And the Killer Is . . .

Book 25: Savannah Reid Mystery

by G.A. McKevett

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

It will be a cold day in San Carmelita before Private Investigator Savannah Reid skips over a high-profile homicide case, especially one attached to a tasty reward. But when ninety-year-old former silver-screen siren Lucinda Faraday is murdered inside her derelict mansion, serving justice comes with unsavory risks. The fallen star, considered one of the most beautiful women of her time, was found strangled by a pair of vintage stockings amid a hoard of garbage and priceless memorabilia. Now, Lucinda is making headlines again—and, like in the past, her name is connected with the worst kind of scandal. As a quest for answers reveals sleazy secrets about the victim’s history, the Moonlight Magnolia Agency soon discovers that corruption, addiction, and blackmail were as rampant in the good old days of Hollywood as in the present—maybe even more so. Balancing a suspect list longer than Lucinda’s acting credits and evidence that could destroy the reputation of people still alive, can Savannah outsmart the culprit before she or someone else gets reduced to tabloid fodder next?

Release date: April 28, 2020

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Print pages: 261

Sample

“Hey! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doin’ there, woman?”

Savannah Reid turned to her enraged husband, sitting next to her in the driver’s seat of his old Buick, and thought she had seen happier expressions on felons’ faces who had just received a sentence of fifty years to life.

“Bloody hell?” she asked calmly. “Since when do you say ‘bloody hell’?”

Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter thought it over a moment, looked a tad sheepish, and admitted, “Okay. I dropped by Ryan and John’s restaurant and had a pint with John earlier. That British accent thing of his is almost as bad as your southern drawl. Rubs off on you. I’m around him ten minutes, and I start talking about dodgy weather and how knackered I was after givin’ some nutter a bollockin’.”

“Do you drop by ReJuvene regularly?”

“Naw. Maybe five or six times a week.”

“These pints you’re downing—they’re free, no doubt, considering Ryan’s and John’s generous natures.”

“Of course they’re free. You wouldn’t expect me to drop into a swanky establishment like theirs and plunk down my hard-earned cash for a beer, wouldja?”

“No, darlin’. Never crossed my mind that you would do such a thing as pay for a drink you could get for free.”

“Good.” He looked relieved for a moment, then seemed to remember his former complaint. “But don’t think you’re distracting me. I still got a beef with you, gal.”

She glanced around, trying to determine what faux pas she might have committed. After all, she was doing him the enormous favor of keeping him company on an afternoon stakeout that was as exciting as eating a mashed potato and white bread sandwich, followed by vanilla pudding.

The locale wasn’t anything to quicken the pulse either. They were parked on a nearly deserted residential street in one of the few unattractive and unsavory neighborhoods of sunny little San Carmelita—otherwise known as “the picturesque seaside village where native Southern Californians themselves go to relax and play.”

Instead of sunlit beaches, boutiques, gift shops, and upscale restaurants, this part of town had ramshackle buildings, barred windows, signs warning of fierce dogs who could run faster than any trespasser, graffiti-smeared cement block walls, and burned-out streetlights. From what Savannah could tell, this section of San Carmelita possessed no virtues whatsoever, except those held by the souls who lived there—strength, courage, pride, and determination born of desperation.

Over the years, Savannah had seen more than one glorious flower bloom on this side of town, thriving in poverty’s mud and squalor. But there were still a lot of places she’d prefer to be and things she’d rather be doing.

Considering the price she was paying to keep her bored cop hubby company, she couldn’t imagine how she had managed to offend him.

She wasn’t painting her fingernails—an activity he despised, claiming he was deathly allergic to the odor.

She had brought a tin of fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies and had been considerate enough not to eat more than her rightful half of them.

She had allowed him to choose the music on the radio and, as a result, she had spent the last hour listening to Johnny Cash.

In truth, she liked Johnny quite a lot, but there was no point in letting Dirk know that. At the end of this tour, she wanted him to feel sufficiently indebted to her to take her out for a nice dinner. Otherwise, he would assume he could buy her off with day-old donuts and stale coffee . . . which he would also manage to finagle for free.

