Killer Physique

by G. A. McKevett

  “If she doesn’t tell you,” Savannah said softly, as she climbed into bed beside him, “you might need to ask her. For your own peace of mind.”

  He snuggled close to her, and for once, he laid his head on her shoulder, rather than the other way around.

  “Do you think I should? Would that be okay, you think? If she doesn’t volunteer it . . .”

  She played with his hair and stroked his cheek as she said, “I think you’ll know when the time comes. You think fast on your feet, and you’ve got really good instincts about people. You’ll figure it out as you go.”

  He thought about it for a long time. So long, in fact, that she thought he might have drifted off to sleep. But then he said, “And if I can’t figure it out, I can ask you what you think about it. Right?”

  She kissed the top of his head, then pulled him even closer. “Of course you can, silly. You know me. There are two things I never run out of—words and opinions.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  She swatted him.

  He winced. “Ouch.”

  “Go to sleep, turkey butt.”

  “Okay. You too.”

  Less than a minute later, Cleopatra and Diamante came into the room, jumped up on the bed, and found them both sound asleep.

  Chapter 12

  Heaven, Savannah thought as she fought her way to a slightly higher level of consciousness. Heaven. Hallelujah, I made it!

  As a rule, private investigators didn’t lead a life that could be considered “squeaky clean” by almost anyone’s standards. The sneaking around, the breaking in, the listening in, not to mention the bevy of lies told in the course of a single day’s work. According to Granny Reid, having those activities on one’s resume could present a problem when attempting to enter the Pearly Gates.

  At times, Savannah had feared for her mortal soul.

  But she had made it! Nothing but Heaven itself smelled like that.

  Even before her eyes could focus, her nose was at work, identifying the delicious scents of freshly brewed coffee, sizzling bacon, fried eggs, and right-out-of-the-oven biscuits.

  Then a second thought occurred to her. This might not be Heaven itself, but the closest thing to it on earth—Gran’s kitchen.

  Many of her childhood mornings, she had awakened to this divine aroma. And even though she had never been known as a “morning person,” the allure of those delicious smells had coaxed her out of bed.

  Opening her eyes, she fully expected to see the bottom of the overhead bunk, where at least two of her sisters would be sleeping. Little sister Alma would be curled against her side, and the baby of the family, Atlanta, would be lying across the foot of the bed. They would all be covered with one of Gran’s beautiful, hand-sewn quilts.

  But no.

  Although it was one of Granny’s quilts that covered her, the cozy snuggle-bug next to her side was Cleopatra. And the foot warmer was Diamante.

  The other side of the bed was empty, except for a rumpled pair of men’s boxer shorts that lay on the pillow. So much for Husband Hamper Training 101.

  She squinted, looking at the bedside clock.

  7:19.

  The stiffness of her muscles and the groggy feeling in her head told her that it wasn’t 7:19 PM.

  No. It was morning, and she had slept for more than twelve hours.

  That had to be a first, even for her.

  And as she crawled out of bed and made her way to the closet for a robe, it occurred to her that this being-in-your-forties business had its disadvantages. She was definitely not as spry as she had been in her twenties and thirties.

  But as she slipped on her robe and house slippers, she consoled herself with the thought that she was a heck of a lot smarter now than she had been twenty years ago. And she would trade “smart” for “spry” any time.

  The cats followed her down the stairs, through the foyer, and into the living room, doing figure eights between her ankles. “One of these days,” she muttered, “I’m gonna step on one of y’all and squash your tail. Or worse yet, I’ll take a spill and mash you both flatter than a flitter. You wait and see.”

  As usual, her dire warnings went unheeded by the felines in question. They knew all too well that Mom was a soft touch. None of her threats were ever carried out, and all of her promises were delivered.

  They also knew that they would be fed before her morning coffee was even poured, let alone drank. So they continued to intertwine themselves around her legs and rub their faces against her feet, purring the entire time.

  Finally, she made it to the kitchen, where she found Dirk sitting at the table, shoving a forkful of eggs into his mouth, chased by a swig from his enormous Bonanza mug that had all three of the Cartwright boys and Pa on the side.

