Savannah parked the Mustang across the street end of the driveway. Just in case someone wanted to make a run for it and peel out, tires smoking, there was no reason to make it easy for them.
“Ready?” Dirk asked her as he checked his weapon—a Smith & Wesson that he kept in a shoulder holster, concealed beneath his bomber jacket.
She did the same with the Beretta 9mm under her sweater.
The redhead she had seen in the park hadn’t looked like a particularly tough girl. But someone had pulled a backpack out of a young, strong, healthy woman’s hands with enough force to break off her fingernails. And probably, the same person had smacked her victim with a rock hard enough to kill her.
Obviously, the killer—whether it was Katherine Zeegers or not—was no pushover.
“Who’s got this?” Dirk asked. “You or me?”
“I talked to her already. She might be under the mistaken impression that I’m nice.”
“We can’t have that.”
“Definitely not.”
“Okay, I’ve got it,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Fortunately, as they walked up the cracked cement sidewalk to the house, the dog couldn’t reach them. He snarled, barked, and bared his teeth to them as they passed.
“I don’t blame you, fella,” Savannah told him. “If all the space I had in the world was a four-foot circle to run around in, I’d be cranky and want to bite somebody, too.”
As they walked up to the house, Savannah took in every detail of her surroundings, looking for any sign that Kitty might be “entertaining guests.”
Other than some rusted bicycles and a swing that was hanging from the tree by one rope, there were no signs of children.
They walked up to the door and stood, quietly listening for sounds inside the house. Hearing none, Dirk knocked on the screen door’s frame, loud enough for Savannah to fear the thing might come loose from its hinges.
It took a long time for Kitty Zeegers to answer the door. When she did, she had a strange look on her face that Savannah couldn’t quite interpret. Fear, to be sure, mixed with something like guilt?
Savannah took that as a good sign, along with the woman’s shaking hands.
She didn’t even know that Dirk was a cop yet, and she was already nervous?
“Hello,” Dirk said, taking his badge from inside his jacket and flipping it open in front of her nose. “I’m Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter with the San Carmelita Police Department. This is Savannah Reid. May we come inside? We need to have a word with you, Ms. Zeegers.”
“Well, uh, I’m very busy at the moment,” she stammered.
“It’s important,” he said. “We can either talk inside your home, or you can come with me now to the police station. It’s up to you.”
“I . . . um . . . okay. If it’s really important.”
“It’s about the missing mother and child that you were looking for earlier today,” Dirk told her. “I’m sure you would consider that important.”
“Oh. Of course, that’s important. Come on in.”
She led them into the living room and moved some dirty clothes off the sofa. “There. Have a seat.” She tossed the clothes onto the floor in the corner. “Sorry about the mess. It’s laundry day,” she explained.
O-kay, Savannah thought. The conversation has just begun, and she’s already told her first lie.
“This is about Beth and Freddy?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dirk said, watching her with predatory eyes.
“Have they, you know . . . been found?”
Savannah felt a shot of adrenaline hit her bloodstream. That was, without a doubt, the most transparently misleading question she had ever heard.
Kitty Z. knew full well that Beth and Freddy hadn’t been found. It was all over her face, in her defensive body language, in her quavering voice.
Savannah knew there was only one way that Kitty would ask the question in that way. The false cheerfulness, the fake hope that all might be well. She would only have to pretend if she knew full well that they couldn’t possibly have been found . . . because she still had them.
“No,” Dirk told her. “They have not been found. We only hope that nothing terrible has happened to them.”
“Oh, of course not. They’re probably okay.” She sat on a chair across from them and began picking at her hangnails. Savannah noticed they were badly infected and her nails had been bitten down to the quick.
“I certainly hope so,” Dirk told her, “because if they aren’t okay, if someone has harmed them, that person will be in a world of trouble.”
“I’m sure they would be. I mean, if they hurt them.”
“If they’re holding them against their will, that’s kidnapping,” Savannah told her.
“If someone is killed—like that sweet little nanny was—during the commission of a kidnapping, that’s a special circumstance,” Dirk added. “You know what they do to people convicted of murder with special circumstances, don’t you?”
“Yes, but . . . but what does that have to do with me? I’m a friend of Beth’s and her husband, Ethan. I know Freddy, and even their nanny was friendly to me. Why would I hurt them?”
“You tell me,” Dirk said, standing and walking over to her chair. “Why would you do something so awful? I guess when sending them fake, dirty pictures of them fooling around with other people didn’t work, you had to come up with another plan.”
Savannah’s eyes strayed from the conversation in front of her to a nearby bookshelf. Lined up on the middle shelf were DVDs. Many DVDs. They were all Ethan’s movies and TV guest appearances.
