Fat Free and Fatal

by G. A. McKevett

  Savannah walked over and slipped her hands under Mary Jo’s armpits. “I think we’d better get you upstairs,” she said. “You look very, very…tired. Tammy, you wanna help me here?”

  Tammy jumped off her stool and hurried to assist.

  With Savannah on one side and Tammy on the other, they managed to get the highly unsteady Mary Jo up the stairs and to her room.

  They even led her inside and over to her bed.

  Tammy yanked the covers back, baring the sheets.

  The room was similar to the one Tammy was staying in, but instead of pink, it was a delicate powder blue. This bed was also canopied and strewn with a dozen accent pillows.

  They sat Mary Jo on the side of the bed. Savannah took off her slippers as Tammy slid her sweater off her shoulders.

  Then Savannah turned her around and laid her back on the bed, fluffing some pillows for under her head. She didn’t feel she knew Mary Jo Livermore quite well enough to peel her slacks off, too. She could just sleep in them.

  Savannah had a feeling that Mary Jo had slept in her clothes on far more than one occasion.

  Covering her with the heavy comforter, Savannah said, “Good night, Mary Jo. You’ll feel better tomorrow morning.”

  “That was her fifth martini,” Tammy whispered, “that I know of.”

  Savannah looked back at Mary Jo, whose mouth was wide open. She was already snoring very loudly.

  “Five martinis, huh?” she said. “Well, then maybe you won’t feel better tomorrow morning. Maybe not a bit better.”

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, the atmosphere in the Papalardo household was strained at best. Savannah had seen happier, more cheerful faces on cops who were conducting full-body searches on transvestite prostitutes.

  Mary Jo had stumbled downstairs around eleven o’clock in search of a glass of orange juice and some aspirin. She and Dona had run into each other in the foyer, and Savannah and Tammy eavesdropped from the kitchen as the two woman had a heated argument about Mark Kellerher.

  The dispute ended with Mary Jo threatening to move out rather than observe this “emotional abuse of a fine man.” Dona offered to help her—by hurling her things out the window and onto the front lawn and then calling the badly abused Mark and telling him how much Mary Jo seemed to want him.

  “Your typical girlfriend fight over boys,” Tammy told Savannah once the fur was no longer flying and both women had retired to their rooms upstairs.

  “Oh yeah? Well, you and I don’t fight over Dirk like that,” Savannah said.

  “And we never ever will.” Tammy shuddered. “Never, never. God forbid.”

  At noon Savannah and Tammy were on the patio, stretched out in chaise lounges, eating chicken, tomato, and avocado sandwiches that Juanita had prepared for them. The maid lingered nearby, making sure that their tea glasses were full and engaging them in friendly chitchat.

  But although they ate the sandwiches and tried to give the appearance that they were relaxing and enjoying the lush backyard and maid service, they were keeping a close eye on Jack, who was puttering around the yard, weeding flower beds, and trimming hedges.

  He was wearing the same thin cutoffs, so the task wasn’t entirely onerous.

  Savannah had informed Tammy of the former evening’s developments, so Tammy was watching him as closely from behind her Nicole Miller cat-eye sunglasses as Savannah was from behind her mirrored SCPD-issue shades.

  They were sitting near the house, under an awning, where they could keep tabs on Jack and watch anything going on in the kitchen. They could also see through to the foyer in case anyone came or went through the front door.

  “His eyes are swollen, and his face is puffy today,” Tammy whispered, nodding slightly toward Jack, who was planting a bed of petunias.

  “Yeah, well, if you’d seen him last night, you’d know why. I’m surprised he’s even at work today considering the state he was in.”

  They dropped the topic as Juanita appeared at the kitchen door with two dishes of something that looked like sherbet and a large glass of lemonade.

  “You like?” she asked, showing them the tray. “Raspberry sorbet. It used to be Senorita Dona’s favorite with these…” She produced a small plate with some delicate chocolate cookies arranged on it in a circle with some fresh raspberries and whipped cream in the center.

