Sour Grapes

confusion, hundreds of people running around in semiordered chaos.
    Yes... what better backdrop could there be than a beauty pageant...? The perfect stage for murder.

Chapter

3

    “G ood morning!” Tammy looked up from the computer keyboard and gave Savannah the dazzling, bright, cheerful smile that could be conjured only by a dyed-in-the-wool “morning person.”
    “Oh, shut up,” Savannah grumbled as she trudged down the stairs in her fuzzy red slippers and her ratty old robe that was basically the same faded shade of navy blue as the circles beneath her eyes. “You know better than to ‘good morning’ me before I’ve had coffee. Especially when I’ve been up half the night.”
    To her great dismay, Tammy followed her into the kitchen, opening blinds and curtains, spreading sunshine—literally and figuratively—all along the way. “Half the night? Cool! Does that mean you and Dirk Were stalking that child-abuser guy again?”
    Savannah groaned and hauled the largest mug she could find out of the cupboard. “We prefer to call it a ‘stakeout’, not ‘stalking.’ ”
    “What’s the difference?”
    After only the briefest consideration, Savannah said, “Very little, come to think of it. But good guys get paid to do it.”
    “ You don’t; Dirk does.”
    After filling the mug with coffee stronger and thicken than Mississippi mud, Savannah added a decadent amount of Half & Half. From the corner of her eye she saw Tammy cringe, so she poured in more—nothing! quite like a health nut to bring out the defiant hedonist in her.
    “Once in a great while,” she said dryly, “I get paid for it. And Dirk’s good to help us out when we’re in a jam.’’ She took a big swig of the coffee and felt the life-fortifying caffeine make a beeline for her bloodstream. She could have sworn her heart fluttered and slowly began to beat. Low-level brain-activity waves started to bounce through her head.
    Heading for the refrigerator, she said, “Speaking of jam... do we still have some of Granny Reid’s blackberry preserves? Or did I use them on the biscuits when I fed the troops yesterday?”
    Tammy’s chin hiked a couple of notches. “I don’t know. I don’t eat fruit that has been ruined by processed sugar. My body is a sacred temple.”
    Savannah found the jam hiding behind the hot-fudge sauce. “Yeah, well... your ‘sacred temple’ could get run over and mashed flat by a bus tomorrow, and you’ll wish you’d had a decent last meal before you departed this earth. Want some eggs and bacon?”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “Grits, swimmin’ in butter? Hot, flaky biscuits? Cream gravy?”
    “Get real.”
    Savannah shrugged as she pulled the necessary ingredients for a full, Southern-style breakfast from the refrigerator and cupboard. “Suit yourself, girl. You don’t know what you’re missing.”
    Tammy grimaced and mumbled, “A heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, obesity—”
    “Watch yourself, Miss Prissy Pot.” Both hands full, she kicked the refrigerator door closed with her foot and dumped the stuff on the counter. “I could fire you for insubordination.”
    Tire me from the almost job that you almost don’t pay me for?” “ That’s the one. Careers like yours are hard to come by... studying at the gum-soled feet of a master detective.”
    Tammy glanced down at Savannah’s fuzzy red slippers, grinned, and slid onto a kitchen chair to watch as Savannah began her preparations. “So, Nancy Drew... did you and the Hardy boy get your bad guy last night?”
    “We did. The moron sneaked into his mom’s house about two in the morning to pick up some of his CDs and a favorite baseball cap. He’s paying for the stuff with his freedom. Where he’s at, he won’t get to use any of it.
    “The little girl he abused was ecstatic to hear we’d picked him up. She can go back to school now, play in the yard again, live like a normal kid”—Savannah sighed as she stretched some bacon strips across a hot skillet— “until her mom makes another trip to the local bar and brings home the next yahoo pervert.”
    Tammy winced. “Ouch, that’s pretty cynical.”
    “Yeah, well... when you’ve been around that block a hundred times, you learn the lay o’ the land.”
    The smell of frying meat filled the kitchen and, apparently, wafted to the sunporch in the back of the house, because two sleek black cats—big enough to pass as miniature panthers—came running into the kitchen.