This time, she meant it literally, because the estate was perched at the top of one of the island's highest peaks. From here they could see, literally, from one end of the island to the other.

Even their lighthouse looked small from such a distance.

And far, far away, across the glittering blue waters, just above the gray morning haze, she could see the faint outline of the California coastline.

"Harrumph," Dirk grumbled as he shoved his wallet back into his rear jeans pocket. "That was cold, hard cash down the toilet. Our golf cart could've made it up here."

Savannah scanned the distance between the distant light, then figured in the steep incline. They were at least fifteen hundred feet above sea level.

She turned back to him and said, "Boy, sometimes I think all your cups ain't in the cupboard."

He laughed. "You could be right." Nodding toward the nearest and largest building, he said, "Let's get this show on the road. I think I smell some of your granny's cinnamon rolls baking."

She sniffed the breeze and, sure enough, that delicious aroma was in the air. She'd know it anywhere.

"You're right. Let's hustle before they're all gone!"

Half an hour later, the entire Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency was sitting at the edge of the infinity pool, enjoying the view and what remained of Granny's cinnamon rolls.

As Savannah lifted one of the soft, fragrant pastries to her mouth and bit into it, feeling the b.u.t.tery frosting coat her upper lip, she thought, I didn't have a chance in h.e.l.l to be skinny.

Yes, being born into a family of cooks like the Reids, she was cursed-or blessed, depending on one's point of view-with what Victorian women had lovingly termed their "silken layer." That thin layer of cushioning between the bones and skin gave them the beautiful, feminine softness so highly prized during that era.

When bombarded with media images that might cause her to feel insecure about her size, Savannah simply reminded herself that she wasn't fat. She'd simply been born in the wrong century. Silken layer? Heck, thanks to generations of tasty family cooking, she had a whole duvet!

"I've got Northrop's address," Tammy was saying as she sat on the edge of the cabana bed, her handheld device on her lap.

Savannah couldn't help noticing how lovely she looked-for a gal with no trace of a silken layer anywhere-in her white bikini and the gauzy aqua sarong she had tied low on her waist.

Savannah also couldn't help noticing that her brother was watching Tammy, taking in the view, like how the breeze lifted the skirt of her sarong, revealing perfectly toned and tanned legs.

Yes, Savannah thought, "little" brother Waycross is a goner. That's all there is to it.

"I'd be happy to have William Northrop's address," Savannah said, "because that's where we're headed next."

"Yeah," Dirk added. "Let's see how happy he is with the investigation the cops are doing of his wife's death."

"While you're at it," Ryan said, "maybe you can get some details about his own shooting."

Ryan was sitting on a chaise, several feet away, wearing sleek black swim trunks. Being a married woman now, Savannah was trying not to notice as he rubbed sunblock on his arms and legs.

Over the years, Savannah had never even tried to deny that Ryan looked like a Greek G.o.d, or that she had shamelessly l.u.s.ted after him from the moment she had first set eyes on him.

But since she wasn't his type-not even in the most basic way-and since he had been devoted to John for many, many years now, she hadn't gone too far down that mental road. Why torture yourself, craving things you couldn't have . . . like a wild affair with a gay Adonis or eating a chocolate truffle from Lyon, France, every morning for breakfast?

Now that she had Dirk's ring on her finger, she was determined to do her best to stay off that path into fantasyland. After all, if Dirk could keep his eyes off Tammy's perfect little bod, she figured she should do the same with Ryan's.

"How can we help with your investigation, love?" John asked Savannah as he took a sip of his morning tea. "As charming as this setting may be, we're here to a.s.sist you, not spend our day bone-idle, dossing by the pool the entire time."

"There's one thing you can do," Dirk said. "You guys are the top o' the food chain when it comes to celebrity security."

Savannah smiled. Dirk had a way of boiling things down to one succinct and usually offensive phrase. In fact, Ryan and John were highly respected and extremely well-paid bodyguards, guarding some of the best known bodies in Hollywood. Having both been FBI agents in a previous life, they brought a great deal of investigation and surveillance expertise to the job.

They were always in high demand, and Savannah was enormously grateful that they a.s.sisted her anytime she asked and never accepted any form of compensation . . . except gifts from her kitchen, which she was more than happy to supply in abundance.

