“Anybody else in the house?”
“Gardener’s outside and…well…everything you said about him…it’s so true. But he’s the only one around, except me and Juanita here.”
“Okay, well, Dirk and I are on our way back. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Take your time,” Tammy said. “Really. No hurry.”
Savannah could hear it in her voice, the excitement you get when an interview or interrogation is going well and you’re actually getting something from your subject. She got the message.
“Okay,” she said, “we’ll take our time getting back. We don’t want to interrupt if you’re getting some good stuff there.”
“Excellent.” She could hear Tammy suppress a giggle. “See you later.”
When Savannah ended the call, Dirk turned to her and said, “Sounds like the kid is doing okay.”
“It sounds to me like she’s doing better than okay. She’s sharing a cup of java with the maid, and I got the idea it’s going well. She all but told me to stay away because she’s getting somewhere with her.”
“So, how’s about we get some lunch before we go back?”
Dirk inviting her to lunch? She turned to him, her mouth hanging open. “Really? You’re going to take me to a restaurant for lunch? Why you sweet thing, you.”
He looked suddenly quite uncomfortable. “Well…I…”
I should have known, she thought. Dirk forking over for a proper meal. Way too good to be true.
“Okay, okay,” she said, “Burger Bonanza’s on the way. I’ll settle for a burger and a chocolate shake.”
She expected him to perk up, but he still looked as though he’d just been told that he was going to have gallbladder surgery.
“What?” she said. “What’s with the puss? Where do you want to go to eat? You’re the one who brought it up, you know.”
“Well, I was thinking that your house is right on the way. Burger Bonanza is a few blocks out of our way and besides, you’ve probably got some of that fried chicken left over from Ryan’s party, right? And you said you’d save me some birthday cake. Besides, I haven’t seen your sister, Jesup, since I was in Georgia and that’s been years and—”
“Oh shut up, you friggin’ mooch. You’re not the least bit interested in seeing any of my kinfolk. You just want to sink your chompers into my leftover fried chicken. My free leftover chicken.”
He shrugged and looked moderately guilty. “Well, hell, Van, you can’t blame a guy for that?”
“Blame a guy?” she said, “I could slug a guy for that. For a lot less than that.”
He grinned broadly “So, is that a ‘yes’?”
She sighed. “Just drive.”
Chapter 10
“What the hell do you think you’re doing there, boy?” Savannah roared.
She stood in the middle of her living room, hands on her hips, glaring at her new brother-in-law. He and Jesup were sitting at Savannah’s desk, staring at the computer in front of them with morbid fascination.
They were so enthralled that they hadn’t even noticed when Savannah and Dirk had entered the house.
Both of them jumped at the sound of her voice and whirled around, guilty looks on their faces.
Savannah stomped over to the desk and pushed the power button on the computer. The gory pictures on the screen dissolved to black.
“You’ll hurt your computer,” Bleak said dryly, “turning it off like that. You’re supposed to close down the programs first.”
Dirk snickered and shook his head.
Savannah fixed Bleak with a look that could have melted a polar ice cap. “I’ll hurt you if you ever touch my private property again, bud. Just try me and see if I’m foolin’.”
Jesup rolled her eyes. “Oh, Savannah, get over it. Big deal. Just some dead bodies.”
“Those are my crime-scene photographs, and I wouldn’t even have them if they hadn’t been important to cases I’ve worked on. Have a little respect, would you? Those were once living, breathing people, who had a horrific thing happen to them—the worst thing that can happen to anyone. And you two ghouls are going to delight in their misfortune?”
“Oh, come on,” Bleak said. “Don’t tell me that you don’t find dead bodies interesting. The kind of work you do? You have to be into it, too.”
“Yes, I’m interested in dead bodies,” she replied, her voice low and ominously emotion-free. “I’m interested in what they can tell me about what happened to them, about who took their lives from them. I don’t delight in the gruesome aspects of their passings, and you shouldn’t either. It’s disrespectful to the point of obscene.”
