Killer Physique (A Savannah Reid Mystery) (24 page)

Feeling like a total jerk, she moved Diamante off her lap, stood, and hurried over to the sofa. She sat down next to him and reached for his hand.

“I’m sorry, darlin’,” she said. “This is a tough situation for you, and I’m not making it any better by bel yachin’.”

“That’s okay,” he said, more graciously than she felt she deserved. “I’m sorry you have to go through this with me.” She flashed back momentarily to the months of rehabilitation after she had been attacked. She remembered the ten thousand kindnesses, smal and great, that he had so lovingly shown her during that time.

And he had never once complained.

She lifted his hand and kissed the back of it, then laid his palm against her cheek. “Sugar, don’t you give it a second thought. Like the preacher man said, you and I are one now. If you’re going through something tough, then so am I.” Suddenly, he grabbed her and hugged her against his chest, so tightly that she could barely even breathe.

“Thank you, Van. You don’t know what that means. This is real y hard for me. It’s about the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do, meeting them. I was mad at them for so many years. I had it in my head that they’d just thrown me out like yesterday’s garbage.” She pul ed back from him, just enough to be able to look into his face. “But that isn’t true, honey. You know that now. Tammy told you they’ve been trying to find you for years. Your mom had posted messages al over the Internet, hoping to connect with you.” She was shocked to see tears wel up in his eyes and spil down his face. Dirk did a lot of complaining, but in al the years she had known him, she had seen him get misty-eyed just a handful of times. And usual y that occurred only when the national anthem was being played or they saw a particularly sad animal story on TV.

Gently, she wiped his tears away with her fingertips. “I’l betcha that before this visit is over, they’l say some things that’l make you feel a lot better about what happened.”

“Maybe. But what if what they tel me makes it worse? Van, you don’t know how bad it was, growing up in that orphanage. Seeing the other kids get adopted. Wondering why nobody wanted you—not even your own mother or father.” She felt a shudder run through his body, and he closed his eyes, as though trying to shut out the painful memories.

Running her fingers through his hair, she said softly, “No, sweetheart, I don’t know how bad that was. My folks had their problems, but at least I had Granny. I can’t even imagine what you went through.”

“And I’d done a pretty good job of putting it behind me,” he said. “I’m not one of those people who sits around and complains about their lousy childhood. I never blamed any of my problems or who I was on them.”

“I know you didn’t, honey. Look how many years it took you to even tel me about it. You’re a strong man. A self-made man. You should be proud.

As we say down South, ‘You rose above your raisin.’ ”

His eyes met hers with an intensity that frightened her. She’d never seen him like this and wasn’t sure what to do or say to help him.

“I don’t feel like a strong, self-made man, Savannah. I wouldn’t tel anybody else on earth this—but right now, I don’t feel like a man at al . I feel like that little boy back in the orphanage, and it sucks.”

She grasped him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. “Stop it,” she said. “You just stop it right now, Dirk Coulter. I don’t care how you’re feeling. Feelings ain’t facts. And the fact is: Your parents are gonna be here in a minute, and we’re gonna do everything we can to make them feel comfortable and welcome. And when I say, ‘We,’ I mean it. We’re in this together, you and me. Got it?” He nodded and offered her a half-smile.

She gave him a playful thump on the end of his nose. “Now stop with the gloom and doom. We’re gonna have a nice visit. It’l be fun . . . you know, like rummaging through a dumpster looking for rotten body parts.”

He laughed, and she could tel he was beginning to relax at least a bit.

“I just wish I could drop twenty pounds in the next two minutes,” he said, “and maybe sprout some more hair up there on the top.” At that moment, they both heard it—the distinctive sound of a vehicle pul ing into the driveway.

His eyes widened as he grabbed for her hand. “My blood pressure just went up fifty points, at least,” he said.

“And I’l betcha dol ars to donuts that theirs is even higher,” she replied, jumping to her feet and pul ing him off the sofa. “Let’s go put ’em outta their misery.”

The first thing Savannah saw, when she and Dirk ran out of the house to greet his parents, was a giant black box in her driveway, and a blur of red, white, and blue.

Then she realized it was an old, black, Jeep Cherokee with an enormous American flag painted across the hood.

The driver’s door opened, and something gray and shaggy streaked across the lawn toward her.

