“I could make you something else, Abby,” Tammy said, her feelings obviously wounded.
“Don’t bother.” Abigail turned to Savannah. “Do you have any of that fried chicken that you made last night left over?” Savannah thought of the drumstick and thigh securely locked away in a plastic bag in her refrigerator. “Nope,” she said. “We ate it all. Nothing left. Your dinner’s there in front of you. Eat it or wear it.”
Again, everyone at the table froze.
Abigail just glared at her for a long moment, and even Savannah considered the wisdom of making a threat that had always worked fine for Granny Reid, but...
To everyone’s surprise, Abigail picked up the sandwich and bit into it. After a moment of chewing, the frown disappeared from her face and she attacked it with gusto.
“So, Tammy,” Savannah said, “how far did you get with that account number and password I gave you?”
Tammy gave Abigail a wary look, then replied, “Not far. Nothing yet. Sorry. I worked on it for hours, but couldn’t get it to work with any of the online banking sites. I haven’t gotten through the list yet. So I might find something.”
Savannah turned to Dirk, “And how’s your drive-by case?”
“Wrapped it up,” he said between chews. “Wasn’t hard. You lean on those wanna-be gangsters, and they give each other up for a thin dime. No honor among punks.”
“Good. Then you can get back to business on this Du Bois case.”
“What case? Is she still missing?”
“Yes, and it’s been 72 hours since Suzette Du Bois was last seen. And besides that...” Savannah glanced over at Abigail, who was contentedly munching away.
Abby stopped in mid-chew. “What? You’re afraid to talk in front of the fat girl? You think I might have killed that stupid doctor, just because she promotes the harassment, degradation, and humiliation of people of size? You think I bumped her off the other night when I said I was out shopping for souvenirs?” She stood and picked up her plate from the table. “Fine. I’ll go out in the backyard so that you can talk about me all you want.”
“Oh, Abby,” Savannah said, “sit yourself down there and eat your meal. I’m pretty sure I know who killed Suzette Du Bois, and it wasn’t you. I just want you to keep anything you hear at this table to yourself. Don’t go spreading it when you’re there at Emerge.”
Tammy perked up. “You know who killed her? You know that she’s been killed?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s dead,” Savannah said. “And I think Devon Wright, their publicist either did it or had someone do it. She’s fooling around with Sir Sergio Full of Himself, and Suzette caught them together. The gals got into a catfight and someone overheard them arguing in the parking lot three nights ago... the night Suzette was last seen.”
“That’s not a lot to go on,” Dirk said.
“How about if Miss Devon pawned a pair of Suzette’s earrings this morning?”
“That’s better,” he said. “You sure?”
“Pretty darned sure. I told Saul to hold onto them until you can get over there to look at them. And there’s a picture of Suzette wearing them in her nightstand drawer.”
He actually looked interested... as interested as Dirk ever got. “That’s much better. As soon as we’re finished eating here, let’s go get that picture.”
“Don’t rush off,” Tammy said. “I made dessert!”
Savannah gasped. “You made a dessert? No way! Not with sugar or flour, I’ll bet.”
“I made watermelon sorbet. And don’t make a face, Savannah. It’s good, even without sugar or flour.”
“I’m sure it’s delicious,” Savannah said through only slightly gritted teeth. She had to be a good example for Abigail... even if she would have much preferred a dish full of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream smothered with hot fudge.
“Great! I’ll dish some up now.” Tammy jumped up from the table and danced over to the refrigerator.
A rude buzzing sound came from Dirk’s shirt pocket. He reached in and took out his cell phone. “Coulter,” he barked. “Yeah. Oh? Where? Okay.”
He returned the phone to his pocket and gave Savannah a loaded look across the table. “Gotta go,” he said. “And you’re gonna wanna come with me.”
“What is it?”
“DB.”
“Oh.”
“What’s a DB?” Abby asked.
