Poisoned Tarts

by G. A. McKevett

  Gran swelled up, moderately indignant. “Listen, young lady, I may be old, but I’m not the least bit senile. I’m fast as a tack and sharp as a whip.”

  Savannah sighed. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  By the time Savannah arrived at the county morgue the next morning, Dirk was already there. She saw his Buick in the parking lot when she pulled in and parked the Mustang beside it.

  Normally, he might have waited for her in the lot to see if she had brought him any biscuits left over from breakfast. The fact that he had gone on inside without her, risking the possibility of having hot biscuits get cold, showed that he was in a highly agitated state.

  She laid the tin containing the fresh bread on the black dash of her car in the sunshine. The biscuits would still be warm, even if it was hours before they returned.

  She left the car and walked up the pathway to the brick building, thinking that she’d rather go to the dentist or the gynecologist.

  Too many sad things occurred inside this building for it to be one of her favorite places. She had witnessed one too many next of kin having to identify the remains of their loved ones inside these walls.

  Walking through the front doors, she saw the other reason why she hated to come here: the desk attendant, Officer Kenny Bates.

  “Savannah!” he exclaimed the moment he saw her. “Hey, girl, you’re looking good today!”

  She and Kenny had a love-loathe relationship. He loved her; she loathed him, the ground he plodded on, the air he breathed.

  Especially the air he exhales, she thought as she caught a whiff of something that smelled like a toxic mixture of garlic and licorice.

  Yeap, there were dill pickles and licorice whips on his desk.

  She tried to breathe through her ears as she wrote on his sign-in sheet, Ida Spize U.

  “I was wondering,” he said, leaning over the counter, trying to look down her blouse. “Do you wanna—”

  “No. I do not.”

  “Go to Las Vegas—”

  “No!”

  “With me—”

  “Never.”

  “For a long, romantic weekend?”

  “I’d rather die. No, wait. I’d rather that you died.”

  “We can take in some of those topless shows and get massages together, maybe get our naked bodies painted with chocolate while the other one watches.”

  She looked at his metal-framed glasses, the lens of which hadn’t been cleaned for years. She watched as he licked his lips with a black, licorice-stained tongue. She noted the shirt wet with green pickle juice and the way it gaped open over his gut between the buttons, letting some of his belly hairs stick through.

  “I’ll bet that’d put you in the mood, huh?” he said. “I’d even lick the chocolate off you if you want me to.”

  The way he waggled one scraggly eyebrow at her made her fantasize about vats of hot, flaming oil being poured from castle parapets down onto deserving pervert, peasant desk attendants.

  “Someday,” she told him, “I’m going to just say, ‘Screw it,’ and shoot you dead where you stand, Bates. Or maybe I’ll stab you in the eyeballs with your own pen over a hundred times and let Dr. Liu decide if it was overkill.”

  He chuckled. And as she walked away, she heard him say, “I love all this sexual tension between us, Savannah. But we just have to take it to the next level. Reconsider that Las Vegas offer, okay.”

  “Go to hell, Bates. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  At the end of the long hallway with its shiny, hospital-type linoleum, she came to a pair of large swinging doors.

  Opening one of them a couple of inches, she peeped inside and said, “Yoo-hoo. Anybody here? Dr. Jen?”

  “Yeah, Van, come on in,” replied a masculine voice.

  She opened the door the rest of the way to find that Dirk was there with Dr. Liu, both of them looking down at the body stretched out on the autopsy table.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said.

  “You aren’t late,” Dr. Liu told her. “This guy is just rushing me.”

  “Who? Me?” Dirk looked highly offended. “I’d never rush anybody.”

  “Oh please.” Savannah shook her head. “You’ve offered to push little old ladies with walkers to get them out of your way.”

  “That only happened once! Once, and now you’re never gonna let me live it down “

  “Sh-h-h. Can’t you tell when I’m teasing you, boy?”

  Out of habit, Savannah went over to a cupboard, opened it, and took out a paper smock, cap, booties, and a pair of surgical gloves.

