A Decadent Way to Die (21 page)

“Sleep while you can, sweetheart,” he whispered. “It’s the only break you get from worrying about everybody and their brother’s cousin’s uncle’s dog.”

He leaned down, brushed her hair back from her face, and kissed her cheek. “Always the big sister, aren’t you, Van,” he said softly, “taking care of everybody but yourself. Good night, baby.”

He patted her on the back, then turned down the lights and left the room.

She stirred slightly in her sleep, reached up and touched the spot on her cheek that he had kissed. “Good night, darlin’,” she whispered back. “Sleep tight.”

Chapter 19

W
hen Savannah woke the next morning, for a moment, she thought she was back in Granny Reid’s feather bed in the little shotgun house in McGill, Georgia.

Golden sunlight streamed through a nearby window, gently warming her face, and the heavenly aromas of coffee, bacon, and something that smelled a lot like pancakes filled her senses.

The smell of Granny’s coffee and bacon was the only thing powerful enough to lure a body out of that feather bed. And even though she was pretty sure she wasn’t in Gran’s pillow-soft bed, the divine scent was the same.

“Hey, sleepy head,” a deep voice said. “It’s about time you rejoined the land of the living.”

“What?” She sat up and pushed the old army blanket off her shoulders. Looking around, she realized she was on Dirk’s sofa. A few feet away, he was puttering about in the kitchen. And through eyes that were still sleep-fuzzy, she was pretty sure she saw him flip a flapjack.

“Good morning,” he said. “Your timing’s perfect. Breakfast is ready.”

“You cook breakfast?”

“Once in a while … on special occasions.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and yawned. “What’s the special occasion?”

He looked slightly hurt, then turned away from her to pour the coffee. “Let’s just say I don’t usually have company this time of morning.”

“Oh.”

She stood, smoothed her rumpled blouse and slacks, and walked over to stand behind him. She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “I’m not used to being anybody’s company this time of day either,” she said. “So, it
is
special. Thank you.”

When he turned to face her, he had a large cup of coffee in his hand. On the front of the mug was a faded picture of the
Bonanza
gang: Pa Cartwright, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe.

As he handed it to her, she said, “Wow! And out of your favorite cup! I really am getting the royal treatment.”

He blushed and looked uncomfortable, as he always did when he got caught doing something nice.

“Go sit on the bus seat and pull up a TV tray,” he told her. “Is there enough half-and-half in that coffee?”

“Yeah, it’s perfect.”

She took her seat and dragged a tray in front of her. And a moment later, he set a plate, laden with golden pancakes and crisp bacon, in front of her, along with a wad of paper towels and a fork with three bent tines.

Then he sat on the sofa across from her with a tray and heaped plate of his own.

“Chow down,” he said. “Or bon appétit or whatever.”

She took one bite of the pancakes and let out an orgasmic groan. “Oh, lawdy be! That is pure paradise in your mouth!”

“Just pancakes,” he mumbled, again embarrassed to be on the receiving end of praise.

“No, these are not just pancakes. What are these things in the batter, mandarin oranges?”

He nodded, taking a big bite himself.

“And what’s that special flavor I taste. Better than vanilla … It’s … What is it?”

“I’m not telling you. You’ll laugh.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll put you in a headlock till you do!”

He laughed and lifted his own Elvis mug to toast her. “Here’s to keeping a little mystery in every relationship.”

The phone rang, and he groaned. “You want somebody to call you, just cook a decent meal and the damned thing starts ringing off the hook.”

“Don’t answer it,” Savannah said. Then she thought of Tammy, and her heart jumped into her throat. “No, answer it. It might be—”

“It’s Ryan,” he said, looking at the caller ID. He picked up the phone and said, “Hey, man … what’s happenin’?”

Dirk listened for a moment, then turned to Savannah, a big smile on his face. “Really? Wow! Good work, dude! We’ll be right over.”