Jesup turned to Bleak and made a face. “See, what did I tell you? Savannah’s a little weird, but we love her anyway.”
Bleak snickered. “Yeah, okay. I’ve got weird relatives, too, so—”
Savannah reached across him to the computer, pulled the cord out of the back of it and yanked the other end out of the wall. She rolled it up and stuck it in her slacks pocket. “I’m about to make some lunch for Dirk and myself,” she said. “Do you two want a plate of cold chicken and potato salad?”
“Sure!” Jesup beamed.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Bleak replied.
“One plate of chicken,” Savannah grumbled as she walked toward the kitchen. “A special order. Raw, bloody, dripping with salmonella and smothered in E. coli. Coming right up.”
“See,” she heard Jesup say as she left the room, “like I told you, even when Savannah’s hoppin’ mad at you, she’ll still feed you. She just can’t help herself.”
“Thanks for lunch, Van,” Dirk said when he dropped her back at Dona Papalardo’s mansion.
She gave him a quick, quizzical look. He rarely remembered to thank her for anything, let alone anything as mundane as food. In an average week, she fed him ten to twelve times, so a cold chicken lunch wasn’t something she expected a heartfelt outpouring of gratitude like this one.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
Granny Reid had always said, “Reward good behavior right away. And with menfolk, faster than right away. They’ve got the attention span of a gnat.”
She grabbed her purse off the floor and unfastened her seat belt. “Where are you off to now?” she asked.
“I thought I’d go get hold of that ex-agent of Dona’s,” he said. “Maybe find out why he was paying Dona’s assistant a bundle of money that would choke a horse.”
“Good idea. Also get his side of why he and Dona are suing each other.”
“What are you up to now?” He nodded toward the mansion.
“I’m going to find out what Tammy managed to squeeze out of the maid, maybe the gardener, and check on Dona. Tammy said she’s been sick, holed up in her bedroom since I left this morning.”
“Might be from that crazy weight-loss surgery she had,” he suggested. “Or the stress of having someone you’re close to die in your arms.”
“Or both,” Savannah said. “I’d vote for both.”
He nodded somberly. “Me, too.”
Savannah knocked at the front door of the mansion, and it was answered by a tiny Hispanic woman with an enormous smile, wearing a pale blue maid’s uniform. No sooner had Savannah introduced herself, than the maid hurried her inside with a warm, “Ah, hello, hello, Senora Savannah. Senorita Tammy told me about you. My name is Juanita. Come in!”
“Actually, Juanita, I’m a senorita, too,” Savannah told her. “As in, no husband.”
The maid gave her a sad smile. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Savannah chuckled. “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not.”
Once inside the door, Savannah looked around and said, “Where is Tammy?”
Juanita shrugged. “I don’t know. She was in the kitchen before. I’ve been doing the laundry downstairs, and I haven’t seen her.”
“And Dona?”
“My lady is resting upstairs,” she said. “Sick again. Sick again.” She shook her head sadly. �
��Always so sick.”
“Sick in her body?” Savannah asked. “Or in her heart?” She pointed to her chest.
“Both, I think.” Juanita paused and looked up the empty staircase. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I cannot say too much about my lady’s business, you know. But I do worry. I worry. And then, with that bad, bad thing that happened to Senorita Kim. I’m scared.”
“I understand.” Savannah laid her hand on the woman’s forearm. “Please try not to worry. That’s why Tammy and I are here, to keep all of you safe. Just keep the doors and windows closed and locked and the alarm system on at all times. And if you see anything unusual, anything at all, you tell one of us right away. Okay?”
Juanita nodded vigorously. “I promise.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“May I go back downstairs now and finish the laundry?”
“Of course. Just go on about your duties here as you always do. Try to ignore us, and we’ll try to stay out of your way.”
With another of her warm, broad smiles, Juanita disappeared down a hallway, leaving Savannah alone in the entryway.
