A Body To Die For

by G. A. McKevett

  But, like Savannah, she also had a fierce streak, and her persona could change to Warrior Queen in a heartbeat…in defense of herself and others whom she deemed innocent and in need of protection.

  Savannah knew that, given no alternative, Tammy would have “bared it all” in a courtroom—if there had been no other way to prosecute Vittorio the Peeporio. But Tammy was handy with the computer, and she was particularly good with manipulating photos, so why shouldn’t she guard her own modesty with a few well-placed defocused circles?

  “I mean it,” Dirk said, biting into a brownie, “her messin’ around with those pictures better not jeopardize my case. I want this guy. You should’ve heard the lip he gave me when I was booking him. Comes from a rich family in Twin Oaks. Considers himself above such things as getting arrested. It’s time he had a reality check, and I’m happy to be the one writing it.”

  “Tammy’s not going to ruin your evidence. She knows what she’s doing. She’ll leave enough that it’ll be obvious what happened. Besides, she’s keeping a copy of the original, untouched movie. Her in all her nudie glory.”

  “Yeah, but what if I get Judge O’Fallon? You know how he is.”

  “O’Fallon?” Savannah sniffed and looked disgusted. “Oh, yeah. He’s the one who insisted on watching those whorehouse tapes over and over when we were prosecuting that madam.”

  “He even took them home with him when the case closed.”

  “If you get O’Fallon,” Tammy said, obviously listening to their every word, “I’m burning this disk…in the fireplace, that is…and you’ll be relying on testimony alone to fry Vito.”

  Savannah chuckled. “She’s not kidding, and it’s a good idea. Otherwise she’d be burglarizing the judge’s house to get the DVD back and in spite of all my lessons, she’s not that good at breaking and entering. She’ll get caught; we’ll have to bail her out and all that rigmarole.”

  “I’ll arrest you for destroying evidence,” Dirk said, waving a brownie in Tammy’s direction.

  “No, you won’t. Because Savannah would stop feeding you, and you’d have to buy your own food or starve to death,” she replied. “There, that should do it.” She popped the DVD out of the computer, slipped it into a plastic case, and walked over to the sofa.

  Holding the DVD out to him, she said, “The whole, sad, sordid story right there in digital format for the world to see.”

  “Thanks.” He took it from her, getting only the merest smear of Savannah’s fudge frosting on the cover. “I owe you girls. I couldn’t have done it without you. None of the girls in the SCPD are cute enough to have lured anybody into that shower room.”

  Savannah stroked Cleopatra’s glossy black coat with one hand and ate a slice of pecan pie with the other. “I wouldn’t share that with the gals you work with,” she told him.

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  Savannah nodded solemnly and gave Tammy a sideways glance. “And thus the mystery is solved: Why does Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter continue to work alone since that day, all those years ago, when Detective Reid left the force?”

  “To heck with that,” Tammy said, nudging Dirk’s shin with the toe of her sneaker. “Let’s get back to that ‘I owe you girls’ part. What’s it going to be? A day at a spa, dinner at Chez Antoine? A weekend on Catalina?”

  “Get real,” Dirk replied. “I’m paying you out of my own pocket.”

  Savannah sighed. “A hot dog at the pier. Pay yourself if you want extras, like sauerkraut or mustard.”

  He grinned. “That’s more like it.”

  His cell phone buzzed, playing the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—his choice of ringtone for his captain.

  “Coulter,” he barked into the phone.

  His curt tone had a lot to do with the fact that he despised the captain, but he would have answered the same way if it had been his grandmother, the Dodgers’ lead pitcher, or Santa Claus.

  “Oh, yeah? Really? Hm-m-m.”

  Savannah and Tammy watched as his irritation faded to subdued interest and mild curiosity.

  That was as close to “excited” as Dirk got.

  “All right,” he said. “Gimme the address.” He dumped an instantly indignant Diamante on the floor, reached to the end of the sofa and got his leather bomber coat. He took a pad and pen from the inside pocket. Scribbling, he said, “Oh, yeah, I know the place. I didn’t know it was she that lived there now. All right. I’m on my way.”

