A Decadent Way to Die

by G. A. McKevett

  “Sure,” Helene replied. “I was still sitting on it when I headed over the edge. The limb caught me, and the bike kept going … landed there on the beach by those big rocks.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “The junkyard,” Emma said. “Waldo and Tiago drove down the beach and got it, brought it back for Oma.”

  “Brought it back in pieces, you mean,” Helene said, shaking her head sadly. “I really liked that bike, too. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as the Harley, but …”

  “Who are Waldo and Tiago?” Savannah asked.

  “Waldo is my great-nephew,” Helene told her. “My good-for-nothing niece’s boy. He lives here on the estate and helps me out. He’s a nice young man.”

  Savannah couldn’t help but notice Emma’s eye roll. Apparently, Emma’s estimation of Waldo’s worth wasn’t quite so lofty as Helene’s.

  “And Tiago Medina is my gardener,” Helene continued. “Thank goodness for Tiago. He’s the one who heard me hollering. He risked his life climbing down the cliff to pull me off that branch.”

  This time Emma agreed, nodding vigorously. “Tiago’s a gem. He’s the one who’s priceless around here, not that nitwit Waldo.”

  “Did I hear my name mentioned …” said a male voice behind them, “… and not in a very nice way?”

  They turned around to see a man in his early thirties, wearing stylishly tattered shorts and a faded surfer tee-shirt. His long blond hair hung in his eyes, sun-fried and frizzled. His darkly tanned face was already creased with deep wrinkles. He had the same startlingly green eyes as Helene. But they lacked her sparkle of wit and intelligence.

  Briefly, Savannah felt a pang of sympathy for him. It wouldn’t be easy being born into a highly successful family of attractive, brilliant people, having less than your share of looks, brain, and charm. Not to mention being stuck with the name Waldo.

  Maybe he was kind. And as Granny Reid always said, “Kind’s more important than pretty’ll ever be.”

  “I heard you call me a nitwit,” he told Emma. “That’s pretty funny, coming from a girl so ugly that she has to pay guys to go out with her.”

  Okay, Savannah thought, so much for the “kind” theory.

  “Stop it!” Helene snapped. “We’re family, for heaven’s sake! You two be nice to each other, or I’ll slap you down … both of you!”

  Savannah stifled a giggle, thinking that was exactly the sort of threat and logic that Granny Reid was famous for.

  “My name is Savannah,” she said, extending her hand to Waldo. She started to add that she was a friend of Emma’s but thought better of it. “I’m visiting your aunt today. She was just telling me what a fright she had, going off this cliff.”

  “Yeah, that was a bummer,” Waldo said, shaking his mop head. “I hate to say it, Oma, but Mom told you to stop riding bikes. You aren’t as young as you used to be and—”

  “And you won’t go adding insult to injury if you know what’s good for you,” Helene said, cutting him off sharply. “My age had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. Anybody could have gone off that cliff … even you.”

  “Especially you,” Emma mumbled, “drunk or stoned all the time like you are….”

  Waldo shot her a dark look.

  “Where were you when your aunt had her accident?” Savannah asked.

  “What do you mean? Like do I have an alibi or something?” Waldo’s green eyes squinted. “Do I need an alibi?”

  “Who said anything about an alibi?” Savannah shrugged. “I was just making small talk. Like, ‘Where were you when you heard Elvis died …?’”

  “I think I was a baby.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She sighed. “They keep making the younger generation younger and younger.” She drew a deep breath and turned to Helene. “What time of day was your accident?”

  “About ten fifteen in the morning. I always ride my bike to the main road to get the mail from the mailbox.”

  Savannah turned to Emma. “Where were you at ten fifteen the morning of your grandmother’s mishap?”

  “I was at home with my boyfriend, Kyd. He lives with me now. We were probably still in bed. He had a gig the night before, so we were sleeping in. He’s a musician.”

  “Oh, please!” Helene put her hands over her ears. “You’re going to give me a headache, just thinking about it!”

  Savannah turned back to Waldo. Try, try, try again. “And where were you at ten fifteen that morning?” she asked slowly, deliberately, as though talking to a three-year-old.

  “Sleeping,” Emma piped up. “That’s all he ever does—sleep and smoke pot and drink beer and look at porn on his computer and play video games. And that’s what he’s going to be doing until he’s sixty-five. The big question is: What’s he going to do when he retires? What’ll he do with all his spare time, when he’s stopped doing absolutely nothing?”

  Suddenly, Savannah felt exhausted, empty. As though somebody had pulled a plug from the bottom of her right foot and all her energy had flowed out and swirled down some cosmic drain hole.

  Donning her most patient look—the one she usually wore while trying to resist the urge to do someone bodily harm—she laced her arm through Waldo’s and led him a few steps away from the two women.

