A Decadent Way to Die (23 page)

“It’s my fault. I didn’t tell him I was going to the Strauss place this morning. And I was climbing the cliff when he texted me,” Tammy sank down onto the sofa and tried to smooth her hair in a pathetic gesture that went straight to Savannah’s heart.

“And later,” she continued, softly crying, “I was driving home and I didn’t answer him when he called me. He was just so worried about me, that when he saw me, he exploded and—”

“Bullshit! Do
not
tell me this was
your
fault, Tammy! I won’t listen to that kind of crap! He assaulted you, just like he did his other two girlfriends, and he’s going to pay for it!”

Savannah fished her cell phone out of her purse and started to call Dirk.

“No!” Tammy leapt to her feet. “Don’t call the cops. He said if I did … I mean … Don’t call anybody, Savannah.” She started to sob. “I’m so ashamed. I don’t want anybody to know about this.”

“Tammy, you know how this works. You have to have him arrested! Next time he’ll hurt you even worse. This won’t end until you end it!”

“And you know how it works, too, Savannah. They’ll pick him up, and he’ll be out on bail in a heartbeat. Only then he’ll be a lot madder at me. If he did this”—she pointed to her face—“be-cause I didn’t take his phone call and tell him where I was, what do you think he’ll do if I have him arrested?”

“You’ll get a restraining order against him and—”

“And what good would that do? It’s a piece of paper, Savannah. Do you really think a piece of paper is going to stop him?”

“So, what are you going to do, Tammy? Are you going to live in fear and let this guy use you for a punching bag any time he gets a notion to?”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do, Savannah. I don’t know.” She sank back down onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands, sobbing. “I don’t know what to do.”

“The first thing is we’ve got to get you to a hospital and have you checked over and—”

“No! I’m not going to any hospital. They’ll just ask me a lot of questions I don’t want to answer. I’m not going.”

“Please. You could have internal injuries. You need to see a doctor.”

“I’m okay. Really. No hospital!”

Savannah battled her own emotions as she tried to switch into a more logical, professional mindset … and couldn’t.

Finally, she bent down and kissed the top of Tammy’s golden hair. “Don’t cry, darlin’,” she said. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I think you should go pack yourself an overnight bag, a couple changes of outfits. Then get that basket full of goodies that’s out there on your porch, and drive to Twin Oaks. Check into the Oak Dale Motel there under a fake name and pay cash for your room. Put some ice on that lip and eye. For now, don’t come back here and don’t go to my house, and when that sonofabitch calls you the next time, do
not
answer your phone!”

“Okay.”

Savannah fished some bills out of her purse and handed them to her. “This should cover the motel.”

“I don’t want to take money from you, Savannah. This is humiliating enough already.”

“You have nothing in the world to be ashamed of. Let me help you, Tammy. It’ll make me feel better. Okay?”

Reluctantly, Tammy took the money. “And while I’m at the motel watching a TV with a lousy picture, what are you going to be doing?”

“I’ve got some business to attend to.”

Tammy stood and hugged Savannah, tightly and for a long time. When she finally released her, she looked up at Savannah with nothing but pure pain and fear in her beautiful face.

“You’re not going to get yourself hurt or make this worse for me, are you?” she said.

“No, darlin’. I promise, I’ll be okay, and I’m not going to make it worse.”

But as Savannah walked her friend out to her car and tucked her inside with her basket full of homemade goodies, she couldn’t quiet that voice in her head. It wasn’t Granny’s sweet, gentle voice. It was the voice of a cop, the police woman Savannah had been for so many years. The voice of experience. A lot of really bad experiences.

And that voice was telling her that, no matter what promises she made to her friend, this situation was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

Chapter 21

A
s Savannah sat in her Mustang and watched Tammy’s VW Beetle drive away, a strange feeling that she’d never experienced before washed through her. It was an icy, numbing sensation that was oddly calming.

For the moment, the image of her friend’s battered face had been carefully, methodically filed away, somewhere in the recesses of her mind. The time would come to take that memory out and deal with it.

But this wasn’t the time.

Tammy was going out of town, to a place he couldn’t get his hands on her, so she was safe for the time being.

Savannah pulled out her cell phone and made a call to the police station house. She asked to speak to Iris, the desk clerk who did most of Dirk’s background checks.

“Hi, Iris. It’s Savannah,” she said.

“Hey, girl,” Iris replied. “If you’re looking for Dirk, he’s gone to West Hollywood to pick up a prisoner.”

“I know. I wanted to talk to you. I have a favor to ask you.”

“Sure. What’s that?”

“You ran a background check on a guy yesterday. His name’s Chad.”

“Chad Avery. That’s right. Bad dude.”

“Could you possibly look up that particular bad dude’s address for me?”