Savannah sat with bated breath, holding a big bite of pancake, dripping with maple syrup, in front of her face. “What?” she asked, half excited, half annoyed.

“John and Ryan were taking Helene for a nice morning stroll on the beach just now.”

“And?”

“When they got to the area where she went over the cliff, they looked up, and there it was.”

“There was what?”

“The boom box. It’s stuck there on the side of the hill, halfway up.”

“Whoa! We’ve got to get our hands on that!”

“Yeah.”

She looked down at her plate, the golden cakes, the crispy bacon. The scrumptious aftertaste of that first bite, her only bite, still lingering on her palate.

“I’m not going anywhere until I eat every morsel of this amazing breakfast you’ve made me,” she told him.

“A team of mules couldn’t pull me away from this,” he agreed. “Friggin’ boom box can just hang for a while longer.”

“I’d give anything to be that agile again,” Savannah told Dirk, Ryan, John, and Helene, as they stood on the beach and watched Tammy scale the cliff.

“Heck,” Helene said, “I’ve given up standing on a step stool to get dishes out of my top kitchen cupboards.”

“The only thing I hate worse than chickens,” Dirk added, “is heights.”

“I think you just say that so that I won’t ask you to clean my gutters,” Savannah told him.

“No, really. Three rungs up, I freeze.” He glanced over at Ryan and John. “Yeah, yeah, I know … you guys parachute and bungee jump when you’ve got nothin’ better to do on a Saturday afternoon. But you’re nuts. The both of you.”

“But we located your evidence for you, loonies that we are,” John told him.

“Something tells me you’ve hit pay dirt,” Ryan added. “Why else would someone toss that over the cliff, instead of just pitching it in the trash?”

“Obviously, they didn’t think we’d find it.” Savannah looked at the beach sand under her feet and the waterline on the cliff. “Last night the tide was in. If they threw it away then, they probably thought it would hit the water and be carried away.”

Dirk gave her a grin. “Now we know something else about our suspect—he or she throws like a girl. They couldn’t even clear the cliff.”

Helene sniffed. “Let me tell you, sonny, in my day I threw a fast ball that you would have had a hard time hitting.”

Savannah laughed, but she didn’t take her eyes off Tammy, who was about a quarter way up the hill, about half the distance to her goal.

An avid rock climber, Tammy had been tickled pink when Savannah had called her earlier and asked her if she thought she could do this chore for them. She had scooted over to the Strauss estate and had arrived before Savannah and Dirk.

Of course, Savannah had been glad to have an excuse to call her and check on her. And to see her young friend, practically jumping out of her shorts with excitement, thrilled to play an important part in the case, did Savannah’s worried heart a world of good.

Apparently, Tammy’s meeting with her troublesome ex-boyfriend had gone well. She seemed in top spirits on this, the morning after.

“She looks okay,” Dirk said as he watched Savannah watch Tammy.

“Yeah. She does. For now,” Savannah replied tentatively.

“Don’t worry,” Ryan told her. “Tammy’s a very good climber. John and I couldn’t keep up with her the last time we went to Mission Mountain.”

“Doesn’t she need some sort of safety rope?” Savannah said as Tammy found new footing and lifted herself a bit higher.

“Not for that one,” Ryan said. “A beginner could scale it with no problem, let alone an experienced climber like Tammy.”

“She has a natural knack for it,” John added. “She’s already far better than Ryan or I will ever be.”

“She has a fearless spirit,” Helene said, looking up the cliff at the young woman, who was within a couple of feet of her goal. “I like that in anyone, but especially a female.”

“Yeah,” Savannah murmured, “though sometimes fear is a good thing. You wanna have a little bit of ‘scared spitless’ in your bones, say, when you’re wranglin’ a rattlesnake.”

“She’s not going to run into any rattlesnake on that hill,” He-lene said. “Not with all the racket we’ve been making down here. They’ve crawled into their holes or left a long time ago.”

“I’m not worried about the snakes that live in holes in the ground,” Savannah grumbled under her breath. “It’s those nasty, two-legged rattlers that bother me.”

