Bitter Sweets

by G. A. McKevett

  “Where the heck did you find her?” he asked, too relieved to care that he had been beaten to the punch.

  “An old army buddy of the colonel’s. A lieutenant colonel who feels he owes Neilson his life.”

  “How did you talk him into giving her to you?” Savannah asked.

  Ryan winked at her. “We quietly suggested that if he did, he might not get into trouble for hiding her all this time. With the colonel in the hospital, he felt it was the best thing to do.”

  “Another thing,” John added, “we promised we would deliver her safely into the arms of her Uncle Brian.”

  “Brian, oh, yes,” Savannah brightened at the thought. Good news to tell him, at last! “Someone needs to let him know what’s happened.”

  “He’s on his way over,” Tammy said proudly. “But we thought you should be the one to tell him.”

  Less than twenty minutes later, Savannah had the deeply satisfying pleasure of introducing Christy “The Snow Fairy Queen” Mallock to her Uncle Brian.

  If Brian O’Donnell had seemed the least bit remote or unemotional before, Savannah decided that it had all been an exercise in self-control as he folded his niece into his arms and kissed her cheek.

  For a child who had been through such a horrible ordeal, Christy seemed remarkably open to him.

  “Are you really my mommy’s big brother?” she asked as they sat down next to each other on the picnic bench.

  The adults gathered around, feeling like intruders on this tender occasion, but unable to pull themselves away.

  “I sure am,” he said. “That’s why we all have red hair and brown eyes . . . . and lots of freckles.”

  “Mommy says they’re angel kisses.”

  Brian cast a quick look at Savannah, who felt her heart catch.

  “Then that’s what they are,” he replied, his own voice husky.

  “My mommy’s dead,” Christy said with childlike candor. “Daddy killed her, just like he said he would.”

  “Did you see that happen, sweetheart?” Brian was sliding easily into the role of father; Savannah could tell by the way he held his niece and the gentleness of his caress as he smoothed her hair back from her face.

  They all waited tensely for the girl’s reply.

  “No, he did it in the other room. But I heard the gun go off. It was really loud. And I knew what he did.”

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, honey.” Brian kissed her forehead.

  “Then my daddy took me into the woods to this little bitty house. And I thought he was going to hurt me, too, because he got mad and said I looked just like my mommy.”

  Savannah had a quick, terrifying vision of what might have happened if Colonel Neilson hadn’t decided to take care of “his soldier” on his own. It didn’t bear speculation.

  “But my grandpa saved me. He hurt my dad before he could hurt me. I think my daddy’s dead, too, but I’m not sure.”

  She waited, obviously expecting an answer.

  “That’s true, Christy,” Uncle Brian said. “I won’t ever lie to you. He’s dead.”

  She nodded matter-of-factly. “That’s probably good. But my grandpa’s in the hospital.”

  “I know. We’re all praying he gets well.”

  “Me, too. But that lady said I can’t live with him all the time, cause he has to take care of himself and Beowulf.” She nodded to Gran. “She said I might get to live close to Disney World.”

  Brian laughed and reached into his hip pocket, pulling out his wallet. “You sure are. Only a few miles from Disney World. And you’re going to live with her . . . .” He opened the wallet and showed the girl a picture. “She’s my wife, your aunt. And these are my three sons.”

  “Three boys!” Her mouth fell open and her amber eyes widened. “I always wanted a brother or a sister, but three of them? And they’re all boys!”

  “They all have red hair. Just like you.”

  “And freckles?”

  “Between us all, we probably have a million, billion freckles.”

  Christy laughed. “Our family will look like One Hundred and One Dalmations!”

  “Our family.”

  Savannah played the term over and over in her mind for the rest of the day and night, even after she had gone to bed. Having heard those words come from Christy’s lips, she knew she could sleep, trusting that the child would be okay in the end.

  Later that night, about ten o’clock, Brian’s wife had flown in from Orlando to accompany Christy and Brian on their trip to Florida.

  Having met her, Savannah knew that—although she would never take Lisa’s place in Christy’s heart—Mrs. O’Donnell would be a loving and devoted mother to the child.

