The Savannah Madam

by Tom Turner

  Ryder had a one-bedroom apartment in Savannah on the ninth hole of a golf course. It was a par three that had a water hazard on one side of the green. Ryder loved having her first drink of the evening watching errant, late-day drives splash into the water. Jackie had told her that was perverse—getting pleasure out of other people’s failures. Ryder had sighed and said, “I know, yet another personality flaw of mine.”

  Ryder’s apartment was north of what the sisters mockingly referred to as Savannah Investigations’ “world headquarters.” World headquarters consisted of three rooms on a second floor across from Little Caesar’s pizza. It was all Jackie could afford four years back. To make matters worse, at least as far as Ryder was concerned, Jackie’s room measured twice the size of hers. Ryder had been bellyaching about that since her first day on the job. The third room served as a waiting area for prospective clients.

  Four years back, Jackie had caught a Presidents Day sale at Havertys and furnished the entire office with a nine-piece home-office, scratch-‘n-dent special. The dark-colored pieces had a nick here, a scratch there, but nothing too egregious.

  Ryder had been lobbying Jackie to move to new offices, and her sister had promised to look into it when work slowed down, and she had a little more money in the bank.

  Ryder had her feet up on Jackie’s shopworn desk.

  “So now you’re all caught up,” Jackie said, taking a pull on her water bottle, then putting it down on her desk. “This afternoon at four, we have an interview with one of the detectives on the case. Before that, at two, we’ve got the woman who started the rival bordello after Miranda’s place shut down.”

  Ryder laughed. “Bordello? How quaint. Sounds like something from the 1920s.”

  Jackie frowned. “What would you call it?”

  “I’d go with another ‘b’ word, but a little more contemporary. Brothel?” Ryder said. “Or how ‘bout ‘knock shop?’ I heard that once on Orange is the New Black.”

  “That’s kind of lame.”

  Ryder shrugged. “Well, so let’s come up with something else then,” she said, taking out her iPad and scrolling down. “‘Cause we’re gonna be using the word a lot on this case.” She typed something on her tablet. “Okay, so here are the choices: ‘Bawdy house’? Nah. ‘House of ill repute’—sounds nineteenth-century. ‘Den of iniquity’? Sounds eighteenth-century. ‘Sporting house’? Sounds like you go play baseball there. Hmm... ‘house with red doors’?” She shrugged. “How about just plain old ‘cat house’?”

  Jackie shrugged and nodded. “I’m good with that.”

  “Okay,” Ryder said. “‘Cat house’ it is.”

  “And while we’re at it, what are we going to call the women? ‘Cause ‘hookers’ is such a put-down.”

  Ryder typed something else on her iPad.

  “Okay, so I put in ‘prostitute’ and”—her eyes got big—“there are three hundred forty-one synonyms on something called the Power Thesaurus.”

  “Jesus,” Jackie said, “this’ll take all day.”

  “The first batch are pretty judgmental: ‘betrayer’ and ‘deceiver,’ to name just two. Then there are a few that just don’t work on our case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, like ‘street walker’ and ‘call girl.’ The chicks who were at Casa Romantica weren’t walking any streets, nor was anyone giving ‘em a call.”

  “What about…strumpet?”

  “Sounds really old-fashioned. Oliver Twist days,” Ryder said, scrolling down. “Got a couple more beauties here.”

  “What?”

  “‘Camp follower’ and… ‘Jezebel’.”

  “‘Camp follower?’ What the hell is that?”

  “Thought you might ask,” Ryder tapped her screen. “Okay, according to this, a ‘camp follower is a civilian not officially connected with a military unit, especially a prostitute who follows or settles near an army camp. See blah blah blah.’ Well, you get the idea.”

  “What about, ‘party girl?’” Jackie asked. “I heard ‘em called that once.”

  Ryder looked up, pumped her fist, and smiled. “I think we have a winner.”

  Jackie was at the wheel of her four-year-old Acura, Ryder in the passenger seat. They were going down Montgomery Cross on their way to the Truman Parkway for their two o’clock meeting with Ashley Slade at the Starbucks on Victory Drive. Jackie had just told Ryder about the rest of the conversation she had had with Sarah Dunn. “And I told her we had an ongoing missing-persons case and still needed to put time in on it until we solved it. She was cool with that.”

