Sugar and Spite

by G. A. McKevett

  She shot Hillquist a dark look and received one in return. Mentally, she sent him the silent message, “Up yours, sideways, with a poison ivy bush.” She saw the curse register behind his eyes. But old Norman was cool. He looked away as though she no longer existed ... too inconsequential to warrant any further attention.

  Jeffries, on the other hand, wasn’t about to ignore her. “What are you here for?” he demanded of her. “Coulter doesn’t need a baby-sitter.”

  She took a step toward him, and she could see that he had to fight the urge to step back. She grinned. “You were the one who ordered me to bring him over here, if I recollect our telephone conversation. And you asked so nicely, with the pretty please and all, that I just couldn’t resist your charms.”

  Jeffries glanced at his expensive scuba watch and scowled. “You’re more than an hour late.”

  “Really?” She looked genuinely surprised, batting her blue eyes and giving him a coquettish grin. “I thought we were twenty-three hours early. You did say tomorrow, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t get on her case about nothin’,” Dirk interjected. “It was me that held up the works.”

  “What matters is that you’re here now,” Hillquist said in the flat monotone that gave Savannah the creeps. The last time she had heard him use that tone, she had lost her job and one of the most vital parts of her life.

  The chief walked over to Dirk, and Savannah saw the glint of a pair of cuffs in his hand. No, he wasn’t going to ...

  “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Polly Coulter,” he continued in that lifeless voice as he pulled Dirk’s hands behind him and snapped the cuffs in place around his wrists. “You have the right to remain silent ...”

  “You’re cuffing him?” Savannah said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’re arresting him and adding insult to injury by putting cuffs on him? He’s a cop, for heaven’s sake. He’s one of the good guys. What are you doing?”

  Even as she spoke the words, a quiet, less emotional, voice inside her head told her that if she’d had the unpleasant duty of arresting Dirk Coulter for murder, she would have cuffed him, too. The guy was known for having a temper and getting a bit physical when he felt he was being treated badly.

  But for some reason, Dirk wasn’t reacting much at all. He simply stood there, stoic, accepting his fate. Strange behavior for the fellow who roared with rage if McDonald’s gave him a hamburger instead of his double cheeseburger, skimped on his super fries or put too much ice in his Coke.

  Dirk had never had a problem defending himself before. Usually, his demeanor was that of a cranky bulldog. This wasn’t the time to lie down, roll over, and play dead like an obedient cocker spaniel.

  Savannah waited for Hillquist to finish his Miranda litany; then she jumped in, feet first. “Lawyer up, buddy. Don’t say a word until you’ve talked to Larry Bostwick. Call him right now.”

  She turned to Hillquist and Jeffries. “He gets his phone call now! Right this minute! He’s calling his attorney, and he doesn’t have anything to say until then.”

  “I think you’d better get out of here, Reid,” Hillquist said, his previously lifeless shark eyes lit with a strange light. Savannah recognized unadulterated hate when she saw it. “You drove him here. Your job’s done. Now get lost.”

  Savannah gave him a sickly sweet smile. “And you, my beloved former chief, may go to hell in a handbasket. You’re arresting Dirk prematurely, and you know it. The only reason is because the press has already decided he’s guilty and with your mayoral election coming up, you want to look good in print. The best thing for you and the department was to prove that your fellow cop was innocent. But since you couldn’t do that in five minutes, the next best thing is to prove how tough you are, willing to take down one of your own if necessary. That plays pretty good, too, huh?”

  Jeffries walked over to her and placed his hand around her upper arm. He squeezed her biceps and she was mildly satisfied to see the slight look of surprise cross his face. She had inherited Granny Reid’s stout physique. Her biceps were better than those of most guys she knew.

  “You heard the chief,” he said. “Time for you to go.”

  “Take your hand off me, and I’ll leave,” she said, imitating Hillquist’s deadly quiet voice.