  “Are you still awake?” Gran asked, sticking her head into Savannah’s bedroom. She was wearing a purple satin robe with a lace shawl collar. A daisy was still stuck behind her ear. She had never looked more beautiful to Savannah.

  “Yep, still awake,” Savannah replied.

  “I just wanted to pop in and remind you . . . . in case you’d forgotten.”

  Savannah grinned. “I hadn’t forgotten, Gran. Really. I’m looking forward to it as much as you are.”

  “Bright and early?”

  Savannah looked doubtful. “How bright? How early?”

  “Dawn-thirty.”

  “Al-l-l-l right. Dawn-thirty.”

  Gran literally shivered with excitement and danced a little jig. “Good night,” she said. “Sleep tight.”

  “And don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Savannah added, finishing off the litany.

  As she cuddled into her pillows, she heard her grandmother strolling back to the guest room, singing, clear and strong:

  “M—I—C. . . . See you real soon.

  “K—E—Y. . . . Why? Because we Like you!

  “M—O—U—S—E E E E E!”

  Plus-sized P.I. Savannah Reid gets a taste of the high life when she attends a Hollywood premiere on the arm of husband Dirk Coulter. Savannah may be a newlywed, but even she gets weak in the knees when she meets celebrity athlete-turned-movie-star Jason Tyrone. So imagine how she feels when the star’s rock-hard body is found rock-hard dead. . . .

  Some guys have everything. With his stunning looks and dazzling charm, former heavyweight champ Jason Tyrone is America’s favorite new action hero. Make that was. Once so spectacular in action, the blockbuster idol was found dead in his hotel room after his latest premiere. Despite his chiseled physique, Jason is never getting up again. . . .

  Though the autopsy reveals Jason may have gotten his killer body through doping, no one wants to believe the beloved athlete is a fraud, least of all Savannah. Soon she’s deeply immersed in the dark world of body enhancing drugs, and wondering if the world-class gym where Jason worked out is really just a front for a lucrative drug ring. Was Jason’s death the price he paid for threatening to expose other celebrities caught in the clutch of keeping a flawless image? Or was everyone’s favorite hero a victim of his own desire to always be at the top of his game? No stranger to society’s obsession with image, Savannah is determined to get to the truth. And for the voluptuous investigator, this time it’s personal. . . .

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of

  G.A. McKevett’s next Savannah Reid mystery

  KILLER PHYSIQUE

  coming in April 2014!

  Chapter One

  Standing at her bathroom sink, staring at the disgruntled, newly-married woman in the mirror, Savannah Reid rehearsed the speech she intended to give the jury at her murder trial. It would be during the sentencing phase, no doubt, because she fully intended to plead “Guilty.”

  She was certain that if there was even one semi-persnickety female on the jury, she’d escape the needle.

  “You have to understand, ladies and gentlemen, that I spent three and a half long weeks redecorating that bathroom — all in anticipation of his parents’ visit. I’m pretty sure I messed up my back permanently by hanging those
fancy ceiling tiles . . . . the ones that used to be white, but are now all globbed up with dribs and drabs of blue shaving foam. How in heaven’s name does a grown man get shaving foam on the ceiling?”

  She glanced around at the carnage of her freshly-renovated bathroom and added in her thick, Georgia drawl, “I reckon the same way he got it all over the sink, the faucet handle, the light switch, and the mirror. My dear jury members, you haven’t lived ‘til you’ve tried to scrub that stuff off a mirror. It’s blue cement. You can take a razor blade and fingernail polish remover to it, and it won’t budge.”

  A brisk knock on the door interrupted her plea for mercy.

  “You in there?” inquired a deep, annoyed, male voice.

  “Yeah,” she barked back.

  “You comin’ out soon? Or am I gonna have to go downstairs again to do my business?”

  She jerked the door open and stood, nose-to-nose, with her beloved new husband — give or take a few inches. “Boy, you and your thimble-sized bladder are irritatin’ the daylights outta me.”

