Cereal Killer

SMILE AND SAY DIE

Savannah nodded to one of the cops who were kneeling beside the body, and when he acknowledged her, she stepped over the tape.

“Mind if I take a look?” she asked. “I might be able to ID her for you.”

“Sure.” The youngest of the two reached over and pulled the tarp back from the face. “There you go. Know her?”

Even with the road dirt, the scraping and the blood that covered a bad wound on the left side of her head, Savannah recognized her instantly. She turned and walked back to Dirk, who was finishing his conversation with Howard. “Her name is Kameeka Wills,” she told him. “She’s a model. A close friend of Caitlin Connor.” For a couple of seconds, she let her information sink in and watched Dirk’s brow cloud. Then she added dryly, “What do you figure the odds are of them both being accidents?”

“About the same as you and me running off to Vegas, getting married and winning a million at the blackjack table.”

‘Yep. That’s about right.”

Books by G. A. McKevett

JUST DESSERTS

BITTER SWEETS

KILLER CALORIES

COOKED GOOSE

SUGAR AND SPITE

SOUR GRAPES

PEACHES AND SCREAMS

DEATH BY CHOCOLATE

CEREAL KILLER

MURDER À LA MODE

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

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Kensington Publishing Corp.

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Copyright © 2004 by GA. McKevett and Kensington Publishing Corp.

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First Hardcover Printing: January 2004

First Mass Market Paperback Printing: December 2004

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

For

Gwendolynn and Bobby

Whose love continually warms and inspires us.

You’ve found each other... at last.

Chapter

1

“I
'm not going to eat another bite of food in this filthy jalopy of yours until you clean it out,” Savannah Reid said as she glanced over the seat into the rear floorboard of the battered old Buick. The sight of wadded burger wrappers, mustard-stained napkins, and assorted taco trash was enough to put her off the double chili cheeseburger and super-sized fries in her lap.

Secretly she had to admit that this principled stand of hers had more to do with the double scoop, rocky road, hot fudge sundae she had consumed half an hour ago than it did with the mess in the back of Dirk Coulter’s old Buick. The biohazard landfill site that he affectionately called his back seat had been irritating her for years. And since that massive sundae had taken the edge off her hunger, she figured it was a better time than most to launch a protest.

“I never thought I’d see the day when you’d threaten not to eat,” Dirk said as he pulled the Skylark out of the Burger Bonanza’s drive-through and entered the midday traffic on Vista Del Mar. “What’d you do... pig out on something before I picked you up back at your place?”

If there was anything that irked Savannah more than Dirk’s filthy car, it was his ability to read her with uncanny accuracy. She wanted to chalk it up to his finely honed skills as a police detective—and that might have had a little to do with it—but mostly it was because the two of them had spent far too much time together over the years.

Most married couples spent less so-called “quality” time together than they did.

Now
there
was a scary thought.

“What makes you think I ate something before you came by?” she asked.

He continued to drive as he fumbled with the Styrofoam burger container in his lap. “Easy. You had chocolate breath when you got in the car. And you’ve got something that looks like a piece of walnut between your front teeth.”

She quickly flipped down the visor and studied her reflection in the mirror on the back. “I do not have anything stuck in my teeth!”

“Lemme see.”

She peeled back her lips and gave him a gruesome grin.

He shrugged. “It’s gone now. What was it? Snickers bar?”

“Ice cream sundae. Breakfast of champions. And it was probably a pecan you saw stuck in my teeth. Us Georgia girls don’t eat walnuts,” she added with her best Southern drawl.

He chuckled as he lifted his burger to his mouth and took a hearty bite. Ketchup oozed out the side of the sandwich and dropped on the front of his Harley-Davidson T-shirt.

“Watch it. You’re dribbling on yourself there.”

He glanced down. “Naw, that’s spaghetti sauce from last night’s dinner.”

“It’s ketchup. I just saw it drop. What do you mean, last night’s spaghetti? You’re wearing the same shirt you wore yesterday? And you’re calling
me
gross because of a little nut between my teeth?”

“Hey, I sniffed it before I put it on. It was clean. I only wore it half a day yesterday. I had to change in the afternoon after that drugged-out perp bled on me.”

“A perp bled on you?”

Dirk grinned. But it was a nasty smile, not one to warm the heart. ‘Yeah. Me and him had a little disagreement.”

“I guess if he was the one who sprang a leak, that means you won the argument.”

“I always do.”

Savannah decided not to mention that she had seen him lose a few “disagreements” in years gone by, when he had wound up shedding more blood than the perps he’d caught. Dirk liked to think he was quite the bad ass, and he was a lot easier to get along with when she didn’t contradict him. Besides, for the most part, she was glad she was his friend and not his enemy. She had to agree; he
was
pretty bad... and frequently an ass, too.

They drove through the main business section of the small seaside town of San Carmelita and past a park whose perimeter was lined with palms. On one side of the park a dozen children entertained themselves in the sandbox and on swings. On the opposite side stood several picnic tables and barbecue pits.

“Pull in,” she told him, nudging him with her elbow. “I want to eat my lunch over there in the fresh air and sunshine.”

“I got fresh air.” He pointed to the pine tree shaped deodorizer dangling from his driver’s mirror. “Plenty of it.”

She grunted and gave him another nudge.

“All right, all right.” He pulled into the only blank spot at the curb and parked.

“That’s a fire hydrant,” she said, pointing to the obvious.

He reached into the back seat and rummaged through the debris until he produced a police ID plaque, which he propped on the dashboard, “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “If the park catches on fire, I’ll move the car, Miss Goody Two-shoes.”

She muttered an abbreviated speech about “being a good example to young people” under her breath as they strolled to the nearest picnic table and found a seagull poop-free spot to spread their lunch and sit down. There was no point in muttering her character improvement speeches aloud; she had been trying to civilize Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter for years. She’d had about as much luck at that as she had at dieting away those pesky extra thirty pounds, organizing her kitchen cupboards, and halting the depletion of the ozone layer.

The older she got, the smarter she got, and the more carefully she picked her battles. Now solidly into her forties, Savannah had learned the value of conserving life energy. Once a tireless perfectionist, she had recently decided to live by a new motto:
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. And if you still can
’t
pull it off, give up. There's no point in being a damned fool about it.

They were golden words to live by. She considered having them tattooed on her left buttock. Heaven knows, there is plenty of room back there—something else that might have caused her a great deal of angst a decade ' ago. But no more.

Savannah liked herself, her life, and her butt... all of it. And now that she wasn’t sitting in his dirty car, she even liked Dirk. With the Southern California sunshine in her face, the ocean breeze in her hair, and a chili cheeseburger in her mouth, she was a happy kid.

‘You got any jobs lately?” Dirk asked between chews. Her spirits plummeted.

Motto number two:
Happiness is short-lived. Enjoy it while you’ve got it.
Something to tattoo on her right buttock for balance.

“No. Nada. Zilch. Not one ka-ching in the old cash register in over a month now,” she admitted. “Private detecting may pay more than being a cop did, but work’s spotty.”

“Maybe you oughta drop your standards a little, start taking on those wayward hubby spying jobs. You must get a call a day for those.”

“Try two or three a day. If I wanted to hang around outside quickie motels and take amateur porno pictures with zoom lenses, I’d be rollin’ in the dough.”