Sugar and Spite Read online

  “Yeah, I remember. But it ain’t like that this time. She just wants me to help her, to take care of somethin’ for her.”

  “That’s all she’s ever wanted, Dirk, from anyone. She’s a leech. That’s the problem.”

  “Naw. I can take care of it. Don’t worry.”

  Don’t worry, yeah, sure, she thought as she left him, got in her Camaro, and drove away. Dirk wasn’t stupid—not by a long shot. But he had a blind spot where women were concerned ... especially women he loved.

  Why else would he buy a stupid story about a cell phone?

  Savannah had no idea what line of bull Polly was going to try to sell him, but she was pretty sure he’d buy it, too.

  Savannah felt a lot older than her forty-plus-a-few years as she walked from her driveway up the walk to her house. The place needed a lot of work. The white stucco could use a coat of paint. Some of the red Spanish tiles were crumbling on the roof. And the bougainvillea—affectionately named Bogey—that had once graced the front porch was a tangled, red-and-green jungle. The mess definitely needed to be hacked back. At one time a pair of ladies’ garden shears would have done the job. Now a macho machete would be required.

  And she wasn’t in the mood for home improvement.

  Or catching wanna-be-Nazi adolescents.

  Or playing the role of codependent rescuer to a guy whose main problem in relationships was that he was a codependent rescuer.

  She was in the mood for a hot bubble bath, a hot chocolate topped with mounds of whipped cream, and a hot, steamy romance novel ... with a subplot involving mounds covered with whipped cream.

  As she walked through the door, her two cats—pampered, four-legged children wearing glossy black fur and rhinestone-studded collars—wrapped themselves affectionately around her ankles. “Cleopatra, Diamante,” she cooed to them as she stroked the ebony fur and was rewarded with motorboat purrs.

  “Anybody home?” she called as she tossed her purse and keys onto the piecrust table in the foyer and kicked off her loafers. “Tammy, are you still here?”

  “In the office,” came the reply from what had once been Savannah’s sunporch, before she had been kicked off the police force, before she had formed the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency ... back when she had been gainfully employed and could afford cheese with her macaroni and cheese dinners. Ah, those were the days.

  Savannah entered the room just in time to see Tammy whip a pair of reading glasses off her face and into the desk drawer. She stifled a giggle as she watched her assistant squirm a bit in her chair, squinting at the computer monitor in front of her.

  “Screen fuzzy again?” Savannah asked, unable to resist.

  “Yeah ... kinda.” Tammy donned her most officious, computer-expert face and tone. “I think it might be a problem with the connector cord or ...”

  “Or a simple case of premature myopia or astigmatism, combined with a narcissistic personality disorder?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Savannah sat in her favorite floral-chintz chair. The piece of furniture was a tad faded, a bit frayed around the edges, more than a little overstuffed, curvaceous, and comfy. Savannah related, reveling in their similarities.

  “Anything new?” Savannah asked. She peered at the computer screen, but as usual, she didn’t understand what she was looking at. It was all a bunch of gobbledygook to her. That was why she desperately needed someone like Tammy Hart. A sweet, hardworking airhead who happened to also be a computer whiz kid. A strange combination, but in Tammy, it worked.

  And Tammy worked. Hard. And cheap.

  At first, Savannah had assumed it was because she had read too many Nancy Drew books as a girl and had some misguided notion that if she hung out with Savannah long enough, she’d become a real, live detective. But now Savannah knew Tammy was there out of love and loyalty. And if she helped nail a bad guy once in a while or find somebody’s runaway teen, all the better.

  “I was scanning some of the message boards on-line today,” Tammy said, clicking away on the keyboard and moving the little white arrow all over the screen with a gadget she called a “mouse.”

  Savannah nodded, pretending to have some vague notion as to what she was talking about. “I see.”

  Tammy shot her a doubtful, sideways grin. “You do?”

  “Nope, but go on. I’ll probably be able to jump in somewhere along the way.”

  “And I saw that someone had posted a message about you.”

