Sour Grapes

I got the word from Dr. Jennifer this afternoon that it was murder for sure, I put an APB out on him and his dark blue Charger. By the way, she says you dropped something off to her and told her it was from me.”
    “Did she tell you what it was?”
    “Something stupid that didn’t make sense. She said to tell you not to bring her any more cowardly poultry. What the hell does that mean?”
    Savannah chuckled and shook her head. “Our Dr. Liu has a weird sense of humor. I suspect that’s her way of telling me that she did the examination and it was, indeed, a gutless chicken. I had a feeling it would be.” Dirk scowled. “Do you wanna fill me in here, or do I have to just wonder what you whacko broads are talking about?”
    Briefly, she told him about her new canine friend, his strange burden, and how she had relieved him of it.
    With every word, Dirk brightened. “All right!” he said. “And we’ve got the kid’s fingerprints on the windowsill and the flower dish.”
    “Where did you get his prints?”
    “He was in Juvie once for malicious mischief and another time for smacking a kid in the head with a skateboard.”
    Savannah studied the face in the picture, the eyes, looking for something that would tell her whether or not this young person was capable of murder. But she seldom saw anything like that in any suspect’s eyes. It was amazing what people could hide.
    “I suppose Dr. Liu told you that Barbie was pregnant.”
    “Yeah, she mentioned it. Do you suppose this guy’s the dad?”
    “When you find him, you can ask him.”
    Dirk growled. “When I find him... I’m gonna have a who-o-ole bunch of questions for him.”
    “Hey, look,” Savannah said, pointing to the opposite side of the pool. “It’s Ryan and John.”
    The two walked over to their table, pulled up chairs, and sat down. Ryan took a stack of folded papers from his pocket and handed it to Dirk. “Here are the cell phone records you wanted,” he told him.
    “That was fast.” Dirk unfolded the wad and glanced over the pages.
    John smiled, causing the ends of his silver mustache to curl upward. “Life is much simpler, old chap, when you no longer have to concern yourselves with such frivolities as court orders. Friends in high places work much more quickly than the justice system.”
    “Is that Barbie Matthews’s record?” Savannah asked, trying to see over Dirk’s shoulder.
    “It sure is,” Ryan replied. “She must have had her phone surgically attached to her ear. I’ve never seen such a phone bill.”
    “Including the day she died,” Dirk said, studying the columns of numbers before him. “Calls coming in, calls going out. It’s gonna take me a month just to run down these numbers.”
    “Is the call there from her mom?” Savannah asked. “Mrs. Matthews said she called Barbie to ask why she hadn’t shown up for dinner.”
    “It doesn’t give you the numbers of the incoming calls, just the times,” Dirk said. “This one at 7:21 P.M. is the last one that came in. I’ll bet you she was on her way out to the parking lot then. She probably got nabbed right where we found her phone.” “ Yeah,” Savannah added. ‘They grabbed her, she dropped her phone, and when they pulled out, they ran over it and crunched it.”
    Ryan leaned over and pointed to the bottom of the last page. “I think that’s the one you’d be most interested in. The last one she called... at 7:05 p.m.”
    Dirk nodded thoughtfully. True. She could’ve been setting up a meeting, agreeing to meet somebody there in the lot We’ll have to check with the phone company and find out whose number that is.”
    “Or... you could just ask us,” John said.
    Dirk half grinned, half grimaced. Savannah chuckled to herself. She knew he was torn between being pleased to have information so close at hand and irked that the other two guys had something that he needed. “Well?”
    That was as gracious as Dirk ever got under such circumstances.
    “It’s a pay phone.”
    “Great That’s just friggin’ peachy.” Dirk shook his head, disgusted, sliding into the old “My Job Sucks” mode. “Where?”
    Ryan smiled. “In that little alcove right between the men’s and women’s rest rooms behind the potted palms.”
    “Here?”
    “That’s right, my friend. Barbara Matthews was calling the public phone right here in Villa Rosa, minutes before somebody killed her. And, now that we’ve done the hard part... all you have to do is figure out who