Pam swayed against her so suddenly and unexpectedly that Savannah nearly lost her balance.
“Whoa,” she said. “Steady, sugar.”
One of the cops stepped forward to help, but Savannah gave him a soft, “Thank you,” and shook her head. “I’ve got her. But if you guys would see these two ladies to their car, I’d appreciate it. And please be sure that nobody bothers them with any irritating questions.”
The older of the two gave her a nod and a wink. “No problem, Savannah. We’ll make sure it’s a quick, smooth trip.”
A moment later, Bunny and her mother were being escorted out the door and into the mob.
Savannah started to lead Pam O’Neil over to the staircase, thinking to sit her down there, but she realized they would be directly under the scythe of the Grim Reaper. And that would be just too creepy.
So she took her on into the great room and seated her on a sofa. Although, since the skeleton wedding was still set up near the fireplace, it was equally eerie. “I’m really sorry, Pam,” she told her as she sat down beside her. “I should have called you, but it was a real shock, finding the body like that.”
“I understand,” Pam said. She was still shaking, and her normally suntanned face was disturbingly white. “I just heard that news broadcast on the TV, and I was so sure that it was Daisy.”
“That’s perfectly understandable. And so is the fact that you were so upset. I would have been, too.”
“I tried to call you on your cell phone, but you didn’t pick up. I thought you weren’t taking my call because it was Daisy and you didn’t want to tell me so on the phone.”
Savannah took her cell phone out of her pocket and saw that, indeed, she had missed a call. “It was pretty noisy out back where they’re processing the scene. I guess I didn’t hear it ring. Again, I apologize.”
Pam reached over, grabbed Savannah’s hand, and squeezed it. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I know you’ve been doing your best for Daisy and for me. I’m sure you have your hands full.”
“It’s pretty hectic. That’s for sure. A missing person and now a homicide. It’s a full plate.”
“Do you think they’re connected, my Daisy disappearing and the murder?”
“We don’t know yet. I suppose we have to assume they could be.”
Savannah heard heavy footsteps coming through the foyer and toward them. Even before she saw him, she knew it was Dirk, and he wasn’t happy about something.
He charged into the room, but when he saw that she was talking to Pam O’Neil, his brusque manner softened instantly.
“Oh,” he said. “I was looking for you, Savannah, but if you’re busy, I…”
“She isn’t busy,” Pam said as she stood, tucked her shirt into her jeans, and adjusted her collar. “I know you guys have a lot to do. I don’t want to get in your way. I just had to know.”
“She heard the news and was worried that it was Daisy we found,” Savannah told him.
“Those damned reporters,” he said, shaking his head. “They report whether they have anything to report or not, and that just stirs everybody and everything up. I hate ’em.”
“Yeah, well…whatever.” Savannah patted Pam on the back and walked her to the door, Dirk following behind. “Are you going to be okay going through the gauntlet again?” she asked her.
“Sure. The reporters didn’t bother me,” Pam said. “I don’t look like anybody, if you know what I mean. Nobody asked me anything. It was the cops who were trying to stop me from getting in.”
Savannah chuckled. “Well, if you got in, you shouldn’t have any problem getting out. Again, I’m sorry you weren’t able to get in touch with me. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.”
“And if it does,” Dirk said, pressing one of his cards into her hand, “call me. Between the two, you should be able to get one of us.”
Pam thanked them both again warmly and then left.
Savannah turned to Dirk. “What did you want me for?”
He looked disgusted. “I’m going crazy trying to question that Tiffany twerp. I swear I’m losing my patience. I’m about to strangle her.”
“Go right ahead. I don’t care.”
“I’d get in trouble. Big trouble.”
“I don’t care about that either. Forget it. You’re not saddling me with that brat.”
“Ah, come on, Van.”
“No way. That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”
“I’ll give you a quarter. I’ll be your friend forever.”
“You’re already going to be my friend forever.”
“But the quarter? Fifty cents? A buck?”
“No.”
“Tiffany, I know you and I haven’t gotten off to the best start,” Savannah said, trying her best to sound like she didn’t want to just reach across the kitchen table and slap the girl silly.
It wasn’t easy.
“But I do feel terrible for you,” she continued, “losing your father this way, not knowing where your close friend is. It must be just awful.”
“Don’t lie. You don’t care about me,” Tiffany said, then took a swig of soda from the can in her hand. “You don’t give a damn about me. Nobody does…now that my dad’s dead.”
There was a sorrow in the girl’s voice that touched Savannah’s heart, and she actually felt guilty for disliking the kid so much. After all, she was only a product of her indulgent upbringing. Any child who had never heard the word no and had been given everything she asked for would have turned out the same way.
“Okay,” Savannah said. “I admit I didn’t like you very much when I first met you. But I do care about you. And I do feel bad for you, considering this horrible thing that’s happened. I’m not lying about that.”
Tiffany lifted red, swollen eyes to Savannah’s and stared at her for a long time. It was a searching look, as though she was truly considering whether she could trust her or not.
She seemed to decide Savannah was being honest with her, and she dropped a bit of her hostility.
