And the Killer Is . . . Read online

  Books by G.A. McKevett

  SAVANNAH REID MYSTERIES

  Just Desserts

  Bitter Sweets

  Killer Calories

  Cooked Goose

  Sugar and Spite

  Sour Grapes

  Peaches and Screams

  Death By Chocolate

  Cereal Killer

  Murder à la Mode

  Corpse Suzette

  Fat Free and Fatal

  Poisoned Tarts

  A Body to Die For

  Wicked Craving

  A Decadent Way to Die

  Buried in Buttercream

  Killer Honeymoon

  Killer Physique

  Killer Gourmet

  Killer Reunion

  Every Body on Deck

  Hide and Sneak

  Bitter Brew

  And the Killer Is . . .

  GRANNY REID MYSTERIES

  Murder in Her Stocking

  Murder in the Corn Maze

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  G.A. MCKEVETT

  And the Killer Is . . .

  A SAVANNAH REID MYSTERY

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Sonja Massie

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2019953559

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2013-9

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: May 2020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2015-3 (e-book)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2015-6 (e-book)

  For Tracie,

  the sister my heart adopted

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Leslie Connell, my dear friend and faithful copy editor, who read my stories before anyone else and set my mind at ease, telling me that they were good and getting better all the time. You will never know how much that meant to me.

  I wish to thank all the fans who write to me, sharing their thoughts and offering endless encouragement. Your stories touch my heart, and I enjoy your letters more than you know. I can be reached at:

  [email protected]

  and

  facebook.com/gwendolynnarden.mckevett

  Chapter 1

  “Hey! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doin’ there, woman?”

  Savannah Reid turned to her enraged husband, sitting next to her in the driver’s seat of his old Buick, and thought she had seen happier expressions on felons’ faces who had just received a sentence of fifty years to life.

  “Bloody hell?” she asked calmly. “Since when do you say ‘bloody hell’?”

  Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter thought it over a moment, looked a tad sheepish, and admitted, “Okay. I dropped by Ryan and John’s restaurant and had a pint with John earlier. That British accent thing of his is almost as bad as your southern drawl. Rubs off on you. I’m around him ten minutes, and I start talking about dodgy weather and how knackered I was after givin’ some nutter a bollockin’.”

  “Do you drop by ReJuvene regularly?”

  “Naw. Maybe five or six times a week.”

  “These pints you’re downing—they’re free, no doubt, considering Ryan’s and John’s generous natures.”

  “Of course they’re free. You wouldn’t expect me to drop into a swanky establishment like theirs and plunk down my hard-earned cash for a beer, wouldja?”

  “No, darlin’. Never crossed my mind that you would do such a thing as pay for a drink you could get for free.”

  “Good.” He looked relieved for a moment, then seemed to remember his former complaint. “But don’t think you’re distracting me. I still got a beef with you, gal.”

  She glanced around, trying to determine what faux pas she might have committed. After all, she was doing him the enormous favor of keeping him company on an afternoon stakeout that was as exciting as eating a mashed potato and white bread sandwich, followed by vanilla pudding.

  The locale wasn’t anything to quicken the pulse either. They were parked on a nearly deserted residential street in one of the few unattractive and unsavory neighborhoods of sunny little San Carmelita—otherwise known as “the picturesque seaside village where native Southern Californians themselves go to relax and play.”

  Instead of sunlit beaches, boutiques, gift shops, and upscale restaurants, this part of town had ramshackle buildings, barred windows, signs warning of fierce dogs who could run faster than any trespasser, graffiti-smeared cement block walls, and burned-out streetlights. From what Savannah could tell, this section of San Carmelita possessed no virtues whatsoever, except those held by the souls who lived there—strength, courage, pride, and determination born of desperation.

  Over the years, Savannah had seen more than one glorious flower bloom on this side of town, thriving in poverty’s mud and squalor. But there were still a lot of places she’d prefer to be and things she’d rather be doing.

  Considering the price she was paying to keep her bored cop hubby company, she couldn’t imagine how she had managed to offend him.

  She wasn’t painting her fingernails—an activity he despised, claiming he was deathly allergic to the odor.

  She had brought a tin of fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies and had been considerate enough not to eat more than her rightful half of them.

  She had allowed him to choose the music on the radio and, as a result, she had spent the last hour listening to Johnny Cash.

