A Body To Die For Read online

  I hope it’s her, she thought. I hope to God it’s her, and we get to bust her ass for first-degree murder or…

  Now, Savannah, girl, don’t go wishin’ evil on another. It ain’t the Christian thing to do, a sweeter, kinder voice whispered in the back of her mind, a voice that sounded a lot like her grandmother’s. Not even if they got it comin’ to ’em. ’Cause if you do, that curse’ll come back ’round and bite you on the rear end ever’ dadgum time.

  Granny Reid was both kind and practical. Bless her heart.

  “Mrs. Jardin, we need to speak to you about your husband,” Dirk said.

  “Yes, I figured,” Clarissa replied. “More questions, I guess. But first, come in here. I want to show you both something.”

  She turned around and walked out of the living room. When they followed, they found themselves in a quaint kitchen. The lemon yellow and cobalt blue tiles glowed in the morning sunlight, and decorative bunches of red chili peppers and dried herbs hung from the beamed ceiling, scenting the air with the aromas of Southwest cooking.

  A heavy, rough-hewn table was covered with stacks of T-shirts, sweatshirts, and sports bottles. All had the House of Pain and Gain logo on it, Clarissa’s curvy silhouette with the slogan, “No Pain = No Gain” below.

  “This is our new line,” Clarissa said proudly, indicating the piles of merchandise with a game show hostess’ wave. “Don’t you love it?”

  They were camouflage fabric with a logo that reminded Savannah of semi-truck drivers’ obnoxious mud-flaps. What’s to like? she thought.

  “Yeah, nice,” was Dirk’s subdued review.

  “Here, have one—on the house.” Clarissa shoved a T-shirt at him. She turned to Savannah. “And for you…” She held out a woman’s shirt with spaghetti straps. Again, she scanned Savannah’s ample figure, top to bottom. With a nasty little, fake-apologetic chuckle, she said, “Oh, sorry. That won’t do for you at all.”

  She searched the stack on the table, found what she was looking for, and held it out to Savannah. “Here you go. A man’s extra large. Do you think that would be big enough for you?”

  Instantly, Dirk stepped between the two women. He moved so quickly that Savannah barely had time to form the mental image of leading Clarissa Jardin up the steps to the guillotine, fastening her head in the yoke, and releasing the blade.

  “Really, Mrs. Jardin,” he said, sounding exasperated. “We don’t have time for this crap.”

  “What? What crap?” Clarissa did her best to appear confused.

  “You know exactly what I mean,” he snapped. “You should have other things on your mind right now than insulting my partner. You reported your husband missing. Has it even occurred to you that we might be here because there’s been a new development in his case?”

  “A new development?” Abruptly, she sank down onto one of the chairs at the table. “No. Maria said you were here to ask me more questions.”

  Before either Savannah or Dirk could answer, a door that led from the kitchen to the courtyard opened and a tall, thin, dark-haired man rushed in.

  “Clarissa, are you all right? he said, hurrying to her side. He dropped onto his knees next to her chair and grabbed her hands. “I just heard, and I came right over. I’m so, so sorry!”

  “What? What are you sorry about?” She snatched her hands out of his. “Theo, what did you hear?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Dirk said in an uncharacteristically soft tone of voice. “I’m Detective Dirk Coulter, from the SCPD. My partner and me, we just got here a few minutes ago. We came to talk to Mrs. Jardin about…her husband,” he added with emphasis.

  Fortunately, the guy on his knees understood Dirk’s implication. He leaped to his feet, his fair complexion turning a pronounced shade of red.

  “Oh, uh…right. I’m sorry,” he said. “I was watching TV and they came on with this, well…I…”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Clarissa said, standing up. “Somebody had better tell me right now!”

  Savannah couldn’t help feeling a rush of sympathy for the woman. Clarissa’s cockiness had disappeared, and she looked genuinely frightened. And although Savannah had been spared the personal experience of being notified of a loved one’s homicide, she believed it had to be the worst moment in someone’s lifetime.

  If, indeed, Clarissa Jardin was innocent and ignorant of her husband’s murder, her nightmare was just beginning.

