by Tom Turner
She hung up.
“What have you heard about that case?” Ryder asked. “You and your girlfriends are pretty wired into the local gossip.”
Jackie laughed. “That’s not much of a compliment.” She leaned back in her chair and looked out the window. “Well, the long and the short was apparently ol’ Federico spent more time chasing women than tennis balls. Women of all ages. From like seniors in high school to old broads like me.”
Ryder laughed.
“And apparently he set up camp at the Pinetop bar when he was here for the Challenger.”
The Pinetop was near where the fitness center and the two indoor pools were located.
“I heard he had a thing with a senior at St. Matthews,” Jackie said, tapping on her desk.
“How would a tennis player from Argentina meet a high school senior?” Ryder asked.
“Way I heard it, she was a ball girl at the Challenger,” Ryder said. “They get kids and people who live at Mercer Island to volunteer. Some of my friends do it. I also heard he was having an affair with a married woman.”
Ryder shrugged. “Well, there you go,” she said. “In five minutes, we’ve already come up with two suspects. The married woman’s husband and the high-school girl’s father.”
“Or boyfriend,” Jackie said.
“Make it three,” Ryder said.
“But all three have to be on Newell and Murphy’s radar screen.”
“How do you know?” Ryder said. “Johnny Redneck wasn’t on Harry’s radar screen. His partner wasn’t either.”
Jackie nodded. “Good point.”
The office phone rang. “Savannah Investigations,” Jackie said, putting it on speaker.
“Is this Jackie Farrell?” the accented voice asked.
“Yes. Mr. Giraldo?”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “I was so happy to get your call. Will you work on my son’s case?”
“Yes,” Jackie said. “My partner and I were fortunate to have resolved the primary case we were working on and would be able to devote our full resources to working on your son’s case.”
Ryder nodded and tapped the desktop.
“I am so happy to hear that,” Giraldo said. “What do I need to do for you to go forward?”
Jackie explained the terms and pay structure.
“That sounds reasonable to me,” Giraldo said. “But just let me explain something: I am not a rich man. When my son started out in tennis, we were lucky enough to find a financial backer through his first coach. He was playing in a junior tournament in Miami, Florida, and his coach knew a Miami businessman, who had helped finance the career of two other tennis players. One from Italy and one from Spain. So, I will ask him if he will pay you.”
“Okay, I understand,” Jackie said. “That’s fine. Just let me know as soon as possible, so we can get started.”
“I will, I will,” Giraldo said. “Thank you so much.’
“You’re welcome,” Jackie said. “Speak to you soon.”
She hung up and looked at Ryder. “A financial backer?”
Ryder nodded. “It makes sense when you think about it. All the traveling they do. Plus, lessons, paying a coach, racquets, sneakers—”
Jackie nodded. “Not to mention, paying for all those women’s drinks at the Pinetop.”
42
The callback Jackie received a little while later from Benedetto Giraldo caught her by surprise.
“Ms. Farrell, I am so sorry to have to give you this news, but my son’s financial backer said no to paying your fee.”
Jackie hit speakerphone and sat up straight. She had just called Mrs. Warren to decline her case and didn’t want to have to call her back and have a conversation that started, On second thought...
Jackie thought for a second. “And just what would you be able to pay, Mr. Benedetto?”
There was a long pause. “Maybe one thousand dollars,” Benedetto said. “But not right away.”
Jackie thought a few more seconds as Ryder shook her head.
“Okay,” Jackie said finally, “we’ll take it. Where are you anyway?”
Ryder shook her head more strenuously and mouthed, Are you fucking crazy?
“In Argentina.”
“Just send a check,” Jackie said and gave him the address. “Me and my associate will start working on the case tomorrow.”
“Thank you so much,” Giraldo said. “I can’t tell you how much—”
“You’re welcome,” she said. “This call is costing you a lot of money. I’ll be in touch when we have something. Good-bye, Mr. Giraldo.”
