“Oh, yes,” she said. “Definitely a possibility.”
“Any indication that he might have been involved with either victim?” Ryan asked.
“Not yet.” Dirk scowled as Savannah handed the next portion to Ryan instead of him. “But I’m working on it,” he said. “If there was any hanky-panky going on, I’ll be sure to find out about it.”
Tammy giggled. “Yeah, Dirk’s a regular bloodhound when it comes to sniffing out hanky. It’s the closest thing to panky he gets.”
“Shut up, bubble brain,” Dirk said, swiping the piece of cake that Savannah had given Tammy out from under her nose.
Savannah rescued the cake and, more importantly, her china from him and handed it back to Tammy. “And then,” she continued, “we’ve got this Jerrod Beekman dude who owns Stellar, the ad agency that’s handling the Slenda account for Wentworth Cereal.”
“Jerrod Beekman?” Ryan turned to John. “We know him. He was seeing Michael Romano last summer. We met them at the opening of that little gallery down on San Fernando Street. Remember?”
Dirk perked up. “Oh, so, Beekman’s a... I mean he’s... one of you guys? Uh, no offense.”
Ryan glanced over at Savannah, then gave Dirk his best “patient” smile. “None taken. Yes, I suppose you could say he’s one of us. He’s certainly not one of you.” His eyes twinkled when he added, “No offense.”
Dirk scowled. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Savannah shoved his oversize cake in front of him. “Eat,” she said.
“I’d keep a sharp eye on Beekman,” John told her. “I’ve heard from more than one source that he’s a wily chap when it comes to business. Not above resorting to mischief to get the upper hand.”
“Thanks, John,” Savannah said. “That’s good to know.”
“I can do some checking about, if you like,” he offered. “I know this particular chap, Michael Romano, and I believe there was a bit of animosity when they ceased to keep company this past winter. He might have something to say about your fellow Beekman.”
“That would be great,” Dirk said with far more enthusiasm than usual for him. Savannah stifled a grin. Frequently, when stumped by a case, Dirk decided that Ryan and John were pretty good to have around.
Joining them at the table with her own dessert, she said, “And then we have the agent, Leah Freed.”
“Why would you suspect her?” Tammy asked.
“I suspect everybody. That way I’m sure to think ill of the bad guy... or girl... at least once,” she said. “Leah hired me to find out what happened to her girls, but she seems more interested in what Dirk has found out than what I’ve uncovered. She called me four times today, leaving messages for me to check in. But when I did, right before you guys came over tonight, all she did was ask me who ‘the police’ think it might be.”
“Are you saying she hired you just to get information on me?” Dirk asked with a look of arrogance that was only slightly diluted by the whipped cream on his chin.
“Oh, yeah, Dirko,” Tammy said. “It’s about you. It’s always about you.”
“And this time it might be more than just a figment of your inflated ego,” Savannah added. “I could swear I was being pumped.”
“You didn’t give her anything good, did you?” Dirk asked.
She gave him a dismissive wave with her fork. “Oh, yes, I spilled everything I knew. And what I didn’t know, I made up. Duh.”
Dirk looked a bit wounded, but he recovered instantly when he filled his face with chocolate cake.
Tammy cleared her throat. “So... nobody’s asked me what I came up with today.”
‘You?” Savannah washed down the bite of cake with a big swig of strong coffee, generously laced with cream. “I didn’t think you’d gotten any time on the computer.” She glanced toward the living room and lowered her voice to a whisper so that her sister wouldn’t hear. “You know,” she added, “with Marietta using it all day to chat with What’s-His-Nuts.”
“There was that half an hour when she was trying to track him down on the phone. I got online then for a while.”
“Track him down?”
‘Yeah. She called his work, his dad’s house, his brother’s ..
“How did she get their numbers?”
Tammy shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. But when she finally got him on the phone, she said something that made me think maybe she wrote them down out of his address book when he was in the shower this morning.”
