Fat Free and Fatal Read online

  “Just a glance. I went out back to check out the yard area, and he was skimming the pool. He walked away before I had a chance to talk to him.” Tammy snickered. “But he did get a look at the miniskirt, and he seemed to approve. Really approve.”

  “Well, now we know that his vision is fine and he’s probably not gay. I’d be very interested in getting his take on Kim.”

  Tammy reached down and ran her fingertips lightly over her left thigh. “I could try again later if you like.”

  “Eh, don’t overdo it. I wouldn’t want you to strain anything with all that effort.”

  Tammy shrugged and laughed. “It’s what you pay me for.”

  “I pay you?”

  “You sure do.”

  “When?”

  “Every month, when I pay your bills.”

  “Do I pay you enough?”

  “Not really. I’m thinking of giving myself a raise.”

  Savannah reached over and tweaked a strand of Tammy’s long blond hair that lay on her shoulder. She gave her friend an affectionate, sweet smile. “You do that, honey bunny. You give yourself a great big raise. Okay?”

  Tammy’s eyes widened. “Really! That’s so cool! When?”

  “I don’t know. You do my books. As soon as you think I can afford it.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell. “That long, huh?”

  Chapter 11

  The front doorbell rang, and Savannah jumped up from the library sofa. “I’ll get it,” she told Tammy. “Why don’t you go grab a cool drink and sit out back by the pool. Maybe Mr. Gorgeous will show up again.”

  Savannah made it to the front door at the same time as Juanita. The maid glanced through the glass door panel and told Savannah, “It’s Senor Mark. He’s my lady’s special friend.”

  Ah, the recently jilted boyfriend, Savannah thought. Just the guy I want to talk to!

  “I’ll let him in,” Savannah told him. “Thank you, Juanita.”

  “Okay. No problem. I’ll go tell Miss Dona. I don’t think she will want to talk to him, but I should tell her he is here.”

  The maid hurried up the staircase as Savannah opened the door and greeted the tall, thin, dark-haired man standing there.

  “Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Savannah Reid.”

  She gave him a quick visual check, looking for any lumps or bumps beneath his clothes. But his thin polo shirt and tightly fitted jeans couldn’t have concealed much in the way of a weapon.

  “Mark Kellerher,” he said, taking her hand and giving it a limp shake. “And you’re here because…?”

  “I’m Ms. Papalardo’s new security consultant.”

  He frowned, his thick black eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle. “Security consultant?”

  “Her bodyguard.”

  “Oh.” He looked uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to another as he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I guess she might want one now, after…that…you know…bad thing happened. Yes, of course you know. That’s probably why she hired you and well, you know…” He babbled on until Savannah pulled the door open wider and beckoned him inside.

  “Won’t you come in? Juanita has gone upstairs to tell Dona that you’re here,” she told him as she led him inside the foyer.

  “She probably won’t want to see me,” he said, running his fingers though his thick, black hair in a self-conscious gesture. “But I thought I’d at least come by and tell her how sorry I am to hear about Kim.”

  “You and Kim were close?” Savannah asked. Normally she would have worked up to it more gradually, but she was afraid Dona would come down any minute and then her opportunity to question him would be lost for the moment.

  His eyes clouded with tears and his voice shook as he said, “Yes, Kim and I were really good friends. She was a sweet person, smart, and ambitious. And she worked really hard for Dona. Dona’s not the easiest person in the world to please.”

  Savannah glanced toward the staircase, which was still empty. “So I’ve heard,” she said. “In fact, I understand that you and she have…um…sort of had a parting of the ways.”

  “After years of being together, she dumped me like a sack of garbage on the side of the road, if that’s what you mean.” His dark eyes flashed momentarily and it occurred to Savannah that Dona had definitely underestimated this man’s capacity for passion. Savannah decided to tell Dirk to take a really close look at him.

  “Do you think Kim was killed deliberately?” she asked. “Or do you think someone was trying to murder Dona?”

