Fat Free And Fatal. G. A. McKevett

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      He let out a yelp as she tightened her grip on his hair.

      “Make me run,” she said, putting her full weight on him. “Make me have to hotfoot all over God’s creation just to lay hands on you, will you? You’re gonna pay for that!”

      She glanced down at her soaked loafers. Now that her suspect had been apprehended she could afford to be fashion conscious again. “You’re gonna pay for my shoes, too,” she told him, “if I have to take it out of your mangy hide!”

      At the sound of pounding footsteps behind her, she turned and saw Dirk racing up to them. At least, he was attempting to race. His face was red and his eyes slightly bugged as he huffed and puffed his way along.

      When he finally reached them, he bent double, holding his stomach, fighting for breath.

      “You okay there, buddy?” she asked him.

      “Yeah, sure…no sweat.”

      But he was sweating. Profusely.

      For a moment, Savannah forgot the struggling, groaning guy beneath her and did a mental checklist of heart attack symptoms.

      “You feel any chest pain?” she asked him, fighting down a surge of panic. Visions of doughnuts and too many beers while watching football games danced in her head, not to mention a chain of cigarettes reaching back for years and years and years. “Any sort of pressure? Pain in your arm or—”

      “No,” he said, still gasping, still bent double. “I’m not having a friggin’ heart attack. I just can’t catch my breath.”

      He reached into his bomber jacket pocket, pulled out a pair of handcuffs, and tossed them to her.

      She quickly manacled R.L., then stood and pulled him to his feet. She gave him a shove in Dirk’s direction. “There you go,” she told him, “one bad guy—signed, sealed, delivered. He’s yours.”

      “Thanks.” Dirk grabbed R.L.’s arm and began to drag him back down the path they had just run. “I owe you one, Van.”

      “Another one,” she corrected him, following close behind. “Another one in a long, long, long line of IOU’s.”

      “Yeah, but that was the first time you’ve ever had to catch a bad guy for me,” he admitted. The look on his face was one of utter devastation and deep humiliation.

      It worried Savannah more than his previous breathlessness.

      Dirk was seldom embarrassed—even on the frequent occasions when he truly should have been—let alone mortified.

      “Dumb luck,” she said, a little too cheerfully, even to her own ears. “Next time you’ll nab ’em.”

      “That ain’t it, and we both know it.” He shook his head in disgust. “I can’t run anymore. Hell, I can’t even breathe anymore.”

      They reached the fountain, where the startled, thoroughly splashed tourists were still standing around, their mouths hanging open, watching for the next chapter of this unexpected drama that was playing out before them.

      Dirk stopped at the edge of the pool and pushed R.L. toward Savannah. “Hold on to him for a minute. I got somethin’ to do here.”

      Amazed, Savannah watched as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She was even more surprised when she saw him toss them into the water.

      “No way,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

      “Believe it, Van. It’s happening. It’s happening right now.” He squared his broad shoulders and lifted his chin a couple of notches. “The day that I can’t chase down a perp—the day that you can catch one and I can’t—that’s the day I quit.”

      Savannah had seen Dirk quit before. Many, many times. He was an expert. He had “quitting” down pat.

      He was as good at quitting smoking as she was at losing weight. They had both done it hundreds of times.

      But after decades of “quitting” and “losing,” he was still a smoker and she was still overly voluptuous, according to the surgeon general’s weight charts.

      This was no different than all the other times she had seen him give up the cigs.

      Or was it?

      Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what he did next. He reached into his pocket one more time, and pulled out his lighter. His silver Harley-Davidson lighter that he’d been carrying the day she had met him, back when polyester-clad dimwits were still dancing in discos and hitting on people with the line, “What’s your sun sign?” Back when she had worn “big hair” and shoulder pads that made her look like a linebacker.

      That lighter was as dear to Dirk as his bomber jacket. She had truly believed she would one day bury him with both.

      But…but it looked like this time it was really going to happen.

      Splash.

      The lighter hit the water out in the middle of the pool and came to rest among the coins—mostly pennies—tossed by hopeful tourists who believed that the mission’s patron saint would grant them a winning lottery ticket…in exchange for a lousy penny’s worth of charity.

      She looked at Dirk with amazement, total disbelief.

      Dirk didn’t own much: a decrepit house trailer, a battered Buick Skylark, his leather jacket, and some faded T-shirts. But he loved what he owned—with a fierce loyalty that bordered on psychosis. He never threw away anything.

      He recycled paper towels!

      With a smug look on his face and a swagger in his step, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter continued to escort his prisoner back toward the parked Buick, bringing a stunned Savannah in tow.

      Lordy be! Granny Reid’s right, she thought. Wonders never cease!

      Chapter 2

      Granny Reid was right about something else, Savannah decided when she took a bite of fried chicken: Soaking the pieces in buttermilk before cooking it did make it melt in your mouth. And the groans of appreciation from the others sitting around Savannah’s dining table provided supporting testimony to the fact.

      Even Tammy Hart, Savannah’s friend and assistant in her detective agency, had set aside her usual healthy, vegetarian lifestyle and was violating her conscience with a juicy drumstick. She had arrived for the dinner party an hour ago, wearing a red silk kimono, her long blond hair pulled back and fastened with a pair of lacquered chopsticks. But now the sleeves of the elegant garment were rolled up to her elbows, and she was gnawing on the chicken leg like any other shameless carnivore. “Savannah, this is the best fried chicken I’ve eaten in ages,” she said, laying the bare bone aside and reaching for a wing.

      “Eh, it’s the only chicken you’ve eaten in ages.”

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