Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs

by Charles Dougherty

  "Yeah, he is," Lizzie agreed, and told Dave how she came to have Donald washing her van. They both chuckled over that, and Dave let himself out as Lizzie loaded up her van for the morning's tour.

  Connie had made peace with Rick readily enough, but she still wished there were some way to undo the accident. She knew they had not meant to hit the girl, but she was devastated that she had been part of causing the girl's death. She didn’t think she and Rick were bad people. Their willingness to bend the rules to satisfy their greed made them a little different from most folks, but that difference didn’t extend to a lack of regard for human life, at least for Connie. She was sure Rick felt the same overwhelming sense of remorse that she did. They needed to share the burden of this guilt, somehow. She was feeling sorry for Rick now. She had caused him to have to shoulder this alone, without her compassion. She thought he must have had a terrible day by himself yesterday.

  While Connie was feeling a little badly that she had abandoned Rick when he most needed her, he didn’t seem to think anything was wrong.

  "I was pretty worried when you didn't show up yesterday," Rick said.

  "I had a nasty hangover, and I kept flashing back to the accident. I just stayed home."

  "I looked the car over carefully. There's no sign of anything on the front end, but I'm going to keep it in the garage until this blows over, just in case. Look, I'm sorry for what happened to the girl, but nothing's going to bring her back, and if we're not careful, this could ruin everything for us."

  "Well, I guess you're right," Connie said with more certainty than she felt. "It's probably best just to let it go."

  "We've got a new patient, Mary Lou Willoughby, coming in a week or so, soon as we line up the next group," he told her, hoping to change the subject. Rick omitted the details of Mary Lou’s pre-admission physical, although talking about her made him remember his encounter with her last night at the dinner. The woman was carnivorous. If Sarah hadn’t stayed by his side all night, he knew he would have been led astray, not to mention ending up too frazzled to come to work today.

  He was a little worried about how to deal with the loopy former cheerleader in the confines of the clinic for her ten-day, inpatient treatment period. That could be challenging, at best, and it could be a disaster if his last two encounters with the woman were an indication. Recreational sex with a patient didn’t bother Rick, but he didn't think Mary Lou had any limits on her behavior. He realized that Connie had asked a question and was waiting for him to answer.

  "Sorry," he said, "Checked out; guess I’m not over the accident either. I seem to keep replaying it." As Rick congratulated himself on his quick thinking, Connie expressed genuine sympathy for him.

  "Aw, I understand. It’s probably going to take a while for it to fade. I just asked how bad a weight problem this Mary Lou person has."

  "It's all in her head. She's afraid she's going to get fat and lose her grip on her old man's purse strings. It's stressing her out. If her beautiful body goes bad on her, she has no fallback position. Wait ‘til you meet her -- you’ll understand then. If we can make a believer of her, the old bags from The Marshe Landes will line up outside our doors. She’s every one of 'em’s worst nightmare."

  Connie smiled at that notion as she departed. She went to her office to go through her in-basket, while there were no patients to see. She took care of most of the administrative work related to running the clinic. Rick handled the "medical" end of things and they had a bookkeeper who did the billing and collections. The bookkeeper had left a pro forma income statement for their first quarter of operation, together with a stack of bills for Connie’s approval.

  Connie was entertained by the idea that she, an honors graduate of the Curl-up and Dye Academy of Cosmetology, was the main person reviewing the financial statements for what promised to be a multimillion-dollar empire of diet clinics. The woman who had run Curl-up and Dye wouldn’t have believed it. Connie had been going to college at night before she left California, though, and she was about three-fourths of the way finished with a degree in accounting, so she did know her way around financial statements.

  She was pleased to see that Chromatic Nutrition, Inc. had grossed over $700,000 during their first quarter, and even more pleased to see that they had collected most of their bills within thirty days. Rich people paid faster than insurance companies did, Rick had maintained, and he was right.

