A Body To Die For Read online

  Savannah had considered going home and grabbing a few hours of sleep before daybreak came and the next step in the search for Bill Jardin would begin. Certainly, it would have been the sensible thing to do.

  But she hadn’t considered it seriously. Of all her many virtues—which, of course, included humility—“sensible” wasn’t at the top of the list.

  Years ago, she had discovered that she could usually circumvent the biological need to sleep, if she only had enough adrenaline, caffeine, and simple carbs in the form of baked goods or chocolate.

  Now, after hours of hanging around the abandoned Jaguar, shooting the breeze with every uniformed cop on the scene, and ignoring the increasingly testy Dirk, she was running low on adrenaline. So, she was delighted to see the hot pink Volkswagen bug pull up to the perimeter edge and a bouncy blonde pop out.

  “Tammy!” Savannah shouted, as though greeting a long-lost relative at the airport. Actually, she was happier to see Tammy than she would have been to see any of her Georgia family, with the exception of her beloved Granny Reid.

  And one of the reasons for her elation was the bag in her assistant’s hand.

  It was a white bag, with “Patty Cake Bakery” printed in red on the side. The much needed nutrition-free simple carbs and caffeine had arrived!

  “Dirk! Hey, Dirk, get over here,” Savannah yelled to him.

  He was sitting in the front seat of his Buick, his arms crossed over the top of the steering wheel, his head resting on his forearms.

  He looked the picture of dejection. But Savannah knew it was more like the epitome of barely repressed terror.

  Dawn was breaking, and he still hadn’t come up with a good excuse not to lead his investigation team over the side of that cliff. She was relieved that he didn’t have any cyanide capsules in the Buick’s glove box.

  He needed food. Free food.

  If that couldn’t cheer him up and take his mind off his troubles, nothing could.

  Oh-so-slowly, he raised his head. Just an inch at first. Then, enough to peek at her over his burly forearms.

  She tried not to laugh. Big, bad Dirk, my butt, she thought. He’d run headlong into a room full of “considered armed and dangerous” perps, Smith & Wesson drawn, a Clint Eastwood scowl on his face. But ask him to climb up a ladder to paint some window trim? Forget about it. He wouldn’t show his face at painting parties, not even for a free keg of beer and all-you-can-eat pepperoni pizza.

  She knew. She had tried.

  “Come here!” she told him again.

  When he didn’t budge, she pointed to Tammy.

  He looked that way and when he saw the Patty Cake bag, he came alive, jumping out of the car and hurrying over to them.

  Savannah felt a surge of affection toward him. She had often thought that the basis of their long-standing friendship was their mutual love of junk food and artificial stimulants.

  But Tammy appeared less happy. By the dim light of the early dawn, Savannah could see a half-smile, half-grimace on her pretty face, and she knew exactly why. Tammy was thrilled to be here, to be part of the action. And the grimace was because…

  “You know I hate having to buy this crap for you,” she said as she held the sack out to Savannah with two fingers, like a dog walker holding a plastic bag with their Fido’s dumpings inside. “It goes against my principles to even step into an establishment that sells poison like that to human beings and calls it ‘food.’ Who—”

  “Smells great in there, though, doesn’t it?” Dirk said, trying to pull the bag out of Savannah’s hand. “I mean, you have to admit the smell of the coffee brewing, along with the fresh-baked muffins and stuff.”

  Tammy grinned. “Yeah, okay, it smelled great, but what’s to keep them from selling at least one whole-bran muffin or something with an actual nutrient in it?”

  Savannah handed Dirk his usual oversized apple fritter and a cup of black coffee. “I think Patty gets a lot more pigs like Dirk and me in her place than she does intelligent, health-conscious people like you.”

  Tammy opened her mouth to retort, then snapped it closed. Why continue to argue when you’ve already won?

  She glanced around, taking in all the activity. The van with the Crime Scene Unit’s logo on the side had just arrived. Technicians in their spotless white lab coats, cases in hand, were descending on the Jaguar.

  But the county coroner’s van was conspicuously absent.

