Bitter Brew

by G. A. McKevett

  She welcomed the occasional spring storm, mudslides and all, just to break the monotony of the perpetually blue sky and seventy-three-degree days.

  Normally, she would be snuggled beneath her grandmother’s quilt, enjoying Mother Nature’s temper tantrum. But tonight, she could neither savor the drama nor fall asleep.

  Being on the outs with one’s husband tended to have that effect on a gal.

  They usually got along quite well. Other than their routine snipping and sniping throughout the day—a habit formed years ago on boring stakeouts for the purpose of keeping them awake and entertained—they seldom had a serious disagreement.

  Today’s unpleasantries were no exception. They could hardly be classified as “serious.” Not a harsh word had been exchanged, no voices raised, nary a household object hurled.

  Savannah might have felt better if that had been the case. She would prefer to anger, annoy, or even infuriate her husband any day, rather than hurt his feelings.

  Gruff, tough Dirk pretended he had no feelings, but she knew better. Today, she had hurt them quite seriously. She knew because he had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the evening. Hardly any eye contact had been established, even over the dinner table.

  His good-night kiss had been lackluster, at best.

  Now, after taking much longer than usual to fall asleep, he was lying on his side, his back to her, and no physical contact whatsoever. Not even a friendly foot seeking hers and nuzzling comfortably against her arch.

  She knew her man well, and she was all too aware that this time “making it up to him” was going to take considerable, creative effort on her part.

  Wrapping her arm around Diamante, she pulled the cat against her tummy and snuggled her close. A warm, purring kitty wasn’t as good as a warm, happy, and contented husband, but since one wasn’t available at the moment, the feline substitute would have to do.

  Just as the digital clock showed 2:00 A.M., Savannah began to nod off, her plans on how to re-woo her estranged husband firmly in place and her peace of mind somewhat restored.

  That was when she heard it. Some sort of disturbance downstairs.

  At first, she thought it was storm-related, the wind having knocked over a flowerpot, another clap of thunder, or rain pelting the living room windows.

  Then, as she became more fully awake, she realized someone was knocking on the front door.

  Not just any knock. Hard and fast with a note of urgency.

  Savannah sat up and glanced over at Dirk. He was still sleeping soundly, snoring even.

  Rather than wake him, she slid out of bed and slipped her faithful old terry-cloth robe over her Minnie Mouse pajamas.

  Diamante followed her out of the bedroom and down the staircase that led from the upstairs hallway down to the foyer.

  “If it’s a magazine salesman at this hour,” Savannah told the cat, “I’m going to open the door so you can rush out and sink your toofers into his Achilles tendon. Okay?”

  Diamante looked up at her with eager, green eyes.

  Savannah wanted to think it was because the cat was excited about rushing to her defense. But she knew her mini-panthers all too well. Diamante thought she was offering treats.

  What a glutton.

  Since they were both up anyway, Savannah decided that, once they had dispensed with their nocturnal visitor, a cup of hot chocolate might be in order. Just the thing for settling the tummy and the spirit before going back to bed.

  “Don’t worry,” she told Di, as though the cat was reading her mind. “I’ll give you a squirt of whipped cream.”

  As Savannah passed the coat closet where both she and Dirk stowed their weapons, it occurred to her to grab hers from the top shelf. Just in case their visitor wasn’t of the friendly persuasion.

  But then, she wasn’t about to open her door at 2:00 A.M. without looking out the peephole first. Once she knew who was on the other side, she could decide whether or not she needed the 9mm Beretta.

  She flipped on the porch light, slid the hole’s cover aside, and squinted through it.

  At first, she wasn’t sure what, let alone who, was standing there. They just looked like a dark, sodden mess.

  Then a particularly nasty gust of wind blew the black, wet curtain of hair back from their face, and Savannah recognized her rain-drenched guest.

  She threw the dead bolt and yanked the door open. “Dr. Liu! What in tarnation? Get in here right now, girl!”

