Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) (9 page)

Sitting on the floor, Jesup held Beauregard’s head on her lap and dabbed the long scratch on his muzzle with a cotton ball. “Did Savannah’s mean old cat hurt you?” she said. The dog whined, his eyes rolling.

“Savannah’s cat was fighting for her life,” Savannah reminded her as she applied antibiotic cream to the small punctures in Dirk’s palm.

“Those cats were in cages,” Jesup argued. “They weren’t in any real danger. It’s not like he could actually bite them. They didn’t have to reach through the bars and—”

“Oh, please! They could’ve died of heart failure!” Savannah snapped. “How would you like to travel for hours on a plane and then have the hound from hell—?”

“That’s enough!” Gran roared. “No harm’s done . . . except to you, Mr. Coulter, that is. I’m real sorry about that.”

Dirk grumbled under his breath. Savannah heard something about “better not . . . rabies . . .”

She wound a strip of gauze around his hand, then gave the uninjured one a squeeze. “That was a good save, big boy,” she said, “yanking him outta there like that. I owe ya.”

“You bet you do, and I’ll collect. I’m talking a chicken-fried-steak dinner, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, the works.”

“But don’t worry about that yet,” Tammy said as she sat on the chair next to Dirk’s. “We’re here to help you.” She looked around the kitchen at each concerned Reid face. “We’re here to help all of you any way we can. What can we do?”

 

“T
here’s no way in hell that Tommy’s going to let you talk to Macon,” Savannah told Dirk. “I had to twist his arm plumb out of its socket to get in myself. And that was before they found those medals under his bed.”

She had filled them in on all the sordid details on the way into town from Gran’s house. Now they sat in the front seat of the rented car, Tammy in the back, watching the front of the McGill sheriff’s station half a block away.

Tom’s cruiser was parked in front of the building. They had seen Sheriff Mahoney drive away ten minutes before in a new Ford pickup.

“
Tommy
, is it?” Dirk’s ears perked. He propped his forearms on the steering wheel. Savannah half expected him to flex his biceps. “Is this
Tommy
an old buddy of yours?”

“This is a one-horse town, Dirk,” Savannah replied, as evenly as possible. “Everybody here is either a friend or an enemy. And, being Southerners, we’re basically friendly. Somebody’s gotta actually do us wrong . . . or hurt someone we care about . . . to become a full-fledged enemy.”

She cleared her throat and turned away to look out the window. “So, yes . . . I guess you could say he’s a buddy of mine. But he’s still not going to let you in to talk to Macon.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. I can outsmart a hick deputy all day long and twice on Sunday. What’s the name of the local hangout?”

“What?”

“The bar where the lowlife spends most of its time and money.”

“Whiskey Joe’s. It’s a couple of miles out of town.”

Savannah didn’t bother to add the fact that her mother, Shirley Reid, was one of Joe’s most faithful patrons, and when she was particularly hard-up she sometimes tended bar there.

“Do you figure that phone booth over there works?” he asked, nodding toward a dilapidated cubicle leaning against a nearby service station.

“It worked last time I used it,” Savannah told him.

“How long ago was that?”

“Let’s just say I put in one thin dime, and my call went through.”

“Oh,” Tammy said from the backseat, “back in the Jurassic era.”

“Exactly.”

“Gimme a quarter.” Dirk held out his bandaged hand.

What a cheapskate
, Savannah thought. Then she reminded herself that he had taken a fang for her.
What a guy
.

She fished some coins out of her purse and dropped them into his hand. “By the way,” she told him, “they don’t have 911 around here. You’ll have to call information to get the station’s number.”

“He’s going to call the station?” Tammy asked, leaning over the back of the seat as she watched Dirk walk to the phone.

“Oh, yeah. This is one of his favorites . . . reporting a major row in the local dive. He throws in a few gory details about broken beer bottles and somebody’s ear nearly sliced off, hanging by an itsy-bitsy flap of skin. By the time he’s done spinning his yarn, ninety percent of the area’s law enforcement is hightailin’ it out there.”

