“You had walked a similar, difficult path with your mother’s cancer,” Savannah replied. “I’m sure you were a great comfort to Brianne and her family. That must have been a deeply bonding experience for you two girls.”
“It was. And that bond held, even when we became women and went our separate ways. She became a corporate attorney and, as you know, I pursued forensic medicine. But I knew all I had to do was pick up the phone, and she’d drop whatever she was doing and run to me. That’s why I couldn’t say, ‘No,’ when she asked me to . . .”
“Falsify her autopsy report.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand, Jen. Why would she ask you to do that?”
“Because she was beginning to manifest the symptoms of Halstead’s herself. It’s hereditary. If your parent had it, you have a fifty-fifty chance of manifesting it yourself. Unlike some other diseases that are similar, there’s no definitive test for Halstead’s. The diagnosis is based solely on symptoms, and hers were getting bad.”
“That’s so sad. I’m really sorry.”
“Rather than suffer the way her mother did, Brianne decided to commit suicide.”
Savannah cringed. “And she wanted that to remain secret because of insurance money or . . . ?”
“No. Nothing like insurance fraud. Brianne had no policies. She was never married and had no children. Just a boyfriend she was thinking of dumping, a brother and sister-in-law. But she didn’t want them or her friends to find out. She didn’t want to be known as the woman who had killed herself.”
“I see.”
They sat quietly for a few moments. Then Savannah said, “So, you did the autopsy and ruled her death as natural causes?”
“Yes. It wasn’t difficult, considering her symptoms and family history. Her doctor had already diagnosed her condition as Halstead’s.”
“Then what’s happened? Did someone discover what you’d done?”
“No. Well, not yet anyway.”
Savannah studied the M.E.’s face, trying to see past the solemn expression that told her nothing. “Then, what’s the problem?” she asked. “And how can I help you?”
“If you can find a way to do it discreetly—you can understand why I don’t want anyone else to know about this, especially Dirk—could you come to the morgue tomorrow? Alone. I have something to show you.”
Savannah thought about her husband, sound asleep upstairs. No, she wouldn’t want Dirk to know, and not just to protect Jennifer. If he found out what the M.E. had done and didn’t report it, he would be in jeopardy himself. She couldn’t put him in that position.
It was bad enough that she found herself in that difficult place.
“Can you tell me what it is?” Savannah asked.
Jennifer gave another furtive glance toward the foyer and its staircase. “I’d rather not go into the details,” she whispered. “Not here.”
“Okay. But can you give me some idea what we’re up against? Why you came to me for help?”
Once again, Jennifer’s eyes flooded with tears, and she began to shiver. Only this time, Savannah suspected it was from fear rather than cold. “I have reason to believe that Brianne didn’t commit suicide after all. I need you to investigate and see if what I fear may have happened.”
“What do you fear? What do you think happened?” Savannah asked, thinking that, from the look of deep sadness in her friend’s eyes, she already knew the answer.
“I’m afraid that my best friend, my sister, was murdered.”
Chapter 5
“What’s the matter with Dirk? Got his bloomers on backward?”
Savannah looked across her breakfast table at her grandmother and thought, not for the first time, that Granny Reid was hardly a woman of mystery. Rather, the octogenarian was a clear mountain stream, totally transparent, who had nothing to hide and, therefore, concealed nothing.
You never had to ask where you stood with Gran.
Her honesty was a spiritual gift, born of a clear conscience. A blessing and life-enriching example to all around her.
And, occasionally, a pain in the rear.
Especially when combined with her acute powers of observation.
“He’s just a bit grumpier than usual at the moment,” Savannah told her, reaching for the basket of biscuits and the jar of peach preserves.
“He didn’t eat breakfast,” Gran replied. “That’s not ‘grumpy.’ For your husband, that’s danged near suicidal.”
“Both of our husbands are a bit gloomy at the moment,” Tammy said as she sipped her seaweed smoothie and balanced Vanna Rose on her knee. It wasn’t an easy task, as the baby was constantly reaching for the glass.