  A look of pain washed over his face, raw and intense. “I’m sure of it,” he said. “Nobody would have any reason to kill Kim. She was a really sweet kid.”

  “And Dona?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then opened it again and said, “Dona is…more…controversial.”

  “What sort of controversies is she involved in?”

  “What the hell are you doing in my house?”

  Savannah whirled around, looked up and saw Dona Papalardo standing at the top of the staircase. She was wearing a rose velvet dressing gown with a cloud of pink marabou feathers around the collar, framing her face. The effect was soft and feminine, but the expression on that pretty face was anything but soft.

  “I said, ‘What the hell are you doing in my house?’” she repeated, her voice booming off the foyer’s marble surfaces.

  Savannah was suddenly aware that the statue of the warrior goddess Diana in the center of the room looked a lot like the fiery mistress of the manor.

  “Get out of here before I call the cops!” she screamed. “Now!”

  “I just came by to give you my condolences, Dona,” Mark said, his voice small and mousy compared to her lion’s roar. “You don’t have to be so nasty. I only wanted to—”

  “Get out of here! Go!” She ran down several steps and nearly tripped on the hem of her gown. “For all I know, you shot Kim, thinking she was me. Get out of my home. I never want to see you again.”

  She turned on Savannah. “And what kind of bodyguard are you supposed to be, letting him in here like that! Get him out! Out!”

  Savannah took Mark’s arm. “I think you should leave, Mr. Kellerher. Let me walk you to your car.”

  She hurried him to the door, opened it and nearly shoved him outside. While Dona Papalardo’s tirade didn’t faze her, she was eager to get him alone and see if his insult and outrage over Dona’s attack would loosen his tongue.

  She walked him out to his car, a new black Lexus that was parked a ways down the driveway. On the way they passed the spray-painted marks left on the brick driveway by the CSI techs.

  She saw him glance at them as they walked by and again, the stark pain showed on his face. And for a moment she wondered if maybe he and Kim had been closer than close. She looked down at his feet to check his shoe size, but his loafers were a much larger size than the men’s shoes she had seen earlier in Kim’s closet. He was also much taller than average, at least six feet, two inches, and the clothes had been for a man less than six feet tall.

  When they reached his car, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she told him, trying to get on his good side quickly. “Dona’s been under a lot of stress lately. And I don’t think she’s feeling well at all today.”

  “She hasn’t felt good since she had that damned surgery,” he said. “She’s been a different person altogether. Dona used to be sweet and funny, bright and charming. But she had that surgery and she nearly died, and now she’s like a different woman. I can’t believe how much she’s changed.”

  “Pain and depression can do that to you.”

  “I know, and I’ve tried to be patient, but I’m not going to keep taking her abuse.” He waved an arm toward the house. “Like this. Did you hear her? Accusing me of killing Kim!”

  Savannah thought for a moment that he was going to burst into tears. She placed her hand on his shoulder and could feel him shaking violently.r />
  “She’s been through a terrible ordeal,” she told him. “And stress like she’s had doesn’t bring the best out in us. Try not to take it too personally.”

  “But accusing me of killing somebody I care about! That’s character assassination. I don’t care how bad you’re feeling, you don’t accuse somebody of murder.” He shook his head. “I never want to see her again for as long as I live. And if somebody was trying to kill her instead of Kim…I hope that next time, they get it right!”

  He shook Savannah’s hand off his shoulder, yanked his car door open and got inside. A few seconds later, he was peeling out of Dona’s driveway, disappearing in a cloud of stinking smoke.

  Savannah watched him until the car was out of sight.

  Then she shook her head and walked back to the house, past the crime-scene markings.

  No, Mark Kellerher was anything but bland and lackluster. She had seen a dark fire burning in his eyes when he had wished Dona ill. And a flame that hot could scorch you if you were too close when it flared.

