Killer Physique (A Savannah Reid Mystery) (28 page)

“I’m sorry,” came a squeaky little sound from the other end of the table.

At first, Savannah wasn’t even sure she had heard it. But then she forced herself to take another look at Dora. And sure enough, her mother-in-law had set down her coffee and was looking at her with eyes that were positively brimming with tears and sincerity.

Savannah gulped and squeezed out a simple, “That’s okay.”

“Real y?” came the shaky reply. “Does that mean you actual y forgive me?”

Savannah looked beyond Dora to her new husband, who was standing in the kitchen, her Beauty and the Beast mug in one hand, the coffeepot in the other, a hopeful, pleading look on his face.

She turned back to Dora and donned her sweetest, Southern-lady, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my mouth smile. “Of course I forgive you, Dora,” she said. “It was al just a sad, unfortunate misunderstanding.” Then, as quickly as it arrived, the smile disappeared and her blue eyes turned icy. “But I’m warning you—if you ever so much as touch the temperature knob on my hot water heater again, I wil get my gun, and I wil shoot you dead where you stand. Got it?”

Dora nodded. “Got it.”

“Good. Then I believe that this here’s gonna be the start of a long and lovely, mother-daughter relationship.” Half an hour later, Savannah looked up from her breakfast plate and saw Tammy sticking her head around the corner, peeking into the kitchen.

She had a tense, questioning look on her face.

“Yes, it’s safe. You can come in now,” Savannah said, as she shoveled in her last bite of grits.

Dirk snickered and added, “The dust’s al settled. No casualties.”

“You should have some of this ham,” Dora said, helping herself to another large slice. “I’ve never eaten anything like this before. And Savannah made us something cal ed red eye gravy. Have you ever had that?”

Tammy wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you.”

“Tamitha doesn’t poison her body with my cooking,” Savannah informed her guests. “And that’s probably why she can run to work and back every day, not to mention the frequent 10Ks and the occasional marathon.”

Dirk grunted. “Yeah, but every time the Santa Ana winds start to howl, we have to stake her to the ground or she’l blow away.” Waycross stuck his curly red head around the corner, next to Tammy’s. “If the fur’s done flyin’, and y’al are about done with stuffin’ your faces, you might wanna hear some of the good gossip we dug up.”

Richard stood, picked up his plate and Dora’s, and headed for the kitchen sink. “Come right in,” he said. “Juicy case gossip trumps food any day

—even when it’s as good as our Savannah’s.”

Three minutes later, the table had been cleared of al edibles and dishes, and only the coffee mugs remained. Tammy sat at the end of the table, her electronic tablet in her hand. But knowing her boss’s propensity for living in the Dark Ages, she had printed everything out on paper and had passed the sheets around to everyone present.

“Your Honor,” Tammy said, with an exaggerated head nod to Savannah, “I would like to present Exhibit Number One. These are the printouts of Thomas Owen’s mean and nasty texts to Jason, referencing al the men and women that Jason was supposedly—” She glanced quickly at Dora and Richard, then to Savannah.

Without looking up from the paper in her hands, Savannah quickly supplied, “With whom he was supposedly dancing the Grizzly Bear Hump?” Richard snickered. “You don’t have to be so delicate. We’re from the Great Pacific Northwest. Between November and March, Dancing the Griz is pretty much our only pastime.”

Tammy tittered, then returned to the business at hand. “As you can see, Thomas didn’t spare any words, even when he should have. I can’t imagine having somebody I love talk to me like that.”

Dora had sat stil and quiet as long as she could. “I can imagine it. In fact, we had a neighbor that lived two doors down from us whose husband used to yel at her, night and day. I was so glad when they moved out two years ago. Or was it three years ago, Richard? It might have been three, because I think it was around the time that Gertrude next door had her gal bladder taken out. Or was it Gertrude’s husband who—”

“Let’s get on to Exhibit Number Two, please, Tammy,” Savannah interjected quite loudly. So loudly, in fact, that Dora actual y stopped to take a breath and a sip of coffee.

“Ah, yes,” Tammy said, scanning her tablet’s screen. “Next we have some information about an entirely different part of Jason’s life. We go from his romantic escapades—”

“Objection.” Savannah held up one hand. “Alleged escapades. Having some abusive s.o.b. accuse you of fooling around doesn’t make it so.”