“Sorry, sweetcheeks,” she said, her down-in-Dixie drawl a bit slower and softer than usual. “I don’t know what sort of sins I’ve committed to get you all in a dither.”

He nodded toward the dash, where she had set her empty soda can.

“Yeah?” she said, genuinely confused. “It’s not going to spill, if that’s what you’re frettin’ about. It’s empty.”

“You better make sure,” he told her in a tone that was uncharacteristically bossy for him.

Over the years, she had trained him well.

He knew better.

She figured it must be mighty important to him, for him to risk riling her. So, she snatched the can off the dash, then began to roll down the window.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.

“I’m gonna see if I can squeeze a drop or two of Coke out of this here can that you’ve got your willy all tied up in a Windsor knot about.”

“You go pouring it out like that, some could splash on the outside of the door and ruin the paint job.”

For a few seconds, she stared at him, calculating how much energy she would have to expend to cram a soda can into a highly annoying husband’s right ear.

She figured, in the end, she could get the job done, but Dirk wasn’t one to quietly submit to having items inserted into his orifices without offering resistance, and she was tired, so she abandoned the plan.

Instead, she rolled the window back up, opened the door, leaned out, bent down, and shook the three remaining drops of soda onto the curb.

Then, with much pomp and circumstance, she shut the door and handed him the can. “There you go. Feel free to shove this . . . wherever you’re putting your garbage, now that you no longer hurl it over your right shoulder and onto the floorboard, the way you did for years and—”

“Until your brother restored this car to cherry condition!” he snapped, grabbing the can from her hand. “After all the work Waycross did on my baby, do you think I’m gonna let her get all dirty again? No way. You could do brain surgery back there on my rear floorboard now.”

“Unsettling thought, but possibly necessary if this conversation continues,” she muttered.

“You could lick ice cream off these seats.”

“Knowing you, if you dropped your cone, you probably would,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m glad you’re so proud of how clean your car is now, after years of slovenliness.”

“Thank you. I guess.” He crushed the can flat with his hands, reached behind her, and lovingly placed it into the fancy-dandy auto litter receptacle attached to her headrest, hanging behind the passenger’s seat.

The bin was lined with a deodorized plastic bag, and Savannah was pretty sure she could detect the scent of bleach.

Her baby brother, Waycross, had restored Dirk’s old Buick after it had been all but totaled in a severe accident. Before, the car had been pretty much a trash heap on wheels.

But since Waycross had surprised Dirk with the perfect “resurrection model” of his formerly deceased vehicle, Dirk was treating the car even better than Savannah babied her red 1965 Mustang. That was saying quite a lot, since she sometimes used dental floss to clean its wire-spoked wheel covers.

While she was glad to see Dirk finally give a dang for a change, embrace a passion, and abandon his former lifestyle—a study in untidy apathy—she found his new obsessive cleanliness annoying, to say the least.

“Be careful what you wish for,” she murmured. “Lord help you if you happen to get it.” Under her breath she added, “Maybe I could get Waycross to remodel the area around my toilet.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Twenty minutes and several cookies later, both Savannah’s and Dirk’s banter had turned to silence born of acute boredom. Not even Johnny’s rousing rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues,” recorded in the infamous jailhouse itself, was enough to keep Dirk from nodding off.

“I could be home right now, you know,” she told him, confident that he was sound asleep and wouldn’t hear a word. “I could be watching TV or reading my new romance novel.”

Surveilling a drug house was seldom a joyous occasion, and the one they were observing was even less exciting than most. They weren’t even sure the occupants inside were selling drugs. Dirk had received a tip that they were a high volume, well-fortified operation. But the informant had a reputation for being less than honest, especially when offering information to avoid arrest.

Dirk’s objective was simple: determine whether the tip was legitimate before going to the trouble and expense of sending an undercover cop into the house to score.

So far, other than a pizza delivery, no one had come in or out of the place, and it looked like any other run-down bungalow in the neighborhood. Quiet and reasonably law abiding.

To the point of boring.

“Yeah. I could be relaxing in my comfy chair, petting my kitties and shoving raspberry truffles in my face,” she continued, berating the sleeping man. “Instead, I’m sitting here, my butt numb, listening to you snore like a warthog with a head cold and . . .”

