Bitter Sweets

was flat, but challenging. Savannah could tell that the statement was intended to shock her. But she wasn’t easily shocked and didn’t like being worked.

    “Actually, when I saw the body, the brains were still inside. No exit wound,” she replied evenly. Two could play that game.

    “Did you kill him?”

    “No. Did you?”

    Both women stared at each other for a long, tense moment. In the end it was Vanessa who broke eye contact.

    “Okay,” Vanessa walked over to a cement block and sat down. She didn’t offer Savannah a seat, but Savannah didn’t want one. “What do you want to know?”

    With most people Savannah tried to exercise a degree of decorum and common civility. But, even though Vanessa appeared to be wonderful with kids, she seemed less socially adept with adults. Maybe she just didn’t like private detectives. Or perhaps it was more personal and she didn’t like blue-eyed women with Southern accents who asked her obnoxious questions.

    Whatever the case, Savannah decided to dive right in, head first. “Did you hate Lisa?” she asked.

    “She and I were best friends.”

    “Even after Earl Mallock married her instead of you?”

    Vanessa’s eyes blazed and she bit her lower lip hard enough to make it bleed as she struggled with her temper.

    Yes, Savannah thought, pay dirt .

    “Earl had to marry her. She was pregnant with his kid.”

    “So were you.” Savannah’s tone was gentle, but Vanessa looked as though she had been hit with a bull whip.

    “How the hell do you know that? Who told you that?”

    “I read it in some of Lisa’s letters. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to violate your privacy. I’m just trying to understand what-”

    “You don’t need to understand a damned thing about me or my past. It’s none of your fucking business. You get the hell off my property, bitch, before I knock your goddamned head off. Do you hear me? Do you?”

    Savannah assumed that everyone on the block could hear Vanessa; she was screaming the words. But tears were beginning to flow down the woman’s grease-smeared cheeks, and Savannah knew she had taken the situation as far as was wise at the moment.

    Quietly, she turned to leave, as Vanessa continued to hurl insults at her back.

    There was no reason to tarry. She had the information she had come for. The answer was: Yes, Vanessa was capable of violence. Anyone listening to her now, or who had seen the wrench sailing across the garage, would have no doubt about that.

    “Don’t you ever come back here again! Never! 1 mean it!” Savannah continued to walk without turning around. It was a dangerous gamble. She half expected to get a socket wrench thrown at her back.

    “If you want to find out who killed Lisa and Earl,” Vanessa shouted, “go after that child molester/pervert that Lisa was dating. She gave him the boot because of what he tried to do to Christy. He probably killed her... and Earl, too. Hassle him for a change. Don’t go bothering people who didn’t do anything wrong.”

    Savannah could hear Vanessa’s voice breaking, and she knew that once she was gone, the hard-nosed motorcycle mama would fall to pieces.

    In spite of herself, Savannah couldn’t help feeling sorry for her and a bit guilty that she had caused her to be so upset.

    But, on the other hand, Savannah rationalized as she climbed into the car, if Vanessa Pearce had anything to do with the murders, she deserved to feel rotten. And if she was innocent, the cry would do her good.

    “Where is it?” Dirk asked, the moment Savannah got into his Buick.

    She shoved the sack with the Egg McMuffin at him. “Why am I giving you bribes when this is my lead?” she asked as he quickly unwrapped it and chomped off an enormous bite.

    “Because you love me?”

    “Guess again.”

    “Because I’m not so grouchy when I’ve been recently fed?”

    “That’s more like it.” She punched his shoulder and pointed to the ignition. “Let’s get rollin’, pal. We’ve got even more reason than ever to visit Mr. Ian ‘High Volt’ Warner.”

    “What’s that?”

    “I’ll tell you on the way. Drive.”

    CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    “I just came from Vanessa Pearce’s garage, and she says Ian Warner is a child molester.” Savannah rolled down the Skylark’s window to escape some of Dirk’s secondhand smoke. For a refreshing change, he took the hint and hung his cigarette out his window as he drove. “But it might have just been a fanciful turn of