"Since you know everybody who's anybody in the bodyguard biz," Dirk was prattling on, "maybe you could find out if the Northrops hired any protection after William himself got shot."

Ryan nodded thoughtfully. "That's a good point. He can certainly afford that sort of thing. And if someone had made an attempt on my life like that, I'd be shopping around for some security."

"If they had security," John added, "the blokes surely didn't do an adequate job of it, considering what happened to that poor la.s.s there on the beach."

The thought of Amelia Northrop lying in the sand, the life going out of her beautiful eyes, spurred Savannah to action.

"We need to get going," she said, standing and gathering up her cup and plate. "I can't wait to hear what Northrop's got to say about all this. I hate intruding on him in his time of grief, but that's the way it's gotta be."

Dirk stood, too. "I guess it's time to call that taxi service again. We're gonna spend a king's ransom gettin' around this island before all's said and done."

"Don't bother with that rubbish," John said, rising and reaching into the pocket of his linen slacks. "Our friend said we're more than welcome to use the three motorcars in the garage. We've no use for more than two."

He pulled out a set of keys and handed them to Dirk. When Dirk took them, he glanced down at the distinctive logo on the key chain. "Holy cow! A Jaguar?"

"You're trusting him with a Jag?" Savannah asked as she wondered whether she could s.n.a.t.c.h the keys from Dirk's hand while holding a cup and plate. She decided she couldn't. Taking the keys to a luxury vehicle from any male was a risky venture, at best.

"Not just any Jag," Ryan said. "A perfectly restored 1972 E-type coupe. Red. Black interior. Smokin' hot."

"I'm sure Dirk will show all due diligence while operating this wonderful piece of machinery," John said, his steely gray eyes boring into Dirk's. "Any sort of careless accident in our friend's fine vehicle could prove fatal."

Dirk chuckled. "If not at the scene, then later, huh?"

"Precisely." John turned to Savannah. "You should fare well on these roads. No lorries or jam sandwiches."

When John returned to his tea drinking, Dirk leaned down and whispered to Ryan, "Lorries? Jam sandwiches? You wanna translate that for us?"

"Trucks and highway patrolmen," Ryan replied, smoothing on more sunscreen. "What's the matter, Coulter? Don't you speak British?"

Dirk shook his head and sighed. "h.e.l.l, it's not enough I'm bilingual and speak Southern?"

As Savannah pa.s.sed through the main cottage, heading for the garage and their newly acquired transportation, she found Granny lounging in the living room in a large wicker chair, her feet propped on an ottoman, her favorite reading material in her lap-the Bible and a supermarket tabloid magazine.

That combination had always puzzled Savannah. They seemed like opposite ends of the reading spectrum in so many ways. But who was she to tell an octogenarian what to read? Granny considered both publications the absolute, gospel truth, and wasn't ever likely to believe differently.

Savannah glanced at the tabloid cover and found its headline most informative: MAJOR MOVIE STAR HAS ALIEN BABY.

To prove their story, the publishers splashed across the cover a picture of the greenish baby in the arms of its glamorous mother.

Yes, Savannah thought, Granny's a complex, multifaceted woman.

"We missed you at the meeting," Savannah said as she leaned over and kissed her grandmother on the top of her silver hair.

"I figured I'd done my do, supplyin' the rolls," Gran said, turning the page of the magazine. "I'll see if I can help Tammy on the computer later when she's lookin' up your bad guys for you. Yesterday, she taught me how to do something called 'browse.' You should try it yourself."

Savannah smiled lovingly down at her. "I'll have to do that sometime, Gran."

Granny flipped another page, squinting through her gla.s.ses at the print. "Yep. You can find out all sorts o' stuff on that-there Internet. They got directions to places, recipes, stories about everybody you ever heard tale of, all sorts of things."

"They do, at that."

"But you can't believe ever'thing you read on there. Some of it's made-up hogwash."

"Do tell?"

"Yessiree. Why, one article I run across said that the North Pole's gonna plumb melt away one o' these days if we don't stop sprayin' too much o' that underarm-deodorant stuff."

"Hmmm."

"Now, who in their right mind would believe a bunch of hooey like that?" She turned the page and snapped to attention. "Hey! Look at this! They finally got a real honest-to-goodness picture of Bigfoot! Wanna see it?"

Chapter 12.

