Just Desserts (5 page)

“Sure.” Marge pulled herself to her feet and slid into the space Beverly had vacated. “Take your time.”

“Thank you.” Beverly retrieved her purse from beneath the table, slung the heavy leather strap over her shoulder, and followed Savannah away from the crowd.

“Would you mind?” Savannah asked, waving a hand toward her red Camaro, which was parked on the street. “We could sit in my car and talk.”

“Of course. That would be fine.”

As Savannah unlocked the passenger door and ushered Beverly inside, it occurred to her that the councilwoman didn’t seem surprised. She hadn’t demanded to know what news Savannah might have. Usually the first thing people asked was, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Maybe Councilwoman Winston was just a very cool, collected individual.

Savannah slid into the driver’s seat, took a deep breath, and switched into intellect mode, as she had at the crime scene. If she allowed herself to feel the pain of giving someone such terrible news, she wouldn’t be able to carefully judge the person’s reaction. And she would have only one brief moment to do it.

“Mrs. Winston, have you—”

“Please, call me Beverly,” she said without meeting her eyes. “Everyone does.”

Savannah studied her curiously. It was as though she was postponing the moment of truth, a very unusual reaction.

“Thank you, Beverly.” Turning, as best she could in her bucket seat, Savannah faced the other woman directly. “Have you spoken to anyone from your husband’s showroom or your home since you left this morning?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Again, she hadn’t asked the inevitable questions.

“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you that there has been a shooting at Mr. Winston’s business on Main Street. Apparently it happened early this morning. I’m afraid the wounds were fatal.”

“Shooting? Someone was shot?”

Savannah watched Beverly carefully, every nuance of her expression, her voice. But all she saw was stunned amazement.

“Yes, I’m sorry.”

“But ... how can that ... ? Someone was killed ... at Jonathan’s showroom?”

“That’s right. In his office,” Savannah added gently, hoping to lead her slowly to the grim truth.

Beverly Winston shook her head and stared straight ahead, watching a group of children, bearing snow cones and balloons, pass in front of the car. “Who? Who would do a thing like that?”

For a moment Savannah didn’t reply as she pondered the significance of the fact that Beverly had asked about the identity of the perpetrator rather than the victim.

“We don’t know. Not yet. But we’re working on it.”

“So terrible,” Beverly whispered. “There ... in his office.”

“I need to ask you a favor, Beverly,” Savannah said. “Would you please come down to the morgue and see if you can identify the body for me?”

Beverly seemed to snap out of her trance as she turned to Savannah and nodded. “Oh, yes ... of course. I should be the one to identify him. Jonathan would want it that way.”

The two women sat quietly for a moment. Savannah’s mental gears were spinning. This wasn’t at all the way she had anticipated this conversation would progress. Beverly Winston wasn’t a stupid woman—not by a long shot. If she had murdered her husband, surely she would have been more clever than to suggest that he was the victim before being informed.

“Beverly, we haven’t formally identified the body. We don’t really know who he is yet.”

“Oh, it’s Jonathan, all right.” She paused to wipe her hand over her eyes, as though suddenly very tired.

“How can you be so sure?”

Beverly chuckled, but it sounded more like a stifled sob. “You didn’t know my husband, did you?”

“No, not personally. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm him?”

She laughed again, a sarcastic, bitter sound. “Oh ... several ideas,” she said. “Jonathan didn’t exactly bring out the best in people. It could have been any of us who knew and loved him. I’m afraid, Detective Reid, you have your work cut out for you.”

T
he San Carmelita County Morgue was one of Savannah’s least favorite spots on earth. Her prejudice went beyond the depressing, industrial-gray walls, the grungy old fart at the front desk who always tried to hit on her, or the acrid smell of chemicals—and that was on a good day when they weren’t autopsying a ripe one. On those occasions the atmosphere could definitely be classified as Harmful to Sensitive Persons, or any human being who wore a nose on his or her face.

The main reason Savannah hated the morgue was far more of an emotional issue than a visual or nasal one. She had lived a multitude of unpleasant, sometimes heart-wrenching experiences here, and when she walked through those spotless, glass-and-chrome front doors, the feelings inevitably came flooding back. Unfortunately they brought back with them accompanying memories of times when she had brought other people here to view their mangled loved ones, and when she, herself, had been asked to identify one of her fellow officers, killed during a drug bust gone bad.

