Cereal Killer

to my own true love. I was on the wrong road, but now I’ve seen the light.”
    “You have?”
    Tammy cleared her throat. “Would you like me to leave? I have some work that I can—”
    “No, stay if you wanna,” Marietta said. “I’ve gotta run upstairs and finish packing.”
    “But... but what about What’s-His-Nose... the chat-room guy?” Savannah asked.
    “Oh, he turned out to be such a mistake. What a loser!” Marietta waved one hand, displaying bright red, dragonlady nails with white glitter hearts. “But it’s worked out for good in the end. You see, when my darlin’ back home found out that I’d come out here to California in search of what he couldn’t give me, he called and proclaimed his love to me again.”
    “Again? Your darlin’ back home?” Alarm bells jangled Savannah’s nerves. ‘You don’t mean—”
    “Yes, my sweet Lester. He’s finally come to his senses, and he says if I’ll just come back home, he’ll leave that worthless Lucille. He’s done some soul searching, and he says he’s actually getting to the point where he can start to think about dumping her once and for all.”
    “Oh, Mari, I don’t think—”
    “He just didn’t know what he had with me till he heard I was gone, you know. He called and said that the thought of me being here with another man was just too much for him to bear. It was driving him plum crazy.”
    “Wouldn’t take much,” Savannah muttered under her breath. “Lester’s always been a little short on smarts where his women are concerned.”
    “Now don’t you even start with me, Miss Savannah Smarty-Pants. You don’t know squat about the deep, dark matters of the heart. And you don’t know what I should or shouldn’t do because you ain’t me!”
    Savannah stood and scooped up her dishes from the table. “You’re absolutely right, Marietta. I’m not you. Excuse me for a minute. I have to go find that tube of Super Glue. I’m going to apply it to my mouth like it was lip gloss. That way I’ll refrain from telling you how stupid I think it is for you to go back home and take up again with a married man... a man whose wife already tried to blow you up with a shotgun.” She stopped, clapped her hands over her mouth, and said, “Oops. Too late.”
    She tossed her dishes into the sink and went upstairs to the bathroom. She needed to brush her teeth. She needed to wash her face. She needed to dunk her head under water three times and bring it up twice.
    But the moment she stepped into the bathroom, she nearly fainted. It had to be over a hundred degrees in there and as humid as a Mississippi swamp in July. The only thing missing was the mosquitoes.
    “Good Lord, Mari,” she mumbled. “Were you taking yourself a tub bath or a steam bath? A body can’t hardly breathe in here.”
    It didn’t take her long to see the cause of the problem; Marietta had turned on the overhead heat lamp and had neglected to turn it off when she’d left the room.
    Savannah quickly switched it off, grumbling under her breath about the electric bill that she probably wouldn’t be able to pay. Not even when the bright red alarmist notice came in the mail—the one with all the bold print, exclamation marks, and evil threats.
    Needing a quick fix of energy and a feeling of renewal after her latest Marietta encounter, she filled the sink with cool water, pulled her hair back with a headband, and bent over. Splashing the refreshing water on her tired eyes felt great, in spite of the fact that the room was still too hot and humid to breathe.
    She picked a white hand towel out of the wicker basket on the back of her toilet tank and dried her face with it. Looking down at the towel in her hands, she remembered the soft, plush, spa-quality towels in Caitlin Connor’s bathroom and thought how nice they would feel in comparison to this nearly worn-out rag. Maybe she would treat herself to some one of these days when—
    Suddenly, she dropped the towel onto the sink edge and whirled around. She stared up at the heat lamp in the ceiling for a long moment. Then she turned and ran out of the bathroom and into her bedroom.
    She grabbed the phone on her nightstand and dialed Dirk.
    He answered after five rings. “Yeah?”
    “I know how they killed Cait,” she said.
    She had expected him to be at least mildly enthused after hearing her announcement. But she had forgotten she was talking to Dirk.
    ‘Yeah, well, good for you,” he said. “I went by Charlotte