Death by Chocolate (11 page)

Having worked herself into
a pretty good lather by the time the plane landed, Savannah had a speech all
rehearsed. It had to do with feeling that her boundaries hadn’t been respected,
nor her preferences taken into account, that her territory had been invaded
without her permission, etc., etc.

But the moment the
passengers of Flight 396 from Atlanta began to disembark, she felt a sense of
excitement. A member of her immediate family, her own flesh and blood, had traveled
across the country to see her. She really should feel honored and pleased.

She
did
feel honored
and pleased. Having decided that she should, she did. Maybe it would be a great
visit, a bonding experience between siblings.

But the instant she set eyes
on her sister, the recently generated warm and fuzzy feelings disappeared.

It wasn’t the fact that
Cordele had the straightest posture of absolutely everybody getting off the
plane— including a couple of Marines. It wasn’t that her white blouse was buttoned
up tightly under her chin or that she was probably the only person in America
under the age of thirty who actually wore a brooch pinned at her throat. It
wasn’t the baggy navy blue skirt or the conservative black loafers that were
modest to the point of dowdy. It wasn’t the lift to her chin that conveyed what
a truly superior human being she felt herself to be. It wasn’t the way she
walked—as if she had sat on a steel rod that now extended from her rear end to
her tonsils.

No. It was the combination of
all of the above. And the fact that Sissy Cordele hadn’t changed one iota. She
was still an uptight snob.

And... she had cut her
hair. Really, really short.

Savannah decided that was
the safest conversation-opening topic.

She hurried to her and gave
her sister a hearty hug. Cordele returned it with a weak, one-handed pat on
Savannah’s back.

“Hi, darlin’,” Savannah
said, trying to summon some degree of enthusiasm. ‘You look great. You ah....
you cut your hair.”

Cordele reached up and
smoothed the slickly gelled hair back, though it had so much goop on it that it
probably wouldn’t have moved in an eighty-mile-an-hour hurricane. ‘Yes,” she
said, “I decided it was time to liberate myself, to come out from behind the
veil of my hair and reveal the true me to the world.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Cordele tossed her head in
what might have been a devil-may-care gesture if it hadn’t been for that
perfectly stiff posture. For a moment, Savannah thought she might have
dislocated her neck.

“You really should cut
yours.” Cordele fell into step beside Savannah as they approached the luggage
carousel. “If you can find the courage to do it, you’ll discover that it’s very
freeing. But of course, you have to give up your security blanket that you hide
behind. You have to be willing to come out and reveal the real you.”

“Uh-huh.” Savannah scanned
the thin trickle of suitcases that was beginning to spill down the chute and
onto the carousel.

“Really. You should cut off
all those split ends,” Cordele continued. “I can do it for you when we get back
to your place and—”

“Thanks but no thanks,”
Savannah interjected. “My hair and I are pretty good as is. Really.”

Cordele shrugged and gave
her sister a slightly wounded but terribly patient smile. “I understand. Not
everybody can do it. I had to grow to the point where I could truly let go.”

Savannah felt her guts
growling deep inside. This was going to be a long, long... how long did she say
she was staying?

“How long did you say
you’re staying?” she asked. Again, Cordele gave her the “patient smile.” The
smile of a highly evolved soul tolerating the less enlightened. “As long as it
takes, Savannah. As long as it takes.” She turned back toward the carousel and
watched the parade of luggage passing by.

Savannah sighed. “O-o-okay.
Whatever.”

Cordele’s saintly smile
evaporated, and she turned to face Savannah. The sisters were practically nose
to nose.

“I have to tell you right
now,” Cordele said, “that having someone say, ‘whatever’ to me pushes one of my
major emotional buttons. I mean, I feel like I’ve just been disrespected and my
opinion dismissed when someone says that. It really, really, deeply upsets me,
and I think you should know that.”

Savannah stared at her
sister. Bit her tongue. Counted to ten. But it didn’t help. She still said it:
“Okay. Whatever.”

“Don’t take this wrong,
Savannah,” Tammy whispered, “but I can’t stand your sister.”

Savannah stood in her
living room, strapping on her shoulder holster. She glanced quickly toward the
kitchen, where Cordele was eating some of Tammy’s yogurt, having found nothing
else in Savannah’s refrigerator that was “it for human consumption” as she had
not so tactfully worded it.

“Don’t feel bad. I don’t
know anybody except Gran who does.”

“Your grandmother likes
her?”

“Well, I don’t know if she actually
likes
her, but she loves her. She has to; she’s her grandmother. It’s
like a grandma rule.”

