Killer Physique

by G. A. McKevett

  “You should have some of this ham,” Dora said, helping herself to another large slice. “I’ve never eaten anything like this before. And Savannah made us something called red eye gravy. Have you ever had that?”

  Tammy wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you.”

  “Tamitha doesn’t poison her body with my cooking,” Savannah informed her guests. “And that’s probably why she can run to work and back every day, not to mention the frequent 10Ks and the occasional marathon.”

  Dirk grunted. “Yeah, but every time the Santa Ana winds start to howl, we have to stake her to the ground or she’ll blow away.”

  Waycross stuck his curly red head around the corner, next to Tammy’s. “If the fur’s done flyin’, and y’all are about done with stuffin’ your faces, you might wanna hear some of the good gossip we dug up.”

  Richard stood, picked up his plate and Dora’s, and headed for the kitchen sink. “Come right in,” he said. “Juicy case gossip trumps food any day—even when it’s as good as our Savannah’s.”

  Three minutes later, the table had been cleared of all edibles and dishes, and only the coffee mugs remained. Tammy sat at the end of the table, her electronic tablet in her hand. But knowing her boss’s propensity for living in the Dark Ages, she had printed everything out on paper and had passed the sheets around to everyone present.

  “Your Honor,” Tammy said, with an exaggerated head nod to Savannah, “I would like to present Exhibit Number One. These are the printouts of Thomas Owen’s mean and nasty texts to Jason, referencing all the men and women that Jason was supposedly—” She glanced quickly at Dora and Richard, then to Savannah.

  Without looking up from the paper in her hands, Savannah quickly supplied, “With whom he was supposedly dancing the Grizzly Bear Hump?”

  Richard snickered. “You don’t have to be so delicate. We’re from the Great Pacific Northwest. Between November and March, Dancing the Griz is pretty much our only pastime.”

  Tammy tittered, then returned to the business at hand. “As you can see, Thomas didn’t spare any words, even when he should have. I can’t imagine having somebody I love talk to me like that.”

  Dora had sat still and quiet as long as she could. “I can imagine it. In fact, we had a neighbor that lived two doors down from us whose husband used to yell at her, night and day. I was so glad when they moved out two years ago. Or was it three years ago, Richard? It might have been three, because I think it was around the time that Gertrude next door had her gallbladder taken out. Or was it Gertrude’s husband who—”

  “Let’s get on to Exhibit Number Two, please, Tammy,” Savannah interjected quite loudly. So loudly, in fact, that Dora actually stopped to take a breath and a sip of coffee.

  “Ah, yes,” Tammy said, scanning her tablet’s screen. “Next we have some information about an entirely different part of Jason’s life. We go from his romantic escapades—”

  “Objection.” Savannah held up one hand. “Alleged escapades. Having some abusive s.o.b. accuse you of fooling around doesn’t make it so.”

  “Duly noted.” Tammy pointed to the next printed page in their stack of papers. “I’d like to draw your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to this information gleaned from Mr. Tyrone’s bank statements.”

  Savannah scanned the page but didn’t see anything too alarming. There were no checks written to bookies or drug pushers. No payments to arms dealers or blackmailers. At least none that were obvious.

  “What are we supposed to be looking at here?” Richard asked.

  “The payments to a particular health club where Jason had worked out for years. See those entries I highlighted in yellow? Those are all payments to that gym and his personal trainers there. He laid out thousands and thousands of dollars over the years to that place.”

  “So what?” Dirk shrugged. “Working out was his hobby and his livelihood rolled into one. Of course he would spend a fortune on it. What’s the big deal about that?”

  Tammy gave him a knowing little grin and said, “He stopped.”

  “What do you mean, he stopped?” Savannah asked.

  Waycross leaned over and pointed to a particular area on Savannah’s paper. “See there. Two months ago he just plum stopped going. And if you look right here, at the same time he bought a ton of fancy workout equipment for his house.”

  Suddenly, both Dirk and Savannah were highly interested.

  Intently studying the papers in her hand, Savannah said, “That’s right. We saw a whole personal gym right there in his house. And the stuff looked shiny and new.”