  Ryder nodded.

  “So, can you take over on Oldfield day-to-day?” Jackie asked. Oldfield was the missing person case. “I got a hunch we’re pretty close to solving it.”

  “Shit, Jack, I thought our deal was we go fifty-fifty on whatever we’re working,” Ryder said.

  “It is. I just need you to spend a few extra hours on Oldfield.”

  Ryder nodded. “While you jump into this nice juicy murder.”

  “Come on. Just a few extra hours.”

  Ryder did her deep, dramatic sigh. “All right, but let’s wrap it up quick.”

  “I agree, and I promise I’m not abandoning it.”

  As they pulled into the Starbucks parking lot, Jackie told Ryder how she was surprised Ashley had agreed to meet with them.

  Ryder thought for a second. “Yeah, but look at it this way, if she had something to do with Miranda’s death, maybe she’d want to find out what we know.”

  Jackie nodded as she reached for the car door. “You might have something there.”

  They both walked toward the front door and into the Starbucks.

  Ashley Slade hadn’t hesitated at all when Jackie asked her that morning what she looked like, so she’d be able to recognize her.

  “Claire Danes,” she said. “First season Homeland.”

  And damned if she didn’t. Maybe a little less intense and her natural blonde hair was longer, a few inches short of her waist. Still, like Eileen Mudge, Ashley Slade was a knock-out. Jackie was surprised, for the second time, because her expectation was that ‘party girls’ would have rouged cheeks, strawberry blonde hair teased to the max, and outrageously high, hi-heels. So, when it came to stereotyping, she was guilty. And dead wrong.

  They sat down at a table. Ashley with a latte, Jackie and Ryder with macchiatos.

  “You guys don’t look like private dicks,” Ashley said, chuckling at her little joke.

  Jackie had heard it a million times. “Looks can be deceiving,” she said. Her standard answer.

  Ryder thrummed the table with her fingers. “So, Ashley, any theories on who killed Miranda Cato?” she asked, in her usual cut-to-the-chase mode.

  “You just dive right in, huh?” Ashley said to Ryder with a faint smile.

  Ryder laughed. “Hey, time is money, girl.”

  Ashley nodded. “And my money’s on the cop,” she said, her eyes going first to Ryder then Jackie.

  “You mean the guy who was allegedly blackmailing Miranda?” Jackie asked.

  Sarah Dunn had mentioned the cop to Jackie, though Sarah didn’t know a lot of the details.

  “Allegedly, my ass,” Ashley said. “Miranda told me he definitely was.”

  “Okay, so tell us why you think it was him?” Ryder asked.

  “Well, ‘cause Miranda had these three Mexican dudes beat the shit out of him,” Ashley said.

  “Beat up the cop?” asked Ryder.

  “Wait,” Jackie said, holding up a hand. “Start at the beginning, will you?”

  Ashley took a quick sip of her latte, then looked up. “So, as I guess you know, the cop found out about the Casa and started blackmailing Miranda. Fat sleazeball threatened to shut us down unless Miranda threw him a couple hundy a week. Then it went up to four hundred, then five. Coming out of our hides, too, ‘cause Miranda made us pay some of it.”

  “What was the cop’s name?” Jackie asked.

  “
Roscoe Byrd,” Ashley said,

  “Which station is he at?” Ryder asked.

  “Station? No station. Dude was retired,” Ashley said.

  “Oh, right,” Jackie said. “So, keep going.”

  “So finally, Miranda decided enough’s enough,” Ashley said. “Went and got the Mexicans to go whack Byrd with a coupla two-by-fours. Something like that. One of the Mexican dudes told Byrd to stay the hell away from Miranda. I heard he said something like, ‘Go near her again and we’ll cut off your dick and stick it in your mouth.’”

  Jackie cringed. “Now that’s a pretty picture.”

  Ashley laughed. “Mexicans don’t fuck around.”

  “I guess not,” Jackie said. “So that was the end of it. Byrd stayed away?”

  Ashley nodded. “I heard he moved to Hinesville,” Ashley said, then a pause. “No Mexicans up in Hinesville, I guess.”

  “So, are you saying you think, after a while, Byrd came back to the Casa and killed Miranda?”

  “Yeah, in the middle of the night,” Ashley said.

