Death by Chocolate

by G. A. McKevett

  Savannah chuckled. “It takes a lot more than the fear of a little contamination to put Dirk Coulter off his chow,” she said.

  Later, as they gathered around the kitchen table to have dessert and coffee, Savannah slid a bowl of cobbler laden with vanilla ice cream in front of Cordele.

  “You do still eat cobbler, don’t you?” Savannah said. “It used to be your favorite. You always asked for that instead of a birthday cake, remember?”

  A look of agony crossed Cordele’s face as she wrestled with the decision on whether to indulge or refrain.

  Tammy sat down beside her and picked up a spoon. “Ah, go ahead. A little refined sugar and flour once in a while won’t hurt you. It’s a special occasion.”

  Soon everyone had a bowl of warm cobbler à la mode and was happily munching away.

  “Remember when we used to go picking blackberries by the roadsides in the fall?” Savannah said, trying to draw Cordele into some sort of meaningful social interaction with her friends. “That was fun, huh?”

  Cordele didn’t look up from her bowl. ‘Yeah, I remember. We used to get our arms all scratched up. It hurt something fierce.”

  Silence around the table. Everyone exchanged awkward glances, but nobody said anything.

  “My brothers and I used to raid a neighbor’s apple orchard,” Ryan finally offered.

  “Oh, that sounds like fun,” Savannah said brightly. Cordele took a deep breath. “Remember when we were picking berries on the side of the highway that time, and we found a dead cat caught in the briars? I remember that like it was yesterday. That ol’ cat was half-rotten and had flies buzzin’ all over it.”

  Savannah sat, frozen, spoon halfway to her mouth, staring at her sister.

  “I gotta tell you,” Cordele continued. “It took the fun out of berry picking for me. Between finding that rotten cat and the briars scratching you all up, it just wasn’t worth it.”

  Slowly Savannah stood and walked, trancelike, from the kitchen and into the living room. Tammy got up from her seat and followed her.

  “Where are you going?” Tammy whispered, tugging at her sweater sleeve.

  “To get a weapon,” Savannah replied. “What do you figure would be best: a rope, a knife, a candlestick, or a gun?”

  “That depends,” Tammy said. “Are you talking homicide or suicide?”

  “I figure I’ll kill her first, then myself.”

  “I see. Well, in that case....” Tammy gave it several moments of serious thought. “Gun. Yeah, definitely the Beretta.”

  “Really? You think so? Why?”

  “It would be too much work bludgeoning yourself to death with a candlestick.”

  She nodded. “Good point. Thanks.”

  “Anytime. What are friends for?”

  With the dishes done, the cats fed, and Cordele in the living room reading her mystery novel, the Moonlight Magnolia team sat around the dining room table, studying the files that Dirk had confiscated from Martin Streck.

  After comparing facts and figures for about an hour, they came to the same conclusion. “Streck’s been embezzling from Eleanor for a long time,” Tammy said.

  “No kidding,” Ryan replied. “He’s just about bled her estate dry.”

  “And didn’t you mention,” John added, “that she and her husband had a recent parting of the ways, so to speak?”

  “Their divorce became final about a month ago.” Dirk shoved back from the table and stretched his arms.

  “A lot of things come to light during a divorce,” Tammy said. “Do you suppose either Eleanor or Burt figured out what Martin was up to?”

  Savannah shook her head. “I guarantee you that Eleanor didn’t know. She was the sort of gal that, if she had found out somebody was cheating her, she’d have chopped them up into paté and fed them to those hounds of hers.”

  “Maybe Streck hadn’t yet been exposed, but was afraid he would be,” Ryan suggested. “Perhaps he thought if he knocked off Eleanor, he could rig the books to hide his tampering from Burt.”

  “He was taking off with these files when we caught him,” Dirk said. “And that maid, Marie, told you that we should be lookin’ at him.”

  “Yes, but she wouldn’t say why.” Savannah took a blank sheet of paper and drew a small box at the top. “I suppose that if I’d been cashing in my client’s CDs, selling off their stocks, and dipping into their bank accounts and skimming off their savings, I’d be pretty nervous about getting caught.”

