A Decadent Way to Die (4 page)

The evil gleam that lit her green eyes sent a chill through Savannah. She’d seen that look many times before … being from the South, where sweet revenge was more popular and more frequently served than sweet tea.

“Let me catch them for you,” Savannah said with an equally wicked tone in her voice. “It’s what I do for a living, and—as a woman who knows her own talents—I can say, I’m very good at it. Once I’ve got them, I’ll hand them over to you. What you do with them … that’s up to you.”

Helene thought about it, then a smile crossed her face. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, sweet and warm, like her apple strudel. It was a cold, nasty smile, and for a heartbeat, Savannah felt half sorry for whoever was behind this skullduggery.

But only
half
sorry.

And only for one heartbeat.

Chapter 3

“T
hank you for being willing to bring me here,” Savannah said as she, Emma, and Helene stood at the edge of the cliff, staring down at the scene of Helene’s humiliation. “I know it isn’t easy for you.”

“You have no idea,” Helene replied as she gingerly peeped over the precipice. “Just seeing this place again brings it all back. Me hanging there, my jacket caught on that branch.”

She pointed to a half-broken tree limb jutting out of the rocky cliff covered with sage scrub brush.

“I dangled there like an idiot, screaming bloody murder, waiting for that branch to crack any minute and send me straight into the hereafter.”

Emma shuddered. “Just thinking about it scares me to death.”

As Savannah studied the cliff, she saw numerous areas below the protruding limb where the sage bushes had been broken and the rocks dislodged.

“Your motor scooter went down the cliff with you?” she asked.

“Sure,” Helene replied. “I was still sitting on it when I headed over the edge. The limb caught me, and the bike kept going … landed there on the beach by those big rocks.”

“Where is it now?”

“The junkyard,” Emma said. “Waldo and Tiago drove down the beach and got it, brought it back for Oma.”

“Brought it back in pieces, you mean,” Helene said, shaking her head sadly. “I really liked that bike, too. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as the Harley, but …”

“Who are Waldo and Tiago?” Savannah asked.

“Waldo is my great-nephew,” Helene told her. “My good-for-nothing niece’s boy. He lives here on the estate and helps me out. He’s a nice young man.”

Savannah couldn’t help but notice Emma’s eye roll. Apparently, Emma’s estimation of Waldo’s worth wasn’t quite so lofty as Helene’s.

“And Tiago Medina is my gardener,” Helene continued. “Thank goodness for Tiago. He’s the one who heard me hollering. He risked his life climbing down the cliff to pull me off that branch.”

This time Emma agreed, nodding vigorously. “Tiago’s a gem. He’s the one who’s priceless around here, not that nitwit Waldo.”

“Did I hear my name mentioned …” said a male voice behind them, “… and not in a very nice way?”

They turned around to see a man in his early thirties, wearing stylishly tattered shorts and a faded surfer tee-shirt. His long blond hair hung in his eyes, sun-fried and frizzled. His darkly tanned face was already creased with deep wrinkles. He had the same startlingly green eyes as Helene. But they lacked her sparkle of wit and intelligence.

Briefly, Savannah felt a pang of sympathy for him. It wouldn’t be easy being born into a highly successful family of attractive, brilliant people, having less than your share of looks, brain, and charm. Not to mention being stuck with the name Waldo.

Maybe he was kind. And as Granny Reid always said, “Kind’s more important than pretty’ll ever be.”

“I heard you call me a nitwit,” he told Emma. “That’s pretty funny, coming from a girl so ugly that she has to
pay
guys to go out with her.”

Okay
, Savannah thought,
so much for the “kind” theory
.

“Stop it!” Helene snapped. “We’re family, for heaven’s sake! You two be nice to each other, or I’ll slap you down … both of you!”

Savannah stifled a giggle, thinking that was exactly the sort of threat and logic that Granny Reid was famous for.

