Fat Free and Fatal Read online

  Savannah thought of the blood and gore on Dona Papalardo’s driveway and figured it was a good thing that Tammy hadn’t been along. Anybody who gagged at canned cat food might do a lot worse viewing the aftermath of a homicide. And Dr. Liu took a dim view of people adding their own DNA to her crime scene.

  “When does your gig start?” Tammy wanted to know.

  “Tomorrow morning. I just came home to tie up some loose ends here and get some things together to take over there.”

  “You get to stay there? At Dona Papalardo’s mansion?”

  Savannah grinned and chuckled. “I do! I do! And you should see the place. It’s gorgeous. Straight off the silver screen. Art deco glamour all the way.”

  Tammy’s lower lip protruded like that of a three-year-old being told that it’s still eleven and a half months to Christmas. “I wish I could see it. It’s not much fun being your assistant if I don’t get to assist you. Especially at cool places like Dona Papalardo’s mansion.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to get you inside as soon as possible.”

  The pout turned into a bright smile. “Really?”

  “Do I lie to you?”

  “Um…”

  “Without good reason?”

  “Uh…”

  Savannah sighed. “I’ll get you in. I’ll deliberately leave something behind that I really need, and you can bring it to me tomorrow. How’s that?”

  “Will I get to stay and play?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Again the pout. “I have a mother. I know what we’ll see means.”

  Savannah sat down in her favorite seat, an overstuffed, comfortable armchair that was covered with rose-print chintz. Propping her feet on an ottoman, she gathered the cats into her lap. They jostled each other, vying for the best spot. “But I’m not anybody’s mother,” Savannah said. “Unless you count these two varmints.”

  “No, but you’re the oldest of nine kids. And big sisters can be as bad or worse than moms.”

  Savannah laughed. “That’s true. And if you don’t believe it, ask any of my eight younger siblings.”

  “Oh! That reminds me.” She pulled a piece of paper from one of the desk’s cubbyholes. “A member of your Georgia brood called about an hour ago, asked to speak to you. I told her I wasn’t sure when you’d be back, just in case you didn’t want to talk to them tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t want to talk to my own flesh and blood?” Savannah said.

  “Well, I know that they can be…um…trying…sometimes.”

  “Trying? My family? Naw. I just love hearing about Vidalia’s most recent fight with Butch, and how the morning sickness has hit her and her ankles are swelling already, and Marietta’s latest fiancé—the guy she found on the Convict Penpal Web site—or Macon’s current brush with the law, having burgled some junkyard for car parts or—”

  “This time it’s Jesup.”

  “Ah, the Princess of Darkness. And that’s on a good day. How did she sound?”

  “Gloomy.”

  “That’s our Jessie. She can generate thunderheads on a cloudless day, just by crawling out of bed and looking out the window. What did she want?”

  “Didn’t say. Just asked to talk to you. She said she wasn’t at home, but didn’t want to leave a number.”

  Savannah felt a little guilty for the sense of relief she felt at not having to return the call. After all, Jesup was her sister, and who wouldn’t want to talk to her sister?

  A sister who harbored a morbid interest in murder, mayhem, and disease—the most exotic, gut-roiling ways that a human being could depart the earth.

  A sister who wore nothing but black, who wrote twenty-stanza poems about Jack the Ripper, the Spanish Inquisition, the Donner Party, and Ted Bundy.

  A sister who constantly asked Savannah if she had any new autopsy or crime-scene photos to share.

  Who could resist the charm and appeal of a sibling like that?

  Savannah decided that she could. And she could get rid of the guilt, too. She’d just toss it on the pile with all those pesky, outdated mottos.

  “How long do you figure this bodyguard job with Dona will last?” Tammy wanted to know.

  “Long enough for me to pay this month’s mortgage and last month’s utility bills,” Savannah replied. “And I—”

  The doorbell rang, followed by a loud pounding on the front door.

  Savannah glanced at her watch. It was after nine.

  Most of her friends were well-trained enough not to drop by without calling first, and certainly not after nine, which was usually her romance-novel reading/chocolate nibbling time.

