She had lived in this area long enough to know that wildfires were simply nature’s way of cleaning house. The overgrown brush would burn, the ashes would fertilize the ground, and new growth would spring up in its place.
But nature could be cruel, clearing the land of both vegetation, man, and beast with no conscience and no regret.
Savannah turned left onto the secondary road, with its cracks and potholes, that led away from the major highway and deep into the hills.
She passed numerous fine homes and even a few mansions—all of which the flames had narrowly missed—as she noted the address numbers on mailboxes and gates. Finally, she saw the number 660.
As she had been instructed to do when she had called to make the appointment, Savannah stopped at the security gate and pushed the red button on the entry panel.
A moment later, a soft, feminine voice, which Savannah recognized as Alanna’s, spoke through the speaker mounted above the panel. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Ms. Cleary, Savannah Reid,” she said.
“Yes, Savannah, come on in,” was the reply.
A buzzer sounded, and the tall, broad iron gates swung open.
Savannah wasted no time going through. She never entered a set of security gates without entertaining at least a fleeting fantasy of them snapping closed too quickly and scrunching the Red Pony flat with her trapped inside it.
And she never entertained that fantasy without cursing herself for having an overly vivid, more-than-a-little-bit paranoid imagination.
She drove down a somewhat long driveway until she saw, nestled among some orange and lemon trees, a surprisingly modest home.
It was a simple, Cape Cod–style place. Its one beauty was the large porch that appeared to wrap all the way around the house. And on the porch, sitting in an oversized wicker rocking chair was the beautiful red-haired actress herself.
As Savannah parked the Mustang and got out of the car, Alanna left the porch and walked down the cobblestone sidewalk to greet her.
She was wearing a simple white camisole and a long, gauzy, aqua skirt that swept her bare feet when she moved. Her famous auburn locks hung loosely around her shoulders, and her only adornment was the pair of oversized gold hoops in her ears.
Although her clothing could be considered beach attire, she looked so elegant that Savannah felt dowdy and underdressed in her simple linen blazer, slacks, and cotton shirt.
But Alanna’s warm smile quickly put her at ease, as she extended her hand and said, “Savannah, how nice to see you again.”
Her handshake was pleasantly firm—the sign of an open and confident woman. And Savannah decided she liked her already.
“I’m surprised you remember me,” Savannah said. “You had so much going on, so many people around you, at the premiere the other night.”
She didn’t mention the funeral. She’d have to bring up painful topics too soon anyway.
Alanna turned toward the porch and waved a hand in the direction of the rocking chair she had just been sitting in and a matching one beside it. “Come have a seat. I’ll get you something to drink, and you can tell me why you came to visit me today. I have a feeling it’s important, or you wouldn’t have driven all the way down here.”
“Yes, I’m afraid it is. And don’t worry about the beverage. I’ve got out-of-state company at home, so I don’t really have time to visit very long. I just have a couple of quick questions.”
Savannah sat in one of the rockers, and just for a moment, she allowed herself to enjoy the setting. The landscaping around Alanna’s home was lush and tropical, with many different types of palm trees, hibiscus, and even a few purple and blue hydrangeas, which made Savannah feel quite at home.
“My granny would go crazy over your yard,” Savannah told Alanna, who settled into the other chair and tucked her bare feet under her. “She just loves her hydrangeas. She calls her white ones ‘snowballs.’ ”
“Where are you from, Savannah? Alabama? Mississippi?”
“A little town called McGill in Georgia.”
Alanna chuckled. “Savannah. Georgia. Of course. I didn’t think that one through. But I knew it was somewhere in the South. I love your accent. I had to do a Southern Gothic movie one time, and no matter how much coaching I had, I couldn’t quite nail it.”
“Reckon you have to be born to it. Are you a California girl, as the Beach Boys say?”
“Born and bred in Oxnard.”
Savannah ran her fingertips over the woven wicker on the chair’s armrest, took a deep breath, and said, “Alanna, we have a serious situation on our hands.”
