Cereal Killer

somebody nails me on it.”
    Tammy shrugged. “Consider it incentive. You solve the murders before your cover’s blown, you get out alive.”
    “We don’t know they’re murders yet.”
    ‘Yes, we do.”
    Savannah dropped the five bottles of foundation she’d been holding. “We do?”
    “Yes. At least Kameeka’s was. That’s what I came up here to tell you.” She smiled that little knowing grin she wore when she was holding a good hand at poker. “Dirk called a minute ago. I told him you were busy packing your girdles, and he said to tell you that he talked to Dr. Liu this morning. She says that Kameeka Wills was dead before the car ran over her.”
    “The tire tracks on her thigh...?”
    “Postmortem.”
    “What killed her?”
    “The blow to the side of her head.”
    Savannah nodded as a mixture of anger and relief spilled through her system. She hated to hear that anyone’s life had been deliberately extinguished by another, but in this case she had known it from the beginning.
    And she was relieved that now it was officially known by others, too.
    “Dirk’s gotta get the Crime Scene Unit over to Luminol that kitchen,” she said.
    Tammy grinned again. “That’s where he called me from. He’s over there with them now. They just sprayed it and then hit it with the lights.”
    “And?”
    “He said it lit up like Fourth of July fireworks.”
     
    Savannah had been somewhat surprised to hear that the address where the shoot was being conducted was only a few blocks south of Cait Connor’s home on the beach. But this place was as traditional as hers was contemporary.
    Looking like something that belonged on a rocky cliff in Maine, the house had a distinct nautical flair with its weathered gray siding, white shutters, and a turret on one corner that resembled a miniature lighthouse. Sitting directly on the beach, the property was surrounded by a heavy rope fence strung on pilings that served as posts. Driftwood had been scattered haphazardly around the house, along with some rusted, barnacle-encrusted anchors. A battered dinghy lay upside down on a sand dune near the porch. On its peeling hull a name had been painted—Timmy Tuna.
    With feelings of trepidation, Savannah parked, grabbed her bag from the back seat, and got out of her car. She really hated this business of being unprepared. And she didn’t like the way she had allowed Leah Freed to bulldoze her into going undercover with such a flimsy front.
    In her bag she carried the hastily prepared résumé that Leah had complied for her, along with a letter saying that although her experience was minimal, Leah considered her a “promising talent.”
    But Tammy was right about the incentive that lying provided. Get in, get out, before you get caught. That was her mantra for the day.
    The sound of activity led her around to the back of the house, where a bunch of people were milling about on an elaborate, three-level deck. On the upper level was a giant spa, and that seemed to be the hub of the activity.
    Half a dozen large white screens and some things that looked like oversize umbrellas were set up around the tub, which was lit with bright spotlights, some on tripods and others on poles.
    Savannah’s eyes scanned the crowd, looking for the photographer, Matt Slater, whom Leah had described as “tall and skinny with a long, oily ponytail.” He wasn’t hard to identify. The word “skinny” didn’t begin to describe him. Ichabod Crane in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, Savannah thought. Not what she had expected in a fashion photographer, but... what did she know?
    And that had to be Jerrod Beekman in the white slacks and purple long-sleeved silk shirt with the sunglasses on his head and the scowl on his face. Leah had described the president of Stellar, the public relations firm that was handling the Slenda account, as “pushy, antsy, and as genuine as a centerfold’s bustline and front teeth.”
    Sitting on the whirlpool’s blue-and-white tiled edge were two lovely women, one of whom Savannah recognized from a picture in Leah’s lobby. A Latin beauty, she had thick black curls spilling down her back, enormous eyes, and an exotic loveliness about her that made Savannah think of every romance novel she had ever read where the heroine was a gypsy, a Polynesian goddess, or an Indian temptress. Dressed in a teal tank-mi, she was full-figured but well toned, and Savannah could instantly see what Leah had been referring to when she