Wicked Craving. G. A. McKevett

natural and altogether necessary function of nature, Savannah didn’t have to even pretend to like it. And it was the memory of the stench, rather than the visuals, that haunted her when she thought back over the bodies she had viewed.

      She couldn’t help being just a bit relieved when she saw that Dirk had covered the corpse with a yellow tarp. It was nice to see a bit at a time, as you chose to, rather than getting hit with the whole effect at once.

      She walked up to the tarp and pulled back one corner to find she was looking at a leg, and a foot wearing a jeweled, designer high heel with an ankle strap. Flipping the tarp back a bit more, she saw the dead woman was wearing its mate on the other foot.

      Glancing at the imposing cliff above them, Savannah said, “Wow, that long fall and she managed to keep both shoes on.”

      “How do you know for sure that she fell off the cliff?”

      “Her shoes have four-inch heels. It would have been really hard to walk down those stairs wearing them. Besides, they cost a fortune, even for her budget. No woman wears her best heels to the beach to get all gritty and wet. She’s a beach girl, living here on the water. She would have changed her shoes or come down here barefoot.”

      “Hm-m-m … that’s what I figured, too.”

      Yeah, sure you did, Savannah thought, Mr. Expert on Women’s High-Fashion Footwear. But she kept her mouth shut. She had to limit how many times she pissed him off in the course of a day. A pissy Dirk was not a thing of beauty.

      “What’s the body like?” she asked.

      “Actually,” Dirk said, pulling back the rest of the tarp, “she’s in pretty good shape, considering she’s outside and it’s the beach. No crabs yet.”

      “Good. I might sleep tonight after all.”

      As he uncovered the face, she realized she had spoken too fast. The crabs might not have found the body yet, but the insects had. And while the coroner, Dr. Jennifer Liu, would find the degree and phases of infestation all quite fascinating and helpful in her investigation, Savannah could do without it.

      But, as always, she pushed the horror to the back of her mind and switched into an analytical, professional mode.

      She squatted beside the body and studied what she could see without touching or moving anything.

      Even with the smears of blood on her face, it was obvious the dead woman was wearing heavy evening makeup. And her blond hair was styled in a formal updo, which was slightly askew, but still in place, thanks to copious amounts of hair spray.

      “She’s got a head wound,” Savannah said, staring at a nasty gash on the side of her forehead.

      “Yeah, I saw that.” He knelt on one knee next to her. “In the temple area like that, it could have been a fatal blow.”

      “It’s clean, no dirt in it.” She looked up at the cliff that was more sand than rock, and added, “It doesn’t really look like a scrape … or like she smacked it coming down. She might have gotten it before she fell.”

      “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

      She resisted the urge to give him a smack of his own. “Did you notice that the sun’s shining today, too?” she asked.

      “What?”

      She sighed. “Never mind.”

      He uncovered the rest of the body, revealing a beautiful, full-length evening gown made of black, shantung silk. A thousand hand-sewn beads accented the front and the waistband.

      The woman would have blended in nicely on the red carpet at the Academy Awards.

      “Wow,” Savannah said. “She was dressed … uh … fit to kill.”

      “Yeah, the husband said they went to a charity ball last night.”

      “There’s just one thing.”

      “What’s that?”

      “She isn’t wearing any jewelry. No earrings. A woman doesn’t dress up like that and go out without even a pair of earrings in her pierced ears.”

      “Okay, if you say so. Maybe it was a robbery.”

      “We’ll have to ask the husband about the jewelry. What time does he say they left the party?”

      “He said they came home separately. She had a headache and left early, around nine thirty. He stayed until nearly midnight.”

      “How did she get home?”

      “She drove their car. He took a cab.”

      “And was she here when he got home?”

      “No. He says the car was here, but he couldn’t find her in the house or the yard.”

      “When did he report her missing?”

      “He didn’t. A jogger on the beach found her about noon today and called it in.”

      Savannah glanced over at the barefoot prints leading from the water to the body, then back in the direction they came.

      “And you were the first to respond?”

      “Yeah. And it’s a good thing, too, or those morons up there would have come down here and trampled all over the scene.”

      “Oh, come on. Not all of those handsome young patrolmen are dummies.”

      He bristled.

      So she said, “You’ve taught them how to respect a crime scene.”

      He unbristled.

      Grinning, she added, “By yelling obscenities, verbally abusing them, and threatening them with great bodily harm.”

      He snorted. “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

      Dirk’s cell phone rang. He dug it out of his jacket pocket and answered it in his usual gracious, loquacious manner. “Yeah, what?”

      She considered nominating him for poet laureate.

      “All right. Come through the house to the backyard and down the stairs. We’re with the body here on the beach.”

      He hung up. “Dr. Liu,” he explained. “They’re here.”

      Savannah looked down at the body on the rocks and felt a little sense of relief, as she always did, that the coroner and Crime Scene Unit had arrived to take over.

      No matter how many times she did it, dealing with a corpse at the scene was always difficult. It was the hardest part of any investigation. Except for one other thing.

      She took a deep, steadying breath. “You think the husband’s finished with his phone calls?”

      “Whether he is or not, I gotta talk to him again,” Dirk said, his face reflecting the dread she felt.

      Because, the only thing worse than dealing with the remains of a person who had passed on … was dealing with the loved ones who had been left behind.

       Chapter 3

      As Savannah and Dirk left the beach and started to climb the stone steps, Savannah looked up and saw a beautiful Asian woman descending the stairs. Her long, glossy black hair spilled around her shoulders, and the snug, black miniskirt she was wearing seemed strangely at odds with her boxy, white lab coat.

      She had exquisitely shaped, long legs, and she was wearing what appeared to be stainless steel, four-inch-high stilettos.

      “Okay, I stand corrected,” Savannah said over her shoulder to Dirk. “You can walk down these stairs wearing super-high heels.”

      But when she glanced backward, she saw that Dirk had barely heard what she’d said. He was transfixed on the