A Body To Die For Read online

  Dirk had always been able to tell when Savannah was putting food on the table. And no sooner had she and Marietta sat down to a bowl of beans and ham and a pan of hot cornbread than he knocked at the kitchen door.

  “Oh, it’s Dirk!” Marietta said, brightening at the sight of a member of the opposite gender. “I swear, he’s cuter now than that last time I saw him!”

  Savannah marveled at the fact that Marietta perked up even more at the sight of a man than she did at the smell of home cooking. Some women just couldn’t get it straight, what mattered and what didn’t in life.

  As he walked over to the table and sat down, he hardly even seemed to notice Marietta, who was sitting directly across from him.

  At the slight, her well-lined, ruby-red, heavily glossed lips protruded in a pout.

  “Got enough food for me?” he asked.

  “Always,” Savannah said. “I’ll get you a plate.”

  “Where’s the kid?” Dirk asked.

  “Tammy’s in the living room, slaving away on that photo you gave her. I don’t think she’s taken time to pee since you sent it to her.” Savannah slid a butter plate in front of her sister. “Marietta, help yourself to the cornbread before it gets cold.”

  “Oh, hi, Marietta,” Dirk said, as though noticing her for the first time. “Savannah didn’t mention you were here.”

  Dirk had never been particularly impressed with Savannah’s family members, except for Gran, whom he adored. And Savannah couldn’t blame him. Dirk had better taste in people than he had in clothes.

  Having performed the minimal social courtesies, he turned his attention to Savannah and business. “The M.E. called,” he told her. “It’s official. The C.O.D. was a G.S.W.”

  “What?” Marietta said. “What does that mean? I know that C.O.D. means you have to pay for a package when the mailman brings it, but what was that other one?”

  Savannah set a plate and silverware in front of Dirk. Then she turned to Marietta, who could never stand not to be the center of any conversation. “We’re working on a homicide case,” she told her. “The medical examiner has determined that our victim’s cause of death was a gunshot wound.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice?” Marietta slathered butter on the large square of cornbread that she had cut for herself. “I got new mirrors for my beauty shop. Did I tell you that yet?”

  “No,” Savannah said. “I don’t recall you mentioning it.” She passed Dirk the butter. “Anything else?” she asked.

  “And a couple of new dryers,” Marietta said. “Oh…and I’m hiring a new nail girl. The other one wasn’t good with French tips.”

  Marietta stuck the cornbread in her mouth, and Savannah decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

  “Dirk,” she said. “What else did Dr. Liu tell you?”

  “I had a Dr. Lou once,” Marietta said, talking around the cornbread. “His name was Dr. Vickerson, but his first name was Lou, and after we slept together, I just started calling him that. It seemed disrespectful not to address him as ‘doctor,’ but ‘Dr. Vickerson’ is a bit of a mouthful when you’re in the throes of passion.”

  Dirk stared at her for a long moment, eyes wide, slack-jawed, then he said, “Like Dr. Liu told us before, she can’t tell how long the body was frozen, so we’re not going to get a time of death. But she did find a couple of other things…”

  “I like to have froze to death one winter when I visited my third husband’s mother in Peoria, Illinois,” Marietta added. “Did I ever tell you about that? Boy, howdy, I learned then and there not to wear a microminiskirt and no underwear when it’s ten below zero. You talk about a wicked awful draft! Why that wind came whipping off the lake and up my skirt and—”

  “Mari, please,” Savannah said. “Do you mind?”

  Dirk seemed mesmerized as he stared at Marietta, obviously lost in thought.

  Savannah could only imagine those thoughts, and imagining made her want to smack both him and her sister.

  “Dirk, yoo-hoo,” she said, kicking him under the table. “What else did Dr. Liu find in the autopsy?”

  “Oh, right.” He cleared his throat and suddenly became busy buttering his own bread. “She said that Jardin was healthy, nothing remarkable…other than the G.S.W. to the head. But she did find something else interesting.”

