Wicked Craving. G. A. McKevett

me,” he said. Turning toward the house, he added, “Wanna see the body?”

      Just to irritate him, she laced her arm through his and half-cuddled up to him. Ten pairs of eyes shifted their way and a few of the fellows snickered. “Of course I want to see the body,” she murmured, leaning her head close to his, as though whispering sweet nothings. “You don’t think I rushed over here to see your body, do you?”

      She expected him to squirm and maybe even blush a little as, one by one, every cop on the scene turned to watch them. All were wide-eyed, and a couple had their mouths hanging open. But instead, he laughed, a big, hearty, deep-throated laugh that—on a day when she wasn’t mad at him about something—she had to admit was pretty darned sexy.

      “I know what you’re trying to do,” he whispered as they walked toward the front of the house. “You’re trying to ruin my reputation as a hard ass.”

      “Don’t you worry, darlin’,” she said. “These boys know you, through and through. They’ll always think of you as an ass.”

      “Gee. Thanks.” He thought it over for a moment. “But a hard ass?”

      She shrugged. “Eh.”

      When Dirk led her into the Wellman mansion, Savannah stepped three feet into the foyer and stood quietly for a moment as she looked around her and reevaluated her Life-contentment Level.

      “Okay,” she said. “Never mind.”

      “What?” Dirk asked.

      “I’ve reconsidered. I do want to be rich when I grow up. This is awesome.”

      Here, too, everything was painted a stark white, but the beveled glass in the double doors and sidelights cast rainbow prisms around the walls, giving the massive entry life and color. Some giant palms grew from a red mahogany vase in the center of the room, a container that was at least five feet tall.

      Savannah decided that she needed a five-foot vase in the middle of her living room. What a conversation piece that would be!

      The vaulted ceiling soared three stories high. And to the right, a graceful, floating staircase with clear, Lucite treads, wound upward, looking like an immense DNA molecule.

      And straight ahead, Savannah could see through the house and its floor-to-ceiling windows to the ocean.

      With the afternoon sunlight glittering on the water and the rows of lacy white foam lining up to wash ashore, the Pacific was a living postcard, advertising the glory of sunny Southern California.

      The house had been designed to create a sense of being one with that grandeur.

      “I love this,” she told Dirk. “You’d feel like a mermaid, living here.”

      He gave the house a dismissive wave and grunted. “Too big,” he said. “Too much to clean.”

      She shot him a sideways look. “Oh, right. It would just plum wear you to a frazzle, scrubbing this place the way you do that trailer of yours … once every year or two.”

      He grinned. “Whether it needs it or not.”

      When they walked into the living room, Savannah saw more mahogany vases filled with palms, and cubist leather furniture in white, black, and red—but no occupants.

      “Where’s the family?” she asked.

      “It’s just the husband. He wanted to go upstairs and make some phone calls. I told him he could.”

      “How did he seem?”

      Dirk shrugged. “Shaking like a cold, wet dog. Seemed more scared than sad.”

      “He did it. Woman gets murdered … you look at the intimate partner.”

      “You always say that.”

      “And I’m usually right.”

      He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it.

      Savannah chuckled. Dirk wasn’t one to argue when he knew he couldn’t win, and the statistics were on her side.

      “Through here,” he said as he led her to a set of glass doors that opened onto a patio area.

      When they walked outside, the smell of the salt air and the warmth of the sunlight washed over her. Normally, Savannah would have closed her eyes, at least for a moment, and soaked in the healing peace of it all. But today, in this place, the peace had been broken. Even the sea’s essential tranquility couldn’t counteract the sense that something nearby was terribly wrong.

      “She’s down there,” he said, pointing to a set of stone stairs that started at the cliff’s edge and descended to the beach.

      Savannah headed down the steps, taking her time, because they were fairly steep, and there was no handrail. Dirk followed close behind.

      She could feel him tensing, but she knew better than to say anything. Dirk had a pronounced fear of heights. Even a stepladder presented a challenge to his phobic psyche. These stairs had to be a nightmare for him.

      “This cliff’s gotta be seventy feet high,” he said, sounding slightly breathless.

      She thought it was probably more like forty or fifty, but she could understand why it seemed a lot higher to him. And she was relieved for him when they finally reached the bottom and stepped onto the sand.

      She looked to her left and braced herself, as she always did at times like these. The Grim Reaper’s handiwork was seldom pretty and always unsettling, even when the passing was the result of natural causes. But a death under unnatural circumstances was the most unsettling of all. And something told her that Mrs. Wellman probably didn’t suffer a stroke or heart attack and tumble down the cliff.

      Instinctively Savannah knew that, at the very least, this was a tragic accident. Maybe worse.

      But, looking northward, she saw nothing but the beach, more cliffs, and more luxury homes stretching into the misty distance.

      “Over here,” Dirk said, heading toward the right and a rocky area, where the sea washed among the stones and receded, leaving tide pools filled with anemones and seaweed.

      Savannah took a moment to reach down and roll up the hems of her linen slacks. Her loafers would be soaked, but her pants didn’t have to be.

      She also paused to note the tracks in the sand where she stood. One set of prints, made by bare feet, led from the water’s edge toward the rocks. Another matching set headed from the rocks back to the beach. She wasn’t surprised to see that the return prints were deeper and not as cleanly defined. It looked like their maker had been running.

      The other two sets, stretching from the stairs to the stones, she would recognize anywhere. They were Dirk’s running sneakers.

      He did more sneaking than running in them, but they had a distinctive tread that she had seen many times at crime scenes throughout the years.

      “I see you’ve been down here a couple of times, already,” she said as she caught up to him.

      “Yeah.” He glanced back at the sand, at his prints. “If I ever commit any sort of felony, I’ll have to buy some new shoes, or you’ll nail me.”

      He stretched out his hand to her, to help her balance as she stepped onto the rocks.

      “Naw,” she said, grabbing his hand. “I’d give you a pass.”

      “You would not.”

      “That would depend on whether you cut me in on the deal or not.”

      “Interesting that you assume it’d have to do with money. What if it was a crime of passion?”

      “Oh, please. What … ripping off a donut shop?”

      He looked genuinely sad. “Don’t talk about food.” He pointed toward a particularly large rock.