A Decadent Way to Die (26 page)

“All the time.”

They walked over to the bar, where a gal with hair the color of the walls, tables, and chairs was slicing a pile of lemons and limes.

Savannah sidled up to the bar. “Hi.”

“We’re not open yet,” the girl said.

“No problem. We’re not drinking yet,” Savannah replied. “But I’ll bet you make a wicked Bloody Mary in here.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Can we ask you a couple of questions?”

Dirk pulled out his badge and passed it under her nose.

Her eyes lit up. She pushed the fruit away. “You mean, like, when cops walk into a bar and ask the bartenders about people who come into the bar and the cops pay them money for answering? That kind of questions?”

Dirk scowled as he dug a couple of bills out of his pocket and laid them down. “Yeah. The kind where the bartender spills her guts and gives the cop his money’s worth.”

“Okay, shoot.”

Savannah pointed to a poster on the wall behind the bar with the same hideous Poison Nails logo she had seen on the side of Kyd’s van. “They play here often?” she asked.

“Oh yeah. They’re everybody’s favorite! They’re here every weekend and sometimes during the week. We sell their CDs and everything.” She reached behind the counter, pulled out a CD, and slid it across the bar.

Savannah picked it up and scanned the list of titles. It read like a roster of slice-and-dice horror flicks.

“Were they here this past Saturday night?” Dirk asked.

“Sure. They play here every Saturday night. And even when they’re not playing, they come by and hang out.”

“How often does Kyd drop in?” Savannah asked.

“Oh, he’s in two, three times a week with his girlfriend. He’s so cool. I love his hair. He likes mine, too. He’s into redheads.”

“Apparently so,” Savannah said. “Emma’s isn’t as red as yours, but—”

“Who’s Emma?”

“His girlfriend.”

“His girlfriend’s name isn’t Emma, and she’s certainly not a redhead. She’s a blonde … very proud of all her highlights … and her fake boobs … and her expensive, old-lady clothes. She stands out like a sore thumb in this place.”

She made a face like she had just sucked on one of her freshly cut lemon wedges. “I don’t know what he sees in her. She’s old enough to be his mother and then some. It’s probably her money. He said she’s coming into some big money soon, and she’s going to finance his career. She’s already produced a CD for them.”

Savannah felt something rising in her spirit that felt effervescent, like a nice champagne. She glanced at Dirk and saw a smile on his face that told her he was feeling the same thing.

“You wouldn’t happen to know the name of this older girlfriend of his, would you?” she asked.

“Sure. Her name is Ada.” She looked under the bar and found yet another CD. She handed it to Savannah. “This is the one she produced. It’s a completely different style than they usually do. I hate it. Figures she’d produce something stupid like that.”

Dirk leaned halfway across the bar, giving the gal one of his gunfighter glares, as Savannah called them. “Are you absolutely, positively sure that Kyd was here last Saturday night. All night?”

“No.”

“No, you aren’t sure?” Savannah asked.

“No, he wasn’t here.”

Savannah’s thoughts spun around in a circle. “But you said Poison Nails played.”

“They did. But Kyd called that afternoon and said he had an upset stomach and couldn’t make it. Antonio sat in for him.”

Savannah turned to Dirk, a smirk on her face. “So, tell me, big boy,” she said. “Are you glad you came to the stinkin’ valley now?”

Chapter 24

T
his time it was Kyd’s turn to sweat in the no-air-conditioning interrogation room of the San Carmelita police station. And he wasn’t doing any better than his buddy, Waldo, had.

Even copious amounts of ultra-gel weren’t standing up to the heat. His hair was plastered flat against his head, and he was as wet with perspiration and as fidgety as his girlfriend had been earlier that morning. Though Savannah was pretty sure his condition wasn’t the result of a narcotic high.

Kyd of the Poison Nails didn’t appear high at all. Apparently, being suspected in a double homicide was a major buzz kill.

“You can sit there and lie all day long and piss off Detective Coulter here if you want to, Kyd,” Savannah was telling him. “But your sugar momma already gave you up. We just interrogated her in a room down the hall, and she told us the whole thing.”

“Well,” Dirk said, “that’s half true. She told us what you did. She didn’t come clean about how she was involved.”

“She left you holding the bag, Kyd, my man,” Savannah told him. “She’s saying it was your idea from the first.”

“It was not!” Kyd’s eyes were practically bugging out of his head.

Savannah loved it when they looked like a fly that had just been swatted.

“She says it was.” Dirk leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands casually behind his head. “Yes, she’s saying you tried to kill the old lady. You dug the hole with the shovel so that she’d hit it and go off the cliff.”

“Pretty smart,” Savannah added, “wiping off all the prints and then sticking it in Waldo’s shed, so that if anybody got blamed for it, it’d be him. By the way, we’re processing the rock with the peace sign and the hidden key. Did Ada remind you to wipe your prints off those, too?”

