Chapter 15
By the time Savannah and Dirk had related their sad story, the mood of the Moonlight gang was far less festive. The seeming nonstop flow of sweet tea—with nary a beer, in honor of Granny and their work ethic—and hot dogs galore had done nothing to raise their spirits.
“Where does this leave us?” Ryan asked.
Dirk leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. “We have a double homicide with only one suspect—”
“Who, we’re pretty sure,” Richard inserted, “is more interested in proposing to his girlfriend than doing a hit on a degenerate gambler.”
“He could do both,” Granny suggested. “You young folks seem to think highly of what you call ‘multitasking.’ Though I think it should be called ‘doing more than one thing, and not doing anything all that good.’”
“When did you fellas pick up his trail?” Savannah asked.
Ryan, John, and Richard conferred for a moment. Then John said, “About half-one, give or take ten minutes.”
“That was about the time we heard about the accident,” Dirk noted. “So he could have had something to do with it, after all. At this point, as far as we know, he doesn’t have an alibi for the time someone would have done their dirty work.”
“Whatever the ‘dirty work’ was that they did,” Ryan offered.
“If any dirty work was done at all,” John added.
“There was!”
Savannah realized, the moment the words left her mouth, that she had shouted them, and she felt terrible about it. The group had every reason to doubt that foul play had been done, just as the trooper at the scene had.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really, I am. I’ve just . . .”
“Had a terribly difficult day,” John offered. “We understand, love.”
“No, that isn’t it.” She wiped her hand wearily across her forehead and paused a moment to find the right words. “I don’t know how I know the Van Cleefs were murdered. I just know, as stupid as that may sound.”
Gran leaned over and grabbed Savannah in a tight, grandmotherly embrace without a thought for the rest of the diners who were now watching to see what might happen next.
“You’ve had an awful shock to your system, Savannah girl,” she said. “Your feelings are strong on this subject, as one well might expect under the circumstances. But you’ve got to figure out if what you’re feeling is ol’ unreliable emotions, born of some sort of misplaced guilt, or true intuition. It’s mighty easy to mistake one for the other at a time like this.”
Savannah tried to absorb what her grandmother was telling her, but her wits were too scrambled. “What does my guilt have to do with it?”
“Guilt’s a powerful thing,” Gran told her. “It’s a good thing if we genuinely did wrong and need to make amends and learn from our errors. But when it’s false guilt, it lies to us and makes us think all sorts of awful things about ourselves that ain’t true. Lies like that don’t do nobody no good.”
“Listen to your granny, babe,” Dirk said. “She’s telling you the truth. Whatever happened to the Van Cleefs, it’s on them, not you.”
“It is,” Richard agreed. “What kind of person hires a team of people to guard them, then tells them to stay away? Then they leave the safety of the ship and go driving around in rural forests without their protectors?”
“That’s true.” Savannah looked into her grandmother’s face. “What does your intuition tell you, Gran?”
“My intuition ain’t saying much. Sometimes, unlike my mouth, it’s quiet. But common sense tells me there’s reason to suspect the worst.”
“Me too,” Dora jumped in from the other end of the table. “Especially considering what we saw today, while we were out and about.”
Granny grinned broadly. “That’s right. Us gals have something to report, even if all you fellas came up with is a guy shopping for an engagement ring.”
Savannah experienced the first positive emotion she had felt since entering that empty suite hours ago. She was about to hear something good. Emotions or intuition, she just knew it.
“You ladies are holding out on us?” Ryan asked.
“Let’s hear what you discovered,” John said.
“As it happens,” Gran said, swelling with importance, “us more mature ladies didn’t exactly spend our afternoon sightseeing. Although, that isn’t completely true. We did see us some sights, didn’t we, Dora. One in particular.”
“We sure did.” Dora giggled. “We saw that dark-haired woman with the black glasses. She was shopping like she was afraid they were going to sell out of T-shirts with grizzly bears on them and those little Inuit dolls with the fur coats. Why, we saw her buy ashtrays with the map of Alaska and—”
“That’s not the important part, Dora,” Gran snapped. “Stop with the chitter-chatter and tell ’em what we saw. Tell ’em the part that mattered, or I will.”
Savannah half expected Dora to fly into a huff, but she was too excited to take offense.
“We didn’t know for sure what we were seeing,” Dora continued, “because we had no idea what you were going to tell us about the car accident and the fact that you smelled gas and that you think—”
“Okay, that’s it.” Granny drew a deep breath. “That dark-haired editor gal wasn’t doing nothin’ but shopping, but that other one, she was up to no good.”
“Which other one?” Savannah asked. “The blonde? Olive, Ms. Van Cleef’s personal assistant?”
“That’s the one. We spotted her driving past in the backseat of a taxi cab. She had a serious, up-to-somethin’ look on her face, for sure. So we kept an eye on her.”
