The maid went straight to the desk and opened the top drawer. Reaching beneath the drawer, she pulled off a small key that was taped there.
“Mr. Dante was careful about how he stored his guns,” she said. “He knew that with kids coming in and out of here, you have to be responsible.”
She used the key to open the bottom right drawer and looked inside. “It’s right…oh…”
“Oh?” Savannah asked with a sinking feeling.
“It isn’t here.”
Now, how did I just know it wasn’t going to be? Savannah asked herself.
“What kind of gun is it?”
“I don’t know much about guns, but it’s one like you hold in your hand.”
“A pistol, not a long one, like a rifle.”
“Yes, a pistol. That’s what he called it. He called it something like his horse or maybe his pony.”
“His horse? His pony?” A lightbulb came on in her head. “Did he maybe refer to it as his Colt?”
“That’s it, his Colt! That’s what he called it, his dad’s old Colt from his army days.”
Colt, as in a Colt .45? Savannah thought, her heart starting to pound.
“Is there any other place it might be?” she asked Libby. “Any other place he kept it sometimes?”
“No. Mr. Dante was big on knowing exactly where his guns were at all times. None of us were allowed to touch them, and he always kept them in the same places.”
Savannah sighed and said, “Well, I’m afraid somebody broke the rules. Somebody touched one. Probably this one.”
She reached over and patted Libby on the arm. “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks a bunch.” She gave her one of her business cards. “If you think of anything else, anybody you might have seen yesterday afternoon, before or after the incident with Tiffany, please give me a call.”
“Sure, I will. Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Savannah went upstairs and soon located Dirk in Tiffany’s bedroom. He jumped when she opened the door and caught him with his hands in one of her dresser drawers.
“You scared me,” he admitted with a weak chuckle as she closed the door behind her.
“You thought I was Tiffany. Big, bad you is scared of that little brat.”
“Am not.”
“Are, too.”
“Okay, I am. Not exactly afraid, but sick of her. One more round and I might do something to her that really would get me sued and fired.”
“I hear you.”
“I see you already questioned that maid,” he said, closing the drawer and opening the one beneath it.
“Yes, and I think I know what gun we’re looking for. There’s a Colt .45 missing from Dante’s library desk.”
Dirk froze in midsearch. “No way!”
“You heard me. The maid—Libby’s her name—took me in there to show it to me. It was supposed to be in a locked drawer. She unlocked the drawer, and it was gone. She says he always, always kept it there.”
“Wow! Good work, Van.”
“Thank you.”
She looked around the hot pink room, at the canopied bed with its pink organza bed curtains spilling down onto a frilly pink bedspread covered with frilly pink pillows. A fainting couch in the corner was pink, as was the fur throw that was laid across it. The folding privacy screen was pink and had an enormous pink feather boa thrown over it.
Savannah was a girlie girl in many ways and liked pink as much as any other female, but this room made her want to gag.
She walked over to the bed and slipped her hands beneath and among the mountain of pillows. Then she moved a giant pink teddy bear out of the corner and looked behind him.
Dirk was finishing with the dresser, so she dropped down onto her knees beside the bed, lifted the pink satin dust ruffle, and looked underneath.
“Dirk,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Come here.”
He hurried over to her and knelt beside her. “What is it?”
“Give me your penlight.”
He handed her the tiny flashlight. She pointed it at the dark object in the corner near the bed’s carved claw-foot.
“Get me a pen,” she said.
He grabbed one off the nightstand and gave it to her.
She reached far under the bed and a moment later, came out with the big pistol dangling from the pen by its trigger guard.
“Whoa! Van, you scored! Good goin’, girl!”
She held the gun close to her nose and gave it a sniff. “Oh yeah,” she said, a huge grin on her face. “What’s better than finding a Colt .45 in bratty Tiffany’s bedroom? Finding one that’s been recently fired.”
He laughed out loud. “Makes my day,” he said. “Bigtime!”
Chapter 17
Tammy sat at Savannah’s kitchen table, staring at the computer screen in front of her, while the entire Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency, plus Gran, sat around the table, waiting and watching with great expectation.
“Drats,” she said, shaking her head. “Nothing.”
“No! Do not tell us that!” Savannah said, sinking low in her chair.
“Are you telling me…”—Dirk leaned over and tried to see the screen as she typed—“…that I went to all that rigmarole to get that search warrant and seize her computer for nothing?”
Tammy threw up her hands in frustration. “What can I say? Tiffy doesn’t compute much. Apparently, she’s too busy.”
“We’re all too busy,” Ryan said from one end of the table. “But we still find at least some time to waste on the computer every day. Don’t we?”
Savannah shook her head. “I don’t.”
“Me either,” Gran added. “I’m still complaining about how much the telephone interferes with my day. Don’t need anything else, like a computer, to make it even harder to get my chores done.”
“Maybe she uses a BlackBerry or some other sort of handheld mobile device to receive e-mails,” John suggested.
“I thought of that,” Dirk said, “and I had them include that kind of thing in the search warrant. But she wasn’t home when I went there to seize the stuff, so I’ll have to wait on that.”
