Bitter Sweets

by G. A. McKevett

  He settled back in his chair, drew a deep breath, and assumed that self-important, omniscient look that made Savannah want to slap him naked and hide his clothes.

  “Yep . . . .” he said, “. . . . for my money, I’m still bettin’ on the brother. He’s the one with the most to gain with both Earl and Lisa dead and the kid missing. That way, he don’t have to share with nobody.”

  “Three lives, for only fifty thousand dollars?” Savannah said, desperately refusing not to meander down that trail of thought.

  “Get real, Van. People have been knocked off for a helluva lot less.”

  Savannah sighed, giving up the fight. Sometimes, it was futile to try to battle Dirk’s cynicism. Like the mumps or German measles, it was contagious. If you were around it, eventually, you caught it.

  “You’re right,” she admitted, chug-a-lugging the rest of the lemonade, wishing it were straight Scotch. “There’s no point. The IRS probably would nab it all. Besides, quadzillions of people would write you tearjerker letters and beg for money, and . . . . God, I hope I never win.”

  “Me, too.”

  Across the dark brown crockery bowl that contained the world’s lightest dumplings, Gran studied Savannah with a curious look on her face.

  “I heard what you and that Dirk character were talking about out there this afternoon,” Granny told her as she ladled another helping onto Savannah’s plate.

  “Oh, you did, huh?” Savannah chuckled. “Is there anything you don’t hear?”

  “Not much.”

  “That’s what I thought. And I suppose you have an opinion about what was said, or you wouldn’t have brought it up, right?”

  Gran smiled broadly. “Moss don’t have a chance to grow on you, does it, sweetie-pie.”

  “Moss doesn’t grow well in piss and vinegar . . . . or so I’ve heard you say.”

  “That’s true. And I do have an opinion about what was said in your backyard. I think your friend, Mr. Dirk Coulter, is a donkey’s rump.”

  Savannah laughed. “Not many would argue with you about that.”

  “And I think he needs a bit of an attitude adjustment where old people are involved.”

  “And women . . . . and kids . . . . and cats . . . . and . . . .”

  “But older folks, especially.”

  Taking a closer look, Savannah saw that her grandmother was genuinely offended, a rare occurrence. “What did he say that upset you, Gran?”

  “Your rude friend called Colonel Neilson an old fart—which he ain’t. He’s a man who’s managed to keep himself alive for seventy or so years, that’s all. And fought three wars for his country and won himself a Congressional Medal of Honor in the process.” Gran hesitated, toying with a bit of dumpling on her plate, her eyes full of hurt. “And what’s worse, Savannah, is that you didn’t even set Mr. Coulter straight for sayin’ it. I’m surprised at you, honey.”

  Her grandmother’s gentle rebuke went straight to Savannah’s heart. She was right, of course.

  How many times had she jumped on Dirk’s case for uttering a racial slur, a sexist remark, an unkind observation about someone who was overweight, underweight, badly dressed, mentally or physically challenged, or just plain different in some way from himself.

  But she had never thought to come to the defense of a person who was being denigrated because of his advanced years.

  “Prejudice is prejudice, Savannah,” Gran continued, “no matter who it’s against. It’s just plain ol’ ignorance: one person thinkin’ he’s better than any other one of God’s creations. Ignorance and arrogance.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry, Gran. I should have said something.”

  “I’ve brought five children into this world, and they’ve blessed me with twenty-two grandkids besides. I’m here to tell you, they’re every one different and I love ’em in different ways. But I love every single one completely, with all my heart and soul. It hurts me to hear one of ’em talkin’ trash about the other one. And I’m not nearly as good a parent as the good Lord above. I can tell you, He feels the same.”

  “I’m sure He does, Gran. I’ll talk to Dirk the very next time I see him. I promise.”

