Fat Free And Fatal. G. A. McKevett

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СКАЧАТЬ “You mess with me, you’ll wind up with nobody to talk to but a junkyard Rottweiler.”

      But she knew she was no closer to getting rid of the Mustang than she was of dumping Dirk. Even though they were both guilty of the occasional objectionable “emission,” she was loyal.

      Often too loyal for her own good.

      But her grandmother had taught her to walk that extra mile with a friend, and then another if they needed the company. And sometimes she felt like she had walked all the way around God’s green Earth. Several times.

      She wanted to believe that it was a mission of friendship that she was on now, coming to this crime scene to help her old friend. But she knew it had less to do with camaraderie and more to do with truth, justice, the American way…and the pure joy of catching a bad guy. It made her blood race faster than a three-pound box of gourmet assorted chocolates.

      And, predictably, her pulse quickened when she saw, at the far end of the road, a Spanish-style mansion with half a dozen black-and-white police cruisers in front of it. She didn’t need to scan the mailbox numbers to know that this was the Papalardo estate. Even without the parked units with their flashing red and blue lights, she recognized the mansion from pictures she had seen in magazines and on television. The seashell-pink walls, the ornate wrought-iron balcony railings, the red-tiled roof, the sheer size of the house, made it distinctive, even among the other mansions in this neighborhood.

      It was a house fit for a diva. And no one fit that persona better than Dona Papalardo.

      Only four years ago, Dona had been the queen of Hollywood, having won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her roles as a steamy temptress in several television remakes of film noir classics. With her wavy blond hair, broad swimmer’s shoulders, and svelte figure, Dona looked as though she had stepped right off the old silver screen into America’s living rooms. And a new generation had been snared by the appeal of the classic femme fatale who used her sensual, womanly wiles to lure a perfectly good, unsuspecting, and overly horny guy down the path to perdition.

      But for some reason, about which the public could only speculate, Dona had disappeared from the Hollywood scene, taking her leave almost immediately after receiving her major accolades. No one heard or saw anything of her…until the tabloid blitz began about a year later.

      DONA PAPALARDO THE LARDO.

      BEAUTY QUEEN PORKS OUT

      DONA P—BIG AS A BUS!

      The headlines at the grocery store checkout stands were ruthless, displaying candid and horrifically unflattering shots of the actress at her higher weight. The paparazzi ambushed her, even on her own property, photographing her from every possible angle to maximize her now-generous proportions.

      Savannah had winced, seeing the pictures, reading the copy, and imagining how painful it must be for a woman once hailed as one of the most beautiful people on earth to be vilified in such a way.

      She liked Dona. Having seen her interviewed many times, she had always been struck by how down-to-earth and purely likable the woman seemed.

      And no one deserved to suffer that sort of abuse.

      Just because a person’s job happened to be acting, that didn’t make them hurt any less when they were maligned and ridiculed. Savannah felt sorry for Dona Papalardo and angry on her behalf that her fans were so fickle. They had held her in such high regard, proclaiming her one of the greatest actresses of her time. Had the woman suddenly lost her ability to act just because she had put on some pounds?

      The tabloids, the gossip columnists, the late-night talk show hosts had all been merciless. There seemed to be nothing too insulting, too hurtful for them to say, as long as it got a laugh. And the world was enjoying a big laugh at a woman they had only a short time ago claimed to admire, even idolize.

      And now this.

      Once again, Dona Papalardo was the center of media attention. At least a dozen camera crews were milling about in front of the house. Their vans, bearing the call letters of their miscellaneous television stations, were parked helter-skelter along the roadside in front of the mansion.

      Several policemen were lined up in front of the driveway, allowing none of the press to set foot on the property.

      Among the SCPD cruisers in the driveway, Savannah saw the van with the county coroner’s seal on the side. Dr. Jennifer Liu and her crime-scene technicians were already there, searching for evidence, collecting and processing whatever they found.

      Savannah was grateful she could be here in the preliminary stages of the investigation. A fresh scene had so much more to tell than a stale one.

      Dirk’s old Buick was parked near the van, but she saw no sign of him among the white-smocked technicians or the uniformed police who were wandering around in the driveway in front of the mansion. But only a few of them were actually inside the yellow cordoned area directly in front of the house.

      “Red marks the spot,” Savannah whispered as she spotted the coroner’s telltale drawings on the blood-splattered brick driveway. She had been hoping they hadn’t removed the body before her arrival, but Dr. Liu and her team were both fast and thorough. No doubt, the victim was already securely bagged, inside the van, and ready for transport to the morgue.

      Savannah found a spot about a hundred feet away, at the end of the media’s impromptu parking lot, to leave the Mustang.

      As she made her way through the throng of reporters, she had no problem elbowing them aside. As a cop, she had run the media gauntlet many times before. And while she realized that reporters had to be rude and relentless—it was their job—that didn’t mean she had to be anything other than rude and relentless back to them.

      “Nope, I’m nobody,” she said in answer to their questions about her identity and her connection to the scene. “Nobody at all. So move out of my way and nobody’ll slap you upside the head. That’s it. Thank you very much. Step aside. You’re too kind.”

      “But you aren’t supposed to go onto the property,” a particularly prissy anchor-type woman said to Savannah as she started up the driveway. “That policeman over there said nobody is supposed to go past the property line.”

      “And I’m just the nobody who can do it,” Savannah returned, flashing her an icy smile. She looked the reporter up and down, taking in the designer suit, big hair, perfect makeup, and three-inch heels. “You, on the other hand, are obviously somebody, so you’d better stay where you are.”

      “What?”

      “Eh, don’t trouble your head about it. I know I’m not going to.”

      “What?”

      Savannah chuckled and hurried on up the brick driveway to the white van and the tall, attractive Asian woman standing beside it. The lab coat did little to disguise Dr. Jennifer Liu’s curvaceous body, and only an inch or two of a black miniskirt showed below the jacket’s hem. Her long, black hair, although swept back and held with a bright aqua and green silk scarf, made her look more like a fashion model than a medical examiner.

      To be sure, at first glance, one might think the good doctor was straight off the pages of Victoria’s Secret, not on her way to an autopsy suite to cut up and evaluate dead bodies.

      Until one looked into her eyes and saw a no-nonsense gleam of macabre fascination СКАЧАТЬ