Wicked Craving Read online

  She heard something about “hair” and “ocean,” but beyond that, she drew a blank.

  And when he walked back to the house, a half-sheepish look on his face, she knew she had to pry it out of him or burst.

  Waving good-bye to Ryan and John as they drove away, she asked, “So, what was all that rigmarole about?”

  With exaggerated pseudo-innocence, he said, “What? What are you talking about? I was just asking them something about the case.”

  She studied his face by the light of the porch light—the too-wide eyes, the fake half smile, the tight jaw.

  “Were not! Don’t you lie to me, boy.”

  He bristled. “Hey, can’t a guy have a little privacy? Do I have to tell you every damned thought I have? You have to hear every word I say?”

  “No, just the ones you don’t want me to hear, because there’s no good reason for you to hide something from me. And that means you’re up to no good.” She took a deep breath and fixed him with her best indignant glare. “Now, what was that about?”

  He stared at her, breathing hard, leaning forward until they were almost nose-to-nose. “I am not going to tell you. It’s none of your business.”

  He started to walk around her to go back inside the house, but she stepped between him and the door.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “Not with Gran and Tammy here as witnesses. But I will.”

  There were a few more moments of tense silence; then he sighed, shoulders slumped—a defeated man. “All right. If you must know…I asked Ryan where he gets his hair cut. And he told me it’s a place on Ocean Avenue, down by the marina. There. You happy now?”

  “Why would you give a hoot where Ryan gets his hair cut? Like the day’s ever gonna dawn that you pay more than ten bucks for a haircut.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Stand aside, woman. I’ve got to say good night to your grandma and then go talk to Wellman’s receptionist.”

  He meant it. She could tell by the way his nostrils were twitching.

  Besides, if she didn’t piss him off too badly, and if Granny was as ready for bed as she appeared to be…she might be able to tag along on the interview with the receptionist.

  “Okay,” she said with a quick, bright smile. “Wanna take a piece of cake with you to go?”

  He gave her a deeply suspicious look as he walked past her and said, “No, thank you. Like I said before, I’m watching how much I eat.”

  But the look wasn’t half as distrustful as the one she shot at his back as he went inside.

  Dirk watching what he ate?

  Looking for a new barber? An expensive barber?

  What in tarnation was this world coming to?

  “So, why are you going to talk to Wellman’s receptionist first?” Savannah asked as they cruised down Main Street in his Buick, heading for one of the town’s least upstanding bars down on the waterfront.

  “You don’t approve?” he snapped. “Who do you figure I’d talk to before her?”

  “Maybe Terry Somers? He seems your most likely suspect at the moment. What with that ugly threat he made in the doctor’s office.”

  Dirk pulled onto one of the largest streets, one of the few in town that were well lit. The orange streetlights flickered on his face as they passed by, and his scowl told Savannah he was still quite irked from their little exchange on the porch.

  He had let her come with him, but she suspected it was because he hadn’t wanted to fight with her in front of Gran. Granny Reid was one of the few people on earth he deigned to at least try to impress.

  “When I talk to Somers, I’m gonna lean hard on him,” he said. “And I want to know exactly what I’ve got on him before I start leanin’.”

  “Gotcha,” she said, nodding thoughtfully. “That’s smart.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He flipped on his left blinker—with at least twice as much force as was necessary. “I’m going to turn here…if that’s quite all right with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good.”

  She sighed. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 5

  The disco era was over…at least in San Carmelita. It had died a natural death, along with giant shoulder pads, grown men singing in falsetto and sounding like ten-year-olds, and massively big hair.

  But nobody had told Rick.

  On the outskirts of town, Rick’s Disco sat just off the road, with a junkyard on one side and an empty lot that was being used as a neighborhood dump on the other.

  In 1978, Rick had been married to a gal named Charmaine, and Charmaine had thought it would be fun to paint the outside of the club with turquoise and purple stripes. Later, Rick had divorced Charmaine—not because of her lack of decorating taste, but because she’d been fooling around with the bartender.