  “Nervous enough to kill somebody?” Tammy said. Savannah glanced into the living room, where Cordele was curled up in the big chair with her book. “Oh, sure,” she said. “If there’s fifty ways to leave a lover, there’s gotta be a thousand reasons to commit murder.”

  She scribbled Martin Streck’s name in the box at the top of the page. He had just been promoted to “Suspect Number One.”

  Chapter

  14

  Savannah had often wondered how Greenwoods Cemetery had gotten its name. Standing among the grave markers that lay flush with the earth was the occasional palmetto. But there wasn’t a woods, or even a leafy tree, in sight. And since the drought-inspired water restrictions had required southern Californians to shower together, flush only when necessary, and water the lawns not at all, Greenwoods Cemetery wasn’t looking particularly green, either.

  Long ago, Savannah had decided that when she kicked the bucket, she wanted to be carted back to Georgia, where she could lie beneath the weeping willows near her beloved grandfather.

  She had attended a depressing amount of funerals in this cemetery. And today’s ceremonial burying was equally somber, as they laid Lady Eleanor Maxwell to rest.

  Surveying the crowd that stretched from the open grave, surrounded by chairs across the beige lawns to the road, she wondered how many of the mourners had actually ever met Eleanor in the flesh and how many were simply groupie gourmets.

  “Quite a crowd,” Dirk remarked. “I’ll bet there won’t be anywhere near this many when I go toes-up.”

  “Unless it’s in the line of duty, and then there’ll be cops from here to San Diego,” Savannah replied.

  When he didn’t answer, she turned and looked at him. He was just staring at her. “Don’t even say that,” he told her. “It’s bad luck.”

  “Oh, pooh. Gran says that if you speak an evil out loud, it won’t come true. Besides, you’re too mean to die. You’ll live to be a hundred and four and irritate us all the whole time.”

  He lowered his voice. “Nice theory, but it didn’t work for her.” He nodded toward the casket that hung on thick canvas straps over the grave.

  “Sh-h-h.” She glanced around, but the only one who had overheard was Tammy, who was standing on the other side of Dirk.

  “Keep it down, Dirko,” Tammy told him. “It’s customary to only say nice things about people at their funerals.”

  “Yeah,” Savannah added. “You keep the really juicy, nasty stuff to yourself and save it for the evening of the funeral, when everybody’s comparing notes about who took it hard and who didn’t seem to give a hoot.”

  Tammy’s mouth dropped open. “I haven’t been to a lot of funerals. Do people really do that?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Savannah told her. ‘You can’t win with the gossips. If you cry too much, they’ll say you ‘just plumb fell apart and made a spectacle of yourself,’ and if you don’t cry enough, they’ll claim that you ‘never did give a fig anyway’ about the recently departed. You’re damned if you do and if you don’t.”

  “Wow.” Tammy shook her head in disbelief. “I’d think that how someone grieves is a personal matter.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what you get for thinkin’,” Dirk said. “And speaking of who’s taking it hard and who ain’t...” He nodded to the circle of Eleanor’s immediate family and friends who were sitting in chairs at the gravesite.

  Savannah’s eyes went automatically to Gilly, who sat between her mother and Sydney Linton. The little girl seemed bewilde
red by all that was going on around her. Savannah’s big-sister persona longed to hug the child, give her a glass of milk and some chocolate chip cookies, and read her a story.

  Louise had a dazed look on her face that Savannah suspected was pharmaceutically induced. Nerve pills, no doubt. She wasn’t likely to do that cookie/story routine tonight, no matter how badly her daughter might need it.

  But the chauffeur seemed to be concerned for Gilly. He was holding her hand and whispering to her from time to time. Whatever he was saying appeared to be helping. She would look up at him, nod, and smile just a little.

  A minister appeared, walked to the head of the grave, and opened his prayer book. The crowd fell silent as the familiar “dust to dust” and “ashes to ashes” passage was read, followed by the Lord’s Prayer.

  Savannah watched Martin Streck, who stood behind Louise, his hand on her shoulder, trying to read his face and demeanor. It would have been nice to pick up a sense of guilt or fear from him, but she didn’t. Other than a mild concern for Louise, he seemed pretty unaffected by the whole thing.

