Bitter Sweets

blamed Earl for them losing their business, and then I left Alan, and Alan said that was Earl’s fault, too, but it was really Alan’s fault, not Earl’s because Alan was never home and didn’t pay me any attention at all, and that was why I left him, because I just couldn’t-”

    “Wait! Please!” Savannah held up one hand in surrender. “There isn’t, like, a quiz on all this later, is there?”

    Jillian Logan looked at her blankly. A couple of “blonde” jokes floated through Savannah’s head, but she quickly dismissed them as being unworthy of a such a mature and sophisticated brunette as herself.

    “A quiz? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jillian continued. “I was just wondering if that was the sort of thing you wanted to know.”

    Savannah considered sticking her head in the wineglass of sparkling water ... just drowning herself... ending it all. But the glass was too small, and her head too big. So, instead, she reached into her purse and pulled out her pad and paper.

    “Certainly, Mrs. Logan,” she said, trying her best to sound patient. “Now, if you could just start at the beginning.”

    “Oh, okay. No problem. It all began back in 1973. Alanthat rotten creep-and I met at a ...”

    CHAPTER NINETEEN

    Savannah was getting ready to dash out of her house and hit the road again, when she opened her front door and nearly ran into Brian O’Donnell. He was standing on her doorstep, his fist raised, ready to knock.

    “Oh, hi...” She wasn’t exactly prepared to speak to him again so soon. She had hoped to have something more concrete to tell him the next time she needed to give a report.

    After delivering so much bad news to the poor man, she was hoping to have something optimistic to relate.

    Oh, well... so much for thinking positive. Usually, when she tried the upbeat, pull-only-good-things-to-you routine, things got worse. Or, maybe she had just been hanging around Dirk too long and had caught his infectious pessimism.

    “Hello, Savannah,” O’Donnell said. “I don’t mean to be a pest, but I’m sitting there, hour after hour, in my hotel room, worrying until I’m almost sick.”

    “I’m sure you are. I’m sorry.”

    “I feel so damned helpless. I had to do something, even if it was just to come over here and bug you.”

    “You aren’t bugging me, Mr. O’Donnell. Why don’t you come in for a minute, and I’ll fill you in on what we have so far.”

    “Is that it?” Brian O’Donnell asked Savannah, after she had spent nearly half an hour trying to make their lack of progress sound like a pep squad rally. But she decided she was losing her touch; he hadn’t bought it.

    He hadn’t even drunk the freshly brewed Mocha Java or eaten any of the cookies, which she had spread invitingly across the tray on the coffee table.

    “Ah .. . yes, but this one lead, the one about the guy with the criminal record may pan out,” she told him. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t turn out to be our killer. And, of course, now that Detective Coulter has him in custody, we’ll soon find out if...we’ll find out where he’s been keeping Christy all this time, and we’ll be able to get her back.”

    “He has a record?”

    Damn, she hadn’t intended to let that slip, but, of course, he had latched onto it. “Mmmm, yeah, just one conviction, though. Not to worry.”

    “What was it for?”

    “What?” She knew darned well “what” but asking was worth a few seconds of stall time.

    “What was he convicted of?”

    “It... ah...it might have been for writing bad checks, insufficient funds, something silly like that?”

    O’Donnell’s eyes searched hers, making her feel the need to squirm in her chair. She could practically feel her nose growing and her tongue turning black. As Granny had often warned her in childhood, it would probably fall out of her mouth at any moment.

    Brian’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘might have been’? Was that all? Just bad checks or something like that?”

    Maybe it was Gran’s presence upstairs in the guest bedroom, or maybe it was the fact that she had formally prayed last night for the first time in ages. Either way, Savannah decided she didn’t really want to sully her freshly cleansed soul so quickly, so badly, with such a blatant lie.

    “No, Brian. It wasn’t bad checks. He was convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor.”

    “How minor?”

    “A child.”

    He stared at