  Jackie shrugged. Could be what happened, she just wasn’t sold. She wondered if Roscoe Byrd was just a handy patsy, to take the heat off of Ashley.

  “We...ah... heard about the fire that killed your stepfather,” Ryder said, always game to stir up the pot.

  A big frown cut across Ashley’s face. “What about it?”

  “Seems you got a little violence in your past,” Ryder said, matter-of-factly.

  Ashley’s eyes narrowed and a vein popped out on her forehead. “Listen you little—”

  Jackie held up a hand. “She’s not looking to piss you off. We just wondered if you and Miranda might have butted heads.”

  Ashley, shaking her head, still seething, glanced over at Jackie. “Your fuckin’ sister’s got some attitude. I mean, I’m doing you two a favor for a lousy cup of coffee.”

  “I know and we appreciate it. We won’t be much longer,” Jackie said. “Sarah Dunn told us you had threatened a few times to, uh, start another… cat house.”

  Ashley smiled. “Cat house, huh? Yeah, I did. So? A little competition’s a good thing.”

  “Did you ever threaten Miranda?” Jackie asked.

  Ashley nodded. “Threatened to leave, that’s all,” she said. “Miranda didn’t give me a big enough piece of the pie. I was the star of the show.”

  Jackie could see Ryder muscling forward a few inches, dying to get back into the Q & A.

  “Did you stand to gain anything,” Ryder asked, “if Miranda was dead?”

  “Okay, bitch, that does it,” Ashley said, sliding out of her seat and standing. “I’m done with this shit.”

  8

  Jackie had called Detective Harry Bull three times before he finally called her back. He said he was flat-out on a double homicide and could see her maybe next week. But Jackie was persistent and when Bull finally said he could talk to her at his gym for a few minutes, she grabbed it. Ryder and she were driving there now. Bull’s gym was on Berwick Street, not one of Savannah’s fancier addresses.

  Bull had told Jackie he’d be the guy in the free-weight section, grunting and sweating and wearing black shorts and a pink T-shirt. A cop in a pink T-shirt? Guy must be fairly comfortable in his manhood, Jackie thought.

  The sisters walked into the gym, explaining to the girl at the desk they were there to talk to one of the members, Detective Bull. The girl pointed to a man doing bench-presses and, sure enough, clad in black and pink.

  As they walked toward Bull, Ryder asked. “Is this the place where you did that kick-boxing?”

  “No, that was a gym in Sandfly,” Jackie said.

  “How long’d you do it for?”

  “Two months or so,” said Jackie.

  “So long enough to learn how to kick a guy in the nuts, if you had to?”

  Jackie just rolled her eyes as they approached Bull. They waited until he stopped his set of bench presses.

  “Detective Bull?” Jackie asked.

  The man looked up at them. “Hey, girls.” He sat up.

  “I’m the one who called you earlier. I’m Jackie and this is my associate, Ryder.”

  Bull shook their hands. “Harry Bull,” he said. “Sorry about the sweaty hand.”

  “Hey, it’s a gym,” Jackie said.

  Bull nodded and smiled. “So, ask away,” he said. “I’ll just keep doing my work out if you don’t mind.”

  Jackie and Ryder nodded.

  Harry Bull was not only in shape, but handsome in an odd way. He had a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once, ears that were small and tight to his head, and a jaw that hadn’t been shaved in a few days, But he had striking emerald green eyes that shone like they were backlit with 1000-watt bulbs and nice, thick dark hair with not a whisper of grey.

  “So, we’ve been hired to investigate the murder of Miranda Cato out on Mercer Island,” Jackie said.

  Bull flattened out on the bench under two hundred pounds of weight. “The daughter, Sarah, huh?”

  “Yes,” said Jackie, watching him lift the barbell, then again, then a third time. On his fourth he got it halfway up and, grunting, lowered it back down to the bar.

  He laughed and sat up. “Can’t concentrate on two things at once.”

  Ryder smiled. “Maybe that’s all you got.”

  Bull eyed her warily. “Yeah, maybe.” He smiled back at Jackie. “So, I’ll give you the condensed version of Cato suspects. There was the woman who worked for her who broke away to start her own, ah, pleasure palace after Miranda died. She had a record—”

  “Ashley Slade, manslaughter,” Ryder said.

