Killer Reunion

Book 0: Savannah Reid Mystery

by G.A. McKevett

Genres: Southern; Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Private Investigators; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Old grudges die hard for the Southern PI when her high school reunion is interrupted by murder in this cozy mystery by the author of Just Desserts. When Savannah Reid fled McGill, Georgia, everyone figured the chubby girl from the wrong side of tracks would never come back. But now the successful private investigator is making a triumphant return, attending her 25th high school reunion with her handsome husband on her arm. When her old nemesis Jeanette Parker reprises her role as the Queen of Mean, Savannah finally shows her up. But her moment of victory is sunk when Jeanette's dead body is found in the swamp. As the primary suspect in Jeanette’s murder, Savannah’s rocky history with the local sheriff doesn’t help her situation. But after calling on her partners at Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency, it is soon revealed that the Queen of Mean had plenty of enemies—and possibly the blood of her recently deceased husband on her hands. Now Savannah and her fellow detectives will have to act fast to catch a killer before another victim is crowned.

Release date: April 1, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

Staring across the table at her dearly beloved, relatively new husband, Savannah Reid wondered if any man in the history of the world had been bludgeoned to death at the kitchen breakfast table because he read his newspaper too loudly.

If not, Dirk was in danger of becoming the first.

Would they list him in The Guinness Book of World Records?

Would Madame Tussaud build a special display in the Chamber of Horrors at her wax museum, dedicated to the unfortunate victim and his dastardly wife?

Savannah could just envision it now: the wax version of Dirk slumped forward onto the table, his face buried in his oversized bowl of cornflakes, the San Carmelita Star spread in front of him, taking up far more than his reasonable half of the table. Standing slightly behind and looming over him would be the figure of Savannah herself—her flannel Minnie Mouse pajamas spattered with blood, a broken coffee mug in her hand—wearing the maniacal grin of a woman who had finally, utterly, irrevocably snapped.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

“What?” Jerked from her morbid and far too pleasant reverie, Savannah realized that he was speaking to her.

“I asked you what you were thinking about just now.” He reached down, grabbed the right lower corner of the newspaper page, and with the amount of energy commonly expended to hurl a discus seventy meters or more, he heaved it to the left. The deafening racket, created by what should have been such a simple movement, set Savannah’s teeth on edge and caused her to grip her Beauty and the Beast mug so tightly that the Beast grimaced. She braced herself for what would inevitably come next.

No sooner had the leaf settled into place than Stage Two of Page Turning commenced—the dreaded Smoothing of the Paper.

The love of her life and current source of great torment began to slap the recently turned sheet with his open palm. Moving from corner to corner in a clockwise motion, he pounded each area repeatedly and thoroughly. That accomplished, he attacked the center of the page, smacking, smoothing, and flattening with all the vim and vigor of an arachnophobe who feared his morning paper was infested with a horde of black widow spiders.

“So, what were you thinking about?” he asked again, leaving the paper for a moment and assaulting his cereal.

“Why do you ask?” She watched him raise an impossibly large spoonful of flakes to his mouth and shovel it in.

He gave her a sweet, loving smile, enhanced by the flakes dangling from his lower lip and the milk oozing from the right corner of his mouth. “I was just wondering, because you look so happy, so contented.”

She shrugged and batted her eyelashes in her most demure Southern belle fashion. “Why, just a little daydream,” she drawled.

“About?”

“Madame Tussaud.”

He looked puzzled for a moment, then dropped his spoon into his bowl. The clang of metal hitting metal sounded like Quasimodo and the bells of Notre Dame announcing the top of the hour. But it was a necessary evil. After he had broken two of her favorite china bowls, Savannah had restricted him to using an indestructible graniteware bowl—the dark blue, white-speckled kind that cowboys used around their campfires. Or so she’d assured him. She had given the bowl to him for his birthday and had told him it was a vintage collectible that had actually been used on the set of Bonanza.

Yes, she was learning that successful matrimony required a certain degree of ingenuity, bolstered by an occasional whopper of a soul-blackening lie.

“Madame Tooth-So?” He quirked one eyebrow as he searched his memory banks for the reference, then nodded knowingly. “Oh, yeah. I remember her. She was that gal we busted who was running the cathouse on Lester Street. The mayor was playin’ footsie with a couple of her gals when we rousted the place.”

