Buried In Buttercream (20 page)

Read Buried In Buttercream Online

Authors: G. A. McKevett

BOOK: Buried In Buttercream
7.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Her voice trailed away as she left the room and not a moment too soon for Savannah.
She sat there in her living room, in her favorite chair, her feet on her cushy ottoman. Even Diamante and Cleopatra climbed down from their sunny window perch and jumped up onto her lap, purring and rubbing their glossy black heads against her hands to get her to pet them.
Dirk stepped out of the foyer and into the living room. His ear-to-ear smile looked like it was going to reach all the way around his head.
“So,” he said, “was it good for you?”
“I'm just basking in the afterglow,” she replied, scratching behind Cleo's left ear. “And I'm going to enjoy the feeling for as long as I can. Because knowing me like I do, I'm sure I'll be second-guessing myself and feeling all guilt-ridden in five minutes.”
Dirk started to reply, but his cell phone rang. He answered it, “Coulter here.” He listened for a moment, then said, “Yeah, well, who're you and what do you want with me?”
She smiled. Dirk had such a great telephone persona. It was even more gracious and eloquent than his non-telephone persona.
“Yeah, all right. I'll be there in half an hour.”
He hung up.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“Bambi Delight.”
“Who?”
“Another stripper at Willy's.”
“What did she want with you?”
“She wants me to meet her at Willy's. Says she can tell me who killed Madeline Aberson. Wanna come with me?”
Savannah sighed. “I should stay here, make amends with my siblings, spend some quality time with them, and re-cement our badly strained familial bonds.”
“Yeah, you probably should. Are you gonna?”
She stood and grabbed her purse. “Hell no. Let's get going.”
Chapter 18
“
A
h, Willy's. How I've missed this place,” Savannah said through moderately gritted teeth as they pulled up in front of the strip joint once again.
“You know you've got the hots for Will,” Dirk teased her. “I saw you ogling him from across the room the other day.”
“Oh, right. That leather vest really does it for me. I'm gonna get you one of those to wear for me on our honeymoon night.”
“We're going to have a honeymoon night?” he asked, a bit wistfully.
“Theoretically,” she replied, sounding just as sad.
Once inside Willy's Rendezvous, it didn't take them long to identify Miss Bambi Delight.
Even through the copious clouds of second-hand smoke, she wasn't hard to spot.
“She's gotta be the one over there with the plastic Rudolph antlers on her head and the deer tail hanging off her bikini bottom,” Savannah said, pointing.
“What powers of observation you have, my dear,” Dirk said, nudging her. “Ever thought about being a detective when you grow up?”
“Yeah. For a minute. Till I heard I'd have to hang out in dives like this one. Then I decided to be the Tooth Fairy, instead.”
“How'd that work out for you?”
“It didn't. Went broke ... you know, negative cash flow and all.”
They didn't even have to approach Bambi. She spotted them almost instantly and hightailed her fake tail across the room to them.
She was a young, petite brunette with a nice figure that didn't appear to have been heavily augmented, like Francie's.
As Savannah gave her a quick once-over, she decided that Bambi—or whatever her real name was—would have been pretty, if she hadn't looked so darned hard and mad at the world.
“Hi,” she said to them. “I heard you were here the other day, talking to Francie. I've got something to tell you.”
Savannah glanced around. Big Willy, his vest, and ponytail were behind the bar, drawing mugs of beer. Francie was nowhere to be seen. And the rest of the Rendezvous crowd's attention was riveted on a particularly buxom redhead on the pole.
“So you said on the phone,” Dirk replied. “You on a break now?”
“Better than that. I'm off!”
He nodded toward the front door. “Then come out to my car, and let's talk.”
“Lemme get dressed. I don't want to be seen in ... you know ... this.” She waved a hand at the almost-clothes she was almost wearing.
“Yeah, okay,” Dirk replied. “Meet you out there. It's the blue Buick.”
As Bambi scurried away to “get decent,” Savannah and Dirk left the bar and returned to the parking lot.
“People are funny,” Dirk observed. “Inside those walls, she strips off down to buck naked. But heaven forbid somebody might catch a glimpse of her out here in her bikini.”
Savannah chuckled. “Hey, a gal's gotta uphold her standards, whatever they may be.”
They had only been in the car a couple of minutes when Bambi came strutting out, wearing a pair of super-short shorts, an ultra-skimpy halter top, and flip-flops. She was carrying a ragged duffle bag with a pair of plastic antlers sticking out the top.
“Oh,” Dirk said. “I'm so glad she got dressed up for us. That outfit's so much better than the other one.”
Savannah reached around to unlock the back door for her. “Hey, I never said a gal's particular standards had to make sense to anyone but her.”
The door opened, and Bambi crawled into Dirk's backseat, shoving fast-food wrappers aside to make room for herself and her bag.
