And the Killer Is . . .

by G. A. McKevett

  Savannah suspected that Dirk was holding back in his efforts, treating his suspect far more gently than he would have a male perp whose child wasn’t nearby.

  She had seen him take a gentler approach before when there were youngsters present. His generosity was often to his detriment.

  “Gentle” wasn’t going to cut it with this gal.

  She had elbowed one of the uniforms in the face. Hard. He was kneeling beside her, holding his hand over his right eye, rocking back and forth and moaning something about how he was “never gonna see again.”

  In her spare time, Ms. Greyson had managed to kick Jake squarely in the solar plexus. He was lying on his side in the road next to the curb, gasping like a salmon who had managed to swim the entire journey upstream to the spawning ground, only to be grabbed by a famished grizzly bear, intent on having him for lunch.

  But worst of all, their would-be captive had a handful of Dirk’s hair and was pulling it as hard as she could—a particularly egregious thing to do to a fellow who literally counted his front top hairs every morning to see if he’d lost any and how many.

  Savannah debated whether to join them, to see if she could add anything worthwhile to the mix. But she didn’t want to turn Brody loose, for fear of what he might do. The last thing she needed was to have to chase a frisky, frightened, angry child through a shady neighborhood with miscreants galore.

  When Savannah saw one of the uniforms reaching down to his utility belt to retrieve his Taser, she knew it was time to get Brody out of the area. At any moment, his mother, who had graduated from slapping and kicking to clawing and biting, was likely to be flopping around in a manner that no child should witness.

  Savannah glanced over at the house and saw that several faces were peeking from between drawn curtains at the windows, but no one appeared overly eager to rush outside and rescue their most recent customer.

  Savannah had a feeling, based on experience, that the plumbing inside that building was being taxed at that moment by the number of drugs being flushed through its pipes.

  Considering the quantity of pills and paraphernalia that had spilled out of Brody’s mom’s backpack, and since she hadn’t been carrying the bag when she’d entered, Savannah knew that Dirk would have ample cause to, at the very least, knock on the door and have a serious conversation with the inhabitants before the evening was over.

  He was going to have a busy night.

  Not to mention the time and effort he would expend booking the reluctant Ms. Greyson.

  It would be hours before Dirk would be coming home and seconds before Brody’s mom was going to be zapped. Savannah decided it was the perfect time to leave.

  “Come along, darlin’,” she told Brody, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him back to the car. “We’ve got better things to do and nicer places to be than hanging around this mess.”

  “But, my momma . . .”

  “I wouldn’t fret about her none.” Savannah glanced back just in time to see the woman on the ground kick the Taser gun so hard that it flew out of the cop’s hand and hit Jake in the head, adding to his already considerable agony—and fury. “I think that little momma of yours can take care of herself just fine.”

  Once again, Savannah shoved him into Dirk’s immaculate backseat and instructed him to buckle his seat belt.

  She could tell by the awkwardness of his movements as he did so that he wasn’t accustomed to even this, the simplest of safety practices.

  She added that fact to the growing list in her head of serious reasons Ms. Greyson could be considered, at the very least, an inadequate parent.

  Savannah and Brody were in the Buick and a block away when they heard a series of yelping shrieks that reminded Savannah of how her cat, Diamante, had reacted years ago when getting her tail caught beneath the back-porch rocking chair.

  She looked in the rearview mirror at her passenger to see how alarmed the boy might be at knowing his mother was having a serious and personal encounter with a Taser.

  To her surprise, he looked quite resigned to the fact. His voice was even calm when he said, “Guess she done made her decision, like you said, to sink or swim. When it comes to my momma, you can pretty much figure on her sinkin’ ever’ time. That’s just how she rolls.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “I wish I could say different, but . . .”

  “I hear ya, sugar.” She locked eyes with him in the mirror and gave him a weak smile. “Try not to feel too bad about it. She’s not all that different from a lot of folks I’ve known in my day.”

  To her surprise, he smiled back—a mischievous little grin. “I’m feelin’ okay. But if that’s true, you must’ve had a pretty crummy life.”