Savannah laughed, wax museum horrors momentarily forgotten, as the memory took her back to the “good old days” when she and Dirk had both been cops, partners even. Dirk was still with the San Carmelita Police Department, but she and they had long since parted ways.

But that didn’t stop her from wallowing in the memories.

“Yes,” she said. “As I recall, he was tickling more than their feet when we charged through the door of that bedroom.”

“And remember the look on the captain’s face when he saw you hauling his mayorship in . . . cuffed and wearing nothing but his boxers?”

Savannah groaned. “That had to be one of the bigger nails in my law-enforcement coffin.”

Sharing a companionable laugh, they were, once again, on common ground. Domestic tranquility had been restored.

Dirk stood, picked up his bowl and spoon, and carried them to the sink. As he rinsed them and placed them into the dishwasher, Savannah congratulated herself on the minor improvement in his behavior. Who said a wife couldn’t change her husband if she only nagged loudly and frequently enough?

“Wanna ride along and keep me company today?” he asked as he pitched the abused but gloriously spider-free newspaper into the recycle bin.

Another uptick on the Civility Meter.

She eyed him suspiciously. “Won’t this be your fifth day staking out that strip-joint dive there in Twin Oaks?”

He shot her a guilty look. “Yeah. So?”

How typical of him to invite her along when his assignment was as exciting as watching a snail marathon. “I’d best stick around here and pack for the trip.” She sighed, thinking about her upcoming journey back in time. Back home to the tiny rural town of McGill, Georgia, where she had been born and reared, not to mention teased and tormented.

A chance to reconnect with her past at a joyous event called a high school class reunion. Woo-hoo. She could hardly wait.

But then, she would also be celebrating Granny Reid’s birthday. And that would make the effort all worthwhile.

Or mostly worthwhile.

Dirk donned a self-satisfied smirk and said, “Rather than leave it to the last minute, I packed last night.”

“Big whoop-de-do. Underdrawers and your spare toothbrush. You fellas have it easy.”

“And you gals take way too much junk and expect us guys to lug it for you.”

She thought of all the clothes spread across her bed upstairs, next to her still empty suitcase. Yes, he had her there. In an attempt to wear something that showed off her overly generous bustline without accenting her overly abundant butt line, she would be dragging half of her closet to McGill and back.

Okay . . . he would be.

Bless his little pea-pickin’ heart.

She stood and carried her own bowl to the sink. Once she’d rinsed it and placed it into the dishwasher, she turned and slipped her arms around his waist. Hugging him tightly against her, she closed her eyes and breathed in the delicious smell of him: freshly applied deodorant, shave lotion, and the faint unique scent of his skin. He smelled like protection, companionship, and strength. But mostly, he smelled like love.

Reluctantly, she released him, and as he walked away to gather up his essentials—cell phone, notebook, badge, and weapon—she did a quick mental tally of how long it would reasonably be until she laid eyes on him again.

If the stakeout was a bust, eight and a half hours. If he actually nailed some dude or dudette dealing meth out of the so-called “gentlemen’s” club, it would be ten or twelve, at least, by the time he had them snuggly situated behind bars and had completed all the paperwork.

“Be careful, darlin’,” she said as he headed for the back door.

“I always am.”

She thought of what a usual shift entailed in the world of Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter. The safest thing he did all day was merge into rush-hour traffic on the 101 freeway with an apple fritter in one hand and a mucho grande coffee in the other. “Yeah, well, be more careful than that.”

He gave her a grin that warmed every part of her body, and said, “Love ya.” Then he sailed out the door and slammed it, rattling the dishes in the cupboards and sending her cats running for cover.

“You better love me, boy,” she replied as she turned back to the sink and the half-washed coffeepot. “After all I put up with offa you, you’d better be plumb nuts about me.”

“You okay, babe?”

Dirk reached over and placed his hand on top of Savannah’s. She was hanging on to the armrest of the airline seat as tightly as she usually gripped the lap bar of a triple-loop roller coaster.