  So, Charmaine was long gone, but her legacy remained. Rick’s Disco was still an eyesore, even in a neighborhood filled with smelly garbage and rusted Plymouths.

  Dirk had a working relationship with Rick. Rick ratted out bad guys whenever Dirk asked him to, and in return, Dirk didn’t close him down for his numerous license violations.

  When Savannah and Dirk walked through the front door of the disco, they saw that Rick was tending bar…again. It seemed he was always firing or beating up his help. They couldn’t seem to keep their hands off his women.

  “Pouring your own beer?” Dirk asked as they sidled up to the bar. “Where’s the Irish dude you had in here last month? Was it…Sean…or Michael?”

  “Kelly,” Rick said, wiping the sweat off his brow with the dishrag thrown over his shoulder. “His name was Kelly, and he ran off with Juanita.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Dirk said.

  “Hi, Savannah.” Rick looked genuinely happy to see her. He reached across the bar and shook her hand. His fist was as big as one of Gran’s Sunday afternoon pot roasts, and the rest of him was proportionally as large.

  Rick had drank a few too many of his own drafts.

  Savannah glanced around, taking in the purple and turquoise walls—Charmaine had been nothing if not consistent—the dance floor with its colored, backlit squares and the obligatory disco ball.

  The ball was no longer spinning, at least half of the squares on the floor were dark, and no one was dancing.

  Rick’s Disco was just not a “happening” place.

  Other than the three young women who sat in the far corner booth, drinking tropical drinks from plastic pineapples adorned with paper umbrellas, the joint was dead.

  “Who’re you after tonight?” Rick asked Dirk. “Or are you here to take Savannah for a few spins around the floor?”

  “I’m no John Travolta,” Dirk told him.

  “No,” Savannah added. “He’s more of a ballroom dancer…Viennese waltz, fox-trot, hot ’n’ heavy tangos. Stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, right.” Dirk grinned, but just a little. “She’s Ginger, and I’m Fred, and we’re looking for a Roxanne Rosen. Her roommate said she’d probably be here.”

  “Sure. Roxie comes in here every night to blow off steam with those gals over in the corner. She usually comes in about ten.”

  Savannah glanced at her watch. It was 9:45. They’d have to wait a few minutes, but then…five minutes of waiting anywhere for anything with Dirk was like serving hard time in the state pen.

  Dirk did some things well. Waiting wasn’t one of them.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. “I’ve got better things to do than hang around this lousy—”

  “No, you don’t,” Savannah said brightly as she dug a twenty dollar bill out of her purse. “We’ll keep our man Rick here company and have a couple of sodas while we hang.”

  Slapping the bill on the bar, she said, “Rick, darlin’, pour us a couple of colas, shove in your Saturday Night Fever CD, and play us some ‘Disco Inferno.’ This is the closest thing to a date I’ve had in weeks.”

  Roxanne Rosen didn’t show up at ten. And at 10:06, Dirk had enjoyed as much of the Bee Gees as
he could stand.

  “Those dudes sound like chicks,” he mumbled into his soda. “I like a man to sound like a man. Like Elvis or Johnny Cash.”

  “They’re both dead,” Savannah replied sadly.

  “But they both still sound great.”

  “True.”

  “If she doesn’t show up soon, we’re leaving,” he said, twisting on the bar stool and rubbing the small of his back. “I’d rather just sit in the Buick outside her house till she shows up. At least we’d have comfortable seats and good music.”

  “No,” Savannah said. “This place has a ladies’ room. I’ve peed in way too many bushes over the years just so that you could listen to ‘Hound Dog’ and ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ We’re waiting here.”

  He started to protest but shut up when the front door opened and a young woman with copious, long blonde hair walked in.

  She was wearing a snug-fitting, long-sleeved, black T-shirt and skin-tight jeans. And something about her extremely thin thighs rang a bell in Savannah’s memory.