  He did, quickly, and she turned to walk to the door. She paused, hand on the knob, and looked back at Dirk. More than anything else he looked tired ... absolutely exhausted, empty, defeated. “Call Larry Bostwick,” she told him. then she gave the chief and the lieutenant one of her snottiest, nanny-nanny-boo-boo looks. “Never mind. I’ll call him for you. From my cell phone in the car. He’ll be here in ten minutes.” To Dirk she added, “Don’t say anything. Not a word, you hear me?”

  Dirk nodded. It wasn’t much, but she had a feeling he had heard her and, even in his compromised mental/emotional state, she believed he understood.

  “It’s been lovely, gentlemen,” she said as she passed out the door. “But I have a few calls to make ... and I should have a word or two with the press before I leave.”

  “You watch what you say, Reid,” Hillquist called after her, all pretense of nonchalance gone. “You’d better not—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, and your mother looks like she fell outta the ugly tree and hit every limb on the way down.”

  Savannah decided not to say anything to the reporters after all, figuring a simple “no comment” was best under the circumstances. But the moment she got into her Camaro, she whipped the cell phone out of the glove box and dialed Larry Bostwick, attorney-at-law. The caped crusader, a defender of the underdog, a criminal’s last hope and an innocent man’s best friend.

  In other words, Larry was a crooked defense lawyer who smelled of stale cigarette smoke and wore a bad toupee and rumpled polyester suits. But he was a damned good liar ... just the sort of guy to have on your side of the courtroom.

  “Larry, Savannah Reid here. Have you heard about Dirk Coulter’s problems?”

  “Heard about it on the radio this morning when I was driving to the office. Does he need me?”

  “You have no idea how badly.”

  “Have they arrested him?”

  “Cuffed and rights read,” she said with a sigh. “Get down here to city hall lickety-split, would you? He’s in a weird frame of mind, and I don’t know what he’ll say or do that would make his problems worse. And they’re bad enough already.”

  “How bad? How does it look for him, Savannah?”

  “It’s bad. He’s in up to his eyeballs. Hurry.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Summer meetings of the “staff” of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective agency were conducted beneath Savannah’s rose arbor in her backyard, with pitchers of fresh lemonade and iced tea, or beer and wine coolers if everyone was officially off duty. The attendees usually wore shorts, T-shirts, and sandals ... except for Ryan Stone and John Gibson, who came a bit more presentably attired in fresh cotton shirts and linen slacks.

  But the winter weather of February called for a seasonal change of menu and wardrobe. Mugs of steaming Earl Grey tea or Irish coffee, hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream, or the occasional whiskey toddy warmed the guests who had changed to long sleeves, as the temperature frequently plummeted to a bitter, bone-chilling seventy-three degrees, rather than the standard seventy-six.

  Whether the dead of winter or during a midsummer dream, the group usually enjoyed these gatherings of minds, ideas, personalities, and resources, pooled to solve a particularly puzzling case.

  But this time, the mood wasn’t so festive, because one of their members was noticably absent. And even though Dirk could be a sand burr on the back of everyone’s britches from time to time, they all liked him ... whether they would openly admit it or not.

  Savannah and Tammy, Ryan and John lounged on comfy chaises beneath the arbor, discussing Dirk’s predicament while consuming mug after mug of tea that Savannah had scented with cloves, cinnamon sticks, and slices of lemon and ora
nges. An array of fresh-from-the-oven, heart-shaped, pink frosted sugar cookies was displayed on a large delft platter—Savannah’s token gesture of celebration for the upcoming lovers’ holiday. The very fact that the pile of sweets had been sitting there for five long minutes showed a couple of things: One: Her guests were too upset to eat. And two: Dirk Coulter wasn’t present to inhale them like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Savannah missed slapping his hand and telling him to behave.

  John took a sip of his tea, closed his eyes for a moment to savor the experience, then fastidiously brushed a drop from his perfectly trimmed mustache. “So, Savannah, we are at your disposal, my dear,” he said with his deep, theatrical, British accent. “Please tell us how you would like us to proceed in helping this unfortunate compatriot of yours.”

  Savannah looked from him, the regal silver fox, to an anxious Tammy and an infinitely attentive Ryan. Dirk’s situation was grim, to be sure, but with players like this on his team, maybe he had a chance that was a wee bit bigger than the infamous “no chance in hell.”

