The redhead shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t. You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“I won’t, I promise. Meet me…ten minutes…the service station. Do it for Bill.”
Aldo had returned and gave her a nasty look as he shoved the drink in front of her. “There you go. Iced tea. That’ll be five bucks.”
“Five bucks? For tea with one lousy piece of ice and no happy hour peanuts? You gotta be kidding.”
Aldo gave her an ugly grin. “You’re paying for the atmosphere,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m going to go home, change clothes, take a shower, and wash your ‘atmosphere’ out of my hair.” She slapped a five-dollar bill and one penny on the bar. “Don’t spend that whole tip in one place. You’ll upset the balance of the economy.”
Ten minutes later, Savannah was standing beside the service station’s air pump, leaning on the Mustang’s trunk. She had checked her watch an average of every fifteen seconds since arriving, and now, forty-one checks later, she saw an older blue Honda pull into the lot. Her hopes rose as the car bypassed the pumps and headed in her direction.
“Yes! Thank you, Lord,” she whispered when she saw that the woman at the wheel was Sharona.
The Honda pulled up beside her, and the car window rolled down.
“Well, I’m here. What now?” Sharona asked.
“Park right over there,” Savannah told her, pointing to the back of the lot, behind the garage. “And then get yourself into my car here. We got us some talking to do, girl to girl.”
A few minutes later, Savannah had taken Sharona to a park on the town’s state beach. Few tourists visited this spot, preferring the more pristine beach near the city pier. With its prominent sand dunes and clumps of thick brush, there were plenty of private spots where people could park, make out, smoke illegal substances, drink beverages that were forbidden on public beaches—and, of course, interrogate subjects from time to time.
It was one of Savannah’s favorite spots.
“Are you a cop?” Sharona asked as she fumbled in her purse and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Nope.” Savannah noticed that Sharona’s hands were still shaking. For just a brief moment, Savannah thought about all the people she had seen shivering with fear over the years. Too many.
Her heart went out to people living in that much fear. It wasn’t much of a life.
“You feel like a cop,” Sharona said, drawing long and hard on her cigarette.
“Feel like a cop?”
“You know—you give off that kind of cop energy.”
Savannah chuckled. “Yeah? Well, I was one for a long time. I guess it never completely goes away. Now I’m a private investigator.”
“And you’re investigating what happened to Bill, right?”
“That’s right.”
The redhead’s eyes filled with tears. “He was murdered, wasn’t he?”
Savannah studied her face closely, watching every expression. She saw only pain, sorrow, and the ever-present fear.
“Yes, he was,” she told her. “I’m sorry. I gather he meant a lot to you.”
“I’m in love with him. I mean, I guess I was in love.” She started to sob, her hands over her face. “I just can’t believe that he’s gone.”
Again, Savannah reached into her purse and produced a bunch of tissues. It occurred to her that she went through more tissues than a marriage counselor.
“I’m sure it’s awful, losing someone you love like this,” Savannah said, “especially in this way.”
“Are you sure somebody killed him?” she asked with a pathetic, hopeful look on her face. “It couldn’t have been some sort of accident?”
“No, I’m sorry.” Savannah reached back behind her seat and pulled out a bottle of water. She unscrewed the top and handed it to Sharona. “And we’re trying to find out who did it.”
“We?”
“My cop friend and I.”
Sharona took a long drink of the water and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I haven’t always gotten along that well with the cops.”
Savannah smiled. “I’ve heard. I’m not interested in whatever run-ins you’ve had with the law in the past. I just want you to tell me about Bill, about what he was up to lately, about anybody who had it out for him.”
“Bill had a lot going on,” Sharona said. “He was getting ready to make some big changes in his life. People don’t always like that.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He was getting ready to run away with me, leave that bitch Clarissa, and start a new life, just the two of us. We were supposed to leave a few days ago for Las Vegas. He was going to get a quickie divorce, and we were going to get married in one of the chapels there.”
She flashed a sizable engagement ring under Savannah’s nose.
“See?” she said. “He was serious, or he wouldn’t have bought me a rock this size, huh?”
Savannah nodded. She had to agree a diamond the size of a doorknob could have indicated a serious commitment—or a pretty toy to keep his mistress happy and quiet.
“How sure are you that this was really going to happen?” Savannah asked her. “I mean, a lot of married guys say they’re going to leave their wives, but when push comes to shove—”
“He meant it! We’d already rented a house in Vegas, a really nice house with a pool and everything! Bill was all excited about it. He said he had one more thing he had to do, and then he’d have lots of money to take care of us until the divorce became final and he got half of all of Clarissa’s stuff. She’s worth millions and millions with all those clubs of hers and the vitamins and the diet meals and the exercise DVDs.”
“Yes, I’m sure she is. Tell me more about this thing he had to take care of.”
“He didn’t say what it was exactly, just that it was going to happen four or five days ago. He said he was going to score, big-time.”
“Do you think it had anything to do with his gambling, like a big win, or…?”
“Bill? No way. Bill was an awful gambler. He loved it, but he never won anything worth getting excited about.”
“Was he into drugs?”
