Killer Honeymoon (6 page)

“It’s kinda nice to be home,” she said. “I’ve only been gone a little over twenty-four hours, but I miss it.”

She turned in the seat and looked at him lovingly. “This’ll be your home from now on, too. Cool, huh?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotta get all my crap dragged over here, before it’s gonna feel much like home to me,” he grumbled. “I’ll have to rent a truck. Not looking forward to that.”

“All my crap”?
she thought. Those three simple words filled her with unspeakable horror.
“All”? Really?

She did a quick mental inventory of the contents of his house trailer. His bus seat “sofa.” His two rusty TV trays, which served as dining tables. His stacks of plastic crates filled with VHS tapes.

Then there was his Harley-Davidson collection. He didn’t actually own a Harley, but he had all the trappings: the ashtrays, the shot glasses, the figurines, the mugs, the old tin signs, the tee-shirts—framed, of course—collector plates galore, and last, but not least, an awe-inspiring collection of Harley-Davidson Christmas ornaments.

She thought of how lovely those ornaments would look next Christmas hanging on her tree among her carefully color-coordinated, lavender and rose Victorian vintage baubles.

Oh, dear Lord
, she thought,
what have I gotten myself into?

Dirk pulled into her driveway and parked next to her bright red ’65 Mustang. It was her baby, her pride and joy, the reason why she could almost understand why he loved his Harley stuff to distraction. An obsession was an obsession. As long as she talked lovingly and sang to her ’Stang every Saturday morning when she washed, vacuumed, dusted, and waxed it—stopping just short of flossing its teeth—she really couldn’t say much about his framed Harley tee-shirts.

“Who-all’s here?” he said as he cut the key and gave a wary glance toward the house.

“You mean, which of my zillion Georgia relatives are still using my house as a free motel while they prolong their California vacations?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Savannah couldn’t blame him for being leery. So was she. On her wedding day, when she had left her home, it had been filled to the brim with Reids.

As the oldest of nine kids, she had more relatives than she could shake a stick at. Frequently, she found that was exactly what she wanted to do. She could handle them one at a time when she had to, but having her small, two-bedroom, one-and-a-half–bath house overrun with her two brothers, six sisters, one brother-in-law, two nieces, and two nephews had just about been her undoing.

Her grandmother had been there, too, but Granny was the one person in the world, other than Dirk—and the jury was still out on him—whom Savannah wouldn’t mind living with for the rest of her life. Gran had taken all nine of her neglected grandchildren into her home and heart, years ago. For that, and for all the loving guidance and comfort she still continued to supply in bountiful abundance, Savannah would be forever grateful and in her debt.

“Well, Granny’s here,” she told him.

“Gran can stay as long as she wants, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, reminding her of why she loved him.

“And Waycross.”

“Waycross’s a cool dude. I don’t mind him. Just tell me Vidalia and her old man and those two sets of twins are gone.”

“Left this morning.”

“Thank goodness for that. Not that I don’t like children, but those kids of hers are enough to turn you against the younger set.”

“Cordele, Alma, Jessup, Atlanta, and Macon left last night. Marietta’s still here,” she said, hoping she could slip that in without him noticing it.

“Marietta? Oh, man. Just kill me now.”

“Ah, come on. I know how much you love her.”

“ ‘Love her’? I can’t stand her. What’s that thing you always say about her and cockroaches?”

“She’s crazy as a sprayed roach?”

“That’s it. And she is. You keep that woman away from me.”

“I’ll do my best, sweetums. Let’s go inside. It’s time to face the music.”

S
avannah and Dirk got out of his car and walked, hand in hand, up the sidewalk to the house. As Savannah was unlocking the front door, she could hear Marietta’s voice inside, high and shrill, rattling on about some topic that Savannah knew had to be positively enthralling. Probably something about the new brand of hair spray she’d discovered on sale or maybe the edible, tiger-striped undies at the naughty-girlie shop she’d located somewhere on the bad side of town. If Granny wasn’t around, she’d probably be jabbering about how she was going to use the hair spray to get the biggest hair possible, and how she would wear the new panties to a rendezvous with some guy she’d met yesterday during an Internet chat. Her most recent soul mate, no doubt.

