Corpse Suzette

saw less and less of the real green
stuff. People were paid in direct deposits and often one’s money was nothing
more than a string of numbers on a sheet of paper or a computer screen. Gone
were the good old days of tossing a pound of cash onto the bed and rolling
naked in it.
    Not that I ever had enough
to actually do that with ,
she reminded herself. It was one of those dreams of hers that would probably
never be fulfilled, along with getting naked—or even semi-naked—and rolling on
absolutely anything with Mel Gibson.
    Wishing upon a star,
contrary to Jiminy Cricket, didn’t always work.
    She took a small tape
recorder from her jacket pocket, turned on the record button, and read off the
numbers aloud, along with the password.
    Then she reached for the
small, brown medicine bottle. Instead of some drug store chain’s logo, as she
was expecting, the label had the name and address of a local vet. In fact, it
was the veterinarian where she occasionally took Diamante and Cleopatra for
their checkups. Dr. Desiree Harney. The prescription was for Sammy Du Bois:
phenobarbital, half a pill, to be taken every twelve hours.
    She noted the date on the
bottle and the quantity of pills and counted the days. If Sammy had been given
his meds faithfully, this prescription would have run out three days ago.
    Again, she flipped on the
recorder. “Check with Dr. Desiree about Sammy Du Bois’s phenobarbital,” she
said, “if a refill was picked up, and by whom.”
    She was just leaving the
bedroom, flipping off the light when she heard a sound, a rattling from the
front of the house.
    She froze, her heart
pounding in her throat.
    Instinctively, she reached
inside her jacket for the Beretta in her shoulder holster. The feel of the
rough textured grip against her palm was reassuring, but not enough to take
away the jelly feeling in her knees as the adrenaline hit her system full
force.
    She eased down the dark
hallway toward the foyer, being careful to step lightly and not make a sound on
the marble floor.
    She could hear muttering,
male voices, speaking low to each other, but she couldn’t make out any words.
And she recognized the rattle. Someone was picking the lock on the front door.
    Just as she neared the end
of the hallway and the moonlit foyer, she heard the door creak open.
    She pulled her weapon and
pointed it toward the ceiling.
    Finger off the trigger, she reminded herself.
    Of course her subconscious
knew the drill. It had been second nature to her for years now. But where
firearms were concerned, you always reminded yourself. You took only conscious
actions.
    The door was open, she
could tell by the change of light in the entrance. She could see their shadows
stretching long across the floor only a few feet away.
    She remained around the
corner, wondering what to do next. She couldn’t exactly jump out, see who it
was, and demand they explain their presence. Not when she had no business being
there herself.
    “Do you think she’s here?”
one of the voices said.
    “She has to be. Her car’s
half a block away,” replied the other.
    They were talking about
her! She had parked the Mustang down on the corner rather than directly in
front of the house. It had to be someone who knew both her and her vehicle. The
thought was more than a little unsettling.
    “We’d better watch
ourselves,” said one of them. “She might shoot us.”
    The other one snickered and
with a distinctly British accent replied, “We’d better use caution, indeed.
She’s an excellent shot, that one. Why only the other day, she and I were at
the shooting range and—”
    Savannah reached over and
flipped a wall switch, illuminating the hallway where she stood. She stepped
out of the shadows and said, “You two like to have scared the piddle right
outta me. I thought you had a dinner theater to go to.”
    Ryan closed the door behind
them, and John hurried over to embrace her. “Savannah, love, we were just
talking about you,” he said.
    “I heard.” She reholstered
her gun and gave him a hearty hug.
    John turned to Ryan.
“See... she had her weapon drawn and everything. I’m telling you, we had a
close brush with the Grim Reaper just now.”
    She playfully shoved him
aside and gave Ryan a peck on the cheek. “You should have called me on my cell
and let me know you were coming. I would have met you at the door, and you
wouldn’t have had to pick the lock.”
    “We thought about it,” Ryan
said. “But it’s good practice