It also struck Savannah that both the person who had designed this costume, as well as the one who had decided that this young lady should wear it, were well aware of the clothing’s limitations—or benefits.
Savannah gave Dirk a sideways glance and saw his eyes flit, ever so briefly, over the outfit and then lock on the maid’s face. She had to give the guy some major points for professionalism. Better than anyone, she knew his predilection for French maid and cheerleader garb.
“Hello. May I help you?” the maid asked in a breathless, half-panting voice that sounded like it was straight from an 800-Call-to-Talk-Dirty phone line. She ran her fingers through her long hair and then shifted her weight from one foot to another, sticking her hip out to one side in what she undoubtedly thought was a sexy pose.
A quick look at Dirk told Savannah that he thought so, too.
His eyes bugged out just a bit as he looked her up and down one more time. But he cleared his throat, and apparently his mind, because he managed to dig out his badge, flip it open under her nose, and say with only the slightest squeak, “I’m Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter, San Carmelita Police Department. This is my colleague, Savannah Reid. We received a call that you have a problem here tonight. Is there a Ms. O’Neil around?”
The maid glanced uneasily over her shoulder. “Uh, yes, but…”
Savannah could hear a woman’s angry voice deep inside the house, and a man’s, too. They sounded as though they were arguing.
Dirk looked past the maid and tried to see into the massive foyer behind her. “Is that Ms. O’Neil I hear?” he asked. He didn’t wait for an answer. “I need to talk to her right now.”
He gave his best, most authoritative cop wave of the hand, and predictably, the young woman stood aside to allow them in. Savannah decided then and there that the maid was more legs and hair than backbone. But she cut her some slack. After all, when she’d been that age, her composition had been much the same.
Hey, she thought, you live and you learn, and you eventually learn how to stand up on your hind legs and roar…like at abusive jerks in supermarkets.
She grinned at the fresh and refreshing memory as she followed Dirk into the mansion. A vision of her would-be assailant lying on the floor, soaking in a marinade of ketchup, pickle juice, and balsamic vinegar, brought a grin to her face and a resolution to her heart.
I simply must do that more often, she thought before pulling her mind back to the business at hand.
The two-story foyer was depressingly large…depressing only because it occurred to Savannah that she could probably put her entire house inside its confines and still have room to park her Mustang, Dirk’s Buick, and Tammy’s VW bug. But even in her downhearted state, she had to admit it was impressive. From the marble floors to the turned oak staircase with its curved railings to the stained-glass rotunda ceiling, this architectural introduction to Dante’s domain said it all.
Andrew Dante had it all.
Or at least, one might say more than his share of it all.
If it just hadn’t been for the pink walls.
They weren’t a delicate, apple blossom pink. They weren’t a hint of smoky pink.
Nope, not even close to anything that could be called classy, Savannah thought. The walls were the color of the medicine that Granny Reid had dispensed by the bottleful over the years, curing everything from stomachaches to adolescent crabbiness. And while it might have been a welcome color to a person suffering from what Gran called “the green apple quick step,” it didn’t belong on walls. And certainly not the walls of a magnificent mansion.
They passed through the foyer and into a great room, following the ever escalating sound of the argument. Again, Savannah was struck by the sheer enormity of the room. The fireplace to her right was large enough for even a tall person to stand inside. And she could see at least three distinct seating groupings: one around the hearth, another near an ornately carved bar to the left, and another at the far end of the room, close to a nine-foot concert grand piano.
But for all its grandeur, the pink curse seemed to have infected this room as well. The walls were a slightly less vulgar shade of pink, but the furniture was upholstered in shockingly bright raspberry velvet.
Again, Savannah wondered who might be the source of this decorating nightmare. But her curiosity was satisfied when she saw a life-sized painting that hung over the fireplace.
The oil was of a pretty, if somewhat haughty-looking, young woman in a ball gown, her platinum blond hair spilling over her bare shoulders. The voluminous dress gave the impression that its wearer was floating in a cloud of organza…bright pink, of course. And in the painting’s background was a garden of roses, again every unnatural shade of pink imaginable.
Something told Savannah that the teenager in the painting had been responsible for choosing the color scheme for this palatial home.
And definitely should not have been, she added to herself, as they hurried past islands of velvet, diamond-tucked furniture to the other end of the room where the woman and man stood arguing beside the piano.
“The cops are going to be here any minute now,” the tall, blond Viking of a man was telling a tiny redhead who glared up at him with clenched fists and a look of fury on her tear-wet face. “And I’m going to have you arrested for…oh, I don’t know…disturbing my peace or something like that. I told you to get out of here or—”
“I am not leaving here until I’ve spoken to that no-good brat of a daughter of yours. I want to know what she’s done with my Daisy, and don’t tell me she isn’t here because I saw her look out her upstairs bedroom window when I drove up.”
“It wasn’t her,” he said. “It was probably one of her friends or a maid or whatever. And it doesn’t matter anyhow whether she’s here or not because I’ve already talked to her, and she said she doesn’t have a clue where Daisy is.”
“She’s a liar! A rotten, spoiled brat, dirty little liar. She’s hurt Daisy. Those girls have hurt her and—”
The blond man was handsome, his features fine and chiseled, his physique muscular beneath his polo shirt and designer jeans, but his face turned ugly with anger at the insult. He took a step closer to the redhead just as Dirk and Savannah reached them. “You better watch your mouth when you’re talking about my daughter! Tiffy’s a good person who’s done a lot for your kid! A whole lot! And you don’t appreciate it! Why I ought to—”
“No! Hold it right there!” Dirk said as he took hold of the man’s arm. With his other hand, he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his badge, and held it practically under the man’s nose. “You called the police? Well, we’re here. So everybody just settle down till we get this all ironed out. What’s going on around here?”
“My daughter is missing,” the red-haired woman said as she started to cry. She covered her eyes with her hands for a moment and let the sobs overtake her. Then, after ten seconds or so, she recovered herself and managed to say, “My Daisy is gone, and she would never have just disappeared on her own like this. Those girls she hangs out with…those pampered, rotten girls…they’ve done something bad to her. I just know it! They’ve always treated her like dirt, made fun of her, used her, and acted like they were way better than her because she doesn’t have their money. And now, now I know they’ve hurt her. They’ve done something horrible to her. I can just feel it.”
When she dissolved into tears again, Dirk gave Savannah a helpless look—the one he always gave her when he had a crying female on his hands.
Dirk didn’t particularly mind if a male perpetrator was screaming with fury or blubbering like a kindergartner who had just been told there was no Santa. But when it came to weeping women, Dirk caved every time.
Savannah reached