“Can we go somewhere else to talk?” she said with a quick glance back at the front door of the club. “I'd feel more comfortable if ...”
“Sure,” Dirk said. “Anyplace special?”
“ 'Bout a half a mile down the road there's a church with a big parking lot. Sometimes I go there to talk to ... I mean we ... I mean, sometimes us girls ... talk to guys there.”
The skin on the back of Savannah's neck crawled, and she was glad that Granny Reid hadn't heard that. For sure, she'd call down hellfire and damnation on anybody who dared to ... talk ... to customers right there on God's own property.
“Oookay,” Dirk said. “Let's go wherever you're comfortable.”
He gave Savannah a sideways glance.
She shrugged and said, “Standards. I'm telling you ... standards.”
Savannah could see why Willy's ladies had chosen this spot for their off-campus rendezvous. It was a large parking lot, and the far end of it was at the edge of a dense woods. A long way from the actual church and with a great view of the open space.
Most importantly, a body who was up to no good could see the law coming a mile off and get their britches hiked back up in time.
Ah, the subtleties of the world's oldest profession,
she thought.
“Okay,” Dirk said as he cut the key on the Buick and turned to face his backseat passenger. “Let 'er rip. Whatcha got?”
“You two are investigating a murder, right?” Bambi said. “That gal that Francie's old man was doing ... ?”
“Yes,” Dirk replied. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “Hey, Willy's is a small place. We know everything about everybody there.”
“Everything?” Savannah said, hopeful.
“Everything worth knowing.” Bambi took a deep breath that threatened to cause her to pop out of her teeny halter top, and said, “For instance, I know that Francie killed that Madeline gal.”
“You do?” Savannah said, working very hard not to get excited or to let it show in her voice. She'd been led down way too many dead-end paths to get too excited too early.
“How do you know that?” Dirk asked.
Bambi looked very pleased with herself. She was enjoying this a lot, and that alone made Savannah doubtful.
Most genuine informers didn't enjoy the act of informing. They did it for any one of a dozen reasons, and none of those motives were anything to put a smile on anyone's face—unless, of course, they were getting paid for it.
“Well ...” Bambi said. “I know that she told you that she was taking a nap in Willy's office when that gal got killed. And she wasn't.”
“No? How can you be so sure?” Savannah asked.
“Because I saw her sneaking out the back door. The rear entrance is right there by Willy's office door, you know.”
“Yes,” Savannah said. “We noticed that.”
“You saw her sneaking out.” Dirk reached for his bag of cinnamon sticks on the dash and took one out. “How do you know she was ‘sneaking' and not just ‘going' out the door?”
“She was creeping along, like on her tippy-toes, and looking around like she was hoping nobody was watching her.”
He popped the cinnamon into his mouth. “But you were watching her.”
“Yeah.”
“From where?”
“Just inside the door to the ladies' can. It's down the hall, out of sight. She didn't know I was there.”
“That's it?” Savannah said. “You saw her tippy-toe out the door, and that's your proof that she killed Madeline Aberson?”
“Also, I heard her say something suspicious to Willy.”
“What's that?” Dirk asked.
“When she came back a few hours later, she went up to him at the bar and whispered something to him. I heard it. She said, ‘I took care of her, like I told you I was gonna. So, that's one problem that ain't a problem no more.'”
Savannah's neck bristled again, but this time it was a good sign. This wasn't a definitive, solid piece of evidence, but then, it might turn out to be something worthwhile.
In the past, she had solved cases with less.
“That's pretty incriminating, don't you think?” Bambi said. “It could mean something, huh?”
Dirk had his poker face in place as he gave her the briefest nod. “Might. Might not. But thanks for telling us. Anything else?”
Bambi seemed to get miffed in an instant. “What do you mean, ‘anything else?' You expect me to solve your whole case for you? That's pure gold, what I just gave you.”
“We don't know yet what you just gave us,” Savannah told her. “We'll have to check it out.”
“Well, there's money offered for information in a case like this, isn't there?” Bambi said, looking anything but innocent and doe-eyed as her stage name might suggest.
In fact,
Savannah thought as she looked into the dancer's face,
she looks pretty darned predatory herself right now.
Back in Georgia, she'd seen chicken hawks looking friendlier at a hen they were about to tear apart.
“I don't know what sort of reward, if any, is being offered in this case,” Dirk told her. “But I do thank you for being such a good citizen and coming forward like this. I'm sure there's a special place in eternity for informers like you.”
Savannah nodded thoughtfully. “And especially those who do their good deeds right here on church property.”
Bambi looked from one to the other, a frown deepening on her face. “I think I'm ready for you to take me back to Willy's to get my car,” she said.
“Definitely that time,” Dirk said, starting the Buick. “Yeah. I think we're all ready.”
 
