Cereal Killer (28 page)

Savannah parked near the Lexus, got out, and walked up to the house. On the warped, tilting front porch sat a half-rotten sofa, whose cushions were sprouting tufts of yellowed stuffing. And long before she got to the door, the smell of stale alcohol caused Savannah to breathe shallowly.

Rapping on the rusty screen door, she called out, “Desiree? Yoo-hoo, Desiree?”

The wooden door was open, but the inside of the house was so dark and the screen so dirty that she couldn’t see in. At first, she thought no one was home, but then she heard a shuffling and some mumbled objections as someone came toward her.

“What? Who is it?” asked a grumpy voice that Savannah recognized, even though it wasn’t laced with the heavy French accent

When the door finally opened and the woman stuck her head outside, Savannah couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. If she had passed this person on a city street, she never would have recognized her as the attractive woman who had been the star of the photo shoot.

The short, sassy curls had disappeared, and her hair fell in lank, oily strands. Her complexion looked more sallow than fair, and dark smudges of mascara ringed her eyes. The shapeless gray sweatsuit she wore hung on her body, making her look much heavier than she was, and the front of the shirt was stained with coffee spills.

She squinted against the sunlight as she peered at Savannah. At first she looked confused, but upon recognizing Savannah, her expression quickly changed to one of annoyance.

“What do
you
want?” she said. “I don’t have time for visitors right now. I’m busy.”

“So am I,” Savannah replied smoothly. “I’m working. And right now my job is talking to you.”

Desiree shook her head. “What?”

“Actually, my name is Savannah, not Susan, and I’m not a model...” Savannah began.

“Oh, really?” She gave an unpleasant snort “Gee, I never would’ve guessed.”

Savannah continued, undeterred. “I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking into these unfortunate deaths... and, of course, Tesla’s disappearance.”

“Have they found her yet?”

“Not yet.”

“They probably won’t either. Not alive, anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

Desiree went from “barely even concerned” to “acutely alert” in two seconds. “No reason,” she said defensively. “I just figure she’s probably dead, considering that she’s missing and because of what happened to Cait and Kameeka.”

She might be a slob when she's off duty,
Savannah thought,
but she's no mental slouch.
Desiree La Port was cunning and clever in a street-smart sort of way. There was an animal wariness in her eyes that Savannah had seen many times in hardened criminals.

Desiree stepped outside, letting the door slam behind her, then walked over and sat down on the old, dirty sofa. Curling one foot under her, she reached into her pants pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Can you think of anyone who would want to see those girls dead?” Savannah asked, glad that—at least for the moment—Desiree seemed willing to talk.

Lighting her cigarette and taking a long drag, she said, “Yeah, I guess a lot of people would want to see them gone.”

“Why?”

“They’re at the top of their game. Being at the top is dangerous. Isn’t it?”

Savannah studied her carefully to see if she was serious. She was. “I suppose it might be dangerous, careerwise,” Savannah said. “But it shouldn’t be life-threatening.”

‘You just never know.” She released twin streams of smoke from her nostrils. “And then there’s Leah and Kevin.”

“What about Leah and Kevin?”

“They were both about to get dumped. Nobody likes to get dumped.”

“Dumped? How?”

“All three of those girls were going to leave Leah and go to another agency. They told her so a couple of days before Cait died.”

Okay,
Savannah thought,
that validates what Kevin said. And speaking of Kevin...

“How was Kevin about to get dumped?”

“Cait found out about his new girlfriend, and she told him it was over unless he ended the affair, once and for all.”

“But wasn’t she seeing someone on the side, too? I thought they had an open marriage.”

Desiree gave a derisive sniff. ‘Yeah, right. Kevin liked to call it that so he could justify his messing around. Cait had a couple of affairs over the years, but that was water under the bridge. They’d both done the forgive-and-forget business and agreed to be faithful from then on. So when Cait found out about his honey there at work, she was hurt and mad. Told him that she was going to divorce him.”

“You know this for sure?”

“Yes. She said so herself. She told me and Kameeka and Tesla at a shoot about a week and a half ago. Those two told her she was doing the right thing, kicking him out, that it was high time she gave him his walking papers.”

“Did you agree with them?”

She shrugged and gave a dismissive wave with her hand and her cigarette. “I don’t know. I don’t get involved in crap like that. It’s none of my business.”

Savannah stood, watching Desiree La Port—if, indeed, her name was Desiree La Port and not something like Debbie or Linda Smith—and she wondered how much Desiree had benefited from the disappearance and deaths of her three major competitors.

“Cait’s problems with her husband might not have been your business,” Savannah said, “but I’d say that your career has made a jump forward this past week.”

Desiree dropped her spent cigarette onto the porch and stubbed it out with the toe of her house slipper. She smiled brightly, and for a moment she looked a bit like that model who had been giggling and mincing for the camera by the pool the other day.

“Oh, well.” She lit up another cigarette and took a long, long drag. She released the smoke into the air and watched it disappear on the afternoon breeze. She looked content, totally at peace with the world—almost pretty. “What can you say?” she added. “Sometimes you just get lucky.”

* * *

By the time Savannah arrived home again, it was well past her dinnertime, and she hadn’t even had lunch yet. Missing one meal could make her cranky. But doing without two in a row could plunge her into a simmering, homicidal rage.

Her mood hadn’t been improved by a quick visit to the police station to see Dirk. His disposition was as dismal as her own. He had spent hours interviewing the families of the dead and missing girls... always a depressing job.