  In truth, she liked Johnny quite a lot, but there was no point in letting Dirk know that. At the end of this tour, she wanted him to feel sufficiently indebted to her to take her out for a nice dinner. Otherwise, he would assume he could buy her off with day-old donuts and stale coffee . . . which he would also manage to finagle for free.

  “Sorry, sweetcheeks,” she said, her down-in-Dixie drawl a bit slower and softer than usual. “I don’t know what sort of sins I’ve committed to get you all in a dither.”

  He nodded toward the dash, where she had set her empty soda can.

  “Yeah?” she said, genuinely confused. “It’s not going to spill, if that’s what you’re frettin’ about. It’s empty.”

  “You better make sure,” he told her in a tone that was uncharacteristically bossy for him.

  Over the years, she had trained him well.

&n
bsp; He knew better.

  She figured it must be mighty important to him, for him to risk riling her. So, she snatched the can off the dash, then began to roll down the window.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.

  “I’m gonna see if I can squeeze a drop or two of Coke out of this here can that you’ve got your willy all tied up in a Windsor knot about.”

  “You go pouring it out like that, some could splash on the outside of the door and ruin the paint job.”

  For a few seconds, she stared at him, calculating how much energy she would have to expend to cram a soda can into a highly annoying husband’s right ear.

  She figured, in the end, she could get the job done, but Dirk wasn’t one to quietly submit to having items inserted into his orifices without offering resistance, and she was tired, so she abandoned the plan.

  Instead, she rolled the window back up, opened the door, leaned out, bent down, and shook the three remaining drops of soda onto the curb.

  Then, with much pomp and circumstance, she shut the door and handed him the can. “There you go. Feel free to shove this . . . wherever you’re putting your garbage, now that you no longer hurl it over your right shoulder and onto the floorboard, the way you did for years and—”

  “Until your brother restored this car to cherry condition!” he snapped, grabbing the can from her hand. “After all the work Waycross did on my baby, do you think I’m gonna let her get all dirty again? No way. You could do brain surgery back there on my rear floorboard now.”

  “Unsettling thought, but possibly necessary if this conversation continues,” she muttered.

  “You could lick ice cream off these seats.”

  “Knowing you, if you dropped your cone, you probably would,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m glad you’re so proud of how clean your car is now, after years of slovenliness.”

  “Thank you. I guess.” He crushed the can flat with his hands, reached behind her, and lovingly placed it into the fancy-dandy auto litter receptacle attached to her headrest, hanging behind the passenger’s seat.

  The bin was lined with a deodorized plastic bag, and Savannah was pretty sure she could detect the scent of bleach.

  Her baby brother, Waycross, had restored Dirk’s old Buick after it had been all but totaled in a severe accident. Before, the car had been pretty much a trash heap on wheels.

  But since Waycross had surprised Dirk with the perfect “resurrection model” of his formerly deceased vehicle, Dirk was treating the car even better than Savannah babied her red 1965 Mustang. That was saying quite a lot, since she sometimes used dental floss to clean its wire-spoked wheel covers.

  While she was glad to see Dirk finally give a dang for a change, embrace a passion, and abandon his former lifestyle—a study in untidy apathy—she found his new obsessive cleanliness annoying, to say the least.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured. “Lord help you if you happen to get it.” Under her breath she added, “Maybe I could get Waycross to remodel the area around my toilet.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes and several cookies later, both Savannah’s and Dirk’s banter had turned to silence born of acute boredom. Not even Johnny’s rousing rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues,” recorded in the infamous jailhouse itself, was enough to keep Dirk from nodding off.

  “I could be home right now, you know,” she told him, confident that he was sound asleep and wouldn’t hear a word. “I could be watching TV or reading my new romance novel.”

  Surveilling a drug house was seldom a joyous occasion, and the one they were observing was even less exciting than most. They weren’t even sure the occupants inside were selling drugs. Dirk had received a tip that they were a high volume, well-fortified operation. But the informant had a reputation for being less than honest, especially when offering information to avoid arrest.

  Dirk’s objective was simple: determine whether the tip was legitimate before going to the trouble and expense of sending an undercover cop into the house to score.

  So far, other than a pizza delivery, no one had come in or out of the place, and it looked like any other run-down bungalow in the neighborhood. Quiet and reasonably law abiding.

  To the point of boring.

  “Yeah. I could be relaxing in my comfy chair, petting my kitties and shoving raspberry truffles in my face,” she continued, berating the sleeping man. “Instead, I’m sitting here, my butt numb, listening to you snore like a warthog with a head cold and . . .”

