Killer Honeymoon (15 page)

“You were out running errands in a cab?” Ryan asked. “You should have asked one of us to drive you.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I made good friends with my driver. He was a nice feller. Named Jesus, but pronounced it ‘Hay-soos.’ Reckon you gotta be a decent person if you’ve got a name like that.”

“I thought you were out by the pool reading your paper,” Waycross told her.

“And I thought you were out taking a stroll somewhere in the neighborhood,” Tammy added.

“No time for that rigmarole when the kitchen’s got no grits in it,” Gran replied. “That’s not all I did either. Wait’ll you see what I’ve got for you.”

“The fixin’s for cornbread?” Savannah guessed.

“Oh, way better than that.”

Her groceries put away, Granny hurried over to the table and pulled her cell phone out of her purse.

She was grinning so broadly that Savannah knew her surprise was going to be something of consequence. Gran had lived too long to get excited or ruffled over trivialities.

“Whatcha got there, Gran?” Dirk asked as she held the phone between him and Savannah so they could see the small screen.

“Just some pictures I took.”

Savannah leaned over and squinted at the phone, half-expecting to see a touristy picture of seagulls or boats in the harbor. But it was of a car. A large black sedan. With someone in it.

“How do I send this thing to you so you can see it there on your computer?” Gran asked Tammy.

Tammy reached for the phone. “May I?”

“Sure.” Gran placed it in her hand.

Tammy’s thumbs flew over the tiny keyboard.

They heard a couple of beeps and a catchy five-note tune. Then Tammy handed it back to Gran.

Tammy turned back to her computer, brought up a new window, and clicked. There was Gran’s picture on the screen, large enough to see all the details.

“It’s that contrary chief of police, La Cross,” Savannah said. “I’d know her sour puss anywhere.”

“Yep. I saw her and remembered what you said about her. Figured it was her,” Gran replied, toying with her phone again.

“You spotted the chief and knew it was her, based on what little I told you about her?” Savannah asked, incredulous.

She was starting to think maybe she’d received some sort of “detecting gene” from the Reid side of the family.

“Partly that,” Gran said, “but it was also what she was doing at the time I took that picture.”

Everyone looked at the picture again. This time, Savannah saw that Chief La Cross had something in her hand.

“What’s that she’s holdin’ there?” Waycross asked, pointing to the screen.

Tammy cropped the area of the photo around the chief’s hand and zoomed in on it.

“Yes, it’s definitely a phone,” Tammy said, “but she’s not talking on it.”

“She’s taking a picture,” Dirk added.

Gran chuckled and looked terribly pleased with herself. “She most certainly is. Wait’ll you see this other one.”

Having located picture number two, she handed the phone to Tammy, who repeated her process of sending it to the computer.

A moment later, they were studying the second one.

But it didn’t take Savannah long to figure out what she was seeing.

Chief Charlotte La Cross was still snapping pictures. And from this angle, Granny had captured the subject of her surveillance.

There was the coast guard station. There was Coconut Jane’s Tavern, in all of its shabby glory. And there, turning to go down the narrow passageway between the two buildings, were Savannah and Dirk.

“Holy sh . . . !” Dirk started to say. Then he shot a quick look at Granny.

“Yeah, that’s about what I thought, too, when I saw what she was up to,” Gran said. “If I’d had a frying pan in reach, I’d have been tempted to give her a good skillet smackin’.”

Tammy nodded, a serious look on her face. “Savannah told us about that, Gran. She says you’re known far and wide in Georgia for being deadly with cooking utensils.”

“Ain’t no big thang,” Gran replied, puffing out her chest a bit. “I just beat the tar outta one of my no-good neighbors after he beat the tar outta his wife and children. After that, my reputation was solidified for all eternity.”

But Savannah wasn’t listening to their chitter-chatter about past kitchen gadget glory. She was staring at that picture and feeling her blood pressure soar by the moment.

When she turned and looked at Dirk, Savannah could tell by the dark expression on his face that he was feeling the same way.

“I’ve had about enough of this,” she said to him, keeping her voice low and even, so as not to alarm the others. The last thing she wanted was for Gran to be worried sick that she was getting ready to confront the island’s
capitan
of law enforcement.

“Yeah. Me too,” Dirk replied.

Quietly they stood and gathered up their papers. Savannah picked up her purse. Dirk grabbed the Jaguar’s keys.