  “Ah-ha,” she said to Dirk. “That’s gotta be our girl. She’s the one I saw leaving Wellman’s house today.”

  “The one he was arguing with?”

  “Yeap. The one who demanded money and then stormed out.”

  Dirk smiled a broad “gotcha” grin, set his glass down, and pushed it away from him.

  Farther down the bar, Rick gave them a knowing look and a nod toward the blonde.

  Savannah took the last drink from her glass, then got up with Dirk and walked over to the woman, who had joined the others in the corner booth.

  “Roxanne Rosen?” Dirk asked her.

  She looked up at him with eyes that were a strangely intense and unnatural shade of aqua, which Savannah figured had to be the result of contact lenses.

  She seemed to be having a problem focusing on Dirk. And even from several feet away, Savannah could smell the alcohol on her breath. She’d gotten a head start on the evening’s festivities.

  “We need to talk to you,” he said.

  “I’m busy,” she replied.

  “Get un-busy.” He took out his badge and passed it under her nose. “I’m a cop.”

  “Woo-hoo,” said one of the blonde’s girlfriends.

  “Boy, Roxie, you’re in trouble now!” said another.

  “Let’s go over there.” Dirk nodded toward some tables on the other side of the room.

  “You gonna arrest her?” Roxie’s buddy asked.

  “Maybe he’s going to cuff her,” one said, giggling.

  “And frisk her!”

  “Can we watch?”

  “Will you frisk me, too, Mr. Policeman?”

  Savannah walked beside Dirk as the three of them made their way across the half-lit floor with its stationary mirror ball.

  “You get the nicest invitations,” she said, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Yeah, just what I want…” he grumbled, “…frisking nitwit bimbos who reek of booze. Like I haven’t had way too much of that over the years.”

  Once they were settled around a table, Dirk caught Rick’s attention and motioned for him to lower the music volume a bit.

  “Good,” he said. “Now I can hear myself think.” He turned to Roxanne, who was giving him a suspicious and increasingly hostile look. “I have to ask you a few questions about the death of Maria Wellman.”

  Savannah watched her carefully, and she was pretty sure the woman turned a couple of shades whiter underneath her generously applied bronzer.

  Roxanne struggled for her next statement, her mental gymnastics showing on her face.

  Having interviewed countless individuals over the years—both guilty and innocent—Savannah could almost tell what the woman was thinking.

  Should I admit that I know Maria is dead, or pretend to be shocked?

  But, apparently, Roxie couldn’t decide, because she just sat there with a blank look on her face and said nothing.

  Savannah wasn’t inclined to let her get away with it.

  “You do know that your boss’s wife is dead, right?” she asked her.

  “Uh…” Her eyes cut back and forth between Savannah and Dirk. “…Yeah. I guess so.”

  “I didn’t ask you if it’s going to rain two months from today,” Savannah said, her tone only a little softer than her words. “This is something you’d be pretty darned sure about. People remember it when they hear that somebody they know just fell off a cliff and died.”

  “Yeah, okay. I know it.” Roxanne ran her fingers through her carefully mussed locks. “But I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Nobody said you did,” Dirk told her. “But now that you’re getting all hinky on us here, I’m starting to wonder.”

  “Who told you she was dead?” Savannah asked.

  “Um-m-m…well…”

  “That’s another one of those answers that shouldn’t require a lot of thought.” Savannah leaned across the table and gave the blonde her most intimidating interrogation stare—the one she usually used for drive-by-shooting, pit bull–fighting, hardcore gang-bangers. “Listen to me,” she said. “A woman is dead, probably murdered. And you could get yourself in a helluva lot of trouble in a heartbeat if you hold anything back.”

  “Yeah,” Dirk added. “I could take you in right now for obstruction of justice if you don’t start talking.”

  This time, when Roxanne ran her fingers through her hair, her fingers were trembling. “Uh…can I have a lawyer?”

  “Do you need a lawyer?” Savannah asked. “Sergeant Coulter’s just asking you some simple questions here. You want legal representation for that?”

