And the Killer Is . . .

by G. A. McKevett

  Brooklynn looked puzzled as she stared down at the card. Finally, she said, “Yeah. Okay. I don’t think I’ll need it.”

  “Just hide it away someplace where nobody but you will see it. Remember it’s there, and don’t be afraid to use it, any time, day or night. Got that?”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  “No, thank you. You have no idea how much help you’ve been,” Dirk said. He looked like he was about to break into song and dance at any moment.

  Savannah decided to get him out of the house before he did.

  Considering the hell the woman was going to catch for what she had done, it just didn’t seem appropriate.

  Chapter 24

  “Lord have mercy! As a fan of romance novels, I’ve read a lot of steamy stuff in my day, but this here plumb takes the cake!” Savannah looked up from the pile of papers on her lap and over at her grandmother, who was sitting on the sofa, the other half of the manuscript on hers. Both wore surgical gloves.

  From the expression on Granny’s face, Savannah could only imagine what Gran’s half of Lucinda Faraday’s tell-all book contained.

  Granny glanced up from her reading, held up a traffic-cop hand, and said, “Sh-h-h. Don’t interrupt me. I just got to the good part. I mean, the bad part.” She reconsidered for a moment. “No, the good part. Oh, mercy, I’m all twitterpated.”

  “I know! Here I thought y’all used to behave yourselves back in the old days. This stuff is worse than we ever—”

  “Hush!”

  Savannah giggled. “Okay. Sorry.”

  If the manuscript had been a published, bound hardcover, she couldn’t have convinced her grandmother to read a sentence of “such filth.” But along with being a modest woman who guarded the sanctity of her eyes, mind, and soul, Granny Reid was a true detective, a card-carrying member of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency.

  When Dirk had left an hour before, his instructions were, “Get that thing read as quick as you can. I gotta know what’s in it and who else Geoffrey Numb-Nuts might be blackmailing.”

  Savannah had made a huge pitcher of sweet tea, piled some cookies on a platter—Reid women needed fuel for their tasks—and she and Gran had settled down, each with a cat cuddled next to them, and applied themselves with a fervor.

  Tammy sat at the rolltop desk in the corner, her daughter asleep in her lap, the computer on and ready to go. Every few minutes, Granny or Savannah would bark out a person, place, or thing for her to research. So far, she had studied the life histories of at least thirteen of Lucinda’s lovers, with whom she had shared from one night up to a year.

  All were well dead and unlikely to care, let alone kill her.

  “Okay, Tams, how about this fella?” Savannah said a few minutes later, having found a story that was darker and more disturbing than the others. “A guy by the name of Jacob Stillman. I gather he was in his early forties in 1948.”

  Tammy turned eagerly to the desk computer. “Then his birth date would have been, let’s say, 1900 to 1910. Got a location? Anywhere he might have lived?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Granny looked up from her pages. “That rings a bell.”

  “It does,” Savannah said. “It sounds familiar to me, too. But I can’t quite place it.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He and Lucinda spent some, um, quality time together when she was fifteen and he was forty-two.”

  “Jerk. Oughta had his tallywhacker tied in a knot.”

  Tammy added, “Around his neck.”

  They all had an instant mental vision of Lucinda’s body and made a face. “Sorry,” Tammy said. “My anti-child-molester zeal got the best of me there. Since I’ve become a mother, my live-and-let-live attitudes have flown out the window. I’m starting to sound more like you Georgia gals.”

  Savannah smiled and nodded, but she was barely listening, as her eyes skimmed the pages. “She was in love with him,” she added. “Very much in love.”

  “Of course she was,” Gran said with a sniff. “She was fifteen. You don’t fall a smidgeon bit in love at that age. It’s head over hiney or nothin’.”

  “What else?” Tammy asked, typing away at the keyboard and staring at the various Web pages popping up on the screen in rapid succession.

  “He was the father of the baby that was aborted.”

  “Apparently, he didn’t mind having sex with a minor,” Tammy said, “but he wasn’t ready to marry and raise a child with a teenager. Nice guy.”

