Poisoned Tarts

by G. A. McKevett

  “They gave me two bottles of water and a handful of vitamins. And then Tiffany told me she’d be back every day to bring me more water and vitamins and my daily allotment of calories—a salad. She said that one way or the other, I was going to lose weight.”

  “That bitch,” Pam whispered to Savannah. “I’m going to kill her. You just wait until I get my hands on her, I—”

  “Sh-h-h. I know how you feel, but later. Later, Pam.”

  “And did she do that?” Granny asked. “Did she bring you water and food every day that you were up there?”

  “No. She did the first day, but after that, she didn’t come back. And I ran out of water. It was so hot in that metal cage.” Daisy shuddered. “In the daytime, it was like an oven in there. I could hardly even breathe. And then at night, it was so cold. They didn’t even give me a blanket or a coat. All I had was that hard bench. And there were rats and…. It was so awful.”

  “I’m sorry, sugar,” Gran said. “I really, really am. But it’s all over and done now. The worst has already happened.”

  Gran looked over at Savannah and Pam, and Savannah couldn’t ever remember seeing her grandmother look so angry.

  Savannah stepped up to the bed and said, “Gran, would you take care of Pam while I just ask Daisy a couple more questions?”

  “Sure.” Gran bent over, smoothed the hair away from Daisy’s face, and kissed her forehead. “You just rest now, sugar. Rest and get well. You’ve been through a real trial, but it’s going to make you a strong, strong woman. You just wait and see. Someday, you’ll find a way to use all this bad for good. I just know it.”

  “Thank you. I will,” Daisy replied with a glimmer of strength and determination in her eyes that confirmed Granny’s prediction.

  Gran walked over to Pam and said, “While Savannah does what she has to do here, why don’t we go get us a cup of coffee and a donut? I always think better with some strong coffee in me.”

  Pam hesitated, but finally, she submitted and left with Granny. Gran looked over her shoulder at Savannah and said. “We’ll see you later. Do your detective thing there, Savannah girl.”

  “Thanks, Gran.”

  “She’s your grandmother?” Daisy asked weakly.

  “Yes, she is,” Savannah replied.

  “You’re lucky.”

  Savannah laughed. “You have no idea how fortunate. And you’re blessed, too. Your mother loves you so much, and she has enormous respect for you.”

  “She told me so many times not to hang around with those stupid girls. She told me they’d get me in trouble. But I didn’t listen, and they nearly killed me.”

  Savannah couldn’t argue with her about that. The emergency room physician had told her and Dirk that if Daisy hadn’t been found in the next twelve hours, she would have died from dehydration. She had very nearly been murdered.

  “Why do you think they really did it?” Savannah asked. “We know it had nothing to do with weight or any stupid intervention. That was the excuse. What was the reason?”

  Daisy thought about it for a while. “I think it’s a couple of reasons. I think Tiffy was super jealous of me getting that part on the TV show. She hated me for having something she wanted and couldn’t buy for herself.”

  “Yes, I’m sure she was.”

  “And Bunny…Bunny told me something, and I think she decided later that she shouldn’t have told me. I think Tiffy was just going to keep me up there for a little while because she was mad, but I think Bunny was really hoping I’d die.”

  Savannah was pretty sure she knew the answer, but she asked the question anyway. “What did she tell you?”

  “That she’s pregnant. She asked me to buy a pregnancy test for her; she was afraid her mother might find out if she bought it. And she took it, and it was positive. Then she asked me to call the clinic here in town and make an appointment for her to have an abortion, all under my name.”

  “And you gave your permission for her to do that?”

  Daisy shrugged. “I was stupid. I did anything any of them asked just to be part of them.”

  “It’s okay. You’ve learned. That’s all any of us can do. Live and learn.”

  “That was a pretty hard way to learn.”

  “It sure was, but like Gran said, it’s over now. Daisy, do you know who the father of Bunny’s baby is?”

