Bitter Sweets

been made, the trailer was free of dirty dishes, vermin, and human and animal wastes. In Dirk’s mind, that constituted “basically sanitary.”

    He had pushed his collection of periodicals and videotapes onto the floor, clearing the coffee table, for her visit. She had been deeply flattered.

    Side by side, they sat on the antique gold, threadbare carpet, leaning against the sofa, examining the materials spread out before them.

    “Look what I found,” she said, pointing to some articles of interest she had garnered from the boxes taken from the colonel’s home.

    She grabbed a black high school yearbook with silver lettering that said “Wolverines” and opened it to a page she had marked with the preaddressed envelope from her overdue electric bill. What the heck, this was just the yellow notice, and she knew she wasn’t going to pay it until the red one came. It would have its own envelope.

    “Here is Lisa’s high school graduation picture,” she said, tapping her fingertip on the photo of a softer, sweeter version of the face she had seen over the plate of M&M cookies. Before Earl Mallock. Before the abuse and the heartaches.

    “Looks like a nice kid.”

    “I’m sure she was.” Savannah flipped back to the section reserved for the junior class. “And this is Vanessa Pearce...without the purple hair.”

    Dirk studied the face of the pretty blonde who, even back then, wore too much makeup for her delicate good looks. “Hmmm, that was Earl’s girlfriend.”

    “ Was, being the operative term. She and Lisa Neilson went to the same school, one year apart.”

    “Okay...so?”

    “They were more than just schoolmates.” She pulled out some snapshots of the two girls playing in a swimming pool, on the beach, at a school basketball game, at a birthday party where Lisa was blowing out candles on a cake. “Lisa Neilson and Vanessa Pearce were best friends all through high school and for years afterward.”

    “And both of them wound up having the same guy?”

    Savannah nodded. “Even back then. I found some letters...right here...that were written when the women were in their thirties.” She pulled the rainbow-striped stationery from her tote bag and spread the letters on the table. “These are from Vanessa to Lisa. It seems that at one point, Earl was dating them both.”

    “Busy guy.”

    “Extremely busy.” She pushed one particular letter into Dirk’s hand. “He got both women pregnant within a few months of each other. Lisa first, then Vanessa. In that letter, Vanessa is begging Lisa to give him up so that she can have him.”

    “Whoa, now that’s messy.”

    “Positively sca-a-andalous. If such a thing had happened in Georgia, some of the male relatives would have run Mr. Mallock out of town on a rail, wearing a fine ensemble of pitch and turkey feathers.”

    “I wonder what the colonel had to say about it all?” Dirk took a long swig of beer and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

    “Well... Earl married Lisa, didn’t he? I’d say the colonel might have had something to say about that.”

    Dirk checked the dates on the letters. “We know what happened to Lisa’s baby; that would have been Christy. But what about Vanessa’s kid?”

    Savannah shrugged. “Don’t know yet. But at least now I nave somebody to move to the top of my board.”

    "You mean Vanessa Pearce .. . that she had a motive?”

    “Why not?”

    “Because, if she was going to knock somebody off, it seems like she would have done it ten years ago, when all this was going down.”

    “But what if she didn’t do it back then? What if she finally got Earl-prize that he was-away from Lisa? What if, after she thought she had him all to herself for good, he started to obsess about Lisa again? What if Vanessa found out about it, and it was just one rejection too many?”

    Dirk considered the possibilities for a while and sipped some more beer. “Well, you’ve talked to her. Does she strike you as the type of person who could kill two people?”

    “No.” She sighed. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

    When Savannah dropped by the house later to check in with Tammy, she opened the front door and received quite a shock.

    Granny Reid was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing a bright red, one-piece bathing suit. Part of the shock was that she looked much better in it than Savannah would have expected.

    “I never had one before .. . not in my whole life,” she told Savannah