Marietta was a woman with her priorities in order.

“They call this Passion Aplenty,” they heard her say as Savannah swung the door open and they stepped inside. “It’s the latest color. I’m going to paint my toenails, too, and wear my open-toed platforms when I meet him tonight. What do you think?”

Savannah walked into the living room to see her sweet, long-suffering assistant, Tammy, huddled in the corner desk as Marietta leaned over her, shoving a bottle of nail polish under her nose.

“Uh, what do I think?” Tammy replied in her most transparently “patient” voice. “I think if you like that color, you should absolutely wear it. Individual expression is important.”

“Yeah, I know what that means. Means you don’t like it.” Marietta walked away, her nose slightly elevated and obviously out of joint.

“But that isn’t important,” Tammy replied. “What matters is if you—”

“Don’t go smoochin’ my rear end after insultin’ me like that.” Marietta plopped her ample backside onto the sofa and threw one leg up onto the back of it, showing an indecent amount of thighs, crotch, and zebra-printed panties.

Savannah glanced at Dirk and saw him quickly avert his eyes.

He did a lot of averting in Marietta’s presence.

When Marietta caught sight of them standing in the foyer, she reached up and patted her enormous bouffant updo, “just so,” and donned a sappy, sexy grin, which Savannah noticed she only wore in the presence of men she considered attractive. Savannah also noticed that in spite of her hair adjusting, she didn’t bother to lower her leg or rearrange her skirt in a more modest position.

In fact, she wriggled around and settled into a pose that showed even more of her nether regions.

“Oh, look what the cat dragged in,” Marietta drawled in a Southern accent that made Savannah sound plumb Yankee-fied. “Our honeymooners are back already. I predicted this marriage would have the life span of a gnat, but I thought you’d at least keep him happy a day or two, big sis.”

Savannah gave her a dirty look and grabbed Dirk’s hand. She led him past the sofa, and its sprawling, simpering occupant, toward Tammy’s desk in the corner.

“Why don’t you hightail it to the kitchen, Mari?” she suggested as they passed. “See if you can find some lemons to suck on.”

Tammy jumped up out of her chair and rushed to them. She grabbed Savannah in an almost desperate hug.

“What’s the matter?” Tammy asked, searching Savannah’s face, then Dirk’s. “Something’s got to be wrong or you two wouldn’t—”

“Don’t worry, kiddo,” Dirk said. “We’re all right. We just had to come back to”—he glanced over at Marietta—“to get some stuff and to talk to you about . . . some stuff.”

Tammy stood there for an awkward moment, looking at them, then Marietta. Finally she nodded. “Oh. Right. Some stuff. Got it. I think.”

“Hey, Dirk,” Marietta said, fingering the lacy trim along the neckline of her extremely low-cut tee-shirt. “That leopard-print negligee I bought Savannah—did she wear it for you yet?”

Savannah bristled. “Watch yourself, Marietta Reid. I’m fixin’ to jar your preserves over there.”

Marietta didn’t look particularly terrified. She waggled one eyebrow. “But I reckon she wouldn’t do that nightgown justice.” Then, in a voice that reminded Savannah of a Dial-To-Talk-Dirty phone actress, Marietta added, “Now if
I’d
been wearin’ that nightie, what with the build on
me,
you’d have stood up and took notice, big-time. Least ways, parts of you would’ve!”

Slowly, with the blankest of expressions on her face, Savannah left Dirk and Tammy and walked over to her comfy chair. She picked up Diamante, who was lying there, stretched across a throw pillow.

“Excuse me, Di,” she said softly as she placed the kitty on the floor and gave her two soft strokes on her glossy black fur. “Mommy’s gotta borrow your pillow for a minute.”

Savannah picked up the pillow and walked over to Marietta. She stood over her for a moment, staring down at her.

Marietta’s smirk started to subside. “What?” she said. “You’re not miffed about something I said, are ya? I was just makin’ conversation.”

