Savannah walked over to the area around the body that had been cordoned off with yellow tape in a ten-or twelve-foot circle around the coffin. She stopped at the tape and waited for Dirk and Dr. Jennifer Liu to look up from their task and acknowledge her.
Dr. Liu saw her first. The Asian beauty smiled the moment she spotted her, rose, and hurried over to embrace her as well as she could, considering she was wearing bloody gloves. “Savannah,” she said, “so good to see you.”
“You, too, Dr. Jen.”
Savannah glanced down at the sequined miniskirt that stuck out only a couple of inches below the coroner’s white lab smock. And below that were black fishnet stockings and a serious pair of black stilettos with four-inch heels.
“Caught you out partying, did they?” Savannah asked with a grin.
“Don’t they always?”
“Either you party a lot or they have lousy timing.”
Dr. Liu smiled a naughty, mischievous little smirk. “Or maybe a bit of both.” She nodded toward the body. “You want to see?”
“I already saw, but sure. Let’s have another look now that we have lighting.”
Savannah ducked under the tape and walked over to the coffin and its unfortunate occupant. Dirk was squatting next to it, also wearing gloves. He was gingerly lifting the fabric that covered the body’s blood-soaked chest with two fingers and looking beneath it.
“Get a load of this,” he told them.
Both women hurried over to him and knelt on either side of the coffin, Savannah next to Dirk.
“What is it?” she asked.
“These clothes…the vampire getup,” he said. “He’s not actually wearing it. The stuff’s lying on him.”
“What?” Savannah looked closer.
Dirk lifted the edge of the burgundy velvet vest that covered Dante’s midriff area. “These weird Dracula clothes. Somebody must have laid them on top of the body. Look. Here are his regular clothes underneath.”
Sure enough. Beneath the costume was a simple, pale blue polo shirt. Under the black pants was a pair of jeans. And he had a pair of Nikes on his feet that were covered by a small piece of black velvet.
“That’s weird,” Dr. Liu said as she bent over and began to peel the fabric back herself. “Charles,” she called out to one of the photographers, who was standing nearby taking pictures of the pool area. “Come here, and get some shots of this.”
The young man walked over to them and stepped inside the perimeter tape.
He shuddered when he saw the body. “Wow,” he said. “That’s a pretty grisly one. Rough way to go.”
Dr. Liu crooked her finger, beckoning him. Reluctantly, he came closer.
“Zoom in tight on this,” she said as she pulled the vest and white shirt away from the blue polo shirt.
After he had taken several shots, she pulled it further away, and he took more.
Then she laid it back down. “I’ll wait till I get him home to take it off. I don’t want to lose anything in the way of hair or fiber that might be on it.” She looked around them at the palms, which were dancing in the night breeze. “It’s a bit too windy out here tonight for my taste. Something good could blow away.”
Dirk didn’t reply. He had stood and was staring down at the body, looking perplexed.
“What is it?” Savannah asked him.
“I’m still wondering…He’s a big guy. Bigger than me. And he was in great shape, too. How do you figure he stood still for somebody to ram that thing into his chest? Anybody who would come at me with something like that, I’d go crazy on them. Why didn’t he?”
Savannah knelt and looked at the body’s hands. “Good point. No defense wounds that I can see. Not a single skinned knuckle, not even a tiny cut.” She turned it over in her mind for a moment or two, then said, “Postmortem, maybe?”
“Maybe,” Dirk said, nodding. “Which would mean that the stake may not even be our murder weapon.”
Dr. Liu had finished directing the photographer and was instructing some of her assistants to lay out the body bag next to the coffin. But she was eavesdropping on their conversation.
“That would make sense,” she said. “That wound just doesn’t look right to me.”
“Well, no, a gruesome wound like that, what’s right about it?” Savannah looked down at the sticky red gore in the middle of the victim’s chest.