  “No body yet?” she asked.

  “No,” Savannah said. “Plenty of biological matter for CSU to process, but no actual DB yet.”

  “Are we sure he’s dead?” Tammy asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Dirk said. “At least, if the spatter is Jardin’s, it’s a lock he ain’t among the living no more.”

  Tammy brightened—far more than was decent under the circumstances. “So, we get to go mountain climbing and look for the body! Cool!”

  What a ghoul, Savannah thought. Maybe she had over-trained the kid. Tammy cried at the thought of chickens losing their lives and being made into nuggets, but finding a human corpse…that was cool stuff?

  “Yeah, yeah, mountain climbing. Yippee,” Dirk grumbled. He took a long drink of his coffee and sauntered back to the Buick.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Tammy asked.

  Savannah bit into a maple bar and closed her eyes to savor it just a moment before answering. She swallowed, opened her eyes and said, “Dirk, heights, remember?”

  “Oh, right. He won’t even climb onto a chair to change a lightbulb. I guess he’s not big on rappelling down a cliff.”

  “You think?”

  “I’ll go. I’m into that stuff.”

  Savannah smiled, basking in the sunshine energy that her dear friend exuded. Tammy was into anything. Tammy was into life.

  Nodding toward the Jaguar, Tammy said, “May I look?”

  “Sure. Don’t get in anybody’s way and if anybody says anything to you, tell them you’re Dirk’s kid sister.”

  Tammy’s face fell. “You think that would actually score me points? I mean, Dirk hasn’t won any Mr. Congeniality contests in the department.”

  “True. Tell them you’re Miss July on this year’s National Law Enforcement Calendar.”

  “National Law Enforcement Calendar?”

  “Yeah, the one they sell to benefit cops going through divorces because they availed themselves of the free services of sex workers while on the job.”

  “What?” Tammy’s eyes widened. “They have a charity fund for that?”

  “Of course not. Well, not that I know of. But once you say, ‘Miss July,’ their brains will lock up and freeze, so it doesn’t matter what you say after that.”

  “Okay.”

  Savannah chuckled as Tammy strolled away, looking particularly fetching in her snug red T-shirt, denim shorts, and espadrilles, her long golden hair shining in the early morning light. No, Tammy wouldn’t have any problem getting around this scene or any other scene where the population was predominately male.

  As Savannah walked over to the Buick to join Dirk, she heard a familiar sound in the distance—helicopter blades, beating the air, in a distinctive staccato rhythm, rapidly approaching.

  “Sounds like our ‘eye in the sky’ has arrived,” she said as she opened the passenger’s door and slid into the car beside him.

  “Yes, and please, please, God, let them find him,” Dirk said.

  “Wouldn’t that be good?” Savannah said. “Then you wouldn’t have to go over the edge on a rope and get all nervous and barf and embarrass yourself in front of everybody? Wouldn’t that be peachy keen?”

  Dirk responded with a “drop dead” look.

  She took a bite of her maple bar, chewed it, savored it, swallowed, and said, “Too bad nothing good like that ever happens to you.”

  “Screw you.”

  She laughed.

  He slid lower in his seat, and once again, draped his arms across the steering wheel and leaned his head on them.

>   “Want half of my other maple bar?” she asked, reaching out to snatch him from the gaping jaws of depression.

  He was instantly alert, but indignant. “Other? Other maple bar? She got you two? How come she got you two maple bars? She only got me one lousy fritter.”

  “’Cause she likes me best.” She tore the pastry in two and held the half out to him. “Do you want it or not?”

  Before he could reach for it, his cell phone rang. It was a ringtone she didn’t recognize, a standard, generic buzz. Very unlike Dirk, who had assigned some kind of a song, usually rock-and-roll, to everyone he knew.

  “Coulter,” he barked. “Who’s this?” He dropped his gruffness instantly and became Sunshine and Light. “Oh, right. Hi! How are you today?”

  A beloved family member, maybe? Savannah mused. No, Dirk didn’t have family, beloved or not.

  His smile broadened. He was practically dancing in his jeans. “Wow! Fantastic!”