  “You have no idea, puddin’ head. Like we say in Georgia, it’s been a tough row to hoe, and it’s not showing any signs of letting up.”

  Chapter 3

  “Wow! You live here? You must be rich!” Brody Greyson exclaimed when Savannah pulled her husband’s Buick into the driveway of their small Spanish-style house with its white stucco walls and red-tiled roof.

  She glanced around at the somewhat middle-to-lower-income neighborhood and wondered how bad Brody’s home must be for him to be so impressed with hers.

  “Rich?” she said, shaking her head. “Not so’s you’d notice it, kiddo. My husband being a cop and me a private detective who’s out of work most days, we do well to make ends meet somewhere in the middle.”

  Her denial did little to dampen the boy’s enthusiasm as he pressed his face to the window, taking in every detail of the yard.

  “But y’all got grass and flowers and stuff, and your house is white and clean as a hound’s tooth.”

  Savannah chuckled, enjoying a bit of nostalgia at hearing the child’s accent and terminology. Despite his scrape with Dirk and some of his too-adult language, the kid was positively oozing with charm, and his southern drawl was a bit of pecan and coconut frosting on the German chocolate cupcake.

  Slowly, carefully she parked the Buick—heaven forbid she should get a scratch on that virgin paint!—next to Granny Reid’s old Mercury panel truck. Until that moment, she had forgotten that her grandmother had asked permission to drop by this evening and use her kitchen to bake a coconut cake for the church picnic raffle.

  Granny had never complained about living in the old mobile home that had once been Dirk’s. Before moving in, she had tossed out his “furniture,” which consisted of a school bus seat “sofa,” TV tray “end tables,” and “storage” units made of stacked plastic milk crates. Then she had set about decorating in earnest, adding enough floral fabrics, ruffles, and lace doilies to make her “castle” her own.

  When Gran woke at dawn every morning, the first thing she did, even before having coffee, was say a prayer of thanksgiving that she now lived among the palm trees in a seaside town in California. It had been a lifelong dream of hers, to live by an ocean with a palm tree in sight, and she never got over the wonder of it all....

  Until it came time to bake something.

  “That blamed trailer oven’s got a lot of gall even claimin’ to be one,” she had told Savannah. “You can’t put a mite-sized pan of brownies in that dinky thing, let alone one of my triple-layer coconut cakes. Mind if I come swing by and bake it in yours?” she had asked.

  Since her grandmother was one of Savannah’s favorite people on earth, she had quickly given her permission.

  “Speaking of hounds’ teeth,” Savannah said as she turned off the car’s ignition, “you’re about to meet an honest-to-goodness hound dog by the name of Colonel Beauregard the third. But we just call him ‘the Colonel.’”

  “What kinda hound is he? There’s all kinds, you know,” Brody shot back with great authority. “Redbones and blue-ticks and basset hounds and beagles, too.”

  “Hey, you know a lot about hounds.”

  “I know a lot about dogs. I like dogs. Cats too. It’s just people I don’t like.”

  She chuckled as she got out of the car, opene
d his door, and helped him unbuckle his seat belt. “I can’t argue with you there, kiddo,” she told him. “I’m a bit partial to folks who wear fur coats and walk on four feet, like my two cats, Diamante and Cleopatra, and my granny’s dog, the Colonel. He’s an honest-to-goodness bloodhound.”

  “Really? Like they have in the movies that go chasin’ people through swamps and stuff?”

  “Sure as shootin’!”

  “With long, floppy ears and one of them wrinkly faces?”

  “Yes, and he can howl loud and long enough to curdle milk and send shivers up and down your spine.”

  Together, they walked up the sidewalk to the house. Savannah was surprised and pleased when he slipped his hand into hers. He seemed quite a different child from the one who had been pummeling her husband such a short time ago.

  As they stepped onto the front porch, she noticed that he was particularly interested in the giant bougainvillea vines that grew from two large clay pots on either side of the door.

  “How did you get them flowers to do that?” he asked, pointing to where they intertwined in a glorious crimson arch above the doorway.

