Wicked Craving Read online

  “Oh, I think we’re pretty progressive now in all fifty states,” Savannah said. “Even where I come from, we figure that divorce is the answer to adultery, not murder.”

  She turned to Dirk. “I’ve enjoyed about enough of this gentleman’s hospitality,” she said. “I’m going to go sit out in the car and wait for you.”

  Without another word, she turned around and walked out the front door, leaving the two men to finish their discussion without her.

  But she didn’t go sit in the car. She had better things to do with her time.

  She headed around the side of the house and toward the rear of the property. Somewhere back there was a garage with a servants’ apartment over it and a discarded, disgraced, probably unhappy wife inside.

  And experience had taught her that most unhappy women had a lot to say about the guy who had discarded them.

  Chapter 10

  Savannah found Brian Mahoney’s wife, as he had said, in the maid’s quarters over the three-car garage.

  She had answered the door wearing an old nightgown with food stains on the front of it. She looked and smelled like a woman who hadn’t recently bathed.

  Depression took its toll.

  But she had invited Savannah inside, offered her a chair at the kitchen table, and had put a cup of weak, instant coffee in her hand. And she was trying to answer Savannah’s questions with as much honesty as possible. Savannah had to give her credit for that, considering that those answers didn’t paint a rosy picture of Lydia Mahoney, her marriage, or her life.

  “I thought I was in love with Dr. Wellman,” she admitted, sucking deeply on the cigarette she held in her hand.

  Savannah noticed that both the hand and the cigarette were shaking.

  “He was so nice to me,” she continued. “When I’d go to see him, his face would just light up when he saw me. He’d tell me that he looked forward to my appointments all week. I went to him to stop smoking.”

  Lydia put one hand to her hair and made a feeble gesture as though trying to fluff the flat, greasy strands. “Of course,” she said, “I didn’t look like this when I went to see him. I’d dress up, fix my hair and makeup. I look pretty good when I clean up.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” Savannah said softly.

  Lydia smiled, a half smile filled with sadness. “I had this one red dress. It was his favorite. I was wearing it the first time that we…well…the first time that I…” She sighed. “We never actually did…it. He wanted to be faithful to his wife, you know. So, I just, you know, took care of him. Not a lot; just a few times. But Brian got wise to us and dropped by during one of my sessions. He got past the receptionist—you can see how big he is—and walked into the office and caught us. It was really bad.”

  “What did Brian do?”

  “He hit the doctor, several times, really hard. I was afraid he was going to kill him. And when he got me home, he hit me, too.”

  Lydia put her finger to her lip, and Savannah could see what remained of a scar on her bottom lip.

  “Why didn’t the doctor press charges against Brian?” Savannah asked, although she was pretty sure of the answer she was going to get.

  “He didn’t want the bad publicity. Brian was counting on that.”

  “When he hit him? Or afterward…when he blackmailed him?”

  Lydia looked stunned and couldn’t speak for a moment. Finally, she said, “How do you know about that?”

  Savannah waved a hand in the direction of the window and the main house. “It’s not too hard to figure out. You two go from living in a little house in the middle of town to a place like this in Spirit Hills. There’s a new, tricked-out pickup in the driveway. Somebody came into some big money somehow. And I don’t buy the BS about the lottery, either.”

  Lydia rubbed one hand over her eyes and shook her head. “We’re not buying this house. We’re just renting it for a few months. The owners are in Brazil, and the guy they left in charge of it is making some extra money on the side by letting us stay here.”

  “Still,” Savannah said. “The truck’s new, and your rent here can’t be cheap.”

  “Brian’s blowing through money like crazy…the cash the doctor gave him, the money from selling our house. He’s sure he can get Dr. Wellman to keep paying him to keep his mouth shut. But now with Maria getting killed like that, and you guys investigating the doctor, who knows what’s going to happen?”

  Lydia stubbed her cigarette out in the tray and promptly lit another. “Brian likes living in a place like this. Says he deserves it after all he’s been through in his life. But I don’t know how he’s going to pull it off…what he’s going to do. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  The women sat quietly for a long time, the silence heavy in the room.

  Finally, Savannah said, “Did you consider pressing charges against Brian when he hit you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I never have.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t risk it. He told me he’d kill me if I ever called the cops on him, and I’m absolutely sure he would. He also told me that if I ever leave him, he’ll hunt me down and kill me. And I’m sure he means that, too. So, see…I’m stuck.”

  Savannah looked around the room at the cardboard boxes that were stacked against the wall, still unopened. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes, and the cigarette tray on the table was overrun with butts.

  She looked at the woman on the other side of the table who had once been pretty enough in her red dress to turn a doctor’s head. But now she looked worse than some of San Carmelita’s street people who hung around in the poorer areas of town.

  And Savannah fully appreciated the dilemma Lydia faced with her abusive husband. While on the police force, Savannah had encountered women like her every single day. And her heart broke for them every single time.

  “Don’t go telling me to get a restraining order against him,” Lydia was saying. “You and I both know all that does is piss these guys off. And then they come after you even worse than before.”

