Death by Chocolate (14 page)

They settled on a stretch
of sand where they could see the roller skaters on the boardwalk and some kids
playing on a set of swings nearby.

Cordele spread the blanket,
and they both plopped down on it. They slipped out of their shoes, and Cordele
wriggled her toes into the sand.

“Let’s see.... what do we
have here?” Savannah pulled out a wrapper and offered it to her sister. “I
believe it’s a whole-wheat pita stuffed with grilled chicken breast, avocado
slices, alfalfa sprouts, tomato, and spinach.” Cordele’s eyes widened. “Really?
You got that special for me?”

“Well, I got one for
myself, too.” She rummaged around in the bag. “And here’s some yogurt-based
sauce for dipping, if you like. And some bottles of cranberry-apple juice.
Isn’t that one of your favorites?”

Cordele took the bottle and
blinked rapidly a couple of times as though she had gotten a grain or two of
sand in her eyes. ‘You remembered,” she said.

“Of course I remember.” She
produced a couple of plastic wineglasses, filled both, and handed one to her
sister. “Because it’s a special occasion,” she said. “Here’s to the Reid
girls.”

Cordele toasted her, drank,
and then pointed to the other bag. “What’s in there?”

“Hot coffee with lots of
cream and two big fat slices of chocolate-dipped cheesecake.” She chuckled.
“Woman does not live on alfalfa sprouts alone.”

Laughing, Cordele shook her
head. “I should have known.”

They munched in contented
silence for a while, then Savannah cleared her throat and said, “So, are we
friends again?”

Cordele took a drink of her
juice. “What do you mean?”

“I felt bad all day about
this morning. I don’t like it when my loved ones and I are on the outs.”

“Yes, I think I do know how
that feels,” Savannah said.

“Do you remember that time
when I was in the Christmas play and I got to be Mary.... and Mom was too drunk
to come see me, and Dad was out of town with his girlfriend?”

“Yes, I remember. You made
a beautiful Mary, and you said all of your lines perfectly.”

“But what good was it if
nobody saw me?”

“I saw you. Gran was there,
and the other kids.”

“That doesn’t count. I
needed parental validation during my developmental years, and I didn’t get it.
I know you don’t realize this, because you haven’t studied psychology, like I
have, but that sort of emotional abuse really damages a person’s self-esteem.”

“Well, actually, I am aware
that it causes problems. And I—”

“No, you don’t know. You
have no idea the pain I’ve been through.”

Savannah sighed. “You
have
mentioned it once or twice. In fact, that’s pretty much the basis of most
conversations you and I have had these past ten or twelve years.”

“Well, you aren’t very
sympathetic.”

Savannah bit her lower lip.
“I believe I
was
sympathetic... say, the first eight or ten years. I’ve
just run out of things to say about the topic of your unhappy childhood.”

“What about your own
miserable childhood?”

“I don’t have much to say
about that anymore, either.”

Cordele stopped her
sniffing and donned her all-seeing, all-knowing look. ‘That’s because you’re in
denial about your upbringing. That’s probably why you have food issues and
haven’t ever had a real relationship except whatever you’ve got with that Dirk
guy and—”

“Cordele, stop!” Savannah
held up her right hand in her best traffic-cop pose. ‘You wanna be a shrink,
Godspeed. But you’ve got to learn not to shrink your friends, and especially
not your family. Believe me, it’s dangerous. Someday one of us is going to
murder you, and it’ll probably be me.”

“But don’t you want to know
what’s wrong with you? Don’t you want the benefit of what I’ve learned?”

“Not really. I think I’d
prefer to just wander around in the darkness of my ignorance and denial without
your guiding light. Thanks anyway.”

Cordele puffed up, reminding
Savannah of some toads she’d seen in Georgia. “Well, if you don’t want my
help—”

“I don’t. I want your love.
For tonight, sitting here on this beautiful beach, I want your company. I want
to just relax here with my sister and eat our dinner, and watch the sun go
down, and I want to talk to you about absolutely
anything
other than the
past. Please, can we do that?”

Cordele thought it over. “I
suppose.”

“Good.” Savannah pointed
across the water. “If you watch, really closely, you can sometimes see the beam
from the lighthouse out there on Santa Lucia Island. Watch. There... did you
see it?”

“Wow! That’s neat. And the
sailboats are pretty. Is that guy on what they call a waverunner?”

“That’s right. If you like,
we’ll rent one while you’re here and you can try it out.”

