Fat Free And Fatal. G. A. McKevett

alone mortified.

      “Dumb luck,” she said, a little too cheerfully, even to her own ears. “Next time you’ll nab ’em.”

      “That ain’t it, and we both know it.” He shook his head in disgust. “I can’t run anymore. Hell, I can’t even breathe anymore.”

      They reached the fountain, where the startled, thoroughly splashed tourists were still standing around, their mouths hanging open, watching for the next chapter of this unexpected drama that was playing out before them.

      Dirk stopped at the edge of the pool and pushed R.L. toward Savannah. “Hold on to him for a minute. I got somethin’ to do here.”

      Amazed, Savannah watched as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She was even more surprised when she saw him toss them into the water.

      “No way,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

      “Believe it, Van. It’s happening. It’s happening right now.” He squared his broad shoulders and lifted his chin a couple of notches. “The day that I can’t chase down a perp—the day that you can catch one and I can’t—that’s the day I quit.”

      Savannah had seen Dirk quit before. Many, many times. He was an expert. He had “quitting” down pat.

      He was as good at quitting smoking as she was at losing weight. They had both done it hundreds of times.

      But after decades of “quitting” and “losing,” he was still a smoker and she was still overly voluptuous, according to the surgeon general’s weight charts.

      This was no different than all the other times she had seen him give up the cigs.

      Or was it?

      Her breath caught in her throat when she saw what he did next. He reached into his pocket one more time, and pulled out his lighter. His silver Harley-Davidson lighter that he’d been carrying the day she had met him, back when polyester-clad dimwits were still dancing in discos and hitting on people with the line, “What’s your sun sign?” Back when she had worn “big hair” and shoulder pads that made her look like a linebacker.

      That lighter was as dear to Dirk as his bomber jacket. She had truly believed she would one day bury him with both.

      But…but it looked like this time it was really going to happen.

      Splash.

      The lighter hit the water out in the middle of the pool and came to rest among the coins—mostly pennies—tossed by hopeful tourists who believed that the mission’s patron saint would grant them a winning lottery ticket…in exchange for a lousy penny’s worth of charity.

      She looked at Dirk with amazement, total disbelief.

      Dirk didn’t own much: a decrepit house trailer, a battered Buick Skylark, his leather jacket, and some faded T-shirts. But he loved what he owned—with a fierce loyalty that bordered on psychosis. He never threw away anything.

      He recycled paper towels!

      With a smug look on his face and a swagger in his step, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter continued to escort his prisoner back toward the parked Buick, bringing a stunned Savannah in tow.

      Lordy be! Granny Reid’s right, she thought. Wonders never cease!

      Chapter 2

      Granny Reid was right about something else, Savannah decided when she took a bite of fried chicken: Soaking the pieces in buttermilk before cooking it did make it melt in your mouth. And the groans of appreciation from the others sitting around Savannah’s dining table provided supporting testimony to the fact.

      Even Tammy Hart, Savannah’s friend and assistant in her detective agency, had set aside her usual healthy, vegetarian lifestyle and was violating her conscience with a juicy drumstick. She had arrived for the dinner party an hour ago, wearing a red silk kimono, her long blond hair pulled back and fastened with a pair of lacquered chopsticks. But now the sleeves of the elegant garment were rolled up to her elbows, and she was gnawing on the chicken leg like any other shameless carnivore. “Savannah, this is the best fried chicken I’ve eaten in ages,” she said, laying the bare bone aside and reaching for a wing.

      “Eh, it’s the only chicken you’ve eaten in ages.”

      “That’s true, but it’s still the best I’ve had since…since…?”

      “Since the last time you ate Savannah’s fried chicken,” said Ryan Stone, the reason for the dinner and the inspiration for Tammy’s haute couture.

      The tall, dark, and fibrillation-inducing Ryan was turning a year older, and Savannah had invited her closest circle of friends to celebrate—an intimate little sphere that just happened to encompass the members of her Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency and no one else.

      Savannah had never experienced even the slightest difficulty in drawing a line between her work and her personal life. It was quite simple: she had no personal life.

      And other than one sainted grandmother and a batch of crazy siblings, whom she had left behind in Georgia, and the two black cats who were doing figure eights between her ankles, begging for table scraps, the people around her table constituted her family.

      Them…and Dirk, who was conspicuously absent.

      Dirk never passed up the opportunity to eat a free meal, and especially one of Savannah’s.

      “I can’t believe Dirko isn’t here,” Tammy said. “And more than that, I can’t believe I actually miss him.” She washed down the final bite of chicken with a long drink of lemonade, made with real sugar—the plain old, refined, and much maligned white stuff.

      Lots of it.

      Savannah put only slightly less sugar in her lemonade than she did her iced tea.

      Yes, Tammy was compromising her virtue right and left, in honor of Ryan Stone. Like all women between the ages of eight and eighty-eight, Tammy had fallen for Ryan within the first three seconds of setting eyes on him. And his courtly manners, countless kindnesses, and impeccable style did nothing to dispel the enchantment. She was totally, hopelessly hooked and too young to hide it.

      Unlike Savannah, solidly into her forties, who was the epitome of “cool” around him. “Ryan, you darlin’ birthday boy,” she said, shoving an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes under his nose. “You eat up now! I won’t have you fainting dead away from hunger out there in the street after having supper at my house.” Savannah blushed slightly, hearing the adolescent titter in her own voice. He reached for the bowl, his fingers brushed hers, and she nearly dropped the spuds in his lap.

      So much for “cool” in face of male perfection.

      But Ryan was kind, as always, and pretended not to notice. It didn’t become a demigod to react to mere female mortals slavering at his feet.

      “Yes, I’m surprised to find that I miss the old boy, too,” John Gibson agreed. He dabbed at his mustache with his napkin and took a sip of Beaujolais.

      Although John was older than his life partner, Ryan, by quite a few years, he could still stop more than a few hearts himself. With his luxuriant silver hair, his pale blue eyes, and elegant British accent, he had the old-world charm of an English nobleman. But the occasional wicked sparkle in those eyes betrayed a far less than stodgy persona beneath those fine tweed jackets. “When the old boy isn’t around,” he continued, “I long for his insightful observations on the state of humanity, his stirring political exhortations, and provocative philosophical—”

      “Yeah, yeah. More like, you miss sparring with him,” Savannah said.

      John chuckled. “Well, he is rather easily baited.”

      “And you,” Ryan said, “have just enough British bulldog in you that you can’t resist going after him.”

      “All