Savannah Reid 12 - Fat Free and Fatal (23 page)

“Maybe his parents are rich,” Tammy suggested.

“No.” Savannah shook her head. “I saw his mother at the morgue, and she didn’t strike me as somebody who had more than a couple of shekels to rub together. And she said she had to work hard to support herself and Cameron after his dad died years ago.”

“Well, he’s making good money someway. And we found something else under the lizard’s cage besides just the rifle. Over fifty grand in cash, all bundled up with rubber bands in five batches of ten thou each.”

“I must admit that’s a bit unusual,” Savannah said. “I’m fond of my kitties, but I don’t put bundles of cash in their litter box. When I have a little extra cash and can’t get to the bank, I stick it in the freezer with my two favorite guys, Ben and Jerry.”

She was about to tell them about the bonus that Dona had given her, but Jesup and Bleak came spilling though the back door into the yard. Bleak had an oversized duffel bag in one hand and a black, plastic garbage bag in the other.

“He’s leaving me,” Jesup yelled as she hurried over to Savannah and grabbed her arm. “My husband is leaving me, and it’s all your fault.”

“My fault?” Savannah pushed her hand away. “Now wait a cotton-pickin’ minute here. I’ve been blamed for a lot of things in my life, and I was guilty of most of them. But this? Are you kidding me?”

Jesup stomped her foot and shook her fist like a homicidal kindergartner. “No, I’m not. We could have gone anywhere for our honeymoon. We could have gone and seen the Charles Manson family ranch. We could have gone to New Orleans and seen Anne Rice’s house and the voodoo queen’s tomb. We could have gone to New York and seen the Amityville horror house, but no-o-o, we had to come see
you
.”

“Yeah,” Bleak chimed in. “‘Come meet my sister!’ Jes said. ‘She’s this famous homicide detective. She’ll let us tag along while she’s solving her cases. We’ll get the inside scoop.’ But you were too busy to even hang with us.”

“And now look at us,” Jesup said, starting to cry. “We’re breaking up. Our marriage is over!”

Savannah stood there, looking at her sister, then her brother-in-law, then back at Jesup. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You two nitwits get hitched as soon as you meet. You drop in on me from out of the blue. And then, when I have to work—yes, some of us actually do work—you complain that I’m not entertaining you. And you blame me for the two of you breaking up…because of
boredom
?”

Jesup turned to Bleak. They lowered their voices and whispered to each other for a few seconds. Then they turned back to Savannah. “Yep,” Bleak said, “that’s about it.”

Savannah turned her back on them and marched inside. Grabbing her phone from the kitchen counter, she dialed Dr. Liu’s office number.

The doctor herself picked up. “Jennifer Liu.”

“Hi, Jen. It’s Savannah.”

“Savannah. I’m so glad you called. I’ve been worried about you. That was a ghastly thing you had to endure, running into his mother. I am so sorry!”

“I’m all right, thanks,” she said. “But I have an enormous favor to ask you.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“Dirk says you picked up a suicide there in the hills today.”

“Yes, we did. I was just about to start on him.”

“Is he really as bad as Dirk says? Or should I say, ‘as bad as Dirk smells?’”

Dr. Liu laughed. “Oh, Dirk isn’t lying and neither is your nose. This guy is foul even by
my
standards. Why do you ask?”

“I have a score that I really need to settle. My sister and her new husband are death junkies, ghoulies from the word
go
. I think I mentioned them to you before? Well, I think it’s time they got a dose of cold reality. Can we pay you a visit?”

She chuckled. “Sure. It’s a suicide, not a homicide. I can allow civilians in, if they promise not to contaminate the body in any way.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Savannah said with an ugly smile. “When they hurl, I’ll make sure it’s into a sink.”

“O
h, shut that thing, Bates,” Savannah told Kenny at the front desk, when she walked in with Jesup and Bleak, “or you’ll catch flies in it.”