  “What?” Savannah wanted to know.

  “Chicken shit.” He glanced over at Marietta. “I beg your pardon, Mari. I mean, excrement.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Marietta assured him. “Gran keeps a passel of hens, you know, for the eggs, and they’re always getting out of their pen, so we stepped in chicken shit every time we went in or out of the house when we was growin’ up. Why I remember one time when Danny Moore came sneaking through my bedroom window at night, after Granny had forbidden me to date him anymore, and he had this big gob of—”

  “Where?” Savannah asked Dirk, getting more frantic by the moment. “Where was it?”

  “On the bottom of his shoes,” Marietta replied. “And when he tried to climb into bed with me—”

  “And a feather,” Dirk said, talking over her. “A feather and some poop were on the backs of his shoes.”

  “The backs?” Marietta asked. “Are you sure she said the backs? I only ask because we had that mess o’ chickens when I was growing up, and I can pretty much tell you for certain that if you step in chicken shit, it gets on the bottoms of your shoes, not on the backs of—”

  “Excuse me!” Savannah said, suddenly pushing back from the table and jumping to her feet. “I…I just have to…please excuse me, because I have to go…I think I’m going to have to go in the other room and…um…uh…scream or maybe hit something really hard. I’ll be right back. Help yourself to the beans.”

  As she ran out of the room, she heard Dirk mumble something to Marietta that sounded like, “It’s been a long day…. hasn’t slept…hours.”

  And Marietta’s matter-of-fact reply, “Don’t pay her no mind. Savannah always was the high-strung, nervous type. Would you pass me some of them beans?”

  Having regained her composure and consumed a considerable amount of beans and cornbread, Savannah was ready to take on the world—or at least perform one more task, pertaining to the case, before falling flat on her face and possibly never getting up again.

  “I’m not being overly dramatic,” she told Dirk as they walked out of her house and toward their cars, which were parked in her driveway. “I feel as rotten as you look, and boy…that’s a bad, bad thing. We both have to spend some time with our toes pointed toward the ceiling or we’re gonna die. We’re too old for this crap.”

  “I know. I don’t just bounce back from this kind of abuse the way I used to when I was young.”

  Savannah decided not to mention that he hadn’t been all that bouncy as a young guy, either. He’d pretty much always been a grouch, young or middle-aged, sleepy or wide-awake.

  But in her book any guy who groaned with orgasmic delight when sinking his teeth into her cornbread was definitely worth the air he breathed.

  “I’ve arranged to go have a talk with our man, Pinky, over in county lockup,” he said when he got to his Buick.

  “Wish I could go with you,” she said. “He sounds like a real character.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve gotta spread out. We’ll get more accomplished separate than together. You go have your little chat with Clarissa about what her mother-in-law said about her. Then we’ll call it a night and start fresh tomorrow.”

  “We’ll start, I don’t know how fresh we’ll be.”

  He gave her an affectionate smile, reached up, and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Thanks, Van. I appreciate all the help you’re giving me on this.”

  “Hey, it’s not for you anymore. Ruby Jardin gave Tammy a nice juicy check this afternoon. I’m now officially ‘on the case.’ Getting paid and everything. So you don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”

  She glanced back at the house and rolled her eyes. “Be
sides, you know I would pay to get out of there. God help me, but I think if I spend too much quality time with my sister, she might wind up with hair rollers shoved up her nose and a curling wand up her…well…never mind.”

  “I hear ya,” he said. “I’ll testify for you in court. Tell them it was justifiable all the way.”

  She walked over to her Mustang and opened the door.

  “No girl fights over there at the hacienda,” he said. “No hair-pulling, eye-gouging, or crotch shots.”

  “You’re seriously crampin’ my style there, good buddy,” she said. “See ya later.”

  When Savannah pulled up to the wall of Rancho Rodriguez, she felt as though this place had become her home away from home. And that wouldn’t have been a bad thing, considering the beauty of the estate, if it hadn’t been for the mistress of the manor.

