Fat Free and Fatal

by G. A. McKevett

  Dirk stepped from behind her, a scowl on his face that matched hers. “What are you doing, eating out here?” he snapped when he saw the table and its bounty.

  “Having a beautiful dinner,” Savannah said. “Come sit down and have some, too, unless you’re still in grouch mode, in which case, you can go sit in a corner somewhere and sulk properly.” She turned to John and Ryan. “Dirk is quitting smoking…again…and we don’t like him much these days.”

  “Not a lot of love lost in days of yore either,” John mumbled under his moustache.

  “I came by to see if you want to go over the case some more,” Dirk said, “but I see you’ve got company, so I’ll leave. But I gotta tell you, I think you’re all nuts to be eating out here. Somebody got killed while hanging around outside on this property and here you are, wining and dining out in the open.”

  Savannah stood, walked over to him and laced her arm through his. “Now stop your frettin’, darlin’,” she said. “If you’ll just look a little closer, you’ll see that we set the table up here so that it’s situated very nicely behind the cover of the pool house and that fence there. If our buddy was up there on the hill again, he couldn’t possibly get a shot off that would hit anything in this area. So why don’t you just sit a spell and have a bit of some of this good food that Ryan and John brought us from Antoine’s?”

  He looked eager for a second at the mention of free food, but then he grimaced. “Antoine’s? That’s that fancy place where they took me that time and told me I was eating buffalo wings when it was frog legs. No way. I’m not falling for that again. I felt sick to my stomach for weeks after that. No, thank you!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Savannah told him. “Surely you can tell the difference in frog legs and chocolate cake. At least have some dessert with us and a cup of co—”

  The tones of a cell phone playing “Hotel California” sounded from among the dishes on the table.

  “That’s mine,” Savannah said as she grabbed for it. She didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID but it was a San Carmelita prefix. “Hello.”

  The voice on the other end was an elderly lady’s voice that reminded her of Granny Reid. But the language wasn’t any that Gran would use.

  “He’s here! That no-good son of a bitch just came barreling down our road at seventy-five miles an hour and headed down to that house where the gal that got herself killed lived.”

  “Wait a minute,” Savannah said. “Are you the rose lady who I gave my number to and—”

  “Well, of course I am. Are you going to come out here and arrest this freakin’ maniac or am I going to have to take matters into my own hands? I’ve got a bunch of boards with nails that I drove into them, and if I have to, I’ll lay them out there in the road right now. I swear I will! Or better yet, I’ll just go on down to the house and bash him in the head with one of them. Or maybe I’ll take my pruning shears to him and see what I can snip off, if you catch my drift. I’m telling you, I’m fed up with this crap!”

  “No, no, don’t do that. You just sit tight. We’re on our way. We’re on our way right now. Don’t you move. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  She hung up and looked at Dirk. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Out to Kim’s house. The guy on the motorcycle is there, and Granny Goodin’ is threatening to brain him with a board with nails on it or circumcise him with her rose-pruning shears.”

  Every man present winced and said, “Owww!”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Coulter, let’s make tracks.”

  Chapter 17

  When Savannah and Dirk drove down the road, past their elderly informant’s house, they saw her standing on the porch, waving what appeared to be a dish towel at them.

  “Boy, she’s loaded for bear, isn’t she?” Dirk said.

  “No kidding. I think if we do anything short of execute him on her front lawn, she’s going to be furious with us.”

  Dirk turned onto the dirt road and turned off his headlights. “No point in announcing our arrival,” he said. “In fact, I’m going to stop right here. We can walk the rest of the way.”

  “Sneak and creep the rest of the way, you mean.”

  “On tippy toes. I want to see what this guy is doing in that house before he knows he’s got visitors.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He parked the car, and they both climbed out, their weapons and flashlights ready.

  As they approached the house, they saw a motorcycle parked near the front door, just outside the picket fence.

