Cooked Goose (18 page)

When he hung up the phone and reached for his coat, Savannah grabbed hers, too.

As they rushed out the door, she said, “So, where are we going?”

“To that big, stone jetty, just north of the pier.”

She locked the door behind them, then ran to catch up with him as he hustled to his car. “Why?’

“Because some anonymous caller just phoned the station.”

“And?”

He paused for a moment, his hand on the Buick’s door handle. He looked as sad and defeated as she had ever seen him. “And they said that’s where we can find Titus Dunn’s body.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

December 14—8:16 a.m.

Dirk sat on the end of the pier, his sneakers dangling over the edge, looking as miserable as Savannah felt. She walked out to him and sat next to him, ignoring the fact that she would probably get seagull poop or fish bait remnants on her good linen slacks. Friends didn’t concern themselves with such things at times like these.

“Don’t jump,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “It isn’t worth it. The water’s way too cold this time of year.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I hear that drowning ain’t all that bad.”

She gazed thoughtfully out at the horizon where the morning sky was clear, cloudless, blue—the typical southern California sky. “I don’t trust information about dying,” she said. “Like, how do they know for sure? The people who’ve really gone through with it aren’t around to talk about it. The rest of them are just guessing.”

“I suppose Titus knows what it’s like to die.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the jetty and the stretch of beach between the rock formation and the wooden pier. The area was swarming with cops. Dr. Liu and her team were hovering over the classic Charger they had found, parked in the beachside lot. It had been empty. Thank God.

Except for a generous amount of blood spatterings, smudges and smears.

Hordes of spectators lined the yellow tape that marked the perimeter. Some were equipped with cameras, microphones, and pushy attitudes that identified them as media. Everybody wanted a piece of the action.

“We can’t be sure Titus is dead,” she said, trying to believe her own words, “until we find the body.”

“Where the hell is it? We looked all night.” He waved a hand at the assortment of uniformed cops, plain-clothes cops, off-duty cops. Everyone and their brother was looking for any sign of their fallen comrade. “Dammit, Van,” he said, “half of the force—hell, more than half—was out here looking all night. And we got zip, zilch.”

“We’ve got a little more than zip or zilch. There’s the Charger.”

He cast a depressed look at the car and winced. “So, the blood is probably his, the same as the house. We already knew he was hurt. So, that’s nothin’ new.”

Savannah marveled at how Dirk could put a negative spin on anything. But this time, he wasn’t without justification. “And somebody wiped the car down pretty good when they were through with it,” he continued, “so we don’t have any prints to go on.”

She was determined to find the proverbial glass half full, or at least not bone dry. “That tells us something,” she offered. “What? That his attacker has good housekeeping skills?”

“Maybe. But mostly, it tells us that Titus was inside the car, bleeding, and whoever shot him must have been with him in the car, probably drove him here, took him out of the car and wiped everything down.”

“Then where’s his body? If they dumped him here, where’s the corpse?”

“If it was lying on the jetty rocks, like the caller said, it may have been washed away before we got here. There was a high tide last night. Now there’s a happy thought. We may never know what happened to him, let alone who did it.”

She draped one arm across his broad shoulders. “Buck up, babycakes. It ain’t over yet.”

She heard footsteps on the pier’s wooden planks, coming toward them. When she turned to see who their visitor might be, some of her depression turned to irritation. Captain Harvey Bloss. Just the guy she needed to see right now.

He had shown up a couple of times during the night to annoy the searchers, pretending to be in charge, but getting in the way. Each time, Savannah had ducked out of sight, rather than risk another confrontation. She didn’t want to fight; she was too tired to be feisty.

“It’s El Capitan Muy Loco. Whoopty-do. Want me to just go ahead and jump?” she asked, pointing to the water that splashed against the barnacle-encrusted pilings below. “Now might be a good time to find out if drowning’s a nice or crummy way to go.”

“Naw. Stick around. If he gives you any guff, he’ll be the one going for a dip. I’m not in the mood to put up with his line o' bull right now.”

Savannah searched Dirk’s eyes. What she saw gave her cause for concern. Dirk looked like he might actually welcome a verbal clash. When he was that tired and discouraged, he didn’t always use the best judgment—unlike herself who didn’t have to be tired or discouraged to abandon good judgment.

“Don’t get on Bloss’s bad side,” she warned him. “Believe me, having been there myself, I can vouch for the fact that it’s not a place you want to be.”

“I thought I told you to stay away from crime scenes, Reid," Bloss said as he approached them, dispensing with his usual unpleasantries.

“What crime scene?” She donned her most irritating pseudo-innocent face for his benefit. “This is a city pier. The only things murdered here are some red snappers and worms.”

“Are you telling me you weren’t running around down there?” Bloss barked.

Dirk stirred, as though about to jump into the conversation, but Savannah squeezed his forearm. “Am I telling you that, Captain? No. I’m not telling you that—or anything else, for that matter. As far as I’m concerned, you and I aren’t speaking.”

“Actually, we
are
speaking. We have some business to discuss. Privately.”

Bloss gave Dirk a dismissive nod, which clearly irked the heck out of him. Dirk turned to Savannah. “Van?”

“Sure. No problem,” Savannah said, looking up and down Bloss’s less-than-impressive physique with contempt. “If push comes to shove, I can take ’im. He'll be the one going over the edge.”

Reluctantly, Dirk rose and walked a short distance away—out of earshot but still close enough to keep an eye on things.

Once they were relatively alone, Savannah turned to Bloss and said, “So, what’s this business you want to discuss? Spit it out, boy. Time’s a’wastin’.”

