Bitter Sweets

jump. It was the cell phone in her jacket pocket...as though her nerves weren’t tight enough as it was. If she’d been smart, she would have left the damned thing in the car or fed it to Beowulf along with the liver.

    She pulled out the phone and nipped it open. “Yeah?” she said irritably.

    “Oops, I’m sorry, Savannah. Are you busy?” Tammy said, her Long Island twang more pronounced than usual. She always reverted when under stress.

    “A little.”

    “Where are you?”

    “The colonel’s. And let’s just say... I didn’t receive an engraved invitation to be here...if you know what I mean.”

    “You broke in?”

    Savannah sighed. “Tammy, this is a cell phone, remember?”

    “Oh, yeah. Sorry again.”

    Tucking the phone beneath her chin, Savannah began to set some of the pictures on top of the piano aside.

    “Did you...ah...find anything yet?” Tammy asked.

    “Nothing yet.” Carefully, Savannah lifted the shining ebony lid of the baby grand. “Is there something I can do for you?”

    “Not really. Why?”

    “You called me. Remember?”

    “Oh, right. Sorry. I just wanted you to know that Dirk is on his way over here. I told him I thought you’d be back by now. I guess I blew that, too.”

    Savannah scanned the row of glistening wires, precision spaced, stretched taut and, no doubt, perfectly tuned. “It’s okay, Tammy. I should be there soon. Just tell him to hang on. Wait a minute....”

    One wire was missing.

    High up in the treble range, a gap, like that of an absent tooth, grinning at her. Savannah shivered with an awareness she didn’t welcome.

    “Shit,” she whispered. “Not exactly what I was hoping for, Colonel.”

    “What?” Tammy sounded completely confused.

    “Let’s just say I may have found something. I’ve gotta go, and Tammy ...”

    “Yes?”

    “You say you’re sorry all the time. It’s driving me around the bend.”

    “It is? Oh, I’m sor-”

    “Stop it, or, every time you say it, I’m going to deduct a quarter from the generous salary that I’m not paying you. Understand?”

    “Urn... I think so.”’

    “Good. See you soon.”

    Savannah shoved the phone back into her pocket and carefully replaced the photographs atop the piano, knowing that a neatnik like Neilson would notice if anything were out of place. She didn’t want anyone, except Tammy and Dirk, to know she had ever been here. Unless she had found something, she hadn’t intended to tell anyone.

    Was this something? She wondered. It certainly wasn’t incriminating evidence. There had to be plenty of pianos in the town of San Carmelita with missing wires. But it was definitely something.

    At the front window, she glanced outside and saw that the street was still empty. But the creepy feeling was even stronger than before. Like a disease-carrying insect, it crawled up her back and around her neck, making her feel the need to go home and take a long, hot shower with lots of soap.

    Murder always made her feel that way.

    It wasn’t natural. No matter who committed it or why, it violated the laws of God and man. And her basic instinct was to stay as far away from it as possible.

    Not feasible, considering her chosen line of work.

    Just as the eerie feeling began to crescendo, the house exploded in a cacophony of bells, chimes, buzzes, and cuckoos. It was 6:00 P.M. on the Pacific coast and in Colonel Forrest Neilson’s house, there was no way to miss the event.

    Savannah’s pulse rate tripled and her knees felt like warm gelatin as she sagged against the windowsill and waited for the din to cease.

    How could he stand living with this? she wondered, as the sounds went on and on. She and her two companions must have stayed less than fifteen minutes the other day, she decided. They must have just missed witnessing the phenomenon.

    The ornately carved grandfather clock to her right was the loudest of all, tolling out the Westminster Chimes with bass notes that reverberated through her body.

    She found herself humming the familiar tune, until it stopped, abruptly, in mid-chime.

    Strange, she thought. In a house where everything appeared to work perfectly, this was an anomaly.

    The clock had an open well, with no glass to shield the chains and etched brass weights. Two of the shining weights were barely visible, hanging in the space above the lower body of the clock. But the third one on the far right had dropped out of sight. The other chains were hanging