Something about the jittery way she raked her fingers through her short hair, the way she ran her hands up and down her arms and constantly shuffled her feet, made Savannah wonder if Waldo and Kyd were the only ones with drug habits.
In spite of the fact that it was a cool morning at the beach, Emma was sweating, and Savannah was sure that her pupils were dilated.
“Are you okay?” Savannah asked her.
“Sure. Fine.” She fidgeted in her seat, toying with her hoop earring. “You said there’s a new development?”
“We found out something that might be important. That’s why I thought I’d drop by and talk to you about it.”
“Yeah. Okay. What is it?”
“We just found out that Kyd and Waldo are good buddies. Have been for a while now.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say they’re good friends. They know each other. We’ve been out to my grandmother’s for social events.”
Savannah didn’t like being lied to. It was one of her pet peeves. And being lied to by clients who were supposedly paying you to uncover the truth was particularly inconvenient and irksome.
“You’ve taken Kyd to a lot of tea parties at Oma Helene’s, have you?” she asked.
Emma squirmed a bit more. “I don’t see why it matters, if Kyd and Waldo know each other.”
“It matters because they were busted together … for dealing drugs together. That matters, Emma.”
“Kyd’s clean now. He goes to meetings to stay straight and sober.”
“The last time I was here, he was having beer for breakfast. So much for his sobriety. And how straight has he been? As straight as you are now?”
Emma stood, her arms crossed over her chest. “I don’t know why you’re talking to me like this, Savannah. I thought you and I were friends.”
“So did I. But you weren’t truthful with me, Emma. And I know why. You didn’t want me to look at Kyd … to think he’s anything other than this great, talented musician, a real standup guy.”
Emma shrugged and hugged herself tightly. “I’m sorry, Savannah,” she said. “I admit it. I was afraid that if you knew Kyd had a record, you might think he had something to do with what happened to my grandmother. But he didn’t. He loves her.”
“Who are you kidding, Emma? I’ll bet you he doesn’t even like her. If she died tomorrow, how long do you think it would take him to march you down the aisle?”
“No! It’s not like that! Kyd loves me for who I am!”
“Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. But, Emma, a woman in your position has to be careful, discerning. Hell, we all do, but a future heiress like yourself …”
“I think you should leave. I’m sorry I ever hired you.”
Savannah stood and looked deeply into the young woman’s eyes. “Tell me the truth, Emma. Why did you hire me? And don’t lie to me. I’ll be able to tell.”
“To protect my grandmother. That’s why. I swear it.”
“Then answer two more questions for me. And again, you better answer me truthfully.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“Where does Waldo keep the key to his shed … the one behind his house?”
“What?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. You lived on that property for years. You’ve known Waldo all your life. Where’s the key to that padlock he has on the door?”
Emma swallowed hard. “There’s a rock with a peace sign painted on it, on the ground to the right of the shed door. He keeps it under that. Now, what’s your other question?”
“Does Kyd know where the key is?”
Emma closed her eyes for several seconds. When she opened them, they were filled with tears. “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes. Kyd knows.”
Usually, Savannah found Dirk’s company to be a simple comfort, a bit like an old, well-worn, much-loved house slipper. Occasionally, he was highly annoying, more like having a grass burr on the seat of your pants.
But once in a while, when she was sitting next to him in the passenger seat of his old Buick, smelling his cinnamon sticks and Old Spice shave lotion, listening to an Elvis classic, an expanse of some Southern California freeway stretching into the distance before them, Savannah felt like life was pert nigh perfect. And his presence was a large part of the feeling.
“This better pay off,” he grumbled in the middle of her blessing counting. “If we drag our candy asses all the way to the stinkin’ valley for nothin’, I’m gonna fly into a blind rage.”
She sighed. Back to the burr on the britches again.
“Did you have a lot of other leads to follow up on?” she snapped back. “Calls pouring into the tip line? Witnesses lining up to say they saw a guy with a long, black cape and a big, black mustache sneaking around the spa, carrying a boom box?”
“All right, all right.” He gave her a sideways grin. “That’s quite enough out of you.”
She sniffed. “I’ll decide when enough’s enough. I’ve got a really strong feeling about this Kyd guy. I want to make sure he was where he said he was that night. And if that means going to a club called Hell’s Inferno in the stinkin’ hot valley, so be it.”
“A phone call wouldn’t do it?”
“I told you, they didn’t answer. You don’t listen to me.”
“You talk too much. My ears get tired. They say women speak twice as many words in the course of a day as men do.”
“That’s because men don’t listen and we have to repeat everything.”
He craned his neck to watch a gorgeous, classic Harley that was weaving through traffic. When it was out of sight, he turned back to her. “What?”
“Exactly.”
Hell’s Inferno was everything it promised to be. The bar was blood-red, as were the tables and the chairs. It looked as though the so-called decorator had walked through the door and tossed buckets of red paint on everything, then told some second-rate cartoonists to paint the walls with flames and cheesy little devils dancing around with pitchforks.
“What would you call this?” Dirk asked as they stood in the middle of the room, looking around. “Décor by Dante? Staging by Satan?”