  Juanita picked up the glass of lemonade from the tray. “And this is for Senor Jack. He has been working very hard all morning. It is hot out here.”

  “You know, Juanita, you’re way nicer than you need to be,” Savannah said as she reached eagerly for the dessert. “We’re just employees, like you are, and you don’t have to wait on us hand and foot.”

  “But you are my friends,” Juanita said with a pretty smile. “I am happy when I give food to my friends.”

  “Savannah knows all about that.” Tammy laughed. “She’s never happier than when she’s shoving food into somebody’s face. Fattening food.”

  “There are worse pastimes,” Savannah snapped.

  “Not for the waistline.” Tammy took the sorbet but waved away the cookies.

  Savannah grabbed the plate and put it on an end table beside her chair.

  Catching a movement from the corner of her eye, Savannah turned to see Dona passing through the kitchen on her way toward them. She had a glass of wine in her hand and a disapproving scowl on her face.

  Savannah half-expected to hear a complaint about how they were lounging on the job, but Dona marched past them and around the swimming pool, over to where Jack was kneeling in the flower bed.

  “What are you doing?” she barked at him. “Why on earth are you putting those there?”

  Jack looked up at her, his face blank. He shook his head. “What?”

  “I’ve never had petunias next to the pool. Are you crazy? Are you a complete idiot? Do you see any blooming plants in this area?”

  Jack swept his hand across his face, leaving a dirty smudge on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said with a meeker spirit than Savannah would have shown, considering the vehemence of Dona’s attack.

  Savannah gave Tammy a sideways glance and saw that her mouth was open. Even Juanita seemed transfixed as she stood there with Jack’s glass of lemonade in her hand.

  Dona leaned down, her face near Jack’s, and she pulled one of the petunias out of the soil. She flung it onto the deck, slinging some of the dirt into the crystalline pool water.

  “Hey,” he said, finally rousing, “you don’t need to do that. I’ll take them out, but—”

  She leaned down by him again, reaching for another. He pushed her hand away.

  “Knock it off!” he shouted, still on his knees in the dirt. “I told you, you don’t need to do that! I’ll take them back out if that’s what you want, but stop it!”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that!” she said, her nose only inches from his. “You work for me, you little bastard.”

  Dona straightened up, and the second she did, Savannah heard it.

  A loud crack.

  A sharp, popping sound that echoed down the hill and across the yard.

  “Gun!” Savannah leaped off the chaise and reached for her weapon in one movement.

  Tammy sprang to her feet, too. But Savannah waved her back. “Get down,” she yelled. “In the house!” She gave Juanita a hard push toward the door.

  Juanita dropped the glass of lemonade. It shattered on the patio bricks.

  Savannah ran out from under the awning and looked up the hill toward the place where they believed the shooter had stood before. But she saw no one.

  Less than a second later, she was across the patio and had thrown Dona to the ground. She fell across her, covering the woman’s body with her own.

  “Down! Get down!” she shouted to Jack.

  She turned her head in his direction.

  Jack was already down.

  He lay in the dirt, facing her, a terrible wound in his throat.

  “No!” S
avannah didn’t hear the word, let alone know that she had screamed it.

  She rolled off Dona.

  “Get in the house!” she told her. “Run! Go! Go! Call nine-one-one!”

  Dona scrambled to her feet and raced around the side of the pool. She slipped and fell hard. Then she jumped to her feet and ran on into the house.

  A moment later, Savannah was aware of Tammy standing over her as she knelt beside Jack.

  “Watch the hill!” she told Tammy. “Watch for the shooter! Stay down!”

  Instantly, Tammy dropped to one knee and ducked her head.

  Savannah reached for Jack and realized that she was still holding her weapon. She shoved it into Tammy’s hand.

  From her kneeling position, Tammy held the Beretta in one hand, her other cupping the gun’s butt. She swept the barrel back and forth as she scanned the hill. “I don’t see anybody,” she said. Casting a quick, sideways glance at Jack, she said, “How is he?”