  Surely, he wasn’t the cook who had filled the house with blissful scents! Could it be she had married a closet chef?

  No.

  One look in the direction of the stove and refrigerator and she knew that the guilty parties were Tammy and Waycross.

  Waycross was flipping eggs in a skillet on the stove. Tammy was taking biscuits from a metal pan and transferring them to a basket lined with a snowy linen cloth.

  “Good morning,” they all said in unison.

  “Sleeping Beauty’s decided to join us, after all,” Dirk said between chews. “How’re you doing, babe? Did you get enough sleep?”

  She grunted and made her way to the cat dishes near the back door. “I should say so,” she replied. “Another hour and I would’ve turned into Rumpelstiltskin.”

  Tammy giggled as she put the basket of biscuits on the table. “Don’t you mean Rip Van Winkle?”

  “One of those guys with a weird name that starts with an R.”

  She poured some fresh Kitty Vittles into the cats’ dishes and refreshed their water, as well. A moment later, the glossy black faces were buried in the food—ankle circling and Mom-love forgotten in a fit of gluttony.

  “When did you crawl out this morning?” Savannah asked Dirk as she walked to the table, planted a quick kiss on the top of his head, and then took a seat beside him.

  “Oh, ages ago. Somebody had to get up and get going. We’ve got a full day’s work ahead of us.”

  Tammy set a jar of Granny’s homemade peach preserves on the table next to the biscuits. “Don’t let him fool you,” she said. “He’s only been down here about ten minutes himself. ‘Get up and get going,’ my butt.”

  Waycross laughed as he carried a platter laden with eggs and bacon still sizzling from the skillet over to the table and set it in front of Savannah. “Aw, who gives a hooey? Y’all needed some extra sleep after pullin’ that all-nighter. Neither one of you’s exactly a spring chicken these days.”

  Savannah shot him a disapproving, big-sister scowl. “You know, I can think depressing thoughts like that ’un all by myself, little brother. I don’t need assistance from you in that department.”

  When she got a good look at the delectables on the platter, she instantly forgave him. “Since when did you learn to do that?” she asked. “Those eggs are beautiful. They don’t even have ruffles around the edges.”

  “Gran taught me,” he said proudly. “ ‘You want the bacon crispy, but not the eggs.’ She’d say that ever’ time.”

  A sad look crossed his face, and just for a moment, Savannah thought that maybe this living in California arrangement might not be 100 percent wonderful for brother Waycross. Even Paradise came with a price.

  “I miss her, too,” Savannah said, giving him a pat on the arm. “In fact, that’s the one thing I miss the most about being here on the West Coast. That and seeing the pretty moss hanging from the trees.”

  “I like that moss stuff, too,” Tammy chimed in. “Saw it when we went back to Georgia that time to get Macon out of jail.”

  At the mention of their brother’s name, another less-than-jolly look passed over both Savannah’s and Waycross’s faces. Among the Reid siblings—some of whom were fairly eccentric and n
ot altogether law-abiding characters—Macon was the one considered most likely to wind up serving a life sentence, making license plates in a Georgia high-security institution.

  “How is Macon these days?” Savannah asked.

  Waycross shrugged. “Macon’s Macon.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Ain’t it though?”

  Savannah dug into the biscuit basket and picked out a large one. It seemed to weigh nothing at all in her hand. She turned to Tammy. “Did you bake these, Yankee girl?”

  Tammy nodded and flushed a lovely shade of pink. She looked slightly embarrassed, like a kid being caught feeding a younger sibling a mud pie. “Yes, I did. It goes against everything I hold sacred, since you have to use white, bleached flour. Of course, at anyone else’s house I could have used some sort of whole-grain flour. But since it’s your house—”

  “Blasphemy! Pure blasphemy! Any second now you’re going to get struck dead by a bolt of lightning! Waycross, stand away from her. Divine retribution’s on its way!”

