She sighed, deflated. “You’re weird, Coulter. I swear, you got more excited over the bear claw.”
“I’m excited.”
“I can tell. You’re positively giddy.”
“It’s just that . . .”
“What?”
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, manila envelope. Peeling it open, he said, “Hold out your hand.”
She did as he said, and he dumped the contents into her open palm.
It was a large, man’s gold ring with a prominent star protruding from the center. And the star was almost exactly the same size of the mark Savannah had seen on Charlene Yardley’s face.
“Wow!” she said. A slight chill trickled through her as she fingered the ignominious piece of jewelry. “How did you get Titus’s ring? Did you find him?”
“Nope.” Dirk looked satisfied with himself, as he always did when he one-upped her. “I just got back from interviewing Joe McGivney’s widow.”
“And?”
“She let me look through some of his personal effects, his dresser drawer, a strongbox under his bed. That’s where I found the ring. His wife confirmed it: That ring you’re holding there . . . it was Joe’s.”
5:10 P.M.
“Thanks to this guy’s anti-social activities . . . orange groves have lost their appeal for me, and now beaches aren’t far behind,” Savannah told Dirk as they stood on the beach and looked down on the very dead body of the recently departed Donald DeCianni.
Dirk had received word only a minute after showing Savannah Joe McGivney’s ring: An anonymous caller had told the 911 dispatcher that DeCianni’s body could be found near the water’s edge in Harrington State Park. As with the tip about Joe McGivney, the informant had been morbidly accurate.
DeCianni was still wearing the sweatpants and shirt he had worn the last time Savannah and Dirk had seen him, in the orange grove, when they had been checking out McGivney’s abandoned unit.
Like his ex-partner, DeCianni had a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead and his badge was sticking out of his slack, open mouth. No other wounds were immediately obvious.
DeCianni’s body was sprawled on its back at the water’s edge. Incoming waves licked at the sneakers on his feet. Vermin-infested seaweed was wrapped around his legs, and the tiny scavengers were already hard at work, recycling the remains of Donald DeCianni.
While DeCianni hadn’t been Savannah’s favorite person, she cringed, seeing a human being reduced to crab bait. She thought of what DeCianni had said about how difficult it was to see an ex-partner come to a bad end. If that were Dirk, lying dead on the sand, she knew she would be insane with grief.
Officers Jake McMurtry and Mike Famon had arrived at the scene immediately after Savannah and Dirk. They were setting up a perimeter as everyone waited for Dr. Liu and her team to appear. Then the macabre circus would begin all over again. It was a performance that was getting old, fast.
“It’s gotta be the same guy,” Savannah said as she knelt on the sand and studied the hole in DeCianni’s forehead. Just like McGivney.
“Yep, gotta be,” Dirk replied. “We didn’t mention the badge in the mouth to the papers, so it ain’t some well-read copycat.”
A dark sedan pulled into the nearby parking lot, and Savannah made a face. “Bloss. I suppose he’ll give me hell for not baby-sitting his kid.”
“Where is she?”
“On Rodeo Drive with Tammy and Ryan . . . Christmas shopping. There are a lot worse ways for a teenager to spend an afternoon, huh?”
Dirk sniffed. “Oh, I don’t know. Piddlin’ around in phoo-phoo stores with a fairy and a bimbo ain’t my idea of a good time.”
Savannah gave him a dirty look. “We can’t all spend our time in manly man pursuits—like watching wrestling matches, demolition derbies and monster truck rallies on the tube while swigging beer and eating stale chips and cheap pizza.”
He shrugged. “Some of us know how to have a good time; some don’t.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Bloss demanded as he strode up to them, his face flushed from the exertion of trudging through the loose sand.
“It’s my job,” Dirk muttered.
“I wasn’t talking to you, and you know it.” He pointed to Savannah. “I’m talking to your mascot here, who’s always hanging around when—”
“Hey, hold it a damned minute!” Dirk took a step toward his captain, fists clenched.
Savannah grabbed his arm. “It’s okay, Dirk,” she said quietly.
