“Right here next to the pavement,” Dirk said as he pulled in behind one of the three cruisers that were parked on the dirt shoulder. “Somebody probably got her when they came around that curve back there.”
“Yes,” Savannah said, but with little enthusiasm. “Maybe.”
He gave her a quick, questioning look, then got out of the car. She followed him, walking along the edge of the road where the scrub brush, sage, and marguerites surrendered to asphalt.
As they approached the body, a middle-aged uniformed officer recognized them and came over to meet them.
“Hey, Howie,” Dirk greeted him, “how does it look?”
“Jogger,” Officer Howard Potter replied with a shrug. “They get it out here all the time. Car whizzes around the corner and “Bam!’ That’s all she wrote.”
Savannah winced. “Fresh?” she asked.
“Yes. Probably early this morning.”
“Any ID?” she said.
“Nope. Nothing on her but her clothes.”
“Who found her?” Dirk wanted to know.
Officer Potter nodded toward a twenty-something guy with red running shorts who was sitting in the back seat of one of the cruisers. He was talking to a policeman who was squatting beside the open door and taking notes.
“He was out here running this morning at daybreak and practically tripped over the body,” Potter continued. “He’s barfed a couple of times.”
“Is she messy?” Dirk asked.
Savannah cringed again. She’d seen it all... but she didn’t relish seeing it all again. The really bad scenes made her old before her time.
“Not too bad,” Potter replied. “Car ran over her, though. You can see the tire tracks.”
“So much for hoping it was a coyote attack,” Savannah said dryly as she left them and walked on toward the body.
“Coyote?” she heard Potter say behind her. “They don’t hurt anybody, ’cept maybe a miniature poodle or...”
“Eh, Van’s got a weird sense of humor,” Dirk replied. “Don’t pay any attention to her. I don’t”
Savannah’s eyes searched the ground as she approached the area that had been cordoned off with the tape. It was a matter of habit after years of investigating crime scenes. You never knew what you were looking for... until you found it. And she’d rather find an unexpected clue at a scene than a pearl in a fried oyster.
But all she saw was roadside litter and none of it exceptional. The CSU would no doubt collect most of it because, even though the victim might have been hit accidentally, the motorist had left her there to die. And that turned an accident into a possible vehicular homicide.
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.
“Her name is Kameeka Wills.”
“I’m sorry,” the young cop said. “A friend of yours, huh?”
“No, I never met her. But I’ve seen her pictures often enough. She’s... she was a high-fashion model.”
The policeman looked down at the body and pulled the tarp halfway down so that he could see her figure. She was wearing a simple tank top that had been partially torn, revealing a lacy bra, and running shorts. Across one thigh Savannah could see the distinct mark of tire treads where the vehicle had run over her.
“She’s a
model?”
he said. “No way! She’s a blimp.”
For the tenth time in twenty-four hours, Savannah fought the urge to feed somebody their front teeth. She looked down at the dead woman’s toned, muscular body... voluptuous, yes, but beautiful even in death.
She gave the cop a quick once-over, taking in his flabby middle, double chin, and pudgy cheeks. Funny how many men held a completely different standard for women than they did for themselves.
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.”
Chapter
7
D
irk had called the station house, requesting an address on Kameeka Wills, at the same time that Savannah had phoned Tammy and asked her to find it on the Internet. Tammy had beaten the station by more than two minutes—a personal best record for her. Usually her lead was only a matter of seconds.
When Savannah and Dirk pulled up in front of the modest bungalow, hidden among a thicket of trees in the crook of a cul-de-sac, she couldn’t help doing a mental comparison to the glass house on the beach.
The home had a woodsy charm with natural siding and a pseudo-cedar shake roof. Real shake roofs had been outlawed long ago after San Carmelita had lost an entire neighborhood to a blazing inferno, which had leaped from one wooden roof to the next, devouring the dried cedar shakes and the houses beneath them.
The new fake shakes didn’t look as good, but they didn’t burn either, and there was a lot to be said for that.
As Savannah and Dirk walked up the sidewalk, they passed a small but pleasant pond stocked with koi to the left of the path and an interesting sculpture on the right. Carved from some sort of exotic, gold-toned wood, the piece reminded Savannah of a Polynesian fertility goddess with enormous, pendulous breasts and a full, rounded belly that could have been carrying a baby or simply an abundance of good food.
Bees buzzed in a nearby bottlebrush plant, and the smell of wild honeysuckle hung heavy and sweet in the warm air.
She watched the windows of the house as they approached, but she saw no movement.
“I don’t think anybody’s home,” Dirk said. “Maybe you’re right; that mighta been her back there on the side of the road.”
“I’ve been known to be right before.”
“Eh, you luck out sometimes.”
“I’d like to be wrong this time.”
Dirk shrugged. “Well, if that body ain’t this Kameeka person, it’s gotta be somebody else, so either way it’s bad news.”
“But if it’s somebody other than a second full-figured model, it’s more likely that the lady on the road was killed accidentally rather than murdered. And I could still believe that maybe Cait Connor died of dehydration.”
“True. Killing yourself through stupidity is better than getting murdered.”
“A little better.”