  Tammy sat down at the table across from Savannah, a glass of herbal tea in her hand. Waycross quickly claimed the chair next to Tammy’s and started loading up his plate with goodies.

  “What else have you two been up to?” Savannah asked.

  Dirk chuckled. “Maybe you shouldn’t ask.”

  “Believe me, I do so with fear and trembling,” Savannah replied. She turned to the young couple, who were trading looks that were so lovey-dovey that Savannah was nearly put off her grub. “You can just give me the basics,” she told them. “You can keep the gory details to yourselves, considering it’s the breakfast table.”

  Tammy blushed again and tittered. “Well, before you jump to conclusions about our love life—”

  “Y’all have a love life?” Savannah interjected. She turned to Dirk. “Our worst suspicions are confirmed. Wait’ll I tell Gran. She’ll take both of ’em behind the woodshed for a proper switching.”

  “You tell on me, I’ll never wash that Buick again,” Waycross threatened.

  “Hold on there,” Dirk said. “Before this gets outta hand . . .” He shoved both the biscuit basket and the peach preserves toward Waycross. “Tell you what, brother-in-law. If you’ll polish that car of mine like you did, say, once every five years, I’ll make sure your sister doesn’t rat you out to Gran for anything. You can run amuck for all I care and Gran’ll never be the wiser.”

  “And I’ll never be the sorrier?”

  “You got it. Deal?”

  Waycross laughed. “That’s a bargain and a half!” He reached over and patted Tammy’s hand. “Tell ’em what you came up with, darlin’, while they were upstairs snoozin’ to beat the band.”

  Seemingly from nowhere, Tammy produced her electronic tablet and turned it on.

  “Did you already run down that list of phone numbers for me?” Dirk asked.

  “Oh, I did better than that. I used the info on that list and hacked his account. I’ve got his calls and texts from months back.”

  “Don’t y’all need some sort of subpoena for that kinda thing?” Waycross wanted to know.

  “It’s the victim’s records,” Tammy told him. “Who would we subpoena?”

  Savannah cleared her throat. “You only need a subpoena if you’re a cop.”

  “Let’s get real here,” Dirk said. “You only need a subpoena if you get caught.” He took a swig from his cowboy mug. “Or if you intend to use anything you found out in a court of law.”

  Savannah nodded. “And all we’re doing right now is sticking our noses in the air and seeing if we can catch a scent. How else are we gonna figure out which path to go down first?”

  Waycross slathered an obscene amount of butter on a biscuit, while Miss Health Nut Tammy pretended not to notice or disapprove. “Don’t pay me no never mind. I was just wondering about your methods, not questioning your ethics. I’m sure whatever y’all do, it’s on the up and up.”

  The other three at the table shot each other guilty little looks, before returning their attention to the morning refreshments.

  “And what did you find out,” Dirk asked, “while you were doing all this high-minded, totally ethical hacking and snooping?”

  “I found out that Jason Tyrone didn’t have any family to speak of. And for a guy the whole world supposedly loves, you’d be surprised how few friends he had. Or at least, if he did have friends, he didn’t communicate with them on the phone.”

  “Maybe he was just a busy guy who didn’t like to chat or text,” Savannah suggested.

  “Oh, he made calls. Lots of them,” Tammy told her. “Calls to his agent. Calls to his manager. Calls to the producer and writers of the movie.”

  “That’s understandable,” Dirk said, “for a guy who’s in the middle of making a movie.”

  Tammy nodded. “Exactly. Nothing sinister or unusual there.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Savannah began. “I appreciate this gorgeous breakfast and all. But . . .” She lifted her nose and pretended to sniff the air. “. . . I don’t smell a thing amiss. Nothing you’ve told us so far would lead us down any particular path. If we’re gonna get some meaningful work done today, we need to know who to harass first.”

  Tammy’s fingers flew over her tablet’s screen. “If it were me, I’d check out his ex. Here, I made a list of some of the texts that passed back and forth between them this past month. There’s been some very emotional, negative energy in that relationship lately. It’s no wonder they called it quits. Or maybe I should say, ‘Jason called it quits.’ Obviously, Thomas didn’t want it to end.”

