Just Desserts (27 page)

She looked like the girls whose photographs were in that manila envelope of Dirk’s.

“May I help you?” she asked in a blatantly sexual tone that sounded flat, a little too practiced.

“Yes, we’re here to see Maximillian,” Savannah said. “He’s an old friend of ours.”

“Is he expecting you?” she asked. “Do you have an appointment?”

Savannah laughed. “No, no, we don’t need an appointment to see Max. Just tell him that Betty and Marco are here. He’ll want to see us, believe me!”

“Betty and Marco ... okay, wait here.”

The girl disappeared for a moment down the dark hall, leaving them standing in the doorway.

A while later a man walked out of what appeared to be the parlor and into the foyer. Savannah could see him through the transparent segments of the leaded glass. In spite of his expensive suit and haircut he looked like a punk ... a vampire of the worst kind.

Her stomach turned as thoughts ran, unbidden, through her brain, thoughts of what he might have done to her sister. Thoughts of how good it would feel to make him pay for what he had done with a bullet between the eyes.

Although Savannah had never once had to kill or even shoot a human being in the course of her law enforcement career, she had to admit she didn’t think she would be irreparably traumatized by taking this child-molesting pervert out.

As he approached, Savannah was struck by what a small man he was, probably no more than five-four, and she doubted he weighed much more than a hundred pounds. What did her sister see in this guy?

The moment he opened his mouth, Savannah had her answer.

“Good morning, good morning,” he gushed. “And how can be of service to you two today?”

He flashed a mouth full of perfectly capped teeth that gleamed against his perfectly suntanned face. His skin had a familiar orange glow to it, but apparently he was more skilled at spreading it on than Atlanta.

Savannah supposed that a naive sixteen-year-old girl might be awed by the flash. She remembered being embarrassingly easy to impress at that age.

“We need to have a word with you ... in private,” she added, dropping her voice. “It’s very important, and I don’t think you’ll want to talk about it here on your porch ... if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Dirk interjected, “there are just some things that a guy doesn’t want his neighbors to know about his private life, like—”

“Okay, okay, come on,” he said, beckoning them inside. His charm and effervescence fizzled like an old seltzer tablet, and Savannah wished Atlanta could see him now.

He hurried into the parlor, and they followed. The room had been beautifully decorated with Victorian furnishings that were from the same period as the house. A bit overly ornate, but in keeping with the times. Brocade diamond-tucked sofas, love seats, and chairs; marble-topped tables, Oriental rugs, and almost everything trimmed with lace or covered with doilies.

“So, Marco ... Betty,” Max said, not bothering to offer them a seat, “what’s this all about?” He stood with his arms crossed over his chest defensively. The gesture wrinkled both his suit and his facade of composure.

“It’s about you being up to your old tricks—so to speak—again,” Dirk said, pulling his badge from his pocket and flipping it open. “And I’m not Marco. She just calls me that sometimes for fun.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His face flushed and a muscle in his jaw began to twitch. “Do you have a warrant or something?”

“Not yet. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to resort to that. Don’t get me wrong; I’d love to put you back in the joint where you belong, but I don’t want to embarrass the young lady in question unless I have to. Get my drift?”

Savannah watched his eyes carefully. She detected a hint of uncertainty when Dirk referred to the “young lady.”
God,
she thought,
he’s got more than one, and he doesn’t know who Dirk is referring to.

“I repeat, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I don’t see any need for anyone to be embarrassed about anything,” he replied with a half-nervous, half-cocky grin. “And I don’t think we have anything else to talk about.”

“Oh, but we do.” Savannah stepped forward, invading his comfort zone. “That is, you and I have things to talk about. Could you leave us for a moment?” she asked Dirk. “Just wait for me in the hall. I’ll only be a minute.”

“No problem.” Dirk nodded to Max. “Nice chatting with you. I’ll be leaving you in my friend Betty’s capable hands. Good luck, sucker,” he added as he walked out the door.

As soon as Dirk had left, Savannah discreetly slipped her hand inside her jacket and produced the Beretta. A half second later Max the Perv’s back was plastered to a mahogany wainscoted wall, the end of the gun’s barrel pressed tightly against his jugular.

“I’m going to tell you a couple of things, Max, and you need to listen really good. Got it?”

