“Yes! ” Gilly said. “Stay here with us and listen to the story. It’s about the cat in the hat.”
“I’d like to, Gilly.” She turned for the door. “But it’ll have to wait until another time. You ladies enjoy your book and your cookies. Thanks, Marie.”
Marie just nodded, the sadness lingering in her eyes. It occurred to Savannah that an observant and discreet housekeeper knew a lot, yet had no one to share that knowledge with. What a lonely occupation, she thought as she left the cottage. What a burdensome, lonely job.
The Lucky Shamrock didn’t look much like a place that had been smiled upon by Lady Luck. Sitting directly on the beach, it had no protection from the salt air and ocean winds that had taken their toll on the once-white clapboard structure.
The pub’s single ornamentation was a neon green shamrock that glowed in the window next to a sign advertising Guinness. The Maxwells’ classic Jaguar was parked right by the front door.
Savannah parked near the back of the lot, got out of her car, and started to walk to the door. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was going to say to Sydney Linton, or how she would say it. But she figured the words would come, as they usually did, when she needed them.
Before she reached the pub’s entrance, the door opened and Sydney walked out with a friend. She stopped where she was, standing in the shadows at the edge of the parking lot, and watched.
The two men chatted for a moment, then the stranger walked to a nearby pickup and drove away.
Savannah was about to continue across the lot and call out his name when she realized he wasn’t returning right away to the Jag. Instead, he stopped and looked around him in a manner that she could only classify as “suspicious.”
Stepping deeper into the shadows, she watched and waited to see what he would do next.
After seeing no one, he walked quickly to the opposite side of the lot and toward the back of the building, where a large Dumpster sat against a crooked wooden fence. Again, he glanced around. Savannah held her breath, hoping he wouldn’t see or sense her watching him there in the darkness.
As though gathering his resolve, he sprinted over to the Dumpster and lifted the lid. He looked inside for only a split second, then closed it and strode back to the Jaguar.
Savannah swallowed the words she had been preparing for him. She wouldn’t need them. In the past minute she had seen more than he would have ever told her, no matter what she had said to him.
She waited for him to pull out of the parking lot and disappear down the highway before she left her hiding place and walked over to the Dumpster. Opening the lid, she could see that it was brimming with typical “bar” garbage.
Mulling over the implications, she left the container and walked across the lot and into the bar. The smell of booze and stale smoke hit her as she walked through the door—along with a belt of loud country music from the jukebox.
Several interested male eyes followed her as she made her way to the bar, where a round, red-faced bartender was drawing draughts into mugs.
“Whatcha drinking, ma’am?” he asked.
“Nothing, thanks,” she replied, leaning over the bar, practically shouting to be heard above the music. “I was just wondering—when is your garbage collected?”
“What?” He looked at her as if she were impaired. “First thing in the morning. Why?”
“What day?” she asked.
“Thursday. Tomorrow. Why?”
“So, that Dumpster out there in your parking lot hasn’t been dumped since last Thursday morning?”
“Yeah. That’s right. They’ll pick it up about six tomorrow morning. Why?”
She shrugged and gave him a dimpled smile. “Aw, nothing. I just keep track of stuff like that.”
“O-o-okay. Whatever you say.”
She walked out of the bar and back to her car. Getting into the Mustang, she took her phone out of her purse and called Dirk.
”You gotta meet me at the Lucky Shamrock tomorrow morning before six,” she said, suddenly feeling tired, and old, and used up. This job would put her in her grave. She should have followed her childhood dream and become a go-go dancer. “And bring some rubber gloves, boots, and overalls. You’re gonna need ‘em.”
Dawn’s early light found Savannah, Dirk, and Tammy hip deep in garbage. Standing in the back of one of San Carmelita’s finest refuse-collection trucks, they were sifting through the Lucky Shamrock’s disposables. The truck’s three crewmen milled around in the pub’s parking lot, sending poisoned glances their way, unhappy to have their daily routine interrupted by a curt detective with a badge and a couple of women in shapeless overalls and yellow slicker boots.
