Cereal Killer

sort of thing.
    Silently she added a bit of padding to Leah’s bill— something she would privately call “The Indecency Factor,” not to be confused with “The Pain in the Butt Factor,” which she sometimes charged particularly difficult clients.
    Grabbing her aqua suit, she headed for the semienclosure. She arrived there about the same time as the Latin beauty, who was carrying a gorgeous black suit with a series of alluring and interesting straps across the back.
    “Hi,” Savannah said as they stepped behind the curtain. “I’m Susan.”
    “Tesla Montoya,” the woman said, extending her hand in a warm, firm handshake. But her smile seemed forced, and Savannah noticed that her eyes were a bit puffy, as though she had been crying.
    Briefly, Savannah wondered if maybe she should step out of the so-called dressing area to give the other model some privacy, but Tesla was already peeling off her first suit.
    “Isn’t it awful, about Cait and Kameeka?” Savannah said. Ordinarily, she would have warmed up to the subject before plunging in, but she didn’t know if she would have this rare, one-on-one opportunity to talk to her again.
    Tesla shot her a pained and suspicious look before shoving her teal suit into her bag. “It’s horrible,” she said softly. “Both of them! I can’t stop thinking about it.”
    “And now they’re saying someone might have... you know... done it intentionally,” Savannah said, watching the woman’s face carefully as she began to slip out of her slacks and blouse.
    “That’s what I heard, too.” Tesla already had the black suit on and was adjusting the various straps. “I can’t…“ Her voice broke. She paused and closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t stand it. Somebody has to do something. I have to—”
    Savannah’s ears were perked, and she held her breath as she waited for the rest of the sentence. But Tesla Montoya seemed to realize that she was talking to a complete stranger, and she ended the conversation with a dismissive wave of her hand.
    A second later she was gone, leaving Savannah standing there in her underwear, frustrated, and wondering what she might have said if she’d continued. What did Tesla think someone should do about the situation? What did she feel she could do?
    Yes, Savannah decided, I’ll definitely have to keep an eye on that one.
    And not just because Tesla seemed upset, or because she appeared to have been crying, or because she had left that sentence dangling in thin air.
    But because Savannah had seen something in her eyes just before she had left to return to the shoot.
    It was guilt
    In her day, Savannah had seen far more than her share of plain, old - fashioned guilt—more than enough to recognize it when she saw it.
    And she intended to find out what Tesla Montoya had done, or not done, to feel guilty about.
     

Chapter
    10
     
    “S usan, your main light is over here. Could you keep that in mind for the rest of this shoot?”
    “Are you on your mark, Susan? I hate having to tell you more than once to stay on your mark.”
    “Could you do something with that left hand, Susan, sweetheart? Relax, for Pete’s sake. That left hand looks like a claw.”
    “Don’t tuck your chin, Susan. Believe me, you won’t like the look. Did you put contour on that double chin of yours? You did? Use more next time.”
    From the orders being barked at her from the art director, the photographer, and even the other models, Savannah didn’t need an official report card to tell her that she was flunking Modeling 101.
    And she had pretty much decided that the next time Matt Slater reached out, grabbed some part of her body, and repositioned it like she was some sort of rag doll, she was going to kick him in the crotch of those ugly baggy Bermuda shorts.
    Slick with the ladies, my hind end, she thought as she watched him moving among the models, handling their limbs, playing with their hair, adjusting their clothes in ways that she could only classify as slimy.
    No doubt a certain amount of physical contact had to occur between professionals in these circumstances. It wasn’t what he was doing that gave her the heebie-jeebies but the lecherous gleam in his eye when he was handling some of the ladies. Especially the gal with the French accent, whom Savannah now knew as Desiree La Port There was no doubt that Desiree thought a great deal more of herself than her sister models thought of her. While Savannah’s partners at the makeup