For a moment Savannah thought Jeanette was dead.
And judging from the burning sensation in her hand, she just might be the one who’d killed her.
But in her left hand Savannah could feel her purse and the weight of the Beretta that she was carrying inside it. So at least she hadn’t shot her.
A moment later someone left the bystanders and walked up to stand on the other side of her. “Whoa. Howdy,” she heard Tom Stafford say. “You got one helluva right cross there, gal. She’s out for the count.”
It occurred to Savannah that perhaps someone should be checking Jeanette for vital signs. Out of curiosity, if for no other reason, just to make sure she still had some.
But no one was rushing forward to administer CPR or scrambling to locate a cardiac defibrillator machine. Jeanette’s former schoolmates seemed perfectly content to stand there and gawk at their fallen monarch.
“What’d you do it for?” Tom asked.
Quickly, Savannah replayed the recent conversation between herself and her tormentor in her head and decided there was no part of it she cared to share with the world.
Heaven knows, they’d already heard way too much.
“You know Jeanette,” she said. “Pick a reason. Any reason.”
On the sidewalk, the stricken Jeanette began to stir. She sat up, put her hand to her left cheek, and massaged it for a moment. Dazed, she looked around, trying to reorient herself to her surroundings and the situation.
Dirk whispered to Savannah, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Talk about mixed emotions.”
Tom put his hand on Savannah’s elbow, then gripped it tightly. “Savannah, you assaulted her. You know I’m gonna have to arrest you for that.”
Savannah couldn’t help being at least moderately amused as she watched Jeanette struggle to get her skirt down and her beehive updo straightened. “She assaulted me first,” she told him.
He looked doubtful. “I don’t see a mark on you.”
“Not all injuries leave a mark, Tom. You know that.” Savannah looked up at him, her eyes searching his for understanding.
She found it. The stern look on his handsome face softened, but he said, “That might be true. But if she decides to press charges, there won’t be much I can do about it.”
Savannah pulled her arm out of his grip and took a few steps toward Jeanette.
This time it was Dirk who grabbed her. “Leave her alone, Van,” he said, “unless you want to spend the rest of our Dixieland vacation in the Crowbar Hotel.”
“I promise, I’m not gonna ruffle a hair on her head. We’re just gonna have us a little girl-to-girl chat. I’m not stupid enough to smack her around right under the noses of two fine policemen like yourselves.”
When they both cut her withering sideways looks, she added under her breath, “Well, not more than once in an evening.”
She walked over to Jeanette and knelt down on one knee beside her.
The instant that Jeanette focused on Savannah’s face, she appeared to become instantly aware of her circumstances and in total recall of former events. “You hit me! You knocked me down! You slapped the tar outta me! How dare you!”
“Now, now,” Savannah said in her most soothing cop voice. “I didn’t hit you, darlin’. My hand just kinda slipped, and your face got in the way.”
“Hand slipped, my hind end! You attacked me, and I’m gonna press charges. I’m gonna—”
Savannah lowered her voice and leaned close to Jeanette’s ear. “Hush. You need to stop running your mouth for once and use your head. I’m not about to plead guilty to anything involving the likes of you. Which means it’d have to go to trial. You just remember all the stuff you said right before . . . before my hand got that little spasm. The little trick you liked to play with your underwear. The fact that you fooled around with a guy you weren’t the least bit interested in marrying, just so you could be one up on a girl you didn’t like. That sort of thing goes over well in a small, conservative town like this.”
Savannah glanced up at Tom, who was hovering over them. She wasn’t sure if he could hear what she was saying or not. So she leaned even closer to Jeanette’s ear and whispered, “And while you’re testifying, be sure to add the part about how the sheriff’s lousy in bed. He’ll probably be sheriff for the next hundred years or so. Should make things nice for you, living hereabouts.”
Her piece said, Savannah stood and brushed the dust from her knee.
Jeanette struggled, trying to rise, as well.