Tammy smirked. “Isn’t there
a sister rule like that, too?”

“Nope. No such law on the
books.”

Savannah opened the coat
closet door and reached up to the top shelf for her Beretta.

Tammy tugged at her sleeve.
“You’re not really going to leave me here with her all day, are you?
Entertaining your nutso relatives is just so-o-o not a part of my job
description.”

“Take off. Go on over to
the Maxwell estate and wait for me outside by the gate. I’ll be along shortly
and you can help me help Dirk.”

“Really?” A look of relief
flooded her face. “Oh, that would be so great!”

“Go.”

Tammy nodded toward the
kitchen. “Does she know you’re leaving her to go to work?”

“Nope. Haven’t broken the
news to her yet. She thinks we’re going to spend the afternoon rehashing old
family grievances.”

“Are you going to tell her
now?”

Savannah drew a deep breath
of resolve. “Yep.” ‘Then I’m outta here, right now.”

Savannah watched as Tammy
hightailed it out the front door. “Chickenshit,” she mumbled after her.

She strolled into the
kitchen, where Cordele was scraping the bottom of her yogurt cup. “Is that
enough lunch for you?” she asked. “I’d be happy to make you a sandwich, warm up
some soup, or....”

“No, this is plenty for
me.” Cordele gave Savannah’s figure a quick glance up and down. “I worked
through my food issues long ago. I no longer use it as an anesthetic to dull
the pain of my childhood woundings. It’s nothing more than fuel to me now.”

Bully for you, Savannah
thought, but she smiled and said, “That’s lovely, dear. Then I won’t feel
obliged to rush home and make fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner.
I’ll just throw together a salad and pick up a quart of brown rice from the
local Chinese takeout.”

Cordele scowled. Then her
scowl deepened. “What do you mean ‘rush home’? Where are you going?”

“To work.”

“When?” She seemed to
notice the Beretta in its holster for the first time. “Now?”

“Yes.” Savannah fought to
keep the anger out of her voice but wasn’t at all successful. “I should have
been working this morning, but I wasn’t. So I may be out until late tonight. I
hope you don’t mind entertaining yourself while I’m—”

“
Entertaining
myself? Do you think I spent six hundred dollars for plane fare and came all
the way out here for
entertainment?”

Savannah walked over to the
sink, grabbed a tumbler out of the cabinet, and poured herself a glassful of
water from the refrigerator. Meanwhile, she warned herself to speak kindly, gently,
tactfully. Treat your sister as you’d want to be treated yourself, Savannah
girl, she could hear her grandmother saying.

She drank the water slowly,
giving herself time to carefully compose her words, while her sister stood
there, glaring at her, hands on her hips.

Finally, she set the glass
on the counter, turned to Cordele, and said, “To be honest, I don’t really know
why you came to see me. All I do know is that my own life is very complicated
right now. I’m working on something that’s very important and—”

“More important than me?
More important than your relationship with your own flesh and blood?”

“No-o-o. My family is more
important to me than my work. But right now, I need you, my family, to
understand my situation. A woman was murdered.... a woman who hired me to
protect her. And now I have to find out who killed her. I have to find out so
that they won’t kill anybody else. I have to find out so that the people who
loved the victim can have closure.”

“Revenge, you mean. You’re
not a cop anymore, but you’ve still got that vengeance mentality. Look at you,
standing there with a gun strapped on your body. The person who killed her is
probably a tormented soul who needs help and compassion more than punishment,
but you don’t see that. You’re only interested in catching them and having them
locked up—or worse.”

Savannah stared at her
sister and shook her head. “Don’t you lecture me about vengeance, young lady.
You don’t know squat about it. Unless you’ve had someone that you love murdered,
ripped away from you by some no-good sonofabitch who thinks he’s got the right
to take somebody else’s life, don’t you shoot your mouth off about revenge.
What you call vengeance is another person’s justice. And don’t you tell me that
justice isn’t important, because justice is what I
do!
As long as it’s
within the bounds of the law, justice is a righteous, necessary thing!”

Cordele looked shocked for
a moment. Then angry. Then the scowl on her face gradually faded, replaced by a
sappy, condescending smile. “I can see that you’re deeply upset by me
expressing my opinion on this issue.”

“Really? Go figure.”

“That’s understandable,
considering where you’re coming from.”

“And where might that be?”
Savannah asked, although she was fairly certain that Cordele’s answer would
make her want to feed her her teeth on a knuckle sandwich.

