Cereal Killer (16 page)

“Okay. I’ll call her now.”

Savannah glanced over at Marietta, who was obviously dying by the moment because the phone was being tied up.

“Yeah, all right,” Savannah continued. “I can come over and help you out with that... if you really need me to, that is.”

Dirk was silent for a moment. Then he said, “What?”

“My sister, Marietta, is visiting, you know, but if you really need me...”

Dirk chuckled. “Oh, I gotcha. I just got done talking to Kevin Connor. I’m outside his house now. But if you want to escape, I’ll meet you at the park in half an hour.”

“Ten minutes, you say?” She nodded vigorously. “Yes,

I can be there. See you soon.”

Marietta practically snatched the phone out of her hand the moment she had finished the call. “I hope he wasn’t trying to call while you were gabbing there,” she said.

Savannah quirked one eyebrow. “Excuse me, but I wasn’t on that long and anyway, isn’t it
my
phone?” Marietta shrugged. “Yeah, I guess, but it’s really important that he get through to me if he wants to.”

“I figure if he called and the line was busy, he’d call back, right? If he really wanted to get in touch, that is.” Oops.

Judging from the way that Marietta’s nostrils were flaring, Savannah decided that might have been the wrong thing to say.

“I gotta go.” She hurried toward the door. “Mari, j hope he calls. Tammy, go on home if you want to.”

Not wasting any time, Tammy caught up with her before she reached the sidewalk.

Savannah laughed. ‘You’re running like your drawers are on fire,” she told her. “Had enough of Marietta for one day?”

“Oh, please,” Tammy returned, “I’ve been listening to that crap all day. And don’t look now, Sister Savannah, but your shorts are smoking, too.”

Chapter

11

S
avannah found Dirk in the park, sitting at the same picnic bench where they had recently shared their lunch. It seemed like such a long time since then, she thought as she felt the weight of two lost lives bearing down on her.

Someday I've got to learn not to take this stuff personally,
she thought as she passed the sandbox and swing-set area to join him at the table.
And the day I don't take it personally is the day I should quit this business and take up needlepoint.

As she approached, he put out his cigarette with a guilty smile. A week ago he had “quit.” Again. Thanks to her constant nagging, he had gotten quite good at quitting. He did it at least once a month.

“Had to get away?” he said as she sat across from him on the opposite bench.

“Big time,” she replied. “When you called, I was sitting there praying that I’d hear from you. I owe you one.”

The smile slid off his face. “Okay, then help me with this case. I’m getting nowhere fast.”

“Did you get in touch with Tesla Montoya?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I called her back, left a message at her home phone and her cell. I even drove by her house on the way over here and nobody was home.”

“Where does she live?”

“Just around the corner. She’s got an apartment in an old house behind City Hall.”

“Hmmm... now that I think about it...” Savannah tapped her nails on the picnic table top. “She called a doctor after she called you. His name is Pappas. I think she was going to his office. Maybe she’s still there.”

Dirk reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out his cell phone. “I hate to bother anybody who’s in the middle of a doctor’s appointment,” he said, “but if you think she’s really got something...”

“She sounded pretty serious about wanting to talk to you. And she said something about nobody being able to help the situation—except for her.”

Dirk punched some numbers into the phone. “Coulter here,” he said. “I need an address on a Dr. Pappas.” He made a face. “I don’t know if he’s local or not. Try for a local listing and then spread out. Sheez. Not likely to make detective anytime soon, are you, Sherlock?” Covering the phone with his hand, he said, “I don’t know where the department gets these jokers. They couldn’t find their butts with their hands cuffed behind ’em.”

“So, next time, don’t call the station house, just dial 411 for Directory Assistance like everybody else in the world.” He looked at her as though she’d suddenly sprouted another head, then grunted. “Hurrumph. Don’t interrupt me when I’m talkin’.”

A second later, he pulled out a small notebook and pen and started scribbling. “Okay, 452 Santa Barbara Avenue. Thanks. Now, was that so hard?”

He hung up and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Let’s go,” he said. “It’s over by the hospital.”

As they were walking across the grass to his Buick, he suddenly stopped and gave her a funny, searching look.

Long ago, Savannah had decided that Dirk had a problem with multitasking... like walking and talking at the same time. It was a guy thing.

“Will they really give you an address if you call regular ol’ Directory Assistance?”

“Sometimes. But you’ve gotta ask nice,” she told him. He thought it over, grumbled a bit, shook his head, and started walking again.

“Yeah...” she said, catching up to him. ‘You’d probably have more luck with the station.”

Like many of the physicians in San Carmelita, Dr. Pappas conducted his practice in one of the dreary, generic office buildings that surrounded Community General Hospital. The no-frills structures with their flat roofs, faded paint, and empty flower beds did little to cheer the patients who visited the obstetricians, dentists, chiropractors, podiatrists, and proctologists who practiced there.

Dr. Pappas’s shingle on his dingy front door identified him as a weight-loss specialist.

“Big surprise there,” Savannah remarked as she pointed out the sign to Dirk. “Do you see a recurring theme with these women?”

‘Yeah, they’re all nuts when it comes to their weight.” He gave a contemptuous little snort. ‘You don’t see us guys obsessing about the size of
our
butts.”

She glanced down at his tummy which, over the years she had known him, had definitely expanded. It wasn’t exactly lapping over his belt, but if he kept eating half a dozen doughnuts for breakfast and two Jumbo Bonanza Burgers for lunch, it soon would.

