Wicked Craving (6 page)

“Are you Terry Somers?” Dirk asked.

Savannah could tell by his tone that he was as surprised as she was.

“Yeah, who are you?” He peered at them through thick-lensed glasses.

Dirk presented his badge. “Sergeant Dirk Coulter, San Carmelita Police Department. This is Savannah Reid. Could we come in and talk with you?”

When Somers hesitated, Dirk added, “I realize it's late, but it's very important.”

“I was just getting ready to go to bed, but…yeah…okay. I guess so.” He stepped back and opened the door wider.

Savannah wasn't even over the threshold before it hit her, the stench of an uncleaned cat litter box.

Actually, she was giving him the benefit of the doubt that somewhere in the house there was, indeed, a litter box for the poor animal to use. And the thought also occurred to her that if her own two cats, Diamante and Cleopatra, were treated to these sorts of accommodations, they would probably attack her and kill her as she slept.

Once inside, Savannah shuddered again, looking around the room at the avalanche of empty pizza boxes, drained beer bottles, flat potato chip bags, and assorted trash that covered nearly every horizontal surface.

The dark brown sofa was coated with a layer of light-colored animal hair.
Tabby's no doubt
, she thought. Yes, the poor thing definitely needed to run away from home.

“You wanna sit down?” their host asked, brushing some of the garbage off one end of the sofa and onto the floor.

“Uh, no, thanks,” Dirk said, glancing around. “We won't be that long.”

“The housekeeper's on vacation.” Somers then reached behind him and pulled out a revolver.

In an instant, both Savannah and Dirk had their own weapons in their hands and pointed at him.

“Holy shit! Don't shoot!” Somers said, laying it on the coffee table, on top of a stack of porn magazines. “Damn. I was just taking it out of my pants because I didn't want to sit down on it. It's uncomfortable, okay?”

Savannah could feel the adrenaline hit her system, and when it got to her knees, they nearly buckled under her. She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears.

“Oh, man, what's the hell's wrong with you?” Dirk said, picking up the discarded revolver. “You pull a gun around cops? You wanna die?”

Dirk holstered his weapon, then emptied Somers's revolver and stuck the bullets into his pocket.

Savannah took her finger off her Beretta's trigger and lowered her own weapon, but she decided to hold on to it, just in case.

“I've had some problems lately,” Somers replied sheepishly. “That's how I got this….” He pointed to his cast. “I was mugged by some punks in Hollywood, and I've been a little jumpy ever since. I didn't know who you were when I answered the door.”

“We look a lot like muggers to you?” Dirk's face was flushed, and he was breathing hard. She could feel the rage rolling off him in waves.

Savannah knew exactly how he felt. Her heart was still racing.

Somers was lucky to be alive. If either she or Dirk had been ten years younger and a little less experienced, he'd be well on his way to keeping Maria Wellman company in Dr. Liu's morgue.

She had killed in the line of duty before, and it wasn't an experience she wanted to repeat in this lifetime.

“I don't like somebody pulling a gun in my presence,” Dirk continued, “and I don't like being lied to, either. So far, buddy, you're O for two.”

This time it was Terry Somers's face that turned a shade redder as anger flashed in his eyes. For just a moment there, Savannah caught a glimpse of a guy who could have made an ugly threat in a doctor's office without caring that there were witnesses.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Somers said, his jaw tight, fists clenched at his sides. “You talk to all victims of violent crimes like this?”

“Only the ones who get themselves in trouble by not paying their gambling debts to connected guys.”

“Who told you that?” Somers practically screamed at Dirk, his eyes bugging out in an extremely unsettling, creepy way.

Savannah was glad that Dirk had emptied the weapon. She was equally glad she hadn't holstered her own yet, just in case he had another one stashed in the cat hair–coated sofa or hidden in a moldy pizza box.

She could understand why Roxanne Rosen had been afraid of him. And since he was at least five inches taller than the petite Roxie, Savannah could even see why she considered him big.

But Dirk was a lot bigger, and as Savannah could attest, plenty mean. And still armed.

“It doesn't matter who told me,” Dirk told him, leaning toward him, quite deliberately invading his personal space. “Word gets around, you know? And that's not all I've heard. I understand you've got a major beef with Dr. Robert Wellman.”

Now Terry Somers was spitting mad. Literally. When he spoke, spittle flew out of his mouth. Savannah half-expected to see his head start spinning around.

“Yeah, I've got something against that snake oil–selling son of a bitch,” he said, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. “I paid him a fortune to help me stop gambling. If you already know how I got this busted leg, then you know how well his shit works.”

