A Body To Die For (3 page)

“The chivalrous knight fighting the dragon to rescue the fair damsel fantasy. Sir Galahad here just ruined it.” She sighed and shook her head sadly. “Dadgummit. And with that body he would’ve looked so good in a suit of armor, too.”

“W
hen the hell is she gonna be done messing with that?” Dirk grumbled as he sat on Savannah’s sofa, petting her oversized black cat, Diamante, who was sprawled across his lap.

Diamante’s only reaction to his complaint was a slight tail twitch to show her own irritation. Diamante and her sister, Cleopatra, held the firm conviction that when a human petted a cat, they should give the task their full, undivided attention.

Dirk was falling down on the job.

Besides his preoccupation with Tammy, he had one eye on the television. The Dodgers were down four runs at the bottom of the eighth, which made him even grumpier than usual. And grumpy, distracted guys didn’t give the best pets.

In the corner of Savannah’s living room, sitting at the rolltop desk, Tammy was working intently at the computer. She had banned everyone, even Savannah, from coming near her while she completed her task.

As Savannah walked by the desk, on her way from the kitchen, a tray of assorted desserts in hand, Tammy grabbed a manila folder from the desktop and held it over the computer screen.

“Oh, please,” Savannah said, “it’s not like I haven’t seen your bare butt in person plenty of times before.” She held out the tray. “Here, eat something before you grow faint from hunger.”

“Like
that
would ever happen to anybody around
here
.”

With a critical eye Tammy glanced over the plate laden with fudge brownies, a piece of pecan pie, a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and something that looked like a strawberry sundae. “Eh, it’s all poison. Pure poison. You really shouldn’t contaminate your body with—”

“Yours is the one in the corner,” Savannah told her, tamping down her irritation. “It’s strawberries over yogurt over a sliced banana, sprinkled with chopped pecans. I made it just for you.”

Tammy hesitated, laid down the envelope, and reached for the dish. “You put sugar in it, didn’t you?”

“Don’t you snerl up your nose at
my
food, girlie. You’ll eat it or wear it!” Savannah glanced at the computer screen. “And believe you me, it’ll cover a lot more of you than that bar of soap did.”

Tammy squealed and slapped the folder back over the screen.

Savannah walked over to Dirk, chuckling. “Here you go, big boy,” she said, setting the tray on the coffee table in front of him. “A little something to take the edge off that ravenous hunger of yours…the one you worked up while pushing away from my dinner table fifteen minutes ago.”

He merely grunted and continued to stare at the television. That was a bad sign. Dirk ignoring free food? She wondered if she should waste time trying to find his pulse or just go straight to CPR.

She glanced at the screen. “That bad?”

“They suck. They just stinkin’ suck.”

“O-o-okay.”

Dirk had a real gift for making succinct, pithy, insightful comments; it was part of the wonder that was him.

But he wasn’t so deeply entrenched in despair that he couldn’t rally enough to reach for a brownie. “She’d better not be ruining my evidence over there,” he grumbled, nodding toward Tammy.

“She’s not. She’s just fuzzying out her…um…”

“Her fuzzy.”

“Sh-h-h!” Savannah sat down on her favorite overstuffed, cushy chair next to him. “If she hears you say something like that, she’ll delete the pictures altogether.”

“She will not. She enjoys nabbing and prosecuting a perv as much as we do.”

“True.” Savannah smiled as she scooped Cleopatra, her other black mini-panther, onto her lap.

Tammy appeared to be a gentle, peaceful, loving soul to those who met her. And most of the time, she was pure human sunshine.

But, like Savannah, she also had a fierce streak, and her persona could change to Warrior Queen in a heartbeat…in defense of herself and others whom she deemed innocent and in need of protection.

Savannah knew that, given no alternative, Tammy would have “bared it all” in a courtroom—if there had been no other way to prosecute Vittorio the Peeporio. But Tammy was handy with the computer, and she was particularly good with manipulating photos, so why shouldn’t she guard her own modesty with a few well-placed defocused circles?

“I mean it,” Dirk said, biting into a brownie, “her messin’ around with those pictures better not jeopardize my case. I want this guy. You should’ve heard the lip he gave me when I was booking him. Comes from a rich family in Twin Oaks. Considers himself above such things as getting arrested. It’s time he had a reality check, and I’m happy to be the one writing it.”

