Sugar and Spite (21 page)

“For all we know, Snake didn’t have a motive to kill Polly, either,” Dirk said dryly, “but, even as we speak, she’s probably getting baked to a crispy critter.”

Savannah winced and looked over her shoulder at him. Even for Dirk, that was a pretty dark joke. Having one’s former spouse cremated wasn’t a laughing matter for almost anyone.

But his face was stoic, telling her nothing.

Dirk was a weird duck, no doubt about it. And he was probably her best friend in the world. She didn’t really want to think what that meant about her.

“Hey, I think I hear a creek,” Savannah said, identifying the charming, burbling sound in the distance.

Jake pointed to a spot farther ahead where the path seemed to dip and disappear. “There it is,” he said. “Not much water in it.”

“Good,” Savannah replied, “because we’re going to have to cross it, and I didn’t bring my snorkeling gear.”

As they drew closer, they saw that others before them had utilized a large tree trunk, cut in half lengthwise, as a makeshift bridge. They did the same, and around the next bend, found that they had arrived at their destination. Three water holes—not that deep, muddy, and stinking of sulfur—were nestled at the base of a thirty-foot cliff. A small waterfall trickled down the moss-covered drop, feeding the holes. It would be larger when the March rains came and would probably disappear completely in the late-summer months.

Water beetles and mosquitoes buzzed across the surface of the miniature pond, along with a couple of dragonflies, shimmering, iridescent in the sunlight. Savannah made a mental note to maybe come back here sometime for a roughing-it type of picnic… with plenty of mosquito repellent and sunscreen in the picnic basket along with the fried chicken, potato salad, and a bottle of wine.

At the moment, not knowing who might be sitting on an overhanging oak limb, a crossbow aimed at them, it was a bit difficult to enjoy the ambience.

“Look sharp, you two,” Dirk said as he glanced around, apparently thinking the same thing. “Anybody who’d want to meet out here is missing a few nuts and bolts.”

“Or maybe he just wants to make sure nobody sees him talking to you,” said a voice behind them. They spun around to see a skinny kid, not more than sixteen or seventeen years old. He was dressed in an enormous black Metallica T-shirt that hung like a limp tent around his thin frame. Knobby knees and bony legs protruded from equally oversize shorts.

“I remember you,” Savannah said, talking a few steps toward him. “I talked to you at the faire, only you were a juggler then, in a jester’s Harlequin outfit.”

But at the moment, he didn’t seem to be in a jesting mood. In fact, he looked downright scared to death. His blue eyes were large in his gaunt face, looking through a mop of dirty blond hair, but now they were enormous. His skin was so pale that his freckles seemed to stand out in bas-relief.

“I wondered if you’d remember,” he said. “You said that guy at faire was killed with a crossbow. You were wondering who had one and all that.”

“Have you got something for us or not?” Dirk asked, far too aggressively. Desperation was going to be his undoing.

The kid winced, and for a moment, Savannah thought the frightened kid was going to pull his head into his T-shirt shell like a turtle and disappear.

Jake stepped forward and flashed his badge at the boy. “I’m Detective McMurtry, son,” he said in what sounded like a lousy John Wayne impression. “And if you’ve got information that would help me with this case, you should volunteer it now.”

Savannah was afraid the teenager would react badly to Jake’s clumsy approach, but he seemed comforted by the sight of the badge. “You’re really a cop?” he said. “Like you could arrest somebody and make sure they stayed locked up?”

“Well, I can take somebody into custody,” he replied, “It’s up to the courts to say whether they stay in jail.”

The boy looked disappointed. “Oh, yeah. Well, if you had good enough evidence you could make it stick, huh? I mean. If I helped you as much as I could, you’d make sure the guy didn’t come after me, right?”

Savannah saw the trust in the kid’s eyes and wished that she could be more certain of the law’s ability to protect the innocent. So many times she had seen it fail in that regard; she was reluctant to make any promises.

But Jake was new to the game. And he had no problem giving reassurances. “Sure, I will. No problem. You tell me what you’ve got, and we’ll go get the guy. Nothing bad will happen to you if you just tell the truth.”

Savannah walked over to the boy, took his arm, and led him over to a large, smooth boulder. “Here,” she told him, “take a load off. Have a seat and tell us all about it… starting with your name.”

The teenager who had identified himself as Nathan—aka Nat the Juggling Computer Nerd—began to relax as Savannah sat on the sun-warmed rock beside him and nudged answers out of him. Neither Dirk nor Jake was nearly so mellow-minded; they paced up and down the edge of the pond, listening anxiously. Jake jingled change in his pocket and smoked liked a salmon in a hothouse. Dirk just paced and smoked.

“The belly-dancer girl,” Nat was saying, “the one who wouldn’t let Snake kiss her…”

“The girl who slapped him and took off down the trail?” Savannah offered. “The girl we never found?”

He nodded vigorously. “Yeah, her. I think she had something to do with what happened to him later.”

“Oh, yeah?” Savannah’s left eyebrow lifted one notch, an accurate barometer of her interest level. “What do you think she had to do with him being killed?”

“Well, it wasn’t her fault, or nothing like that,” he quickly added. “I mean, if she did do it… come on to him and then slap him and get him to follow her into the woods… she didn’t mean to. That is, she didn’t do it to get him killed. She would’ve just done it because… well, because her boyfriend wanted her to. That’s all.”

Savannah studied his face, the blue eyes so full of fear. “Sounds as if maybe you like her a little, maybe you want to protect her even though you know she did something wrong.”

