Bitter Sweets

by G. A. McKevett

  “Earl is dead.”

  “Dead?” He dropped his wooden block and sat down hard on the deck. She could have sworn he turned a bit pale beneath his sea tan. “My God,” he said, “are you sure about this?”

  “Very. I saw the body.”

  He covered his face with both hands and a shudder ran through him.

  “Oh, man . . . . this is too weird,” he said. “I mean, you wish a guy dead for so long and then it happens and you . . . . it’s just too strange.”

  She didn’t reply but watched him closely. Although she had informed many people of many terrible things over the years, she had decided long ago that no two reacted in exactly the same way.

  “You wished Earl dead?”

  “Of course I did. That bastard cost me everything I had: my business, my life’s savings, my home, even my wife and kids. I wanted him to suffer, big time.”

  He drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them tightly, rocking slowly back and forth. “Did he?” he asked.

  “Did he what?”

  “Did Earl suffer?”

  Unbidden, mental pictures of twisted wire appeared in technicolor across the movie screen in her head. Pictures of thin wire cutting into flesh. “Yes,” she said, “I think it’s pretty safe to say that Earl suffered a lot before he died.”

  “What a surprise. That actually makes me feel worse, not better. I wouldn’t have bet on that a week ago. You never know how you’re going to react to a situation, until you’re in it.”

  “That’s true.”

  Savannah waited for him to collect himself, waited for the obvious question that didn’t seem to be forthcoming.

  “He had it coming, you know,” Alan said, rubbing his eyes as though they stung. “He’s hurt so many people for so long. It’s a wonder somebody didn’t knock him off long ago. Hell, I’ve even threatened to do it myself.”

  “Did you?”

  His eyes locked with hers, and she could see he had switched to “red alert.” She remembered how cold he had gone that day when he had asked her to deliver his message to Earl.

  “Did I threaten him? Yes. Did I murder him? No. Thinking about it and talking about it, are a long way from doing it.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, do you have an alibi for Wednesday night?”

  “Am I going to need one?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a cop anymore. But it never hurts to remember where you were when something like that happens. Especially considering your past history with Earl and your public threats against him. Sooner or later, somebody besides me is gonna ask you.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got an alibi.” He shook his head as though disgusted with himself, or perhaps with Fate. “See that spot right there . . . .” He pointed to a four-by-four-foot square on the deck near the bow, where the surface was dull. “. . . . I was sanding that. Do you suppose anybody would believe it?”

  A few minutes later as Savannah was wiping the dust from her white skirt and climbing back into the Camaro, she was thinking of how she would describe the conversation to Dirk.

  Sitting in the car, she reached into her purse and pulled out her tiny, personal recorder.

  “Overall, he seemed sincerely upset,” she dictated into the minuscule machine. “Important to note, though . . . . I didn’t tell him Earl had been murdered. I only said that he was dead, and he never asked how he got that way. Mr. Alan Logan, captain of The Big Bust, seemed to know that all by his lonesome.”

  Savannah checked out the station house parking lot, before going inside. Not seeing the chiefs BMW or Bloss’s generic, beige, “Fed” sedan, she decided the coast was clear. Dirk’s grungy Skylark was a welcome sight. These days, she missed him more than she wanted to admit.

  It was around seven, and most of the “brass” had gone home—at least the ones she was openly feuding with. Bette the Blabbermouth was at the front desk; Savannah wasn’t pleased.

  “Oh, hi there, Savannah. Nice to see you again.” At least Bette had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

  “Uh-huh,” Savannah replied without enthusiasm. “Where’s Denise?”

  “Vacation. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “That depends. Are you going to put me on hold so that Bloss can shove my backside through a wringer?”

  “Oh, come on, Savannah. I was just doing my job.” Bette toyed with one of the bleached, frosted, and permed locks that curled over each ear. The rest were piled on top of her head and haphazardly held with a butterfly clip.

  A quaint, Southern phrase drifted through Savannah’s mind. Something about: Snatching her bald. . . .

  Bette held out her hand. “Sisters?”