  Tammy handed the tablet to Savannah, and she scanned the list while sipping her coffee.

  Just as Tammy had said, many of the texts were less than cordial. While some were nothing more than the usual domestic squabbles about housework responsibilities and who was going to make the next grocery store run, some were downright bitter.

  Three weeks before Jason’s death, Thomas had sent him texts of an accusing nature. Apparently, Thomas believed Jason had been sexually intimate with his leading lady, Alanna Cleary.

  Shortly after that, Thomas’s tone had changed to one of pleading, begging Jason not to end the relationship.

  Savannah handed the tablet to Dirk. “Looks like the gossip rags had it right,” she said. “It seems they did break up over Alanna.”

  Dirk read for a while, then said, “Over Alanna or over Thomas’s jealousy about Alanna. Just because Jason was being accused doesn’t mean he was doing anything wrong.”

  Waycross gave Dirk a hearty nod of agreement. “That’s right, man. Us guys get accused of a lot of malarkey we never did.”

  “And a ton of it that you did but didn’t get caught doing,” Savannah said.

  Tammy snickered. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  Savannah choked on her biscuit. “Of course.”

  Dirk laid down the tablet and picked up his fork. “Thomas did it. All we have to do is prove it.”

  Tammy’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that just a little bit judgmental?”

  “Yeah,” Waycross agreed. “Ain’t you sorta jumpin’ the gun there, good buddy?”

  “Nope. It was Thomas.” Dirk chewed on happily. “It’s always the husband, the wife, the lover, sometimes just the one-night stand. But if somebody winds up dead, it’s almost always somebody they made love to.”

  Tammy and Waycross both turned to Savannah, questioning looks on their faces.

  “What he just said . . . it’s absolutely, positively true,” she told them. “Sad commentary on the human race, huh?”

  Chapter 13

  “Hmmm,” Savannah said, as Dirk drove the newly polished Buick along a scenic, winding road that led deeper and deeper into a magnificent piece of country property that now belonged to Thomas Owen. “This is a nice little breakup gift, if ever I saw one.”

  “No kidding,” Dirk replied. “Either Jason Tyrone must’ve been really, really rich, or he felt really,
really guilty for calling it off.”

  “Probably both. This little bit of real estate must have set him back millions.” She reached over and gave his thigh a little squeeze. “If you and I ever wind up calling it quits, don’t expect a severance package like this one from me.”

  He gave her a look of alarm. “Hey, don’t even kid about a thing like that. There ain’t gonna be no severance. This here’s a life sentence.”

  She smiled at him sweetly. “I agree, no divorce. Homicide, on the other hand, is a possibility if you don’t stop spittin’ toothpaste all over my bathroom mirror. But no divorce.”

  He looked so relieved that she felt guilty for having made the joke at all. And she vowed to herself never again to be flippant about a topic that would cause her husband such consternation.

  She also reminded herself that although she had never suffered through the miseries of a divorce, Dirk had. His first wife, Polly, had run away with a much younger rock guitarist. Savannah wasn’t sure which had upset Dirk the most—the kid’s youth, or the fact that the rocker had sported at least ten times the amount of hair as Dirk.

  They drove over a beautiful rock bridge that crossed a bubbling creek. As the stream flowed along on its rocky bed and disappeared in the distance into a grove of giant oak trees, it made a lovely, soothing sound.

  Savannah wished she could somehow reproduce that sound in her bedroom at night. Going to sleep would be no problem when lulled by the music of nature.

  To their left was an orange grove. The scent of the ripening fruit mingled with the perfume of the white, starry blossoms, lending the air a fragrance that was as beautiful as the perfect rows of trees themselves.

  To the right grew an avocado orchard, its trees much larger and foliage far darker than that of the oranges. Avocados hung on the thick, sturdy limbs in profusion. Apparently, this year it had been a bumper crop.

  “You’d think the income from a ranch like this,” Savannah said, “would keep old Owen in the manner to which he had become accustomed.”