  Savannah stared down at the cup in her hands. “Sometimes restraining orders work, with some guys.”

  “Brian’s not one of them,” Lydia said. “Believe me, I know.”

  “I won’t argue with you. You know your situation better than anyone else.” Savannah reached across the table and patted the woman’s hand. “But, honey, if he’s hit you before, he’ll hit you again. And one of these days, he’ll hurt you really bad or kill you. So, if there’s any way you can get away from him, do it. And get all the help you can from law enforcement or friends or family or any place you can get it.”

  “I don’t have any family or friends,” Lydia said. “Over the years, Brian got rid of everybody who ever meant anything to me—pushed them out of our lives. And, one by one, I let him do it. Now he’s got me right where he wants me. I don’t have anybody.”

  Savannah reached into her purse and pulled out her business card. Then she took out a pen and scribbled her cell phone number on the back of it.

  She pressed it into the woman’s hand. “Now you’ve got somebody,” she said. “You’re not alone anymore. You’ve got me.”

  After Savannah left Lydia, she was on her way back to the car when her cell phone started ringing. She saw from the caller ID that it was Dirk.

  “I’m here in the car,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Look in your rearview mirror,” she told him. “What do you see?”

  “A hot, bodacious brunette,” he replied. “You think maybe I could pick her up, get her to take a ride with me?”

  “I’d say your chances are good.”

  He reached across the seat and pushed the passenger door open for her.

  They both hung up their phones as she slid in beside him. “Get anything more from Mahoney?” she asked.

  “More attitude and mouth. That’s about it.” He drove the car around the circular driveway and back onto the street. “And you?”

 
; “I went back to the garage apartment and chatted with his wife.”

  “I figured. How’d that go?”

  “Mahoney blackmailed Wellman. That’s how they’re affording the house. Although, it’s rented, so it’s not like they shook him down for a king’s ransom or whatever.”

  “Then why do you think Mahoney would murder Maria Wellman…or Gina…or whatever her name is?”

  “What makes you think he did it?” Savannah asked.

  “I don’t know if he did or not. I just hope he did so that I can bust him.”

  “That makes two of us.” Savannah thought about the scar on Lydia’s lip. “He beats his wife.”

  Dirk scowled and shook his head.

  One of the things Savannah loved most about him was his general attitude toward woman beaters, child molesters, senior-citizen robbers, and anybody who hurt anything with a furry face.

  Basically, he would be happy to tie cement shoes onto their feet and watch as Savannah pushed them off the end of the city pier. And Savannah agreed with his position on those particular crimes, as long as she got to do the off-the-pier pushing.

  “So, who’s next?” she asked as they passed through the guardhouse gate. “That Karen gal? The one who’s supposedly carrying the doctor’s baby?”

  Dirk glanced at his watch and frowned. “Um-m-m…actually, there’s someplace I’ve gotta be in a few minutes. How would you feel about me dropping you back at your house now? That way you can enjoy your dinner with Granny, while I take care of my business, and—”

  “Gran’s having dinner with Ryan and John. Remember me telling you that they’re taking her out to Chez Antoine?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And I cleared the whole evening for you. I’m missing out on a superb dinner and the company of my beloved grandmother and two of my dearest friends, just to help you with this case.”

  Dirk squirmed in his seat. “Yeah, I remember…now that you remind me. But really, there’s something I need to do this evening. It’s important and I—”

  “So, take me along with you. I can hang out, entertain myself. And then, if we’ve got time after you’re done doing whatever it is, we could go find this Karen Burns gal.”

  Dirk looked absolutely miserable as he stared straight ahead, refusing to meet her eyes. “I sorta need to do this…this thing…by myself. But I’ll find out where she lives, and we can go talk to her tomorrow morning, first thing. I promise.”

  “Hey, why are you promising me anything? This ain’t a trip to Disneyland, you know. It’s your case. I’m doing this for you. And right now, I’m thinking about Antoine’s fresh-baked sourdough bread and his goose liver pate, and I’m thinking I did the wrong thing extending myself for you tonight.”

  “Oh, hell, Van. You don’t even like liver. You told me so yourself. So, now you’re just griping for the fun of it.”

  “Fun? Fun? You think this is fun for me, fighting with you?”

  “Must be. You’re the one yapping and keeping it going.”

  It was a long, silent trip home—very long, very silent.

  When Dirk pulled into her driveway, Savannah had her seat belt unbuckled and her purse tucked under her arm even before he had the car stopped.

  She started to get out without saying anything to him, but he put his hand on her forearm.

  “Just so that I don’t have to wonder, which are you mad at me about,” he said, “the fact that I didn’t tell you where I’m going or that ‘yapping’ comment, or both?”

  “I think the question should be, ‘Which am I the maddest about?’”

  He nodded. “Apparently, it’s both.”

  “You figure?”

  “Then, just to clarify here,” he said, his tone sarcastic, “because you and I are friends, I can’t go somewhere on my own without telling you where I’m going and what I’m doing?”

