Death by Chocolate

by G. A. McKevett

  “Tell me something new,” he grumbled. “What I really hate is when the darned thing freezes up on me and I have to turn it off the old-fashioned way, you know— with the on/off button—and then when I turn it on again it yells at me for not closing it down properly.”

  “That is aggravating, it’s true.” She looked around the room at the empty desks. Other than one guy whom she didn’t even recognize standing at a filing cabinet on the other side of a partition, Dirk was the only one in sight. “Where is everybody?”

  “What do you mean everybody? I told you, the cutbacks are wicked. We’re down to three detectives. That’s it. Ray took his retirement last year, and Bruce went out this year, and they haven’t replaced either one of them.”

  “No wonder you’re always asking me to go on stakeouts with you. You’re lonely, Coulter.”

  “Lonely, my butt. I’m just keeping you off the streets and outta the pool halls.”

  She reached across him and nabbed his coffee cup. “Hey, don’t drink outta that!” He tried to snatch it back, but she was too quick. ‘You’ll give me your cold.” It was room temperature. She grimaced and gave it back to him. “Lukewarm.... yum. I don’t have my cold anymore. That toddy you made last night cured me.”

  “Completely?”

  “My nose is dry, and I haven’t sneezed or coughed once since I woke up.”

  “Wow! I’ve discovered the cure for the common cold.”

  “I think the Irish discovered it long, long ago.” She studied the form he was filling out on the screen. The words “Eleanor Maxwell” caught her eye. “What’re you working on?”

  “Nothing,” he said, too quickly. ‘Just the usual crap.”

  “Did you get any sleep, or did you stay up all night processing the scene?”

  He frowned. “Bimbo-head wasn’t supposed to tell you about that.”

  “I pried it out of her—threaten her with mutilation and she caves every time. What have you got?”

  “Nothing. Really.” He closed the screen and switched off the computer.

  “Where’s the body?”

  “Dr. Liu’s got it.”

  “When is she going to do the autopsy?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know for sure. Could be today, tomorrow. Depends on how many bodies she’s got piling up down there.”

  She gave him a piercing look. “Is she doing it right now, Dirk?”

  “Yeah. She’s probably just about done.” He sighed. “And I suppose you want to come with me to the morgue.” She nodded, reached over and ruffled his hair. He hated that. It would take him five minutes to get those precious few strands combed just right to cover the thin spots. ‘You betcha. Let’s go. Now’s as good a time as any for good news.... or bad.”

  At the coroner’s office Savannah and Dirk found Officer Rosa Ortez manning the front desk. Her smile was bright, her manner professional as she asked them to sign in.

  “So, you’re Kenny’s replacement, huh?” Savannah asked as she wrote her own name, not Minnie Mouse’s, on the sheet.

  “Yes,” Rosa replied. “As of Monday.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  Rosa grinned broadly. “He pinched my butt; I took his job.”

  Dirk laughed. “Sounds fair to me. But now I have to look at his ugly mug over at the station every morning. You were a lot easier on the eyes.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry. This is a lot closer to my babysitter. And Kenny hates working at the station, where there’s actually something to do. Unlike here.” She waved her hand, indicating the relatively silent and empty building. “Deadly quiet.”

  “Oo-o-o-o, bad one.” Savannah placed the pen back in its holder and waved good-bye. “Keep a stiff upper lip.”

  “Oh, like that’s any better,” Rosa replied as they left the reception area and walked down the tiled hallway toward the coroner’s autopsy suite in the back of the building.

  There was no point in stopping at Dr. Jennifer Liu’s office halfway down the hall. She was hardly ever behind a desk. The swinging double doors that opened into the rooms where autopsies were performed were both closed. That usually meant a procedure was underway.

  Savannah steeled her nerves before opening the door. It was never particularly pleasant to watch an autopsy performed, but she found it much harder when the body had belonged to someone she knew. When she swung it open and looked inside, she was relieved to see that the corpse on the table had already been wrapped in a white shroud and was ready for the funeral home’s collection. From its general height and shape, she figured it was the remains of Eleanor Maxwell.