“You threatened his life,” Dirk said.

“I might have.”

“In front of witnesses,” Savannah added.

“Okay, I did.”

“Where were you last night?” Dirk asked.

“Right here, watching TV with my cat and trying to drink enough that my leg wouldn't hurt. Why?”

When neither Dirk nor Savannah answered him right away, he was suddenly highly interested, excited. “Wait a minute. Why are you asking me about Wellman and where I was? Did something happen to him? Did he get beat up?”

Again they didn't reply.

“He got offed?” The sheer delight on his face at the mere prospect was telling. He looked like a kid who had just been told that Santa might come for a second visit sometime in July.

“Did he?” he insisted. “Did he? Is he dead? That's why you're here, isn't it?”

“No,” Dirk said.

Somers's face fell. “Oh.”

“His wife was killed.” Savannah watched his expression closely to see the effect her words would have on him.

He gasped. “Killed, like murdered?”

“We think so.”

“Damn! Really? Oh, man! That's wild!” Somers sat down suddenly on the couch. And when his cat tried to jump up onto his lap, he brushed her aside, shaking his head. “I can't believe it. I mean, I believe it, considering…but, wow!”

“You believe it, considering what?” Dirk wanted to know.

“Considering the kind of person she was. She was in his office the first time I came by to ask for my money back. She told me off, using words I never even heard a woman use before. No wonder somebody killed her. I gotta tell you, that woman was a major bitch!”

Savannah nodded somberly. “So we've heard.”

“Yeap,” Dirk added. “That seems to be the general consensus.”

 

Later, they left Somers and walked to the Buick parked at the curb, neither of them speaking until they were well on their way.

“Tired?” Dirk said.

“Very. You?”

“Yeah. And I have a feeling this is going to be a tough case.”

“Trying to find somebody who
didn't
want Maria Wellman dead?”

“Exactly.”

W
hen Savannah opened her eyes the next morning, for just a moment, she thought she was a little girl again back in Georgia.

Like thousands of other mornings, the incomparable aroma of fresh coffee brewing, bacon frying, and biscuits baking beckoned her from the far reaches of the house.

“Oh, my Lord,” she whispered. “If heaven doesn't smell exactly like that, let me just come back to earth.”

She jumped out of bed, threw a robe over her nightgown, and rushed downstairs with a vim and vigor she seldom displayed before noon.

“Granny! What are you doing cooking?” she asked as she ran into the room and found her grandmother standing in front of the stove, frying eggs. On the back burner, a pan full of grits bubbled, and a plate of crispy bacon sat on the counter nearby.

“I heard you come in late last night, so I figured you'd be tuckered out,” Gran said, expertly flipping the eggs. “I'll have to give that young man of yours a serious talkin' to, keeping you out till the wee hours of the morning thataway.”

“We weren't up to nothin' naughty,” Savannah said with a chuckle as she leaned over and kissed Gran's cheek.

“Hmmph. That's what you used to say when you was a teenager and you and Tommy Stafford were keeping company. And we both know that was a bald-faced lie.”

Savannah pulled the half-and-half from the refrigerator and put a generous dollop into her Minnie Mouse mug. “I reckon it depends on your definition of ‘naughty.'”

“I can understand the temptation there.” Gran opened the oven door a crack and peeked at the biscuits. “Tommy was a pretty boy. Still is, for that matter. He looks especially fetching in that policeman's uniform.”

“I know. Remember, I saw him and his uniform last time I was home.”

“Course, your Dirk looks pretty fine, even in that old beat-up leather coat of his.”

Savannah sniffed. “Since when is he ‘my' Dirk? He's just Dirk.”

Granny gave her a knowing, sideways look and grinned. “Okay. Whatever you say, sweet cheeks.”

Savannah took a long drink from her mug, then closed her eyes and savored the moment. How was it that Granny could use the same coffee from her own canister, the water from her tap, and her coffeepot, and yet brew something so much better than her own?

“If I didn't know better,” Granny said, “I'd think that you and your Dirk—who's not yours, according to you—had a little tiff last night when Ryan and John were leaving.”

“A little one. But we got over it.”

“Well, that's good. You have to make up before the day's over. ‘Don't let the sun set on your wrath,' the Bible says.”

“Yeah, there's nothing like having somebody you're interviewing pull a gun out of his britches to put things into perspective.”

Savannah put her mug on the counter and started to set the table for two. Then she glanced at the cat clock on the wall with its switching tail and rhinestone eyes and decided to set it for three.

“Dirk'll probably be by any time now,” she said as she laid out the plates.

“Does he come by every morning?”