  Savannah stopped and thought it over before answering. “Well, if you put it like that…”

  “Ah-ha. Then you admit that I’ve got a right to my own privacy, and you had no reason at all to get mad at me back there.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that ‘yapping’ thing. I do not yap. Pomeranians and Chihuahuas yap.”

  “Okay, okay, then I apologize for the ‘yap’ thing. Friends again?” He leaned toward her and puckered up his lips.

  Reluctantly, she moved a notch closer to him and offered her cheek. He gave it a big, noisy smack.

  “I’ll swing by to pick you up tomorrow morning a little before nine,” he said as she climbed out of the car.

  “If you make it eight, I’ll feed you breakfast.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll just grab some black coffee and a lowfat granola bar on my way out.”

  With that, he put the Buick in reverse and backed out of the driveway. He gave her a wave and a toot on his horn as he took off.

  He wasn’t even to the corner before she raced to her Mustang, yanked the door open, got in, and fired it up. “A right to your own privacy…a lowfat granola bar…my ass,” she muttered as she sped down the road after him. “Boy, you’re up to no good. And I’m gonna find out once and for all what brand of no-good you’re up to.”

  “Well, spill it!” Tammy said, barely able to contain her excitement at the breakfast table the next morning. “Where did ol’ Dirko go?”

  Even Granny was on the edge of her seat. “Mind you,” she said, “I’m not condoning the practice of you spying on a body, especially a friend, even if it is your profession, but…”

  “But you still want to know where he went?” Savannah said as she scurried around the kitchen, gathering the remainders of their morning feast.

  She set a bowl brimming with strawberry jam on the table. Then she ladled a thick helping of grits onto Gran’s plate, to keep the sausage patties, bacon, and sunny-side-up eggs company.

  “The harm’s already been done—you blackening your soul with all that underhanded sneakiness,” Gran said, grinning as she laid a pat of butter on top of the grits. “You might as well tell us what you found out.”

  “He went to Hardbodies,” Savannah plopped down on her own chair, coffee cup in hand.

  “Hardbodies? Get outta here!” Tammy said.

  “Yeap. And he stayed for two hours. Two hours!”

  “What’s Hardbodies?” Gran asked. “It sounds nasty…like one of them fan-dancer places.”

  Savannah chuckled. “It’s not a strip joint, Gran. And I don’t think they dance behind feathered fans in those places anymore.”

  Gran sniffed. “Well, I don’t keep up on what women of ill repute wear or what they don’t wear, so you could be right about that.”

  “Hardbodies is a health club, a gym,” Tammy said. “Although it’s more like a meat market than a real gym. I took a so-called yoga class there once and it was quite disappointing. They didn’t even—”

  “A gymnasium that sells meat?” Gran said. “That doesn’t sound very sanitary. I wouldn’t want to buy my pork chops or Sunday roast in a place where sweaty men hang out.”

  “The point is, why would Dirk be going there?” Savannah salted and peppered her eggs, then reached for the cream gravy. “Since when is he into bodybuilding?”

  “Maybe it’s not his own body he’s interested in,” Tammy suggested as she sipped her drink made of pulverized vegetables and protein powder. “Did you peek inside to see what he was up to?”

  Savannah sighed. “I stood on tiptoe to look in the rear window for at least an hour. But then it started to rain, and the water was running off the roof and down on my head and…shoot…even I have my limits.”

  She reached down and rubbed her leg. “Man, my calves are so sore today I could hardly get out of bed and walk.”

  “Well, what was he doing?” Granny asked.

  “Working out.”

  “That’s all?” Granny said. “You got wet as a drowned rat, and you liked to’ve crippled yourself, and all he was doing was what a body normally does in a gym?”

>   “That was it, the whole kit ’n’ caboodle, right there.”

  Tammy shook her head. “That was hardly worth it.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I think,” Tammy said, “it’s wonderful, Dirk taking control of his life this way. He’s evolving to a higher consciousness.”

  “Yeah, right. Whatever.” Savannah grabbed another biscuit. “The worst part of the whole sorry mess is that I’m in a world of pain because of him and his foolishness, and I can’t even holler at him about it!”

  Chapter 11

  That afternoon, when Dirk came by Savannah’s house to pick her up, his mood wasn’t any better than hers. His greeting was lackluster as she climbed into the Buick, and he didn’t have much to say on the way to Karen Burns’s house.

  Most important, he didn’t mention why he was late or where he had been all morning. And she found that particularly suspicious, since he was in the habit of telling her details of his life that were far more intimate than she cared to hear.

  Long ago, she had decided that, unless a man put a diamond ring on a woman’s finger, she really shouldn’t have to hear about how well his new fiber cereal bars were working. When it came to stuff like that, she much preferred to be on a need-to-know basis only.

  Twice, he reached up with his left hand and massaged his right shoulder. She saw him wince, and if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the pain in her own muscles, she might have felt sorry for him.

  But when she thought about how Hardbodies Gym had a reputation for being a pick-up joint, all vestiges of her sympathy evaporated.

  Of course, that didn’t mean her curiosity was satisfied.

  “Shoulder sore today?” she asked.

  He gave her a quick sideways glance that was filled with what she was pretty sure looked like pure guilt.