  A loud crash—one of Savannah’s hanging flowerpots being blown off its hook and hitting the porch—caused the already traumatized Jennifer Liu to shudder, then rush inside the house.

  Savannah struggled to grasp what she was seeing. This disheveled, shivering, obviously distraught woman bore no resemblance whatsoever to the cool, calm, frightfully intelligent medical examiner whom Savannah had known for years.

  Savannah had never seen the good doctor with even a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her haute couture—if somewhat slutty, in an expensive call girl sort of way—apparel.

  Instead of her usual silk blouse, leather miniskirt, and stilettos, Dr. Liu was wearing a baggy boyfriend shirt, yoga pants, and past-their-prime running shoes. All thoroughly drenched. She couldn’t have been wetter if someone had tossed her into a swimming pool and left her there to dog paddle for half an hour.

  “Good Lord, woman,” Savannah said, “you look like a half-drowned swamp rat.”

  She expected some sort of smart aleck reply. Dr. Liu might have flunked out of Tact and Sensitivity School, but she had an honorary doctorate from the University of Savage and Sarcastic Repartee.

  Instead of a sassy retort, Jennifer’s eyes met Savannah’s for the first time since entering her home, and the sadness and fear that Savannah saw registered there chilled her more than any cold rainstorm.

  “You’re in trouble,” Savannah said.

  It wasn’t a question. She was just thinking aloud.

  “I am. Big trouble.” Jennifer started to softly cry, her tears mingling with the rain on her face. “I’m sorry, Savannah. I wouldn’t bring my problems to your doorstep if I could think of any other way out. I’ve been walking for hours, trying to come up with a solution on my own. I can’t. I need help. Please—” Her voice broke, and she began to sob in earnest.

  Savannah put her arms around her trembling, cold, wet friend and pulled her close. “Of course, I’ll help you, Jen. Whatever’s going on, I’ll do everything I can for you. You know that.”

  “You don’t mind me coming here in the middle of the night like this, getting you out of bed and—?”

  “Oh, hush, darlin’. Do you reckon this is the first time that Trouble has ever knocked on my door in the middle of the night?”

  Jennifer gave a derisive sniff and half a smirk, and for a moment, she looked like her old self. “No. I suppose not. After all, you’re married to Dirk Coulter.” Her expression quickly defaulted back to fearful as she glanced up the staircase. “Is he here?”

  “He’s upstairs asleep. Out cold. He wouldn’t wake up if a bulldozer crashed through the front door.”

  Savannah took the doctor by the arm and led her through the living room and kitchen toward the back of the house and the downstairs bathroom. Jennifer was unsteady on her feet and, in spite of Savannah’s support, she stumbled along the way.

  “The first thing we have to do,” Savannah told her, “is get you warm and dry.”

  “Yes. Loss of coordination, difficulty thinking, shivering, and irregular heartbeat,” Jennifer replied, as though by rote, in a clinical, flat monotone. “I suspect I’m in the initial stages of hypothermia.”

  “I don’t know about that. But you’re cold as a frog on a mountain, if that’s what you mean.”

  Savannah took off her robe and shoved it into the doctor’s hands. “Get in that bathroom and peel off those wet things. Toss them out the door, then take a hot shower and thaw out a bit. I’ll throw them in the dryer, and they can run while we’re talking about
this awful problem of yours.”

  Jennifer said nothing, just gave Savannah a weak smile and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Savannah walked back into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Her overly active imagination started churning out scenarios, one after the other, as she tried to picture what might have gone so wrong in the M.E.’s life.

  Just judging from Jennifer Liu’s risqué wardrobe, her frequent use of the double entendre, and her references to the wild parties she attended, Savannah suspected that the doctor had an unconventional sex life. Beyond that, Savannah knew next to nothing about her personally. The two women had bonded over chocolate, while assisting each other with numerous difficult cases, but they had never truly socialized.

  Only a few days earlier, Savannah had dropped by the morgue with Dirk, when he had needed to identify the body of one of his informants. Dr. Liu had seemed okay, though perhaps a bit preoccupied. Even then it had occurred to Savannah that she hadn’t seemed quite herself.