“Yes, I gathered as much. How can I help?”
“I have to ask you a couple of really personal questions. You can help by being completely honest with me. Believe me, I’m not trying to pry into your life. I’m sure you get enough of that already, being a celebrity and all.”
“Yes, I do. But I understand that you’re just doing your job. And I trust you. Ask whatever you need to.”
“Okay, thank you.” Savannah turned in her chair so that she could look directly into those world-famous green eyes. “I’ve heard rumors that you and Jason were romantically involved. In fact, if you believe the tabloids—and I don’t—you were the reason he and Thomas ended their relationship. Is there any truth to those stories?”
Alanna toyed with a lock of her long, red hair a moment before replying. “I’d have to say that’s a bit of a ‘yes’ and a ‘no.’ ”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to clarify what you mean by that.”
“Did Jason and I have a sexual relationship? No. The only time we kissed or touched each other was what you saw right there on the screen.” She hesitated. “But did we have a romantic relationship? That’s a bit harder to answer.”
She looked down and ran her finger along some of the tiny beads on her skirt. “It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t an actor, but working on a film is an intense experience. The stress of it all heightens one’s emotions. I find that I have very strong feelings about the individuals I work with on a set. I either loathe them or draw very close to them. There’s not a lot of middle ground.”
Savannah nodded, thinking it was very similar for police officers. When she had been on the job, she had bonded with some of her fellow cops, and the rest she avoided like roadkill skunks.
“That makes sense,” she said. “Did you love or loathe Jason?”
“Oh, I loved him. I adored him. He was one of the dearest people I’ve ever met in my life. And I’ll miss him until the day I die. But I knew he had no interest in me, at least not as a lover. And it’s a real shame that those closest to us couldn’t see that.”
“Those closest to you? And who was that?”
“Jason’s partner, Thomas. And my boyfriend, Mick. They both thought that something was going on between me and Jason. And that’s a shame, because it ruined two relationships.”
Instantly, Savannah’s antennae rose. “So the tabloids were right? That was the reason Jason and Thomas called it quits?”
A flash of anger crossed Alanna’s face, and it occurred to Savannah that Alanna Cleary could go from “gentle” to “riled” in a heartbeat—mellow, California girl or not.
“Before we go any further,” the actress said, “I just want to make something perfectly clear. I did not cause Jason and Thomas to break up. Thomas’s insane jealousy is the reason Jason had to end their relationship. Thomas has some major trust issues, and he made Jason miserable by spying on him constantly, accusing him of being sexual with everyone around him—male and female.”
“To your knowledge, did Thomas abuse Jason?”
“I don’t know if he was ever violent with Jason, but he most certainly abused him verbally. I witnessed it myself several times, and I have to tell you, it broke my heart. I don’t blame Jason for dumping him. I would have, too, in a heartbeat. No one should have to put up with that crap.”
“Amen to that, sister.” Savannah thought she se
nsed an anger in Alanna that seemed to be coming from a more personal source. “Did you ever find yourself in that position, Alanna?”
“Yes, I certainly did. And that’s why my ex-boyfriend, Mick, is now touring Europe by himself. One night when we were in the middle of filming Thomas called here looking for Jason. Mick answered the phone, and that stupid, drunken Thomas told him that Jason and I were having a wild, passionate love affair. Mick believed him, not me. And while I might have forgiven Mick for that, under the circumstances, I’ll never forgive him for the way he spoke to me when he confronted me about it. I don’t put up with that kind of disrespect.”
Savannah gave her a grim smile. “Good for you, girl. I wish more women felt that way. There’d be a lot less sorrow in the world—for them and for their kids.”
“Thank you. Something tells me you don’t put up with a lot of crap yourself, Savannah from McGill, Georgia.”
“I don’t have to. I’ve got a good guy at home. And if he wasn’t a good one, he’d be out the door.”
“Maybe I’ll find myself one of those good guys someday.”
“You will. They’re everywhere. You just have to toss all the jackasses aside to get to ’em. And speaking of jackasses, tell me a little more about Mick. You say he’s in Europe now. How long has he been there?”