Her complaint faded away as an old van with battered fenders and rust-encrusted paint pulled in front of the house in question. After jumping the curb, driving onto the grass for a moment, then down, the vehicle managed to park.

A woman exited the driver’s door, nearly falling on her face in the process. Even from where Savannah sat and without any sort of sobriety test, she could tell the gal was strongly under the influence of something.

Savannah grabbed her binoculars off the dash and took a closer look at her. She paid special attention to the woman’s haggard, anxious expression, her drug-ravaged body and shaky, fidgety movements.

She was painfully thin and dressed to reveal as much skin as possible in a teeny bikini top and short shorts that suggested the goods she was displaying were for sale—or at least for short-term rental.

“As Granny would say,” Savannah whispered, “you can see all the way to Christmas and—glory be!—New Year’s Eve, too.”

When the woman walked around the rear of the van, on her way to the sidewalk, she paused to bang her fist on the back window several times. She yelled, “You stay put! Set one foot outside this van and I swear to gawd, I’ll whup your tail good when I get back.”

A rusty old bell clanged deep inside Savannah’s personal memories. For a moment she was a twelve-year-old child, sitting in the open bed of an ancient pickup truck filled with her younger siblings, watching their mother stumble across a dark alley and enter a tavern’s rear entrance. She felt the chill of the night air, the ache of hunger in her belly, and the crushing weight of responsibility, knowing that she alone would be responsible for keeping them all safe for the next four or five hours.

Warm, fed, or entertained . . . those were impossible luxuries.

Safety would be the only gift she might be able to afford.

But even that could prove difficult, considering the drunken patrons coming and going through the bar’s back door. Not to mention the older children’s propensity to ignore her orders, climb out of the truck, and play in the unlit parking area strewn with broken glass, discarded hypodermic needles, and used condoms.

Adjusting the binoculars’ focus, Savannah saw a small face appear at the van’s rear window for a second, then duck back down.

Deep inside her, among the dark memories, a presence stirred—a being that had been born long ago in that lonely, dangerous alley. A child with a woman’s fierce maternal instincts, who carried a sword that she named Justice and a shield that was wide enough to protect not only herself, but any and all innocents she could gather behind it.

“Don’t worry, darlin’,” she whispered to the little one with the frightened face she had seen in the window. “Tonight . . . your life changes for the better. I promise.”

Savannah nudged the sleeping Dirk. “Wake up, sugar,” she told him. “Your nap’s over. Time to get to work. You don’t want to miss the show.”

Dirk stirred, glanced around with sleepy eyes, then managed to focus on the retreating woman’s backside as she walked away from them, stumbling up the sidewalk toward the house they were surveilling.

“Eh,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “I’ve seen way better butts than that—like this morning, when you bent over to take the biscuits outta the oven.”

Ordinarily, Savannah would have been flattered and happy to receive the compliment. Of Dirk’s numerous, endearing qualities, one of her favorites was his attitude that “more is more” when it came to feminine curvature.

But under the present circumstances, considering the child in the van and the fact that the woman entering the drug house could barely walk, let alone drive safely, Savannah had other things to think about than her husband’s unabashed enthusiasm for his wife’s ample backside.

“Is that her van?” Dirk asked, nodding toward the decrepit vehicle.

“Yes,” Savannah replied.

“Was she drivin’ it?”

“Rather badly, but yes.”

“Good. When she comes out, we’ll let her drive a couple of blocks—far enough away that the dealers in the house won’t see. We don’t wanna tip them off just yet that we’re watching them. We’ll get her on a DUI along with the junk, assuming she scores some.”

“That would be nice, if only it was that simple,” Savannah said with a tired sigh.

“Whaddaya mean? Maybe I can get ’er to talk. If I withhold her goods for a few hours, she’ll flip.”

Savannah watched as the woman tripped over her own feet, entering the house. “She looks like a flipper all right. Five minutes with you in the sweat box, she’ll fold like a shy oyster.”

“Exactly. Instead of messing with setting up an undercover buyer, we’ll use her statement, and maybe a couple of others to get a warrant and come back next week with a full team to roust the house good and proper. No problem.”

