Corpse Suzette (10 page)

Sergio wiped one hand
wearily across his face. “Why were you asking me about Rosarita?” he said,
suddenly curious.

“Don’t you know?” she
asked.

“No. Why?”

“It wasn’t your password on
your account?”

“No. It wasn’t. Why would
you think it was?”

Savannah’s mental gears
whirred.
Don't tell all you know,
she told herself.
Not to a guy with
half a dozen aliases, a prison record, a missing—and possibly murdered—business
partner.

“I found a scrap of paper
in her house. The word was written on it.”

“Why would you think it was
a password?”

“The notes said, ‘Password,
rosarita.'
That’s why.”

Okay, so Granny Reid
wouldn’t be proud. But what Gran didn’t know wouldn’t earn Savannah a trip
behind the woodshed.

“So, that’s probably the
password for the account where she transferred my money,” Sergio said, excited.
“Do you think you can find that number for me? With that and the password, I
could get my money back.”

Savannah thought of Tammy
back at the office. Tam probably had those numbers memorized by now as she
tried to find the bank they belonged to.

“I don’t know. We’ll keep
shaking the tree and see what falls out.” With a sly grin she added, “These
things have a way of working out. If the good Lord thinks you deserve that
money, I’m sure you’ll get it back.”

His eyes narrowed. He
looked about as comforted as she had intended him to be. “But,” he said, “you
think she used the word
‘rosarita
’ as the password for the account where
she stuck my money?”

“I reckon she did.” Again,
she couldn’t hide a smile. Suzette was a corker; Savannah’s kind of gal. “I
figure Miss Suzette chose that particular password to make a point.”

“Yeah, she made her point
all right.” He sighed. For a moment Leonard/Sergio looked much older than his
age, in spite of all the plastic surgery. “I screwed Devon at ‘our’ hotel, and
now I’m screwed.”

Savannah nodded. “That’s
about it... in a pe-can shell.”

Chapter

A
fter Savannah finished
speaking with Sergio D’Alessandro, she was more than eager to leave Emerge. As
lovely as the establishment might be, architecturally speaking, the place felt
creepy to her. A few too many dark secrets seemed to cast a gloom over even the
most beautifully decorated and sunlit interiors.

She was walking across the
parking lot to her Mustang when she spotted Devon Wright, who was approaching
her Corvette. Before the younger woman climbed into the convertible, she
glanced around, as if to see whether anyone was watching her. Fortunately, she
didn’t look Savannah’s way, or she would have seen that, indeed, she was being
observed.

What’s with the paranoia,
girlie?
Savannah thought.
What are you up to that you don’t want anyone to know
about?

As Savannah got into her
own car and started the engine, she decided to follow the publicist and find
out.

She would have to tail her
at a distance; the bright red Mustang wasn’t exactly a low-profile vehicle.
More than once Savannah had considered trading it in for something less
conspicuous. Something that got more than nine miles to a gallon of gasoline,
had air bags, and didn’t need a carburetor tune-up every month to run smoothly
Ah, the joys of owning a classic.

But just thinking of
getting rid of the ’stang broke her heart. Years ago, she had made the mistake
of selling the Camaro she’d had since high school. The loss had plunged her
into a depression so deep that only those who owned a collectable muscle car
and were continually challenged to race while sitting at stoplights could possibly
understand.

No, the Mustang was here to
stay. She’d just have to stay a couple of blocks behind anyone she wanted to
tail. And fortunately, she knew every street, alley, nook, and cranny of San
Carmelita, so it was fairly simple keeping track of her quarry.

Devon drove along the edge
of the foothills, then headed toward the downtown area. Lined with palm trees,
mission-style boutiques, antique shops, and souvenir stores that sold what
Savannah affectionately called “that glued-together seashell crap” to the Los
Angeles tourists, Main Street was picturesque and quaint.

But Devon Wright drove
right through the picturesque part, past the quaint section and into the grungy
side of town. Here the cute shops gave way to X-rated video stores, tattoo
parlors, strip clubs, and pawn establishments.

It was in front of one of
those hock shops that Devon parked her convertible. Savannah was more than a
little surprised that she would leave such a nice vehicle in that sort of
neighborhood, especially with the top down.

But there was no accounting
for naiveté.

Savannah watched from a
block away as Devon and her black leather miniskirt disappeared into the store.
Fifteen minutes later, she emerged, a satisfied look on her face. Apparently,
her business had been accomplished.