“Six weeks.”
Savannah did some quick math in her head and realized that not only was Mick out of the country the night Jason died, but he had left the continent two weeks before the prescription on that box of patches had been filled.
Like many of the roads she had traveled in this case, Mick was a dead end. And apparently so was this interview.
“Alanna, this has been lovely—our little chat and getting to know you better. But I’ve got to get going.” She stood and tucked her purse under her arm.
Alanna Cleary unfolded her long legs and rose from her chair. She reached over and laid her hand on Savannah’s shoulder and looked intently into Savannah’s eyes. “I was honest with you,” she said. “Now I want you to return the favor. Okay?”
“Fair enough. What do you want to know?”
“Did somebody kill Jason? Is that why you’re here questioning me?”
Savannah met her gaze, straight on. “Jason was murdered. And, yes, that’s why I’m here.”
Tears filled the actress’s eyes. “I knew it. I felt it in my heart.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she choked. When she recovered herself, she whispered, “Oh, God, that makes losing him so much worse.”
Savannah reached for her hand and gently squeezed it. “Alanna, think hard. . . . Do you have any idea who might’ve done it?”
“No. I can’t stand Thomas, and I think he’s a creep. But I can’t picture him or anybody else killing someone as special and wonderful as Jason. It’s just unimaginable.”
Savannah left Alanna standing, brokenhearted, on her walkway and got back into her car.
And as she drove through the charred hills on her way back to the Pacific Coast Highway and the sparkling beaches of Malibu, she had to admit that she, too, found the thought of anyone murdering Jason unthinkable.
She also had to admit that she knew no more now than she had before she had made this trek.
And she certainly wasn’t looking forward to telling Dirk.
Dirk took the news better than Savannah had expected. In fact, he’d been so blasé about the whole thing that she had to resist the urge to put her hand on his forehead and see if he had a fever.
She and Dirk and his parents were sitting in her backyard, beneath the wisteria arbor, sipping cold lemonade, when she had delivered her depressing news. But during her entire Alanna Cleary debriefing, Dirk had hardly seemed to hear half of what she was saying.
“Where do you think we should go from here?” she asked him.
When he didn’t respond, Richard piped up, “Sounds to me like you need to have another talk with that ex-boyfriend. When it comes to murder, you know it’s almost always the significant other.”
Savannah chuckled dryly. “In Seattle too, huh?”
Richard gave her a nice smile and a wink that reminded her so much of Dirk. “In Seattle, in San Carmelita, and in Timbuktu, I’m afraid.”
“We had a girl get killed by her boyfriend right on our block,” Dora began. “She’d called the cops on him a hundred times or more.” She turned to Richard. “Hadn’t she, honey? You answered some of those calls yourself. Don’t you remember? I think it was back about ten years ago, or was it twelve? I think it was twelve. No, it was ten, because that was when you were working out of . . .”
Savannah glanced over at Dirk and saw that, yes, his fuses were fried. No doubt about it. Any minute now he was just going to keel over dead from acute boredom, and what would she say to Dr. Liu? “You can’t understand, doc, unless you’d actually spent ten minutes with the woman. She’s lethal. Really.”
This was a Code 3 emergency call. Savannah had to rescue her husband. It might already be too late.
She noticed that both Richard and Dora were sweating profusely, even in the shade of the arbor. Long-sleeved, flannel shirts might be the perfect attire for the cool, damp clime of Seattle. But they were highly inappropriate for a summer day in sunny California.
“Is that there all the clothes y’all brought?” she asked, abruptly interrupting Dora.
Dora prattled on about her abused neighbor and assorted tangent topics, but Richard replied, “Yes, I’m afraid so. What you’ve heard about Seattleites is pretty much true. Our favorite color is plaid and we love our flannel.”
“I love flannel, too. But not here and not in the summer.” Savannah forced a bright smile onto her face—the sort of saintly countenance she imagined the martyrs had worn as they’d been tied to the stake. “Tell you what,” she heard herself saying, “why don’t you boys go interview Thomas again, while us girls go shopping for some California-style outfits?”
