A Body To Die For Read online

  Savannah, Tammy and the photographer gave him weird looks.

  He shrugged. “Well, you know what I mean. Compared to some we’ve found.”

  Savannah shuddered to think of some they’d found.

  Nature wasn’t particularly kind or pretty in the way she took care of business when life had ended. But she was efficient.

  “You about done there?” Dirk asked the photographer. “I’d like to get this body out of here before we freeze our asses off in this cold water…if you don’t mind.”

  The tech turned to Savannah. “Your ass frozen?”

  “Nope,” she said, “mine’s toasty warm, but I can’t feel anything below my knees.”

  Dirk pointed straight up. “And that helicopter is getting some pretty ugly shots of their own that are sure to show up on the LA evening news.”

  “I’m done. He’s all yours.” The tech stuck her camera in her smock pocket and gave Dirk a sarcastic grin. “Thank you for your patience. It’s always a joy working with you.”

  Dirk mumbled something under his breath that only Savannah, who was standing next to him, could hear. It sounded something like, “Yeah…mumble, mumble…and your little dog, Toto, too.”

  “What did he say?” Tammy asked her.

  Savannah shook her head and cleared her throat. “Nothing. He just went somewhere over a rainbow there for a moment.”

  Louder, to Dirk, she said, “Don’t you think we’d better wait for Dr. Liu to get here? She gets mighty perturbed when you go messing with her bodies before she has a chance to even look them over.”

  “No. I ain’t waitin’ for no coroner. I’m getting this guy outta here as quick as I can,” Dirk said, glancing up at the chopper overhead. It had dropped even lower, and the cameraman was practically hanging out the window by his toes to get a better shot. “If those dudes up there know who this is…with his wife being a celebrity and all…this is probably being broadcast live, coast-to-coast, right now.”

  One of the firemen looked up, ran his fingers through his hair, and smiled broadly for the camera.

  “I see your point,” Savannah said.

  The male CSU tech was leaning over the body, examining Jardin’s scalp.

  “Here’s the entrance wound,” he said, brushing the hair away from an area on the back of the head. “About where you’d figure it to be, considering the spatter in the car.”

  “Yeah, well, get him bundled up and out of here and you can look all you want later,” Dirk told them.

  As they worked to free Jardin’s torn polo shirt from the jagged limb it was caught on, Savannah noticed a distinctly pink area on his back.

  “Look at that,” Tammy said. “Isn’t that lividity?”

  Savannah nodded. Yes, it was, indeed, an area of congested blood that had settled beneath the skin soon after death. Within six hours or so after he had died, Jardin had been lying on his back.

  But even Tammy knew the color was wrong.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be bluish purple, like a bruise?”

  “It usually is.”

  “Isn’t pink supposed to indicate carbon monoxide poisoning?”

  Savannah couldn’t help noticing the self-satisfied smirk on Tammy’s face. The kid had learned a lot about death, dying, and mayhem during her association with the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency. But nothing took the place of experience. Years of it.

  “It isn’t red enough,” Savannah said.

  “What?” Tammy looked like somebody had popped her enormous bubble gum bubble. “What do you mean?”

  “Victims of CO poisoning aren’t always red. The two I saw who were…they were a brighter pink than that. I haven’t seen anything like this before.”

  Dirk and the two firemen managed to work the polo shirt free, and they flipped the body over.

  Savannah prepared herself for the horror of a vicious exit wound. But, surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as she’d seen. Certainly, the hole in his forehead—just to the left of center—was larger than the small, neat entrance wound to the back of his head, but minimal damage had been done to Bill Jardin’s face.

  Clarissa would, no doubt, be able to identify his body.

  Savannah winced at the thought, feeling a surge of pity for the woman. Even nasty, condescending, rude people should be spared having to identify one of their loved ones in a city morgue. It was one of those soul-scarring agonies that was difficult even to witness, let alone experience.

  Leaning over the body, Dirk studied the face, then turned to Savannah. “That wound looks really clean, for an exit,” he said. “But then, I guess the river washed it clean.”