“Not at all. Bill was superclean when it came to that stuff. He was into health and fitness and all that. He didn’t have much of a choice about it, being married to the Queen of Fitness.”
Savannah wasn’t particularly surprised by the amount of venom in those last three words. If Clarissa provoked hostility in most of the people she met, you couldn’t really expect the “other woman” in her marriage to hold her in high regard.
It was Savannah’s experience that the mistresses of married men usually looked for the worst in the wives’ characters to help ease their consciences. And with Clarissa, there was just so much to work with.
“How did you and Bill meet?” she asked.
“At one of Pinky’s poker games. Pinky’s this guy I used to work for.” She took a drink of water and turned her face away from Savannah, looking out the passenger window. “I used to be in some bad stuff, but that was before. Since I met Bill, I’ve only been with him.” She choked up. “I was really looking forward to…to only being with him.”
“Tell me about Pinky,” Savannah asked, trying not to sound too wildly interested, trying to look nonchalant when she was mentally shaking cheerleader pom-poms and jumping up and down.
“Pinky’s a really bad guy. He’s a bookie, but he does a lot of other stuff, too. He’s got a lot of girls working for him. You know, like an escort service. And he’s into the drug scene. He doesn’t use, but he finances a lot of big deals.”
She tried to set her bottle of water on the dash, but she sloshed some of it onto the console. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. Really.” Savannah put her hand on the redhead’s forearm and gave it a comforting squeeze. “What were you saying about this Pinky guy?”
Sharona turned toward Savannah, her eyes haunted and frightene
d. “I think Pinky killed Bill. I know Bill owed him some money, and Bill said that once he had this other money, the big score he was working on, he would pay Pinky off. That way we could go to Vegas with a clean slate and not have to be looking over our shoulders all the time.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“Six days ago. We were going to be leaving right after he took care of this business of his and once he’d paid Pinky.”
“So, what happened?”
“He was supposed to call me, as soon as he’d made his big score and settled things with Pinky. But the days came and went and he never called. That wasn’t like him. I was so afraid that something was wrong, really bad wrong. And then today I was watching the news on TV, and I saw that they’d found a red convertible and a body up there on Sulphur Creek Road. I just knew it was Bill. I knew it.”
“I’m sorry, Sharona. It’s terrible to lose anybody you love, but especially this way.”
“It is terrible. And now I’m afraid that Pinky’s going to come after me, or send somebody after me.”
“Why?”
“Because they all know—everybody on his crew—that Bill and I had a thing. If he’d kill Bill over some money, he won’t give it a second thought, getting rid of me because I might know something. That’s why I was hanging out over at The Keg. Aldo’s an old boyfriend of mine. He’s a bad guy, too, but he hates Pinky. And he wouldn’t let him hurt me…at least, not in his place.”
Savannah thought of the safe house a few miles out of town that the SCPD kept just for these occasions. It wasn’t much, a little cottage out in the middle of some orange groves. But it smelled a heck of a lot better than The Keg, and Sharona Dubarry looked like she could use some fresh air and a stress-free environment for awhile.
“If I could arrange for a place for you to stay, until this whole thing is settled, would you like that?” she asked her. “It would be better than running from one bad guy to another, trying to choose the lesser of evils.”
“You mean like a hotel room?”
“A little better than that. It’s a house, old, small, quiet. You can take walks among the orange trees and smell the blossoms. There’s a porch with a swing. You can sit there and listen to the birds chirp. Not exciting, but restful.”
Sharona started to cry again, but Savannah sensed they were tears of relief. And she had stopped shaking. That was a good start.
“Then we’ll do it. I’ll make a phone call to my partner and get him to okay it. Then I’ll take you back to your car. We’ll go to your house together, and I’ll wait and keep watch while you pack a bag. Then I’ll drive you out there.”
“Thank you,” Sharona said. “I really appreciate this.”
Savannah gave her a reassuring smile. “I know you do, sugar. I’m glad to help.”
But she wasn’t all that glad. As she made the call to Dirk, then drove Sharona back to the gas station, she had mixed emotions, mulling over all that she’d just heard.
On one hand, she was elated to have this lead that sounded like a hot one. But at the same time, she had a nagging disappointed feeling, deep in her gut.
She didn’t have to do more than two seconds’ worth of soul searching to know where that was coming from. She wanted hot leads, but she wanted them to lead her to Clarissa Jardin, not some wiseguy bookie.
And how sick is that? she asked herself as she followed Sharona Dubarry’s blue Honda to her house near the beach. Sometimes self-awareness just…well…sucks.
Chapter 12
Usually, when Savannah returned home, it was a tossup who was the most excited to see her, Tammy, Cleopatra, or Diamante. But when she walked into the house in the late afternoon, the only interested parties were the cats.
Tammy had her nose practically glued to the computer screen, and she barely gave a grunt as Savannah walked by.
A glance over her assistant’s shoulder told Savannah that Tammy was slaving away on the luminol picture—the one Dirk had forwarded to her from the lab.
It didn’t look like much to Savannah, just a dark, charcoal gray screen with some white dots like tiny paint spatters…or a starry night sky in an Arizona desert if she were to wax poetic. And she wasn’t in a poetic mood. Twenty-nine hours without sleep could just sap the poet right out of a body.
