Angela smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. Most of us do. And do you binge eat?”
“Sometimes . . . if I’ve been dieting for a long time really strict, I get hungry and I pig out, like a whole pint of ice cream and half a package of cookies.”
Savannah gulped, thinking of her own extravagances. Bingeing? Wasn’t a pint of Chunky Monkey and a package of Oreos just your run-of-the-mill dessert? An entire peanut butter chocolate-dipped cheesecake along with the Chunky Monkey, the Oreos, and a dozen Winchell’s donuts . . . now that would be a binge.
Not that she had actually ever done that herself, of course.
“Do you weigh yourself every day, Atlanta?” Angela asked.
She nodded.
“And if your weight is down, do you feel good about it all day? And if it’s up, it bums you out?”
Another yes.
“Have you ever fasted to lose weight?”
“Yeah.”
“And do you think about your weight a lot . . . like off and on all day?”
“Yeah, it’s important to me to look good.”
Angela fingered the beads of her earring thoughtfully. “And do you think you look good? Are you happy with the way you look?”
“I’m still heavy in my hips and right here.” She grabbed half an inch of skin on her bare midriff and pinched it distastefully. “No matter how much I diet, I can’t get rid of that.”
“Do you exercise a lot?”
“I should do a lot more.”
Angela said nothing for a long, tense few moments as she studied Atlanta, who sat, squirming, in her chair.
Finally, Angela spoke. “I want to thank you for talking to me about this, Atlanta,” she said. “I know it wasn’t easy for you. Your sister did the right thing, asking you to speak to a professional about your problem.”
“I don’t have a problem. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“You do have a problem, potentially a very serious, possibly fatal eating disorder.”
“No way! I’ve read the lists of symptoms on the Internet, and I’m not bulimic or anorexic. I’m not!”
“I didn’t say that you are either of those things. I said that you have an eating disorder. Millions of people do. Thousands die from theirs. If you don’t get some help, you might be one of them.”
“That’s so lame. No way.”
“Atlanta, you don’t have to have all the symptoms on those lists. Even a few of the signs are reason enough for concern.”
Angela turned to Savannah. “I’m going to give you some phone numbers of professionals in Atlanta’s area who specialize in eating disorders. It’s very important that she get help and that it be from someone who is experienced in this field.”
“Thank you. I’ll take care of it.”
“No! I’m not going to see no shrink!” Atlanta began to cry. “I’m not crazy, and I’m not helpless. I don’t want my big sister to do that; she’s always taking care of me, and I hate that!”
“I don’t believe you’re crazy or helpless,” Angela told her as she reached over and placed her hand on the girl’s arm. “But these first few steps are very difficult for a person to take on her own, and finding a professional and setting up appointments are actions that loved ones can take for someone in your position. Let her do this for you, Atlanta. Savannah may be bossy sometimes, but I assure you that she loves you very much. Let her help.”
Savannah rose from her chair, walked over to Atlanta, and knelt beside her. “Please, sweetie . . . trust me,” she said. “I’ll find someone who’s good, someone you like and can relate to. The right person will make this situation better for you, not worse, I promise.”
When Atlanta didn’t answer, Savannah took her hands and folded them between her own. “Let me do this for you. Someday when I’m old and senile and can’t remember where I left my dentures, I’ll need you to make some calls and set up some appointments for me . . . okay? We’ll take turns taking care of each other.”
When Atlanta gave a small, curt nod, Savannah felt better.
But when Atlanta threw her arms around Savannah’s neck, buried her face on her shoulder, and sobbed, Savannah found that her own tears were flowing as freely as her little sister’s.
Good tears.
Soul-cleansing tears.
A few minutes later, when Savannah and Atlanta came out of the office, bidding Angela a grateful good-bye, Dirk came rushing up to them, an excited look on his face.
“I’ve been looking for you all over the place,” he told Savannah. “I . . .”
He looked from Savannah to Atlanta and back. Both were wiping their eyes and noses with tissues and sniffing.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is everything all . . . are you gals all . . . are you okay?”