And it didn’t matter one diddly-do to her.

Dirk was Dirk, no matter the size of his belly. It would never occur to her to evaluate a friend according to their weight.

And she didn’t know many woman who would judge another person by size. So, why did they judge themselves so harshly?

“Girls have to get smart about weight,” she muttered as they entered the office.

“Yep. And they’ve gotta stop worrying about what us guys think, too. A lot of us like a broad with some junk in the trunk.”

“Junk
in the
trunk?”
She didn’t know whether to hit him or kiss him... a common dilemma with Dirk.

So, as usual, she ignored him.

They walked into a crowded waiting room and looked around. As Dirk might have predicted, they were all females, in every size and shape imaginable. But the pretty Latin model wasn’t among them.

Dirk gave Savannah a questioning look, and she shook her head. He walked up to the receptionist’s window and discreetly flashed his badge. “Is Tesla Montoya in with the doctor?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

The sweet-faced nurse behind the glass instantly dropped her sweet face. “No, she’s not,” she snapped. “She hasn’t shown up, and we were expecting her over an hour ago. Didn’t even call to cancel.”

Savannah felt her stomach sink. One glance at Dirk’s face told her that he was feeling the same.

“So, Montoya had an appointment?” he asked the nurse.

“No. She called and asked us to fit her in. Then she didn’t even show. Just wait until the next time she wants to come in without an appointment.”

Dirk glanced back at the crowded waiting room. “Yeah, heaven knows how long she’d have to hang around, cooling her heels, if she didn’t have an appointment.”

Savannah reached for Dirk’s arm and pulled him away from the window. “Thank you,” she told the nurse. “Have a good day.”

Once outside the office, standing in the courtyard with its flowerless flower boxes and cracked sidewalks, Dirk shook her hand off his arm and said, “Did that Montoya chick seem like somebody who wouldn’t show up for an appointment without calling?”

“Nope.”

“That’s what I figured.”

He took out his phone and his notebook and punched in a number. After a few rings, he said, “Ms. Montoya, this is Detective Coulter again. Call me as soon as you get this. It’s very important that I talk to you right away.” Then he hung up and turned to Savannah. “What now?” Savannah’s mind raced. “We’ve got to find her, before...”

She couldn’t say it.

‘Yeah,” he said. “Before.”

“Back to her house?”

He shook his head. “We’re not going to find her there.”

‘You got any better ideas of where to look?”

This time he took
her
arm. “Let’s go,” he said, propelling her toward the parking lot. “She’s not going to be there, but if we’re lucky, at least maybe the floor won’t be freshly mopped.”

“One can always hope.”

No doubt the old house on the hill above City Hall had been lovely in its day. With its high-pitched roof, gables, and ornate gingerbread trim, the turn-of-the-century “painted lady” looked as if she needed a new coat of lipstick and rouge.

With illusions of herself as a renovator/decorator, Savannah would have loved to get her hands on something like that house, to restore it to all of its former grandeur. But not having at least a cool million socked away for such a time-consuming venture, not to mention the time and energy to spend the next ten years cleaning, scraping, and painting, she had decided to stick with her own little house.

When the burning desire to refurbish something became overwhelming—usually after watching a show on the Home & Garden TV channel—she reminded herself of the leak under her kitchen sink, and that was usually enough to stifle the urge.

But she couldn’t help saying, “Beautiful old house,” as they walked up the sidewalk to the front door.

“Eh, it’s a dump. You couldn’t give me a mess like this.”

Savannah thought of his rusted house trailer and the yard that surrounded it—a bed of gravel. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it and swallowed the comment.

Sometimes she was just in the mood to be kind.

“She lives in the back,” he said, leading Savannah to the right and along the wide veranda that wrapped all the way around the house.

At the back of the home, a quaint Dutch door bore a brass plaque with the letter B scrolled on it. The window in the upper half of the door was covered by a lace curtain. On either side of the door, the window drapes were drawn.

“Looks like it did when I was here before,” Dirk said, tapping his knuckles on the window glass. “This was a waste of time.”

“Probably, but you’ve gotta start somewhere,” Savannah replied—the sunbeam forever trying to penetrate his clouds of doom and gloom. It was a thankless task, one that she couldn’t seem to break herself of doing.

When no one answered his knock, he hammered his fist on the lower wooden half.

Other than a dog who started barking in the yard next door, there was no response.

“Try the door,” Savannah said, nudging him with her elbow.

“Oh, yeah, right. We’re gonna get lucky two times in a row...

He jiggled the knob, but it was locked.

“That’s it,” she said. “A no-go.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

Savannah gave him a suspicious side glance. There was no mistaking the mischievous tone in his voice. The one he always got just before he did something that would eventually land him on the police chief s carpet.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, cocking his head sideways and listening intently.

Savannah grinned. They had played this game before, but not for a while. You had to rotate games pretty frequently. Police Chief Hillquist might be a jerk, but he wasn’t stupid.

‘Yeah, I think I did,” she said, cupping her hand behind her right ear. “Sounded like somebody calling out for help to me.”

“That’s what it sounded like to me, too. I think we’d better break in.”

“And make it snappy.”

“Chiefs gonna be pissed,” he said as he pulled his jacket sleeve down over his hand.

‘Yeah, well... wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last.”

With hardly any force at all, Dirk gave the lower right-hand glass panel one sharp rap, and it shattered.

“What’s the point of even locking your door when you’ve got glass three inches from the knob?” she said as he carefully reached inside and opened the door.