“So are you going to find out who killed my father?” she asked. “Or, maybe I should say, are you going to nail that bitch stepmother of mine and make her pay for this?”
“Why do you think Robyn killed him?”
She gave a disdainful sniff. “Oh, pleeez. Like we don’t all know she did it.”
“I don’t know that she did it. Do you?”
“Of course she did.”
“Why? Why would she kill your dad?”
Tiffany hesitated, then said, “Because he was fooling around on her. My dad was a good guy, a great father, but he was a lousy husband, unfaithful and all that. It’s not like that’s a secret.”
This time, the hurt in the girl’s eyes, mixed with shame, was so strong that Savannah felt it wash all the way through her.
Besides, Savannah knew what it was to have a father who chased women and to have everyone around you know it, too. It was a shame she and her eight other siblings had borne their whole lives.
Everyone in the little town of McGill, Georgia, knew that Macon Reid, Sr., had girlfriends who rode across the country with him in his eighteen-wheeler. He would stash them in a fleabag hotel when he came home a couple of times a year. And when he would leave to go back on the road, he took his latest squeeze with him and left his wife at the local bar to drink away her anger and loneliness.
And this young woman sitting across the table lived with the same shame. Only, thanks to the tabloids, the whole world knew about her father.
“I’m really sorry for your troubles, Tiffany,” she said. “I can understand why you don’t like your stepmother. My dad finally married one of his girlfriends. I’m not very fond of her, either.”
Tiffany looked surprised. Either that she and Savannah shared a life experience or that Savannah would tell her about it, Savannah didn’t know which.
“Are you sure your dad was fooling around on Robyn?” Savannah asked her.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I know ho
w he acts when he’s got somebody new. We went through this about every two or three years when I was growing up. I know the symptoms. He gets all happy…and giggly…and worried about how he looks. And sneaky.”
“Do you know who he’s been seeing?”
Tiffany stalled, sipping from her soda can, playing with her hair, before she finally said, “No.”
Savannah didn’t believe her. “Do you have any other reason to believe that Robyn did it?” she asked her. “Did you overhear them fighting about another woman, or anything else, for that matter?”
“Not really. Dad wasn’t home enough for them to fight much. He’d be home a day or two, and then he’d leave again. Probably to be with her.”
“The girlfriend.”
“Yeah.”
“The girlfriend you don’t know.”
Tiffany shot her an unpleasant look. “Yeah. The one I don’t know.”
She downed the rest of her soda and stood up. “Are you about done with me now?” she said. “Because I’m really tired, and I want to go lay down. You let Robyn go to bed. I want to go to bed.”
“Sure.” Savannah stood, too. “I just have one more question. When you got out of Detective Coulter’s car there in front of the station and your attorney picked you up…did he bring you right back here?”
“Yeah. He did.”
“And was your father here then? Did you see him?”
“No. I mean…he wasn’t in the house. The house was empty. I guess he might have been already out there, but I didn’t see—”
She choked on her words and started to cry.
Savannah reached to touch her, comfort her, but she flinched and moved out of reach.
“Okay, thank you,” Savannah told her. “Go on upstairs, and get some rest. I appreciate you talking to me. If you need anything, let me or any of the rest of us know.”
Tiffany shot her a bitter look and said, “Yeah, right. All of you can go screw yourselves.” Then she left the room.
Savannah stood there in the middle of the kitchen, shaking her head and muttering a short prayer. “Lord, give me patience,” she said, feeling too tired to breathe. “Because if you give me strength, I just might slap that girl into next Tuesday.”
“I wish I’d gotten another chance to talk to Kiki Wallace,” Savannah told Dirk when he finally took her home at nearly three in the morning. “I swear she was just about to tell me something about Daisy when Tiffany came in and put a halt to it. And then Bunny found Dante, and all hell broke loose.”
“Yeah,” he said as he turned down her street. “Her mother came and got her, too, and I couldn’t really hold her any longer. You were talking to Tiffany, and I figured that was more important.”
“As it turns out, not really. She says she thinks Robyn killed him. But I think that’s wishful thinking on her part. I’m sure nothing would make her happier than to see her wicked stepmother go away for it.”
“But the kid gets the old man’s money either way, right?”
“According to Robyn, yes. I’d check it out though, just to be sure.”
“In my spare time.”
“Yeah, in your spare time.”
They both sighed, exhausted.
“I’m sorry that you have to drive home,” she said. “I’d let you crash on my sofa, but…well…Gran.”
“No way. I’m afraid of your grandma. She’d think I was up to no good for sure.”
“She would. She truly would.”
They drove a few more blocks through the silent, moonlit neighborhood. The only sounds were some yipping coyotes in the foothills beyond. The cool October night air smelled of citrus and eucalyptus as it rushed through the car’s open windows.
Dirk reached over and took a cinnamon stick from the dash. Sticking it into his mouth, he said, “I felt bad for that O’Neil gal. Must be hell what she’s going through.”
“I can’t even imagine. It’s got to be a fate way worse than death.”
Savannah reflected back over the conversation she’d had with Daisy’s mother earlier. “There’s just something that’s sorta bothering me,” she told him.
He drew a long breath through the stick. “What’s that?”