Tom offered his hand, but she slapped it away. “Just leave me alone. All of you yahoos. Just leave me the hell alone. The day I need help from any of y’all is the day I go lay my head on a railroad track somewheres. You’re all just a bunch a hillbilly hicks. And that goes for you, too, Savannah. You may have moved off to California and become some kind of hotshot private detective, but you’re still just a white trash kid with a drunk mother and a whore for a father. We all know that.”
Dirk took a quick step toward Jeanette and raised his hand. Savannah grabbed it, gave it a squeeze.
“That’s all right, darlin’,” she told him. “It doesn’t matter what the likes of her says about me. Or about anything else, for that matter. She’s an idiot, and a mean one at that. Besides . . .” She flexed her right hand, which was still stinging. “I reckon she’s had enough for one day.”
Chapter 5
“So this is the infamous Lookout Point, huh?” Dirk asked as he pulled the rented car to within a few feet of the cliff’s edge, parked, and turned off the headlights and the engine. “Somehow I was expecting more.”
“Like what?” Savannah asked as she breathed in the pine-scented, sultry night air through the open passenger window.
“I don’t know. Maybe something to look out at?”
She laughed. “It’s not what you’re looking out at. It’s who you’re looking out for.” When he gave her a still-confused look, she pointed down the road they had just traveled. “From up here,” she said, “you can see for over a mile behind you. You can look out for your parents, your school principal, your next-door neighbors, your pastor, or anybody else who might catch you foolin’ around.”
Dirk looked over his shoulder, down the road, and at the dark pine forest around them, then at the cliff ahead. At the bottom of the ninety-degree embankment lay a quiet lake. “I guess the water’s kinda nice,” he said grudgingly. “You know, with moonlight shining on it and all that stuff.”
That’s my guy, Savannah thought. Always the romantic.
“It’s probably got frogs in it, though,” he added. “Snakes, alligators, shit like that.”
She sighed. “You’re kinda killin’ the mood here, boy.”
“Sorry.” He paused, thinking. “The trees smell good.”
“Much better.”
He unfastened his seat belt, reached over, and released hers. “I was kinda surprised you still wanted to come up here after that whole Jeanette rigmarole back at the school.”
“All the more reason to make the trip,” she replied.
He gave her a long questioning look. “Just so’s I know, did we come up here to celebrate or for me to comfort you?”
“Well, we don’t exactly have to break out the sparklers and party hats, but I’m feeling pretty fine. I’ve been itching to smack ole Jeanette upside the head for almost as long as I can remember. Since kindergarten, at least, when she started making fun of my bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches.”
“I love bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches.”
“Every day? Every single day of your childhood? And nothing else, not even an apple or a banana?”
“Okay. Point taken.”
“Anyway, it was a long time coming. I do feel kinda guilty for hitting her instead of just telling her off. Everybody knows you’re not supposed to lay hands on another person in violence, no matter what the provocation.”
“Must’ve been some pretty nasty provocation.�
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“It was. That’s why I’m not going to go mope around, hanging my head, staring at the floor, wringing my hands with shame.”
“You’ll find a way to handle all that guilt?” he asked with a grin.
“’Tis a hardship, but I’ll bear up. I’m nothing if not resilient.”
He pulled her into his arms and gave her a kiss. “I hate to admit it, but I was proud of you,” he whispered against her cheek. “I was worried my wife was going to spend the next five or so years in jail, and I’d have to do my husbandly duty to her between iron bars. But I was proud of you.”
She laughed and returned the kiss. “Why, thank you, kind sir. How’s about we climb into that backseat and you can show me just exactly how proud you really are?”
“Mighty proud, Miss Savannah,” he said, faking her Southern accent. His hands began to wander. His lips, too. “Powerful proud. And growing prouder by the moment.”
“Is it just me,” Savannah asked as she handed Dirk his briefs and continued the search for her panties on the rear floorboard, “or didn’t backseats of cars used to be bigger?”
