Poisoned Tarts (6 page)

“She's not?”

“No!”

“Then where is she?”

“How would
I
know?”

“Well, if you're so sure that she isn't dead, you must know where she is.”

Tiffy took one step backward and nearly lost her balance, teetering precariously on her four-inch heels. “This is all just stupid,” she said. “I'll bet that it's Daisy's stupid mom who put you up to all of this, isn't it? She just doesn't like us, and she blames us any time anything goes wrong with her precious little baby Daisy.”

“Like what?” Savannah wanted to know.

“Like when Daisy's boyfriend dumped her, and Daisy got all depressed and went around moping about it for months. Pam blamed that on me! Said I took him away from her daughter, lured him away with my feminine charms or something stupid like that.” She chuckled, and Savannah thought that she had heard warmer laughter rippling through the city jail cells. “He dumped Daisy because she got
fat
, that's all. But no-o-o-o. Neither Daisy nor her mom wanted to face the truth. God forbid that Daisy would go on a
diet!”

“You should say fatter,” Bunny added.

“What?” Savannah turned on Bunny.

“I was correcting Tiffy. Daisy didn't get fat—she was already fat. She got fatter. And, I mean, like what guy is into
that?
It's just so gross.”

Savannah flashed back on some delicious chapters in her own history book: sultry summer evenings in Tommy Stafford's old '56 Chevy, parked in moonlit Georgia orchards, the fragrance of fresh peaches scenting the night air.

Ah, yes…Tommy and few others since him had more than enjoyed her own ample curves.

She gave Bunny a sly grin. “Oh, you'd be surprised what guys like. What they
really, really
like. But that's neither here nor there. I want to know what happened here yesterday afternoon when Daisy dropped by.”

“Daisy wasn't here,” Bunny said a little too desperately. “Really! She wasn't—”

“Okay, okay, so she was here for a little while,” Tiffy interjected. “She dropped by and asked me for a favor—like she always does—and when I didn't come running to her rescue as usual, she left in a huff.”

“And what favor was that?”

Tiffy sighed and tossed her head in an impatient, It-Isn't-About-Me-So-I-Can't-Be-Bothered move. “She wanted me to go over her stupid lines with her. She was supposed to be on this stupid sitcom thing, and she had four friggen lines. Four! And, oh my gawd, you'd think she was going to be giving an Oscar-winning performance the way she was going on and on and on about it.”

“And did you, help her with her lines, that is?” Savannah asked.

“No way. I had things to do. I'm having a big Halloween party, and the party planner is screwing it up bigtime. She hasn't even hired the fortune teller, or the belly dancers, or the makeup artist yet! I don't have time to mess with stupid Daisy and her stupid lines.”

Savannah quirked one eyebrow as she contemplated the pleasure of tattooing the word STUPID across Tiffany Dante's forehead. “You wouldn't be just a wee little bit jealous now, would you?” she asked her.

“Jealous? Jealous? Are you kidding me? I wouldn't stoop to doing some stupid sitcom! I'm a
real
actress. I've trained with Beverly Diamond
and
Malcolm Whitmore! Do you know who
they
are?”

“Not a clue.”

“Well, that figures because
you
aren't in the business. They are the most prestigious acting coaches in the world. And I studied under
both
of them last July. I have an agent, and a Screen Actors Guild card, and fantastic head shots and everything! Stupid Daisy wouldn't even have this little sitcom walk-on if it weren't for me! Jealous of Daisy O'Neil, that fat, no talent cow? That'll be the day!”

Savannah listened to the tirade, watched the young woman's face contort with pure, hot rage. And Savannah asked herself the standard question she always asked when interviewing potential suspects:

Is this person capable of hurting someone…really, seriously harming another human being?

Tiffany Dante was only three degrees away from frothing at the mouth, from having her eyes bug out of her head like a cartoon character.

Yes
, Savannah thought.
This spoiled rotten little brat could hurt another person. Badly.

Or pay someone to.

She looked at the two girls, Bunny and Kiki. Especially Bunny, who so obviously ached to be a Tiffy clone.