  And while Dirk wasn’t particularly well-trained, she knew it wasn’t him. She had said good-bye to him at the Papalardo mansion and sent him home with strict instructions to get a good night’s sleep and let some uniformed cops stand guard at Dona’s.

  When it came to sleeping, Dirk usually followed directions.

  “Who can that be?” Tammy said.

  “A dead person walkin,’” Savannah replied, dumping the cats onto the floor and heading to the front hall. She mentally checked the fact that her Beretta was in its holster, lying on the table next to the door. If it was a burglar or a door-to-door salesman, they were living their final moments on earth.

  When she opened the door and saw the faces of the people standing on her porch, Savannah instinctively slammed the door closed, threw the bolt and reached for the gun. She had it out of the holster and had chambered a round before she could form any conclusion about what she had just seen.

  “Who is it?” Tammy asked.

  Who? Savannah wasn’t even sure what it was.

  Her mind was churning with the possibilities. A person in a Halloween mask? It wasn’t even close to Halloween. A burglar?

  Violent, disturbing visions of all the home-invasion robbery scenes she’d ever processed raced through her mind, along with plans of action.

  “Call nine-one-one!” she told Tammy. “And run to the back door. Don’t open it. Make sure it’s locked and turn on the porch light.”

  Then she pointed the gun at the center of her closed front door—her finger off the trigger, but ready.

  “Who the hell are you?” she shouted. “And what do you want?”

  “Your sister, you idiot,” yelled back a voice with a thick Georgia accent. “Open up.”

  Sister? Sister?

  Savannah’s brain whirred, trying to process the vision of the white-faced, black-lipped, monster-clown faces on her doorstep with the concept of “sister.”

  And it just didn’t compute.

  “Open up, Van! What’s the matter with you, girl? Slam the door in my face, will ya?”

  Okay, the voice was right. The Southern twang, the bossy indignation—all rang Savannah’s memory bells.

  She ventured a look through the peephole, a definite no-no when expecting that the person on the other side might be an armed and dangerous criminal. More than one person had done so, only to find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun.

  She saw the snow-white face again, with its black-rimmed eyes and black lips, surrounded by spiky black hair. The face was grinning and sticking its tongue out at her.

  “Savaaa-nn-ah,” it said. “Open the door this very minute! I want you to meet my new husband!”

  Savannah looked past the first face to the one behind it, equally adorned with the macabre makeup. She could tell from the square set of the jaw and the strange goatee that it was male.

  Husband? For half a second she considered that her sister, Vidalia and her redneck, mechanic husband, Butch, had gone stark raving crazy. Vidalia was the only one of her siblings who was married at the moment, Marietta being between hubbies.

  “It’s me, Jesup. Girl, have you plumb lost your mind? Let us in!”

  Suddenly, the loose pieces snapped into place.

  Jesup.

  Over her shoulder, she shouted, “Skip the nine-one-one call, Tammy.”

  “I’ve a
lready got them on the line,” was the answer.

  “Tell them it’s a false alarm.”

  Tammy came into the hallway, the phone to her ear. “Then I should tell them that we aren’t in life-threatening danger?”

  Savannah sighed as she replaced her gun in its holster, laid it on the table, and opened the door. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But, hopefully, you and I can handle it.”

  “Does Granny Reid know that you ran off and got yourself hitched?” Savannah asked, once she had her sister and her newfound brother-in-law sitting on the sofa, tall glasses of lemonade in their hands and a plate of pecan brownies on a plate in front of them.

  “Nope,” Jesup replied, munching on a brownie. “It’s gonna be as big a surprise for her as it was for you.”

  “Dear Lord, I hope not! She’s too old for a shock like I just had. Her ticker would seize up and stop for sure. Where does she think you are?”

  “Oh, she knows that I went to Las Vegas. She just thinks I’m still there, gambling and dabbling in the devil’s stagnant scum pond of wickedness and pure D iniquity—as she calls the place. And she thinks I’m alone. She doesn’t know nothin’ about Bleak. Nobody back home does. We met on Monday. It was love at first sight.”

