Sour Grapes (A Savannah Reid Mystery #6) (15 page)

"Yeah, and the Dodgers could win the World Series next year," Dirk said.

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Savannah smacked him on the shoulder. "Hey, it never hurts to hold a good thought."

"All the positive thinking in the world ain't gonna

help that kid," Dirk said. "I guess she meant to end it

and looks like she did. . . even though she didn't make it all the way to the bottom."

"What makes you so sure it was suicide?" Ryan asked. 'Maybe someone pushed her over."

Dirk looked around the dry, dusty ground. "Don't iee no drag marks. No scuffle marks."

"But the girls and I were running and walking all

rver this area," Tammy said, "before one of them spot:ed the body. I'm afraid we would have messed up any racks that were here."

"Did you run any farther down the road?" Savannah tsked.

"No, this is as far as we came. And I told them not to :ouch anything or do anything except run straight back

,o the center. Then I took off running. I couldn't wait or them to catch up."

"You did good, Tam."

Savannah listened as Dirk called Dr. Liu and inOrmed her of their discovery. Her team would be arrivng soon, along with the Search and Rescue crew.

Walking along the edge of the precipice, Savannah ooked for something . . . anything. . . and found nothng. Then she saw it a large, round impression in the lirt, nearly two feet across.

The indentation was almost directly over the place

where Barbara Matthews was hanging on the cliff face

)elow.

She tossed her key ring to Tammy. "Get my binocuars,"

she said. "They're in that black case in my trunk."

While Tammy did as she was told, Dirk and Ryan

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joined Savannah at the cliff and peered along with her

over the edge.

"What you see?" Dirk asked, squinting down at the body.

"What is it, Savannah?" Ryan strained to see as well. "I'm not sure. Just a second."

Tammy returned with the binoculars, and Savannah used them to study a large object at the base of the cliff.

'That's what I thought," she said, handing the binoculars to Dirk. "Check out that big rock down there at the bottom. See it? The one right by the water's edge."

Dirk adjusted the focus on the binoculars, then nodded. "Yeah, okay, I see it. So what? There's a bunch of rocks down there. A million of 'em."

He passed the binoculars to Ryan, who also took a look.

"Can you see that circle of dirt stuck on one side?" Savannah asked Ryan.

"Yes, I see it there on the left."

Savannah pointed to the impression in the ground. "It's about the same size as that," she said. 'There was a big rain a couple of nights ago. That's why the river is so swollen right now. The rain should have washed the dirt off that stone, like it has all the other rocks down there. That stone has fallen since the rains."

"Or somebody pushed it over the edge," Tammy added.

"Exactly."

"Why do you suppose they would shove a big heavy

rock like that one over the edge?" Dirk said.

They thought for a moment; it came to them all at once.

"Somebody threw her over," Savannah said, echoing what the others were thinking. "And they intended for

her body to go all the way to the bottom, maybe even be swept away by the river."

"But she got caught on that bush," Dirk said. "Bummer."

"Yes," Ryan said, "and they pushed the rock over the edge hoping it would dislodge her body."

They all stood there quietly, thinking, the only sound that of the river flowing below.

"Gross," Tammy said softly.

"Yeah," Savannah replied. "Really gross."

he county fire department's Search and Rescue

team wasted no time rappelling down the face of

the cliff to reach their patient. But once there, it took mly a moment for them to confirm everyone's worst

;uspicions: Barbara Matthews was now within reach, but far beyond help.

The Moonlight Magnolia gang stood by and watched

is the litter, with her body strapped to it, was lifted from )elow.

"I just feel so sick," Savannah said.

"Man, I know what you mean," Dirk replied. He mlled his hand out his jeans pocket and rubbed his

;tomach. 'That donut thing that Fluff Head brought us lidn't sit too well without some real breakfast to go with

."

"That Tammy brought us? Those donuts were mine,

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tnd if the one you ate gave you an upset stomach, you leserve it. I'm talking about this situation here, Mr. iensitivity. I mean, the kid was a booger, but I hate it hat this happened to her."