  Their patients had so far not blinked at paying $15,000 for their initial ten-day stay at the clinic, and they were all opting for the $2,000 monthly maintenance plan. The maintenance plan had been Connie’s idea. Once they had a proven sucker, she reasoned, they should keep "helping." The $2,000 paid for four hours a month of telephone consultation and one overnight stay, if necessary, for "re-evaluation." Re-evaluation frequently resulted in the need for another inpatient period.

  Most of their patients were so insecure that they exceeded the 4 hours per month, and the hourly billing rate escalated to $1,000 per hour or fraction of an hour after the first four hours. Once these people were on the phone with the personal coach with whom they had bonded during their inpatient period, time seemed to lose its meaning for them, and the hourly billings had far outstripped Connie’s expectations. She made a note to spend some time with the folks who were personal coaches, helping them develop techniques to encourage calls from patients.

  Connie noticed that in spite of the solid revenue, the business had not made a profit in the first quarter. The patient margins were about what she and Rick had projected. Clearly, they needed more patients to turn a profit. They knew that. The doors had only been open for three months. They had expected that the business would take a year to break even, and had secured funding accordingly. Their revenues were substantially above budget, though, and Connie was surprised they had not been profitable, given the higher volume of business.

  She was alarmed at the rate at which they were spending money on facility maintenance. The building was only a few years old and seemed to be in good condition, but plumbing and air-conditioning repairs, landscaping, and janitorial service all appeared to be far above budgeted levels. She made another note, this one to talk with Jimmy Taglio, the building and grounds maintenance supervisor, and see what he thought. Maybe the expenses would taper off now that they were up and running. Jimmy should have a good handle on that sort of thing, she reasoned, because he had been in the same role when the nursing home had been operating in this facility.

  She and Rick had felt fortunate that Jimmy had still been available when they came along, given his experience with the building and all of its mechanical and electrical systems. Of course, the diet clinic was different from the nursing home in terms of the type of physical plant. Because of the clientele they were trying to attract, they had added a number of things like the pool and sauna, and the gym, and the tennis courts, which might be more maintenance intensive. The new systems had had their share of start-up glitches, too, which were no doubt reflected in these expenses.

  Day 3, Afternoon

  Kathy was excited at the prospect of seeing Dave Bannon. He was part of many pleasant memories from her childhood. In spite of Lizzie teasing her on the phone this morning, there had not been any romantic interest between Kathy and Dave. They had been in the same classes in parochial school, from kindergarten through the eighth grade.

  Then, in the way of parochial schools in Savannah, the boys and girls had been separated. Of the children who had continued in parochial schools after eighth grade, the boys had gone to Benedictine Military School, or B.C., as it had always been known, and the girls to St. Vincent’s Academy. Both schools had been selective academically, so not all students were able take that path to a secondary education. None who were academically able were deprived of the opportunity, nor, in the case of Benedictine, were any who were superior athletes turned away. Kathy wondered if the powers that ordained this separation by gender had any idea how it had stimulated the hormones of the teenagers involved.<
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  She remembered how her little brother, Joe, two years behind Dave at Benedictine, had idolized "Sergeant Bannon." Kathy thought it was hilarious at the time, because Joe had tagged along behind Kathy and Dave and their friends for his whole life. Then Dave had gone to Benedictine. Two years later, as an entering freshman, Joe looked up to Dave with such awe that he might have been some superman. The gulf between an entering freshman and a junior who had survived the rigors of his first two years had engendered a serious case of hero worship on Joe’s part when he saw his big sister’s friend in the role of Platoon Sergeant.

  That was a wide chasm in a military high school, where the seniority system was rigid in a way that only children could make it. The real Army demanded less formality. Joe had worked hard to emulate Dave’s every move, which had not been a bad thing. Dave had been a runaway success even back then, excelling at everything he put his mind to. It would have been easy for him to have ignored Joe, or worse yet, to have crushed him in the military environment just because he could. He had chosen instead to be Joe’s mentor, helping him learn to live in the peculiar society in which they found themselves. Kathy still appreciated Dave’s kindness to her little brother, even though she hadn’t seen or heard of Dave in years.