“Tammy’s not going to ruin your evidence. She knows what she’s doing. She’ll leave enough that it’ll be obvious what happened. Besides, she’s keeping a copy of the original, untouched movie. Her in all her nudie glory.”

“Yeah, but what if I get Judge O’Fallon? You know how
he
is.”

“O’Fallon?” Savannah sniffed and looked disgusted. “Oh, yeah. He’s the one who insisted on watching those whorehouse tapes over and over when we were prosecuting that madam.”

“He even took them home with him when the case closed.”

“If you get O’Fallon,” Tammy said, obviously listening to their every word, “I’m burning this disk…in the fireplace, that is…and you’ll be relying on testimony alone to fry Vito.”

Savannah chuckled. “She’s not kidding, and it’s a good idea. Otherwise she’d be burglarizing the judge’s house to get the DVD back and in spite of all my lessons, she’s not that good at breaking and entering. She’ll get caught; we’ll have to bail her out and all that rigmarole.”

“I’ll arrest you for destroying evidence,” Dirk said, waving a brownie in Tammy’s direction.

“No, you won’t. Because Savannah would stop feeding you, and you’d have to buy your own food or starve to death,” she replied. “There, that should do it.” She popped the DVD out of the computer, slipped it into a plastic case, and walked over to the sofa.

Holding the DVD out to him, she said, “The whole, sad, sordid story right there in digital format for the world to see.”

“Thanks.” He took it from her, getting only the merest smear of Savannah’s fudge frosting on the cover. “I owe you girls. I couldn’t have done it without you. None of the girls in the SCPD are cute enough to have lured anybody into that shower room.”

Savannah stroked Cleopatra’s glossy black coat with one hand and ate a slice of pecan pie with the other. “I wouldn’t share that with the gals you work with,” she told him.

“Why not? It’s true.”

Savannah nodded solemnly and gave Tammy a sideways glance. “And thus the mystery is solved: Why does Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter continue to work alone since that day, all those years ago, when Detective Reid left the force?”

“To heck with that,” Tammy said, nudging Dirk’s shin with the toe of her sneaker. “Let’s get back to that ‘I owe you girls’ part. What’s it going to be? A day at a spa, dinner at Chez Antoine? A weekend on Catalina?”

“Get real,” Dirk replied. “I’m paying you out of my own pocket.”

Savannah sighed. “A hot dog at the pier. Pay yourself if you want extras, like sauerkraut or mustard.”

He grinned. “That’s more like it.”

His cell phone buzzed, playing the theme from
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
—his choice of ringtone for his captain.

“Coulter,” he barked into the phone.

His curt tone had a lot to do with the fact that he despised the captain, but he would have answered the same way if it had been his grandmother, the Dodgers’ lead pitcher, or Santa Claus.

“Oh, yeah? Really? Hm-m-m.”

Savannah and Tammy watched as his irritation faded to subdued interest and mild curiosity.

That was as close to “excited” as Dirk got.

“All right,” he said. “Gimme the address.” He dumped an instantly indignant Diamante on the floor, reached to the end of the sofa and got his leather bomber coat. He took a pad and pen from the inside pocket. Scribbling, he said, “Oh, yeah, I know the place. I didn’t know it was
she
that lived there now. All right. I’m on my way.”

He clicked the phone closed and sat there with a perverse little smirk on his face. “You’re not going to believe this. You are
not
gonna freakin’ believe this!”

“What?” Tammy asked.

“Who?” Savannah wanted to know.

He swelled up with the high degree of irritating self-importance enjoyed by someone who holds a juicy gossip tidbit that they haven’t yet shared.

Savannah had seen toad frogs less puffy.

“Oh, spit it out,” she said, “before I slap you nekkid and hide your clothes.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin a couple of notches. “Clarissa Jardin.”

Neither Savannah nor Tammy said anything for as long as they could stand it. Finally, Savannah broke the stalemate by reaching down and snatching the remainder of his brownie out of his hand.

“Hey! I wasn’t done with that!”

“You are, unless you tell us what you’re so danged smug about. What’s with Clarissa? She’s having a hissy fit about us busting a perv in her gym and giving her bad publicity?”

“Oh, no. She’s happy about publicity. Any kind of publicity.”

“That’s true,” Tammy said, “or else she wouldn’t go on all the talk shows, the way she does, and talk trash about ‘tub-os’ as she calls them.”