“Duly noted.” Tammy pointed to the next printed page in their stack of papers. “I’d like to draw your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to this information gleaned from Mr. Tyrone’s bank statements.”

Savannah scanned the page but didn’t see anything too alarming. There were no checks written to bookies or drug pushers. No payments to arms dealers or blackmailers. At least none that were obvious.

“What are we supposed to be looking at here?” Richard asked.

“The payments to a particular health club where Jason had worked out for years. See those entries I highlighted in yel ow? Those are al payments to that gym and his personal trainers there. He laid out thousands and thousands of dol ars over the years to that place.”

“So what?” Dirk shrugged. “Working out was his hobby and his livelihood rol ed into one. Of course he would spend a fortune on it. What’s the big deal about that?”

Tammy gave him a knowing little grin and said, “He stopped.”

“What do you mean, he stopped?” Savannah asked.

Waycross leaned over and pointed to a particular area on Savannah’s paper. “See there. Two months ago he just plum stopped going. And if you look right here, at the same time he bought a ton of fancy workout equipment for his house.” Suddenly, both Dirk and Savannah were highly interested.

Intently studying the papers in her hand, Savannah said, “That’s right. We saw a whole personal gym right there in his house. And the stuff looked shiny and new.”

“Apparently, that’s because it was,” Dirk said.

Richard laid the paper he was looking at on the table in front of them and poked it with his forefinger. “That’s important, guys,” he said. “For a bodybuilder like Tyrone, his gym of choice and his personal trainers are everything. He wouldn’t leave them and start working out at home for no good reason.”

Tammy gave them a self-satisfied smile that bordered on annoyingly self-righteous. “That’s what we thought. We figured there must have been a big fal ing out of some sort.”

Waycross draped his arm across Tammy’s shoulders and gave her an affectionate little shake. “And that’s when my girl here started checking them out.”

Savannah couldn’t help registering the “my girl” and feeling good about it. Apparently this Waycross-Tammy connection was official now, and that made Savannah very happy, indeed.

“That’s good, you checking them out,” Dora said. “People need to check everybody out these days. And you never know what you’l find. One of our neighbor’s cousin’s friends needed a babysitter for her kids—she had two of them, a girl and a boy, ages seven and five—and she got this teenager who seemed okay at first, but—”

“What did you find, Tams?” Savannah asked, trying to keep the frantic tone in her voice down to a minimum. “Tel us, quick.”

“The owner of that gym, where Jason used to go, his name is Fabio Garzone. And he’s got quite a reputation in Hol ywood. He’s known as the guy who can transform a Clark Kent, nerdy dude into Superman in a matter of weeks. Apparently, a lot of the major stars go to him before they start filming an action flick, or even a romance, where they’re going to be showing off their kil er abs and biceps. He and his trainers make sure that they’ve got some to show.”

Savannah nodded thoughtful y. “I’ve noticed myself lately that nearly every actor in a starring role is al beefed-up for the screen.” Waycross nudged her with his elbow. “Yeah, I’l just bet you’ve noticed. Your eyebal s are probably sore from gawking at al that beefcake.”

“I’m not saying they aren’t pretty to look at. But I’m a little worried where it’s al headed.”

“What do you mean?” Richard asked. “What could be wrong with guys getting as strong and healthy as they can?”

“If they’re truly strong and healthy, more power to them. But after watching women get more and more paranoid about their weight, feeling terrible about themselves because they’re not super-skinny like the women on screen, I hope our men aren’t headed down the same road.” Tammy nodded solemnly. “I heard that young guys are getting eating disorders now, like girls. And this bodybuilding and taking steroids is even popular with the high school kids now.”

“That’s what I mean. I hope you men don’t fal into the same trap we women are in, risking our health to make ourselves look like society says we should.”

Dirk looked down at his spare tire. It wasn’t exactly a tractor tire, but it hadn’t been there ten years before. “No danger of that happening around here,” he said. Then he turned back to Tammy. “What else about this Fabio Garzone guy?”

“He’s just as wel known to law enforcement as he is to the rich and famous. Only for different reasons.”

“Do tel ,” Savannah said.

“He’s got a rap sheet going back to when he was fourteen and helped some other kids rob a pizza delivery guy. You’l find the long, sad list there on the next page.”