Savannah looked at him with mild amazement. “Did anybody ever tell you, you aren’t the run-of-the-mill blue-collar dude?”
“All the time.”
They walked over to the bar, where a gal with hair the color of the walls, tables, and chairs was slicing a pile of lemons and limes.
Savannah sidled up to the bar. “Hi.”
“We’re not open yet,” the girl said.
“No problem. We’re not drinking yet,” Savannah replied. “But I’ll bet you make a wicked Bloody Mary in here.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Can we ask you a couple of questions?”
Dirk pulled out his badge and passed it under her nose.
Her eyes lit up. She pushed the fruit away. “You mean, like, when cops walk into a bar and ask the bartenders about people who come into the bar and the cops pay them money for answering? That kind of questions?”
Dirk scowled as he dug a couple of bills out of his pocket and laid them down. “Yeah. The kind where the bartender spills her guts and gives the cop his money’s worth.”
“Okay, shoot.”
Savannah pointed to a poster on the wall behind the bar with the same hideous Poison Nails logo she had seen on the side of Kyd’s van. “They play here often?” she asked.
“Oh yeah. They’re everybody’s favorite! They’re here every weekend and sometimes during the week. We sell their CDs and everything.” She reached behind the counter, pulled out a CD, and slid it across the bar.
Savannah picked it up and scanned the list of titles. It read like a roster of slice-and-dice horror flicks.
“Were they here this past Saturday night?” Dirk asked.
“Sure. They play here every Saturday night. And even when they’re not playing, they come by and hang out.”
“How often does Kyd drop in?” Savannah aske
d.
“Oh, he’s in two, three times a week with his girlfriend. He’s so cool. I love his hair. He likes mine, too. He’s into redheads.”
“Apparently so,” Savannah said. “Emma’s isn’t as red as yours, but—”
“Who’s Emma?”
“His girlfriend.”
“His girlfriend’s name isn’t Emma, and she’s certainly not a redhead. She’s a blonde … very proud of all her highlights … and her fake boobs … and her expensive, old-lady clothes. She stands out like a sore thumb in this place.”
She made a face like she had just sucked on one of her freshly cut lemon wedges. “I don’t know what he sees in her. She’s old enough to be his mother and then some. It’s probably her money. He said she’s coming into some big money soon, and she’s going to finance his career. She’s already produced a CD for them.”
Savannah felt something rising in her spirit that felt effervescent, like a nice champagne. She glanced at Dirk and saw a smile on his face that told her he was feeling the same thing.
“You wouldn’t happen to know the name of this older girlfriend of his, would you?” she asked.
“Sure. Her name is Ada.” She looked under the bar and found yet another CD. She handed it to Savannah. “This is the one she produced. It’s a completely different style than they usually do. I hate it. Figures she’d produce something stupid like that.”
Dirk leaned halfway across the bar, giving the gal one of his gunfighter glares, as Savannah called them. “Are you absolutely, positively sure that Kyd was here last Saturday night. All night?”
“No.”
“No, you aren’t sure?” Savannah asked.
“No, he wasn’t here.”
Savannah’s thoughts spun around in a circle. “But you said Poison Nails played.”
“They did. But Kyd called that afternoon and said he had an upset stomach and couldn’t make it. Antonio sat in for him.”
Savannah turned to Dirk, a smirk on her face. “So, tell me, big boy,” she said. “Are you glad you came to the stinkin’ valley now?”
Chapter 24
This time it was Kyd’s turn to sweat in the no-air-conditioning interrogation room of the San Carmelita police station. And he wasn’t doing any better than his buddy, Waldo, had.
Even copious amounts of ultra-gel weren’t standing up to the heat. His hair was plastered flat against his head, and he was as wet with perspiration and as fidgety as his girlfriend had been earlier that morning. Though Savannah was pretty sure his condition wasn’t the result of a narcotic high.
Kyd of the Poison Nails didn’t appear high at all. Apparently, being suspected in a double homicide was a major buzz kill.
“You can sit there and lie all day long and piss off Detective Coulter here if you want to, Kyd,” Savannah was telling him. “But your sugar momma already gave you up. We just interrogated her in a room down the hall, and she told us the whole thing.”
“Well,” Dirk said, “that’s half true. She told us what you did. She didn’t come clean about how she was involved.”
“She left you holding the bag, Kyd, my man,” Savannah told him. “She’s saying it was your idea from the first.”
“It was not!” Kyd’s eyes were practically bugging out of his head.
Savannah loved it when they looked like a fly that had just been swatted.
“She says it was.” Dirk leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands casually behind his head. “Yes, she’s saying you tried to kill the old lady. You dug the hole with the shovel so that she’d hit it and go off the cliff.”
“Pretty smart,” Savannah added, “wiping off all the prints and then sticking it in Waldo’s shed, so that if anybody got blamed for it, it’d be him. By the way, we’re processing the rock with the peace sign and the hidden key. Did Ada remind you to wipe your prints off those, too?”
“She didn’t tell me … I … never mind.”
Savannah stifled a chuckle. From the moment he had sat down, they had told him nothing but lies. But he was buying it all. It was like shooting catfish in a barrel, only without feeling sorry for the fish.