“Oh, it’s gross all right,” the doctor agreed. “But what I mean is, the wound itself, at least what I can see of it here in this lighting with the body still dressed, it doesn’t look right to me. The edges around the wound are very ragged. I’m thinking the stake might have been inserted postmortem. And I’m not totally convinced he was killed here. He may have been, but…”
“What do you mean?” Dirk asked her. “You don’t think he was killed here?”
“I don’t know, and I won’t until I get him on my table. But I have my doubts.”
Dirk and Savannah watched as the coroner and her team unfolded a white sheet and laid it on top of the open, unzipped body bag. Then the four of them lifted the corpse from the coffin and laid it onto the sheet.
Dr. Liu filled out an evidence label and scribbled pertinent information on a toe tag, as well. She removed Dante’s tennis shoe and slipped the tag onto his toe.
Savannah smiled—it was a pleasure watching her high level of professionalism. Some coroners waited until the body was in the morgue to put on the toe tag. But years ago, Dr. Liu’s predecessor had temporarily mixed up a couple of bodies in the morgue. And since that was one of the main reasons he had lost his job and Dr. Liu had gotten hers, the good doctor was particularly cautious about that sort of thing.
The two men and two women were out of breath by the time they had the body moved, properly bundled in the sheet, and placed into the body transport bag.
Dirk turned to Savannah and said, “If this guy wasn’t killed here and somebody moved him—”
“It must have been more than one person who moved him,” she finished for him.
“No kidding,” Dr. Liu said, smoothing her long black hair back and retying it with a silk scarf. “He’s a handful. Several hands full.”
“Dr. Liu,” one of the techs said, “what are we going to do about that?”
He had zipped the bag as far closed as he could, but the stake sticking out of the chest prevented him from closing it all the way.
“Yes, that’s a bit of a problem,” she said. “I don’t want to remove that until I get him on the autopsy table. I want to properly examine and document the angle and all that.”
“You can’t take that out the front door with a crowd of paparazzi waiting,” Dirk said. “Can you imagine? They’d go crazy!”
Dr. Liu gave him a withering look. “I’m ten steps ahead of you, Detective, as usual. But my concerns are more legal than media-oriented. This is a homicide—I can’t leave that body bag unsealed.”
Dirk returned the nasty, condescending look. “Well, in spite of you grossly insulting me, as usual, I’m going to help you out. And then, when you see what a brilliant solution I have to your problem, you can apologize to me properly.”
With a cocky strut, he walked away from them, around the pool, and back into the house.
“Apologize? To him?” Dr. Liu said with a chuckle.
“Oh, yes. And properly,” Savannah added.
“O-o-okay.” She shook her head. “That’ll be the day, when Coulter rises to brilliant.”
“Hey, he can surprise you. Dirk’s not just a pretty face, you know.”
While Dirk was gone on his mysterious errand, the coroner’s team brought in a gurney and placed it beside the body bag. After carefully lifting the bag and its strange burden onto the gurney, they raised the stretcher to waist level.
By then, Dirk had returned with his treasures—a roll of duct tape and a white plastic garbage bag.
“Voila!” he said, presenting both items.
“Voilà?” Dr. Liu said. “I don’t see a voilà
in front of me. No ‘There you are!’ in sight.”
“Do I have to do everything myself?” Dirk said with the sigh of the well-practiced martyr.
“Apparently so,” Savannah told him.
With much flourish and a style that was lacking in polish but rich in drama, Dirk tented the garbage bag over the stake, tore off a long piece of the tape, and began to seal the edges around the garbage bag onto the transport bag.
A few minutes later, his creation was finished. A true example of functional art.
He pulled a permanent marker from his pocket, handed it to Dr. Liu, and said, “There! Sign it, your signature running over the seam, and then…you may offer me your apology and see if I will accept it.”
Dr. Liu stared at him for a long time. And Savannah held her breath.
Of all the many qualities, the myriad virtues that made up Dr. Liu’s character, humility wasn’t among them. Jennifer Liu was highly intelligent, successful, strong, and beautiful. She didn’t really have a lot to be humble about. So she didn’t bother.
