A Body To Die For

by G. A. McKevett

  When she got no answer, she glanced over the rows and columns, seeing if any of the answers jumped out at her. None did. Sharona had already gotten all the easy ones.

  Bored and tired, she laid the book aside, got out her cell phone, and called Dirk.

  “Yeah?” he answered with his usual charm.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I just wasted an hour with that Rachel chick. I was trying to squeeze her to give up the gun, but she’s got an attorney now, and she’s not saying much.”

  “You’ve got her written confession. You don’t need the murder weapon, do you?”

  “Not really, but it’s a loose end, you know. Like that ‘666’ phone number. I don’t like loose ends.”

  The phone on the end table began to ring.

  “Somebody’s calling here,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  She hung up and reached for the house phone. “Hello,” she said.

  A very cheery female voice on the other end said, “Hi, Sharona. It’s Lucinda from Worldwide Travel. I just wanted you to know that I was able to get those first-class tickets for you and the honeymoon suite there in Casa del Sol was available, so you’re all set.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “I so-o-o-o envy you! You and Aldo are going to just lo-o-ove Cancun! I’d ask you to take me along, but since it’s a honeymoon, I guess you won’t want company.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Savannah glanced at the closed bathroom door. She could still hear the shower running. “Um, Lucinda,” she said, her voice low, “I don’t remember for sure…did I already give you my credit card number?”

  “What? Boy, you must be excited. Don’t you remember we had that whole conversation about you paying cash…about how we don’t usually have that much laying around here at one time, but we’ll take money however we can get it?”

  “Oh, right. Duh. I guess I am a little scatterbrained right now,” she replied, trying her best to squelch her Southern accent.

  “So, we’ll see you soon?”

  “Yeah. Soon.”

  “We close at five.”

  “Gotcha. Thanks a lot.”

  Savannah hung up the phone and stood there a moment, her thoughts spinning.

  She glanced around the room and spotted Sharona’s purse lying on the carpet at the end of the sofa.

  Still listening for the shower, she rushed over to it, and grabbed it up off the floor.

  She didn’t even have to look inside. She could feel the heft of it. And she knew all too well what a purse that heavy meant.

  She sighed, shook her head, and said to the closed bathroom door, “Ah, Sharona. Damn it, girl, you’re good. I’ll give you that.”

  A few minutes later, when Sharona came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her hair and another around her body, Savannah was sitting on the sofa, the crossword book on her lap.

  “Boy, I feel better,” Sharona said. “Nothing like a cool shower to perk you up.”

  “Yeah, nothing like it,” Savannah replied. “Hope you don’t mind that I’m working on your puzzle here.”

  “No, not at all. But I was wondering, is it okay if I take the book along with me on the plane? It’s a long flight.”

  “It certainly is. How many hours is it…from here to Indiana?”

  Sharona hesitated only a second. “Oh, I’m not sure. Three or four, I guess. And I have a few of your good cookies left over. I think I’ll take them along, too. They don’t feed you now on planes, I’ve heard.”

  Savannah fixed her with a level stare that Dirk called, “shooting those blue lasers.” Her voice even and monotone, she said, “Oh, I wouldn’t fret too much. I think they still feed the folks in first class.”

  Something flickered in Sharona’s eyes, but it was gone in an instant. She gave a tense little laugh and said, “Yeah, but first class…who can afford that these days?”

  “You’d better get dressed,” Savannah said. “You don’t want to miss that flight. I’m sure they’re looking forward to seeing you back home. Your sister and her new baby girl, that is.”

  “Right. I’ll just go get dressed.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom and then reappeared in record time, wearing jeans and a sexy wrap top in a colorful, tropical print. She was carrying her suitcase. “Okay,” she said. “All set.”

  Savannah shielded the cell phone in her hand with the book as she punched the “send” button. Her phone dialed Dirk’s infamous “666” number. A second later, Sharona’s purse, lying on the carpet beside the sofa, began to play a merry tune.

  Sharona glanced at it and seemed to freeze in place. A look that Savannah could only describe as “quite worried” crossed her face.

  The song played louder and louder, and finally Savannah said, “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

  Sharona stared at Savannah, her eyes searching her face. But Savannah was a pretty mean poker player herself, and she had on her best deadpan expression.

  “It’s probably just my sister calling again,” Sharona said. “She’s all excited about me coming. I don’t have time to chat with her now.”

  “You might oughta check. It could be the airline calling to tell you that your flight’s been cancelled. You know the way they are these days.”

  “Yeah…okay.”

  Slowly, Sharona walked over and picked her purse up from the floor. Reaching inside, she pulled out her phone. With her hand wrapped around it, she glanced down at the caller ID, and her eyes widened.

  She looked up at Savannah. “What…what are you…?”

  When she saw that Savannah was holding her own phone up for her to see, she shoved hers back into her purse. “What are you doing?” she asked, sounding a bit unnerved.

  “I’m calling a phone number that ends with ‘666.’ Detective Coulter’s been calling it for days, trying to figure out who has the phone now. But nobody’s answered.”