True, she wasn’t crazy about landings, but she usually didn’t mind them this much. She seldom broke out in a cold sweat and felt the overwhelming need to shriek, “We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die!” as the plane banked, then straightened and descended, lining up with the runway.

Below she could see Atlanta, Georgia, spread before her, remarkably greener than the beige desert landscape she had left behind in Southern California.

She liked green. She loved the smell of the Georgia pines and the peach orchards. Hearing the soft, sweet drawls, so like her own, did her heart good.

Then there was the less health-conscious regional cuisine. It probably did her heart far less good, but it certainly nourished her spirit, and that alone was worth the trip.

She was looking forward to fewer kale chips and bean sprout wraps and more pecan pie à la mode and peach cobbler.

There was a lot she loved about Georgia and Georgians. So, ordinarily, she didn’t mind a homecoming.

She had been back a few times in the past twenty years and didn’t recall experiencing quite so much dread at the prospect of being returned to the bosom of her native soil.

“It ain’t the soil’s bosom I’m worried about,” she muttered. “It’s the natives.”

“What?” Dirk gave her a quizzical look, the one he wore when she spoke her thoughts aloud without any explanatory preamble.

“Nothing. I’ll be okay,” she told him with a sigh as the wheels hit the tarmac and the plane bounced along, as though happy to be on land once more. “Everything will be fine and dandy . . . just as soon as I see Granny.”

Indeed, all was right with Savannah’s world the moment Dirk drove the rented car off the two-lane rural highway and down the narrow dirt road leading to her grandmother’s house. The mere sight of that tiny shotgun shack lifted her mood and brought peace to her soul in a way that no luxury estate on earth could have done.

It wasn’t so much the run-down structure, with its peeling paint, sagging front porch, and missing tar-paper roof tiles, that warmed Savannah’s heart. It was what this humble piece of property represented. Or, more importantly, whom.

As children, Savannah and her eight siblings had been removed from their mother’s custody and placed in the care of Granny Reid. Savannah would never forget the night when superheroes dressed in dark blue uniforms, with shining badges pinned to their chests, had scooped her and her brothers and sisters into their strong arms and had delivered them from their dark world of chaos, squalor, neglect, and abuse.

They have been driven away from their furious, shrieking mother in big, powerful black-and-white cars with magical red and blue flashing lights on their tops. And from the moment those heaven-sent warriors had transported them to this little house at the end of the dirt road, their childhoods—their lives—had changed forever.

Humble but tasty meals appeared three times a day, with the punctuality of a Marine Corps mess hall. Fresh, clean clothes were available every morning, and a bath with plenty of soap and vigorous scrubbing was required every evening.

Good manners and bedtime prayers were mandatory. Discipline was consistent and fairly administered, tempered with copious amounts of love in the form of hugs, kisses, encouragement, and sage advice.

Now, all these years later, although Savannah wasn’t exactly giddy at the prospect of reuniting with her school chums, she considered it worthwhile just to see Granny in her own natural habitat.

“It’ll be nice to visit with Granny here, in her own house, for a change instead of at our place,” Dirk said.

Savannah was often taken aback by how frequently and how precisely his thoughts echoed hers. It had been bad enough when they were partners on the force and friends, but now that they were married, it certainly appeared that “two had become one.”

A little scary, she thought, considering it’s Dirko.

“I’ll bet that’s what you were thinking, too,” he said. “You ever noticed how often me and you are thinking the same thing?”

“Knock it off. You’re creeping me out.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Pay no attention to me. I’m just out of sorts, you know, what with the reunion and all.”

“What are you talking about? It’ll be great! A chance to rub elbows, drink punchless punch, and eat dried-out cake with a bunch of knuckleheads you never wanted to see again for the rest of your life.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the least of it,” she replied as, once again, she felt tiny drops of sweat appear on her forehead. Perspiration that had nothing to do with the humidity of a Georgia summer.

Dirk pulled the car up to the front of the house and killed the engine. He reached over and took her hand in his. Giving her fingers a squeeze, he said, “Okay, so that’s the least of it. What’s the most of it?”

She gulped. “Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly socialite material back then. The clothes I wore, my hairstyle and makeup, or lack thereof, were all hot topics of lunchroom gossip. That and the fact that I never showed up for school functions.”