“Hm-m-m . . . ” Tammy mused. “Is that a misdemeanor or a felony?”

“Depends on whether or not they catch you. Of course, Dirk’s going to have to work up a Dixie drawl if he’s gonna pull it off this time. Southerners can spot a Yankee a mile off.”

“But Dirk’s from California.”

“Anybody who ain’t from south of the Mason-Dixon line is a Yankee.”

“How about somebody from another country?”

“They’re a foreigner.”

“I see . . . I think.”

Savannah turned around and looked Tammy up and down. She was wearing a simple shirt blouse and a denim skirt. “Can you pull your shirttail out and tie it in a knot at your midriff?”

“Ah . . . yeah, I guess so. Why?”

“And could you roll that skirt up at the waistband and make it about four inches shorter?”

“Well, yes. Like this?”

“Yeah, and take that scrunchy out of your hair and shake it loose.”

Tammy did as she was told, a smirk on her face. “Let me guess, I’m the slut bait.”

“Now, now, you’re in Georgia. Ladies here don’t have potty mouths. I was thinking more like ‘truck-stop cutie.’ ”

“You think it’ll work on your buddy Tommy?”

Savannah flashed back on Tom’s former appreciation of her own voluptuous curves.

No. Tammy’s size-zero bod wouldn’t do it for Deputy Stafford. “Dirk’s taking care of Tom with the call,” she said. “You’ll have to work your wicked female wiles on someone else. And with any luck, you’ll be just his type.”

 

 

Four minutes later, Dirk’s plan had unfolded and each of the players had changed their positions on the chessboard. Even those who weren’t aware—at least, not yet—that they were playing. Tom Stafford was in his cruiser, racing off to quell the mayhem at Whiskey Joe’s. The pharmacist, Fred Jeter, was leaning into the open hood of the rental car with Tammy beside him, explaining her theory of the “awful, knocking sound” her engine had been making just before the car stalled down the block from the station. Enthralled by the lengthy expanse of her lean legs, Fred had remained clueless as his jail had been invaded. And Dirk and Savannah had slipped in the front door unobserved, scooted up the stairs, and were standing in front of Macon’s cell.

“Get over here. We’ve gotta talk fast,” Dirk said, looking over his shoulder, “or our butts are going to be as crispy fried as yours.”

“Who are you?” a sullen Macon wanted to know.

“Do what he said,” Savannah snapped at him. “It’s only a matter of time till either Jeter or Tom gets back, and we’ve gotta know some things.”

Macon hauled his hulk off the cot and shuffled on stockinged feet over to the bars. “What? I done told you everything, Savan-nah. Why don’t you just let it be?”

Dirk reached through the bars and grabbed a handful of Macon’s T-shirt. “ ’Cause you’re probably gonna get tried, convicted, and maybe executed for murder, smart guy. And your sister is gonna feel lower than dog shit if she doesn’t do everything she can to get you off. So, help her out, okay?”

A light of fear flickered in Macon’s eyes, and for a moment Savannah envied Dirk. It had been a long time since she had instilled a drop of fear in one of her siblings. Too long. She’d have to sharpen up her intimidation and manipulation skills.

“They know you were in the Patterson mansion,” she told her brother. “They’ve got your prints on the window sill. Your Ruger was on the floor, and they’re pretty sure it was the murder weapon.”

Macon stared, sullen, at the floor. “So?”

“So, you’re screwed, my friend,” Dirk said, releasing his hold on him. “What happened? You and your friend break in, figuring to rob the old guy?”

Macon shrugged. “We didn’t know he was home. His big ol’ black car was gone. We thought he was at that golf club, like he usually was late in the afternoon.”

Savannah felt her stomach tighten. Of course, she had known from the evidence that her brother had been there, but there was nothing like hearing a confession with your own ears to make you sick.

“You broke in through the window, and then what?” Dirk said.

“The old man came at us, roarin’ like some kind of a lion.” Macon shuddered. Apparently, the memory was still rich. “He was swingin’ that cane around like a crazy person. He hit me hard, right here.” He pointed to the bruised area on his forearm. “And he whacked Kenny Jr. across the back, too. Hit him so hard, he knocked him right on the floor.”