“We’re fine,” Savannah said, her arm around Atlanta’s shoulders. “What’s up, doc?”
“We’ve got the Gorton kid.”
“Francie?” Atlanta asked.
“No, her brother, Trent.”
“Where did you find him?” Savannah said.
“In the arcade at the mall. Figures, huh?” He chuckled. “In the old days, when we were looking for a local punk, we checked out the pool halls. Now it’s the mall arcade . . . where all the mommies send their little kids when they’re shopping. Scary, huh?”
“Very.” Savannah tucked the tissue into her pocket. “So what’s next?”
“A lineup. I’ve got Mrs. Lippincott coming down to the station in an hour to see if he’s the one who dropped off those flowers. Wanna come and watch?”
Savannah turned to Atlanta.
Atlanta blew her nose soundly and gave Savannah a weak smile. “I’m all right. I’ve gotta practice my guitar anyway, get ready for the talent competition tonight. You go ahead.”
“Okay,” Savannah said, “but—”
“I know . . . I know. Keep the door locked! Ugh!”
Chapter 21
“Marion Lippincott must love you,” Savannah said, “you pulling her away on the last day . . . the big day . . . of her pageant.”
“Actually, she hates me,” Dirk replied. “In fact, she called me a few names that I’m pretty sure aren’t supposed to be uttered at an All-American function like a beauty contest. But she don’t have to like me. She just has to show for the lineup.”
With Dirk at the wheel, the battered old Skylark rounded the curves, heading out of wine country and entering lemon-grove country. In another ten minutes they would be “in town,” not that San Carmelita was a metropolis by anyone’s definition.
Savannah was enjoying just sitting in the passenger’s seat, kicking back, savoring the view and a few responsibility-free minutes. And she had to admit she was actually glad to have some downtime with Dirk. Although she usually considered him a nuisance, he was a habit. And even an aggravation, if it was habitual, could be dear to the heart.
“If Lippincott picks the Gorton boy out of the lineup, are you gonna hold him?” she asked.
“I haven’t decided yet. But if she does ID him, it’ll give me a little more torque to squeeze him with.”
“So, you haven’t questioned him yet?’
“Nope. But I’m gonna right after the lineup. Wanna watch?”
“Are you gonna use the rack and the pendulum?”
“Naw . . . they’re at the repair shop. But I got this cool new contraption called an Iron Maiden. It’s this casket sorta thing with spikes inside. You stick the interviewee in it and slam the door closed.”
“A la Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price?”
“Exactly.”
“Cool. I definitely wanna watch.”
“What is this, man? I been treated with nothin’ but disrespect all day long, man. You know what I’m sayin’, man?”
Trent Gorton walked with that cocky bee-bop stride that made Savannah wish she had an enormous flyswatter so that she could whack him across the butt with it. As she watched Dirk lead him down the hall from the temporary lockup to th
e room where they would do the lineup, she wondered how this scraggly, moronic gangster could be from the same gene pool as his lovely, intelligent, sensitive sister.
“What’s up?” he asked for the tenth time in three minutes. “Where we goin’? Whatcha’ll doin’ with me here? I didn’t do nothin’ and nobody’s told me nothin’.”
“You’re gonna stand in a lineup, pal,” Dirk told him. “We’ve got the lady who saw you delivering that batch of flowers to Barbara Matthews the night you killed her.”
“I didn’t kill nobody. I was through with her, man. We was broke up, and I’m on to another old lady. You know what I mean, man?”
“For right now, let’s just see if we can get a positive ID. Then we’ll take it from there.”
“Can I leave, man? I mean, if you get that positive ID you want, can I leave?”
Dirk stopped, spun him around, and began to remove his handcuffs. “We’ll see. One thing at a time, my friend. I’m gonna take these cuffs off for the moment, ’cause we don’t want you to be only one standin’ there wearin’ bracelets. But you try to pull somethin’, and I’ll be all over you . . . you know what I mean, man?”
