Savannah Reid 12 - Fat Free and Fatal Read Online Free Page B

yours if you want it. I told this spoiled rotten movie star bimbo that she needs a bodyguard. I told her either she hired somebody or I was going to assign my ugliest, meanest, nastiest cop to do the job. She fought me about it at first until I told her I knew a gal who could do it. You know, that you could watch out for her, even though you’re a chick.”
    “Ah, how generous of you.” Savannah reminded herself to crack him in the head with a skillet sometime when he least expected it. “But really…” She lowered her voice. “…I can’t right now. I could come over later after—”
    “Go now,” Ryan said.
    Savannah turned around and saw that her friend had a wide smile on his handsome face. “But your birthday? The cake?”
    “Hey,” he said, “a homicide case and a paying gig for the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency? That tops a birthday party all day and all night.”
    Savannah weighed one against the other for two whole seconds.
    A friend’s party versus looking at a dead body?
    Birthday cake or a homicide case?
    It wasn’t until she was in her ’65 Mustang, speeding toward the Papalardo estate in Spirit Hills that she paused to consider what it might say about her character, or lack thereof—how quickly and shamelessly she had made that decision.
    Murder takes the cake. Any ol’ day.

Chapter 3
     
    A s Savannah drove her classic Mustang through the posh, gated community of Spirit Hills, she tried not to notice the dark smoke appearing in her rearview mirror, coming from the ’Stang’s tailpipe. During the car’s last garage appointment, it had been given a grim prognosis from Ray, her mechanic. “You’re gonna need a ring job soon, Savannah, and maybe the valves ground, too. And that’s gonna set you back some serious cash. You might consider trading her in while she’s still running as good as she is.”
    The thought of getting rid of the ’Stang made Savannah’s heartstrings twang with a sour resonance, and she usually managed not to think about it, not to notice the billowing black cloud behind her. One of her life mottos was: If you don’t see it, it ain’t there. But while that level of denial might work when it came to the size of one’s buttocks, it was harder to maintain when you could look in your rearview mirror and see that you were a one-woman pollution machine in such a beautiful locale as Spirit Hills.
    As she passed one palatial mansion after another with their vast property allotments, it was all too apparent to Savannah that she was a “have-not” in a “have-a-lot” community. She passed Tudor and Greek revivals, Spanish haciendas, and the odd sprawling contemporary, but not a single driveway contained a smog factory like the one she was driving. Not even close.
    “Eh, some people just got no taste for the classics,” she muttered in a voice that sounded a lot like her Granny Reid’s. “It takes a person of refinement to appreciate an objet d’art like you,” she told the car, lovingly patting its dashboard.
    As though on cue, the Mustang sputtered and spewed an especially foul emission from its rear.
    “Knock it off!” she said, swatting the steering wheel. “You mess with me, you’ll wind up with nobody to talk to but a junkyard Rottweiler.”
    But she knew she was no closer to getting rid of the Mustang than she was of dumping Dirk. Even though they were both guilty of the occasional objectionable “emission,” she was loyal.
    Often too loyal for her own good.
    But her grandmother had taught her to walk that extra mile with a friend, and then another if they needed the company. And sometimes she felt like she had walked all the way around God’s green Earth. Several times.
    She wanted to believe that it was a mission of friendship that she was on now, coming to this crime scene to help her old friend. But she knew it had less to do with camaraderie and more to do with truth, justice, the American way…and the pure joy of catching a bad guy. It