“Yeah. Give me a minute here…. Let’s see …”

While Savannah waited, she looked at the front of Tammy’s cute little beach cottage. Buying that house was a dream come true for Tammy. She had literally danced for joy when she’d crossed over that threshold.

But then, Tammy was joy and dancing and sunlight all rolled into one amazing human being. She always thought the best of and hoped the best for everyone she met.

And now she wasn’t even safe inside her own precious little home.

“I’ve got it, “Iris said. “He’s at fifteen seventy Becker Street. It’s over in that subdivision behind the mall, I think.”

“Yeah, I know where it is. Thank you. And, Iris, could you just keep this call between you and me?”

“Absolutely. Us girls gotta hang together.”

Savannah hung up and headed toward the center of town and the mall.

A few times in her life … very few … Savannah had actually hated someone. Usually the feeling was hot, intense, and fleeting.

Granny Reid had taught her a lot about not hanging on to the hot coals of anger, because you were the person most likely to be badly burned by them. So, she had always let her anger go as quickly as she could.

But this feeling wasn’t disappearing any time soon. All she had to do was think of Tammy sitting on her sofa, sobbing, ashamed, saying it was her own fault that she had been stuck, and Savannah knew … this was a rage she was going to feel for the rest of her life.

When Savannah saw the tricked-out SUV sitting in the driveway at 1570 Becker Street, she was relieved. She wanted this to be over, one way or the other. Now.

Deep inside, the ex-cop was telling her that this was dangerous, coming here to confront him like this. This man was violent. Large, mean, and, obviously, no gentleman where women were concerned.

And she didn’t care.

For the first time in her life, a switch had been flipped, and survival was no longer the primary motive.

Stopping him. That was her only goal.

She reached beneath her linen jacket and, for a moment, closed her hand around the butt of her holstered Beretta. She un-snapped the thumb break, drew the weapon, then slid it back into the holster.

You should have a plan, Savannah,
the cop in her head whispered as she walked up the sidewalk to the house.

No plan needed,
she told it.
This is pretty simple.

She knocked on the door, resisting the urge to pound it with her fist. No point in alerting him.

She knocked twice more before he finally answered. And when he did open the door a bit and peek around it, the look on his face suggested he might have been expecting her. He gave her a half a smirk and said, “Savannah! How nice to see—”

She kicked the door with all her might. It flew open and the edge struck him, hard, in center of his face. Blood spurted from his nose as he stumbled backward, holding it and moaning.

“What the hell?” he said, snorting, trying to breathe through the liquid flow.

She let go with another kick, this one directly to his groin.

He forgot his broken nose as he grabbed his crotch with both hands, folded in half, and toppled to the floor.

In an instant she was standing over him, her foot on his throat. Her Beretta was in her hand, end of the barrel jammed against his forehead.

“You hurt Tammy,” she could hear herself saying in a voice she didn’t even recognize as her own. “Tammy is my family. If you ever hurt her, if you ever even speak to her again, I will kill you.”

He looked up at her with a dark enmity she had never seen before. For two seconds, she was afraid. Deeply, terribly afraid.

So, she shoved the gun even harder against his skin, leaned down until they were nearly face-to-face, and bored him with her eyes. “If I hear that you came within a hundred yards of her, or if you even call her on the phone, I swear to God, I will hunt you down and blow your brains out.”

When he said nothing, she dug her foot deeper into his neck. “You won’t even see it coming. I’ll break into your house and shoot you in your sleep, or I’ll sneak up behind you in a dark alley, and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. Do you understand me?”

He gave her the slightest nod.

A sinking feeling in her gut told her that was all she was going to get out of him.

She straightened up and took her foot off his neck.

As quickly as she had entered the house, she left.

It wasn’t until she was at least a mile away that it hit her, and she had to pull over to the side of the road as the adrenaline surged through her body. Arms crossed over her chest, she hugged herself tightly and waited for the shivering to stop.

She fought the nausea and the horrible, tight sensation in her chest, like a giant hand was squeezing her, and there was no air to breathe in the car at all.

The enormity of what she’d done hit her like a riptide, overwhelming her, dragging her under, carrying her out to sea.

Finally, the shaking subsided. She passed her hand over her forehead and realized she was drenched in sweat. And when she looked in the mirror, a woman with wild blue eyes stared back at her. A woman who appeared very nearly insane.

In that moment, her eyes looked just like the eyes of the guy lying on the floor, her foot on his neck, her gun to his head. And that was what frightened her most.

Savannah’s knees were still a bit weak when she entered the police station an hour later. She came in through a seldom-used side door to avoid running into the brass. Having parted ways with them under less-than-amicable circumstances years before, she didn’t want to come face-to-face with the chief or the captain.

She figured that, after the day she’d just had, a run-in with either one of them could prove fatal for somebody.

