Killer Physique (A Savannah Reid Mystery)

Chapter 1

Standing at her bathroom sink, staring at the disgruntled, newly married woman in the mirror, Savannah Reid rehearsed the speech she intended to give the jury at her murder trial. It would be during the sentencing phase, no doubt, because she ful y intended to plead guilty.

She was certain that if there was even one semipersnickety female on the jury, she’d escape the needle.

“You have to understand, ladies and gentlemen, that I spent three and a half long weeks redecorating that bathroom—al in anticipation of his parents’ visit. I’m pretty sure I messed up my back permanently by hanging those fancy ceiling tiles . . . the ones that used to be white but are now al globbed up with dribs and drabs of blue shaving foam. How in heaven’s name does a grown man get shaving foam on the ceiling?” She glanced around at the carnage of her freshly renovated bathroom and added in her thick, Georgia drawl, “I reckon the same way he got it al over the sink, the faucet handle, the light switch, and the mirror. My dear jury members, you haven’t lived til you’ve tried to scrub that stuff off a mirror. It’s blue cement. You can take a razor blade and fingernail polish remover to it, and it won’t budge.” A brisk knock on the door interrupted her plea for mercy.

“You in there?” inquired a deep, annoyed male voice.

“Yeah,” she barked back.

“You comin’ out soon? Or am I gonna have to go downstairs again to do my business?” She jerked the door open and stood—nose to nose, give or take a few inches—with her beloved new husband. “Boy, you and your thimble-sized bladder are irritatin’ the daylights outta me.”

He shrugged and grinned down at her with a sexy smirk that would have set her bloomers atwitter, were it not for the devastation behind her.

“Hey,” he said, “when the dragon needs drainin’, what’s a guy to do?”

He waited, giving her plenty of time to chuckle, or at least grin. But al he got was an icy blue stare. It was the glacial glare that had made former cop, now private detective Savannah Reid infamous among suspected murderers, robbers, embezzlers, and jaywalkers. Evildoers of al shapes and sizes, including husbands who left the toilet seat up and burped loudly in fancy restaurants, had been on the receiving end of those cobalt lasers.

Rol ing his eyes, Dirk moaned and said, “Oh, man. I’m always in trouble. What did I do this time?” Stepping to one side, so that he would have a clear, unobstructed view of the crime scene, she waved an arm to indicate the extent of the damages. “That,” she said. “That’s what you did. Again.”

He gave the room a cursory glance and frowned, obviously confused. “What? What’s the matter? Did I fold the towel in half instead of perfect thirds? Did I leave the cap off the toothpaste? Am I gonna get shot at sunrise or hanged from the neck until dead?” She decided not to tel him that she had, indeed, been fantasizing about an execution only moments before. Her own. Society’s recompense for premeditated, first-degree homicide.

As she watched his eyes dart around the room, registering absolutely nothing amiss, by his own lax nonstandards, her ire rose. “Does this room look neat and tidy to you?” she asked.

“I’ve seen worse,” he replied.

“Yes, I’m sure you have. But not in my house. Look at those toothpaste spit specks al over the mirror.”

“Hey, happens when I floss. You don’t want a husband with lousy dental hygiene, do you?”

“And why did you leave your deodorant, shave cream can, and jock itch powder there on the sink again? I asked you to put them back in the medicine cabinet when you’re done with them.”

He looked genuinely perplexed. “But why should I go to al that work when tomorrow I’m just gonna have to drag ’em out so’s I can use ’em again?”

“Al-l-l that work? Dra-a-ag ’em out? You act like I’m asking you to pick a bale o’ cotton in the hot Georgia sun.” He gave her a sappy, condescending smile that was, no doubt, intended to smooth her ruffled feathers, but in fact accomplished exactly the opposite. “If I put those three tiny little things away,” he said, “wil that make my beautiful new bride happy?”

“I reckon,” she grumbled. “And maybe you could wipe off the mirror once in a month of Sundays, since it’s you who gunks it al up four times a day.”

Sighing deeply, he trudged past her into the room, picked up his offending toiletries, and with great ceremony placed them in the medicine chest.

He fussed with the containers for what seemed like forever to Savannah, making quite a show of spacing them perfectly, evenly, among their neighbors, turning the labels straight outward, then readjusting ad nauseum.

With that delicate mission accomplished, he strode to the toilet, unrol ed a giant handful of tissue, and returned to the sink. Stil grinning like a goat munching sand burrs, he flipped on the sink faucet and wetted the paper.

As Savannah’s blood pressure soared, he calmly, casual y, smeared the sodden wad al over the mirror, leaving bits of soggy mess behind.

Unfortunately, the blue blobs of shaving cream remained undisturbed.

Standing behind him, her face turning redder by the moment, Savannah looked around the room for potential murder weapons and wondered if it were possible to inflict a fatal wound with a Lady Gil ette aloe-moisturizing bikini line shaver.

“There,” he exclaimed, proudly displaying his handiwork. “Happy now?”

“Plum ecstatic,” she muttered.

“Good. And now that I’m in here, I’m gonna choke the chicken. So unless you’ve got some picky-ass directions about how I oughta do that, too, you might wanna skedaddle.”

With her chin a few notches higher than usual and a grim look on her face, Savannah marched stiffly to the door. She paused there for a moment as a hundred or so of Granny Reid’s admonitions about “living in harmony with the man the good God gave ya” and “overlookin’ the better part of a husband’s transgressions bein’ the path to domestic tranquil ity” danced through her head.

She could take the high road and just walk out without saying another word. That would be noble, virtuous.

Blessed are the peacemakers, and al that good stuff.

