Cereal Killer

best.”
    “Who? Dirk? He’s not the best. He just thinks he is.”
    “I meant you. ”
    “Oh, all right. Take care of yourself.”
    “Bye.” Click.
    End of conversation, Savannah thought. Simple as that. She laid the cell phone on the passenger seat beside her and picked up the maple bar. She took a bite, sipped some coffee, and sent a silent prayer heavenward.
    Lord, I’d consider it a personal favor if you'd keep an eye on the kid today for me. She means well, and she’s plenty smart, but sometimes she trusts people a little too much. And you can't trust people any further than you can throw ’em. But then, I guess You know all about that.
    Her phone rang. She put down the maple bar, wiped her fingers on a paper napkin, and answered it. “Hello.”
    “I just got done talking to Wentworth,” was Dirk’s opener. “He stinks, but I don’t know if he’s killed anybody lately.”
    “Yeah, well, I just left Kevin Connor. I’m pretty sure he had a girlfriend upstairs.”
    “Oh? Already?”
    “More like still. According to him, he and Cait had an open marriage.”
    “Open? Like they both fooled around whenever they wanted to?”
    “That’s it.”
    “Sounds like good work if you can get it. Most women I know wouldn’t go for it, though.”
    “You think?” She sighed. “I’m going to go over to Desiree La Port’s house now. See if I can find her at home.”
    “That’s a heck of a drive all the way to Arroyo Verde. What if she’s not home? Maybe you should call her first.”
    “She’s not exactly the friendly type. I have a feeling that if I called first, she’d make herself scarce. I’ll do better if I just show up. Besides”—Savannah grinned— “if she’s not at home, maybe I’ll just make myself at home and look around a little. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
    “I didn’t hear that.” Click.
    Savannah shook her head. One of these days I’ll have to teach these Yankee heathens some manners, she thought as she licked a blotch of maple frosting off her wrist. At least how to properly begin and end a telephone conversation. Now... where did I put that other maple bar?
     
    * * *
     
    Savannah should have been able to make the thirty-mile drive to Arroyo Verde in half an hour, but a traffic backup on the Ventura Freeway turned the simple jaunt into a two-hour ordeal. Whizzing along at a breakneck speed of zero to ten and back to zero, she cursed the California Tourism Board for making Southern California seem so darned attractive to the rest of the country.
    Every other license plate was from out of state, and half of the bumpers sported cutesy stickers declaring that the family inside had recently visited Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, or Universal Studios.
    Not that she minded seeing children wearing Mickey Mouse ears or even adults with Donald Duck caps, but did they all have to drive on the same roads as she did?
    When she finally reached the small, affluent town of Arroyo Verde, her doughnuts had long worn off, and her stomach was telling her it was time for lunch.
    That's the problem with eating carbohydrates, she thought. In a little while your blood-sugar level plummets and then you just have to eat more to get it back up there again where it belongs. Yep, she decided, I should have bought half a dozen of those maple bars while I had the chance instead of a measly two. What was I thinking?
    And she was getting downright shaky by the time she finally located the tiny house that was barely more than a shack far off the paved road on the outskirts of town. Whatever sort of home she had expected a successful model named Desiree La Port to live in... this wasn’t it.
    She hadn’t anticipated that Desiree’s place would be as impressive as Caitlin Connor’s, or necessarily as tidy and inviting as Kameeka’s. But she hadn’t imagined the snooty Desiree living in a dump.
    The little cracker box of a structure was in desperate need of some paint, having once been white but now a dingy, peeling gray. The yard didn’t have a single blade of grass, just weeds that had never seen a mower blade.
    Apparently, Desiree didn’t feel the need to haul her garbage all the way out to the main road for pickup, but left it in fly-infested piles only a few yards from the house.
    The only sign of prosperity on the property was the new Lexus parked in front. Savannah had seen Desiree leave the shoot the other day in that car and had assumed she was a woman of means. But