The precocious child had recently figured out that people larger than herself had culinary options besides breast milk, and she was determined to imbibe as well.
“I thought Waycross seemed a bit jumpy yesterday,” Savannah observed, buttering her biscuit. “You’d think my sofa was infested with fire ants the way he was squirming and fidgeting around.”
Tammy nodded. “The pain in his leg just won’t let up, and it’s getting to him, sitting around, hurting all the time, not able to do much.”
“But he can drive now, right?” Gran asked.
“He can. But it’s a hassle with the cast and all. He hates it. Plus, he’s worried about missing so much work at the garage. He was in the middle of restoring a beautiful old Ford pickup, and the boss gave it to someone else to finish. Broke his heart.” Tammy’s big eyes filled with tears. “I feel so guilty. I shouldn’t have asked him to clean those gutters. Or at least, I should have helped him.”
“It’s not your fault, sugar. Somebody had to keep both feet on the ground and take care of the baby,” Granny said. “Accidents happen, and Waycross, sweet boy that he is, has always been prone to them. I can’t recall the exact number of casts that child wore in his day. He was forever divin’ off somethin’ or into somethin’ or gettin’ in the way of an object that weighed a ton more than him.”
“Like Farmer Haskell’s prize bull?” Savannah said with a shudder.
“Oh, hush. I can’t even bear to think about it. That boy all bloody and broken, his clothes tore clean off him.” Gran shook her head. “He was miserable for months and missed all that school. I swear, that mess took ten years off my life!”
Gran stood and carried her plate and silverware to the sink. Making herself at home in her granddaughter’s kitchen, she washed and dried the dishes, then put them away in the cupboards.
The domestic chores finished, she walked over to Tammy and held out her arms to Vanna Rose. “Come to Granny, puddin’, and let your mama drink that pitiful green guck of hers in peace,” she told the child, who instantly brightened and began to hop up and down on her mother’s lap, her own chubby baby arms extended to her great-grandmother.
Granny scooped her up and planted a kiss on each of her pink cheeks.
Once Gran and little Vanna were settled back in Granny’s chair, the questioning continued. “What is wrong with your husband, Savannah girl? I’ve seen him grumpy for years. This ain’t the case of his usual contrariness.”
Savannah hesitated, then decided to share. More than once Granny’s insight on husbands and marriage had helped her out of a predicament. Gran’s advice on such matters tended to be golden.
“We had a little anniversary-gift-giving spat.” Savannah shoved a bite of biscuit into her mouth and washed it down with a gulp of strong coffee.
“Seemed like maybe more than ‘a little,’ and worse than a ‘spat,’ ” Granny observed.
Tammy dabbed the green froth off her lips with a paper napkin and said, “It couldn’t have been any worse than the Christmas-gift-giving spat.”
“Oh, that was a doozy,” Savannah admitted. “But this beat it by a mile. A total debacle. Waterloo and Custer’s Last Stand all rolled into one.”
“Okay. Let’s hear about it,” Granny said, “and don’t spare any of the gory details.”
Savannah took a deep breath. “When we got home the other night, or should I say morning, we were in a pretty bad mood after all that malarkey with Vince What’s-His-Name and his rhinestone gladiator sandals. So, we decided to exchange gifts.”
“You probably should have gotten a good night’s sleep first,” Tammy offered. “Sleep is second only to nutrition when it comes to health maintenance.”
“I know, Tamitha.” Savannah sighed. “But it had been a pretty crappy anniversary up to that point. We figured the only way it could go was up.”
Granny gave her a sad, sympathetic smile. “Little did you know—”
“Exactly. My first mistake was telling him that I was tired of opening my presents from him with a box cutter. If I went to all the trouble of choosing my gifts, ordering them, and literally placing them into his outstretched hand, I figured the least he could do was shove them into some gift bag, stick some tissue in the top, and present them to me properly. I even bought him the bags and tissue paper to make life as easy as possible for him.”
