Savannah Reid 12 - Fat Free and Fatal Read Free Page B

owned—with a fierce loyalty that bordered on psychosis. He never threw away anything .
    He recycled paper towels!
    With a smug look on his face and a swagger in his step, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter continued to escort his prisoner back toward the parked Buick, bringing a stunned Savannah in tow.
    Lordy be! Granny Reid’s right , she thought. Wonders never cease!

Chapter 2
     
    G ranny Reid was right about something else, Savannah decided when she took a bite of fried chicken: Soaking the pieces in buttermilk before cooking it did make it melt in your mouth. And the groans of appreciation from the others sitting around Savannah’s dining table provided supporting testimony to the fact.
    Even Tammy Hart, Savannah’s friend and assistant in her detective agency, had set aside her usual healthy, vegetarian lifestyle and was violating her conscience with a juicy drumstick. She had arrived for the dinner party an hour ago, wearing a red silk kimono, her long blond hair pulled back and fastened with a pair of lacquered chopsticks. But now the sleeves of the elegant garment were rolled up to her elbows, and she was gnawing on the chicken leg like any other shameless carnivore. “Savannah, this is the best fried chicken I’ve eaten in ages,” she said, laying the bare bone aside and reaching for a wing.
    “Eh, it’s the only chicken you’ve eaten in ages.”
    “That’s true, but it’s still the best I’ve had since…since…?”
    “Since the last time you ate Savannah’s fried chicken,” said Ryan Stone, the reason for the dinner and the inspiration for Tammy’s haute couture.
    The tall, dark, and fibrillation-inducing Ryan was turning a year older, and Savannah had invited her closest circle of friends to celebrate—an intimate little sphere that just happened to encompass the members of her Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency and no one else.
    Savannah had never experienced even the slightest difficulty in drawing a line between her work and her personal life. It was quite simple: she had no personal life.
    And other than one sainted grandmother and a batch of crazy siblings, whom she had left behind in Georgia, and the two black cats who were doing figure eights between her ankles, begging for table scraps, the people around her table constituted her family.
    Them…and Dirk, who was conspicuously absent.
    Dirk never passed up the opportunity to eat a free meal, and especially one of Savannah’s.
    “I can’t believe Dirko isn’t here,” Tammy said. “And more than that, I can’t believe I actually miss him.” She washed down the final bite of chicken with a long drink of lemonade, made with real sugar—the plain old, refined, and much maligned white stuff.
    Lots of it.
    Savannah put only slightly less sugar in her lemonade than she did her iced tea.
    Yes, Tammy was compromising her virtue right and left, in honor of Ryan Stone. Like all women between the ages of eight and eighty-eight, Tammy had fallen for Ryan within the first three seconds of setting eyes on him. And his courtly manners, countless kindnesses, and impeccable style did nothing to dispel the enchantment. She was totally, hopelessly hooked and too young to hide it.
    Unlike Savannah, solidly into her forties, who was the epitome of “cool” around him. “Ryan, you darlin’ birthday boy,” she said, shoving an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes under his nose. “You eat up now! I won’t have you fainting dead away from hunger out there in the street after having supper at my house.” Savannah blushed slightly, hearing the adolescent titter in her own voice. He reached for the bowl, his fingers brushed hers, and she nearly dropped the spuds in his lap.
    So much for “cool” in face of male perfection.
    But Ryan was kind, as always, and pretended not to notice. It didn’t become a demigod to react to mere female mortals slavering at his feet.
    “Yes, I’m surprised to find that I miss the old boy, too,” John Gibson agreed.