Savannah thought,
Tiffany Dante is perfectly capable of doing it herself, paying someone…or manipulating others to do harm to a perceived enemy. No doubt about it.

Deep in her gut, Savannah felt a stirring of very real fear. Fear for Daisy O'Neil. Fear for her worried mother. Fear that this girl in front of her, a child who had apparently been raised without boundaries or empathy, could have done something truly terrible.

She stepped closer to Tiffany, deliberately invading her space, and fixed her with a laser stare that had melted far harder-bitten characters than Tiffy Dante would ever be. This time it was Tiffany who looked away, breaking eye contact.

“I'm going to find Daisy O'Neil,” Savannah said, her voice low and even, but with an ominous underlying tone. “I'm not going to rest until I find her. And when I do, she had better be alive and healthy. Or someone is going to pay a very, very dear price for hurting her.”

The girls said nothing. But Savannah carefully noted all three of their facial expressions. Tiffany looked cocky, as usual. Bunny seemed a bit nervous, maybe worried.

But it was the look in Kiki's eyes that bothered Savannah most. Kiley Wallace looked sad, deeply sad…and guilty.

And that didn't bode well for Daisy O'Neil.

 

Savannah left the girls to ponder her threat and headed back to the house. Entering by the same door she had exited in the breakfast room, she could hear male voices in a nearby room. And from the tone of those voices, she surmised that Dirk's interview with Andrew Dante was going even worse than before.

But that was no great surprise. Dirk was highly skilled at leaning on street thugs and threatening the truth out of them. He was a lot less accomplished in dealing with “regular” folk.

In fact, most regular folk considered Dirk Coulter boorish, overbearing, and antagonistic, and they spent as little time as possible in his presence. And while Savannah agreed with their evaluation of him, she also knew that most of his less than gracious behavior sprang from his deep concern for crime victims and his passion to find justice for them.

And realizing that, she had decided long ago to cut the guy a lot of slack. She felt the same way he did about crime solving, and for the same reasons. She just had slightly better manners, having been raised by a Southern granny.

Except for abusive jerks in grocery stores.

And cocky, arrogant teenagers.

And the occasional street punk who rubbed her the wrong way and…

Okay, so maybe she wasn't all that much better behaved than Dirk. She could live with that.

As she walked from the breakfast room into the kitchen, she heard Dirk saying something about search warrants, and Dante reply with the name of a powerful, prestigious local attorney.

No, things weren't going all that well in the Coulter-Dante interview.

Any business of her own that she wanted to conclude had to be done right away. She had a feeling she and Dirk were due to be tossed out on their backsides at any moment.

Hoping she would run into the maid again, she walked through the formal dining room and back into the great room. But instead of the maid, she ran into yet another young woman.

Sitting at the grand piano, running the fingers of one hand lightly over the keys in a practiced scale, the woman appeared to be in her mid-twenties. She also looked deeply sad. With a pretty, heart-shaped face, enormous blue eyes, and extremely short, platinum blond hair, she had a fey quality about her, exuding fragility and vulnerability.

She, too, was abnormally slender, but instead of the Skeleton Key silk pajamas uniform, she was wearing an exquisite dressing gown of silver jacquard. And even though the fabric was most complimentary to her figure and coloring, the style seemed more be-fitting to an older woman.

She looked a little like a kid playing dress up in her mother's clothes.

Except that she appeared anything but playful. Her big blue eyes were filled with tears, and her head was bowed in a defeatist pose as she practiced her scale with first one hand and then the other.

Savannah took a few steps closer, and the woman noticed her. She ended her playing instantly and stood.

“Oh,” she said. “I didn't know you were here. I…uh…you probably want to see Tiffany. I'll go get her for you.”

“No, that's okay, thanks,” Savannah replied, thinking that even though this woman was wearing a dressing gown, she must be a visitor, probably another friend of Tiffy's. No one would feel this ill at ease in their own home. She seemed painfully out of place.

“But she's been expecting you,” she said, holding her robe tightly closed in front of her. “She was really upset that you weren't here earlier, and you know how she gets when, well, you know.”

“I'm sorry. Obviously, you've mistaken me for someone else.” Savannah held out her hand. “My name is Savannah Reid. And you are…?”

