“We can’t keep driving in circles, Van,” Dirk told her as, once again, they left McGill’s city limits and headed down a monotonous county highway that led through nothing but endless cotton fields. “We have to decide. Are we going to go up there or not?”
Savannah reached over and turned the car’s air-conditioning up a notch. Then she readjusted the vent so that it would blow directly on her face. She was beginning to think she would never be cool and comfortable again. How had she stood this weather as a child?
You stood the heat and humidity because you didn’t have a choice, she told herself. But you do now, her inner voice added. And you’d better make the right one, or you may live to regret it.
“Let’s just run through it one more time,” she said, “in case there’s something we forgot or something we didn’t think of.”
“There’s always something to forget. Always something you don’t think of,” Dirk replied with a sniff. “The prisons are filled with guys who thought they’d thought of everything.”
She shot him an irritated look. “Gee, thanks.”
“I guess that didn’t help much, huh?”
“You think?”
He reconsidered. “But all those dudes in jail, they’re not nearly as smart as you and me. We can probably think of everything.”
“Seriously, Dirk. Watch what you say. I’m not doing so well right now. I don’t recall when I was this scared. I can literally feel my guts shaking inside me. Did you ever feel like that?”
He nodded solemnly. “A few times. Right before I got the runs, so watch out. If you need me to pull over so’s you can do your business there in the cotton patch, just let me know.”
Savannah felt her last thread of patience snap. “I mean it, Dirk. This is not the time to be funny. I’m so not in the mood.”
He looked confused. “Funny? I, oh, yeah. Okay.”
They traveled on in silence past a few more fields. Finally, he said, “Let’s run over it one more time.”
Steeling herself, she said, “Yeah. And then we’re going to decide. Okay? Because I can’t stand this sitting-on-the-fence business much longer.”
“All right.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic zip-top bag full of cinnamon sticks and tossed it into her lap. “Gimme one of those things, would ya?”
As she handed him a stick and he poked the end of it in his mouth, it occurred to her that the stress of the situation might cause him to relapse with his smoking.
Was there no end to the consequences of a single slap down?
“Okay,” he said. “If we don’t go up to Lookout Point and find your shoe—”
“And Jeanette’s body is at the bottom of that cliff, and the cops find the sandal—”
“You’re dead meat.”
“Delicately put.”
“And true,” he said.
“Or maybe it’s all just a bunch of hooey, and Jeanette shacked up with somebody last night somewhere and hasn’t gotten back to town yet. In which case, I have nothing to worry about.”
“Or she was driving home from the reunion, had some kind of hemorrhage in her brain as a result of you hitting her, drove off the road and into a ditch, and nobody’s found her yet.”
She gave him another dirty look. “Gee, we can only hope.”
“You’re so sure you heard that splash—”
“I did. And soon after it, I saw a set of taillights going down the hill. Like somebody dumped something into the lake and then took off.”
“Or got finished with their make-out business and went home.”
“Nobody was parked in that lower spot when we drove by, going up the hill,” Savannah said. “I know. I looked.”
“So they got there after we did and finished quicker than us.” A self-satisfied smirk crossed his face. “Not every guy takes his time and stops the elevator at every floor like I do.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’ve always loved about you, your sexual prowess and your humility.”
“If we go up there now,” he said, “we’re going to have to traipse all around in the mud to find that shoe.”
“Since when were you worried about getting your old sneakers dirty?”
“Since I realized that we’d be leaving a bazillion footprints in the dirt. How long do you think it would take your old honey to pour some plaster in those prints, then come knocking on Granny’s door, wanting to check out my sneakers and your loafers?”
“Good point,” she conceded. “But what if the shoe’s lying somewhere close to the road? What if we can just lean over and pick it up?”
“That’s kinda a big if, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“We’ll leave tire marks on the road.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Water was running down that road like a river last night. And it was still raining when we went to bed there at Granny’s. The mud’s probably all washed away.”
They reached a T in the road. Dirk stopped the car, and they sat there for a long time, deciding.
“Which way, kiddo?” he said. “Turn left, circle back to town, forget the whole thing, and take our chances? Or turn right and head up to Lookout Point?”
As it did in moments of high stress, time seemed to slow for Savannah. A thousand thoughts raced through her mind, but she spoke only one word.
“Right.”
“You got it, babe,” he said as he took the chosen road. “I’m glad you said that. I figure we have to at least try. If something goes wrong, we’ll find a way to live with it. But if everything goes in the toilet, and we didn’t even give it a shot . . .”
When she didn’t reply, he reached over and nudged her arm. “We’ll be careful,” he told her. “Besides, you mark my words. This is all just a bunch of crap. Jeanette’s gonna turn up, fine and dandy. And before sunset, Stafford’ll be knocking on your grandma’s front door, apologizing to us and asking for an invitation to her birthday party. Right?”
Savannah wanted to answer him, to tell him that she absolutely agreed, and that this was all much ado about nothing.
But she couldn’t.
