A Decadent Way to Die (12 page)

Long ago, she had heard that some Native Americans believed that a bit of a craftsman’s soul entered into the weapons he made or the tools he created.

She liked to believe it was true. When she missed Granny a little too much, felt sad or particularly tired, or had the sniffles, she wrapped herself in the quilt and imagined she was being hugged by her beloved grandmother. And it helped.

Lifting the top of the old chest that her grandfather had built for Gran as a wedding present, so many years ago, Savannah breathed in the rich, earthy scent of the cedar.

That smell had always represented love, safety, and stability to Savannah, and had the ability to transport her back to a sweeter, more innocent time in her life. A time long before forensic reports, autopsy results, homicide investigations, and murderers’ grisly confessions. Before she knew what human beings were capable of doing to one another.

She reached inside the chest and, beneath some of Gran’s doilies and a set of her own hand-embroidered pillowcases, she found Valdosta. She was wrapped in a square of green velvet cloth cut from an old Christmas decoration. Nothing had been wasted in Granny Reid’s house.

Lovingly, Savannah unwrapped her and looked down into the doll’s beautiful, lifelike eyes. Her long, curling locks of black hair, the lace-trimmed satin dress that was the same blue as her eyes, her creamy skin and perfectly shaped mouth … she was a work of art. Helene Strauss’s art.

“Hello, little sweetie,” Savannah whispered. “It’s been too long since I took you out of there.”

She kissed the doll’s face and felt its smooth cool cheek against her lips.

“I met the woman who made you today,” she told her, “and a lot of your sisters and even some brothers. Her name is Helene, and she’s a great lady. You come from a fine family.”

Savannah stood and walked to the side of the bed.

“Helene says you aren’t happy, living in that dark old trunk. She told me to take you out and display you. What do you think about that? You want to be on display?”

Although Valdosta didn’t reply, Savannah could swear that her smile widened a tad.

“I don’t have a Bavarian-style mansion for you to live in, like your relatives, or even a glass display case, but you can lie here on my guest bed, if you like. How would that be?”

Gently, she placed the doll, just so, in the middle of the bed, her head on the pillows, her full skirt spread out around her.

“And at least once a day, I’ll come in here, give you a kiss and ask how you’re doing. What do you think of that?”

Yes, she could definitely see the pink mouth curving upward, just a bit, and the blue eyes sparkled a little brighter.

Feeling like she had done some sort of good deed, Savannah left the guest room, went into her bedroom, and got the phone.

A few moments later, she was lying in her claw-foot bathtub, up to her chin in bubbles that glistened in the light provided by the rose-scented, votive candles on the vanity.

She punched some numbers on the phone, then smiled when she heard the soft, Southern accent on the other end.

“Hey there, Savannah, darlin’. How’s my sweet girl?”

“I’m fine, Gran. Fine and dandy. I just wanted to call and tell you that I met somebody who puts me in mind of you.”

“And who might that be?”

“A lovely lady named Helene. Oh, and I just spoke to an old friend of ours. Valdosta says to tell you, ‘hi, Granny.’”

Savannah had just drifted off to sleep, Diamante curled beneath her right arm, Cleopatra snuggled at her feet, when her bedside phone jangled her awake.

She jumped and grabbed at the phone, her heart pounding.

With a growl of indignation, Diamante relocated to the foot of the bed to lie beside her sister.

“Hello?” Savannah said, staring at the darkness outside her window, trying to orient herself.

She squinted at the clock on her night table. It was only 11:02. No wonder she felt less than refreshed.

“It’s me, Ryan,” said a voice on the other end. A voice that sounded worried. Very worried. “I’m sorry to wake you.”

“No problem. What’s up?”

“You’ve got to come over here … to Helene’s estate.”

Her pulse rate soared. She could feel the blood pounding in her temples. “Why?” she said. “What have you got?”

She heard Ryan draw a long breath, then let it out. “Honestly, Savannah, we’re not even sure what we’ve got. But you have to come over here right now. I’ve already called Dirk. He’s on his way.”

“So am I.”

Savannah hung up the phone and leapt out of bed so fast that it made her lightheaded. As she ran to the closet to grab a pair of jeans and a shirt, she fought down the sense of panic that was rising along with her blood pressure.

She knew, whatever it was, it had to be really bad.

Ryan had called
Dirk
first.

Chapter 11

B
y the time Savannah had arrived at the Strauss estate, Dirk was already there. She parked her Mustang next to his old Buick and jumped out, cell phone in hand. As she hurried to the mansion’s front door, she phoned him.

“Where are you?” she barked when he answered.

“Where are
you
?”

“In front of the main house,” she said, looking up at the windows, which were nearly all lit.

“Wait there. I’ll send Ryan to get you.” He hung up.

Impatiently, she did as she was told, standing at the front door, listening for sounds from within. But the house was silent.

When Ryan did appear, it was from a path that led into the woods to her right.

The solar lights that lined the stone walkway were bright enough for her to see his expression. And it was grim.

“What in tarnation’s going on?” she asked, hurrying down the porch steps and running to him.

