A Decadent Way to Die

by G. A. McKevett

  “Answer some questions for me.”

  “Okay. I will if I can.”

  “Miss Helene said that sometimes, when the weather is cold, people plug a portable heater in over there.” She pointed to the outlet by the towel valet.

  “Yes, we do that sometimes.”

  “Where is that heater now? I didn’t see it in the shed with the spa supplies.”

  “We keep it in the garage. Sometimes we use it on the patio by the house and beside the pool, too.”

  “And how about the boom box … the one that you use out here sometimes? Is that in the garage, too?”

  “No. That belongs to Waldo. He keeps it in the tool shed behind his house.”

  “Okay. Now, try to think hard, Tiago. Has anything different, anything unusual happened in the past few days?”

  “Miss Helene fell over the cliff. And she had the problem with her medicine.”

  “Yes, of course. But anything else? Anything at all?”

  He appeared to be thinking hard for a long time. Then he said, “This isn’t important, but you said anything.”

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “A few days ago the shovel disappeared. The one I use to clean the chicken coop. I always put the tools away in their places. I hang the shovel on the wall in a shed by the coop. But when I wanted to use it the other day, it was gone. I looked for it everywhere, but I haven’t found it yet.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “It’s small and the blade is flat.”

  She nodded. “Down South we call that a spade. It’s the perfect thing for cleaning a chicken coop.”

  “And one corner of the blade is broken off.” He shrugged. “I was trying too hard to dig out a rock for Miss Helene.”

  “Thank you, Tiago,” she said. “And now I have one last question to ask you….”

  “Okay.”

  “This isn’t a time when you can have any secrets. The police are going to uncover everything there is to know about you and Blanca and your life together. Eventually, they’ll figure out what really happened to you last night, to your face. So, you might as well tell me. Who were you fighting, and what was the fight about?”

  “I’m sorry, señora,” he said. “It doesn’t matter now. I’ve told you enough. We’re done talking.”

  And with that, he stood and walked away, heading back toward his cottage.

  Savannah watched him leave, surprised by his sudden change in attitude and wondering what it meant.

  Well, Tiago, she thought. The fact that you won’t answer that question means it’s the one I have to get answered first … right after I look for the heater, the boom box, and that shovel.

  “So, what did you squeeze out of him?” Dirk wanted to know when Savannah found him and Tammy standing by the cliff where Helene had fallen days before.

  “Not a lot,” she replied. “I couldn’t get him to tell me about the fight. What are you two doing here?”

  “I thought I’d show the kid where Mrs. Strauss took her tumble.”

  “I think you’re right about the dirt there in the path, Savannah,” Tammy said. “Looks like somebody dug a hole there to me, too.”

  “Speaking of digging … we’ve got a runaway shovel to locate.”

  “Get Dirko here to put out an APB,” Tammy said, gouging him in the ribs with her elbow.

  Savannah waved a hand in the direction of the main house. “How about you two shake some tail feathers and help me look instead?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Dirk grumbled, “but no more chicken references.”

  * * *

  “I’d like to have a four-car garage,” Tammy said, looking around the cavernous interior.

  “I’d like to have a garage,” Dirk added.

  “I’d like to find a heater with water inside it and big, fat fingerprints all over it.” Savannah walked along the wall, searching the shelves that held everything from luggage to boxes of seasonal decorations in well-organized and clearly labeled boxes.

  “Helene has six boxes of Halloween stuff,” Tammy said. “I’ll bet this place makes a great haunted house.”

  “And Easter must be pretty festive, too.” Savannah pointed to a stack of clear, plastic bins filled with colorful rabbits and egg decorations. “But so much for the fun stuff. Where are the tools and patio equipment?”

  “I see a rake and some chair covers over there.” Tammy pointed to a far wall.

  They headed that direction, and it didn’t take them long to locate several different types of patio heaters, including a large fire pit hanging on a hook from the wall next to a big propane gas heater.

  Savannah pulled a surgical glove from her purse and slipped it onto her hand. “I think this is what we’re looking for,” she said, reaching behind a folded chair cover and pulling out a small, portable, electric heater.

  Dirk donned a pair of gloves himself and took the heater from Savannah. He turned it this way and that, as they all three looked it over.

  He gave it a little shake.

  “No water that I can see,” he said. “But I’ll bag it and take it to Eileen. See if she can find anything wrong with it.”

  “Or any prints or fibers or other forms of evidence on it,” Tammy added in her most officious, Moonlight Magnolia tone.

  Savannah was already moving down the wall, looking at the Peg Board wall where the large garden tools hung, all in a neat row. If one tool had been missing, there would have been a noticeable gap. Or if there had been an extra one, it would have been obvious.