“We need to get going,” Savannah said in her best pseudo-casual voice. “We’ve got a handyman to talk to. Maybe we’ll pick up some lunch somewhere, relax a little, and pretend we’re actually newlyweds on a romantic island honeymoon.”

Gran fixed them with a long, concerned look.

Uh-oh,
Savannah thought.
Here comes the grandma speech about being careful, about watching yourself and not letting your temper get the best of you, about showing good Christian charity to all your fellow men, women, beasts, and fowl alike
.

Gran put her hands on her hips. Her lower lip protruded just a bit. “Well, lan’s sakes,” she said in a slightly huffy tone. “You’d think, after what I just showed ya, that y’all would have more important things to do than that romantic-lunch nonsense.”

“I beg your pardon, Gran?” Dirk said. “What are you—”

“If I were you,” Gran replied with a lift of her chin, “I’d hunt down that nosy chief of police and ask her what in tarnation she thinks she’s doin’, takin’ pictures of innocent people on the street, who’re just goin’ about their business. Tell her I said to get some business of her own and mind
it
!”

Savannah smiled. “Yes, we’ll schedule that in, too.”

“Good. You might wanna do it before lunch. You gotta keep your priorities in order, girl. I always taught you that.”

As she and Dirk were leaving the room, Gran called out, “If she gives you any lip, you tell her to watch herself. I may not be able to find any grits on this-here backwards island, but I’ll just betcha I could lay my hands on a cast-iron skillet!”

“Y
ou’re really lucky to have a grandmother like Granny Reid,” Dirk told Savannah as they headed up steep hills where no structures had been built, and very little except scrub brush grew.

“Truer words were never spoken,” Savannah replied. “The court taking the nine of us kids away from our parents and giving us to Gran, that was the best thing that ever happened to us.”

“You don’t talk much about that,” Dirk said, giving her a cautious, sideways glance. “It has to be pretty bad before the courts will actually take kids away permanently and change custody of them to their grandparents.”

“It was bad,” Savannah said. “With my ol’ man being a trucker and always on the road, and my mom’s butt glued to a bar stool, nine kids can get in a heap of trouble. We were no exception.”

“Did you play with matches and burn the neighborhood down?”

“Just one pine forest, east of town.”

“I was kidding.”

“I’m not. Then there was the time that Waycross and Marietta squirted glue in all the door frames of the school on Friday night. On Monday morning, when everybody showed up, well . . . you can imagine.”

Dirk laughed. “We won’t share that one with Tammy.”

“But some incidents weren’t so funny. Our mom thought it was just fine if her kids entertained themselves at night in the alley behind the tavern, while she was inside drinking. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent playing behind bars, but there’re a lot of broken bottles behind most of them.”

Savannah turned her head to the right and stared out the window, remembering all too well. She was seeing the magnificent, sunlit scenery of a Pacific island, but recalling a dark, chilly Georgia night. “Vidalia was running from Marietta, playing tag or whatever, when she slipped and sliced her leg wide open. It was about a six-inch gash.”

“Holy cow!”

“Yeah. I ran in the bar and dragged Shirley off her stool. She tried to drive us all to the hospital, which was forty miles away. But she was way too sloshed to operate a vehicle. So we all wound up wrecked in a ditch, and Vidalia gushin’ blood like Niagara Falls.”

Savannah stopped and drew a deep, regrouping breath. “That’s the way the cops found us. Shirley sitting on the edge of the road, bawling. Me in the back of the wrecked car, with Vidalia and the rest of the kids, trying to stop the bleeding with an old grease rag.”

“And that was the last straw for the authorities?”

“One of several. They checked out the state of the house, did an investigation like they’d done many times before. Finally they agreed that the welfare of the children was as important as the rights of their parents to maintain custody.”

“Sounds like it wasn’t a minute too soon.”

“It was years too late. But better late than never.”

“I notice you always call her ‘Shirley’ and not ‘Mom.’ ”

“She insisted on it when I was a kid. When I got to be an adult, I chose to just continue.”

They drove along in companionable silence for a while. Then Savannah decided to broach a topic that she’d always figured was off-limits with Dirk, and she assumed that because he had never opened up about it on his own.

“What did you call your mom?” she said, her voice gentle and soft.

It took him a long time to reply. “Nothing. I never knew her.”

“Oh.” Savannah swallowed. She figured his relationship with his family had been rocky. Maybe
very
rocky. But she hadn’t expected that. “So you were adopted when you were a baby?”