  He clicked the phone closed and sat there with a perverse little smirk on his face. “You’re not going to believe this. You are not gonna freakin’ believe this!”

  “What?” Tammy asked.

  “Who?” Savannah wanted to know.

  He swelled up with the high degree of irritating self-importance enjoyed by someone who holds a juicy gossip tidbit that they haven’t yet shared.

  Savannah had seen toad frogs less puffy.

  “Oh, spit it out,” she said, “before I slap you nekkid and hide your clothes.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin a couple of notches. “Clarissa Jardin.”

  Neither Savannah nor Tammy said anything for as long as they could stand it. Finally, Savannah broke the stalemate by reaching down and snatching the remainder of his brownie out of his hand.

  “Hey! I wasn’t done with that!”

  “You are, unless you tell us what you’re so danged smug about. What’s with Clarissa? She’s having a hissy fit about us busting a perv in her gym and giving her bad publicity?”

  “Oh, no. She’s happy about publicity. Any kind of publicity.”

  “That’s true,” Tammy said, “or else she wouldn’t go on all the talk shows, the way she does, and talk trash about ‘tub-os’ as she calls them.”

  “Yeah, she needs a skillet beatin’ for that,” Savannah said. “But what’s the call about?”

  “Did you know she lives in the area?” Dirk said.

  “Yeah, big deal,” Savannah replied.

  Looking quite pleased with herself, Tammy said, “I knew that, too. I read the other day she’s bought that old, old adobe mansion up in the hills between here and Twin Oaks. It used to belong to the Mexican landowner Don Ramon Rodriguez back in the mid-1800s.”

  “That place?” Savannah said. “I heard that old place is haunted.”

  “Well, that’s where the Mistress of Pain and Gain and her hubby are living right now,” Dirk told them. “Or, at least she’s living there. Seems to be some question about whether he’s living or not.”

  “What?” Savannah and Tammy asked in unison.

  “Yeap,” he said. “That’s what the call’s about. She phoned the station house tonight and reported him missing. And I just caught the case.”

  “How long?” Savannah wanted to know.

  “Five days.”

  “Five days?” Savannah’s right eyebrow raised a notch. “Not exactly eager to get him back, huh?”

  “Maybe he leaves home frequently,” Tammy said.

  “You listened to her squawking all afternoon.” Dirk rose and pulled on his coat. “If you managed to get away from her, wouldn’t you stay gone?”

  “But five days!” Savannah couldn’t get over it. “Heck, I wouldn’t wait a minute past four days to report you missing.” She poked Dirk in the ribs as he passed by her. “Wait. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To talk to the Mistress of ‘No Pain, No Gain.’”

  “Not without me you aren’t. Let me get my purse…and my gun.”

  “Your gun? You probably won’t need your gu—”

  “Listen, if that loudmouth gives me any lip at all or even mentions the word ‘tub-o’ in my presence, you gotta know what’s gonna happen. It’ll be justifiable homicide. And if there’s one overweight gal on the jury, I’m home free.”

  Dirk gulped and shot Tammy a helpless, worried look. At least, as helpless and worried as tough-guy Coulter ever looked.

  “Yeah,” he said, following her to t
he front door. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You dispensing your own brand of Southern justice in the middle of my missing persons case. Just thinkin’ about all that extra paperwork is enough to make me sick to my stomach.”

  He paused at the door, then darted back into the living room. In one smooth move, he scooped up another brownie and some chocolate pecan cookies.

  Wrapping them in a napkin, he hurried back to Savannah. “Okay, let’s boogie.”

  She glanced down at the wad of goodies, which he was cramming into his coat pocket. “A little something to settle your tummy?”

  “Hey, whatever gets you through the night. We’ll stop at the Patty Cake Donut Shop for some free coffee on the way.”

  Savannah could practically see the dollar bills flying out the tailpipe of Dirk’s old Buick Skylark as they chugged up the steep foothills that framed the eastern side of San Carmelita. The ancient bomber was big, comfortable, practically indestructible, and got a whole whopping nine miles to the gallon.