  “Well, you better. You inform Mr. Hot Shot Coulter, that he’s gonna be old, too. It’ll happen before he knows it, too, unless he kicks the bucket early, that is, and most people don’t want to do that. You tell him that us old folks aren’t any different than anybody else, except that we’ve been around longer. Just like younger people, we feel love and hate, sorrow and joy. Every day we decide whether to do good deeds or evil. And don’t fool yourself, we’re perfectly capable of both.”

  “Are you telling me that Dirk should reinstate the colonel on his list of suspects?”

  “Hell, yes!” Gran’s eyes blazed with a passion and conviction that, as always, made Savannah less afraid to grow old. “Don’t you hear what I’m telling you, girl? To leave Colonel Neilson off that list is a downright insult! He belongs on there with the best and the worst of ’em!”

  With the help of the Yellow Pages section of her phone book, Savannah located the bike rental agency that was nearest the abandoned Montoya Ranch where they had found Earl Mallock’s body.

  It was only a mile away from the cutoff that led to the old ranch house. She reminded herself to give Ryan a punch in the chops, at least verbally, for not mentioning this fact earlier. It irked her to think they could have ridden to the spread on the relative comfort of a dirt bike, rather than trudged over hills, through valley and dale.

  “How long have you guys been in business?” she asked the swarthy, curly-haired fellow behind the counter. He was wearing a Grateful Dead tee shirt, but she decided he must be a second or third generation Deadhead. He didn’t appear to be more than nineteen or twenty.

  “Dad opened the place last fall,” he replied as he scribbled down her driver’s license number and expiration date on a rental form.

  “So, you’re new. That must be why my friend didn’t know about you.”

  “Don’t tell me you hiked the old trail all the way to the Montoya Ranch.”

  “I did. With these two feet and a twenty-gallon aquarium of water strapped to my waist.”

  “Really?”

  He stared at her blankly; she determined he was a deadhead in more ways than one.

  “No, not really. It just felt like it after the first hour or so.”

  “Well, you’ll get there a lot faster on a bike. You do know how to ride, don’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. ’Cause Dad says we shouldn’t rent to anybody who isn’t experienced.”

  Five minutes later, Savannah sat on the bike in front of the shop, staring at the controls on the handles. “No problem,” she mumbled once the kid was out of earshot. “Now, which one do you suppose is the brake?”

  Two “hit-a-rock-or-some-damned-thing” spinouts, three “lose-your-balance” dump overs, and a first-class “bike goes east, rider goes west” dive, and Savannah was there.

  Well, she was almost there.

  The tin shed, trussed with yellow crime scene tape, was within sight, barely, across the open field. This time she was approaching from the rear, the opposite of when she, Dirk, and Ryan had come before.

  And this was the end of the trail.

  The young guy at the rental shop had described the beginning of the newly established dirt bike path. He had mentioned that hikers, tired of walking the long trail had begun to take bikes into the area. In an effort to stop the flow, forest rangers had erected the barricades across the old path, which the three of them had seen earlier.

  Not to be undone, the bikers had forged another trail. And, although it wasn’t as wide or well established, the path provided an only marginally treacherous route to the Montoya Ranch. This new path had only natural barricades: broken trees, unexpected rocks, the occasional bit of fauna.

  Savannah concluded it was worth the bumps and bruises when she saw the tire marks, which she had been following,
come to a halt, in the middle of nowhere, still a distance from the shed.

  Other than that one structure, there was nothing for anyone to see in the area, no reason to come out here. So, why didn’t they ride on up to the shed?

  She had spotted the tire tracks as soon as she had started down the path. The marks had a unique distinction: an extra indentation, not caused by the tire itself, that was repeated regularly. It was a stone, wedged between the treads that created the demarcation.

  Savannah was sure, because the imprint was exactly the same as the one left by the bike she was riding.

  Someone else had recently rented this machine and driven it to this exact spot. And for some reason, they had elected to walk the rest of the way to the shed.

  She got off the bike, released its kickstand, and followed the footprints in the loose soil. The prints were larger than hers, but that didn’t surprise her. All of her suspects were male and had feet that were bigger . . . . except for Vanessa, and Savannah had noticed that her shoes were in proportion to the remainder of the giantess.

