Wicked Craving. G. A. McKevett

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ was a babe, and as a pair, they were both pretty darned hot stuff.

      On the seat between them lay the empty sack that had recently held two apple fritters and two cups of coffee, all compliments of the Patty Cake Bakery.

      Patty, the blond bimbo baker, liked the way Dirk filled out his worn jeans and, apparently, didn’t mind the old T-shirt, because she was always generous, dolling out the sugar and caffeine. She was also a major cop groupie, which irked Savannah and pleased Dirk to no end.

      Since Dirk was also in his mid-forties—a tad past his “glory days”—he was constantly starving for attention from the opposite sex, wherever he could get it. He wallowed in every bit that came his way, even from a moderately desperate, blatantly oversexed donut clerk.

      Long ago, Savannah had gotten sick of the goo-goo eyes and the silly tittering and the deliberately deep bending over the counter while Patty was waiting on them. But Savannah kept her mouth shut. Patty was as well known for her generously frosted maple bars as she was for her appetite for the boys in blue, and Savannah was a woman with her priorities in order … having a healthy appetite of her own.

      She glanced down at her ample figure and wondered briefly how many of Patty’s maple bars and apple fritters she was toting around with her on any given day. Several pounds’ worth, to be sure. But Savannah liked to think that most of her “extra poundage” was well placed. And the admiring glances she got from quite a few guys told her that Patty’s pastries were being put to good use.

      The guy sitting beside her was one of those. Frequently, she caught him giving her a sideways look that wasn’t very different from the ones Patty gave him when she was sacking up the goods. And, considering how long Savannah and Dirk had worked together—first as partners on the San Carmelita Police Department and then as investigators of numerous homicide cases—she found it most complimentary that he still noticed and enjoyed her curves.

      But then he sped up a bit too much and hit a pothole, jarring every bone in her body.

      “Dangnation, Dirk,” she snapped. “If I had dentures, they’d be in my lap. Would you take it easy?”

      He loved it when she criticized his driving. “Hey, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong! You know they never fix the roads out here. Besides, I can’t drive like an old lady if you wanna nail this guy.”

      He had her there.

      Savannah was just as eager as he was to slap a fresh pair of handcuffs on Norbert “Stumpy” Weyerhauser. And just because Stumpy’s mom, Myrtle, had told them he was home an hour ago, didn’t mean he would hang around. If he smelled a rat—or a cop sting operation—he’d be making tracks out of town.

      “Do you think she bought it?” Dirk asked for the fourth time.

      “Who? Myrtle?”

      He nodded.

      “Oh, yeah.” Savannah chuckled at the memory of the telephone call her assistant had made on Dirk’s behalf earlier. “You should have heard Tammy laying it on thick.” Savannah dropped her southern accent and donned Tammy’s valley-girl tone. “‘Yes, Mrs. Weyerhauser, it’s true! Your son, Norbert, has won a forty-one-inch, high-definition, flat-screen television! If you can assure me that he’ll be home to sign for it personally this afternoon, your entire family will be able to watch TV in style this weekend!’ ”

      Dirk frowned. “She said forty-one-inch?”

      “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

      “I don’t think they make a forty-one-inch. I told her to say it was a forty-two.”

      Savannah shrugged. “Oh well. So, Stumpy gets shorted an inch. He’s probably used to it.”

      “What?”

      Grinning, she said, “Didn’t you ever notice that Stumpy and his limbs are normal height and length?”

      “Uh … yeah … I guess.”

      “So, where did he get that nickname? I’m thinking from a former wife or girlfriend, someone who knew him intimately. ”

      Dirk smirked. “You’re a nasty, evil woman, Van. I like the way you think.”

      “Well, you know me.” She shrugged. “I have a soft spot in my heart for nimrods who break into elderly ladies’ houses, steal from them, and smack them around. I think about Granny Reid, and then I have this overwhelming need to beat them to death with a brick of week-old cornbread.”

      “Yeah, me, too. I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear that this dude had violated his parole. I begged the captain to let me be the one to bring him in.”

      As they neared the street where Stumpy, robber and senior-citizen abuser, lived, they both dropped the casual banter and assumed an all-business demeanor. Stump wasn’t known for carrying deadly weapons or assaulting anybody who was actually big enough or strong enough to fight back, but he was still a convicted felon. And they were pretty sure he’d have pretty strong objections to going back to prison. So, they couldn’t exactly sleepwalk through the act of nabbing him.

      “When we get there, you go to the front door,” Savannah said. “I get to cover the back.”

      “No way!”

      “That’s the price I charge for going along.”

      “But he always runs out the back door!”

      “I know. I read his sheet. Why do you think I want to cover the rear?”

      “Hey, I’m the cop and—”

      “Don’t you even go there, buddy. If I wanted to watch cops doing their thing, I’d be home with my feet up, eating Godiva chocolate, and staring at the TV.”

      “Damn,” Dirk grumbled. “I should have had Jake McMurtry or Mike Farnon come along instead of you. They take orders a lot better.”

      “Yeah, but they wouldn’t have come. They don’t like you.”

      Actually, nobody in the SCPD liked Dirk. Most respected him, even envied him; he was a gifted detective. But he never received invitations to hang out at the local bar after hours or drop by for a tri-tip sandwich when somebody in the department threw a barbecue.

      Normally, Savannah wouldn’t have mentioned that to a person. She wasn’t cruel, as a rule. But she knew Dirk didn’t care. He didn’t have a people-pleasing bone in his body. And long ago she had decided to be Dirk when she grew up. He saved so much energy … not giving a flying fig what anybody thought of him.

      “But you like me,” he said with more than a touch of little-boy vulnerability in his voice.

      Okay, he cared a little what a few people thought—the people he loved. And he could count those on one hand.

      She gave him a dimpled grin. “Oh, I’m plumb crazy about you, but I still get the rear of the house. End of discussion.”

      Dirk pulled the truck over to the curb. “Then get out here. The house is up there on the right. The yellow one.”

      As she started to climb out of the truck, СКАЧАТЬ