“Cool.” Her smile faded;
storm clouds gathered on her brow. ‘You know, we were only about a three-,
maybe four-hour drive to the Adantic, but do you think our folks would take us
to the beach even once
—once
in our entire rotten childhood?”

“Eah-h-h-h!”

When Savannah woke the next
morning, she wasn’t exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. In fact, she was too
tired to breathe. She lay in her bed, staring at the ceil
ing,
wishing she could just mentally whisk herself away to some enchanted island
paradise where there were no murdered TV chefs or disgruntled sisters.

And her cold was back with
a vengeance. She sat up in bed and held her head in her hands, willing the
throbbing in her sinuses to go away. It didn’t. When she bent over to retrieve
her house slippers from beneath the bed, she nearly blacked out.

“Oh, joy. Just what I
need,” she mumbled. She wondered if there was any sort of rule against having
whiskey hot toddies for breakfast. She could just imagine the joy Cordele would
have tattling to teetotaling Granny Reid.

She could hear her now: I
hate to have to tell you this, Gran, but Savannah has developed a substance
addiction. Alcohol, I’m afraid. You know, I recently read an article in
Psychology
Digest
about the likelihood of the children of alcohol-abusing parents
developing addictions of their own. And since Savannah refuses to deal with her
parental abandonment issues—like I’ve done, by cutting my hair off—it was only
a matter of time till she became a boozer.

Yes, Savannah could picture
it all.

So she decided to settle
for coffee.

“Leave me alone. I feel
like crap, and I hate the world right now,” Savannah told Tammy when she tried
to show her a website she had found. Savannah shuffled by the desk without even
a glance in her assistant’s direction and made her way to her cushy chair,
coffee [ mug in hand.

As usual, Tammy’s cheerful
morning mood couldn’t be dampened. It couldn’t be dampened with a fire hose. ;
She smiled brightly and said, “No problem. Sorry your cold came back. Can I get
you something? Goldenseal or ginseng?”

“Peace and quiet?” she
grumbled, sinking into her chair.

“You got it.”

In less than three seconds,
both cats had left their perches on the windowsill and were climbing all over
her, begging to be petted.

“Get off me, you foul
beasts. Just because Mommy makes a lap doesn’t mean you have to use it. Scram.”

“Boy,” Tammy muttered, “you
are in a bad mood.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Tammy left her
chair at the desk and clapped her hands together and whistled. “Come here,
Cleo. Atta girl, Di. Aunt Tammy will feed you. Mom’s sick and grumpy this
morning.”

Savannah said nothing, but
bared her teeth and growled.

Tammy chuckled as she led
the cats into the kitchen... obviously terrified.

Savannah closed her eyes and
held the coffee mug under her nose. She breathed deeply and could almost smell
something through her stuffiness. Almost, but not quite. She took a drink and
decided that coffee didn’t taste like much if you couldn’t smell it.

After enjoying less than two
minutes of quiet, blissful solitude, she found her reverie interrupted when she
heard the back door open and Cordele saying something to Tammy.

“Lord, help me,” she
whispered. “I’ve only got about one nerve left, and it’s frazzled. If she gets
on it, I might kill her.”

Cordele came into the
living room, dressed in a black leotard and tights. Savannah was shocked to see
that beneath her usual costume of a baggy white blouse and a saggy dark skirt
Cordele actually had a nice figure.

“Good morning,” her sister
said between sips from a water bottle.
“Tammy says you’re not feeling good
this morning.”

“I have a cold. I’m tired.
It’s been a tough week. That’s all.” She decided to stick her head out of her
shell for a moment and attempt to be civil. “You look good in that getup. What
are you doing?”

“My yoga. I do it every
morning to calm my mind, to harmonize my spirit and my body.”

Savannah tried to summon a
modicum of enthusiasm. She couldn’t find any, so she faked it. ‘That’s good.”

“It also helps with muscle toning
and weight control. You should try it sometime.”

Savannah glared at her with
red, burning eyes. “I
have
tried yoga, Cordele. I live in southern
California, for pete’s sake. We’ve all tried everything at one time or another.
We’re very open-minded people.”

“Obviously you didn’t stick
with it,” Cordele replied, scanning up and down Savannah’s body. “Discipline is
the key.”

“Eh....” Savannah mumbled,
“go sit on a Lifesaver and tell me what flavor it is.”

Cordele bristled like a
banty hen. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“No, I heard what you said.
It was that obscene Lifesaver insult you used to say when we were kids. I
remember the first time you ever said that to me. I was devastated.”