As he wriggled into his underwear, he accidentally poked her in the eye with his elbow. “Oops. Sorry. I think it’s sorta like airline seats. We’ve gotten a little bigger, and they’ve gotten a whole lot smaller.”
Savannah had donned her bra and was situating the “girls” in their individual cups when she heard something.
A splash.
A big splash.
She was pretty sure the sound was from the lake below.
“Did you hear that?” she said, sitting up and straining to see over the front seat and the car’s hood to the cliff and the lake beyond.
Dirk paused, his pants half on, and listened. “No. I didn’t.”
“Well, I did. Loud and clear.”
“My ears are still ringing.”
“Ringing?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. A few minutes ago, this woman was screaming lusty obscenities in my ear. It’s gonna take a while for me to get my hearing back.”
Normally, she might have chuckled and uttered yet another dirty sweet nothing for his benefit, but she was sure of what she’d heard.
She got out of the car, wearing only her bra and panties and Marietta’s heels, and walked over to the cliff’s edge. Peering over the embankment, she saw only still, dark water, sparkling with a fine dusting of moon silver.
Dirk joined her, buttoning up his shirt and stuffing the tails of it into his trousers. “Normally, I wouldn’t complain, because you look pretty hot there, kiddo,” he said, giving her a long, lascivious body scan up and down. “But are you at all concerned that somebody might see you?”
“Who? The frogs? The snakes? The alligators?”
“Yeah, okay. Never mind.”
The moon began to disappear behind some thick, ominous-looking clouds, so she had to strain to see any movement on the water, on the shore, on the road below.
Then she saw it. A set of lights. Taillights. One red light on each side.
On the right, a second red light shone momentarily next to the red taillight, then went dark just as the car disappeared around the curve at the bottom of the hill.
“There! Did you see that?” She grabbed Dirk’s arm. “There was a car on the road.”
He looked where she was pointing and shook his head. “Sorry, babe. I didn’t see anything. But after tonight’s festivities, I suppose we might not be the only ones up here cleaning the pipes. Old acquaintances renewed and all that stuff.”
“And the splash?” she asked.
“Maybe it was a fish.”
“It must’ve been a really big fish. Like Jaws or Moby Dick.”
Suddenly, Savannah felt a large cold drop of water on her shoulder. Then another. Within seconds, it was as though they were standing in a giant shower with the tap turned on full force.
They raced back to the car, slipping and sliding on the muddy Georgia clay. By the time they dove into the automobile, they were thoroughly soaked.
“At least I have some dry clothes to put on,” Savannah said, reaching into the backseat for her dress. “You, on the other hand, look like a drowned rat in a suit.”
He was holding up one leg, then the other, looking at the mud splattered all over his trousers. “Yeah, yeah. Just tell me this Podunk town has a dry cleaner.”
Indignant, she replied, “Of course. Do you really think we wouldn’t have at least a couple of . . .” She sighed. “Okay, there’s one. Three towns over.”
“That’s what I figured,” he grumbled as he started the car and turned the windshield wipers on full speed.
As he began to navigate down the hill toward the main road, the vehicle slipped sideways, off the pavement and into the weeds. After the third slide, his mutterings and grumblings turned to full-fledged cursing as the car’s tires spun in the mud.
“I wouldn’t say it was a bad idea, coming up here with you,” he said, “’cause we had a lot of fun. But let’s just say, this sudden monsoon is a pain in the ass, and the thrill’s fading fast.”
“I tend to agree,” she replied. “Only it’s not the rain that has dampened my spirits. I can’t get over that noise I heard.”
“What? That so-called splash?”
“It wasn’t ‘so-called.’ It was a splash. A big one. And I think it came from right around there,” she said, pointing to an area ahead and to the right of the road.
Like the place farther up the hill where lovers enjoyed increasing their town’s meager population, the spot ahead was clear of trees and brush and provided an unobstructed view of the lake below.