  The next time Mark came to the house, if he ever did again, she wouldn’t be letting him inside.

  He might not have tried to kill Dona Papalardo before. But she wouldn’t put it past him to try now. And the last thing this palatial property needed was another set of crime-scene marks.

  Before she got to the door, she felt her cell phone buzzing in her pocket. Taking it out, she looked at the caller ID and saw that it was Dirk. She decided to speak to him outside the house where she would have more privacy.

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

  “Got some news for you,” he replied.

  He sounded moderately pleased. Something fantastic must have occurred.

  She grinned. “Okay, shoot.”

  “They did…with a rifle, that is. Dr. Liu dug the slug out of the victim. It was a .270.”

  “Deer-hunting ammo.”

  “That’s right. And she said there was no powder residue, so it wasn’t close range, which you’d figure with a rifle. I’m still thinking he took the shot from up on that hill above the house.”

  She turned and looked up at the hill in question. A little shiver ran down her back as she imagined someone poised up there with a rifle, likely even a scope, taking bead on an innocent woman in an evening gown and fur coat.

  “Did they process that footprint they found up there?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, it’s a size thirteen, Porter-Marceau hiking boot.”

  “That’s an expensive shoe.”

  “Four hundred bucks a pair, minimum. And every pair custom made to fit. He doesn’t shop where I do, that’s for sure.”

  “Ah-h-h, they might have a pair like that at the mission thrift store.”

  “Very funny. Size thirteen is larger than the shoes in Kim’s closet.”

  Savannah’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, but about the same size as some feet I just saw.”

  “Huh?”

  “Dona’s recently dumped boyfriend, Mark Kellerher, just dropped by here to give his condolences to Dona—at least that’s why he said he was here—and she tossed him out on his left ear. He’s tall and skinny and about a size thirteen.”

  “Good to know,” he said. “And here’s something that you might want to know about Kim Dylan. She’s a fake.”

  “What do you mean, a ‘fake’?”

  “There’s no Kim Dylan. It’s an alias.”

  “Get out!”

  “Yep. Remember when I said she was clean as a whistle? No record, no nothing. Well, that’s because she doesn’t exist. At least, not as Kim Dylan. We ran her fingerprints through AFIS. She’s Penny Kara Bethany, wanted in Missouri and Indiana for fraud and blackmail.”

  “No way! That’s great!”

  “Great? What’s great about it?”

  “Well, it’s interesting, opens up all other sorts of possibilities.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, hell, Dirk, I don’t know off the top of my head. You annoy me to distraction sometimes, you know that?”

  She heard him chuckle on the other end.

  “What else?” she snapped.

  “I couldn’t get my hands on that agent of hers. I went to his office there in Hollywood on Sunset, and his secretary said he was out. But I had the feeling she was lying.”

  “And you didn’t storm past her and into his office? You’re losing your edge, buddy.”

  “I was afraid to. I’m so wired from this quitting smoking thing that I’m afraid to get into it with anybody. The way I’m feeling right now, I might spiral out of control. I might kill ’em.”

  She giggled. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you need to protect the public at large from those flying fists of fury.”

  “Laugh it up, chuckles, but you’ve never seen me really mad before. Boy, when I get really steamed—”

  “I’ve seen you steamed. I’ve seen you steamed at me, and I’ve survived, so get real. What else do you have for me?”

  “Isn’t that enough for now?”

  “If that’s all you’ve got, I guess it’s enough.”

  “There’s one other thing. Penny Kara Bethany had an accomplice in her little blackmail scheme that she perpetrated there in Missouri.”

  “Really?” A light flashed inside her head. “Let me guess. Somebody named James Morgan?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Got a picture?”

  “Sure. It’s black and white.”

  “Well, that’ll do.”

  “It’s his fingerprints.”

  She sighed. “That’s peachy. All we have to do is run around asking every male we meet if he’ll show us his thumb.”

