She hurried over to Savannah and, to Savannah’s surprise, embraced her heartily. “I’m so glad you came by to see me,” she said. “With the police here last night, questioning everyone and processing my bedroom, I didn’t get a chance to tell you how grateful I am to you for saving my life!”
Savannah shrugged. “You’re welcome, but I was just doing what you pay me to do.”
“And that reminds me. I must pay you—pay you for a job well done. Come into the library with me, and we’ll take care of that right now.” She turned to her maid. “Juanita, get us each a glass of Chardonnay.”
Savannah held up one hand. “Uh, I really don’t—”
“Oh, don’t be silly. We need to celebrate a little, celebrate life, celebrate the end of this terrible ordeal.”
Savannah followed her into the library, but she found it difficult to raise her mood to match Dona’s. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I just came from the morgue, where Field’s mother had come to identify his body. Understandably, she was very upset. It was difficult for me to see that.”
Dona stopped abruptly, and she turned around to look at Savannah, her smile evaporating. “Oh, dear. I never thought about…I mean…I guess he does have some relatives, a mother, someone who would grieve him. He was just so awful that I didn’t think of him as being someone’s son.”
“Everyone has a mother. And no matter what you’ve done in your life, most mothers will love you anyway…and grieve terribly if you pass on before them.”
Dona placed a gloved hand on Savannah’s forearm. “I’m really sorry, Savannah, that you had to go through that. And that’s another price you’ve paid for me. I don’t know how I’m ever going to thank you.”
She slid behind her desk and sat down, waving an arm in the direction of a nearby chair. “Please, have a seat. I don’t have long to talk. I’m on my way to an interview. America Tonight wants to do an entire show about what’s happened here. We’re taping it today, and it’ll air tomorrow night.”
Pulling a large leather checkbook from the desk drawer, she said, “I have to tell you—and I feel guilty even thinking it, let alone saying it, considering the fact that both Jack and Kim lost their lives—but I’ve never felt so alive as I do today. Just having something so terrible happen, having that maniac waving a gun in my face, telling me that he was going to kill me, and then having bullets flying around my bedroom like that! I tell you, it reminds you of how precious life is and how quickly you can lose it!”
Savannah nodded. “A brush with death frequently leaves people feeling like that.”
“Do you feel that way today? As though the world is somehow lighter? Brighter?”
“No, I can’t honestly say that I do. But maybe after a good night’s sleep.” She thought for a moment. “Where did you sleep last night after the police left?”
“Well, of course, after all that happened in my bedroom, I certainly couldn’t sleep in there. Besides, your detective friend said he wasn’t ready to release it yet. It’s still officially a crime scene. I had to call him earlier today and ask for permission to go in there and get my clothes. I slept downstairs, in Mary Jo’s room.”
“Oh?” For a moment Savannah thought she might have missed a potentially important element in the Dona–Mary Jo relationship.
But then Dona added, “Mary Jo left yesterday morning, long before the trouble started around here. She said she was going to Encino to stay with her mother for a while. She and I had a bit of a falling-out about Mark. Not the first time either, I might add. Mary Jo is never happy unless she has what I have. Which, of course, means she’s never going to be happy.”
She scribbled some figures on a check and with dramatic flourish, tore it out of the checkbook and handed it to Savannah. “There you go,” she said with a bright smile. “A little something to show how much I appreciate you saving my life last night. I’ll never forget you for it.”
And Savannah knew that she would never forget this moment. As she looked at the exorbitant amount written on the check, she nearly fainted. Normally, she would do well to make that much in a year. A really good year.
“Ms. Papalardo!” she said. “I think you’ve made a mistake here. This is far, far more than we originally agreed on.”
“And as it turned out, you had to do far more than we had ever expected.”
“But that goes with the territory. When I take the job of guarding someone, I know it may be necessary for me to use deadly force to do so.”
“Still, it would make me feel better. Take it. I want you to have it.”
Savannah stared down at the check in her hand and thought of all the places it could go. Her house was in desperate need of some repairs, as well as her car. And she could give Tammy the big bonus that she had deserved for so long.
When she looked up at Dona, she saw the actress’s green eyes were alight with humor and affection. “Savannah, this isn’t the time to be proud,” she said. “You probably need the money, and I don’t mean to brag, but I can easily afford it, so stick the check in your purse and spend it in good health.”
“Okay, if you put it that way.” Savannah folded the check and slipped it into her pocketbook. “Thank you very much.”
Dona flipped the checkbook closed and tossed it back into the drawer.
Juanita entered the room, a pair of wineglasses on a tray. She handed one to Dona and the other to Savannah.
“Here’s to the end of a terrible time,” Dona said, lifting her glass to Savannah, “and the beginning of good ones.”
Savannah raised her glass, but even as she sipped the cold, white wine, she felt the nettling of unsettled questions working on her subconscious.
“Dona,” she said, “did you know Cameron Field? Had you ever seen him before last night?”
“No, I hadn’t. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering why he was so determined to kill you. Do you have any idea?”
Dona looked confused at the question. “Now that you mention it, I wondered that myself. I suppose he was some sort of obsessed fan.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I guess because of what he said last night.”
