“I mean, do people who live in a place, like say, that one there…”—he pointed to a sprawling Tudor mansion on their right—“…do they actually bring home a bucket of chicken when everybody’s too tired to cook? Or do they eat pheasant under glass every night?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation again. We both agreed last time that very few people actually have pheasant under glass for dinner anymore. And no, I’m not going to try to make it for you. Ever. Barbecued game hens are the closest I’ll ever come.”
He didn’t reply, and they sat in silence for a while until she added, “And to be honest, I’m plum confused as to why you, of all people, would even give a hoot about a fancy schmancy dish like that. You’re more of a hot dog and hamburger guy. What’s with this obsession you have about pheasant under glass?”
He shrugged and looked mildly uncomfortable. “I don’t want to tell you. You’ll laugh.”
“So what? I always laugh at you. Spit it out. What is it?”
“It’s a James Bond thing, okay?”
“James Bond?”
“Yeah, I read somewhere or heard that he likes it, like it’s his favorite dish or whatever. And you know I’m a big fan of his.”
She shook her head and stared at him. “I never heard that.”
“Well, believe it or not, Miss Smarty Pants, you don’t know as much about some stuff as I do.”
“Besides, James Bond is a fictional character. Do you mean Sean Connery likes it?”
“No, I mean James Bond. Never mind. I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“Lord help us,” she mumbled under her breath. “Next thing you know, he’ll want his beer shaken, not stirred.”
She rolled down her window to let in some of the fresh evening air and to release some of the less refreshing aromas of the burger and taco wrappers that he had tossed onto the back floorboard. Pheasant under glass, indeed.
“I want to talk about this case,” she said. “Like, why are we going to Dante’s mansion rather than this Daisy O’Neil’s house?”
“Because her mother called 9-1-1 from Dante’s, said she wasn’t leaving there until they told her where to find her daughter. She’s convinced that the other girls had something to do with Daisy’s disappearance, and she’s causing a big stink about it.”
“Seems like Dante would have been the one calling the cops if she’s harassing him on his own property.”
“Yeah, you’d think so. We may wind up having to toss her out of there if we can’t settle her down.”
“The thought of ‘tossing’ a worried mother anywhere doesn’t exactly agree with me,” Savannah said. “If I had kids and one went missing, I’d be beside myself. I lost one of my kid sisters—I think it was Atlanta—in a Wal-Mart one Sunday afternoon for twenty minutes, and I about went out of my mind imagining what might have happened to her.”
“Yeah, that’s just gotta be the worst. The absolutely worst thing that can happen to a parent…having a kid go missing. But this gal will turn up. I can feel it.”
She sniffed. “Oh yes, the infamous, infallible Coulter intuition.”
“Hey, don’t knock it. My instinct has gotten you out of some nasty jams over the years.”
“And gotten me into plenty of them, too.”
“Be that as it may.”
They rounded a curve, and on a separate hill above them and to the left was the most magnificent mansion Savannah had ever seen. Crowning the hill, the palatial home looked like a cross between a Tuscan country villa and the Acropolis.
Illuminated by exquisitely placed architectural lighting, the limestone façade glowed golden against the darkening twilit sky. Arched and shuttered windows, some two and three stories tall, reached to ornate eaves and a red-tiled roof.
They drove through an avenue of giant, mature oaks that momentarily obscured the view of the house. Something about their black, gnarled trunks and the way their thick foliage blocked out even the last rays of the fading sunlight gave Savannah a creepy feeling. She felt like she was watching the prelude to some sort of horror movie as they passed between them.
But the sense of foreboding left the moment they exited the oaks and entered the circular motor court. Giant palm trees danced in the evening breeze, throwing lacy shadows across the front of the mansion, and in the center of the court, a four-tiered marble fountain was lit with golden floodlights. The water that cascaded from layer to layer sparkled like streams of liquid topaz.
“Wow, I heard about this place when they were building it two years ago,” she said, “but I had no idea it was so grand! Glory be, what a spread!”
“Eh,” Dirk replied. “My trailer looks this good when the neighbor’s mutt runs too close to my front door and the outdoor security light flips on. It’s all done with lighting.”
“Yeah, right.”
They parked in the court between a new Porsche convertible and an older rusty and dented minivan. On the van’s bumper was a faded sticker that read “My Kid Is On the S.C.H.S. Honor Roll.”
“Something tells me that van belongs to Daisy O’Neil’s mom,” Savannah said. “I can’t imagine the guy who lives in this place driving it. And I’m sure they’d expect any servants who owned that to park around back and out of sight.”
Dirk nodded. “And from what I’ve read about her, I don’t think Miss Tiffy would be caught dead in any vehicle that didn’t cost as much as your house and my trailer combined.”
Savannah recalled the appraised value of her own house on her last tax statement and added twenty-five cents for Dirk’s single-wide monstrosity that still had vestiges of dinosaur poop on its tires. “No,” she said, “I doubt that she would.”
They left the Buick and walked across the granite-paved courtyard, through a gracefully arched colonnade, to a wrought iron double door. The delicate iron work formed two letters—a T on the left and a D on the right.
“Andrew Dante,” Savannah mumbled, mulling the initials over in her mind. “Should be an A, not a T.”
They both looked at each other with raised eyebrows. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “He put his kid’s initials on his door?”
“Maybe his wife’s name is Tiffy, or something equally stupid that starts with a T.”
“Or he’s a doting father. An extremely doting father.”
“That would explain some of the stories I’ve read in the tabloids. To hear them tell it, she’s a brat who gets everything she wants and then some.”
Savannah pushed the button next to the door and heard the Westminster Chimes echo inside. “Ah, don’t believe everything you read. Rich people get a bad rap just because everybody’s jealous of them. Some of the nicest, most humble, and most generous people I’ve ever known were rich.”
“Naw. I hate ’em all. You can’t be a decent person and be rich.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Coulter…there isn’t one single solitary group of people under the sun that you trust, respect, or like.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Is, too.”
“Is not. I like dogs.”
The door opened, and a tiny woman in her early twenties stood there in a black