“My name is Savannah,” she said, extending her hand to Waldo. She started to add that she was a friend of Emma’s but thought better of it. “I’m visiting your aunt today. She was just telling me what a fright she had, going off this cliff.”

“Yeah, that was a bummer,” Waldo said, shaking his mop head. “I hate to say it, Oma, but Mom told you to stop riding bikes. You aren’t as young as you used to be and—”

“And you won’t go adding insult to injury if you know what’s good for you,” Helene said, cutting him off sharply. “My age had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident. Anybody could have gone off that cliff … even you.”

“Especially you,” Emma mumbled, “drunk or stoned all the time like you are….”

Waldo shot her a dark look.

“Where were you when your aunt had her accident?” Savannah asked.

“What do you mean? Like do I have an alibi or something?” Waldo’s green eyes squinted. “Do I need an alibi?”

“Who said anything about an alibi?” Savannah shrugged. “I was just making small talk. Like, ‘Where were you when you heard Elvis died …?’”

“I think I was a baby.”

“Oh, yeah.” She sighed. “They keep making the younger generation younger and younger.” She drew a deep breath and turned to Helene. “What time of day was your accident?”

“About ten fifteen in the morning. I always ride my bike to the main road to get the mail from the mailbox.”

Savannah turned to Emma. “Where were you at ten fifteen the morning of your grandmother’s mishap?”

“I was at home with my boyfriend, Kyd. He lives with me now. We were probably still in bed. He had a gig the night before, so we were sleeping in. He’s a musician.”

“Oh, please!” Helene put her hands over her ears. “You’re going to give me a headache, just thinking about it!”

Savannah turned back to Waldo. Try, try, try again. “And where were
you
at ten fifteen that morning?” she asked slowly, deliberately, as though talking to a three-year-old.

“Sleeping,” Emma piped up. “That’s all he ever does—sleep and smoke pot and drink beer and look at porn on his computer and play video games. And that’s what he’s going to be doing until he’s sixty-five. The big question is: What’s he going to do when he retires? What’ll he do with all his spare time, when he’s stopped doing absolutely
nothing
?”

Suddenly, Savannah felt exhausted, empty. As though somebody had pulled a plug from the bottom of her right foot and all her energy had flowed out and swirled down some cosmic drain hole.

Donning her most patient look—the one she usually wore while trying to resist the urge to do someone bodily harm—she laced her arm through Waldo’s and led him a few steps away from the two women.

“Waldo, my man,” she said, “you’ve got some mighty critical womenfolk in your inner family circle.”

“No kidding.” He bobbed his blond head vigorously. “And Emma’s not nearly as bad as my mom. Man, she’s ragging on me day and night about getting a job or going to school or making something of myself.”

“She hasn’t figured out how pointless that is, huh?”

“Nope. I keep waiting for her to get it through her thick head, but …”

“Moms.” Savannah gave him a sympathetic tsk-tsk and shook her head. “Always pushing their kids to succeed. Don’t they know the damage they do?”

“Yeah.”

Savannah guided him a few feet farther down the path and patted his arm companionably. He responded to the female attention with the shy grin of a guy who didn’t get much.

“Do you normally sleep in,” she asked him, “like Emma said? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Who wouldn’t if they could?”

He nodded. “Yeah. But I stay up late at night. It’s not like I’m not doin’ nothin’ with my life.”

“Of course not. And the morning your aunt had her accident, do you think you slept in then, too, or …”

“I guess so. I don’t remember doing anything different.”

“How did you find out about her mishap?”

“The siren woke me up. I looked out the window of my house over there”—he pointed through the trees, and Savannah could just see the top of the roof of a tiny cottage that reminded her of a
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
book her granny had read to them—“and I saw the ambulance coming down the road. They stopped there by the cliff and then I saw her laying on the ground, with Tiago kneeling next to her. I knew it wasn’t good.”

“That must have been a shock to the system, seeing that,” Savannah said, studying his face closely.

“Oh, it was! I thought for sure she was a goner!”

“You and your aunt pretty close, are you?”