  “Oh, yeah? On the Internet?”

  “Yep. Somebody’s looking for you.”

  Someone hunting for her. That didn’t sit well with Savannah. She was far more comfortable with doing the hunting.

  “Who was it?”

  “Here, let me sign on again, and I’ll find it for you.”

  Savannah stood and walked over to stand behind Tammy. She rested her hands on the young woman’s shoulders as Tammy worked her magic with the keyboard and mouse. Rude sounds, a series of irritating beeps and hisses, spewed from the computer’s speakers as it communicated with the world. Seconds later, Savannah saw a message displayed across the screen.

  I am searching for a woman by the name of Savannah Reid, please contact me at the following address. She is Caucasian, in her early forties, approximately 5’8”, 135 lbs., and has dark brown hair and blue eyes. She is from the Atlanta, Georgia, area and was last believed to be on the West Coast, possibly Southern California. If anyone knows the whereabouts of this person would they please contact me at the following e-mail address ...

  “Do you recognize the address?” Tammy asked.

  Savannah shook her head. “No. Does it say who posted it?”

  “Not really. But there’s a city mentioned ... right down here.” She scrolled to the bottom of the page. “There it is. Macon. That’s a town in Georgia, right? I wonder why they would give their town but not their name.”

  Savannah felt her stomach flip into a tight roll like an overwound window blind as she stared at the word. Finally, she found her voice. “Macon is a town, all right. But in this case, it’s not a location. It’s a name.”

  “A name? Don’t tell me you have another sibling named after a Georgia town! I thought I knew all nine of you.”

  “He’s not my brother,” she said.

  Tammy looked up at her expectantly, but she didn’t fill in the blank. That window blind had rolled all the way up her throat.

  “Well, do you want me to respond? If it’s an old boyfriend, maybe he wants to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day and—”

  “No.”

  The answer was so quick and abrupt that Tammy raised one eyebrow. “Ooo-kaay. Whatever you say.”

  Savannah turned to walk out of the room. Tammy jumped up from the chair and followed: Nancy Drew on the prowl.

  “Do you wanna talk about it?” she asked. “Because if you do, I—”

  “No ... thank you.” Savannah stopped in the middle of the floor and was nearly rear-ended. She turned and gave Tammy a kind but don’t-push-it look. “Why don’t you knock off a little early?” she said gently. “Not much going on around here, right?”

  “Ah. Yeah, I guess right.”

  Savannah watched, feeling a little guilty as her deflated assistant walked into the front hall and retrieved her own purse and keys from the piecrust table. Savannah’s grandmother’s table. The table where Macon had tossed his keys, a lifetime ago.

  “Thanks for everything you do, Tam,” she said. “I just want a hot bath and a well-balanced, nutritious, wholesome dinner.”

  “A pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey?”

  “You know me too well.”

  Tammy shook her head. “Junk food is going to be the death of you.”

  “I’ll die a happy woman ... with chocolate on my breath and a smile on my lips.”

  “Call me later, if you need me.”

  Savannah smiled. Yes, Tammy was there for love, not money. “I will, sweetie. I will.”

  But Tammy wasn’t
the one Savannah called later that night when the decadent culinary treats and the sweetness of the romance novel wouldn’t take the bitter taste away. She called Granny Reid in Georgia. Even though it was late, she knew Gran would still be up, reading her Bible and her National Enquirer ... both the absolute, gospel truth, according to her.

  No one could beat Gran when it came to lending an ear and giving advice. In her eighty-five years, Gran had seen it all and lived most of it. Nothing even surprised her, let alone shocked her.

  Savannah snuggled under the rose-spangled satin comforter on lace-trimmed sheets as she held the telephone receiver against her cheek and listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times. The sleeves of her white-cotton, Victorian-styled nightgown were also trimmed with lace, the bodice closed with a crisscrossing of tiny pink ribbons.

  Around the house and out in the hard, cold world, Savannah was denim and linen, wool and corduroy. But in bed ... in bed she was all woman.