Her instincts—and her overactive imagination—told her that it was an enormous rat. But fortunately, before she made a complete fool of herself and ran, screaming, for higher ground atop her antique lamppost . . . she realized it was a dog. A miniature schnauzer.

It raced up to her and began dancing at her feet, hopping up and down on her shoe, and scratching wildly at her kneecap with its forepaws.

In an effort to save her best linen slacks—and because it was so darned cute that she couldn’t resist—she reached down and scooped it up.

Wriggling like a worm on a hot sidewalk, the dog began to lick her cheeks and chin with a violence that she, as a cat owner, had never experienced.

“Wel , wel . And a fine how-do-you-do to you, too,” she said, trying her best to avoid being French-kissed by a canine who hadn’t even bought her dinner and whose name she didn’t know.

Returning her attention to the Jeep, she saw a tal , handsome man getting out. He looked remarkably like Dirk, only with glistening white hair and paler skin. He appeared to be in his early sixties. He was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt and wel -worn jeans.

So this is Richard Jones, my father-in-law, Savannah thought. And more important, it was Dirk’s biological father.

She couldn’t imagine the enormity of the moment for both of them.

Richard’s eyes sought out Dirk, and when he saw him, his face glowed with one of the happiest smiles Savannah had ever seen on anyone.

He rushed across the lawn, his arms open, grabbed Dirk, and enfolded him in an embrace that looked like a cross between a bear hug and an NFL tackle.

Savannah watched on the sidelines, as the two men clung to each other, laughing from the sheer joy of the experience.

She glanced toward the Jeep, but the sun was glaring on the windows and she couldn’t see the passenger stil inside.

Final y, Richard held his son at arm’s length so he could check him out. “Just look at you!” he said. “Boy, you’re a chip off the old block.”

“Then I guess that makes you the old block,” Dirk said, stil laughing. “How was your trip?” he asked, casting a quick look at the stil -closed passenger door.

“Fine, just fine. It’s a beautiful drive.” Richard looked at the Jeep, too, a slightly worried look on his face. “It might’ve not been a good idea to take the Pacific Coast Highway, though. Turns out, it’s quite a thril ride. I think I scared the hel outta your mother when I was wringing out those curves, and she was looking over those cliffs. She was white-knuckling it al the way.” Both men and Savannah were quiet for a long moment as they waited, watching the closed door.

At last, Dirk said, “Is she al right?”

Richard shook his head. “To be honest, son—no, not real y. She’s scared, you know . . .” Dirk cleared his throat. “Yeah. I know.”

He looked over at Savannah. She had no idea what to say or do.

Final y, the Southern hostess in her came to the fore, and she started toward the Jeep. But Dirk met her halfway and said softly, “That’s okay. I got it.”

She paused, stil holding the wiggly schnauzer, as Dirk walked up to the Jeep door and slowly opened it.

A woman with clouds of lovely salt and pepper hair sat there in the passenger seat. Like her husband, she was wearing jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. But other than that, it was impossible to see what she looked like, because her hands were spread over her face. She was leaning forward, nearly against the dash. Her shoulders were hunched and shaking with sobs.

For only a second, Dirk hesitated. Then he reached inside and awkwardly put his arms around her. “Hey there,” he said softly. “What’s the matter, huh?” Ever so gently, he pul ed her out of the Jeep and steadied her as she leaned against him, stil weeping.

He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head. “There, there,” he said, “you’re okay.” She looked up at him, her pretty face wet with tears—

as his had been only moments before in the house with Savannah.

“What’s al this?” he said with a smile. “You haven’t even met me, and you’re cryin’ already? Most people don’t start bawling til they’ve known me at least five or ten minutes.”

She gazed up at him with a mixture of awe, adoration, and heartbreak in her eyes. “It’s just that . . . you don’t know how long I’ve waited to . . .” Again she dissolved into tears.

“I know. Me too,” he told her. Then he put his arm around her shoulders and led her toward Savannah, Richard, and the house. “Come on. We’ve got a lot of catchin’ up to do. And first of al , I want you to meet my beautiful, new wife.” Dirk looked at his beaming father and gave him a grin and a wink. Then he added, “ ’Cause from what I can tel , the men in this family have a history of marrying women way better than they deserve.”

