Cereal Killer

don’t you?”
    Marietta’s lower lip protruded. “Corn flakes are a bit of a letdown when you’ve got your taste buds set for biscuits and peach preserves.”
    “Mari, go back into the living room and give me a chance to work up a pulse and some brain-wave activity. Okay?” She glanced down at the phone in her hand. “Why don’t you call your boys and see how they’re doing? They probably miss their mom.”
    Marietta gave her a blank look, as though she were speaking in a foreign tongue. “What? They’re teenagers. They miss their mamma like they’d miss a big ol’ briar on the seat of their breeches. Lord knows what kind of trouble they’ve gotten themselves into.”
    “All the more reason to check on them, don’t you reckon?”
    Marietta shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. You do have call waiting, don’t you? I mean, if he was to call, it would beep or something and...”
    “It’ll beep. And you can look on the Caller ID and see if it’s him.”
    “Good.”
    As Savannah set about making a full lumberjack breakfast for her sister, she tried not to think about her nephews, Steve and Paulie, whom Marietta had left to fend for themselves back in Georgia. With Granny Reid half a mile away, not to mention all the aunts and uncles in town, they were sure to be well cared for. But this wasn’t the first time that Marietta had demonstrated her lack of concern about them. When it came to a tug-of-war between Marietta’s boys and the men in her life, the boys always ended up on their faces in the middle, having lost again.
    As she rolled and cut the biscuits, she could hear Marietta’s two-minute call to Georgia, and the probing questions she asked. “How’s the weather? You aren’t making a mess outta the house, are you?” And the advice: “Put a Band-Aid on it, for Pete’s sake. I don’t know. Ask Gran when you drop off your laundry. Well, take it over there! I don’t want to come home to a heap of dirty clothes!”
    A few minutes of silence in the living room told Savannah that the call was over, and she expected Marietta to come in and complain that the food wasn’t on the table yet.
    But then she heard a new conversation begin: “Hello.
    I need to speak to a Mr. Bill Donaldson. He works there in your accounting department, right? My name? Marietta Jane Reid. Of course it’s important. It’s extremely important. Yes, I can hold... for a little while.”
    Savannah paused, the box of grits in her hand. Maybe she could slip just a little arsenic in there. Surely she had some arsenic somewhere in her spice cabinet.
    “What do you mean, he’s away from his desk? Is he really, or did he just tell you to tell me that?”
    How much do you suppose it would take? Savannah asked herself. A teaspoon, a heaping tablespoon?
    “Well, I don’t believe you, not for one minute. I think he’s sitting right there with his teeth in his mouth, probably listening to this call on some extension line. I know how these things work.”
    Hmmm, not a smidgen of arsenic in the cupboard when you need it. I’ve got lots of oregano, I wonder... is oregano toxic in large doses? How much oregano would it take to kill a stupid sister and would she notice it in the grits?
    “Well, let me tell you a thing or two about that man you work with. You might think you know him, but the truth is, he ain’t fit to spit and what’s more...”
     
    As Savannah was walking into the Plaza Del Oro Tower on her way up to Leah Freed’s suite of offices, Dirk called her on her cell phone.
    “I’m just leaving Montoya’s apartment,” he told her. “Anything?”
    “Nothing new. And if the kidnapper was looking for something—like in your latest middle-of-the-night theory—he must have found it, ’cause I couldn’t find anything worth kidnapping or killing anybody over.”
    “I could have been wrong.”
    “You? Never.”
    She chuckled. “But say it like you mean it.”
    “Never. What are you up to?”
    “The tenth floor in a minute or two,” she said. “I’m over here in the Plaza Del Oro seeing Leah Freed. She called while I was eating breakfast and demanded to know what I had for her.”
    “Don’t tell her anything good.”
    “She’s paying me. Remember?”
    “Just remember that she could be mixed up in this, too.”
    “Dirk... not being a complete moron, I won’t jeopardize your case in the course of making a living for myself.”
    “Okay, okay. Do you wanna go with me over to that Dr. Pappas’s office in a