She stepped up to Dirk, and in her four-inch heels, she was eye to eye with him. And when she leaned forward, they were literally nose to nose.
“You, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter, are, indeed, brilliant,” she said with only a modicum of sarcasm. “You are a man among men, a prince among thieves, a diamond among the rough, a tribute to your gender. I bow before your austere magnificence and pay homage to your—”
“All right, enough.” Dirk stepped back and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Is there an apology in there somewhere, or are you just trying to bore me to death with all this crap so that you won’t have to admit that I’m smarter than you?”
“Smarter?” Dr. Liu threw back her head and laughed. “Get real, Coulter. The day you’re smarter than me, I drink an arsenic milkshake and wind up on my own autopsy table. But…in this particular circumstance, you’ve proven yourself a wee, tiny, smidgen bit more resourceful than I.”
Dirk stood there, breathing hard, arms still crossed, staring at her. Finally, he grinned, dropped his arms, and slapped her on the shoulder. “That’ll do,” he said. “I’m happy with that.”
He left them and walked over to a group of CSI techs who were combing the area around the pool. In no time, he was arguing with them, waving his arms, gesticulating wildly, obviously telling them off about something.
Dr. Liu shook her head and gave Savannah a sympathetic smile. “How do you stand him?” she said.
Savannah looked across the pool at her old friend and thought of how kind and respectful he was to Granny Reid. She remembered how he took the time to scratch behind Diamante’s ear, just the way she liked it, for as long as the cat wanted. She considered that he had never once said, “I don’t have time,” when she was troubled and needed to talk at three in the morning. She recalled how he had held her head and soothed her when she was sick and throwing up during that stakeout—after he had fed her a tuna sandwich and forgotten to tell her it had been in the glove box for three days.
With a soft sweetness in her voice, she said, “Hey, what’s not to love?”
Chapter 14
“I’m so sorry, Gran,” Savannah said into her cell phone as she apologized yet again for leaving her grandmother alone at home. “But there’s been a murder here at the Dante mansion and—”
“Oh, I know!” Gran replied on the other end. “I’m sitting here right now, watching it on the television. They’ve got live coverage of the front of the house! In fact, you should come to the front door and wave to me.”
Savannah suppressed a chuckle as she walked around the pool and into the back door of the house. “I don’t think I’d better do that, Gran,” she said. “Those reporters are a bunch of wild hyenas out there. If I were to open that front door, I’d get trampled in the stampede.”
“Well, don’t do it then. But I have to know…the dead body…it’s not that little Daisy girl you’ve been looking for, is it?”
“No, Gran. Thank goodness it’s not.”
“Is it Tiffany Dante herself?”
“No. Tiffany’s okay.”
“Then who is it?”
Savannah nearly told her, but since she was on a mobile phone and for miles around, they were surrounded by trucks and vans full of all sorts of fancy audio equipment, she decided against it.
“If you’re still up when I get home, I’ll tell you then.”
“You’ll tell me everything?”
Savannah laughed again. “Yes, Gran. I’ll tell you way more than I’m supposed to.”
“Good. I’ll wait up.”
“It’s going to be late.”
“Who cares? I’m old. I can lay abed in the morning if I’ve a mind to.”
“You certainly can. I’ll even bring you breakfast in bed if you’ve a mind to have it. I’ll see you later. I love you, Gran.”
“I love you, too, Savannah girl. Be careful around those murderers and reprobates.”
“Oh, I’m keeping an eye peeled for reprobates, degenerates, and miscreants. Don’t you worry about me.”
As Savannah entered the kitchen, she found Dirk having a hot debate with a woman she had never met before. The lady was well-dressed in a pale jade silk blouse and matching trousers, and her hair was cut in a sophisticated, shoulder-length bob.
She looked somewhat familiar to Savannah, but she couldn’t place her until Bunny came running into the room and fell into her arms, sobbing. The family resemblance was strong. No doubt, this was Bunny Greenaway’s mother.
