Fat Free and Fatal Page 2

  “No!” she shouted as he spun on his heel and headed for the doorway. “Don’t you run, you little—”

  She banged her hip hard on the corner of the glass cabinet as she rounded it, but she hardly felt the pain because of the jolt of adrenaline that had hit her bloodstream. She headed for the door, about six steps behind their now-on-the-run thief.

  R.L. and his ugly leather vest shot out the door with Savannah on his heels and Dirk behind her. He took off down the sidewalk, running with the grace of a recently decapitated chicken, knocking his fellow pedestrians aside and a kid off his bicycle.

  But what he lacked in beauty, he made up in determination.

  The guy was pretty fast.

  Too fast for Savannah’s liking.

  After only a couple of blocks, she could hear Dirk huffing and puffing behind her. An excellent runner with longer legs than hers, he normally overtook and passed her when they were in a footrace. But this time it was she who was in the lead when their quarry changed routes and headed down a side street toward the old mission.

  A tourist attraction as well as a functioning church, the mission had a wide, shallow pool, decoratively situated in a courtyard at the entrance to the property. Inlaid with cobalt blue and yellow tiles, the pool provided some cool, refreshing wading for the town’s children on hot summer days.

  And, it seemed, for the occasional thief on the lam.

  Rather than try to fight his way through a crowd of tourists who were taking pictures of the ancient adobe building and its picturesque surroundings, R.L. decided to take a shortcut through the fountain.

  Splashing water like a Labrador retriever puppy gamboling at the beach, he galloped through it and was out the other side in less than five seconds.

  Savannah didn’t take the time or energy to even consider her new suede loafers. She plunged right in, making just as big a splash…much to the chagrin of the tourists within splash range.

  She didn’t take time to hate him either as she felt the cold water soak her new linen slacks up to the knee. She could always hate him at her leisure.

  Once she had her hands on him.

  He reached the other side of the plaza and its surrounding wall, where he hesitated a couple of seconds before deciding to turn right and head for the old graveyard near the back of the mission.

  Those two seconds were all Savannah needed to close most of the distance between them.

  And when he paused another half second before jumping up onto the wrought-iron fence that bordered the cemetery, that was all she needed.

  She tackled him, grabbed one handful of leather vest and another handful of Mohawk, and yanked him down off the fence. A moment later, R.L. was face first on the grass and Savannah’s right knee was firmly planted on the small of his back.

  He let out a yelp as she tightened her grip on his hair.

  “Make me run,” she said, putting her full weight on him. “Make me have to hotfoot all over God’s creation just to lay hands on you, will you? You’re gonna pay for that!”

  She glanced down at her soaked loafers. Now that her suspect had been apprehended she could afford to be fashion conscious again. “You’re gonna pay for my shoes, too,” she told him, “if I have to take it out of your mangy hide!”

  At the sound of pounding footsteps behind her, she turned and saw Dirk racing up to them. At least, he was attempting to race. His face was red and his eyes slightly bugged as he huffed and puffed his way along.

  When he finally reached them, he bent double, holding his stomach, fighting for breath.

  “You okay there, buddy?” she asked him.

  “Yeah, sure…no sweat.”

  But he was sweating. Profusely.

  For a moment, Savannah forgot the struggling, groaning guy beneath her and did a mental checklist of heart attack symptoms.

  “You feel any chest pain?” she asked him, fighting down a surge of panic. Visions of doughnuts and too many beers while watching football games danced in her head, not to mention a chain of cigarettes reaching back for years and years and years. “Any sort of pressure? Pain in your arm or—”

  “No,” he said, still gasping, still bent double. “I’m not having a friggin’ heart attack. I just can’t catch my breath.”

  He reached into his bomber jacket pocket, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, and tossed them to her.

  She quickly manacled R.L., then stood and pulled him to his feet. She gave him a shove in Dirk’s direction. “There you go,” she told him, “one bad guy—signed, sealed, delivered. He’s yours.”