“And I . . . ,” Savannah said calmly, “. . . am just gonna do something I’ve been aching to do for most of the years I’ve known you.”

Suddenly Savannah’s entire demeanor changed. In an instant, she tore into her sister, beating her with the pillow—first on the head, then systematically up and down her body, with all the fury and violence of a demon-possessed serial killer. Had her weapon of choice been anything other than a throw pillow, the attack would have, undoubtedly, been fatal.

“Ow! Now, Savannah, that hurts! Ouch! Stop it! Sa-van-nah! You’re messin’ up my hair and . . .
Owww!Now
, girl, that hurts! You better . . . oh!”

Tammy gasped and clapped both of her hands over her mouth, staring bug-eyed at the brutality occurring only a few feet from her.

Dirk whispered, “Holy shit”; then he grinned.

As she pounded away with all her might, Savannah was lost in the fog of battle. But in her peripheral vision, she registered a familiar figure walking down the stairs, crossing the foyer, and casually strolling into the living room.

It was her blessed grandmother—Granny Reid—in the flesh.

For a second, Savannah froze in midswing.

Marietta saw Granny and shouted, “Gran! Savannah’s whoopin’ me somethin’ fierce! Make ’er stop!”

Barely glancing their way, Granny glided through the living room in her brightly colored caftan and purple-and-red–sequined house slippers.

“If Savannah’s thumpin’ on you, Marietta,” she said in her soft, calm voice, “then you had it comin’. Take it like a big girl and turn from the error of your ways.”

“Error of
my
ways?” Marietta whimpered, her arms up to protect her badly damaged bouffant. “Why do you always figure it’s
my
ways and not
Savannah’s
?”

“Let’s just say I know the both of you,” Gran replied as she left the living room and entered the kitchen. “If your sister’s finally resorted to cleanin’ your clock, I reckon you ain’t gettin’ nary a lick amiss.”

Tammy leaned over and whispered to Dirk, “What does that mean?”

“Don’t know,” he replied. “I can translate most of Savannah’s Southernisms, but Granny’s . . .”

Savannah was still standing there, holding the upraised pillow over Marietta’s head.

Marietta looked up at her sister and the pillow. She put on her most patient, yet condescending, look. “Now, Savannah,” she said, “if you’ve had quite enough of this childish behavior, I would like to—”

Wham!
Another blow, and then another, and another.

But Savannah had lost some of her steam.

Finally she stopped, walked back to her comfy chair, and laid the pillow back on the seat cushion. Then she reached down and picked up Diamante, who was still right where she’d left her.

“There you go, sweet pea,” she said as she gently, lovingly laid the cat on the pillow. “You go back to sleep now. Mommy done knocked the stuffin’ outta Aunt ‘Jezebel’ Marietta, and she won’t be bothering Mommy or Uncle Dirk any more.”

Meanwhile, Aunt “Jezebel” Marietta was hauling herself off the sofa with great difficulty, while trying to straighten her now-sadly-askew hairdo.

“I have never,” she was muttering to herself, “in all my born days, been subjected to such a display of adolescent—”

Marietta stomped across the room, wobbling slightly on her five-inch, chrome-and-acrylic platform stilettos.

As Savannah watched her, she thought that any woman wearing shoes like that should be flat on her back, not walking . . . and certainly not stomping. But she decided not to mention it.

It wasn’t good battle strategy to start World War IV with a tired arm.

Marietta paused at the foot of the staircase to deliver one more verbal volley before retreating. “You know, Miss Grouchy Pants, I didn’t traipse all the way from Georgia to California to attend your nuptials, only to have the tar beat outta me. You are the worst bride I have ever had the misfortune of—”

She ducked as a book sailed past her head, nearly taking off her right ear.

As Savannah watched Marietta scurry on up the stairs, she murmured, “Well, won’t you just look at that. Given enough motivation, she can make pretty good time on those hooker heels.”

She turned back to Tammy and Dirk, who were smiling like a couple of yahoos with a twelve-pack of beer watching a wrestling match on TV.

“Way to go, Savannah,” Tammy whispered. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a week.”

