Corpse Suzette

Myrna?”
    The woman stopped shrieking
and nodded her head ever so slightly.
    “Suzette fixed your
ex-boyfriend up really good, didn’t she,” Savannah said. “So good that he left
you, found himself a younger woman with his new, younger-looking face that you
paid for.”
    Again, Myrna nodded.
    Savannah continued. “She’s
playing solitaire out there in your pool house. And you’re here, in a fancy
house, with all her money and Sergio’s, too. And under those bandages you’ve
got a new face, a new life... or so you thought.”
    Myrna nodded, still crying,
still clutching the bedclothes. “There’s just one problem, Myrna,” Savannah
told her, “you can’t create a nice, new life for yourself by robbing two other
people of theirs.”
    “Yeah,” Dirk said,
uncuffing the bedpost and placing it on her other wrist. “Lady, you just bought
yourself one shitload of really nasty karma.”

Chapter

24
     
     
     
    “I ’m never going to look at
that island the same way again,” Savannah said as she gazed out across the
water at Santa Tesla Island, where it appeared to be floating on the horizon
atop a cloud of haze.
    “I just wish we’d been
there with you,” Abby said as she bit into one of Savannah’s chicken salad
sandwiches and helped herself to a handful of potato chips. “I would have given
anything to sleep in a hotel right under that lighthouse. To have its beam
shining right inside your room! That must have been a wonderful experience.”
    Savannah cast a quick
warning glance toward Dirk, but he pretended not to hear as he stretched out on
his back on the beach towel and adjusted the bill of his baseball cap to shield
his eyes from the sun.
    “It was okay,” she said.
“Maybe we can take you over there for a day trip before you go back home to New
York.”
    “Count me out on that one,”
Dirk grumbled. “I’ve had all of that stinking island I can stand. You couldn’t
pay me to go back there again.”
    Savannah laughed. “He’s
just irked because nobody over there was all that impressed with his gold
shield.”
    “I shoulda showed ’em my
big gun,” he said with a smirk. “That would have put the fear of Dirk in them.”
    “Yeah, yeah, we all live in
terror of the Almighty Dirko.” Tammy picked up a slice of fresh mango and
squirted him with it.
    “Myrna Cooper was pretty
scared of him,” Savannah said. “She was a babbling idiot on the way home in
that medical helicopter. Told Dirk everything he wanted to know and then some.”
    “Okay...” Tammy nudged him
with her foot. “Why did she dye her hair blond and take the name Norma Jean
Baker? She isn’t a big Marilyn fan, is she?”
    Dirk groaned and rolled
over on his side to face them. He looked terribly put out to have to answer all
these questions. But Savannah knew better; Dirk was never happier than when he
could complain about something. He was loving every minute of it.
    “No, she’s not all that
into Marilyn,” he said. “But she figured if we were on her trail, it would be
better for us to think she was Suzette. Then, she could supposedly shake us if
she needed to and start up again somewhere else, and we’d never know it was her
we were chasing. So she wore a blond wig her first few trips to the island.
Then the day before we caught up with her, right before her surgery, she
colored it permanently.”
    “But she’s so much older
than Suzette,” Abigail added. “How could she hope to pass for her?”
    “She did a pretty good job
of it,” Savannah told her. “She wore large sunglasses and scarves and depended
on her big cleavage to keep the boys’ eyes off her face. It worked. The guys on
the catamaran thought she was a lot younger.”
    “How exactly and where did
she kill Suzette?” Abby wanted to know.
    Savannah cringed,
remembering Myrna’s cold-blooded description of the murder. “Suzette used to
take Sammy for a walk in some woods near her house, first thing, every day when
she got home from work. Myrna knew the route well, from taking him for walks
herself. She hid herself and her car among the trees and waited for Suzette to
come along. Then she ran up behind her, smashed her in the head with a big
rock, and dragged her body into her trunk.”
    “Primitive,” Abby said.
    Savannah nodded. “Very, but
effective.”
    “So, Myrna was the one who
installed the spyware on Sergio’s computer?” Tammy asked.
    Savannah shook her head.
“Actually, Myrna claims that Suzette put it in there to