“She didn’t tell me … I … never mind.”

Savannah stifled a chuckle. From the moment he had sat down, they had told him nothing but lies. But he was buying it all. It was like shooting catfish in a barrel, only without feeling sorry for the fish.

“She told us you tried to kill her aunt for her,” Dirk said. “She even gave you up for murdering Blanca and Vern. But she said you just killed them for the fun of it, because you’re nothing but a cold-blooded bastard.”

“I am not!” Kyd shot up out of his chair.

Dirk reached across the table, put a big hand on his shoulder, and shoved him back down.

Savannah never ceased to marvel at how, no matter how vicious and cold-blooded certain criminals might be, they never wanted to be thought of as such. Over the years, she had heard the most contrived, totally illogical rationalizations for the most heinous crimes. But those who embraced their flimsy excuses did so with a passion.

Savannah suspected it had something to do with being able to sleep at night and look in a mirror every morning. Even coldblooded bastards had to live with themselves.

Dirk turned to Savannah. “See there? He’s not as bad as you thought. I told you it was all Ada’s idea. I knew she was no-good the moment I laid eyes on her.”

“She’s not!” Kyd agreed, sensing an ally. “She’s the one behind this. It was all her idea!”

“I told you so,” Dirk said to Savannah, a twinkle in his eyes. “I told you she was laying it all on this guy, when it was her who talked him into it. She’s the primary offender here. He’s just a secondary offender at most.”

She nodded solemnly. “And you should remember that when you write up your report, Detective.”

“Oh, I will.” He turned back to Kyd, who was looking much encouraged at his turn of good fortune. “So, Kyd, the only thing left to clear this whole thing up is why she had you throw that boom box in the spa in the first place. You know her better than we do. Help us out here. What would you say was her motive for that?”

Kyd looked right and left, as though expecting a vengeful Ada to appear over one of his shoulders. “I think,” he said, “it was because she thought it was her aunt in the tub with Vern. Helene was always in the tub at that time of night.”

“Ah, that makes perfect sense,” Savannah said.

“It does. Thank you.” Dirk gave him an encouraging, grateful smile. “And if Ada had already planned for you to electrocute her aunt, even before she caught her boyfriend in the tub, too, that would be premeditated murder on Ada’s part.”

“Oh, come on. She’s not
that
cold,” Savannah said. “She told me that Kyd here decided to do it on the spot.”

“I did not! She was planning that for days, telling me to get an extension cord for the boom box and where to plug it in and how to stand behind those bushes there by the spa so her aunt wouldn’t see me.”

“Then what was Vern, a bonus?” Dirk asked. “She wanted you to do her aunt, but then when she realized her boyfriend was in the tub, too, she figured, what the heck? Kill two birds with one boom box?”

Kyd gave him a suspicious look. “If that’s what she did, would that be better for me, or worse?”

“Oh, much better,” Dirk assured him. “Then she’d be even more of the primary offender, and you’d be like … a tertiary offender. That’s a lot better than a secondary offender.”

“Okay. Then, yeah … that’s what happened.”

Dirk stood, walked over to a file cabinet and opened the top drawer. He took out a yellow legal pad and a pencil. “But,” he said, “for me to be able to make this all a matter of record, you need to get it down on paper. Otherwise, she could still dispute everything you’ve told us and blame it all on you.”

“All right. I will. But you have to show it to her after I write it. I want her to know I was too smart for her.”

“Oh, we’ll show it to her,” Savannah said as she watched him start to scrawl his words across the paper. “We certainly will.”

Half an hour later, much to his surprise, Kyd was behind bars, and his written confession was securely sealed in an evidence envelope … having first been photocopied for Ada’s sake.

Savannah and Dirk were strolling down the hallway, on their way out of the station.

“What the hell,” she said, “is a tertiary offender?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just made it up. Pretty good for your run-of-the-mill blue-collar sorta guy, huh?”

She laughed, shook her head, and laced her arm through his. “Do you ever check to see if your nose is growing?”

“I file it down every morning when I shave.”

When Dirk knocked on Ada Fischer’s apartment door, he used his most officious, San Carmelita Police Department knock. It was the one that could be heard the first time, through every room of any residence. When Dirk used his cop knock, even the neighbors heard.

Savannah couldn’t blame Ada for leaving the security chain on when she answered.

She peeked out of the five-inch opening and looked quite dismayed and annoyed when she saw them.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

“Oh, Ada,” Savannah said. “We want you.”

“Are you going to take the word of a drugged-out rock musician with a record over mine?” Ada stood in the middle of her living room, hands on her hips, glaring at Savannah and Dirk.