“I hear ya.”
“Good.”
At that moment, Savannah heard a door open to the right and, to her dismay, Marion Lippincott walked through it. There was nothing quite like lack of organization to spoil a perfectly good lineup.
“Shit,” Dirk muttered. “What’s she doin’ back here? . . . ruins everything.”
Trent looked around him, a definite haziness in his eyes that spoke of too many nights spent partying and not enough studying. “What?” he said, equally concerned. He spotted Marion Lippincott. “Oh, all you need is a positive ID, right?” he asked Dirk.
Dirk froze. He gave Savannah a quick, I-Can’t-Believe-It glance, and said. “Ye-e-e-es.”
“Okay, then . . . I recognize her,” Trent said, happy to comply if it meant this ordeal might be over. “That old gal there . . . she’s the one who was at that wine place when I dropped off the flowers. I recognize her. Okay?”
Dirk and Savannah stared at each other, then back at Trent.
“Well, what’re you waitin’ for?” Having performed his civic duty, Trent was getting antsy. “You got your positive ID. Now I’m outta here, right?”
Dirk shook his head, still incredulous. “Boy, you gotta lay off sniffin’ that paint or whatever you’re doin’. You ain’t got much left upstairs.”
Dirk replaced the cuffs, then walked over to Marion Lippincott who looked equally impatient. “I believe you can go back to your pageant now, Mrs. Lippincott. Thanks to Mr. Gorton, we’ve got all we need here.”
Savannah stood behind the glass and watched Trent Gorton squirm in what was called the “sweat tank,” but politely known to the public as the interrogation room. And Dirk was one of the best when it came to making a suspect sweat.
“So, why did you kill her? Was it because she broke up with you?” Dirk paced up and down behind the kid’s chair, the action designed to raise his anxiety level as much as to work off Dirk’s nervous energy.
“She didn’t break up with me; I broke up with her. I’ve done told you that.”
Dirk laughed. “Oh, yeah, a gorgeous gal like that . . . a scumbucket like you just up and dumps her. I’m supposed to believe that, huh?”
Trent shrugged his skinny shoulders and toyed with the enormous skull ring on his middle finger. “You can believe it, or don’t believe it. It don’t matter to me what you believe, you know what I’m sayin’, man? That’s what happened, I swear it on my mama’s grave.”
Dirk reached over and gave him swat on the back of the head. “Your mama ain’t dead, peabrain, so you swearin’ on her grave don’t mean dick. Now you better start telling me the truth or I’m gonna start showin’ you some serious disrespect. We found your fingerprints on the flowerpot, so we know you were at Villa Rosa that night. And even better, we’ve got more of your prints on the windowsill. You left them there when you leaned in and poured the chicken blood on the bed.”
“Okay, okay! So I did the chicken thing. I’ll admit that. But I didn’t kill Barbie. I didn’t even see her there that night. I just did that business with the chicken to get back at her, and then I left. That’s all I did.”
“You didn’t figure you’d knock off the mother of your baby to make your life a whole lot simpler?”
Savannah watched the kid carefully and saw genuine surprise dawn in his eyes. He hadn’t known. Barbie hadn’t told him.
“Barb was pregnant?” he asked. “She was gonna have a baby?”
“You didn’t know that, huh?”
“No. She didn’t say nothin’ about it. But, come to think of it, maybe that’s why she was actin’ weird.”
“Weird?”
“You know, man, wantin’ to break up with me and all that.”
“So, now she’s the one who wanted to break it off with you? Make up your mind. Usually, a girl who’s knocked up ain’t the one callin’ it off. Usually it’s the guy who wants out. Whose kid do you figure it was?”
Trent jumped up from the seat, but Dirk pushed him right back down. “If Barbie was pregnant, it was my kid,” he said, slamming his fist on the table. “You understand me, man?”
“I think you’re tellin’ me that you were so special that she wasn’t doin’ nobody else but you. That’s what you’re sayin’, right?”
