Just Desserts (31 page)

“Why was the loan a secret?” Gibson asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t see anything in the files that explained that. But this past year Elite, etc., has been going under. We’ve had to cut back on production and lay off a quarter of our employees. Mr. Connors really needed to be repaid.

“I found a memo, something about Mr. Winston refusing to pay the loan at all. Somehow, my boss found out that Mr. Winston had been skimming money out of his own company and misleading Mr. Connors about his assets. From the tone of the memo I got the idea that Mr. Connors was furious.”

“Can’t say that I blame him,” Dirk commented, taking a slurp from his coffee cup.

“Then I found all these letters to the creditors who were breathing down our neck. Mr. Connors was telling them that we had been approved for a major loan to help us over the hump, and they would be paid soon.”

“Let me guess... no loan,” Ryan said.

“That’s right. He told us all that he had gotten a loan from a local bank. But in those files I found the letter, stating the reasons why they had turned us down.”

“Did he pay his bills?”

“Yes, all of them in full—the day after Fiona O’Neal was murdered. He also paid some unnamed party ten thousand dollars.”

“Eric Bowman?” Dirk asked, turning to Savannah.

“I don’t know, but I’ve thought of a way to find out for sure.”

Dirk returned his attention to Tammy. “This is all very interesting, Tammy. Is it documented somehow?”

She nodded and patted the notebook computer in front of her. “I copied all the files. They’re right in here. And I reprogrammed the office computer so that I can override his password anytime I want. That’s how I’ve been keeping up with him.”

“What a brilliant young lady you are,” Gibson said, giving her the full benefit of his warm smile.

“Obviously, this information is fascinating, but hardly conclusive evidence,” Ryan said. “If Dirk is going to arrest Paul Connors for those two murders, he’ll have to have solid evidence. What’s your plan, Savannah?”

She grinned broadly and reached for one of the cream-filled pastry horns that were sitting on a silver plate in the middle of the table. “I thought you’d never ask.”

The plans had been made, the pastry horns eaten, the coffee cups shoved into the dishwasher. And everyone had left ... except Dirk.

Savannah walked into the living room and he followed, jingling his keys in his hand.

“Well, I’d better drag my weary ass home and stick it in bed,” he said, “or I won’t be any good to anybody tomorrow.”

She felt a twinge of disappointment. A bit nervous about tomorrow’s outcome, she wasn’t ready to be alone just yet.

As she had sat at the table, making plans with the gang, she had done a quick inventory of Dirk and Ryan, comparing notes. All in all, she decided that she preferred Dirk anyway. He wasn’t as pretty as Ryan, but then, Granny Reid had always told her never to trust a man who was prettier than she.

Excellent advice in retrospect.

Dirk was familiar, and therefore dear, as comfortable as a well-worn slipper.

Ryan had a gorgeous body, but would she have been too self-conscious of her own lumps and bumps to enjoy being with him?

Well, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to happen.

“Do you think it will work?” she asked, trying to keep her mind and her conversation on business.

“The plan for tomorrow?”

She nodded.

“Yeah. I think it’s got a better-than-average chance.”

He paused, his hand on the doorknob, and she took the opportunity to reach up and give him a kiss on the cheek.

“What was that for?”

She shrugged. “I just miss you, buddy. I miss working with you. I miss your smelly cigarette smoke.”

He lifted one eyebrow suspiciously. “I doubt that.”

“Okay, I don’t miss the smoke. But it is good being on the same team with you again.”

Tweaking one of her dark curls, he smiled and said, “Yeah, me, too.”

Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, Savannah wanted to take his hand, lead him up the stairs, rip off his clothes, and throw him onto her bed.

The thought of being that close, that passionate, that connected to another person was sweet, indeed. She needed connection. She hadn’t enjoyed nearly enough in the past few years.

Besides, her pride was still a bit wounded at finding that Ryan preferred Gibson to her. How could she have been so wrong about his feelings for her?

“What are you thinking, Van?” he asked.

She didn’t reply.

“Come on,” he said, “out with it.”