“And so you shot him,” Dirk added.

“No! I did not!”

“Did Kenny Jr.?” Savannah asked.

“No! That’s when Kenny dropped the gun . . . my gun. He was the one carryin’ it. We didn’t hurt the judge. Hell, we didn’t get a chance to.” Macon’s ruddy face flushed several shades brighter. “We just hightailed it outta there. Both of us. After he got whalloped, Junior was yellin’ like a scalded pig. I’m telling ya, we were scared shitless. That wasn’t what we had in mind at all. We were just gonna go in there, get a few of those fancy pistols of his outta the gun cabinet, and leave. But he started screamin’ and beatin’ and she-e-ez! It was awful!”

“Are you telling me,” Savannah said, slowly, as though he were three years old again, “that the judge was alive when you . . . hightailed it outta there?”

“Damn right, he was alive. Alive and kickin’, and screechin’, and swingin’ that cane. Lordy, he was mad!”

Savannah glanced at Dirk and saw a look on his face that surprised her. Dirk was buying it. She only wished
she
could.

“What about the medals?” she said.

The look her brother gave her was as blank as a freshly washed chalkboard.

“What medals? What are you talking about?”

“The Civil War medals that were hanging on the wall in a frame. The frame you broke,” Dirk added.

Macon shook his head and ran his fingers through his short hair, causing it to stand on end. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Medals? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“The medals you stole from the judge’s house and stashed under your bed.” Savannah watched his face for any sign of recognition, but saw only confusion.

“I didn’t take no medals,” he said. “I told you, we went there for some of his guns. And we didn’t even get the chance to grab any of those. I swear, me and Kenny Jr. didn’t take
nothin’
outta there but a couple of nasty bruises.”

Savannah glanced around into the other cells which, other than the one occupied by Yukon Bill, were empty. “Where is Kenny Jr.? I thought they picked him up, too.”

“They did,” Macon replied. “But I heard them downstairs saying something about stashing him in the jail over in Brownsville. They didn’t want us talking to each other up here and getting our stories straight.”

“Don’t you be talking to anybody about anything, not till you get a lawyer,” Dirk said, shaking his forefinger a few inches from Macon’s nose.

“I know. I know. Savannah done told me that.”

“Well, you listen to her, boy. She knows what’s best. And we’re going to do all we can for you, okay? So you just sit tight and don’t sweat it. Everything’s gonna work out.”

Savannah watched as Macon’s eyes searched Dirk’s and seemed to find something comforting in the older man. Silently, she blessed her friend. Again.

“Okay.” Macon nodded and looked as though his burden had been lightened by at least a couple of ounces. “Thanks, man.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank
her
. She’s a lot better to both of us than we deserve.”

 

A few moments later, as they walked away from Macon’s cell, heading back downstairs, Savannah nudged Dirk with her elbow.

“Better than you deserve, huh, buddy?”

“Eh, don’t let it go to your head. I was just bullshittin’ the kid.”

“Yeah, right. I heard you the first time and . . . Uh, oh. Trouble down below.”

They both heard it at the same time, and they halted there on the third step from the top.

A two-way conversation in the office at the bottom of the stairs. Somebody was getting an earful.

“When you are left in charge of this place, Deputy Jeter, you are to remain on your post, come hell or high water, or good-lookin’ women with car trouble. Do you hear me, boy?”

“I do, Sheriff. I’m sorry, but she said she was afraid it was about to catch fire, and I thought—”

“That’s where you went wrong . . . that ‘thinking’ crap. We don’t pay you to think around here. We pay you to do what I say.”

“Y’all don’t pay me,” was the soft, halfhearted reply.

“What?”

“I said, y’all don’t exactly pay me. I’m a volunteer, and—”

“Does that mean you can shirk your duty, deputy? Does that mean you can go traipsin’ around and leave this facility unattended?”

“No, sir.”