“No. I was raised in an orphanage till I was thirteen. The pretty, blond, blue-eyed kids got adopted. The ones who knew how to turn on the ‘cuteness act’ and be charming when the prospective parents made the rounds. That just wasn’t me.”

Savannah reached over and put her hand on his forearm. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. That must’ve been plumb awful!”

He chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “Felt a bit like being the ugly dog at the pound.”

“Oh, honey.”

“It’s all right. I got along.”

Savannah fought back the tears as she thought of him there, being passed over year after year.

“What happened when you were thirteen?” she asked.

“I got adopted. This couple came around, looking at all the kids. I’d already had my growth spurt and was the size of most grown men. The guy didn’t ask me a single question, just picked me out, ’cause I was the biggest. A few days later, when they took me home with them, I found out right away why they’d adopted me.”

“Why was that?” Savannah asked, afraid of the answer.

“He had a small, one-man construction business. He needed some free labor, picking up the junk on sites after he’d finished working, loading and unloading lumber off his truck, crap like that.”

This time, Savannah couldn’t stop the flow of tears. Her heart ached for that little boy in a man’s body, finally getting adopted, only to realize that he hadn’t been chosen for himself, and would never be truly loved for who he was.

“How about your adopted mother?” she asked, dabbing beneath her eyes with the hem of her sleeve.

“She had problems of her own, dealing with him. He made her pretty miserable, so she just sorta moped around the house, getting through each day. Kept a low profile, you know?”

Yes, Savannah knew the type all too well. Invisible women, afraid to show who they were to the world because their man would object. So many lights hidden under so many bushels.

“You don’t have any idea who your biological parents were, then?”

“No. The guy who adopted me said my mom was a hooker. She didn’t even know who my dad was.”

Savannah’s jaw clenched and so did her fist. “Your adopted dad was a real piece of work, telling a kid something like that.”

Dirk reached over and patted the top of her head. “Don’t let it bum you out, babe. I stopped letting it bother me a long time ago. Johnny Cash said, ‘Close the door on the past. Don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.’ And you know what a great guy he was!”

Savannah laughed, in spite of her sadness. Dirk’s heroes were Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Ben “Pa” Cartwright. She decided he could have chosen far worse, for sure.

“Is he still alive, this so-called ‘adoptive dad’ of yours?”

“No.”

“And his wife?”

“They’re both gone. They’d also adopted a girl, before me. She was a lot older than I was. She did quite a bit of the cooking and cleaning. She and I hardly ever spoke a word to each other, but I guess she’s the closest thing I ever had to a sister.”

“Do you two talk?”

“She used to live in Twin Oaks, till she got married. Soon after that, she and her husband moved to Chicago. We haven’t stayed in touch. I think she’d just as soon forget her whole childhood, me included. And I can’t blame her.”

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” Savannah said. “Thank you for telling me all that. I know it’s not easy, talking about stuff from the past. Stuff that hurts.”

“You’re my wife now. You’ve got a right to know.” He turned and winked at her. “Now be honest, you’ve suspected more than once that Dirk Coulter was a real bastard.”

She looked into his eyes and saw the pain that belied the stupid joke. “I’m married to Mr. Dirk Coulter,” she said in her most indignant version of a Southern drawl. “And as his wife, I’ll ask you to keep a civil tongue in your head when you discuss him with me. He’s a fine gentleman, no matter what his parentage. And I’m proud to say, he rose above his raisin’.”

Suddenly Dirk slowed the Jaguar down and looked the other way, finding something terribly important to watch to his left. She heard him sniff a time or two. When he turned his full attention back to the road ahead, she could see his eyes were filled with tears.

“I love you, Savannah,” he said.

“I love you, too, darlin’. And I wouldn’t take a million bucks for you, no matter what’s written on your birth certificate.”

 

A few minutes later, Savannah and Dirk arrived at the Island Lagoon Motel.

Just as Tammy had described it, the place was lagoon-free. In fact, it had no landscaping at all. The one-story, ten-unit no-tell motel had all the charm of a long, rusty cracker tin with windows.

“I’ve made better buildings than this with Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs,” Dirk said as he pulled the Jaguar into one of the parking spaces in the pothole-ridden parking lot.

“It makes that fleabag motel where we spent our honeymoon night look like the Taj Mahal,” she replied.

They got out of the car and walked to the lobby. The room was no larger than ten by ten feet and had dark, fake walnut paneling of a style and quality that Savannah had only seen in the basements of her childhood friends back in Georgia.

In front of the counter was a display rack, featuring brochures from the myriad attractions in California, from Alcatraz to Disneyland, and on down to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The pamphlets were the only bright spot in the room.

