Saving Savannah Read Online Free PDF Page A

immediately started ringing.
    Two hours later, he was on a flight to Georgia. In the past, when he was happily on his way home after a long mission, that Gladys Knight song “Midnight Train to Georgia” would play in his head. This time, he for damn sure wasn’t happy. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and looked, for about the thousandth time, at the photo of himself and Savannah taken two weeks before his deployment, on the night he’d asked her to marry him. They looked so happy.
    Was she happy now?
    Had she built a new life for herself without him?
    Where the hell did she think he’d been all this time? He’d forgotten to ask his mother. Probably dead. Yep, he’d bet his stripes that his mother would have told her he was deceased, not MIA.
    Another unwelcome thought came to him. What if she’d married and his little girl was calling another man daddy?
    “Oh, Savannah, where are you?” he whispered, pressing the picture to his lips. Tears welled in his eyes, but then he raised his head with determination. “I’m on my way, sweetheart, wherever you are.”
    Some puzzles just take time to solve .  . .
    “I JIST CAIN’T understand why she won’t accept my help. I’ve asked her ta come stay here with me,” Tante Lulu told Tee-John as they sat in rockers on her Bayou Black back porch. Tee-John’s five-year-old son Etienne was down at the bayou stream fishing. Or more accurately, scaring away every fish, bird, and small animal within fifty feet with his wild casting technique.
    Tee-John took a draw on his long neck bottle of beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, even though there was a perfectly good St. Jude napkin sitting on the wicker table beside him.
    “She’s afraid, Tante.”
    “Of what?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    She gave him a narrow-eyed look, the one that had been working since he was a young’en causing mischief up and down the bayou. “How kin you not be sure?”
    “I’m a detective, not a magician. Besides, I’ve been stickin’ close ta home with Celine bein’ pregnant and all.” She was in the house at the moment, taking a nap on the same cot Tee-John slept on all those years ago when he ran away from his father, Valcour LeDeux, when he got to drinking. That man was meaner than a grizzly with a corncob up its butt.
    Imagine. Tee-John having another chile. And this time he would be around to see the bebe be born. “I hope she has a girl this time.”
    “That would be nice, but Etienne sez it better be a boy or we’re sending it back.”
    She had to smile at that. The little imp! “Back ta Savannah. Fer two weeks, I been goin’ over ta Nawleans ta talk with her. You were right, she’s livin’ in her car. I ain’t et so many chicken dippers in all my life. I think I’m startin’ ta cluck.”
    “Oh, Lord! You’ve been going to that strip joint, haven’t you?”
    “Yeah, and I’m learnin’ some good dance moves, too. Didja ever hear of the twerk?”
    “I’m afraid to ask.”
    “It involves bendin’ yer knees and spreadin’ them. Sorta like squatin’ ta pee in the woods.”
    “I pee against a tree.”
    She swatted him on the knee with her folded Richard Simmons fan for the interruption. “Then you vibrate yer tushie real fast. You could say it’s like shimmyin’ yer butt. Me and Charmaine been practicin’. When Charmaine showed Rusty how it was done, he almos’ had a heart attack. Then he took her ta bed fer a whole afternoon. Leastways, thass what Charmaine said. Want me ta demonstrate?”
    “Please don’t.” He was staring at her like she was a little bit crazy. Nothing new there. “I bet Savannah is pissed about you bird-doggin’ her.”
    “You could say that. Las’ night, fer example, I followed her around Walmart ’til she stopped and asked what I was doin’ there. I tol’ her there ain’t no law sez I cain’t shop wherever I want. ‘At midnight?’ she asked then. Jeesh! I did buy her little girl a pretty sundress,