  She put aside her memories as she pulled up to the curb in front of the Waving Girl. She recognized the man waiting on the porch as a mature version of the teenaged boy she had known so long ago. Dave had put on a few pounds, but still looked fit. His hair had been blond in his school days, but it was darker now, except for the sprinkling of silver. He still had hair, though, unlike her little brother. She got out of the car and met Dave on the sidewalk, giving him a big hug.

  Dave grinned and said, "Thirty years ago, all the guys in my class used to fantasize about getting a hug like that from Kathy Denardo. You don’t look like you used to; you’ve improved with age."

  "It’s good to see you, Dave. Welcome home. You don’t look so bad yourself, for an old man."

  "So how's Joe doing? He ever get the hang of spit-shining his shoes?"

  "Oh, he's all grown up now. He's a detective with the Savannah Police. He doesn’t have to wear uniforms any more, so I don't know about the spit-shine."

  By then, they were in Kathy’s car, and she started her routine overview of Savannah’s different neighborhoods. "Have you thought about how much you might want to spend on a house, Dave?"

  "Well, I need to tell you right up front that I'm not sure I'm ready to buy a house. I wouldn’t want you to pass up any hot prospects on my account."

  "Thanks, but lots of my hot prospects aren't really so hot. They come on as all ready to jump, but then they get bogged down and spend days agonizing about whether they really want to move to Savannah. Don't worry. I'm pleased to show an old friend around without worrying about what you might be worth in commissions."

  She and Dave discussed the fact that since his divorce, he had lived in apartments and condos, having no desire to maintain a single-family dwelling. Kathy explained that there were condos available in most of the city’s neighborhoods in just about any price range. She proposed that they spend the afternoon just driving around, so Dave could get a sense of what Savannah was like these days.

  "So you’re retired now," Kathy prompted.

  "Well, I'm not really retired. I just got worn out with what I was doing, and I had enough money saved to stop for a while and get my bearings."

  Dave gave her a short version of his life since he left Savannah, and explained that he had been living on his sailboat full time for the last couple of years. "I've been exploring the east coast and the Bahamas while I thought things over."

  "That sounds like a dream life."

  "It's not bad, but it's a lot more solitary than I thought it would be. Most of the folks I meet doing this are couples and they're friendly enough, but I'm kind of the odd man out," Dave explained.

  As they progressed with their tour of the city, Kathy suggested that they finish at her place in Thunderbolt. "I've just bought a condo there myself, so you can see what it's like. I'll call Joe and see if he can join us. We can have some steamed shrimp and beer and get reacquainted."

  Dave readily accepted her offer, having enjoyed her company today more than he had expected to. He thought it would be great fun to see Joe, as well.

  Connie had gone into Rick’s office to fill him in on the first quarter's results. She didn’t plan to bother him with the out-of-line maintenance expenses until she had a chance to talk to Jimmy. It probably was no big deal, and their basic business model looked sound, especially with the steady stream of new patients they were expecting. When she walked in, she found Rick with his feet on his desk and a glass of cola, beaded with moisture, in his hand, the picture of an on-top-of-things Medical Director taking a well-earned mid-afternoon break. There was a rousing march tune playing on a boom box in the corner, which Connie thought was odd. Then she saw Mary Lou.

  Mary Lou was barefooted up to her eyebrows, going through what must have been some kind of cheerleading routine. It was certainly upbeat. Rick’s feet hit the floor as he spied Connie. He came upright in his swivel chair, spilling his drink in the process.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Willoughby. Please go back into the examination room and get dressed. I’ll be with you as soon as I dictate my notes," Rick improvised.

  Mary Lou glared at Connie, grabbed the boom box, and made a quick departure.

  "You scumbag!" Connie hissed, her anger flaring out of control. "Can’t wait to read your notes in the patient file."