  Savannah pressed her hand tight against the wound in his neck, but blood was pouring between her fingertips at an impossible rate. In her fingertips she could feel a rapid fluttering, but it wasn’t anything that could be called a true pulse.

  His eyes stared up at her, but were seeing beyond her.

  Far beyond.

  “He’s going,” she said as she listened to the terrible liquid sounds of his body’s final attempts to breathe.

  She glanced up at the hill.

  The shooter was gone. She was sure of it. He had taken his one deadly shot, just like before, and by now would be long gone.

  “Go get me my phone,” she said. “It’s there on that table by where I was sitting.”

  She waited as Tammy scrambled to do her bidding.

  Jack’s bleeding, along with the rapid, irregular pulse and labored breathing, was slowing with each passing moment.

  The glazed look in his unblinking eyes told her Jack…or James…or whatever his name was…was all but gone.

  Tammy returned and held the phone out to her.

  She reached for it with her left hand, still maintaining pressure with her right.

  In some disinterested part of her mind, she realized she was getting Jack’s blood all over her cell phone, but she gave it no more consideration.

  That was even less important than the fact that she was allowing someone’s blood to come in contact with her bare hands.

  Some things couldn’t be helped.

  “What do you want me to do?” Tammy asked.

  Savannah looked up and saw that her friend’s big eyes were filled with tears.

  Tammy held out a trembling hand toward the gardener. “What should we do for him?”

  “There’s nothing we can do for him,” Savannah said. She lifted her hand just a second to show Tammy the entrance wound.

  She was grateful her sensitive assistant would never see the devastating exit wound on the back of his neck—the one that she could see from her point of view and, no doubt would continue to see in her nightmares for months to come.

  Even her act of applying pressure was pointless, and she knew it. “Go inside,” Savannah told Tammy. “Try to comfort Dona and Juanita. Make sure they aren’t hurt.”

  “Do you want me to call nine-one-one? In case they haven’t already, that is?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. Tell them it’s a code three.”

  Who are you kidding? Savannah’s inner voice asked. It wasn’t a code 3, a lights-and-siren emergency. It wasn’t even an 11-8, a person down. It was a DB.

  Jack the gardener was a DB.

  A dead body.

  It might not be official until some medical expert pronounced him, but it was a fact nevertheless.

  And he had become a dead body on her watch.

  Savannah felt a constriction in her own throat, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick, there in the dirt beside the victim. But she fought it down and flipped her cell phone open.

  She had to call Dirk. He had to know about this as soon as possible.

  But before she even began to punch in his number, the cell went off in her hand, playing its little tune. The song, “Hotel California,” didn’t seem as funny as when she had programmed it in.

  “Hello,” she said.

  It was Dirk. “AFIS came through with those prints we lifted in Kim Dylan’s apartment,” he said without even his usual grunt of a greeting. “And we’ve got a picture, here, too. This dude, James Morgan, he’s your gardener there for sure.”

  “I see,” Savannah replied, her voice sounding small and shaky even to her.

  “I’m thinking I’m going to come over there and pick him up this afternoon,” he continued, oblivious. “This isn’t just your ordinary fraud. He and this gal Kim…or Penny…as they know her in Missouri…they’ve bilked a lot of people out of a lot of money. They ruined some little old ladies, got them to turn over their retirement money and took off with it. And there’s something about a country singer in Branson.”

  “Okay,” Savannah said, staring down at the man who was no longer showing any vital signs at all.

  “So, I’m on my way there right now,” Dirk said.

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “You okay, Van?” he asked. “You sound a little funny.”

  “He’s gone,” she said. “Jack’s gone.”

  “I told you to keep on eye on him, to let me know if he looked like he was leaving.” He gave a big, weary sigh. “Dammit, Savannah, now I’m going to have to chase him down, and I have a lot I need to do today and—”

  “Shut up, Dirk,” she said without passion. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re not going to have to chase him down. He’s dead.”

