Corpse Suzette

next Saturday night at your
house and the heavyweight championship fight on your HBO.”
    “Against?”
    “Dinner out with me. You
pick the place.”
    “No way. Any restaurant?
Like Chez Antoine?”
    “Get real. I’m talking
McDonald’s, Burger King, or Burger Bonanza.”
    “Gee,” she said dryly.
“Think you can handle that?”
    “Yeah, I can handle it. As
long as you don’t go wild and order the most expensive burger on the menu.”
    Savannah shook her head.
“Dirk, you’re so cheap you could squeeze an Indian head nickel until the
buffalo poops.”
    “Thank you.”
     
    Devon Wright lived in Two
Oaks, a small community inland from San Carmelita, and it was nearly half past
nine by the time Savannah and Dirk arrived at her modest house. The place
wasn’t easy to find, sitting at the end of a long dirt road that bisected a
large avocado grove.
    As they left the Buick and
walked up to the house, a security light flipped on and Savannah saw some sort
of critter skedaddle into the nearby brush.
    “I don’t like running
around in the dark on these farms at night,” she told Dirk. “I haven’t ever
since that night that we nearly ran head-on into that mountain lion. Remember
him?” Dirk knocked on the front door. Inside they could hear the television
blaring. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “I’m not likely to forget that guy. I think I wet
my pants when we came running around the back of that house and practically
tripped over him. Scared me so bad I let the perp get away.”
    She cast a quick look into
the weeds that grew thick and high on either side of the house. “The occasional
opossum I can handle,” she said. “But the big cats I can do without.”
    When no one answered, he
knocked again, louder and longer. Savannah shifted from one foot to the other
and tried to peek through the lace curtains that covered the door’s upper half
window. “Did I ever tell you about the time when Gran’s old hound dog, Colonel
Beauregard, treed a bobcat right there in her backyard?”
    “Yes, at least a dozen
times,” he replied. “When two people have spent as much time together as we
have, they’ve heard all of the other one’s good stories.”
    “Well, I pretend to listen
to your reruns with bated breath. You could do the same, you know.”
    “That’s because you’re a
better person than me, Van. I’m not ashamed to admit it.” He pounded with his
fist on the door and shouted, “San Carmelita Police Department! Open up this
door right now before I break it down!”
    The woman who finally
opened the door bore little resemblance to the publicist Savannah had followed
only that morning to the pawn shop. She looked like Devon Wright’s disheveled
and depressed twin, wearing a ratty bathrobe, no makeup, and a pair of men’s
house slippers.
    “What do you want?” she
demanded, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. “Bust my damn door
down, will you?! What’s the matter with you? I got a kid in here!”
    “Well, answer your door
next time,” Dirk snapped back. “I knocked three times and—”
    “Allan, turn that friggen
TV down!” she screamed over her shoulder. “And go to bed. I told you to go to
bed half an hour ago, young man! Get going! Move it!”
    A thin, pale little boy,
about seven years old, sulked over to the television and turned it off. An
equally dejected, scruffy terrier trailed after the child as he meandered down
the hall to bed.
    “I need to speak to you,”
Dirk told her, his tone as irritable as hers.
    “Well, it’s a little late,
and I’m not in the mood to talk to you anymore about that stupid Suzette. I
keep telling you, she’ll show up sooner or later. She’s just messing with our
heads, disappearing like this. She loves to do that kind of thing.”
    “We aren’t here to talk to
you about Suzette,” Savannah told her.
    “Yeah, and what are you doing here? What’s a magazine reporter doing, hanging out with a cop?”
    “I’m not a magazine
reporter,” she admitted. “I’m a private investigator. I’m... I was working for
Mr. D’Alessandro, trying to find Suzette for him.”
    “He never told me he hired
a private investigator.”
    “I believe he wanted to
keep it confidential,” Savannah said. “But that’s not really important now. May
we come inside? We really do have something to tell you. Something you need to
hear.”
    “And it can’t wait until
morning?”
    “No,” Dirk said, brushing
by her and entering the house. “It