  “Apparently, that’s because it was,” Dirk said.

  Richard laid the paper he was looking at on the table in front of them and poked it with his forefinger. “That’s important, guys,” he said. “For a bodybuilder like Tyrone, his gym of choice and his personal trainers are everything. He wouldn’t leave them and start working out at home for no good reason.”

  Tammy gave them a self-satisfied smile that bordered on annoyingly self-righteous. “That’s what we thought. We figured there must have been a big falling out of some sort.”

  Waycross draped his arm across Tammy’s shoulders and gave her an affectionate little shake. “And that’s when my girl here started checking them out.”

  Savannah couldn’t help registering the “my girl” and feeling good about it. Apparently this Waycross-Tammy connection was official now, and that made Savannah very happy, indeed.

  “That’s good, you checking them out,” Dora said. “People need to check everybody out these days. And you never know what you’ll find. One of our neighbor’s cousin’s friends needed a babysitter for her kids—she had two of them, a girl and a boy, ages seven and five—and she got this teenager who seemed okay at first, but—”

  “What did you find, Tams?” Savannah asked, trying to keep the frantic tone in her voice down to a minimum. “Tell us, quick.”

  “The owner of that gym, where Jason used to go, his name is Fabio Garzone. And he’s got quite a reputation in Hollywood. He’s known as the guy who can transform a Clark Kent, nerdy dude into Superman in a matter of weeks. Apparently, a lot of the major stars go to him before they start filming an action flick, or even a romance, where they’re going to be showing off their killer abs and biceps. He and his trainers make sure that they’ve got some to show.”

  Savannah nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve noticed myself lately that nearly every actor in a starring role is all beefed-up for the screen.”

  Waycross nudged her with his elbow. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you’ve noticed. Your eyeballs are probably sore from gawking at all that beefcake.”

  “I’m not saying they aren’t pretty to look at. But I’m a little worried where it’s all headed.”

  “What do you mean?” Richard asked. “What could be wrong with guys getting as strong and healthy as they can?”

  “If they’re truly strong and healthy, more power to them. But after watching women get more and more paranoid about their weight, feeling terrible about themselves because they’re not super-skinny like the women on screen, I hope our men aren’t headed down the same road.”

  Tammy nodded solemnly. “I heard that young guys are getting eating disorders now, like girls. And this bodybuilding and taking steroids is even popular with the high school kids now.”

  “That’s what I mean. I hope you men don’t fall into the same trap we women are in, risking our health to make ourselves look like society says we should.”

  Dirk looked down at his spare tire. It wasn’t exactly a tractor tire, but it hadn’t been there ten years before. “No danger of that happening around here,” he said. Then he turned back to Tammy. “What else about this Fabio Garzone guy?”

  “He’s just as well known to law enforcement as he is to the rich and famous. Only for different reasons.”

  “Do tell,” Savannah said.

  “He’s got a rap sheet going back to when he was fourteen and helped some other kids rob a pizza delivery gu
y. You’ll find the long, sad list there on the next page.”

  Savannah scanned the paper, reading aloud, “Aggravated assault, second degree robbery, arson, distribution of Class A drugs, conspiracy to commit murder. And he’s been to prison twice. Why is this guy walking the streets?”

  “Other than the two he served time for, the rest of those charges didn’t stick,” Tammy said. “Apparently, the star witnesses at his trials tend to develop memory problems right before they testify.”

  “Oh, I don’t like him one bit,” Savannah said. “And it looks like Jason decided that he didn’t either.”

  Dirk nodded. “When you go from paying somebody tens of thousands of dollars a month for years to zero, I’d say that constitutes a breakup of sorts.”

  He looked across the table at Savannah. “I think we need to go visit Fabio and see if he was as upset about Jason breaking up with him as our old friend Thomas was.”

  He turned to his father. “Wanna come along? Tangle with some musclemen?”

  Richard beamed. “Sure.”