“Before we came into your room?”
“Yes. He told me that he’d loved me for years, and that he knew we were meant to be together. When I told him that I had a boyfriend, he threatened to kill Mark, too. He said he’s watched from the hill the other night when we were kissing by the front door.”
Savannah nodded. “That certainly does sound like a stalker all right. Classic, in fact. But how do you suppose he got into the house?”
“Oh, the police figured that out last night. They said he climbed a tree up to the balcony of Mary Jo’s bedroom. She had forgotten to close the sliding door and it’s one of the few doors we don’t have a sensor on.”
“Is there a bougainvillea bush around there?”
“Yes, at the base of the tree. Why?”
“He had some thorns caught in his clothes. I saw them just now when I viewed his body at the morgue.”
“Ah, well, then the police were right.”
“One other thing,” Savannah said, “When Tammy and I were outside your door, about to come in, I thought I heard the two of you arguing.”
“Oh, we were! He was telling me that it was my fault that he killed Kim and Jack. And even though he was pointing that gun at me, I couldn’t let him say that and get away with it. I told him that their deaths were on him, not me. He chose to do what he did, and that was his fault, not mine. That’s when you came in.”
Savannah took a sip of her wine and thought that one over. “Yes,” she said, “I’ll bet you that when Dirk searches his apartment, he’ll probably find pictures and news articles about you, CDs of all of your movies, stuff like that. An obsessed fan with a criminal streak, not what a celebrity needs.”
“A criminal streak?”
“Yes, his own mother admitted today that she worried about him being on the
wrong side of the law sometimes.”
“Well, there you go. What can you expect from a guy whose own mother thinks he’s bad?”
Dona took a tiny sip from her glass, then stood. “I really hate to cut our visit short, Savannah, but I have to be on time for this taping in the valley, and it’s going to take me a while to fight my way through those reporters out there.”
“Why don’t you have your driver pull into your garage and you can get into the car there?”
Dona grinned and the brightness of her smile reminded Savannah of why she was a world-famous star. “Now where would be the fun in that?” she said.
“Then at least let me walk out with you. Considering the bonus you just threw my way, I can work a few minutes of overtime for you.”
Both women stood. Dona walked around the desk and laced her arm through Savannah’s. “Then let’s go, bodyguard. We’ll walk out together. I’ll look glamorous and you can beat them over the heads with their own cameras.”
“’Twill be my pleasure, ma’am. My pleasure, indeed.”
Chapter 25
When Savannah arrived back at her own house, her first clue that all wasn’t well on the home front was Tammy sitting on the front porch, a miserable look on her face.
Savannah got out of the Mustang and walked up the steps, dreading anything that might even smell like bad news.
Where was that delicious, peaceful feeling of “homecoming?” Where was the serene sense of returning to one’s haven from the world’s raging madness?
“I hate you, hate you, hate you! I never should have married you! You just suck!”
“Yeah? Well, well…well, you do, too! You suck worse!”
“No, you suck worser than I ever did!”
The screams echoed from the interior of Savannah’s haven of refuge and drifted out across her lawn to pollute the serenity of her neighborhood, as well. From the corner of her eye, Savannah could see Mr. Viola washing his car, a less-than-cheerful look on his face. And next door, Mrs. McDermott was weeding her flower bed and shooting Savannah looks of disapproval.
Yes, the world’s raging madness had come home to roost right there in her own little henhouse.
“Trouble in honeymooner paradise?” she asked Tammy as she climbed the steps onto the porch.
Tammy was sitting on the porch itself—no chair, cushion, or blanket beneath her—leaning against the wall. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and had her hair pulled up in a ponytail, but from the spreadsheet on the computer’s screen, Savannah could see that she was working on their accounts. Tammy sighed, readjusted the computer on her lap and grimaced as she stretched her long legs out before her.
“Oh, it’s nasty in there,” she said. “They’ve been going at it all morning. I had to come outside just so that I could think.”
“Why aren’t you in the backyard, sitting in a comfortable chair, sipping some lemonade while you do that?”
“I was. But they were going back and forth from the house to the backyard and back to the house. I figured it would be easier to just—”
Another volley sounded from inside. “I can’t believe I married a sucky guy like you! What was I thinking?”
“What were you thinking? What was I thinking? I can’t believe I married you either!”
Tammy shook her head. “It’s not that they’re arguing. That could even be entertaining, but they’re just so…so…inarticulate and redundant. It stopped being interesting two hours ago.”
Savannah glanced back one more time at her neighbors. She could tell that her status on the street was plummeting by the moment. Any minute now she and her unruly clan would be classified officially as “white trash.”
And no granddaughter of Granny Reid of McGill, Georgia could abide that!
She charged into the house, threw her purse onto the side table in the hallway, and stomped into the living room where her sister and brother-in-law were standing nose to nose in the middle of the room, still debating who sucked the most, longest, and worst.
“That’s enough!” she roared. “In fact, that’s way more than enough. Have you two just gone plumb crazy?”
“He started it! He said that I—!”
“It’s your sister here who’s crazy! All I said was—!”