When she found Dirk, he was just getting ready to begin his official interrogation of Waldo Fischer. He had given her a call and told her he had returned with his prisoner. He’d invited her to come watch, and she decided it was a better plan than sitting at home, stewing about Tammy and Chad.

She walked up to Dirk, who was standing in the hallway, right outside Interrogation Room Two. It was the room with the lousy air-conditioning, and was commonly referred to as “the sweat box.”

Dirk always stuck his hardcore cases in there.

“Hey, Van,” he said, happy to see her … until he took a second look. “Babe, don’t take this wrong, but you look awful.”

She quickly ran her fingers through her hair, wiped the smeared mascara from under her eyes, smoothed her slacks with her palms, and buttoned her jacket so that the blood on her blouse wouldn’t show. “There,” she said. “Better?”

“Not really. You look like you’ve been through the wringer. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“A lot of nothing, I’d say.”

“We’ll talk about it later. Let’s play a game of Lean on Waldo.”

“Sure.” He motioned for her to enter the room first. Then, as she walked by him, he peered at the front of her shirt. “Is that blood on you?”

“Might be.”

“Yours?”

“Nope. But with the mood I’m in, if he doesn’t cooperate, we might be adding some of Waldo’s.”

Dirk and Savannah sat on one side of the unadorned, utilitarian, metal table on chairs that were as hard and uncomfortable as the SCPD could find when they had “decorated” the room.

With stark walls, no windows, and the temperature set higher than any other room in the station, they had intended the space to be a no-fun zone … and they had succeeded.

On the other side of the table, on his own hard, overly upright chair, sat a disgruntled, disheveled Waldo.

Savannah took a mildly perverse pleasure in knowing that, no matter how bad she might look at the moment, blood on her shirt and all, he looked way worse. His stringy, blond hair was damp with sweat, hanging into his eyes. His tee-shirt’s armpits were dark and wet. His tanned face was an ashen shade of gray, which complemented his red-rimmed eyes perfectly.

Yes, Waldo was a mess.

Quality, one-on-one time with Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter could do that to a guy.

Apparently, it had been a rough ride from West Hollywood.

Dirk had told her on the phone that Waldo had been extremely uncooperative, answering none of his questions on the way to San Carmelita. But at least, in his silence he hadn’t uttered the one dirty word that ruined a detective’s day. “Lawyer.”

Prepared to play the “good cop,” Savannah pasted a fake smile on her face—the “I Understand What You’ve Been Through” one—and leaned across the table toward Waldo.

His green eyes, so like his aunt’s, were dull and vacant as he tried to focus on her.

“What are you on, Waldo?” she asked him.

He thought it over for a while. A long while. Then he delivered his well-considered, deeply philosophical response. “Noth-in’.”

“So, we’re going to start this interview with a big, fat lie?” Dirk said. “Okay. If that’s the way you want it.”

“Waldo,” Savannah said, “have you spoken to anybody in your family lately?”

“No.”

At least he answered that one right away,
Savannah thought to herself. One lie, one truth. The score was tied.

“Do you know what happened on your aunt’s estate?”

“What do you mean, ‘what happened’?” he asked, obviously trying hard to concentrate. “What happened?”

“Some people died,” Dirk told him.

He suddenly looked far more alert. “Who?” he asked. “Who died?”

“Blanca,” Savannah said. She waited for that to sink in, then added, “And Vern Oldham.”

“Blanca? Oh, no.” He seemed genuinely sad, though Savannah couldn’t tell for sure through the haze of the drugs. She hated interviewing someone who was under the influence. It often dulled their responses and made them harder to read.

“What was Vern doing there?” he asked.

“Apparently, he was doing Blanca,” Dirk replied. “Did you know they had a thing going?”

“He used to drop by once in a while, when my aunt was gone somewhere. I guess he could have started something with her then.”

“What did he drop by for, Waldo?” Savannah’s wheels were turning fast. She remembered the half-smoked marijuana joint in the ashtray next to the chocolate-dipped strawberries and champagne. “Did Vern come to the property to score his pot from you?”

“Naw, he had a ’script for it, from his doctor, you know.”

“You seem to know a lot about Vern’s habits,” Dirk said. “Were you his connection? Did you sell him what his doctor wouldn’t give him? Like his coke?”

“Uh, no. I wouldn’t deal.”

“You’ve got a record for dealing,” Dirk said, standing up and walking around to stand next to him. “And we found your stash in the shed behind your house, so don’t tell me you’re above it. That’s just gonna piss me off.”

Waldo held up his cuffed hands. “Okay, okay. I used to. But that stuff you found, it’s not mine.”

“Let me guess,” Dirk said, leaning over him. “You were holding it for a friend of yours. Some guy who sits next to you in study hall.”

“Waldo, buddy,” Savannah said, “you need somebody to write you some new material. That one doesn’t fly once you’re wearin’ big-boy britches.”