Corpse Suzette by G. A. McKevett Page B

she looked around at the mess that had once been Suzette Du Bois’s
home. Still might be her home for all I know, she reminded herself. And
she might come waltzing in here any minute and want to know who I am and what
I’m doing he re.
    But Savannah didn’t waste
much time thinking about that. She had lied her way out of far too many
situations in the past to suffer any serious pangs of conscience or angst at
this late date.
    She did have to admit,
however, that she would like to have Tammy with her tonight. The silence in the
empty house was deafening. And even if she didn’t feel any spiritual residue of
recent evils committed inside the walls, the place was still creepy enough for
her to wish she had some company.
    Dirk was busy on his
drive-by shooting case. And when she had called and invited Ryan and John, they
had gracefully declined, having tickets to a dinner theater production that
they had been looking forward to for months.
    So, she was on her own and
not particularly enjoying her own company.
    As best she could, she
shook off the feelings and concentrated on the job at hand, which was hard
enough even when you didn’t have the heebie-jeebies. Trying to find something,
when you didn’t have the slightest idea what you were looking for, was always a
challenge.
    She had already gone over
the living room, looking for anything she and Dirk might have missed before.
Finding nothing, she decided to check the bedroom next.
    Down the hallway and to the
right, she found the master bedroom. She flipped on the wall dimmer switch,
then quickly lowered the light. There was no point in announcing to the
neighbors or passers-by that someone was home.
    Especially if the “someone”
wasn’t the homeowner.
    As Dirk had said, the
bedroom was a disaster, like the rest of the house. Originally it had been
decorated in a rustic but elegant old-Spanish style, with a mixture of dark,
heavy furniture, cream-colored plaster walls, and light, gauzy fabrics. The
four-poster bed was draped with a sheer white canopy and the floor-to-ceiling
windows were framed with the same delicate material.
    The paintings on the walls
were of exquisite old-world gardens in the Mediterranean.
    But that was where the
loveliness and grace ended.
    Like the rest of the house,
the room was a muddle of clutter and confusion. As she walked around, she
distinguished between what was simply bad-housekeeping—the dirty dishes stacked
on the bed tables, the piles of books and magazines beside the bed, the
crumpled clothes tossed in the corner near the bathroom door—versus the results
of what she assumed was Sergio’s searching: dresser and chest drawers open with
clothing tossed onto the floor, the desk in the corner emptied, and the closet
doors opened with clothing and shoes piled in a heap just outside.
    “Thanks for making my job
even harder,” she whispered to the unseen Sergio. If he had just left
everything as it was, she would have had a much better reading on what was
going on with Dr. Suzette right before she evaporated.
    She walked over to the
nightstand that had a phone and alarm clock on it. Experience told her that if
you wanted to know which side of the bed the head of the house usually slept
on, look for the phone and alarm clock.
    Opening the drawers of that
stand, she was somewhat surprised at the contents. There was the usual array of
reading glasses, antacids, and sleeping pills, an address book, pens, and a
couple of notepads.
    What she wasn’t expecting
was the array of pictures, magazines, calendars, and other memorabilia, all
dedicated to one woman.
    Marilyn Monroe.
    While she might have
understood such a collection in the bedroom of a sixty-plus-year-old man, it
was unusual in a woman’s nightstand. Especially a woman who was born after the
actress’s death.
    Two pictures in particular
interested Savannah. One was a close-up of Marilyn, dressed in typical silver
screen glam, a white fur stole around her bare shoulders and flashy