“You’ve always had a
simplistic, black or white, plus or minus, view of the world.... the good guys
versus the bad guys. And of course you see yourself as one of the good guys.”

Savannah’s eyes narrowed.
“When it comes to murder and the apprehension of murderers, I
am
one of
the good guys. Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of the bad ones. You wouldn’t want
to run into them in a dark alley.”

“So you see it.” Cordele
leaned back in her chair and folded her hands primly on the table in front of
her. “Of course, in my studies in the science of psychology, I’ve learned that
the human psyche is far more complicated than your elementary viewpoint. There
are no bad people in this world, only misguided ones who—”

“Oh, can it, Cordele. What
the hell do you learn about anything sitting in a classroom? I could show you
crime-scene pictures that would make you puke. I could tell you things that
your ‘misguided’ monsters have done to innocent people that would scar your
soul. If you want to feel sorry for them, go right ahead. I’m going to go to
work. I’m going to find out who poisoned a woman to death, and I’m going to
stick their ass in a sling and wring ‘em dry. And if that offends your enlightened
sensibilities, tough.”

Savannah turned on her heel
and stomped out of the kitchen. She paused at the hall closet to grab her
jacket.

Cordele was right behind
her. “When are you coming home?” she demanded.

“I told you already. Late.
Read a book, watch TV, and order yourself a pizza. There’s some money in the
cookie jar.”

“I don’t eat pizza. It’s
junk food.”

Savannah snatched her purse
and keys off the table by the door. ‘Then check the fridge. I think there’s a
head of lettuce in there and some carrots. You can—” She paused at the door,
debated whether to finish her statement, and decided not to. She left before
telling her sister what she could do with the vegetables in question.

Granny Reid would have been
so proud.

Chapter

W
hen Savannah arrived at the
gates of the Maxwell estate, Tammy was sitting in her Volkswagen bug parked
right across the road. Savannah waited for her to run across the highway and
get into the passenger’s seat before she drove up to the key pad and punched in
the security code.

“I didn’t know you had
that,” Tammy said. “When did they give you the combination?”

“They didn’t. I saw it
written on a piece of paper and taped to the inside of the pantry door.
Discreet, huh?” The gates swung open, and she drove the Mustang through.

“Not very. Gee.... anybody
could have seen it there.”

“Exactly. Doesn’t narrow
down our list of who might have been on the property lately.”

Tammy thought for a moment.
“And with the murder weapon being something she ate, it could have been planted
almost anytime.”

“Please don’t remind me.
I’m depressed enough as it is.”

Savannah drove past the
barn-converted-studio and saw Dirk’s battered Buick parked behind the building.

“Let’s start here,” she
said. “We’ll see how far Dirk’s gotten on his own this morning.”

“Where the hell have you
been?” was the cry that greeted them when they walked through the studio doors.
On the far side of the cavernous room, Dirk was on his hands and knees behind a
partition, sifting through what appeared to be a pile of garbage. ‘You said you
were going to give me a hand, and I’ve been working my tail off all morning by
myself with no help from anybody.”

“And you haven’t come up
with anything,” Savannah replied as they walked across the room to join him.

“How do you know I
haven’t?”

“Because you’re crankier
than usual. If you’d found anything good, you’d be more cordial.”

She knelt on the floor
beside him and saw that it was indeed the studio garbage that he was searching.
The trash consisted mostly of paper, but enough coffee, sodas, and chocolate
cake had been added to the mix to make it a disgusting mess. He was wearing a
pair of surgical gloves. Though he had no hygienic standards about sifting
through garbage with his bare hands, she knew he was concerned about
contaminating anything he might find in the way of evidence.

She dug in her purse for a
pair of gloves for Tammy and another for herself. They both slipped them on and
began to rummage with him. He appeared to be collecting bits of chocolate cake
and stashing them in an evidence bag.

“I had to go to the airport
to pick up my sister,” she reminded him, as she tossed a coffee-soggy piece
into his bag.

Tammy knelt on the other
side of Dirk and wrinkled her nose at the smell of the garbage. ‘Yeah, and
hanging out with Cordele isn’t exactly fun.”

“Oh yeah.” Dirk nodded
thoughtfully. “I remember that one. Met her in Georgia when we were there last
year. She’s the one with the stick up her—”

“Yep, that’s Cordele, all
right,” Savannah replied. “And she’s come to visit me for an undetermined
length of time.”

“Lucky you.” Dirk picked up
another hunk and dropped it into the bag.