Anger flashed in the captain’s eyes, but she could tell he was trying hard to keep his temper in check. “Actually, it’s more of a favor,” he finally said, looking like he was about to choke on his own spit.

“A favor? You're going to ask me for a favor? How fun! And I get to tell you to go hell in a hand basket! Go ahead, ask. I can’t wait.”

“I want you to let Margie stay at your house for a few days, until this case is resolved. I’m concerned for her safety, and I think she’d be better off there than the hotel.”

“Oh.” Her emotional hot air balloon came tumbling to earth. She would do it. Of course she would. She had to. But she wasn’t going to let him off that easily. “So, tell me why I should do anything for you?”

“Not for me. For Margie.” His patience was on a very short leash and it quickly reached its end. “Don’t bust my balls about this, Reid. Believe me, it’s not my idea. It’s hers. For some reason, which I can’t understand, she likes you. She’s throwing a fit to stay with you.”

“Tell me the truth about something.”

“What?” He looked unhappy, uncomfortable. Briefly, she wondered why.

“
Is
she in danger? Do you know something I don’t?”

“She was kidnapped and—”

“I know. But she got away. Do you have any particular reason to think he might come after her again?”

His usually florid face blushed even redder. She could tell she was really pissing him off. She couldn’t be more pleased.

“Look, Reid,” he snapped. “You know as much about this case as I do. I just figure it’s a good idea at this point for her to stay at your place. I can’t keep paying for a hotel room and all that room service.”

“Oh, I see,” she said sarcastically. “So, this is an issue of economics.”

“It’s an issue of my daughter getting on with her life. She won’t stay cooped up in a hotel room anymore.”

“And you need a baby-sitter.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“How much?”

He named an amount that was larger than she had anticipated, a sum that would make a tidy difference in her overdrawn bank account.

“That’s not nearly enough.”

He upped his offer by fifty percent. But she was feeling perverse.

“I don’t want your damned money. I want you to bring a couple of bags of groceries to my house. All her favorite stuff.”

He looked confused. “But I don’t know what she likes.”

Savannah shook her head. “What a sorry excuse for a father you are. Ask her. Tell her to make a list, and you go shopping, and you deliver it to my door. I want to make sure she’s got everything she wants to eat. Nobody’s ever fainted from hunger in the Reid household.”

He glanced up and down her figure. “Obviously.”

“Up yours.”

“So, you’ll pick her up right away and take her home with you?”

Savannah nodded. “And you’ll drop off the groceries this afternoon?”

He agreed. As he walked away, he said over his shoulder, “Watch out for her, you hear? I don’t want anything to happen to that kid.”

As Savannah watched him leave, she lifted one eyebrow and mumbled, “You’d better be careful, captain. There for a second, I thought I saw a flicker of humanity.”

Then she reconsidered. “Naw.”

* * *

9:42 A.M.

When Margie opened her hotel-room door and saw Savannah standing there, she nearly “cut a rug” as Savannah’s Granny Reid described the little dance done by extremely happy people.

“Savannah! Hi!” She threw the door open wide and practically pulled Savannah inside. “I thought it was my dumb dad. Come on in.”

“You should have looked through the peephole first, and then you would have known who it was,” Savannah told her. “And you oughta stop calling him your dumb dad.”

“Why? He is.”

“Because it confuses me—makes me think you’ve got a smart one around somewhere.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Savannah sat on the edge of the bed that was littered with deflated potato chip bags, an empty pizza box, makeup and lots of new clothes that looked like they had been purchased at the gift shop downstairs. Yeah, Harvey Bloss was going to have a four-figure bill to pay. And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy.

“The point is,” Savannah continued, “he’s still your father, and where I come from, you don’t talk that way about your elders. No matter what their I.Q….or lack thereof.”

Margie plopped down on the other side of the bed and put on a sourpuss. “I thought you came by to see me, maybe to hang out. But I guess you’re here to lecture me about respecting my parents.”

Savannah grinned. It was always fun to make somebody’s day. “No,” she said. “I came by to spring you outta this joint. The parole board granted you a pardon.”

Margie jumped up from the bed, scattering bottles of blue and black nail polish. “No kidding?”

“I kid you not, kiddo. Get your stuff packed.”

“All right!” Then she looked suspicious. “Where am I going? Not back to my dad’s house.”

“Nope. Back to
my
house.”

“He’s going to let me stay with you? He actually agreed to that?”

“He did, indeed. Said he thought you’d feel safer at my place. See there. The old far—, I mean fella, does something right once in awhile.”

“Fantastic! I asked him if I could stay with you. Well, actually, I threw a fit. But he said no way, because he really, really hates you. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I can’t believe he said yes. This is just too cool!”

“Seems your father put your feelings and desires ahead of his own this time.”

Savannah nearly gagged on the words. It really grumped her butt to say anything nice about that s.o.b., but she sensed his daughter needed to have some positive thoughts toward the man who had sired her.

Margie started throwing her new clothes and makeup into shopping bags. “He’s not letting me do this because he’s a nice guy,” she said, tossing in a top of the line electronic tablet. “It’s just that he was afraid that if he made me stay here another night by myself, I’d run away to Hollywood and become a hooker druggie on Sunset Boulevard.”

“Now, where would he get an idea like that?” Savannah mused as she sat down in a comfortable chair that overlooked the marina below. “How imaginative. A teenage, runaway, drugged-out hooker on the streets of Hollywood. How unique.”

Margie giggled. “Okay, so it might not have been the most creative threat I could’ve come up with but—”

Savannah smiled as she watched a yacht leave its slip and head for the open water. “As threats go,” she said, “I’d say that was right up there with holding your breath until you turn blue.”