  “Yes, it looks very clean,” she said. “I have serious doubts about how much evidence you’re going to get off it.”

  “That’s usually the point of a river dumping. Makes me think that whoever did this knew what they were doing.”

  He reached into the right front pocket of the body’s jeans and pulled out a thin black leather wallet. As he removed a California driver’s license and looked at it, he nodded. “Yeap. It’s Jardin all right.”

  Glancing up at the hovering chopper and over at the ever-growing crowd on the road, Dirk tucked the wallet back into Jardin’s jeans pocket and motioned to the firemen. “Let’s get him in that basket—quick as we can.”

  Savannah looked up at the helicopter that was now nearly on top of them. The downdraft from its rotating blades was kicking up foam in the water around them. The cameraman was leaning even farther out the window than before.

  “You’d better hurry,” she told them. “Before that guy up there, Mr. Eye in the Sky, winds up down here in the river next to Bill, and you’ve got two bodies to transport.”

  Dirk chuckled. It was the first time Savannah had seen him laugh since he had received the call about a missing person. “Yeah,” he said, “live feed of a camera falling out of a helicopter with the reporter still attached. That’d be real ‘film at eleven’ footage, huh?”

  By the time the retrieval team had recovered Bill Jardin’s remains and transported the body from the river, up the embankment, and over the guardrail, they were all pretty breathless. Savannah and Dirk were particularly tired, as they had been awake over twenty-four hours.

  Funny, she thought, how missing a night’s sleep is no big deal for a twenty-year-old, but once you pass forty, it ruins your year.

  And so could climbing over a guardrail, snagging your already-soggy pants on a rusty screw, looking up, and seeing a reporter sticking a microphone in your face.

  “Is that the body of Bill Jardin, the exercise diva’s husband?” asked a perfectly coiffed, overly made-up brunette with a dazzling bleached smile.

  “No comment.”

  Savannah tried to sidestep her, but hair, makeup, and teeth brightening weren’t the reporter’s only areas of expertise. She was pretty light on her feet, too.

  Again, Savannah had a microphone practically up her left nostril.

  “We’ve received a report,” the brunette continued, “that William Jardin has gone missing and the body you’ve recovered from the river just now is his. Can you please confirm this?”

  Savannah glanced over at the litter basket, which was being loaded into the back of a large, white van with the county coroner’s logo on the side. She also saw a beautiful, tall, Asian woman, wearing a white smock, a miniskirt, and four-inch-high stilettos, getting out of a white station wagon with the same logo on its door.

  The fur was about to fly, fast and furious, and Savannah wasn’t going to stand here chatting with a newscaster while it happened.

  Besides, she could see at least five other reporters heading their way, like a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. The last thing she wanted was to get swamped and have to fight them off with a flyswatter.

  That always looked bad on camera.

  “I’m sure the police will release a statement,” she told the woman, “once the next of kin is notified. Until then, ‘No comment.’”

  When the reporte
r turned from Savannah to Tammy, pushing her microphone under her nose, Savannah brushed it aside and grabbed Tammy by the arm. “She’s not going to have any comment, either,” Savannah said as she propelled Tammy away from the crowd and toward the white van.

  “Oh, wow!” Tammy said when she saw the station wagon. “Dr. Liu is here. Dirko’s gonna be in trouble.”

  “Yeah, and we don’t want to miss a second of it.”

  And by the time they got to the van, the hostilities had already begun.

  In her four-inch heels, Dr. Liu was eye to eye with Dirk, her finger in his face. “How many times do I have to tell you that the body is mine, mine! It’s mine, damn it, Coulter! You are not to move it, touch it, or even breathe on it until I examine it and release it!”

  Savannah cringed and felt a little sorry for Dirk. She knew he was secretly scared to death of Dr. Jennifer Liu.

  Everybody was.

  The county’s first female chief coroner, Dr. Liu had “aggression” down pat. There was just something strangely intimidating about a woman who spent most of her waking hours dissecting dead bodies while wearing a black leather miniskirt and stilettos.