“No, it’s not okay.” He shook off her hand and stepped closer to Bloss, who looked temporarily nonplussed by the intensity of his detective’s anger.
“I need all the help I can get on this fuckin’ case,” he shouted in Bloss’s face. “And you give me nothin’! Nobody! I’m tryin’ to catch a damned cop killer and a nut job who’s assaulting another woman every couple of days. And you won’t assign me one other detective to help me out, when I oughta have a friggin’ task force workin’ on this with me.”
“I’ve explained to you about my budget and—”
“Screw your budget. We got cops dyin’ here and I don’t think you give a damn!”
Bloss’s nostrils flared and the blood vessels on his forehead bulged. “Of course I give a damn! What are you accusing me of, Detective?”
“Being a damned fool and a jackass to boot.”
“Dirk!” Savannah grabbed him again.
“No! I’ve had enough of this horseshit.”
He stuck his finger in Bloss’s face, and Savannah had instant visions of her friend standing in the unemployment line.
But Bloss’s anger seemed to be changing to fear as spit flew from Dirk’s mouth when he said, “This woman . . .” He jammed a thumb in Savannah’s direction. “. . . has been working with me day and night, on her own time, for free, tryin’ to solve this case. And then you walk up here and insult her . . . in front of me, knowing she’s my friend. In my book that makes you dumb and rude . . . whether you’re a captain or not.”
“And how intelligent are you,” Bloss said quietly, “to address your superior in that way?”
Savannah didn’t like the deadly calm in Bloss’s voice. The last time she had heard him use that tone, he had been two minutes away from firing her.
“Dirk,” she said, “I appreciate what you said, and I’m sure the captain would have appreciated my efforts . . . if he’d only been aware of them. And now that you’ve told him, I’m sure he’ll be a wee bit more courteous if he sees me hanging around.”
She sidled up to Bloss and looked him up and down as though evaluating his shanks and withers. “After all,” she said smoothly, “it’s to the good captain’s advantage to get this guy behind bars as soon as possible. Who knows, he could be next.”
She had said it flippantly, meaning nothing more than to make a mildly irritating, smartaleck remark.
But her statement’s impact couldn’t have been more dramatic if someone had touched the captain’s hind quarters with an electric prod. His eyes bulged and turned blood red, sweat seemed to materialize across his forehead and upper lip, and his chin began to shake.
“What do you mean by that?” he demanded. “Why did you say that?”
“Why? Well, no reason in particular,” she said, backing up until she was nearly stepping on poor DeCianni.
“No! You meant something! What do you know?”
Bloss looked like he was about to have a stroke or go into cardiac arrest, but Savannah figured it was only wishful thinking on her part.
“I just meant that, with cops dropping right and left, any one of us could be next.” She couldn’t resist one more little jab. “Except me, that is,” she added with a smile. “I suppose, under the present circumstances, I should thank you for firing me.”
Bloss turned on his heel and stomped away. Or at least he tried to stomp, although it was difficult to make much of a statement in the loose sand.
“My, my,” she said, watching hi
s less than graceful exit, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say our brave captain is a Nervous Nellie these days. Wonder why?”
“I wonder, too,” Dirk said, throwing his arm around her shoulder and giving her a companionable squeeze. “Hell, from the way his eyes popped out of their sockets, you’d think he was next.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
December 17—10:19 A.M.
Savannah hung another ornament—a miniature, jeweled carousel horse—on the Christmas tree and stood back to survey the effect. Ah-h-h. Christmas. With all the glimmer and sparkle, the good food and camaraderie, it was her favorite time of year. The time when the child inside her came out to play. And even if there was no snow in the yard for snowmen when she trimmed the tree, Savannah was seven years old, feeling the magic and the love.
“This is dumb.”
Okay, so Margie wasn’t feeling the magic. She was being a bit of a Scrooge this morning, moping around the house in a black T-shirt and sagging, bagging shorts of the same colorful hue.