He pointed back in the direction he had come. “We’ve got two down,” he told her.

“Two? Down?” She did a quick mental tally of the residents of the estate. Helene, Waldo, Tiago, and Blanca. Two was a disturbingly high percentage for a place that was home to only four people.

And Emma
, she thought.
Emma said she’d be spending the night here, too.

“Down as in
hurt
?” she asked. “Or …?”

“They’re gone, Savannah. I’m sorry. When we found them, we tried to help, but …”

He turned and hurried back down the path he had come, with her trotting alongside.

“Who is it?” she asked breathlessly

“We don’t know for sure. A male and a female.”

Savannah’s throat felt like it was closing so tightly she could hardly speak the word, “Helene?”

“Helene’s accounted for. She’s in the house. John’s with her.”

“Good.”

Ahead, through the trees, Savannah could see lights and a figure moving about.

She would know those broad shoulders and the lumbering gait anywhere.

She and Ryan hurried through the trees and emerged into a small clearing.

Soft blue lights illuminated a large whirlpool spa surrounded by rock paving and several thick-cushioned, wicker chaise lounges with matching accent tables. But it wasn’t the water gently swirling in the tub or the comfortable furniture that caught Savannah’s eye.

It was the two bodies lying, faceup, on the stone pavement beside the spa.

Dirk stood next to them, arms crossed over his chest, a mixture of sadness and anger on his face.

Savannah had seen that look and that stance many times. And she knew what he was feeling. He was trying to shield himself from the harsh reality of what he was seeing—a futile attempt that law enforcement officers everywhere couldn’t help making.

Of course, it never worked, but that didn’t stop anyone from trying.

She felt herself doing it as she approached the bodies. Emotion clicking off; logic and intellect taking over.

And that worked for five seconds, until she recognized the face of the young woman.

“Blanca,” she whispered. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah, it’s her,” Dirk said, reaching over and placing a hand on Savannah’s shoulder.

Savannah didn’t have to ask if the housekeeper was dead. Her eyes were staring sightlessly into the night sky. Her torso was covered with a white towel, and there was no natural rising and falling of her chest.

Her beautiful, long, black hair was wet, spread out on the stones around her head, and her skin that had glowed with golden health looked ashen in the blue light.

Long ago, Savannah had realized that not every dead person had the peaceful look of sleep on their faces, like the corpses on television and in movies. Some looked as though they had died in a moment of horror.

Sadly, Blanca was one of those.

Savannah walked around her body to get a better look at the face of the male lying near her. “So, who’s the other one?” she asked.

“His name is Victor Odell,” Ryan replied. “John and I recognized him right away.”

Savannah knelt on one knee beside the male’s body and tried to see his features, which were in shadow.

She saw enough that she, too, recognized him.

“Victor who?” she said. “That’s Vern Oldham. Ada’s boyfriend.”

“Well, I don’t know what name he’s using now,” Ryan said, “but John and I had the misfortune of crossing paths with him several years ago, and back then, he was Victor.”

“At least he kept the initials the same,” Dirk added.

“Yeah,” Ryan replied, “good old Victor had everything he owned monogrammed. I guess he didn’t want to change wardrobes every time he changed aliases.”

“I had the new gal at the station run a check on him today,” Dirk told them. “She couldn’t find anything past a year ago.”

“How did you two know him?” Savannah asked Ryan as she stood and brushed off her knee.

“He belonged to our boat club and—”

“Your
yacht
club,” Dirk corrected him. “You can say ‘yacht.’ We know you’ve got one. I have a fifty-footer myself … keep it parked behind my house trailer.”

“Okay.” Ryan gave him a half smile. “He was a member of our
yacht
club, courtesy of a dear friend of ours, Melissa Hamilton. He did everything he could to cause Melissa to fall in love with him … and succeeded … and then robbed her of most of her fortune and broke her heart.”

Savannah shook her head. “One of your favorite people, no doubt.”

“Let’s just say, John and I offered to administer some Georgia-style, Savannah justice to him, but Melissa just wanted to put the whole sorry affair behind her.”

Savannah looked down at the still body, the lifeless face. “Looks like Lady Justice might have knocked hard on our boy Victor/Vern’s door tonight.”

“Yeah,” Dirk said, “I’m not gonna cry over that one.” He pointed to Blanca’s body. “That one there, I feel really bad about. Something tells me she didn’t deserve what she got.”

Savannah looked around, taking in the details of the scene. “And what, exactly,
did
she get? What happened here?”

“John and I were making an evening round,” Ryan told her.“Just wanted to check everything one more time before we went to bed. John walked down toward the gardener’s cottage, and I checked the pool area and then back here.”

“You were the one who found them, lying here by the spa?” Savannah asked.

“No. As I was walking by, I saw something strange in the water. As it turns out, it was her hair, floating at the top. Both of them were submerged there in the tub.”

“You dragged them out of there yourself?” Savannah noticed for the first time that the front of Ryan’s shirt and his trousers were wet.