“She’s got a child there in the van. From what I could see, a little one.”

Savannah watched as the reality of the situation dawned on her husband, along with its implications.

“Damn,” he said.

“Yeah. We can’t let her drive away with a youngster in the van and her drunk as Cooter Brown. Not even a few blocks.”

“But if we remove the kid she’ll notice he or she is gone, throw a fit, and alert the house that we’re out here. They’ll figure out that they’re being watched.”

“Exactly.”

She could tell from his grimace that Dirk’s brain was spinning as fast as hers, trying to form a plan.

Reaching a conclusion at the exact same moment, they said in unison, “Call Jake.”

Dirk reached for his phone, punched in a number, and waited for his fellow detective, Jake McMurtry, to answer.

Since she was only a few feet away and Dirk always had the volume up on his phone, Savannah could hear Jake’s drowsy tone when he said, “Yeah, Coulter. What’s happenin’?”

Her husband wasn’t the only one who nodded off on stakeouts. It was an occupational hazard. One that could cost a cop their job . . . or worse.

“You still sittin’ on that house in the projects?” Dirk asked him.

“Yeah. Nothing’s going on here. I think I’ll pack it in.”

“I’m at the house on Lester with Savannah. Turns out we may have to bust them now. Get over here as quick as you can.”

“Call for backup.”

“I will. Move!”

As soon as Dirk had placed the second call for reinforcements, Savannah said, “We have to get that young’un out of that van now. I’ll bring the kid back here to the car and babysit till y’all are done doing what you gotta do.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

Both bailed out of the Buick and hurried up the sidewalk to the van, trying to stay behind the vehicles as much as possible in case someone in the house was looking out the window at that moment.

“Where did you see ’em?” Dirk asked. “Front or back?”

“Looking out the rear window. I’ll try the back door, and you open the driver’s side. I didn’t see the mother lock it.”

“Watch yourself,” he said. “There might be someone else, another adult, in the back with the kid.”

“I already thought of that. But thank you.”

“Maybe I should take the rear.”

As she had many times, Savannah reminded herself that Dirk hadn’t done the protective male thing years ago, when they had been partners on the force. Back in “the day” he had treated her as an equal.

He still did. For the most part. But she had been shot and nearly died in his arms.

Near tragedies like that changed everything.

It had certainly changed him . . . her . . . them.

Eventually, skin, muscle, and bone healed. But the scars left by fear on the human psyche—those were forever.

“I got it, darlin’,” she told him, her southern drawl soft but confident. “If there’s a problem, you’ll come scrambling between those bucket seats, into the back, and save me.”

“Well, okay. But don’t open the door till I give the word.”

“All right. But not your usual one. It needs to be G rated for the kiddo.”

He chuckled, a bit nervously. “Yeah. Gotcha.”

They ducked as they scurried to the back of the van, keeping wary eyes on both the vehicle and the house.

Once Savannah was crouched at the rear door with her head beneath the window, her fingers around the handle, Dirk rushed to the driver’s side.

A few seconds later, she heard his authoritative but, thankfully, suitable for all ages command, “Go!”

She twisted the handle, yanked hard, and the door came open with some difficulty and a loud, creaking sound, like an ancient, partially buried, dirt-encrusted casket opening in an old horror movie.

Peering inside the dark, cluttered interior, she saw nothing at first. But her eyes quickly adjusted, and she could see a small, frightened child with heartbreaking, large, frightened eyes staring at her.

“It’s okay, sugar,” she said, holding up both of her hands in a surrender pose. “Everything’s all right.”

The little head whipped around to watch Dirk as he climbed into the driver’s seat and turned to face them.

“She’s right. You’re okay. We’re just here to help you,” Dirk said, using his “soft, sweet” voice. It was the one he usually reserved for his three favorite creatures on earth—Cleo, the gentler of their two cats at home, Vanna Rose, their red-haired, toddler niece, and of course, Savannah . . . when they weren’t quarreling.

As Savannah climbed into the rear of the van, she could see the child better and realized it was a boy, about six years old.

