Corpse Suzette (11 page)

“They hate each other, of
course. Suzette tried to fire her when she found about the two of them, but
Sergio wouldn’t hear of it.”

“And he’s the boss when it
comes to that sort of thing?”

Myrna snorted with disgust.
“Sergio is the boss when it comes to anything. And why that is, I’ll never
know. Suzette is the surgeon, the one with the skill and the credentials. He
does nothing but sit in that office of his and pretend to manage things.
Suzette could replace him in a heartbeat, but he’s having a heck of a time
filling her shoes.”

Savannah set her drink down
abruptly. “What? He’s trying to replace her already?”

“Oh, he’s been trying to
pull in another surgeon since the day she went missing. Making calls all over
Beverly Hills, Malibu, Santa Monica, even talking to New York doctors, trying
to sell them on the idea of a practice in sunny California. Right now, Emerge
doesn’t have a surgeon. We’re out of business until we do.”

Savannah toyed with her
straw and waited for a group of young women to pass by their booth and out of
earshot. Then she leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “Myrna,” she
said. “What do you think has happened to Suzette? What’s your best guess?”

Myrna looked sad and
thought for a long time before answering. “I don’t want it to be in your paper
that I said this, okay?” Savannah nodded. “I promise that absolutely nothing
you say to me will wind up in any paper.”

“I’m not sure what’s
happened to Suzette,” Myrna said. “Either she got fed up with Sergio, once and
for all, and just took off somewhere. Like a mini-nervous breakdown, and she’s
sitting in some hotel somewhere sobbing her eyes out and letting him worry.
Or... worse.”

“And by worse, you
mean...?”

“Foul play. Someone has
hurt her... or worse.”

“And who would have hurt
her? Could you make a guess? Just between us girls, of course.”

Again, Myrna considered her
answer carefully, then said, “If I had to guess who might murder her—and that’s
what we’re talking about here, murder, right?—I’d say that Devon is the most
likely to have done it. After all, she threatened to kill Suzette. Maybe she
did.”

Savannah froze, her glass
half way to her lips. “Devon threatened to kill Suzette? When? Where?”

“In the parking lot, the
night before Suzette went missing. They were screaming at each other because
Suzette had caught Devon and Sergio together at some hotel. And Devon told
Suzette to back off or she’d be sorry. When Suzette asked her what she meant by
that, Devon said, ‘Back off or you’ll find out. I know people who would take
care of you for fifty bucks and as far as I’m concerned, it would be money well
spent.’” Myrna paused and took a breath. “That sounds like a threat to me. How
about your

Savannah recalled the
sapphire and diamond earrings in Saul’s pawn shop and the satisfied smile on
Miss Devon Prissy Pants’s face when she had strolled into his place that
morning.

“Yeap,” she said with a
thoughtful nod. “Sure as shootin’... sounds like a threat to me, too.”

“Hey, this rabbit food
ain’t too bad,” Dirk said as he buried his face in the toasted pita sandwich
that Tammy had prepared for them. “Considering that a bimbo made it,” he added.

“It is good, Tam,” Savannah
said. “I didn’t know you could cook... other than cutting up celery and carrot
sticks and pouring mineral water, that is.”

From the other end of the
table, Tammy beamed as she passed a bowl of salad to Abigail, who sat silently
beside her, staring at her plate with open disgust. “Why, thank y’all,” Tammy
said in a fairly dreadful imitation of Savannah’s southern drawl. “I figured
you’d cooked for me plenty of times, and since Abby’s here, I should make
dinner for a change.”

“I like Savannah’s cooking
better,” Abigail said.

Everyone paused,
momentarily stunned by the blunt comment. Then Savannah shook her head and
said, “What’s the matter with you Yankees? You don’t have the good manners that
God gave a jackass.”

“I don’t eat crap like
this,” Abigail replied nudging the pita on her plate with one finger, like a
kid would a dead bug to see if it would wiggle.