  Dirk followed close behind her. “Dr. Liu?” he called. “Anybody home?”

  A moment later, the county coroner walked out of a back room and joined them beside the body on the stainless-steel table. An exquisitely lovely, petite and slender Asian woman, Dr. Jennifer Liu could have been cast as a runway model, a martial arts expert, or a ballerina. But most people who met her would not have guessed she was a medical examiner.

  Her long, glossy hair was tied back with a blue paisley scarf, and she wore green surgical scrubs and disposable paper booties over her sneakers. The scrubs were bloodstained.

  “Is this Maxwell?” Dirk asked, nodding toward the body.

  “That’s her.” She turned to Savannah. “Hey, girlfriend. How’s it going? Haven’t seen you for a while.” Savannah decided not to mention that fact that she considered rare visits to the coroner’s office a good thing. Not that she didn’t like Dr. Jen, but... “Things have been pretty quiet with me,” she replied, then added, “Until this, that is.”

  Dr. Liu nodded. ‘Yeah, Dirk told me you were her bodyguard or something like that.”

  “Apparently, I was more ‘something’ than guard.” The doctor gave her a warm, comforting smile. ‘There’s no reason to suspect foul play at this point,” she said. “She died of a heart attack, and she was being treated for a heart condition. Natural causes.”

  “Oh yeah?” Dirk said. “That’s good news, huh, Van?”

  “I guess.”

  Dr. Liu walked over to a nearby table and picked up a manila folder. Opening it, she studied the papers inside. “I talked to her physician, a Dr. Raymond Hynson, and he said she was suffering from advanced heart disease.”

  “Was she taking meds for it?” Dirk asked.

  “Dr. Hynson had prescribed metosorbide for her. And once you inventory the contents of her medicine chest at home, and I get the lab tests back, I’ll let you know if she was taking what he’d prescribed.”

  “She drank quite a lot,” Savannah offered. “Isn’t that a no-no for people taking metosorbide?”

  “Yes, it is.” Dr. Liu shook her head and closed the folder. “What a shame. Some people just don’t realize what they’re doing to themselves.”

  Savannah remembered sitting on the patio, gazing out at the dark sea with Eleanor Maxwell—the tears on her cheeks, her comments about how little joy there was in her life.

  “Maybe she did realize it,” Savannah said. “There’s more than one way to commit suicide.”

  “Was Lady Eleanor, Queen of Chocolate, that unhappy?” Dr. Liu asked, looking at the bundled body on her table.

  “Oh yeah,” Savannah said. “Definitely that unhappy. No doubt about it.”

  Chapter

  8

  “So, it looks like you’re off the hook,” Dirk said as k3he drove Savannah home. “Natural causes. Would have happened no matter what you did, short of keeping her from drinking and lowering her cholesterol.” Savannah watched the neighborhood whiz by the car window, but she wasn’t seeing it. Her thoughts were elsewhere—on the plastic bags she had given to Tammy the night before.

  “Hey, I’m not just talking to hear my own head rattle, you know?” he said, nudging her.

  “What? Oh, yeah, right. I’m off the hook. Except...”

  “Except what? There isn’t anything else you can do for her.”

  “I still haven’t done what she hired me t
o do.”

  “What are you talking about? She doesn’t need protection anymore, she’s—”

  “I know.” Savannah sighed. “But she didn’t hire me to protect her. She made that abundantly clear. In fact, she was downright rude about it. All she wanted me to do was find out who was writing her those threatening letters so that she could kill them.”

  “Is that what she said?” Dirk was instantly alert. “She was going to kill them?”

  “I think she was speaking figuratively.”

  “Well, I certainly hope so.”

  “And I still need to do my job.”

  Dirk shook his head. “Savannah, that’s dumb. Your client croaked.”

  “Yeah, but she paid me in advance. I think she’d still want to know who it was.”

  Abruptly, he pulled the Buick over to the side of the road and turned to face her. “Look,” he said, “the gal’s dead. She ain’t ever gonna know nothin’, so—”

  “Granny Reid says the moment we pass over we instantly have all knowledge. It’s like a veil being lifted, and once we leave the physical world and join the spiritual one, we see everything clearly.”