  “Waldo, my man,” she said, “you’ve got some mighty critical womenfolk in your inner family circle.”

  “No kidding.” He bobbed his blond head vigorously. “And Emma’s not nearly as bad as my mom. Man, she’s ragging on me day and night about getting a job or going to school or making something of myself.”

  “She hasn’t figured out how pointless that is, huh?”

  “Nope. I keep waiting for her to get it through her thick head, but …”

  “Moms.” Savannah gave him a sympathetic tsk-tsk and shook her head. “Always pushing their kids to succeed. Don’t they know the damage they do?”

  “Yeah.”

  Savannah guided him a few feet farther down the path and patted his arm companionably. He responded to the female attention with the shy grin of a guy who didn’t get much.

  “Do you normally sleep in,” she asked him, “like Emma said? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Who wouldn’t if they could?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. But I stay up late at night. It’s not like I’m not doin’ nothin’ with my life.”

  “Of course not. And the morning your aunt had her accident, do you think you slept in then, too, or …”

  “I guess so. I don’t remember doing anything different.”

  “How did you find out about her mishap?”

  “The siren woke me up. I looked out the window of my house over there”—he pointed through the trees, and Savannah could just see the top of the roof of a tiny cottage that reminded her of a Goldilocks and the Three Bears book her granny had read to them—“and I saw the ambulance coming down the road. They stopped there by the cliff and then I saw her laying on the ground, with Tiago kneeling next to her. I knew it wasn’t good.”

  “That must have been a shock to the system, seeing that,” Savannah said, studying his face closely.

  “Oh, it was! I thought for sure she was a goner!”

  “You and your aunt pretty close, are you?”

  “She’s the only person in the world who loves me,” he said with a candor that took Savannah by surprise. “My mother hates me. Emma does, too. And I’ve sorta run out of friends the last few years.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Savannah looked into his green eyes and saw a lot of pain. “Any particular reason why your friends flew the coop?”

  “I only had two to start with. One of ’em got married and his new wife doesn’t want him hanging out with me anymore … says I’m a loser. The other friend OD’d.”

  “Waldo, that’s a hard-luck tale if ever I heard one,” Savannah said. But her tone lacked the ring of sincerity, because she was distracted.

  Looking down at the path, about three feet from where they stood, she had noticed somet
hing strange.

  Wanting to investigate without an audience, she took Waldo by the arm and led him back toward his aunt and Emma. “Thank you for that information,” she told him as she pulled a small notebook and pen from her purse. “If I have any other questions and need to call you, where can I reach you?”

  He gave her his email address and, at her prompting, supplied a phone number, as well. She jotted them down.

  Turning to Helene and Emma, she said, “I won’t keep y’all out here any longer. I reckon you’ve got things to do and places to be.”

  “I certainly do,” Helene said. She turned to Waldo, “I have to go see that mother of yours and give her a piece of my mind about that ridiculous new doll she’s planning. Go take a shower. I want you to drive me to the office.”

  He mumbled something that sounded like a halfhearted objection, then moped down the path toward the cottage among the trees.

  Helene extended her hand to Savannah. “I’m sorry I wasn’t very hospitable when you first got here. Next time we’ll skip the gun and go straight to the strudel.”

  Savannah gave the woman’s hand an affectionate squeeze and smiled. “That sounds like an excellent plan. And one of these days, you’ll have to come to my house and sample my apple pie and homemade ice cream.”

  Helene’s green eyes twinkled. “I’ve worked eighty years on my strudel recipe. Do you really think you can top it?”

  “Granny Reid’s older than you, and it’s her recipe. So, maybe …”

  “We shall see. We shall see.”

  “I get to judge that contest.” Emma nodded toward the main house. “So, Savannah, are you ready for me to take you home?”

  Savannah thought of what she’d seen on the path and shook her head. “Actually, I think I can arrange my own ride back home,” she told Emma. “And, if you don’t mind, Helene, I’d like to spend a little time here on your property, just looking around a bit. Would that be okay?”

  “Poking around is more like it,” Helene replied.

  Savannah grinned. “Looking, poking, nosing around … pretty much the same thing in my neck of the woods.”

  “Okay. Stay as long as you like.”

  Savannah decided to press her luck. “And is there any way that I could get back into the house … if you’re gone and there was something I really wanted to look at … say … in your kitchen.”

  Helene raised one eyebrow. “If you’re thinking of snooping around for my strudel recipe, don’t waste your time. The only copy of it is in my head.”

  “Actually,” Savannah replied, “I’m more interested in your cocoa tin … and sugar canister … and …”

  “I suppose. If you want to go into the house after I’m gone, ask Tiago, the gardener, to let you in. Tell him I said you are family now. His cottage is down the road, past Waldo’s.” Helene gave her a sly little grin. “I put vanilla in my hot chocolate, too,” she said. “And a pinch of salt.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. And milk and …”

  “Milk?” Helene sniffed. “Milk is for wimps. Half-and-half.”