Savannah leaned against Dirk and whispered in his ear. “We’re dead. We can’t stay up here all day, and when we go down, we’re compost.”

“No, Deputy Jeter’s dead.” He grinned his wry little sadistic smirk, the one he wore when he was actually savoring the prospect of conflict. “You and me . . . we’re just gonna get our butts roasted.”

 

S
heriff Mahoney stood by the water cooler, his thick arms crossed over the bulge of his belly, his stout legs spread, firm and planted. Nearby, the poor little pharmacist was quaking inside his white smock, wringing his hands and looking as though he would gladly walk out of that office and into a den of rabid hyenas.

Savannah had never liked Mahoney, not even when she was a kid and he was a deputy. She didn’t trust him then, and she had met too many cops like him in the intervening years who had only deepened that prejudice.

Most law enforcement officers were good people, she truly believed, who did a difficult job well, out of concern for their fellow humans.

Then there were the bullies, the tough guys who used their badges, guns, and nightsticks to bolster their already overinflated egos at the expense of those unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Long ago, she had decided that Mahoney belonged in the second category. And she had no use for his type.

But as she and Dirk slowly descended the stairs, waiting for the sheriff to glance their way, she reminded herself that they were on Mahoney’s turf, and he might very well hold the key to her brother’s future.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to piss him off.

Too late.

The instant he saw them, his hand lowered to the butt of the enormous revolver strapped, Western-style, to his hip.

For half a second, she thought he was going to shoot them both dead on the stairs without asking a single question.

She felt Dirk tense beside her and knew that he, too, was mentally willing himself not to reach for his own weapon.

“Whoa, and who the hell are you?” Mahoney shouted, taking a couple of quick steps in their direction.

They froze. Savannah made her hands, open and empty, fully visible to him. Dirk did the same.

“I’m Savannah Reid, Sheriff,” she said quickly. “I was born and raised here in McGill. You remember me, don’t you?”

He studied her, his eyes dark and suspicious under the large, yellow uni-brow that stretched from one side of his face to the other.

She noticed he had developed a bright-red boozer’s nose and a patchwork of red and purple veins across his cheeks since she had seen him last. In McGill, rumors had always abounded that Mahoney liked a bit of vodka with his morning orange juice . . . and his afternoon cola, and his supper coffee, and his evening beer.

His once blond hair held more white than gold now, but it was still wavy and thick for a guy in his late fifties or early sixties. Like Tom, he had filled out considerably. But, unlike his deputy, the added bulk wasn’t muscle.

He looked her up and down for a couple of moments, then a light of recognition shone in his eyes. “You Shirley Reid’s oldest kid?”

“Yes, I am.”

Surprising, she thought, how she still hated to admit that. It was one thing to be Granny Reid’s granddaughter. But Shirley’s . . . That was a pedigree she could do without.

“Then that means you been up there with your little brother, my murder suspect, doing God-knows-what!”

He walked on over to them, practically bristling under his two-sizes-too-small uniform. The khaki didn’t flatter him half as much as it did Tom.

They walked down the remainder of the steps and met him halfway in the middle of the room.

“Talking
to him,” Dirk said. “That’s all we were doing . . . talking.”

“And who are
you
?”

Savannah cringed as Mahoney shoved a forefinger in Dirk’s face. Dirk wasn’t the sort to rein in his temper under circumstances like these. He, too, had a weak spot for bully cops. He liked to have them for breakfast with bacon and eggs, sunny-side up.

Dirk reached into his shirt pocket and produced his badge. He flipped it open. “I’m Detective Seargent Dirk Coulter.”

He pushed it under Mahoney’s nose. “And that’s gold,” he added, looking smugly at the tin star on Mahoney’s chest.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s studded with diamonds and rubies,” Mahoney snapped. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, running around free as a jaybird in my jail?”

He turned back to Jeter. “Get your lazy, no-good hind end up those stairs and check that prisoner. Search him good. And his cell too.”

Jeter ran full-tilt for the staircase, flying past them.

“Do you think you can handle that, Deputy?” he yelled after the little man as he pounded up the steps.