“Not even football games?” he asked with a look of shock and horror. “Why the hell not?”

Savannah gave him a sweet smile; that was her guy, all right. Always the jock. Missing a sporting event, anytime and for any reason, was simply unthinkable.

But her expression soon turned solemn again as she recalled the long hours spent on Gran’s back porch with the wringer washer. She could still hear the hypnotic rhythm of the machine’s agitator as it sloshed the load back and forth in its tub of hot, soapy water. She could still smell the acrid scent of bleach and strong detergent in the humid summer air.

She would never forget the anxiety provoked by feeding washed, wet clothes through the powerful wringer as she tried to keep her hand from slipping between the hard rollers, which would have surely crushed her fingers.

Then there were the endless afternoons and weekends spent in the backyard, where baskets overflowed with cold, wet laundry, and miles of heavy-laden clotheslines sagged with clothes flapping in the breeze.

“I didn’t have time to hang out with the other kids,” she said, “because I was too busy hanging their clothes out to dry. And then for extra fun, on weekends we scrubbed their houses.” She chuckled wryly and shrugged. “Gran and I had a lot of mouths to feed, and, Lord, how those younguns could eat.”

Dirk lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingers. A look of sadness and a hint of repressed anger crossed his face as he said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart, that you had to work so hard, and you were just a kid.”

“Oh, I didn’t mind the work,” she replied. “ ‘Hard work never killed nobody,’ as Gran frequently told us. What I minded was the other kids—a certain group of girls in particular—never letting me forget that I was beneath them.”

Dirk pulled her close and nuzzled her hair. “You ain’t beneath nobody, darlin’. And tomorrow night the two of us are gonna walk hand in hand into that gymnasium, with all its tacky crepe paper and balloon decorations. And my head’s gonna be held high. The lady I’ll be escorting will be not only my wife and the prettiest woman ever to come out of Georgia, but also the best person I’ve known in my life.”

Savannah looked into her husband’s eyes and knew with every cell of her being that he meant it. He told her that often, and she usually delivered a smart-aleck response, like “If I’m the best person you’ve ever known, boy, you need to get out more.”

But at that moment, sarcasm was the farthest thing from her mind. “And I love you, too. Plumb to pieces.”

“I know you do. But we better get in that house right now, ’cause your granny’s at the window, watching us make out. And from the scowl on her face, I’d say she disapproves.”

Savannah sighed and laughed. “Reckon some things never change.”

“It’s not that I minded the two of you swappin’ slobber in front of my house,” Granny told Savannah and Dirk once she had hugged them hard enough to make their ribs ache. “Seein’s how y’all are married now, it’s allowed and even encouraged. But not when I’m in here, itchin’ to get my hands on you.”

Savannah gave her grandmother an extra hug and marveled at the essence of pure feistiness that radiated from this eighty-plus Southern belle, wrapped in a pink and purple floral caftan. Her thick silver hair was neatly arranged, every curl in place, and from her ears dangled fuchsia chandelier earrings.

Every birthday since Gran had turned eighty, she had challenged herself to do something “new and daring.” Wearing shoulder-sweeping chandelier earrings was last year’s bold fashion foray. Savannah couldn’t wait to see what this upcoming birthday would bring. Granny had already warned everybody to beware; it was going to be a doozy.

“So, where is everyone?” Savannah asked, looking around the strangely empty house. She had expected to be mobbed by a gaggle of Reids and Reid younguns. Even half of her siblings, along with their rambunctious offspring, could fill the average living room.

“I told ’em not to descend on you like a pack of hyenas the minute you got here this evenin’,” Gran replied. “They’ll all be swoopin’ in like a flock o’ pigeons first thing tomorrow mornin’, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, lookin’ for breakfast.”

Savannah grinned at the imagery of bushy-tailed pigeons, but mixing her metaphors was just part of Gran’s charm, so Savannah wouldn’t dream of correcting her.

“They’ll be lookin’ for you to cook for ’em, you mean,” Savannah said.

Gran chuckled. “I don’t mind. Vidalia’s biscuits are heavy enough to sink a battleship, and Marietta fries her eggs so hot, they have them tough ruffle things around the edges. I don’t mind cookin’, especially for you, sugar.”

