“So, you don’t mind if I go back to my hot date? I left him in a Tahitian bar, sipping daiquiris from a pineapple. If I’m lucky, he’ll still be there when I get back.”
Savannah grinned and slapped her on the back. “Don’t worry, Doc. He’ll be there. As good as you look tonight . . . believe me . . . he’ll be there.”
“He’d better be,” she said as she opened the door. “If he isn’t, you owe me a ten-pound box of Godiva.”
“You’ve got it. Have a good time.”
Savannah saw that Catherine Villa was still there, standing in the hall outside the doorway with that distraught look on her face.
“Mrs. Villa, good news,” Savannah said, motioning her to come closer. Then she added under her breath, “If you consider having chicken blood and guts on your bedspread good news.” She patted the woman’s shoulder comfortingly and said, “Now I’m not nearly so worried about Barbie Matthews, and you shouldn’t be either. She’s probably ju-u-ust fine.”
Chapter 11
As Savannah stood in the shower and allowed the hot water to flow over her weary body, she wished that she could just melt and slide down the drain along with the shampoo suds.
She was sure that she had been this exhausted and discouraged at some point in her life, but at the moment she couldn’t remember when.
The night hours spent looking for Barbie Matthews in every nook and crook of Villa Rosa had rendered absolutely zip, and in spite of what Savannah had been telling everyone associated with the winery and the beauty pageant, she was worried about the missing teenager. She was worried sick.
Having missed an entire day’s worth of food, and a whole night of sleep, Savannah had already decided that when they found the kid, she had better be dead, or she would kill her for having caused such a ruckus. But she was afraid someone might have beaten her to it, or at least done the girl some major harm.
Stepping out of the shower and drying off with one of Villa Rosa’s lush towels, she silently thanked Catherine Villa for furnishing her guests with quality appointments. One nice thing about most snobs, Savannah had noticed: They tended to have good taste in clothing, furnishings, and cocktail-party guests.
She pulled her robe around her and stepped into the room where her younger sister lay sleeping on a twin bed. This second-story room was similar to the one downstairs that Atlanta had shared with Barbie, only a bit larger and more lavishly furnished. Catherine had offered it to Savannah, making it clear that she hoped she would remain on the property until Barbie had been found. And Savannah had insisted that Atlanta sleep there, where she could keep an eye on her.
“Van? What are you doing?” Atlanta asked, stirring beneath the covers. One foot emerged, then a hand and finally a tousled, platinum blond head.
“Getting ready to go to work.”
“Work? Have you been to bed yet?”
“No, but I’m not a contestant; I don’t need that much beauty sleep.”
Atlanta yawned, stretched, and opened one eye. “Did you guys find Barbie?”
“No. That’s why I’m heading back out. It’s dawn now, and we’re going to check the grounds again. Hopefully, we’ll find something we missed, now that it’s daylight.”
“Dawn?” Her other eye blinked and opened. “It’s dawn? No wonder I’m still dog-tired. You can get up with the chickens if you want to, but I’m lyin’ here and relaxin’ for a couple more hours at least.”
“How lovely for you,” Savannah replied dryly as she slipped into a silk tank, linen slacks, and loafers. “Catch a few winks for me, and don’t let anybody in here except members of the Moonlight Magnolia gang. Do you hear me?”
There was no reply.
Savannah strapped on her shoulder holster and Beretta and pulled a light jacket on over it. “You’ve gotta rise and shine, at least long enough to bolt this door behind me.”
A grunt was all she heard from beneath the rumpled covers.
“Shake a leg, gal. You’re holding me up here.”
Finally, Atlanta rolled out of bed, a drowsy figure in pajamas with big, yellow roosters crowing on bright red flannel. She followed Savannah to the door, where she accepted a kiss on the cheek from her older sister.
“Be careful, Atlanta. Stay in here by yourself with the door locked or out there in a crowd of people. Okay?”
“Okay. Okay. Okay. Don’t worry, Mom.”
“It’s my job. Throw the bolt and then go back to bed, Sleeping Snoozie.”