  "It’s not what it looks like, Connie," said Rick, frantically trying to think of a cogent story.

  "How do you know it’s not what it looks like, jerk? Sampled it already?" Connie snapped. "I came in to tell you how well our business was doing, but I guess you have other things on your mind."

  "Sh- she showed up without an appointment," Rick stammered. "I had Frances put her in the examination room next door to cool her heels for a few minutes, while I had a soda. I didn't want to offend her, but I also wanted to send a message about who was in charge here. She came barging in with her boom box, stripping to the music, right before you burst in unannounced."

  He offered Connie the drink to sample. Safe enough, he thought. It really had been cola. Then he tried to turn the situation on Connie.

  "What is it with you all of a sudden? Walking into my office unannounced – you act like my wife! Don't forget, you work for me," he said in a strong tone.

  "Forget the personal side, Rick," Connie said, regaining her self-control. "As your business partner, I don’t like it when you jeopardize everything we’ve both worked for by screwing around with patients."

  Rick thought he had told a good story, under the circumstances. Mary Lou was completely out of control. Never mind that she was going to hasten old Frank’s demise; she was doing quite a job on Rick. While his tale wasn’t completely accurate, it wasn't too far from the truth. Mary Lou had shown up and talked her way past the receptionist, saying that she desperately needed to see the doctor. Frances had settled her in the examination room adjoining his office and brought Rick the soda. He had intended to make Mary Lou wait 10 or 15 minutes, but Mary Lou had other ideas. As soon as Frances left his office, the door from the examination room had burst open and Mary Lou danced in, wearing a minimal costume, boom box blaring. She had set down the boom box, loosened Rick’s tie, and started to strip. Rick had been trying to act cool when Connie came in.

  "I’m sorry, Connie," Rick said, plaintively. He needed to heal the damage to their relationship, in spite of Connie's comment about forgetting the personal side. She had to be wounded by his apparent disregard for her feelings. He would lay it on thickly. "You know you mean everything to me. I wish things were different. It would be so great if we were married, but there's no way I can cut Sarah loose without ruining everything we've built here. That Willoughby woman is bad news. I can't believe she did that. What could have been on her mind? I can't think stra
ight since the accident. How are you doing with the flashbacks?" he said, playing for sympathy and hoping to distract her from further discussion of Mary Lou.

  Connie wanted to believe Rick, but she didn't buy his line about marriage -- not for a minute. That aside, she was reasonably sure he had been faithful to her over the years. You couldn’t really count Sarah; Sarah was his wife. She accepted Rick’s explanation and apology for the moment, and drew up a chair next to him behind his desk, spreading out her papers to review the numbers with him.

  Mary Lou, meanwhile, had gotten dressed and made her way to the parking lot. She wondered who that woman was. "What lousy timing," she reflected, mumbling to herself. She had left her costume in Rick’s office, but she had others. She was sure she could use it as an excuse to see him later. She thought of it as just another variation on the theme of leaving a sweater in her date’s car as a trick to get to see him again. She could tell from the look in Rick’s eyes that there would be other chances, maybe once he started her inpatient treatments. She was looking forward to his undivided attention for the whole ten days; it had not entered her mind that there would be other patients in the clinic.

  Day 3, Evening

  Donald had spent the afternoon piecing together a costume he thought was suitable for Black Caesar. He’d found a Knights of Columbus sword in a thrift shop, where he had also picked up a dressy, large-sized lady’s silk blouse with ruffles down the front and flowing sleeves, in a tomato red color. He had experimented with it in front of the bathroom mirror at his mother’s until he thought he had the appearance right. He left it unbuttoned and tied the tails together in front. It looked pirate-like, especially with the black leather Sam Browne belt, its shoulder strap diagonally across the ruffles, supporting the sword. He had secretly borrowed one of his mother’s earrings, too, just for effect. He still had to find some pants and a pair of boots, but those should be easy.