  He shrugged and grinned down at her with a sexy smirk that would have set her bloomers atwitter, were it not for the devastation behind her.

  “Hey,” he said, “when the dragon needs drainin’, what’s a guy to do?”

  He waited, giving her plenty of time to chuckle, or at least grin. But all he got was an icy blue stare. It was the glacial glare that had made former cop, now private detective, Savannah Reid, infamous among suspected murderers, robbers, embezzlers, and jaywalkers. Evildoers of all shapes and sizes, including husbands who left the toilet seat up and burped loudly in fancy restaurants, had been on the receiving end of those cobalt lasers.

  Rolling his eyes, Dirk moaned and said, “Oh, man. I’m always in trouble. What did I do this time?”

  Stepping to one side, so that he would have a clear, unobstructed view of the crime scene, she waved an arm to indicate the extent of the damages. “That,” she said. “That’s what you did. Again.”

  He gave the room a cursory glance and frowned, obviously confused. “What? What’s the matter? Did I fold the towel in half instead of perfect thirds? Did I leave the cap off the toothpaste? Am I gonna get shot at sunrise or hanged from the neck until dead?”

  She decided not to tell him that she had, indeed, been fantasizing about an execution only moments before. Her own. Society’s recompense for premeditated, first degree homicide.

  As she watched his eyes dart around the room, registering absolutely nothing amiss, by his own lax non-standards, her ire rose. “Does this room look neat and tidy to you?” she asked.

  “I’ve seen worse,” he replied.

  “Yes, I’m sure you have. But not in my house. Look at those toothpaste spit specks all over the mirror.”

  “Hey, happens when I floss. You don’t want a husband with lousy dental hygiene, do you?”

  “And why did you leave your deodorant, shave cream can, and jock itch powder there on the sink again? I asked you to put them back in the medicine cabinet when you’re done with them.”

  He looked genuinely perplexed. “But why should I go to all that work when tomorrow I’m just gonna have to drag ‘em out so’s I can use ‘em again?”

  “Al-l-l that work? Dra-a-ag ‘em out? You act like I’m asking you to pick a bale o’ cotton in the hot, Georgia sun.”

  He gave her a sappy, condescending smile that was, no doubt, intended to smooth her ruffled feathers, but in fact, accomplished exactly the opposite. “If I put those three tiny little things away,” he said, “Will that make my beautiful, new bride happy?”

  “I reckon,” she grumbled. “And maybe you could wipe off the mirror once in a month of Sundays, since it’s you who gunks it all up four times a day.”

  Sighing deeply, he trudged past her into the room, picked up his offending toiletries and with great ceremony, placed them in the medicine chest. He fussed with the containers for what seemed like forever to Savannah, making quite a show of spacing them perfectly, evenly, among their neighbors, turning the labels straight outward, then re-adjusting ad nauseum.

  With that delicate mission accomplished, he strode to the toilet, unrolled a giant handful of tissue, and returned to the sink. Still grinning like a goat munching sand burrs, he flipped on the sink faucet and wetted the paper.

  As Savannah’s blood pressure soared, he calmly, casually, smeared the sodden wad all over the mirror, leaving bits of soggy mess behind. Unfortunately, the blue blobs of shaving cream remained undisturbed.

  Standing behind him, her face turning redder by the moment, Savannah looked around the room for potential murder weapons and wondered if it were possible to inflict a fatal wound with a Lady Gillette aloe-moisturizing bikini line shaver.

  “There,” he exclaimed, proudly displaying his handiwork. “Happy now?”

  “Plum ecstatic,” she muttered.

  “Good. And now that I’m in here, I’m gonna choke the chicken. So, unless you’ve got some picky-ass directions about how I oughta do that, too, you might wanna skedaddle.”

  With her chin a few notches higher than usual, a grim look on her face, Savannah marched stiffly to the door. She paused there for a moment as a hundred or so of Granny Reid’s admonitions about “living in harmony with the man the good God gave ya” and “overlookin’ the better part of a husband’s transgressions bein’ the path to domestic tranquility” danced through her head.

  She could take the high road and just walk out without saying another word. That would be noble, virtuous.

