Cereal Killer

Savannah as a grossly overdone version of “The Caribbean Meets Las Vegas.”
    If the structure looked like an arboretum from the outside, it looked even more so inside. Enormous jungle plants, the size of full-grown trees, reached the three-story ceiling of the living room. After a double take, Savannah decided they were a combination of silk and] plastic. Oh, well... everybody didn’t have a green thumb.
    The artificial trees were filled with colorful parrots. It took Savannah a few seconds to realize—with a shudder of disgust—that they, too, were fake. Or, at least, she preferred to think they were fake, because the alternative was to consider that they were dead and stuffed by a taxidermist. And that was an even bigger shudder.
    What seemed like miles of brilliantly colored batik fabrics draped the walls and formed canopies over rattan furniture, whose cushions were also covered in eye-assaulting shades of red, turquoise, yellow, purple, and hot pink, all splashed together in dizzying prints.
    Savannah thought of every TV commercial she had ever seen, designed to lure tourists to the tropics. She half expected a sexy hunk named Carlos to appear with a pineapple and rum drink in one hand and a bottle of tanning oil in the other, wearing skimpy swim briefs and a “Come to me, señorita” grin on his handsome face.
    “Oh, well, the waterfall’s cool,” she whispered to herself. The far wall was covered in natural stone and water trickled from its highest point near the ceiling down the stones, over moss and exotic plants—probably plastic—to the shallow pond below. The soothing sound lent yet another sensual layer to the tropical fantasy.
    Okay, Savannah decided, maybe Granny Reid would call it trashy gaudy. But she thought it was still pretty neat... in a gaudy, trashy sort of way.
    She crossed the living room to a dining area, which was also resplendent in tropical foliage with a chrome and glass table and chairs. A carved wooden bowl in the middle of the table overflowed with beaded fruit.
    Beyond the table and chairs was a glass wall, and through it Savannah could see a pool and a Jacuzzi. At an umbrella-covered table on the patio sat a large darkhaired man wearing green surgical scrubs. His elbows were propped on the table, his hands covering his face. His shoulders were shaking, and he appeared to be sobbing.
    She was about to go out to him, perhaps to comfort him, when she heard a shuffling sound above her. She looked up to see a second-story mezzanine and Dirk standing on it, beckoning to her.
    “Up here,” he said. “She’s in the john. Come check it out.”
    Savannah glanced at the man on the patio, hesitated, then climbed a curved staircase that led from the main floor to the mezzanine.
    Half a dozen doors lined the balcony, and Dirk pointed to the one on the far left. “In there,” he said.
    She tried to read the expression on his face to see how much she needed to steel herself before viewing the body. But Dirk wore only two expressions when he was working a scene: grim and grimmer. Neither one told her much, and today he was somewhere between the two.
    “How does it look?” she said as she walked by him, heading toward the bathroom door.
    “Eh.” He shrugged. “You tell me.”
    She stepped into the room and was surprised at how lovely it was. Mostly because, unlike downstairs, it wasn’t overtly decorated. Tiles, the color of pale jade, reflected the sunlight that streamed through a large skylight, and the sink and other fixtures were the same soft color. White towels, spa-thick, hung pristinely on gleaming brass rods, and near the whirlpool tub sat a basket filled with exotic soaps and bottles of bath gels.
    But these amenities registered only on Savannah’s mental periphery. Her attention focused on the body in the middle of the floor.
    Caitlin Connor lay on her back, her head toward the door, her arms flung out on either side of her. She was without a doubt quite dead, her eyes staring, sightless and soulless, up into the skylight. Her beautiful long red hair—once her trademark—was spread across the tiles in lank, limp strands that looked as pathetic and lifeless as their owner.
    “What’s that getup she’s wearing there?” Dirk asked over Savannah’s shoulder. “She looks like an escapee from that old TV show, Lost in Space. ”
    Dropping to one knee beside the body, Savannah examined the metallic-looking fabric of the sweatsuit that the body was wearing. It