“Not every morning, but most.” She paused, silverware in hand. “Now that I think about it, he's been coming by a bit less lately.”

“Oh?”

“In fact, he's been acting mighty strange…stranger than usual, even for him. He's not been dropping by as often, watching his diet, not answering his phone sometimes in the middle of the afternoon, and last night, I overheard him asking Ryan about a place to get a decent haircut.”

“Has he bought new boxer shorts lately?”

“New
boxer shorts
? Now, how the heck would I know a thing like that?”

Granny grinned at her, and Savannah realized she'd just been questioned by someone who was a much better interrogator than she was.

“That's always a sign that a man's up to no good,” Granny said, dishing up the eggs. “All of a sudden he's watching his weight, frettin' over his hair, and gets new underwear—especially if he ain't a dietin', fashionable, new-underwear kinda guy.”

Savannah mulled that over and didn't like the feeling that was welling up inside her.

It felt a lot like petty jealousy.

Only not all that petty.

“And the other day,” she said, “when I called him at three thirty in the afternoon, he avoided telling me where he was…and…he sounded all out of breath.”

“Hmmm…” Gran walked past her, a plate of bacon in one hand and one of eggs in the other. “Then I'd say it's a darned good thing he ain't ‘your' Dirk, or you'd have good reason to get your bloomers in a kink.”

 

Dirk didn't show up for breakfast. And when she hadn't heard from him by 10:30, Savannah couldn't stand it anymore.

“That does it. By crackie, I'm calling him,” she told Granny and Tammy, who were spending a far more peaceful morning than she was, in spite of her pacing and fretting.

Tammy was at the desk, staring at the computer screen and reading them everything she could find on the Internet regarding Maria Wellman's death.

Granny sat in Savannah's comfy chair, the cats keeping her feet warm on the ottoman, a crocheted afghan over her lap. She was reading the
True Informer
, her favorite tabloid, keeping abreast of all the latest news about UFOs and which starlet had most recently flashed her crotch for the paparazzi.

“So, if you want to call Dirko, call him,” Tammy said. “Tell him that the Associated Press even picked up the story. That Dr. Wellman is a big shot, what with all those talk shows he did. There's an article here by one of his biggest critics, Dr. Bonnie Saperstein. She's a weight loss doctor in Twin Oaks who says he's a charlatan. Says he got his papermill doctorate from some Russian Web site.”

Savannah didn't reply, but kept pacing.

Finally, she stomped to the foyer and grabbed her purse off the table next to the door. “Okay. I'm gonna call him,” she said, fishing out her cell phone. “If I don't, he might go over to Dr. Liu's without me, and he'll get snippy with her for not getting that autopsy done as quick as he wants her to, and then we won't have anything to go on for hours, and…”

Her voice faded away as she walked into the kitchen, punching buttons on her cell phone.

Tammy clicked away for a moment or two, then said to Gran, “Has she always been like that?”

“Like what?” Gran asked without looking up from her paper.

“Getting in a tizzy over nothing.”

Gran sighed and turned the page. “Savannah was born tizzied.”

Tammy giggled. “But we love her anyway.”

“Yeap. You gotta take a body however you find 'em.”

 

“So, what were you going to do, just go to the morgue without me?” Savannah asked Dirk when she got into the Buick.

“No,” he said. “I was gonna call you. I got busy. I had some things to do this morning.”

He pulled away from the curb, reaching over and grabbing a chocolate sucker from the dash. Handing it to her, he said, “Un-wrap that for me, wouldcha?” And after a moment's pause, he added, “And get another one out of the glove box if you want one for yourself.”

She gave him a thorough once-over.

He hadn't gotten his hair cut. He didn't seem to be sweaty or out of breath.

She wondered if he was wearing new boxers…and felt the overwhelming urge to slap him naked and find out.

But instead, she opened the glove compartment and found at least two dozen of the chocolate suckers stuffed inside.

“What's all this?” she asked. “Since when do you eat lollipops instead of real food?”

“They satisfy my chocolate cravings and only have fifty calories each. They're a good bang for your junk-food-calorie buck.”

“Okay, that's it!” She slammed the glove box closed. “You are going to tell me, once and for all, why you're dieting. And don't give me some song and dance about recapturing your girlish figure, because you look just fine and dandy right now.”

“I do?” He looked far too pleased to suit her, considering how aggravated she was with him.

“Yes, you do. So, what's going on here?”

He thought a moment, and then his grin faded. “But you're only saying that 'cause you haven't seen me with my clothes off.”