But, despite Savannah’s distaste for the place, this was an important element of the investigation. Not that they depended upon a positive ID from Mrs. Winston—there were half a dozen other ways to ascertain the identity of the victim. Mostly, Savannah had brought Beverly Winston here so that she could watch and evaluate the woman’s response when she saw her dead husband.

That fact made Savannah feel a bit like a ghoul, but, hey ... it was all in a day’s work.

“Well, hi there, good lookin’,” the front-desk clerk said in a voice so cheerful that it seemed incongruent with the dismal surroundings.

Loud, invasive, cocky, and aggressive, Officer Kenny Bates seemed to possess a much higher opinion of himself than was held by those who knew him. On the first day she had met him, five years earlier, Savannah had decided that someday, when she had an extra five minutes to blow, she would contemplate and evaluate all the convoluted trailways and byways of Ken Bates’s psyche. Perhaps then she would unlock the secret: Was he really an insecure, tortured man trying to overcompensate, or was he just a pompous jerk?

So far, she hadn’t found the time.

“This is Councilwoman Beverly Winston,” Savannah said, trying to convey the gravity of the situation in her tone.

Bates was oblivious.

“Hi! Nice to meet you,” he said, flashing a toothsome smile that was only somewhat sullied by the hard-boiled egg yoke stuck between an incisor and its neighbor. He leaned both elbows on the waist-high counter and tilted his head to one side while perusing the councilwoman’s features. Fortunately he confined his curiosity to her face, rather than giving her his usual elevator sweep, head to toe and back again, pausing at each floor to savor the view.

Maybe the recent departmental workshops about sexual harassment had enlightened him. Or maybe Beverly Winston was just a little too mature and sedate for his tastes.

“We’ve come to make an identification,” Savannah said as she fixed him with her sternest smarten-up-asshole look. Again, Officer Kenny didn’t have a clue.

“Could I please have the log?” Savannah asked, leaning across the counter and grabbing the clipboard out of his hand. She pulled a pen from her purse and jotted down her name, Beverly’s, and the time.

“So, when are you and me goin’ out?” he said, lowering his voice to what he probably considered a deep, husky, sexy whisper. But “sexy” wasn’t what came to Savannah’s mind. His tone reminded her of a few obscene phone calls she had received at three o’clock in the morning... and was just about as stimulating.

With considerably more force than was required, she shoved the clipboard across the counter to Bates. The hard, sharp edge caught him in the diaphragm, momentarily knocking the wind out of his sails.

“If you would, please, come with me.” Savannah turned to Beverly and gently took her elbow. “Down this way. It won’t take long, I promise, and then it’ll be over.”

Feeling the woman stiffen at her touch, Savannah instantly released her. “I’m all right, Detective Reid,” she said, lifting her chin. “Let’s get on with it.”

Savannah wondered, not for the first time, if a prominent jawline truly was indicative of strong character. In Councilwoman Winston’s case, it appeared to be so.

With a wave of her hand Savannah gestured toward the corridor to their right. “This way,” she said, matching Winston’s curt tone. If the councilwoman wanted businesslike rather than maternal treatment, no problem.

Savannah’s leather-soled, sensible flats made no sound to accompany the staccato clicking of Beverly’s Gucci pumps as they walked briskly down the hall. The gray linoleum floor glistened, reflecting white circles of light from the institutional fixtures overhead.

Glancing at Beverly, Savannah was somewhat surprised by her cool, collected demeanor. Of all the times she had walked people down this far-too-long corridor to view the remains of their loved ones, Savannah had never seen such a subdued reaction.

Even if the person being conducted down the hall later turned out to have been the killer, he or she usually showed more emotion than this.

“How long have you and Mr. Winston been married?” she asked. She supposed it was a bit tactless to bring up the subject at a time like this, but it would have been more awkward to continue on in silence or to try to make small talk about the weather or the last Lakers’ game.