“No!” Savannah held up one
hand. “Don’t you even start with me this morning, girl, or I swear I’ll breathe
on you. I’ll cough on you and sneeze all over you, and give you this friggin’
cold. You just aggravate me some more and see if I don’t! Back off. I mean it!”

Tammy hurried into the
living room, having overheard. She looked from one sister to the other, but
they were locked in a glaring match.

“Cordele,” she said. “Would
you like to have some breakfast? I believe we have fresh strawberries and
yogurt in the refrigerator. Some wheat germ to sprinkle on the top. What do you
say?”

Eventually Cordele broke
the glare standoff and stomped away into the kitchen.

“Thank you,” Savannah
mouthed to Tammy.

Tammy just smiled—her sunny
good-morning smile. And Savannah thanked her stars above that she had a friend
who was observant, perceptive, compassionate.... and a morning person.

Chapter

N
o sooner had Savannah
pulled into the parking lot at the station house than Dirk came bopping out of the
back door. He hurried over to her Mustang and stuck his head in the open window
on the passenger’s side.

“Were you watching for me
from the window?” she asked. “Or have you developed ESP in your old age?”

“I was watchin’. Hillquist
is in the squad room, and I figured you’d just as soon avoid him if possible.”

“Like creeping cruditis,”
she said.

Since Police Chief Norman
Hillquist had fired her from the police force several years back, he had been
her least favorite person on the planet. “Dirty, sucking, pond scum” was the
way she usually referred to him. And that was to his face. Behind his back she
was less kind.

“Thanks for sparing me,”
she said. “Get in, and I’ll drive.”

He hesitated. Like most men
she had met, Dirk preferred to be the one behind the wheel. Usually she didn’t
care either way. But today she wanted at least the illusion of control over
some part of her life.

“Get in,” she said. “The
lab’s all the way across town. Just think how much gas money you’ll save.”

He opened the door and
plopped himself inside. Giving her a double sideways take, he said, “What’s
with your nose bein’ all red? You got your cold back or somethin’?”

“No,” she said. “I was
putting on lipstick, and I missed.”

“And your eyes are puffy,
too. I hate to tell you this, but you look like shit, Van. You should be home,
not running around with me.”

“My sister is in my home.”

He smirked. “So you prefer
my company to hers, huh?”

“Yeah. Sorry state of
affairs, no?”

They drove along in silence
for a few minutes until they reached the industrial area of town. Savannah
looked around at the endless rows of soulless gray buildings and asphalt
parking lots.

“I remember when this was
all orange groves and strawberry fields,” she said. “Look at it now.”

“Progress. It just keeps
marching on. Pretty soon, San Carmelita will just be another part of L.A.”

“Don’t even say it.”

She pulled into one of the
lots and parked next to a dull gray building with an equally dull gray door.
The only clue to its occupancy was the Great Seal of California and the county
emblem next to the doorbell.

Dirk pushed the button, and
a nearby intercom sputtered and crackled.

“Yeah?” asked a tired,
harried-sounding voice. “Coulter,” Dirk replied, sounding equally droopy and
irritable.

“Come in.”

A buzzer beeped, and he pushed
the heavy steel door open. Inside were the offices of the county’s forensic
laboratories where crime-scene evidence was processed.

Over the years Savannah and
Dirk had brought everything here from hairs and fibers to chips of paint from
cars and casts made of tire prints, bloodstained clothing, murder weapons...
and a pet pygmy goat whom they’d suspected of eating a pair of rubber gloves
that had been used in an armed robbery.

And Eileen Bradley and her
team of technicians had handled it all. Not always gracefully or
enthusiastically, but they had gotten the job done. A middle-aged woman,
big-boned, with long gray hair that she wore in a braid down her back, Eileen
wasn’t somebody to mess with. Her subordinates were pretty much terrified of
her, and that was just the way she liked it.

But she and Savannah had
always gotten along. Even after Savannah left the force, she knew she was
welcome to drop by the lab and chat. As long as she didn’t get underfoot or
touch any of the equipment.

“I told you not to come by
before noon,” Eileen barked at Dirk as she came out of her cubicle, which was
about twice as big as the other three cubicles. All gray. But Eileen’s had an
Elvis calendar pinned to the partition wall.

“I was in the area,” Dirk
said. “I just thought I’d drop by and—”

“You’re crowding me.”
Eileen walked up to Dirk and poked her finger at his chest. ‘You’re being
pushy, and I told you to knock that off. You can wait for your results, like
everybody else.”

