Cereal Killer

by G. A. McKevett

  “Hmmm.” Savannah mulled that over for a minute. “Are you aware that Leah has hired me to investigate this case?”

  “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Leah likes to know what’s going on, and she knows you’re friends with the police detective who’s in charge of the case. Knowing her, she’s probably been pumping you to find out everything you know, right?”

  Savannah didn’t reply. She wasn’t going to tell him about all the persistent, insistent phone calls from Leah, night and day. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that she had been thinking along the same lines as Leah squeezed her for information.

  She rose from the table. “Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate your time and your input.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’m glad you came by. If there’s anything else you need, give me a call.”

  “I will.”

  He escorted her through the house to the front door. Shaking his hand, she said, ‘Just for the record, Kevin... I’m with you on that lawsuit. If you can prove that those guys pushed Caitlin into ruining her health, all for the sake of an ad campaign, I hope you win a bundle. And I hope it makes the lead story on the eleven o’clock news.”

  He grinned broadly, and it occurred to Savannah— not for the first time—that Caitlin Connor had been married to a very handsome man.

  An open marriage, huh.? She chuckled as she left the house and walked to her car, thinking of that magnolia tree in her backyard bursting with buds. Nope. Not this girl. No way in hell.

  Chapter

  19

  After Savannah left Kevin Connor’s house, she drove to her favorite doughnut shop on Main Street and ordered a large coffee and a couple of maple bars. Sitting in her car, raising her blood sugar and her serum caffeine, she phoned Tammy to see what was happening at home. Tammy informed her that Leah Freed had called twice already, insisting on the latest update.

  “And it’s not even nine o’clock yet,” Tammy complained. “That woman is the most irritating client we’ve ever had.”

  “How quickly you forget,” Savannah reminded her. “We’ve had some extremely difficult clients in the past. Remember the one who turned out to be the killer?”

  “Yeah, but at least he didn’t call constantly,” Tammy replied. “And he behaved like a gentleman... except for that killing part.”

  “Is Marietta up yet?”

  “She just ran out the door. She’s headed for the mall. Said she’s going to buy herself a cell phone so that she can call What’s-His-Face.”

  Savannah took a long, stiff drink of the coffee and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling it hit her bloodstream like a shot of much-needed adrenaline. “I’m surprised,” she said, “that she didn’t try to talk you into giving her one of the phones.”

  “Oh, she did! Big time! In fact, I had to lock the two extra ones in my car trunk, and I kept this one beside me all the time. Even took it to the bathroom with me.”

  “Good girl. You get a raise.”

  “A raise, huh? Yeah, right. If I had a raise for every time you gave me a raise...”

  ‘You’d probably be all the way up to minimum wage by now.”

  “Exactly. Listen, I’ve got to go now. Dirk gave me an assignment.”

  Savannah smiled. The kid sounded so proud that it touched her heart.

  “Doing what?” she asked.

  “He wants me to tail Tumblety today. Isn’t that cool?” Savannah felt a twinge of misgiving, like a mother hen who worried that her chicken-little might be pecking off more than she could chew. ‘Yeah, it’s cool. Be careful, huh? That guy’s creepy. And you’re not exactly inconspicuous in that hot-pink VW Beetle of yours.” ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, Mama Savannah. I’ve learned from the best.”

  “Who? Dirk? He’s not the best. He just thinks he is.”

  “I meant you. ”

  “Oh, all right. Take care of yourself.”

  “Bye.” Click.

  End of conversation,Savannah thought. Simple as that. She laid the cell phone on the passenger seat beside her and picked up the maple bar. She took a bite, sipped some coffee, and sent a silent prayer heavenward.

  Lord, I’d consider it a personal favor if you'd keep an eye on the kid today for me. She means well, and she’s plenty smart, but sometimes she trusts people a little too much. And you can't trust people any further than you can throw ’em. But then, I guess You know all about that.