“Yeah, lucky me,” Savannah
said. “I’ve got a homicide to investigate and don’t have to hang around the
house and get my head shrunk.”

“She’s a shrink?” He folded
the bag closed, took a black marker from his pocket, and began to scribble
pertinent information on an orange label, which he then affixed to the bag,
sealing it.

“No. She’s studying to be
one.” Savannah continued to sift through the mess, but saw no more cake
fragments. “She’s just learned enough to be dangerous—to herself, that is.
Someday she’s going to tell the wrong person that they’re passive-aggressive
and they’ll forget all about being passive, if you know what I mean.”

“I can understand how she
might bring out the worst in a person.” He stood and brushed the remnants of
garbage from the front of his jeans. “Why don’t you put her on a plane and send
her home?”

“Easier said than done,”
Tammy muttered. “She’s a Reid, and they don’t obey very well.”

“What’s that?” Savannah
said.

“Nothing.” Tammy looked
around at the empty, relatively dark studio. “Where’s your Crime Scene Unit?
Why aren’t they helping you today?”

“More budget cuts from our
dear mayor.” Dirk walked over to a box he had stowed near the stage and dropped
the bag into it. “We’ve only got three guys on it—actually, one’s a broad—and
they’re on the other side of town, dusting for prints at a house burglary.”

“Since when does a burglary
take a backseat to a homicide?” Savannah wanted to know.

“When it’s the mayor’s
sister-in-law who got burgled.”

“Oh.” Savannah peeled off
her gloves and tossed them into the trash heap. “So, you figure it was the
cake?”

“That’s the last thing she
ate.” Dirk walked onto the set with its green marble counters and cozy,
stained-glass cupboards. ‘That redhead producer—”

“Kaitlin Dover?” Savannah
followed him reluctantly onto the set. Only hours ago she had been kneeling
right there—in that spot between the counter and the oven—holding Eleanor
Maxwell, watching her die.

“Yeah, Kaitlin.” Dirk
produced another bag from inside his jacket and took the remainder of the cake,
plate and all, that was sitting on the counter, and shoved it into the bag.
“She was by earlier, and I had her show me the film—the one they were taping
when it happened.” Tammy joined them on the set. “Could you tell anything from
looking at the tape?”

“Just that she made the
cake, took a few bites, got sick, and kicked the bucket.”

“Wait a minute.” Savannah
tapped her fingers on the marble. “A bunch of us had a bite of that cake. I ate
some myself, and I didn’t get sick.”

“You aren’t on heart medications,”
Dirk reminded her. “It was the interaction that did her in, not the stuff
itself.”

“But I should have had some
sort of symptoms if it was that concentrated in the cake.” Savannah turned to
Tammy. “What would the symptoms be? Do you remember from that Internet article
you read?”

“I don’t think it said
anything about overdose symptoms, but I remember it was used for colds, to
clear congestion and...”

Savannah raised one eyebrow
and poked Dirk in the chest with her forefinger. “Hot toddy, my hind end. You
didn’t cure me, big boy. I’ll bet you a plug nickel it was that bite of cake
that dried me out.”

Dirk sniffed. “Well, that’s
appreciation. See if I ever make another one of my special toddies for you.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like
it. I said it wasn’t what dried up my nose. You wait till they run some tests
on that cake and you’ll see that it’s full of that stuff.”

Dirk looked around the
kitchen. “Well, just in case it isn’t, I’ve gotta take everything else that I
can find around here in for tests, too. Anything remotely edible.”

Savannah began opening
cupboards, but most were empty. “Why do I get the feeling they didn’t actually
do much cooking here in this kitchen?”

“They didn’t,” Dirk
replied. “I already talked to Kaitlin about that. She said that Eleanor put
most of the stuff together down at the house and brought it up here after it
was cooked.”

“Sure, that makes sense.”
Savannah found some pots and pans, but they were dusty and obviously hadn’t
been moved recently. She closed the door and kept looking as Dirk and Tammy did
the same. ‘You know... I’ll bet the cake we ate wasn’t even the one she mixed
up here on the show.”

“What do you mean?” Dirk
said, his head in the refrigerator.

“I mean... she mixes up one
here on camera to demonstrate how it’s done to her audience, but when she puts
it in the oven to ‘bake,’ she takes out the one that’s already been baked and
serves it.”

Tammy nodded. “Sure. You
can’t wait for it to bake on a TV show.”

Dirk had donned another
pair of gloves and was placing the items from the refrigerator into yet another
evidence box. “Well, that may be true, but we still have to take all this crap
in and have it checked, just in case.”