"Yeah, especially while you were on duty, so to peak."

Savannah shot him poisoned look. "That's strike two. knother comment like that, and I'm outta here." "No you're not. You're hanging out, just like I am, to iee if she got shot, perforated, or mutilated. And here's the lady who's gonna tell us."

He nodded toward a long white station wagon that

vas coming up the road, raising clouds of dust behind . On the driver's door was the official seal of the medcal examiner.

"I'm never going to get Dr. Liu paid off at this rate," >avannah said.

"Paid off?"

"Yeah. I keep bribing her with her boxes of Godiva liocolates in exchange for all these favors."

Dirk glanced over at the litter with Barbie's rigid

)ody on it. The girl had been "setup" while bent dou)le. "You don't have to pay Dr. Liu to handle this one," le said. "She has to look at all the 'unnatural' deaths, aid this one definitely qualifies."

Minutes later, they were all gathered in a circle iround the stretcher while Jennifer Liu made her initial

ield inspection of the body.

"There's no obvious cause of death," she said "but I lon't want to undress her until I get her into the auopsy

suite."

"Then maybe she did jump, after all," Dirk replied. We were thinking that she was pushed, or maybe--"

SOUR GRAPES 151

"No, I don't think she jumped." Jennifer Liu reached down and with her fingertips gently brushed the girl's

hair back from her face. "Not unless she jumped while trying to escape from the person who had her."

Savannah looked into Jennifer's dark eyes and saw

that even the jaded doctor who had performed hundreds

of autopsies was touched by this one. They all were affected emotionally when it was a kid.

"What do you mean?" Savannah asked. "How do you know someone had her?"

"Her hands were bound with tape," Jennifer said, "and her mouth, too."

"How do you know?" Tammy stepped closer, then leaned over studying the victim's lips and wrists.

"See there, across her face . . . that red rectangle around her mouth?"

They all nodded in unison.

'There was a wide piece of tape over her mouth, and you can see where it ripped off some of the skin from

her lips when it was pulled away."

Savannah winced. 'That must have hurt."

"Actually, I don't think it did. From the lack of bleeding, I suspect she was already dead when the tape was removed."

"And how about her hands?" Ryan asked. "Were her bindings removed postmortem, too?"

"I don't know for sure about that. I may be able to tell later."

"But you do believe there was tape around her wrists, as well as over her mouth?" Savannah asked.

Jennifer nodded. "You can see bald areas there along the backs of her wrists where the hair was pulled out

when they took it off."

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Savannah squatted beside the litter and looked

closely. The doctor was right; the fine, blond fuzz on the girl's arm did end abruptly in a straight line just

above both wrists. And the flesh there was also irritated, like that around her mouth.

Dr. Liu delicately lifted the hem of the girl's skirt and glanced beneath it. "Her underwear is still in place," she said. "That's a good sign. . . I guess."

Those in the circle exchanged a few relieved glances. The situation was tragic already. It was a small blessing if the killer had not added sexual insult to injury.

"Okay, boys and girls," Dr. Liu said, "you're going to have to stand back now and let my assistants do their

thing."

The Magnolia gang moved out of the way as the

crime-scene technicians took over, placing small sacks over each of the girl's hands, then loading her into a body bag.

Savannah always got a bit of the chill when she saw

one of those blue bags, the ones with locks on their zippers. Those were for situations that required extra security because the individuals had died under unusual

circumstances. Every time she saw one of those bags being zipped closed and locked, Savannah whispered a quick prayer that she would never see anyone she loved

being zipped into a body bag. . . especially a blue one.

As the technicians were moving the corpse into the

coroner's station wagon, Savannah left the rest of the group and walked farther down the road away from

the scene. In one area the dirt was softer, looser than the rest, and she could see tire marks in the soil that were more than a yard long.