  Savannah stepped forward and placed her hand on Clarissa’s shoulder. “Please, Mrs. Jardin, sit down,” she told her. When Clarissa resisted, Savannah repeated, “Please,” and gently nudged her toward the chair.

  Once she was seated, Savannah sat on a chair next to her and turned to face her. “Clarissa,” she said, “there’s just no easy way to tell you this.”

  Clarissa began to shake her head. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me. Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear that he’s…”

  “His car was found before dawn, abandoned on the side of the road,” Savannah told her.

  Ever so slightly, Clarissa brightened. “His car? Oh. It was just his car that you found?”

  “There was evidence inside the car…” Savannah continued. “…evidence that leads us to believe that your husband was the victim of foul play.”

  “Foul play? Victim? What do you mean ‘he was?’”

  “The area around his car was searched. And at daybreak, we found his body—”

  “His body?” Clarissa gasped, then started to cry. “His body? Are you telling me Bill is gone? He’s dead?”

  Savannah nodded. “We’re pretty sure. He still had his identification on him. He was dressed the way you said he was, and…well…we saw your pictures there in the living room.”

  Dirk cleared his throat. “Yes, ma’am, it’s him. I mean, you’ll have to identify his bo…I mean…the remains, but we’re sure.”

  “No, I can’t!” Clarissa buried her head on her arms on the table and began to sob into her stacks of T-shirts. “I can’t look at him! I don’t want to remember him that way!”

  “I’ll do it,” the dark-haired man said. “Don’t worry, Clarissa. I’ll take care of that. And everything else. Don’t you worry about anything.”

  “And just who are you?” Dirk asked him, sounding a bit irritated.

  “I’m Theodore Gibby, a close friend of the family,” he snapped back.

  “He’s my manager,” Clarissa said, shooting Theodore a look that Savannah would not have classified as warm or even particularly friendly.

  Dirk looked uneasy as he weighed his decision. “Well,” he said, “the identification is usually done by a family member.”

  But Clarissa had begun to cry into her T-shirts again.

  Dirk turned to Savannah, a perfectly miserable look on his face. She knew he would rather be wrestling a naked, dirty, sweaty perp than dealing with a weeping female.

  Savannah rose to the occasion, thinking: Some things never change.

  She said to Theodore, “How well did you know Mr. Jardin?”

  “Very well,” was his reply. “He’s my best friend. We’ve played golf together at least once a week for years. That’s how I met Clarissa.”

  He reached down and patted her on the back.

  She shrugged his hand away. Rising from her chair, she wiped her hands across her eyes. “I’m feeling sick. I’m going to go lie down for a while,” she said. “And as far as the identification…” She waved a hand in Theodore’s direction. “…Theo, you take care of it. You go manage. God knows, that’s what you do best.”

  Turning abruptly, she left the room, disappearing through the door that led to the living room. Apparently, the bedrooms were on the other end of the house.

  Dirk turned to Theodore Gibby. “Is there someone else you can think of who would qualify as next of kin to this guy? No offense, but I’d rather have a family member.”

  “Not that I can think of,” Theodore told him. “They don’t have any relatives living around here that I k
now of.”

  “Then it looks like you’re it, buddy,” Dirk said. “Do you know where the county morgue is?”

  Theodore nodded. “A block from the police station, by the pier. Shall I meet you there?”

  “No, you go on ahead. I’ve got another stop to make first. I’ll call and let ’em know you’re on your way.”

  Savannah nodded toward the door. “Is she going to be okay?” she asked Theodore.

  “Clarissa? Sure,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about her. She’s a survivor, that one—lands on her feet every time.”

  “Somehow I knew that,” Savannah replied.

  “Let’s go,” Dirk told her. “We’ve gotta get across town and do that interview right away.” He glanced at his watch, shook his head, and sighed. “We’re way late as it is.”

  Theodore Gibby walked out with them, through the courtyard and to his own car, which was parked beside the Buick.