Ryder was shooting daggers at her. “Are you kidding? Maybe you’re independently wealthy or a trust-fund baby, but I doubt it, since we both have the same father.”
“Didn’t you just tell me you had a homicide jones?”
“Yeah, but my eating jones is bigger,” Ryder said. “Those Savannah Investigations paychecks that put bread on the table are all I got.”
“Look, I thought about it, weighed the pros and cons—”
Ryder shook her head in disbelief. “When exactly did you do that? In the three seconds that it took you to say yes to Giraldo?”
“Okay, just listen,” Jackie said. “Sometimes you gotta look at the big picture. Can you imagine if we solved two high-profile murders back to back? We would never have to work for the Ralston Oldfields or the Mrs. Warrens of the world ever again. We would never have to even think about taking on a cheating-spouse job ever again. We would be the queens of murder. Someone gets stabbed, call the queens. Someone gets shot, call the queens.”
Ryder gave her a faint nod.
“I mean, think of all the publicity,” Jackie said. “Just like Miranda Cato, where we’ve had the headline in the Morning News three days in a row.”
“All right, all right,” Ryder said, rolling up one leg of her blue jeans. “But this time I don’t want to have to tackle the killer in an airport”—she put her bare leg up on Jackie’s desk—“I still got rug burns from that.”
The outdoor buzzer of Savannah Investigations rang.
“Who’s that going to be?” Ryder asked.
Jackie went to the intercom and pressed the button. “Sarah?”
“Yes.”
Jackie buzzed her in. “Come on up,” she said, then to Ryder. “Sarah Dunn’s in town for a convention”—she smiled and rubbed her hands together—“and dropping off a sizable check, too.”
Ryder’s eyes lit up. “Oh, goody.”
“Yeah, that was another reason why I figured we could take on Giraldo.”
“You mean our pro bono.”
Jackie shrugged as they heard Sarah Dunn’s steps in the reception area. Then she walked in.
“Hey, Sarah, welcome back,” said Jackie.
“Hi, Sarah,” Ryder said, pointing to the chair next to her, “you get the nice comfortable client chair as opposed to this lumpy, old thing.”
Sarah Dunn took a check out of her purse. “Maybe you’ll upgrade the furniture with this.” She handed the twenty-thousand-dollar check to Jackie. “For a job well done.”
“Thank you,” Jackie said.
“Thank you both so much,” Sarah said. “You did a fabulous job. With you two, there’s no need for the Savannah Police Department anymore.”
Jackie laughed. “Thanks for saying that,” she said. “But the reality is they’re actually pretty good. But, as is true with everything, there’s always a few rotten apples.”
“That guy Suggs Brown, who I read about?”
Jackie nodded. “Yeah, a guy very effective at sabotaging the good work his partner was doing.”
Sarah nodded. “I was always impressed with Harry Bull, thought he was a straight shooter.”
“My sister couldn’t agree with you more,” Ryder said, then shot Jackie a wink.
Sarah smiled. “What? Is there something I don’t know?”
Jackie shook her head and smiled. “What my blabbermouth sister is trying to say is that
Harry and I—”
“No,” Sarah said, and her eyes lit up. “Oh, you lucky girl. That man’s got such gorgeous eyes.” She leaned across the desk and gave Jackie a high five.
Then she fell back into her chair. “How about you, Ryder, you have a boyfriend?”
Ryder sighed. “Nah, looks like I’m destined to be an old maid. One of those old babes with the casseroles.”
Sarah screwed up her eyes. “The what?”
Ryder looked at Jackie, then back to Sarah. “My sister told me about these women at Mercer Island—widows, I guess—when a single guy moves into the neighborhood, they hot foot it over with a casserole.”
Jackie nodded. “That’s just the beginning. Then they get him out on the bocce court.”
