Death by Chocolate (4 page)

Savannah stroked first one
cat, then the other, feeling them arch to enjoy her touch to the fullest. She
looked down at the tiny teeth marks in her finger. Hitler, Satan, Killer—how
sick was that?

She thought of the woman
with the spiky gray hair, the gaudy muumuu, and the voice that felt like a
parmesan cheese grater raking across her nerves. The com
mands
to “sit” and “get lost.” The harried, weary look on the gentle maid’s face. The
death threats that had the tone of someone who was, very simply, fed up with
Lady Eleanor.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe
I don’t need the hassle right now,” she said, feeling a cloud lift from her
head and shoulders, a cloud that had been floating around her since that rude
2:00
a.m.
phone call.

“Good.” Tammy crunched on
her celery. “I think that’s wise. Let Eleanor find another flunky to guard her
royal heinie.”

Savannah thought a few
seconds more, weighing all factors. “Did you pay the bills this morning?” she
finally. asked.

“Some of them.”

A long, heavy silence
stretched between them.

“How many of them?”

Tammy sighed. “I paid last
month’s electricity. The phone from the month before last.”

“The mortgage?”

“Nope.”

“Insurance?”

“Uh-uh. The electric and
phone tapped you out.”

“When’s the last time you paid
yourself?”

“Last March.”

“That long, huh?”

Savannah drained the last
of her coffee. Tammy finished off the celery stick and started on the carrots
before she said, “So, when do you report for Eleanor Guard Duty?”

“Tonight at eight P.M.
That’s when she starts taping.”

“A taping. Hmmm. That
should be interesting. You
know... kinda nice.”

“Gr-r-r-r…”

Chapter

”G
ee,” Savannah whispered to
the maid, who she had recently found out was named Marie, “somehow I thought
the show was filmed in her actual kitchen, like she says it is on TV.”

”A lot of people think
that,” Marie said as she walked around the set with a garbage bag in hand,
picking up the plastic cups and paper plates left behind by the film crew. “At
first we taped in the kitchen in the house, but it was so much trouble setting
up and breaking down each time. So a year ago they built this studio here in
the barn. Well, it used to be a barn, but they got rid of the animals and....”

Marie’s voice trailed away,
and so did she, leaving Savannah standing on the periphery of a bustle of
activity that she knew absolutely nothing about. Half a dozen people, wearing
strange headgear, T-shirts, and shorts, scurried around, some of them carrying
notebooks or stacks of papers, others handling microphones, lights of all
different sizes and colors, and other terribly technical looking meter-type
equipment that Savannah didn’t recognize.

But even more foreign than
the taping set in front of her was the transformation of Eleanor Maxwell. Gone
was the disheveled, slovenly woman of the afternoon. Standing behind the
kitchen counter, dressed in a high-necked ivory lace blouse, wearing an auburn
wig of perfectly coifed ringlets, twists, and rolls, was the Lady Eleanor of
Gourmet Network fame.

Speaking with the distinction
of a diction coach at a British school for young ladies, the woman stirring the
wonderfully fragrant chocolate mixture on the stove seemed to be from another
world, far removed from the gal in the muumuu, shoving bagels and lox into her
face, washing them down with Bloody Marys.

For half a second, Savannah
allowed herself to fantasize about this gracious lady’s evil white-trash twin
who kept the real Lady Eleanor imprisoned in some sort of dungeon beneath the house
and allowed her to come out for air only during tapings.

“A bit more what you were
expecting?” asked a female voice behind her.

Savannah turned to see the
woman who had earlier been introduced to her as Kaitlin Dover, the show’s
producer.

From the moment she’d met
her, Savannah liked Kaitlin. Petite, slender to the point of looking underfed,
the thirty-something Kaitlin looked as though she had inherited her red hair
and golden freckles from some Irish ancestor. And maybe a bit of Irish charm,
too.

From the way her large
brown eyes met Savannah’s openly and honestly, to the perpetual half-grin she
wore that seemed to be bravely covering some sort of personal pain, Kaitlin
Dover came across a genuine person. And after spending the better—or rather, the
worst— part of the afternoon with Eleanor, genuine seemed all the more
appealing to Savannah.

“Yes, this is who I was
expecting when I arrived for my appointment this afternoon,” Savannah said,
keeping her voice low as the crew moved in a swirl of activity around them.
“I’ve been a fan of Lady Elean.... well, this person’s for a long time.”

Kaitlin’s freckled face
beamed with something that looked like satisfaction. She took the pencil she
had been scribbling with on a clipboard and stuck it in her short, tight red
curls above her ear. ‘That’s the idea,” she said. “To create a character that
the world embraces.”

“A character? To create?”