Ordinarily, Dirk would have
decked anybody who poked him in the chest, but in Eileen’s presence, he wilted
like a lettuce leaf in a frying pan.

“If you’re not done yet,”
he said, “we can come back. No problem. I was just thinkin’ that—”

“Yeah, yeah... I’ve heard
it all before.” Eileen looked over at Savannah, a faint twinkle in her eyes.
“How do you put up with this guy?”

“Eh, he’s not so bad. He
buys me a Hershey bar every Valentine’s Day and takes me out to Mickey D’s on
my birthday.”

“What a catch. You’d better
hang on to him.”

“Okay, okay,” Dirk interjected.
“Is my stuff done or not?”

“It’s done, but I don’t
think you’re going to like what you’ve got.” Eileen led them to the back of the
room where several long tables were set up with beakers, microscopes, and
assorted laboratory equipment that always reminded Savannah of her high school
biology class.

“What have I got?” he
asked, following her like an obedient puppy. “Don’t tell me there’s nothing
wrong in any of those samples I brought you.”

“Are you kidding?” Eileen
gave him a dirty look. ‘You brought me everything but the kitchen sink. I had
to find something in those samples or you probably would have dragged that in
next.”

He brightened. “Then you
did
find something! ” Eileen strolled over to a pile of files that were lying on
one of the tables and picked up the top one, a bright yellow folder. She
flipped it open, taking her good old easy time.

Savannah suppressed a
chuckle. Few people could get under Dirk’s skin as efficiently as Eileen. And he
didn’t dare retaliate, because his lab results would take twice as long the
next time.

“The cake contained high
levels of phenyprophedrine,” she said.

Dirk practically jumped out
of his jeans. “I knew it! And I’ll bet that it was in some of that stuff I
brought in here, too—the sugar or the flour, or—”

“The cocoa.” Eileen glanced
down at the open folder in her hands. ‘The cocoa was absolutely full of it.”

“I ate a bite of it,”
Savannah said, “and so did several others there that night. And obviously, we’re
all still kicking around. It must have not been a lethal dose.”

“Not if a person only had a
few bites of the cake, and if that person were healthy,” Eileen said. ‘The most
they would feel would probably be a dry mouth, an elevated pulse, maybe some
anxiety or trembling.”

“But if somebody had a bad
heart and was on phenylprophedrine?” Dirk asked. “Could it cause a heart
attack?”

“Sure. It could
significandy raise the pulse rate and the blood pressure, which would put a
strain on an already diseased heart. The combination could be fatal.”

“But who would know
something like that?” Dirk asked. “You’d have to be a doctor, or somebody in
the medical profession, right?”

“Not necessarily.” Eileen
replaced the folder on the stack. “When phenylprophedrine was recalled, there
were news stories on TV and in the papers that warned people with heart
conditions, especially people taking metosorbide, that it could be dangerous,
even deadly.”

“So,” Savannah said. “We can
narrow it down to a doctor, a nurse, or somebody who watches TV or reads the
Times.
That helps a lot.”

Dirk shoved his hands into
his jeans pockets and rattled his change—his “frustrated” gesture. “I don’t
suppose there were any prints on that cocoa box.”

Eileen gave him one of her
irritating smirks. “Now wouldn’t that make it easy for you.” She walked over to
another table and another stack of files. This time she picked up a red folder.
Opening it, she shoved it under his nose.

He looked it over before
handing it back.

Savannah said, “Well?”

“The victim’s,” he replied.

“That’s all?”

“Yep.” He gave Eileen a
“thanks for nothing” look. “After all, we wouldn’t want to make it too easy,
right?”

Half an hour later Savannah
was dropping Dirk off in the police station parking lot.

“Sorry, buddy,” she said.
“But now we know for sure it’s a homicide. All we’ve gotta do is find out who
spiked the cocoa.”

He replied with an
inarticulate grumble.

“Cheer up,” she added as he
walked away. “It’s barbecued pork chops and corn on the cob night at my house.
Ryan and John will be there. Bring those papers of Streck’s along, and we’ll go
over them again with you.” He just kept walking, head down, radiating gloom.
“Hey,” she shouted after him, “at least you don’t have to entertain my sister.
You don’t have a cold. You don’t have to shave your legs or color your gray.
You think you’ve got it rough? Boy, you don’t know what rough is.”