  “Dead? How? When?”

  “He just got shot here in the yard, like Kim Dylan. I’m sitting here with his body now.” She could hear sirens in the distance, drawing closer. “The ambulance is about here.”

  “Oh, shit, Savannah, I’m so sorry. Are you all right? Are you safe?”

  She looked up and scanned the hills again. “Yeah. I don’t see anybody. I’m sure the shooter’s gone by now.”

  “I’ll be there in less than five. You hang in there, honey.”

  Suddenly, she felt the need to have him there. It flooded over her, warm and sweet, making her knees even weaker than they were.

  “Hurry,” she told him.

  “I will, babe,” he said. “I will.”

  Chapter 19

  Dirk arrived at the Papalardo mansion even a minute sooner than he said he would. Savannah and Tammy were waiting for him in the driveway in front of the house. Several patrol cars had arrived, but the CSI team and Dr. Liu were still en route.

  A couple of officers were in the backyard, draping the yellow crime-scene tape around the patio and pool area.

  Dirk climbed out of the Buick, took a quick look up the hill, then ran over to the women.

  He scooped one into each arm and held them close, saying nothing at first. Then he held them at arm’s length, checking them over for injuries.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Van?” he said, looking down at the blood on the front of her sweater and slacks.

  “Yeah,” she said. “This is all his, not mine.”

  Dirk gave her a squeeze and a kiss on the forehead. Then he turned to Tammy, “And how about you, kiddo? Are you okay?”

  Tammy’s eyes were big and full of fear, but her smile was brave. “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “Good.” He let out a long breath. “I want my girls to be okay. My girls have to be okay.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, buddy,” Savannah said. “I really am.”

  “Tell me what you need from me. What can I do?”

  She looked up in her old friend’s face and soaked in his concern and strength. Throughout the years they had taken turns being strong, and that was one of the best perks of their partnership.

  It was his turn.

  “Take care of this mess for me now,” she said. “I nee
d to just go sit down somewhere and…just sit.”

  He turned and stared up at the hill above them for a moment. A look of grim determination came over his face and he nodded. “Oh, you’ve got it,” he said. “You two go find a hole somewhere and crawl into it and rest, regroup. I’ll come get you if I need you.”

  Savannah could feel an enormous weight shift from her shoulders to his broad ones, even though she knew it would only be a temporary reprieve. In the end, everyone had to carry their own burdens. But for the moment she was happy to hand the whole, sad mess over to him and find refuge somewhere.

  That “somewhere” turned out to be the library, with Tammy and Juanita.

  Savannah and Tammy sat on the leather sofa. Juanita was in a wing-backed chair across from them, quietly sobbing into a handful of tissues.

  Savannah lost track of time as they sat there, watching the parade of law enforcement personnel that came and went through the marble foyer, past the statue of Diana and the curving wrought-iron staircase.

  Dr. Liu and her white-coated team trooped in and out for what seemed like forever, until finally, the scene was processed. Through the library’s doorway, they watched the gurney, bearing yet another locked body bag, being wheeled through the foyer and out the front door.

  “Well, I guess Jack wasn’t our killer, after all,” Tammy said once the coroner’s team was gone.

  “Gee, you think?” Savannah snapped. Then she shook her head and reached out for Tammy’s hand. “I’m sorry, sugar. That wasn’t nice. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I understand,” Tammy replied. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen happen in my whole life.”

  “It was right up there in my top ten, too.” Savannah leaned her head back on the sofa and slid down in the seat. Suddenly, she was beyond tired. She was deeply exhausted in body and spirit.

  Having someone murdered in front of you can do that to you, she thought. Especially when you’re in charge of keeping people safe.

  “I blew it,” she said, more to herself than the others. “I really, really blew it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tammy asked. “You didn’t blow anything. You couldn’t have known that the killer was up there, ready to take another shot.”