Cooked Goose

get caught or killed, I’ll disavow any knowledge of your actions.”
    “Thanks. Drive.”

    Moon Shadow looked just flaky enough that Savannah decided her name might actually be Moon Shadow. What a ridiculous name for an exotic dancer. She just had to get a lot of teasing about that one.
    Moon stood in the doorway of her apartment, wearing a tube top and Daisy Mae shorts. Her body might once have been good, but it was long past its prime. The sad thing was, Moon wasn’t much over thirty and her prime shouldn’t have come and gone so quickly.
    The cigarette in one hand, the glass of booze in the other, and the track marks on her arm provided clues as to why she had lost her youth early.
    “Who are you?” she asked without preamble.
    “My name is Savannah Reid,” she told her. “I’m a private investigator and I’m looking into the Donald DeCianni homicide. I understand you and he were good friends.”
    “Then you understand wrong. I hated his guts, the lousy bastard.”
    “Did you kill him?”
    Long ago, Savannah had decided that the best way to find out something you wanted to know was just to ask. Of course, the replies were seldom truthful, but she could read the answers she needed in the person’s eyes and their body language.
    “No, I didn’t kill him,” Moon said. Her eyes said the same. “But I’m glad he’s dead. Real glad.”
    “Do you know who did?”
    “No, but I’d like to shake his hand. He did the world, and me, a big favor.”
    “Boy, you really are mad. Do you want to talk about it?”
    Savannah had learned that, often, if a person had no one to talk to, the thought of unburdening themselves to a stranger was a deep comfort. Everyone needed to talk to someone; it was a basic human necessity. Savannah was betting that Moon Shadow was as lonely and as in need of a listener as she looked.
    The bet paid off. She opened the rusty screen door and said, “Come on in, lady. I’ll give you an earful.”

    And she did. An hour later, Savannah walked out to the sidewalk, called Dirk on her cell phone, and told him to pick her up. She had more down and dirty gossip than she would have garnered if she had spent an entire Sunday afternoon sitting in the swing with Gran on her front porch in Georgia .
    Dirk must have been waiting around the corner, because he picked her up within a minute.
    “She’s pregnant,” Savannah announced the instant she climbed into the car. “Not as pregnant as Vidalia, but there’s definitely a cinnamon bun in the oven. Ask me who the baker was?”
    Dirk was as alert as Savannah’s cats when they heard the whir of an electric can opener. “DeCianni, right?”
    “Maybe. She doesn’t know for sure. But she swears it was either him or the other guy she was seeing.”
    “Who?”
    “Joe.”
    “McGivney? No way!”
    “Yep. Seems she was having deep, meaningful, soul-centered relationships with both guys until two months ago when McGivney found out. That was also about the time she figured out she was pregnant.”
    “So she’s about four months along?”
    “Just starting to show a little. I guess her days of shaking it at Ricky’s are numbered.”
    Dirk headed west, out of the valley and toward the ocean. In the distance they could see the white-capped waves glittering in the noon day sun. The temperature would probably reach eighty within the hour. A perfect Southern California day. Not very Christmas-like, but perfect.
    “How did she stand with these guys,” Dirk said, “once they found out they weren’t her one and only?”
    “They dumped her; she hated them. Pretty simple.”
    “Do you think she had anything to do with them being killed?”
    “I don’t think she did it herself. She mentioned an older brother. You might want to check him out. A guy named Star
    Shadow.”
    “You’re kidding. That Shadow crap is for real? I assumed it was her stage name.”
    “Hippie parents.”
    “Oh. Figures.”
    “And one other possibility. She says that fooling around on their women wasn’t their only vice. They were both in deep to Jorge Maldonado.”
    “The bookie out in Oak Creek ?”
    “I understand Jorge’s special form of debt enforcement is kneecap displacement.”
    “Wonder how he feels about stuffing badges in dead cops’ mouths?”
    “Maybe you should pay him a visit and see if he strikes you as the creative type.”
    “First things first.”
    They had arrived at the beach, and he pulled the car into the parking lot beneath the pier.