  “Thanks.” Dirk grabbed R.L.’s arm and began to drag him back down the path they had just run. “I owe you one, Van.”

  “Another one,” she corrected him, following close behind. “Another one in a long, long, long line of IOU’s.”

  “Yeah, but that was the first time you’ve ever had to catch a bad guy for me,” he admitted. The look on his face was one of utter devastation and deep humiliation.

  It worried Savannah more than his previous breathlessness.

  Dirk was seldom embarrassed—even on the frequent occasions when he truly should have been—let alone mortified.

  “Dumb luck,” she said, a little too cheerfully, even to her own ears. “Next time you’ll nab ’em.”

  “That ain’t it, and we both know it.” He shook his head in disgust. “I can’t run anymore. Hell, I can’t even breathe anymore.”

  They reached the fountain, where the startled, thoroughly splashed tourists were still standing around, their mouths hanging open, watching for the next chapter of this unexpected drama that was playing out before them.

  Dirk stopped at the edge of the pool and pushed R.L. toward Savannah. “Hold on to him for a minute. I got somethin’ to do here.”

  Amazed, Savannah watched as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She was even more surprised when she saw him toss them into the water.

  “No way,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it, Van. It’s happening. It’s happening right now.” He squared his broad shoulders and lifted his chin a couple of notches. “The day that I can’t chase down a perp—the day that you can catch one and I can’t—that’s the day I quit.”

  Savannah had seen Dirk quit before. Many, many times. He was an expert. He had “quitting” down pat.

  He was as good at quitting smoking as she was at losing weight. They had both done it hundreds of times.

  But after decades of “quitting” and “losing,” he was still a smoker and she was still overly voluptuous, according to the surgeon general’s weight charts.

  This was no different than all the other times she had seen him give up the cigs.

  Or was it?

  Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what he did next. He reached into his pocket one more time, and pulled out his lighter. His silver Harley-Davidson lighter that he’d been carrying the day she had met him, back when polyester-clad dimwits were still dancing in discos and hitting on people with the line, “What’s your sun sign?” Back when she had worn “big hair” and shoulder pads that made her look like a linebacker.

  That lighter was as dear to Dirk as his bomber jacket. She had truly believed she would one day bury him with both.

  But…but it looked like this time it was really going to happen.

  Splash.

  The lighter hit the water out in the middle of the pool and came to rest among the coins—mostly pennies—tossed by hopeful tourists who believed that the mission’s patron saint would grant them a winning lottery ticket…in exchange for a lousy penny’s worth of charity.

  She looked at Dirk with amazement, total disbelief.

  Dirk didn’t own much: a decrepit house trailer, a battered Buick Skylark, his leather jacket, and some faded T-shirts. But he loved what he owned—with a fierce loyalty that bordered on psychosis. He never threw away anything.

  He recycled paper towels!


  With a smug look on his face and a swagger in his step, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter continued to escort his prisoner back toward the parked Buick, bringing a stunned Savannah in tow.

  Lordy be! Granny Reid’s right, she thought. Wonders never cease!

  Chapter 2

  Granny Reid was right about something else, Savannah decided when she took a bite of fried chicken: Soaking the pieces in buttermilk before cooking it did make it melt in your mouth. And the groans of appreciation from the others sitting around Savannah’s dining table provided supporting testimony to the fact.

  Even Tammy Hart, Savannah’s friend and assistant in her detective agency, had set aside her usual healthy, vegetarian lifestyle and was violating her conscience with a juicy drumstick. She had arrived for the dinner party an hour ago, wearing a red silk kimono, her long blond hair pulled back and fastened with a pair of lacquered chopsticks. But now the sleeves of the elegant garment were rolled up to her elbows, and she was gnawing on the chicken leg like any other shameless carnivore. “Savannah, this is the best fried chicken I’ve eaten in ages,” she said, laying the bare bone aside and reaching for a wing.

  “Eh, it’s the only chicken you’ve eaten in ages.”

  “That’s true, but it’s still the best I’ve had since…since…?”