Dirk’s mouth dropped open, and he stared at her—at first with amazement, then with utter love and gratitude shining in his eyes. “Really?” he said. “Really, Van? You’d do that?”
“Sure,” she replied, before he said something he might regret. “It’d give us girls some bonding time, and who knows, Papa Richard here might put the fear of God in Thomas, and y’all might wrestle a confession outta him, right there on the spot.”
Dirk gave her a smile that made her melt and mouthed the words “I love you.”
She winked and held up two fingers—their unspoken gesture for “I love you, too.”
But this time, what she was thinking was . . . Boy, oh, boy, you owe me a five-pound box of Godiva truffles.
As Savannah drove the Mustang down Lester Street, heading toward the mall, it occurred to her that if she were going to actually follow any of her mother-in-law’s stories, she would need a flow chart.
Between all the subplots, the backtracking, the overlapping, and the frequent retractions, it was impossible for a mere mortal to truly keep track of a Dora story, no matter how hard they tried.
“And that’s how we met, Dick and me, there at the junior high prom,” she jabbered along happily. “Did I tell you that everybody used to call him Dick back when he was a kid? It was only after we got married that he started going by Richard. Or was it before we got married? Hmmm. I’m not sure. I know it was when LBJ was president because—Hey!”
She shouted so loudly that Savannah jumped and nearly lost control of the car as she was pulling into the mall parking lot. “What?” Savannah shouted back. “What’s wrong?”
“Where are you taking me?”
Savannah glanced up and down the long line of stores, flanked on the ends by a Sears and a Macy’s, then up at the enormous sign hanging practically over their heads, that said SAN CARMELITA MALL.
“Um . . . the mall? We’re going shopping, right?”
“Yes, but who goes shopping at a mall?”
Savannah looked around at the hundreds of cars parked in the lot and th
e hordes of shoppers going in and out, carrying bags and boxes filled with their purchases.
At least a dozen smart-aleck replies rushed to her lips, but she swallowed them all.
“I’m sorry, Dora. Where would you like to shop? We have a Kmart and a Target, but if you’d prefer to go to Walmart, we could drive to Oxnard.”
Dora lifted her chin a couple of notches and gave Savannah a haughty, disapproving look. “Don’t tell me that you throw my son’s money away shopping in those stores.”
Savannah brought the Mustang to a screeching stop in the middle of the parking lot, turned to her mother-in-law, and said through gritted teeth, “No, I spend my own money in stores when I need to buy something. But if you would rather go somewhere other than this mall, I’d be more than happy to take you there.”
“Good. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s how to survive on a cop’s salary. And you’d better learn to, or you’ll be living in the poor house.”
Savannah reached over, grabbed her mother-in-law by the throat, and strangled her until she was absolutely certain she was dead. Then she drove to the swamps and fed her body to the gators.
But, of course, that was only in her fantasies.
In reality, she bit her tongue bloody and said in a voice that was so patient and kind, she was certain she deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, “Dora, where would you like me to take you? Please just tell me. Now.”
Dora thought it over. “Well, it’s too late to take in any garage sales. All the good stuff will be long gone by now. You have any good flea markets?”
“We have markets, and we have sand fleas galore. But no flea markets. Sorry. Your next choice?”
“Do you have thrift stores?”
“I reckon we do. Somewhere.”
“Somewhere? You mean you don’t even know where your thrift stores are?”
Savannah took off, squealing the Mustang’s tires so badly that, if she had still been a cop, she would’ve given herself a ticket.
“You know that kind of driving eats up a lot of gas,” Dora told her as she reached out and clutched the dash for dear life. “And you shouldn’t have a car like this anyway. These muscle cars cost a fortune to run. Why, my cousin had one of these back in ’69 or was it ’68? I think it was ’69 because that’s the year that my sister got in trouble for—”
Killer Physique Page 21
