Read Online A Decadent Way to Die by G.A. McKevett - Free Book Online Page A

sure she’s a bit of a factor. When you’ve got somebody in your life, someone you love, who’s older, but full of life and vital, it makes you realize how disrespectfully our senior citizens are treated.”
“Yeah,” Dirk said, “and the older you get, the more you realize you’re gonna be in the same boat someday. It makes you think.”
Tammy nodded in solemn agreement. “That’s so true. And speaking of Granny Reid, when is she coming to see us again? I miss her.”
Savannah wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked to the refrigerator. She reached inside and took out a pitcher of tea. “Not for a while. She started taking a class on art appreciation at the community college over in Halderville, and that’s filled up all her spare time.”
Tammy sighed. “I hope I’m like her when I’m her age.”
“Heck,” Savannah said, “I’d be happy to be like her at my age.”
Savannah poured herself a large glass of tea and tossed in some ice cubes. Then she joined Dirk and Tammy at the table.
“You know,” Dirk said, “even if the lab finds something in those samples, we’re not going to be able to nail anybody with just that and some loose dirt on a path.”
“I know.” Savannah traced the top of the frosty glass with her fingertip. “But it’s a start.”
“What did the gardener have to say about that soft spot on the road?” Tammy asked, glancing at her watch.
“We showed it to him when he was taking us to the house,” Savannah said. “He acted like it was the first time he’d seen it or heard anything about it.”
“Did you believe him?”
Savannah shrugged. “I guess. I swear people are better at lying than they used to be. It’s getting harder and harder to tell.”
“But if the gardener rescued her off the cliff,” Tammy reasoned, “and the trench was the cause of her accident, it would have still been there. It seems like he would have seen it.”
“She says she hung there on the cliff for half an hour, yelling for somebody to help her before he came along,” Dirk said. “Whoever dug it in the first place would have had enough time to fill it back in.”
Savannah nodded. “If I’d set up an accident like that, I wouldn’t be able to resist hanging around in the bushes somewhere, waiting to see if it worked.”
Dirk walked over to the waste can and disposed of his drumstick bone. Pulling some paper towels off the roll, he said, “It wouldn’t take more than two minutes to shovel that dirt back in place and stomp it down.”
He wiped his fingers and his face, then pitched the towels into the garbage. “He could have had everything looking normal before the gardener even heard her cries for help.”
“Or the gardener himself could have done it all,” Tammy said. “He may have set her up, and then changed his mind when he heard her yelling and pulled her off the cliff.”
Savannah shook her head. “I doubt it. Why go to all that trouble and risk your own life to save her if you’re just going to poison her later?”
“I didn’t like his wife,” Dirk said. “She acted hinky when she first saw us.”
“Yeah.” Savannah took a sip of tea. “And I heard her say something on the phone in Spanish. It sounded like, ‘be careful what you say.’”
“A lot of people are paranoid. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve broken the law,” Tammy said, glancing up at Savannah’s cat clock with its swinging tail and rolling eyes.
“You got someplace you gotta be, sugar?” Savannah asked her.
Tammy grinned. “Actually, someone’s dropping by in a few minutes to get me.”
Savannah was all ears. “Oh? Someone special? Like maybe that new boyfriend we keep hearing about?”
Blushing, Tammy nodded. “Yeah … but you have to be nice to him.”
“Nice?” Dirk said. “We have to be nice? To heck with ‘nice.’ How much fun would that be?”
“We’ll be absolutely adorable to your new honey-bunny,” Savannah said, kicking Dirk under the table. “I’ll give him cookies