Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) by G. A. McKevett Page B

way,” Gran said, as she reached for the screen-door handle. “I forgot to tell you, your friend, Tammy called earlier, before dinner. She was just wanting to know that you got here safe and sound.”
    “Oh, that’s right. I promised to give her a call, and I forgot all about it.”
    “I explained everything to her . . . well, at least some of it . . . and she said if you need her help with anything, you just give her a call, you hear?”
    “I’m sure she meant it, too. She’s family . . . know what I mean?”
    Gran smiled. “I sure do. Some family you’re born with, and some you choose to adopt along the way. But they’re all family, just the same.”
    Savannah looked into those blue eyes, so like her own. They were faded, perhaps, but still alight with love and wisdom. Savannah thought, Who would imagine that eighty-plus years could be so beautiful?
    “If you hadn’t been born into my family, Savannah,” Gran said, “I would’ve snapped you up, adoption-style, in a heartbeat and considered myself lucky.”
    “Same here, Gran. Same here.”
     
     
    The toolshed near the back edge of the property that Macon had turned into his private apartment was little more than a shack, ten feet square. As she walked the foot-worn path through the garden to the shed, Savannah saw the heavy cord he had strung from the house, along the fence, to the peach tree and then to the roof of the tiny structure, to provide electricity.
    Macon had always been handy . . . when he chose to be. Though, unlike the hardworking Waycross, he seldom elected to make his talents useful to others.
    Beauregard trotted along at her heels, ears flapping, content to have company for the moment. But as they neared the shed, he stopped in the middle of the path, sat back on his haunches, and howled.
    Savannah reached down to pat his head. “You know Macon’s gone, don’t you. We miss him, too.”
    The dog whimpered once and rolled his eyes. Then he looked back at the shed and growled.
    “You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to,” she told him. “Run along back to the house. There’s supper scraps in your dish, you know.”
    As though relieved to be dismissed, he took off, heading back to the porch and his dinner bowl.
    She laughed and continued on down the path toward the shed.
    Nearby, in the poultry pen, she could hear the chickens clucking contentedly, settling into the henhouse for the night. She smelled the cozy, dusty scent of their feathers and recalled the pleasant task of collecting the eggs. Stealing an egg from under a warm, setting chicken beat the heck out of taking a Styrofoam container from the cold refrigerator in a grocery store.
    But the shed itself provoked less comforting memories. Miscellaneous greasy car parts littered the ground around the door, and Savannah recalled half a dozen “redneck” and “trailer park trash” jokes about automobile engines dangling from tree limbs in the yard. Twenty—even ten—years ago, Gran wouldn’t have allowed such a thing on her property. But with age, her standards and her control on her grandchildren had slipped a bit.
    Savannah vowed that if she could get Macon out of that jail and the trouble he was in, she would tell him to get this mess cleaned up, pronto.
    She intended to tell him to clean up a lot of things. And if threats of bloodshed were required to light a fire under his rear end, that was fine, too.
    When she opened the door, it stuck, swollen from the humidity, tight in its frame. The smell of stale food and dirty laundry greeted her as she stepped into the gloomy interior . . . and another odor that was unmistakable and all too familiar to her as a former law enforcement officer.
    “Pot,” she said to herself. “Yeah, you little turkey-butt, Macon W. Reid. We’re going to have a lot to talk about one of these days soon.”
    At least, I hope we have the opportunity to talk about such things, she thought. Last week, she would have been worried to