On an average day, she might’ve considered it more seriously. But after the trials of the past few hours, she was tired, and she hadn’t been to the shooting range for a while. She was afraid she might miss.
No point in taking chances.
At that moment, he turned in her direction and something akin to the fabled “Lightning Bolt of Love” must’ve struck him. He did such a violent double take that the action seemed to make him dizzy. He nearly tumbled backward off his stool.
“Well, hi there, pretty lady,” he said, sucking in his beer gut and squaring his shoulders. “Aren’t you a pretty thing, sitting there, looking all prettied up.”
She gave him a bright smile. “Aw, shucks. You sure know how to turn a girl’s head. I might just send you a little present, come Christmas.”
Leering at her cleavage, he said, “That’d be great. I’d love to see more of you.”
“No, no, no. I was thinking maybe a thesaurus.”
He looked baffled. “Huh? Oh, okay. That’d be nice, too. You’re the prettiest thing that’s ever walked through those doors. And I should know. I’ve been sitting on this here stool watching, every single day, since this place opened, twenty-one years ago.”
“Wow! Two decades well-spent in the betterment of mankind and a lofty life aspiration fulfilled. Yay, you!”
Again, he seemed confused but still intrigued. “You gonna start coming here regular-like?”
“I assure you that I will walk through those doors each and every time that circumstances compel me to do so upon pain of death.”
“Wow! Then I look forward to seeing more of you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Whatcha drinking?”
“Sweet tea. Iced.”
“You’re not going to get much of a buzz off that.”
She batted her eyelashes and tried to inhale shallowly to avoid smelling his alcohol-saturated breath. She estimated he would blow a 2.8 on Dirk’s Breathalyzer.
“I’m getting a buzz just sitting here next to you,” she replied, deepening her dimples.
He looked like he might swoon any moment, so she decided the time was right to get down to business.
Pulling her phone from her jacket pocket, she flipped to Brianne’s driver’s license photo. She shoved it under his nose and said, “This is a friend of mine. Since you notice every attractive lady who comes in here, I’ll bet you noticed her.”
He squinted, peering at the picture, and nodded vigorously. “Oh, sure I did. She’s a pretty one, too. But she had a guy with her already, so I didn’t make a move on her.”
Savannah nodded and gave him an approving look of deep respect. “Wise. Very wise on your part.”
“They sat over there,” he said, turning around and, with great effort, focusing on the far side of the room, where some dark, tight booths provided an intimate setting for those who frequented The Fisherman’s Lair with more than just booze on their minds.
“Ah,” she said. “That was probably her boyfriend.”
“I don’t think so,” he replied, shaking his head. “Or if he’s her man, he wasn’t acting like it. He didn’t lay a hand on her the whole time they were here. Me, I would’ve been all over her.”
“I’ll bet you would’ve.”
On a hunch, she flipped through her photos and brought up Nels Farrow’s DMV photo.
“Did he look anything like this man?” she asked, showing it to her new best friend.
He nodded vigorously, then closed his eyes for a long time. She figured he was either meditating or giving his eyeballs a chance to adjust to his head’s robust movement.
When he finally opened them, he said, “That’s him. That’s the guy that was with her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, I am. I never forget a face. Though I am partial to the pretty ones, like yours and your friend’s.”
He tapped her phone screen with an overgrown, dirty fingernail. She decided to scrub it with bleach and steel wool as soon as she returned home.
“That guy there, he could use a dose of Viagra—not that I know much about it or need it myself. I got no problems in that department, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“If I’d been the one sitting back there in that dark corner in a booth with that pretty gal, she’d have known that I was a man, for sure.”
The fellow sitting on the other side of her friend snickered, shook his head, and buried his face in his beer mug. Apparently, her buddy’s masculine prowess was more joke than legend in his native habitat.