43
Harry Bull had a friend who kept a boat at the marina in Mercer Island. The friend told him he barely used it and urged Bull to take it out it any time he wanted. Bull had finally taken him up on it, and he and Jackie had just brought aboard some adult beverages for an early evening boat ride. Specifically, Jackie had mixed up a batch of her margaritas.
It was around eighty degrees at six o’clock as they boarded the Paco, and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful sunset.
“You ready for your first one?” Jackie asked, raising her plastic container of pink margaritas.
“Not yet,” Bull said. “I need both hands and full sobriety to guide us out of this marina without smacking into another boat.”
Jackie put the margarita container back into her Igloo cooler filled with ice. “So, as your first mate, what would you like me to do?”
“Tell you what,” Bull said, at the wheel of the Regulator 21 center console, “just give a little shove off the dock, will you?”
Jackie, wearing blue jeans, Converse sneakers, and a sleeveless T-shirt, walked to one side and pushed them off from a pier. Bull backed the boat up, then headed out toward the Intracoastal. Their destination was a restaurant four miles away.
Jackie walked up to Bull, who put his arm around her and gave her a kiss. “How long does it take to get there?”
“The slow and scenic route, an hour,” Bull said. “Pedal to the metal, um, twenty minutes.”
“Let’s go slow and scenic.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“You ready for a pink diablo?” Jackie asked.
“Bring it on.”
Jackie walked back to the cooler. She got a plastic cup, put in a handful of ice cubes, poured one and brought it up to Bull.
“Thanks.”
“Same color as that T-shirt you were wearing the first time I met you.”
Bull chuckled. “That’s my color.”
She went back, got one for herself, then joined him. “I’d like to propose a little toast,” Jackie said. “To all the bad guys now residing in jail. To my sister, the fastest girl in Georgia, and to you”—looking up into Harry’s eyes—“for being you.” She shook her head, embarrassed. “Sorry, that was kinda cheesy.”
“I liked it,” Bull said, raising his glass. “And to you, for making me look good.”
“Aww,” said Jackie, then she touched plastic to plastic with Bull.
“So, what’s the name of this place again?” Jackie asked as she looked out over the water with the vast marshland behind it.
“It’s called Wyld, spelled W-y-l-d,” Bull said. “Used to be called the Bonnabella Yacht Club.”
“I like that better,” Jackie said, then pointing at the water at the bow of the boat. “Oh, look.”
A pod of dolphins had just appeared at the bow, diving and surfacing in unison.
“Cool,” Bull said. “Let ‘em lead the way.”
Bull and Jackie looked out over the water on both sides, taking in the beautiful, tranquil view.
“Doesn’t get much better than this,” Jackie said, shading her eyes from the setting sun.
“Hey, check that out,” Bull said pointing at a large house, off in the distance.
“What is it?” Jackie asked, studying the red brick house and the tennis court to its left.
“You don’t recognize it?”
Jackie shook her head.
“It’s the former Casa Erotica,” Bull said, then pointing. “To the right is the helipad.”
“Oh, my God, so it is,” Jackie said, taking a closer look. “I didn’t recognize it from this angle. I wonder what’s going to happen to it now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, who’s going to buy a place with seven gigantic bedrooms, an underground grotto with marble everywhere, a grass and clay tennis court, a skeet-shooting range, a five-hole putting green, and a very sketchy reputation?”
Bull took a sip of his margarita. “I remember the mother of my best friend in high school. She always used to say, ‘There’s a hat for every head.’”
They tied up at a dock right next to the Wyld, which was an outdoor bar/restaurant surrounded by marshland with tall pines trees behind it. They walked up to bartender. He had a sunburned nose and wore a pork-pie hat and a Hawaiian shirt. Jackie ordered a pinot grigio and Bull a beer. They took their drinks, walked over to a table, and sat down.
A few minutes later a waiter came over, introduced himself and gave them menus.
Jackie looked off in the distance. A beautiful red and gold sunset stretched out over the tall pines and live oaks behind them.