“It’s good,” Dirk said.
“There’s little shrimps and some kind of melted cheese in there with all that
green grass-stuff. It ain’t half bad.”

“I could make you something
else, Abby,” Tammy said, her feelings obviously wounded.

“Don’t bother.” Abigail
turned to Savannah. “Do you have any of that fried chicken that you made last
night left over?” Savannah thought of the drumstick and thigh securely locked
away in a plastic bag in her refrigerator. “Nope,” she said. “We ate it all.
Nothing left. Your dinner’s there in front of you. Eat it or wear it.”

Again, everyone at the
table froze.

Abigail just glared at her
for a long moment, and even Savannah considered the wisdom of making a threat
that had always worked fine for Granny Reid, but...

To everyone’s surprise,
Abigail picked up the sandwich and bit into it. After a moment of chewing, the
frown disappeared from her face and she attacked it with gusto.

“So, Tammy,” Savannah said,
“how far did you get with that account number and password I gave you?”

Tammy gave Abigail a wary
look, then replied, “Not far. Nothing yet. Sorry. I worked on it for hours, but
couldn’t get it to work with any of the online banking sites. I haven’t gotten
through the list yet. So I might find something.”

Savannah turned to Dirk,
“And how’s your drive-by case?”

“Wrapped it up,” he said
between chews. “Wasn’t hard. You lean on those wanna-be gangsters, and they
give each other up for a thin dime. No honor among punks.”

“Good. Then you can get
back to business on this Du Bois case.”

“What case? Is she still
missing?”

“Yes, and it’s been 72
hours since Suzette Du Bois was last seen. And besides that...” Savannah
glanced over at Abigail, who was contentedly munching away.

Abby stopped in mid-chew.
“What? You’re afraid to talk in front of the fat girl? You think I might have
killed that stupid doctor, just because she promotes the harassment,
degradation, and humiliation of people of size? You think I bumped her off the
other night when I said I was out shopping for souvenirs?” She stood and picked
up her plate from the table. “Fine. I’ll go out in the backyard so that you can
talk about me all you want.”

“Oh, Abby,” Savannah said,
“sit yourself down there and eat your meal. I’m pretty sure I know who killed
Suzette Du Bois, and it wasn’t you. I just want you to keep anything you hear
at this table to yourself. Don’t go spreading it when you’re there at Emerge.”

Tammy perked up. “You know
who killed her? You know that she’s been killed?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s
dead,” Savannah said. “And I think Devon Wright, their publicist either did it
or had someone do it. She’s fooling around with Sir Sergio Full of Himself, and
Suzette caught them together. The gals got into a catfight and someone
overheard them arguing in the parking lot three nights ago... the night Suzette
was last seen.”

“That’s not a lot to go
on,” Dirk said.

“How about if Miss Devon
pawned a pair of Suzette’s earrings this morning?”

“That’s better,” he said.
“You sure?”

“Pretty darned sure. I told
Saul to hold onto them until you can get over there to look at them. And
there’s a picture of Suzette wearing them in her nightstand drawer.”

He actually looked
interested... as interested as Dirk ever got. “That’s much better. As soon as
we’re finished eating here, let’s go get that picture.”

“Don’t rush off,” Tammy
said. “I made dessert!”

Savannah gasped. “You made
a
dessert
? No way! Not with sugar or flour, I’ll bet.”

“I made watermelon sorbet.
And don’t make a face, Savannah. It’s good, even without sugar or flour.”

“I’m sure it’s delicious,”
Savannah said through only slightly gritted teeth. She had to be a good example
for Abigail... even if she would have much preferred a dish full of Ben and
Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream smothered with hot fudge.

“Great! I’ll dish some up
now.” Tammy jumped up from the table and danced over to the refrigerator.

A rude buzzing sound came
from Dirk’s shirt pocket. He reached in and took out his cell phone. “Coulter,”
he barked. “Yeah. Oh? Where? Okay.”