He nodded ever so slightly, staring down at the gun.

“You’ve been messin’ with a pretty young thing named Atlanta. You know ... Atlanta?”

Again he nodded.

“Well, ‘Lanta is my baby sister, and I don’t cotton to havin’ a forty-year-old degenerate like yourself fool around with my little sister.” Her voice was smooth, taking on an even heavier than usual Southern accent. But her eyes were only inches from his, and the deadly intensity registered there was unmistakable.

“Let me tell you something else that you need to know: I’m from Georgia. Now that’s
below
the Mason-Dixon Line. And down there we see things differently than you Yankees. We don’t always do things by the book.”

She paused and began to trail the barrel of the gun slowly down the front of his shirt, dragging it over each pearlized button.

“Don’t get me wrong: I’m not going to put a sheet over my head and burn this pretty house of yours down. I mean, it’s not like I’m a vigilante or anything like that. But if you
ever
...” She punctuated her words by sharply gouging him in the ribs with the gun. Then she slid it down to his zipper area and a tad lower. She could smell his terror in the sweat that was beginning to run down his face. “If you ever even look in my sister’s direction, I’m going to personally shorten parts of your anatomy that are probably already woefully inadequate. ‘Cause where I come from that’s the way we handle dirty ol’ men like you who mess with our pretty little girls.”

Slowly she withdrew the pistol and replaced it in her shoulder holster.

The instant the gun was no longer a threat the fear disappeared from his face and fury replaced it.

He lifted one fist, shook it in front of her, and said, “You bitch! Don’t you ever point a gun at my—”

He never got to finish his statement, because she snatched his fist out of the air and gave his wrist a vicious twist that instantly brought him to his knees. He let out a scream of pain as she gave it one more quarter turn for emphasis.

“Have it your way,” she said. “I won’t need a gun to accomplish what I want to with you. Maybe I’ll just twist that little Vienna sausage of yours off with one hand and feed it to you with the other.”

As abruptly as she had grabbed him, she released him. He sagged to the floor, groaning and rubbing his wrist, which was already beginning to swell and turn blue. Every trace of arrogance and cockiness was gone from his face. Only pain, fear, and anger remained.

Maybe he had gotten the message.

She left him there on the floor, holding his wrist, which looked as though it might be broken, and joined Dirk in the foyer.

He raised one eyebrow and said, “Is he still alive? I heard him yell.”

“Oh, yeah ... he’s still kickin’,” she replied.

She took Dirk’s arm, and they walked out the door and down to his car.

“But let’s just say,” she added, “that unless he’s ambidextrous, his sex life may not be too satisfying for a month or so.”

“So, what’s next?” Dirk said as they climbed into his car.

Savannah hesitated for a moment, actually enjoying being inside the old jalopy again ... with Dirk. She felt good about what had just gone down. As a cop, she would never have threatened someone like that. But as Atlanta’s avenging big sister, she was satisfied that she could live with the memory of scaring Max the Perv so bad that he’d wet his fancy britches.

She gave Dirk a bright smile and giggled. “Ah, hell ... while I’m on a roll, let’s go after that bastard who whacked me in the head.”

“
T
ell me again, exactly why is it that we have to wait for this Ryan Stone guy to show up?” Dirk said as they sat behind the Seaview Apartments, keeping an eye on the battered old Studebaker parked in the lot across the alley.

Savannah had often wondered at the wisdom of the owners who had given the complex its name. Here on the far east side of town there wasn’t so much as a whiff of sea air, let alone a sea view. And unless the predicted “Big One” rearranged the better half of California’s geography, there wasn’t likely to ever be a sea view from this property.

“Because he gave me the name and address. And when I called to tell him we were coming over here he offered to help. Plus, I wanted to ask him a few more questions before I go splitting this guy’s head. I need a plan—like how many clefts I should put in his skull—before I strike the first blow.”

Dirk gave her a questioning look. “Geez, you really are on a roll, aren’t you? I’ve never seen you quite so revved, Van. I have to tell you, it’s kinda sexy.”

She replied with a growl and took her bottle of red nail polish from her purse.