  Everything had a place and was neatly arranged accordingly.

  “Helene runs a tight ship,” she said.

  “Just like my trailer,” Dirk replied with a self-satisfied smile.

  Savannah marveled at how thoroughly he could deceive himself. Having a tidy, well-organized home was a far cry from knowing where all your junk was in the midst of a cluttered mess, like his house trailer.

  Just because a guy could lay his hands on his bottle opener at a moment’s notice, didn’t make him Martha Stewart.

  “I don’t see our missing shovel,” Savannah said. “Not that I was really expecting to. I’m sure Tiago searched here already.”

  “You act like you believe everything he told you.” Dirk was wearing his highly suspicious, cynical look. The one he wore most of the time. Savannah suspected he wore it in the shower and to bed.

  “I wouldn’t say I believe everything that anybody tells me, but—”

  Dirk looked wounded. “You don’t believe everything I tell you?”

  “Nope. You lied to me once. Trust is a fragile thing. And it was broken.”

  “What did I lie to you about?”

  “Breaking the wing off my fairy statue in my rose garden.”

  “Oh, God. I’m never gonna live down that stupid fairy.”

  “Hey, it’s my fairy, and I love her. Don’t call her stupid.”

  Tammy giggled and walked away. She was always smart enough to know when to make a graceful exit.

  “I tripped over it,” Dirk protested. “It was an accident!”

  “I know. And I forgave you for the accident. But lying to me, blaming in on poor little Cleopatra—who’s an indoor kitty—that I’ll hold against you till the day I die.”

  “Apparently so. Sheezzz.”

  After locking the electric heater in Dirk’s trunk, the three checked the shed by the chicken coop, looking for the missing shovel.

  Dirk was clearly eager to leave the area as soon as possible. So eager, in fact, that Tammy’s curiosity was piqued.

  “This phobia thing you’ve got about chickens,” she asked him as they headed in the direction of Waldo’s cottage, “does it have anything to do with that awful cock-fighting ring we busted some time back?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he replied. “That’s it. That’s when it started.”

  Savannah nudged him with her elbow. “And you wonder why nobody trusts you?”

  “Nobody trusts me?”

  �
�Nobody who actually knows you.”

  “That’s cold, girl.”

  “Okay, I trust you a little. But only because I’m a sucker for a cute ass.”

  “You think I have a cute ass?”

  “Yeah, but don’t let it go to your head. We’d all have to start calling you butt head, and I don’t want that sort of immature talk going on at the office.”

  “Of course not.”

  As they approached Waldo’s house, they could see a building behind it that was too small to be a garage.

  “His car’s still gone,” Dirk said. “When I told Helene I couldn’t find him here on the property, she said he’s often gone all night.”

  “Doing what?” Savannah asked.

  “She was a bit vague about that. Deliberately avoided the question.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s out trying to score one of his recreational substances. Emma told me that’s pretty much his main pastime—doing the drugs or looking for his next high.”

  “Sad way to live a life,” Tammy commented.

  Her cell phone beeped again. She pulled it from her pocket and looked at her latest text with a look of dread on her face.

  It occurred to Savannah that jumping every time your phone rang was a pretty sad way to live a life, too. And it took all of the fine, Christian, Southern upbringing that Granny had given her for her not to curse Chad the Cad and wish he would fall down a flight of steep stairs into a pit of rabid crocodiles.

  Just regular crocs will do, she decided with all the charitable kindness she could muster.

  Tammy texted something back, and Savannah wondered if there was any point at all in suggesting that interacting with a fool was foolhardy.

  Probably not.

  Savannah had realized long ago, that was something a woman had to learn on her own … the hard way. And it was heartbreaking to see how long and how hard that way had to be in most cases. When it comes to matters of the heart, Savannah thought, these processes take time.

  And as she watched her beautiful young friend, so full of life and love … so trusting that both life and love would bring her only good things … she hoped that hard road wouldn’t be too long or too rough for her.

  “These are the only outbuildings that Tiago mentioned?” Dirk asked as they approached Waldo’s shed.

  Savannah nodded. “The only ones where they store tools—the garage, the one behind the spa, the one near the chicken coop, and this one.”

  “So, if we don’t find that shovel here,” Tammy said, “it’s God-knows-where.”

  “Yeah.” Savannah sighed. “Then we start looking in bushes and the Dumpster for it. Unless the garbage service has collected the trash since Helene’s cliff accident.”

  “One can always hope,” Dirk said. “I’m dedicated to my work and all that hooey, but whenever possible, I avoid Dumpster diving. Kitty litter, wet coffee grounds, and rotten potato peels …” He shuddered.