And other than expressing their sorrow and anger, the friends and relatives had given him absolutely nothing new to aid in the investigation.

Since Dirk was a generous sort of guy, he had been kind enough to share his depression, pessimism, and ill temper with her. So by the time she pulled up to her house and saw her sister’s rental car still occupying both parking spaces in her driveway, she was solidly in a murderous state of mind.

As she walked up the sidewalk to her front door, she could hear her grandmother’s kindly voice whispering in the back of her mind.
Don
’t
kill your sister, Savannah girl, just because you've had a bad day. Strangling Marietta might seem like the thing to do, but it’s wicked.

But Gran,
she silently argued with the voice of reason,
it wasn't just a bad day. I hardly got any sleep last night, next to no food today, and Marietta's whining about men is driving me nuts. You know how she can be sometimes.

That’s true. Marietta’s a royal pain in the ass. Go ahead and kill her.
Savannah stopped cold in the middle of her porch and shook her head. That wasn’t Gran’s voice. Gran didn’t say “ass.” She probably didn’t even think it.

No doubt about it,
Savannah thought,
I’m hearing strange voices... and they don
’t
like Marietta either.

She decided she’d better get some food and some sleep in that order before barking dogs started telling her that she should dance the hootchie-kootchie naked on the courthouse steps.

But when she walked into her house, it wasn’t a whining, sniveling Marietta who was sitting on her sofa, happily chatting on the phone. It was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, sunny-faced alien who had taken over her sister’s body.

“Okay, darlin’,” she was saying. “Yes, I miss you, too. Can’t wait to see you again and... well... I can’t talk now ’cause Savannah just came in. Yeah, she’s the same as ever.” She cut a sideways look at Savannah and said, “That’s about right.”

Savannah scowled. She trusted this cheerful version of Marietta less than she had the whinin’-and-moanin’ one. At least the old one had been familiar, and as Gran said, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”

Marietta was making obscene kissy sounds into the phone. Savannah walked into the kitchen, vowing to spritz it with Lysol before she used it again. She had to eat something; she couldn’t take this... whatever it was... on an empty stomach.

“Did you eat yet?” she called back into the living room.

“No, I was waiting for you,” came the predictable answer.

“Waiting for me to cook it and serve you, is more like it,” she mumbled as she pulled a package of pork chops out of the refrigerator, along with a head of lettuce, some tomatoes, and a Bermuda onion.

Cleopatra and Diamante ran into the kitchen, tails up and waving, anticipating their evening ration of Kitten Kitties.

“Sometimes I just feel plain used,” Savannah said as they wrapped themselves around her ankles. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve got WELCOME printed across my forehead.”

No sooner had she scooped the fishy-smelling concoction into their bowls than she heard a purring sound, and it wasn’t coming from the cats. It was the sound of her cell phone buzzing in her purse on the kitchen table.

“Go away,” she told it. “Let me get a mess of pork chops and mashed potatoes in my stomach and a nap and then you can wipe your feet on the old Savannah doormat.”

She pulled her cast-iron skillet out of the oven, set it on the stove, and lit the flame under it. But as she was reaching into the cupboard for the can of shortening, the phone started to buzz again.

“Lord Almighty, there’s no rest for the weary... and apparently no dinner either,” she said as she turned off the stove, walked over to the table, and fished her phone out of her purse.

“What do you want?” she barked, expecting it to be Dirk.

Instead it was Tammy on the other end, and she sounded excited. “Oh, I’m so glad you picked up this time,” she said. “You’re not going to believe where I am.”

“Well, let me tell you where
I
am,” she said. “I’m in my kitchen, trying to make myself a bite to eat and—”

“I know.”

‘You know? How do you know?”

“I didn’t know that you were cooking, but I know you’re home because I’m parked about a block and a half from your house.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Surveillance.”

‘You’re doing surveillance on me? Tammy, I m not someone who needs to be—”

“I know, I know. I’ve been tailing Tumblety all day long. I followed him all over town early this morning and then I tailed him all the way out to Arroyo Verde and back....”

Savannah completely forgot about food or sleep as her brain began to spin. “Arroyo Verde? Today?”

“Yeah, and then he came back here to San Carmelita, and guess where he is right now?”

The hair on the back of Savannah’s neck started to prickle. “Don’t tell me....”

‘Yes. I’m sitting in my car, watching him with my binoculars. And right this very minute, that creep is peeping in your kitchen window.”

Chapter

20

I
t took every smidgen of Savannah’s self-control not to rush over to her window and confront Tumblety. But if she did that, he would simply run, and she wasn’t in the mood to let anybody get away with anything today. And especially not violating her privacy!

Calmly, she turned her back to the window and said, “Really? Now isn’t that just so-o-o-o interesting. Let’s keep talking about this.”

She strolled back to the table and picked up her purse. “I’m going to go into the living room now,” she said, “and I want you to tell me everything he does. Okay?”

Tammy assured her she would.

Her purse in one hand, the phone in the other, Savannah walked into the living room where Marietta was still chatting happily on the phone.

“Mari,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Listen close. Do exactly what I say. Okay?”

Marietta looked up at her and screwed up her face in annoyance. “Can’t you see? I’m on the phone.

“Hang up right now, and call 911. ’

“Why?”

‘Just do it.” Then, into the phone, she said, “What’s he doing now?”