Even under the strained circumstances, Savannah couldn’t help noticing the formfitting purple leopard jumpsuit she was wearing. Savannah couldn’t recall seeing an outfit like that one for the past twenty years. And she hoped that after today, she’d have another fortunate twenty-year stretch without seeing another one.

It did show off Ada’s nipped and tucked body to perfection though.

Savannah glanced at Dirk and saw that he was staring straight at Ada’s face, his eyes not wavering one bit. She had seen him do that many times and admired his self-control. He would watch a cute bikini priss by on the beach, like any other guy, but when he was on duty, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter was the consummate professional and refrained from ogling.

“Hey, some of my favorite people are rock musicians,” Savannah told her. “And a lot of them are probably drugged-out half the time. Doesn’t make them liars.”

“We have evidence that this particular rocker is telling the truth about your involvement in those murders,” Dirk told her.

“I don’t even know Emma’s idiot boyfriend. I think I met him once when she brought him to the offices to see Helene.”

“Oh, you’ve met him way more than once,” Dirk said. “I’ll bet there’s a ton of Hell’s Inferno customers who would testify they saw you two smooching in there.”

“One little red-haired bartender in particular who’s got her eye on Kyd and is wondering what he sees in you,” Savannah added. “And that reminds me …”

She reached into her purse and pulled out the CD the barkeep had sold her. She held it out to Ada, who reluctantly took it.

“The fifth song on that,” Savannah said, “is ‘Take Five,’ which just happens to be my favorite jazz tune of all time. It’s actually a very nice version of it. That nitwit Kyd is a halfway decent guitarist after all.”

Ada shoved the CD back at her. “What does that have to do with me?”

“You were playing it on your stereo system when I was here the other day,” Savannah said with a smile. “You were playing a song on a CD that you produced, performed by a guy you’ve met maybe once? I don’t think so.”

“People don’t lie to the cops unless they have a reason to,” Dirk told her. “And when they do, it’s usually because they’re guilty of something.”

“I’ve had nothing to do with Kyd or anything illegal that he may have done,” she protested, flipping her hair—and hair extensions—over her shoulder.

“Funny,” Dirk said as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs, “that’s what he said about you … at first … before he gave us a full written confession.”

“I want a lawyer!” Ada said as he clamped the cuffs onto her wrists. “I want to see that damned confession.”

“Then get yourself a lawyer,” Dirk said. “Maybe we’ll let him see the confession.”

Savannah walked along with them to the waiting patrol car in the apartment building’s parking lot and watched as Dirk tucked an unhappy Ada into the backseat.

“He was so quick to sell her out,” he said as they returned to his Buick.

“So much for true love. And once it sinks in on her that we’ve really got her, she’s gonna blame everything on him.”

“Sure makes our job a lot easier.”

“Yeah,” Savannah said, watching the unit drive away with its prisoner glaring at them through the back window. “If people ever start treating each other decent in this world, Lord help us. We’ll actually have to work for a living.”

They looked at each other and in unison said, “Heaven forbid.”

The next morning, when the receptionist at Strauss Doll Works escorted Savannah back to Helene’s office, he was far more polite, even personable.

“I hear that Ms. Fischer was arrested last night,” he whispered as they walked down the hallway, passing one office door after another. “I even heard that she tried to kill Ms. Helene. Is that true?”

“Now, how would I know a thing like that?” Savannah said, raising one eyebrow.

“I heard you’re the private investigator who solved the case.”

“Don’t believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. I’m only one of several people who solved this case.”

“Then Ms. Fischer
was
arrested?”

“I’m nothing if not discreet. You’re just going to have to read your newspaper, young man.” Savannah reached over and patted him on the front of his well pressed shirt. “Now, if I can find a murderer, I can find my way to an office I’ve already visited. Thank you for your company.”

She left him and hurried on down the hallway to Helene’s office. When she knocked, she heard an instant and cheerful, “Come in.”

Entering, she saw Helene rising from her desk.

The lady hurried to her and folded her close in a warm hug. “My dear Savannah,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank you!”

“So, you’ve heard?”

“My extremely repentant granddaughter called me first thing this morning and filled me in on all the details.” Helene invited her to sit at the desk’s side chair.

Savannah took the seat and watched as Helene glided back to her desk. She couldn’t help hoping that she would be that graceful when she was Helene’s age.

“I told Emma,” Helene continued, “that guy was a no-good bum. But of course, the youngsters never believe us old-timers.”

“Did you believe your grandmother when you were Emma’s age?”

“Not on your life. I was sure she was cracked.” Helene’s green eyes glowed with an affectionate warmth as she looked into Savannah’s. “But you revere your grandmother, don’t you?”

“I do. I have to. If I didn’t, she’d take a hickory switch to my behind.”

Both women laughed.