries has hit the skids, and it’s just a matter of time until it goes over the cliff.”

  Savannah tucked that particular tidbit into her “to be considered later in depth” file. “So, Number Three must be pretty upset that his campaign is in jeopardy,” she said. “It sounds like his new cereal, this Slenda stuff, was a pretty important gamble. And with the campaign based on those two girls and both of them murdered...”

  “Oh, Charles was upset before the girls died. He was already furious because they hadn’t lost the required weight. He was leaning on Jerrod, who was pressuring me. Why do you think I was calling Cait every day, checking on how she was doing? I don’t like coercing my girls like
that. Especially Cait. I was afraid her eating disorder might kick in again under that kind of stress. And I was right.”

  Again, her eyes filled with tears, and she dabbed at her nose with the tissues. “Are we about done here?” she asked. “I think I’ve enjoyed this conversation about as much as I can stand for one day.”

  Savannah resisted the urge to remind her that she had requested the interview. For the first time since meeting her, Savannah actually felt a bit of warmth toward the woman. Anyone who loved a friend—warts and all—the way Leah had obviously cared about Caitlin, had to have a spark of good in her somewhere.

  “Sure,” she told her. “No problem.” She glanced at her watch. “Actually, I have to meet someone soon. I’ll write up a report for you tonight. I can drop it off with your receptionist tomorrow if you—”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t want you wasting time writing reports.” Leah stood, walked to the door, and opened it wide. “I want you to catch the bastard who killed my girls, and I want you to find Tesla... hopefully alive and healthy.”

  “Believe me,” Savannah told her, “that’s what I want, too.”

  In the rear of Dr. Pappas’s parking lot, Savannah sat in her Mustang, waiting for Dirk, listening to an old tape of the Eagles. Glenn Fry still did it for her after all these years.

  Someday she’d have to break down and have a CD player installed, but the paint job had been her big splurge of the decade. Besides, by the time she could afford a new CD player, they would be obsolete and there would be some other newfangled gadget that she couldn’t afford either.

  She was singing along to “Lyin’ Eyes” when she saw a black Mercedes limo pull into the parking lot. Having lived for years in Southern California, the sight of a limousine had ceased to cause an elevation in her heart rate long ago. Every Billy Bob and his cousin’s uncle’s dog had one. Although, even with her jaded eye, she had to admit that this one was a beauty.

  Long, sleek, and polished like an ebony grand piano, the automobile looked out of place in the dusty alley parking lot. She would have been happy to ride in such a vehicle to her own funeral, let alone to a simple doctor’s visit.

  The limo stopped directly behind the back door of the clinic and a driver dressed in formal livery got out. He went inside and only a few moments later returned with a gray-haired man wearing a white smock and navy slacks. He didn’t have a stethoscope hanging around his neck, but he didn’t need one for Savannah to know he was a doctor. He had way too much self-important swagger for a nurse or physician’s assistant.

  When the driver opened the rear door of the limo and directed the doctor inside, Savannah sat up to attention and turned off her tape player.

  “Must be nice,” she said, “having a house call in the back of your Mercedes.”

  The windows were darkly tinted, and she couldn’t see anything going on inside, but there was something about the worried look on the doctor’s face just before he entered the car that caught her attention.

  She slid lower in the seat until she could just peek over the dash. Trouble—like burned coffee—had a distinctive odor to it, and she could swear that she could smell some sort of trouble brewing inside that limousine, whether she could see through the windows or not.

  She waited, keeping an eye on her watch. Three minutes. Five. Seven minutes.

  Seven minutes worth of any doctor’s time was a precious commodity. She couldn’t help wondering who rated so much personal attention—limo or no limo.

  Eight minutes. Then she saw the door open and the doctor get out. This time his walk and general body language lacked its previous confidence. His head down, he trudged back to the office as though he were walking through wet cement.

  No sooner had he gone back inside the building than the limo pulled away. As it left the lot, Savannah caught a good look at the rear of the car, and she quickly jotted down the license plate. It probably wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans, as Gran would say, but she’d still have Dirk run the number.

  As she was tucking her notebook back into her purse, he arrived. Seeing her at the rear of the lot, he drove back to her and parked beside the Mustang.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as they got out of their cars and started walking across the lot. “I decided to go by the hospital where Cait Connor’s husband works and talk to him again.”

  “Oh, yeah? Did he tell you that his wife had been fooling around with that photographer, Matt Slater?” Savannah couldn’t help grinning. She loved trumping Dirk, telling Mr. Know-It-All something he didn’t know.

  “No,” he said. “He didn’t mention it.”