  “When are you going to trade this tanker in on something more energy efficient, something less polluting, something kinder to Mother Earth?” she asked him as she sipped her free coffee and helped herself to one of the only slightly mashed cookies from his pocket.

  “I’ll trade it in when you get rid of the Scarlet Pony, Miss Treehugger Environmentalist. That jalopy of yours guzzles just as much gas as this thing does.”

  He had her there. Her ’65 Mustang with its Holley carburetor was hardly a “green machine.” She kicked herself for starting an argument she couldn’t win. Until…

  “My ‘jalopy’ can go from zero to one-twenty lickety-split. This thing can’t go over ninety downhill with a stiff wind behind it.”

  “It don’t need to go over ninety.”

  She gave him a sideways glance. Even by the dim light of a half-moon and the Buick’s dash lights, she could see he was stung.

  She grinned. Touché.

  Rolling down the car window, she breathed in the moist night air, scented with orange blossoms and eucalyptus and wild sage. Ah, life was, indeed, worth living.

  As they traveled farther from town, higher into the foothills, the fewer houses they saw. Although there were developments here and there, some of them exclusive, gated communities, overall, the countryside had a lonely, almost haunting quality about it.

  Dark, gnarled oaks and patches of desert scrub and prickly pear cacti provided the only greenery. Occasionally, through the trees, a creek could be seen, running parallel to the winding two-lane road. Its rocky bed was usually dry or held only a trickle at best. But the spring rains had been abundant so far this year, and as a result, the rivers, streams, and creeks of Southern California actually contained water.

  “What do you think about this house we’re going to?” she asked.

  “It’s not a house; it’s a hacienda,” he snapped.

  Still pissy about the car comment, I see, she thought. Someday she’d learn not to bait him. He pouted for so long afterward that it was hardly worth it.

  “I know it’s a hacienda, as in, big fancy Spanish house. I meant, what do you think about the stories about it being haunted?”

  “I think it’s bullshit. And anybody stupid enough to believe in that kind of crap is nuts.”

  Boy, still really pissy, she thought.

  She cleared her throat. “Okay. Next time I talk to Granny Reid, I’ll be sure to tell her that you think she’s nuts.”

  “She believes in ghosts?”

  “Big time. Calls ’em ‘haunts.’ Don’t ever get her started about the time Great-Granny Robinson came to visit her from the other side of the grave. That story will stand your hairs on end.”

  He didn’t reply right away, but she could tell he was dying to ask.

  Finally, he gave a little. “Wasn’t your great-grandma an Indian or something?”

  “Full-blooded Cherokee.”

  Again, a long silence.

  “Okay!” he snapped. “What happened?”

  “Well, one night, about a month after she died, Great-Grandma came to Gran in a dream. She warned her about a giant black cat that was stalking the—”

  He snorted. “Probably one of those fleabags of yours, Di or Cleo. The way you feed those things, they’re the size of lions.”

  Savannah shot him a deadly look. “Do you want to hear this story or not? It’s my family folklore. This is deep, serious, spiritual stuff that I’m sharing with you here.”

  “Yeah, okay. In a dream, a giant pussycat. Go—”

  “Great-Grandma Robinson told Gran, ‘Beware the Spirit of the Black Leopard who roams the woods here ’bouts and—’”

  “Hair boats? What’s that?”

  Savannah bristled. “Once more, buddy, and you ain’t hearing the end of this story.” She drew a deep breath and dropped her voice an octave before continuing. “Grandma Robinson told Granny that under no circumstances was she to wander near the woods after sundown for the next ten days…until the moon had reached full and then waned. Because if she did the demon spirit that was inhabitin’ that black leopard would not only rip her throat out but also steal the soul clean outta her.”

  “Yeah. Right. I hate it when that happens.”

  “Laugh it up, fuzz ball. But even though Granny Reid warned everybody in town about her dream, old Angus Carmody went out drinking that next Friday night and got lost on his way home. And when they found him, two days later, he was in the woods, facedown, all scratched to kingdom come, deader than an aged side o’ beef.”