  As she neared the shed, the dirt became more compact and rocky, and the footprints faded. That explained why the police hadn’t followed the trail from the shed out to the bike path, she surmised.

  To her knowledge, until today, when she had found it, no one investigating the crime knew that there was another way into the location, other than on foot.

  Savannah paused and listened to a couple of doves cooing in an oak tree. The nearby stream burbled with a relaxing, peaceful sound that belied the violence done here.

  But Savannah’s thoughts couldn’t be soothed by any of nature’s gentle melodies. Because, until today, no one had considered that a seventy-year-old retired army colonel, an arthritis-plagued war hero, a grief-stricken father and worried-sick grandfather, could have made his way into this remote location.

  Standing there, looking at the miserable little shed where the deed had been done, Savannah wondered if Colonel Neilson had killed Earl Mallock. She wondered if she would have done the same thing; she strongly suspected she might have.

  Which left her with the most burning question of all: If she were able to prove that Colonel Neilson murdered his son-in-law, how could she bring herself to turn him in?

  “Have a nice ride?” The young man’s eyes flickered up and down Savannah’s body as he spoke, taking in the dirt-streaked jeans, the mud-splattered blouse, her disheveled hair.

  “Just friggin’ ducky,” she replied as she returned the bike and retrieved her generous deposit. Fortunately, the machine had fared better than its rider.

  “Find the trail okay?”

  “It was right where you said it was. Just behind the ‘Absolutely No Trespassing’ sign.”

  “You gotta be careful going up there,” he told her, counting the bills onto her outstretched palm. “Some dude got himself murdered in a shack a few days ago.”

  “I know. That’s why I was up there. I’m investigating the homicide.”

  “You’re a cop?” he asked, his eyes wide with shock.

  “Nope. A private investigator.”

  She could tell by the enthusiasm meter on his face that he was far more impressed by the title of P.I. than law enforcement officer.

  “Wow, cool.” He leaned across the counter toward her, his smile eager. “Can I help you with anything? I keep a close eye out all the time. I notice all kinds of stuff.”

  “Can you tell me who else has rented this bike lately,” she asked, hopeful. “The one I was riding today.”

  “Sure. Some crazy chick with purple hair. She loaded it down with groceries and camping stuff from her car, then took off. I figured she’d be up there for weeks, considering all the provisions she took. But she came right back that afternoon.”

  “Which afternoon was that?”

  Savannah couldn’t help being hopeful. Maybe it was Vanessa, after all. She had to admit she would be relieved. She liked the colonel, Brian O’Donnell, and even Alan Logan. If it had to be someone . . . . and it did . . . . she hoped it was Vanessa, her least favorite.

  “A gal with purple hair?” Savannah tried to sound surprised. “I guess you would notice something like that.”

  “It looked like she was trying to hide it under a baseball cap. But it was sticking out on the sides.”

  “What day, exactly, did she rent the bike?” Savannah was so excited, she could hardly feel the pain in her butt or the bruise on her thigh.

  The kid hauled a stack of receipts in a binder out from under the counter. “Let’s see now. It was about the fifth or the sixth. Yeah, here it is. It was the morning of the sixth.”

  “Oh.” Her hopes fell. Suddenly, her injuries began to throb. “That was a week or so before the murder.”

  “I guess it doesn’t have anything to do with it, then, huh?” he said, looking equally disappointed to have let her down.

  “Is that the last time you rented it out?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me take a look at these and . . . .”

  He thumbed through the pink sheets, then stopped, excited. “Wait a minute. Here’s another one for that bike. It was rented on Thursday.”

  “This last Thursday?”

  “Yeah. Hey! Wasn’t that the day that guy got blown away?”

  “Yes, it was. Can you tell me the name of the party you rented it to?”

  “Sure.” He consulted the ticket. “It was a guy named Charlie Delta.”

  “Charlie Delta?” Bells went off in Savannah’s head. “Do you recall what this ‘Mr. Delta’ looked like?”