  Daisy nodded. “Andrew Dante, Tiffy’s dad. They’ve had a thing going since last spring. She was on the pill, but she went off it deliberately so that she’d get pregnant. She wanted to have his baby more than anything in the world.”

  “But you said she scheduled an abortion.”

  “That was only after he told her to. She had this big idea that if she got pregnant, he would dump Robyn and marry her. Then she’d have him, that big mansion, everything. She wanted to be the lady of the manor, even above Tiffany.”

  “That’s mighty ambitious.”

  “Yes, and dumb. Andrew told her, ‘No way. Just forget about it.’ So she asked me to schedule an abortion for her. But then she got to thinking about it and threw a big fit. She threatened to tell Robyn. That’s when he offered her a luxury trip to Europe to have the abortion there.”

  “How did she feel about that?”

  “She hated him for that. I mean, really hated him. I’m even afraid she might kill him over it. She’s said a bunch of times that if he won’t marry her, she might.”

  Savannah hesitated, then decided to go ahead and tell her the truth. “Daisy, Andrew Dante is dead. Someone did kill him.”

  Daisy’s eyes widened. “No! No! Really?”

  “Yes. We’ve been working on trying to solve his murder.”

  “Oh my God! That’s awful. I mean, he wasn’t the greatest guy ever. He shouldn’t have been fooling around on his wife, and not with a young kid like Bunny. But still…that’s terrible.”

  “It is. So if you can help us in any way, we’d really appreciate it.”

  “Sure. I’ll tell you anything I know. It’s not like I need to have any loyalty toward them, considering what they did to me.”

  “Do you know anything about a false passport?”

  Daisy nodded. “Yeah. Andrew got one for Bunny so that she could go to Amsterdam with him last spring. They went to Hollywood to some tattoo parlor and got it.”

  “Do you have any idea where it is?”

  “Yes. She keeps it and other stuff she doesn’t want her mother to know about in a secret place under the floor of her bedroom closet. Her diary’s there, too, and she writes everything in there. If that helps you any.”

  It was all Savannah could do not to scoop Daisy up off the bed and squish her with hugs. “Oh, yes, that will help.”

  “If Bunny killed Mr. Dante,” Daisy said, “she should pay for it.”

  “She will. And she and Tiffany will pay for what they did to you. False imprisonment is a very serious crime. They’re going to prison for a long time for what they did.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good.”

  Daisy gave her a smile that Savannah recognized all too well. It was the smile of a victim who believed they might get some justice, the ultimate validation of their suffering.

  “Daisy,” Savannah said, “how much does Tiffany know about Bunny and her dad?”

  “She knows it all. Everything except that Bunny threatened to kill him. Bunny never said anything like that in front of her, just to me and Kiki.”

  “She didn’t care that her dad and Bunny were having an affair?”

  “Oh, she cared some because she’s jealous of anybody who gets any kind of attention from her dad. But she hates Robyn, so she didn’t care that he was fooling around on his wife.”

  “And how did she feel about the pregnancy?”

  “Oh, she was furious about that. She loves being her father’s only kid. She was all for the abortion, just not the big European trip. She was pressuring Bunny to have one here in town.”

  “Does Bun
ny’s mom know any of this?”

  “No, nothing. She thinks her little honey Bunny is perfect in every way.”

  “And Kiki?”

  “Kiki knows all about Bunny and Andrew, too. But she wasn’t there when they put me in the cage. I can’t believe she would know about that and not tell someone where to find me. She’s always been a better friend to me than the other two.”

  Savannah didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was pretty sure Kiki knew, too. Daisy had suffered enough in the past few days. And she was looking tired, so Savannah decided it was time to end the interview.

  Besides, Pam was returning with Gran, and she wanted to give the mother and daughter the healing time they needed together.

  “You get well, sweetie,” she said, leaning over and giving her a kiss on the cheek. “When you get out of here and are feeling better, I want you and your mom to come over to my house. I’ll cook you a dinner that will knock your flip-flops off!”

