She could have sworn that his eyes lit up when he saw her. To her surprise and delight, he stood and moved to another chair at the end of the table and pointed to the empty seat next to his. “Good morning, Savannah,” he said, “I was starting to worry about you.”
Ignoring the poison looks from the other women around the table, she not only sat next to him, but leaned over and gave him a friendly kiss on the cheek. “Good morning yourself, sugar,” she told him. “Now, why would you be worrying about me?”
A look of concern crossed his face. He glanced around quickly, then said, “Well, you know…with what’s happening around here. First Tess and now Carisa. You never know who’s going to wind up hurt or…or worse.”
“Carisa’s going to be okay,” Brandy said cheerfully. “I called the hospital this morning, and they said she turned the corner a couple of hours ago.”
“What a relief,” Roxy said dryly, adjusting her vest and patting her hair. “I was awake all night worrying about that one.”
“Yeah,” Leila piped up, “Carisa’s going to be just fine. So, we don’t have to waste time talking about her.”
Suddenly, the crew appeared: Pete with his microphone boom; Leonard the cameraman; Mary holding her clipboard, with a pen between her teeth; Kit lugging her make-up case; and Alex Jarvis with his attitude.
“I agree,” Alex said. “We’ve wasted enough time already. Let’s get on with this. Maybe we can accomplish some work today if we can keep the interruptions to a minimum.”
Savannah couldn’t stand it. “Yeah, murder and felony assault,” she said, “those pesky interruptions.”
“That’ll be enough!” Alex shouted, his pasty face turning a slightly pinker shade of white.
“Enough?” Savannah grumbled under her breath. “I doubt it.”
Under the table, she felt a large, warm hand close around hers.
“Sh-h-h,” Lance whispered, gently squeezing her fingers. “We don’t want you kicked out of here.”
A rush of pure glee went through her, stronger than anything she had felt since—she tried to remember—ah, yes…since she had been fourteen and Tommy Stafford had kissed her in a moonlit peach orchard.
I’m going to win this stupid contest today, no matter what it is, she told herself.
The camera started rolling, and Mary stepped forward to tell them about their day. “Miladies, as you may have surmised from your costumes, today’s activities are less genteel than our falconry competition of yore.”
Savannah wondered if she could eat one of the apples on the table and actually swallow a bite without gagging. She decided to wait until Mary’s monologue was finished.
“Today,” Mary continued, “Cupid’s arrows will fly. And the lady whose arrows most accurately pierce the target will be rewarded by spending the afternoon with the ‘Man of Her Dreams.’ She will ride with Lance into yonder hills, where the springtime daisies bloom, the perfume of wild lavender scents the air and…”
Archery? Oh, Lord, Savannah prayed, just kill me now.
“That was really nice of you,” Tammy told Savannah, “to let Brandy win the archery contest like that.”
“Oh, shut up. Don’t you have some sleuthing or something to do?” Savannah lay on her back, sprawled across the floor of Ryan and John’s quarters. Ryan had tucked one of the cheap pillows under her head and another under her knees. She could hear John in the kitchen and the sound of ice cubes rattling. He was preparing a cold compress for the inside of her left forearm.
Dirk and Tammy, on the other hand, were being less solicitous. Tammy was typing away on her laptop computer while Dirk stuffed his face with cookies and swigged a Coke.
“You just let the redheaded bimbo win?” he asked. “Why would you do that? I thought you wanted to win this contest and that dumb crown prize. I thought you liked this guy.”
“She does,” Tammy offered, “but she hates riding horses.”
“The horse had nothing to do with it, and I didn’t let her win.” Savannah groaned as John gently laid a plastic bag full of ice on her bruised, swollen arm. “That Brandy chick is some sort of expert with a bow and arrow. Did you see her hit the middle of that big stupid red heart? Dead center every time! I wish I’d had my Beretta with me. I’d have shown her some target shooting.”
Ryan unlaced Savannah’s boots and slipped them off her feet. “Well,” he said, “you should have suspected something. Your first clue was when she showed up with her own arm guard and quiver.”