  Southern femininity—her heritage from the lady on the other end of the phone, whose voice was silkier than any satin spread.

  “Hi, Gran. It’s me.”

  “What’s the matter, sugar?”

  Nothing got past Gran. She could smell a whiff of trouble across a phone line three thousand miles away.

  “Macon’s looking for me.”

  There was a long silence on the other end. She could tell her grandmother was choosing her words carefully. Southern belles were known for their tact, their diplomacy, their—

  “What does that horse’s ass want with you?”

  Well, maybe not.

  “Don’t know. I haven’t talked to him. He left a message on the Internet.”

  “On the what?”

  “Ah ... the worldwide computer system.”

  “Can’t imagine he’d be bright enough to operate something like that.”

  “Maybe he had help.”

  “Like an accomplice? Naw. That would mean he had a friend. Not likely.”

  “I see your point.”

  They both shared a companionable giggle; then Gran got serious. “How do you feel about that, sweetheart ... him trying to get in touch with you after all these years?”

  “Honestly?”

  “That goes without saying. I don’t ask if I don’t want to know.”

  “I wish he’d just leave me the hell alone. As far as I’m concerned, my business with him is over and done with, and that’s the way I like it.”

  “Then send him a message on that Internet thing and tell him so.”

  “Or just ignore him, drink lots of liquids, stay warm, and get plenty of rest, and like a bad case of the flu, maybe he’ll go away?”

  “One can always hope.”

  Savannah thought she could detect a note of sadness in her grandmother’s voice. Gran wasn’t the only one who could detect a problem long-distance. “I’m sorry if it hurts you to discuss him,” Savannah said. “I probably shouldn’t have called you, of all people.”

  She heard Gran sniff a no-nonsense, but still ladylike, sniff on the other end. “Do you really think I don’t know what sort of person Macon is? Of all people, I should know my own son.”

  Savannah toyed with the ribbon on the front of her gown, allowing it to slip between her fingers. Unshed tears began to burn her eyes. She blinked them away. Why should it still hurt after all this time?

  She started to speak, but her throat closed up. As always, Gran filled in the blank. “It’s all right, honey. It’s okay to cry.”

  Savannah cleared the knot out of her throat. “I’m not crying.” But it wasn’t a very convincing denial; even to her own ears, she sounded like a defiant, teary, five-year-old.

  “I didn’t say you were boo-hooing up a storm,” Gran said. “But I could tell you were getting a little weepy on me. And that’s all right. I know my son wasn’t much of a father to you. And your mama ... well, she was another story altogether. And things weren’t exactly a picnic for you, the oldest in a family with nine young’uns and no full-time parent to take charge.”

  Savannah flashed back on the mountains of laundry that always needed to be washed, hung on the clothesline, folded, or ironed. The skinned knees, cut fingers, cat scratches, and beestings that had to be cleaned, medicated, and kissed. The endless assembly line of school lunches: stacks of sandwiches, sliced Spam when they could afford it, peanut butter when they couldn’t. Babies crying, kids fussing, the verbal quarrels and the knock-down-drag-outs that had to be refereed. A table with not one, but three extra leaves in it, burdened with plates of fried chicken—one piece per kid—and huge bowls piled high with mashed potatoes. If you truly are what you eat, those children’s bodies must have been ninety percent mashed potatoes.

  But the memories weren’t all tiresome.

  Granny Reid had always sat at the end of that table, saying grace at the beginning, and thanking the Good Lord above for every one of them sitting around it. She had cared for her shiftless son’s children without one word of complaint, making each of them feel as though they had a special, wonderfully warm spot in her heart.

  “I didn’t suffer, Gran,” Savannah said, wishing she could, like the commercial said, reach out and actually touch the precious person on the other end of the phone. “Not one bit. I have no regrets about my childhood ... thanks to you.”

  “Me either, sugar. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. You children kept me young long past my youth. And now the grandbabies are doing the same. As long as there’s a youngster in the house, I’m a kid, too.”