She looked over to an end table and there was a pile of cut-up paper, articles from every newspaper and magazine that had announced the kidnapping of Ethan Malloy’s family.
Kitty Zeegers had cut out every story and was pasting them in a scrapbook. It was an enormous scrapbook, and something told Savannah it was filled with Ethan Malloy memorabilia.
Kitty had ceased to chew her nails for a moment and was scratching furiously at her ankles. Savannah could see that they were actually bloody from all the scratching.
Poison oak, she thought. The CSI techs had to walk through poison oak to retrieve the rock left by the person who killed Pilar.
As Dirk continued to grill Kitty, Savannah stood and walked around the room. She could see in her peripheral vision that Kitty was watching her every move.
When Savannah stepped closer to the kitchen, Kitty cried out, “Stop! What are you doing? You can’t just walk around my house like that. I didn’t give you permission!”
Savannah stopped, but from where she stood, she continued to look.
On the kitchen counter, she saw some food that appeared to be half prepared. Mangos. Mangled mangos, at least half a dozen of them, had been awkwardly cut by someone who had no idea how to get the most of the seemingly difficult-to-prepare fruit.
There were also blueberries. Two boxes of fresh ones, next to the mangos.
Savannah turned to Dirk, a grim smile on her face. “They’re here,” she said. “At least, Freddy is.”
He looked at her as though he wanted to believe her, but wasn’t sure. “She’s got them, I tell you! They’re here!”
Dirk reached into his rear jeans pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. He quickly secured Kitty to the leg of a heavy table.
“Beth?” Savannah called out as loudly as she could. “Beth, where are you?”
Both she and Dirk began to look under the bed, inside cupboards, behind chairs.
“Beth? This is the police,” Dirk shouted. “We’re here to help you. If you can hear me, answer.”
Within seconds, they heard a crashing sound, as though something metal had been pushed over.
Eventually, they found it, a door, which opened to a steep flight of stairs, reaching downward into the musty darkness of a cellar.
“We’re coming, Beth,” Savannah yelled. “We’re coming.”
Savannah gave Kitty a quick look to
make sure she couldn’t escape, then plunged down the stairs with Dirk right behind her.
Once in the cellar, it took Savannah’s eyes a few moments to adjust to the almost complete absence of light. Only dimly could she make out the outline of a woman, crouched in the corner of the small, dank room.
“Beth?” she asked, hurrying toward her.
All she heard in response was a feeble grunt.
Suddenly, a light illuminated the dark scene. Dirk had produced his ever-handy penlight and was showing its small but powerful beam on the corner.
What Savannah saw nearly made her sick.
Beth was sitting in the corner, on the wet cement floor. Her mouth was covered with duct tape. Her wrists and ankles were also bound with the silver stuff. She was filthy, her eyes wild with fear.
Clinging to her arm was her child, as dirty and terrified as she was. When the light hit his face, he began to wail piteously.
“Oh, you poor darlin’s,” Savannah said, rushing to them. “You poor, poor things.”
She and Dirk eased the tape off Beth’s mouth and peeled it from her wrists and ankles. At the captive woman’s feet were the awful, spilled contents of a bucket, the bucket she had overturned to alert them to her presence.
Beth was crying, as loudly and as hard as her child.
Savannah pulled Freddy to her, wrapped her arms tightly around him, and held him close. “Don’t cry, sweet boy,” she told him. “You’re all right. You and your momma are going to be all right.”
Dirk helped Beth to her feet, but she was so weak, she could hardly stand. Like Savannah had with Freddy, he pulled her into his embrace and held her as she sobbed against his shoulder.
“Don’t cry, Ms. Malloy,” he said. “We’ve gotcha. You don’t have to worry anymore. You and your son are completely safe. We’ve gotcha now.”
Chapter 26
Many, many nights, the members of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency had sat at Savannah’s dining room table, basking in the glow of good companionship, good food, and the light of her dragonfly stained-glass lamp, which lent its cozy gold-and-red light to the setting.
This particular night, the mood was a bit less jovial than usual.
They weren’t as festive as they might have been after closing a case, but there was a quiet sense of deep satisfaction in the air.
They were all the better for being there and sharing the moment.
“Thank heavens above that nasty woman didn’t do any major harm to Mrs. Malloy and her baby,” Granny said. “I don’t think I could have borne it if they’d wound up in the same condition as Miss Pilar.”
“None of us could have borne an outcome like that, Granny,” Waycross said. “While that baby was missing, I felt guilty ever’ time I picked up my own child and hugged her.”
