"That"s right," Dirk said. "We need to talk to a dude named . . ." He turned to Savannah. "What was it, Van?"
"Hank Jordan. From what I heard, he"s a handyman for a motel on the other side of the island. He"s been involved in animal protection groups that use violence to make their points."
Tammy started clicking away on her computer. "I love animals as much as the next person," she said, "and more than some. But I never understood the people who do that awful stuff in the name of compa.s.sion. Don"t they see how they"re undermining their own cause?"
"Reckon some folks can"t see the nose stuck right there on the front of their faces," said Waycross.
Tammy laughed uproariously.
Savannah smiled and shot a look at Dirk, who rolled his eyes.
Waycross had made a halfway-good funny, but it wasn"t all that funny. Unless, of course, the Love Bug had nipped you behind the right ear.
"Let"s see who can find "im first," Waycross challenged Tammy as his own fingers started to pound away on his keyboard. He grinned across the table at Savannah. "She done taught me all of her tricks, and now it"s gonna come back to bite "er."
"You don"t know them all, buddy boy," Tammy said. "I could still show you a thing or . . . Oh! Wait! I"ve got him!"
"Dang it!" Waycross closed his computer with a snap. "She"s just too good for me."
Oh, Lord, Savannah thought. Do we sound as sappy as that? Heaven forbid.
"Well? Where"s he at?" Savannah asked Tammy.
"The Island Lagoon. Just like you said, on the other side of the island. Although, I"m looking at a picture of it here on a travel advisory site, and I don"t see an oversized mud puddle, let alone a lagoon."
Waycross leaned across her shoulder and stared at her screen. "There it is."
"Where?"
"In the logo. It"s one of the O"s."
Tammy squinted at the screen. "That"s a pretty bad logo."
Waycross nodded. "And a pretty bad motel, too. Me and Tammy could go check it out for you, if you want us to."
"Why, Brother Waycross," Savannah said, her drawl thick, "are you suggesting that you"d like to take my pretty young a.s.sistant to a seedy motel?"
Instantly Waycross turned as red as his curls. "No! Of course not! I"d never take Miss Tammy here to no nasty motel! I mean, I wouldn"t take her to . . . I mean . . . shoot. You know what I mean."
Tammy reached over and patted him on the shoulder. "I know exactly what you mean, and so do they. Don"t let them tease you. Once they get started, they don"t know when to quit."
"Tell me about it! You oughta growed up having her for a big sister! It was awful! She was bossy and kept after me all the time to do right. She was worse than Granny!"
"You got me back, putting that frog in my underwear drawer."
He snickered. "Yeah. That was a good "un. It was worth that trip behind the henhouse with Granny and her hickory switch."
They heard the sound of voices coming from the living-room area, and footsteps. Ryan and John had returned.
They walked into the kitchen, greeted all sitting at the table, then raided the refrigerator.
John began a.s.sembling ingredients from the cupboard and refrigerator, including a cuc.u.mber, some mint, ginger ale, and a bottle of some sort of alcohol from the bar. "Anyone for a Pimm"s?" he offered.
"Is it booze?" Tammy asked.
He smiled. "Most a.s.suredly."
"Then no. We"re working," she replied with utmost seriousness.
"So you teetotalers won"t go for a beer either?" Ryan asked as he pulled one out for himself.
"No way. Dulls the senses," Tammy said. "But I"ll take one of those herbal teas. They have ginseng. It helps me think clearly."
"By all means, get her two," Dirk whispered, low enough for only Savannah to hear.
Savannah kicked him under the table.
Ryan reached inside the refrigerator for the bottle of tea. "You got it, Tammy. Anybody else?"
"A c.o.ke for me," Waycross said. "Make it a Dr Pepper, if you"ve got one handy."
Still bent over, his head inside the refrigerator, Ryan looked around the door, bewildered. "Say what?"
Savannah translated. "Down where we come from, "c.o.ke" is sorta a generic term for all soft drinks. You gotta specify which one you want."
"O-o-o-kay." Ryan closed the door. "I"m fairly certain that I speak better Mandarin than I do Southern. I feel like I need one of those pocket translators when I"m with the Reid clan."
Ryan distributed the beverages, then popped his beer and took a long swig.
"Since when do you drink beer?" Savannah asked, watching him. "You"re more of a wine-sorta guy."
Ryan pointed to Dirk. "Your hubby there wore off on me."
Dirk grinned and shrugged. "What can I say? It was that hot day him and me were fixin" the faucet on the back of your house. I offered him one, and that"s all it took."
John walked up with his drink-an unusual-looking c.o.c.ktail, with a spear of cuc.u.mber for a stirrer.
"What the heck is that?" Savannah asked.
" "Tis a Pimm"s, love. Would you like to try it?"
"She"s working," Tammy interjected, just as Savannah had held out her hand to John.
Savannah pulled it back. "I guess not. I"m afraid I may have overtrained my a.s.sistant here."
"Well, I"m not working, and neither is his nibs there." John nodded toward Ryan as he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. "Though we certainly gave it the old heave-ho."