As Savannah drove the Jaguar up yet another of Santa Tesla's steep-and-twisting hill roads, the automobile purred like a giant red panther hugging every curve. She shivered with delight, feeling the s.e.xy surge of adrenaline race through her bloodstream.

Dirk, on the other hand, wasn't so happy.

He was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat, his arms crossed over his chest, a pout on his face. He hadn't said more than three sentences since they'd left. And those three sentences had been: "Give me back those keys, woman! d.a.m.n it, Savannah, I never got to drive a Jag before!" And . . . "If you don't give them back to me in the next five seconds, it's gonna put a serious damper on this honeymoon."

Reckon I'd best throw him an olive branch, she thought, or this is gonna be a long, gloomy day.

"I'll let you drive when we leave, okay?" she said. "Just help me find this address. We should be there soon."

Dead silence.

"Come on. Don't be a sourpuss. You got to drive the golf cart first."

"You can't compare a stupid golf cart with a 1972 Jaguar E-type!" he spat out, breaking his vow of silence. "And you nearly broke my hand jerking those keys outta it. That's gotta be the rudest thing you ever did to me, Savannah. And considering our rocky relationship, that's saying something."

"Okay," she muttered under her breath. "Just throw my olive branch in the wood chipper, would ya?"

She decided, then and there, that she wouldn't utter another word to him until Satan took up ice-skating....

"Since when is our relationship rocky?" she snapped back. "This morning, I was the love of your life."

She had never been good at the "Silent Treatment." Mostly because it required being silent.

"That was before you broke my hand."

"Your hand isn't broken. A manly man like yourself doesn't break that easily. And stick your bottom lip in before I roll it up like a window shade."

She glanced down at the bit of paper in her lap and compared the number written on it to the bra.s.s numbers mounted on a stone mailbox beside some wrought-iron gates.

"This is it, 667 Vista Del Mar," she said.

"It's gated. Don't ram the Jag into the gate and blame the damage on me."

She looked up at the seven-foot wooden barrier, with its hammered-iron hardware. "I see the gates, Mr. Smarty-Pants. They're a little hard to miss. Sheez."

"You ran into the back of a donut shop one time."

"I was wearing weird new cowboy boots, and when I went for the brake, the edge of the sole hit the accelerator."

"So you said."

"I also told you a long time ago that I never wanted to discuss that incident again-not for the rest of our natural lives."

"If you can s.n.a.t.c.h keys out of my hand, I can discuss donut shop rammings if I want to."

"Boy, you are getting on my last nerve."

She drove up to the gate's security access panel, rolled down her window, and pushed the intercom b.u.t.ton.

"You pulled pretty close to that thing," Dirk said. "Don't sc.r.a.pe the side of the car when you pull away."

As she wondered how hard it would be to remove all traces of blood from Jaguar seats, the intercom buzzed and crackled. A woman's voice said, "Northrop residence. May I help you?"

"Yes, h.e.l.lo. My name is Savannah Reid. I'm with Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter, and we'd like to have a word with Mr. Northrop."

There was a long, long wait, and Savannah was just getting ready to push the b.u.t.ton again when the woman said, "I'm sorry, but Mr. Northrop isn't receiving visitors today."

"Please tell him it's extremely important," Savannah told her. "We need to speak to him about Mrs. Northrop . . . about his wife's . . . pa.s.sing. He really, really needs to hear what we have to say."

Again, there was an insufferably long wait. Then the giant gates began to swing away from the Jaguar, opening wide.

"Hurry up," Dirk said, "before they close. You don't want them to close on the-"

"Dirk, darlin'," she said as she drove through the gates, "if you say one more word about this car or my driving, I swear, one of us is gonna be sleeping on the sofa tonight. And if that doesn't strike fear in your heart, let me tell you that I'll also eat the rest of that carrot cake all by myself." She shot him a stern look. "You know I can do it."

He mumbled something that sounded like, "That's for sure," but she wasn't certain, so she decided to let it drop. For now.

They went only a short distance before they saw the house-the strangest house Savannah had ever seen.

"It looks like a giant Rubik's Cube, only made of gla.s.s," she said as she stared at the building, looking right through it and out the other side. Every exterior wall was gla.s.s, floor to ceiling. And from what she could see, most of the interior walls, too.

Every room, every piece of furniture-all of which appeared to be white-was clearly on display for everyone to see.