Hide and Sneak

by G. A. McKevett

  Tammy nodded. “I don’t suppose it’s all that unusual. If one actor in a family is happy with the way his manager is handling his career, he’d probably recommend his services to another actor, even if it’s his wife.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. But Ethan didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the guy when he realized he’d entered his house uninvited.”

  Gran shrugged. “Unless you’re living in a town like McGill where everybody knows one another, I can see why that would bother a body.”

  “True.” Savannah read on. “I see the nanny, Pilar Padilla, has been with the Malloys for nearly two years. Their son is almost two. She’s probably been his nanny since birth. Clean record for her, too.”

  “Not that it matters,” Tammy said, “but see the note I made about her having type one diabetes? I found where she’d posted quite a few comments on Internet support sites, trying to help others who have it.”

  “It would matter if she’s somewhere and being held against her will without her insulin,” Savannah added. “Let’s hope to high heaven that’s not the case.”

  “True,” Tammy said. “But mostly, I keep thinking about that little boy.” She gazed down at Vanna Rose, fast asleep in her arms. “I can’t imagine how Ethan Malloy feels right now, not knowing if his baby is safe or not.”

  “Must be plum awful,” Granny agreed. “About the worst experience a body can go through in this lifetime.”

  “We have to help him,” Tammy said, fighting back tears. “We have to bring his little one back to him.”

  Savannah had been feeling the same anxiety as Tammy, but with each passing hour, her stress level had risen. Experience had taught her that the first hours after a disappearance were crucial. If, indeed, bad things were going to happen to a victim, they tended to happen right away.

  “Okay, thank you for gathering this,” she said to Tammy, laying the papers on the desk. “Now let’s look into old flames. Candace York, obviously, and any other significant relationships Ethan might have had. Also, see if Beth has any ex-husbands or boyfriends. Pilar, too.”

  Granny took the baby from Tammy, and Tammy turned her attention to the computer.

  “What would you like me to do, darlin’?” Granny asked Savannah.

  “If you don’t mind, you can keep an eye on Punkin Little there, so Tammy can work. Also, try to remember anything else you read in those tabloids about Ethan and Beth.”

  Granny’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, now you’ve decided to believe what’s in my magazines? Since when? I distinctly recollect you sayin’ they’re nothin’ but a pile o’ rubbish.”

  “Just goes to show you how desperate I am,” Savannah replied.

  She was going to say more, defending her position, but her cell phone rang. She saw it was Dirk.

  “Hey, sugar,” she said. “What’s shakin’?”

  Usually, he would have replied with a breezy quip of a salacious nature, but there was no humor in his voice at all when he said, “I caught a case. A bad one.”

  Savannah felt a chill run through her soul. “How bad?”

  “Real bad. A 10-100, up here in the hills above Oak Grove Park.”

  Savannah swallowed, so hard that it hurt her throat. “Victim? Victims?”

  “A young woman,” he said.

  “A young woman,” she repeated, turning to Tammy, then Gran. She saw the same horror she was feeling reflected on their faces. “Homicide?”

  “Not sure yet, but might be.”

  “Description?”

  “Petite. Mid-twenties. Latina.”

  “A Latina,” Savannah said to Gran and Tammy, “deceased.”

  Tammy gasped, and tears sprang to her eyes. Gran closed her eyes and began to murmur a prayer.

  “Got an identity?” Savannah asked, afraid of the answer.

  “Not yet” was his reply. “No purse around. I’m just getting ready to check the body.”

  Savannah glanced at Tammy’s notes one more time, then said to Dirk, “Check out her wrist. Would she happen to be wearing a medical alert bracelet?”

  She heard him moving about, searching. Then he said, “She does. It says, ‘Diabetes on Insulin.’ Hey, and her name. It’s—”

  “Pilar Padilla.”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “Just an unlucky guess,” she replied, her voice shaking, her knees suddenly feeling weak. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “You don’t need to come, Van. It’s not pretty. . . .”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “To help you search for two more victims.”

  Chapter 6

  Oak Grove wasn’t the prettiest park in San Carmelita or the most popular. Those honors would have belonged to one of the seaside recreational areas—either the park beside the harbor filled with sailboats, the one with the 1,200-foot-long pier, used for fishing and romantic strolls, or the one downtown near the old mission where art shows occurred on the first Sunday of each month.

  On the opposite side of town, the less ritzy side, Oak Grove was a verdant valley, reaching deep into the foothills, a secluded area that San Carmelita folks frequented when they wanted to be alone and commune with nature, to perform a bit of yoga beneath the ancient trees, to take a hike among the waist-high daisies that grew in abundance on the hillsides, to fool around with their honey under the stars, or occasionally, to dump a dead body.

  Although Savannah and Dirk had done their share of stargazing tomfoolery in the privacy of Oak Grove, it still wasn’t her favorite place. Far from it, in fact.

  The discovery of even a single corpse among such natural splendor could turn one off to an area. Permanently. Or so she had discovered.

  As Savannah drove the narrow road that stretched from the park’s entrance through the arroyo that was lined with old oaks on each side, to the back of the park where the road ended and the hiking trails began, her heart rate steadily increased.

