Killer Physique Read online

  “Yes,” she said softly, “that’s where we were. Ryan and John found him dead in his suite at the Island View Hotel.”

  “Mercy! That’s plum terrible!” Waycross said. “Ryan and John must’ve been mighty upset.”

  “To say the least,” Savannah replied.

  Dirk paused at the kitchen door and looked back at Savannah. “I’m gonna make us some more coffee,” he said. “Patty’s throw-outs weren’t enough. You want decaf or regular?”

  “Regular’s fine. Thanks, darlin’.”

  He turned to leave, then hesitated. “I thought we were gonna hit the sheets and try to get a little sleep. You sure regular won’t keep you awake?”

  Savannah closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the sting of fatigue in her eyelids. “Right now, sugar, I could take me a ten-hour nap in the middle of a runway at LAX. And as soon as I drink that coffee and fill these nosy bodies in on all the gory details, that’s exactly what I aim to do.”

  “Me too,” Dirk replied. “Except for the LAX runway business. We’ve got an un-slept-in bed upstairs that’d be a helluva lot more comfortable.”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “I told you we should have decaf.”

  “It ain’t the coffee.”

  “I know.”

  Savannah rolled onto her side to face Dirk, who lay next to her on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  Cleopatra was sprawled across his bare chest, snoring. Diamante slept between them, one paw curled over her face.

  At least the felines of the household are getting some sleep, Savannah thought. But then, they hadn’t seen a handsome young actor sprawled lifeless on the floor—a friend of two of their dearest friends. Disturbing, to say the least, and not the least bit conducive to rest and relaxation.

  “I have a bad feeling about this whole thing,” she said.

  “You sense skullduggery afoot?”

  “Well, that sounds more like something Tammy would say, but yeah—something stinks about all this.”

  “I’ll say, it does. Like a block of Limburger cheese left on Somebody You Hate’s manifold on a hot summer day.”

  “Now that sounds a lot more like you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She reached over and laid her hand on his chest. For just a moment she put the troubles of recent events aside and marveled at the pleasure that simple intimacy provided.

  This business of having a husband, one she could just reach over and touch, one who touched back—and very nicely, too—was far, far sweeter than she had expected it would be.

  But the moment didn’t last long.

  The memory of Ryan’s and John’s faces chased it away.

  “What do you think Dr. Liu’s gonna find?” she asked, laying her cheek on his shoulder.

  “I don’t know.” He kissed the top of her head as he ran his fingers through her curls. “I don’t know whether to hope she finds something or just rules it an accident or natural causes.”

  “Of course, it’d be better if it was the latter.”

  “It would?”

  “Sure.”

  “If she says everything’s okay, you’re gonna believe it? Gonna feel good about it?”

  She didn’t have to think that over for very long at all. “No,” she said. “I know something’s wrong.”

  “Then let’s hope she finds out what.”

  “Exactly.”

  They lay quietly a few minutes more. Then Dirk broke the silence. “You figure she’s done with that autopsy yet?”

  “Done? She’s probably just begun.”

  “Figure she needs some help?”

  Savannah laughed and poked him in the ribs. “Oh, right. Doctor Jen just loves it when you drop by the morgue to ‘assist.’ ”

  “She doesn’t mind so much when I have you with me.”

  “True.”

  “And when we bring chocolate.”

  “I’ve got an unopened two-pound box of Godiva truffles in my stash.”

  “It’s not like we’re really gonna get any sleep anyway.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 6

  If Savannah had to guess what Hell’s waiting room would look like, she would imagine a drab, gray building like the county morgue.

  “This place is so ugly and depressing,” she told Dirk, as they walked across the parking lot to the front door, passing flower beds that held only wilted and dying plants.

  The town of San Carmelita was suffering a double whammy—economic issues and a drought. So the city elders had decided that turning off the landscape sprinklers on the municipal properties would help cure the community’s ills.