“Could be worse,” Savannah said as she shoved aside some lemon peels, shriveled lime slices, and soggy napkins. “Could be hospital garbage. Remember when we had to look for hypodermic needles in Community General’s trash?”
“Now that was scary,” Tammy agreed with a shudder. “Would you two broads can it?” Dirk growled as he dug in with his yellow rubber gloves. “The last thing I need is a couple of Pollyannas telling me that rummaging through a heap of stinkin’ garbage before I’ve even had my morning coffee is a good thing.”
“In your ear sideways, Coulter,” Savannah replied, tossing a wad of wet paper towels in the vicinity of his head. “At least I was smart enough to wait until the truck got here and dumped the load upside down. You were ready to go combing through the whole mess.”
“Yeah, and you’re just so sure it was on the bottom of the Dumpster. What if it wasn’t?”
“Then I’m wrong. But I’ll bet it is. I told you: The last time this trash was picked up was last Thursday, a week ago today. Eleanor died a week ago Wednesday. I’m telling you, Sydney dropped the empty bottles—and probably the empty capsules, too—in here on Thursday night, when he came by for his nightly beer.”
Dirk grumbled under his breath.
“What did you say?” Savannah asked, straightening up and stretching the kinks out of her back for a moment.
“I said—we’re going through all of this crap just because you saw a guy walk over to the Dumpster and look inside. Big deal.”
“Not only that. There’s also the phone call from Angela. She—”
“Hey! I think I’ve got something here!” Tammy shouted. She lifted up a white plastic bag that had a familiar logo printed on the side.
“Rx Shop!” Savannah tromped through the refuse to Tammy’s side and took the sack from her. Eagerly she opened it and found two brown plastic bottles inside. They were empty.
Even Dirk’s scowl melted into a grin as he glanced into the bag and read the labels on the bottles: phenylprophedrine.
“All right!” he said. “Let’s get these suckers over to the lab pronto.”
Savannah glanced at her watch. “There won’t be anybody there yet. Not for a couple of hours.”
“So we’ll be there when they open,” Dirk said, holding up the garbage-smeared bag with two fingers and looking at it like it contained a winning lottery ticket.
“You’ll be there when they open,” Savannah said. “I’m going home to take a bath and drink a pot of coffee. And you’re going to call me as soon as you know whether they lifted any prints. The very instant—you hear me, boy?”
Dirk gave her an almost sad, sympathetic look. “I thought you didn’t want it to be him.”
“I don’t,” she said. “But at this point.... I just want it to be over.”
* * *
Savannah lay soaking in her clawfoot bathtub, her favorite mountains of jasmine-scented bubbles up to her chin, the blinds pulled against the midday sun, and candles lit.
But it wasn’t working.
The smell of garbage was long gone, but her nerves were still twisted into knots. She kept glancing over at her cell phone on top of the hamper, willing it to ring— and somehow hoping it wouldn’t.
Until she heard the words... she wouldn’t know for sure.
The phone rang, and
she jumped, her heart suddenly pounding so hard she could hear her pulse thudding in her ears.
She grabbed it and punched the talk button. ‘Yeah,” she said.
“Three clear prints,” Dirk said on the other end. ‘Two on one of the bottles. One on the sack.”
“His?”
“Yeah. One of them on the bottle is a match to his DMV thumbprint.”
She swallowed hard. “Let me go out there first and talk to him.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah. He’s not going to hurt me, Dirk. He only had the one murder in him, believe me.”
The long silence on the other end told her that Dirk wasn’t convinced. But finally, he said, “Will you wear a wire?”
She didn’t need anybody to tell her that a wire was a good idea and not just for her own security. There was nothing like a taped confession to assure a conviction— if you could get one.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll go in wired. But I’m going to try to talk him into coming in on his own. And you’ve gotta let me. Hear?”