  The thought that a young woman, who spent her days caring for a child, was lying dead among those hills, filled Savannah with dread. The thought that the child himself and maybe his mother could have suffered the same fate nearly overwhelmed her with horror.

  Experience had shown Savannah Reid that she could bear a lot. In the past twenty years, she had witnessed far more of the evil that one human being could inflict upon another than anyone should see.

  It made a person old before their time.

  Sometimes she felt like she was forty-something going on ninety-seven.

  She tried to steel her heart for what she might find up there among the wildflowers and sage bushes, but she knew there was no point. You couldn’t guard your soul from an assault like that.

  With each victim of violence that she had encountered in her time as a police officer and then a private detective, Savannah felt she had lost a bit of her humanity, her belief in the basic goodness of mankind.

  Granny Reid said you had to keep the faith, you couldn’t let the dark deeds of a few overshadow the golden, shining acts of others who chose to do good in the world.

  But that was far more easily said than done at a time like this.

  Ahead, at the end of the road, Savannah saw two police cruisers parked side by side, their rooftop lights flashing. They appeared identical, but the license plate on one identified it as the squad car that Dirk was now driving and had been since he had wrecked his Buick. Still in mourning over the old Skylark, he was reluctant to replace her with another vehicle. After six months, Savannah had refused to chauffeur him about in the Mustang any longer, so he had finagled a unit from the department.

  At least once a week, Savannah had offered to take him car shopping, but since that would require spending money, he always found something more pressing to do. Like sort through his old LPs, or watch a boxing match.

  She recognized the license plate of the second black-and-white, as well, and was relieved that it was driven by two of her favorite patrolmen, Jake McMurtry and Mike Farnon. Childhood
buddies, they had decided to join the police force at the same time, and although they had only been on the job less than five years, she considered them better than most she had worked with in the SCPD.

  She could see that a large area ahead had been neatly cordoned off with yellow police barrier tape. Jake’s and Mike’s work, no doubt. She was pretty sure that Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter wouldn’t have performed such a mundane chore, with two “underlings” at his disposal.

  At least none of the department brass had shown up yet, and that was just fine with Savannah. The last thing she needed right now—with a murdered nanny and two of her client’s family members missing—was to come face-to-face with the police department “suits” who had unfairly fired her from the job she loved.

  She parked the Mustang behind a nondescript, cement block building that served as one of the park’s two restrooms. As far as she was concerned, the only downside to driving a bright red, beautifully restored classic vehicle was the complete lack of anonymity it provided—like when she was trying to tail a suspect.

  Or hide from the chief of police.

  No sooner had she gotten out of the car than she spotted Dirk, leaving a copse of gnarled, stately oaks and hurrying toward her. He had a heartsick look on his face, one she knew all too well. His expression told her that the situation was just as bad as she had imagined it. Maybe worse.

  It bothered Dirk to see a bad guy harmed by another bad guy. He took a dim view of anyone who gave themselves permission to hurt one of the citizens he had sworn to protect and serve.

  But when it was an innocent victim, someone who had not “lived by the sword” but had nevertheless died violently, Dirk’s cynical, street-hardened heart ached for them and the loved ones they left behind in a world of grief.

  Throughout Savannah’s and Dirk’s friendship, he always turned to her when he was in pain, as she had with him. But, since their marriage, it seemed to her that he had become even more dependent upon her during difficult times like this.

  He sought her out more quickly, shared more of his grief and frustrations with her, and listened fully and intently to any consolation or advice she offered.

  She found it touching and deeply satisfying to have such a strong, self-reliant man turn to her in his time of need.

  It felt good to be needed.

  She rushed to him and, since there were no other cops standing nearby, she slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him close.

  “Sorry, babe,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” he replied, his voice husky with emotion as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You, too.”

  She nodded and allowed herself the luxury of resting her forehead on his shoulder. But only for a moment.

  Drawing away from him and putting on her best “professional investigator” face, she tried to prepare herself emotionally for what was to come. “Is she over there?” she asked, pointing to the stand of trees where he had been.

  “Yeah. I called Dr. Liu. She should be here pretty soon.”

  “Good. Anybody else coming?”

  He knew what she meant, even without her explaining. Her firing had been a blow to both of them. One of those wounds that wasn’t likely to heal in the course of a lifetime.

  “Not that I know of, darlin’,” he said with a sympathetic smile. “Nobody here but us chickens, and Jake and Mike.”

  “Okay. If the chief or the captain shows up, I’ll take a hike, so to speak.”

  He nodded. “As long as you don’t run into a rattlesnake or a mountain lion.”

  She shuddered. While no relative of Diamante’s or Cleo’s, no matter how distant or how large, particularly frightened her, like most Southern belles she had a healthy respect for venomous snakes, especially those wearing a set of rattles on their tails.

  “Or maybe,” she said, “I’ll just get in my car and drive off.”

  “Good idea.”

  He wiped his palm across his forehead, which was sweatier than the day’s temperature warranted. Savannah took his arm and together they started up the path toward the circle of oaks.

  “So, how do you know this gal?” he asked.