  “Yeah, now that I think about it, I do. He was an older guy with gray hair. It was chopped off flat on top, one of those dumb-lookin’ crew cuts, like the Beach Boys used to wear, you know, way back in . . . .”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Savannah stood at Colonel Forrest Neilson’s back door, her heart in her throat, and a slice of Gran’s famous beef liver in her hand.

  The colonel wasn’t at home. Of that she was sure, because she had just seen him drive away in his Lincoln. But, unfortunately, he hadn’t taken Beowulf along.

  “It’ll work, I tell you,” her grandmother had said as Savannah had left home fifteen minutes ago with two pieces of dinner leftovers zipped into a plastic bag. “Dogs love it. Just stick it under his nose and he’ll be yours forever . . . . or at least until he finishes gobbling it down.”

  “That’s a good Beowulf,” Savannah told the dog as she presented her offering to him. “Come on, you handsome devil. Bite the liver, and not the leg.”

  With incisors bared and eyes gleaming, the dog took one step closer to her. The growl that issued from him sounded as though it were rumbling out of a deep cavern. With a nerve-jangling revelation, Savannah realized this was probably the most dangerous animal she had ever encountered . . . . including that copperhead that she had nearly stepped on barefoot as a kid while picnicking beside the Mississippi River.

  But just when she was sure the dog was going to chomp a plug out of her, his nostrils flared and began to twitch.

  “Yeah . . . . that’s it. Smells great, doesn’t it?”

  Beowulf seemed to agree. Gingerly, he put out his tongue and licked the edge of the meat.

  The long, fringed black tail began to wave from side to side. A good sign, Savannah thought with a modicum of relief. Maybe she would have the opportunity, like every other “normal” person, to die of a terminal illness, in an automobile crash, or of old age.

  That was comforting. She wasn’t sure they let you into heaven if you expired from being eaten by an Akita who seemed to think he was a mountain grizzly.

  Once she was sure she had the dog’s full attention, she dropped the meat onto the porch and took a tentative step closer to the door. As Gran had predicted, the liver ploy had worked, and Beowulf paid her no mind as she proceeded to try to pick the colonel’s lock.

  “Dang it,” she muttered after the third attempt failed. Back in the olden days, when she had held a search w
arrant in one hand and her badge in the other, this sort of nonsense hadn’t been necessary. It wasn’t easy, being Jane Q. Citizen.

  Click. She heard the tumbler move. “Bingo,” she said, twisting the knob. The door slid open.

  She ventured another quick glance at Beowulf, but he was in doggy-ecstasy, licking every molecule of liver from the cement with his long, red tongue.

  Quickly, she slipped inside the house, making sure the door was securely closed behind her. She couldn’t afford to have the dog follow her, because she only had one more piece of liver left, and that was to help her make her escape.

  First, she tiptoed through the house, checking to be certain that no one else was about. In every room, she felt watched by the dozens of clock faces and wondered what the lord of the manor would say if he could see her now.

  Best not to think of that at the moment, she told herself. She had always hated this part of the job. Even with a badge and a judge’s authorization, she felt uncomfortable invading a person’s home . . . . if that person was someone she liked.

  And, whether she wanted to admit it or not, whether he had murdered his former son-in-law or not, she did like the colonel. She couldn’t help it. The man radiated a quiet grace, strength and confidence of a bygone era. He was a hero, straight out of central casting, and she was in awe of him, no matter what he had done.

  Besides the fact that she was violating Neilson’s privacy, she didn’t relish going on a search when she wasn’t sure what she was looking for.

  A cursory glance into each room told her nothing, except that the colonel was obsessively neat in his housekeeping habits.

  In the guest room closet, Savannah found a collection of Barbie dolls and girls’ clothing. But that was to be expected of a man who doted on his granddaughter.

  “Christy, where are you, sweetie?” Savannah murmured as she touched one of the dolls, which had long red hair like its mistress. “Please be safe until we can find you.”