Corpse Suzette

bit—”
    “Watch it. That’s my family
you’re talking about,” Tammy said.
    “Yeah, and my houseguest,”
Savannah added.
    He stood and tucked his
notepad and pen back into his pocket. “Can I take a couple of those cookies to
go?” he asked wearily. “If I don’t get horizontal soon, I’m gonna pass out.”
    “Sure.” Savannah stuck a
few into a plastic bag and zipped it closed. She handed it to him as Tammy
walked out the door, following her cousin. “You’re right, you know,” she said.
“Abby is bristly.”
    “And she’s a bitch, too.”
    Savannah smiled. “Yes, she
is. But then, the value of good, honest bitchiness is highly underrated in our
society.”
    He just grunted.
    She slipped her arm through
his and guided him toward the front door. “Go home and take a nap, sugar,” she
told him. “You know you’re not worth shootin’ if you don’t get enough pillow
time. Go home, put on your Mickey Mouse jammies, crawl into bed and—”
    “You know I don’t wear
pajamas! Real men don’t wear pajamas.”
    “Yeah, yeah... or wipe
their feet at the door, or use a napkin, or drink wine, or...” She smiled. “You
bad, Dirk. We all know it. You ba-a-a-ad.”

Chapter

6
     
     
     
    S avannah stood in the middle
of Suzette Du Bois’s tumbled living room and closed her eyes. Unlike Granny
Reid, whom everybody knew had a psychic streak, or as Gran preferred to call
it, “the good Lord’s gift of knowledge,” Savannah didn’t claim to know anything
above what her five senses told her.
    Yet, more than once, she
had stood in the center of a crime scene and felt something that her high
school science teacher couldn’t have explained. She had sensed the victim’s
fear, horror, and pain as palpably as any human touch on her skin.
    But tonight, although she
closed her eyes and willed her mind and her own emotions to be still and open
to impression, she felt nothing out of the ordinary in the doctor’s home.
    All she felt was a creeping
uneasiness at being in a place she wasn’t really supposed to be, doing
something relatively illegal.
    Downright illegal , she reminded herself. There's
police tape over that front door and you crossed it, girlie. That's a definite
no-no.
    Then she chuckled to
herself. Funny how the voice of reason and caution in her head always had a
soft tone with a strong Georgian accent... just like Granny Reid’s.
    Savannah had left Tammy and
Abigail sitting on her sofa with a big bowl of popcorn and a couple of movies.
She had told Tammy where she was going and Tammy had begged to join her for a
bit of “sleuthing,” as Tammy-Wanna-Be-Nancy-Drew called it. But neither of them
thought it a good idea to share the details of their investigation with
Abigail, and they couldn’t think of any plausible excuse to leave her at home
by herself.
    So Tammy was at the house,
pouting and watching chick flicks with her grumpy cousin while Savannah had all
the fun.
    If you want to call this
fun , she
thought, as she looked around at the mess that had once been Suzette Du Bois’s
home. Still might be her home for all I know, she reminded herself. And
she might come waltzing in here any minute and want to know who I am and what
I’m doing he re.
    But Savannah didn’t waste
much time thinking about that. She had lied her way out of far too many
situations in the past to suffer any serious pangs of conscience or angst at
this late date.
    She did have to admit,
however, that she would like to have Tammy with her tonight. The silence in the
empty house was deafening. And even if she didn’t feel any spiritual residue of
recent evils committed inside the walls, the place was still creepy enough for
her to wish she had some company.
    Dirk was busy on his
drive-by shooting case. And when she had called and invited Ryan and John, they
had gracefully declined, having tickets to a dinner theater production that
they had been looking forward to for months.
    So, she was on her own and
not particularly enjoying her own company.
    As best she could, she
shook off the feelings and concentrated on the job at hand, which was hard
enough even when you didn’t have the heebie-jeebies. Trying to find something,
when you didn’t have the slightest idea what you were looking for, was always a
challenge.
    She had already gone over
the living room, looking for anything she and Dirk might have missed before.
Finding nothing, she decided to check the bedroom next.
    Down the hallway and to the
right,