“I was thinking how lucky I am to have you for a friend and, occasionally now, a partner,” she lied. She was sullying her soul, to be sure. But better that than to hurt a friend with the truth.

He smiled and pulled the door open. “Me, too, kiddo,” he said. Leaning down, he gave her a brief but sweet kiss on the lips. Just enough to make her really want more. But if she tried to seduce him tonight, she would never know if it had been because she needed him, as he had requested it be, or if she had been using him as a balm for the insults and a cure-all for her horniness.

Dirk deserved better.

Besides, Atlanta was upstairs, asleep in the guest room. Somehow, Savannah didn’t feel inclined to share something as special as her first time with Dirk with her kid sister. Maybe it was just that old-fashioned ethic of being a good example and all that.

Another time. Another place. Well... definitely another time.

“Good night, Savannah,” Dirk said. From the soft look in his eyes she wondered if he were reading her thoughts.

“Good night, Dirk. Sleep tight... and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she said.

As she watched him walk down her sidewalk toward the street, that distinctly male, endearing lope to his step, she silently congratulated herself on her self-control.

Dirk deserved a
lot
better.

And she was looking forward to the day she could give it to him.

But for now Dirk’s wasn’t the only weary ass that needed to be dragged off to bed. She closed the door behind him, locked it, and trudged up the stairs.

Alone. Again.

S
avannah climbed out of the Camaro and looked down the street to assure herself that her backup was in place. Good ol’ Dirk ... what would she ever do without him? No matter how tense the situation, she always took comfort in his presence.

Not that she suspected any real trouble from Eric Bowman. She had him pegged as the sort who was a lot braver with a shotgun in hand, coming against someone who wasn’t expecting him or sneaking up on them from behind. Eric was a coward who did not want an opponent, only a victim.

But then, considering what she was about to tell him, he might not be cordial enough to whack her from the rear. In which case, Dirk would be a valuable asset.

“Well, here goes nothin’,” she whispered into the microphone secreted in her jacket collar. “Time to rattle this polecat’s cage and see what happens.”

She rapped sharply on the front door, but there was no answer. His Studebaker was parked in the alley beside the complex, so she figured he was home.

Seeing a slight movement at the window, she called, “Open up, Bowman! I’ve got something to say to you, and believe me, you do want to hear it!”

A few seconds later the door creaked open and a pinched, ashen face thrust its nose through the crack.

“What do you want?” he asked, with all the charm and appeal of a warthog with acne. “I’m busy.”

“Gilligan again?”

He looked at her, confused. It didn’t seem to take much to confuse Eric Bowman.

“What”

“Never mind. I just dropped by to tell you something interesting.” She stepped closer to the door and lowered her voice. “I thought you should know that I slid a letter under the door at Elite,
etc.
You know, Paul Connors’s place?”

He glanced quickly right and left, then cleared his throat. “so?”

“I typed it on this old typewriter I keep in my garage. I thought you might like to see a copy of it.”

She held out a single piece of plain white paper with a few words clumsily typed with a faded ribbon.

He snatched it from her hand and read the short message.

Dear Mr. Connors,

I did a really important thing for you. Two important things. And I don’t think you paid me enough. The cops have been coming around. I’m scared. I think you should pay me more, since it’s this bad. I want you to have somebody bring ten thousand more to my house tonight. I’ll be waiting.

E. B.

It took him a long time to read the letter, and for a moment she was afraid the whole plan would go down the pipes because he was illiterate. But, finally, she could tell by the horrified, then furious look on his face, that he understood what he was reading.

“You bitch!” he said, wadding up the paper and throwing it in the general vicinity of her chest. “What are you tryin’ to do, get me killed?”

Savannah assumed her most naive, butter-wouldn’t-melton-my-buttocks smile. “Now, how could this little ol’ letter cause that much trouble? I mean, there’s got to be hundreds of people with the initials E. B. If you haven’t done anything wrong for him, you don’t have to worry. Right? Of course, if you
have
, you may be in some big trouble. Paul Connors doesn’t really strike me as a guy who would take extortion in stride. I’ll bet he could be pretty nasty if he wanted to.”