  “Then you don’t have to find out anything for her. According to your grandma, she already knows everything, right?”

  Savannah turned and gave him a long, hard look. “Okay, smarty-pants. Maybe I want to know for myself.” He threw the car into drive and pulled back into traffic. “Well, hell, girl, why didn’t you just say so in the first place? Let’s go back to the mansion and check out that medicine chest.”

  “And her dresser drawers, and her desk and her closets and—”

  “Anybody ever tell you you’re a nosy old broad?” ‘Yeah. It’s a gift. And I keep telling you, boy... I’m middle-aged.”

  Dirk knocked at the front door of the mansion, but when nobody answered, Savannah reached across him and tried the knob. Just as she had suspected it would, it opened easily.

  “They didn’t bother to lock it before,” she said. “Not much reason to bother now.”

  The tripping of tiny toenails across the hardwood floors announced the arrival of the terrible threesome.

  “Meet my buddies,” she told Dirk as she knelt on one knee and began petting first one, then the other. ‘They’re named Satan, Killer, and the little runt one is Hider.”

  “Are you serious?” Dirk offered his hand, but Satan snarled. “Stupid names for some barking rats.”

  “Are you guys hungry?” she asked. Then she noticed the bits of dog food in Killer’s tiny beard. Satan’s whiskers were wet, so they had water. And they weren’t rushing out the door to go doggy-wee-wee, so she assumed Marie must still be on duty.

  “They look fine to me,” Dirk said, dismissing them with a wave of his hand. It occurred to Savannah that nothing short of a German shepherd or rottweiler was a “real” dog to Dirk. But then, he hadn’t been bitten by one of these little ones, either. She still had a bandage on her forefinger.

  “Anybody here?” he shouted, his deep voice echoing through the house.

  The answering silence seemed heavy and thick, as though the house itself knew that something had changed.

  Looking around at the antiques, the heavy drapes, the dark fabrics, Savannah said, “I don’t think I’d want to be here after midnight... in the middle of a thunderstorm—”

  “With a psycho ax-murderer on the loose from a local nuthouse.... yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve got some imagination, Van. It’s just your average, run-of-the-mill mansion.”

  “With a carousel horse and a suit of armor in the living room?”

  “Exactly. I’ve got the same sorta stuff in my trailer.”

  “Oh, yeah.... with your TV-tray coffee table and your orange-crate bookshelves.” Savannah started up the stairs. “Come on, I’ve been dying to see the master suite.”

  When Savannah opened the door to Eleanor’s bedroom and looked inside, her first thought was, Somebody beat us to it. It’s already been searched.

  The canopied bed was topsy-turvy, a tumble of blankets, sheets, and pillows, some of it spilling onto the carpet. Half of the dresser’s drawers were open, clothes hanging out. The closet door stood ajar, the heel of a rhinestone-studded pump stuck beneath it.

  Every horizontal surface was littered with food wrappers, empty booze bottles, jewelry and makeup and assorted items of clothing, some clean but more dirty.

  The room had a stale odor about it, as though it badly needed a breath of fresh air.

  “She really was depressed,” Savannah said.

  “Why didn’t the maid straighten up in here?” Dirk shook his head as he looked around, taking in the mess. “Hell, this is worse than my trailer. At least I keep all of my dirty clothes in one pile.”

  “Yeah, you’re quite the Suzy Homemaker. I suspect that Eleanor wouldn’t let the maid—or anybody, for that matter—in here. This was her cave, where she hid from the world.”

  Dirk walked over to the closet, pushed the door open, and looked inside. “What do ya suppose she was hiding?” ‘The fact that she wasn’t Lady Eleanor.... queen of anything. She was living in a world not of her own design. A lot of women do.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. You get the bathroom, and I’ll see what I can find in here.”

  Savannah rummaged through the dresser drawers but found only the expected brightly colored, plus-sized muumuus, housedresses, and nightgowns. Judging from the amount of loungewear, Eleanor spent more time lolling around than dressing up.