“Hey, I made it!” Tammy yelled down from her perch on a rock that jutted from the side of the cliff.

With both feet firmly on the stone, she removed her climbing gloves and tucked them into her shirt pocket. Then she pulled a pair of surgical gloves from the back pocket of her shorts and put them on.

Reaching up, she gently dislodged the portable stereo from the branch where it had caught.

From the other back pocket of her shorts she took out a small nylon cord. Carefully, she tied one end around the handle of the boom box.

“Here you go,” she said. “I’m sending it down.”

“Let ’er rip, kiddo,” Dirk called to her as he pulled out his own gloves and put them on.

Slowly, Tammy played out the cord, lowering it down until it reached Dirk’s outstretched hands.

“Got it,” he said and dodged the cord as she released it.

“Good girl! Careful coming down, sweetie,” Savannah called to her.

Helene stepped up to Dirk and squinted, looking the boom box over carefully. “I don’t understand all the uproar over a stereo,” she said. “I agree my nephew should have put it in the garbage, instead of littering the property with it, but that’s hardly a concern for the police, I should think.”

Dirk was instantly alert. “Did you actually see Waldo throwing this away?” he asked her.

“Of course not. If I had, I’d have yelled at him and sent him down the cliff to get it. We know what to do with garbage.”

“Then why are you assuming he was the one who pitched it?” Savannah asked her.

Helene shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose because it’s his.”

“Are you sure?” Dirk asked. “These things look a lot alike … black, rectangular, buttons …”

“Certainly, I’m sure. I gave it to him for his birthday a couple of years ago. I picked it out myself. I don’t forget things like that. In fact, I don’t forget much of anything.”

“I’ll bet you don’t, love.” John gave her a smile and patted her shoulder. He turned to Dirk. “If she says it’s her nephew’s, it is.”

“Fine with me,” Dirk said under his breath.

Savannah watched as Tammy made quick work of returning down the cliff.

Dirk was squatting on the beach, the stereo balanced on his thigh, when Tammy jumped down onto the sand.

“Excellent work there, girlie,” Savannah told her, giving her a hug and a slap on the back.

“No sweat.” Tammy brushed the dirt off her clothes, then removed her climbing gloves. “In fact, it was fun.”

“Not as fun as beating us to the top of Mission Mountain,” Ryan said, giving her a playful nudge.

Tammy poked him back and laughed. “No. Not nearly as much fun as that.”

Savannah looked over Dirk’s shoulder and watched as he pushed the eject button on the player and caused the CD drive door to open. A small amount of water trickled out.

“Oh, yes,” he said, looking up at her with eyes twinkling. “We have water inside.”

“Hallelujah,” Savannah answered.

“What’s so good about that?” Helene wanted to know.

Instantly, Savannah’s mood plummeted. What was good news to them was going to cause a lot of pain to a nice lady. And Savannah wasn’t sure how to tell her.

She didn’t have to.

Helene’s sharp mind processed the information, and she came to her own conclusion in an instant. “Oh,” she said sadly. “I see. You’re happy because you believe you’ve found the murder weapon … which happens to belong to my grandnephew.”

“Yes, Helene,” Savannah said. “I’m so sorry.”

Helene turned to leave. “Not as sorry as I am,” she said as she walked away.

As Savannah walked Tammy along the beach and down the forest path, back to her car, she tried to get a reading off her young friend’s mood.

She had seemed buoyant enough before the climb, and ecstatic afterward, while reveling in the praise of the team. But now, as they strolled through the sun-dappled woods, Tammy seemed worried and preoccupied.

“You did really well back there. Thanks again,” Savannah told her.

Tammy took the ponytail scrunchy out of her hair and shook the glossy length free. It fell around her shoulders, looking like a golden, satin curtain.

Savannah couldn’t help but think that Tammy could have her pick of men. Pretty, sweet, funny, and smart, she was a prize.