He shook his head. “No. She didn’t do anything wrong. And I don’t like her. At least, not that way. She’s… well… she’s my older sister. I’m just telling you this because I’m worried about her.”

Dirk stopped pacing for a minute. “You’d
better
be worried for her. If she lured that guy Snake into the woods to get him killed, she’s in big trouble.”

“Yeah!” Jake agreed. “And you’d better not protect her, because then you’d be an accessory, too.”

Savannah gave them both scathing looks. “If you two don’t mind. Nat and I are talking. You two are pacing and smoking and acting like jerks. We all have our gifts, and it’s best if we stick to what we’re good at.”

She turned her attention back to the boy. “You said she would have done it because she was told to. Who would want her to do such a thing?”

“Her no-good, bum boyfriend, Kevin Donaldson. He’s a really bad dude.”

The kid’s fear intensified, and Savannah realized the source of his anxiety and why he had requested such a private, out-of-the-way meeting place. He was scared to death of this bad dude. But he still had the courage to come forward out of concern for his older sister. She had to admire him for his moxie and loyalty to his family.

“What makes you think this Donaldson is so bad?” she asked him. “Have you seen him do anything or—”

“I’ve seen him smack my sister around. And he kicked our dog a couple of times, really hard, and she wasn’t even doing anything wrong. And, one time when he was really drunk, he said that he had burned some people’s house down. Said he did it with another guy for money. That’s how he bought his Corvette.”

“Did he say who those people were… the people whose house he burned?”

“No. And I didn’t ask him either. I was afraid that the next morning he’d sober up and remember he told me about it and kill me.”

“Probably smart on your part. What else?”

“And he was asking me all about my crossbow, how to use it and stuff.”

“Did you tell him?”

“Yeah. I was afraid not to. He even made me take him out into the woods, and he practiced shooting at trees and then birds.”

“How was he?”

“Pretty good! He shot a crow out of a tree, first try.”

Savannah gave Dirk and Jake knowing looks. They had stopped their restless wanderings and were listening attentively to every word.

“He was all proud of himself that he’d shot it,” he continued. “It was lying there all dying and bloody, its wings twitching. And Kevin was laughing, bragging that he’d got it right through the heart.”

“Where is your crossbow right now?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. I put it back after we’d been shooting in the woods. I kept it under my bedroll in our tent. But when I looked for it this morning, it was gone. My quarrels, too.”

“Quarrels?”

“Sorry. That’s what they used to call the square-headed arrows used with a crossbow.”

“Of course. I’m a little rusty on my old English. Did this Kevin guy know where you kept your bow?”

“Sure. He saw me get it out before we went shooting, and he saw me put it back under my bedroll.”

Dirk walked up to them and sat on a nearby rock. His face softened as he dropped the tough-guy routine and became the man Savannah had always found endearing.

“I’m sorry I was a jerk a few minutes ago,” he told Nat. “I’m just really worried about this case and mad, too. See, that guy Snake murdered my ex-wife, right in my own home. Shot her with my gun.”

Nat’s eyes bugged. “No way!”

“It’s true,” Savannah assured him. “And now Snake’s dead, too, and we don’t know why.”

“Do you think your sister might have lured Snake into the woods so that Donaldson could shoot him with your crossbow?” Dirk asked.

The kid’s blue eyes quickly filled with tears, but he blinked them away. “I think so. I heard them arguing just before. She was saying, ‘Why? Why do you want me to do it? I won’t do it unless you tell me why.’ “

“Do you think he told her?” Savannah asked.

“No. I listened, and he didn’t. He just hit her and told her to do it or else she’d be sorry. And he told her to keep her mouth shut about it, too.”

Jake had sat down on the rock near Dirk and lit up another smoke. “Did you hear him tell her what she was supposed to do?”

“No, but it was right after that happened that she went out and found Snake and was making eyes at him, coming on to him and stuff. Then, when he decided to go for it, he tried to kiss her, and she slapped him. My sister Lynn isn’t that kind of girl. She doesn’t go around teasing guys. And she didn’t like Snake at all. She’s just into Kevin; I don’t know why.”

Savannah gave him a sympathetic nudge with her elbow. “Sometimes girls get involved with a bad guy before they realize what’s up. And then, they’re afraid to walk away. Your sister’s probably caught in that sort of situation. But now that you’ve come forward, I think we can help her. You did the right thing, Nat.”

“Yeah, and we really appreciate it,” Dirk said. “
I
really appreciate it.”

“Will you come down to the station with me,” Jake asked, “and put this on paper?” When a look of horror crossed the boy’s face, he quickly added, “I’ll keep you safe. I promise. I won’t move on this Donaldson until I’m sure I’ve got him. We’ll do it right. Trust me.”

Savannah gave Jake a You’d Better Not Screw This Up Or You’re Dead look. Then she turned to Nat. “They’re going to do it right. Promise. We have to take good care of folks who do the right thing; there aren’t enough of them in the world as it is.”

* * *

Savannah licked the edge of the Very, Very Berry and Chocolate Supreme Decadence, double-scoop ice-cream cone and decided that maybe, just maybe, life was worth living after all. How many occupations allowed you to indulge in such cullinary hedonism… all in the line of duty? And every dieter knows that food eaten on the job has no calories, as well anything consumed standing up or riding in a car, or bites stolen from someone else’s plate in a restaurant, as those calories rightly belong to the person who ordered the dish in the first place. Guilt-free goodies… one of life’s greatest treasures.