  “Throat ripped out, I suppose?”

  “Naw, his throat was all right. But still, all those scratches. Deep, ugly, nasty gashes and tears. Hundreds of them. All over his body. What a sight! Folks in them parts still talk about it.”

  They rounded several more curves before Savannah added, “’Course, the scratches might have come from that patch of blackberry briars they found him in.”

  Dirk gave her one quick, sideways look and a slap on the thigh.

  They both laughed.

  “And,” he said, “I suppose ol’ Angus Carmody had the soul sucked clean outta him, too.”

  “Well, let’s just say nobody’s expecting to meet up with him on heaven’s golden streets after Judgment Day.”

  Dirk rounded a curve and slowed the car as they approached a gated driveway on the right side of the road.

  “You know,” he said, “one of these days you’re going to pull my leg one time too many, and you’re going to be a very sorry lady.”

  “I’m worried plum sick to death.”

  “Live in fear, woman. Live in fear.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I sleep with my eyes open all night long and a butcher knife under my pillow.”

  “You’d better. I could come for you any time.”

  “I’d turn Diamante and Cleopatra loose on you, boy. They’d scratch and bite the tar outta you.”

  “And suck my soul out?”

  “Damn tootin’.”

  “Eh, those two would never attack me. I’m the guy who gives them belly rubs and tuna treats.”

  “True. They’ve got you well-trained.”

  As they turned onto the gravel road, she saw an ornately painted sign above the gate that identified the property as “Rancho Rodriguez.”

  “This is it, huh?” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about this place, but I’ve never been here.”

  “Me neither. I make a habit of staying away from weird, haunted places. It’s a personal standard I have.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’d go out of my way to run into one.”

  Savannah recalled the television interviews with the snooty blonde who called anyone with even a few extra pounds a lazy “tub-o.” She thought of the shrill, demanding and demeaning voice she had listened to far too long at the gym.

  Clarissa Jardin was the personification of every kid’s nightmare PE teacher from hell.

  “I think,” she said
, “I’d rather run into a nice friendly ghost than this gal we’re going to interview.”

  He gave her a warning look. “You be nice now. You hear me?”

  “Su-u-re,” she said with a nasty little grin. “Aren’t I always?”

  Chapter 3

  Dirk drove along the gravel road and stopped just before the gate. He rolled down his window and pushed the call button on the security box.

  Moments later, a female voice with a distinct Spanish accent answered. “Hardin residence. May I help you?”

  “Hardin?” Dirk said.

  “I think that’s the español pronunciation of Jardin,” Savannah whispered.

  “May I help you?” the speaker box asked again.

  “Yeah. Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter with the San Carmelita Police Department here. Ms. Jardin is expecting me. Let me in.”

  It was a while longer—quite a while longer—before the gate finally swung open.

  “That was deliberate,” Dirk grumbled as he spun gravel, shooting through. “Keeping me waiting like that…just out of spite…yanking my chain…messin’ with me.”

  “You were snippy with her. I keep telling you,” she said, “you’ll catch more flies with sugar then vinegar.”

  “Yeah, well, who needs more friggen flies?”

  “Good point.”

  The Buick’s tires crunched through the gravel as they drove down the long road, through dark clusters of oaks, past groves of avocado, orange, and lemon trees. On either side of the road stood ancient barns, dilapidated outbuildings, and rusting, abandoned farm equipment—all somehow picturesque in their decay, reminding visitors that this had once been a thriving, working ranch.

  Ahead, they could see a long, white wall, glowing in the moonlight. And as they drove nearer, they could tell that it was a walled-in enclosure, like a small fortress. The tiled roof of the hacienda was just visible on the far side.

  In the center of the wall was an arched entry with a wrought-iron gate and above the gate hung a large bell.

  “Wow,” Savannah said. “This is the real thing. You can just tell by looking at that wall it’s been here forever. Back before California was even a state. It’s probably not that different from when this was a great rancho and Don Rodriguez was the lord of it all.”