Cereal Killer

elegant, sensitive, and charming hunks was enough. With Ryan and John, the role of “friend” didn’t seem like Second Prize.
    And tonight, maybe because Dirk was feeling a bit swamped by his investigations, he seemed more grateful than usual to receive whatever input the two had to offer.
    “No,” he was telling John, “the ME couldn’t find anything that would indicate homicide on the Connor death. Looks like an accident, but Van and I don’t think so, because of the second one. And then this other gal’s gone missing.”
    John took a sip of his Earl Grey tea and nodded thoughtfully. “Your second young lady,” he continued in his exquisitely proper British accent, “was most assuredly murdered?”
    ‘Yeah,” Dirk replied. “Dr. Liu says the body had none of the usual pedestrian versus vehicle injuries.”
    Tammy pointed to her computer. “That’s true. I’ve been doing my Internet research, and when a car hits a jogger or a walker, the most common injury is to the lower legs, where the bumper first makes contact.”
    “And Kameeka Wills died of cerebral hemorrhage, caused by a blow to the head with a blunt object,” Savannah added. “The only signs that she’d been in contact with a vehicle were the tire marks across her upper thighs.”
    “And,” Dirk said, “Dr. Liu says those were postmortem.”
    “Just one blow to the head?” Ryan wanted to know. “Yeah, but apparently it was a nasty one.” Dirk grimaced and took a long drink from his coffee mug. “Fractured her skull.”
    “Any ideas on the weapon?” Ryan asked.
    Dirk shook his head. “Not for sure, but Dr. Liu said she’d seen that sort of injury before and thought it was from a baseball bat.”
    “A man’s weapon,” Ryan said.
    Tammy looked up from her computer screen where she was taking meticulous notes of the meeting. Notes no one would ever read, but she liked to feel useful. “Hey, I was pretty awesome with a bat when I was in Girls’ Little League.”
    “Bully for you,” Dirk said. “So, everybody, Tammy’s a suspect, along with all the guys in the picture.”
    “What guys?” John asked.
    Savannah got up from the table and walked to the kitchen counter, where she began to carve up a triplelayer chocolate cake. “We’ve got Kevin Connor, Cait’s husband,” she said.
    “But he has a solid alibi for the time when Cait died,” Dirk added. “He was at work, and his superior vouches for him, says he wasn’t out of her sight all day.”
    “And when Kameeka was killed?” John asked.
    Dirk shook his head. “Nope. I asked him about that, and he was home alone. He said he was passed out in bed from drinking too much the night before. He’s pretty upset about losing his wife.”
    “Most people without partners would have a hard time establishing an alibi for the early morning hours,”
    John replied. “So you can’t place much emphasis on that”
    “I’ll testify to the fact that he’s a close friend of Jack Daniels,” Savannah said, dishing monstrous slices of the cake onto her best dessert plates.
    For the safety of her Royal Albert Old Country Roses china, she put Dirk’s on an unbreakable Corelle plate. He’d never notice the slight... as long as his piece was a bit larger than the others. There was no point in feeding the bull in the china shop on your best dinnerware.
    “And we’ve got Matt Slater,” Savannah said as she set a piece of cake in front of John. “He’s the main photographer on the Slenda Flakes campaign. He gave me the heebie-jeebies, the way he was looking at the girls at the shoot and the way he was handling them, way more than necessary just to pose them.”
    John turned his plate first one way, then the other, admiring the cake with its generous dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of Chambord sauce. “Savannah, my dear, you certainly know how to gild the culinary lily. Do you think this photographer of yours is committing... shall we say... indiscretions with his ladies?” Savannah thought it over for a moment, remembering how Matt had slid his hand between Desiree’s thighs to reposition her leg. A gende hand on the knee or a verbal command would have been more than sufficient. Then there had been the look that passed between them as his hand lingered a few seconds too long.
    “Oh, yes,” she said. “Definitely a possibility.”
    “Any indication that he might have been involved with either victim?” Ryan asked.
    “Not yet.” Dirk scowled as Savannah handed