  “He wasn’t a nice guy, and not just for what he did to Lucinda,” Savannah said, studying the papers in her hand. “He worked for Lucinda’s manager, who was a gangster himself. Definite ties with organized crime.”

  “Back in those days,” Granny added, “gangsters were the roughest ruffians around. They were shootin’ the puddin’ outta each other on a daily basis. They had the police and politicians and judges in their hip pockets. Them that weren’t cops and governors and judges theirselves, that is.”

  “Lucinda writes that Stillman didn’t want her to have the baby and give it up for adoption because he intended to be a judge when he grew up someday. Figured he could help out his mob buddies if he was in position to rule on cases against them.”

  “Of course he could,” Tammy said. “That’d make him an extremely popular, and no doubt wealthy, fellow in that time and place.”

  “Nothin’ like havin’ a squad o’ rich mobsters on your side back then,” Gran agreed. “He’d have been set for life. Did he ever get to be a judge, heaven forbid?”

  Tammy nodded. “He did. In 1949. Served for the next twenty-two years.”

  “That was twenty-two years of corruption and judicial misconduct, I’m sure,” Savannah said.

  “Oh, that’s not all,” Tammy said, sounding most excited. “That was the turning point for his particular branch of the Stillman family. They did quite well for themselves after that.”

  “In what way?” Savannah asked.

  “Every way! He married into a wealthy family and had two sons. One also served as a judge, the other built an extremely successful shipping company.”

  “Wait a minute! I got it!” Granny exclaimed, startling the sleeping Cleo curled beside her. “That nice-looking young man who wants to run for governor, Mr. Clifton J. Stillman. Wasn’t his daddy a super-rich guy who made his money in shipping?”

  Tammy gasped. “That’s right! Clifton’s on fire! They say he’s the rising star of his party here in California. Some are saying he could be president someday! I’ve watched him debate a couple times, and he’s brilliant. I think I heard him say his grandfather was a judge. That his family is all about public service and justice.”

  “Not to mention a bazillion bucks from shippin’ and who knows what other skullduggery,” Granny added.

  Savannah listened with one ear, but she had reached a part of the manuscript that was so horrifying, she could hardly breathe. She read it as quickly as she could to the end.

  Laying the pages down on her lap, she reached for her tea, her hand shaking. As she was taking a long drink, to wet her dry mouth, she heard Granny say, “Savannah girl? You okay, sugar?”

  “Not really,” she replied, “and when you hear this, you won’t be either. I’ve gotta call Dirk.”

  * * *

  Savannah, Dirk, and Granny sat at the kitchen table, while Tammy sat on the sofa, close enough to join in the conversation, as she nursed her daughter.

  “Are you absolutely sure about all of this?” Dirk asked. “’Cause if I move on it with a guy like Stillman . . .”

  “If Lucinda’s manuscript is true, and it sure has the ring of authenticity to me, then it’s true,” Savannah told him. “That’s the best guarantee I can give you.”

  “Run it past me one more time before I leave. If I’m gonna go rattle the cage of a guy who might be president someday, I gotta be well informed.”

  “Okay.” Savannah drew a deep breath and began.
“Lucinda got pregnant by this older guy, Jacob Stillman, who was in cahoots with the mob and wasn’t the least bit interested in raising a baby with a kid.”

  “I got that much. Go on.”

  “Her manager and Stillman were mob buddies. The manager arranged to take Lucinda and Stillman out on a high-level mobster’s yacht. They also invited a girlfriend of Lucinda’s, named Belinda, along. Belinda was sixteen and she was also pregnant. The father of her baby was the mobster who owned the yacht.”

  “We didn’t hear about Belinda in the diary,” Tammy spoke up from the living room.

  “No,” Savannah said. “The tell-all is a lot more forthcoming than even her personal diary. Anyway, they told the girls that it was going to be a party, and they didn’t bother to mention that they had also invited an abortionist. Not a real doctor, of course.”

  Dirk shook his head with disgust. “Of course not. A coat hanger, back alley kinda guy.”