“Yeah.” Savannah lifted the ice bag for a moment and looked at the dark purple swelling beneath it. “I wish I’d had one of those contraptions for my arm. Boy, howdy! When that string zings along your bare flesh, it about takes your hide off.”
“I tried to get them to supply arm guards for all of you,” Ryan said. “Anyone who knows anything about archery knows how important it is to protect your arm.”
“Apparently, Miss Brandy Thomas knew a little about archery,” Tammy said.
“Well, duh.” Savannah replaced the ice and closed her eyes. “Like we just said, she—”
“She’s the archery champion of Southwest Texas.”
“What?” Savannah’s eyes flew open. “What did you say?”
Tammy looked up from her computer. “I found a national archery championship here on the Internet. She’s been number one the past three years in a row.”
“Oh, man! Talk about a stacked deck.” Savannah sat up and groaned as her shoulders complained about the unfamiliar exercise. “Who would have thought it would be so hard to pull one of those bows? Robin Hood and Little John made it look so easy in the movies.”
“The bows you ladies were using had a draw weight of 36 pounds. They shouldn’t have been more than 15 or 20 at most,” Ryan said. “Again, I told them to chose their equipment a little more carefully, taking into account that you were novices. Well, except for Brandy, of course.”
“Yes, except for Brandy.” Savannah recalled how she and the other girls had fumbled with the bow and then mostly missed the target entirely, while the redhead had not even bothered to disguise her expert stance and smooth execution. “If Alex is tight with the owner of this place, this R.R. dude, and Brandy’s his girlfriend, then setting up this archery competition had to be deliberate. They wanted Brandy to win, plain and simple.”
“They probably just wanted to keep her happy,” Tammy said.
“Or quiet.” Savannah recalled Brandy’s phone conversation with the castle’s eccentric builder and Alex’s call earlier that morning to the same guy. “Maybe this R.R. and Brandy know what Alex has been up to.”
“And what’s that?” Dirk wanted to know.
“Killing Tess, of course. You do still think he did it, right? He complained to me today that you keep grilling him.”
“Grilling him?” Dirk gave a snort. “I haven’t even come close to grilling that boy. I’ve been easy on him. Real easy. When I finally decide to light some charcoals under him, then he’ll know he’s been grilled.”
“What makes you so sure it was Alex?” John asked as he settled down beside Savannah.
“We don’t have that much,” she told him, “other than the fact that he’s been fooling around with that Roxy hussy. And the stuff I overheard them say to each other there behind the falcon house could have been incriminating, though not conclusively.”
“But,” Dirk interjected, “it had to be somebody who knew Tess’s ice cream routine. And that would have to be the husband.”
“Or Mary, her personal assistant,” John said. “She would be well aware of her mistress’s habits.”
“Or Lance,” Tammy suggested. “He told Savannah he’s known her for years.”
“Or any of the crew members, who have all worked for her before,” Savannah admitted with a sigh.
“The only people we can rule out are the contestants,” Tammy said. “Because they had just met Tess here the first day of the shoot. Except for Roxy, who must have known all about her, si
nce she knows so much about her husband.”
“Actually,” John said, toying with the end of his mustache. “You can’t rule out the other ladies either. I distinctly recall hearing Mrs. Jarvis prompting her assistant, Mary, about the ice cream, reminding her to be certain it was available for her midnight indulgence.”
“So?” Dirk said.
“She said it in front of the other ladies,” John added. “The contestants were all standing there, except for you, Savannah.”
Savannah’s spirits sank a little lower. Brandy was out there somewhere, riding through the wild lavender-scented hills with the man of her dreams, while she lay there on some cheap pillows with ice on her wounded arm and a quiver full of suspects, not even one of which she could eliminate.
“This stinks,” she said. “My arm hurts, and we’ve got nothing.”
“Could be worse,” Tammy chirped. “Your arm is only bruised. I hear they had to put four steel pins in Carisa’s leg and arm.”