  As a result, children played on parched brown lawns in the town parks, the courthouse grounds looked like a desert, and even the drought-resistant plantings around all the public buildings were giving up their little botanical ghosts.

  It only strengthened Savannah’s conviction that the morgue was a site of doom and gloom. Who would expect marigolds and California poppies to thrive in Purgatory?

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Dirk said. “It’s not like anything good ever happens here.”

  Savannah thought that over for a moment, then reconsidered. She remembered something Dr. Liu had told her a long time ago.

  When Savannah had asked the coroner how she could stand to do her job since her duties were so sad and grim. Dr. Liu had chuckled—one of those dry, semi-bitter laughs with no humor in it. Then she’d said, “How ironic that you should ask me that question. I just said the same thing last night to a friend of mine who’s an emergency room physician. I don’t know how he stands it, all the sadness, the pressure. I have the easy job. But the time they arrive here, the worst has already been done. Anything I do will only make things easier.”

  “But sometimes you have to tell family members such terrible things.”

  “I tell them the truth. And no matter how painful it might be for them at the time to hear it, in the end, truth always makes things better.”

  And now, as Savannah and Dirk entered the building, she reexamined her attitude about the place and the things that happened inside those gray walls. The truth might not always be pretty, but it had the power to heal a lot of pain.

  “And speaking of pains,” she muttered, as she caught a glimpse of Officer Kenny Bates, the oversized receptionist, sitting in his undersized desk behind the reception counter.

  “Don’t worry about that numbskull,” Dirk told her. “You’re my wife now. If he gives you any trouble at all, I’ll knock his teeth so far down his throat he’ll have to sit on a sandwich to eat it.”

  “What? And ruin all my fun? Whuppin’ the tar outta ol’ Kenny once a year is the high point of my social calendar.”

  Dirk opened the door for her. “Don’t forget, they installed a camera after that last incident.”

  “You mean when I smacked the crap outta him with a rolled-up girlie magazine?”

  Dirk chuckled. “That was a low blow, you gotta admit. Beating a man nearly to death with his own porn. The guys still rag him about that at the Fourth of July barbecues.”

  As they entered the lobby and walked to the counter, Bates looked up from the video game he was playing on an electronic tablet he was half-hiding behind a stack of files on his desk.

  The moment he saw Savannah, a mixture of lust and loathing crossed his ugly mug, making him, if possible, even less attractive.

  She did find it amusing, though, to see him reach up and readjust his toupee—sprawled like a roadkill raccoon across his head. And as he stood and walked to the counter, he brushed some wayward corn chip dust off the front of his two-sizes-too-small uniform shirt.

  “Now, Officer Bates, you don’t need to go getting all spiffied up just for little ol’ me,” she told him.

  “Yeah, it won’t help,” Dirk added. “She’d still hate you, even if you took a honeysuckle bubble bath and brushed that green, fuzzy guck off your teeth.”
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  “Just sign the sheet,” Bates said, shoving a clipboard across the counter at them.

  Savannah caught a whiff of his breath as he tossed a pen, as well. Hmm, she thought. Apparently, a bag of nacho cheese chips is now the breakfast of champions.

  She scribbled a signature and time, then passed the board to Dirk.

  He snickered when he read what she’d written: U. S. Tink.

  In the years that she’d been signing Bates’s sheets, she’d written far worse. But today she was feeling charitable. Lack of sleep had softened her crusty exterior.

  “How’s married life treatin’ you, Savannah?” Bates asked, as she and Dirk left the desk and headed for the hallway. “If Coulter there needs to put another man on the job, I’m available.”

  Dirk turned on his heel and headed toward the counter. But Savannah grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.

  “One of these days, you lop-eared peckerhead,” she told Bates, “I’m gonna turn this man of mine loose on you. And when I do, he’s gonna stomp a mud hole in your backside big enough for Tom Hill’s pigs to waller in.”

  Leaving Bates to contemplate the future of his backside, Savannah and Dirk continued down the hall toward the autopsy suite in the rear of the building.