“She came rushing over there because she was afraid that the body we’d found was Daisy’s, right?”
“That’s what she said. Why?”
“Well, we talked for a while, for several minutes…”
“Yeah? And…?”
“We talked, and she left.” Savannah ran her fingers through her hair and massaged a spot that was starting to ache right in the middle of her forehead. “And she never once asked me who it was that we found.”
Dirk shot her a quick look. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They rode on in silence a little while.
Then Dirk said, “I would have asked. I mean…she may have just been really upset and worked up about it being Daisy and was so relieved to hear that it wasn’t her. And she’s probably really tired and hasn’t slept.”
Again, a prolonged, tense silence. Finally, Savannah said. “I don’t know for sure because I’m not her, but I think I would have asked.”
Dirk nodded, took the cinnamon stick out of his mouth, and tossed it out the window. “Me, too,” he said. “Me, too.”
Chapter 15
This time, when Savannah walked into her house, she found Granny sitting in her comfy chair and wide awake.
“Well, look at you,” Savannah said, peeling off her jacket and removing her weapon and holster, “all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the wee hours of the morning.”
Gran chuckled. “Hey, I’ve got a chance to find out something juicy even before the True Informer does! How many chances in a lifetime does a body get to do that?”
Savannah kicked her loafers off and tossed them into the bottom of the coat closet. Then she put the Beretta in its off duty resting place on the top shelf of the closet under a folded windbreaker.
“Dirk gave us strict instructions not to say anything to anybody about what happened over there today,” she told Gran as she walked through the living room and into the kitchen. “On pain of death, not one single word.”
Gran followed right behind. “So, that means you’re only going to tell me half of it?”
“Oh, no. I’m going to spill it all. There’s no way I could keep anything like this all to myself. Besides, I remember what you told me about the definition of a secret.”
Gran smiled. “A secret is something a body tells to one person at a time.”
“That’s it. Tonight I tell you. Tomorrow I tell Tammy.”
“And who do I get to tell?”
“Certainly not the True Informer! You make any phone calls to them, and we’ll all be in deep doo-doo.”
“What if I call Martha Phelps, and she calls them? Then we could split the money they pay.”
Martha had been Gran’s best friend for more than seventy years, and she was sure that whether she gave Gran permission or not, Martha would know every grisly detail before sunrise.
And since the two dear ladies were living off meager pension checks and were both born blabbermouths, why interfere with the normal processes of nature?
“I don’t want to know anything about anything having to do with Martha or the True Informer,” Savannah said. “Not a word.”
Gran’s eyes twinkled. “You won’t. I’ll be the soul of discretion.”
“Yeah, right.” Savannah reached into the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of sweet tea. “Want a glass?” she asked.
“No, thanks. It would keep me up all night.”
Savannah glanced up at the clock and said, “In case you haven’t noticed, the night’s pretty much gone already.”
“You sure are burning the midnight oil on this one.”
Savannah took a long drink of the iced tea, then stood still, eyes closed, waiting for the sugar and caffeine to hit her system, for the cold refreshment to do its work and refresh her tired body.<
br />
But nothing happened.
“You look plum worn to a frazzle, sweet pea,” Gran said. “If you don’t get some rest, you’re just gonna fall down in a dead faint.”
“I know. I’m going to go to bed and try to get some sleep pretty soon. I’m sure tomorrow’s going to be a doozy. Just looking for Daisy was enough, and now this murder on top of it.”
“There’s nothing new at all about the girl?”
“No, nothing. For a moment tonight, I thought I was going to get something out of one of the girls in their little club, but then the body was discovered and…”
Savannah dumped the rest of the tea into the sink and put the glass into the dishwasher. “That’s the worst part,” she said. “Not that I don’t feel terrible about Andrew Dante getting murdered, but—”
Gran gasped. “It’s Andrew Dante who’s dead! Lord have mercy! I figured it was one of their servants or somebody working on the party there.”
“No, it’s the master of the house himself. And all the media coverage is just going to make things worse, not to mention the pressure from folks in high places.” She ran her hand over her face and through her hair. She was too tired to even focus anymore. “I just feel so bad for Daisy and her poor mother. Andrew’s dead and of course, we have to catch the killer, but Daisy…Daisy’s the one who’s going to keep me awake tonight. I feel guilty even going to bed when she’s still out there somewhere.”
Gran reached for her, took her in her arms, and gave her a hearty hug. Holding her close, she patted her back and said, “My sweet, brave Savannah. It’s always about the kids for you, isn’t it, darlin’? Always has been about the kids your whole life.”
Savannah looked into her grandmother’s dear face and remembered the years and years of sacrifice that she had made to raise her and her siblings. “You’re somebody to talk,” she said, giving Gran a kiss on the nose. “You softie. You still spoil them rotten.”
The pat on the back turned to a playful slap. “I do not. I’m gettin’ downright ornery in my old age.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’ll be the day.”
She took her grandmother’s hand and said, “Okay, come on into the living room, and I’ll fill you in on all the gory details. But there are a few things that you can’t even tell Martha because they’re confidential facts of the case. You’re going to have to keep it straight, what you can repeat and what you can’t. Got it?”
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