Kaitlin gave her a long,
measured look, as though deciding how open to be with this newcomer to the set.
‘Yes,” she finally said, “creating characters. Conjuring the magic inside the
viewers’ minds and imaginations. That’s showbiz.”

“Even in a cooking show,
huh?” Savannah watched as a young man patted the shine off the Queen of
Chocolate’s nose between takes.

“Lights, camera, action....
and it’s all make-believe.... done with smoke and mirrors. Even for a cooking
show.” Kaitlin sighed. Savannah noticed how dark the circles were under her
eyes. She was too young to look so tired.

“I was surprised that you
started taping this late,” Savannah said, glancing down at her watch. It was
almost eleven and they had only gotten down to business about half an hour
before. “Don’t most TV shows tape in the afternoon or early evening? I mean....
I heard that the
Tonight Show
is done in the afternoon and....”

“We tape when Eleanor is
ready to tape,” Kaitlin said, her eyes trained on the star of the show, who had
dropped her genteel facade the moment the cameras stopped rolling and was
dishing out verbal abuse to a long-suffering hairstylist who was trying to set
her wig right for the next take.

“She’s a bit of a night
owl, huh?” Savannah said, noting the look of pure, bitter hatred that
fleetingly passed over Kaitlin’s pretty Irish face. It was gone when she turned
back to Savannah and said in a sweet, even tone, “Oh, yes. Eleanor prefers the
darkness to the light.”

“And why do you suppose
that is?”

Kaitlin shrugged. “So many,
many things become clear by day.”

“Things she’d prefer not to
see?”

Kaitlin’s eyes cut back to
Eleanor, who was shoving a crew member out of her way as she stomped off the
set, shouting, “Damned stupid idiots.... I oughta fire all of you! I’m gonna go
back to the house to take a break. And don’t call me until you get your shit
together!”

“A break.” Kaitlin shook
her head wearily. “She’ll be drunk as a skunk by the time she gets done with
her ‘break.’” She left Savannah’s side and strolled to the center of the set,
where nobody seemed particularly surprised. “That’s it for tonight, ladies and
gentlemen. We’ll try again on Wednesday. Thanks.”

In less than ten minutes,
Kaitlin and her crew had cleared out of the barn-converted studio, and Savannah
was left alone to wander down the cobblestone driveway back to the main house.

Perhaps under different
circumstances she might have considered the moonlit walk romantic: the silver
light spilling over the lawns, the smell of the sea mingling with that of
nearby eucalyptus trees, the house’s stained-glass windows glowing in the jewel
colors of ruby, sapphire, and topaz, and the hypnotic, rhythmic sounds of the
waves washing onto the beach below.

But there was another,
unsettling sound. The soft snuffling of someone crying. A child.

Savannah saw her sitting in
the gazebo, a young girl of about six, with long, straight dark hair that covered
her downturned face like a privacy curtain. She had her knees drawn up under
her chin, her arms wrapped around her bare shins. She wore a bright pink
T-shirt and matching shorts, and in the moonlight Savannah could see sparkles,
like glitter, on her sneakers.

Savannah walked across the
lawn to the gazebo and stepped into the white, ivy-draped structure. “Hi,” she
said softly.

The child looked up her
with enormous eyes full of sadness that went straight to Savannah’s heart.
Being the oldest of nine siblings, Savannah had seen more than her share of
pouting and whining, but this youngster’s sorrow was obviously genuine and
deep.

“What’s the matter,
sweetpea?” she asked in her best big-sister voice as she sat across from the
girl on the circular padded bench that surrounded the interior of the gazebo.

Shrugging her shoulders,
the child sniffed and wiped her hand across her nose. Savannah reached into her
slacks pocket, pulled out a clean tissue, and offered it to her. The girl took
the tissue and blew heartily into it before tucking it into her own pocket.

“What’s wrong?” she asked
again. “Did something bad or sad happen? Did one of those terrible terriers
down there take a bite out of your shorts?”

The child shook her head, but
Savannah saw a trace of a smile cross her face. “Naw. Hitler’s the only one who
ever really bit me, and he doesn’t do it anymore, ‘cause I smacked him on the
butt with a flyswatter.” Savannah chuckled. “Well, I can’t say that I think
hitting innocent animals is a good idea, but”—she held up her bandaged
forefinger—“I do understand. I have to admit that if I’d been holding a
flyswatter or a rolled-up newspaper this afternoon when I met Hitler, I would
have whalloped him, too. Self-defense and all that.”

