Killer Market

so.”

“Someone who knew he was that allergic…” Drew’s chair rocked back and forth with gentle creaks. “I wonder how many people did know. I certainly didn’t.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “I mean I knew he couldn’t take penicillin like everyone else, but not that it could kill him. And I knew him about as well as anybody at Market. He never wanted to talk about any kind of health problem.”

Out in the street, car doors slammed and engines cranked up as people came and went from Dixie’s house.

“So I guess the first question is did Savannah know and the next is would Chan have taken food from her?”

“Chan would have taken anything from any woman,” Drew sighed. “Especially chocolate.”

She gave me a speculative glance. “It’s a good thing you didn’t have time to get to know him or David would probably have you in handcuffs since they were your tablets. But to answer your other question, yes, he’d take brownies from Savannah because he knew her from before. His wife Evelyn—Lynnette’s mother? Did you know her?”

“Not really.”

“She worked at Mulholland, too. Not with Savannah. With Pell Austin’s group.”

There was a touch of condescension in her voice and for a moment I saw a hint of the pecking order that must have existed in the design studio where the brilliant Savannah had overshadowed her colleagues. Drew might have been a couple of years younger than Evelyn, but as Savannah’s protege, she would have ranked higher than Dixie’s daughter even without her wealthy background.

A tall, patrician-looking man was caught in a car’s headlights as he crossed the street, and Drew sat up sharply. “Well, bless his heart!”

“Who is it?” Even in the headlights, all I could make out were silver hair and erect carriage.

“Jacob Collier. Good for him,” she said approvingly. “He may not cut it in the field anymore, but he still has style.”

“I thought you said he got in a fight with Chan last night”

“He did. That’s what I mean. He was furious at Chan for taking away some of the accounts he was hoping to give Tracy and Vic, but he’s man enough to forget about last night and remember all the good years.”

“He’s alone,” I observed.

“Well, I’m not saying Tracy Collier’s got her grandfather’s style,” Drew drawled.

She said it with enough bitchiness in her tone to remind me that Dixie had considered Drew in the running for Chan’s affections even though Drew herself kept saying that they were only good pals. On the other hand, good pals can care enough to keep a wary eye on a pal’s romantic entanglements. Dwight Bryant’s always treated me like a younger sister, but he doesn’t miss an opportunity to snipe at Kidd.

“What about Savannah, though?” I asked, returning to my first question. “If she thinks you’re her daughter and that Lynnette’s your daughter, then maybe she saw Chan with Tracy Collier or that Trocchi woman from Hickory-Dock—”

“Lavelle Trocchi.”

“—and thought he was being unfaithful to you.”

“And being a good mother, poisoned him so I’d never have to hear he was unfaithful?” she asked sardonically.

Put like that, it did sound absurd.

“I’m not saying it’s sane, but then neither is Savannah, is she? What about the time she smashed her car?”

“What about it?” she asked cautiously.

“You think it’s sane to smash an expensive car just because you’re mad at your insurance company?”

In the dim light, Drew looked uncomfortable. “She has extreme mood swings—what she calls episodes. When she’s up, she’s brilliant. Nobody comes close to her style. But when she’s down? For years, everyone thought she went off on glamorous junkets between projects. Wrong. Her money’s gone to pay for stays at a psychiatric facility somewhere in Georgia where they get her medications balanced.”

I thought of Savannah’s pills, neatly lined up beside the turkey croissant I’d bought her yesterday. From my mental-health hearings, I know how difficult it is to keep the medications balanced in delusional manic-depressives, or bipolars, or whatever the correct term is these days. If indeed she’s any of them.

“Does she have family down there?”

“A father maybe? I’m not sure. Pell knows.”

“He does?” That surprised me.

“The last time she flipped, Pell was the one who got to her first. He called down there and somebody came and got her.”

We rocked in silence for a moment, then she observed, “A lot of gay men have women friends, but I think Pell really likes women. After Evelyn got hit by that car and had to have all that therapy, he got Dixie that house, got her that job. When Evelyn died, it hurt him just about as bad as it did Dixie and he loves Lynnette better than anything else in the world. He was absolutely furious that Chan was going to take her off to Malaysia.”