  Perhaps someone saying he’d won some lottery money…or better yet, a free trip to a buffet?

  “Oh, man, that’s great! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

  Holy cow! Savannah thought. He hadn’t been this happy when she’d given him that Harley-Davidson T-shirt eighteen years ago. And she was pretty sure he’d insist on being buried in that ratty shirt.

  “Okay. Again, thank you so-o-o much. I owe you one, man. I do. I won’t forget this!”

  He punched the “off” button, turned and gave her a big, nanny-nanny-boo-boo-smirk. “So! Good things don’t happen to me, huh? Isn’t that what you just said? I could have sworn that was just what you said. I heard you say—”

  “Oh, shut up and tell me. What is it? You won a lifetime subscription to the Victoria’s Secret catalog?”

  “Better than that. Way better than that.”

  It must be good, she thought. Dirk’s nuts about Victoria’s girlies.

  “Spit it out,” she said. “Now.”

  He rolled down the Buick’s window, stuck his arm out, and waved wildly to the helicopter as it flew slowly by.

  She noticed that the chopper wasn’t a law enforcement copter, as she had expected. It had the call letters of a Los Angeles television station emblazoned on its side. It was a news helicopter.

  “It was them,” he told her. “The guys in that chopper. They found him! They spotted the body about a quarter mile from here. They said it’s in the middle of the river, caught on a log. We might even be able to see it from the road if we go down there!”

  “Hey, that is good news! You don’t have to send out search teams, just a couple of firemen and a CSU investigator or two with a gurney to hoist him up and out of there. Job done.”

  “And most important,” he said with a deep sigh, “I don’t have to go over the cliff myself and lead a search team, now that we know where he’s at. I don’t really have to even look over that damned cliff again if I don’t want to. Well, at least not here at Deadman’s Curve.”

  “It’s your lucky day, buddy,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder. “You dodged a high caliber bullet on that one, big-time.”

  “I know it.” He wiped his hand across his brow. “Believe me, I know it.”

  “What’s next?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m gonna send a team over that cliff, and then I’m outta here. I’m gonna go buy a lotto ticket, while I’m on a roll!”

  Chapter 5

  Dirk called the County Coroner and told them to meet him on Sulphur Creek Road, about a quarter mile east of Deadman’s Curve. Then, leaving half of the forensic team there with the abandoned Jaguar and the cliff covered with broken brush and cacti, he and everyone else took off for the new location.

  Savannah rode with Tammy in the VW, which Savannah affectionately called the Hot Pink Barbie Bug.

  “What did you think of Clarissa Jardin?” Tammy wanted to know. “Was she dressed in a black leather jumpsuit and carrying a whip?”

  “No,” Savannah replied. “Actually, she was wearing a Victorian nightgown and looked like Gran does when she’s getting ready to climb into bed.”

  “No way!”

  “I swear.” Savannah crossed her heart. “But she was still rude and catty.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. A major me-e-ow.”

  “I knew it. I knew she couldn’t be a nice person.”

  Savannah thought it over for a moment. “Actually, I feel a bit bad about the way I spoke to her. I was pretty much in her face.”

  “Good. She deserves it. She’s—”

  “No, it’s not an issue of whether she deserves it or not. I wasn’t fair to Dirk. I let my loathing of the woman override my professionalism. He really had to rein me in while we were questioning her, and that wasn’t cool. I should apologize to him.”

  For a moment, Savannah thought that Tammy was going to lose control of the bug as she took a curve too fast and crossed well over the centerline. Thankfully, there was no oncoming traffic.

  “Are you kidding?” Tammy looked positively scandalized. “Apologize to old Dirko?”

  “I’m thinking about it. Why? You figure the world will come to an end if I did?”

  “It might. I’m just wondering if it’s a good precedent to set. He’s already got such a swelled head. You saying he was right and you were wrong…it might just send him over the edge.”

  Savannah searched her soul…for two and a half seconds. “Okay, you’ve got a good point there. Forget it. I’ll talk a little nicer to her next time—make up for it.”

