LITMIR.BIZ

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with Kiki Wallace.

      Experience had taught her that if she could find one person in a group who had a tender conscience, they could be the key to solving a case.

      “And how about you, Kiki?” Savannah asked. “Is Daisy a friend of yours, too?”

      Kiki replied, but in a voice so low that Savannah couldn’t hear her.

      “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

      “I said, ‘Yes, Daisy is my friend.’”

      “And do you think that she would have just gone off, disappeared without telling anybody—her mother, any of you girls—where she’d gone?”

      Kiki shot a questioning look over at Tiffy, then shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah, I guess so,” she said.

      “Would you do that? Would you just take off somewhere without telling anybody?” Savannah asked her.

      “I don’t know. I might.”

      Kiki looked like she was about to start crying. Yes, Savannah decided. I’m definitely going to have to get Kiki here alone. Maybe hold her upside down by her high heels and see what I can shake out of her.

      Tiffy hurried over to them and stood between Savannah and Kiki. “Do you have, like, a warrant or something? My dad doesn’t usually let cops on his property unless they have a warrant or something.”

      “No, I don’t have a warrant…or something. I don’t need one. I’m not even a police officer.”

      “Then what are you doing on our property?”

      “I was invited.” Savannah didn’t feel the need to mention it was the maid who had let them in. “I’m sure everyone, including your father, is concerned about Daisy’s disappearance and would be relieved if we could find her safe and sound. I’m sure you would like that, too, right?”

      Tiffy locked eyes with Savannah and gave her what, no doubt, was intended to be an intimidating glare. But since in the course of Savannah’s career, she had been glared at by hardcore street thugs, members of organized crime, a serial killer, and a rabid pit bull, she didn’t scare easily.

      In fact, she decided to get a little rough with Tiff.

      “I understand that Daisy came over here yesterday afternoon,” she said with all the steadfast authority of a practiced liar. “In fact, I hear that you girls were the last people to see her alive.”

      “We were not! No, we weren’t! I mean,” Tiffy stammered, “we couldn’t have been the last ones to see her…what do you mean ‘alive’? She’s not dead!”

      “She’s not?”

      “No!”

      “Then where is she?”

      “How would I know?”

      “Well, if you’re so sure that she isn’t dead, you must know where she is.”

      Tiffy took one step backward and nearly lost her balance, teetering precariously on her four-inch heels. “This is all just stupid,” she said. “I’ll bet that it’s Daisy’s stupid mom who put you up to all of this, isn’t it? She just doesn’t like us, and she blames us any time anything goes wrong with her precious little baby Daisy.”

      “Like what?” Savannah wanted to know.

      “Like when Daisy’s boyfriend dumped her, and Daisy got all depressed and went around moping about it for months. Pam blamed that on me! Said I took him away from her daughter, lured him away with my feminine charms or something stupid like that.” She chuckled, and Savannah thought that she had heard warmer laughter rippling through the city jail cells. “He dumped Daisy because she got fat, that’s all. But no-o-o-o. Neither Daisy nor her mom wanted to face the truth. God forbid that Daisy would go on a diet!”

      “You should say fatter,” Bunny added.

      “What?” Savannah turned on Bunny.

      “I was correcting Tiffy. Daisy didn’t get fat—she was already fat. She got fatter. And, I mean, like what guy is into that? It’s just so gross.”

      Savannah flashed back on some delicious chapters in her own history book: sultry summer evenings in Tommy Stafford’s old ’56 Chevy, parked in moonlit Georgia orchards, the fragrance of fresh peaches scenting the night air.

      Ah, yes…Tommy and few others since him had more than enjoyed her own ample curves.

      She gave Bunny a sly grin. “Oh, you’d be surprised what guys like. What they really, really like. But that’s neither here nor there. I want to know what happened here yesterday afternoon when Daisy dropped by.”

      “Daisy wasn’t here,” Bunny said a little too desperately. “Really! She wasn’t—”

      “Okay, okay, so she was here for a little while,” Tiffy interjected. “She dropped by and asked me for a favor—like she always does—and when I didn’t come running to her rescue as usual, she left in a huff.”

      “And what favor was that?”

      Tiffy sighed and tossed her head in an impatient, It-Isn’t-About-Me-So-I-Can’t-Be-Bothered move. “She wanted me to go over her stupid lines with her. She was supposed to be on this stupid sitcom thing, and she had four friggen lines. Four! And, oh my gawd, you’d think she was going to be giving an Oscar-winning performance the way she was going on and on and on about it.”

      “And did you, help her with her lines, that is?” Savannah asked.

      “No way. I had things to do. I’m having a big Halloween party, and the party planner is screwing it up bigtime. She hasn’t even hired the fortune teller, or the belly dancers, or the makeup artist yet! I don’t have time to mess with stupid Daisy and her stupid lines.”

      Savannah quirked one eyebrow as she contemplated the pleasure of tattooing the word STUPID across Tiffany Dante’s forehead. “You wouldn’t be just a wee little bit jealous now, would you?” she asked her.

      “Jealous? Jealous? Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t stoop to doing some stupid sitcom! I’m a real actress. I’ve trained with Beverly Diamond and Malcolm Whitmore! Do you know who they are?”

      “Not a clue.”

      “Well, that figures because you aren’t in the business. They are the most prestigious acting coaches in the world. And I studied under both of them last July. I have an agent, and a Screen Actors Guild card, and fantastic head shots and everything! Stupid Daisy wouldn’t even have this little sitcom walk-on if it weren’t for me! Jealous of Daisy O’Neil, that fat, no talent cow? That’ll be the day!”

      Savannah listened to the tirade, watched the young woman’s face contort with pure, hot rage. And Savannah asked herself the standard question she always asked when interviewing potential suspects:

      Is this person capable of hurting someone…really, seriously harming another human being?

      Tiffany Dante was only three degrees away from frothing at the mouth, from having her eyes bug out of her head like a cartoon character.

      Yes, Savannah thought. This spoiled rotten little brat could hurt another person. Badly.

      Or pay someone to.

      She looked at the two girls, Bunny and Kiki. Especially Bunny, who so obviously ached to be a Tiffy clone.

      Savannah thought, Tiffany Dante is perfectly capable of doing it herself, paying someone…or manipulating others to do harm to a perceived enemy. No doubt about it.

      Deep in her gut, Savannah felt a stirring of very real fear. Fear for Daisy O’Neil. Fear for her worried mother. Fear that this girl in front of her, a child who had apparently been raised without boundaries or empathy, could have done something truly terrible.

      She stepped closer to Tiffany, deliberately

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