Savannah swallowed hard. “A dead body.” To Dirk she said, “Is it Suzette?”
“Nope.”
“Who then?”
Dirk suddenly looked tired and a little bewildered. “You gonna come with me or ask questions?”
“I’ll get my purse and weapon.”
Chapter
9
By the time Savannah and Dirk arrived at Emerge, half a dozen radio cars were already there, forming a barricade in the driveway in front of the entrance with red and blue lights flashing. Across the front door was a strip of yellow crime scene tape... the very sight of which could give Savannah an adrenaline jolt.
They piled out of Dirk’s Buick and hurried up to the door. A young, uniformed cop stepped aside to let them pass.
“Where is it?” Dirk asked him.
“Down there... at the end of the hall,” the patrolman replied.
As they strode down the hallway, toward a knot of still more policemen standing in a circle around a figure lying on the floor, Savannah could hear a woman sobbing hysterically in one of the offices that they passed.
It was a sound she had never gotten used to. The pure, gut-wrenching sound of human sadness at its deepest. Sometimes she could hardly stand it.
As they approached, some of the cops recognized them and moved away from the body to make room for them.
“Sergeant,” one of the oldest ones said, “Jake and I were the first ones here. We’ve started a log.”
“Good,” Dirk replied. “Who called it in?”
“The janitor lady. Said she practically tripped over it when she came in to clean. Jake’s talking to her there in one of the offices. She’s really upset.”
Savannah joined Dirk beside the corpse, and they knelt beside the body to study it closer.
This was something else that, no matter how many times she saw it, she never grew accustomed to it. The difference in “alive” and “dead.”
When the soul left a person and only the shell of a body remained, the contrast was deeply shocking. It hit her hard every time she witnessed the phenomenon.
Only hours before she had been talking to this man, watching his every movement, hanging on his every word. And now he was gone. Completely, absolutely gone.
But in spite of her shock, the cool, trained, professional part of her brain took over, scanning the body in a methodical manner.
Sergio D’Alessandro’s corpse showed no obvious signs of trauma. Since he was lying on his side, they had a pretty clear view of the front and the back of the body. There was no blood on the exposed skin or clothing. At least, nothing visible to the naked eye, although every inch of his garments and body would be painstakingly examined before that was officially concluded.
His eyes were open, and his mouth, as well. His expression was mostly blank—maybe slightly worried. There were no bruises or signs of violence on his face or hands.
“How do you figure he died?” Dirk asked Savannah.
“Don’t know. Maybe a heart attack or something?”
“Could be.” Dirk turned to the cop who had been first on the scene. “Did the maid say if she saw anything unusual, suspicious?”
“She said everything was just the way it always was. Door locked. Nobody around. His car is in the parking lot. She saw it and figured he was working late.”
“Did you search the building?”
“We did,” one of the other patrolmen said. “Me and my partner, Jack Pierce. There’s no one else here. No sign of any struggle or anything out of the ordinary.”
“Help me turn him over,” Dirk said.
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Two of them assisted him in rolling the body onto its other side. The left side was as benign as the right.
“Maybe it’s natural causes or a drug overdose or something,” Dirk said. “We won’t know anything for sure until Dr. Liu gets him on her table tomorrow morning.”
Dr. Liu's autopsy table, Savannah thought. That's one place I never want to end up.
No, an autopsy table was where they sent you when society didn’t know who or what the hell had killed you.
And suspected the worst.
Savannah and Dirk waited until Dr. Jennifer Liu and her entire coroner’s crime scene investigation crew had come and gone. And by the time the white van, emblazoned with the Great Seal of the State of California on its side, drove away, Sergio D’Ales-sandro’s remains in the back, it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening.
As they walked back to Dirk’s Buick, he glanced at his watch. “It’s not too late to call on your buddy, that Devon gal, is it?”
“Well, her lover has just been found dead, of god knows what cause. I should think she’d want to be informed, if nothing else.”