“She told us you tried to kill her aunt for her,” Dirk said. “She even gave you up for murdering Blanca and Vern. But she said you just killed them for the fun of it, because you’re nothing but a cold-blooded bastard.”
“I am not!” Kyd shot up out of his chair.
Dirk reached across the table, put a big hand on his shoulder, and shoved him back down.
Savannah never ceased to marvel at how, no matter how vicious and cold-blooded certain criminals might be, they never wanted to be thought of as such. Over the years, she had heard the most contrived, totally illogical rationalizations for the most heinous crimes. But those who embraced their flimsy excuses did so with a passion.
Savannah suspected it had something to do with being able to sleep at night and look in a mirror every morning. Even coldblooded bastards had to live with themselves.
Dirk turned to Savannah. “See there? He’s not as bad as you thought. I told you it was all Ada’s idea. I knew she was no-good the moment I laid eyes on her.”
“She’s not!” Kyd agreed, sensing an ally. “She’s the one behind this. It was all her idea!”
“I told you so,” Dirk said to Savannah, a twinkle in his eyes. “I told you she was laying it all on this guy, when it was her who talked him into it. She’s the primary offender here. He’s just a secondary offender at most.”
She nodded solemnly. “And you should remember that when you write up your report, Detective.”
“Oh, I will.” He turned back to Kyd, who was looking much encouraged at his turn of good fortune. “So, Kyd, the only thing left to clear this whole thing up is why she had you throw that boom box in the spa in the first place. You know her better than we do. Help us out here. What would you say was her motive for that?”
Kyd looked right and left, as though expecting a vengeful Ada to appear over one of his shoulders. “I think,” he said, “it was because she thought it was her aunt in the tub with Vern. Helene was always in the tub at that time of night.”
“Ah, that makes perfect sense,” Savannah said.
“It does. Thank you.” Dirk gave him an encouraging, grateful smile. “And if Ada had already planned for you to electrocute her aunt, even before she caught her boyfriend in the tub, too, that would be premeditated murder on Ada’s part.”
“Oh, come on. She’s not that cold,” Savannah said. “She told me that Kyd here decided to do it on the spot.”
“I did not! She was planning that for days, telling me to get an extension cord for the boom box and where to plug it in and how to stand behind those bushes there by the spa so her aunt wouldn’t see me.”
“Then what was Vern, a bonus?” Dirk asked. “She wanted you to do her aunt, but then when she realized her boyfriend was in the tub, too, she figured, what the heck? Kill two birds with one boom box?”
Kyd gave him a suspicious look. “If that’s what she did, would that be better for me, or worse?”
“Oh, much better,” Dirk assured him. “Then she’d be even more of the primary offender, and you’d be like … a tertiary offender. That’s a lot better than a secondary offender.”
“Okay. Then, yeah … that’s what happened.”
Dirk stood, walked over to a file cabinet and opened the top drawer. He took out a yellow legal pad and a pencil. “But,” he said, “for me to be able to make this all a matter of record, you need to get it down on paper. Otherwise, she could still dispute everything you’ve told us and blame it all on you.”
“All right. I will. But you have to show it to her after I write it. I want her to know I was too smart for her.”
“Oh, we’ll show it to her,” Savannah said as she watched him start to scrawl his words across the paper. “We certainly will.”
Half an hour later, much to his surprise, Kyd was behind bars, and his written confession was securely sealed in an evide
nce envelope … having first been photocopied for Ada’s sake.
Savannah and Dirk were strolling down the hallway, on their way out of the station.
“What the hell,” she said, “is a tertiary offender?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just made it up. Pretty good for your run-of-the-mill blue-collar sorta guy, huh?”
She laughed, shook her head, and laced her arm through his. “Do you ever check to see if your nose is growing?”
“I file it down every morning when I shave.”
When Dirk knocked on Ada Fischer’s apartment door, he used his most officious, San Carmelita Police Department knock. It was the one that could be heard the first time, through every room of any residence. When Dirk used his cop knock, even the neighbors heard.
Savannah couldn’t blame Ada for leaving the security chain on when she answered.
She peeked out of the five-inch opening and looked quite dismayed and annoyed when she saw them.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“Oh, Ada,” Savannah said. “We want you.”
“Are you going to take the word of a drugged-out rock musician with a record over mine?” Ada stood in the middle of her living room, hands on her hips, glaring at Savannah and Dirk.
Even under the strained circumstances, Savannah couldn’t help noticing the formfitting purple leopard jumpsuit she was wearing. Savannah couldn’t recall seeing an outfit like that one for the past twenty years. And she hoped that after today, she’d have another fortunate twenty-year stretch without seeing another one.
It did show off Ada’s nipped and tucked body to perfection though.
Savannah glanced at Dirk and saw that he was staring straight at Ada’s face, his eyes not wavering one bit. She had seen him do that many times and admired his self-control. He would watch a cute bikini priss by on the beach, like any other guy, but when he was on duty, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter was the consummate professional and refrained from ogling.
A Decadent Way to Die: A Savannah Reid Mystery Page 22