“Oh, hey, hold on,” Tammy said. “I think I found something here. She’s stored a few e-mails here. I just found them.”
“That’s more like it!” Savannah said. “But are they recent?”
“Last week.” Tammy typed away and squinted at the screen. “They’re from somebody whose screen name is SwizMiz62.”
“SwizMiz62,” Savannah mused. “Tiffany’s mother lived in Switzerland. I suppose it could stand for Swiss Miss? But I doubt she’s 62.”
Ryan added, “It could be her birth year. That would be about right.”
“You’re right,” Tammy said. “It is her mother. There’s some really nasty stuff here about Robyn. Her mom’s real name is Crystal. And boy, they both really hate Robyn’s guts.”
“Can’t really expect it’d be otherwise,” Gran said softly. “Most women don’t take kindly to the gal who took their man away. And you can’t really blame that Tiffany girl either. It’s hard for a young’un to deal with grown-ups’ nonsense. They’ve got enough trouble just being a kid.”
“But it’s been a couple of years since all that went down,” Dirk told her. “You’d think they’d be over it by now.”
Gran shook her head. “No. Some hurts go too deep for a body to ever get over.”
Dirk considered that for a while. “You suppose she’s nursing a grudge still deep enough to kill the guy over?”
“Might be,” Savannah said. “At any rate, we’ve got to add her to the list of people to check, make sure she’s still in Argentina with her polo player.”
Dirk said, “That list of ours seems to be getting longer rather than shorter. And us with a missing kid still on our hands.”
A cell phone lying on the table began to play a merry tune. Dirk reached for it and looked at the caller ID. “It’s Daisy’s cell,” he said. “And it�
��s her boyfriend calling again. He keeps leaving messages every couple of hours and has been since we talked to him. He’s getting more and more frantic.”
“You haven’t told him that we have her phone?” Tammy asked.
“No.” Dirk continued to let it ring without picking up. “I wanted to hear what he was saying to her. But so far, he just sounds like a boyfriend who’s worried sick.”
“Her mom is a mess,” Savannah said. “She went on the news at noon and begged for whoever has Daisy to let her go. It broke my heart.”
“Well, hopefully, it’ll break somebody else’s heart,” Gran added. “Maybe somebody who knows something will come forward, and then maybe you guys can get a lead on what’s happened to her.”
“I’ve been trying to get hold of Kiki,” Savannah said. “I swear, if I could get her alone one more time, maybe I could pry something out of her. But she’s obviously avoiding me. I’ve called a dozen times.”
Dirk rubbed his eyes wearily. “I’ll try to get hold of her again. It’s just that with this Dante thing on top of it all, I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Ryan said. “Really, let us take part of this for you. What can we do?”
“We’ve been known to pry a few things out of unwilling parties from time to time ourselves back when we were with the Bureau,” John replied, a twinkle in his eyes.
“I thought it was a kinder, gentler FBI now,” Savannah said.
“That’s the IRS,” Ryan replied with a laugh. “The FBI is still as mean as ever.”
“All right,” Dirk said, admitting defeat…or something close to it. “If you two really do want to help, I’ll give you the address of a certain travel agency, the one Dante always used. I’ll call the gal there who’s expecting me to drop by and tell her that you’ll be interviewing her for me. I need to know a couple of things.”
Ryan grabbed a legal pad from the middle of the table and reached into his pocket for his signature fountain pen. “Okay, shoot.”
“It’s on the corner of Charles Avenue and Eve’s Place. The gal’s name is Marilee. I need you to get every bit of info you can on any traveling Dante’s paid for these past six months. I’m particularly interested in a trip to Amsterdam that he took four months ago in the middle of June. I want to know if he went alone, and if not, who he went with.”
Ryan scribbled away on the pad. “Got it. And…?”
“Also, I want to know if he’s booked anything recently. Supposedly, there was a note saying he was going to London at the time he was killed. See if he bought a ticket.”
“Anything else?”
Dirk thought for a moment, then said, “I think that’s it.”
Ryan tore the sheet off the pad and said, “No problem. We’ll take care of that this afternoon and give you a call when we’re done.”
“Thanks, buddy. I appreciate it,” Dirk said with uncustomary warmth.
Savannah couldn’t help being surprised and pleased.
“Anything to help you find a missing youngster,” John said. “We all carry a soft spot for those adolescents who can get themselves into such serious trouble so quickly.”
“Well, this travel agency thing is more related to the Dante murder than the missing kid,” Dirk said.
As Ryan folded the paper and stuck it into his shirt pocket, he said, “Don’t you really think that one has to do with the other?”
Reluctantly, Dirk admitted, “Yes. I’d like to hope that Daisy’s disappearance has nothing to do with a cold-blooded, gruesome murder. I’d hate to think she’s on the bad side of somebody who would drive a stake into their victim’s chest just for fun.”
“No kidding,” Savannah said under her breath.
Another cell phone began to play a tune. This time, it was Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party.”
“It’s Dr. Liu,” Savannah told the group as Dirk answered his phone.
“Coulter,” Dirk said. He listened for a moment, then said, “Oh, yeah? What?” Grinning a little, he said, “No, you neglected to mention that detail. Did you swab it for DNA? Okay. What shade?” He chuckled. “Thanks a lot, Dr. Jen.”