She knelt beside the most clearly defined section

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and studied it. The tread size was substantial, not as big as a truck's, but wide for a car. She stood and motioned to Dirk. "Hey, buddy. Come check this out."

The technicians were pouring a plaster cast of the

tire track, and Savannah and Dirk were observing the process, when Catherine Villa drove up in a green Jeep Cherokee. She stopped short at the yellow tape barrier, jumped out, and ran straight to Savannah.

"Oh, my god! I can't believe it. That poor girl!" She glanced around the scene, at the coroner's wagon, at the Search and Rescue team members who were packing

their equipment into their van. "Where is she? I mean, where is the body?"

'They've already recovered her remains from the

hillside," Savannah told her. "Dr. Liu has her in the wagon now, and she'll be taking her away in just a few minutes."

"But what do you think happened to her? Do you suppose she went for a walk out here in the dark and

fell off the cliff?"

Savannah considered telling her about the tape

bindings, but under these circumstances she had often found that the less said the better.

"We don't know exactly what happened to her yet, Mrs. Villa. The doctor will perform an autopsy on the body and that should give us some answers."

"This is just so terrible. We've never had anything like this happen around here. I'm sure as soon as the press hears about this, they'll be all over. . . and with Tony's candidacy. Oh, dear, this is just such an awful time to have something like this happen."

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Savannah took a deep breath and gathered what little

of her patience remained. "Yes, Mrs. Villa, it's perfectly dreadful. But then, there's no convenient time for someone to be murdered."

Catherine hesitated a long time before answering. She, too, appeared to be marshaling every ounce of courtesy that she could muster. "I realize, Savannah, that my comments may sound somewhat insensitive to

your ears. But Tony and I have worked hard and long for him to win this senate seat. We've invested everything we have, financially, emotionally, so you'll just have to forgive me if I seem to be overreacting to this

situation."

"Murder is always serious, tragic business," Savannah said. "It would be difficult for anyone to overreact to a young woman losing her life this way."

"Murder? Is that what you said? You actually think someone killed that girl?"

Catherine WhitestoneVilla was turning so pale that

Savannah was seriously considering the best way to

catch her when she fainted.

"It may be a homicide," Savannah said, "and maybe not. We'll see, once Dr. Liu has completed the autopsy." "This is so awful! I wish we had never sponsored this pageant. Then none of this would have happened." "Well, as I said, we'll know more later. So there's no need to speculate at this point."

Catherine shook her head, disbelief and shock registering in every aristocratic line of her face. "And what are they doing over there . . . on the ground?" she asked.

'They're taking a plaster cast of a tire mark there in

the dirt."

SOUR GRAPES 155

"It's true then--the police are treating this as a homicide?"

"Not necessarily. They're just making sure to cover all the bases. By the way," Savannah said, "can you tell me where this road leads?"

"It winds, north to south, across the back of the vineyards along the eastern edge of our property, then turns west and intersects the main highway, several miles south of our front gates."

"Who uses this road?"

"We all do: our friends and family, the workers, delivery people, everybody. Why?"

"Just asking . . . trying to get a mental picture."

Catherine Villa's eyes narrowed. "No, you're not just asking. If you think someone at Villa Rosa hurt that girl, you're wrong. I know every person who works for me, and they are wonderful people. We've had many of our cellar workers and even seasonal workers for years. Many of them worked for Tony's father, and some even for his grandfather. None of them would ever do anything like this."

"I never said any of them did."

"If someone murdered one of the beauty contestants,

it was somebody she brought with her, someone who came to Villa Rosa because she Was here. I'm absolutely certain of that. Do you understand me, Savannah?"

Savannah sighed and felt the fatigue of the past

twenty-four hours sweep over her. "I understand that you are absolutely certain, Mrs. Villa. On the other hand, I can't say that I'm sure about anything. . . except. . . that if I don't get some sleep pretty soon, I'm going to fall down dead in my tracks, and they're going to be carrying me out of here in a body bag."