“She’s the only person in the world who loves me,” he said with a candor that took Savannah by surprise. “My mother hates me. Emma does, too. And I’ve sorta run out of friends the last few years.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Savannah looked into his green eyes and saw a lot of pain. “Any particular reason why your friends flew the coop?”

“I only had two to start with. One of ’em got married and his new wife doesn’t want him hanging out with me anymore … says I’m a loser. The other friend OD’d.”

“Waldo, that’s a hard-luck tale if ever I heard one,” Savannah said. But her tone lacked the ring of sincerity, because she was distracted.

Looking down at the path, about three feet from where they stood, she had noticed something strange.

Wanting to investigate without an audience, she took Waldo by the arm and led him back toward his aunt and Emma. “Thank you for that information,” she told him as she pulled a small notebook and pen from her purse. “If I have any other questions and need to call you, where can I reach you?”

He gave her his email address and, at her prompting, supplied a phone number, as well. She jotted them down.

Turning to Helene and Emma, she said, “I won’t keep y’all out here any longer. I reckon you’ve got things to do and places to be.”

“I certainly do,” Helene said. She turned to Waldo, “I have to go see that mother of yours and give her a piece of my mind about that ridiculous new doll she’s planning. Go take a shower. I want you to drive me to the office.”

He mumbled something that sounded like a halfhearted objection, then moped down the path toward the cottage among the trees.

Helene extended her hand to Savannah. “I’m sorry I wasn’t very hospitable when you first got here. Next time we’ll skip the gun and go straight to the strudel.”

Savannah gave the woman’s hand an affectionate squeeze and smiled. “That sounds like an excellent plan. And one of these days, you’ll have to come to my house and sample my apple pie and homemade ice cream.”

Helene’s green eyes twinkled. “I’ve worked eighty years on my strudel recipe. Do you really think you can top it?”

“Granny Reid’s older than you, and it’s her recipe. So, maybe …”

“We shall see. We shall see.”

“I get to judge that contest.” Emma nodded toward the main house. “So, Savannah, are you ready for me to take you home?”

Savannah thought of what she’d seen on the path and shook her head. “Actually, I think I can arrange my own ride back home,” she told Emma. “And, if you don’t mind, Helene, I’d like to spend a little time here on your property, just looking around a bit. Would that be okay?”

“Poking around is more like it,” Helene replied.

Savannah grinned. “Looking, poking, nosing around … pretty much the same thing in my neck of the woods.”

“Okay. Stay as long as you like.”

Savannah decided to press her luck. “And is there any way that I could get back into the house … if you’re gone and there was something I really wanted to look at … say … in your kitchen.”

Helene raised one eyebrow. “If you’re thinking of snooping around for my strudel recipe, don’t waste your time. The only copy of it is in my head.”

“Actually,” Savannah replied, “I’m more interested in your cocoa tin … and sugar canister … and …”

“I suppose. If you want to go into the house after I’m gone, ask Tiago, the gardener, to let you in. Tell him I said you are family now. His cottage is down the road, past Waldo’s.” Helene gave her a sly little grin. “I put vanilla in my hot chocolate, too,” she said. “And a pinch of salt.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And milk and …”

“Milk?” Helene sniffed. “Milk is for wimps. Half-and-half.”

“Ahhh … a woman after my own heart.”

Once Helene and Emma were gone, and Savannah was certain she was alone, she walked back down the path and knelt on one knee next to the suspicious area she had noticed before.

She poked at the traffic-hardened dirt with one finger, then tested the section next to it.

Slowly, she stood and dusted off her hand.

She looked at the path … the cliff where Helene Strauss had nearly met her death.

Savannah’s eyes went cold, her face hard, as she took her cell phone from her purse and called Dirk.

“Hi,” she said. “I need you.”

“And how many times a day do women tell me that?”

He must be finished doing the paperwork on the Murphy brothers,
she thought. Dirk never flirted—or even cracked a grin, for that matter—when he was at his desk.