For a woman who couldn’t squeeze out a single word because she was crying too hard, she’s sure making up for lost time now, Savannah thought, as she sat across the lunch table from her mother-in-law and listened to her seemingly endless stream of chatter.

I do declare, I don’t think she ever stops to take a breath, Savannah told herself. Maybe she just sucks the air in through her ears and lets it flow outta her mouth.

She looked to her left to see if Dirk had noticed. And judging from the glazed look in his eye, the mechanical nods of his head, and the obligatory grunts of “Uh-huh,” and “Huh-uh,” he was finding it as difficult to fol ow Dora’s verbal stream of consciousness as she was.

“I’m tel ing you,” Dora was saying, as she helped herself to a third helping of Savannah’s famous crab macaroni and cheese, “I felt like slapping Richard for driving so fast on that crazy road. But of course if I’d slapped him, we would’ve gone right over the side of one of those giant cliffs and splatted down there on those jagged rocks. I’m tel ing you, it was absolutely terrifying! Some of those cliffs had to be a hundred feet high!” Savannah didn’t have the heart to tel her that in some places the cliffs between the Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean below were actual y several hundreds of feet tal . And the thought of slapping anyone who was driving that gorgeous but treacherous road was ludicrous.

Personal y, Savannah had driven it once. She was absolutely delighted that she had and believed that everyone should do so. Once.

“And Richard kept wanting to pul off to the side of the road to look at the views. I was scared to death that somebody was going to run us over. If even one person decided that they were going to stop and look at the view in the exact same place that you are busy looking at the view they could run into the back of you, push you and your car off one of those cliffs, and it would be just like in the movies, when the car goes sailing through the air in slow motion—except that if it was for real it wouldn’t be in slow motion—and then splat! The car and you in it would look like one of those cars that got mashed in a junkyard. You’ve seen those cars that get mashed in the junkyard, haven’t you, Dirk? Savannah, you’ve seen them, right?” Savannah’s and Dirk’s heads bobbed in unison like a couple of dol s in the back of a ’59 Chevy.

Savannah turned to Richard, hoping that perhaps he had a solution to the problem at hand—the desperate need to rest one’s ears with a second or two of blissful silence every once in a while.

But Richard was enjoying the crab macaroni and cheese as much as his wife. He munched away peaceful y, not even attempting to interject himself into Dora’s one-woman conversation. Nor did he look upset by the situation.

In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice.

Savannah reminded herself that they had been married for more than forty years. No doubt, he had adapted to the situation long ago—or else he would’ve gone crazy or deaf or both.

“This macaroni and cheese is the best I’ve ever had,” Dora was saying. “I’ve made a lot of macaroni and cheese myself in my life. No matter how tight the grocery budget is, you can almost always afford macaroni and cheese.” Savannah was infinitely relieved that they were final y off the subject of the terrors of the Pacific Coast Highway. She herself was starting to feel nauseous, just hearing about those winding curves and dizzying heights.

Cooking was a good topic of conversation. She was happy to be back on familiar ground.

“Yes,” Dirk began, elbowing his way in, “Savannah’s a great cook. And this is one of her best dishes. I asked her if she’d cook it for you because you—”

“But this isn’t real crab meat you’ve got in here, is it, Savannah?”

Dora gave Savannah an intense, probing look. And for a moment, Savannah thought what it must feel like to be a perp in an interrogation room with Dirk.

“Wel , I . . .”

“Because that would just be like throwing money away, using real crab meat when the fake stuff is so good and so much cheaper. You do use the fake stuff, right?”

“I . . . um . . . it’s a special occasion, so I—”

“Oh, no. You might as wel have put a match to that money and burned it up. We’l have to put a stop to that. Waste not, want not, you know. My parents were children during the Great Depression, and if they taught us kids one thing, it was ‘Waste not, want not.’ And you young people these days would do wel to remember that because you never know when you’re going to need something and you won’t have it because you . . .” Savannah laid her fork down on her plate and slowly, discreetly put her right hand up to her ear. Just for a moment she entertained a smal , harmless fantasy. She imagined that there, near her earlobe, was a tiny button. And if she pushed it, just like that, one itty-bitty push, she was turning the volume on Dora’s chatter from a ten down to a two.