Buried In Buttercream (23 page)

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Authors: G. A. McKevett

BOOK: Buried In Buttercream
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Savannah looked at Dirk. “Do you consider a museum about death out of the ordinary?”
“Not for an undertaker. You've gotta figure that anybody who's a funeral director has to be wired just a little bit different from the rest of us.”
“Well, I think it's suspicious,” Tammy said. “We're here investigating him for murder, and he's all obsessed with death? What are the chances?”
“Surely they have quite a few visitors to this place, and they can't all be murderers,” Savannah said, knowing that her words were falling on ears that had already made up their minds.
She'd seen Tammy like this many times before. Savannah called it her Super Sleuth mode. There was no dampening the gal's passions at a time like this.
“Listen,” Tammy said, “we're going in now, so I have to hang up. Can't risk him overhearing what I'm saying to you.”
“No, of course not.”
“Are you two coming in, too?”
Savannah turned to Dirk. “Do you want to check out the place and tail the tails?”
“No. We're outta here. They can follow him around, while we go check out that cat house she says he went to. But while we're gone, tell her not to approach him for any reason whatsoever. He's to be considered armed and dangerous at all times.”
Savannah returned to the phone. “Dirk says—”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard him.”
“He means it, Tams. And I mean it, too. No contact! And if you need anything at all, call me. Okay?”
But Tammy had already hung up.
Savannah looked at Dirk and shook her head. “I almost feel sorry for ol' Ethan. With a bloodhound like her after him, he doesn't stand a chance.”
Chapter 21
“
M
ore driving. More desert. Oh, goody gum drops,” Savannah complained as they headed out of Vegas and once again, into the wild, open countryside.
“You've gotta leave town,” Dirk said, “if you're going to find a whorehouse. Contrary to popular opinion, there aren't any in the city. Not officially anyway.”
“I don't think most sex workers would approve of your terminology.”
“Oh, sorry. How about den of iniquity? House of ill repute?”
“I think the appropriate term is brothel.”
“Huh. I didn't think you were the type who worried a whole lot about hookers getting offended.”
Savannah fixed her eyes on the road straight ahead and looked a bit grim as she said, “You and I, we've had a lot of contact with that world. How many gals, and guys, too, did we bust in our careers?”
“Way too many.”
“That's for sure. I had a front-row view to how much misery it causes in this world. To the prostitutes themselves, their johns, and the johns' families. I've seen the horrible results of the diseases that are spread, and the dangerous situations these girls put themselves in to make a buck. The abusive pimps. The drug-addiction angle. There's a heap of better ways to make a living that don't get a body beaten or killed.”
“So, you wouldn't legalize it?”
“Not on your life.”
“Me either.”
Savannah thought for a few moments, remembering. Wishing she could forget.
“My father was into prostitutes,” she said.
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she caught her breath, shocked by her own candor. She had never shared that with anyone before.
“He was?”
She ventured a glance at Dirk. He seemed a little surprised, but mostly sad.
She nodded.
“I'm sorry to hear that, Van. Very sorry. I had no idea.”
She took a deep breath. “As you know, he was a trucker. Those truck stop cuties would wave it in his face, and he'd go for it every time. Unless you believe my mother's version of the story, and then they didn't even have to wave it. He'd go after it. In fact, she said that's why he became a trucker in the first place. So he could be away from home for days on end and do whatever he wanted with anybody he wanted.”
Dirk reached over and laid a hand on her shoulder. “That must have been awful for you.”
“It was. And I remember lying in bed, crying, when I was little, after hearing them screaming and fighting about it. And I wanted to just get up out of that bed and go to those truck stops and tell those girls to leave my daddy alone. That he belonged to us kids and my mommy. That we needed him more than they did.”
He ran his fingers gently through the back of her hair and massaged the nape of her neck. “I'm so sorry, Van.”
“So, I'd have to say, no, I don't like prostitution very much.”
“I don't suppose you do. And I can't blame you.”