She considered going upstairs to see if Dona was okay and to maybe persuade her to talk a bit. She wanted to ask her if she knew anything about a man in Kim’s life. Specifically, one named James Morgan.
But she decided against it. If Dona truly was sick—and she certainly had been earlier—she didn’t need to be disturbed.
Deciding that she would go looking for Tammy instead, she headed toward the back of the house and the kitchen. But as she passed the library door, she heard the rustling of papers inside.
Walking softly so as not to be heard, she approached the door carefully and looked into the room. In the dim interior of the library she saw someone standing behind the desk.
Once her eyes adjusted, she realized it was Tammy. She was rummaging through some papers in one of the lower drawers of the desk.
“What are you doing there, girl?” Savannah said.
“Oh!” Tammy jumped, grabbed her chest dramatically and sank down onto the desk chair. “Savannah Marie, you nearly scared me to death!”
Savannah laughed at her. “Eh, it’s good for you. Clears out your arteries. And I keep telling you, my middle name isn’t Marie.”
She giggled. “I know. I call everybody that.”
“What were you doing that you weren’t supposed to be doing?” She nodded to the stack of papers on the table that looked like cutouts from tabloid newspapers.
“How do you know it’s something that I’m not supposed to be doing?”
“Because nobody jumps like that unless they’re caught doing something wrong.”
“Hey, I’m snooping. And that’s what we’re getting paid for, right?”
Savannah shrugged. “Well, technically, this time we’re being paid to protect and serve. The snooping is just a service we throw in for free…generous folks that we are. What did you find there?”
“Well,” Tammy gave a quick, cautious glance toward the doorway, “the reason I was looking in here in the first place is because, just before she went upstairs to her bedroom, Dona was looking at these and crying really hard. I wanted to see what it was that would make her cry like that.”
“Excellent.” Savannah picked up the top cutting off the stack and looked at it. “Let’s see what we have here.”
“They’re about Dona, of course. The nasty articles about her being fat, then more about her getting the gastric bypass. They say she nearly died on the operating table and then again a week later from a post-op infection.”
Savannah scanned that article in particular. “Yes, I recall stories about that even in the Times. I think she really did have a hard time with her surgery, during and after.”
“But I guess it was worth it,” Tammy said. “Look at how big she was there,” she pointed to one especially unflattering picture of Dona wearing a swimsuit, bent over, dipping her hand into a swimming pool.
“Okay, she’s got some extra pounds,” Savannah said thoughtfully, “but remember, pictures make you look heavier than you really are. And she doesn’t look all that heavy. Not as large as some people who get gastric bypasses. I know you have to be a certain size, a particular body-mass index, before you’re even eligible. And she doesn’t look all that big to me.”
“But she looks great now, so it worked.”
“Yes, but they surgically make your stomach smaller so that you can’t put as much in it without feeling miserable. And they bypass part of your small intestine so that you won’t absorb all of the small amount you do eat. I hear you have to eat only tiny amounts of foods and even then, you have to be sure not to eat anything too rich, too sweet or fatty. And they tell you to get on an exercise plan, too.”
“That’s what I’ve heard, too,” Tammy agreed.
“Well, let’s see now. Small amounts of food, cut out the sweets and fats, exercise…gee…that sounds a heck of a lot like a diet to me!”
“When you put it that way….”
“That’s what it is, an enforced diet. Sorta like the old-fashioned business of wiring your jaws shut so that you couldn’t eat. Only the jaw wiring could be taken out at any time and you would be back to normal. And I doubt that very many of those people died on the operating table.”
“Sounds barbaric, unless you take into account that some people need the surgery to save their lives. It’s supposed to help people who have diabetes, asthma, sleep apnea, all sorts of life-threatening illnesses.”
Savannah shrugged. “If that’s the only way to save their lives, more power to them. But looking at this picture, which was supposedly taken a week before Dona had the surgery, I have to wonder if she really met the qualifying criteria.”