“Savannah…? Oh, I thought you were the party coordinator. You aren't here about Tiffy's Halloween party?”

“No, I'm with Detective Coulter.” She nodded in the direction of the raised male voices. “We're investigating the disappearance of one of Tiffany's friends, Daisy O'Neil.”

Savannah watched the woman's eyes closely to see what effect her words might have. But nothing seemed to register, beyond the sadness she had already shown.

“Daisy is
missing?
What do you mean, ‘missing'? Is that why her mother was here?”

Apparently, this member of the entourage is seriously out of the loop
, Savannah thought.

“Yes. She hasn't been seen since yesterday afternoon. Didn't come home last night, and hasn't contacted her mother in over twenty-four hours. Pam O'Neil is terribly worried.”

“I'm sure she is. That isn't like Daisy at all. Daisy's a sweet girl, very responsible. And she and her mom are really close.”

The genuine concern and compassion in the young woman's eyes made Savannah think that maybe all of Tiffy Dante's friends weren't shallow, callous brats.

“I didn't catch
your
name,” Savannah said.

The woman extended her hand. When Savannah took it in her own, she noticed how cold and damp it was. “I'm Robyn Dante,” she said.

Savannah searched her mental infobanks, trying to recall if the tabloids had ever mentioned Tiffany Dante having an older sister. The name
did
seem familiar, but she just couldn't…

“Robyn,” she murmured, trying to remember.

“Yes.” The woman looked slightly embarrassed and once again, out of place and ill at ease. “I'm Robyn Dante…Mrs. Andrew Dante.”

Again, her eyes flooded with tears. She blinked and looked away. “You know,” she said with a bitter tone, “queen of the castle. The mistress of al-l-l this.”

She gave a wide sweep with her arm, encompassing the bright pink room, the garish, raspberry velvet furniture, the enormous painting of her stepdaughter that dominated the room from its place of honor over the fireplace.

Mrs. Andrew Dante sighed, shook her head, and added, “Lucky me.”

“W
ell, that was a friggen waste of time,” Dirk said half an hour later as they left the Dante estate. “That Andrew Dante is a total jerk. Told me nothing. Rich people suck. They just do.”

“Ah, Detective Dirk Coulter,” Savannah replied, “philosopher, social commentator, orator extraordinaire. And for your information,
all
people suck, not just the rich ones.”

Sighing, he said, “Don't hassle me, woman. I'm tired.”

He took a small, plastic bag from the dashboard and fumbled with it while he tried to drive.

“Here, let me open that for you before you kill us both.” Savannah took the bag from him and unzipped it. Inside were half a dozen cinnamon sticks. She held one out to him. “How's it going?” she asked.

“Like hell.” He took the stick and popped it into the side of his mouth. “How do you suppose it's going? Kicking nicotine is worse than going off heroin or cocaine. Ask any junkie who's tried to shake all three.”

Savannah made a mental note to question any non-cigarette smoking, former heroin/cocaine junkies she might encounter in the future. And while she was at it, she'd ask them if going cold turkey off those substances was half as miserable as a 1,000 calories a day diet that didn't include chocolate—while you were in the throes of PMS.

Now
that
was suffering!

Dirk had been trying to quit smoking for months. The cinnamon sticks must be working. He was still officially on the smoke-free wagon.

Or maybe it was the nicotine patches on his butt, the ones he didn't think she knew about.

She had found the wrappers among the taco and hamburger litter in the backseat of his car. And she'd checked the following day and found two more—a day when she'd seen him in nothing but a pair of cutoffs.

Never try to fool a detective
.

Another one of her mottos.

She turned in her seat and looked at him, studying his face in the one second flashes of headlights from passing cars.

He
did
look tired. And older.

She couldn't help thinking that years ago, when they had first met, Dirk had definitely been a hunk—back when she had definitely been a babe. Now in their forties, they were…well…a little bit past hunk and babe. Not much past, but a tad.

Too bad we didn't realize how very hunkish and babeesque we were back then
, she thought.
We could have savored that brief time a little more
.

And she thought of something that Granny Reid had told her a few years ago.