  “And this one would probably have chicken coop scrapings in it, too,” Savannah added, grinning at him.

  “Shut up.”

  “Okay.”

  When they reached the small shed, they found the door was secured with a padlock.

  “What’s ol’ Waldo got in there that he needs to hide from the world?” Dirk said.

  “More like from his grandma,” Savannah replied. “With that big fence around the property, I can’t imagine they get a lot of unwanted visitors.”

  Savannah was already rummaging in her purse. A moment later, she produced her lock pick.

  Dirk gave her a look.

  “What?” she said. “Helene gave me permission to search her property. If you don’t want to see this, Detective Sergeant Coulter, avert your eyes.”

  “Hell, no. I’m gonna watch. You’re way better at that lock picking business than I am, and I’m always trying to figure out why.”

  He didn’t learn much, because Savannah had the lock opened in five seconds.

  “Some women knit while they watch their soap operas. I practice picking locks.” She shrugged and grinned. “Hey, for a while there I was totally hooked on General Hospital.”

  She opened the door, and they stepped inside.

  This shed was a bit larger than the one by the spa, and that was a good thing, because it was overflowing with junk.

  “This is the least organized, dirtiest place I’ve yet to see on this property,” Savannah remarked as she looked up and down the teetering stacks of magazines, bags of old clothes, and boxes overflowing with discarded computer equipment, CDs, and the occasional piece of drug paraphernalia. “The rest of the estate is neat as a pin … though I never could figure out what was so gall darned neat about a pin.”

  “Expensive looking bong.” Tammy pointed to a large piece of fanciful, colorful blown glass … a marijuana bong with a broken stem.

  “Hey, spare no expensive for your favorite vices,” Savannah said. “That’s why I put only the best chocolate and ice cream on my backside.”

  “High brow reading material here.” Dirk held up a handful of porn magazines, mixed with some periodicals promoting the cannabis culture.

  “How old is Waldo?” Tammy asked.

  Savannah replied, “Old enough to have moved on.”

  Tammy moved a big, empty cardboard box that, according to the logo printed on its side, had contained a large, flat-screen television. Pushing it aside, she peeked behind it and said, “Hey! I think I’ve got a shovel here!”

  “Don’t touch it!” Savannah said. “And let’s get a picture of it first, hidden behind the box.”

  “Any good defense attorney would say the box was just set in front of it,” Dirk replied.

  “Not if we prove he used the shovel a few days ago and bought the TV last summer.”

  “Good point.”

  Savannah pulled a small digital camera from her purse and snapped several photos of the box and the hidden shovel. Putting the camera away, she grabbed a couple of the disposable gloves that she always carried in her pocketbook and handed them to Tammy.

  “You found the evidence—or, at least, we hope it’s evidence—so you can retrieve it,” she told her.

  It did Savannah’s heart good to see the wide grin on Tammy’s face as she donned the gloves, then reached behind the box to get the shovel.

  Until Tammy had met Chad, she lived for her work. Investigation and everything remotely related to it was Tammy’s chosen career, and had been since she’d been a child. All little girls might go through a Nancy Drew period, while growing up, but Tammy Hart had never outgrown the dream. And there was no happier person on the planet than someone who was living their childhood fantasy.

  Until she meets a controlling numbskull, who hijacks her life, Savannah thought as Tammy’s cell phone chimed once again. What’s that been, thirty texts in the past two hours?

  Once Tammy had the shovel out of its hiding place, Savannah said, “Hold it up here. I want to see its blade.”

  Tammy tilted it, bringing the business end of the tool even with Savannah’s face.

  There it was. The flat blade, which proved it was a spade, not a shovel, as Tiago had described. And better yet, there was the damaged corner.

  “It’s chipped, just like Tiago said,” she told them. “He explained that he’d broken it trying to dig a rock out of the ground for Helene.”

  “So, this is definitely the shovel that Tiago claims went missing?” Dirk asked.

  “I’m sure it is,” Savannah said. “And the fact that it was obviously hidden, and in a locked shed, points a finger right at He-lene’s favorite great-nephew.”

  Dirk was still looking, moving boxes aside, searching inside miscellaneous jars and cans. “Bingo,” he said, showing them the contents of an old, wooden, cigar box. Inside were at least a dozen tiny glassine envelopes containing white powder.

  “Waldo’s cocaine stash,” Tammy said. “That’s got to be helpful.”

  “Oh, it will be,” Dirk said. “This means, as
soon as I lay hands on our man Waldo, I can hang on to him as long as I want.”

  “It’s going to break Helene’s heart,” Savannah said softly.

  Dirk sighed and nodded. “Something tells me this guy’s going to be a source of heartbreak for a long, long time … for everybody that loves him.”