Savannah had threatened to withhold food and water from her if she didn’t help trim the tree. So she had tossed some tinsel in its general direction, and now she was expressing her sentiments about the festivities from her seat on Savannah’s freshly polished mahogany coffee table.
“This sucks. It’s dumb. And it sucks.”
“I see. And while you’re expressing your opinion in such an articulate, erudite manner, why don’t you tell me how you really feel.”
Savannah readjusted the teddy bear with the bright green vest, hanging him closer to the girl teddy bear with the crimson bow. Okay, she was a bit sappy, but only for a few weeks each year. The rest of the time she was reasonably cynical and hardbitten, so she figured she was entitled to a little Yuletide levity.
And any killjoy teenager who wouldn’t get into the swing of things could just go enjoy the holidays with her brimming-with-cheer father.
Naw, she wouldn’t do that to the kid, but she did expect her to make a small effort toward holiday spirit. Even if it wasn’t “cool.”
“Listen you,” she told her. “I like Christmas. And one of my favorite Christmas activities is decorating my tree. So, get off your butt—and more importantly, off my coffee table—and pretend to enjoy doing this with me.”
“Or else?”
“Or I won’t teach you how to make fudge later.”
Margie eyed her skeptically. “Is it, like, real fudge? The kind you buy in a candy store?”
“Of course it’s the real thing.” She pointed to her ample rear. “Does this look like the butt of a woman who doesn’t know her sweets? I wear only the best.”
Margie giggled and dropped some of her “disgruntled adolescent” act. “Can we put nuts in it, too?”
“Not just nuts . . . Georgia papershell pecans, sent to me by my own dear grandmother for exactly that purpose. String on some more of that tinsel and hang it straight. It’s supposed to be icicles, for heaven’s sake. And they hang straight down.”
Margie actually got into the spirit of the activity, until she was even adjusting and readjusting the ornaments Savannah had hung. “Wow, it’s really pretty,” she said as they plugged in the lights and sat down on the sofa to admire their handiwork. “I never did that before.”
“Did what?”
“You know . . .” She waved a hand toward the tree and looked a bit embarrassed. “. . . like, put things on a tree that way.”
Savannah caught herself just before blurting out “What? You mean you never trimmed a Christmas tree before?” Instead, she swallowed the question and silently cursed Harvey Bloss and his ex-wife. What was wrong with those people? As poor as Savannah had been, growing up in a family of nine kids, raised by an aging grandmother, there had always been this shining symbol of Christmas, a celebration of hope and love.
“Is your family Jewish?” Savannah asked.
“Nope. We aren’t anything.”
“Well, now you know how to decorate a tree yourself if you want to,” Savannah said softly, understanding some of the girl’s previous crankiness. “And next year, wherever you are, you can bring one into your home—even if it’s just a tiny one that sits on a table—and decorate it.”
Margie said nothing for a long moment, then surprised Savannah by reaching over and nudging her shoulder. “When I do that . . . next year and the year after that . . . I’ll remember you and how we did this today.”
Savannah smiled, more than pleased, then she stood and walked over to the tree. Picking the carousel horse off its branch, she said, “Then I want you to have this fellow for your tree. My grandmother gave him to me the Christmas I turned sixteen. And one of these days you can give it to some sixteen-year-old who has touched your heart.”
Margie took the horse in her hand and stared down at it without looking up for a long time. When she did, Savannah saw that her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“That’s like . . . you know . . . really cool,” the girl said. “Thanks.”
“You’re . . . like . . . really welcome. Is it time to make fudge?”
Margie jumped up from the sofa, all smiles. “Any time is fudge time!”
“A woman after my own appetites!”
But they were only halfway to the kitchen when the doorbell rang.
Before Savannah had time to open the door, the bell rang several more times.
“All right, all right, I’m coming already,” she called, “Don’t wet your britches.”
When she flung open the door, it was like lifting the lid on Pandora’s box. A flurry of munchkins charged past her and into the living room, a swirling tornado of chaos and commotion. It took her several seconds to realize the crowd consisted of only two youngsters—her beloved niece and nephew, Jack and his twin sister, Jillian.