“Yes, and I phoned John and told him to get over here. The two of us could see right away that they were both gone. We tried, but no amount of resuscitation was going to work.”

“Looks to me,” Dirk said, “like they’ve both been dead a couple of hours at least.”

Savannah pointed to the white towels, one covering Blanca’s body and the other lying over Vern’s groin area. “You and John put the towels over them?”

Ryan nodded. “I know. Dirk already mentioned that wasn’t the best choice, forensic-wise. But it seemed like the decent thing to do.”

Looking around, Savannah spotted a towel valet, stacked with snowy white towels. “Did you take them from over there?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ryan replied. “We deliberately used clean ones, so that we wouldn’t cross-contaminate any evidence.”

“And the towels beside the spa were there already?” Savannah asked with a wave toward a couple of crumpled ones on the edge of the whirlpool.

“Yes,” Ryan said, “and their clothes are over there.” He pointed to a woman’s sundress, a man’s slacks and shirt, and a pair of panties and some men’s briefs draped across one of the chaise lounges. On the pavement nearby were two pairs of sandals.

Savannah noticed something else on a table near the spa—a tray laden with sumptuous goodies. The remainders of their feast included giant shrimp, a couple of lobster tails, various cheeses and fruits, chocolate-dipped strawberries, a champagne bottle, and two wineglasses.

In an ashtray next to the food was a half-smoked marijuana joint.

“Wow,” she said. “That was quite a spread. Something tells me that Blanca couldn’t have afforded a layout like that.”

“Like I said”—Ryan shook his head—“Victor—or Vern, as you call him—was good at seduction.”

Dirk walked closer to the bodies, took a flashlight from inside his jacket, and shined it slowly from one end of Vern’s body to the other, lifting the towel and looking beneath it as he searched. “I don’t see any signs of trauma at all,” he said. “The guy’s clean as a whistle.”

Savannah borrowed his light and did the same to Blanca’s. “I don’t see anything on her either. Did anybody look at their backs?”

“John and I both did, after we dragged them out and before we covered them,” Ryan replied. “Nothing at all.”

“What do you suppose killed them?” Savannah wondered aloud. “You hear all the time that you aren’t supposed to drink alcohol in a hot tub, for fear of heat stroke. But what’re the odds they’d both be overcome like that at the same time?”

She walked over to the whirlpool and looked in. There was nothing, not even a floating leaf or soap bubble in the crystalline water that gently swirled inside.

“The jets weren’t on when you found them?” she asked.

“No. It was just like that,” Ryan told her. “Both of them inside, completely submerged … except for her hair that was floating on the surface.”

Savannah pointed to the buttons on the side of the spa. “It’s on a timer. So, even if they’d been using the jets, it would have probably shut off on its own.”

Dirk put his flashlight back into his jacket. “Obviously, they were having a little hanky-panky out here. Romantic snacks, smokin’ a joint, having a moonlight skinny dip … Where’s the hubby, Tiago?”

“More importantly,” Savannah said, “where’s he been all night?”

“John and I asked Helene earlier where everyone was. She said that Waldo went out for a drive to some unknown destination … to ‘settle his nerves,’ she said. Apparently, he does that a lot.”

“Probably went to the bad part of town to score,” Savannah surmised.

“And,” Ryan continued, “she said the gardener and his wife had gone to La Rosita, like they do every Saturday night, to visit his brother and cousins.”

Savannah looked down at the young woman on the ground. “Blanca should have gone to La Rosita to visit her in-laws instead of staying behind to fool around with Vern the Skunk. She’d probably still be alive.”

“I checked their place, the gardener’s cottage, before you got here,” Dirk said. “The house was dark. Nobody was there.”

“Did you go inside … without a warrant?” Savannah asked.

“Of course.”

“My bad habits are rubbing off on you, boy.”

“Heaven forbid.”

They heard someone coming down the path and turned to see a disheveled Emma emerging from the woods. She was wearing a tank top with pajama bottoms, and she was dripping wet from head to toe.

“There you are,” she said. “I was looking all over for you guys. Oma said there’s been some sort of accident out here, and—oh, my God!”

She gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth, staring at the bodies.

Savannah hurried over to her and put her arm around her shoulders. Her skin was wet and clammy, and she was shivering violently.

“Girl, you’re cold as a cucumber,” Savannah told her. “Dirk, fetch us a couple of those towels over here.”

Dirk delivered the towels, and she wrapped one around Emma, like a shawl.

“How’d you get so wet?” she asked her. “You look like a drowned rat.”

“I took a shortcut across the lawn to get over here,” Emma said, teeth chattering. “The sprinklers came on when I was halfway across. I was drenched before I could get to the other side.”

Emma took the second towel and began to dry her hair with it. “I wasn’t expecting the sprinkler system to come on so early. It’s set for three in the morning.”

“You know when the sprinklers come on?” Dirk asked her.

“I grew up here. I was a teenager here. When you sneak into the house late, you keep track of things like that.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess you do.”

“Who is that over there?” she asked, nodding toward the bodies. “What happened to them?”