  Perhaps this problem of hers had been brewing for a while.

  Savannah took a lemon from a bowl of fruit on the counter, cut a few slices from it, and studded them with some whole cloves.

  When she opened the cupboard, looking for a mug, she automatically reached for the bright pink Minnie Mouse one, then reconsidered. This was for Dr. Jennifer Liu. Something told her that a woman who dissected dead bodies for a living might require something a bit less cheerful on a dark and stormy night when she was beset with personal problems.

  Savannah picked the cup she had scored on her last trip to the “Happiest Place on Earth,” adorned with the black and purple wallpaper of the Haunted Mansion. It seemed more Dr. Liu’s speed.

  She tossed the clove-adorned slices inside, added a squirt of lemon juice, spooned in some honey, poured in boiling water from the teakettle, then stirred the whole thing with one of Dirk’s cinnamon sticks, until the honey dissolved.

  There’s nothing quite like an Irish hot toddy to cure what ails you, she thought as she added a generous amount of whiskey. Or, at least make you not mind so much.

  She heard the shower start in the bathroom, so she hurried to scoop up the wet clothes off the floor where Jennifer had left them and shove them into the dryer.

  As she did so, the former police detective and present private detective in Savannah couldn’t help examining each garment for anything untoward—rips, scuffs, dirt . . . blood.

  Nothing appeared amiss.

  No sooner had Savannah adjusted the settings on the dryer and started it spinning than the bathroom door opened and Jennifer emerged. Her hair was still wet, but she was wrapped snuggly in Savannah’s thick terry-cloth robe. While it looked several sizes too large for the slender woman, Jennifer appeared far more comfortable than she had before.

  At least she wasn’t shivering anymore.

  “You okay?” Savannah asked.

  Jennifer gave her a quick nod. “I will be, sooner or later.”

  “Good. Come in the kitchen and see what I made for you. It’ll get you to ‘Okay’ sooner rather than later.”

  Chapter 4

  Savannah sat in her comfy chair with its colorful, rose-print chintz, her feet on the equally cushy footstool, and Diamante curled into a purring ball of ebony silkiness in her lap.

  Seated on the sofa to her left, Dr. Liu clutched the black and purple mug, wrapping her fingers around it tightly, as though welcoming its warmth.

  “You caught quite a chill out there, sugar,” Savannah told her as she scanned her friend from her damp head to her bare toes. She had never seen this natural, no-frills version of the sexy M.E. Her otherwise carefully and generously applied makeup was only a few dark smudges under her eyes and her hair, normally as glossy as Diamante’s coat and tied back with a brightly colored, silk scarf, was now hanging in limp strands around her shoulders. The only reminder of her former flamboyant self was her scarlet toenails, peeking out from under the hem of Savannah’s robe.

  Savannah took a sip of hot cocoa from her own Minnie mug. She had opted for a non-alcoholic warmer, figuring she might need all of her mental faculties to deal with whatever she was about to be told.

  When she saw Jennifer take the last sip of her toddy, Savannah decided it was time to find out the reason for this impromptu midnight visit.

  “Are you ready to talk about it?” she asked in as gentle a tone as her rabid curiosity would allow.

  Jennifer set her mug on the coffee table. “Not really. When this all started, I never dreamed I’d have to tell anybody about it. I figured I would just do what had to be done, then wash my hands of the whole thing, and try my best to forget it. As if I ever could.”

  Savannah resisted the urge to ask another question. Dr. Jennifer Liu was a fiercely private person. Something told her that probing too hard and too fast might prove counterproductive.

  So, she stroked Diamante’s soft ears, and listened.

  “In the beginning, I just thought I was helping a friend,” Jennifer said. “My best friend in the world.”

  Tears filled her eyes as she stared down at her hands. “To be honest,” she continued, “Brianne was my only friend. We were closer than most sisters.”

  Savannah thought of Tammy, so very dear to her heart. Then she thought of Marietta, the oldest of her many sisters, whom she fervently wanted to bludgeon with a decorative sofa pillow at least once a week.