Dirk was, after al , a decent man. He loved her. He’d put his crap away with a smile—okay, a smirk—on his face and kinda, sorta cleaned up when she’d asked him to. What more could a woman ask, real y?

Yes, she would put away her anger and choose the path of peace.

Virtue, after al , had its own reward . . . mostly in the form of self-righteous gloating.

Then she heard a sound behind her that made every muscle in her body kink into a knot. A merry little tinkling sound.

Not the sound of liquid hitting water. Oh, no. It was the unmistakable merry little melody of pee hitting tile.

She whirled on him with a vengeance. “Dammit al , Dirk! At the shooting range, you score forty-nine out of fifty shots from twenty-five yards—

standing, kneeling, and prone! But you can’t hit a dadgum toilet that’s two feet away?” He stood—chicken partial y choked, dragon half drained—a look of shock and confusion on his face. “What?”

“If I were to paint a bul ’s-eye on the bottom of the bowl, do you reckon it’d improve that piss-poor aim of yours?” He thought about it. Long and hard. Then, having given it al due consideration, he solemnly nodded, smiled, and said, “It could. Yes, I think it might at that. Good idea, babe. You get on that right away.”

“You . . . ! You . . . ! I oughta . . . ! A-a-u-u-gh!”

She stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind her, rocking the house to its foundation.

As she strode down the hal way, she could hear her groom laughing his butt off on the other side of the bathroom door.

Yeah, well, at least somebody’s enjoying all this wedded bliss, she thought.

“Laugh it up, fuzzbal ,” she muttered as she went into the bedroom to get dressed for their big night out. “I’l getcha back. One way or the other.” Granny Reid had told her many times, “Don’t let the sun set on your wrath, Savannah girl. No matter how bad the squabblin’s been that day, come nighttime you always make it right ’tween you and your man before you lay your head on your pil ow to sleep.” Savannah had no problem with that sage advice. It would be at least seven hours before they retired for the evening. Surely she could arrange some soul-gratifying form of revenge before then.

Nope, she had no intention of going to bed angry. Come nighttime, she intended to be giggling on that pil ow and rubbing her hands with glee.

Chapter 2

As Savannah rode down the Ventura Freeway in the rear seat of the beautiful old Bentley—on her way to a major Hol ywood movie premiere, dressed to the nines in her best, sapphire silk dress—she couldn’t help thinking about that tiny, rural town where she had grown up.

McGil , Georgia, was, and remained, little more than a wide spot in a rough, pothole-ridden road.

Thanks to Granny Reid, who’d raised Savannah and her eight siblings, Savannah had many pleasant childhood memories. But she had even more grim ones from the days before Granny had taken custody of her grandchildren. And at times like this, when her life was ful to overflowing with the abundant blessings of basic needs fulfil ed, loving friends, and the occasional adventure, like this one, she thought about the child she had been in McGil .

Sometimes she enjoyed the irrational but healing fantasy of the adult Savannah returning to yesteryear, scooping up the ragged little girl she had been, setting her on her lap, and tel ing the child, “Things are gonna get a whole lot better, darlin’, when you grow up. You just hang in there and it’l happen, sooner than you think. You’re just a little caterpil ar now. But when you grow up, you’re gonna be a big, beautiful butterfly.” It would have helped, she had no doubt. Because if anybody in the world could have benefited from a crystal bal that showed a sparkling future, it was a poor kid from McGil , Georgia, struggling to make it through a tough childhood in a dark place with limited hope.

As Dirk reached over, took her hand, folded it between his large, warm ones, and squeezed, her earlier irritations with him melted away. She gave him a sideways glance, then a wink, and a grin that deepened her dimples. She had to admit he looked darn good in a tux. The end results were almost worth the trouble of having to hog-tie him first to get him into it.

He leaned his head down to hers and nuzzled her dark curls with his nose. She prepared her heart for the sweet nothing he was about to whisper in her ear.

“See?” he said. “I didn’t have to wear this stupid penguin outfit, after al . The damn tie’s choking me so bad I can’t even swal ow my own spit. Any minute now I’m gonna start drooling down the front of this sissy shirt.”

Okay, she thought. Which will it be? Kill him with kindness? Or just open the car door and push him out?

She decided to be nice. “Nice” was the programmed, default mode for Southern bel es. Though she could flip the switch into “cantankerous” when the situation warranted it—when “nice” wasn’t getting her what she wanted.

Long ago, she had decided that Dixie gentility had more to do with effectiveness and efficiency than any code of ethics. And being a pragmatist, she had no problem with that.

“But, darlin’,” she cooed, “you look so handsome in a tuxedo. Sorta like James Bond, Clint Eastwood on Oscar night, and Elvis—al rol ed into one.”

“Now, when did you ever see the King wearing a tux?”

“I don’t know. He probably did when he and Priscil a got married.”

Dirk nodded toward the front of the car, where their good friends, Ryan Stone and John Gibson sat—John at the wheel and Ryan in the passenger seat. “Yeah, wel , you were wrong about the formal wear crap, about me having to wear this stupid thing to this stupid shindig. They’re not wearing tuxedos. Hel , Ryan’s not even got a tie on. I feel like an overdressed idiot. And that’s the worst kind—gussied up and uncomfortable.” Savannah considered tel ing him the truth, which was: When you look like Ryan Stone—tal , dark, gorgeous hunk that he is—you didn’t need a tie.

With a body like Ryan’s, he would’ve looked good in a barrel or, better yet, in Savannah’s humble opinion, a loincloth.

“He may not be wearing a tuxedo,” she whispered. “But that’s an Armani suit he’s got on. I’m pretty sure that John’s is Prada.” She glanced up, and her eyes met John’s in the rearview mirror. Obviously having heard what she’d said, he was giving her one of his warm, kindhearted smiles.