  Savannah saw the Buick ahead of them begin to slow down. The television news chopper was hovering off to their left, over the riverbed.

  “Dirk’s pulling over,” Tammy said. “I think this is it.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure it is. Park right behind him.” Savannah took a deep breath. This wasn’t part of the job she liked. It wasn’t as bad as the worst part—informing the next of kin. But finding the body, even if you’d spent months looking for it, hoping and praying you’d find it, was never easy.

  The women got out of the Volkswagen and hurried across the road to the edge. There was a guardrail here, but it was far less substantial than the reinforced one at Deadman’s Curve. And the drop down to the river wasn’t nearly so dramatic. The water burbled wildly, foaming as it rushed over its rocky bed only about thirty feet away from them, and the slope was gradual.

  Already, Dirk was at the edge of the road, looking over, and the expression on his face was that of a man who had received a stay of execution from the governor himself.

  Then the smile disappeared from his face. And Savannah knew, even before she looked herself, that he had spotted the body.

  “Ohmigawd,” Tammy said. “There it is. I see it!”

  Savannah saw it, too.

  His turquoise polo shirt snagged on a jagged tree limb that was stretched across the river, Bill Jardin lay facedown in the river, the water swirling around him.

  His left arm was twisted behind him in a sickening, unnatural angle. The turbulence lifted his right arm, up and down, up and down, and in a perverse way, it looked as though he were waving to someone beneath him on the bottom of the river.

  Two firemen with their litter basket and three members of the CSU had already climbed over the railing and were heading down the incline toward the water with Dirk in the lead.

  When Savannah joined them at the river’s edge, she thought nothing of rushing right into the water, balancing on the slippery rocks where she could and wading up to her knees in other places. But when she glanced back, she saw Tammy hesitating on the bank, looking down at her new espadrilles. They were the “must have” shoes of the season—or so Tammy had informed Savannah when she’d first worn them—and Tammy had blown two week’s pay on them.

  Not that Savannah paid her all that much. But two weeks’ “pittance” was a major expenditure in thrifty Tammy’s economy.

  However, a true Nancy Drew sleuth wanna-be could never be stopped by a simple raging river or a pai
r of hot new shoes. In seconds, Tammy had stripped off the sandals, tied their laces together, and flung them around her neck.

  Barefoot, she plunged into the river and quickly caught up with Savannah. “Br-r-r,” she said. “This water is freezing, and you’re going to ruin your loafers.”

  “Nah, I shudder to even think what these loafers have stepped in. A little water will do them good.”

  But she had to agree that the river was cold. Who would have thought that water, running off the Southern California desert hills, would feel like melted snow? Her toes were already numb.

  Just ahead of them, Dirk, a fireman, and a CSU tech had reached the body. The technician had her camera in hand and was snapping pictures, documenting the position of the body before anything was moved or disturbed.

  Dirk stood back a few feet, watching her, hands on his hips, scowling, radiating his impatience—that antsy irritability that endeared him to the hearts of all he met, especially his fellow workers.

  “You got enough pictures there?” he snapped. “This ain’t no Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition shoot here, ya know.”

  “Back off, Coulter,” the feisty little redhead told him. “Go take five, smoke a cigarette, and chill out. I’ll be done when I’m done.”

  Savannah cringed. Apparently, the tech wasn’t aware that Dirk had recently joined the ranks of the nonsmokers. And that hadn’t improved his irritability factor either. In fact, Dirk might be the first guy in history who had actually shortened his life by kicking the habit. As a snippy, sullen, nonsmoker, his odds of dying by homicide had risen considerably.

  She and Tammy made their way closer to the body, but stayed well out of the camera’s frame. The other CSU tech and the two firemen also waited for the photographer to finish, busying themselves by pulling on surgical gloves, preparing the litter basket and body bag.

  Savannah glanced over the remains of Bill Jardin, forming her first impressions. “He looks fresh,” she told Tammy, “for a guy who’s been missing five days.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Dirk agreed. “No way this guy’s been dead for that long. He’s fresh as a daisy.”