In the twenty-five minutes it had taken Savannah to run upstairs and shower, reinforcements had arrived. As she entered the gallery she saw Ryan standing near the door, talking to Dirk, Tammy, and John.
Tammy was holding a small, pink, paper bag in her hand, that Savannah didn’t dare to hope was . . .
“Tammy, you darlin’ girl! Did you bring me donuts from the Patty Cake Bakery?”
Smiling, Tammy held out the bag to her and gave her a hug. “Better than that. I bought you two chocolate-covered, custard-filled Long Johns and an apple fritter.”
“I love you. I truly do. I’ll give you a nickel-an-hour raise.”
“Gee, after a month or so, I’ll be reimbursed for the donuts.”
Savannah attacked the bag with a fury born of acute starvation. And while she was filling her face with creamy custard and chocolate, Dirk presented her with a super-sized Styrofoam cup of coffee.
“Ah, Dirk. Bless your little heart. You dropped by the Java Nut House and bummed them out of a free coffee. You shouldn’t have.”
“An extra big one, too.”
“What a guy! When you panhandle, you beg for only the best. You’re a class act, Coulter.”
Dirk beamed, and Savannah wondered whether the fact that insults frequently flew over his head made the game more fun or a source of frustration. She decided it was a bit of both.
Savannah looked over at Ryan and noticed, for the first time, that he looked almost as tired as she felt. His usual, outdoorsy tan was more pale than golden, and he, too, had dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. Apparently, he had gotten the same amount of sleep that she had . . . none. And Savannah knew how seriously Ryan took his work, especially when it involved young people and their safety.
In a fit of self-sacrifice, she offered him her precious apple fritter.
Realizing the depth of her generosity, he gave her a warm smile and shook his head. “No thanks. You need it more than I do; John brought me fresh bagels with lox, cream cheese, and capers.”
Savannah sighed. “Ahhh, lox and bagels . . . John Gibson, would you do me the honor of being my husband?”
John took her hand and lifted it to his lips, tickling her with his mustache as he kissed her knuckles that were dusted with powdered sugar. “My dear Savannah, I assure you . . . should I decide to take a bride, you would be the first lady on my short and exclusive list.”
Ryan laughed, Tammy giggled, and Dirk snorted, but for once he kept his comments to himself. “So,” he said, “what’s the game plan?”
“We’re here to help,” John told him. “Put us to work wherever you like.”
Tammy began to practically hop up and down in her well-worn running shoes, so eager that Savannah had to resist the temptation to do her bodily harm; it was that “morning person” thing again. “I’ve already talked to Mrs. Lippincott,” she said. “And she specifically asked me if I would go along with some of the girls who want to take a morning jog around the property, look at the vineyards and all that.”
“That’s good, and I need to call Barbie’s parents again,” Savannah said. “When I spoke to them last night on the phone, her mother didn’t seem terribly concerned that her daughter was missing. I got the idea this disappearing act might be Barbie’s standard MO.”
“Did you tell Mrs. Matthews about the blood on the bed?” Ryan asked.
“I just told her that the room had been vandalized. She didn’t ask for details, so I didn’t elaborate.”
Dirk grabbed Savannah’s coffee and took a long drink
of it. “Yeah, you don’t want the old lady thinking that her daughter got nabbed by some voodoo cult. She’ll start worryin’ that the kid might be stretched out naked on some sacrificial altar somewhere with her throat cut, a big, upside-down pentacle painted on her chest in blood.”
Savannah nearly choked on her fritter. “Well, thank you very much, Detective Coulter, for that lovely visual. Personally, the worst I had imagined was the girl lying, raped and murdered, out among the grapevines.”
Wearily, Ryan ran his fingers through his hair. Savannah was fairly sure it was the first time she had ever seen it mussed. She hated to think what her own dripping-wet mop must look like. “So, this is what we’re going to do,” he said. “Savannah, you call the parents. Tammy, take the girls for their run. John and I will search the grounds again. Now that it’s light out, maybe we’ll see something we missed earlier.”
