Bitter Sweets

Lisa’s stories about her creepy husband, came the comforting reply. Since when do you lock car doors against stories and watchdogs ? Okay, she admitted, it had her there. Steering her car toward home, she decided it was too late to try to contact Brian O’Donnell. He had waited all these years to get in touch with his sister. Surely, he could hold out until morning.

    Besides, Savannah had already decided that she had to sleep on it before turning the information over to him.

    Lisa and Christy Mallock were trusting her. And Savannah knew she was going to spend a fitful night, wrestling with the demon-or maybe it was her own intuition-who was telling her that she was about to do something she would regret.

    CHAPTER FOUR

    Savannah woke with a start and sat up in bed, gripping her sheets with shaking hands. Her new silk nightgown clung to her perspiration-soaked body. It was a cold, clammy, sick sweat. She was deeply frightened, her pulse pounding in her ears, her mouth dry. Probably the residue from a nightmare...but she couldn’t remember many details.

    The last time she had awoken this abruptly and this unpleasantly had been during the Northridge earthquake, an event that she and her fellow Southern Californians weren’t likely to forget anytime soon. But the fern hanging in the corner was still, not swinging wildly, as before. The pictures remained on the wall. The same walls were intact and basically vertical...always a good sign.

    So, why did she feel as though she needed to throw up?

    She wasn’t sure, but her dream had been inhabited by tiny, star-spangled dancers in pink ruffled skirts and a dark, menacing presence, that had somehow gained access to the innocents by way of her own actions.

    Earl Mallock. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. Dark hair, heavy set, blue eyes. And pure evil. That had been Lisa’s description of her ex-husband.

    Brian O’Donnell. Dark auburn hair, slender, soft-spoken and brown-eyed.

    They couldn’t be the same person.

    But what if the man in her office had been working for Earl Mallock? Perhaps he was a misguided friend performing some sort of grim favor?

    No, he had seemed sincere enough. Savannah prided herself on being an astute judge of character, and she could have sworn that she had seen only honesty in his face, that she had heard only love and concern in his voice.

    But then, she had been fooled before. Good judgment or not, no one was infallible. Not if a con was good at his job.

    Either way, she couldn’t simply lie there in bed, thinking, worrying. The hope of going back to sleep was a futile fantasy.

    With a sigh she threw back the sheets and duvet and stared at the alarm clock on her bed stand as though it were a mortal enemy-1:25 A.M. Great... she had been asleep a whole hour and a half.

    Dragging her tired body from the warm, soft bed, she walked to her closet and pulled on some jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of sneakers, sans the socks. Then she headed downstairs to get her purse and car keys.

    She wasn’t sure where she was going, or what she was hoping to accomplish at this time of night. But she knew she had to do something. She had to make sure everything was okay with Brian O’Donnell. Because, in eight hours, she was supposed to tell him where to find Lisa Mallock and her daughter.

    And before she gave him that precious information, she had to be absolutely, positively sure.

    Just outside the San Carmelita city limits-fifty yards outside, to be exact-sat the Blue Moon Motel. The sign in front of the establishment boasted easy access to Lake Arroyo, the best fishing, boating, and skiing in the county. But, cynical as she was, Savannah had long suspected that its location had been chosen because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the San Carmelita Police Department.

    With only occasional interference from the county sheriffs deputies, the Blue Moon owners provided a convenient, outof-the-way, no-tell motel for those individuals engaging in clandestine meetings. Twenty-five bucks would buy you three hours of uninterrupted debauchery beneath mirrored ceilings, on vibrating beds with blue crushed velvet spreads-circa: 1972.

    And if you weren’t fortunate enough to have company in your room, any one of four X-rated cable television stations would show you what you were missing.

    Fourteen units long, the building glowed an anemic bluewhite in the light of the flickering neon sign which announced that there were, indeed,