Five minutes later, Savannah and Dirk were watching Bambi walk from their car across the parking lot to her own beat-up jalopy.
“Do you think she did it?” Savannah asked him.
“I don't know if she did or not. Francie had a lot of hate for Madeline. We knew that after our talk with her.”
“I wasn't talking about Francie. I meant Bambi there.”
“What would Bambi have against Madeline?”
“Who knows. But did you get a load of the anger in her eyes when she was talking about it?”
“Yeah, I picked up on that. Some definite hostility there. But why do you think she might be the killer?”
Savannah shrugged. “I don't really. I was just saying because ... well, you know how on
Bonanza
and
Gunsmoke
, it was always the guy who was pointing at some other dude, saying, ‘He done it! He done it! Let's hang him right now!' and every time it turned out to be the one pointing the finger.”
“Well, yeah.” He gave her a sarcastic grin. “But I'm not sure that the same crime-solving techniques that worked on the Ponderosa and in Dodge City would apply here in San Carmelita.”
“Bite me.”
“I'm looking forward to the day when I can.”
“Oh, yuck.”
Bambi drove away, and they got out of the car.
It was time to have a talk with the man, old Willy Rendezvous himself, about his girls.
 
Savannah looked down at the pit bull who was standing next to her, nuzzling her hand with his big, square face, gazing up at her with a wistful look that she recognized all too well. It was the same expression that Cleo and Di used when they either wanted to be petted or fed.
She glanced over at the full bowl of doggy kibbles in the corner of the office.
“Okay, big boy,” she said, dropping to one knee. “I didn't exactly come in here to scratch a dog's ears, but since you asked so nicely.”
She gave the big, burly animal a nice face massage as she listened to Dirk squeeze Willy for information about his dancers. It was the same, basic routine she used on the cats, but Hercules didn't seem to mind.

Other books

Love Unfortunate by Claudia D. Christian
Death Will Help You Leave Him by Zelvin, Elizabeth
Fiery by Nikki Duncan
NW by Zadie Smith
Bound to the Dragon King by Caroline Hale