  “I planted them, and they grew. That twisting themselves together business—they just sort of did that on their own,” she told him. “That’s why I named them Bogey and Ilsa.”

  He gave her a look of total confusion.

  Chuckling, she said, “Maybe someday, you’ll watch a fine old movie named Casablanca and then you’ll understand.”

  After thinking that over for a moment, he scowled, shook his head, and said, “Naw, I don’t think so. If it’s about plants getting tangled up together, it’s probably a mushy movie. I ain’t big on them.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you are.” She unlocked the door and ushered him inside. “At your age, I reckon it’s ugly monsters out to destroy the world and superheroes trying to stop them.”

  “Well, yeah. Duh.”

  Once inside the foyer, she called out, “Gran! I’m home, and I brought company.”

  “Hey, darlin’! In the kitchen. I’ll be out in a minute,” was the cheerful reply from the rear of the house.

  Still standing in the foyer, next to the coat closet door, Savannah hesitated a moment, then said to Brody, “You go on into the living room, while I put away my purse,” she said. “Look around and see if you can find a black cat or two.”

  “You’ve got lotsa pets! You’re lucky!”

  “I certainly am,” Savannah said as she watched the child scurry into the living room, in search of furry faces.

  Once he was out of sight, she opened the closet door, shoved some coats aside, and punched in the number combination on the small wall safe’s pad. With one more glance over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t watching, she opened the door, removed her Beretta pistol from her purse, and put it inside the safe.

  In the olden days, when it had just been her living in the house and with only a few adult visitors, Savannah had simply placed her weapon on the closet’s top shelf, far back in the corner. But her quiet little house had become far busier in the past few years, and children had been added to the mix. With two firearms in the family, she and Dirk had decided to install a safe and use it faithfully.

  With a child like Brody visiting, she was glad they had done so.

  Both she and Dirk had witnessed the tragic aftereffects of careless, unsafe gun storage practices.

  With so much at stake, there was no point in taking chances.

  Her weapon locked away and her purse on the top shelf, she closed the closet door and walked into the living room.

  Not for the first time, she was surprised when she saw what Brody was doing. He had found one of her two black mini-panthers lying on the windowsill cat perch. The cat was soaking up the last bit of afternoon sun as the boy leaned over her, scratching behind her right ear, whispering sweet nothings to her.

  Savannah was shocked to realize it was Diamante, the less friendly, far more aloof of the two sister kitties.

  Strangers simply did not pet Diamante. It was unthinkable. She just didn’t allow such things.

  Cleopatra was affectionate to a fault, usually making a nuisance of herself by begging for pets, belly rubs, and ear scratches.

  Diamante, on the other hand, deigned to allow Savannah, and only Savannah, to pet her. When absolutely necessary. For short periods of time. If she was in the mood.

  This new turn of events was even more miraculous because Diamante had an ear infection and, as a result, was even grumpier than usual.

  “Oh, watch out!” Savannah warned him, rushing to the window perch, ready to rescue her juvenile guest, if necessary. “Her ear’s been bothering her lately, so she’s not—”

  “I know, I know,” he said calmly, still stroking the cat. “But the right one’s the sore one. That’s why I’m just touching the other one.”

  Once again, Savannah was surprised. “How did you know that?”

  “When I walked in, she was scratching the right one. Then she shook her head hard, like they do when they’ve got a bum ear.”

  He bent down and peered into the ear in question. “I don’t see no mites. That ain’t the problem.”

  “No. It isn’t mites. The vet decided she had an allergic reaction to some new food I bought them at—”

  “A food they never ate before?”

  “Yes. I had a coupon and—”

  “Yeah. Food allergy. That’s what I woulda said, too. No mites and both ears are nice and clean. A change of food . . . that could do it.”

  Savannah could barely suppress a snicker at his somber little face and oh-so-grave tone. A prestigious cardio surgeon couldn’t have been more serious or confident when diagnosing a complex artery disease.

  “Did your vet give you some stuff to smear inside there?” he asked.