  Savannah cast a critical eye over the object of her younger sister’s affection, the latest member of her family, and she tried not to gag. He reminded her of a certain jewelry thief she had recently wrestled to the ground. The leather vest, the tattoos that crawled from his wrists up his arms and onto his neck, images of snakes, snarling demon faces, bats and spiders, vampire fangs dripping with blood—all without a “Mom,” a heart, or a flower among them. Not to mention the spiky hair that, with the help of a jar of gel, defied gravity as well as society.

  She also had to resist the urge to walk across the floor and slap her sister stupid. One whack would probably suffice.

  She glanced over at Tammy, who was known for being far more tolerant and less judgmental than Savannah ever could be, even on her most benevolent, Sunday-go-to-meetin’ behavior.

  And she could tell that even Sister Tammy the Munificent was put off by his appearance.

  Both Bleak and Jesup wore white, chalky foundation makeup, as well as lipstick that was the color of coagulated blood and black, dramatic eyeliner. But Bleak had used the liquid eyeliner brush to draw a spiderweb on his right cheek, complete with a spider, whose eyes were tiny rhinestones, apparently glued to his face.

  All Savannah could think was that he looked like a demon-possessed drag queen. And an ugly one at that.

  Yes, Gran would roll over in her grave—if she weren’t still alive.

  “You met on Monday,” Savannah repeated in an ominously monotone voice that she usually reserved for questioning perps she suspected of child molesting or puppy drowning. “Monday, you say. And it’s only…Friday. Now, if that don’t just beat all. And you got married when?”

  “Yesterday,” Jesup announced proudly. “We wanted to on Tuesday, after spending the night together Monday night, but we decided to wait and think about it some more, you know.”

  “Oh, yes, wait, think about it, mull it over, weigh the pros and cons. Lord knows you wouldn’t want to just jump into something as all-fired serious as marriage with both feet on a moment’s notice like that. That would just be plain ol’ loco.”

  “Exactly. It’s a real commitment, marriage is, and—”

  “No, Jessie,” Savannah said, “bringing home a kitten from the city dump, that’s a commitment. Marriage is a life sentence. At least, it’s supposed to be.”

  Jesup looked at Savannah as though she had lost her mind, then rolled her eyes. “Well, duh, Van. Of course it’s for life. Once you meet your soul mate who completes you, you’ll never want to be without them. Not even for a moment.”

  “Soul mate?” Savannah shook her head. “What constitutes a soul mate? Somebody who shares the same tube of lipstick with you? The same bottle of black nail polish? Does that constitute a ‘mate’ who was ordained to be with you since the creation of the universe or some such hooey?”

  Jesup reached over and grasped Bleak’s hand in hers. Yes, their red-black nail polish was the same shade, although hers were extremely long dragon claws, and his were bitten to the quick. “Yes, we are soul mates and the very fact that you have to ask what a soul mate is means that you haven’t met yours yet. So there!”

  Jesup turned goo-goo eyes on Bleak and blinked at him with what must have been pure soul-mate adoration.

  Savannah wasn’t sure because, as Jesup had so tactlessly reminded her, she hadn’t met hers yet. Or if she had, he hadn’t announced himself as such, and she hadn’t recognized him.

  Although, watching her sister ogle her new hubby, Savannah was reminded of a few milk cows she’d known on neighboring farms in Georgia. The same shining eyes, the same gentle spirit, the same quiet acceptance, generosity, and quiet resignation—all the result of having a single-digit IQ.

  Jesup had always been a bit ditzy, a little melancholy of disposition, a tad shy of the good sense possessed by most tennis balls. But this was a new low, even for her.

  “Did the two of you meet in Vegas?” Tammy asked, sprightly, feigning fascination.

  “Yes! At the Blood Fest,” Jesup replied. “It was wonderful! Four full, beautiful days.” She looked up at Bleak and batted her spiky eyelashes that were caked with clumpy, red mascara. “And four wonderful nights, as well,” she added.

  “So, Bleak…” Savannah said, helping herself to another brownie. It was going to take a lot of carbs to get her serotonin level up after this shock. She walked over to her comfy chair and lowered herself into it with a weary sigh. “…tell us about yourself.”