“That’s right!” Dora was practically bouncing up and down on her chair. “Then we saw that she was waving the cab driver to pull into a service station. There’s one right there by the place that’s got those grizzly T-shirts five for twenty dollars. I thought about buying some, but I don’t know five people who’d wear a bear on their chest like that, especially a—”
“When the driver stopped,” Gran interjected, “this Olive gal jumped out of the cab and ran into the service station. A couple of minutes later, she came out with one of them gas cans that you keep in your trunk. You know, for in case you run out of gasoline.”
Savannah felt her heart begin to pound. Her brain started to race with this small but tantalizing amount of information.
“Then,” Gran continued, “she looked like she was talkin’ all sweet to the fella that works there at the station. Sidlin’ up to him, she was, friendly like a female hound dog who just met a male hound dog that she’s taken a likin’ to. The next thing you know, he’s pumpin’ gasoline into that can of hers.”
“Then she paid him,” Dora added. “I couldn’t see how much she paid him, but you’ve just gotta know that she was way overcharged. Probably paid too much for the can, too. They know they’ve got you at their mercy in a little place like this. They’ll just gouge you any way they can.”
Richard leaned close to his wife. “What. Happened. Next?” he asked her. “What did she do once the can was filled and she paid him too much money?”
“She carried the can over to the taxi and tried to get into the backseat with it,” Dora said.
“The cab driver made it clear, even to us, as far away as we were,” Gran said, “that he wasn’t havin’ none of that. The two of them argued for a while. Then the cabbie got out, opened up the trunk, and let her stick the can there in the back.”
“Then they took off, and we couldn’t see them anymore, so we don’t know what happened then.” Dora picked up her glass and drained the last of her tea.
“Which direction did they go?” Dirk asked.
In unison Gran and Dora pointed south.
Granny unsnapped the clasp of her white patent leather pocketbook. Reaching inside, she said, “But there is one more little thing you might like, so that you don’t have a complete dead end on your hands here.”
She pulled out a piece of paper with some pencil scribblings on it and pressed it into Savannah’s hand. “I may just be an amateur detective, not a professional one like most of y’all sittin’ here. But I know a thing or two, and I aim to earn my keep on this here trip of ours.”
Savannah looked down at the piece of paper and saw several numbers scrawled across it. “What is this, Gran? Don’t tell me it’s the plate number of the taxi.”
“Of course it is. It ain’t my grocery shoppin’ list. That other one, 592, that’s the number of the cab itself. You know how they’ve got the number painted on the back there where you can see it.”
Dirk jumped up from his chair and gave both his mother and Granny hearty hugs. “I can’t believe you two gals were sitting on this all this time. We’re here stuffing our faces with hot dogs and swilling down tea, and you’ve got the best break of the day.”
“The only break of the day,” Granny said, smiling.
“Okay. The only break.” He turned to Savannah, an excited look on his face. “What you say, babe? Let’s pile in the Bronco and let these ladies take us to the service station. We’ll see if Blondie said anything to the station attendant while he was selling her the can and pumping her gas. Then we’ll take a drive to the taxi office and find out what we can about that cab and his schedule today. Maybe they can tell us where he dropped her off.”
Savannah wanted to go. She desperately wanted to go. But she thought of the sadness in her brother’s voice, of him and Tammy sitting on that deck alone, troubled by a problem that seem to be getting the better of them.
Finally, she said. “But before I perform any other duties on behalf of the Van Cleefs, I’ve got something I need to do for my own family.”
Dirk’s eyes searched hers. “Tammy and Waycross?” he asked.
“Yes. I have to talk to them. Figure out what’s going on. Then I’ll find a way to join you.”
“I understand. You take care of business, and we’ll hook up later.” He leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek, and when he did, he whispered in her ear, “You tell them that I’m thinking of them, and that whatever it is that’s bothering them, it’s gonna be all right.”
As everyone stood and gathered their belongings, getting ready to go their separate ways, Granny reached out and grabbed Dirk’s hand. “Would you mind too much, Grandson, if it was just your mama who took you to see that gas station? I’m worried about those young’uns myself, and if Savannah’s gonna give them a talkin’ to, I’d like to be along.”
Dirk tweaked her nose. “Not a bit. We’ll be just fine. You’ve already earned your keep and then some today. Go tend to your family.”
Granny reached over and took Savannah’s hand in hers. “That’s all we’ve ever done, ain’t it, Savannah girl? It’s a job I don’t think we’ll ever get to retire from.”
Savannah thought of Tammy and Waycross’s child. Soon the baby would be entering the world with needs of its own. There was never an end, it seemed, to the long line of people to love, people who needed you. Usually at the most inconvenient times.
“I believe you’re right, Gran,” Savannah said. “I reckon this is a life sentence we’re serving.”