As Savannah watched her get
into the Corvette and drive away, she considered what she should do—continue to
follow her, or go into that store and find out what the publicist had been up
to.

Fortunately, Savannah knew
the owner of the store, a sweet old Jewish fellow named Saul, who had helped
her and Dirk a number of times on other cases. Once he had even helped them
solve a murder, so he was high on her list of favorite citizens.

She decided to scoot inside
and find out what Devon Wright had pawned. She could always tail that gal some
other time if she ran out of other leads and needed an excuse to stay away from
home and sweet Cousin Abigail.

“Saulie,” she exclaimed as
she entered the front door, setting the string of silver bells hanging from the
ceiling tinkling. “What’s shakin’, sugar?”

Saul rounded the corner,
his arms outstretched. “Savannah, my dear! How have you been? Where have you
been? I thought you and I had something special, and then I don’t see you for months!
My heart, it’s broken, broken, I tell you.”

For effect he clasped both
hands to his chest and shook his head, gazing mournfully heavenward.

“Oh, Saul, don’t give me
that. You’ve got a harem of women, bringing you food, doing your laundry,
picking out ties for you, and god knows what. You’re the most eligible bachelor
in town.” Saul’s wizened face split with a wide grin. “That’s true,” he said.
“The women, they flock to Saul’s store, his house. They think I’ll give them
some of my treasures here.” He waved an arm, indicating the glass counters
filled with both new and estate jewelry.

“And tell me, Saul,” she
said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “do you barter favors
from the fairer sex with all of these shiny baubles of yours? Come on, you can
tell
me
.”

The old fellow laughed so
hard she thought he might fall down. “Ah, Savannah, you do me good. I’m
flattered that you think I would still benefit from such ‘favors,’ as you call
them. But I’m past all that.”

“No man is ever truly past
all that, until he’s six feet under. So don’t give me that line of hooey. Don’t
tell me you didn’t enjoy the legs on that gal who was just in here. The one in
the leather miniskirt.”

He giggled again. “I
looked, yes. I enjoyed, true. But beyond that...?” He shrugged. “What can I do
for you today, dear Savannah? You want something sparkly for yourself? I’ll
give you a good deal. I have a pendant, a London blue topaz, the exact color of
your beautiful eyes. Let me get it for you. You look and see, and you won’t be
able to live without it.”

He shuffled over to a
counter, slipped behind it, slid the door in the back of the display open and
reached inside.

“No, no, no, Saul. I can’t
afford any of your pretties, so don’t even tempt me. I came in to ask you a
question.”

His bottom lip protruded,
but his eyes twinkled. “And here I thought you came into my shop to see me and
ask me to run away with you to Acapulco.”

“If I ever get a yen to run
away to Acapulco, Saulie, I promise it will be with you and no other. But
meanwhile, would you mind terribly telling me why that young woman was in
here?”

“The one in the miniskirt
with the great ankles?”

“That’s the one. Did she
buy something or hock something?” He stroked his scraggly beard with one hand
and his smile faded slightly. “Neither one. She sold me something. And you’d
better not tell me that it wasn’t hers to sell. I checked the sheets the
policemen give me, the lists of things that have been stolen. There was nothing
on there about sapphire and diamond earrings. Nothing at all.”

Sapphire and diamond
earrings?

A bell went off in
Savannah’s head. And it sounded very, very sweet. Rather like the bells of the
old mission in town when they rang on Christmas Eve and Easter morning.

“Would you mind if I took a
look at those earrings, Saul? Pretty please with whipped cream and chocolate
sprinkles on top?”

Reluctantly, he reached
behind him and took a small black velvet box from the top of a desk. He slid it
across the counter to her.

She could feel the shot of
adrenaline hit her bloodstream as she opened the lid. It made her knees weak,
the ultimate high for a junkie like her. These were the moments she lived for.

Yes. There, nestled against
the black velvet were a pair of exquisite earrings. At least two carats each of
emerald-cut sapphires, surrounded by diamonds, set in white gold.

Marilyn Monroe had owned a
pair just like this.

And more importantly, so
had Dr. Suzette Du Bois.

“Saulie,” she said, trying
not to be too happy, considering the kindly old fellow’s misfortune. “I hate to
tell you this, honey, but you need to hold on tight to these earrings. Don’t
sell them, don’t even touch them until I get Sergeant Coulter over here to look
at them.”

Saul looked bewildered.
“But that young lady. She seemed nice, like a good girl. You don’t think she
stole these, do you?”