“I’ll go with you,” Dirk said, returning Savannah’s coffee and snatching one of the Long Johns out of her bag. “I wanna check that parking lot again. It was so dark out there last night, you couldn’t see squat.”
As Savannah watched the team disperse, she felt a wave of sadness. Mostly, she felt that way because with every hour that passed, the hope grew dimmer that this disappearance would have a happy outcome. And partly because Dirk was walking away with the rest of her breakfast. Two pastries and half a cup of coffee just didn’t contain enough chemical stimuli to make up for a day’s fasting and a night without sleep. She decided to hit the kitchen on her way to the telephone. What the heck—the Matthews clan wouldn’t want to be awakened this early anyway.
“I think you might want to come out to Villa Rosa,” Savannah had told Mrs. Matthews on the telephone. “I really do. We’d like to ask you and your husband a few questions about Barbie’s . . . habits . . . and we don’t want to interrupt our search here.”
This time, Mom Matthews had seemed more concerned and assured Savannah that she and Pop Matthews and Sis Matthews were on their way.
And they were—promptly. Less than twenty minutes after Savannah called them, they came screeching up to the front door of the complex in their late-model Volvo and ran inside.
Savannah had been on her way up to Francie’s room, to see if the girl was awake yet, but she was intercepted in the gallery.
“Where’s my daughter?” Mrs. Matthews demanded. “I was told you had excellent security here. How could you morons lose one of the girls?”
Savannah checked the family out with a quick once-over. Middle-aged dad was deeply tanned, muscular, and dressed in a stained T-shirt and jeans decorated with splotches of paint and bits of dried cement. A builder of some sort, no doubt.
Dressed in a calico-print dress with a white-lace collar and white sandals, Mom looked as though the extent of her physical labor might be lifting the gavel at a PTA meeting. From the bossy, take-charge look on her face, Savannah was sure she would be president. She could also see where Barbie had gotten her penchant for heavy makeup and “big” hair.
Younger sister would have been perfect for a talk-show makeover. The opposite of her mother and sister, the dowdy teenager appeared to give no time or effort to vanity. Her unwashed hair had been pulled back into a scrunchy, her baggy jeans and oversize sweatshirt hung limply off her shapeless body, and her thick-lensed glasses would have been improved by a simple cleaning.
Savannah instantly pigeonholed them into three uncomplimentary slots: Mom the Hen, Dad the Pecked, and Sister the Ugly Duckling.
In her personal life, Savannah tried to avoid snap judgments of individuals. People were complicated creatures, far too complex to be evaluated in a matter of minutes.
But, as a street cop Savannah had learned that survival itself depended upon making evaluations in seconds. And, while she was always willing to change her original opinion of a person—given evidence to the contrary—experience had taught her to trust those valuable first impressions.
Although she would have preferred to give this woman a karate chop, Savannah decided to ignore the insult. Exercising restraint was an excellent way to build character, and she figured it was a good time to chalk up some spiritual brownie points. Besides, she needed the bucks and didn’t want to get fired from the gig.
“Mrs. Matthews,” Savannah said, “I wouldn’t necessarily say that your daughter is lost. She probably knows exactly where she is; the problem is, we don’t know. And we’re doing everything we can to find her.”
“Then you’d better do more,” Mrs. Matthews said. “If anything’s happened to my baby girl, we’re going to sue you people for all you’re worth—you, and that Lippincott gal, and Villa Rosa.”
“I have no doubt that you would do precisely that, Mrs. Matthews,” Savannah replied. “But hopefully, we’ll find Barbie soon, safe and sound, and all that nasty suing business won’t be necessary. Because, if you intend to sue me for all I’m worth, I’m sorry to say, you won’t get much . . . two lazy cats who eat as much as a couple of great Danes. That’s about the sum of my assets.”
No abusive reply was forthcoming, so Savannah softened her tone. “Come along with me,” she said. “They have a lovely courtyard out here with tables where we can sit, and maybe you can tell me a few things about your daughter.”
“Talk? Answer questions?” Mrs. Matthews’s densely ratted, stiffly sprayed hair seemed to bristle, like a hunting hound who had caught a whiff of a raccoon. “We don’t need to waste time talking, and the only question you need to answer is, ‘Where is my daughter?’”