He was standing behind the counter, his mouth hanging wide open. Apparently, Officer Kenneth Bates didn’t spend a lot of time with people who wore white makeup on their face, painted their lips and nails blood red and drew bats on their cheeks and snakes on their foreheads.

And what bothered Savannah most wasn’t that Kenny was shocked by their attire and makeup. It was that she
wasn’t
shocked by it anymore. In fact, she hardly even noticed it.

But Bates was more than noticing the dark-red velvet corset that Jesup was wearing, as well as the black, ripped fishnet stockings she had on under her leather miniskirt. He had gone from mouth-wide-open shock to tongue-hanging lust in ten seconds.

Savannah walked over and began to sign the ledger: “Moe, Curly, Larry.”

“Who are these people?” he asked when he finally regained use of a few brain cells. “Are you arresting them? Wait, you can’t arrest people, so—”

“These are my
family
!
”
she said. “So watch what you say about ’em.”

“Oh, okay. Whatever.”

He leaned over to get a better look at Jesup’s legs as Savannah led them toward the hall.

“Hey, Savannah,” he whispered. “Do
you
ever dress up in stuff like that?”

“Do you ever wear a real tie, Bates, instead of that lame clip-on?” she asked him, her blue eyes boring holes into his. “A real tie—worn really, really tight, that is. Until your tongue sticks out and swells up and turns black, and your eyeballs pop out of their sockets and down onto your cheeks? I’ll get you one. I’d be happy to even tie it around your neck for you.”

She herded the happy twosome down the hall toward the autopsy suite. Bleak was practically dancing in his black velvet pants and knee-high riding boots. Jesup seemed slightly less eager, but happy to see her man so excited for a change.

“Wait here,” Savannah told them outside the stainless steel doors. “Let me find Dr. Liu, and see if she’s ready for you.”

She peeked inside the doors and sure enough, there was Dr. Jen suited up in surgical greens, a disposable paper cap over her hair and booties over her shoes. She was standing between the autopsy table and a gurney that had a bagged body on it.

Even with the big fans over the table going full force and the bag still sealed, Savannah got a whiff of the corpse and her stomach lurched.

She had always had a high tolerance for anything visual. Sooner or later, she could get over almost everything she saw in her line of work.

Almost.

But she never got over the smell.

“Did you bring your little gore junkies along?” Dr. Liu said as she snapped on a pair of surgical gloves.

“Oh, they’re waiting right outside, as chipper as a couple of kids on Christmas morning.”

“So, they’re virgins?”

“White as the driven snow. Slice-’em and dice-’em movies—that’s it.”

Jennifer rubbed her gloved hands together with Vincent Price glee. “Hee-hee, my favorites. Lambs to the slaughter. Bring them in.”

Savannah walked back to the door and waved Jesup and Bleak over to her. “It’s showtime,” she said.

“All right!” Bleak practically ran her down getting into the room. Jesup followed a few halting steps behind.

“Dr. Liu,” Savannah said, “I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Jesup, and her new husband of only a few glorious days, Bleak Manifest. Jes, Bleak, this is Dr. Jennifer Liu, the first female coroner ever in this county and the absolute best, too, I might add.”

The doctor registered no surprise whatsoever at their appearance. Savannah knew that Dr. Jen traveled in some rather “alternative” groups herself when not on company time, and it appeared to take a lot to shock her.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” the ME said. “Savannah says that you’re particularly interested in the forensic sciences.”

“Mostly just the dead bodies,” Bleak said. “I’m going to start my own body farm just outside of Vegas.”

“When you grow up someday?” Dr. Liu asked with a deadpan smile that didn’t betray whether she was serious or insulting him.

“Uh…yeah, I guess. I have to get people to donate the bodies and all.”

The doctor gave him a too-sweet smile. “Well, there are always some obstacles on the ladder to success.”

She walked over to a cabinet, opened a drawer and pulled out three surgical masks and a jar of vapor rub. Handing one to Bleak and another to Jesup, she said, “Here, you’ll want to put these on, but smear a big glob of the vapor rub inside the mask first. It helps cut the smell. A little.”