Savannah shuddered. “Oooo, scary stuff.”
“Well, what did you come up with, Nancy Drew?” Dirk asked, prodding Tammy’s elbow with his finger.
“I found out about the restraining orders.”
There was a long moment of silence all around the table. Then John said, “Good show, old girl! Do tell... who has a restraining order and against whom?”
‘Yeah, cough it up, hairball! ” Dirk said.
Tammy gave him her prissiest adolescent smirk. “Do you mean to tell me that you, Detective Sergeant Coulter, hadn’t checked for that yet?”
Dirk growled and gouged her again, harder and in the ribs. “I don’t wanna have to hurt you, kid. Give.”
“Yeah.” Savannah poked her in the other side. “Talk.”
“Both Cait Connor and Kameeka Wills had restraining orders against the same person.”
“And...?” Savannah leaned closer, resisting the urge to throttie her.
“And so do Tesla Montoya and even Desiree La Port.”
“All four ladies have restraining orders against the same individual?” John asked.
“The same person.” Tammy paused, milking every drop of drama juice from the moment.
“Well, who is it?” Dirk roared.
Hitching her chin upward two notches, she proudly announced, “His name is... Ronald Tumblety. Tumblety, T-U-M-B-L-E-T-Y.”
Savannah looked at Dirk. John and Ryan looked at Savannah. Dirk just sat there, staring at Tammy.
Finally, Ryan asked the obvious. “Who’s Ronald Tumblety?”
Savannah sighed and sank back in her chair. “The hell if I know,” she said.
“Me either,” Dirk said, letting out a sigh that sounded like a punctured bicycle tire oozing air.
“Well, who is he?” Savannah asked Tammy.
Tammy shrugged. “I don’t know. I found out his name and the fact that the basis for the restraining order is because he was stalking them. All of them, at one time or another. Beyond that... it’s up to you professionals.” She looked at Dirk and made a face. “After all, I’m just the amateur sleuth around here.”
But Dirk was already on his feet. The whole house shook as he left, slamming the back door behind him.
“Dirk’ll find out,” Savannah said as she picked up her fork and continued to eat her cake. “After all, he’s got the badge and all the legal connections... not to mention that big check from the department every other Friday. Would you like another piece of cake, John?”
“I’d be delighted, love.”
“Pass your plate.”
* * *
Half an hour later, when the rest of the gang had left for the evening, Savannah dished up an extra generous helping of the cake and took it into the living room. Marietta was still sitting at the computer, staring at the screen, her face illuminated by the green glow.
She didn’t even appear to be blinking.
“Hey, Sis,” Savannah said, walking over to her. “The troops are gone now. Why don’t you take a break from that thing and chat with a live person for a while?”
Marietta’s only response was a slight shake of her head. Then she began to type furiously.
“Saved you a big piece of my Death by Chocolate,” Savannah said, waving the cake under her nose. “Raspberry sauce on it. Whipped cream, your favorite.”
“Naw. Not now.”
“But, Mari, you’ve been on that thing for...” She glanced at her watch. “Four and a half hours now. What could be so interesting?”
/> As though startled out of a coma, Marietta jumped and looked up at Savannah, her eyes wide and vacant. “What?”
“Come visit with me for a while.” Savannah motioned toward the sofa. “I’m going to bed pretty soon, and you haven’t told me the latest on your new lover boy.”
Savannah heard the words coming out of her mouth and wondered—not for the first time—if she was a complete idiot. Here she was actually asking to be tortured. And why?
Just to be nice? Courteous and polite?
Where had she gotten the idea that it was a good thing, this pretending to give a hoot? Oh, yeah... Granny Reid. Gran had definitely overemphasized that aspect of being a Southern lady.
Sometimes “nice” sucked.
Like when Marietta looked up at her with tear-brimmed eyes, her lower lip trembling, and said, “Something’s wrong. I don’t think he loves me anymore.”
“Who? Mr. Cyberdude?”