  Dirk asked Savannah, “Was there ever really a pig farmer named Tom Hill, or did you just make him up on the spot back there?”

  “Of course there was. He was Sam Hill’s brother. You know, as in, ‘What in Sam Hill are you . . . ?’ ”

  Dirk stopped in the middle of the hall and stared at her blankly, shaking his head. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, woman.”

  “You have no idea what in Sam Hill I’m talking about. Get ’er right, boy.”

  “What?”

  She laughed and laced her arm through his companionably. “Yankee boy, you’re married to a Southern woman now. You have just got to learn the language.”

  They opened one of the double swinging doors that led into the autopsy suite just a crack and peeked inside. Sure enough, there was the county coroner, Dr. Jennifer Liu, standing beside a stainless steel table. And stretched across the cold, sterile table lay the body of Jason Tyrone in mid-autopsy.

  Though Savannah hardly recognized him, because his torso was spread open with the ugly, customary coroner’s Y incision.

  Even the top of his head had been removed, and Dr. Liu was holding the brain in her gloved hands.

  Savannah was grateful that neither Ryan nor John were here to witness this. She could hardly stand to see it herself.

  Forcing her eyes away from the body on the table, she concentrated on Dr. Jennifer Liu, San Carmelita’s first and only female coroner.

  Over the years Savannah had become accustomed to Dr. Liu’s unorthodox on-the-job apparel. The tall, slender, exquisite Asian beauty frequently performed her duties while wearing a barely-past-her-shapely-bottom miniskirt or skintight pants and four-inch stilettos.

  But Savannah had never seen the leather short-shorts before. Or the glittery, acrylic platforms.

  This was a bit much, even for the good doctor.

  “Wow!” Dirk whispered.

  “Yeah. No kidding.”

  Long ago, Savannah had decided not to be jealous when Dirk ogled Dr. Jen. After all, if Savannah, a heterosexual female, stood with eyes wide and mouth agape at the sight of this femme fatale in all of her overtly salacious glory, how could she expect him not to drool—at least a little.

  “Do you think she wears those getups when she’s cleaning house?” he mused, as they continued to peep.

  “I’ve wondered about that myself. Or maybe, after hours, she’s always at one of those sex clubs, then comes straight to work without going home to change first.”

  Dirk grinned lasciviously. “Hey, I like your theory better. I mean, I was into the fantasy of her bending over to dust in one of those short skirts, but your scenario’s way more—”

  She gouged him in the ribs. “Hey, watch it. You’re a married man now.”

  “Fantasies are free.”

  “If you share too many details with your old lady, you might find yourself paying the price.”

  She had raised her voice a bit too much, and Dr. Liu had heard. She laid the brain she was holding onto a nearby scale, then turned to them and gave them a scowl.

  “What are you two doing here?” she barked.

  Savannah opened the door a couple more inches and shoved the box of chocolate through. “Delivering some goodies?”

  Savannah watched the battle registering on the doctor’s pretty face—the battle of chocolate addiction versus her indignation at having her work interrupted by a couple of notorious buttinskies.

  Finally, she asked, “Are they truffles?”

  Savannah laughed. “Of course. Do you think we’d show up this early with anything less?”

  “Get in here.”

  Ah-ha, Savannah thought, resisting the urge to cackle triumphantly . PMS-induced carbohydrate craving wins again.

  She knew it would. She and Dr. Liu had been friends for a long, long time.

  When she and Dirk reached the table, the doctor wasted no time before ripping off her surgical gloves and snatching the box of chocolates out of Savannah’s hand.

  Oh no, Savannah thought. She’s gonna eat them right here, right now.

  No matter how many times Savannah saw the coroner consume edibles and potables in the presence of a corpse, she would never get used to it. It just seemed so . . . wrong.

  Way, way worse than eating in a bathroom, Savannah had decided—since nibbling chocolates and sipping wine in a candlelit bubble bath was one of her favorite pastimes.