  As they watched him drive away in his black Porsche, Dirk flipped open his cell phone and called the county morgue. “Yeah, Coulter here. You’ve got a guy named Theodore Gibby on his way there to identify Jardin.” He listened for a moment, then shook his head. “No. You don’t have to clean him up that much. This guy’s a golfing buddy. The wife wouldn’t come.”

  Having said good-bye, he shoved the phone into his pocket and turned to Savannah. “There,” he said. “That’s done.”

  She grinned. “So, exactly who do you reckon you’ll be interviewing…way across town? A waffle? A stack of pancakes? Or a Manly Man’s breakfast at Penny’s Café?”

  He flexed a biceps for her. “I’m feeling particularly masculine today. A Manly Man’s Big Meat Combo Breakfast it is.”

  Once they were in the car and he had the engine started, she saw him pass his hand across his eyes and shake his head, trying to stay alert.

  Feeling masculine, my butt, she thought. She could feel his fatigue.

  “We’re getting too old for these all-nighters,” she said.

  “Speak for yourself,” he replied. “I was too old for this crap when I was twenty-five. Old’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

  An enormous breakfast of sausages, bacon, buttermilk pancakes, and sunny-side-up eggs improved Dirk’s mood a smidgen, but it put a big smile on Savannah’s—mostly because he had paid the tab. By the time they had walked out of Penny’s Café with nearly a pot of Pen’s famous, black-as-Mississippi-mud coffee surging through their bloodstreams, they were ready to take on the world, slay fire-breathing dragons, deliver marauding miscreants into the hands of Lady Justice.

  Or at least walk, talk, and keep their eyes open for a few more hours.

  “Amazing what six thousand calories can do to perk up a body’s system,” Savannah said as they walked through the city parking lot behind Penny’s to the Buick.

  Pausing a moment beside the car as Dirk fiddled with his CDs in the trunk, she pointed her face to the sun, closed her eyes, and breathed in the delicious, distinctive smell of San Carmelita. Moments like these were why she could never move back to Georgia. Just the smell alone was enough to bond her to this place forever—an intoxicating mixture of ocean breeze, sage from the foothills, eucalyptus and citrus from the groves, mixed with the perfume of flowers that bloomed year-round in the gentle Southern California climate.

  She could hear the cawing of the gulls, the rustle of fronds in the palm trees that lined Main Street, the sound of children playing in the nearby city park. Ah, life was good. At the very least, it was well worth living.

  But then her purse began to play a frenetic tune that gave her a mental image of a tiny cartoon mouse in an enormous sombrero, being chased by a hungry cat.

  It also reminded her of her overly energetic friend, Tammy, which is why she had chosen that tune for Tammy’s cell phone.

  “Hello, Tamitha, my dear,” she said as she got into the car and put on her seatbelt. “What’s shakin’, sugar?”

  Tammy was excited, nearly bursting out of her skin. But for Tammy, that was status quo. “You’re not going to believe this!” she said. “I mean, seriously, this is wild!”

  Savannah looked over at Dirk, who was now sitting beside her in the driver’s seat. He popped out the Elvis CD and put in his latest choice. A moment later, Charlie Daniels was “sawing on a fiddle and playing it hot,” while serenading them about a boy named Johnny and his competition with the Devil.

  He gave her a big smile, and she knew he was trying to score points with her. It was the “Georgia” reference in the song that was supposed to do the trick. And, since she was a fan of Charlie’s, it usually did.

  Today, she knew it was a matter of guilt. He felt bad for keeping her up all night with no monetary compensation.

  He was also worried that, down the road, he might have to compensate her with more than a breakfast at Penny’s.

  Dirk was just covering his butt, which made Charlie’s fiddle playing a little less sweet.

  “What’s wild?” she asked Tammy. “Did they get your favorite flavor of yogurt in at the health food store?”

  “No, I’m still waiting for that,” was the matter-of-fact reply.

  “Did you get a lead on that gal at the river?”

  “No, I’m still working on that. But we got a call a few minutes ago, here at the office.”

  Savannah smiled, loving Tammy and her ability to pretend that the cramped corner of Savannah’s living room constituted a real honest-to-goodness office. “Really? And who was it?”

  “Ruby Jardin!”