  “Could he take that thing up into the hills behind Dona’s place?” Savannah asked him. Dirk was the motorcycle enthusiast in the family.

  “Sure,” he said. “Those trails are fairly smooth and that’s a Juergin Orlet. It’s small enough to maneuver on the trails and yet it’s street-worthy.”

  “You think that bike left those tracks we saw?”

  “It could have, can’t rule it out. But there’s no way I can say for sure till I have a closer look.”

  “You can look at bike tires if you want to,” she said, “but right now I’m more interested in getting a look at James Morgan.”

  The moon wasn’t up yet, so they crept slowly across the property, using their flashlights to pick their way through farm equipment, rusty car parts, falling-down fences, and the occasional broken-down pieces of furniture that looked like they had become disoriented on their way to the city dump.

  But once they stepped over the picket fence, the rustic chaos gave way to urban perfection. The newly laid sod was as pristine as the grass surrounding Dona Papalardo’s mansion. Kim had obviously been in the process of changing her surroundings for the better, and the project appeared to be as dead as the property’s owner.

  Dirk went straight to the bike, and Savannah headed for the living room window. While he shone his flashlight on the bike, specifically the tires, she squatted down in front of the window.

  Slowly, she rose, inch by inch, until she could see through the lace curtains to the inside. But, even though she craned her neck first one way, then the other, stood up, and even pressed her nose to the glass, she couldn’t see a soul inside.

  Leaving Dirk to peruse the bike, she sneaked around to the side of the house. From a window there, she could see both the kitchen and the dining area.

  On the table she saw a black helmet and hanging on the back of one of the table chairs was a black leather jacket.

  Granny Grump with the roses was right, she thought. Evel Knievel’s home.

  At least they hadn’t driven out this time for nothing.

  She worked her way around the house, being sure she didn’t trip over any garden hoses or irrigation pipes—more evidence of the recent renovation.

  And as she neared the back of the house, she heard a strange noise that sounded like an animal whimpering.

  Slowly, she crawled beneath the bedroom window and raised herself, bit by bit, until she could see inside.

  The young man lay in the middle of the bed, curled into a fetal position, sobbing hysterically. He had a nightgown clutched to his face, a pink satin and lace gown that Savannah remembered seeing hanging on the back of the bathroom door when she and Dirk had been there before.

  She felt someone brush her shoulder. Turning, she saw Dirk was right behind her, also watching the solitary drama being played inside.

  “I knew there was more to him than he let on,” Dirk said.

  “Yeah, gardener, my butt. What else is he?”

  “Well, most upstanding citizens don’t feel the need to have an alias like Mr. James Morgan here. Him and his dead girlfriend, that is.”

  They watched him cry for a while longer, then they backed away from the window.

  “What do you want to do now?” Savannah asked him. “Are you going to take him to the station house and question him? You can at least arrest him on that outstanding warrant.”

  “Let’s go back to the car,” he said, �
��and we’ll talk about it.”

  They returned to the Buick and got inside, all the time keeping a close watch on the house.

  “He’s really broken up about her death,” Savannah said when they were settled. “Doesn’t look like a killer, lying there, crying, and hugging her nightgown.”

  “Eh, that doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve seen guys who just cut their family into little tiny pieces bawl their eyes out.”

  “That’s because you just beat the crap out of them.”

  He didn’t bother to deny her charges. “Sometimes,” he said matter-of-factly. “But not always. Sometimes people just go off and then they regret it a second later.”

  “Whoever took a bike up that hill, took aim and fired on Kim—that person wasn’t somebody who just ‘went off’ in a moment of passion. They thought about it.”

  “Speaking of bikes,” Dirk said, “that one ain’t it.”

  “What?”

  “That bike over there didn’t leave the tracks that we saw up there on the hill. Not unless he put on different tires since the shooting. And those that are on there are pretty ragged. I’d say they’re original, and that’s an old bike.”

  They sat in depressed silence for a few moments.