  “It’s going to be hard to go after the killer,” she said, “with no more than we have on him at this point.”

  “Dirk didn’t get a good look at him?” Tammy asked, as she sat, literally, on the edge of her seat, a pen in her hand, a pad of paper on her lap.

  “No. He said he ran into the living room, saw Polly lying on the floor, bleeding, saw the guy for a half a second, and then realized he was holding a gun ... his gun. From that moment on, Dirk says his attention was on the gun, getting it away from the guy, it going off while they struggled for it ... him dropping it, then picking it up again and running after the intruder, who, by that time, was long gone.”

  “But he saw him for that half a second,” Ryan said. “What can he tell us?”

  “Caucasian. Medium height, medium weight. Brown hair.”

  “Light or dark brown?” John asked.

  “Medium ... of course. He can’t say about the color of his eyes.”

  Tammy sniffed. “Probably medium brown. What was he wearing?” Savannah grinned. Tammy was always the clothes-conscious one. She was even concerned about what criminals wore to the scenes of their crimes, and frequently she had opinions about the suitability of that attire.

  “Dirk said he thought he was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, black sneakers, no coat or hat. But, once again, he was thinking about Polly and the gun. I don’t think he was at his all-observant best under the circumstances.”

  “Did they find any fingerprints?” Tammy asked, scribbling on the pad on her lap.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to pay Dr. Liu a visit; she’s performing the autopsy this afternoon. And I’ll check with the crime-scene tech. But I’m not expecting much in the latent-print department. Dirk is pretty sure the guy was wearing some sort of thin leather gloves.”

  “Medium brown, I suppose,” Ryan said dryly.

  “As a matter of fact, that’s what he said.”

  “And he didn’t see what sort of motor vehicle the killer drove?” John asked.

  “He said he didn’t hear a car pulling out. The guy ran off down the trailer-park road and disappeared into a wooded area near the main road.”

  “Any hope of footprints?” Tammy suggested.

  “Nope. The road through the park is gravel. The main one that connects with it is asphalt. Dirk suspects he was parked there on the main road. And before you ask, it’s gravel alongside that road, too, so no chance of tire tracks.”

  “Are they having him look through mug books?” Ryan asked.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Savannah replied. “But they certainly should let him. I’ll ask the next time I talk to Dirk or Jake McMurtry. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “I’ll question the residents at the park this afternoon, if you like, ” Ryan offered, “and ask if any of them saw anything.”

  “The old coot in the trailer right next to Dirk’s saw and heard quite a bit, and he’s blabbering to the cops about it, too,” Savannah added. She noticed that her hand, which was holding her mug, was shaking. She realized she hadn’t eaten a decent meal for more than twenty-four hours. But with her best friend sitting in a jail cell keeping company with an assortment of grizzly characters who hated cops, she couldn’t see herself taking time for a ham and cheese sandwich, a hot fudge sundae, and a snooze.

  “That’s good,” she told Ryan. “You take the trailer park, question the occupants and poke around for anything physical the forensic team might have overlooked.”

  She stood to replenish John’s empty teacup, but he saw how she was trembling and took the pot from her hands. “Let me handle that business for you, love,” he said. “I’ll also find out the principal players in Dirk’s most recent cases and run checks on them. Just, perchance, he was the intended victim and not that poor Polly.”

  “Good idea, thanks.” She turned to Tammy, who for all of her complaining about “dumb ol’ Dirk,” was eager to jump into the deep end. “And you,” Savannah told her, “can start on Polly herself. Go on-line and see what you can find out about her ... anything and everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything. There’s no such thing as a privacy issue here. The woman’s dead, and if she were alive, I’m sure she would tell us anything we needed to know to catch her killer. Go for it.”

  Tammy nodded and scribbled on her pad. “You’ve got it.”

  “And I,” Savannah said, “am headed over to Dr. Liu’s autopsy suite at the hospital. I understand she’s due to begin Polly’s examination in half an hour. I’d like to be there when she finishes and find out what she knows.”