“Sure. Who else. The guy I spent the night with last night. I don’t think he loves me anymore.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because he’s telling everybody in the chat room that he never did love me.”
“Oh. Yeah. Well. I see your point.”
Maybe it’s not too late for a graceful exit,Savannah thought as she set the dish of cake on the desk beside the computer.
“I think I’ll call it a night,” she said. “Since you’re busy there and—”
Marietta clicked off the computer. And promptly burst into tears.
Too late. The escape route is definitely closed now.Savannah sighed and reached for the box of tissues in the desk’s top drawer. And 1 have only myself to blame. She handed the tissues to Marietta, turned, and walked over to her comfy chair. Yes, Savannah, you people-pleasing idiot, you had to ask, didn’t you?
“I just don’t understand it,” Marietta was saying as she dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “This time last night we were layin’ there in each other’s arms, proclaiming our undying love and tonight... tonight he puts me on ‘Ignore.’ ”
“Ignore?”
Sniff. “That’s what you do when you’re in a chat room and you don’t even want to see what the other person’s saying. So you click ‘Ignore,’ and they plumb disappear off the screen. That’s what he did to me just now.”
“Um-m-m. That’s not a good sign.”
Marietta left the desk and plopped down on the sofa. “How can somebody just up and turn on you like that? I don’t understand it. I thought that what we had was special. A once-in-a-lifetime soul connection.”
You could be soaking in a bubble bath right now,Savannah told herself as she painted a “concerned and not at all irritated as hell” look on her face. But no-o-o-o! Yo-o-ou had to go and ask her how she was.
“Did he really tell you that he loved you last night?” she asked.
“Sure he did.”
“He actually said the L word?”
Marietta thought for a moment. “Let’s see now.... I told him that I loved him, and he said, “Thanks.’ That’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
Only if you're a complete dope. “Well... I...”
“I mean, he was smiling when he said it. He looked grateful and happy.”
“Were you naked and in bed?”
“Yeah.”
“And you hadn’t actually ‘done it’ yet?”
“Not yet, but we were about to.”
“Maybe that was why he was smiling, grateful, and happy.”
Marietta’s face screwed up in pain. “Are you telling me, Savannah Reid, that you think the only reason that man told me he loved me was so that he could have his way with me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that a guy stretched the truth a bit to get laid, Marietta. It happens all the time. You should have figured that out by the time you were fifteen. And besides that, he didn’t actually say ‘love.’ He said, “Thanks.’ That sounds kinda lukewarm to me.” “That just goes to show what you know!” Marietta cried, throwing her used tissues to the floor and jumping up off the sofa. “You don’t know squat about men, Savannah! And you could put everything you know about romance into one of Gran’s sewing thimbles!”
She stomped across the living room to the foot of the stairs. “And what’s more,” she said, pausing with her hand on the rail, “you’ve got a lot of nerve to sit there in your easy chair like God Almighty and tell me what’s going on in my life! You always have been bossy, Savannah Reid. Bossy and overbearing and critical.” With that, Marietta made her stage exit, straight up the stairs.
Savannah heard the door to her guest bedroom slam. Then renewed wailing... possibly even the rending of garments and the gnashing of teeth.
As though sensing Savannah’s less than cheerful mood, Diamante and Cleopatra leaped down from their window perch and jumped onto their mistress’s lap. Cleo began to lick her cheek.
“Why are you so sweet?” Savannah asked the cats as they cuddled warm and soft against her chest. “Is it because you’re spayed? Yes, I think that’s it.” She glanced toward the top of the stairs. “Maybe we could get Marietta spayed... do the world a favor.”
Diamante meowed and rubbed her face against Savannah’s shoulder.
‘Yes, I think you’re right,” she said. “Lover Chat Boy wouldn’t mind if we had her fixed. In fact, we could probably get him to pay for it.”
But she didn’t have long to luxuriate in the unconditional love of her pets, because less than a minute later the phone rang.