“You aren’t the only one who questioned that,” Tammy said. “There are a couple of articles here that quote Dona’s girlfriend, Mary Jo, saying exactly the same thing. Apparently, she openly opposed the surgery and even accused Dona of being superficial and vain. She said Dona’s surgeon was irresponsible and greedy for performing the surgery on a woman who didn’t meet the criteria.”
“That must have gone over well with Dona, having a friend say that about her publicly. Have you seen Mary Jo today, by the way?”
“Just for a moment as she was leaving earlier. I overheard her and Dona arguing and Mary Jo said something about ‘getting out of here before I wind up like Kim.’”
“Wow, that’s pretty brutal.”
Tammy nodded. “There’s definitely trouble in paradise around here right now.” She pointed to the stack of papers on the desk. “And as if there isn’t enough going on in her ‘real’ world, Dona drags these things out, reads them, and hurts herself all over again. Can you imagine even cutting them out and saving them, let alone dwelling over them like this?”
“No, I can’t.” Savannah shook her head. “Granny Reid always used to warn us about what she called ‘scratching at the wound.’ She used to say, ‘It’s bad enough that you or somebody else caused you a wound. But the worst thing you can do is to keep scratchin’ at it, thinkin’ about it, talkin’ about it, frettin’ over it. That only keeps it raw and open and if it ever does finally close over, the scar’s gonna be a lot worse. Just leave it alone and let it heal; no point in reinjuring yourself.’”
“That’s what Dona was doing today, going through these,” Tammy said. “She was reinjuring herself all over again, scratching at old wounds.”
“No wonder she’s upstairs sick.” Savannah began to gather the articles up into a pile. “But maybe you should put these away before somebody comes in here and catches us with them.”
She gave the stack to Tammy, who promptly placed them back into the drawer and closed it.
When she was finished, Tammy brushed her hands against each other, dusting her fingers off.
Savannah snickered. “Yeah, right. Like guilt is that easily removed.”
“Out damned spot and all that.”
“Exactly, Lady Tammy Ma
cbeth.”
Savannah motioned toward a leather sofa with nail-head trim and ball-and-claw feet. “Sit over here with me and fill me in on what the maid told you,” she said.
“She’s very sweet and friendly.”
“I know. I met her in the foyer earlier.”
They took a seat side by side, both keeping an eye on the doorway, in case there were any eavesdroppers lurking nearby.
“She seemed reluctant to talk too much about Dona,” Tammy said. “After all, she is her employer, and I’m sure celebrities are sensitive about house staff with loose lips.”
Savannah ran her palm over the supple smoothness of the sofa’s leather cushions and thought that she could probably decorate her entire house for what Dona Papalardo paid for this one couch. “So, if Juanita didn’t talk about Dona, what was the juicy stuff that you were getting out of her? I distinctly picked that up on the phone earlier. You got my hopes up.”
“Mostly she was talking about Kim. I got the idea that she didn’t like her very much. Juanita said Kim bossed her around, talked down to her, disrespected her in general, expected her to do all sorts of personal errands for her. Juanita didn’t really seem to be grieving that she was gone. Quite the contrary, in fact.”
Savannah processed that for a moment, then said, “When Dirk and I were at Kim’s house just now, we found evidence that some guy is living there with her. Maybe named James Morgan. Did she say anything about that?”
“Actually, she did say that this past month or so Kim was in better spirits and easier to get along with. Juanita thought it might be because she had a new boyfriend. And she also seemed to have more money than usual. She was buying new clothes, getting her hair styled at expensive salons and bragging about it.”
“Hmm…sprucing up can also be a sign of a new boyfriend.”
Tammy giggled. “If she was buying new, sexy lingerie, then it would be a sure thing.”
“Speaking of sexy things…did you get a look at the gardener yet?” Savannah put a hand over her heart and fluttered her eyelashes.
Fat Free and Fatal Page 10