  They stood to leave, and Ryan asked the inevitable, inescapable question ... the one that had to be asked by someone ... at least once.

  “Just for the record,” he said, giving Savannah an intense, calculating look, “do we absolutely know for sure that Dirk didn’t kill her himself?”

  Savannah thought for what seemed like forever before answering as truthfully and diplomatically as possible. “Dirk Coulter is no more capable of committing murder than any of us.”

  Ryan just grunted and gave John and Tammy a sad, knowing look. He said, “Mmm ... That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Don’t kill him,” Savannah cautioned herself as she approached the desk where all of the visitors to the county coroner’s offices were expected to check in. “If you murder Kenny Bates, you’ll wind up in jail yourself and you’ll be no good at all to Dirk. Wait until after you get Dirk off, and then you can do it. A machete would be nice. Maybe a wood-chipper.”

  Morbid imagery flooded her imagination as she stepped up to the desk and the leering idiot who sat behind it. She and Officer Kenneth Bates had a love/hate relationship. He loved—or at least, madly lusted after—her, and she despised him. Her lowly opinion of this blatant lecher was shared by all females on the force. If Kenny had held any real power in the department, his constant come-ons and lewd comments might have been considered sexual harassment. But, since he wasn’t anyone’s boss and wielded no authority over anyone or anything ... other than the check-in sheet ... his annoying behavior was merely a case of odious manners.

  “Hey, Savannah ... my favorite Valentine!” he exclaimed as she strolled up to the desk. “You haven’t been around for so long, I was afraid you didn’t love me anymore.”

  “And what were you going to do if you’d found out it was true?”

  He shrugged. “Ah ... I don’t know. Probably hang myself. I mean, life wouldn’t be worth the hassle. The only thing that keeps me going is the dream that you and me are gonna be doing the Grizzly Bear Hump on my bear rug some Saturday night.”

  Leaning across the desk toward her, he glanced right and left, then lowered his voice. “You know, I was thinking about you the other day when I was in that adult store on Main Street, The Naughty Lady’s Nook, picturing you in some of that red leather bondage stuff that they’ve got in the window for Valentine’s Day.”

  “Close
your mouth, Bates,” she told him as she reached for the sheet, which was attached to a clipboard. “Your ignorance is showing.”

  For half a second, he glanced, concerned, down at his fly; then he laughed. “Yeah, and I bought some of that strawberry-flavored lotion goop. I’ll smear it on some secret part of my body and you have to find it with your tongue. How does that sound?”

  “I’d rather kiss a freshly bathed rat’s ass.”

  He brightened. She couldn’t imagine why. “Well, sure,” he said, “I mean, I’d be glad to take a shower first.”

  Savannah looked Officer Bates up and down, taking in the greasy, slicked-back hair, the lopsided tie, the police uniform that bulged in all the wrong places, having been designed for a body that was far more trim and fit than his.

  “Bates,” she said with a long-suffering sigh, “there aren’t enough showers in the world, and especially in droughtstricken Southern California to transform your body into a delectable morsel. Then, there’s that other little problem: I loathe you and always have.”

  “Naw, you’re crazy about me. Don’t you ever watch Oprah or Jerry Springer? What you’re feeling is sexual tension.”

  He reached out to take the clipboard, after she had signed it, and grabbed her hand along with the board. A second later, he had dropped the ledger and was howling in pain as she twisted his little finger almost completely backwards.

  “Now that,” she said, “is sexual tension. That’s the pain that’s shooting up your arm right now.”

  With satisfaction she watched his pale, pasty face turn a sickly shade of light green. Finally, just as he looked like he was going to pass out, she released him. “Don’t ever grab me again,” she told him. “Not any single part of me, ever. Do you understand, Bates?”

  He merely nodded as he grasped his hurt finger and rocked back and forth in his chair.

  She smiled at him as she replaced his pen on the desk. “I’m so glad we came to an understanding. I’d hate for you to live under the delusion that I’m ever going to have physical contact with you ... other than the kind that causes you great pain.”