“How much do you want to bet she already knows that? I’ll bet you pizza next Saturday night at your house and the heavyweight championship fight on your HBO.”
“Against?”
“Dinner out with me. You pick the place.”
“No way. Any restaurant? Like Chez Antoine?”
“Get real. I’m talking McDonald’s, Burger King, or Burger Bonanza.”
“Gee,” she said dryly. “Think you can handle that?”
“Yeah, I can handle it. As long as you don’t go wild and order the most expensive burger on the menu.”
Savannah shook her head. “Dirk, you’re so cheap you could squeeze an Indian head nickel until the buffalo poops.”
“Thank you.”
Devon Wright lived in Two Oaks, a small community inland from San Carmelita, and it was nearly half past nine by the time Savannah and Dirk arrived at her modest house. The place wasn’t easy to find, sitting at the end of a long dirt road that bisected a large avocado grove.
As they left the Buick and walked up to the house, a security light flipped on and Savannah saw some sort of critter skedaddle into the nearby brush.
“I don’t like running around in the dark on these farms at night,” she told Dirk. “I haven’t ever since that night that we nearly ran head-on into that mountain lion. Remember him?” Dirk knocked on the front door. Inside they could hear the television blaring. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “I’m not likely to forget that guy. I think I wet my pants when we came running around the back of that house and practically tripped over him. Scared me so bad I let the perp get away.”
She cast a quick look into the weeds that grew thick and high on either side of the house. “The occasional opossum I can handle,” she said. “But the big cats I can do without.”
When no one answered, he knocked again, louder and longer. Savannah shifted from one foot to the other and tried to peek through the lace curtains that covered the door’s upper half window. “Did I ever tell you about the time when Gran’s old hound dog, Colonel Beauregard, treed a bobcat right there in her backyard?”
“Yes, at least a dozen times,” he replied. “When two people have spent as much time together as we have, they’ve heard all of the other one’s good stories.”
“Well, I pretend to listen to your reruns with bated breath. You could do the same, you know.”
“That’s because you’re a better person than me, Van. I’m not ashamed to admit it.” He pounded with his fist on the door and shouted, “San Carmelita Police Department! Open up this door right now before I break it down!”
The woman who finally opened the door bore little resemblance to the publicist Savannah had followed only that morning to the pawn shop. She looked like Devon Wright’s disheveled and depressed twin, wearing a ratty bathrobe, no makeup, and a pair of men’s house slippers.
“What do you want?” she demanded, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. “Bust my damn door down, will you?! What’s the matter with you? I got a kid in here!”
“Well, answer your door next time,” Dirk snapped back. “I knocked three times and—”
“Allan, turn that friggen TV down!” she screamed over her shoulder. “And go to bed. I told you to go to bed half an hour ago, young man! Get going! Move it!”
A thin, pale little boy, about seven years old, sulked over to the television and turned it off. An equally dejected, scruffy terrier trailed after the child as he meandered down the hall to bed.
“I need to speak to you,” Dirk told her, his tone as irritable as hers.
“Well, it’s a little late, and I’m not in the mood to talk to you anymore about that stupid Suzette. I keep telling you, she’ll show up sooner or later. She’s just messing with our heads, disappearing like this. She loves to do that kind of thing.”
“We aren’t here to talk to you about Suzette,” Savannah told her.
“Yeah, and what are you doing here? What’s a magazine reporter doing, hanging out with a cop?”
“I’m not a magazine reporter,” she admitted. “I’m a private investigator. I’m... I was working for Mr. D’Alessandro, trying to find Suzette for him.”
“He never told me he hired a private investigator.”
“I believe he wanted to keep it confidential,” Savannah said. “But that’s not really important now. May we come inside? We really do have something to tell you. Something you need to hear.”
“And it can’t wait until morning?”
“No,” Dirk said, brushing by her and entering the house. “It can’t. Go sit over there on the couch, and brace yourself. I’ve got some unpleasant news for you.”