He returned the phone to his
pocket and gave Savannah a loaded look across the table. “Gotta go,” he said.
“And you’re gonna wanna come with me.”

“What is it?”

“DB.”

“Oh.”

“What’s a DB?” Abby asked.

Savannah swallowed hard. “A
dead body.” To Dirk she said, “Is it Suzette?”

“Nope.”

“Who then?”

Dirk suddenly looked tired
and a little bewildered. “You gonna come with me or ask questions?”

“I’ll get my purse and
weapon.”

Chapter

B
y the time Savannah and
Dirk arrived at Emerge, half a dozen radio cars were already there, forming a
barricade in the driveway in front of the entrance with red and blue lights
flashing. Across the front door was a strip of yellow crime scene tape... the
very sight of which could give Savannah an adrenaline jolt.

They piled out of Dirk’s
Buick and hurried up to the door. A young, uniformed cop stepped aside to let
them pass.

“Where is it?” Dirk asked
him.

“Down there... at the end
of the hall,” the patrolman replied.

As they strode down the hallway,
toward a knot of still more policemen standing in a circle around a figure
lying on the floor, Savannah could hear a woman sobbing hysterically in one of
the offices that they passed.

It was a sound she had
never gotten used to. The pure, gut-wrenching sound of human sadness at its
deepest. Sometimes she could hardly stand it.

As they approached, some of
the cops recognized them and moved away from the body to make room for them.

“Sergeant,” one of the
oldest ones said, “Jake and I were the first ones here. We’ve started a log.”

“Good,” Dirk replied. “Who
called it in?”

“The janitor lady. Said she
practically tripped over it when she came in to clean. Jake’s talking to her
there in one of the offices. She’s really upset.”

Savannah joined Dirk beside
the corpse, and they knelt beside the body to study it closer.

This was something else
that, no matter how many times she saw it, she never grew accustomed to it. The
difference in “alive” and “dead.”

When the soul left a person
and only the shell of a body remained, the contrast was deeply shocking. It hit
her hard every time she witnessed the phenomenon.

Only hours before she had
been talking to this man, watching his every movement, hanging on his every
word. And now he was gone. Completely, absolutely gone.

But in spite of her shock,
the cool, trained, professional part of her brain took over, scanning the body
in a methodical manner.

Sergio D’Alessandro’s
corpse showed no obvious signs of trauma. Since he was lying on his side, they
had a pretty clear view of the front and the back of the body. There was no
blood on the exposed skin or clothing. At least, nothing visible to the naked
eye, although every inch of his garments and body would be painstakingly
examined before that was officially concluded.

His eyes were open, and his
mouth, as well. His expression was mostly blank—maybe slightly worried. There
were no bruises or signs of violence on his face or hands.

“How do you figure he
died?” Dirk asked Savannah.

“Don’t know. Maybe a heart
attack or something?”

“Could be.” Dirk turned to
the cop who had been first on the scene. “Did the maid say if she saw anything
unusual, suspicious?”

“She said everything was
just the way it always was. Door locked. Nobody around. His car is in the parking
lot. She saw it and figured he was working late.”

“Did you search the
building?”

“We did,” one of the other
patrolmen said. “Me and my partner, Jack Pierce. There’s no one else here. No
sign of any struggle or anything out of the ordinary.”

“Help me turn him over,”
Dirk said.

Two of them assisted him in
rolling the body onto its other side. The left side was as benign as the right.

“Maybe it’s natural causes
or a drug overdose or something,” Dirk said. “We won’t know anything for sure
until Dr. Liu gets him on her table tomorrow morning.”

Dr. Liu's autopsy table
, Savannah thought.
That's
one place I never want to end up.

No, an autopsy table was
where they sent you when society didn’t know who or what the hell had killed
you.

And suspected the worst.