“But we're on our way to interview some, so I'm going to put my prejudices in my back pocket, and you're going to watch your terminology. Because no matter what they do for a living, we're going to treat them with respect.”
“Understood.”
They traveled on in companionable silence for a while, until Dirk said, “Savannah, you don't ever have to worry about me doing something like that.”
“I know.”
“I want to make sure you know. I'd never be unfaithful to you. I'll never break your heart.”
“I know.”
She turned her head, nuzzling her cheek into the palm of his big, warm hand.
“If for no other reason,” he said, “I wouldn't do it because of that little girl in Georgia. I can't stand the thought of her crying in her bed over crap she shouldn't have even known about till she was a whole lot older.”
The road ahead got very blurry. Savannah blinked her eyes several times and sniffed.
“Thank you, Dirk.”
“You're welcome, baby.”
 
“Wow, how romantic,” Savannah said as she and Dirk pulled over to the side of the road and parked in front of what looked like a miniature, abandoned trailer park out in the middle of nowhere.
For as far as the eye could see in any direction, the dilapidated mobile homes were the only structures, the only signs of humanity. An island of faded, rusting metal, baking in the desert sun.
Savannah thought she'd never seen such a lonely setting in all her life.
“I don't think romance is an important ingredient in what goes on here,” Dirk said. “What were you expecting?”
“Oh, I don't know. With a name like Monique's Ranch, I guess I was picturing something with some French flavor. A bit of New Orleans charm, balconies with fancy wrought iron. Beautiful ladies standing on them, wearing feather boas and revealing evening gowns, beckoning ‘come hither' to passersby.”
Dirk shook his head and laughed. “You've read way too many of those romance novels, gal. Let's go inside and get a taste of the real world ... distasteful though it may be.”
They left the car and walked across the hard-packed dirt to the door of the trailer that was front and center in the haphazard complex. Over the door hung a hand-painted black sign with the name of the place spelled out in hot pink. On either side of the name was a pink circle with a red dot in the center.
“Are those supposed to be boobs?” she said.
“I reckon,” he replied. “I drew better ones than that when I was nine.”
“You drew boobs when you were nine?”
He grinned and glanced down at her ample chest. “I became a boob man very early in life and never looked back.”
“Apparently so.”
Dirk tried the doorknob, but found it locked. He rang the bell and a loud, annoying buzz like an electric shock sounded throughout the property.
A few moments later, the door was opened by a large, Slavic-looking man. With his blond hair and light blue eyes, he might have been handsome, had it not been for the coldness in those icy eyes and the numerous scars on his face.
Savannah had seen scars from accidents and scars from fights. And she knew, this was not the face of a peace-loving man.
He glanced quickly from Dirk to Savannah and back. “Yes,” he said in a heavy Russian accent. “What can I help you with?”
Dirk showed him his badge, though Savannah noticed that he flashed it a bit faster than he normally did.
No point in advertising the fact that he was out of his jurisdiction.
“I need to talk to the madam of this establishment.”
The guy's eyes flickered over Dirk like a prize fighter checking out the competition before a bout. “You talk to me,” he replied.
“Inside,” Dirk replied, matching his gruff tone. “Now.”
The doorman didn't exactly jump to obey. He stood there for several long, tense moments before he finally stepped backward just enough to allow them entrance.
Once inside, Savannah glanced around at Monique's reception area and saw that this legal brothel looked like every other cheap, illegal establishment that she and Dirk had rousted when she was a cop. The cliché, dim, red lighting, crushed red velvet, dirty chandeliers, and pictures on the walls of nude or scantily clad females set the mood.
The place smelled like it could use a good airing out, Savannah thought. She would bet that it hadn't seen a beam of sunlight or a whiff of fresh air in years.
“I need to talk to Monique,” Dirk said as he walked over to a small counter in the left-rear corner of the room and picked up a piece of paper that said “Menu” at the top.
“You talk to me,” the iceman repeated.
Dirk scanned the paper, then handed it to Savannah. She glanced over it and was mildly surprised at the simplicity of the choices. For the most part, there wasn't anything on it that didn't routinely occur in bedrooms of regular old married folks the world over.