“And all the stuff from the
kitchen in the house,” Savannah said. ‘They’re just gonna love you at the lab.”
Dirk growled, “If we can drag it all down there, the least they can do is run
the lousy tests.”

Savannah grinned. ‘Yeah,
you be sure to put it to ‘em just like that. There’s nothing like that Coulter
charm to ensure cooperation.”

This time when Savannah
stepped onto the mansion’s verandah with Dirk and Tammy in tow, the three
mini-hounds from hell didn’t even bother to get up from their comfortable
chairs where they were having their early afternoon snooze. Killer simply
opened one eye, blinked lazily, and closed it, then shoved his nose under one
paw.

“Vicious creatures,” Tammy
said. “Until they get to know you. Then they’d lead you straight to the family
heirloom silver and help you carry it out of the house.”

“It was the garlic-flavored
chicken livers that brought them around,” Savannah told her. “One sandwich bag
of that spread three ways and they’re in my power forever.”

“Food....” Dirk opened the
front door, which was unlocked, and walked inside. ‘That’s how you control all
of us.”

“Ah, yes, the power of
fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and cream gravy.” Savannah grinned.

Ordinarily, she would have
added chocolate cake to the end of that list, but for the moment, she was
turned off to the whole idea—a definite first for her. She didn’t know if she
could ever eat chocolate cake again. This murderer was going to get caught and
pay the price for that alone.... if not for Lady Eleanor’s demise.

“Hello,” Dirk called.
“Anybody here?”

“In here,” came a voice
from the kitchen.

“Damn,” he muttered. “We’re
gonna have to string some tape around this house and seal the doors. Now that
we know it was a murder, we can’t have people running around disturbing
things.”

“I’ll do it if you want,”
Tammy offered.

Dirk looked surprised, then
rummaged in his jeans pocket and pulled out his keys. He tossed them to her.
‘The tape’s in my kit in the trunk. Thanks, kid.”

“You’re welcome.... Dirko,”
she replied. She bounced away, long blond ponytail swinging.

“Better watch out,”
Savannah told him. ‘You two might actually start liking each other if you
aren’t careful.”

“Naw. It’ll never happen.”

She followed him into the
kitchen, where they found Marie unloading the dishwasher.

“Good afternoon,” the maid
said, stopping to dry her hands on a towel. “May I get you something to drink?
A cappuccino or...?”

“No, thank you,” Savannah
said. “This is Detective-Sergeant Coulter from the San Carmelita Police
Department. Dirk, this is Marie, Eleanor’s housekeeper.”

Dirk shook Marie’s hand and
nodded graciously. “Glad to meet you. But I’m going to have to ask you to leave
this house here right away and don’t come back in until we clear it.”

“But, but I work here,”
Marie sputtered. “I don’t understand. We’ll be having Mrs. Maxwell’s memorial
service tomorrow and we’re expecting a lot of people. I have to get things
ready.”

“No, you don’t.” Dirk took
her by the elbow and gently led her toward the back door. “You have to vacate
the! premises—at least the house itself. It’s a crime scene.”

“What?” Marie’s jaw dropped.
“What do you mean, a crime?”

Savannah stepped forward.
“Dirk, she doesn’t.... you know.”

“Oh, yeah.” Dirk let go of
her arm and put on his gentler face. “I’m sorry to inform you that after
receiving the results of the coroner’s autopsy, we’re investigating Mrs.
Maxwell’s death as a possible homicide. So that means—”

“A homicide?” The maid
leaned her hand against the pantry door for support. “Someone killed her?”

“We don’t know yet for
sure,” Savannah said, rushing to her side. “That’s why we have to continue to
investigate. And that’s why no one can come into the house until we’re
finished.”

“But... but...” The maid
looked around as though seeing her surroundings for the first time. “What will
I do?”

“You live in the servants’
quarters, right?” Savannah asked.

Marie nodded.

“And where’s that?” Dirk
asked.

“In the gardener’s cottage
behind the garage.” Savannah reached out and placed a comforting hand on the
woman’s shoulder. “So, why don’t you go back there for now, maybe lie down awhile?
I know this must be disturbing news to hear.”

“It is.
Very
disturbing,” Marie said, her voice shaking. “Mrs. Maxwell murdered! What a
terrible thing.”

Savannah could feel her trembling.
She led her gen-dy to the back door and opened it for her. ‘Try not to worry,”
she said. “I’m sure we’ll have this all straightened out soon.”