  Bull gave her a quick nod. “Exactly. Then there was Roscoe Byrd, who may or may not have been blackmailing Miranda—”

  “Now up in Hinesville keeping his distance from those of the Mexican persuasion,” Ryder said.

  Bull smiled and mopped his brow with his shirt. “Right again. Then the guy who threatened to kill her ‘cause….” Bull paused and looked over at Ryder to finish his sentence.

  “‘Cause he got barred for life at Casa Romantica for getting drunk and abusive to one of the girls?” Ryder said,

  “Yup. Glen Cromartie. Guess you know everything,” Bull said. “So, the obvious question is, what the hell do you need me for?”

  “‘Cause there’s a lot we don’t know,” Jackie said. “Go on, please.”

  “Okay, do you know about Talmadge Bartow?”

  Ryder looked at Jackie, a puzzled look on her face. “Talmadge Bartow?”

  Jackie shrugged. “No, who’s he?”

  “He was Miranda’s boyfriend, but she was two-timing him, maybe even three-timing him,” Bull said. “Me and my partner found out Miranda had a couple guys she was friendly with she met on Match.com. One guy in Hilton Head, another at the Ford Plantation. Seemed like Miranda would go on—let’s just call ‘em away games—with these guys. Unbeknownst to ol’ Talmadge.”

  “So, he found out?” Ryder asked. “Ol’ Talmadge.”

  Bull nodded. “Yup, and, word is, beat her up pretty good.”

  “How old is he?” Jackie asked.

  “Like maybe mid-fifties, I’m guessing,” Bull said. “Big guy. Good golfer. Club champ out on Mercer Island a few years back, as I recall.”

  “The other two, from Hilton Head and the Ford Plantation, you know their names?” Jackie asked.

  “The one from Hilton Head’s name was Nick, but we could never track him down,” Bull said. “The guy from the Ford Plantation, no clue.”

  “But older guys, right?” Jackie asked.

  “Yeah, fifties, early sixties, I’d guess.”

  “So not exactly the profiles of men who’d be crawling around at three in the morning, stabbing someone in the heart with a knife,” Jackie said.

  Bull shrugged. “What? Gotta be in your twenties to do that?”

  “No, not necessarily,” Jackie said. “I’d just figure it would more likely be a younger guy than an older guy
.”

  Ryder looked over at a man across the room who was punctuating every bench-press rep with a thunderous grunt. “He all right?” she asked Bull.

  Bull chuckled. “Yeah, thinks he’s benching a pickup truck ‘stead of just seventy pounds.”

  Ryder laughed. “So, what’s your sense? The guy who did it was a pro?” For Bull’s benefit, she was going heavy on cop-speak. “A hitter?”

  Bull looked amused. “Maybe,” he said. “Just dangle a few bucks out there and you got a buncha guys interested.”

  “But was a pro ever a suspect?” Ryder asked.

  “No.”

  “So that was it?” Ryder asked.

  “What do you mean, what was it?”

  “You had four suspects, nothing stuck, end of story, into the cold-case file?”

  Bull laughed and wiped his brow again. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Ryder said. “How old are you?”

  “So, you been doing this little P.I. hobby of yours for what… couple months now?”

  Ryder was unruffled. “What difference does it make how long? It’s how well.”

  “That’s a good point,” Bull said. “So, I’m guessing you have a long list of pros and hitters you’ve taken down and put in the hoosegow? Sent up the river.”

  Ryder chuckled. “I like a sarcastic man. So, does the name Philomena Soames mean anything to you?”

  Jackie gave her sister a nasty look, which Ryder pointedly ignored.

  “No, can’t say it does,” Bull said. “But if you ladies are done with this little Q & A, I gotta finish up here so I can go catch a guy who killed two brothers with ten rounds from a Heckler & Koch VP9”—he turned to Ryder—“You know what that is, right?”

  Ryder didn’t hesitate. “Sure, a German-made semi-automatic pistol. You’re not suggesting because I’m a woman that I don’t know anything about guns, are you?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, just saying I’ve got a job to do.”

  Jackie shifted from one leg to the other. “Well, thanks for seeing us,” she said, giving her sister a head-flick to the door.

  “Yes, thank you, Detective,” Ryder said.