  “Ruby Jardin?” Savannah did a quick mental computer search with no results. “Who the heck is Ruby Jardin?” she asked, giving Dirk a questioning look.

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  Tammy waited a moment for theatrical effect, then said, “Bill Jardin’s mother!”

  “Get outta here! Bill Jardin’s mother?” Savannah repeated for Dirk’s benefit. “Why would she be calling me?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! You and Dirk and Clarissa and Bill have been all over the TV! They showed the footage of you guys taking his body out of the river. And then they reported that we arrested a pervert in one of her gyms, and they’ve been speculating that he could be connected somehow, because the guy we busted looks like maybe he’s part of the mob, and—”

  “Whoa! Hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute. Where did they come up with that crap? He’s a stupid kid with lots of muscles and an Italian last name. That doesn’t make him mobbed up.”

  “Who’s mobbed up?” Dirk wanted to know.

  “Nobody. Tammy’s hallucinating.”

  “I am not. That’s what they said on TV.”

  “Which station?”

  Tammy told her.

  “Oh, please,” Savannah said with a snort. “Those people can’t get yesterday’s weather right. Anyway, what does that have to do with Bill Jardin’s mother calling me?”

  “She was on TV. I saw her. She was saying that Clarissa either killed her son or had somebody do it, and that she’s going to hire a private detective to prove it. And then, it wasn’t ten minutes later that the office phone rang, and it was her! She wants to hire us to solve the case! She wants to give you money and everything.”

  “She wants to pay me for what I’m already doing for free?” Savannah chuckled. “Sounds like a plan. When am I supposed to meet with her?”

  “She was in St. Louis when she called. But she was getting on the first plane to Los Angeles. She said she wants to see you as soon as possible. She’ll call you the minute she gets in town.”

  Savannah did a bit of time travel math and for half a second she thought, She’ll probably call two seconds after I lay my head on a pillow to grab a few minutes’ sleep. Who needs the aggravation?

  Then she remembered the stack of overdue bills in her desk and quickly discarded the thought. She needed the aggravation. A job was a job.

  As Granny often said, “Make hay while the sun shines.”

  If the sun wanted to shine
on her in the form of a woman named Ruby Jardin—especially if that woman was Clarissa’s bitter mother-in-law—Savannah was going to let the sun shine in and face it with a grin.

  She thanked Tammy and said good-bye.

  Rolling down the car window, she breathed in some more of that unique and wonderful California seaside air. Closing her eyes she said, “So, good buddy, I’ve got a gig. Somebody’s offered me money to prove that Clarissa Jardin is guilty of murder. Sweet, huh?”

  Dirk laughed as Charlie played away and the Georgia boy, Johnny, won a golden fiddle off the Devil. “That’s a real bite in the ass for you,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah. Awful. Plum awful. I can hardly stand it.”

  “Where you wanna go first? The morgue or the lab?”

  Savannah mulled it over for a few moments, then said, “If we go to the morgue without Dr. Liu calling us first to tell us she’s done, she’ll be madder than a wet hornet. And if we go to the lab and bug them while they’re processing the car, Eileen’s going to get pissed and throw us out.”

  He nodded. “True. Very true. So…?”

  “I guess it boils down to a question of who you’re the most afraid of—Dr. Liu or Eileen Bradley.”

  “Eileen’s bigger,” he said.

  “Dr. Liu has scalpels and stiletto heels.”

  “And a nasty temper.”

  Savannah shuddered. “And she can remove your liver with one clean swipe.”

  He nodded somberly, pulled the car out of the lot and headed north. “O-o-kay…the crime lab it is.”

  Chapter 7

  “Industrial park, my ass,” Dirk said as they drove along row after row of windowless, cement-block buildings with large, sliding cargo doors. “Where’s the park supposed to be? I don’t see no swing sets, no baseball diamond, no slides for the kiddies. And not a blade of grass in sight.”

  Usually, Savannah felt it was her God-ordained obligation to counter the negative statements that Dirk sent out into the universe with her own Pollyanna-style propaganda. But when it came to this area of town, she totally agreed with him.