  When Savannah entered the kitchen, she found Juanita and Tammy having a discussion about the evening’s dinner plans.

  “Savannah,” Tammy said, “Juanita says she’s going to make dinner for us tonight, and I told her we don’t expect her to do that.” She was perched on a high stool at the center island, her elbows propped on the dark-green marble top. In front of her was a large crystal bowl filled with apples, grapes, and bananas.

  Savannah realized it had been a while since lunch and the mention of dinner stirred some appetite pangs.

  She walked over to where Juanita was loading dishes into the oversized dishwasher. “Of course you don’t need to feed us,” she told her. “We work here, too. We’re not guests, you know.”

  Juanita leaned over and adjusted some pans, and when she stood up, her dark eyes were filled with sadness. “I would be happy to cook for you,” she said. “It would be like old times here in the house again. We used to have parties all the time, many people, much good food, much laughter. But now we have no parties. We have only tears.”

  Savannah sat down on one of the stools at the island, next to Tammy. “Dona used to entertain a lot, did she?”

  “Oh, all the time! Many famous people came here, movie stars, singers, businesspeople, politicos. They all loved her because she was so funny, so happy. And the food, oh…she and I would cook for two, three days before. We would laugh and taste and cook some more. It was wonderful!”

  “When did things change?” Tammy asked. “After she had her surgery?”

  Juanita cast a wary eye toward the door and lowered her voice a little. “A while before that,” she said. “When Senorita Dona got a little bit more big and the newspapers started to make jokes about her. She would read the papers and be sad. She tried to stop eating for days at a time, but she would get so weak. Then she would eat too much and be sick from that, too.”

  Savannah shook her head, thinking of how many women she knew who were caught in that terrible cycle. “And let me guess,” she said, “she did that and got larger and larger.”

  “Yes. It’s true! And the bigger she got, the more they made fun of her and the more she would eat and…” She sighed. “And then her agent told her he would no longer have her, you know, as a client, unless she got the surgery.”

  “That’s awful,” Tammy said. �
��For him to give her an ultimatum like that, regarding something having to do with her body and her health!”

  “Yeah,” Savannah replied, “I would have had to give him an ultimatum—like jump off the end of that dock voluntarily or get thrown off.”

  “I’ve seen the pictures of her before the surgery,” Tammy said. “She didn’t really look all that heavy. I thought you had to be a certain weight before you can even have gastric-bypass surgery.”

  “She wasn’t big enough,” Juanita said. “And she went to many doctors. They all told her ‘no.’ But finally she found one who would do it…if she gained another twenty pounds. So, she did. She ate night and day and gained enough.”

  Tammy gasped. “A doctor recommended that she do that?”

  “I don’t know if he told her to do it, but he knew she was doing it. She told him. She would call him and say, ‘Ten more pounds, is that enough?’ And then call him again, ‘Fifteen more. Enough?’ And he didn’t tell her to stop, so…”

  “That’s criminal,” Savannah said. “Who is this guy?”

  “His name is Dr. Cahill. His office is in the valley. But you must not tell anyone I told you these things,” Juanita said. “I need this job. I feed my mother and my brothers and sisters and my son in Ecuador from my work here.”

  “No, of course not,” Savannah said. “We’ll watch out for you. Don’t worry about that.”

  Juanita smiled sweetly. “I can trust you. I can tell. You ladies, you have good hearts. And I want to make a nice dinner for you. I will make you soup. Beautiful soup. You will see. It will be my gift to you. And you will eat it outside on the patio, and I will light some candles, and it will be a little bit like old times here again.”

  “Well, if you insist,” Savannah said. “But only if you let us pay for the ingredients.”

  “No one is paying for anything they eat in my home,” said a voice from the doorway.

  All three of them jumped and turned around to see Dona Papalardo standing there, still wearing her marabou-trimmed gown. Savannah worried for a moment that she might have overheard something incriminating, but she had a softer, gentler look on her face than Savannah had seen so far.