Savannah and Dirk waited
until Dr. Jennifer Liu and her entire coroner’s crime scene investigation crew
had come and gone. And by the time the white van, emblazoned with the Great
Seal of the State of California on its side, drove away, Sergio D’Ales-sandro’s
remains in the back, it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening.

As they walked back to
Dirk’s Buick, he glanced at his watch. “It’s not too late to call on your
buddy, that Devon gal, is it?”

“Well, her lover has just
been found dead, of god knows what cause. I should think she’d want to be
informed, if nothing else.”

“How much do you want to
bet she already knows that? I’ll bet you pizza next Saturday night at your
house and the heavyweight championship fight on your HBO.”

“Against?”

“Dinner out with me. You
pick the place.”

“No way. Any restaurant?
Like Chez Antoine?”

“Get real. I’m talking
McDonald’s, Burger King, or Burger Bonanza.”

“Gee,” she said dryly.
“Think you can handle that?”

“Yeah, I can handle it. As
long as you don’t go wild and order the most expensive burger on the menu.”

Savannah shook her head.
“Dirk, you’re so cheap you could squeeze an Indian head nickel until the
buffalo poops.”

“Thank you.”

Devon Wright lived in Two
Oaks, a small community inland from San Carmelita, and it was nearly half past
nine by the time Savannah and Dirk arrived at her modest house. The place
wasn’t easy to find, sitting at the end of a long dirt road that bisected a
large avocado grove.

As they left the Buick and
walked up to the house, a security light flipped on and Savannah saw some sort
of critter skedaddle into the nearby brush.

“I don’t like running
around in the dark on these farms at night,” she told Dirk. “I haven’t ever
since that night that we nearly ran head-on into that mountain lion. Remember
him?” Dirk knocked on the front door. Inside they could hear the television
blaring. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “I’m not likely to forget that guy. I think I wet
my pants when we came running around the back of that house and practically
tripped over him. Scared me so bad I let the perp get away.”

She cast a quick look into
the weeds that grew thick and high on either side of the house. “The occasional
opossum I can handle,” she said. “But the big cats I can do without.”

When no one answered, he
knocked again, louder and longer. Savannah shifted from one foot to the other
and tried to peek through the lace curtains that covered the door’s upper half
window. “Did I ever tell you about the time when Gran’s old hound dog, Colonel
Beauregard, treed a bobcat right there in her backyard?”

“Yes, at least a dozen
times,” he replied. “When two people have spent as much time together as we
have, they’ve heard all of the other one’s good stories.”

“Well, I pretend to listen
to your reruns with bated breath. You could do the same, you know.”

“That’s because you’re a
better person than me, Van. I’m not ashamed to admit it.” He pounded with his
fist on the door and shouted, “San Carmelita Police Department! Open up this
door right now before I break it down!”

The woman who finally
opened the door bore little resemblance to the publicist Savannah had followed
only that morning to the pawn shop. She looked like Devon Wright’s disheveled
and depressed twin, wearing a ratty bathrobe, no makeup, and a pair of men’s
house slippers.

“What do you want?” she
demanded, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. “Bust my damn door
down, will you?! What’s the matter with you? I got a kid in here!”

“Well, answer your door
next time,” Dirk snapped back. “I knocked three times and—”

“Allan, turn that friggen
TV down!” she screamed over her shoulder. “And go to bed. I told you to go to
bed half an hour ago, young man! Get going! Move it!”

A thin, pale little boy,
about seven years old, sulked over to the television and turned it off. An
equally dejected, scruffy terrier trailed after the child as he meandered down
the hall to bed.

“I need to speak to you,”
Dirk told her, his tone as irritable as hers.

“Well, it’s a little late,
and I’m not in the mood to talk to you anymore about that stupid Suzette. I
keep telling you, she’ll show up sooner or later. She’s just messing with our
heads, disappearing like this. She loves to do that kind of thing.”

“We aren’t here to talk to
you about Suzette,” Savannah told her.

“Yeah, and what are
you
doing here? What’s a magazine reporter doing, hanging out with a cop?”