  Once she was appropriately dressed, she walked up to the table where Dr. Liu was in the middle of Andrew Dante’s autopsy.

  “See,” Dr. Liu told Dirk. “Savannah wears the disposable protective gear like I ask her to.”

  “Yeah, and she crosses streets at the corners, inside the little lines, too. She’s a nerd, so—ow-w!”

  He grabbed his arm and rubbed the spot where Savannah had slugged him. “And for a nerd, she’s got a pretty good right jab, too,” he said with a chuckle.

  “What have y’all got here?” Savannah asked, looking down on the body with the detachment of a professional and only a little of a layman’s queasiness.

  “What we have,” Dr. Liu said, “is a very interesting case.”

  “That’s for sure,” Dirk added. “Wait’ll we tell you what killed him.”

  “What killed him?” Savannah looked down at the grievous wound in the chest, which had been incised even further open. “The stake didn’t do it?”

  “Nope.” Dirk grinned, enjoying the suspense. “The stake didn’t do it. Remember Dr. Liu said at the scene that the wound didn’t look right to her, didn’t look like your average stabbing with a foreign object.”

  “The stake was inserted postmortem,” Dr. Liu said.

  “For effect, I suppose.” Savannah shook her head. “And whoa! What an effect! What was it that actually killed him?”

  “Manner of death, homicide,” Dr. Liu told her. “Cause of death, gunshot wound of chest.”

  “Gunshot? Get out!”

  “She’s dead serious,” Dirk said. “Can you roll him over, Doc, and show her?”

  “No, but if you suit up, I’ll let you roll him over,” Dr. Liu said with a grin.

  Grumbling, Dirk went to the cupboard, got the disposable protection gear, and put it on. When he returned to the table, Savannah snickered and said, “You didn’t have to put the cap on. That’s to keep your hair from dropping on the body.”

  “Shut up.”

  “We could do a hair count before and after you look at him,” Savannah continued, undaunted. “If you start out with eleven and end up with eleven, no problem.”

  “I said, ‘Shut up.’ There are some things you just don’t tease about. And the hair is one of them.”

  He walked around to the opposite side of the table, put one hand on Dante’s shoulder and the other under his hip, and rolled him onto his side. “Are you going to stand there smarting off about my lack of hair, or are you gonna check this out?”

  “I’m checking. I’m checking.”

  Savannah hurried around the table to stand next to him. One look at the back of Andrew Dante’s shirt told the story all too clearly.

  In the center of his pale blue shirt—high, only a few inches below the neck—was a neat black hole burned into the fabric. A small amount of blood had oozed onto the fabric around it. But even with the bloodstains, she could see the telltale stain of gunpowder residue.

  “Oh, wow,” she said. “And this is the entrance wound. Which means that awful thing on the front…”

  “The exit wound,” Dr. Liu added.

  “High caliber, too,” Savannah said, thinking out loud. “Neat hole here in the back, a major blowout in the front.” She turned to Dr. Liu. “I can see why you didn’t think the wound looked like a stab there at the scene.”

  “Yeah, well…before you toot my horn too l
oudly, I have to admit, I was wrong when I said I doubted he was killed there. Now, I’m pretty sure he was.”

  “Oh, really? Why?”

  “Roll him back over, Dirk, and I’ll show her.”

  Dirk did as he was told, and Dr. Liu lifted the vampire costume carefully off the body.

  Immediately, Savannah could see the gruesome evidence. A disturbing amount of gore was all over the front of the pants, basically in the victim’s lap.

  “Mercy,” she said. “That’s pretty ugly.”

  “Yes, it is.” Dr. Liu pointed to the chest wound. “The bullet entered his back high up between his shoulder blades, went through his heart, and exited right here, slightly below center.”

  “So the shooter was slightly higher than he was, aiming downward?”

  “I think so,” Dr. Liu said. “I’ll know the exact angle by the time I finish the autopsy.”