But he didn’t seem to notice as he continued his boasting. “Yep, I’d have shown her what it’s like to be with a hot-blooded, American male—not that namby-pamby she was with. I sure wouldn’t have wasted my time with her, sitting there, talking about Barbies.”
“Barbies?” Savannah’s brain searched its libraries for any logical explanation for this sharp left turn in the conversation. It found none. Maybe she’d heard wrong. “Did you say they were talking about Barbies? Like the dolls?”
He nodded. “I had to go to the can to take a leak, so I walked right past them. I swear that’s what he was talking about to her.”
“They were talking about Barbies?”
He gave her a condescending smirk. “Girl, you’re pretty and got a great rack, but I’m starting to think you aren’t overly smart.... A bit on the thick side even for a girl. I done told you twice already.”
For half a second she reconsidered her earlier plan of taking the Beretta from her purse and giving him a single shot in the backside. Just a flesh wound. Nothing that some hydrogen peroxide and a couple of drugstore bandages wouldn’t take care of.
She summoned her last smidgeon of patience. “Why don’t you just tell me exactly, word for word, what you heard him say?”
“Oh, okay. I didn’t hear a lot of what they were saying, because I was in a rush to get to the can. But I definitely heard him say something about a Ken doll.” He paused, thought it over, and added, “That’s Barbie’s boyfriend, in case you don’t know about stuff like that.”
Looking a bit embarrassed, he explained, “I only know that kind of thing because I had sisters. And they used to get super pissed off when I’d shave their dolls’ heads and then swallow them.”
“Swallow . . . them?”
“The dolls’ heads.”
“Oh, of course. Silly me.”
“You really do need to have those ears of yours checked, baby. Either they’re stopped up with wax, or you don’t believe me.”
“Surprisingly, I have no trouble believing everything you just told me. I must say, I can’t recall when I’ve met a more uniquely imbecilic and malodorous Philistine in all my born days.”
He actually blushed with pleasure at the “compliment.” Shrugging, he said, “Ah, hell. Thanks.”
Briefly, the image of the morgue receptionist Officer Kenneth Bates intruded on her consciousness, and she was forced to add, “Actually, there’s one other dude who’s got you beat, but you’re a solid second.”
“Well, you keep coming in here and hanging out with me. I’ll change your pretty little mind. When I get done with you, you’ll be happy to bump me up to that number one spot.”
She laughed brightly and smacked him on the shoulder, hard enough to knock him sideways onto his next-stool buddy.
“With just a little effort, I reckon you might,” she assured him as she grabbed her purse and rose from her stool. “Yes, if anybody could best that other guy in the fine art of contumelious discourse, I do believe it might be you.”
She left him a happy man.
Chapter 20
Savannah had no idea how hungry she was, until she arrived at her rendezvous point on the beach, left her car, and got into Dr. Liu’s BMW. Once she was settled, a fine china dessert plate was shoved under her nose with an exquisite Napoleon resting on a lace paper doily in its center.
“Oh, mercy me!” she said, grabbing it. “You
have no idea how much I need this. I’m plum famished! For the first time in history, I was actually so busy today that I forgot to eat.”
Jennifer chuckled. “You told me once you don’t believe anyone who says that.”
“I used to think they were lying or a severely disturbed individual. I’ll be less judgmental next time.”
She groaned as she bit into the delicate pastry with its buttery, crispy crust, drizzled with chocolate, filled with a rich vanilla bean cream, and garnished with fresh raspberries.
There was nothing quite like missing a couple of meals to make even the most bland and mundane food delicious. But this Napoleon, she decided, must have been baked in heaven’s ovens by French angels.
Unless the chef was Dr. Liu. Lately, Savannah had discovered that she was a multifaceted lady, to say the least.
“Did you make this?” she asked. “Because, if you did, I have to get the recipe from you.”
“I’m excellent at cracking a cranium or sawing a sternum, but I doubt that I could boil an egg that would be fit to eat.”