“Let me guess,” Gran said. “When you told him all that, he gave you the deer-in-the-headlights look. The one that men always use to try to fool us into thinking they’re total imbeciles, so’s we won’t expect them to do stuff they don’t wanna mess with.”
Savannah nodded. “That’s the look.”
“Waycross gave me that look once,” Tammy said, “when I asked him to help me bake a gluten-free soufflé.”
Gran and Savannah stared at her blankly.
“Once?” Savannah asked. “He gave it to you one time? And it was about baking a soufflé?”
Tammy nodded.
“He’s a poor country boy from Georgia, darlin’,” Gran said. “He couldn’t tell a soufflé from a skunk’s rear end.”
“No kidding, Tams,” Savannah joined in. “You better hang on to that boy. He’s a keeper if ever there was one.”
Gran turned to Savannah. “So, did Dirk put your stuff in the bags, like you asked him to?”
“Surprisingly enough, he did. He took the bags and disappeared into his man cave upstairs. A minute later, he yelled down the stairs, ‘Do I have to take them out of the boxes they came in?’ I hollered up, ‘Yes!’ ”
Tammy rolled her eyes. “How very Dirk-ish.”
“He’s a man,” Granny offered. “They just don’t think like women, and that’s both their charm and their aggravation.”
Savannah continued. “He was up there for a long time, messing around. Then he stuck his head out the door again and shouted down, ‘You want to look at this junk before I wrap it all up? I don’t remember buying all this stuff for you.”
“How much was it?” Tammy asked.
“Just three things. That’s what we’d agreed on. Three little things instead of one big thing. I hollered back up to him, ‘No! It’s bad enough that I already know what it is. I don’t want to see it until I unwrap it!”
Granny nodded. “Okay. Go on.”
“Then he started carting down the bags. Armloads of them.”
“Armloads?” Tammy’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Tons. Seriously. I’d given him a big bunch of bags that I got on sale. There was a whole box of them in assorted sizes and colors. I’d only intended for him to use two or three. But here he came, carrying three bags to each hand. And he made several trips. Up and down. Up and down. By the time he was done, the living room floor was littered with gift bags, and he was a downright sweaty mess.”
“Mercy,” Granny said. “Now there’s a mystery for you to solve.”
Savannah nodded. “No kidding. I was feeling so guilty. All I’d got him was a Harley-Davidson keychain, a new Dodgers cap, and his main present—a 1980 mint condition poster of the Roberto Duran versus Sugar Ray Leonard fight. As he was toting all this stuff down the stairs, I heard him mumbling under his breath. He said something like, ‘Well, she’s a generous wife, so . . .’ ”
After pausing for another swig of coffee, Savannah came to the conclusion of her sad saga. “I opened the first bag and it was my chocolate truffles, which I was expecting. Then I opened the second bag and found . . . of all things . . . that ugly scarf that I tried to crochet a couple of years ago. The third one had some white pants that made my butt look a mile wide.”
“What in tarnation?” Gran exclaimed.
“And the fourth had some mugs and glasses from when I’d de-cluttered my kitchen cabinets. That’s when I remembered—”
“Remembered what?” Tammy leaned across the table, eager for the answer.
“I recalled what happened last Christmas Eve.” She turned to Granny. “Remember, you had to spend the night with us after you mistakenly drank some of the spiked eggnog, instead of the nonalcoholic stuff I made for you?”
Gran shook her head sadly. “I was a sorry sight to behold. Drunk as a three-eyed goat and on the good Lord’s birthday, too.”
“You were fine,” Savannah told her. “A little flat when we were singing Christmas carols, but as spifflicated as you might have been, you behaved like a perfect lady. Anyway, when I went upstairs to tidy up the guest room . . . um, Dirk’s man cave . . . I gathered up some boxes of stuff I’d laid out on the futon. They were things I was intending to donate to the local thrift store. I shoved them all there in the corner behind Dirk’s recliner, just to get the mess out of sight. I forgot all about it, and that’s where Dirk was ‘hiding’ my presents.”
Tammy gasped. “Oh, no!”