With a microphone taped to her chest and her Beretta in its holster beneath her blazer, Savannah got out of her Mustang and walked across the parking area to the Maxwells’ garage.
“The Jag’s here,” she said softly to the microphone in the vicinity of her left breast. “I’m going up to the apartment.”
But having climbed the steps and knocked several times on the door, she neither saw nor heard anyone.
“Gonna walk around the grounds,” she told Dirk, Tammy, Ryan, and John, who were waiting just outside the gates on the highway. They were inside John’s van, which was packed with the latest high-tech surveillance equipment.
Dirk could have used departmental issue microphones and receivers, but heck....John’s toys were more advanced and therefore more fun to play with.
Not in a million years would Dirk have admitted that he felt better having the two of them along with him and Tammy, serving backup for Savannah.
“I think I hear somebody around the side of the house,” she said as she walked between the mansion and garage, passing an herb garden and a fountain bird-bath.
“Okay,” she whispered, “I see him. He’s with Gilly-Looks like they’re... building something.”
As Savannah neared the spot under a tree where they were, she could see that Sydney was on his knees, painting a small house bright pink. Gilly stood nearby and looked as if she were giving him directions as he brushed on the paint. Mona Lisa scampered at her feet.
Savannah’s heartstrings gave a painful twang.
He was building the girl a doghouse for her new pup—a house that matched the mansion, right down to the steep-pitched roof and white gingerbread trim.
Not for the first time, Savannah marveled at the complexity of the human spirit—how a person could be such a bewildering mixture of good and evil.
As she approached, they both saw her and called out greetings. The puppy came romping across the grass to attack her shoe. She reached down and scooped her up. The dog rewarded her with a wet lick on her cheek.
“Look! Look!” Gilly shouted, pointing to the doghouse. “Sydney’s made Mona a cool place to sleep. It looks like my grandma’s house and mine too. See?”
“I sure do,” Savannah said. She turned to Sydney, who was still kneeling on the grass, paintbrush in hand. “That’s the most beautiful doghouse I’ve ever seen in my life. You did a good job, Syd.”
He gave her a pleased smile and a nod. But then he took a second look. Something in her face must have clued him that all wasn’t well. He placed the brush in the paint can, stood, and wiped his hands on a rag that hung from his belt.
“What’s up, Savannah?” he said, trying to sound casual, but she could hear the tension in his voice.
Gilly heard it, too. She looked from Savannah, to him, and back to Savannah. “Yeah, what’s up?” she asked.
Savannah handed her the puppy. “Is your mom at home, sweet stuff?”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t want me to bother her. She’s been all nervous since she got back from wherever she was, and she took a bunch of her nervous pills. She told me to get lost and not be a nuisance.”
“Oh, okay. How about Marie?” Savannah asked. “She’s home. I saw her a while ago.”
“Then would you do something for me? Would you go knock on her door and tell her I’m here talking to Sydney. Ask her if she would please watch you for a little while. Okay?”
The girl’s bottom lip trembled, and she looked down at the pink and white confection of a doghouse. “Why can’t I stay here with you guys? I want to watch Sydney paint Mona’s house.”
“Sydney and I have to talk about some grown-up stuff,” Savannah told her. “I’m sorry, but you really need to go stay with Marie for a while.”
Gilly huffed and puffed a couple of times, but she finally walked away, holding the puppy close to the front of her T-shirt. “All right, Mona,” she muttered as she left, “we know when we’re not wanted. They’ve got ‘grownup stuff to do.”
After the child had gone, Savannah and Sydney were silent, a thick tension in the air between them. Finally, he said, “So.... what is it? What do you want with me?” Savannah locked eyes with him and took a step closer. “I know you did it, Sydney. And I’m pretty sure I know why. I think if you turn yourself in, you might be able to cut some kind of deal.”