For once, even the mental images of the activities just described, gruesome things Savannah herself had observed in Dr. Liu’s autopsy suite, didn’t put her off her food.
The gourmet delicacy wasn’t long for this world. To her dismay, she finished it in five bites.
“Okay,” Jennifer said, “now that I’ve fed the help, what do you have for me? Did you find out anything new over at the bar?”
Once Savannah had dabbed the crumbs away from her lips with her pinky and returned the dainty plate to her hostess, she focused on the business at hand. “I got something. I’m not sure what it is.”
“Tell me. Maybe I can figure it out.”
“All right. This may sound strange, but do you recall Brianne having a particular fondness for Barbie dolls?”
Jennifer gave her a searching look, as though trying to decide if she was serious or not. “What the hell do Barbies have to do with anything?”
“I haven’t a clue. But Brianne was seen in The Fisherman’s Lair with a man, whom a regular identified as Nels Farrow.”
“Okay. That’s good to know. Our first real connection between the two of them, other than the poison formula. But what does that have to do with fashion dolls?”
“This frequent-flier at The Lair overheard Nels say something to Brianne about a ‘Ken doll.’ ”
“Those were his precise words?”
“Yes, and the only ones my source remembers hearing.”
When Jennifer didn’t reply, Savannah added, “The guy who told me was a bit of a flake, to say the least. And I know it’s a weird thing, but he swears that’s what he overheard, and for what it’s worth, I believe him. About that, anyway.”
Jennifer leaned forward in the driver’s seat, crossed her arms atop the steering wheel, and rested her forehead on them.
Savannah thought she was discouraged, exhausted, possibly at her wits’ end.
Then she heard her whispering, “Ken doll, Ken doll, Ken doll, Ken doll.”
Suddenly, she jerked upright and gripped the steering wheel. Turning to Savannah, she said, “Kendall!”
Savannah couldn’t interpret what she was hearing. “Ken Dahl? What? Is he someone you know?”
“Not a he. A her. I’ll bet Nels was talking about Dr. Earlene Kendall. K-E-N-D-A-L-L.”
“Okay. Who is she?”
“She’s a specialist in fatal genetic disorders. After Farrow’s general practitioner diagnosed him with Halstead’s, he referred Farrow to her.”
“Do you know her personally?”
“No, but I saw her name in his medical records.”
“Is she local?”
“I don’t know where she lives. But I think her office is in Santa Barbara.”
“Close enough. I have to talk to her. She might be our link between Brianne and Nels.”
The two women studied each other, as best they could, in the semi-darkness of the car. Savannah could sense a bit of hope hanging in the air, like a pleasant, floral scent in an otherwise stale, musty room.
“Looks like we have a lead,” Jennifer said.
“Yes, indeed. We do. I’ll follow up on it tomorrow.” She paused for a moment, then added, “I just have to think of some excuse to give my husband and family about why I’m traipsing off to Santa Barbara.”
There was a long, awkward pause as Savannah waited for Jennifer’s response. Finally, the doctor cleared her throat and said, “That brings me to the reason why I wanted to meet you here tonight. I’ve come to a decision. An important one.”
Waiting at full attention, Savannah said, “Okay. Let’s have it.”
The doctor looked defeated and sad when she said, “I have no doubt that Brianne and Nels were murdered. Do you agree?”
Before answering, Savannah took a moment to recall her conversation with Nels Farrow’s widow, Candy. She remembered what the woman said about how she and Nels sat at the kitchen table the night before his death and worked on their “bucket list” of things they wanted to enjoy together while Nels was still healthy enough to do them.
Savannah thought of Brianne and Paul, planning their wedding and, in spite of the terrible risk, deciding to bring their own child into the world.
“Everything I’ve seen and heard,” Savannah said, “points to the fact that both Brianne and Nels were looking forward to spending the rest of their lives, whatever time they had left, with their spouses. They seemed incredibly brave and positive under horrible circumstances.”
“You don’t believe they killed themselves or allowed someone else to?”