  “Okay.” Sharona sat down hard on a nearby chair, her purse clutched to her chest. “And so…what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you have the phone that Bill Jardin called the night he died. The best we can figure, within an hour, or thereabouts, of the time he died.”

  “So?”

  “But you said you never heard from him that night. You were so worried, because it wasn’t like him not to call.”

  She shrugged. “I guess I forgot.”

  “I’ll bet,” Savannah said, “that if I were to look at that phone of yours, I’d see quite a few interesting calls, both incoming and outgoing. Unless, of course, you’re smart enough to have deleted all the history.”

  “What are you saying? Are you accusing me of something?”

  “First of all, your phone…it’s stolen. Somebody took it from an elderly woman across town.”

  “I didn’t steal this phone. Somebody gave it to me.”

  “Aldo?”

  When she didn’t reply, Savannah said, “Does Aldo rip off old ladies?”

  “No, he certainly does not! He told me that he found it on a table in the library.”

  “Yeah, Aldo strikes me as a big reader, one of those intellectual types.”

  “He’s not that bad!”

  “Not exactly a weed outside in that trash can either, is he?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re going to make me miss my plane if we just sit here like this.”

  Savannah laid her phone on the sofa cushion next to her. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “You’ve got all the time in the world. In fact, I’d say you’ll get thirty, maybe even forty years. Premeditated, first-degree homicide. That’s a hefty sentence.”

  Yes, she’s getting the picture now, Savannah thought as she watched Sharona’s face change from red to a ghastly gray.

  Savannah continued, “We thought that Bill called Rachel that night and told her their affair was over. But it was you he called. He was the one who dialed the phone when Clarissa insisted he ma
ke the call. How was she to know who he was talking to?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Bill never dumped me. We were in love. We were going to move away together.”

  “You can drop that story now, Sharona. That was never the plan for either one of you. Bill was lying to you. He was moving to Vegas, all right, but with another woman. With Rachel.”

  Sharona’s eyes flooded with tears. “That’s not true! He loved me.”

  “Stop with the waterworks. I’m not buying it this time. You killed him.”

  “I did not!”

  “You’re the one who called Pinky. You pretended to be Clarissa when you told him that Bill wanted to meet him later than the time they’d agreed on. Then you went to the chicken plant…which you know damned well wasn’t a tree or a flower…and you blew his brains out.”

  The tears stopped flowing so abruptly, it was as if Sharona had turned the handle of a faucet.

  “I did not,” she said coolly, “and you can’t prove anything anyway. You’re going to charge me with murder based on what? A couple of phone calls?”

  “Partly, yes. Your phone carrier’s been a little slow turning the records over to Detective Coulter, but they’ll get around to it pretty soon. And it’ll show that it was you Bill called that night, that you were the one who got dumped.”

  “That’s not enough to prove murder. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “Well, the jury’s still out on how stupid you are or aren’t. But I’ll bet that you took your phone with you that night when you went out to the processing plant. And if it was on, the cops can tell by the records that you were in that area.”

  “They can not! I mean, if a person doesn’t make or receive any calls, there wouldn’t be a record of where they were.”

  “The signal that’s being sent to your phone is beamed from one tower and then another as you go from one area to the next.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is. How do you think your phone always knows what time it is? It’s receiving a signal. And there’s a record of that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Savannah laughed. “Well, you can believe me or not, missy. Maybe they’ll explain it better at your trial. I never was all that good with techno stuff. Let’s see if you’re any better at explaining how you came into all that ready cash. You know, enough money to fly first class to Cancun and stay in a swanky resort…you and Aldo.”

  Sharona looked like she had just received a blow to the stomach. She clutched her purse tighter to her chest and started to shake her head. “No,” she whispered, “no, no.”

  Savannah continued, “How much was in that envelope…the one you took out of Bill’s glove box after you shot him? Was there a lot of blood on it, Sharona? Did you get it all off, or will the CSU find traces on some of the bills?”

  Sharona didn’t reply, but Savannah thought she had seen friendlier eyes on killers in a courtroom who had just been sentenced to death.

  “Did it bother you at all to have to clean a man’s blood and brain matter off that envelope, Sharona? Or are you just a coldhearted bitch all the way through?”

  “He dumped me. We were going to get married. We were going to have a life together, but he called and said it was over, that I was never to even try to contact him again. Can you imagine how much that hurt?”

  “Oh, that’s going to be your defense? Crime of passion and all that crap? But that won’t work either. You’d planned to murder Bill even before he called you and told you the affair was over. Pinky says you phoned him earlier that day and reset Bill’s meet time to later. You did that so you could get there before Pinky, and shoot and rob Bill. You never intended to run away with the guy, just murder him and take his money. The jury’s gonna take a dim view of that.”

  “You think I would kill somebody…just for money?”

  “Oh, I think there was an element of payback in it, too. I’m sure that phone call from him was hard on your ego, but yeah, I’d say it was mostly for the money. You were intending to kill him that night, whether he was planning to run away with you or not.”

  Savannah watched her closely, weighing every expression that flitted across her face. Sharona was teetering, but not over the edge just yet. She needed another little push.

