Free Sugar and Spite by G. A. McKevett

tape recorders with microphones. Rosemary Hulse was there in the center of the pack, her perpetual yellow legal pad in hand. Hulse was an old-fashioned sort of reporter.
    “Why do you figure they’re out here?” Dirk asked as Savannah headed the Camaro around the far side of the building and toward the rear parking lot. “Bunch of damned vultures, always around when there’s a corpse to be picked.”
    Savannah didn’t want to raise his already high anxiety level, so she didn’t mention her theory that
he
might be the gasping, prostrate prospector whose body the buzzards were circling. But she had quickly decided that they would enter by a seldom-used back door, rather than the front, just in case.
    Unfortunately, a couple of hungry-looking vultures were hovering at that entrance, too. And the moment they spotted her bright red car, they came running over.
    “I’m it?” Dirk had opened the door halfway, but he slammed it closed. “I’m the news? Oh, shit. I don’t believe it.”
    The two reporters had posted their positions, one by Savannah’s door, one by Dirk’s. Apparently the gang in front had noticed her vehicle, too, because they were making hot tracks around the side of the complex and heading in their direction.
    “I’m not going in,” Dirk said. “I’m not going to talk to them, and I’m not going to wade through them either.”
    Savannah looked at her watch. They were late, so late, for their very important date with Jeffries. “You have to,” she told him. “We’ve got to get in the building, and that’s it.”
    He looked from one eager face to another, peering in the car at them, and shook his head. “No way. If any one of them says something smart, I’ll clobber them, and it’ll all be right there on tape.” He nodded toward the guy with the video camera. “I can see it now… Cop beats reporter to death with his bare hands, still bloody from murdering his ex-wife last night. Film at eleven.”
    “You aren’t fixin’ to clobber anybody,” she told him. “Because if you do, I’ll clobber you. You’re going to step out of this car, head high, and walk into that building with all the solemn dignity worthy of a peace officer. And you aren’t going to say a word to them. Do you hear me?”
    He mulled it over for a few seconds. “Oh… all right… I guess that’s the thing to do.”
    “That’s my brave boy.” She gave him an elbow nudge. “On my count… one… two… three… Let’s go.”
    She swung her door open, he did the same, and they were immediately accosted with microphones and a deafening din of questions.
    “Did you kill your wife last night, Sergeant Coulter?”
    “Exactly where was she shot and how many times, sir?”
    “Are you here to turn yourself in?”
    “Why did you shoot her, Detective? Did the two of you have an argument?”
    Dirk opened his mouth to speak, but Savannah caught his eye and gave him a don’t-you-dare-speak-or-I-swear-Hl-brain-you look.
    The look worked. He lifted his chin a couple of notches, and with far more grace than she had ever seen him exhibit, he began the long walk to the back door. They scurried after him, jostling for the position closest to their quarry. But he didn’t alter a step.
    Savannah flew at them like a mother hen whose nest was being robbed. “Get away from him, you mangy-assed hyenas. He’s got nothin’ to say to any of you.”
    “Who are you, his lawyer?” asked the guy with the video cam. He shoved the lens in her face and missed hitting her, hard, by less than an inch.
    “I’m Detective Sergeant Coulter’s friend,” she said with deadly softness. “And if you don’t get that blamed thing outta my face, I’m going to whop you upside the head with it, and your ears will be ringing from here to Tuesday.”
    “Are you threatening me, Miss…?”
    “… Savannah Reid. Of course I’m threatening you, nitwit.” She shook her head and brushed him aside. “Not exactly the sharpest knife in the