  “And how about you?” Savannah asked Dora. “It’s Hollywood. While we’re in the gym you could stroll up and down Sunset Boulevard and look at all the weirdoes. Maybe see a celebrity or two.”

  Dora thought it over. “Are there any thrift shops in Hollywood?”

  Savannah resisted the urge to roll her eyes and sigh. “It’s a pretty fair-sized town. I reckon we can find you one.”

  Chapter 23

  The first thing Savannah always noticed when she walked into a health club was the smell.

  No matter how much room deodorizer was sprayed into the air or how much disinfectant was squirted on the equipment, it smelled like a high school locker room. It stunk of sweat.

  Although, as she looked around at the magnificent bodies that were producing that sweat, she decided maybe a whiff of BO was a small enough price to pay for the results. Because most of Fabio’s clients were gorgeous.

  But to Savannah, they were more like objets d’art than a objets de lust.

  When it came to cuddling up with a male body in bed, she actually preferred her regular guy, who was masculine and muscular but not bulging to extremes. She wanted to cuddle up to a man she loved and snuggle with him, not feel like she was lying against a pile of rocks.

  However, as she, Dirk, and Richard strolled into Garzone’s Extreme Fitness Center, Savannah could certainly understand the appeal of a place like this.

  The not-so-subtle message was: Walk through our doors, work your ass off, and you can look like the superheroes and super-heroines in the pictures that line the walls.

  The bass from the hard-driving rock music that was piped into the center set the tempo for dozens of hard bodies who were working machines of steel, cables, and springs, running on treadmills, and racing on bikes that went nowhere.

  Others wore headphones and stared at their tablets, opting to live in worlds of their own choosing.

  To their right was a merchandise center, selling tee-shirts, hats, hoodies, and multitudinous other fitness accessories, all with Garzone’s logo—a muscle-bound, fire-breathing dragon. The giant Z in the middle of the name gave the dragon something that looked suspiciously like an oversized phallus.

  No point in being subtle, Savannah thought. Go big or go home.

  To their left was a refreshment bar that, according to the sign on the wall, offered a plethora of protein-enriched delectables.

  The food and drink here also followed the logo’s theme, with names like Fire Eater, Dragon Slayer, and Blood of the Beast.

  Sitting at the snack bar, drinking a perfectly normal, nonflam-ing bottle of beer, was a highly tattooed, swarthy fellow with thick black hair, whom Savannah recognized instantly from the mug shot Tammy had shown them.

  “There he is, guys,” Savannah told Dirk and Richard. “It’s our friend, Fabio, in the buffed-up, tattooed-out flesh.”

  Fabio was having a conversation with an even larger fellow who stood behind the counter, mixing some sort of drink. From the looks on their faces, it was obvious that the conversation they were having wasn’t an especially friendly one. It also looked like the big guy was losing the argument and wasn’t particularly happy about it.

  Dirk walked up to the owner, with Savannah and Richard following close behind. When Fabio noticed their approach, his eyes quickly scanned Dirk from head to toe in a look that Savannah recognized all too well.

  It was the same look that snooty women gave other females upon meeting them. For those who had perfected The Scan, it was a most efficient tool. In less than two seconds you could evaluate your competition, steal some new ideas about nail polish and accessorizing, and make the other woman feel like a country bumpkin wearing a burlap sack—even if they were in Dior.

  Fabio’s head-to-toe appraisal conveyed the male version, which said: You’re a flabby wimp, unlike me, who’s a major stud/tough guy. I can take you in ten seconds, and by the way, I could take your woman, too.

  Dirk got the message and gave him his best You-Wanna-Piece-of-Me? glare. Dirk had perfected that look over the years, practicing it in front of Savannah’s hallway mirror, storefront windows, and occasionally at the breakfast table, where he could see his image in the stainless steel toaster. With all that rehearsal, he was pretty good at it and enjoyed a reputation for striking terror in the hearts of lesser males.

  And, apparently, Fabio Garzone must have been one of those lesser dudes, because he quickly glanced away and returned his attention to his hapless employee. “I mean it, Nico,” he told the guy, who looked like a mob enforcer who ate steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “You put that blender away dirty one more time, and you’ll be polishing every piece of steel in this place.”