  Dirk got a sick look on his face. “The guy could have even been sitting down when he got hit, like sitting there in that coffin when somebody shot him from the back.”

  “That’s a pretty grim way to go,” Savannah added. “I wonder if he knew it was coming.”

  “He must have figured something was up if he was already sitting in a coffin.” Dirk shuddered. “I mean, you couldn’t be too cheerful, sitting in a casket, maybe waiting for somebody to shoot you in the back.”

  “He couldn’t have known it was coming, not for sure,” Savannah said, “or like you said at the scene, he would have fought like a maniac. Andrew Dante was a big guy, and I’m sure not a shy one, considering all he’d accomplished in his life. You don’t get to the level of success he had by being a pushover. I can’t imagine he’d go peacefully.”

  “Or maybe it was somebody he trusted,” Dr. Liu suggested. “Maybe someone was threatening him with a gun, but it was someone he loved, and he didn’t really believe they would hurt him.”

  Dirk chuckled—a hard, bitter laugh. “Well, if that was the case, he must have been pretty friggen surprised.”

  Savannah groaned. “Hopefully, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to be unhappily surprised for long.”

  “No,” Dr. Liu said, “it wouldn’t have been long at all. He would have bled right out, gone unconscious very quickly.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Savannah said without enthusiasm. “I guess.”

  “It still sucks,” Dirk muttered.

  “Yeah. It sure does.”

  Savannah pictured it: Andrew Dante sitting in that ridiculous prop casket, someone he may have loved and trusted—at least at one time—threatening him with a gun. Him hoping, believing they’d never actually do it. Then…bang! Surprise!

  “Yeah,” she repeated, “that really does stink—a rotten, rotten thing to do. Let’s get ’em.”

  Chapter 16

  “Try to be a little nicer to Eileen today, would you?” Savannah asked Dirk as they pulled into the forensic lab’s parking lot. “No arm twisting, no pushy crap, no name-calling, hair pulling, groin kicking, eyeball gouging…”

  He laughed. “Boy, you sure know how to cramp a guy’s style.” Giving her a wink, he added, “I’ll be good. I’ll be sweet. I’ll be so nice to Eileen that you’ll get jealous.”

  “Jealous? Me?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  She sniffed. “That’ll be the day, you make me jealous.”

  As they got out of the car and walked up to the door, Savannah gave it a little more thought and got moderately irked. “I do not get jealous of you, ever. That’s just your overinflated ego talking, boy.”

  He punched the buzzer button with his thumb. “You do, too. Every time we go to the Patty Cake Donut Shop and I flirt with that little cutie, Sherry, you get pissy.”

  “No way!”

  “Uh-huh. Not enough to kill your appetite for maple bars, but you do give her dirty looks.”

  “I give you dirty looks for buttering her up just so that you can get an extra large coffee for the price of a small one. It’s about you being cheap, not me being jealous.”

  “Yeah, right. I know what I see.”

  “See this!”

  She started to make a gesture that was definitely not on Granny Reid’s list of approved hand signals for Southern ladies. Then she realized they were on camera, the one mounted over the door. And that was another rule: if at all possible, never behave badly on videotape.

  The door opened, and a cranky Eileen filled the space. Eileen was a big girl who seemed to expand when her mood turned ugly.

  “If you’re here about those clothes your victim was wearing,” she told Dirk, hands on hips, “turn around and march right back to your car. We just got them, and I haven’t even had time to open the bag.”

  Dirk lifted both hands in absolute surrender, a sheepish look on his face that Savannah knew darned well was totally fake, but Eileen might buy it. “Please, Eileen, forgive me for the other day. I’ve been informed by somebody who knows a lot more about being polite and courteous than I do…” He cut a sideways look at Savannah. “…that I was a jerk to you last time I was in here. And I’m really sorry. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

  Eileen gave him a sustained drop-dead look, then shook her head. “Oh, please,” she said, “like I’m going to buy a ton of crap like that. I’m busy here. What do you want?”