  Blessed are the peacemakers, and all that good stuff.

  Dirk was, after all, a decent man. He loved her. He’d put his crap away with a smile — okay, a smirk — on his face and kinda, sorta cleaned up when she’d asked him to. What more could a woman ask, really?

  Yes, she would put away her anger and choose the path of peace.

  Virtue, after all, had its own reward. . . . mostly in the form of self-righteous gloating.

  Then she heard a sound behind her that made every muscle in her body kink into a knot. A merry little tinkling sound.

  Not the sound of liquid hitting water. Oh, no. It was the unmistakable merry little melody of pee hitting tile.

  She whirled on him with a vengeance. “Dammit all, Dirk! At the shooting range, you score 49 out of 50 shots from 25 yards—standing, kneeling and prone! But you can’t hit a dadgum toilet that’s two feet away?”

  He stood — chicken partially choked, dragon half drained — a look of shock and confusion on his face. “What?”

  “If I were to paint a bull’s-eye on the bottom of the bowl, do you reckon it’d improve that piss-poor aim of yours?”

  He thought about it. Long and hard. Then, having given it all due consideration, he solemnly nodded, smiled and said, “It could. Yes, I think it might at that. Good idea, babe. You get on that right away.”

  “You. . . .! You. . . . ! I oughta. . . . ! A-a-u-u-gh!”

  She stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind her, rocking the house to its foundation.

  As she strode down the hallway, she could hear her groom laughing his butt off on the other side of the bathroom door.

  Yeah, well, at least somebody’s enjoying all this wedded bliss, she thought.

  “Laugh it up, Fuzzball,” she muttered as she went into the bedroom to get dressed for their big night out. “I’ll getcha back. One way or the other.”

  Granny Reid had told her many times, “Don’t let the sun set on your wrath, Savannah girl. No matter how bad the squabblin’s been that day, come nighttime you always make it right ‘tween you and your man before you lay your head on your pillow, to sleep.”

  Savannah had no problem with that sage advice. It would be at least seven hours or more before they retired for the evening. Surely, she could arrange some soul-gratifying form of revenge before then.

  Nope, she had no intention of going to bed angry. Come nighttime, she intended to be giggling on that pillow and rubbing her ha
nds with glee.

  Chapter Two

  As Savannah rode down the Ventura Highway in the rear seat of the beautiful old Bentley — on her way to a major Hollywood movie premiere, dressed to the nines in her best, sapphire silk dress — she couldn’t help thinking about that tiny, rural town where she had grown up.

  McGill, Georgia was, and remained, little more than a wide spot in a rough, pothole-ridden road.

  Thanks to Granny Reid, who’d raised Savannah and her eight siblings, Savannah had many pleasant childhood memories. But she had even more grim ones from the days before Granny had taken custody of her grandchildren. And at times like this, when her life was full to overflowing with the abundant blessings of basic needs fulfilled, loving friends, and the occasional adventure, like this one, she thought about the child she had been in McGill.

  Sometimes she enjoyed the irrational, but healing, fantasy of the adult Savannah returning to yesteryear, scooping up the ragged little girl she had been, setting her on her lap, and telling the child, “Things are gonna get a whole lot better, darlin’, when you grow up. You just hang in there and it’ll happen, sooner than you think. You’re just a little caterpillar now. But when you grow up, you’re gonna be a big, beautiful butterfly.”

  It would have helped, she had no doubt. Because if anybody in the world could benefit from a crystal ball that showed a sparkling future, it was a poor kid from McGill, Georgia, struggling to make it through a tough childhood in a dark place with limited hope.

  As Dirk reached over, took her hand, folded it between his large, warm ones, and squeezed, her earlier irritations toward him melted away. She gave him a sideways glance, then a wink, and a grin that deepened her dimples. She had to admit he looked darn good in a tux. The end results were almost worth the trouble of having to hogtie him first to get him into it.

  He leaned his head down to hers and nuzzled her dark curls with his nose. She prepared her heart for the sweet nothing he was about to whisper in her ear.