Buried In Buttercream

Savannah said, unable to resist needling him just a bit. “But I guess you can call your honeys in here girls or bitches or cell mate bed warmers or anything you want to.”
    “I mean on the outside ,” he said, rising for the bait. “Real women!”
    As she could have predicted, ol’ Arlo didn’t like women with sass. And that was fine, because she and every other sassified gal she could imagine wouldn’t have given a jerk like Arlo a second glance.
    Or a first one either, for that matter.
    “You been in here how long now?” Dirk asked.
    Savannah knew that Dirk was well aware of the details of Arlo’s little vacation on the county. But then, Dirk seldom asked questions that he didn’t already know the answer to.
    “Two weeks,” Arlo replied. “And what’s the matter with one of my girls?”
    “Well,” Dirk said, “I thought you’d want to know, dear little Francie’s shaking her bare buzzungas and her naked butt, too, down at that scumbucket bar ... Willy’s.”
    Dirk waited for his information to sink in.
    It looked to Savannah that Arlo hadn’t been aware of that and didn’t approve. At all.
    Arlo, who didn’t mind jumping his best friend’s wife, didn’t like other men looking at his woman’s junk.
    That was no surprise. Long ago, Savannah had observed that it was always the men who habitually fooled around on their partners who were the most jealous.
    “Okay,” Arlo said. “I’ll have to have a little talk with her about that. She told me she was filing books at the local library for extra money.”
    Savannah stifled a laugh. “Not unless she’s doing some sort of naughty librarian routine for Willy and the boys.”
    That didn’t go over well either with ol’ Arlo. And Savannah was perversely pleased that it hadn’t.
    “But Francie’s not the only one of your women who’s got a problem,” Dirk told him. “In fact, her wavin’ her dinglebobbers in front of a bunch of guys is nothing compared to what’s going on with your other gal.”
    “Stop messing with me, man. Which one of those stupid bitches got a problem?” Arlo demanded, not bothering to mask his bad temper.
    “The one who broke up your marriage,” Savannah told him, not bothering to hide her delight in rubbing some salt in his wound. “She’s got a major, major problem.”
    “Who, Madeline? So what? Who cares?” He leaned so far back in his chair that Savannah was afraid he’d topple over backward.
    She didn’t particularly care if he busted his head open on the hard, cement floor, but she didn’t want Dirk to have to go through all the paperwork that such an injury, occurring during an interview, would precipitate.
    “You’ll care,” Dirk said, “once I charge you for it.”
    “Charge me for what? What am I supposed to have done to her?”
    “You murdered her.”
    “Murdered?” Arlo gulped, looked at Dirk, then Savannah, his eyes wide, mouth gaping. “Are you ... are you saying ... Madeline’s dead?”
    “Very.”
    He appeared to quickly absorb the information ... and deal with it. “Oh. Okay. Whatever.”
    Savannah said, “I’d tell you that I’m sorry for your loss, but you don’t seem all that sorry yourself, so I won’t bother.”
    “She caused me a lot of trouble, that bitch. If somebody took her out, I ain’t gonna cry about it.”
    “I don’t expect you to cry about it,” Dirk said. “But I’m thinking you did it.”
    “I did it? How could I have done it? I’m in here!”
    “I think you paid for it.”
    “Paid for it? You think I paid somebody to knock off Madeline? Are you serious?”
    “Serious as a heart attack.” Dirk leaned across the table toward him. “We’ve found out a lot about Madeline Aberson, and most of it isn’t all that nice. I’m sure you had a good reason.”
    “Let’s hear your side of it,” Savannah said, “so that we don’t think you’re just a coldhearted bastard. Why did you have somebody kill her?”
    Arlo shook his head. “Oh, no ... you aren’t going to get me to answer a question like that. That’s like asking somebody, ‘Did you hurt your hand when you smacked your wife?’ I ain’t falling for nothing like that.”
    Savannah turned to Dirk. “Arlo here’s too smart for us, buddy. You can’t pull the wool over his eyes.”
    Dirk’s eyes narrowed as he leaned still closer to his interviewee. “Okay, then let’s get real honest, real quick. You tell me who you think might’ve killed Madeline, and I’ll check them