  Roxie shrugged. “No, I don’t guess so.” She paused, then said, “Dr. Wellman told me.”

  “When?” Dirk wanted to know.

  “Today. I stopped by there…on an errand. But he was all upset, and he told me she was dead.”

  “What were his exact words when he said it?” Savannah asked.

  “I think he said, ‘Maria’s dead. A jogger found her down on the beach. I can’t mess with you right now.’”

  “Mess with you?” Savannah said. “What did he mean by that? What were you there for?”

  Again, Roxanne hesitated, considering her answer carefully. Finally, she said, “I was there to pick up something.”

  “What?” Dirk asked.

  “Some money that they owe me.”

  “For what?” Savannah said.

  “My paycheck. They owe me one.”

  Savannah thought about the conversation they had overheard earlier at the house. It made sense, but still, it seemed like a big hullabaloo to be making over one late paycheck.

  “Were they in the habit of withholding your wages?” she asked.

  “No. But I need it to pay my rent and stuff.”

  “Any particular reason why they were late with this one?”

  Again, the suspicious pause. “Um…not really.”

  “Okay.” Savannah turned to Dirk. “This is like pulling hen’s teeth here. Why don’t you have a go at it?”

  He took over. “I actually came here to ask you about Terry Somers.”

  A look of fear washed over Roxanne. “Oh, I don’t like him. He’s a bad guy, for sure…but please don’t tell him I said that. He’s not somebody I want for an enemy, if you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean.” Dirk leaned back in his chair. “Tell me.”

  “He’s, like, in the mob or something. He’s big and mean-looking, and I’m pretty sure I saw a gun stuck in the back of his pants one day in the waiting room when he leaned over to get a new magazine.”

  “We hear,” Dirk said, “that there’s bad blood between him and your boss.”

  “Oh, big time. He hates Dr. Wellman! Right there in the office he threatened to kill him!”

  “Because…?”

  “Because the doctor told him he could cure his gambling problem, but when it didn’t work—like, duh, he really thought
it would?—he blamed Dr. Wellman for it.”

  “Do you think Terry Somers would hurt Mrs. Wellman?” Savannah said.

  “I don’t know if he even knew her…had ever met her. But if he came out to the house to hurt the doctor, and he found her there alone, and she did her usual routine on him, he might have. Anybody might have.”

  “Her usual routine?” Dirk asked.

  “Yeah, you know, the raving lunatic routine.”

  Savannah and Dirk both stared at her for several seconds; then Savannah said, “Maria Wellman was a raving lunatic?”

  “Oh,” Roxanne nodded vigorously, “everybody who knew Maria knew that. It’s not like it was a secret. That gal was a maniac bitch on wheels. It’s really no wonder somebody killed her.”

  Savannah had already unfastened the retention snap on her holster and had her hand on her Beretta’s grip before Dirk even knocked on Terry Somers’s front door.

  Anyone who had been described as big, mean, armed, and as having at least an association with organized crime, wasn’t somebody who you wanted to mess with. And knocking on their door at 11:30 at night, when they had recently been assaulted by mob debt collectors—some people might construe that as being “messed with.”

  Feeling Dirk tense beside her, she knew he was thinking the same thing.

  When Somers didn’t answer, she said, “Maybe we should’ve waited till morning when he’d be less irritable.”

  “I’m more irritable in the morning.”

  “That’s true.”

  “And he’s awake. I can hear the TV.”

  “Me, too.” She listened more closely and heard a familiar theme song. “Hey,” she said, “he’s watching Cops. Good one.”

  “Yeah. Really. You’d be surprised how many times—”

  The front door opened about a foot, and Savannah’s hand tightened around her gun.

  But the guy on the other side of the screened door peeking through the narrow opening didn’t look all that menacing. He was several inches shorter than Savannah and would have to run around in a rainstorm to get wet.

  And, even though the door was less than half open, she could see that his right leg was in a cast, and he was holding a fluffy, orange tabby cat in his arms.