It was hard to imagine what the big deal was.
“Are you telling me that this is your place?” Dirk asked him.
“It is.”
“Ah, well, then ... in that case, Monique, you're the one I need some answers from.”
“My name is Vadim. You will call me Vadim, not Monique. That woman's name.”
“Okay, Vadim. I would have guessed Boris, but ... whatever.”
Savannah stifled a grin when Vadim the Terrible's nostrils flared.
At times like this, she often thought that maybe someday she could break Dirk out of his unfortunate habit of pissing off nearly everyone he met. It was a pleasant fantasy, a civil Dirk, brought into being under her gentle tutelage.
But Granny had warned all of her granddaughters, “Don't marry a man expecting to change him. It'll just annoy the daylights outta him, and wear you to a frazzle.”
No, she would probably never be able to change Dirk. She was lucky if she could get him to keep his feet off her coffee table.
“What you want with me?” Vadim barked, crossing his burly arms over his even burlier chest.
Savannah hoped that Dirk had noticed these burly qualities and was taking them into account when he was taunting him like this.
Dirk reached into his pocket and pulled out the photo copy of Ethan Aberson. He shoved it under Vadim's nose.
“Vadim shoved the picture away. “No. I know nothing about him. I—”
“You look again,” Dirk said, shoving it back in his face. “He was here. We know that. I want to talk to the gal who serviced him.”
“My ladies do not ‘serve.' They are companions.”
Savannah couldn't resist the urge to enter the fray. She stepped forward and held the menu up to him. “Okay, then which one of your lovely lady companions provided one of these ... um ... tasty dishes for that man in that picture.”
“I don't remember.”
“That's too bad,” Dirk said, “because that means you're going to have to blow your whistle, or whatever you do, to get your ladies to all come parading in here and line up so that I can show each one of them this picture and see who remembers him.”
“They shouldn't mind too much,” Savannah said. “They do it all the time, day and night, for your customers. And we'll even let them wear their clothes and retain their dignity.”
Vadim wrestled with his anger, staring at Dirk with those pale blue eyes that got colder by the second.
“You have some paper to show you can make me do this?” he asked.
“No, but I can get one,” Dirk lied. “And while we're interviewing all of your women, we're going to look them over really closely for any signs of bruising, any indications that they aren't happy in their work here.”
“This is legal brothel.”
“Oh, I'm sure it is,” Savannah replied. “And I'm sure that you're abiding by absolutely every single rule regulating its operation. There are so many of those pesky laws, I don't know how you people can keep them all straight.”
“And I hear the penalties are pretty harsh,” Dirk said. He paused, letting their message sink in, then he said, “I need to speak to the young lady who was a companion to this gentleman at this establishment. Now. We ain't got all day.”
Stoically, Vadim stood, staring at them, a muscle in his massive jaw twitching furiously.
Dirk stared back. And so did Savannah.
The only sounds were of an old regulator clock on the wall ticking and the whistling of air that was rushing in and out of Vadim's flared nostrils.
Finally, he whipped a cell phone out of his pocket and barked into it, “Come up here.” Then he snapped it closed.
Less than thirty seconds later, a pretty little blonde came rushing in, wearing nothing but a bikini bottom. She had a baby face, and Savannah would have guessed she was no more than fifteen.
On that sweet face was entirely too much makeup and an obviously fake smile. When she saw Savannah, she looked mildly surprised. She turned questioningly to Vadim.
“Both of them?” she said.
“No. He just wants to talk,” her boss told her.
“No,” Dirk interjected. “Both of us. Her
and
me. Both of us just want to talk.”
The girl motioned for them to come with her, but Vadim held up one hand.
“Stop,” he said. “Pay first. Both of you. You just talk, you pay, too.”
As Dirk forked over the cash, Savannah watched Vadim and the girl and saw a look exchanged between them. Having seen that look far too many times, Savannah was familiar with the subtext it contained. “Watch what you say, or else,” was the message, loud and clear.

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