  “Ahhh … a woman after my own heart.”

  Once Helene and Emma were gone, and Savannah was certain she was alone, she walked back down the path and knelt on one knee next to the suspicious area she had noticed before.

  She poked at the traffic-hardened dirt with one finger, then tested the section next to it.

  Slowly, she stood and dusted off her hand.

  She looked at the path … the cliff where Helene Strauss had nearly met her death.

  Savannah’s eyes went cold, her face hard, as she took her cell phone from her purse and called Dirk.

  “Hi,” she said. “I need you.”

  “And how many times a day do women tell me that?”

  He must be finished doing the paperwork on the Murphy brothers, she thought. Dirk never flirted—or even cracked a grin, for that matter—when he was at his desk.

  “I mean it,” she said. “I’m at a beachfront property about five miles north of town. It’s just past the Vista del Sol restaurant where I took you for your birthday. First drive on the left. I’ll meet you at the main house.”

  “Ooo-kaay,” he said. “You gonna tell me why?”

  “I’ll fill you in when you get here. Bring evidence bags, your camera, and a stiff ruler.”

  No sooner had she said it than she knew it was coming. He was, after all, male.

  “You might not need a stiff ruler if I’m there. Whatcha gonna measure?”

  “Something longer than three and a half inches, so bring the friggin’ ruler.”

  He chuckled.

  That was one thing she loved about Dirk—his tough hide. He took insults better than most.

  “You gonna buy me dinner again?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Really? Wow! I’ll be right out.”

  She clicked the phone closed. “Sure, I’ll buy you a dee-luxe cheeseburger, fries, and a beer … your very next birthday.”

  Chapter 4

  Half an hour later, Dirk was standing over Savannah, watching as she shoved the wooden yardstick into a strip of soft dirt that crossed the path, from one side to the other.

  “See how the straightedge slides right down, nice and easy like?” she said. “This section’s been dug out recently, then filled back in.”

  He kicked at the path with the toe of his sneaker. “Yeah. I see that. It’s hard as a rock here. You’d break that ruler if you tried to push it in here.” He moved to the other side of her and tested that soil, too. “And it’s just as hard over here.”

  He looked up and down the path. “This road’s old … beaten down over the years. I’ll bet there’s not another spot like that anywhere on it.”

  “Me, too.”

  She pushed the yardstick easily through the dirt until it met resistance. “Fourteen inches,” she said. “That’d be deep enough to do the trick for sure.”

  “What trick?” he asked.

  She pulled the ruler out and continued to poke around. “And about six inches across.”

  “What’s this all about?” he said.

  “But how would they know she wouldn’t see it and stop or go around it?” she muttered to herself as she stood, then walked several feet down the path, back toward the main road.

  “She, who?” Dirk wanted to know.

  “Helene Strauss, the wonderful elderly lady who owns this property. She reminds me of Gran. She was riding her motorbike from the main house to the mailbox out on the highway, like she did every morning. She hit that hole and went over the cliff right there.”

  “Your granny doesn’t ride a motorbike.”

  “She would if she had one. Hush up, boy … you’re interfer-rin’ with my concentration.”

  “God forbid.”

  “So, why dig the hole there?” she said. “The path runs close to the cliff for quite a stretch here.”

  Dirk walked over to Savannah and surveyed the area, up and down. After a few moments, he said matter-of-factly, “The view.”

  She looked up at him and couldn’t help noticing the moderately smug look on his face. “What?”

  “The view. It’s the best here. Back there and up ahead there’s more bushes and trees, blocking the view of the ocean.”

  “That’s true.” Savannah nodded, looking through the break in the foliage that afforded a breathtaking vista of sea, sand, and sky. “Even if I rode through here every day, I’d turn my head and soak in that gorgeous scenery every time. Look at how pretty it is.”

  She turned to Dirk. “Boy, I take back what I’ve said about you behind your back over the years. You do have the sense God gave a goose.”

  “Gee. Thanks. How often does a guy get a compliment like that?”

  “I want a house like that,” Savannah said as she and Dirk rounded a curve in the path and saw the first cottage.

  She had already fallen in love, having glimpsed bits of the roof and upper story through the trees. The mullio
ned windows with their dark red shutters, the steeply pitched roof, and lacy gingerbread woodwork seemed fit for a fairy-tale princess.

  Though the tie-dyed tee-shirt and tattered beach towel draped over the upstairs balcony railing, and the dried-up vines that trailed from the flower boxes suggested that someone other than Snow White or Cinderella lived there.

  “Call it a hunch,” she told Dirk, “that’s Waldo’s place.”