  Dirk dropped the repentant sinner façade in an instant. “To look at the coffin,” he replied, equally acerbic.

  “That’s it? You’re not going to irritate me at all? You’re not going to try to manipulate me into—”

  Dirk snapped. “I just want to look at the damned casket, if you don’t friggen mind!” he shouted, his face dark red.

  Eileen said nothing, just turned abruptly and walked away. But she left the door open behind her, and Savannah and Dirk took that as a yes.

  They scurried inside before she could change her mind.

  “Smooth,” Savannah whispered to him. “Quite the silken-tongued laddie you are.”

  “Oh, back off me, woman. I’m not in the mood.”

  She laughed at him. “If I had to wait until you were in the mood, I’d never get to harass you, and life would hardly be worth living.”

  He ignored her and looked around the enormous room for his evidence. Eileen had returned to her lab bench in the back. Her assistants were helping her or sitting at computers.

  A couple of the techs shot Dirk wary looks, but none offered to help him.

  Fortunately, an item as large as a coffin wasn’t difficult to find. In the rear of the room near where Eileen was working was a large, long cardboard box that was sealed across the top with evidence tape.

  “That’s gotta be it,” he said as he walked over to the box and knelt beside it.

  Savannah did the same and read the evidence label taped to the top. One of the techs had written on the label, describing the contents as “stage prop coffin-victim found inside.”

  Dirk looked over at Eileen, who was peering into a microscope. He opened his mouth to say something to her, but without taking her eye from the scope, she said, “Go on. Open it. Just be sure to sign the chain of possession label.”

  Dirk grumbled something that sounded remotely like, “Thanks,” then did as she said. On the top of the box, a large piece of paper had been taped. It bore the same description as the evidence label but also had a number of blank lines below the description where those handling the evidence could write their signatures.

  Dirk scribbled “Det. Coulter,” the date, and time. Then he and Savannah both put on rubber gloves, and he used his pocketknife to slit the tape that sealed the top of the box.

  Savannah helped him open the flaps, and they found themselves staring down into the black coffin where Andrew Dante had been found.

  It was a cheap, plywood box made in the shape of an old-fashioned, toe-pincher style coffin—wide about one-third of the way down, and narrow at the head and feet. The edges were rough and unsanded, and a quick coat of black paint had been slap
ped on.

  For all of its spooky effect in the semidarkness with blood-red lighting, it looked pretty tacky in the bright light of the laboratory.

  But even under high-tech illumination, the black background made any blood difficult to see.

  “Here. You’ll need these.” They looked up to see Eileen holding out two pairs of orange wraparound plastic goggles and a portable light source, which looked like a small black box with a handle, and a lens similar to a flashlight on the front.

  “Thanks,” Dirk said, taking the scope from her and one pair of the glasses. He actually sounded grateful this time.

  Handing the second pair to Savannah, she called out, “Mike, dim the lights back here.”

  A few seconds later, the ceiling lights in the room went down to the level of a romantic restaurant in the evening.

  “I assume you’re checking for blood spatter,” Eileen said, putting on a pair of goggles.

  “Among other things,” Dirk said.

  “Like?”

  “The bullet that killed our victim.”

  Even behind the goggles, Savannah saw Eileen’s eyes widen. “Get outta here! No way!”

  “Yep,” Savannah told her. “We were just at Dr. Liu’s. He was shot through the heart. The old-fashioned way—with a gun.”

  “But the wooden stake?”

  “Apparently, it was inserted postmortem.” Dirk switched on the light source and directed the beam onto the casket. “Holy crap! Look at that!”

  “Wow, talk about lit up! It’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve in there,” Savannah said as all three stared at the eerie glow inside the coffin.

  Tiny fine dots glistened on nearly every square inch of the black wood. But the densest area of illumination was about three-quarters of the way down from the top of the coffin. And it had a strange, almost triangular shape to it, with the apex of the triangle toward the top of the coffin and broadening toward the bottom.