  “Since the last time you ate Savannah’s fried chicken,” said Ryan Stone, the reason for the dinner and the inspiration for Tammy’s haute couture.

  The tall, dark, and fibrillation-inducing Ryan was turning a year older, and Savannah had invited her closest circle of friends to celebrate—an intimate little sphere that just happened to encompass the members of her Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency and no one else.

  Savannah had never experienced even the slightest difficulty in drawing a line between her work and her personal life. It was quite simple: she had no personal life.

  And other than one sainted grandmother and a batch of crazy siblings, whom she had left behind in Georgia, and the two black cats who were doing figure eights between her ankles, begging for table scraps, the people around her table constituted her family.

  Them…and Dirk, who was conspicuously absent.

  Dirk never passed up the opportunity to eat a free meal, and especially one of Savannah’s.

  “I can’t believe Dirko isn’t here,” Tammy said. “And more than that, I can’t believe I actually miss him.” She washed down the final bite of chicken with a long drink of lemonade, made with real sugar—the plain old, refined, and much maligned white stuff.

  Lots of it.

  Savannah put only slightly less sugar in her lemonade than she did her iced tea.

  Yes, Tammy was compromising her virtue right and left, in honor of Ryan Stone. Like all women between the ages of eight and eighty-eight, Tammy had fallen for Ryan within the first three seconds of setting eyes on him. And his courtly manners, countless kindnesses, and impeccable style did nothing to dispel the enchantment. She was totally, hopelessly hooked and too young to hide it.

  Unlike Savannah, solidly into her forties, who was the epitome of “cool” around him. “Ryan, you darlin’ birthday boy,” she said, shoving an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes under his nose. “You eat up now! I won’t have you fainting dead away from hunger out there in the street after having supper at my house.” Savannah blushed slightly, hearing the adolescent titter in her own voice. He reached for the bowl, his fingers brushed hers, and she nearly dropped the spuds in his lap.

  So much for “cool” in face of male perfection.

  But Ryan was kind, as always, and pretended not to notice. It didn’t become a demigod to react to mere female mortals slavering at his feet.

  “Yes, I’m surprised to find that I miss the old boy, too,” John Gibson agreed. He dabbed at his mustache with his napkin and took a sip of Beaujolais.

  Although John was older than his life partner, Ryan, by quite a few years, he could still stop more than a few hearts himself. With his luxuriant silver hair, his pale blue eyes, and elegant British accent, he had the old-world charm of an English nobleman. But the occasional wicked sparkle in those eyes betrayed a far less than stodgy persona beneath those fine tweed jackets. “When the old boy isn’t around,” he continued, “I long for his insightful observations on the state of humanity, his stirring political exhortations, and provocative philosophical—”

  “Yeah, yeah. More like, you miss sparring with him,” Savannah said.

  John chuckled. “Well, he is rather easily baited.”

  “And you,” Ryan said, “have just enough British bulldog in you that you can’t resist going after him.”

  “All in good fun,” John replied. “All in good fun.”

  “Good fun. That’s what the matador calls a bullfight.” Savannah sighed and shook her head. More than once it had occurred to her that trying to merge her extremely diverse friends into one happy gaggle had resulted in the creation of an extended dysfunctional family.

  The Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency was basically a group of people who loved each other. Every one of them would readily defend the others from a rabid Siberian tiger attack. But even on a good day, not all of them actually liked each other. Especially Dirk and the couple sitting at her table.

  “Dirk caught a case this afternoon. That’s why he isn’t with us,” Savannah said as she stood and began to clear their plates from the table. “A homicide.”

  “The one over at Dona Papalardo’s estate?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes. How did you know about that already? It just happened around noon today. I don’t think even the AP has picked it up yet.”

  Tammy perked up; Nancy Drew was on the case. “What? A murder at Dona Papalardo’s place? No way! What happened?”