  Her complaint faded away as an old van with battered fenders and rust-encrusted paint pulled in front of the house in question. After jumping the curb, driving onto the grass for a moment, then down, the vehicle managed to park.

  A woman exited the driver’s door, nearly falling on her face in the process. Even from where Savannah sat and without any sort of sobriety test, she could tell the gal was strongly under the influence of something.

  Savannah grabbed her binoculars off the dash and took a closer look at her. She paid special attention to the woman’s haggard, anxious expression, her drug-ravaged body and shaky, fidgety movements.

  She was painfully thin and dressed to reveal as much skin as possible in a teeny bikini top and short shorts that suggested the goods she was displaying were for sale—or at least for short-term rental.

  “As Granny would say,” Savannah whispered, “you can see all the way to Christmas and—glory be!—New Year’s Eve, too.”

  When the woman walked around the rear of the van, on her way to the sidewalk, she paused to bang her fist on the back window several times. She yelled, “You stay put! Set one foot outside this van and I swear to gawd, I’ll whup your tail good when I get back.”

  A rusty old bell clanged deep inside Savannah’s personal memories. For a moment she was a twelve-year-old child, sitting in the open bed of an ancient pickup truck filled with her younger siblings, watching their mother stumble across a dark alley and enter a tavern’s rear entrance. She felt the chill of the night air, the ache of hunger in her belly, and the crushing weight of responsibility, knowing that she alone would be responsible for keeping them all safe for the next four or five hours.

  Warm, fed, or entertained . . . those were impossible luxuries.

  Safety would be the only gift she might be able to afford.

  But even that could prove difficult, considering the drunken patrons coming and going through the bar’s back door. Not to mention the older children’s propensity to ignore her orders, climb out of the truck, and play in the unlit parking area strewn with broken glass, discarded hypodermic needles, and used condoms.

  Adjusting the binoculars’ focus, Savannah saw a small face appear at the van’s rear window for a second, then duck back down.

  Deep inside her, among the dark memories, a presence stirred—a being that had been born long ago in that lonely, dangerous alley. A child with a woman’s fierce maternal instincts, who carried a sword that she named Justice and a shield that was wide enough to protect not only herself, but any and all innocents she could gather behind it.

  “Don’t worry, darlin’,” she whispered to the little one with the frightened face she had seen in the window. “Tonight . . . your life changes for the better. I promise.”

  Chapter 2

  Savannah nudged the sleeping Dirk. “Wake up, sugar,” she told him. “Your nap’s over. Time to get to work. You don’t want to miss the show.”

  Dirk stirred, glanced around with sleepy eyes, then managed to focus on the retreating woman’s backside as she walked away from them, stumbling up the sidewalk toward the house they were surveilling.

  “Eh,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “I’ve seen way better butts than that—like this morning, when you bent over to take the biscuits outta the oven.”

  Ordinarily, Savannah would have been flattered and happy to receive the compl
iment. Of Dirk’s numerous, endearing qualities, one of her favorites was his attitude that “more is more” when it came to feminine curvature.

  But under the present circumstances, considering the child in the van and the fact that the woman entering the drug house could barely walk, let alone drive safely, Savannah had other things to think about than her husband’s unabashed enthusiasm for his wife’s ample backside.

  “Is that her van?” Dirk asked, nodding toward the decrepit vehicle.

  “Yes,” Savannah replied.

  “Was she drivin’ it?”

  “Rather badly, but yes.”

  “Good. When she comes out, we’ll let her drive a couple of blocks—far enough away that the dealers in the house won’t see. We don’t wanna tip them off just yet that we’re watching them. We’ll get her on a DUI along with the junk, assuming she scores some.”

  “That would be nice, if only it was that simple,” Savannah said with a tired sigh.

  “Whaddaya mean? Maybe I can get ’er to talk. If I withhold her goods for a few hours, she’ll flip.”

  Savannah watched as the woman tripped over her own feet, entering the house. “She looks like a flipper all right. Five minutes with you in the sweat box, she’ll fold like a shy oyster.”

  “Exactly. Instead of messing with setting up an undercover buyer, we’ll use her statement, and maybe a couple of others to get a warrant and come back next week with a full team to roust the house good and proper. No problem.”

  “She’s got a child there in the van. From what I could see, a little one.”

  Savannah watched as the reality of the situation dawned on her husband, along with its implications.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Yeah. We can’t let her drive away with a youngster in the van and her drunk as Cooter Brown. Not even a few blocks.”