“I could do this every night,” Jackie said.
Bull looked up from his menu. “All we’d have to do is fill the tank every once in a while.”
Jackie took a sip of her wine. “So, Harry, I promise a minimum of shop talk, but I’m curious about Suggs Brown.”
“What do you want to know? It’s an old story… called greed and lust.”
“So that was it, money and girls?”
“Yeah, that’s the subtitle,” Bull said. “I found out he was Redmond’s bouncer at Tattletale, the strip joint, back like ten years ago. So, I guess Redmond liked having him around. Trusted him. So, he ended up first at Casa Romantica, then Casa Erotica.”
“And, what do you think? Redmond figured he could get away with just about anything with one of Savannah’s finest in his pocket?”
Bull took a sip of his drink, looked away, and didn’t answer right away. “Suggs, I always knew, never wanted to be my partner. I thought that was a little strange. I’d like to think now it was because he was afraid I might catch on to what he was up to. But I got to hand it to him, he was really good at covering his tracks. I never suspected a thing.”
Jackie nodded. “I’ve thought about it a lot. It’s like if Ryder was doing the same thing Suggs was—working against me—I might never know.”
Bull shrugged. “Yeah, maybe not.”
“Did you find out how much he was getting from Redmond?”
“Yeah, a thousand a week. Peanuts for Redmond, but a lot for Suggs for a side hustle.”
The waiter came up to their table and Jackie ordered the crab cakes and Bull, the pompano.
“So, what’s your next job?” Bull asked.
Jackie watched a gull splash into the water then fly up into the air with a fish in its talons. “Remember that tennis player who got shot?”
“Sure,” Bull said. “George Newell and Zed Murphy caught that one.”
“Well, now Jackie and Ryder caught it too.”
Bull rolled his eyes. “Good luck working with those guys.”
The ride back to the dock was pedal-to-the-metal because they had an unspoken mission: to pick up where they left off before having been rudely interrupted three nights ago by the knife-wielding Ronnie Wallace.
They got to the dock at 9:30, then made the short drive in Bull’s car to Jackie’s house.
Jackie got them both a drink then she switched on a movie. She knew they’d never finish either one.
Five minutes into it, Bull had his arm around Jackie’s shoulder. Seven minutes into it they were kissing like teenagers on prom night. Two minutes a
fter that, Bull was fumbling with the strap to Jackie’s bra.
“Somebody ought to come up with a button you push,” Bull was saying, as he fumbled.
“I don’t think a bra designer’s objective was to make it easier for men.”
“Well, it should have been,” Bull said, finally unhitching it.
Then he lifted her T-shirt over her head and flicked her bra to a nearby chair.
She kissed him again, then pulled back. “Okay, now it’s my turn to solve a mystery.”
“What’s that?”
Jackie grabbed the two ends of Bull’s collared shirt, then lifted it up over Bull’s head in one swift motion. Then she looked down at his stomach. “And there’s my answer. Hmm, I’d say…more like a four-pack.”
Bull looked down. “What?”
“Ryder guessed you had a six-pack.”
Bull laughed. “Jesus, is that what women talk about?”
Jackie nodded. “Umm, yeah, pretty much.”
THE END
I hope you enjoyed The Savannah Madam, the first in my Farrell sisters/ Savannah series.
The following is the first two chapters in the first book of the Palm Beach series.
Afterword
Thanks for reading The Savannah Madam.
Now, let’s head north a hundred miles, from Savannah to Charleston, for the first in my Nick Janzek Charleston series, Killing Time in Charleston. Nick’s new in town and before he can even unpack, he’s got a murder on his hands. One that could turn Charleston upside down. Available now on Amazon.
And to receive an email when the next Savannah Mystery comes out, be sure to sign up for my free author newsletter at tomturnerbooks.com/news.
Best,
Tom
Palm Beach Nasty - Sample
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