  Not that Savannah would judge her for that. Why not live in pj’s if you could? If you had to pour yourself into one of those Victorian corsets and put on a heavy, hot wig every evening... kick back the rest of the time.

  The miscellaneous candy wrappers, empty cookie boxes, and potato chip bags scattered about revealed a diet that was relatively nutrient-free. Not the ideal for anybody, let alone a heart patient. And Savannah counted at least half a dozen empty fifths of hard booze.

  She could hear Dirk rummaging around in the adjoining bathroom. “What did you find?” she called out to him.

  “All kinds of crap she was taking,” he said. “I’ve got a dozen prescriptions here at least... from several different doctors.”

  “Are you bringing them with you?”

  “Oh, yeah. How about you?”

  “Nothing interesting.” She walked over to the night-stand, which was covered with movie magazines and romance novels as well as the ever present junk-food wrappers.

  Opening the top drawer of the stand, she saw a clutter of reading glasses, old TV Guides, and more gaudy costume jewelry. Her practiced eye scanned the mundane contents, looking for the unusual or the informative.

  She found it: a journal, leather-bound with loose-leaf pages. A purple felt-tipped pen was tucked between the pages, and the writing throughout was in bold purple ink. The handwriting was large with plenty of curly flourishes, and although the entire book was obviously written by the same hand, the penmanship varied from neat and formal to almost illegible.

  Savannah didn’t have to read more than a page or two to realize it was Eleanor Maxwell’s.

  “Bingo,” she said. “Diary.”

  Dirk poked his head around the corner. “Really? Hers?”

  “Yep. Could make interesting reading, you know, if...” She didn’t want to speak the words aloud. “If we find out she was murdered.”

  “Exactly,” he replied.

  He disappeared back into the bathroom, and she continued to search the remaining drawers. But the journal was the only thing of interest she uncovered.

  “Are you about done in here?” Dirk asked as he exited the bathroom, a paper bag in his hand containing the medications he had found.

  “Yes. I peaked with the diary. Let’s go.”

  They were just leaving the master suite and entering the upstairs hall when they heard a noise on the lower level.

  “That’s too loud to be the mutts,” Dirk whispered.

  Savannah
listened to the heavy footsteps. “Definitely a two-footed critter. Maybe Marie.”

  “Let’s see.”

  The thick Oriental rugs cushioned their steps as they made their way quietly down the hall. When they reached the top of the staircase, they could see down into the foyer. Savannah recognized the thick white hair and the pinstriped suit. This time Martin Streck was wearing a purple shirt with an olive tie. She decided he must be color-blind and single. No wife would let her man leave the house dressed like that.

  The accountant was holding a large file box, and from the way he was carrying it, the thing was full and heavy.

  “Hey,” Dirk called as he passed Savannah on the stairs and hurried the rest of the way down. “Whatcha got there, buddy?”

  Streck hugged the box closer to his chest and lifted his nose a few notches. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  Dirk reached into his pocket, pulled out his badge, and flipped it open, displaying the gold shield. “Detective Sergeant Coulter. I’m conducting an investigation. So I’ll ask you again: What have you got in the box?”

  One glance at Dirk’s face told Savannah that he had exhausted his supply of “nice” and was entering “cranky.” Dirk never bothered to stock a lot of “nice” on his personality shelf, and he was frequently running out.

  “I’m Martin Streck, the late Mrs. Maxwell’s accountant. I need these files to settle her estate.” He turned to Savannah. “What have you got to do with this?”

  She smiled and shrugged. “I’m just hanging out with what’s-his-face here.”

  “Put the box down,” Dirk said.

  Streck stuck out his chin. “I will not. These belong to my client and—”

  “Belonged... belonged to your client,” Dirk interjected. “She’s dead, and those files are part of my crime scene. Put ‘em down. Now.”

  “Crime scene? What crime has been committed?” A fine sprinkling of sweat popped out on Streck’s forehead, and his breathing sounded as if he had just run a hundred-yard sprint.