Poisoned Tarts. G. A. McKevett

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СКАЧАТЬ hospitality just didn’t allow for such things.

      She knew Dirk was thinking the same thing as he glanced around the room, then gave her a questioning look.

      “Oh, go ahead and go,” Gran said, standing up and offering a hand up to Savannah. “You know you want to.”

      “I don’t want to,” she lied.

      “You do, too. It’s as plain as the fudge on your face.” Gran reached down and wiped a smear of chocolate off her granddaughter’s lip. “Don’t stick around on my account. I’ll be trottin’ off to bed in a minute anyway. Gotta read my Bible and my True Informer. There’ll probably be something in there about this missing girl. You know how they beat everybody else to the scoop.”

      Gran’s unwavering confidence in the True Informer’s journalistic integrity had always amazed Savannah. Whether something was written between the well-worn leather covers of her King James Bible or within the pulp mill pages of the national tabloid, it was gospel, according to Gran.

      “Go ahead and go with him, Savannah,” Ryan said as he stood and stretched his long limbs. “John and I have an early tee time at the club tomorrow morning. We’ll be getting going ourselves.”

      Only Tammy appeared to mind. Her lower lip protruded in predictable fashion. Tammy didn’t mind the fact that Savannah would be leaving as much as that she wouldn’t be accompanying her.

      Savannah felt for her, but not enough to invite her along. There was a limit to how many civilians Dirk could bring with him when he was on the job. And since Savannah brought along carbo-rich goodies and Tammy irritated him to distraction, Savannah was always his first choice.

      “You coming?” he asked her.

      She grinned, winked at him, and out of respect for her grandmother, decided not to give him her usual X-rated reply to that question. “Absolutely,” she said. “Let me get my weapon and—”

      “You won’t need it,” he said with a smirk. “I’ve got mine. I’ll keep you safe.”

      “Yeah, right,” she said. “I’ll just bring along my own, if you don’t mind. I’ve seen you at the target range.”

      Chapter 2

      Savannah gazed out the window as they passed one mansion after another after another in the exclusive enclave of Spirit Hills. As they drove deeper into the valley, each estate seemed grander than the last. Here in the heart of the canyon, the trees grew thicker, and the road curved more tightly and rose in elevation with each twist and turn. And with every crook in the road, more and more of the panoramic view was revealed.

      If you lived in San Carmelita and were rich enough, you could afford to live in Spirit Hills. If you were filthy, stinking rich, you could afford to live on one of the hillsides at the end of the canyon, overlooking the valley, the town, and the Pacific Ocean. And you could feel pretty darned good about it.

      Or at least, Savannah figured they should feel pretty good about it. Heck, if she lived here, she would!

      In McGill, the little rural town where she had been born, most people had looked down on her immediate family. Her barfly mom and never home trucker dad had made pretty sure of that. Their deeds and misdeeds had secured the family’s reputation as white trash in the better part of three counties. Other than turning out a new baby every year and naming each one after a town in Georgia, neither of them had accomplished anything that would have garnered any respect from their neighbors.

      But Granny Reid was respected and deeply loved by all who knew her—with the possible exception of Leon Hafner, who respected her but harbored precious little affection for her since the skillet incident. And when the courts had taken Savannah and her brothers and sisters away from her parents and put them in Gran’s care, their lives had taken a decided turn for the better.

      But not before Savannah had learned the pain of having people look down on you. Way down. And she had to think that living here on what seemed like the top of the world and literally looking down on everyone else…that would go a long way toward healing any inferiority complexes one might have incurred during a rocky childhood.

      “Do you ever wonder what they eat in joints like this?” Dirk said as he guided his ancient Buick Skylark around another curve and shifted into low gear to climb a particularly steep hill.

      “Is that all you ever think about?” she asked him. “Food?”

      “No, sometimes I think about sex and baseball.”

      She groaned and shook her head. “What do you mean, what do they eat? They eat just like the rest of us. Well, they probably wash it down with wine instead of beer or soda pop, but—”

      “I mean, do people who live in a place, like say, that one there…”—he pointed to a sprawling Tudor mansion on their right—“…do they actually bring home a bucket of chicken when everybody’s too tired to cook? Or do they eat pheasant under glass every night?”

      “I don’t want to have this conversation again. We both agreed last time that very few people actually have pheasant under glass for dinner anymore. And no, I’m not going to try to make it for you. Ever. Barbecued game hens are the closest I’ll ever come.”

      He didn’t reply, and they sat in silence for a while until she added, “And to be honest, I’m plum confused as to why you, of all people, would even give a hoot about a fancy schmancy dish like that. You’re more of a hot dog and hamburger guy. What’s with this obsession you have about pheasant under glass?”

      He shrugged and looked mildly uncomfortable. “I don’t want to tell you. You’ll laugh.”

      “So what? I always laugh at you. Spit it out. What is it?”

      “It’s a James Bond thing, okay?”

      “James Bond?”

      “Yeah, I read somewhere or heard that he likes it, like it’s his favorite dish or whatever. And you know I’m a big fan of his.”

      She shook her head and stared at him. “I never heard that.”

      “Well, believe it or not, Miss Smarty Pants, you don’t know as much about some stuff as I do.”

      “Besides, James Bond is a fictional character. Do you mean Sean Connery likes it?”

      “No, I mean James Bond. Never mind. I didn’t think you’d understand.”

      “Lord help us,” she mumbled under her breath. “Next thing you know, he’ll want his beer shaken, not stirred.”

      She rolled down her window to let in some of the fresh evening air and to release some of the less refreshing aromas of the burger and taco wrappers that he had tossed onto the back floorboard. Pheasant under glass, indeed.

      “I want to talk about this case,” she said. “Like, why are we going to Dante’s mansion rather than this Daisy O’Neil’s house?”

      “Because her mother called 9-1-1 from Dante’s, said she wasn’t leaving there until they told her where to find her daughter. She’s convinced that the other girls had something to do with Daisy’s disappearance, and she’s causing a big stink СКАЧАТЬ