  Her phone rang. She put down the maple bar, wiped her fingers on a paper napkin, and answered it. “Hello.”

  “I just got done talking to Wentworth,” was Dirk’s opener. “He stinks, but I don’t know if he’s killed anybody lately.”

  “Yeah, well, I just left Kevin Connor. I’m pretty sure he had a girlfriend upstairs.”

  “Oh? Already?”

  “More like still. According to him, he and Cait had an open marriage.”

  “Open? Like they both fooled around whenever they wanted to?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Sounds like good work if you can get it. Most women I know wouldn’t go for it, though.”

  “You think?” She sighed. “I’m going to go over to Desiree La Port’s house now. See if I can find her at home.”

  “That’s a heck of a drive all the way to Arroyo Verde. What if she’s not home? Maybe you should call her first.”

  “She’s not exactly the friendly type. I have a feeling that if I called first, she’d make herself scarce. I’ll do better if I just show up. Besides”—Savannah grinned— “if she’s not at home, maybe I’ll just make myself at home and look around a little. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “I didn’t hear that.” Click.

  Savannah shook her head. One of these days I’ll have to teach these Yankee heathens some manners, she thought as she licked a blotch of maple frosting off her wrist. At least how to properly begin and end a telephone conversation. Now... where did I put that other maple bar?

  * * *

  Savannah should have been able to make the thirty-mile drive to Arroyo Verde in half an hour, but a traffic backup on the Ventura Freeway turned the simple jaunt into a two-hour ordeal. Whizzing along at a breakneck speed of zero to ten and back to zero, she cursed the California Tourism Board for making Southern California seem so darned attractive to the rest of the country.

  Every other license plate was from out of state, and half of the bumpers sported cutesy stickers declaring that the family inside had recently visited Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, or Universal Studios.

  Not that she minded seeing children wearing Mickey Mouse ears or even adults with Donald Duck caps, but did they all have to drive on the same roads as she did?

  When she finally reached the small, affluent town of Arroyo Verde, her doughnuts had long worn off, and her stomach was telling her it was time for lunch.

  That's the problem with eating carbohydrates, she thought. In a little while your blood-sugar level plummets and then you just have to eat more to get it back up there again where it belongs. Yep, she decided, I should have bought half a dozen of those maple bars while I had the chance instead of a measly two. What was I thinking?

  And she was getting downright shaky by the time she finally located the tiny house that was barely more than a shack far off the paved road on the outskirts of town. Whatever sort of home she had expected a successful model named Desiree La Port to live in... this wasn’t it.

  She hadn’t anticipated that Desiree’s place would be as impressive as Caitlin Connor’s, or necessarily as tidy and inviting as Kameeka’s. But she hadn’t imagined the snooty Desiree living in a dump.

  The little cracker box of a structure was in desperate need of some paint, having once been white but now a dingy, peeling gray. The yard didn’t have a single blade of grass, just weeds that had never seen a mower blade.

  Apparently, Desiree didn’t feel the need to haul her garbage all the way out to the main road for pickup, but left it in fly-infested piles only a few yards
from the house.

  The only sign of prosperity on the property was the new Lexus parked in front. Savannah had seen Desiree leave the shoot the other day in that car and had assumed she was a woman of means. But if this was her address, as the Department of Motor Vehicles said it was, her vehicle was part of a façade... along with her upturned nose.

  Savannah parked near the Lexus, got out, and walked up to the house. On the warped, tilting front porch sat a half-rotten sofa, whose cushions were sprouting tufts of yellowed stuffing. And long before she got to the door, the smell of stale alcohol caused Savannah to breathe shallowly.

  Rapping on the rusty screen door, she called out, “Desiree? Yoo-hoo, Desiree?”

  The wooden door was open, but the inside of the house was so dark and the screen so dirty that she couldn’t see in. At first, she thought no one was home, but then she heard a shuffling and some mumbled objections as someone came toward her.