  “Tragically, yes.” Savannah took a long drink of her tea and realized that her thirst was from her nerves, not dehydration. No amount of liquid was going to wash away the terrible taste left behind by what she had read. “If you want all the gory details,” she told Dirk, “you can read the manuscript. It’s quite graphic. Very sad. But the upshot is: Both girls received abortions that neither of them wanted. Lucinda survived hers, obviously. Belinda did not. She was, I guess you would say, ‘buried at sea.’ Lucinda witnessed everything that happened to her friend, as well as suffered her own loss.”

  “Damn,” Dirk said.

  “Yes,” Granny agreed. “That poor little Belinda, and no wonder Miss Lucinda was haunted by that night for the rest o’ her days. Somethin’ like that’d scar the mightiest of souls, to be sure.”

  Dirk sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Savannah recognized the gesture all too well. He was guarding his heart.

  Unfortunately, in a cop’s world, if you had a heart at all, protecting it from the tragedies you witnessed every day was impossible.

  “Okay,” he said, “what else?”

  “I don’t know how true it is,” Savannah continued, “but Lucinda wrote that some months later, Jacob Stillman had the nerve to actually blackmail the mobster who owned the yacht. He threatened to go to the cops about the murder if the mobster didn’t use his influence to help Stillman get the judicial appointment he was after. I guess the mobster decided it would be handy to have a guy like that in his pocket. They formed a sort of sick, symbiotic, parasitic relationship, each feeding off the other. The mobster even invested in Stillman’s son’s shipping company, guaranteeing its success.”

  Dirk nodded thoughtfully. “So, we have this guy now, Clifton Jacob Stillman, the grandson, with his family’s wealth and judicial experience—not to mention who knows how many unsavory connections—getting ready to run for governor of California. Nice.”

  “He might be,” Tammy piped up from the living room. “I like him. He seems to be a real man of the people with a lot of compassion.”

  “That’s a rare commodity in the world of politics,” Savannah said. “But maybe he doesn’t know his family’s history. Maybe he doesn’t realize that their wealth and influence began that night on a yacht where a couple of girls had their babies stolen from them, and one lost her life.”

  Dirk stood, picked up his phone from the table, and shoved it into his pocket. Turning to Savannah, he said, “I’m off to Los Angeles to find out how much he knows and doesn’t know. You want to come with me?”

  She glanced at the clock. It was twelve-thirty. The drive to Los Angeles could easily take an hour, maybe more. Plus, who knew how much rigmarole they would have to go through to see a man as important and busy as Clifton J. Stillman?

  “I don’t think we could make it there and back before Brody gets out of school,” she said. “I’d better stick around here.”

  She saw the disappointment in her husband’s face. The same disappointment she felt at having to turn him down. There was nothing she wanted more than to be there and watch this interview. She owed it to Ethan if nothing else.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Granny said. “Have y’all forgotten already that you have a built-in babysitter here, one that’s more than willin’ and eager to take that little guy off your hands?”

  “But you’ll have to pick him up from school and everything,” Savannah replied.

  Granny put the back of her hand to her forehead and feigned a dramatic faint. “Oh dear, oh dear, whatever shall I do? I’ve never picked up a child from school before, and it’s a whole, what, two blocks away? I might get lost or plum wore out before I get there and back.”

  Savannah laughed. “Okay, okay. That’s enough. I’ll leave him in your extraordinarily competent hands, Gran.”

  “I’ll probably just walk over with the Colonel and get him. Somethin’ tells me Brody’ll score points there at his new school by showin’ off his four-footed friend.”

  “I think that’s the best idea ever. Thank you, Granny.”

  “My pleasure, darlin’.” Gran turned to Dirk. “Go to Los Angeles and talk to that Stillman man. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that weasel, Geoffrey, already has.”

  “We can hope,” Dirk said. “Never hurts to hope.”

  As they headed for the door, Dirk stopped and looked back at the brown paper evidence bag on the kitchen table that held the manuscript. “You’re absolutely sure,” he asked Savannah, “that you and Granny are the only ones who touched that thing.”