“Yes, sir! I can . . . I mean . . . I will, sir.”

“I oughta lock you both up right now,” Mahoney said, running his eyes up and down each of them in turn. The fact that they were both a head taller than him didn’t seem to impress him at all.

Savannah could tell he was seriously considering it. The vision of herself and Dirk locked up with Macon, and Tammy running the investigation alone on the outside, gave her a chill that had nothing to do with the air-conditioning in the office.

“On what charge?” Dirk said.

“Breaking into my jail, for starters.”

“We didn’t break in, Sheriff.” Savannah donned her sweetest, buttery voice. “We just walked in. We would have asked for permission to talk to Macon, but nobody was here, so we just figured it would be okay if we—”

“Bullshit. I reckon you don’t know nothing about that blonde out there with the broken-down car . . . that probably ain’t broken-down no more.” He turned to Dirk. “And you weren’t the one who made the call that sent my deputy on a wild-goose chase out to Whiskey Joe’s.”

Dirk shrugged and gave him a half smirk. “What blonde? Whiskey who?”

“Get outta here, both of y’all, before I slap cuffs on you and throw you in the pokey.”

Savannah didn’t exactly break into a run, like Jeter, but she didn’t allow any moss to grow on her before she headed for the door, with Dirk right behind her.

“And don’t you two come back here, either, you hear?”

Savannah opened the door, shoved Dirk outside, then said over her shoulder, “Well, if for some reason we have to, I’ll be sure to have Dirk call Deputy Stafford first.”

She slammed the door behind them, and they hot-stepped to the rented car, which—as Mahoney had predicted—was now sitting at the curb, running just fine, with a grinning Tammy at the wheel.

“What happened?” Tammy asked breathlessly as they piled in, Savannah in the front, Dirk in the back.

“Drive!” Dirk said. “Now.”

“Whee-e-e, howdy.” Savannah felt her knees go to jelly. She reached over and slapped Tammy on the back as Tammy put the car in gear and peeled out. “We just escaped the iron jaws o’ the law, my friend. And the seat of my britches is tattered and my arse is aflappin’ bare in the breeze.” She sighed deeply. “Yep, that there was a close one.”

 

 

When Tammy pulled into the dirt parking lot of Whiskey Joe’s, Savannah felt a wave of nausea that was the strongest she’d felt since changing birth control pills last summer. Instantly, she recognized the faded orange Karman Ghia parked closest to the store. Her mom had bought that car, used, in 1975 and had been driving it ever since. The last time Savannah had taken a ride in it, about twelve years ago, she had watched the road whipping along beneath them through at least three sizable holes in the floorboard. Her mom had warned her to leave her shoes on or risk losing them.

Driving over a mud puddle had been a particularly invigorating experience.

Savannah was surprised to see the car still running. Not only because of the sheer mileage, but because Shirley Reid was infamous for driving under the influence. Way under the influence. Savannah considered it a miracle that neither she nor the car had suffered a permanent crackup. As Gran would say:
They’re both running on borrowed time.

“You don’t have to go in there, Van,” Dirk said. “You can just drop me and the kid here off for a while and drop around later to pick us up. We can ask any questions that need asking.”

In a gesture that touched her heart, he leaned forward from the backseat and laid a big, warm hand on her shoulder. She laid her cheek against it for a second.

“Thanks. But, like you, now that we’ve talked to Macon, I’m thinking maybe he didn’t do it after all. And if he didn’t, somebody’s setting him up by sticking those medals under his bed.”

She flashed back on the moment she had decided to leave those incriminating bits of evidence where they lay. Yes, she definitely had to do everything she could for her little brother. “I’m not exactly hankering to see my mom, but it might as well be now as later. Get it over with, you know?”

“I guess.” Dirk didn’t sound convinced. He held the firm conviction that conflict—at least the personal kind—was to be avoided at all cost.

Tammy shot her a sympathetic, but slightly confused look, and Savannah knew how difficult it was for the younger woman to comprehend what she was feeling. Although Tammy’s family lived three thousand miles away from her on the north shore of Long Island in New York, she called them several times a week and visited frequently.

