Cereal Killer (23 page)

This time it was Savannah’s face that flushed. She briefly considered jumping through the window and wringing Nurse Ratched’s neck, but she decided to forego violence in favor of blackmail.

“Maybe you should scoot back there and tell Dr. Pappas that two of his patients are dead, one is missing, and at the moment, he’s a prime suspect for multiple murder.”

The receptionist whirled around, her mouth hanging open. A strange hush had come over the crowded waiting room. The only sound was that of a low chuckle coming from Dirk’s direction.

“And while you’re at it, ask the doctor if he usually treats his patients in limousines in the alley.”

The receptionist disappeared so quickly that Savannah half expected to see a puff of pink smoke in her wake.

Dirk stepped up behind her. “What was that bit about the limousine?” he asked.

She turned around and saw a roomful of people staring at them, their ears practically out on stems.

“I’ll tell you later,” she said. ‘Just a hunch I had. If he’s out here in less than ten seconds, I was right.”

It was eight seconds before the receptionist appeared again. “The doctor will see you now in his office.”

Savannah gave her a bright smile... the one she saved for people she didn’t particularly like. “Thank you,” she said sweetly. “I thought he might.”

Chapter

16

S
avannah wasn’t at all surprised, when she and Dirk entered the doctor’s office, to see that Dr. Pappas was, indeed, the fellow she had seen getting into the Mercedes limousine outside. Nor was she shocked that he wasn’t particularly happy to see them.

Not only did he neglect to offer them a seat, but he didn’t even speak to them. He just sat behind his desk and glowered at them from beneath bushy white eyebrows.

Up close, Dr. Pappas was even less attractive than he had appeared from across the parking lot. Looking more like a caricature of a mad scientist than a physician, with his tousled silver hair and carelessly trimmed white beard, Savannah wondered what it was about this man that inspired a waiting room full of patients.

“Dr. Pappas,” Dirk said, extending his hand across the desk. “Thank you for seeing me. I’m Detective Coulter, and this is my associate, Savannah Reid.”

“I know who you are,” he said, tight-lipped.

“Then you probably know what I want,” Dirk said, dropping the pseudo-friendliness. “I’m afraid that one of your patients, Tesla Montoya, has been the victim of foul play... like Cait Connor and Kameeka Wills... also patients of yours.”

The doctor said nothing as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over the front of his white smock.

“I need to know her blood type,” Dirk continued. “If you have that information in her medical files, it would help me a lot.”

“I don’t release personal information on my patients,” he replied evenly. “No responsible physician would.”

“I’m not asking you for anything all that personal,” Dirk said. “I don’t want to know how much she weighed or if she had AIDS, for Pete’s sake.”

No response.

“We found a pool of blood in Tesla Montoya’s apartment,” Dirk added, obviously growing more impatient by the moment. “She’s missing, and we have reason to think she’s been kidnapped. Would you or one of your nurses just look in her file and tell me her blood type? If you’ll do that I’ll leave you alone.”

Pappas stared at Dirk for several long, tense seconds; then he reached for a manila folder in a stack of similar ones on his desk and flipped it open. He thumbed through the papers inside, reading.

Finally, he closed the folder and tossed it back on the heap. “She was A-negative,” he said, crossing his arms again. “Is that all?”

“That’s all. Thank you.”

Savannah was never happier to be outside in the fresh air and sunshine than when they exited the clinic. Once in the parking lot, she paused and took a deep breath.

“I hear ya,” Dirk said. “That guy smells... and I’m not talkin’ about his onion breath either.”

“Let’s keep an eye peeled on him.”

“Man, I’m running out of eyes here. I had to cut Tumblety loose, and I’ve got Jake McMurtry tailing him. Then there’s Cait’s husband and that agent gal and those other models and the photographer and that ad agency dude. Cheez. Usually you can’t find a suspect in a case, and now we’re drowning in them.”

Savannah reached into her purse, pulled out her notebook, and flipped it open to the page where she had jotted down the limo’s plate number. “Well, your life’s about to take a turn for the worse,” she told him, “because I have a sneaking suspicion that when you run this plate, you’re going to find out that it belongs to a guy named Charles Wentworth III.”

“The cereal tycoon?”

“None other.”

Dirk winced as he wrote the number in his own notebook. “I hate dealing with those dudes with the numbers after their names.”

Savannah laughed. “Oh, yeah? You oughta rub noses with the guys down South like Bubba Junior and Little Billy Ray. There’s just something about having to live up to the ‘seniors’ or numbers one, two, or three that makes a fella defensive.”

Dirk glanced back at the clinic door. “Or having an MD after your name and something to hide.”

Savannah was in the grocery store, picking up the makings of a fine pork chop and cornbread dressing dinner, when her cell phone rang. Stopping in the frozen section, she answered and was surprised to hear an unfamiliar voice on the other end.

‘Yes, hi,” he was saying, “I’m Officer Leo Kingston with the SCPD. I got your number from Dirk Coulter. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought I should call you.”

“No problem,” she said, reaching for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. “What’s up?”

“I mentioned to some of the guys here that I was going to have to go out and talk to somebody and one of them recognized your address.”

“My address? Why are you going out to my address?” She pitched the ice cream into the cart and reached for a pint of Cherry Garcia, Marietta’s favorite.

“We got a complaint about a Marietta Reid, who’s staying there. Dirk says she’s your sister.”

Savannah froze, the ice cream in her hand. “Yes, I’m afraid she’s a close blood relation of mine. What was the nature of the complaint... as if I have to ask.”

“Apparently she’s been harassing a certain William Donaldson, who lives in West Hollywood. He called us and asked us to speak to her about it, to tell her that he’s considering getting a restraining order against her. It seems she showed up today at his place of employment and had to be removed from the premises by the security there.”

