Killer Calories

See you tomorrow afternoon. Savannah ! Savannah ! Yoo-hoo, wait up!”
    She scurried across the lawn to intercept her at the edge of the tennis court.
    Savannah clapped her hand over Tammy’s mouth. “ Shhhh . I’m trying to keep a low profile, remember?”
    “Oh, just give it up,” Tammy mumbled through her fingers. “Nobody bought the migraine baloney anyway.”
    “So I’m busted?”
    “They figure you were lying low somewhere to get out of aerobics and hiking... or maybe you snuck away so that you could eat some garbage.”
    Savannah reminded herself not to burp in Tammy’s presence for the next few hours. Miss Marple-etta would be sure to smell the chocolate.
    “They have dirty, suspicious minds,” Savannah said. “Let them think whatever they want.”
    Tammy fell into step beside her and wiped her forehead with a white hand towel that bore the spa’s emblem, two intertwining palm trees, embroidered in blue. Savannah didn’t know why Tammy bothered—she never broke a sweat, even when exercising vigorously.
    Sometimes she seemed so much more like a life-size doll than a human being, that Savannah wondered if she had “Made in Japan ” stamped on her cute little rear.
    “So, guess what happened about an hour ago...” Tammy said, lowering her voice and glancing around.
    “Dumb ol ’ Dirk stopped by and grilled Dr. Ross about Kat?”
    Tammy stopped in the middle of the path and propped her hands on her waist. “That’s a pretty good guess.”
    “So, what happened?”
    “Dumb ol ’ Dirk stopped by and grilled Dr. Ross about Kat. How did you know?”
    “I’ve been working all morning... detecting... just like I told you. What did you think I was doing, sitting in some restaurant, pigging out on cheese blintzes?”
    Tammy looked satisfactorily abashed. “Well... yeah, kind of.”
    Savannah shook her head. “Oh, ye of little faith.” She took her by the arm. “Let’s go back to the room, and you can tell me all about Dirk and Dr. Ross.”
    “But that’s all I know.”
    “That’s it? Geez, you’ll never make it as a gossip columnist. Now my granny Reid... she was an ever-flowing fount of knowledge when it came to the goings-on in our little town. Her motto was if you can’t say something good about somebody... come sit down here by me in the porch swing and...”

    * * *

    Having weaseled absolutely nothing of any value out of Tammy, Savannah had to wait until after sundown to sneak away and meet Dirk. Her curiosity was killing her, wondering how Dirk’s questioning of the doctor had gone. And she was able to convince herself that her interest had nothing to do with the fact that Dr. Freeman Ross was a hunk. Nothing at all.
    She found Dirk sitting in his old Skylark about a quarter mile down the road from the spa’s main entrance. The car was parked in a fairly secluded area, between an orange grove and a lemon grove.
    As Savannah climbed into the Buick, it occurred to her that the first time she had sat in a car in an area like that, she had lost her virginity. Of course, that had been around the turn of the millennium, so the memory was a bit hazy. But she was pretty sure it had been either a peach or pecan orchard.
    She breathed in the sweet perfume of the dew-damp orange blossoms. “I’ll bet half of this county was spawned in these citrus groves,” she told Dirk, who was sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup and looking bored.
    “Is that a proposition?” he asked, shoving a similar cup into her hand.
    “You wish.”
    “We could always climb into the backseat and see if we still know how it’s done.”
    “How romantic. We could wallow around back there with your fast-food wrappers, mildewed laundry, and oily car parts.”
    “ Mmmm ... you get me hot when you talk dirty.”
    She grunted. “Tammy says you questioned Ross this afternoon.”
    “That’s right. I questioned; he didn’t have many answers .“
    “Not even about the suicide equipment he was getting rid of?”
    “He says it was a carpet shampooer that he’d rented from a local grocery store.”
    “The doctor cleans his own carpets?”
    “Says he’s very domestic, likes to do it himself and make sure it’s done right.”
    “Cute, domestic, and a clean freak... not a bad set of qualities in a man. Unless, of course, he’s some sort of Angel of Death in his spare time.” Savannah took a sip of the coffee from the Styrofoam cup and made a wry face. “Good grief! That’s awful! I’ve tasted