Everyone looked to Ryan for clarification. "We checked around, like you asked, and found that your friend William Northrop hasn"t hired any protection of any kind. At least not for the past year. So we asked him if he wanted to hire us as bodyguards. It seemed like a reasonable proposition, considering all that"s gone on around him lately."
"Wait a minute . . . you two actually went to see Northrop?" Savannah said, more than a little surprised.
"Knocked him up about half eleven," John said.
Again, they looked to Ryan.
"Dropped by his house at eleven-thirty. Presented our case to him. He said, "No," in no uncertain terms."
"Actually," John said, "a few of the terms he used when addressing us were distinctly rude."
Dirk cleared his throat. "I didn"t know you boys were that hard up for work. Things a little lean in the bodyguard biz right now?"
"Not at all," John replied. "We just wanted to get inside-infiltrate, if you will-and find out whatever we could about him."
"It"s just as well," Ryan said. "I didn"t feel so great about the plan anyway. I"ve never offered to protect someone with the express purpose of spying on him."
"True," Savannah said. "I"m pretty sure that"s on the list of "Bodyguard No-Nos." Don"t spy on your client and try to collect d.a.m.ning evidence against him."
"Here," Tammy said, "I"ve got directions for you to the motel where that weirdo is."
"What motel?" Ryan asked.
John set down his Pimm"s. "What weirdo?"
"A dude on the other side of the island," Dirk replied, "who thinks it"s okay to bomb laboratories. Stuff like that."
"We"re headed over to rattle his cage a bit," Savannah told them.
"You want some backup?" Ryan asked.
"I don"t think he"s that weird, but thanks for the offer," Savannah replied.
She heard the sound of shuffling, scurrying feet behind her and turned, knowing whose footsteps it was. That was a beloved sound-one she"d known since childhood.
"Granny," she said as her grandmother walked into the kitchen, shopping bags in each arm. "I thought you were in one of those cottages taking a nap."
In an instant, Ryan and John slid their alcoholic beverages beneath the edge of the table. Gran was h.e.l.l on "demon rum." She felt pretty much the same way about beer, wine, margaritas, and daiquiris-even though she had been known to order a Shirley Temple served in a pineapple, with a little paper umbrella, when she was out of town. She would splurge and order one of those concoctions when she wasn"t in any danger of being spotted by her minister"s wife.
Well trained by Gran and Savannah, respectively, Waycross and Dirk jumped up to relieve Gran of her burden. They set the sacks on the counter and returned to the table.
Immediately Gran dug in and started taking out grocery items and putting them in the refrigerator and inside the cupboards. "Can you believe," she said indignantly, "that there"s nary a box o" grits on this entire island? I know, "cause I had that taxi driver take me to all six grocery stores before I finally gave up the search."
"You were out running errands in a cab?" Ryan asked. "You should have asked one of us to drive you."
"That"s okay," she said. "I made good friends with my driver. He was a nice feller. Named Jesus, but p.r.o.nounced it "Hay-soos." Reckon you gotta be a decent person if you"ve got a name like that."
"I thought you were out by the pool reading your paper," Waycross told her.
"And I thought you were out taking a stroll somewhere in the neighborhood," Tammy added.
"No time for that rigmarole when the kitchen"s got no grits in it," Gran replied. "That"s not all I did either. Wait"ll you see what I"ve got for you."
"The fixin"s for cornbread?" Savannah guessed.
"Oh, way better than that."
Her groceries put away, Granny hurried over to the table and pulled her cell phone out of her purse.
She was grinning so broadly that Savannah knew her surprise was going to be something of consequence. Gran had lived too long to get excited or ruffled over trivialities.
"Whatcha got there, Gran?" Dirk asked as she held the phone between him and Savannah so they could see the small screen.
"Just some pictures I took."
Savannah leaned over and squinted at the phone, half-expecting to see a touristy picture of seagulls or boats in the harbor. But it was of a car. A large black sedan. With someone in it.
"How do I send this thing to you so you can see it there on your computer?" Gran asked Tammy.
Tammy reached for the phone. "May I?"
"Sure." Gran placed it in her hand.
Tammy"s thumbs flew over the tiny keyboard.
They heard a couple of beeps and a catchy five-note tune. Then Tammy handed it back to Gran.
Tammy turned back to her computer, brought up a new window, and clicked. There was Gran"s picture on the screen, large enough to see all the details.
"It"s that contrary chief of police, La Cross," Savannah said. "I"d know her sour puss anywhere."
"Yep. I saw her and remembered what you said about her. Figured it was her," Gran replied, toying with her phone again.
"You spotted the chief and knew it was her, based on what little I told you about her?" Savannah asked, incredulous.
She was starting to think maybe she"d received some sort of "detecting gene" from the Reid side of the family.
"Partly that," Gran said, "but it was also what she was doing at the time I took that picture."
Everyone looked at the picture again. This time, Savannah saw that Chief La Cross had something in her hand.
"What"s that she"s holdin" there?" Waycross asked, pointing to the screen.
Tammy cropped the area of the photo around the chief"s hand and zoomed in on it.
"Yes, it"s definitely a phone," Tammy said, "but she"s not talking on it."
"She"s taking a picture," Dirk added.
Gran chuckled and looked terribly pleased with herself. "She most certainly is. Wait"ll you see this other one."