“Lord help us,” Savannah muttered. “That girl’s plumb lost her mind, and she didn’t have all that much to begin with.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. Thank you for calling me, Officer Kingston. I’ll speak to my sister, really, and I guarantee you that she won’t be bothering Mr. Donaldson again.”

“Are you sure, because I really ought to follow up on this if—”

“I’m sure. Thank you, Leo.”

Savannah hung up and stood there, staring at the Cherry Garcia in her hand. Then, with a determination born of fury, she shoved the ice cream back into the freezer.

“Screw you, Marietta Jane Reid,” she grumbled. “No ice cream for you. No pork chop dinner. No
nothing.
You can just get your butt with your purple, tiger-striped pants on the next plane to Georgia. It’s a transcontinental flight. If you’re lucky maybe
they
will feed you something!”

“You can’t make me go home, Savannah! You can’t make me do nothin’ I don’t wanna do!” Marietta shouted as she paced the length of the living room, waving her arms and punctuating each statement with a stomp.

In her wing-back chair, Savannah sat quietly, watching the tantrum and sipping her coffee that was liberally laced with Baileys Irish Cream. She wished it was Jack Daniels, but Baileys would have to do. She had to keep her wits about her. Assertiveness had never come easy for her when it came to her family members.

Bad guys were one thing. She had no problem threatening them with manual castration or death by slow strangulation. But when it came to her sisters...

Tammy had discreetly removed herself from the living room and taken refuge in the kitchen, where she sat at the table, quietly working on her computer. But she wasn’t fooling Savannah. She was absorbing every detail of this drama. Having come from a relatively sane family herself, Tammy found the dynamics between the Reid sisters a never-ending source of amazement and amusement.

“Finally, I have a chance at happiness,” Marietta wailed. “And you just can’t stand it. I’ve got a man who loves me, a good man, and you’re so jealous that you’re throwin’ a monkey wrench into the works by making me go home.”

Savannah scooped Diamante up onto her lap and began to pet the cat. She’d heard that stroking an animal could lower your blood pressure. And judging from the pulse pounding in her temples, hers needed lowering.

“I’m not making you go home,” she said calmly. “I’m just telling you that if you intend to stay here in California and make a blamed fool of yourself over a man who doesn’t want any part of you... you’ll have to do it someplace other than my house.”

“But I can’t afford a motel room! I already told you that! Why else do you think I’d stay here?”

Savannah winced, wishing there was a form of bulletproof vest that could fend off darts from your so-called loved ones. “I don’t know...” she said. “Maybe because you wanted to see me, to spend time with me?”

“Doing what? Listening to you put me down, tell me how stupid I am, and how I’m always messing up? Gee, that’s a lot of fun.”

In her peripheral vision, Savannah could see Tammy peek around the corner, a look of concern on her face. Maybe she could trade Sister Marietta in on a sister like Tammy—someone who didn’t shoot poisoned verbal arrows.

“You’re right, Marietta,” she said as she stood and set the cat on the floor. “You’re a grown woman, and your life is your own. I’ve taken liberties, expressing my opinions to you when you didn’t ask for them. I apologize for that. Please forgive me.”

Marietta looked relieved, then confused. “So... what does that mean?” she asked. “Can I stay here with you? At least for a few more days while I work out these little problems with Bill?”

“No. You can’t stay.”

“But—but you just admitted that you were wrong.’

“I
was
wrong to give you advice that you didn't want. But you still have to go.”

“But where? Where will I go if I can’t stay here?”

“Home to your boys, maybe?”

“There you go, judging me again. That was advice... and a statement about me not being a good mother.” Savannah’s remaining nerve snapped. “Dammit, Mari! You asked me. You asked me a specific question, and I answered it You can go home or you can go check into a cheap hotel. Lord knows there are plenty of them in your so-called boyfriend’s neighborhood. You can go fly a kite on the beach and sleep in your rented car. I don’t care what you do! But if you’re going to act stupider than stupid, you’re not going to do it around me, ’cause I have better things to do than watch it.”

At that moment, she was once again saved by a bell; the telephone rang. As usual, it was resting on the coffee table, and both she and Marietta dove for it.

“Don’t you touch that stinkin’ telephone!” she shouted at her sister. “It’s my dad-gummed phone, and if you so much as lay a finger on it, I swear, I’ll beat you to a frazzle with it!”

Marietta must have believed her, because she backed off—all the way to the other side of the living room— and stood there sulking.

“Hello!” Savannah said into the phone with a vehemence rarely used for a simple telephone greeting unless one was expecting a telephone solicitor.

“Hi. Is everything okay?” asked a velvet voice that could only belong to Ryan Stone.

She instantly melted. “Ryan. I’m so glad to hear from you.” He had no idea how glad, but someday she might tell him the sad, sad story of how she had thrown her sister out onto the cold, cold street and ruined forever any chance she had of finding her One True Love.

“I’m calling to ask you out on a date,” he said, a touch of humor in his words.

“Yeah, right. Don’t toy with me, boy. My heart’s a fragile thing where you’re concerned.”

“No, really. I’m hoping you’ll do me the honor of allowing me to escort you to a social function this evening. And if Tammy is free, John would like to take her. We realize it’s short notice, but it shouldn’t take long for you ladies to become ravishingly beautiful. It’s formal, by the way.”

Savannah looked over at Marietta, who was still trembling with rage and indignation. She quickly weighed the options before her: Spend the evening with two delicious men at a formal affair. Fight with her sister for another two hours and wind up committing homicide. And as fun as that might be, there was the body disposal, which could prove tricky with all the new advances in forensic investigations.