Savannah lifted one
eyebrow. “At the moment, Saul, my man... I don’t know
what
that girl’s
capable of, but I intend to find out.”

As Savannah and her new-found
girlfriend sat across from each other in a booth at Cache, Savannah wondered
why Myrna, a woman in her sixties, would have chosen this glorified ladies’
strip joint as a place to meet for a drink.

All around them, women in
their twenties and thirties strutted their far more youthful “stuff’ for the
equally young—or as Savannah preferred to think of them, “immature”—men who
were waiting on them, wearing only black spandex pants and black bow ties.

Either the strutting ladies
didn’t mind the fact that most of the mega-muscled, gorgeous waiters were gay,
or they just preferred not to think about the fact that they wouldn’t have a
chance with them, no matter how charming their “stuff’ might be.

Savannah didn’t mind the
fact that she was old enough to have mothered some of these gals. She had d-one
more than her share of strutting in her day. Now it was their turn. And while
she might miss the excitement and vanity boost of donning a sexy outfit,
sashaying around, and having people notice, she wouldn’t go back to that era in
her life for anything.

Young and bouncy was fun.
But she wouldn’t have given up the life lessons she’d learned in the past ten
to twenty years for any amount of perkiness.

Myrna, on the other hand,
didn’t appear to realize that it was no longer her turn.

Her two-sizes-too-small
skirt and midriff-baring top looked ludicrous on a woman her age. But she
didn’t seem to notice the disparaging glances the younger women shot her way
as^ they passed by. And when she batted her eyes at the waiter and made an
overt pass at him, she didn’t appear to register the look of disgust that
flitted across his handsome face as he placed her gin and tonic in front of
her.

“Do you have a boyfriend,
Savannah?” Myrna asked as she twirled her fingertip in her drink, then made a
show of licking a few drops from the end of her bright red fingernail in what
was, no doubt, intended to be a sultry gesture. “You must have, a pretty girl
like you.”

“No boyfriend,” Savannah
replied, sipping at her own cola. “I have men friends, but no romantic
entanglements at the moment.”

Myrna looked shocked and
mortified. “How sad!”

Savannah shrugged. “Not
really. I don’t have the time or energy for all that rigmarole right now
anyway.”

“But don’t you get lonely?”

“Don’t have time for that
either.”

Myrna shook her head, still
bewildered. “But at night, when you’re sleeping all alone, surely that must
bother you.”

“Oh, I may not have a
boyfriend, but I never sleep alone.” Myrna’s eyes widened. “Oh, you mean you...”

“Yes, I have two cats. If I
shut them out of the bedroom, they sit outside my door and howl all night.
Sleeping alone is a luxury I’ll never have as long as Diamante and Cleopatra
are alive.”

“Oh.”

Savannah could tell she had
just lost some major points in Myrna’s estimation. Nobody worth anything slept
alone if they could help it. Not in Myrna’s world.

“Do you have a boyfriend,
Myrna?”

A look of profound sadness
crossed the woman’s face. “Not anymore. He left me for... well... someone
else.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.
Had you been together long?”

“Six years.”

“That’s long enough. More
like a divorce than a breakup at that point.”

Myrna nodded. “We were
doing fine, getting along really good. I thought he was even thinking about
marrying me. But then, I made a big mistake. I treated him to having some work
done at Mystic Twilight last year. Suzette did a great job on him. When she was
finished with him, he looked ten or fifteen years younger. Ran off with a girl
half his age.”

“Ouch. That must have
really hurt. Especially considering the expense of your ‘treat.’ That sort of
gift doesn’t come cheap.”

“Suzette let me work it
off. I work off all of my... procedures.”

Savannah wondered how long
it had been since Myrna had gotten a full paycheck, if ever.

“Speaking of Suzette,”
Savannah said, eager to get away from romantic gossip and on to the case, “can
you tell me about Suzette and Sergio?”

“What’s to say? They’re off
and on, together then apart, year after year.”

“And why would you say that
is?”

“Simple enough. Suzette
loves Sergio. Always has. He uses her, then dumps her, then takes her back,
then dumps her. It’s ridiculous how much nonsense she takes from him. She could
do a lot better than him, but she doesn’t realize that, so . .

“And how about Devon?”

“Devon is nothing to
Sergio. She’s this month’s fling. Nothing more.”

“How about Devon and
Suzette? How do they get along, considering...?”