  But Dirk was exhausted, and that brought out the rottweiler in him. He leaned forward and shouted back, “That’s enough! Back off, woman!”

  “Whoa,” Tammy whispered. “He’s dead now!”

  Savannah held her breath.

  So did Dr. Liu. She just stood there, staring at Dirk, breathing hard and seething.

  “Before you go jumpin’ headfirst down my throat, screaming at me like that,” he continued, “you oughta find out what’s going on here. The body was out there, facedown, in the middle of that river. You’ve got a news chopper in the sky and an army of reporters blocking the road. What were you going to do…wade out there in your short skirt and your fancy hooker shoes, cut him open, and shove a temperature probe into his liver with everybody looking on?”

  Dr. Liu lowered her voice, but her eyes flashed fire when she said, “Watch your tone with me, Coulter.”

  “Then you watch yours with me,” he told her. “I’ve been up all friggen night and all I’ve had is one cup of coffee and an apple fritter to keep me going. I’m tired, and I’ve got a full day ahead of me, which includes having to…” he looked around and whispered, “…go tell Clarissa Jardin that somebody blew her husband’s brains out. So, cut me a little slack here, would ya, Doc?”

  Savannah watched, amazed, as the anger faded from the coroner’s face. She said nothing for what seemed like a very long time, then she gave him something like an understanding semi-smile. “Go do your notification, Detective,” she said softly, “and get yourself a decent breakfast. Then drop by the morgue and maybe I’ll have something for you by then.”

  Dirk nodded. “Thank you, Dr. Jen. I appreciate it.”

  They watched as she spoke briefly to the CSU techs, then walked back to the station wagon and got inside, flashing an impressive length of leg as she did so.

  The reporters on the scene were quick to get it all on camera…every sensuous move, every inch of well-rounded calf and thigh.

  Savannah grinned. Yes, Dr. Liu always provided good film footage.

  Its back doors closed, its grim cargo secured, the van left at the same time as the station wagon. Several of the reporters followed close behind.

  Something…someone…caught Savannah’s eye.

  A young red-haired woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, petite and attractive, was standing in the midst of the reporters, but she didn’t have a camera or a microphone in her hand, and she appeared quite distraught. Crying, she was trying to talk to first one person, then another, reporters, police officers, firemen, and even the CSU techs. And one by one, they dismissed her.

  She appeared to be growing more frantic by the moment.

  Dirk sidled up to Savannah. “You wanna go with me?” he asked.

  “For breakfast?” she replied, keeping her eyes on the redhead.

  “Yeah, and for…you know…”

  “The notification?” Savannah didn’t even have to ask. Dirk hated notifying victims’ families more than anything in the world—especially when the next of kin was a female. Upset women were something Dirk Coulter just couldn’t handle.

  Men, he didn’t mind upsetting. In fact, that was his favorite pastime. Cutting another guy off in traffic worked like a tonic for all that ailed him.

  But crying women—that was a different story.

  “Yeah, the notification,” he said.

  “Gee,” Tammy mumbled under her breath, “lucky Savannah.”

  “Oh, shut up, kid,” Dirk snapped.

  “Don’t tell her to shut up,” Savannah leaned to the left, to see around Tammy. She was watching the redhead go up to yet another fireman, tug on his coat, and try to talk to him. He, too, ignored her.

  “Come on,” Dirk said. “Please? I’ll buy breakfast.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Savannah replied, barely hearing him as she watched the increasingly frantic woman.

  “What do you want me to do?” Tammy asked. “Am I just supposed to go home and twiddle my thumbs while you two do all the investigating?”

  Savannah had just decided to go grab the redhead and find out what was going on with her, when the young woman turned around abruptly and headed through the crowd, back to where a bunch of vehicles were parked along the roadside.

  “Follow her,” she told Tammy. “That’s what you can do. Follow that redhead and get her license plate number. And when you get back home, look her up.”