“There you are, sweetheart!” the woman said, holding her daughter tight. “This policeman said I couldn’t take you home yet, but I told him—”
“All right, all right,” Dirk interjected. “Take her home. But I’m not finished interviewing any of the girls yet, so do not leave town.” He took his notebook from his pocket and a pen and said, “But before you do, I want your home phone number and address and everybody’s cell numbers. I will be calling you, and I’m not going to have the time to track you down.”
Mrs. Greenaway did as she was told, but the moment she had finished writing on his pad, she shoved the paper and pen back at him and said, “I’m not going to forget how rudely you treated me and my daughter. My husband is on the City Council, and I am a major contributor at the Annual Police Benefit Ball. Don’t think I won’t remember this when I make out my check in December.”
Dirk gave her a deadpan look as he stuck his notepad back inside his bomber jacket. “Dear me,” he said. “Whatever shall I do this Christmas without my Greenaway donation stocking stuffer? Oh, I know…the same as I always do because I never even see your stinkin’ money, let alone get any of it, and furthermore—”
Savannah stepped up and grabbed his arm. “Uh, Detective Coulter,” she said, “they need you out back by the pool. Right away.”
She didn’t think it would work. Dirk could usually tell when she was blatantly lying. But he was tired, and his BS detector wasn’t finely tuned.
“Oh, all right,” he said, then disappeared.
“He’s very tired,” Savannah offered as a feeble excuse. “He’s been working on the Daisy O’Neil case night and day, and now this…”
“Well, he didn’t have to be so ill-mannered and curt with me.” Mrs. Greenaway continued to hug and soothe her daughter. “I just want to take my baby home. She’s had a terrible experience here and needs to be with her family.”
Savannah glanced down at Bunny, who continued to cry against her mother’s shoulder, although there did seem to be a shortage of actual tears streaming down her face, considering the amount of boohooing that was going on.
“Yes, she has had a dreadful shock,” Savannah said. “A terrible thing, finding a homicide victim.”
Mrs. Greenaway raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “We are a good family,” she said. “We don’t allow things like this to happen in our family. Girls going missing and people getting horrible things stuck in them—it’s just so, so low
class.”
Savannah nodded and kept a straight face when she said, “It is a bit tacky, to be sure.”
Mrs. Greenaway waved an arm, indicating the enormous kitchen with its luxury appointments. “They may have all of this, but I have to tell you, for all their money, I don’t approve of their lifestyle around here. I’ve had my doubts about the influence Tiffany and her friends have had on my Bunny.”
Bunny pulled back from her mother’s embrace, a nasty scowl on her face. “What is that supposed to mean? It’s an honor to be one of the Skeleton Key Three.”
“Oh, phu-u-ush, it is not. I don’t even like the sound of that name—Skeleton Key. I worry about you developing an eating disorder like Tiffany has.”
“Mom, I told you we do not have any kind of disorder. Oh my God, you drop a few pounds and—”
“You’re bingeing and purging again.”
“I am not!”
“You are, too. I heard you last night in your bathroom, and you were—”
“Ladies, ladies!” Savannah interrupted them. “Please. The past few hours have been stressful for all of us. Mrs. Greenaway, maybe it would be a good idea if you took Bunny on home and put her to bed. Some rest would do everyone good. I’m sure we’ll all feel a little better in the morning.”
Both mother and daughter seemed to agree with her because they allowed her to usher them through the house to the foyer. Savannah was debating the wisdom of taking them directly out the front door and fighting a path through the press or trying to sneak them out a back door when the front door flew open.
Two young uniformed policemen were escorting a distraught woman, who appeared to be both fighting them and clinging to them at the same time.
“Pam,” Savannah said, leaving the Greenaways and hurrying over to Daisy’s mother. “What’s wrong? What is it?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong?” she asked. “I turn on my TV, and they’re saying that there’s been a murder here, that you’ve found a dead body!”
“Oh, you poor thing.” Savannah shooed the policemen away with her hand and took hold of Pam O’Neil herself. “It isn’t Daisy, honey. We haven’t found her. It’s someone else.”
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