  Savannah grunted and gave it a brief, limp shake. “Cousins . . . . maybe,” she mumbled. “Twice removed.”

  She found Dirk, as always, rooted to his desk chair, staring bleary-eyed at a mountainous stack of papers in front of him, an assortment of burnt-out cigarette butts bristling from a nearby ashtray.

  His tired face lit up when he saw her, and she felt special. Maybe, as Granny said, absence did make the heart grow fonder.

  “What’s shakin’, sugar?” she asked, dragging up a chair to sit beside him.

  “I’ve had better days, maybe better lifetimes,” he growled.

  She reached over and pinched his arm. “If I ever ask you how you are, and you say, ‘Fine, thanks,’ I’ll faint.”

  “If you’re unconscious, does that mean your mouth won’t be runnin’?”

  She grinned. “No guarantees. I’ve been known to hold entire conversations under general anesthetic.”

  “Why do I find that completely believable?”

  Leaning over, she rested her head briefly on his shoulder. “Miss me?” she asked in her best Dixie coquette impression.

  “Nope.”

  “Not even a little?”

  He cleared his throat and looked miserably uncomfortable. Dirk couldn’t handle any “mushy” stuff at all.

  “Maybe a bit,” he admitted. “I’m going through nail polish fume withdrawal. Stakeouts are pretty boring without you pestering me.”

  She tickled his ribs, and he jumped, overly sensitive about the extra weight he had added around the middle lately.

  “Seriously, what have you got?” she asked, looking down at the papers on his desk.

  “A pain in the rump. Nothing makes sense.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  He lit up a Camel and blew out a long, frustrated stream of smoke. Away from Savannah. With great effort, she had finally taught him some of the finer points of smoking etiquette.

  “The problem,” he said, “is that everybody hated Earl Mallock and wanted to kill him, but, other than her ex, nobody would have killed Lisa Mallock. She was a really nice person, and everyone loved her. Even Earl, in his own sick way.”

  Considering Vanessa, Savannah didn’t necessarily agree about Lisa being loved by everyone, but she decided to keep her observations to herself for the moment. Dirk was exhausted, and when he was tired, he wasn’t known for being receptive to new ideas.

  “So, I’m figuring it was somebody who didn’t really know them all that well,” he said. “I think it’s the brother.”

  “Brian? What reason would he have to hurt his sister and her ex?”

  “The oldest reason in the world: Money. He just inherited pretty big bucks from his dad, and he has to split it down the middle with a sister that he hardly knows.”

  He pointed to the avalanche of papers on his desk. “I’ve been doing some checking, and Daddy Dearest was a real bastard for the last five years of his life. Brian and his wife took the old guy in, nursed him, put up with a lot of grief off him.”

  “Brian seems like the sort of guy who would do that without complaining.”

  “I would, too, if I thought I was going to get a nice inheritance at the end of it all. But by the time he divides it with sissy and pays Uncle Sam, he’s not going to have much left. That would tick me off,
and I’ll bet it did him, too.”

  Savannah silently speculated that maybe Brian was a more generous and mature individual than Dirk. Ninety percent of the population probably was. But some things were better left unsaid.

  “I checked the details of old man O’Donnell’s will,” he continued. “With the sister gone, the money would go to the kid. The kid is underage, so it would go to her legal guardian . . . . which would be Earl if Lisa was out of the picture.”

  “So, you think Brian O’Donnell killed Lisa, then Earl, and the girl, too?” She shook her head. “He has children of his own. I can’t imagine he would kill anybody, let alone a child.”

  “I don’t know if he offed her, too.” He blew a snort of smoke out both nostrils. His “dragon routine,” as Savannah called it. “I guess we’ll have to hope to God we find her, or else wait for her to turn up. She will sooner or later, alive or dead.”

  “Think alive, Dirk. Keep looking and thinking, alive, alive, alive.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Burning the midnight fluorescent?” Savannah asked as she entered the county morgue’s examination room.