His eyes turned as cold and gray as slush on a New York City street. In that instant Savannah knew what Jonathan and Fiona had seen in the final moments of their lives. Judging from the intense hostility radiating from him, Savannah realized that if she wasn’t careful, and Dirk alert, the same might happen to her.

“I’ll get you for this,” he said. “I swear to God I will.”

Savannah knew better than to show fear, even though it was clear to her that he meant every word he was saying.

Looking him straight in the eyes, she said, “Any time. If you thinks you’re man enough to take me down, give it your best shot.”

As she turned on her heel and strode away, the thought occurred to her that if looks could kill, she would be lying there, chopped into tiny pieces all over the sidewalk.

Fortunately she wasn’t, and she intended to keep it that way.

“Well, old man,” she said softly to her collar, “we’ve rattled the bars and the specimen named ‘Eric’ has growled, nipped, and shown his teeth... both of them. It was
not
a pretty sight!”

The time had come to sit tight, keep her fingers crossed, and hope, hope, hope.

Hope that Eric Bowman was as stupid as she had predicted he was.

The equipment had been set up, the window left open just a tiny crack... but wide enough to mount a miniature camera lens and microphone on the sill.

“Lights, camera, if we only had some action,” Ryan told Gibson as the two of them stared at the tiny black-and-white monitor that displayed a not-so-great image of the adjacent room—Paul Connors’s office.

Earlier in the day Tammy had sneaked them into the building through a back door and stashed them in this large storage closet, which was perfect for electronic eavesdropping on the activities next door. Savannah, Dirk, and Tammy would join them shortly. Soon they would all know if the plan would work or not. They would know if this whole cat-and-mouse routine was going to be worth the effort.

For the better part of the past hour they had been watching, nearly going to sleep, as Paul Connors sat at his desk, scribbling on some papers. Nothing so far.

A knock sounded at Paul Connors’s office door, and they peered at the screen, watching as Tammy Hart walked into his office and put some papers on his desk.

“Would you like something from the deli across the street, Mr. Connors?” she asked.

Ryan and Gibson snapped to attention. That was the signal. Savannah had called Tammy to let her know: Bowman was on his way.

Ryan turned to Gibson with a smile on his face. “That’s it. He bought it! We’re in business... again....” he added, remembering the good old days, when they had worked together at the bureau.

“Jolly good show,” Gibson said, fingering the briarwood pipe. “Our Savannah is as cunning as she is beautiful.”

“Yes, Eric, what is so important that you felt you had to come here to my office?” Paul Connors asked the fidgety, scraggly punk who stood in front of his desk. “I told you not to ever, ever come by here again. That was part of our agreement.”

“I know, know....” Sweat began to bead on Bowman’s forehead. “But I had to tell you that I didn’t send you that letter.”

Paul Connors studied him for a long moment, saying nothing.

“I didn’t, really,” Bowman continued. “It’s this cop, Savannah Reid, the one you asked me to keep an eye on for you; she sent it.”

Paul raised one eyebrow slightly. “Oh? She sent it?”

“Yeah, really.... I wouldn’t ask you for more money. I think you already paid me plenty. I mean, if you really
wanted
to give me more, I’d take it, but I’d never outright ask for it.”

“She actually told you that she was the one who sent me the letter asking for more money?”

“Yeah, she did. Honest! I don’t know why. I told her she would get me killed doing shit like that.” He laughed nervously, snorting through his nose.

“Why do you think she would lie to me like that?” His tone was even, his words nonthreatening. Bowman didn’t seem to notice the fire of anger that had leapt into his eyes.

“I don’t know! She figured out that I was the one who plunked her on the head that night, and she’s all nuts about it. Go figure.”

“I see.” Connors stood and walked over to the window to look out.

In the other room five people held their collective breath. An extreme close-up of his pants’ fly filled their tiny screen.

“Did she mention whether or not she thinks you might also have committed the murders?”