  Savannah took a deep breath and snuggled deeper under the satin comforter. “I wish I could be as young tomorrow as you were yesterday, Gran.”

  “Well, of course you do, sugar,” her eighty-five-year-old grandmother replied with Mae West sauciness. “Or half as good-looking.”

  Savannah had just dropped off to sleep when the telephone rang, exploding in her right ear and sending her pulse racing like a scared rabbit’s. She grabbed the receiver, dropped it on the floor, picked it up, and smacked herself on the teeth with the mouthpiece. She could swear she tasted blood.

  “What?” she shouted, ready to kill whoever was calling her at—she squinted at the red, glowing numbers on the bedside clock—1:22 A.M.

  “Van ...”

  Savannah didn’t need Gran’s extrasensitive radar to detect the distress in that one word. She sat straight up and flipped on the bedside lamp. “Yeah, Dirk, what’s going on?”

  “It’s Polly.”

  Savannah had a half a second to utter a quick, silent prayer, one that she instinctively knew was pointless. God, let her be okay. They just had a fight, right? She’s alive, but they just argued and—

  “She’s dead.”

  Let it be natural causes, or ... “A car accident?”

  “Murdered.”

  She could hear him, feel him shaking through the phone. Dirk got excited, but he wasn’t a shaker. His teeth were chattering, and he was having trouble breathing.

  “Calm down, buddy,” she said as she jumped out of bed and reached for the jeans and sweatshirt she had tossed into the hamper upon retiring. “Where are you?”

  “At home ... in my trailer.”

  She danced around on one foot, trying to get the jeans on with one hand and the nightgown off over her head. “And where is the bo—I mean, where is she?”

  “In my trailer. Shot with my gun.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t do anything. Don’t touch anything. Don’t say anything to anybody. Just sit down on the floor and put your head between your legs until I get there.”

  There was silence on the other end, except for his shaky breathing.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you. Hurry.”

  “Hang tight, buddy. I’m halfway there.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Savannah made the ten-minute trip to Dirk’s place in less than six, but that was plenty of time for her to fantasize more
than a dozen scenarios of what had happened in his trailer. And she didn’t like the way any of them played in her head.

  They didn’t call it “hom-i-cide” for nothing. Most murders were committed in the home and by killers who were either family or friends of the victim.

  But Dirk wouldn’t kill Polly. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He just would not do it.

  The words gave Savannah comfort, so she kept playing them over and over in her head. But each time she repeated the litany, it had a less convincing ring of truth to it. Savannah had learned several things in law enforcement. And one of them was: Anyone will do anything under the right/wrong circumstances.

  Dirk wouldn’t kill Polly. All right, he might have if ...

  As she whipped along the narrow, dark, eucalyptus-lined road leading to his trailer park, she tried to fill in the blank. What would it take to put a guy like Dirk over the edge? He had been through a lot with his former wife already, and he had never hit or harmed her in any way. At least, not that Savannah had ever heard. And usually, domestic-related killings were a culmination of abuse that had escalated over a period of time.

  If Dirk had shot his ex-wife, Savannah could honestly say she hadn’t seen that one coming.

  Her headlights shone silver on the leaves of the orange trees that stood in long, straight rows parallel to the road. The groves glimmered in the winter moonlight, and Savannah wished her spirit were even half as peaceful as those orchards looked.

  What could have happened in that trailer?

  She considered alternative scenarios—the ones where another party had pulled the trigger.

  Of Dirk’s gun?

  Yes, she told the nasty, cynical cop voice inside her head. It could happen. Well ... it could. The killer—not Dirk—could be lurking in the darkness of the groves right then, watching her approach the park.

  If somebody else did it, he would have hightailed it out of there right away ... unless Dirk got him, too. She hadn’t taken the time to ask before racing to his aid.

  She wondered if he had called the cops yet. Knowing Dirk as she did, she figured he hadn’t. But someone must have. The trailers were pretty close together, and the nosy Biddles wouldn’t have missed an opportunity to report trouble and stir up a hornets’ nest if possible.