  Dr. Jennifer Liu sat on a high stool at the counter, peering down into a microscope. A petite Asian woman with exotic eyes, a full, sensitive mouth, and lush black hair pulled back with a colorful scarf, Dr. Jenny didn’t fit Savannah’s preconceived notion of what a coroner should look like. She was far too pretty, much too sexy . . . . and wasn’t even a bit “crusty around the edges” as Savannah had once thought all forensic experts would have to be.

  “It was a busy weekend here in San Carmelita County,” Jennifer said, putting her hand to the back of her neck and rubbing the stiff muscles. “The bodies are starting to stack up around here, and Barry is on vacation. I’m getting behind.”

  “I’m getting quite a behind these days, too, but I’m not here to talk about my body.” Savannah pulled a two-pound box of See’s candies from her tote and handed them to Jennifer. “Here, assorted creams. You can apply those directly to your hips. I’ve always said, wear only the best.”

  “Ah, Savannah, you shouldn’t have. But I’m thrilled you did.” Instantly, she dug into the box and sampled one. A look of ecstasy crossed her face.

  “Good?”

  “Orgasmic.”

  The two women had often swapped war stories about the therapeutic qualities of chocolate on the PMS female human. Both were avid believers.

  Savannah sat on a stool nearby. “Whatcha working on?”

  “Lisa Neilson-Mallock. Such a sad case. Some of them get to you more than others. I had nightmares about this one last night.”

  “What have you found?”

  “Mostly that she really suffered. That sadistic bastard sure put her through it before he killed her.” She pointed to the microscope. “He had her bound with the wire for several hours. That’s a tissue sample from the area around her wrists. Take a look.”

  Reluctantly, Savannah ventured a glance through Dr. Liu’s scope, steeling herself, as always, for whatever horrors she might see.

  But even after a second and third peek, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Mostly, she saw a lot of blue-black dots.

  “I give up,” she said. “What are they?”

  “Inflammation cells. They take a few hours to form. At least five or six.”

  “They couldn’t have appeared postmortem?”

  “No, only a living body produces those.”

  “Great.” Savannah sighed and pushed away from the microscope, as though doing so would provide any emotional distance. “Now we can both have nightmares.”

  Dr. Jenny gave her a compassionate pat on the shoulder. “I can show you something that might make you feel a bit better about it all,” she said.

  “Please do.”

  The doctor walked to a file cabinet, opened a drawer and took out a manila envelope. After breaking the seal, she spread a dozen or more graphic, color photos across the counter.

  “These are going to make me feel better?” Savannah asked, wincing at the documentation of the violence perpetrated on Lisa Mallock.

  “This one will.”

  Jennifer chose one and held it up for Savannah’s closer examination. The picture clearly showed abrasions on the knuckles.

  “Defensive wounds?” Savannah asked.

  “On the contrary, I’m fairly certain they’re offensive. Of course, almost anything is possible. But in my experience, that sort of skinning of the knuckles is usually done when a person is punching someone else . . . . and pretty effectively, too.”

  Savannah allowed that information to bubble in the mental pot for a few moments. “So, are you telling me that you think she got at least a few licks in before she bit the dust?”

  “That’s right. If it’s any comfort to you, I think you can be fairly sure that Lisa Mallock went down fighting.”

  The thought of Lisa landing some painful blows on her attacker did help. A little. If she was fighting, she had hope, up until the moment she died.

  Although Savannah couldn’t exactly explain why, somehow, that made it better.

  With Lisa Mallock weighing heavily on her mind, Savannah found herself drawn to the simple duplex. Sitting in her car on the opposite side of the street, Savannah wished she had woke Lisa that night and warned her that Earl was on her trail. If she had only . . . .

  Don’t play “If,” she warned herself. It’ll drive you crazy.

  The problem with the “If” game was that there was no end to it. “If she had warned Lisa that night. “If” Lisa had never married Earl Mallock. “If” Earl had stepped in front of a truck and gotten flattened a year ago today. “If” Lisa’s biological father hadn’t given her away after his wife died.

  The fact was: Lisa was dead, reduced from a human being to an autopsy on Dr. Jennifer Liu’s examination table. Nothing could change that now.