Savannah had been looking in her bathroom mirror, frowning at some new lines that were beginning on her forehead.

“Gran, I'm getting old,” she said. “Look at these wrinkles.”

Granny walked up behind her, put her hands on Savannah's shoulders, and peered at her granddaughter's reflection in the mirror. “Lord have mercy, child. You aren't old. What are you frettin' about?”

“I'm not as young as I used to be.”

“Well, glory be, girl. Who is?” She turned Savannah around to face her. Her eyes shone with wisdom and good humor as she reached out with her forefinger and pushed one of Savannah's dark curls out of her eyes and behind her ear. “Savannah girl, if the good God in heaven blesses you with long life, you
will
be old someday. And then, you'll look back and realize how much of your sweet youth was just plum wasted worrying 'bout getting old. Don't even start that nonsense, sugar. It's such a foolish path to walk down.”

Looking into her grandmother's face, Savannah thought that she wouldn't have taken away a single line from that sweet countenance. She couldn't imagine changing one thing about this woman she adored—not one wrinkle, one gray hair, one extra pound.

Maybe Gran was right. Maybe worrying about the inevitable and unavoidable
was
a waste of time and energy.

“If you've just got to worry about something,” Granny Reid continued, “worry about the child across town who's going to bed hungry tonight or the young mother next door who can't make her rent. That's the sort of thing you might be able to do something about. Don't bother about a little line on your face that don't amount to a hill of beans.”

And since that day, Savannah had spent less time peering into the mirror, searching for signs of aging. Instead, she had made a habit of looking deeply into the eyes of the woman in the mirror and saying in a voice that sounded a lot like Gran's, “You're doin' good, sweetheart. You've been through your ups and downs, but you've mostly done your best. You're doin' good.”

Old didn't matter so much.

Most of the time.

Savannah rolled down the Buick's window and breathed the sweet, moist night air. “Do you think we're old yet?” she asked Dirk.

He turned to look at her, a surprised expression on his face. “What?”

“Do you think we're old? I mean, I know we aren't old-old yet, but…do you think of me as old?”

“You? Hell, no. You're not old, Van. You're no different than you were when I first met you. It's not like you're a guy…losing your hair and crap like that.”

Poor Dirk
, she thought.
Always with the hair.
The world began and ended with The Hair.

Dirk could lose every tooth in his head and gain three hundred pounds, and all he would worry about was whether his hair had thinned in the past two months.

“
I'm
getting older,” he said. “I can feel it in my body, especially the day after I've gone a few rounds with some street punk. But you…” He shot her a flirtatious grin that, she had to admit, made her heart beat just a bit faster. “…you're fresh as a sun-warmed Georgia peach and twice as tasty.”

Yeap, the pulse rate is definitely up
, she thought. “When you look at me like that,” she told him, “you remind me of that guy I met years ago, the one I had to fight off a time or two on stakeouts when we first got assigned together.”

He bristled. “Who? Somebody got fresh with you? You should've told me. I would've—”

“I meant
you
, dimwit.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat and stared straight ahead, suddenly intent on the road. Finally, he said, “It's been so long since I've tried to get into your knickers that I'd forgotten. And that just goes to show you how old
I'm
getting.”

“Naw.” She reached over and thumped him on the shoulder. “You're still a virile horndog. You're just tired, run down a little. They've been working you too hard.”

“They have been. I've got five cases on my desk already, and now they throw this one at me. I'm telling you, if that girl turns up dead, I'm screwed.”

Good ol' Dirk. Always thinking of others,
she thought.

“I'll help you find her,” she said.

He brightened. “Really?”

“Sure. Sadly, I don't have any clients at the moment. I want to enjoy my visit with Gran while she's here, but I should still have plenty of time to help you track her down.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, fatigue, or depression—with him, it was hard to tell which—he said, “So, you think she's all right, this girl? You think she's still alive?”

Savannah thought of how many times Granny Reid had warned her about saying negative things. “A body has to watch what comes out of their mouth,” she'd said. “Your words float out into the universe, and who knows where they'll land. You can speak things into being, so be careful what you say.”