  “Um, yes, as a matter of fact. An antibiotic cream. But she—”

  “Hates it. Yeah, I know, and you probably have to put it in there a couple times a day.”

  “Yes. Twice.”

  “Next time she needs it, you just tell me, and I’ll do it for ya, okay? I’m real good at it.”

  “No way! She’d claw your eyes out.” Savannah reached down and pulled up one sleeve to reveal fresh scratch marks on her arm. “This is what I wound up with, and that was just because she saw the tube in my hand.”

  “Then I won’t let her see the tube. I got a system. Really.”

  “Who’s your new friend, Savannah girl?”

  Savannah turned to see her grandmother standing behind her. She was wearing an old-fashioned apron over her bright tropical-print caftan. Her cloud of soft silver hair was tied back from her face with an equally colorful scarf, twisted into a headband.

  A smudge of flour on her nose and a dusting across her cheeks suggested she had been cooking—along with the amazing aroma of fresh-baked goods scenting the air.

  Her bright blue eyes sparkled with good-natured humor as she smiled at the boy and held out her hand. “I’m Stella Reid, but everybody I know calls me Granny, so you might as well, too,” she told him.

  The child accepted her hand and gave it a hearty shake. “I’m Mister Brody Greyson. Glad to make your acquaintance, Miz Reid,” he replied with all the mannered graciousness of a well-bred southern gentleman.

  “And yours, young man,” Granny replied. Turning to Savannah, she said, “He’s a real whiz with cats, it ’pears. Could’ve saved you a vet bill, if only you’d known.”

  Again, Savannah watched as Granny’s sharp eyes swept over the boy, from head to toe. This time, Savannah could tell she was noting his soiled, worn, inadequate clothes. It took more than a pair of shorts and flip-flops to keep a child warm on a cool beach day. Then there were the unattended scrapes and cuts, not to mention the lack of basic sanitation.

  Savannah watched her grandmother’s smile fade into something more akin to sadness, tinged with anger. Gran harbored strong feelings for innocent children who were neglected—and toward those who shoul
d have been caring for them.

  “How do you know so much about animals and their ailments?” Savannah asked Brody, as he continued his ear rubbing on the purring and highly contented Diamante.

  “One of my friends is a vet. She helps me with my animals,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  “I thought you said you didn’t have any pets.”

  “I don’t have pets. But I take care of the cats and dogs out in the alley behind a motel we stay at when we’ve got the money. If they’re hurt, I take ’em to Dr. Carolyn, and she fixes ’em up for me. I pay her back by helpin’ her there at her clinic. I clean up after the animals and sometimes I help her hold them still while she works on ’em.”

  “No wonder you know so much about ear infections and the like.”

  “Yeah. I told her I’m gonna be a vet, too, when I grow up, so she’s givin’ me a head start.”

  “She sounds like a fine person,” Granny said, “as are you, for helpin’ out them poor alley cats and stray dogs.”

  Brody shrugged his bony shoulders. “It ain’t as good as havin’ pets of your own, but we can’t.”

  “Why’s that?” Granny asked.

  “’Cause sometimes, when my momma can’t pay the motel, we get kicked outta our room on our ears. Then we gotta sleep in our car on the beach. Can’t have your own honest-to-goodness pets with that happenin’ all the time.”

  “No, I reckon not,” Granny said. “Animals need stability. Children too,” she added softly.

  Instantly, Brody bristled. “My momma ain’t bad. She does the best she can!”

  “I’ve no doubt that she does, son,” Granny replied. Looking down at his skinned knees, she added, “But once in a while, life gets extra hard and folks need a helpin’ hand.”

  A hard, cold look came over his otherwise sweet face. It occurred to Savannah that it was an expression seldom seen on one so young and usually observed on street-hardened criminals.

  The thought also crossed her mind that, unless someone intervened soon, this boy, whose heart was tender toward animals and who wanted to be a veterinarian when he grew up, would probably never fulfill his dream. Unless his present path was drastically altered, he would probably be wearing that bitter expression behind bars.