“I understand, Mrs. Matthews, that you’re upset,” Savannah replied. “I’m sure I would be, too, in your situation. But the best thing you can do for Barbie right now is to spend a few minutes with me, telling me about her daily life, her habits, her friends, et cetera.”
Mr. Matthews laid a large, work-callused hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Come on, Mother,” he said. “Let’s do what she says . . . for Barbie.”
Chapter 12
Savannah sat on one side of the table, taking notes on a small pad, and on the other side sat the three Matthewses, a united front of uncooperation.
So far she had received only the briefest answers to her questions—most of those supplied by the husband.
“Has Barbie been dating anyone special lately?” she asked. There, that should be simple enough to prompt a straightforward answer.
But no . . .
“Yes, she was,” said Mr. Matthews.
“No, she was not!” His wife’s jaw tightened and her nostrils twitched.
Savannah looked from one to the other. “Well? Was she, or not?”
Mrs. Matthews shot her husband a “shut up!” look, and he did so, staring down at his hands that were clenched together on the tabletop.
“Barbie had been seeing this punk kid from the east end,” she admitted. “You know . . . the east end . . . ?”
Savannah nodded. Yes, she caught the woman’s drift. The east end was the poorer part of town, the “other side of the tracks.”
“But I told her in no uncertain terms to break it off with him. And I have no doubt that she did exactly as I told her.”
From the corner of her eye Savannah saw the sister, who she had been told was named Louise, turn her head away from her mother and suppress a little grin. “Is that true, Louise? Did your sister stop seeing the boy, like your mother told her to do?”
The moment she asked the question, Savannah realized she had gotten the teenager in trouble. Mom poked her in the ribs with her elbow. “She did, didn’t she?” Mrs. Matthews asked. But it was more of a statement than an inquiry. Obviously, it was beyond the woman’s mental grasp—the concept that she had been disobeyed.
The girl shrugged, and mumbled, “Yeah, sure.”
“And what’s the name of this boy . . . ,” Savannah asked, “the one she had stopped seeing on your orders.”
“His name is Trent Gorton,” the father supplied. “He’s not really a bad kid, he just—”
“He wasn�
�t right for Barbie,” Mom snapped. “That’s all that needs to be said. They just weren’t right for each other, and I made that clear to my daughter.”
Savannah scribbled for moment and thought. “Do you know how he took it . . . when she told him it was off?”
“No, I don’t. We didn’t discuss it.” Mrs. Matthews glanced down at her wedding ring and noticed a fingerprint smudge on the surface of the impressive diamond. With the lace end of her sleeve she wiped it away. “Is that all?” she asked. “If it is, I want to start looking around for my daughter.”
“Just two more questions.” Savannah glanced down in her notepad. “When was the last time you had any sort of contract with your daughter?”
“It was during dinner last night,” Mr. Matthews said. “We were here at the welcoming ceremony, but Barbie didn’t come down for dinner. Mother called her on her cell phone, but she said she wasn’t feeling good, that she was going to stay in her room for the rest of evening.”
“That was about what time?”
“Between seven and seven-thirty.”
“Okay, there’s one more question I have to ask you,” Savannah said. “Has Barbie ever run away before?”
“Absolutely not!” Mrs. Matthews’s jaw was starting to lock again. “My girls are better trained than that. They know very well that if they did something stupid like that, they’d come running home a lot faster than they left, with me right behind them.”
Again, Savannah saw the younger sister glance away, a smirk on her face and an unpleasant glimmer in her eye.
“Okay . . . thank you very much.” Savannah rose from the table, signifying the end of the interview. “I can understand your desire to help in the search,” she said. “But you might consider returning home . . . just in case Barbie should try to contact you there.”
“No! We’re staying right here until our daughter has been found.” Mrs. Matthews replied, jumping up from the bench.
But her husband rose and again placed his large, rough hand on her shoulder. “I think Ms. Reid is right, Mother. Barb might even be home when we get there. You never know what she’s going to do.”
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