  “I can’t imagine Jack the gardener wearing a four-hundred-dollar pair of hiking boots. Or a four-hundred-dollar anything for that matter,” she said. “The other day, I noticed his flip-flops were held together with a piece of duct tape. And you could read the Los Angeles Times through those cutoffs of his, they were so threadbare—especially on the seat.”

  “Sounds like you tried.” He sounded grumpy. She laughed.

  “Oh, yeah. You didn’t try to get the ‘lay of the land’ on that new gal at the station desk.”

  “Boys are supposed to ogle. Girls aren’t.”

  “Says who? We’re just more discreet about it. We don’t actually allow our tongues to hang out onto our chins.”

  “Do you gals compare notes? Do you talk to other women about guys’ butts, stuff like that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face and shook his head. “Oh, god, I didn’t want to know that. I really did not want to know that.”

  “Don’t worry. When we yak about you, we talk about how totally hot you are.”

  He cheered up instantly. “Really? You do?”

  “Eh, get over yourself. What are you going to do about that guy in there who’s crying about his dead girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think I oughtta do?”

  “Like I said, you could, and probably should, arrest him on that outstanding warrant. Then you could question him about Kim.”

  “You think he killed her?”

  “No evidence that he did. None at all. You couldn’t even get a search warrant for his house or car…if he has a house or car.”

  He reached over to the dash and picked up a cinnamon stick. “I’d like to watch him for a day or two, see what he’s going to do if anything,” he said as he poked the stick into his mouth. “You’ll see him there at the house, doing his gardening crap, and you can keep an eye on him.”

  “But what about the outstanding warrant?”

  “Hey, Missouri’s had all this time to find him, and they haven’t. I care more about solving my murder than arresting their fraud escapee. He doesn’t know that we’re onto him. Maybe he didn’t do it, but had somebody else do it. Or maybe he knows who did. I’d rather just watch him for a few days before I scoop him up.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I hear you,” she said. “If he was going to split, he probably would have right after the murder, so I’ll fill Tammy in, and we’ll keep an eye on him for you.”

  With the lights still off, Dirk backed his way out of the dirt road.

  It wasn’t until they reached the main road that Savannah had a horrible thought.

  “Oh, no!”

  “What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Granny Grump is going to be furious with us!”

  He shrugged. “Oh, well. That’s the breaks,” he said. “She’s got your phone number, not mine.”

  As Dirk drove down the street in front of the Papalardo mansion, Savannah saw something that made her reach for his arm. “Wait!” she said. “Don’t pull in the driveway. Look, there by the front door.”

  He slowed down and headed toward the side of the street, but he didn’t turn into the brick drive as he had intended. “What is it?” he said, looking where she was pointing.

  “That couple standing there by the doorway, making out.”

  He looked with a bit more enthusiasm than before. “Where? Oh, I see them. There behind the Lexus.”

  Savannah squinted, cursing her own vanity for not getting glasses when she knew she needed them. Faraway objects just kept getting fuzzier and fuzzier. And if she admitted it, the print on bottles and in the phone book was getting smaller and smaller.

  The couple in the mansion’s doorway was just a blur, until she recognized the distinctive pale blond hair on the woman.

  “Lordy be!” she said. “That’s Dona! And I recognize the car. It’s her ex-boyfriend, Mark Kellerher.”

  Dirk cleared his throat. “Uh…judging from where he’s got his hands right now, I’d say he’s not an ‘ex’ anymore.”

  Savannah lifted one eyebrow. “Well, she’s got a lot of nerve, that one!”

  “What? Making up with her old boyfriend is a bad thing?”

  “Yes, it is. She yelled at me for letting him in the door and now…”

  “And now she’s letting him cop a feel.”

  “Precisely. She needs to make up her mind and not go around spouting her mouth off until she does.”

  “He’s leaving,” Dirk said, taking a long draw on his cinnamon stick. “If I’d got that far with a dame, I’d have finagled an invitation into her bedroom.”