  Savannah waited as Gran said her brief good-byes, and Pam thanked them both profusely one more time. Then the two of them left the ICU.

  Once they were in the hallway, Savannah grabbed her cell phone out of her purse and called Dirk.

  “Where are you?” she asked him.

  “I just came down off the hill. You’re not going to believe how bad that place was. The straw in there was full of rats, and they’d given her this one little pot to—”

  “I know,” she said. “I just left the ICU. Daisy’s doing a lot better now, and Gran and I got to talk to her. It was Tiffany and Bunny who shut her in there. And it’s Bunny who’s pregnant…with Andrew Dante’s kid.”

  “Whoa!”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you want to do next?”

  “Why don’t you nab Tiffany and Bunny and take them to the station for questioning? I’ll meet you there.” She glanced down at her watch and smiled. It was ten minutes until eleven. “If you hurry, maybe we can get them in there and squeeze a confession out of them before midnight. That would make this the best Halloween ever!”

  Chapter 21

  Savannah wasted no time dropping Gran off at home and then hightailing it over to the police station.

  Normally, she didn’t like hanging around the station. Some years back, she and the San Carmelita Police Department had parted ways with a less than amicable divorce. And even though she was close friends with many of the cops, she still loathed the bosses who had unfairly dismissed her. And she avoided running into them whenever possible.

  Fortunately, none of them worked the night shift.

  So when she walked through the front door, she was greeted like a long lost family member.

  “Savannah!” Officer Marianna Weil shouted from the front desk. “We heard you guys found the O’Neil girl! Good goin’!”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Is Dirk here?”

  Marianna’s bright expression dimmed ever so slightly. “No, but I heard he’s on his way. They’re bringing that Tiffy Dante gal in with some friend of hers. He called and asked for two radio cars with cages to transport them.”

  Savannah laughed. “How appropriate.”

  “Hey, what’s that?” Marianna stood up, and she and Savannah hurried over to the window. A crowd had appeared out of nowhere—cars, vans pulling up in front of the station and people spilling out of the vehicles, carrying cameras and microphones.

  “Looks like we’ve got a departmental leak,” Marianna said.

  For a moment, Savannah flashed back on the moment she had dropped Gran at her house. Had she remembered to warn her not to call her girlfriend Martha Phelps in Georgia? She was pretty sure she’d forgotten to. Oh, well.

  “This stuff gets out,” she told Marianna. “You just can’t keep a lid on it.”

  Within less than two minutes, there wasn’t an empty parking space on either side of the street for as far down as they could see. And the yard in front of the station house was filling up, as well.

  Officer Weil walked back to her desk and picked up the phone. “Yeah, uh…you may want to send somebody out there for crowd control. Coulter’s going to be bringing those bimbos in any minute now, and all hell’s gonna break loose.”

  No sooner had she hung up than they heard sirens and saw the lights of the squad cars coming down the road.

  “Dirk’s not stupid,” Savannah said. “And he doesn’t give a hoot about headlines or getting his picture in the paper. He’ll bring them in the back way.”

  And he did. She saw the two cars take a sharp and abrupt turn left down a side street. And like lemmings following each other, the crowd shifted and moved in unison, going after them.

  Savannah hurried through the station, racing to the back door, and arrived there just as Dirk and three uniformed cops escorted Tiffany, Bunny, and her mother inside.

  All three ladies had looked better. Apparently, they had been plucked from their beds and hustled into the radio cars because they were all wearing pajamas and no makeup and their normally perfect hairdos were askew.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Dirk was telling them. “We have to get you inside and safe. You don’t want those media nuts to get their hands on you. Move along now!”

  Savannah knew the reason for Dirk’s haste, and it had nothing to do with the paparazzi crowd out front. He was keeping their minds on other things for as long as possible to forestall the moment when he would hear those most unwelcome words, “I wanna talk to my lawyer!”

  Fortunately, all three females looked too stunned to be thinking straight yet.