  Choosing a mocha cream, the doctor placed the whole piece in her mouth, closed her eyes, and chewed, with a look of orgasmic pleasure on her face. When she finished, she carefully licked a tiny bit of chocolate residue from the flaming red nail polish on her index finger.

  Savannah took a sideways glance at Dirk, saw the gleam of male interest in his eyes, and decided she did not want to know what sort of fantasy he was spinning at the moment.

  “You know, of course,” Dr. Liu said, as she reached for a second truffle, “I’ve never fallen for this ridiculous chocolate-delivering ruse you guys use when you drop by.”

  “You just got a suspicious streak,” Dirk replied, his attention now fixed on the chocolate. He was, if nothing else, a man with his priorities in order.

  Savannah gave the coroner her sweetest, down-in-Dixie smile. “Why, darlin’, you know we come in here just to see you. To brag on you and tell you what a good job you’re doing.”

  “Yeah,” Dirk added, “just think of us as your cheerleaders, standing on the sidelines, shakin’ our pom-poms.”

  Dr. Liu grinned in spite of herself and shook her head. “No, thanks. That’s a mental image I can do without—especially if you’re the one with the pom-poms, Dirk.”

  She walked over to a cupboard, opened its door, and stashed the box of candy high on the top shelf.

  Then she turned back to them, pulled a fresh pair of surgical gloves from the pocket of her white smock, and donned them.

  “You know, you’re wasting your time and your chocolates,” she told them. “I’m not even close to finishing this autopsy.”

  She walked back to the body on the table and the brain she had just placed in the scale. “If a ‘hurry-it-up’ call from the chief of police, another one from the mayor, and yet a third one from an Oscar-winning movie director couldn’t speed me up, you two don’t have a chance.”

  “We just came by to help,” Dirk said.

  “And deliver the chocolates.” Savannah cleared her throat. “And of course, help in any way we can.”

  “Help? Until I determine if this is natural, accidental, or homicide, you two shouldn’t even be in here.”

  Savannah grinned, thinking how many times she had heard that. Having once been a popular and respected member of the San Carmelita Police Department, she was granted
easy access to the scene of nearly every crime committed in the town. And though, years ago, she had been fired from the force, the brass who had canned her did little to curtail her activities.

  She knew this had little to do with her dimples and Georgia accent. She understood it was because she and her detective agency had solved some of their most difficult cases.

  As Granny Reid would say, “They know what side their biscuit’s buttered on.”

  “You know, Doc,” Dirk said with a smirk, one eyebrow raised a notch, “we’re honeymooners. We could be home in bed foolin’ around right now. Or better yet, sleeping—which we haven’t done for more than twenty-four hours straight.”

  “Not that we haven’t tried,” Savannah added. “It’s just that we were lying there, wondering about this case, thinking about our friends, Ryan and John. You know Ryan and John and what great guys they are.”

  Savannah waved a hand in the direction of the body on the table. “Jason here was a good friend of theirs. They knew him way back when. And now they’re worried sick, wondering what happened to him. You can’t blame us for trying to find out.”

  Dr. Liu said nothing for a long moment, as her dark eyes studied Savannah’s. Finally she said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ve got. But I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”

  Savannah steeled herself for the worst as she and Dirk walked to the other side of the table opposite the doctor. She tried to forget that she knew the person who lay on the table between them. At moments like this, she had to put her heart on hold and switch into a purely cerebral mode.

  “As you can see,” Dr. Liu began, “this is a young male, I’m told in his early thirties, with highly developed musculature. And as I’m sure you guessed, he didn’t get all those muscles strictly from lifting weights.”

  “Steroids?” Dirk asked.

  “Definitely. Heavy, long-term usage.”

  “Then what happened?” Savannah asked. “Did he OD on steroids?”

  “Not exactly.” Dr. Liu drew a deep breath. “Actual steroid overdose is rare. The damage that performance-enhancing substances do to the body is more gradual.”

  She pointed to a stainless-steel pan on a nearby countertop that contained numerous body organs.