“Anything new? Anybody call?” Savannah asked.
“Nope.”
“Bill Jardin’s mother? Marietta?”
“Nope and nope.”
“Okay.”
Worn out from that lengthy, scintillating, and complex discussion, Savannah went into the kitchen, poured some cat food into the ever-hungry felines’ dishes, refreshed their water, and got herself a glass of iced tea. No token slice of lemon but gobs of ice.
Leaving the cats to gorge themselves on Whisker Vittles, she returned to the living room and sank into her comfy chair. Her head spun for a moment and she realized that she was getting dangerously tired. If she didn’t at least grab a nap soon, she wasn’t going to be able to function.
“Did you find Sharona?” Tammy asked, her eyes still trained on the screen as she manipulated the computer’s mouse and worked the photo program, trying one type of enhancement after another.
“Found her, talked to her, took her to the safe house.”
Tammy whirled around in her chair. “The safe house? Why?”
“She thinks that dude Pinky killed Jardin, and she’s afraid he may be after her, too.”
“Whoa! Get out!” Tammy looked disappointed. “And we were hoping it was Clarissa.”
“You were? I thought it was just me who doesn’t like her.”
“Nope. Can’t stand her. I avoid watching her on TV or reading about her in the paper because she disturbs my inner peace. I have to meditate afterward, just to cleanse my spirit of her hostility.”
“Wow, I thought it was just people like me who felt that way. I didn’t think that folks like you…”
The hurt expression on Tammy’s face made Savannah swallow the rest of her words.
“Why did you think that?” Tammy asked softly. “Because I’m skinny?”
“Well, I…you’re…you know…into fitness and all that. You aren’t the kind of person that Clarissa would criticize or insult. You’re more like…”
“Like her?”
Savannah realized she was blowing it with her friend, but she was too tired to fully understand why. She decided to shut up before she made the situation worse.
“Savannah,” Tammy said, her voice tremulous, “I hope you don’t think that just because I’m thin, because I like to work out and eat a certain way…that I approve of what Clarissa Jardin does. I think she’s amassed a fortune by being cruel and sensational and controversial. She claims to be this health guru, but I think what’s she’s doing is wrong and unhealthy for our entire society.”
Savannah was surprised at the depth of her friend’s conviction and sorry that she had obviously offended her. “Tammy, I had no idea you felt that way.”
“But you should have known,” Tammy said softly, with no accusation, only hurt in her voice. “I try to be a good person, and good people don’t condone cruelty, no matter what size they are.”
Savannah got up from her chair, walked across the room, and pulled Tammy to her feet. Wrapping her arms around her, she said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. I really am. It’s so easy to slide into that foolish ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality when it comes to this stupid weight issue. And I don’t ever want to think of you that way. I always want you and me to be ‘us.’ No matter what size you are.”
Tammy returned the hearty hug. “And I couldn’t possibly love you more, whether you ever dropped or gained a pound. Even the thought that I might seems ludicrous to me.”
The office phone rang, and Tammy grabbed for it. “Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency. Tammy Hart speaking,” she said in a breathy and rather bad Marilyn Monroe impression that Savannah had always found humorous.
“Oh, it’s just you,” Tamm
y said. She mouthed, “Dirk-o,” to Savannah. “Yes, I’ve got the sister’s name and address and everything you asked for. That’s such old news. I’m working on the blood spatter photo now.” She listened for a minute, then said, “Well, don’t sound so surprised. We Moonlight Magnolia ladies don’t dillydally, you know.”
She picked up a piece of paper from the desk and read the pertinent information to him. “Her name is Rachel Morris. Up until last month, she lived in New York—Greenwich Village, to be exact. Then she and her son—age sixteen, named Tanner—moved to Yucca Mountain…a little town on Interstate 15 near the Nevada border. She’s never been married, doesn’t have a criminal record, and she pays her bills on time.” She grinned broadly. “Anything else you want to know?”
She held out the phone to Savannah. “He wants to talk to you.”
Savannah took the phone and walked into the kitchen, leaving Tammy to return to her computer work. “Did you at least say ‘Thank you?’”
“Of course I did,” Dirk replied, sounding moderately miffed. “I know how to talk to people.”
Since when? Savannah thought, but she kept it to herself. With Dirk, she really had to choose her battles. If she griped about everything he did that drove her nuts, she’d be nagging him all the time…and then they might as well be married and filing joint tax returns.
“Speaking of talking to people,” she said, “did you get hold of that D. A., Wilcox?”
“Yeah. He’s got a pretty good case against Pinky, whose name, by the way, is actually Pinky—go figure.”
“No way.”
“I swear, that’s his legal name. Baldovino Pinky Moretti.”
“What? He didn’t want to go by Baldovino?”
“He’s mobbed up.”
“No kidding. Sharona already told me all about him, the drugs, the hookers, the gambling.”
“And murder. Wilcox is sure he’s gotten rid of at least three members of his crew by himself, and he’s thinking Pinky did Jardin, too. What Clarissa said about Bill going in to talk to Wilcox…it’s all true. He was supposed to give his deposition tomorrow.”
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