“Twenty-three years,” Beverly replied in a flat monotone. “We married very young. The first two years were good.”

“And the rest?” Savannah asked, pressing gently.

“The rest were convenient.”

Unaccustomed to such candor, Savannah gave Beverly a quick sideways glance, which she intercepted. The woman stopped abruptly in the middle of the hall and took a deep breath. “Detective Reid,” she said, “I’m not going to insult your intelligence by lying to you. By the time you’re finished with your investigation you’ll know that my marriage was ... rocky, at best.”

Savannah returned her steady gaze. “I appreciate that, Beverly. A bit of honesty goes a long way in trying to uncover the truth.”

“The truth is ... if that body in there is Jonathan, I won’t be surprised. I’ve been expecting something like this. My husband has been committed to a self-destructive path for years. It was only a matter of time.”

“You seem pretty certain it is him.”

She shrugged, and her expression became even more bitter. “Call it a hunch,” she said.

A door to their left opened and an attractive, petite Asian woman stepped into the hall. She wore a white smock and a gentle smile that radiated an unearthly serenity.

Savannah beckoned her. “Dr. Liu, this is Councilwoman Beverly Winston,” she said. “She’s here to see if she can identify this morning’s homicide victim.”

“Yes, of course. He’s here in the examining room,” she said, indicating a set of double doors farther down the hall. “Give me a moment, please, and then you can come on in.”

Savannah knew the coroner would be draping the body, preparing it to be viewed with the least amount of emotional trauma to the parties involved. One look at Beverly told her that she, too, had understood the purpose of the delay.

Gone was the congenial politician who had shaken her hand only half an hour ago. She appeared exhausted, pale and drawn, with the practiced facade lowered. Beverly Winston seemed to have aged ten years in the past thirty minutes.

For a moment the woman closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples. Savannah could only imagine how badly her head must be aching.

Once again the heavy silence between them grew thicker by the second. Thankfully, Dr. Liu appeared at the door. “Thank you for waiting,” she said. “You may come in now.”

She held open the door to the examining room, and Savannah motioned Beverly inside.

If the morgue was Savannah’s least favorite place, this room was her least favorite single spot on earth. Within these sparkling white walls, decorated with
Gray’s Anatomy
maps, she had seen more than one sight that had made her old before her time. The first time she had viewed a mangled child on that stainless-steel table in the middle of the room she had felt like she was thirtysomething going on eighty-five.

Dr. Liu had carefully covered the body with a white cloth, and she stood aside, quietly allowing Savannah to proceed.

Turning to Beverly, Savannah saw that the coldness, the almost nonchalant attitude she had observed before was slipping away. The woman’s eyes were fixed on the white sheet, her face nearly as pale.

“This won’t take long, Beverly,” she said. “I’d just like you to take a look at ... his left hand and see if you can make the identification for us.”

“His hand?” Beverly’s eyes met hers, and Savannah saw the beginnings of these raw emotions she usually witnessed in this room. “Why his hand? I want to see his face.”

Savannah studied her for a moment, feeling a wave of sympathy that took more out of her than a ten-minute, full-out foot chase. “No, you don’t,” she said softly. “Really ... the hand will be enough.”

Beverly shook her head. “But I do. Why can’t I ... ?”

“Mrs. Winston, I don’t believe you could make a positive identification from the facial features. Is there some other part of the body you would prefer to view?”

Understanding dawned on Beverly’s face. “Oh, he was shot in ... I see.” She paused and shuddered slightly before continuing. “The hand will be fine. Actually, the forearm. My husband has a distinctive tattoo on his upper forearm. A black panther... from his wilder days.”

Savannah glanced questioningly at Dr. Liu, who nodded slightly. At the crime scene she hadn’t seen his forearms, but the doctor would have, once the body had arrived and had been stripped.

Carefully, Savannah reached down and pulled the sheet back just a little, enough to bare the corpse’s left forearm. There, faded over the years but unmistakable, was the crude tattoo of a panther, crawling up the arm, his claws raking long red “scratches” on the flesh.

Beverly Winston closed her eyes and swayed forward. Savannah reached for her, thinking she was going to faint. But she recovered herself and pushed Savannah’s hand away.