Jesup took the mask and rub, and began to do as she was told.

But Bleak shook his head. “Naw, I don’t need anything like that,” he said. “I can handle stuff like that. I’m…like…
into
stuff like that.”

Dr. Liu gave him a big smile. In fact, she nearly laughed in his face. “O-o-okay,” she said. “Whatever you like. But I have a rule in here. If you get sick, you do it in one of these plastic bags.” She pulled a couple of large bags from her pocket and held one out to each of them.

Again, Bleak refused.

“Okay,” she fixed him with a stern eye. “Then if you throw up, you’d better do it in that sink over there, because anything that misses the sink,
you
clean up. And I’m talking
major
disinfecting, not just a swipe with a paper towel. Got that?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

She offered a mask to Savannah. But Savannah refused as well. “Actually,” she said. “I think I’ll just wait this one out in the hallway. I’ve seen my quota of DBs this week.” She turned to Jesup. “But I’ll be right outside the door if you need me.”

Jesup’s eyes were big and filled with apprehension. And under other circumstances, Savannah would have warned her or at least felt a bit of compassion for her.

But she needed to know right now what life with Ghoul Boy was going to be like.

Body farm, indeed.

“See y’all later,” she said brightly as she walked though the swinging doors and into the hallway.

She glanced at her watch.

She’d give them two minutes. Three tops.

But it was only ninety seconds later when Jesup came crashing through the doorway, her plastic bag over her face. And she was gagging, coughing and hacking like she had eaten five pounds of week-old hamburger.

Savannah suppressed a giggle as she walked over and put her arms around her sister. “Are you all right, sweet pea?” she asked.

“No! Oh, my god! You should have seen—” More gagging, more choking, more retching. “You should have smelled…oh…that was the worst…ah…”

Savannah glanced toward the door that was still swinging from the impact. “I guess Bleak’s doing okay, though, huh?” she asked, just a little disappointed.

“Oh, no! I think Bleak’s dead!”

“Dead! No way! He can’t be dead! You can’t die just from—”

“I’m telling you,” Jesup said, trying to catch her breath. “The doctor unzipped that bag, and we saw, oh, mercy…and we smelled, oh, and…and Bleak just keeled over right there on the floor, deader than a roadkill skunk.”

Again Savannah fought down a fit of giggles. “Well, maybe you should go back in there and try to give him CPR or something. Maybe you can give him the breath of life. Just think how romantic that would be!”

Jesup shook her head. “No way! I’m not going back into that stinkin’ room for love nor money. He can just stay dead for all I care. Hell, he sucks anyway. Where’s the bathroom?”

Savannah pointed to a door further down the hallway. As she watched her sister’s retreating figure, she said, “Oh well, so much for the love of a soul mate.”

She knew she should go in there and help Dr. Liu with the recently departed Bleak Manifest. But she knew that Dr. Jen was a whiz when it came to bringing the dead back to life. A simple swipe under the nose with an ammonia inhalant—plain old-fashioned smelling salts—and those in a dead faint usually came right around.

And sure enough, less than a minute later, an even paler than usual Bleak stumbled out with Dr. Liu right behind him.

Savannah had once seen a hound that had tangled with a bear and lost who had more dignity than her brother-in-law displayed at that moment.

“You okay, bro?” she said, trying to interject an adequate amount of pseudo-sympathy into her tone.

He simply moaned, walked over to the wall, put his back against it and slid down to the floor. Dr. Liu shoved a plastic bag into his hand and said, “Just in case.”

Then she turned to Savannah. “I’ll return to my autopsy in a moment. May I see you in my office? Before you take these two home and put them to bed, I have something I think you’d like to see.”

“Sure.” Savannah looked down at Bleak. “You just sit there and hold that wall up there, son. It was looking a mite shaky a minute ago. I’ll be back directly.”

She followed Dr. Liu down the hall and into her office.