Twenty minutes later, Devon was still crying, wringing her hands, and wiping her nose on the sleeve of her robe, in spite of the fact that Savannah kept shoving handfuls of tissues at her.
“I can’t believe it!” she said for the seventh time. “He was so healthy! So energetic! That guy could go all night and frequently did!”
The thought of Sergio “going” at all, let alone all night, made Savannah want to go scrub her mind’s eye with a steel wool pad and bleach. But considering the depth of Devon’s apparent grief, it was clear that his smarminess held a certain appeal for some females.
There was no accounting for taste, or the lack thereof.
Savannah was already mentally celebrating the fact that she had won the bet with Dirk and would be dining in splendid repast at Burger Bonanza soon.
Devon might be a jerk, and she may have killed Suzette and robbed her of her earrings. But there was no way that she had murdered her lover. Her shock at hearing of his passing was genuine; no doubt about it.
“How?” she kept saying. “How did he die?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Savannah told her. “After the autopsy.”
“And until we do find out,” Dirk added, “there’s not much more to talk about concerning that topic. I’ve got something else to discuss with you tonight.”
Devon’s red, swollen eyes narrowed even more. “What? I told you, it’s late, and now that I’ve gotten this awful news . .
“And you’re about to get some more.” Dirk gave her an ugly smile. “I’d like you to know that I’m seriously thinking of arresting you for murder.”
“Murder?” Devon choked and sputtered. “How can you even think I’d kill Sergio? I loved him! And besides, you just said you don’t even know how or why he died. It could have been natural causes and—”
“Not D’Alessandro,” he said, “Suzette Du Bois.”
“That’s just stupid!” She threw the handful of tissues at him, but they fluttered to the floor midway between them. “You don’t even have a body. How can you be sure she’s dead, let alone that I did it?”
He gave her his most intimidating look, the one he reserved for his least favorite suspects. “You pawned her earrings this morning.”
“I did not!”
“We have the earrings. We have your fingerprints on the ear-rings. We have Suzette’s thumbprint on the earrings and her DNA. We’ve traced the earrings back to the jeweler where they were purchased... by Suzette Du Bois. They’re hers. You pawned them. In other words. We have you.”
Savannah gave Dirk a sideways glance and had to suppress a giggle. Not having been raised by Granny Reid, Dirk had no qualms about lying until his tongue turned black and fell out. Considering that he hadn’t even heard about the earrings until little more than an hour ago, he had just told a string of whoppers. DNA, indeed.
But it worked. Which proved, contrary to Granny’s teaching, bad guys did occasionally win.
Devon dissolved into hysterical sobs. Hands over her face, she spilled it, just as Dirk had intended her to. “Okay, okay, I had her earrings. I took them out of her dresser the other night when Sergio and I were searching her house.”
“You and Sergio were searching Suzette’s place?” Dirk asked. “For what?” Savannah added. She knew already, but she wasn’t sure how much Sergio had told his girlfriend.
“For the money that Suzette stole from Sergio. And when we didn’t find it, he told me to go ahead and treat myself to something. He said that, considering how badly she’d ripped him off, we deserved to take a little of it back. So, I took those diamond and sapphire earrings.”
“What did he take?” Savannah asked.
“A couple of the rings he’d given her, and a bracelet, and a pendant, and some silver candlesticks from Tiffany, and some Waterford crystal, and Sammy’s diamond collar.”
“A dog collar?” Dirk frowned and shook his head. “A diamond dog collar?”
“Yeah. He said he’d pry the diamonds out and sell them. He was always jealous of Sammy, said she cared more about that stupid dog than she did about him. But now…” She began to choke again. “Now he’s... he’s... he’s dea-a-a-ad!”
Dirk turned to Savannah. “A diamond dog collar? Is she serious?”
Savannah shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I’d buy a couple for my kitties if I had the bucks.”
Corpse Suzette Page 11
