Corpse Suzette by G. A. McKevett Page A

panful of
cookies into the oven and set the timer. “Don’t get riled, Abby,” she said.
“Dirk checks everybody out. He’s sorta like you New Yorkers. He doesn’t
trust anybody.” Abby turned back to Dirk. “Okay. I ate at a Mexican restaurant
there on the beach. Maria de... something or the other. I had a beef tamale and
a chicken enchilada with extra cheese and two margaritas. Okay? So it wasn’t
exactly lowfat or low-carb, but—”
    Dirk held up one hand. “I
don’t give a damn what you had to eat or drink. Cheez, chill out.”
    “Are we quite done?”
Abigail rose from the table and pushed in her chair.
    “Did you come back here after
dinner and stay here until you went to bed?”
    “Yes, I did. Ask Savannah
if I didn’t.”
    “I will.” He flipped his
notepad closed. “We’re done here. And thank you for your cooperation.”
    Abigail turned on one heel
and marched outside.
    Dirk shook his head. “Tammy,
I gotta tell you, kiddo, your cousin is one bristly bit—”
    “Watch it. That’s my family
you’re talking about,” Tammy said.
    “Yeah, and my houseguest,”
Savannah added.
    He stood and tucked his
notepad and pen back into his pocket. “Can I take a couple of those cookies to
go?” he asked wearily. “If I don’t get horizontal soon, I’m gonna pass out.”
    “Sure.” Savannah stuck a
few into a plastic bag and zipped it closed. She handed it to him as Tammy
walked out the door, following her cousin. “You’re right, you know,” she said.
“Abby is bristly.”
    “And she’s a bitch, too.”
    Savannah smiled. “Yes, she
is. But then, the value of good, honest bitchiness is highly underrated in our
society.”
    He just grunted.
    She slipped her arm through
his and guided him toward the front door. “Go home and take a nap, sugar,” she
told him. “You know you’re not worth shootin’ if you don’t get enough pillow
time. Go home, put on your Mickey Mouse jammies, crawl into bed and—”
    “You know I don’t wear
pajamas! Real men don’t wear pajamas.”
    “Yeah, yeah... or wipe
their feet at the door, or use a napkin, or drink wine, or...” She smiled. “You
bad, Dirk. We all know it. You ba-a-a-ad.”

Chapter

6
     
     
     
    S avannah stood in the middle
of Suzette Du Bois’s tumbled living room and closed her eyes. Unlike Granny
Reid, whom everybody knew had a psychic streak, or as Gran preferred to call
it, “the good Lord’s gift of knowledge,” Savannah didn’t claim to know anything
above what her five senses told her.
    Yet, more than once, she
had stood in the center of a crime scene and felt something that her high
school science teacher couldn’t have explained. She had sensed the victim’s
fear, horror, and pain as palpably as any human touch on her skin.
    But tonight, although she
closed her eyes and willed her mind and her own emotions to be still and open
to impression, she felt nothing out of the ordinary in the doctor’s home.
    All she felt was a creeping
uneasiness at being in a place she wasn’t really supposed to be, doing
something relatively illegal.
    Downright illegal , she reminded herself. There's
police tape over that front door and you crossed it, girlie. That's a definite
no-no.
    Then she chuckled to
herself. Funny how the voice of reason and caution in her head always had a
soft tone with a strong Georgian accent... just like Granny Reid’s.
    Savannah had left Tammy and
Abigail sitting on her sofa with a big bowl of popcorn and a couple of movies.
She had told Tammy where she was going and Tammy had begged to join her for a
bit of “sleuthing,” as Tammy-Wanna-Be-Nancy-Drew called it. But neither of them
thought it a good idea to share the details of their investigation with
Abigail, and they couldn’t think of any plausible excuse to leave her at home
by herself.
    So Tammy was at the house,
pouting and watching chick flicks with her grumpy cousin while Savannah had all
the fun.
    If you want to call this
fun , she
thought, as