“Ethan must have been thrilled to death when you called to give him the news,” Ryan said to Savannah. “I can’t even imagine the relief he must have felt.”
“He made record time getting to the hospital once we told him they were there,” Dirk said.
“He must have just been thrilled to death to see them,” Tammy said.
Savannah and Dirk exchanged an awkward glance, which Granny’s sharp eye caught immediately.
“Okay, what’s that all about?” she wanted to know. “Was he happy to see them or not?”
“He was tickled pink to see them,” Savannah told her. “I’m sorry to say that Beth wasn’t happy to be reunited with her husband.”
Granny was scandalized. “Why in tarnation not? You must’ve told her that stupid picture was fake, just like the one of her and her ex-husband was false as Aunt Josie’s teeth.”
“We did,” Dirk said. “But she has in her head that she and the boy got kidnapped because crazy women all over the world are in love with her husband.”
“That’s hardly the lad’s fault,” John observed. “He’s exceptionally talented and extraordinarily handsome. What can she expect?”
Savannah sighed. She felt a weariness in her bones, just thinking about the Malloy family. “I reckon she expects to have her husband all to herself in every way. But considering his occupation, which is also his passion, that isn’t likely to ever happen.”
“Maybe she’s just in shock, from all she went through,” Tammy suggested.
“Could be.” Savannah took a cookie from a plate that was being passed around. “Seeing Pilar killed like that had to take a toll on her. Even if she recovers from the shock of it all someday, I wouldn’t bet that her marriage will.”
“I still don’t get what that Kitty woman thought she was going to accomplish by kidnapping Beth and the baby,” Waycross said.
“She’s obsessed with Ethan,” Savannah told him. “Her diaries show how sick and out of touch with reality she was. She created those pictures and e-mailed them to the Malloys and Irwin and Candace, thinking that would break them up. When it didn’t as quickly as she’d hoped, she decided to kill Beth and then pretend she had rescued Freddy from the evil person who had killed Beth. She thought that would cause Ethan to fall in love with her, and with Beth out of the way . . .”
“That’s crazy, not to mention cruel,” Tammy said.
“Yes. It is crazy and cruel. She’s both.” Savannah continued, “She hadn’t intended for Pilar to be there, or for Pilar to put up a fight. But Pilar did, and Kitty murdered her. Kitty took Beth and Freddy to her house and kept them in that basement, waiting until she got the nerve to kill her.”
Granny said, “Maybe after taking someone’s life, Kitty realized it was harder to do than she’d thought.”
“You may be right, Gran,” Ryan told her. “I’d like to think it would be hard for most people to do such a thing.”
“How did Pilar’s parents take it,” Tammy asked, “when you told them you had their daughter’s killer in custody?”
“They were grateful,” Dirk said. He looked down at the table, at his hands, which were clenched. “It really gets you, when people are so thankful under circumstances like that.”
“They should be very proud of their daughter,” Tammy said. “She fought to protect her family.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and tears spilled down her cheeks. “They were her family, you know. Not bound by blood, but by love.”
“I’m sorry, sugar,” Savannah said, reaching over and patting her hand, then stroking the baby’s head as she snuggled up to her mom. “I know it was rough, saying good-bye to your parents today. Considering, well, your mother’s last words to you.”
“It’s okay,” Tammy said. “My dad was nice. Said he was glad to see me and the baby and to meet Waycross. He promised to come back again soon. As long as I’m all right with him, the rest is okay.”
“No, it isn’t.” Gran took a long, shuddering breath. “It’s a cryin’ shame’s what it is. But what could you do, Tammy? The Good Book tells us to live in peace with all men, as much as is within our power to do so. But sometimes, some people . . . you just have to let ’em go.”
Tammy nodded as tears rolled down her cheeks. “I did. I let her go. She asked me one more time, as she was getting into the airport taxi, to go back to New York with her and leave my family behind. I told her I would never, never do that. So, she walked away, and I let her. I think she believed I’d run after her, because I always have before. But not this time. No. Not this time.”
“You did the right thing,” Gran said. “The noble thing. I’m most proud of you.”
“Thank you, Granny.” Tammy took a moment to look around the table, at each person sitting there. “Pilar died defending her family,” she said. “Her family. And I would for you, too. Any one of you. You are my family, the one my heart adopted. I’ll never let you go.”
Savannah dropped to her knees beside her friend’s chair and enfolded her and her child in her arms. She kissed Tammy’s wet cheeks. “We’ll never let you go either, kiddo. You’re ours!”
Tammy nodded and laughed through her tears. “I hear you, loud and clear.
There’s no family I’d rather belong to than this one right here.”
Hide and Sneak Page 23