Savannah flopped back on the pillows and threw her good arm over her eyes. “I’m tired,” she said. “If somebody would please smack Pollyanna over there with her own computer, I’d sure appreciate it.”
“I don’t know who’s going to be voted out tonight,” Brandy whispered to Savannah, “but I don’t think it’s going to be me.”
Savannah glanced around at the other women who, like her, had been told to exchange their musketeer vests and boots for full-length, velvet gowns…again with laced bodices. They looked uncomfortable, nervous, and basically out of sorts as they waited for the inevitable thinning of their ranks.
Standing in the courtyard in front of the keep, waiting for Lance to place one of them in the waiting carriage and “banish” her from the “kingdom,” Savannah was amazed how a dress that had practically no front to speak of could be so blasted hot.
She was pretty darned sure that the merry maids of old England hadn’t sweated this profusely in their finery. If they had, they would have outlawed velvet gowns and taken up wearing more sensible garments. Like gauze loincloths. But then, they hadn’t been living in Southern California in August either.
Next to the carriage stood Ryan and John, looking as uncomfortable in their livery as the ladies were in their gowns. And beside the carriages sat the trunks. As before, one of the girls would have her “belongings” loaded into the carriage along with her and her shredded dignity and driven away.
Under the circumstances, Savannah didn’t really want to hear Brandy chattering away about how she was sure that she wasn’t the one who would get the boot.
But her curiosity got the best of her.
It always did.
“Oh?” she said with as much kindly interest as she could feign. “Then your afternoon riding went well?”
Brandy rolled her big eyes. “I should say so. I’m a bit of a cowgirl myself, you know. I was raised on a Texas ranch, so I was right at home on the horse. Lance complimented me several times on my riding, in fact.”
Savannah’s nostrils flared ever so slightly, but she smiled. A little. “Well, isn’t that just so nice of him.”
“We decided we have a lot in common, Lance and I. Besides just riding horses, that is.”
“Hm-m…do tell.” She gave her a sideways look and added, “Is Lance an archery champion, too?”
Brandy looked down and decided it was time to pick some lint off her skirt. “Uh, no. He’s not, I mean, I was a long time ago, but he…no.”
“Lucky break for you, having the competition be archery. Coincidental, I’m sure.”
“Oh, of course. No one would, you know, have arranged something like that if they’d realized one of us was sort of good at it.”
“Good? Oh, sugar, don’t be modest. You were magnificent! You looked like the goddess Diana herself, standing there with that bow.”
Brandy’s cheeks turned nearly as red as her hair, but she didn’t reply.
“And when you brought out your own arm guard, I knew the rest of us were dead in the water. That’s like when a guy in a pool hall cracks out his own cue. You know you’re about to get hustl—I mean, beaten.”
“Where is the crew?” Roxy interjected, shifting from one foot to the other. “I’m tired and I just want to get this over with so that I can go back to my room and relax. If they make such a big deal about us being here on time, they should be, too.”
“Yeah, I’m a little tired of the disrespect I’m getting around here,” Leila added. “It’s enough that you have to worry about getting attacked or even murdered, but to keep us waiting out here in the sun in these heavy, hot dresses…”
Her voice trailed away as the maligned crew appeared en masse. They all looked tired and as eager to be finished with the day as the rest.
Alex glanced around then scowled. “Where’s Lance?” he snapped at Mary.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was in his room half an hour ago with Kit. She was having to adjust his costume; it didn’t quite fit. I’m sure he’ll be along any—oh, here he is now!”
She looked enormously relieved as Lance hurried out of the keep, looking stunning in a dark hunter-green ensemble. Again, he was wearing the customary musketeer’s shirt with a deep vee neck and billowing sleeves along with a tunic, leggings, and knee-high boots. But this time the outfit included a full cape of the same color that swept the ground behind him when he walked.
He, too, looked tired, and Savannah noticed that Kit had made him up more heavily than usual, perhaps to counteract the signs of fatigue.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said as the camera rolled. He walked from Roxy to Leila, to Brandy, and then to Savannah, bowing and kissing each woman’s hand in turn.