  “Apparently her personal assistant was shot and killed right in Dona’s front driveway,” Savannah said. She gave Tammy a sideways smirk. “The gal probably caused Dona’s computer to crash and lose all their billing data.”

  “That wasn’t my fault!” Tammy’s face crumpled into a pout, and she sank lower in her chair. “It’s that stupid new computer you bought. I told you to let me do the consumer research online, pick out the best system, but no…you have to go shopping yourself at some stupid department store and pick out the first thing that—”

  “It wasn’t the first one I saw. It was the third one.”

  “And you bought it because…?”

  “It was blue. The other ones were gray or black. That one was prettier.”

  Tammy sighed. “I rest my case. Anyway, what’s this business about Dona Papalardo’s assistant?”

  “Just that,” Savannah said. “She was shot dead in the driveway of that fancy mansion Dona has up in Spirit Hills, while getting into Dona’s limousine. Dirk seems to think the shooter may have thought she was Dona. She fits Dona’s general description, and Dona had loaned her one of those fancy furs of hers—you know, the ones that PETA was giving her so much grief about?”

  Tammy grimaced. “I don’t blame them. Dona really overdoes that silver-screen actress bit.”

  “And especially for one so young,” John agreed. “She can’t be a day over thirty-five, and yet she dresses like Jean Harlow.”

  Ryan shrugged. “Hey, it’s pure glamour, and it looks good on her.”

  Savannah sniffed. “Yeah, like you’d notice.”

  “I notice.” He laughed. “Notice is all I do, but I notice.”

  “Did you notice my kimono?” Tammy asked, carefully adjusting one of the chopsticks in her hair in a gesture that was so sickeningly girlie that Savannah nearly gagged.

  “Of course. The fabric is gorgeous.” Ryan turned to John. “Don’t you wish we had a few yards of that for throw pillows in the bedroom?”

  Tammy groaned. “Oh, gawd, why do I even bother?”

  “You look lovely, dear,” John said. “And, as Ryan knows all too well, that shade of red is far too bold for our bedroom. He’s just teasing you again.”

  She sighed and shook her head.
Then, turning to Savannah, she said, “Just wait until the tabloids get a hold of this! Dona’s been on the front cover of every rag in the grocery store checkout line for the past year, what with her weight loss and all.”

  “So true,” John reached for a biscuit and began to butter it. “I’ve been shocked by how rapidly the pounds have melted off her. I guess these new surgeries really work.”

  “Of course they work,” Savannah grumbled under her breath. “Cut out most of somebody’s insides and there’s bound to be some changes made.”

  “Actually,” Tammy said, “I think she had gastric bypass—that doesn’t actually remove—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Savannah shook her head. “It’s still messin’ big time with what the good God gave you. It’s a bunch of hooey, if you ask me. Dangerous hooey.”

  “That may be true,” John interjected, “but you must admit, she’s much thinner now. And healthier.”

  “Thinner? Yes. Healthier? Who knows? Chemo patients get thin. So do anorexics and bulimics. Doesn’t mean they’re healthy.”

  The table was silent for a tense moment, then Tammy said, a little too sprightly, “Well, so Dirk is out there now, processing the scene?”

  “He is. And interviewing the staff there at her mansion and whoever was present when it happened.” Savannah tried to keep the jealous tone out of her voice, but she wasn’t at all successful. It was only at times like this, when Dirk was assigned to something particularly interesting, that she regretted her parting with the San Carmelita police department all those years ago.

  She could take a day off, pretty much whenever she wanted. But Dirk had a pension, medical benefits, and juicy cases…like a murder at a movie star’s mansion in the hills.

  Sometimes she found herself wishing she had his job and he had a wart on his tail…as Granny Reid would say.

  “When do you think he’ll be finished over there?” Ryan wanted to know.

  She glanced up at the clock on her kitchen wall, a cat whose tail swung back and forth and whose green, rhinestone eyes clicked right and left—a gift from Granny Reid, which made it a treasure. “Oh, he’ll probably be wrapping up in an hour or so. Dirk doesn’t exactly dally.”