  “Here,” he was telling them, “just go in there, Tiffany, and you, Bunny, into that room there, and Mrs. Greenaway, if you could just wait for me in—”

  “No!” Bunny wailed. “I want my mother! I want my mom to come in here with me!”

  “Sure, sure, no problem. I’d be happy to do that for you,” Dirk said, all sunshine and cooperation…for the moment. “Just go in there, and I’ll be right with you.”

  “Are we in any kind of trouble?” Mrs. Greenaway said, trying to smooth her tousled hair.

  “You? Naw, not at all,” Dirk said. “There’s just been some new developments in Daisy’s and Mr. Dante’s cases, and you ladies would want to know all about that, right?”

  Bunny glanced around her, uneasy. “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

  Then she and her mother went into their appointed room.

  Dirk motioned for Savannah to follow him, and they hurried into the interrogation room where he had stashed Tiffany.

  She was pacing the tiny room, and the moment they entered, she yelled, “You can’t question me! My attorney said that I didn’t have to say another word to you ever again if I don’t want to. And I don’t want to, so there!”

  “I’m not here to question you, Ms. Dante,” Dirk said far too calmly, far too politely. “I don’t need to hear another word from you ever again. I know all I need to know about you. I’m placing you under arrest for the false imprisonment of Daisy O’Neil. And after a few more conversations with the prosecutor, I may even be able to add kidnapping and attempted murder to the list of charges. So there!”

  Tiffany gasped, and the sound was like air escaping an overinflated balloon. She staggered back and sat abruptly down on a folding chair. “False imprisonment? What is that?”

  Savannah stepped forward and leaned over her. “It’s putting a human being into a hot metal cage and then leaving her there with no food and no water and—”

  “Oh, that!” She looked instantly relieved. “That wasn’t imprisonment. That was an intervention. Daisy is so-o-o fat! Have you seen her lately? She has totally blimped out. We just did that for her own good. I explained that to her. She didn’t need food. She could just live off her fat for, like, a year at least. And then she’d look a lot better!”

  Savannah fought the urge to slap her off the chair and onto the floor. “When we found that poor girl a few hours ago, she was nearly dead from dehydration. She’s in the hospital now in intens
ive care.”

  “Oh, ple-e-ease. We left her some water. And I couldn’t go back. My dad had been murdered! I was busy.”

  Dirk stepped forward, and for a moment, Savannah was afraid he really would hit her. “I don’t have time to mess with you right now,” he told her. “But you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”

  Savannah turned and walked out of the room, her stomach tightening into a hard, bitter ball in her belly. Still, after all these years, she couldn’t get over the way human beings could rationalize the most vicious acts.

  It simply boggled her mind.

  Dirk came out a few moments later and asked a female uniformed cop in the hallway to keep an eye on Tiffany. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” he said. “She’s under arrest.”

  “Really?” the cop asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool!”

  Dirk turned to Savannah. “You know,” he said, “we don’t have enough to actually nail this Bunny kid for killing Dante. I know she did, and you do, too, but we’ve got squat. The fake passport, some lipstick, and maybe some DNA when it eventually comes back from the lab—that’s not enough.”

  “She threatened to kill him several times in front of Daisy and Kiki.”

  “Still not enough.”

  “There’s a diary stashed in her room that may have some good stuff in it.”

  “But for right now, we’ve got nothing.”

  Savannah raised one eyebrow and grinned. “Yeah, but she doesn’t know how nothing the nothing is that we’ve got.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. Watch this.”

  “Let me tell you what we already know, Bunny,” Savannah said as she leaned across the table that separated her and Dirk from Bunny and the girl’s mother. “Not the stuff we think or the stuff we’re just guessing about…but the stuff that we absolutely, positively know.”

  “Okay,” Bunny said, flipping her hair back over her shoulder in a very Tiffanyesque move. “Go right ahead. You tell me what you know about me, lady detective.”

  “No,” Mrs. Greenaway interrupted. “I think we should have a lawyer here before anybody says anything.”