  She had to admit she wasn’t the least bit eager to see Clarissa Jardin’s face again, or, worse yet, to listen to her mouth. But work was work, and she had to keep the cats in Whisker Vittles and Tammy in celery sticks.

  As she walked through the bell gate and into the courtyard, enjoying the fragrance of the garden flowers, enhanced by the evening dew, she experienced one of those brief, but beautiful, life-affirming moments.

  Gran had always taught her to pause, at least a couple of times each day, and savor the pure joy of being alive. “I don’t care how busy you think you are,” her grandmother said. “Everybody has ten seconds to look around and notice what’s beautiful around ’em. This ol’ world is full of misery and suffering, but there’s good in it, too, if you’ve a mind to look for it.”

  Sometimes, those moments were all too brief, though, as Savannah had noticed. And this was one of them.

  Her ten-second reverie was cut to four seconds when she heard two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, speaking Spanish in low, whispered tones.

  It was the gardener and the maid, Maria, huddled together over the bed of asters. They were working together, removing the offending plants, as they talked.

  As soon as they saw Savannah, they ended their conversation, and avoided eye contact with her.

  “Buenos notches,” Savannah said.

  They both grinned, and—as always when using her limited and rather bad Spanish—she didn’t know it if was because the listeners appreciated her feeble attempt to speak their language, or if her accent was so terrible that they were trying not to laugh outright.

  “Good evening, Señora,” Maria said.

  The gardener simply nodded.

  “Is Ms. Jardin at home?” Savannah asked.

  The woman’s face clouded at the mention of her mistress. “No. She is not here now.”

  Savannah couldn’t help being disappointed, but she had decided not to call ahead. She figured: Why give Clarissa a heads-up? Why give her a reason to lock the gate and post rabid rottweilers to guard it? Wasn’t life complicated enough?

  And when she had found the gate by the main road not only unlocked but also wide open, she was sure the gods were smiling on her.

  Oh, well. So much for that theory.

  “Then may I ask,” Savannah said, “where she is?”

  The look of fear that spread over the maid’s face went straight to Savannah’s heart. So did the barely suppressed fury on the man’s. She could tell they were hardworking people who sacrificed their dignity to work for someone like Clarissa Jardin, and she couldn’t help feeling indignant on their behalf.

  It cost so little to be kind to your fellow man, especially those who served you.

  “Please, Señora,” Maria said, looking as though she might start crying at any moment. “Please do not ask us. We need the jobs. We have families at home. We send the money to them, to feed our mothers, our sisters and brothers.”

  “I understand,” Savannah said. “I won’t do anything to make you lose your job.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maria replied, “but you do not understand. If Señora Clarissa sees us talk to you, we will be told to leave. Please go away now, before she comes back.”

  “I will,” Savannah said. “I don’t want to cause any trouble for you. That’s the last thing I want to—”

  The man threw down a handful of the plants and said, “We have trouble already, Maria. Much trouble. Someone killed Señor Bill and this lady is trying to help.”

  He turned to Savannah. “The Señora is in the hills.” He pointed to the foothills edging the property. “She runs. She runs and runs and runs.” He smiled, but there was no humor on his lined, sun-darkened face. “She runs but she can not get away. She will never get away.”

  “From whom?” Savannah asked. “What is she running from?”

  “From herself,” he said. “She runs from herself, from the wolves inside her soul. But someday los lobos will catch her. They will destroy her.”

  Savannah felt a chill run through her as, for a moment, she sensed her own wolf pack, nipping at her heels. Everyone had wolves—one kind or another. And there were so many breeds of wolves: unfulfilled dreams, broken relationships, poor health, financial problems, addictions and obsessions…not to mention difficult childhoods.

  “Guardar silencio, Hernando,” Maria whispered to him.

  “It’s okay,” Savannah assured her. “I’m going. I won’t tell her that I talked to you. I promise. Thank you.”