Savannah scanned the paper, reading aloud, “Aggravated assault, second degree robbery, arson, distribution of Class A drugs, conspiracy to commit murder. And he’s been to prison twice. Why is this guy walking the streets?”

“Other than the two he served time for, the rest of those charges didn’t stick,” Tammy said. “Apparently, the star witnesses at his trials tend to develop memory problems right before they testify.”

“Oh, I don’t like him one bit,” Savannah said. “And it looks like Jason decided that he didn’t either.” Dirk nodded. “When you go from paying somebody tens of thousands of dol ars a month for years to zero, I’d say that constitutes a breakup of sorts.”

He looked across the table at Savannah. “I think we need to go visit Fabio and see if he was as upset about Jason breaking up with him as our old friend Thomas was.”

He turned to his father. “Wanna come along? Tangle with some musclemen?”

Richard beamed. “Sure.”

“And how about you?” Savannah asked Dora. “It’s Hol ywood. While we’re in the gym you could strol up and down Sunset Boulevard and look at al the weirdoes. Maybe see a celebrity or two.”

Dora thought it over. “Are there any thrift shops in Hol ywood?”

Savannah resisted the urge to rol her eyes and sigh. “It’s a pretty fair-sized town. I reckon we can find you one.” Chapter 23

The first thing Savannah always noticed when she walked into a health club was the smel .

No matter how much room deodorizer was sprayed into the air or how much disinfectant was squirted on the equipment, it smel ed like a high school locker room. It stunk of sweat.

Although, as she looked around at the magnificent bodies that were producing that sweat, she decided maybe a whiff of BO was a smal enough price to pay for the results. Because most of Fabio’s clients were gorgeous.

But to Savannah, they were more like objets d’art than a objets de lust.

When it came to cuddling up with a male body in bed, she actual y preferred her regular guy, who was masculine and muscular but not bulging to extremes. She wanted to cuddle up to a man she loved and snuggle with him, not feel like she was lying against a pile of rocks.

However, as she, Dirk, and Richard strol ed into Garzone’s Extreme Fitness Center, Savannah could certainly understand the appeal of a place like this.

The not-so-subtle message was: Walk through our doors, work your ass off, and you can look like the superheroes and super-heroines in the pictures that line the wal s.

The bass from the hard-driving rock music that was piped into the center set the tempo for dozens of hard bodies who were working machines of steel, cables, and springs, running on treadmil s, and racing on bikes that went nowhere.

Others wore headphones and stared at their tablets, opting to live in worlds of their own choosing.

To their right was a merchandise center, sel ing tee-shirts, hats, hoodies, and multitudinous other fitness accessories, al with Garzone’s logo—a muscle-bound, fire-breathing dragon. The giant Z in the middle of the name gave the dragon something that looked suspiciously like an oversized phal us.

No point in being subtle, Savannah thought. Go big or go home.

To their left was a refreshment bar that, according to the sign on the wal , offered a plethora of protein-enriched delectables.

The food and drink here also fol owed the logo’s theme, with names like Fire Eater, Dragon Slayer, and Blood of the Beast.

Sitting at the snack bar, drinking a perfectly normal, nonflam-ing bottle of beer, was a highly tattooed, swarthy fel ow with thick black hair, whom Savannah recognized instantly from the mug shot Tammy had shown them.

“There he is, guys,” Savannah told Dirk and Richard. “It’s our friend, Fabio, in the buffed-up, tattooed-out flesh.” Fabio was having a conversation with an even larger fel ow who stood behind the counter, mixing some sort of drink. From the looks on their faces, it was obvious that the conversation they were having wasn’t an especial y friendly one. It also looked like the big guy was losing the argument and wasn’t particularly happy about it.

Dirk walked up to the owner, with Savannah and Richard fol owing close behind. When Fabio noticed their approach, his eyes quickly scanned Dirk from head to toe in a look that Savannah recognized al too wel .

It was the same look that snooty women gave other females upon meeting them. For those who had perfected The Scan, it was a most efficient tool. In less than two seconds you could evaluate your competition, steal some new ideas about nail polish and accessorizing, and make the other woman feel like a country bumpkin wearing a burlap sack—even if they were in Dior.

Fabio’s head-to-toe appraisal conveyed the male version, which said: You’re a flabby wimp, unlike me, who’s a major stud/tough guy. I can take you in ten seconds, and by the way, I could take your woman, too.