She’d heard that splash.
All she could do was give him a halfhearted nod.
“This place looks a lot different in the daylight,” Dirk told Savannah as he stopped the car near the lower-level make-out spot. “It was a lot more romantic in the moonlight and then in the pouring-down rain, with you running around in your Skivvies.”
She groaned and shook her head. “At least you have some fond memories of the occasion. I’d hate to think this was all for naught.”
They cast some furtive glances up and down the road and, seeing that all was clear, got out of the car.
As they walked to the edge of the pavement, which was, as he had predicted, clear of all mud, Savannah began mumbling under her breath.
“You told me to tell you when you’re talking to yourself,” he said. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m not talking to myself. Not this time, anyway,” she told him.
“Practicing your defense speech?”
“No, Mr. Smarty-Pants. If you must know, I was praying.”
“Praying? It’s not that desperate yet, is it?”
“Gran taught me that it’s best to start praying before things turn desperate. You know, get a head start on it.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense, I guess. Then if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, you’ve got some retroactive prayers already racked and loaded. Can’t hurt.”
“I don’t think Gran used those words exactly, but that was the gist.”
They stood at the pavement’s edge and stared into the area beyond, between the road and the cliff’s edge. Just off the road there was soft red mud galore. Other than a few tracks, which Savannah was pretty sure had been made by a rabbit, the surface was unmarked.
“There’s no way we could walk on that and not leave our signatures,” Dirk observed.
“No
kidding,” she replied. “We might as well write our names and leave our handprints, like the movie stars at Grauman’s Theatre.”
Looking around at the lush green forest and through the break in the trees where the lake waters glittered in the sunlight, Dirk said, “It is kinda pretty up here. Smells nice, too. This is what pine trees really smell like. Not that junk in the spray cans that you use in the bathroom after you—”
“Do you mind? Can we discuss the finer points of room deodorizers after we find Marietta’s stupid shoe?”
“Oh, yeah. Okay. Here, let’s get some sticks to poke stuff with.”
After selecting a couple of small, straight branches from the other side of the road, they walked back and forth along the edge of the pavement. Every few feet or so they used the sticks to gently lift a pinecone, a clump of leaves, or a discarded beer can. After looking under and around the items, they carefully returned them to their resting places and continued their search.
When twenty minutes or so had passed, Savannah stopped to wipe the sweat off her face and catch her breath. She could feel that her bra cups were saturated and the freshness from last evening’s shower was long gone. She’d need another one as soon as she got back to Gran’s.
Then she considered the nonexistence of shower facilities at the city jail and renewed her search. She even “racked and loaded” a few more prayers in the process.
At the thirty-minute point, she was about to scream with frustration when she heard her husband say, “Hey, babe. I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“The bad. I always want to get the worst out of the way.”
“Okay. It’s at least ten feet away. Maybe twelve.”
“What? Oh! Oh! You see it?” She ran over to him, as excited as a kid on an Easter egg hunt, if finding the egg was a matter of life and death.
“Yeah. That was the good news.”
“Where is it?”
“Over there, by that broken log with the moss on it.”
After a few moments, she spotted the shoe—a bit of rhinestone sparkle in the greenery. “I see it,” she said, less enthusiastic than before. “It looks like the strap’s tangled around the log.”
“That was my second bit of bad news. I didn’t want to hit you with it all at once.”
“Thank you.”
“You get depressed easy.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
“Especially since you started this ‘change o’ life’ business.”
She turned to him, gave him a long, hard look, and said, “You know, statistics show that women commit more murders during menopause than at any other time in their lives.”
“Really? Is that true?”
“If you keep talking about how cranky I am now that I’m in it, you might just find out.”
He gave her a grin and a wink. “Let’s see if we can find us a twelve-foot stick. Unless you wanna fool around again, and then we could use my—”
“You’re gonna die, boy. You’re tap-dancin’ on a tightrope over a swamp with a hungry momma alligator right under you.”
“A menopausal alligator.”
“Those are the worst kind, and don’t you forget it.”
After finding several long limbs, only to discover that their choices were mere inches too short, Dirk finally located one that would reach the sandal. But it took another twenty minutes of futile and frustrating attempts before Savannah was able to hook the end of it through the shoe and out its open toe.
Carefully and ever so slowly, scarcely daring to breathe, she pulled it free.
“Now, don’t drop it,” he advised as she balanced it on the forked end of the stick and eased it toward them an inch at a time.
“Any more useful advice like that,” she said, “and you get this stick in your left ear.”
“Empty threat if ever I heard one.”
By the time several more stress-filled minutes had passed, she had the sandal more than halfway to the road. For the first time since Savannah had seen it, seemingly beyond their reach, she began to think their little foray into the dark world of crime-scene tampering might prove to be successful, after all.
Then she heard it.
And felt it.
A buzzing, like that of an angry bumblebee, in the back pocket of her jeans. Along with a cheerful little jingle that she had found particularly irritating, so she’d chosen it as Vidalia’s ringtone. Overly excited, frenzied, and frenetic, it had seemed appropriate at the time. And even more so now.