Behind the counter stood a woman who looked like she had never been anywhere but that one spot. Not even in front of the counter, let alone to Alcatraz or San Diego. She looked tired—of her job, to be sure, and maybe even of her life.

“Yeah?” she asked.

While Savannah hesitated, wondering exactly how to answer such a complex question, the woman sighed, leaned forward on the counter, and said, “Thirty bucks an hour. You go over the hour, even five minutes, it’s another thirty. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Savannah replied, “but we don’t want a room. We want to talk to Hank.”

“He’s busy.”

Dirk stepped up to the counter and leaned on it, which put him and Miss Hospitality nearly eye to eye. “We’re busy, too,” he said. “And we can see that you’re just working your fingers to the bone back there on . . . well . . . whatever it is you do.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and placed it on the counter. “So this might help pay for your time.”

“My time’s worth more than that.”

“It’ll take you five seconds to tell us where Hank’s at,” Dirk said. “Let’s see now, that’s”—he did the math in his head—“over fourteen thousand dollars an hour for your valuable time. I’ll bet you never made that kind of money before in your life.”

She reached for the twenty, but Dirk put his finger on it.

“He’s cleaning room eight,” she said.

“I thought he was the handyman here,” Savannah said. “Not a maid.”

“Hank does it all.” She reached down again for the bill. This time, Dirk released it. She nabbed it and shoved it into her jeans pocket.

As Savannah and Dirk walked out of the lobby, back into the parking lot, and headed for the rooms, Savannah said, “What do you call a guy who cleans a motel room or house or whatever?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t call him a ‘maid.’ A male ‘maid’ just ain’t natural.”

“Then what would you call him?”

“A ‘cleaner-upper’? Hell, I don’t know.”

“If he’d clean my house for me, I’d call him ‘lover boy.’ ”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

They found Hank Jordan in room eight, as promised. The door was open and even before they entered, they could see him inside, yanking the sheets off a bed.

He looked about as thrilled with his life career choice as the gal at the desk. In his early fifties, generously enhanced around the midsection, a mop of long, dirty hair pulled back into a greasy ponytail, he peered at them from behind glasses that had blotches of something that looked like green paint on the lenses.

Savannah noticed it matched the blotches of green paint on his black sweatshirt. At least he was accessory coordinated.

“Is your name Hank?” Dirk asked him as he and Savannah stepped into the room.

“Maybe it is, but maybe it ain’t” was the reply.

Dirk turned to Savannah. “Don’t you just hate it when their mothers don’t teach them their names before they start school?”

“It’s pitiful,” she said. “Plumb pity-full.”

She turned back to Hank, who had just finished putting fresh sheets on the bed and was in the process of picking the bedspread up off the filthy, stained carpet and putting it back on the bed.

“Y’all don’t put clean bedspreads on, too, when you change the sheets?” she asked.

He smirked, and she could see he was missing a front tooth. “The smile of a quarrelsome man,” Granny would say.

“You’re kidding, right?” he replied. “We don’t put on clean bedspreads every time, and neither do the five-star hotels in the real world.”

“Ewww.Gross.”
She had to make a mental effort to put that disturbing bit of information aside and contemplate it later—if she dared .

Hank threw a couple of pillows onto the bed; then he grabbed a squirt bottle and a dingy rag off the floor and headed for the bathroom.

Dirk followed after him, his badge in hand. “I’m a cop,” he said, “and I’ve gotta ask you a couple of questions about something that happened here on the island two days ago.”

“I didn’t see anything or do anything,” Hank replied as he gave the sink what Savannah called “a lick and a promise” with the dirty rag.

“You need to take this seriously,” Dirk said, using his deepest, most officious voice. “A very bad crime was committed.”

“Not by me,” Hank replied.

“Well, let’s don’t act like you’re above it,” Dirk snapped. “I’ve looked at your record and you ain’t spotless. Sorta like that sink you just kinda cleaned there.”

“I did some stuff, back in my day. But nothin’ lately.” He grinned again. “Nothing the statute of limitations hasn’t run out on.”

“Where were you day before yesterday, in the morning?”

“Was that when it happened?”

“When what happened?”

“The bad crime you think I might’ve done.”

Dirk’s eyes narrowed. “Hank, my man, I’m gettin’ sick and tired of you real quick here. Now—day before yesterday, mid-morning—where the hell were you? Spit it out, or you’ll be missing both of your front teeth.”