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  Jennifer’s tears started to flow again. “Brianne was a giver, not a taker. We knew each other since we were children, and she never asked me for a single thing. Until the end. Then she pleaded with me to do her one favor, something she desperately needed. Something that only I could do for her. Now it seems I can’t even give her that.”

  “What did she want, Jen?”

  “She asked me to perform the autopsy on her body.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, as Savannah contemplated the horror of doing such a thing to a beloved friend.

  Finally, Savannah handed Jennifer a box of tissues and said, “I don’t blame you. I think most people would find it terribly difficult to autopsy anyone they knew, let alone someone they loved.”

  Jennifer wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “Oh, I did the autopsy. Someone had to, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted Dixon to do it. I wouldn’t let that old butcher within a mile of her body.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “It was the second half of her request that presented the problem. A big problem.”

  “How? What else did she want?”

  “She begged me to falsify the report.”

  Savannah suppressed a shudder. “But you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, right? To falsify an autopsy report is a felony. You could lose your license, maybe your freedom.”

  Jen’s fist tightened around the tissue in her hand until her fingers turned white. “I brought myself to do it.”

  Savannah heard herself gasp. All she could say was “Why?”

  “I told you, she was my best friend. For a long time, she was the only person in the world who loved me.”

  “No, Jen, that can’t be true.”

  “It is true. Savannah, I don’t like to talk about it, but I had a . . . complicated . . . childhood.”

  She wrapped the robe tighter around her, as though the fabric could somehow protect her from the pain of memories recalled. “When I was four, my father was killed in a car accident. A year later, my mother died of cancer. I was adopted by an elderly couple who had more money than time or affection for the child they thought they wanted . . . then discovered they didn’t.”

  Savannah felt her own throat tightening. “I’m so sorry.”

  “They were generous to me. Gave me anything I asked for. Raised me in a beautiful mansion. Sent me to the finest schools. Ignored me. Barely tolerated my presence. I was a very lonely kid, until I met the girl who lived on the estate next door to ours.”

  “Brianne?”

  Jennif
er nodded. “Yes. Brianne Marston. She was my playmate, sister, my whole family, rolled into one. We spent hours together, roaming around the two properties, exploring, getting into all sorts of wonderful trouble.”

  For a moment, a sweet smile softened Jennifer’s face.

  “What sort of mischief are we talking here?” Savannah asked.

  “We put purple dye in the koi pond.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Non-toxic, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “We took one of the ponies from her stable and put it upstairs in my adopted parents’ bedroom suite.”

  “It must have been tough getting him up the stairs.”

  “We had an elevator.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “The worst was when we raided her mom’s jewelry box for ‘pirate loot’ and buried it in the backyard.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “It was. Until we lost the treasure map and couldn’t remember where we’d hid it.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. We got in huge trouble over that. We dug holes all over that yard for years, looking for it.”

  “Was it ever found?”

  “No. As far as I know, there’s still an old strawberry jelly jar with a glorious stash of custom pieces by Cartier, Tiffany, and Harry Winston there on the property, somewhere in the wooded area about four feet down.”

  “Four feet?”

  “We took our piracy and booty burying very seriously.”

  “Apparently so.”

  Jennifer smiled again, and Savannah thought, not for the first time, how beautiful the woman was . . . when she wasn’t crying and beside herself with grief.

  “Those were the good times,” Jennifer continued. “But they ended. When Brianne’s mom came down with Halstead’s disease.”

  Savannah searched her memory for the term, recalling very little. “That’s a form of dementia, right?”

  “A deadly form. Always fatal. Though it takes its victims slowly, robbing them of their identities, their dignity as human beings, long before it’s finally finished with them.”

  “How sad.”

  “It is. And it was. Her whole family really suffered during that time. Her mom, obviously, but her dad and her brother, too. I tried to help them, especially Brianne, the best I could. She told me later that I made it easier for them. I doubt that’s true, but I appreciated her saying it.”