Although, watching her sister ogle her new hubby, Savannah was reminded of a few milk cows she’d known on neighboring farms in Georgia. The same shining eyes, the same gentle spirit, the same quiet acceptance, generosity, and quiet resignation—all the result of having a single-digit IQ.
Jesup had always been a bit ditzy, a little melancholy of disposition, a tad shy of the good sense possessed by most tennis balls. But this was a new low, even for her.
“Did the two of you meet in Vegas?” Tammy asked, sprightly, feigning fascination.
“Yes! At the Blood Fest,” Jesup replied. “It was wonderful! Four full, beautiful days.” She looked up at Bleak and batted her spiky eyelashes that were caked with clumpy, red mascara. “And four wonderful nights, as well,” she added.
“So, Bleak…” Savannah said, helping herself to another brownie. It was going to take a lot of carbs to get her serotonin level up after this shock. She walked over to her comfy chair and lowered herself into it with a weary sigh. “…tell us about yourself.”
Bleak fingered the stud sticking out of the right side of his nose and said, “Sure. Whatcha wanna know?”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“When is your birthday?”
“January thirteenth. Why? Are you going to send me a birthday card?”
Oh yeah, Savannah thought. Right after I run a check on you and see what sort of a record you’ve got, you jackass. Then she reminded herself that, other than his bizarre personal grooming, she hadn’t really seen anything too objectionable in ol’ Bleak. Keep an open mind, Savannah, she told herself. At least until you get that report back with his arm-long rap sheet and find out that he’s a serial killer.
“Do you have a last name, Bleak? Or is it just Bleak, like Cher and Madonna and—”
“Yeah. Manifest.”
“Manifest.” Savannah stared at him for a long time. In her peripheral vision she could see Tammy squirm and shoot her a warning look to “be nice.” She could also hear Granny Reid’s voice deep in her heart telling her to assume the best about people until they showed you the worst. Although, she was pretty sure that the minute Gran saw this guy, she’d call the elders of her church over to lay hands on him and cast out the devils out of him.
“So…” she said, “…about thirty-three years ago, Mr. and Mrs. Manifest had a beautiful, bouncing baby boy, and they looked down at him in his bassinet and said, ‘Now, ain’t he just the cutest thing you ever did see? Let’s name this precious little bundle of joy “Bleak.”’ Is that what you’re telling us?”
Bleak returned her level stare. “Nope. Bleak Manifest is a name of my own choosing. It better describes my view of this prison sentence we call life.”
“It describes it better than…?”
He hesitated. And Jesup filled in the blank. “Better than Milton Pillsbury.”
Savannah checked him out again, the makeup, tattoos, piercings, the rattlesnake boots. Yes, Bleak Manifest did suit him a lot better than Milton Pillsbury. She had to agree with him there.
She wondered what he looked like under all that makeup. Oh, well, she thought, I’ll find out when I see his mug shot.
“And are you from Las Vegas originally?”
He laughed. “Nobody’s from Vegas originally. My family is in Barstow. They own the biggest mortuary there.”
“I’ll bet they do. And is that the line of work you’re in?”
“No. I’m in school.”
“To be…?”
“I want to run a body farm.”
“A body farm.” She glanced over at Tammy, who nearly choked on her mineral water. “Do you mean a body farm, as in, forensic research?”
His eyes blazed with interest. And to her dismay, so did Jesup’s. Suddenly, they both came alive with passion.
Bleak scooted forward to the edge of the sofa. “Yeah! Me and Jess are going to have our own body farm, there in the desert outside Vegas. I’ve already got the property picked out. It’ll be perfect. Lots of wildlife to scavenge the corpses and hot enough that the decomposition rate will be—”
Savannah held up her traffic-cop palm. “Okay, Okay. Gotcha. I’ve been to body farms before…far more frequently than I’ve wanted to.”
“Really? Wow!” Bleak was practically dancing in his black leather pants. “Oh man! That’s so cool. When Jess told me about you, that you’re a homicide investigator, I told her, ‘Hey, I gotta meet this sister of yours.’ And that’s when we decided we’d spend our honeymoon here with you. Do you have any cool pictures of murder scenes? Stuff like that? Could we, like, go with you on some of your investigations, you know, before they actually clean up the scenes and—?”
“Whoa! Hold on a minute. In the first place, I’m not a ‘homicide investigator.’ I’m a private investigator.”
“Who usually investigates homicides,” Tammy said.
Savannah gave her a dirty look. “You aren’t helping here, Tamitha.”
Tammy giggled. “Sorry.”
“And…” Savannah continued, “…it’s usually all I can do to get myself onto a scene before it’s ‘cleaned up,’ as you say. There’s no way I could get you onto an unprocessed crime scene. That’s illegal and, to be frank, it wouldn’t be half as much fun as you think it would be.”
Bleak and Jesup looked at each other, totally confused. “But why not?” Jesup asked Savannah.
“Why not what?”
“Why wouldn’t it be fun?”
“Yeah!” Bleak added. “I think it would be great! I mean to see it firsthand, the blood and guts and brain matter and—”
“Oh, for pete’s sake.” Savannah shook her head. “What’s the matter with you two chuckleheads? There’s nothing fun or great or cool about somebody being murdered. It’s the most horrific thing that can ever happen! Ever!” She jumped up from her chair, walked over and snatched the plate of brownies out from under their noses. “You guys are disgusting, and I’ve had just about enough of this conversation.”
“Hey,” Jesup said, grabbing her lemonade and holding it close to her chest before Savannah could nab it, too. “Death is what life is all about. We’re all going to die someday. That’s where we’re all headed.”
“Yeah.” Bleak nodded so hard that his gelled hair nearly budged. “We’re all going to be moldering in a grave someday, just like those bodies on the body farm. Might as well get used to the idea.”
“Get used to the idea, yes,” Savannah agreed. “But we don’t have to wallow in it like a bunch of hogs in a mud ditch. Death is not what life is about. Life is what life’s about.”
Tammy cleared her throat. “And besides,” she said, “not all of us are going to molder in a grave somewhere, monopolizing valuable land resources. Personally, I’m being cremated. It’s far more environmentally conscious. Do you know, I read that cemeteries take up—”
“Oh, shut up, Tammy.” Plate of brownies in hand, Savannah stomped off into the kitchen.
Once she was gone, Tammy snickered. “Sorry,” she said. “Savannah’s had a rough day. Someone was murdered at Dona Papalardo’s estate nearby here, and she’s helping with the investigation.”
Jesup shrugged. “Eh…you don’t have to apologize to me for my big sister. She always was cranky and bossy.”
Bleak