  His position as alpha male reestablished, he turned back to Dirk. “Yeah?” he barked. “You need somethin’—like maybe a workout regimen?” He grinned widely, showing less than a full set of yellowed teeth.

  Dirk walked up to him, put one elbow on the bar, and leaned far into his personal space. Pulling out his badge, Dirk shoved it under his nose. “Naw, I don’t need no workout regimen. I get all the exercise I need bustin’ morons who can’t figure out how to stay out of the system.”

  Dirk gave him a grim smile as he stuck his badge back into his pocket. “And speaking of . . . Have you and I ever met? Your face looks familiar. Oh yeah, I recently saw it on a mug shot.”

  Fabio had his poker face firmly in place. But Savannah saw the guy he had called Nico wince and move a couple of steps away, farther down the bar.

  Something told her that Nico’s craggy features might have graced a mug shot or two during his career as a protein shake barista. And he had probably been arrested for a more serious transgression then just putting away a dirty blender.

  “What are you cops doing here?” Fabio said, as he leaned back on his stool, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and Dirk. “I finished my parole with no violations. You got no reason to be harassing me.”

  “Who’s harassing you?” Richard said. “We’re just here to check out your facility.”

  Not wanting the boys to have all the fun, Savannah figuratively stepped into the ring, too. “Yeah, we hear that you’re the trainer to the stars, and I’ve got an audition to play Red Sonja coming up in a week. You got some iron I can pump, some machines I can work?” She narrowed her eyes. “Some illegal steroid cocktails I could take?”

  She nodded toward the big guy behind the counter. “I betcha Nico back there could blend me up a nice concoction of human growth hormone, a diuretic, a laxative, and a big ol’ scoop of that stuff that they feed to race horses to make ’em run fast. I hear that crap’s real popular now, here in y’all’s neck o’ the woods.”

  Fabio gave Savannah one of the up-and-down looks that she loved so much and said, “It’d take way more than a week to get you in Red Sonja shape,” he told her. “It’d take a couple of years, and by then you’d be way too old for the part.”
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br />   Dirk threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Oh, man,” he said, “you are taking your life in your hands saying something like that to her. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

  Savannah took a step closer and locked eyes with Fabio. “That’s okay,” she said with deadly calm. “We’re gonna let that one pass—for now. At the moment we’ve got bigger fish to fry, like that formal complaint that Jason Tyrone was about to file against this place.”

  It was a stab in the dark, of course. They had no solid proof that Jason even had a complaint against Garzone’s Extreme Fitness Center, let alone that he was getting ready to file anything with anyone anywhere.

  But she’d had a hunch, and she was glad she had played it. Because the look on Fabio’s and Nico’s faces said it all. Oh, yes, there had been a feud of some sort between Jason Tyrone and his gym. No doubt about it.

  Fabio’s otherwise swarthy complexion had just faded at least two shades, and Nico looked like he might swoon at any moment, like a Southern belle at a cotillion whose corset was too tight.

  Yes, Savannah was quite sure of one thing.

  That fight of theirs, whatever it had been about—it must have been a doozy.

  Considering how badly the day had begun, Savannah was quickly deciding that it had ended well. Of course, it hadn’t hurt one bit that the whole crew—she and Dirk, Tammy and Waycross, and Dora and Richard—had been wined and dined by Ryan and John at Antoine’s, Savannah’s favorite French restaurant.

  From the first time she had eaten there, Savannah had decided that if she was ever on death row and had to choose a last meal, she would just ask for three courses of Antoine’s Chocolate Soufflé. She was pretty sure that she could then just float straight up and into heaven.

  Yes. Friends, newfound family, and amazing food—life didn’t get much better than that.

  Even Dora had been on her best behavior. She seemed to be putting out an effort to listen, as well as talk. And she’d looked very pretty in the simple black dress she had scored at a Hollywood thrift store that specialized in vintage fashion. It was so nice, in fact, that Savannah was reexamining her stand on mall shopping.