  Bleak fingered the stud sticking out of the right side of his nose and said, “Sure. Whatcha wanna know?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “When is your birthday?”

  “January thirteenth. Why? Are you going to send me a birthday card?”

  Oh yeah, Savannah thought. Right after I run a check on you and see what sort of a record you’ve got, you jackass. Then she reminded herself that, other than his bizarre personal grooming, she hadn’t really seen anything too objectionable in ol’ Bleak. Keep an open mind, Savannah, she told herself. At least until you get that report back with his arm-long rap sheet and find out that he’s a serial killer.

  “Do you have a last name, Bleak? Or is it just Bleak, like Cher and Madonna and—”

  “Yeah. Manifest.”

  “Manifest.” Savannah stared at him for a long time. In her peripheral vision she could see Tammy squirm and shoot her a warning look to “be nice.” She could also hear Granny Reid’s voice deep in her heart telling her to assume the best about people until they showed you the worst. Although, she was pretty sure that the minute Gran saw this guy, she’d call the elders of her church over to lay hands on him and cast out the devils out of him.

  “So…” she said, “…about thirty-three years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Manifest had a beautiful, bouncing baby boy, and they looked down at him in his bassinet and said, ‘Now, ain’t he just the cutest thing you ever did see? Let’s name this precious little bundle of joy “Bleak.”’ Is that what you’re telling us?”

  Bleak returned her level stare. “Nope. Bleak Manifest is a name of my own choosing. It better describes my view of this prison sentence we call life.”

  “It describes it better than…?”

  He hesitated. And Jesup filled in the blank. “Better than Milton Pillsbury.”

  Savannah checked him out again, the makeup, tattoos, piercings, the rattlesnake boots. Yes, Bleak Manifest did suit him a lot better than Milton Pillsbury. She had to agree with him there.

  She wondered what he looked like under all that makeup. Oh, well, she thought, I’ll find out when I see his mug shot.

  “And are you from Las Vegas originally?”

  He laughed. “Nobody’s from Vegas originally. My family
is in Barstow. They own the biggest mortuary there.”

  “I’ll bet they do. And is that the line of work you’re in?”

  “No. I’m in school.”

  “To be…?”

  “I want to run a body farm.”

  “A body farm.” She glanced over at Tammy, who nearly choked on her mineral water. “Do you mean a body farm, as in, forensic research?”

  His eyes blazed with interest. And to her dismay, so did Jesup’s. Suddenly, they both came alive with passion.

  Bleak scooted forward to the edge of the sofa. “Yeah! Me and Jess are going to have our own body farm, there in the desert outside Vegas. I’ve already got the property picked out. It’ll be perfect. Lots of wildlife to scavenge the corpses and hot enough that the decomposition rate will be—”

  Savannah held up her traffic-cop palm. “Okay, Okay. Gotcha. I’ve been to body farms before…far more frequently than I’ve wanted to.”

  “Really? Wow!” Bleak was practically dancing in his black leather pants. “Oh man! That’s so cool. When Jess told me about you, that you’re a homicide investigator, I told her, ‘Hey, I gotta meet this sister of yours.’ And that’s when we decided we’d spend our honeymoon here with you. Do you have any cool pictures of murder scenes? Stuff like that? Could we, like, go with you on some of your investigations, you know, before they actually clean up the scenes and—?”

  “Whoa! Hold on a minute. In the first place, I’m not a ‘homicide investigator.’ I’m a private investigator.”

  “Who usually investigates homicides,” Tammy said.

  Savannah gave her a dirty look. “You aren’t helping here, Tamitha.”

  Tammy giggled. “Sorry.”

  “And…” Savannah continued, “…it’s usually all I can do to get myself onto a scene before it’s ‘cleaned up,’ as you say. There’s no way I could get you onto an unprocessed crime scene. That’s illegal and, to be frank, it wouldn’t be half as much fun as you think it would be.”

  Bleak and Jesup looked at each other, totally confused. “But why not?” Jesup asked Savannah.

  “Why not what?”