  “What? Who is it?” asked a grumpy voice that Savannah recognized, even though it wasn’t laced with the heavy French accent

  When the door finally opened and the woman stuck her head outside, Savannah couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. If she had passed this person on a city street, she never would have recognized her as the attractive woman who had been the star of the photo shoot.

  The short, sassy curls had disappeared, and her hair fell in lank, oily strands. Her complexion looked more sallow than fair, and dark smudges of mascara ringed her eyes. The shapeless gray sweatsuit she wore hung on her body, making her look much heavier than she was, and the front of the shirt was stained with coffee spills.

  She squinted against the sunlight as she peered at Savannah. At first she looked confused, but upon recognizing Savannah, her expression quickly changed to one of annoyance.

  “What do you want?” she said. “I don’t have time for visitors right now. I’m busy.”

  “So am I,” Savannah replied smoothly. “I’m working. And right now my job is talking to you.”

  Desiree shook her head. “What?”

  “Actually, my name is Savannah, not Susan, and I’m not a model...” Savannah began.

  “Oh, really?” She gave an unpleasant snort “Gee, I never would’ve guessed.”

  Savannah continued, undeterred. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking into these unfortunate deaths... and, of course, Tesla’s disappearance.”

  “Have they found her yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “They probably won’t either. Not alive, anyway.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Desiree went from “barely even concerned” to “acutely alert” in two seconds. “No reason,” she said defensively. “I just figure she’s probably dead, considering that she’s missing and because of what happened to Cait and Kameeka.”

  She might be a slob when she's off duty,Savannah thought, but she's no mental slouch. Desiree La Port was cunning and clever in a street-smart sort of way. There was an animal wariness in her eyes that Savannah had seen many times in hardened criminals.

  Desiree stepped outside, letting the door slam behind her, then walked over and sat down on the old, dirty sofa. Curling one foot under her, she reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Can you think of anyone who would want to see those girls dead?” Savannah asked, glad that—at least for the moment—Desiree seemed willing to talk.

  Lighting her cigarette and taking a long drag, she said, “Yeah, I guess a lot of people would want to see them gone.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re at the top of their game. Being at the top is dangerous. Isn’t it?”

  Savannah studied her carefully to see if she was serious. She was. “I suppose it might be dangerous, careerwise,” Savannah said. “But it shouldn’t be life-threatening.”

  ‘You just never know.” She released twin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “And then there’s Leah and Kevin.”

  “What about Leah and Kevin?”

  “They were both about to get dumped. Nobody likes to get dumped.”

  “Dumped? How?”

  “All three of those girls were going to leave Leah and go to another agency. They told her so a couple of days before Cait died.”

  Okay,Savannah thought, that validates what Kevin said. And speaking of Kevin...

  “How was Kevin about to get dumped?”

  “Cait found out about his new girlfriend, and she told him it was over unless he ended the affair, once and for all.”

  “But wasn’t she seeing someone on the side, too? I thought they had an open marriage.”

  Desiree gave a derisive sniff. ‘Yeah, right. Kevin liked to call it that so he could justify his messing around. Cait had a couple of affairs over the years, but that was water under the bridge. They’d both done the forgive-and-forget business and agreed to be faithful from then on. So when Cait found out about his honey there at work, she was hurt and mad. Told him that she was going to divorce him.”

  “You know this for sure?”

  “Yes. She said so herself. She told me and Kameeka and Tesla at a shoot about a week and a half ago. Those two told her she was doing the right thing, kicking him out, that it was high time she gave him his walking papers.”

  “Did you agree with them?”

  She shrugged and gave a dismissive wave with her hand and her cigarette. “I don’t know. I don’t get involved in crap like that. It’s none of my business.”

  Savannah stood, watching Desiree La Port—if, indeed, her name was Desiree La Port and not something like Debbie or Linda Smith—and she wondered how much Desiree had benefited from the disappearance and deaths of her three major competitors.