“Yeah, a little. But, then, dead is still dead.”
Savannah sighed.
Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter,
she thought,
a man of few words. But not few enough.
On the front door of the cottage hung a wreath of dried grapevines sprigged with lavender and wild sage. The aroma scented the whole porch and gave the home a cozy, welcoming presence.
Dirk rang the doorbell several times, but there was no sound of movement within, and no one pulled the curtains aside to look out.
He turned the doorknob and gently pushed; the door opened an inch. Turning back to Savannah, he said, “How sure are you that was Wills back there on the road?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Sure, sure?”
“I hate to say it, but I’m sure as shootin’.”
“Okay then,” he said, slowing pushing the door open. He took one step inside. “Anybody here?” he called. “San Carmelita Police Department. Anyone home?”
Instinctively, Savannah’s hand slipped under her sweater, and she unsnapped the holster that held her Beretta. She noticed that Dirk had reached under his leather jacket, too, for his Smith & Wesson.
She followed him into the gloom of the living room, where they waited just inside the doorway for their eyes to adjust to the dim light.
White wooden shutters were closed over the windows, and only a small amount of sunshine filtered between the slats, throwing thin blades of golden light onto a cream-colored Berber carpet.
The room was sparsely but tastefully decorated with the clean lines of contemporary furnishings. In front of the window sat a tan leather sofa, and a chest with brass fittings served as a coffee table. Over a fireplace in the center of the far wall hung a large black-and-white photograph of Kameeka Wills. Draped in a sheer, hooded robe, she stood on a rugged cliff overlooking the ocean in a landscape that reminded Savannah of the Monterey area.
A wind was whipping the garment around her long, shapely limbs, and she had a look of unworldly peace and soul-deep contentment on her beautiful face as she stared out across the horizon.
Savannah’s mind flashed back to the bruised and bloodied body she had just seen on the side of the road, and her heart ached.
“That her?” Dirk asked, nodding toward the picture.
“It was,” Savannah replied.
“Too bad. A pretty girl,” he said.
Savannah smiled in spite of her sadness. One of Dirk’s most endearing qualities as a man was his complete oblivion to weight issues. The only time she had ever heard him complain about a woman’s build was when he occasionally remarked upon seeing an extremely thin woman, “Boy, she looks like she could use a cheeseburger and a milkshake.”
“Anybody here?” Dirk called out again, projecting his deep bass voice down the hall to their right.
As before, there was no reply.
Ahead lay a dining area with a glass-topped table and bamboo chairs with comfortable-looking seat cushions. In the middle of the spotless glass sat a crystal vase and a simple arrangement of multicolored tulips.
On the wall, stainless steel shelves that were equally free of dust or fingerprint smudges held a dozen picture frames containing photos of what must have been Kameeka’s family and friends.
Loved ones—who probably didn’t know yet that she was gone from their lives, Savannah thought as she studied one picture in which Kameeka was in the center, her arms around the shoulders of two younger women who looked so much like her that they had to be sisters.
For a moment Savannah allowed the thought to play through her mind of how she would feel to lose one of her own sisters in such a way. But just as quickly as the thought sprang into her mind, she pushed it firmly away. Professionals couldn’t think of such things when they were “on the job.” It clouded the judgment.
Later, she knew it would return. When she was in bed and trying to get to sleep, about three in the morning, the thoughts would come back to haunt her the way they always did. But she would battle that problem when it presented itself. For now, one dragon to slay at a time.
She looked around the living room and dining area for anything that might appear to be out of place. But the home was impeccably kept.
“Either Kameeka’s a heck of a housekeeper or she’s got a great cleaning service,” she remarked.
‘Yeah, this is about the spiffiest place I’ve been in... ever,” Dirk added as he passed the table and chairs and headed toward the kitchen.
Savannah followed and nearly bumped into his back when he stopped abruptly and sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?” he asked.
She breathed deeply and grinned. “It’s called floor wax. An unfamiliar scent?” she asked, nudging him. “Like furniture polish and window cleaner?”
He scowled at her. “I’ll have you know I bleach my toilet and my bathroom floor every Saturday morning, rain or shine.”
“Yeah, well, big whoopty-do. With an aim like yours, you’d have to.”
Standing at the doorway to the kitchen, she glanced quickly around the room, taking in the shining copper pans hanging from an iron rack on one wall, the garden window above the sink that was filled with growing herbs, and the butcher block counters lined with decorative botties of spiced cooking oils.
Again, the place looked comfortable and lived in, but perfectly maintained. The only thing that might even be considered to be out of place was a daisy-spangled mug sitting on the counter beside the coffeemaker, and next to the cup was one small packet of a sugar substitute and what appeared to be a vitamin pill.
The coffee pot was the same model Savannah had been considering buying, but hadn’t because it was beyond her budget. It had a timer that you could set so that it would grind the beans and make the coffee before you got up—a lovely luxury that she intended to treat herself to the next time she actually scored a paying job.
Apparently, Kameeka had been able to afford such an extravagance because her pot was full of a dark, thick brew. The power light was off. Otherwise, everything appeared undisturbed by human hands.
But then Savannah looked down at the floor with its snowy white, two-inch tiles.