“Yeah, baby,” Dirk added. “I think that’s the first time I ever had a woman fight another one over me. It was kinda awesome.”

“Come along, you two,” Savannah said. “Let’s raid the refrigerator and see if we can find us something with a lot of empty calories in it. We’ve got a new case to investigate, and after all that exertion, I need myself an energy boost!”

 

Instead of sitting in her usual, favorite chair, with its rose-printed chintz and none-the-worse-for-wear pillow, Savannah plopped herself in the middle of the sofa to eat her pecan pie and ice cream. It wasn’t a conscious decision. More of an instinctive one. It wasn’t until she was settled and halfway through her pie that she realized what she had done and wondered about it.

For many years, Savannah had sat in her chair, and Dirk had sprawled across the sofa. They had talked, laughed, and cursed whatever people or circumstances might be annoying them at the time. They had watched television, petted cats, and munched a wide variety of edibles. When they were extremely tired, they had sat there doing absolutely nothing . . . together. She on her chair, and Dirk on the sofa.

But tonight, when they, Tammy, and Granny had returned from the kitchen to the living room and chosen their spots, Dirk had situated himself in his usual place on the end of the sofa. And Savannah had parked her backside in the middle next to him.

Granny was in Savannah’s comfy chair, concentrating on her pecan pie.

As usual, Tammy was sitting yoga-style on the floor, sipping mineral water with frozen grapes and strawberries floating in it.

Briefly Savannah wondered if she would do this, year after year. Had marriage changed her life so much that she would forever give up her favorite chair? How much else would she find herself surrendering, before all was said and done?

She suspected it was just a temporary state of affairs, born of newlywed ardor. She knew herself and Dirk pretty well. They were creatures of habit and comfort. Eventually they’d probably revert to their old routines.

But for tonight, she enjoyed having her shoulder and arm against his. The warm, solid feel of him. The pleasant emotion that it imparted—a sense of being loved, protected, and looked after by someone who truly cherished her.

Best of all, she no longer felt so alone in the big, wide world.

On the other side of her sat her six-foot-three skinny brother, with his carrottop hair and a thin mustache and tiny goatee to match. He had been out running errands for Granny and had arrived after the pie had been distributed. But since he was her favorite brother—her favorite male on the planet, next to Dirk— Savannah had made it up to him by constructing a formidable banana split.

All that remained in his dish was half of a split banana. None of the Reids were bashful when it came to cleaning their plates.

“That’s some story you just told us,” Granny said as she set her empty plate on the table beside the chair. “Why do you reckon that woman chief of police acted the way she did?”

“And her not thoroughly questioning you,” Tammy added. “Even I know that isn’t proper procedure, and I’m not a member of law enforcement.”

Waycross nodded in agreement. “Then telling the news folks and everybody listenin’ to the television set that lady up and drowned herself in some sorta riptide. What’s all that hooey about?”

Dirk scraped the last bit of ice cream off his plate with his finger and held it out to Cleopatra, who was sauntering by the sofa. She gratefully licked it off, then climbed into his lap. “Well,” he said, “the least incriminating reason I can think of is that she’s trying to protect the island from any bad press. It’s the beginning of the summer tourist season there. They depend on every cent they can get from the knuckleheads on the mainland who come over there to play and honeymoon, and stuff like that.”

Savannah looked up from her pie. “You mean, knuckleheads like us?”

He nodded solemnly. “Exactly. Her lyin’ her face off like that might be nothing more than them not wanting people to know they got themselves a killer there among ’em.”

“It’s a little bitty island,” Gran supplied. “Knowing that you might be rubbin’ elbows with a killer, that don’t contribute to a carefree, fun-lovin’ sorta vacation mood. If it was me, instead of goin’ there, I’d just go to Disneyland.”

Savannah laughed. “Granny, you always want to go to Disneyland.”

“I got me a thing for the Mouse. It’s a powerful thing, I’ll admit. But my point is, there’s a lot of nice things to do here in Southern California for fun besides go to an island where a killer with a gun’s done run amuck. That had to occur to that police chief lady.”