Stepping over the dog, he knelt down and gently dabbed the cloth on her face, wiping away the traces of sawdust and dried sweat from her face and bare arms. “You’re a mess,” he said quietly.
Hattie stirred but didn’t open her eyes. “Huh?”
He untied her work boots and slid them off her feet.
“Thanks,” she murmured. “Sooo tired.”
He went back to the kitchen, and found the broom closet. Mo swept up the dog food, depositing some of it in Ribsy’s bowl, which he placed on the counter. He went back to the living room where Hattie was snoring again. He leaned over and tucked her hair behind her ear.
“He’s not good enough for you,” he said softly. “He should have driven you home himself, the chickenshit. He got you drunk and he should have made sure you were okay. I would never do you that way.”
Hattie stirred slightly and turned her face toward his. “Kiss me,” she mumbled. He hesitated, then dropped a kiss on her slightly parted lips.
“Mmm. Nice,” she said with a sigh.
Mo lingered for a moment, studying Hattie’s face, flushed with sleep, eyelashes still flecked with sawdust. He wondered what it would be like to wake up, every morning, to that lovely face.
Pushing the thought aside, he let himself out of the house, locking the door and depositing Hattie’s keys in a planter of ferns on the porch.
* * *
She heard the click of the key in the lock and the departing footsteps. She touched her lips. Had she dreamed that kiss? She yawned and fell back asleep.
54
Alert the Media
Makarowicz stood uneasily before a microphone in the room that was usually reserved for Tybee traffic court hearings. He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief and checked the notes he’d hastily scrawled on an index card an hour earlier.
He counted eight reporters seated in the front row of the courtroom. Three were from local television news stations. One was from CNN, which surprised him, and there were four reporters armed only with notebooks and cameras, which meant they were from the print press. Molly Fowlkes sat squarely in the middle of the row.
Mak had lived up to his end of the bargain.
“We, uh, found skeletal remains, at a property on Tybee Island,” he had said, when Molly answered his call. “It’s her. There’s a press conference at nine tomorrow, in the courtroom at the police department.”
Now he was surrounded by reporters and feeling seriously outmanned. He cleared his throat and tapped the mike.
“Good morning. I’m Detective Allan Makarowicz. Two days ago, at a property here on Tybee Island, a set of skeletal remains was discovered at the site of an abandoned septic tank on a privately owned property. Late yesterday they were identified as those of Lanier Ragan, a twenty-five-year-old Savannah woman who went missing in February of 2005. The body was obviously badly decomposed, but it was subsequently identified through Mrs. Ragan’s dental records. No cause of death until the coroner’s office gives us that.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “I’ll take questions now.”
Molly Fowlkes’s hand shot up. “Has Lanier’s death been ruled a homicide then?”
“Not yet.”
He heard a ripple of camera shutters clicking.
Molly wasn’t done. “Detective, you mentioned that the remains were discovered at a private property here on the island. Is that the same property where Mrs. Ragan’s billfold was discovered recently? A house on Chatham Avenue that’s currently being used to film a television reality show?”
Makarowicz shifted from one foot to the other. “Yes. That’s correct.”
“How was the body found?” Molly pressed.
Mak cleared his throat again. “Uh, a piece of heavy equipment that had been brought onto the property actually crashed through the manhole cover, and at that time the old septic tank and the remains were discovered.”
The dark-haired male reporter from the local ABC affiliate followed up. “That home was owned up until recently by Mr. and Mrs. Holland Creedmore, a prominent Savannah family, right?”
“I believe so,” Mak said.
“Have you questioned the Creedmores about how the body came to be on their property?”
“No comment,” Mak said.
“How about the husband?” the reporter from the NBC affiliate called out. “Frank Ragan? Has he been questioned? Is he a suspect?”
“I can’t comment about an ongoing investigation,” Mak said.
“Detective, can you talk about when Lanier Ragan was last seen?”