“What are you talking about?” He kept wiping his hands on the cloth and staring at them as though they belonged to someone else.
“Don’t, Sydney. We don’t have time to play games. I know you killed Eleanor. You’re the one who put the phenylprophedrine in the cocoa, knowing that she was going to use it in her cake that night. I know you put the empty bottles and capsules back into the plastic bag from the pharmacy and threw it into the Dumpster by the Lucky Shamrock, where you have your beer every night.”
He shook his head. “No. It wasn’t me. It was the person who sent those threatening letters. It was Louise. You know that. That’s why the cops arrested her.”
“And they also released her, as you know.”
“Yeah. I was wondering why they let her go.”
“Because they found out that she wasn’t even in town when that kid from the pharmacy dropped off the phenylprophedrine. That means somebody else sent him the love letter, asking him to get the stuff for her, and they signed the note with her name—a pretty good copy of her signature.”
“But the threatening letters....?”
“Same thing. You got into her cottage and typed them up. You figured if you used Louise’s computer and her stationery, we’d figure it was her.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To kill two birds with one stone.... so to speak. If you murdered Eleanor and framed Louise, they would both be out of the picture and then maybe you could get custody of your daughter.”
He sighed deeply, and his shoulders sagged as though he were deflating. “How do you know she’s mine?”
“I have a good friend who’s in Child Protective Services. She saw your paperwork, your petition for custody, based on the fact that you’re Gilly’s biological father and that Louise is an unfit parent.”
“Louise is unfit.”
“I know. So, why didn’t you make a legal play for the girl a long time ago? Why kill Eleanor and set up Louise?”
He looked at her with haunted eyes. “Don’t you think I tried that? I did! Years ago, when Gilly was still a baby. But Eleanor had the money and the power. I had nothing but this measly job, which she threatened to take away from me if I pursued the case. I even offered to marry Louise, begged her to let me be a proper father to my little girl. But other than that brief affair we had when I first started working here, she didn’t want any part of me. I was just the chauffeur.”
“So, you kept working here, taking Eleanor’s abuse for all these years, to be close to Gilly?”
“Sure. I certainly didn’t do it for the money. But as long as I was working here, I could
see her every day, take care of her sometimes, be a positive influence on her.”
Savannah flashed back for a moment on the scene at the studio, when she had held Eleanor Maxwell in her arms and felt the life drain out of her.
“I feel for you, Sydney,” she said, “but it wasn’t a very positive influence you exerted on your daughter’s life, killing her grandmother. Eleanor wasn’t a very lovable person, but she didn’t deserve to have her life taken away from her like that.”
“Yes, I realize that. These past few days I’ve been thinking it over and.... I know what I did was wrong. All I can say is, it seemed right at the time. I believe it was the only thing I could do for myself—and for Gilly.”
Savannah gave him a sad smile. ‘You know, down where I come from, the argument ‘He needed killin’ can be considered a viable defense. But here in California, like most of the rest of the country, that doesn’t fly. They seem to think you should leave the killing up to the justice system.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think they’ve got a good point. Leaving it to the authorities is the best way to go almost every time. Sydney, a lot of us have good reasons to want to knock off somebody. But mostly, we don’t actually do it. You did it. You’re gonna have to pay the price.”
He knelt on the grass, took the brush out of the paint can, and wiped it off. Then he replaced the lid on the can. Without looking up, he said, “I guess your cop buddy knows you’re here right now.”
“Yes, he knows. I asked him if I could come talk to you, give you a chance to come in on your own.”
He tapped the lid of the can with the handle of the brush, sealing it. ‘That’s about the only thing I can do, under the circumstances, huh?”
“Yes, with your prints on that pharmacy bag, he has all he needs to arrest you for murder. You should turn yourself in, express your remorse, all that. As it is, you’re looking at first-degree homicide, premeditated.... the works. You could get the death penalty. You have to do everything you can to help yourself.”
Death by Chocolate Page 24