“Shoot!” she said. “Dang Vidalia’s mangy hide. That girl always did have lousy timing.”
“I’ll answer it.” He reached toward her rear end.
“Don’t you dare touch me! If that dingbat sister of mine makes me drop this thing . . .”
“You’re right. Ignore it. Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve almost got it.”
She turned slightly to her left, bringing the end of the branch and the dangling high heel toward him. He wasted no time getting into a squatting catcher’s position, as though preparing to receive a third-strike fastball.
The second it was within his reach, he snatched it off the limb, clasped it to his chest, mud and all, and let out a series of deafening celebratory yelps, which he usually reserved for when his favorite team won the World Series or one of his least favorite boxers hit the mat.
Savannah tossed the branch back on the other side of the road, then yanked the phone out of her back pocket.
“Yeah, Vi. What’s up?” she asked breathlessly, trying to sound casual and not like a woman whose bacon had just been pulled, sizzling, out of a smoking skillet.
“I thought you wuz never gonna answer,” Vidalia scolded. “It musta rang a dozen times or more.”
“I was a little busy.”
“Me too. But I still took the time to call you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Savannah had an awful thought. “Oh, no. You didn’t let Gran’s cake burn, did you? That was a scratch cake, girl, and if it’s burnt, you’re gonna be measuring all those teaspoons and quarter cups and stuff to make the next one.”
“No. The cake’s fine. Alma looked after it.”
“Okay. Then what do you want?”
Savannah watched as Dirk opened the car’s passenger door and tossed the muddy shoe onto the floorboard. Then he motioned for her to get inside. She did, and he closed the door behind her.
“What I want is to tell you some news that I just heard,” Vidalia was saying. “It’s about your long-lost friend Jeanette.”
A thought, an evil thought, passed through Savannah’s brain. If that gal’s not really dead, after all I just went through getting that damn shoe, I’m gonna kill her myself.
But she quickly discarded it and said as demurely as she could manage, “Really? Do tell.”
Vidalia happily obliged. “I just got a call from Butch. And he said that Tom called him a while ago there at the garage and told him to get hold of the biggest tow truck he could get his hands on, even if he had to go out of town to get it, and bring it up to Lookout Point.”
Dirk had started the car, and they were descending the hill. But Savannah felt as though her stomach had already hit the bottom.
“Lookout Point?” she said, shooting Dirk a look of alarm.
Instantly, he was all ears.
“Yep,” Vidalia continued. “Seems one of them Henderson boys, the least one, I think, was out there on the lake, fishing, first thing this mornin’. And he saw something in the water ’bout halfway up the hill there to the point. You know, where we all used to stop and smooch if somebody’d already claimed the spot at the—”
“Yes, yes, I know the place. What did the littlest Henderson boy see?”
“Something purple. There in the water. Well, actually, just below the surface of the water.”
Savannah gulped. “Purple? Like the dress Jeanette wore to the reunion last night?”
“Oh, no. Someth
ing way bigger than that. Something like that big purple Cadillac convertible of hers.”
It was only after she had hung up that Savannah realized she hadn’t told her sister good-bye.
Like it mattered.
Like anything mattered right now. Anything that wasn’t some gaudy, horrid shade of purple.
“What is it? What did she say?” she could hear Dirk asking as though from far away. “Come on, Van. Talk to me.”
“That was an even bigger splash than I thought,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
“What the hell are you talking about, woman? Spit it out! I’m dyin’ here!”
But she never answered him.
Because they had reached the bottom of the hill, and there, blocking their path, was a big black-and-white patrol car with its red and blue lights flashing. Two other similar units flanked it on either side.
And inside the center car, glaring at them thorough his dark wraparound sunglasses, sat one very angry Sheriff Thomas Stafford.
Chapter 9
After Savannah’s initial thought, which included a string of colorful curse words, it occurred to her that they should have put the muddy high heel in the trunk. Or, at least, she should have shoved it under the seat beneath her.
But Sheriff Stafford’s radio car was much too close to their own vehicle for her to perform any furtive movements. Especially the shoving of evidence under a seat. If there was a gesture that every street cop knew when they saw it, that was the one.
As if reading her mind, Dirk said, “Don’t lean down. He’ll see you.”
“I know. I won’t.”
“What are we going to say if he asks about it?”
“If all else fails, we might have to tell them the truth.”
“Hell, I hope not. Surely, it won’t come to that.”
With her foot, Savannah nudged her purse closer to the shoe, partially, but not completely, concealing its sparkly muddiness.
At that moment she felt the passing urge to snatch Marietta bald.
Her and her stupid shoes.
If only she’d been wearing her sensible black pumps, they never would’ve fallen off her feet, and she wouldn’t be sitting here, doing the High Noon Gunslinger Stare Down with Tom Stafford.
Killer Reunion Page 9