With eyes the same striking sapphire blue as Savannah’s, Gran gazed lovingly up at her granddaughter. But the affection quickly turned to concern. “What’s the matter with you, girl?” she snapped.

“What? Oh, nothing, Gran.”

“Yes there is. Somethin’s amiss for sure.”

She grabbed Savannah’s hand and pushed her across the tiny living room to an ancient plaid sofa covered with a large afghan—just one of Granny’s many creations that decorated the otherwise plain but cozy house.

“Sit yourself down right there,” she said, “and tell me all about what’s ailin’ you.”

Gran gave Dirk a shove toward the overstuffed armchair in the corner, its threadbare areas covered with snowy crocheted doilies . . . also products of Gran’s skilled fingers. “And since you’re my grandson-in-law now, I’ll let you sit in my comfy chair.”

“Why, thank you, Granny. I’m deeply honored,” Dirk said. He settled into the chair, but after placing his hands briefly on the doily-covered armrests, he seemed to think better of it and folded them demurely on his lap. He looked anything but comfy.

Savannah grinned, watching her husband squirm. Dirk had never been at ease among “girlie” stuff. Discarded beer cans, empty pizza boxes, and rusty TV trays were what he considered to be perfectly acceptable items of home décor. But ruffles and floral prints sent him into a dither. So an overtly feminine home like Granny’s was the stuff of nightmares for a manly man like him. He lived in mortal terror that he would break a delicate ceramic angel or snag a lacy something or spill iced tea on an heirloom quilt.

Savannah had tried in vain to convince him that a woman who had raised nine children in a tiny house was quite adept at gluing broken items and removing even the most stubborn stains.

Savannah couldn’t count the times over the years when she had heard Gran say to her or one of her siblings, “Accidents happen, sugar dumplin’. Don’t fret. There ain’t nothin’ in this house that means half as much to me as you do.”

Whatever Gran did or said, it came from a heart filled with love. Even interrogations like the one that was about to begin.

But no sooner had Gran settled herself next to Savannah on the couch than they heard the back door open, then slam closed. No doubt, it was one of the Reid offspring. Neighbors and friends would have been polite enough to knock.

Savannah was grateful for a possible reprieve from the pending “What’s wrong with you?” Gran cross-examination.

“Yoo-hoo! Granny? You here?” yelled a less than melodious female voice from the kitchen.

“In the front room, Marietta,” Gran called back.

“I brought your casserole dish back, like you told me to. I didn’t get a chance to wash it. I’m pokin’ it here in the sink.”

Savannah braced herself as the approaching click-click of high heels announced the arrival of Marietta. She was sister number two, right behind Savannah in the long line of siblings. Miss Mari was Savannah’s least favorite of the batch.

She actually qualified as one of the other reasons why Savannah wasn’t thrilled to be “home.”

“I thought I’d fetch it over here before that ornery, nasty, mule-headed sister of mine and her old man come sailin’ in,” Marietta babbled as she made her way from the kitchen, through the bedrooms, and toward the living room. “I’m gonna try my best to avoid crossin’ paths with—” Marietta stopped so abruptly in the living room doorway that she nearly fell off her four-inch zebra-striped mules. “Oh. You done got here.”

Savannah flashed her sister her best fake smile, which looked more like a grimace worn by wolves fighting over the carcass of a dead elk. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” she said. “If I’d known, I would’ve asked the captain to circle over Atlanta a few times before landing.”

Propping her hands on her ample hips, Marietta lifted her chin and stuck out her chest, which, in typical Reid gal fashion, was more than voluptuous. So voluptuous, in fact, that if she took one deep breath too many, she might “volupt” right out the front of her low-cut leopard-print blouse.

As Savannah took in the tiger-striped purse, it occurred to her that Miss Marietta wanted to make sure every male in the county knew that she would be a virtual tear-cat between the sheets, if only they were fortunate enough to get the chance to bed her.

A shockingly large percentage of them had lucked out at one time or the other. Much to Granny’s consternation.

But Savannah just thought her sister looked like a billboard advertisement for a zoo. Also, she had seen enough of Marietta’s heavy-duty body-shaping foundation garments hanging on the shower curtain rod to know that it was mostly false adverti. . .