  Instantly, Tammy took off running—still barefoot, her espadrilles hanging around her neck, flopping all the way.

  Dirk shook his head. “I wish I could get help like that. You tell her to do something, she’s on it. No lip, no hemming and hawing, no lame excuses. She just friggen does it.”

  Savannah slapped him on the back as they strolled through the crowd, back toward the Buick. “It’s called ‘leadership quality,’ buddy boy,” she told him. “You have to learn how to inspire the masses.”

  “I’ll inspire the masses,” he said with a sniff. “A swift kick to the masses’ asses, that gets ’em movin’.”

  “Oh, yeah. A boot to the butt. That’s how to win friends and influence people.”

  “Works for me.”

  She sighed and shook her head.

  Why did she even bother?

  Chapter 6

  “It seems like a week ago that we were here,” Dirk told Savannah as they walked through the courtyard of Rancho Rodriguez.

  “No kidding,” she replied. “Time drags when you’re working all night instead of snoozing, like nature intended. But it’s nothing that a big ol’ breakfast and a pot of strong coffee won’t fix.”

  He brightened instantly. “You’re gonna cook me breakfast when we leave here? Will you make grits and some of those homemade biscuits, too? Your grandma’s peach preserves are great with those—”

  “Eh, get over yourself,” she told him. “What do you think this is, your birthday? I was up all night, too, you know. And I’m not even getting paid for it.”

  He grumbled, “Sorry,” and she got the distinct impression that he was expressing sorrow over the loss of biscuits and grits, not apologizing.

  As they approached Clarissa Jardin’s door, he said, “Now remember. You promised to be good in here.”

  “Oh, come on.” She punched the doorbell. “I told you on the way over here that I felt bad about last time. Do you really think I’m going to beat up on a woman during a notification?”

  “Yeah, well…I think this sort of woman brings out the worst in you.”

  She nodded solemnly. “That’s true. That’s absolutely true.”

  The door opened and, again, they were greeted by the maid. Her manner was warm enough when she invited them inside, but she looked tired, maybe a bit worried.

  It occurred to Savannah that Maria might be worth interviewing, if she could get some time alone with her, away from her mis
tress.

  “I will tell Señora Jardin you are here,” she said before disappearing through a door to the right.

  Savannah looked around the room with its beautiful antiques and thought how much more cheerful the house appeared with golden morning sunbeams streaming through the windows. Though it had been lovely at night, too, the daylight seemed to dispel the ghosts of inhabitants past that she had imagined by the light of the moon.

  On a table beside the sofa, Savannah noticed a grouping of photographs in gilded frames. She walked over to the table and picked up a picture of Clarissa and the man they had seen only a short time before, facedown in the river. It was their wedding picture, and even though Savannah had no affection for Clarissa, she had to admit that the woman had been a gorgeous bride. And Bill Jardin had been a handsome man, especially with the light of happiness in his eyes. They had made a stunning couple.

  When Savannah recalled the unkind things Clarissa had said about her husband only hours before, she wondered, as she often did, how a once-loving relationship could disintegrate and sink so deeply into a well of bitterness.

  “He sure looked better in that picture,” Dirk whispered, leaning over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, no kidding. It’s pretty grim, what a bullet to the head and getting dumped in a river can do to—”

  She swallowed her words and quickly replaced the photo as Clarissa entered the room. Turning to greet the woman, she couldn’t help noticing that Clarissa looked surprisingly fresh, even chipper, in her bright yellow terry-cloth workout suit. Even her hair and makeup were freshly done.

  Well, at least somebody slept last night, Savannah couldn’t help thinking. She was sure that her own lipstick and mascara were long gone and, since her dark curls had a mind of their own even on a “good hair day,” she couldn’t imagine how bad it looked now.

  But Clarissa let her know how bad.

  With a look that all women know and despise, she quickly scanned Savannah from head to toe, smirked ever so slightly, lifted her nose a notch, and then glanced away.

  At that moment, Savannah stopped fighting the thought that had been running through her head since she had left this place last night.