“Yeah, she needs a skillet beatin’ for that,” Savannah said. “But what’s the call about?”

“Did you know she lives in the area?” Dirk said.

“Yeah, big deal,” Savannah replied.

Looking quite pleased with herself, Tammy said, “I knew that, too. I read the other day she’s bought that old, old adobe mansion up in the hills between here and Twin Oaks. It used to belong to the Mexican landowner Don Ramon Rodriguez back in the mid-1800s.”

“
That
place?” Savannah said. “I heard that old place is haunted.”

“Well, that’s where the Mistress of Pain and Gain and her hubby are living right now,” Dirk told them. “Or, at least she’s living there. Seems to be some question about whether he’s living or not.”

“What?” Savannah and Tammy asked in unison.

“Yeap,” he said. “That’s what the call’s about. She phoned the station house tonight and reported him missing. And I just caught the case.”

“How long?” Savannah wanted to know.

“Five days.”

“Five days?” Savannah’s right eyebrow raised a notch. “Not exactly eager to get him back, huh?”

“Maybe he leaves home frequently,” Tammy said.

“You listened to her squawking all afternoon.” Dirk rose and pulled on his coat. “If you managed to get away from her, wouldn’t you stay gone?”

“But five days!” Savannah couldn’t get over it. “Heck, I wouldn’t wait a minute past four days to report
you
missing.” She poked Dirk in the ribs as he passed by her. “Wait. Where do you think you’re going?”

“To talk to the Mistress of ‘No Pain, No Gain.’”

“Not without me you aren’t. Let me get my purse…and my gun.”

“Your gun? You probably won’t need your gu—”

“Listen, if that loudmouth gives me any lip at all or even mentions the word ‘tub-o’ in my presence, you gotta know what’s gonna happen. It’ll be justifiable homicide. And if there’s one overweight gal on the jury, I’m home free.”

Dirk gulped and shot Tammy a helpless, worried look. At least, as helpless and worried as tough-guy Coulter ever looked.

“Yeah,” he said, following her to the front door. “That’s what I’m afraid of. You dispensing your own brand of Southern justice in the middle of my missing persons case. Just thinkin’ about all that extra paperwork is enough to make me sick to my stomach.”

He paused at the door, then darted back into the living room. In one smooth move, he scooped up another brownie and some chocolate pecan cookies.

Wrapping them in a napkin, he hurried back to Savannah. “Okay, let’s boogie.”

She glanced down at the wad of goodies, which he was cramming into his coat pocket. “A little something to settle your tummy?”

“Hey, whatever gets you through the night. We’ll stop at the Patty Cake Donut Shop for some free coffee on the way.”

Savannah could practically see the dollar bills flying out the tailpipe of Dirk’s old Buick Skylark as they chugged up the steep foothills that framed the eastern side of San Carmelita. The ancient bomber was big, comfortable, practically indestructible, and got a whole whopping nine miles to the gallon.

“When are you going to trade this tanker in on something more energy efficient, something less polluting, something kinder to Mother Earth?” she asked him as she sipped her free coffee and helped herself to one of the only slightly mashed cookies from his pocket.

“I’ll trade it in when you get rid of the Scarlet Pony, Miss Treehugger Environmentalist. That jalopy of yours guzzles just as much gas as this thing does.”

He had her there. Her ’65 Mustang with its Holley carburetor was hardly a “green machine.” She kicked herself for starting an argument she couldn’t win. Until…

“My ‘jalopy’ can go from zero to one-twenty lickety-split. This thing can’t go over ninety downhill with a stiff wind behind it.”

“It don’t need to go over ninety.”

She gave him a sideways glance. Even by the dim light of a half-moon and the Buick’s dash lights, she could see he was stung.

She grinned.
Touché
.

Rolling down the car window, she breathed in the moist night air, scented with orange blossoms and eucalyptus and wild sage. Ah, life was, indeed, worth living.

As they traveled farther from town, higher into the foothills, the fewer houses they saw. Although there were developments here and there, some of them exclusive, gated communities, overall, the countryside had a lonely, almost haunting quality about it.

Dark, gnarled oaks and patches of desert scrub and prickly pear cacti provided the only greenery. Occasionally, through the trees, a creek could be seen, running parallel to the winding two-lane road. Its rocky bed was usually dry or held only a trickle at best. But the spring rains had been abundant so far this year, and as a result, the rivers, streams, and creeks of Southern California actually contained water.