The low, sensual purr of a motorcycle caught her attention. Peering down the alley, she saw a fully outfitted Harley-Davidson coming toward them. The rider wore black leathers and a silver helmet that matched the black-and-silver trim on the bike. Something about the wide set of the shoulders and the slender waist and hips tipped her off as to who might be under that helmet.

“Oops, never mind,” she said as she stuck the polish back into her purse. “I do believe Mr. Stone has arrived.”

“That’s
your buddy?” Dirk asked in a sarcastic tone that Savannah instantly recognized.

Ha, ha! Dirk was jealous.

Wait until you see him with his helmet off,
she thought. But while her heart was thumping at the thought of seeing Ryan again, she was uncomfortable having him and Dirk meet. She wasn’t sure why.

Okay, she suspected why, but she didn’t want to think about it. The words “When Worlds Collide” kept bouncing around in her brain.

Ryan brought the bike to a halt beside Dirk’s car, next to Savannah’s window, and killed the engine. He took off his helmet and ran his fingers through the thick, dark waves that fell almost to his collar. Before, when Savannah had seen him, he’d had his mane slicked back in a G.Q. look. She sucked in her breath and tried not to ogle. Heavens ... he looked even better mussed up.

“Hi,” he said, grinning down at her as he peeled off the leather gloves. “Am I late?”

“Yeah,” Dirk mumbled under his breath so that only Savannah heard. She didn’t expect him to like Ryan. He had an aversion to any man who had more hair than he, and that included a rather large percentage of the male population.

“Nah, we’re just early. See, we don’t have a life.” Savannah nodded toward the Harley. “Subtle,” she said. “Blends right in with the neighborhood.”

“Better than the Bentley,” he replied, climbing off the bike and stowing the helmet and gloves. “Actually, this is Gibson’s. He let me borrow it.”

“Gibson’s?”

“Yep.” He laughed. “There’s a lot more to the Brit than meets the eye.”

“No kidding.”

Beside her, Dirk cleared his throat, and she realized she had been excluding him from the conversation. In fact, she had all but forgotten his presence.

“Oh, ah ... Dirk Coulter, this is Ryan Stone. Ryan—Dirk.”

“A pleasure, I’m sure,” Ryan said, leaning into Savannah’s open window.

“Yeah, right.” Dirk refused to make eye contact with him but continued to stare straight ahead at the battered van. “Now that you’ve shown up, maybe we can get this over with?”

Discreetly, Savannah reached over and pinched him hard on the ribs. He jumped slightly and gave her a dirty look.

She turned back to Ryan. Lord knows, he was a lot easier on the eyes and in a helluva lot better mood.

“How did you find out about this guy, anyway?” she asked. “I didn’t even tell you where or how I’d met him.”

“You want to know my secrets, huh?”

His voice was deep and sultry, his tone flirtatious. She could feel Dirk’s disapproval radiating in giant waves around her, even as her own body melted like a lukewarm bowl of gelatin.

“Yes,” she said, trying not to stumble and croak over the frog in her throat. “All of them.”

“I have a contact on the streets who knows someone, who saw a scrawny blond guy in heavy-metal regalia driving away from the back of the showroom in a classic Studebaker Golden Hawk. Let’s just say I took it from there.”

Dirk gave an unpleasant snort. “The guy got nailed because he was driving a weird vehicle. Take a lesson, pal.”

This time Savannah was sure Ryan must have heard him, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead he glanced quickly up and down the Buick, lingering a moment on the avalanche of fast-food wrappers littering the backseat and floorboards. At any given time one could look into the rear of the Buick and tell what Dirk had eaten for dinner the past two weeks. Sequence could be determined by the varying degrees of decomposition of any remaining organic materials.

“Just what do you think we’re going to accomplish by confronting this guy?” Dirk said. “We don’t have a search warrant. Our potential witness is a friend of a friend of yours—whoever you are, Mr. Stone—so we can’t even think about arresting him.”

“I just want to know, okay?” Savannah said, her temper rising along with the intensity of her headache. The painkiller she had taken earlier was beginning to wear off, and she wasn’t supposed to pop another one for two hours. “I want to look into his eyes and see if he’s the one who bopped me. I’ll know. And if he is, I’m going to be all over him like stink on a roadkill skunk until I find a way to nail his butt to the nearest jail wall.”