“Not for ages. Not since that time when we had to stay in the same motel room, and you went traipsin' off to the bathroom in the middle of the night without telling me to close my eyes first.”

“Hey, I'd warned you…I'm just not a pajama sorta guy.”

“You could've left your boxers on.”

“Briefs. Not a boxer sorta guy, either.”

“More information than I need, thank you.”

They traveled along in silence until they were almost to the morgue.

That was as long as Savannah could hold back. “So, what's the big deal?” she said. “Who cares if you lose weight or whatever.
Nobody
ever sees
you
with your clothes off.”

He grinned. It was a half-hearted, sheepish sort of a grin that she couldn't, for the life of her, interpret.

“Oh,” he said. “You'd be surprised.”

 

Savannah steeled herself as they walked up the sidewalk to the morgue. She didn't like the place; it creeped her out.

It wasn't the fact that there were dead bodies inside. Dead people usually caused a heck of a lot less trouble than the live ones.

But she had too many bad memories of the place. Too many instances of taking victims' family members there to make identifications. Too many times when she'd walked through those doors and learned new and horrible things that human beings could do to each other.

It never failed to amaze and horrify her how creative bad guys could be.

And then…there was Kenny Bates.

Savannah liked most people unless they gave her good reason not to. Her list of folks she truly hated was a short one, and she believed that everyone on it had worked quite hard to get there.

But she loathed Kenny Bates.

Kenny worked the morgue's front desk—if you considered eating nacho cheese chips, swilling sodas, pretending to look busy while looking at porn on his computer, and hitting on every female who walked through the door, work. If those activities had been part of his job description, the taxpayers would have gotten way more than their money's worth out of Officer Kenny Bates.

Dirk held the door as she walked inside. She could see Bates sitting behind his desk.

As usual, he quickly exited the screen he was ogling on his desktop monitor and adjusted his toupee.

He didn't bother to brush the chip dust off the front of his uniform that was far too small for his extremely rotund body. Kenny's grooming standards had their limitations.

When he stood to greet the new arrivals and saw who they were, Savannah got the first inkling that maybe their rocky relationship had changed for the better since the last time she had visited here.

He gave her a dirty look, then abruptly sat back down and spun around in his chair, turning his back on her.

“Still carrying a grudge, I see,” Dirk said as he walked over to the counter and picked up the clipboard with its sign-in sheet.

Bates said nothing.

Dirk turned to Savannah, “I hate to tell you, Van, but I think the romance is over between you and Kenny here.”

“Appears so,” Savannah said. “Boy, you beat a guy half to death with his own porn magazine, and he gets all huffy on you. Go figure.”

Still no reaction from Bates.

Dirk scribbled his name and the time on the sheet, then chuckled. “You know, Savannah,” he said, “ol' Kenny here still gets ribbed about that. Sorta ruins a dude's rep, getting beat up by a girl…even you. And with his own property no less. You tore that magazine to shreds. And it was all caught on tape.”

He motioned to the camera in the upper corner of the room. “You have any idea how many times us guys have watched that?” he continued. “I heard somebody even posted it on the Internet.”

Bates was breathing hard, his extremely wide back going in and out like a blacksmith's bellows. But he didn't break his silence.

They passed by him and started down the long corridor leading to the medical examiner's autopsy suite.

“Refresh my memory,” Dirk said. “Why was it exactly that you attacked him with that rolled-up magazine?”

“He told me I looked like the centerfold…and then he showed me the centerfold. She was ugly. And she was in a remarkably unladylike position. As a genteel belle of the South, I took offense.”

“It's a wonder you didn't kill him.”

“Damn tootin'.”

At the end of the depressing hallway with its gray walls, charcoal-colored tiles, dingy ceiling, and flickering florescent lights was a set of large double doors.

Dirk stopped in the middle of the hallway and slapped his forehead. “Shoot, I forgot to bring the chocolate. I thought about what you said about how I'm never nice to her, and I was gonna take some money out of petty cash and buy her some.”

Savannah grinned, reached into her purse, and pulled out a small box of Godiva's chocolates. “Like these?”

“Oh, girl. You rule!”

“I do. And don't you forget it.” She glanced at her watch. “Eleven forty-five. She said she'd be done by noon. You'll only be fifteen minutes early. That's gotta be some sort of record for you. Normally, you'd be camped out on her doorstep, making a nuisance of yourself.”

“You're civilizing me.”

“That'll be the day.”

“Lemme have that box of chocolates.”

“Why?”

“'Cause I wanna be the one to give 'em to her.”

“No! I bought them. I brought them. I'm getting the credit for it.”

“But I need to score the points. She already likes you.”