“No. I don’t. I agree with you that they were murdered.”
Nodding thoughtfully, Jennifer said, “That’s why I’ve come to this decision. It’s a really hard one, but I can’t allow someone to get away with one homicide, let alone two. And I certainly can’t let a murderer escape justice when they killed the person I loved most in the world. No matter what it costs me personally.”
Savannah had a feeling what was coming next, but she waited patiently to hear the doctor say it.
“Even if I lose my career,” Jennifer continued. “Even if it costs me my freedom, I have to do everything I can to catch the person who did this. Otherwise, I can’t live with myself.”
“I understand,” Savannah told her. “I think that’s very brave and noble of you. I do.”
Jennifer turned to her with haunted eyes. “I’ve been hampering you severely by not letting you engage your team. Who knows the toll that’s already taken on the investigation?”
Certainly, it hadn’t been easy, Savannah thought. But there was no point in saying so and driving the spearpoint of her friend’s guilt even deeper.
Savannah could tell by the wounded look on her face that Dr. Liu was suffering enough already from her heart’s own condemnation.
“I want your team to know everything,” Jennifer said. “Even Dirk. You won’t be compromising him, because I’m going to go to the authorities myself. I’ll even request that he be put in charge of the investigation. For all the good that will do. I won’t have much clout, since I’ll be under arrest and probably locked up the moment I confess.”
Savannah wanted to disagree with her, to console her, and suggest that maybe things might not be so dire, after all. But she couldn’t bring herself to lie to a woman who knew the justice system as well as she did.
While it was a courageous thing that Jennifer Liu was doing, by stepping forward, she was virtually ending her life as she knew it. Her license would most probably be revoked, and she would very likely spend some time in prison. If she were really unlucky, she might be incarcerated with inmates who’d been sent to prison on the basis of the M.E.’s own investigations and testimonies.
“I want to help you. What can I do?” Savannah asked, feeling helpless, considering the gravity of the situation, and more than a little guilty for not having succeeded in closing the case on her own.
Maybe if she
hadn’t been so distracted by her personal problems she could’ve done better, found a killer, and saved Dr. Liu from taking this drastic step.
“Call a meeting of your Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency as soon as possible. I want to be there myself.”
“Okay. I’ll do that first thing tomorrow morning. What else do you want me to do?”
“The one thing that I don’t want,” Jennifer added, “is for you to feel guilty about this. It isn’t your fault. Even if you had solved the case and exposed the murderer, I still would have been forced to explain my false rulings.”
Savannah felt both relieved and touched by her words, but not entirely exonerated. “How did you know I was feeling guilty? Are you a cranium cracker, a sternum cutter, and a mind reader, too?”
“I know you, Savannah Reid. You’re a softhearted person, who thinks she has to take care of the entire world. You’re far too maternal for your own good, trying to save everybody around you, even when they caused the trouble they’re in.”
“Now, now. I don’t know about that. Yes, I’ve been accused of trying to feed everybody within arm’s reach. But I’ve been known to let a few folks stew in the chowder they made. Especially those who seem to want to live their whole lives floundering around in a soup pot.”
“But you feel bad about not rescuing me.”
Savannah shrugged and grinned. “From what I can tell, this is your first swim in the soup. If we manage to yank you out of this one, and you go diving back in . . .”
“That’s a nice thought . . . you and your team saving me. But I don’t believe you or anybody else is going to pull me out of this one.” She shuddered, crossed her arms over her chest, and hugged herself tightly. “I’m pretty sure this particular soup pot that I’m in now is about one hundred feet deep.”
Chapter 21
When Savannah returned home, it was after 11:00 P.M., so she half expected Granny to be asleep in the guest room with little Vanna Rose by her side. Instead, she found her grandmother sitting in Dirk’s recliner, wearing her long-sleeved, flannel nightgown with tiny pink rosebuds, and reading her well-worn Bible.
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