Читать книгу Fat Free And Fatal - G. A. McKevett - Страница 8

Granny Reid was right about something else, Savannah decided when she took a bite of fried chicken: Soaking the pieces in buttermilk before cooking it did make it melt in your mouth. And the groans of appreciation from the others sitting around Savannah’s dining table provided supporting testimony to the fact.

Even Tammy Hart, Savannah’s friend and assistant in her detective agency, had set aside her usual healthy, vegetarian lifestyle and was violating her conscience with a juicy drumstick. She had arrived for the dinner party an hour ago, wearing a red silk kimono, her long blond hair pulled back and fastened with a pair of lacquered chopsticks. But now the sleeves of the elegant garment were rolled up to her elbows, and she was gnawing on the chicken leg like any other shameless carnivore. “Savannah, this is the best fried chicken I’ve eaten in ages,” she said, laying the bare bone aside and reaching for a wing.

“Eh, it’s the only chicken you’ve eaten in ages.”

“That’s true, but it’s still the best I’ve had since…since…?”

“Since the last time you ate Savannah’s fried chicken,” said Ryan Stone, the reason for the dinner and the inspiration for Tammy’s haute couture.

The tall, dark, and fibrillation-inducing Ryan was turning a year older, and Savannah had invited her closest circle of friends to celebrate—an intimate little sphere that just happened to encompass the members of her Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency and no one else.

Savannah had never experienced even the slightest difficulty in drawing a line between her work and her personal life. It was quite simple: she had no personal life.

And other than one sainted grandmother and a batch of crazy siblings, whom she had left behind in Georgia, and the two black cats who were doing figure eights between her ankles, begging for table scraps, the people around her table constituted her family.

Them…and Dirk, who was conspicuously absent.

Dirk never passed up the opportunity to eat a free meal, and especially one of Savannah’s.

“I can’t believe Dirko isn’t here,” Tammy said. “And more than that, I can’t believe I actually miss him.” She washed down the final bite of chicken with a long drink of lemonade, made with real sugar—the plain old, refined, and much maligned white stuff.

Lots of it.

Savannah put only slightly less sugar in her lemonade than she did her iced tea.

Yes, Tammy was compromising her virtue right and left, in honor of Ryan Stone. Like all women between the ages of eight and eighty-eight, Tammy had fallen for Ryan within the first three seconds of setting eyes on him. And his courtly manners, countless kindnesses, and impeccable style did nothing to dispel the enchantment. She was totally, hopelessly hooked and too young to hide it.

Unlike Savannah, solidly into her forties, who was the epitome of “cool” around him. “Ryan, you darlin’ birthday boy,” she said, shoving an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes under his nose. “You eat up now! I won’t have you fainting dead away from hunger out there in the street after having supper at my house.” Savannah blushed slightly, hearing the adolescent titter in her own voice. He reached for the bowl, his fingers brushed hers, and she nearly dropped the spuds in his lap.

So much for “cool” in face of male perfection.

But Ryan was kind, as always, and pretended not to notice. It didn’t become a demigod to react to mere female mortals slavering at his feet.

“Yes, I’m surprised to find that I miss the old boy, too,” John Gibson agreed. He dabbed at his mustache with his napkin and took a sip of Beaujolais.

Although John was older than his life partner, Ryan, by quite a few years, he could still stop more than a few hearts himself. With his luxuriant silver hair, his pale blue eyes, and elegant British accent, he had the old-world charm of an English nobleman. But the occasional wicked sparkle in those eyes betrayed a far less than stodgy persona beneath those fine tweed jackets. “When the old boy isn’t around,” he continued, “I long for his insightful observations on the state of humanity, his stirring political exhortations, and provocative philosophical—”

“Yeah, yeah. More like, you miss sparring with him,” Savannah said.

John chuckled. “Well, he is rather easily baited.”

“And you,” Ryan said, “have just enough British bulldog in you that you can’t resist going after him.”

“All in good fun,” John replied. “All in good fun.”

“Good fun. That’s what the matador calls a bullfight.” Savannah sighed and shook her head. More than once it had occurred to her that trying to merge her extremely diverse friends into one happy gaggle had resulted in the creation of an extended dysfunctional family.

The Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency was basically a group of people who loved each other. Every one of them would readily defend the others from a rabid Siberian tiger attack. But even on a good day, not all of them actually liked each other. Especially Dirk and the couple sitting at her table.

“Dirk caught a case this afternoon. That’s why he isn’t with us,” Savannah said as she stood and began to clear their plates from the table. “A homicide.”

“The one over at Dona Papalardo’s estate?” Ryan asked.

“Yes. How did you know about that already? It just happened around noon today. I don’t think even the AP has picked it up yet.”

Tammy perked up; Nancy Drew was on the case. “What? A murder at Dona Papalardo’s place? No way! What happened?”

“Apparently her personal assistant was shot and killed right in Dona’s front driveway,” Savannah said. She gave Tammy a sideways smirk. “The gal probably caused Dona’s computer to crash and lose all their billing data.”

“That wasn’t my fault!” Tammy’s face crumpled into a pout, and she sank lower in her chair. “It’s that stupid new computer you bought. I told you to let me do the consumer research online, pick out the best system, but no…you have to go shopping yourself at some stupid department store and pick out the first thing that—”

“It wasn’t the first one I saw. It was the third one.”

“And you bought it because…?”

“It was blue. The other ones were gray or black. That one was prettier.”

Tammy sighed. “I rest my case. Anyway, what’s this business about Dona Papalardo’s assistant?”