“Alive?” she said. “Sure. Daisy's still alive. She's just off somewhere, getting into something she shouldn't, like any other teenager.”

Savannah thought of Pam O'Neil, of how her mother's intuition was telling her that something terrible had happened to her precious daughter.

She thought of Kiki Wallace's downcast, guilt-filled eyes.

She thought of Robyn Dante, the so-called queen of the castle, who had answered Savannah's questions with clipped, curt responses. And even those answers had been contradictory.

No, Daisy hadn't been there at all yesterday. Okay, she was there, but not for long.

No, she hadn't talked to her. Well, yes, Daisy had mentioned to her that she was excited about taping the sitcom.

No, Robyn couldn't imagine why Daisy had gone missing. She was sure it wasn't anything bad, though. Couldn't be anything bad.

Dirk jarred her back to the present. “Really?” he was asking. “Do you really think the kid's okay?”

Savannah remembered Granny's “Don't speak evil” warning again, but she also remembered that Gran had taught her not to lie.

“No,” she said softly. “I don't think she's okay. After talking to that bunch back there, I don't think she's just off getting into mischief. I think it's a lot worse than that.”

Dirk nodded…and he
did
look tired…and he
did
look old. “Me, too,” he said. “I hate to say it, but me, too.”

As Dirk turned onto Lester Boulevard and headed toward Savannah's neighborhood, she asked, “Where are you taking me?”

“Home. Don't you want to go home and rest, visit with your grandma?”

She thought about it for a moment: her soft chair, her big, black cats curled around her feet, a cup of hot coffee, and a slice of the carrot cake that Gran had baked that afternoon. It was tempting.

But then she thought of Pam O'Neil's red, swollen eyes, so full of pain and worry.

“What are you going to do with the rest of your evening?” she asked him.

“I thought I'd drive over to the mom's house and talk to her, maybe get a look at the kid's bedroom. Why?”

Savannah flipped open her cell phone and dialed her house. Gran answered.

“Hi, Granny,” she said. “It's not looking good, this case with this girl. We're a bit worried about her.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, sugar. Is there anything I can do?”

“Maybe say one of your prayers for her.”

“I sure will.”

“Are you going to be up a while yet?”

Gran chuckled on the other end. “Just until all my little chickadees are back in the nest,” she said…the reply that Savannah had heard so many times during her teenage years. “Why? Are you wanting to stay out with your young man past your curfew?”

Savannah laughed. “Just another hour or so. I'd like to go with Dirk to the girl's house before I come home.”

“I'll be up quite a while longer. I'm reading my Bible and my new
True Informer
.”

Savannah knew that if her grandmother had a new
True Informer
, she wouldn't be going to bed for two hours. Granny Reid devoured the tabloid from cover to cover, including the classified ads in the back.

“Don't wait up for me if you're tired, Gran. Go on to bed if you've a mind to, and I'll see you in the morning.”

“You'll see me when you set foot inside this house,” Gran replied. “You go find that little missing girl. Don't you worry 'bout me.”

Savannah told her good-bye and snapped the phone closed. “Granny says we can stay out a little longer, but no French kissing and you gotta drive below the speed limit.”

“Darn. I guess that means no parking and making out at Lover's Leap.”

“Gran's death on parkin', demon alcohol, and chewin' tobacco. She used to threaten me something fierce about partaking of any of those three.”

“And did you?”

“Partake?”

“Yeah.”

She grinned. “Of course not. I was a good girl. The perfect teenager.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Okay. Two out of three.”

“You partook of two out of three? Or you avoided two out of three?”

She chuckled, reliving fond memories. “That's right. You've got it.”

 

When Dirk called Pam O'Neil to see if they could drop by, she eagerly invited them over. And when they pulled into the driveway of the humble duplex in the working class end of town, she was sitting on the stoop, smoking a cigarette, waiting for them.

“I couldn't believe it when you called,” she said as she ground the cigarette out with the toe of her construction boot. “I'm sure glad you did, though. Did you get anything out of Dante or those brat girls?”

Dirk shook his head as he and Savannah followed her into the house. “No, nothing worthwhile. But I'm not done with him or that bunch over there.”