“I know. They’re mean,
those little dogs. Mommy says that Grandma spoils them rotten and that’s why
they’re bad. Doggies are supposed to be nice, not going around biting people
for no reason at all. I told Mommy I wanted a good dog, like a golden retriever,
but she said that Satan and Hitler would eat another dog alive. So I can't have
one until all three of them die. Maybe a coyote will come down out of the hills
and eat them some night. I hope so.

The wicked gleam in the little girl’s
eyes took Savannah aback for a moment. She had seen that particular light in
the eyes of criminals she had arrested on the force, and it seemed
inappropriate on one so young.

“My name’s Savannah,” she told the
girl. “And you are...?”

“Gilly. Gilly Sarah-Jane Maxwell.” The
child reached into her pocket, pulled out the tissue, and blew into it again.

“And Lady Eleanor is your
grandmother?”

“Yeah, but we don’t call her ‘lady.’
Just people who don’t know her call her that, because of television, you know.
My mommy calls her a bitch.”

Savannah cringed. After her own Granny
Reid’s strict Southern upbringing, she couldn’t get used to a child cursing...
or being cursed around.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could think
to reply.

“Yeah, me too. I like my grandma okay...
except for when she drinks booze and smells bad and talks bad. Then she’s no
fun to be around.”

Glancing across the lawns to the
mansion, which was now mostly dark except for the kitchen lights, Savannah
said, “Like tonight?”

Gilly sniffed and nodded. “Yeah. I
went down to visit her, but she was already, you know, weird. She told me to
get lost. She doesn’t usually do that. Sometimes she lets me watch her cook.
I’m the only one who can.”

So much for gleaning any chocolate
secrets, Savannah thought. “Do you live in the mansion with your parents?”

“No. I live in the gatekeeper’s
cottage with my mom. Her name is Louise. I never saw my daddy. Mommy says he
was rich and very, very handsome, but she didn’t want to marry him, ’cause she
didn’t really like him that much. She says I’m ill’jitmutt. And the kids at
school say I’m a bastard.”

Again, Savannah’s heart
ached.... and her fingers itched to wrap themselves around any mother’s throat
who would say something like that to a child.

“Those are ugly words for
such a pretty girl,” she said softly as she reached over to brush Gilly’s long,
stringy hair out of her eyes. The child was in great need of a hairbrushing, a
hug, and a gentler, healthier environment. “My daddy wasn’t around much when I
was a kid, either,” Savannah said. “But I had other people who loved me. I’ll
bet you do, too.”

Gilly thought for a moment,
then nodded. “Yeap. Marie likes me and Sydney, too.”

“Who’s Sydney?”

“He works for my grandma.
Drives her to Los Angeles and stuff. And he lets me help him wash her big,
black car sometimes. And my grandma loves me.... when she’s not... you know...
and my mommy does. Mommy’s just got really bad nerves because of Grandma being
such a bad mom to her when she was a kid. Mommy has to take a lot of nerve
pills, or she gets all mixed up and sad and mad and stuff, and sometimes she
has to go away... you know... for a rest.”

“A rest, hmmm.” Savannah
was fairly sure Mom wasn’t checking into the local Motel 6 for her “rests.”
Rehab clinics, maybe, for popping all those “nerve” pills? “Where do you live
when your mom’s away... resting?”

“With Grandma or Grandpa.
He loves me, too, but he doesn’t come around here anymore, ‘cause Grandma said
if he did, she’d call the cops and get his sorry butt arrested. They’re
divorced.”

Savannah jotted that one
down in her mental notebook, along with the other information she had gleaned
in this small but child-candid conversation. Ten minutes spent talking to a
pure soul with no guilty secrets could be more informative than hours
interrogating a hardened street criminal.

Savannah glanced around at
the dark, shadowed areas of the lawns and listened to a pack of coyotes yipping
in the distant hills. Lady Eleanor’s estate struck her as more spooky than
romantic at night, despite its Victorian elegance.

“Do you usually hang around
outside this late?” she asked the girl, who had taken the tissue out of her
pocket and was dabbing at her eyes again.

“It’s not that late,” she
replied with a sniff.

Savannah glanced at her
watch. “Actually, it’s almost eleven-thirty. That’s pretty late on a school
night. You do go to school, right?”

“Yeah, I’m in first grade.
But if I don’t want to go tomorrow morning, I’ll just tell Mommy that my
stomach hurts and she’ll let me stay home. Besides, Mommy’s already asleep. She
doesn’t care if I stay up and run around, as long as I don’t wake her up when I
come in.” Savannah reached over and tweaked the girl’s bangs. “Well, I’ll tell
you what I think... and I had eight little brothers and sisters, so I know a
lot about kids and bedtimes. I think you’re still growing, and in order to grow
big and strong, you have to sleep. Because that’s when it happens—the growing,
that is.”