Cereal Killer

into the bathroom with her, just in case.
    Call Dirk, she told herself. Call him and tell him that you think ....
    What? the more sensible of her multipersonalities asked. What do you think?
    That Caitlin Connor didn’t just up and die all by herself. Somebody killed her.
    You don’t know that. There’s no reason to think that.
    Yes there is. She was —
    Ding dong.
    The sound cut through Savannah’s brain waves, interrupting the domestic fight in her head. Also short-circuiting the problem-solving process that had just been on the verge of figuring out... something....
    Ding dong.
    “Go away,” Savannah said, knowing her unwelcome visitor couldn’t possibly hear her, but hoping they would somehow get the psychic message.
    Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong.
    “Tarnation,” she muttered, rising from the sea of bubbles and stepping out of the claw-foot tub onto the plush bath rug... a treat she couldn’t resist from the latest Pottery Barn catalog. “You’d better not be selling window cleaner or magazines at this time of night,” she grumbled as she slipped on her ancient blue terry-cloth robe. “ ’Cause if you are, I just might feed you some of your own products.”
    The bell chimed three more times before she could make it down the stairs. As she stepped off the carpet and onto the hardwood floor in the foyer, her wet feet slipped and she nearly fell.
    “Hold on!” she shouted as she neared the door, the cats scurrying excitedly around her damp ankles.
    “Savannah!” she heard a female voice cry from the other side of the closed door. “Savannah, it’s me! Open up, girl. I ain’t got all day!”
    “Me? Who’s me?”
    Frantically, her mind searched its memory files for a female voice with a distinctly Southern accent. So many choices presented themselves. So few that she wanted to believe.
    As a former Georgian, the oldest of nine siblings, Savannah had plenty of female relatives who seemed to think nothing of dropping by unexpectedly—if you could consider a two thousand mile coast-to-coast trip dropping by.
    Savannah flipped on the front porch lights, looked through the door’s peephole and saw... big hair. Stiffly sprayed, meticulously styled, big, big hair.
    There was only one person, north or south of the Mason-Dixon line, who sported a hairdo that big.
    “Marietta!” she exclaimed, flinging the door open and taking her sister in her arms.
    ‘You’re wet!” Marietta cried as she pulled away. She laughed as she brushed her hands across the front of her shirt ‘You’ll ruin my clothes.”
    Savannah looked down at her sister’s shirt, which was adorned with a rhinestone-bespangled tiger’s face. The cat had particularly large eyes that were accented with bright green, marquise-shaped stones.
    Lovely , Savannah thought Understated elegance... that’s our Mari.
    ‘You got me out of the bathtub,” she said, pulling her unexpected guest into the house. “That’s why I’m wet.”
    She noticed a generic midsize car, which she surmised was a rental, in her driveway and a couple of oversize suitcases on the porch. Sighing inwardly, she walked out the door and picked up one case in each hand.
    They were unbelievably heavy. Must be all the rhinestones, she thought Too much to hope she'd just be carrying an overnight bag.
    Not that she didn’t welcome visits from her loved ones. Even impromptu visits were nice. But only for about two or three days. Experience had taught her that after a brief window of blissful familial communion, thoughts of homicide tended to dance in her head.
    “Are you surprised to see me?” Marietta asked, patting her poofy updo with one hand, the other hand perched jauntily on her hip in what looked like a silver-screen pose of some sort. In Savannah’s opinion, Marietta had watched far too many black-and-white movies where women with overplucked eyebrows puffed on cigarettes while leading good-hearted but hopelessly horny men astray.
    “Surprised?” she said. “Yes, I guess so. I had no idea you were coming out to see me. Maybe if you’d called or...
    Marietta left Savannah with the suitcases in hand and walked into the living room. She looked around, evaluating with the critical eye of a Fifth Avenue decorator. “Naw, I wanted to surprise you. Besides, I was in the neighborhood.”
    “In the neighborhood? What... you took a wrong turn on your way to Wal-Mart and wound up on my doorstep?”
    Marietta cut her a quick look that didn’t really reveal