  “Yes, and before you ask, we were wearing gloves the entire time.”

  “Good.” He rushed over to the table and scooped up the bag. “After we get back from LA, I’ll drop this over to the lab and make Eileen dust every single page for fingerprints.”

  Savannah gave him a tsk-tsk. “And you wonder why that gal’s not a fan of yours?”

  Chapter 25

  Traffic was light on the way to Los Angeles, and Savannah and Dirk had no trouble at all finding Clifton J. Stillman’s campaign headquarters. His operation was not being run from a shabby first-floor converted bodega in a tough part of town, like some politicians who claimed to be “for the people.”

  No, Clifton Stillman didn’t bother to hide his wealth. His headquarters covered the entire fifty-third floor of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Glass and steel, and an atrium four stories high with full-sized palm trees and a waterfall announced his wealth to anyone visiting the heart of his operation.

  “I hear they have a penthouse suite in this place that would knock your socks off,” Savannah told Dirk as they walked to the elevator bay and watched as herds of rich Californians, dressed in their ultra-expensive pseudo-casual attire poured out of the various doors.

  Savannah felt a little underdressed in her simple white cotton shirt and her linen slacks and jacket. She decided she should have at least worn heels instead of her trusty loafers.

  As they stepped into an elevator, she looked Dirk over, taking in his standard uniform: faded jeans, Harley-Davidson T-shirt, bomber jacket, and scuffed running shoes.

  He must really be embarrassed, she thought. But only briefly before remembering—he was Dirk.

  He did fill out those jeans quite nicely, though she doubted that would impress Clifton Stillman as much as it did her.

  She had always enjoyed walking behind Dirk, and since he walked twice as fast as she did, she frequently got the opportunity to savor the view.

  It took a while for the elevator, fast and modern as it was, to get to the fifty-third floor. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant trip, as neither she nor Dirk enjoyed elevators. Usually, they were alone when riding one, and they passed the time and reduced the tension by making out.

  She supposed they could have followed their routine. Californians weren’t known for being overly judgmental about those things. But with a dozen other people inside the tiny enclosure, riders constantly getting in and out and jostling for positions, she decided it would hardly be worth
it.

  She looked over at Dirk and saw he was grinning down at her. The twinkle in his eyes told her he was thinking the same thing.

  He bent his head down to hers and whispered, “Thanks for the thought anyway.”

  She chuckled. “You too.” Then she added for good measure, “Don’t worry. This’ll go okay.”

  “I know,” he said with typical Dirk nonchalance.

  Not for the first time, Savannah wished she could feel as confident about anything, even once in her life, as her husband did about almost everything.

  How nice it would be not to have inherited the Reid Worry-All-The-Time and the Second-Guess-Yourself-Every-Dang-Chance-You-Get genes.

  She would never know. She suspected those two anomalies made up 90 percent of her DNA.

  Finally, they arrived at the appropriate floor and exited the elevator to find themselves in an expensive, elegant office foyer.

  The design and furnishings were ultra-contemporary. A lot of industrial style cement, black leather sofas and chairs, a gas fireplace, and one of the biggest widescreen televisions she had ever seen. It was showing, predictably, Clifton J. Stillman giving a speech and looking quite gubernatorial, even presidential, doing so.

  To their far right, behind a black and chrome desk, sat a beautiful young woman, impeccably dressed in a designer suit that even Geoffrey Faraday would probably approve.

  They walked over to the desk, and Dirk took his badge from his jacket pocket.

  Holding it out for her inspection, he said, “Good afternoon. I’m Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter. I need to speak with Mr. Stillman.”

  Savannah couldn’t help noticing that he had neglected to mention the fact that he was with the San Carmelita Police Department. She didn’t blame him. Nothing could be gained by drawing attention to the fact that you were from another jurisdiction.

  The young woman smiled, showing a full set of perfect teeth. “Is Mr. Stillman expecting you? Do you have an appointment?” she asked.