“Well, are you going to share with the rest of us?” Savannah said when he’d hung up.
He glanced over at Gran and cleared his throat. “Um, it seems the good doctor noticed something else during her autopsy after we left.”
Savannah nudged him under the table with her foot. “And…?”
“It seems our Mr. Dante had, um, enjoyed a form of sexual activity the day he died.”
“You asked, ‘what shade,’” Savannah said. “What? Did she find lipstick on his collar, as the old song says?”
Again, Dirk shot Gran a quick look. “Mm-m-m-m, not exactly on his collar.”
There was a long, heavy silence in the room before Savannah finally said, “Ah, okay, gotcha.”
Everyone nodded knowingly, including Gran.
Another long, uncomfortable silence reigned until once again, Savannah broke it. “Well, what shade was it?”
“Dark red, very dark. Almost black.” Dirk pushed back from the table and stood. “I guess I need to go back out to the Dante place and ask Mrs. Dante if she and her husband got friendly that day and see if she has a tube of dark, dark red lipstick in her makeup drawer.”
Gran stood, too, and walked over to the refrigerator. She reached inside and pulled out a pitcher of iced tea. “Well, if she does have a tube that color in her stuff, then you know she wasn’t the one who kilt him.”
They all mulled that one over for a minute, then Savannah asked, “How do you figure, Gran?”
She grinned as she poured herself a tall glass of the tea. “’Cause there ain’t no wife alive who’d get that friendly if she was figurin’ on killin’ her man the same day. That’d be a pure waste o’ time and energy.”
“That was nice of Ryan and John to volunteer to help us out, huh?” Savannah said as she and Dirk drove through Spirit Hills to the Dante place.
“Yeah, they’re stand-up guys, those two,” Dirk admitted.
She reached into a bag on the floorboard and pulled out a Snickers bar and a can of Pepsi. “You didn’t like them when you first met them.”
“Well, it’s not for the reason you think.”
She popped the top of the can and handed it to him. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that I didn’t like them when I met them, but you thought it was because they’re gay.” He took a long drink of the Pepsi, then turned and grinned at her. “That is what you thought, huh?”
“Well…yeah. I guess so.”
He tucked the soda between his thighs and took the candy bar she had unwrapped for him. “It’s not true. That wasn’t the reason.”
“Okay.” She got another chocolate bar and soda from the bag for herself. “I’ll bite. Why didn’t you like them?”
“’Cause I thought they were stuffy and uppity.”
Savannah knew exactly what he meant. Anybody who wore an ironed shirt and creased trousers was “uppity” to Dirk. And anybody who enjoyed classical music or knew the names of more than three artists was “stuffy.”
“And now?” she asked.
“I know them now. And I mean, I don’t have that much in common with them. I like baseball and football, and they like tennis and golf. I drink coffee and beer, and they drink tea and wine. I eat burgers, and they eat frogs’ legs. Stuff like that. But they’re good guys.”
“And when did you decide this?”
“Oh, I’ve been making up my mind for a long time now. It was, like…an evolutionary process.”
“Whoa!”
“What?”
“Watch out there, buddy, or you’ll sound uppity and stuffy.”
“Naw, never gonna happen. Not me.”
A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of the mansion, their refreshments finished, their energy temporarily recharged.
They were met at the door by Libby.
“Hey, what was that?” Dirk wanted to know. “Since when are you two bosom buddies?”
“We bonded,” Savannah said with a shrug. “We had our own little Hate Tiffy chat session, and now we’re sisters. Why? Jealous?”
“A little, yeah. I mean, I don’t want to be her brother, but…”
A couple of minutes later, Libby returned and said, “Mrs. Dante is on the telephone. But she asked me to show you outside to the patio and get you something to drink. She’ll be down in a minute.”
“If I have anything else to drink, I’ll float away,” Savannah said as they followed her out to the patio.
Savannah was astonished to see how ordinary the place looked. Dirk had finally released the scene, and apparently, the woman who had furnished the props had wasted no time in clearing everything away.
The only evidence of the violence that had happened here were the CSI techs’ markings on the patio, specifically, where the coffin had been.
Dirk sat down in the chair that Libby offered, but Savannah walked around to the opposite side of the pool instead. She knelt near the markings and looked closely at the tiles that had been directly beneath the coffin.
After a while, she came back to Dirk and sat down on the chair next to his. “You can see where a little bit of the black paint rubbed off on the tiles over there,” she said.
“Yeah? So?”
“I was just checking to see if the murderer dragged it. I was looking at the paint on the coffin there in the lab, and it looked fresh. I was looking to see if maybe the thing had been dragged here on the tile.”
“O-o-okay. And this matters because?”
“Because we were talking about whether he was shot here or…I don’t know, Dirk. Maybe I’m tired, too. We’re kinda going in circles here. Nothing to really hang our hat on.”
Dirk chuckled. “If what Dr. Liu told me is true, somebody could have hung their hat on Andrew’s—hey, look who’s here!”
Robyn Dante had just exited the house and was walking over toward them. She had a triumphant smile on her face.
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