  Once, Savannah had asked Jennifer how she stood it, day after day, seeing the cruelty that one person could visit on another.

  “I don’t think I could bear to work in an emergency room,” Jennifer had told her, “to see the misery and know it was my responsibility to try to stop it. But it isn’t so bad, being a medical examiner. By the time they come to me, the suffering is over. Nothing I can do will make it worse for the victim. But, if I can unravel the puzzle, I may be able to bring them justice . . . . and closure to their loved ones.”

  And that’s all you can do now, too, kid, she told herself as she studied the small house, the pink bicycle with training wheels chained to the side fence. Just try to unravel the puzzle.

  An elderly lady in a red-and-white-striped shirt and blue shorts was watering a flower bed in front of the house. She was keeping a close eye on Savannah, and it occurred to Savannah that not much would get past her.

  As she stepped out of the Camaro and strolled up the sidewalk toward the woman, she temporarily allowed her sadness to be set aside, supplanted by hope. Maybe she could find one more small piece of the puzzle.

  “I already talked to a cop,” Mrs. Abernathy said as she handed Savannah a can of generic store brand cola and a tall glass of ice. “He was kinda heavy without a lot of hair. He had on a wrinkled-up trench coat. I think his name was Dick or Kirk something.”

  Savannah accepted the seat she was offered in the living room, a multipatched, leatherette chair. Mrs. Abernathy sat in a rocker and picked up a piece of cross-stitch. She didn’t appear to own a sofa . . . . or much else for that matter, like her neighbor Lisa.

  “Yeah, I know about the trench coat,” Savannah admitted. “Detective Coulter is a friend of mine. Dirk doesn’t mean to dress like a slob: he’s just seen one too many episodes of ‘Columbo.’”

  “I didn’t really mind. He was pretty nice . . . . didn’t have much of a sense of humor . . . . but nice enough.”

  “I suppose he asked you a lot of questions already.”

  “Not that many. Mostly if I heard anything unusual the night Lisa and Christy were take
n.”

  “Did you?”

  She shook her head sadly. “Not a thing. The doctor gave me some new sleeping pills, ’cause I hadn’t been able to get to sleep lately, and they worked really good that night.”

  Great time to break a streak of insomnia, Savannah thought. If only . . . . no, she wasn’t going down that road again.

  “Mrs. Abernathy, how much did you know about Lisa Mallock’s personal life?”

  The woman’s cheek twitched and she looked away quickly, as though Savannah had accused her of something. “Well, not that much really. Mostly, I just tend to my own business.”

  “I’m sure you’re the soul of discretion,” Savannah said soothingly, summoning as much false sincerity as she could muster under the circumstances. “I’ve no doubt that you always respect the privacy of others. I just thought maybe you might have seen or heard something, living so close to Lisa and all. These duplexes do have thin walls.”

  Mrs. A. cleared her throat and popped the top of her own can of cola. “I might of heard a thing or two.” She lowered her voice. “Maybe a fight.”

  “Between Lisa and someone else?”

  She nodded. “Yep. It was just hard words, loud voices, that’s all. I didn’t hear any fistfighting, you understand, or I would have called the police right away. I don’t believe in that sort of business—a man hitting on a woman. My ex-husband tried that just once, and I kicked him out on his rear.”

  “Good for you. Now, Mrs. Abernathy. . . . about this particular argument . . . . do you know who the person was?”

  “Well . . . . let’s see here.” Savannah watched as Mrs. Abernathy began to warm to the situation, feeling the measure of her own importance. She knew Savannah was hanging on her every word. “The big argument I heard was about two weeks ago. It was on a Sunday afternoon. I remember that because I had just gotten back from church and was in a prayerful mood, but that sort of ruined it, listening to all that hoopla.”

  “What exactly did you overhear?”

  “Lisa was telling some man to get out and not come back. Something about him not treating her little girl right. In fact . . . .” She paused and glanced out the window as if expecting some sort of eavesdropper, but the coast was clear. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she continued, “Lisa told this man that if he showed his face around here again, she’d shoot him between the eyes.”