  So, Savannah asked her, “Where’s the gun that you shot him with? We’ll find that, too, you know. And when we match the ballistics on it. They’ll be able to prove that your 9mm gun shot the bullet we found at the scene. And there you go! Guilty as charged on all counts!”

  That did it.

  Sharona reached into her purse and pulled out a Ruger 9mm pistol. She pointed it at Savannah. “Here it is,” she said, her voice as emotionless and cold as Savannah had ever heard. “Right here. This is what I shot him with.”

  Savannah looked down the barrel of the weapon and nodded solemnly. “Yes, that definitely looks like it would do the job.”

  Sharona glanced around, as though making sure no one else was present. “I can’t let you live now…now that you know.”

  “I understand completely,” Savannah said. “I wouldn’t expect you to. If you could kill a man for money, a man you’d made love with, it shouldn’t be that hard to kill me, too.”

  “Actually, I sort of liked you. You were nice, bringing me here, the cookie basket and all that. But you shouldn’t have been so smart, figuring it all out like that.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what I get paid for.”

  Savannah reached inside her jacket, put her hand around the butt of her own gun, and started to pull it out.

  “No! Don’t!” Sharona shouted as she pulled the Ruger’s trigger.

  Savannah smiled. “And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she said, “that click you just heard, was the sound of Ms. Dubarry attempting to shoot me with an empty gun.”

  Savannah pointed the Beretta at Sharona with her right hand and pointed to the phone with her left. “And you, my dear, have just been recorded, confessing to murder in the first degree. Oh, and by the way…” She nodded toward the crossword book. “…21 across is ‘conviction.’ What do you think, is that some sort of omen? I’m sure my Granny Reid would think so.”

  “Savannah, you look positively stunning in that gown,” John told her. “The blue satin brings out those sapphire eyes of yours and the drape of the fabric accentuates the curves of your figure so that—”

  “Oh, stop. This old thing? You’re just a silken-tongued lad, you are.” She leaned close to him and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Now, what was that you were saying about my figure…?”

  They laughed, as she took his arm and he escorted her around the paradise that had, only hours ago, been her backyard.

  The festivities had begun before noon, in the form of a party rental company, bearing an Arabian-style tent with sumptuous carpets, satin cushions, and faux-fur throws.

  Then a florist appeared and filled the erected tent, as well as the rest of the yard, with sprays of pink and lavender roses as well as at least a hundred white candles.

  Next, the caterer arrived and by dinnertime, silver trays, laden with cheese, fruit, olives, shrimp kabobs, mushroom strudel, and crostini, covered the tabletops. The exotic aroma of Bisteeya Moroccan Chicken Pie filled the air. And in the place of honor in the center of the tent, a fountain was flowing with warm, Belgian chocolate, surrounded with fresh fruits and other sweets for dipping.

  A violinist, a flutist, and a cellist performed classical music as Savannah, Tammy, and Marietta descended the back stairs in their evening attire.

  Savannah wore a deep blue silk wrap gown, Tammy a bright green, full-length kimono, and Marietta her tiger-striped, stretchy dress that, as advertised, was cut down to here and up to there.

  All three of them had “big hair.” As “big” as Marietta, a teasing comb, and a can of hair spray could get it.

  They looked magnificent.

  And so did their escorts. Ryan and John were at the foot of the s
tairs waiting for them, looking simply delicious in their tuxedos, with roses in their hands for each woman.

  There was time for a few dances before the other guests began to arrive.

  “Is Dirko going to wear a tux?” Tammy asked Savannah.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve never seen him in anything but a T-shirt…oh…and the maids-a-milkin’ costume you made him wear that Christmas.”

  “He asked me what he owed us for helping him with the case. That was my price.”

  And when Dirk did appear, wearing not only a tux, but an opera tux, complete with white cummerbund and white wing-collar shirt, Savannah thought her heart would stop.

  “Lord have mercy,” she said as she hurried across the lawn to greet him, her hand on her chest, “you clean up go-o-od, boy! You look plumb fit to eat!”

  “Well, enjoy it while you can,” he grumbled, “’cause this damned thing is friggen uncomfortable. You’ll never get me in one again.”

  She glanced around quickly, to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t, so she wrapped her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe, and gave him a warm, long, sweet kiss on the lips. When she finally pulled back, she flashed him a dimpled smile, tapped him on the chest with her forefinger, and said, “Yeah? Well…we’ll see about that.”

  She left him, stunned, his mouth hanging open and walked back to join Tammy and John who were nibbling on crème fraiche and caviar on cucumber slices.

  “Have the guests of honor arrived yet?” Tammy asked.

  “Not yet,” Savannah replied. “But they sounded so pleased to be invited, I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”

  “That must have been most fulfilling, restoring a mother’s and son’s relationship,” John said. “Was it difficult, convincing young Tanner that his mom was innocent, in spite of her confession?”

  “Not at all. I explained to him that, in her mind, she thought she was protecting her son. A mother will even confess to murder to save her child. She really believed he’d done it. Once she found out about Sharona, she denied it all.”