  She left them to their work and returned to her car.

  Ordinarily, she would have driven up to the hills to see if she could find Clarissa, but there would be no way to do so without compromising Maria and Hernando. So, she decided to wait in her car.

  The well-fortified adobe walls had been built in an age when security was a matter of life and death for the family who lived here. And, as the builders had intended it to do, the enclosure made sure that everyone entered and left the property through the bell gate.

  It was just a matter of time until Clarissa Jardin came running home…with that pack of hungry wolves at her heels.

  Savannah wondered if she had time to do a bit of snooping before she returned. And if she did, could she do so without Maria or Hernando catching her?

  Something told her that, even if Hernando caught her stealing the family silver, he’d be more likely to help her cart it out of the house than prevent the burglary.

  She glanced up the hill and saw no sign of any jogger on the dusty, dirt road. So, she reached into her purse, pulled out her penlight flashlight, and got ready to…as Tammy would say…“Go sleuthing.”

  Chapter 14

  As Savannah walked around the outside of the adobe wall that protected the courtyard and hacienda, she felt as though she had stepped back in time. Antique, rusted farm equipment sat in the shade of eucalyptus trees and one area of the wall had aging leather harnesses hanging side by side next to a fenced area that appeared to be an old livestock corral.

  The split-rail fence was missing a few planks here and there, but she could see places where horses had chewed on the wood. She thought of the men who rode those horses, and, of course, pictured them to look a heck of a lot like Clint Eastwood in his prime. She thought of the ladies who might have ridden sidesaddles, their skirts billowing around them.

  But mostly, she thought about the fact that if Clarissa Jardin caught her snooping around her property, she’d probably stick Savannah’s head in one of those sinister-looking pieces of gym equipment she was so famous for.

  Near the corral, Savannah saw a large outbuilding that looked as though it might have served as a barn in its previous life. Like the house, it had been restored, and its adobe plaster and paint were in near-perfect condition.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she hurried to the building, bypassed the wide doors in the front and entered by way of a small door around the corner on the other side.

  As she had suspected, the former barn was being used as a garage. Wide enough to accommodate two cars, it housed only one—a beautiful black Mercedes.

  Usually, Savannah didn’t consider herself materialistic. But
she had to admit that, as much as she loved her classic Mustang, she’d trade it for this ride in a heartbeat.

  But, even though she would have loved to stand there and imagine herself stepping into that car, wearing a Christian Dior gown of billowing chiffon, bespangled with tiny crystals, driven by an expensive gigolo in an Armani tux, she had better things to do.

  She glanced over the car, looking for anything that seemed out of place, suspicious, or extraordinary, and saw nothing. Some items from Clarissa’s tacky new sports line were tossed onto the back seat. A stack of brochures advertising her “Houses of Pain and Gain” lay on the dash.

  Savannah tried not to be disappointed that there was no gun or bloody gloves lying in plain sight on the passenger’s seat. It was never that easy. At least, not if you were trying to nail a criminal with more than two brain cells to rub together. And even though she couldn’t stand Clarissa Jardin, Savannah had to admit the woman was no dummy.

  Savannah squatted behind the car and shone her penlight’s beam on the rear tires. Then she walked around to both sides, checking the front tires.

  There were bits of leaves and other assorted vegetation lodged between the treads, some sand, and a few small rocks, but no poultry droppings and nary a feather in sight.

  No, it was never that easy.

  “Dagnabbit,” she whispered. She had risked her neck for nothing.

  Noticing that it was rapidly growing darker in the building, she glanced at the window and saw that the sun was, indeed setting. Clarissa was bound to be getting home soon. Savannah figured she should get back to her car, so that she could pretend she had just arrived when Clarissa did return.

  But when she turned around to head for the door, she nearly walked headfirst into the indignant lady of the house.

  Clarissa was standing there, wearing a camouflage-print, formfitting workout suit, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, perspiration pouring down her face.