She grabbed it off the end table and glanced at the Caller ID. It was Dirk. ‘Yeah, who is he?” she said.
“A scumbag who’s been rousted for everything from peeping to dicky waving. He’s got a thing for big girls.”
“Was he actually stalking them like Tammy said?”
“According to the papers he was.”
Savannah laughed and resisted the urge to jump out of her chair and cut a rug right on her living room carpet. There was nothing on earth like an exciting lead on a case to take the edge off a recent sibling spat.
“When are you going to go visit him?” she asked.
“I figure now’s as good a time as any to go rattle his cage.”
Glancing at her watch, Savannah said, “It’s nearly ten. Prime time for peeping and stalking. He’s probably not home.”
“Then I’ll wait for him to come back. Wanna go with me?”
She looked up at the top of the stairs and listened for a moment. Marietta’s wailing had settled down to plain old sobbing, but she sounded like she could go for a couple more hours at least.
“I might as well go along,” she said. “It’s not like anybody around here is going to get any sleep before midnight.”
“I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. And Van...”
“Yeah?”
“Could you bring a thermos of coffee, just in case it’s a late, late night?”
“Sure.”
“And some more of that cake if you’ve got any left?”
Savannah looked at Marietta’s plate, still brimming with goodies.
She knew her sister pretty well. And she knew that in a little while, grief-stricken or not, Sweet-Tooth Mari would remember the cake and hotfoot it down the stairs for a late-night snack.
She thought of how disappointed she’d be if it was gone.
‘You got it, buddy,” she told Dirk with a nasty grin on her face that Granny Reid definitely would not have approved of. “I’ll be waiting on the porch for you in fifteen minutes—with a thermos of coffee and a Tupperware container full of cake.”
“I love ya! ” he said with the usual enthusiasm that he showed when free food was being offered.
“Yeah, I know,” she replied. Then, still grinning, she added, “Thanks.”
Chapter
13
Sitting on the passenger side of Dirk’s old Buick, watching him lick the chocolate off his fingers, she wondered exactly what it was that she considered �
�charming” about him.
“Don’t you have some napkins or at least paper towels in that heap back there?” she said, nodding toward the landfill in his back seat and floorboard.
“What? And waste a bite of this heavenly stuff?” He closed his eyes in ecstasy as he polished off the last bit, and for a moment she thought he might actually lick the Tupperware clean. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Van,” he said, “you may have your limitations, but no matter what anybody says, you’re a damned good cook.”
“Gee, thanks... I guess.”
Savannah looked out the dirty window at an even dirtier neighborhood—if, indeed, this end of town could even be called a neighborhood. The object of their surveillance, Mr. Ronald Tumblety, lived in a rusty blue van parked behind an abandoned auto repair shop in San Carmelita’s “industrial” area.
Though on this particular block of Potter Street, it appeared there hadn’t been any bona fide industry in the past decade or more. Even the graffiti on the cement block walls was outdated, including some faded references to the Vietnam war and Watergate.
When Savannah and Dirk had arrived two hours ago, it hadn’t taken long for them to realize that Tumblety wasn’t living in the auto shop—the address he had given to the Department of Motor Vehicles. And a quick once-over of the property told them that his official domicile was the van with two flat tires and a broken windshield that was parked in the rear.
Apparently “Tom Peeping” didn’t pay much, and neither did stalking.
“How long are we going to wait for this guy?” she asked, getting more depressed by the moment.
Dirk set the empty container on the dash, sighed, and rubbed his belly contentedly. “Why? You in a rush to get back to your sister?”
Savannah glanced at her watch. “It’s after midnight. She’s probably composed herself by now.”
“I can’t believe she’d take some Internet romance that seriously.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised what Marietta, Queen of Drama, takes seriously. Especially when it comes to men.” Dirk snorted. “Not me, man. I stay a million miles away from broads like her. They’re way more trouble than they’re worth.”
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