  “I thought so.”

  “One of his fellow nurses told me. Said it wasn’t the first time the wife had played around either.”

  “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Well, what did Kevin Connor have to say?”

  “He’s hot to trot to sue Wentworth Industries and this Dr. Pappas, too.”

  They paused outside the clinic’s door and lowered their voices. “Why Pappas?” she asked.

  “He was the physician in charge of overseeing the models’ weight loss.”

  “Both Caitlin and Kameeka?”

  “And Tesla and Desiree. He says that his wife was threatening to sue the good doctor here a couple of weeks before she died... said the doc was jeopardizing her health by expecting her to lose so much so fast.”

  “Sounds like a possible motive to me.”

  “Yep, me too.”

  When they went inside, they found the waiting room packed again. Apparently Dr. Pappas’s weight-loss practice was thriving, whether Cait Connor had approved of his methods or not.

  This time, as they approached the receptionist’s window, the woman on the other side of the glass didn’t even bother to feign friendliness. She rose from her desk, slid the window aside, and said, “I told you not to come over here, Detective Coulter. You’re wasting your time and ours.”

  Dirk gave her a teeth-baring smile. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”

  “I mind.” She slid the window closed and turned her back on them as she began to sort files on a counter behind the desk.

  Dirk’s face went from pink to purple in under three seconds, and Savannah decided to avert tragedy if she could. Stepping up to the window, she moved the pane aside and stuck her head through the opening. “Excuse me,” she said. “But Detective Coulter really needs that information. It’s critical to his case and—”

  “Get a warrant,” she snapped without even turning around. “And until you’ve got a warrant, get out.”

  This time it was Savannah’s face that flushed. She briefly considered jumping through the window and wringing Nurse Ratched’s neck, but she decided to forego violence in favor of blackmail.

  “Maybe you should scoot back there and tell Dr. Pappas that two of his patients are dead, one is missing, and at the moment, he’s a prime suspect for multiple murder.”

  The receptionist whirled around, her mouth hanging open. A strange hush had come over the crowded waiting room. The only sound was that of a low chuckle coming from Dirk’s direction.

  “And while you’re at it, ask the doctor if he usually treats his patients in limousines in the alley.”

  The receptionist disappeared so quickly that Savannah half expected to see a puff of pink smoke in her wake.

  Dirk stepped up behind her. “What was that bit about the limousine?” he asked.

  She turned around and saw a roomful of people staring at them, their ears practically out on stems.

  “I’ll tell you later,” she said. ‘Just a hunch I had. If he’s out here in less than ten seconds, I was right.”

  It was eight seconds before the receptionist appeared again. “The doctor will see you now in his office.”

  Savannah gave her a bright smile... the one she saved for people she didn’t particularly like. “Thank you,” she said sweetly. “I thought he might.”

  Chapter

  16

  Savannah wasn�
��t at all surprised, when she and Dirk entered the doctor’s office, to see that Dr. Pappas was, indeed, the fellow she had seen getting into the Mercedes limousine outside. Nor was she shocked that he wasn’t particularly happy to see them.

  Not only did he neglect to offer them a seat, but he didn’t even speak to them. He just sat behind his desk and glowered at them from beneath bushy white eyebrows.

  Up close, Dr. Pappas was even less attractive than he had appeared from across the parking lot. Looking more like a caricature of a mad scientist than a physician, with his tousled silver hair and carelessly trimmed white beard, Savannah wondered what it was about this man that inspired a waiting room full of patients.

  “Dr. Pappas,” Dirk said, extending his hand across the desk. “Thank you for seeing me. I’m Detective Coulter, and this is my associate, Savannah Reid.”

  “I know who you are,” he said, tight-lipped.

  “Then you probably know what I want,” Dirk said, dropping the pseudo-friendliness. “I’m afraid that one of your patients, Tesla Montoya, has been the victim of foul play... like Cait Connor and Kameeka Wills... also patients of yours.”

  The doctor said nothing as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over the front of his white smock.

  “I need to know her blood type,” Dirk continued. “If you have that information in her medical files, it would help me a lot.”

  “I don’t release personal information on my patients,” he replied evenly. “No responsible physician would.”

  “I’m not asking you for anything all that personal,” Dirk said. “I don’t want to know how much she weighed or if she had AIDS, for Pete’s sake.”

  No response.

  “We found a pool of blood in Tesla Montoya’s apartment,” Dirk added, obviously growing more impatient by the moment. “She’s missing, and we have reason to think she’s been kidnapped. Would you or one of your nurses just look in her file and tell me her blood type? If you’ll do that I’ll leave you alone.”