  “I don’t know her personally. But do you remember when I told you this morning that John had sent me a new client?”

  He gave her a quick, worried look. “Don’t tell me this is her, your new client.”

  “No. But almost that bad. She’s one of three people who’ve gone missing, and my client hired me to find them.”

  “Damn.”

  Savannah watched as his eyes scanned the area, as though he half expected to see two other bodies laid out on the hills somewhere.

  “Who’s the client?” he asked.

  “Ethan Malloy,” she replied.

  “The movie star?”

  “None other.”

  “Wow! Who’s our victim to him?”

  “The family nanny. She takes care of their little boy—two years old.”

  Dirk froze, an expression of horror and dread in his eyes. “Don’t tell me the kid is one of the three.”

  “He is.” Savannah drew a long, shuddering breath. “And his mother, Ethan’s wife.”

  “Damn,” he whispered, shaking his head.

  She didn’t know what to say, so she gave his arm an affectionate squeeze, then released him and walked on ahead.

  It took her only seconds to locate the body, lying on its side, facing the trunk of one of the largest oaks. The bright pink and purple floral print on the woman’s dress stood out in stark contrast to the browns and greens of the natural setting.

  Pilar Padilla looked as if she could have been asleep, curled into a semi-fetal position, her knees drawn up toward her chest, her hands wrapped around them.

  For just a moment, Savannah was grateful that she appeared so peaceful. Then she reminded herself that, until they determined how she had died, tranquil poses meant nothing.

  Savannah had seen more than one murder victim who looked as if they were simply taking a nap by the side of the road, in a back alley, or their own bed.

  Until you saw the injury that killed them.

  “Is there a wound?” she said, more to herself than to Dirk. For a moment, she had forgotten that he was standing behind her.

  “Head. Temple area,” he replied. “I didn’t see it myself at first either, because of all that dark hair.”

  Savannah leaned forward, her eyes searching the mass of blue-black curls that shone iridescent like a blackbird’s feathers in the sunlight.

  Then she saw it. As he had said, the injury was to the side of the head, directly over the temple.

  “Just a bit of blood,” she whispered, again, thinking out loud. “Not as much as you might think, considering that—”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Exactly. Heaven knows, we’ve seen worse.”

  “Like that guy that washed up on the beach after five days, and—”

  “Don’t even start. I’m upset enough as it is.”

  “Sorry.”

  Without touching the body Savannah studied the ground around it, looking for a rock or any other hard object. She couldn’t help hoping that there was a nonviolent answer to the terrible question: “How did this woman die?”

  While it would never bring the dead back to life, an accident was so much easier for a family to bear than the thought that their loved one’s life had willfully been taken from them.

  But the dirt around the body was smooth and hardpacked from the lack of rain. There wasn’t even one discernible footprint, including theirs.

  The only rocks were tiny, less than an inch in diameter, not nearly large enough to cause a fatal accident.

  “There’s no rock or murder weapon that I can see,” Dirk told her. “I already checked.”

  “Of course you did.”

  For a moment, her eyes scanned the tree bark, searching for blood, scrape marks, or anything unusual. But the old oak appeared as undisturbed as the rest of the scene.

/>   As if reading her mind, Dirk said, “That bark’s rough. If she’d hit her head on it, she’d be more gouged up than that.”

  “True,” she admitted. “But when you don’t know what you’re looking for, you have to keep looking for it.”

  “Huh? Oh. Okay. Whatever you say.”

  Savannah returned to the body, knelt on one knee beside it, and studied the victim’s hands and arms. “Did you see these?” she asked him.

  In an instant, he was kneeling beside her. “See what?”

  “Defensive wounds.” She pointed to the wrists. “Both are bruised. Just a bit of discoloring on both of them.”

  “Not much. Wouldn’t have been much of a struggle.”

  “Or maybe it was, but if she died quickly afterward, and the wounds wouldn’t have had time to swell.”

  “One can always hope,” he said.

  The sorrow Savannah heard in his voice was the same emotion she was feeling. When she turned and gave him a quick look, she could see it in his eyes—the grief a police officer felt when witnessing one of society’s worst moments firsthand.

  Dirk was a tough guy. No doubt about it. He had spent most of his childhood in a survival-of-the-fittest orphanage and then, later, had been adopted by a brutal man who worked him like an indentured servant. The few idle hours of his adolescence had been spent on the streets.

  But for all his gritty machismo, Savannah knew her husband had a soft place in his heart for victims of crimes. When he had been assigned their cases, he felt a strong responsibility to secure justice for them and their loved ones.

  “Yes,” she said. “One can always hope it was quick.” She turned back to the body, studied it a bit more, and said, “Three of her fingernails are broken.”

  “Good,” he replied.

  “Good? Good that she had to fight for her life?”

  “I mean ‘good’ because, with any luck Dr. Liu will get some DNA out from under them.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  She hoped that Dr. Jennifer Liu would arrive soon. She didn’t have to ask Dirk if he had called the medical examiner right away. At home, he might not be able to find the ice cubes in the ice cube trays or his socks in his sock drawer, but at a crime scene he was all business. A total professional.