“Just that,” Savannah said. “She was shot dead in the driveway of that fancy mansion Dona has up in Spirit Hills, while getting into Dona’s limousine. Dirk seems to think the shooter may have thought she was Dona. She fits Dona’s general description, and Dona had loaned her one of those fancy furs of hers—you know, the ones that PETA was giving her so much grief about?”

Tammy grimaced. “I don’t blame them. Dona really overdoes that silver-screen actress bit.”

“And especially for one so young,” John agreed. “She can’t be a day over thirty-five, and yet she dresses like Jean Harlow.”

Ryan shrugged. “Hey, it’s pure glamour, and it looks good on her.”

Savannah sniffed. “Yeah, like you’d notice.”

“I notice.” He laughed. “Notice is all I do, but I notice.”

“Did you notice my kimono?” Tammy asked, carefully adjusting one of the chopsticks in her hair in a gesture that was so sickeningly girlie that Savannah nearly gagged.

“Of course. The fabric is gorgeous.” Ryan turned to John. “Don’t you wish we had a few yards of that for throw pillows in the bedroom?”

Tammy groaned. “Oh, gawd, why do I even bother?”

“You look lovely, dear,” John said. “And, as Ryan knows all too well, that shade of red is far too bold for our bedroom. He’s just teasing you again.”

She sighed and shook her head. Then, turning to Savannah, she said, “Just wait until the tabloids get a hold of this! Dona’s been on the front cover of every rag in the grocery store checkout line for the past year, what with her weight loss and all.”

“So true,” John reached for a biscuit and began to butter it. “I’ve been shocked by how rapidly the pounds have melted off her. I guess these new surgeries really work.”

“Of course they work,” Savannah grumbled under her breath. “Cut out most of somebody’s insides and there’s bound to be some changes made.”

“Actually,” Tammy said, “I think she had gastric bypass—that doesn’t actually remove—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Savannah shook her head. “It’s still messin’ big time with what the good God gave you. It’s a bunch of hooey, if you ask me. Dangerous hooey.”

“That may be true,” John interjected, “but you must admit, she’s much thinner now. And healthier.”

“Thinner? Yes. Healthier? Who knows? Chemo patients get thin. So do anorexics and bulimics. Doesn’t mean they’re healthy.”

The table was silent for a tense moment, then Tammy said, a little too sprightly, “Well, so Dirk is out there now, processing the scene?”

“He is. And interviewing the staff there at her mansion and whoever was present when it happened.” Savannah tried to keep the jealous tone out of her voice, but she wasn’t at all successful. It was only at times like this, when Dirk was assigned to something particularly interesting, that she regretted her parting with the San Carmelita police department all those years ago.

She could take a day off, pretty much whenever she wanted. But Dirk had a pension, medical benefits, and juicy cases…like a murder at a movie star’s mansion in the hills.

Sometimes she found herself wishing she had his job and he had a wart on his tail…as Granny Reid would say.

“When do you think he’ll be finished over there?” Ryan wanted to know.

She glanced up at the clock on her kitchen wall, a cat whose tail swung back and forth and whose green, rhinestone eyes clicked right and left—a gift from Granny Reid, which made it a treasure. “Oh, he’ll probably be wrapping up in an hour or so. Dirk doesn’t exactly dally.”

“Which means he’ll be here in an hour and ten minutes,” Tammy said. “He can smell your fried chicken and hear it calling to him from the other side of LA.”

Savannah stood and began to clear the dishes. “Everybody ready for cake and ice cream?”

Ryan looked at John. “Oh, we can wait…for Dirk, that is.”

“Most certainly,” John said. “’Tisn’t truly a party without him.”

Savannah chuckled. Yes, they might be dysfunctional, but they were a family, this strange circle of hers. “We’ll wait then,” she said as she carried their dirty dishes to the sink. “But I’ll go ahead and give you your gifts now that—”

The phone rang. Savannah wiped her hands on a towel and reached for it.

The voice on the other end was gruff and abrupt. Typical Dirk. He had never gotten the hang of “hello” and “good-bye.” Pleasantries were a waste of time—unlike fishing and watching heavyweight bouts on Savannah’s HBO.

“This sucks,” was his greeting and pithy report.

“Oo-okay,” she replied. “Details?”

“Come see for yourself.”

“Really?” Savannah nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Now.”

Savannah glanced over at the guests sitting around her table. Of course she couldn’t just leave in the middle of Ryan’s party, but—

“Uh, I can’t right now.”

“You sure? I got you a job here if you want it,” Dirk said.

“A job? A paying job? Don’t you toy with me, boy.”

“It’s yours if you want it. I told this spoiled rotten movie star bimbo that she needs a bodyguard. I told her either she hired somebody or I was going to assign my ugliest, meanest, nastiest cop to do the job. She fought me about it at first until I told her I knew a gal who could do it. You know, that you could watch out for her, even though you’re a chick.”

“Ah, how generous of you.” Savannah reminded herself to crack him in the head with a skillet sometime when he least expected it. “But really…” She lowered her voice. “…I can’t right now. I could come over later after—”

“Go now,” Ryan said.

Savannah turned around and saw that her friend had a wide smile on his handsome face. “But your birthday? The cake?”

“Hey,” he said, “a homicide case and a paying gig for the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency? That tops a birthday party all day and all night.”

Savannah weighed one against the other for two whole seconds.

A friend’s party versus looking at a dead body?

Birthday cake or a homicide case?

It wasn’t until she was in her ’65 Mustang, speeding toward the Papalardo estate in Spirit Hills that she paused to consider what it might say about her character, or lack thereof—how quickly and shamelessly she had made that decision.

Murder takes the cake. Any ol’ day.