More than a few of McGill’s residents had been conceived there, as well. It was the number two favorite make-out spot and was frequently used when the primary nook higher up the hill was occupied.
“Pull over,” she said as they drew closer to the place in question. “I want to check it out.”
“Check what out?”
“Right there. Where the splash came from.”
Dirk slowed slightly. “I’m not pulling over anywhere. If I get off this road, we’ll get stuck in the mud up to our axles and die up here.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s a bit overly dramatic, don’t you think? The most dangerous things in these hills are raccoons and the occasional bobcat, and we’re both armed.”
“And rattlesnakes and copperheads and cottonmouths and—”
“Okay, okay.” Savannah could feel her skin crawl. She hated snakes and avoided thinking about them whenever possible. “I’m sure they’re all safely tucked into their nice, dry snaky houses for the night.”
“Watching TV or playing video games with their kids, right? I think I’ve heard this little fantasy of yours before.”
“Hey, it works for me. Okay?” She reached over and poked him in the ribs. “Stop. You don’t have to pull over. Just stop.”
“Savannah, you’re not goin’ on one of your wild-goose chases out here in a dark Georgia woods in the middle of a downpour.”
“Dirk,” she said in a deadly serious voice, barely above a whisper, “if you don’t stop this vehicle this very second, I swear, I’m gonna give you grief about it all night long. I’ll be lying there in bed next to you, tossing and turning and mumbling to myself, frettin’ up a storm, and wondering what I might’ve seen if you’d only just stopped and humored me for one teeny, tiny second.”
He slammed on the brakes. The car slid a couple of feet and came to an abrupt halt.
“There,” he snapped. “Happy?”
“Plumb ecstatic.”
“Good.”
She knew he was mad. He was huffing and puffing like a bulldog who had just run a marathon, and unless they were in the final throes of passion, that was hardly ever a good sign.
Casting a quick sideways look at him, she was pretty sure she could see tendrils of smoke curling out of his nostrils. His face was an unpleasant shade of green in the dim glow of the dash lights.
&n
bsp; “I’m just going to be a minute. Really,” she said in a voice far too sweet. “You’ll see.”
He muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t understand, and she figured that was probably a blessing.
She had managed to get her dress halfway on, but she quickly peeled it off again and laid it across the console between them.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said. “You asked me to stop so you could look and see . . . I don’t know. . . . What? The splash you heard before? Well, I stopped. So look!”
She pointed to her side window, where nothing was visible but thick condensation on the inside of the car and rain streaming down the exterior. “Now you tell me. Can you see anything out that side window, boy? Can you? No, you can’t. Even with those windshield wipers flappin’ to beat the band, you can’t see diddly-squat out the front, either.”
“Don’t you dare roll that window down.”
“I’m not going to. Sheez. What kind of nitwit do you think I am?”
“Actually, I’m still trying to figure that out,” he grumbled.
“I heard that.”
“And will probably give me grief about that tonight, too, when I’m just trying to sleep. I put up with a lot off of you, girl.”
“I know, sugar. It’s ’cause you’re so sweet and love me so much.”
He growled.
She reached for the door handle and started to pull it.
“No!” He reached across her and grabbed her arm. “You are not getting out of this car, Savannah. You are not going out in this storm.”
She pulled the handle. The door swung open a couple of inches. The cold rain blew in and pelted against her side, stinging her bare skin.
He’s right, whispered an inner voice. She recognized the voice immediately. It was her higher spiritual self speaking. Your husband is being sensible . . . for once. Follow his sound advice.
Then the other voice spoke. And it didn’t whisper. It was loud and obnoxious. Are you kidding? This is Dirk you’re dealing with, it said. If you admit he’s right now, you’ll never hear the end of it. In for a penny, in for a pound. For Pete’s sake, just bite the bullet and do it.
Killer Reunion Page 6