As the ME peeled off her gloves and tossed them into a trash can, she snickered and said, “I never even got to lay a hand on the body in there. I barely had him unzipped before they got a good look, a good snootful and bang. Your sister was outta there, and that brother-in-law of yours was on the floor. Pansies.”

“I wouldn’t ordinarily do that to anybody, but those two have been asking for it right and left. Dirk showed up at my place, stinking to high heaven, and I just couldn’t resist.”

“I can understand that. Believe me, in my line of work, I run into groupies all the time. They make me sick. It’s kind of fun to return the favor.”

She reached into her smock pocket and pulled out two pairs of gloves. Handing one pair to Savannah, she said, “Here, put these on.” Then she donned a fresh pair herself.

She walked over to a cabinet, unlocked it, and took out a manila evidence envelope. “I found this on Cameron Field,” she said. “It was in the pants pocket of his sweats. I was saving it to show to Dirk, but since you’re here, I thought I’d let you have a look at it.”

Savannah took the envelope from her and opened it.

Inside the larger envelope was a smaller, beige one, the size that might normally contain a thank-you note or casual party invitation. It appeared to be high-quality linen paper.

“Look inside,” Dr. Liu said. “And tell me what you think.”

Savannah opened it and found several items. Two were snapshots. The third was a note card that matched the envelope.

When she turned over the first photo and looked at it, her stomach tightened. It was a picture of Dona’s gardener, James Morgan, a candid shot of him working in the yard. He didn’t appear to know that his picture was being taken.

Flipping the second picture over, Savannah wasn’t sure if she recognized the pretty blond woman who was getting out of a car in front of the Papalardo house. But she was about the size and general description of Dona, and didn’t appear to be posing or aware she was being photographed either.

“Is this Kim Dylan?” she asked.

“Yes.” Dr. Liu’s eyes were dark, her face grim.

Savannah’s hand began to shake as she opened the note card and looked inside. On it was scrawled some lines, some circles and squares and an
X
on one side.

“It’s a map,” she said.

“That’s what I thought, too.”

“It’s a map of the Papalardo property and the trails around it. The
X
marks the spot where we’re pretty sure Field was standing when he took his shots. You have a clear view of both the front-and backyards from there.”

“I figured.”

Savannah looked each item over again thoroughly, then carefully slipped them back into the small envelope. She took a deep breath. “This is major,” she said.

“Yes, it is. We’ll get all of that over to the lab and see if they can pick up any prints on it, other than his, that is.”

“DNA off the seal, too.”

It was when Savannah was putting the smaller envelope back into the larger one that she smelled something. And the odor sent a series of rapid-fire memory synapses through her brain cells.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “No, it can’t be.” Her legs turned to jelly beneath her, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then a hot surge of anger went through her and the weak feeling disappeared, replaced by pure rage.

“What? Savannah, what is it? What’s wrong?” Dr. Liu asked.

But Savannah didn’t hear her.

She threw the envelope onto the doctor’s desk, turned and headed for the emergency entrance at the far end of the hall.

It wasn’t until she was several miles away that she remembered her sister and Bleak back at the morgue.

She took her phone out of her purse and dialed Tammy.

“Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency,” was Tammy’s standard salutation.

“I need you to do something,” she said.

“Sure, what?”

“Go to the morgue and pick up Jessie and what’s-his-name. Give them a ride back to the house. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Savannah, you sound funny. Are you all right?”

“No. I’m not. I’m not all right at all. I’ve never been so mad in all my livin’ life!”

“At Jessie and Bleak?”

Savannah shook her head. “No. Sugar, just do me that favor, okay? I’ll call you later.”

Without waiting for an answer, she hung up and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.

She knew that in a minute, two at the most, it would ring again. That’s how long it would take Tammy to call Dirk and tattle on her, tell him that something was up with Savannah again.

But this time she wasn’t going to answer it.

This time…she was going to take care of business herself, her own way.

This was one pound of flesh that she wasn’t going to share with anybody. Not even Dirk.