“Shut up, both of you! I will not have this low-class screeching and carryin’ on in my house. You two either make up right this minute or get out of my house. I mean it. Decide what you’re gonna do right now.”
Jesup and Bleak glared at each other, eye to baleful eye.
Savannah glanced toward the sofa and saw two long black tails sticking out from beneath the pillows. “Now look at that,” she said. “You’ve scared my cats half to death. And they live with me; they’re not all that easily scared. You oughta be ashamed of yourselves, frightening the pee-diddle out of innocent creatures like that.”
She walked over to the sofa and uncovered Diamante and Cleopatra, who looked up at her with nervous, blinking eyes. Scooping one under each arm, she carried them into the kitchen, where she dumped some of their favorite treats into their bowls.
When she returned to the living room, Jesup and her husband were each sitting on opposite ends of the sofa, arms crossed over their chests.
Marital bliss at its best, Savannah thought. She walked over, sat down in her comfy chair and propped her feet up on her cushy footstool. Ah, the comforts of home, or at least, it would be without the spitting cobras in her living room.
She wondered if they had any idea how ridiculous they looked, dressed and made up like demons from the bowels of hell—with their bottom lips stuck out like those of pouting two-year-olds.
“Just out of curiosity,” she said, “how long does it take you two to put all that crap on your faces and hair every morning? Most days, I don’t even have time to swipe on some lipstick before I’m out the door.”
Bleak lifted his chin—his chin that had a lightning bolt painted on it today—and said, “You take time for what’s important to you in life. And personal adornment and unique self-expression are high on my list of priorities.”
Savannah shook her head and thought, This from a guy who can’t think of anything better to say in the middle of a domestic dispute than, “You suck worser.”
“Wow, that’s deep,” she said with a sniff.
He nodded somberly. “Thank you.”
“Now that we’ve all settled down a bit, do you want to tell me what started this little affray today? Jessie, you go first.”
“I made him breakfast, and I even brought it to him in bed, but do you think he appreciated it? No-o-o! He—”
“It was toast!” Bleak interjected. “It wasn’t breakfast, it was friggin’ toast! That’s all you know how to cook. Am I supposed to eat toast three times a day for the rest of my life? You never told me that you didn’t know how to cook!”
“Yeah, well, you never told me that you don’t have a friggin’ job! How are we even going to afford bread for toast if you don’t work?”
“Okay, okay!” Savannah held up one hand. “So it appears that maybe you two didn’t know each other as well as you thought you did. I mean, a day or two at Blood-Fest-Whatever-the-Hell, might not be enough to truly figure out whether or not you’re compatible enough for a lifelong commitment.”
“But, but…” Jesup started to cry, causing her thick eyeliner to streak black lines down her white cheeks. “…but we’re soul mates.”
“Even soul mates have to work at being married, Jes,” Savannah said. “Even if the Universe or whatever puts you together, you still have to work like the dickens to stay together.”
“But I don’t want to stay with him! He sucks!”
“So I’ve heard. Recently. Repeatedly. And apparently, he’s decided that you do, too.”
Jesup looked at her new husband with resentment and disappointment. “I don’t think this is going to work out. I think we should go back to Vegas right now and get divorced and forget this whole thing ever happened.�
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“Good idea.” He jumped to his feet. “I’m going to go pack my stuff, and I’m outta here!”
He headed for the stairs, but Jesup was right behind him. “What do you mean you’re going to Vegas?”
“I’m going to go back home—by myself—and the first thing I’m going to do is divorce you.”
“And what am I supposed to be doing while you’re divorcing me?” she asked as she tramped up the stairs after him.
“Stay here with your sister. Go back to Georgia. I don’t care as long as I don’t have to be around you anymore.”
“You can’t divorce me! I’m going to divorce you. You suck!”
“No, you do!”
“No, you!”
Savannah sighed, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back on the chair. “I’ve got news for you,” she mumbled. “You both do.”
When Savannah finally opened her eyes, Tammy was standing nearby, watching her with a sympathetic look on her face. “You look exhausted,” she said. “Can I get you something, do anything for you?”
Savannah looked at her usually perky friend and noticed dark circles under her eyes, not to mention the marked lack of exuberance that she normally radiated in irritating proportions. “You look a little droopy yourself, darlin’,” she said. “Why don’t you sit a spell and tell me what’s going on with you?”
Tammy sat on the end of the sofa and laid her computer on the coffee table. “I guess I’m just feeling the aftermath of seeing those two shootings. One would have been enough, but two like that, right together. I think my circuits were overloaded.”
“I’m sure they were. Mine, too.”
“Then it’s not just me? I’m not just…” She blinked back some tears and her lip trembled. “…just weak?”
Savannah reached over and patted her hand that lay on the arm of the sofa. “You? Weak? Not at all, honey. You aren’t a weak person. I’ve never, never thought of you that way.”
Tammy didn’t say anything, but her tears began to flow in earnest.
Savannah squeezed her hand. “Tammy, there are all kinds of strength in this world. The ability to pull a trigger and take a life in the defense of other lives…that’s just one kind of strength. You’re strong in your own way.”
Fat Free and Fatal Page 23
