Murder A'la Mode. G. A. McKevett

the baseball cap pulled a knife from beneath his oversized windbreaker and held it out in front of him. “Give it up, bitch,” he said. “Your purse and your jewelry. Now!”

      The black teen produced a length of chain and began to twirl it in a circle in front of him like a cowboy with a lasso. “Your wallet,” he told Dirk, “and your watch.” He swung the chain in Savannah’s direction. “Do it, bitch, or we’ll mess up your face bad.”

      “Naw,” she responded, her drawl even thicker than usual. “I don’t think so.”

      She and Dirk pulled away from each other and turned toward the pair. In one fluid movement they both pointed their weapons in the robbers’ faces and enjoyed watching their cocky smirks dissolve into looks of shock and profound dismay.

      With his left hand, Dirk produced a badge. “San Carmelita Police Department, and you girls are under arrest.”

      The black kid dropped his chain onto the sand. He started to back away, his hands held up in front of his face. “No,” he said, “I ain’t goin’ in. No.”

      “Freeze!” Dirk shouted. “Right there! Don’t you move!”

      “You can’t shoot us, man,” the other boy said, moving away with his friend. “It’s against the law for you to shoot us when we’re not no threat to nobody and we’re not—”

      A shot crackled in the air, stunning him into silence. The round sizzled as it hit the surf right next to his foot.

      Smoke curled from the barrel of Savannah’s Beretta.

      “Believe me, darlin’,” she said, “I missed you because I intended to. Next shot takes your head clean off.”

      “But…but cops can’t—” he argued.

      “I’m not a cop. Not anymore.” Even in the near-darkness her eyes blazed as she stared the kid down. “I’m just a plain ol’ citizen who’s sick to death of folks not being able to enjoy their beaches because of the likes of you.”

      “But you can’t just shoot me!”

      “Oh, but I will. And I’ll say you rushed me with a knife. It was all I could do. And you’ll be dead, so who’s gonna say otherwise?”

      The boy looked to his friend, who simply shrugged. Turning to Dirk, he said, “So, what’re you gonna do? I’m a juvenile! Are you gonna just stand there and let her shoot a kid?”

      Dirk grinned. “Yep. She’s a good shot, too…hangs out at the range more than I do. She’ll take you down with one, two tops.” He moved closer to them, stuck his badge back in his pocket, and produced a pair of handcuffs. “Or you can just turn around, put your hands up and spread your legs.”

      “Oh, man, this sucks,” the black kid complained as Dirk cuffed him.

      Savannah did the same to his partner and said, “That oughta teach you guys a lesson: Never bring a knife and a chain to a gun fight. Better yet, get a real job at Burger King and work for a living like everybody else.”

      Ten minutes later, Dirk was shoving his prisoners into the backseat of a patrol car while Savannah watched, content and cheerful. She was looking forward to the rest of the evening. Dirk had promised to buy her dinner, and after a satisfying meal—okay, it would be a hot dog if Dirk was buying—she would head home where she’d relax in a bubble bath, then cozy up in bed with her Lance Roman paperbacks and her two cats to keep her feet warm.

      Could life get any better?

      “I can’t believe it!” she heard one of the robbers say just before Dirk slammed the door in his face. “The cops are having their girlfriends shoot people now! Man, that’s not even fair!”

      She laughed and laced her arm through Dirk’s. Yes, life was good. Very good, indeed.

      By the next afternoon, Savannah’s pleasant “catch-the-bad-guys buzz” had worn off and things were back to their mundane humdrum. She sat in her overstuffed, rose chintz easy chair, her feet on an equally overstuffed ottoman, with an enormous black cat in her lap. The feline was as cushy as the chair and footstool, but not nearly as comfortable.

      “Ow!” Savannah yelped as needle-sharp teeth sank into her thumb. “Dang it, Cleopatra! You’ve got to take this medicine! Now open up those jaws before I skin you alive!”

      Another black cat, as well-fed as the one being dosed on her lap, sat on a sunlit window perch nearby, grooming itself and oblivious to the drama in the chair. Savannah gave it a nasty look. “Yeah, Diamante, just wash your face like nothing’s happening. But you’re next.”

      Across the living room, a slender young woman sat at a rolltop desk, a computer screen in front of her. With her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked like a teenager, but the expression on her face as she studied the screen was all business. Tammy Hart took her job as Savannah’s assistant in the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency far too seriously, much to Savannah’s amusement. Savannah was convinced that the kid had read too many Nancy Drew books in her lackluster childhood. Tammy was the only person Savannah had ever known in law enforcement or private detection who actually referred to themselves as a “sleuth.”

      As Tammy pecked at the keyboard, she said, “Too bad you don’t want to expand the agency’s horizons a little, try something new. We could make a bundle.”

      “I’ve told you before,” Savannah said, grimacing at the drop of blood appearing on her thumb, “the day I have to resort to taking dirty pictures of wayward wives, I’ll go get a job cleaning hotel toilets.” To the cat, she said, “Look at that! You hurt Mommy. And if it gets infected, Mommy’s gonna take you to the pound and tell them she doesn’t know you, that you’re a good-for-nothing varmint that she found rummaging in her garbage can.”

      The cat growled and laid back her ears.

      “Don’t you sass me, young lady!” Savannah told her. “There are plenty of good cats in the world who don’t bite their owners. You’ll find yourself walking that long green mile yet.”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Tammy muttered. “Like you don’t threaten those panthers of yours every day. Yesterday, if they didn’t stop scratching the sofa, you were going to stretch their hides out to dry on the barn wall. And you don’t even have a barn.”

      “Well, they don’t know that, and the garage would do in a pinch.” Having successfully shoved the pill down the cat’s throat, she gave it a kiss on its glossy black head. “There you go, sweet pea. That wasn’t so bad, huh?”

      “Really, Savannah,” Tammy said, “you should try to think outside the box with this business if you’re ever really going to succeed. I’ve been researching all morning, and I’ve found something that would be a lot of fun.”

      Savannah placed the cat on the rug beside her chair, rose and walked over to the window perch. “I’m afraid to ask,” she said, “but what is it?”

      “Well, like I said, it would be fun. We’d get to role-play, dress up, and go to fancy bars and clubs and—”

      “I’m getting too old to play hooker. Those four-inch heels kill me, and I swore that once my leather miniskirt didn’t fit anymore I’d find a new undercover persona.”

      “No, we wouldn’t be posing as hookers, just really hot chicks. And we’d be doing the community a great service.”

      Savannah raised one eyebrow. “The community? A service? What are you talking about, girl? Spit it out.”

      Taking a deep breath, Tammy launched into her spiel. “Some detective agencies are making handfuls of money by sending out females to…well…sorta ‘test’ certain men…to see if they’re faithful husbands and boyfriends. They come on to the guys in bars and see if they’ll go for the bait. And, of course, the whole thing is being taped so that the wife can hear what her man says when he’s presented with a temptation that—”