Granny began to laugh. Bouncing on her lap, Vanna Rose giggled along with her.
“How’d you handle this knee-slappin’ but mighty delicate situation?” Granny asked.
Savannah gulped. “Not with grace or compassion. I laughed myself plumb stupid. I couldn’t stop. It was the funniest thing I’d seen in ages. But the look on his face when I told him . . .”
“I can only imagine.” Granny paused to wipe her tears of laughter away and catch her breath. “But since he ain’t talkin’ to you now, I reckon he didn’t find it so funny, huh?”
“He seemed to take it okay, at least at first. He laughed along with me, and I finished unwrapping my gifts and gave him his, which he was happy with. Especially the poster. We talked a little while and went to bed. The next morning, y’all dropped by, and we showed you the video. He seemed okay then.”
“He did,” Tammy agreed. “I didn’t pick up any negative vibes from him. No more than usual anyway.”
“I know,” Savannah continued, “and then he went off to work as usual. But when he got back home, I could tell he’d been thinking about it or something, because he wasn’t saying much.”
“The silent treatment isn’t exactly your man’s style,” Granny said. “He ain’t the sort to suffer in silence.”
“He never was, but apparently, he is now. I apologized for putting him through that whole wrapping ordeal and then laughing at him, adding insult to injury. But he just gave me the brush-off and went outside and mowed the lawn.”
“He did yard work without you finagling him into it?” Granny scowled. “Are you sure that boy’s not sick with something? Reckon he might be comin’ down with a cold?”
“No, he’s just mad at me. Or worse yet, he’s got his feelings hurt something fierce. And I feel lower than a limbo stick at a Hawaiian luau.”
Gran reached across the table and patted Savannah’s hand. “It was an honest mistake, sweetheart. You just keep showering him with kindness and affection, and he’ll get past it when he has a mind to.”
Savannah glanced at her watch and jumped up from the table. “I don’t mean to eat and run, but I have, uh, someplace I have to be in a few minutes. I’ve gotta go.”
She could feel their eyes on her back as she carried her dishes to the sink. They were an open trio, who usually shared every detail of their days with each other. When some facts were withheld, curiosity levels were bound to rise and the inevitable questions asked.
“Where do you have to be, sugar?” Granny asked.<
br />
Savannah smiled to herself. Yes, clear as a mountain stream, that was her grandmother. Nosy to the point of being somewhat rude but endearing all the same for the loving concern her questions expressed.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t Savannah’s secret to share. “I told a friend I would meet her,” Savannah said, hoping it would be enough.
“Anybody we know?” Granny’s curiosity, like that of her private detective granddaughter, was insatiable—a family trait that was sometimes a virtue, other times a vice.
Savannah gave her grandmother a loving, sweet look. “I wish I could tell you about it, Granny,” she said. “But she’s in a difficult situation, and it’s confidential in nature.”
Granny returned the same affectionate smile. “I understand, darlin’. If you’ve been entrusted with an important secret, it’s your sacred duty to guard it. I’ll say a prayer for your friend, that she finds a way out of her difficult situation. Tell her not to worry. All will be well.”
Tammy nodded. “With you as a friend to help her, I’m sure she’ll be okay in the end.”
Savannah thanked them both, grabbed her purse, and left through the kitchen door. But as she got into her car and headed toward the county morgue, she wished that she could be even half as confident as her grandmother and best friend were. Well wishes and prayers helped, to be sure. And in the end, most things did turn out for the best.
But not all.
Experience had taught her that life, and the myriad problems it presented, didn’t always resolve in a satisfactory manner. Not everything turned out the best in the end.
Not always.
Sadly, not everyone lived happily ever after.
Chapter 6
Savannah wasn’t afraid of dead people. As a police officer and then a private detective, she had seen more than her share of them.
Usually, folks passed gently from natural causes. Sadly, accidents cost other people their lives. Under those two circumstances, the mourners left behind could sometimes find an ounce of comfort in the idea that their loved one’s “time had come” or “it was meant to be.”
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