Even in the dim light she could tell that he was underfed and barely clothed in only a pair of dirty shorts and flip-flops. He was in dire need of a good bath, a shampoo, and a haircut.

“My name is Savannah,” she told him, holding out her hand to him. “What’s yours?”

The boy hesitated and glanced down at her outstretched hand. Then without accepting the handshake, he looked her square in the eyes and said in a strong, confrontational tone and a southern accent even stronger than her own, “I’m Mr. Brody Greyson. But I’m not supposed to talk to strangers, especially ones that’s just broke into my momma’s van.”

Something about the boy’s squared, bony shoulders touched Savannah’s heart, not to mention his Southern twang. His thin arms were crossed over his chest and his chin lifted defiantly. But she could see he was trembling.

She glanced out the side window of the van toward the house. The path was clear. No sign of Mom. At least, not yet.

“That’s good advice your momma gave you about not talking to strangers, but in this case—”

“It weren’t my momma that said it. My teacher tells us that.”

“Then good for your teacher,” she told him, “but in this case, it’s okay, because that fella there is my husband, Detective Sergeant Coulter, and he’s a policeman.”

Dirk pulled his badge from his pocket and held it up for the child’s inspection.

But instead of being impressed and comforted, Brody Greyson whirled on Dirk with a vengeance and shouted, “A cop? You’re a stinkin’ cop? Then you’d better get your smelly butt outta here right now, before my mom comes back! If she catches you in her van, she’ll whup you up one side and down the other! She’s mean as mean can be, and she hates cops! She says you’re nothin’ but a rotten, stinkin’, lousy bunch of—”

“Now, now, Mr. Brody Greyson,” Savannah said. “If you make a habit of speaking to police officers in that disrespectful manner, your life’s bound to get complicated real fast. You could find yourself in a whirlwind of trouble, even at your age!”

“I don’t give a hoot! You clear outta here, before I knock you into next week myself! My momma left me in charge of her van, and if she finds out I let you in here, she’ll thrash me with her belt. I’d a heap rather you get a whuppin’ from me than I get one from her!”

“How about if nobody gets any whuppin’ at all?” Savannah said, placing her hand gently on the boy’s shoulder. “There’s no call for anybody to get hurt. We’re just going to talk and sort out some problems, all nice and peaceful. Would you like that? Would that be okay with you?”

She glanced over at Dirk and saw the sadness she was feeling in his eyes.

Something told her that a woman who had raised her son to be this aggressive and opposed to peace officers wasn’t likely to be taken into custody gracefully.

“If you try to talk to my momma ’bout anything, it ain’t gonna be nice or peaceful, I guarantee you,” the child stated with deep conviction, echoing Savannah’s thoughts. “She ain’t known for ‘peaceful,’ and she’s not all that nice either, even to people she likes, and she hates cops more than anything in the world. ’Cept maybe preachers.”

“But if Detective Coulter treats her with respect—”

“Won’t make a bit of difference. She says she’d be happy to skin every cop in the world alive and roast ’em all for dinner.”

Savannah winced, then faked a laugh. “There’s a lot of police officers in the world. If she tried to roast them all, she’d find herself busier than a one-eyed cat watching nine mouse holes.”

“She’s got a lot of energy, my momma,” Brody said, nodding solemnly. “She’d get ’er done.”

Savannah looked at Dirk and noticed he was watching the front door of the drug house intently. She wasn’t surprised. The woman had been inside for several minutes now. Certainly long enough to do a quick drug deal. Most likely, she’d be coming out at any moment.

Behind Dirk, through the windshield, Savannah saw two police cruisers coming down the street toward them, their lights off. They pulled to the curb and parked, half a block away.

“Backup’s ten-twenty-three,” she told him.

“What’ve we got?”

“Two units.”

His cell phone dinged. He glanced at the text message. “Jake too,” he told her.

He didn’t have to tell her that the time for conversation with young, but old for his age, Mr. Brody Greyson was coming to an end.

“Listen, son,” Dirk told him, “I’m going to have to ask you to go with this lady and do everything she tells you to do. We’ve got some important business to tend to here at this house, and it would be best for everybody if you go with her until it’s all over with.”

“I ain’t goin’ now. . .