  “Yes, but the last time you ‘got that far’ with a woman, females were still called dames, and a lot’s happened since then—what with the dinosaurs becoming extinct and all.”

  They watched him get into his car and drive toward them as Dona vigorously waved good-bye.

  “Besides,” Savannah said, “for all you know, he’s coming from her bedroom right now. Although, when I saw her earlier, I wouldn’t have figured she had enough energy for a rendezvous.”

  The Lexus pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the street. Dona had turned and was heading back to the door.

  “Okay,” she said. “Take me on up. I want to catch her before she goes back upstairs.”

  “You’re not going to tell her what we know about her gardener, are you?”

  Savannah thought about it as they headed up the driveway. “I really should. I mean, I work for her as an investigator and now we know that a person she employs is an escaped felon. I sorta owe it to her to tell her.”

  “I don’t want you to. Not yet.”

  “Okay. For how long?

  “Twenty-four hours. I’m going to go back there right now, and I’m going to watch him for as long as I can keep my eyes open.”

  They pulled up in front of the door just as Dona was about to disappear inside. “Keep me posted,” Savannah said as she bailed out of the Buick and slammed the door behind her. “Oh, Dona. Yoo-hoo! Wait for me!”

  Dona paused, the door half open, looking irritated.

  “Was that Mark I just saw leaving?” Savannah asked as she squeezed through the door after her. There was no point in pretending she hadn’t seen. Not when confronting her would be infinitely more satisfying. “Looks like you two have made up.”

  Dona gave her a withering look that only a diva could manage to such perfection. “I beg your pardon, but my personal affairs are none of your business.”

  Savannah chuckled. “You’re absolutely right. All I have to know is that he’s…well…off the list of people that I need to shoot on sight.”

  “Very funny.” She turned and headed toward the staircase, her pink chif
fon peignoir swirling around her with each movement. “I’m going back to bed. And I’m not to be disturbed, by you or anyone.”

  “Good night,” Savannah called gaily after her. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  Once Dona was upstairs, Savannah decided to go to the kitchen to get herself something to drink. It was probably too much to hope that Dona had the makings of a cup of cocoa laced with Bailey’s, but it was worth a try. Then she would hunt Tammy down and fill her in on the evening’s latest gossip.

  But as she neared the kitchen, she heard Tammy’s voice and another woman’s, as well.

  She entered the room and found Tammy and Mary Jo sitting at the island. Tammy had a glass of herb tea in front of her, and Mary Jo had a Cosmopolitan martini.

  “It just…ma-makes me sh-hick!” Mary Jo was saying, her voice slurring so badly she could hardly be understood. Tears were streaming down her face, dripping onto her chin and into her martini. “Ma-a-rk,” she said, “he’s a good…a…man. And Dona just doesn’t, you know, appre-e-echiate him like she sh-sh-should. And he loves her so-o-o mutch that he comes running uh…back…you know…to her every, every time. It’s just so, um, sad.”

  Tammy nodded to Dona, “I know. I know.” She gave Savannah a half-smile as she walked in.

  “Are you talking about Mark and Dona getting back together?” Savannah asked.

  “Yes,” Tammy said softly. “He came by here earlier, and I refused to let him in, as Ms. Papalardo required. But she came downstairs and invited him to come up to her room. They were up there quite a while. And when they came down…” She glanced over at Mary Jo. “…it was obvious that they had made up.”

  “I shaw them,” Mary Jo said. She took a deep gulp of the martini. “I shaw them there. On the po-o-orch. They were al-l-l over each other. It’s just dish-gusting.”

  Tammy said, “Mary Jo here was just telling me that she doesn’t approve of Dona’s and Mark’s relationship because she feels that Dona takes advantage of Mark. Isn’t that right, Mary Jo?”

  Mary Jo nodded, but she seemed to be sliding lower on her stool, losing the battle against her intoxication.