“Right! That’s exactly right. She didn’t need nobody but Trent. I was more than enough for that bitch.”
Dirk walked around the table and sat down across from him. “Tell me something, Trent. What color is the carpet in that Charger of yours?”
The kid’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?”
“I’m planning to recarpet my Buick, and I thought I’d ask your decorating advice. You seem like such a discriminating kinda guy.”
“It’s black. But what’s that got to do with anything?”
Dirk nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve heard your Charger is cherry; you rebuilt everything on it yourself.”
“Everything but the paint job. My cousin did that.”
“So, when did you put the new carpet in?”
“Last summer. Why?”
Dirk grinned. “Just askin’. I’m the sorta guy who’s curious about a lot of things. Like I’m wondering right now, where is that Charger of yours? They say you weren’t driving it when they picked you up at the mall today.”
“That’s right, my stupid sister took off with it, and we haven’t seen her since. When she gets home, she’s in big trouble with me. She knows better than to drive my wheels.”
Listening on the other side of the mirror, Savannah felt a small chill of premonition. His sister took off with his car . . . and she hasn’t been seen since?
That felt bad.
It felt really bad.
And Savannah had learned through painful experience, that when something felt that bad, it usually was. Sometimes it was even worse.
Half an hour later, Savannah and Dirk were getting into his Buick, intending to head back to Villa Rosa, when Dirk got a call.
Digging the phone out of his jacket pocket, he flipped it open. “Yeah?”
In the passenger’s seat, Savannah grinned. Dirk wasted precious little energy on such frivolities as courtesy or diplomacy. Being bridled with a Southern upbringing which requires an exhausting degree of gentility, she vowed to be exactly like Dirk when she grew up someday. How deliciously liberating it would be.
“Okay,” he said. Turning to Savannah, he said, “They found the Charger.”
“Good, where is it?”
“Where is it?” he barked into the phone. “What’s it doin’ there?”
He listened again and scowled. “All right. I’m on my way.”
As he refolded the phone and tossed it onto the dash, he sighed.
“What’s up?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“The car is at the old mission. It’s sitting
in the parking lot.”
“All right. Anybody in it?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s empty. The keys are still in the ignition.”
“So, what’s the matter?”
“Trent’s kid sister is there, too.”
“Francie? What’s she doing at the old mission?”
It took Dirk a long time to answer. “Nothin’. Dammit, she ain’t doin’ nothin’ at all.”
When Dirk and Savannah pulled into the mission’s parking lot, they saw the dark blue Charger, sitting empty, as they had been told it was. A patrol car was next to it, and inside the unit sat Officer Mike Farnon. On a routine round through the parking lot, he had spotted the Charger. And with the help of the mission curator, he had found Francie.
He looked shook-up. His door was open, and his feet were on the ground. He had his hands over his face, and he was rubbing his eyes.
Savannah felt sorry for him. She knew the gesture. She also knew that it wouldn’t help. Whatever vision he was trying to wipe away would remain with him for the rest of his life. In this business, you saw sights that scarred your soul and made you old before your time.
Savannah figured she was about ninety-eight.
Dirk parked his car next to the cruiser, and when she crawled out of the Buick, she felt like someone had poured her body full of liquid cement.
That beautiful girl. Dead. Yes, she felt very, very old today.
“Where is she?” Dirk asked Mike.
He nodded toward the back of the mission. “Down those stairs.”
“Where’s the curator?” Savannah asked.
“That’s her over there,” Mike replied, pointing to an elderly woman who was kneeling at the edge of the parking lot. “The one puking into the weeds.”
“Is she okay?” Savannah said.
“About as okay as I am.” Mike shook his head and let out a long, shuddering breath. “She got here right after I did. I asked her if she’d look around and she did. At first, we didn’t think anybody was here, but then she went downstairs and . . . Sorry, but it kinda got to me, the kid being so young and all.”
Dirk slapped him on the back. “Just sit here and get yourself together, Mike. We’ll go down on our own.”
Sour Grapes Page 18