They were close.

And members of close families might try to understand. But they couldn’t. Not really.

“I can’t come home and not see my mom,” Savannah said. “I mean . . . I could. But I can’t. So, let’s do it.”

The three of them got out of the car and strolled up to the bar’s front door.

Whiskey Joe’s hadn’t always been a dive; it hadn’t always been Whiskey Joe’s. In McGill’s better days, the bar had been a restaurant, Julia’s Place, frequented by the county’s wealthy landowners. Stained-glass windows, etched mirrors, solid brass hardware on hardwood doors had set the scene for leisurely candlelit dinners. But few remnants of its former grandeur remained.

The oak door bore numerous scars from careless boot kicks and a deep crack down the middle from the front tire of J.P. Murphy’s Harley-Davidson, when he had decided to crash the place one hot Fourth of July.

The floor-to-ceiling stained-glass window to the right of the door was bowed outward, roughly in the shape of a human body, from the night J.P. had been evicted . . . and missed the doorway.

Savannah could think of a lot of places on earth to pleasantly while away the hours of her life, but, unlike her mom, Whiskey Joe’s wasn’t one of them.

Each to his own . . . or
her
own
, she told herself as she walked through the door.
Don’t judge. Nobody knows enough about anyone else to judge.

But a man is judged by his actions. Or lack thereof. A woman, too,
came the quick mental response.

She sighed to herself.
So much for not judging.

The smell of booze and stale cigarette smoke hit her, along with the familiar pinging and bells of the pinball machine and the clicking of pool balls being knocked around three full-sized tables, and the whine of a country ballad from the jukebox in the corner.

“Pretty busy for early afternoon,” Dirk said, glancing around the main room, at the bar, booths, and tables that were at least one-third full.

“You oughta see it on a Saturday night,” Savannah replied, her own eyes searching the room. But she wasn’t counting the crowd.

She felt Tammy’s hand close around her arm. “Isn’t that her, over there at the end of the bar?”

Savannah wondered at Tammy’s powers of detection, until she recalled that in her spare time, Tammy had scanned and catalogued all of Savannah’s old family pictures into the office computer.

Following Tammy’s line of vision, she saw her mother, sitting where she had been the last time Savannah saw her . . . on the second stool from the end, beneath a picture of Elvis.

Now, as then, she was holding a beer in her right hand, while smoke curled upward from the tip of a cigarette in her left.

But that was where the similarity between yesteryear and the present ended.

“I wouldn’t have known her if I’d run into her on Main Street,” Savannah said under her breath. “I don’t think I would have recognized my own mother.”

Shirley Reid had aged twenty years in eight. Once a pretty woman, who had spent an inordinate amount of time and care on her personal appearance, Shirley looked as if she hadn’t brushed her hair or changed her clothing in a week. She had always been slender, but now she was painfully gaunt, her cheeks sunken and deeply lined.

Alone at the bar, with only her beer and cigarette for company, she looked frail, fragile, and terribly lost.

Savannah had been afraid of the anger she would feel when she saw her mother again, the resentment, the disappointment. But the only emotion she felt, standing in the back of Whiskey Joe’s staring into her mother’s lonely world, was sadness.

She turned to Dirk and Tammy, who were watching her with the depth of compassion and concern that only the dearest friends could demonstrate. “You two go on, mingle, shoot some pool, whatever, and ask your questions. Talk to you later.”

They nodded and headed for the other side of the room, where a bald and burly bartender was giving a pile of glasses their requisite swish in the sink and loading them onto a draining tray.

Savannah took a deep breath and strolled over to the bar stool . . . the one directly beneath the picture of “The King.”

Shirley didn’t notice her, didn’t even move, until she was standing right behind her. Savannah reached out and lightly tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hey, Shirl,” she said. “What’s shakin’?”

Long ago, Shirley had established the cardinal rule: Don’t call me “Mom” in here. Not ever.

Shirley wasn’t big on being called “Mom” anywhere. Especially a setting where members of the opposite sex might overhear.