She scooped them up, one under each arm, just as they were beginning to scale the limbs of the Christmas tree. “Oh no, you don’t, you little monkeys!” she told them, planting a kiss on the top of each one’s golden curls. “No tree climbing in Aunt Savannah’s house. Where’s your sweet mama?”
“Outside,” chimed Jack.
“Paying the taxi man for the window,” added his sister.
Savannah set them on their feet but kept a tight hold on each collar.
“Paying for the window?” Margie asked. She stood in the kitchen doorway, her eyes wide with amazement.
“Don’t ask,” Savannah told her. “It’s probably a long, sad story. Vi pays for a lot of things.”
She took the children by their hands. “Come on, let’s go help your mommy with the bags. Margie, you want to give us a hand here?”
“Sure.” She shot the kids a doubtful look. “With the suitcases, that is, not with . . . them, right?”
“Right.”
“I want some grape juice,” Jillian said in a whiny, singsong voice that grated on Savannah’s last nerve strand that was still intact, but strained from the week’s miscellaneous stresses.
“I don’t have any grape juice,” Savannah told her as she walked them out to the taxi, where an extremely rotund, somewhat younger, but less well-groomed version of Savannah, was haggling with an irate cabby. “I only have grapes. But as soon as we get you all settled, I’ll go to the grocery store and get you some grape juice. Apple, too.”
“I want it now!” A tiny foot came down hard on Savannah’s instep with a ferocity that she would have loved to have seen demonstrated in one of her defense classes.
But on her front lawn . . . on her own foot . . . by an irate five-year-old . . . was a bit much.
With one hand under each arm, she lifted her angelic niece until they were face to face. “And I,” she said, “want you to walk on your own feet, not mine. Because if you stomp on me again like that, I’ll buy broccoli-and-liver-flavored juice instead of grape. Do you understand?”
Momentarily quelled, the girl nodded, and Savannah set her on the ground again. A second later, her arms were full of Vidalia and her tummy.
> “Sis! I can’t believe we’re finally here!” she cried, hugging Savannah so tightly that she could hardly breathe. “This is a big ol’ country! My tail end was practically rooted to that bus seat.”
“I’ll bet it was.”
Savannah was a bit shocked to see what a difference seven and a half months of pregnancy had made in her younger sister. Vidalia hadn’t gained any more weight than would be expected, but she was in desperate need of a haircut, and no Reid gal—pregnant or otherwise—would have been seen in such a shabby, shapeless outfit, outside of Gran’s rose garden.
Savannah decided to chalk it up to Vidalia having spent several days on a bus with a couple of rambunctious kids with a tummy full of another one. Either that, or the once vain, fastidious Vidalia was in a downhill slide of depression.
“Here, let me get those suitcases for you.” Savannah grabbed a couple of bags, but she hardly made a dent in the pile heaped on the curb. “Vidalia, meet Margie Bloss, a houseguest of mine. Margie, in case you hadn’t already guessed, this is my sister Vidalia and her family.”
“Houseguest?” Vidalia looked positively put out—too put out for a deeply depressed ragamuffin, Savannah noted. “You invited another houseguest when you knew we were comin’ callin’?”
Savannah glanced at Margie and saw the stud in her left nostril twitch with irritation. “Margie is more than welcome in my home, and so are you and the twins,” she added quickly. “The more the merrier, ho, ho, ho. Right?” She smiled weakly.
“I guess so.” Vidalia shoved one of her bags into Margie’s hands, and for a long, awful second, Savannah thought Margie might shove it back at her.
That was what she needed, a scene from a Jerry Springer show erupting right here on her front lawn.
“Let’s go inside and stir up a pitcher of lemonade,” Savannah offered. “Jillian was saying she wants grape juice, and maybe that would . . . oh, no . . . Vi.” She looked frantically around the deserted yard. “Where are those precious young’uns of yours?”
They found the dreadful duo in Savannah’s kitchen. Savannah stood, looking, but unable to believe her eyes. Jack was balanced precariously on her countertop, searching the cupboard.
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