Once he had greeted them all, he took his place beside the carriage and Alex bellowed the traditional, “Cut!” Then he turned on Lance. “You were late again! And I told you I wanted you to wear the blue outfit tonight!”
“I’m not late again,” Lance said calmly, but there was a fire in his eyes as he returned Alex’s glare that suggested he might be a bit fed up with Alex’s barking. “Because this is the first time I’ve been late. And it was unavoidable. A problem with the costume. The blue one didn’t fit, and Kit and I couldn’t make it fit. So, it’s this one or my jeans and UCLA sweatshirt. You pick.”
“I guess it’ll have to do,” Alex said. “Mary, do your spiel.”
Mary laid her ubiquitous notebook on the ground and stepped into camera range. “Ladies, we have drawn near, once again, to say ‘Fare thee well’ to a sister who has grown so dear to our hearts. And as wrenching as this will be, it is a necessary evil because…”
Wrenching? Savannah thought. Scraping the hide off your arm with a bowstring, that’s a wrenching evil. Getting rid of one of these bimbos. That I can handle.
Of course, there was the possibility she would be the one leaving, but she didn’t even want to think about that.
She glanced around at the other women. None of them looked the least bit worried. They practically reeked of self-confidence.
As Lance handed each of them a trunk key, she tried to read his face. But all she could see in his eyes was a deep unhappiness that made her want to take his hand, lead him off to a private place and ask him what was going on.
But with the possibility that she might be the next to leave dangling over her, it wasn’t exactly the time to pull his head onto her bosom and encourage him to “Tell Momma all about it.”
As attractive as that prospect might be.
One by one, they were instructed, as the night before, to open their trunks and see if they had received a gift, or if their belongings had been packed for their departure.
This time their presents were less original—scented soaps—and Savannah had the distinct impression that Lance hadn’t chosen them personally. Mary seemed far more interested in whether or not she liked her lavender, Roxy her gardenia, and Brandy her carnation.
And, once again, it was Leila who found her trunk filled with costumes a
nd junk jewelry.
Leila was even less gracious than before, as Ryan and John performed their unhappy tasks of lifting her trunk onto the back of the carriage and ushering her inside.
“Okay, okay,” she shouted out the window. “I can take a hint. You don’t have to tell me three times. This is it. I wouldn’t come back again if you begged me to.”
As Ryan drove away in the carriage with Leila inside, Savannah looked around and didn’t see anyone who looked as though they were “wrenched” to see this sister go.
Lance, who had supposedly elected to have her leave, was the only one who appeared the least bit disturbed by the curses that floated back to them from the departing carriage—suggestions about where they should spend eternity and what they might do for entertainment while there, preferably with their next of kin. He seemed downright embarrassed.
Savannah couldn’t really blame him. This wasn’t exactly an Emmy-winning documentary on the human condition that they were filming here. And at this point she was fairly certain she didn’t want Granny’s hound dog to see it on TV, let alone the rest of the nation.
“Well, that’s that,” Alex told them. “You’re on your own for the rest of the evening, but I suggest you hit the hay early. I want you at breakfast at seven sharp. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
A couple of the ladies groaned, Savannah included.
“Hey, Savannah,” Alex said, as she and the others turned to walk away.
She stopped. “Yes?”
“If you just have to see the dailies, now’s the time. Leonard can show you the ones of the foyer there, like you wanted.”
“I want to see the tapes, too!” Roxy wailed.
“Yes, if Savannah gets to see them, we should all get to see them,” Brandy said. “It’s only fair, and I know you want to be fair, Mr. Jarvis.”
Alex wasn’t buying it. “He’s not showing them to her so that she can see how she looks. It’s part of her investigation into Tess’s murder. She’s checking out something having to do with the foyer when we all first got here.”
“Really? What is it? What are you checking for? Who do you think did it? Why do you want to see the pictures of the foyer?”
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