  “Cait’s problems with her husband might not have been your business,” Savannah said, “but I’d say that your career has made a jump forward this past week.”

  Desiree dropped her spent cigarette onto the porch and stubbed it out with the toe of her house slipper. She smiled brightly, and for a moment she looked a bit like that model who had been giggling and mincing for the camera by the pool the other day.

  “Oh, well.” She lit up another cigarette and took a long, long drag. She released the smoke into the air and watched it disappear on the afternoon breeze. She looked content, totally at peace with the world—almost pretty. “What can you say?” she added. “Sometimes you just get lucky.”

  * * *

  By the time Savannah arrived home again, it was well past her dinnertime, and she hadn’t even had lunch yet. Missing one meal could make her cranky. But doing without two in a row could plunge her into a simmering, homicidal rage.

  Her mood hadn’t been improved by a quick visit to the police station to see Dirk. His disposition was as dismal as her own. He had spent hours interviewing the families of the dead and missing girls... always a depressing job.

  And other than expressing their sorrow and anger, the friends and relatives had given him absolutely nothing new to aid in the investigation.

  Since Dirk was a generous sort of guy, he had been kind enough to share his depression, pessimism, and ill temper with her. So by the time she pulled up to her house and saw her sister’s rental car still occupying both parking spaces in her driveway, she was solidly in a murderous state of mind.

  As she walked up the sidewalk to her front door, she could hear her grandmother’s kindly voice whispering in the back of her mind. Don ’t kill your sister, Savannah girl, just because you've had a bad day. Strangling Marietta might seem like the thing to do, but it’s wicked.

  But Gran, she silently argued with the voice of reason, it wasn't just a bad day. I hardly got any sleep last night, next to no food today, and Marietta's whining about men is driving me nuts. You know how she can be sometimes.

  That’s true. Marietta’s a royal pain in the ass. Go ahead and kill her.Savannah stopped cold in the middle of her porch and shook her head. That wasn’t Gran’s voice. Gran didn’t say “ass.” She probabl
y didn’t even think it.

  No doubt about it,Savannah thought, I’m hearing strange voices... and they don ’t like Marietta either.

  She decided she’d better get some food and some sleep in that order before barking dogs started telling her that she should dance the hootchie-kootchie naked on the courthouse steps.

  But when she walked into her house, it wasn’t a whining, sniveling Marietta who was sitting on her sofa, happily chatting on the phone. It was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, sunny-faced alien who had taken over her sister’s body.

  “Okay, darlin’,” she was saying. “Yes, I miss you, too. Can’t wait to see you again and... well... I can’t talk now ’cause Savannah just came in. Yeah, she’s the same as ever.” She cut a sideways look at Savannah and said, “That’s about right.”

  Savannah scowled. She trusted this cheerful version of Marietta less than she had the whinin’-and-moanin’ one. At least the old one had been familiar, and as Gran said, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

  Marietta was making obscene kissy sounds into the phone. Savannah walked into the kitchen, vowing to spritz it with Lysol before she used it again. She had to eat something; she couldn’t take this... whatever it was... on an empty stomach.

  “Did you eat yet?” she called back into the living room.

  “No, I was waiting for you,” came the predictable answer.

  “Waiting for me to cook it and serve you, is more like it,” she mumbled as she pulled a package of pork chops out of the refrigerator, along with a head of lettuce, some tomatoes, and a Bermuda onion.

  Cleopatra and Diamante ran into the kitchen, tails up and waving, anticipating their evening ration of Kitten Kitties.

  “Sometimes I just feel plain used,” Savannah said as they wrapped themselves around her ankles. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve got WELCOME printed across my forehead.”

  No sooner had she scooped the fishy-smelling concoction into their bowls than she heard a purring sound, and it wasn’t coming from the cats. It was the sound of her cell phone buzzing in her purse on the kitchen table.