“I’m not a magazine
reporter,” she admitted. “I’m a private investigator. I’m... I was working for
Mr. D’Alessandro, trying to find Suzette for him.”

“He never told me he hired
a private investigator.”

“I believe he wanted to
keep it confidential,” Savannah said. “But that’s not really important now. May
we come inside? We really do have something to tell you. Something you need to
hear.”

“And it can’t wait until
morning?”

“No,” Dirk said, brushing
by her and entering the house. “It can’t. Go sit over there on the couch, and
brace yourself. I’ve got some unpleasant news for you.”

Twenty minutes later, Devon
was still crying, wringing her hands, and wiping her nose on the sleeve of her
robe, in spite of the fact that Savannah kept shoving handfuls of tissues at
her.

“I can’t believe it!” she
said for the seventh time. “He was so healthy! So energetic! That guy could go all
night and frequently did!”

The thought of Sergio
“going” at all, let alone all night, made Savannah want to go scrub her mind’s
eye with a steel wool pad and bleach. But considering the depth of Devon’s
apparent grief, it was clear that his smarminess held a certain appeal for some
females.

There was no accounting for
taste, or the lack thereof.

Savannah was already
mentally celebrating the fact that she had won the bet with Dirk and would be
dining in splendid repast at Burger Bonanza soon.

Devon might be a jerk, and
she may have killed Suzette and robbed her of her earrings. But there was no
way that she had murdered her lover. Her shock at hearing of his passing was
genuine; no doubt about it.

“How?” she kept saying.
“How did he die?”

“We’ll find out tomorrow,”
Savannah told her. “After the autopsy.”

“And until we do find out,”
Dirk added, “there’s not much more to talk about concerning that topic. I’ve
got something else to discuss with you tonight.”

Devon’s red, swollen eyes
narrowed even more. “What? I told you, it’s late, and now that I’ve gotten this
awful news . .

“And you’re about to get
some more.” Dirk gave her an ugly smile. “I’d like you to know that I’m
seriously thinking of arresting you for murder.”

“Murder?” Devon choked and
sputtered. “How can you even think I’d kill Sergio? I loved him! And besides,
you just said you don’t even know how or why he died. It could have been
natural causes and—”

“Not D’Alessandro,” he
said, “Suzette Du Bois.”

“That’s just stupid!” She
threw the handful of tissues at him, but they fluttered to the floor midway
between them. “You don’t even have a body. How can you be sure she’s dead, let
alone that I did it?”

He gave her his most
intimidating look, the one he reserved for his least favorite suspects. “You
pawned her earrings this morning.”

“I did
not
!”

“We have the earrings. We
have your fingerprints on the ear-rings. We have Suzette’s thumbprint on the
earrings and her DNA. We’ve traced the earrings back to the jeweler where they
were purchased... by Suzette Du Bois. They’re hers. You pawned them. In other
words.
We
have
you
.”

Savannah gave Dirk a
sideways glance and had to suppress a giggle. Not having been raised by Granny
Reid, Dirk had no qualms about lying until his tongue turned black and fell
out. Considering that he hadn’t even heard about the earrings until little more
than an hour ago, he had just told a string of whoppers. DNA, indeed.

But it worked. Which
proved, contrary to Granny’s teaching, bad guys
did
occasionally win.

Devon dissolved into
hysterical sobs. Hands over her face, she spilled it, just as Dirk had intended
her to. “Okay, okay, I had her earrings. I took them out of her dresser the
other night when Sergio and I were searching her house.”

“You and Sergio were
searching Suzette’s place?” Dirk asked. “For what?” Savannah added. She knew
already, but she wasn’t sure how much Sergio had told his girlfriend.

“For the money that Suzette
stole from Sergio. And when we didn’t find it, he told me to go ahead and treat
myself to something. He said that, considering how badly she’d ripped him off,
we deserved to take a little of it back. So, I took those diamond and sapphire
earrings.”