  Marie sat on the other side of Sydney. She was the only one present—other than Gilly—who seemed to be genuinely distressed. Although she was wearing dark glasses, she was constantly wiping her eyes and nose with a lace handkerchief she held, knotted, in her hand. Her black dress made her seem even more pale and gaunt than usual.

  Savannah didn’t recognize the good-looking blond fellow who sat on Louise’s other side. But from his age and the resemblance between him and Louise, Savannah assumed he was Louise’s father, Burt Maxwell.

  Eleanor’s ex, she thought. Hm-m-m... definitely cuter than she had been.

  Standing behind Burt was Kaitlin Dover and several others that Savannah recognized from the crew that had been taping in the studio barn.

  They were all wearing long faces, and Savannah wondered if it was because Eleanor had died or because they had lost a steady gig. From what she had heard, jobs in Hollywood were few and far between these days. Even a difficult boss like Eleanor Maxwell was better than no boss at all.

  The minister had finished, and, one by one, they were filing past the closed coffin, each person dropping a single red rose onto the highly polished top.

  Louise carelessly tossed her flower onto the casket, then turned to her daughter, whose rose was pale pink. “Go ahead,” she told her.

  Savannah’s heart ached as she watched the little girl kiss the face of the flower, then gently place it on her grandmother’s coffin.

  Sydney laid his down next, then took Gilly by the hand and led her across the lawn after Louise. They made their way to the classic Jaguar parked nearby. Sydney opened the door, assisted mother and child inside, and took his place in the driver’s seat.

  Nearby, more than a dozen reporters’ cameras clicked and whirred. Savannah saw at least three TV news crews filming the proceedings. Lady Eleanor was a hot story, especially now that word was out that she had been murdered.

  They all focused on the Jaguar as it pulled away.

  “It just occurred to me,” Savannah said. “You know who’s not here?”

  “Who?” Tammy asked.

  “Anybody who even looks remotely like Eleanor. And she’s supposed to have an identical twin sister named Elizabeth.”

  Dirk shrugged. “Maybe she lives out of state and couldn’t make it.”

  “Nope. She lives in Twin Oaks.”

  “That’s only fifteen minutes down the freeway,” Dirk said. “Wonder why she didn’t show?”

  “Maybe she didn’t like her sister,” Savannah suggested, trying not to think of Cordele at the moment she muttered the words.

  “Or,” Tammy said, “maybe she didn’t want to show up and have everybody critique her manner of grieving. I sure wouldn’t.”

  Against her better judgment, Savannah invited Cordele to go to the mall with her. Ordinarily, she would never have taken anyone but Tammy when she was hoping to do an interview. But Cordele’s face had fallen when Savannah suggested that she might want to stay at home and finish her mystery. So she had caved and asked her to come along.

  After the funeral, Dirk had said he weis going to go after Burt Maxwell, to see if he could “squeeze him for a little juice about Martin Streck, or anybody else,” as he had delicately put it. Savannah had offered to go to the mall restaurant where Eleanor’s twin sister, Elizabeth, worked.

  Savannah had meant well, inviting Cordele to come along, but now she was having second thoughts. It wasn’t going to be easy, telling Cordele to get lost for a few minutes. She was bound to take it personally and be insulted. Cordele took it personally if it rained too hard in her vicinity.

  “You don’t mind, do you,” Savannah said as they pulled into the parking lot next to the food court, “if I go into the restaurant alone at first and see if this gal’s even working today? If she isn’t, we’ll both go to the nail salon and get a French manicure. How does that sound?”

  The face fell... again.

  “Come on, sugar,” Savannah pleaded. “I really need to do this one little thing by myself, and then you and I can shop or get a Mrs. Fields cookie or.... oh, right... you don’t eat cookies. I’ll buy you a frozen yogurt. With sprinkles or fruit on top. Whatever you want. How’s that? Cordele?”

  Cordele sat in the passenger’s seat, staring out the side window, giving Savannah a fine view of the back of her head.

  Savannah wanted to smack her. This was ridiculous, having to bribe a woman who was nearly thirty years old as if she were four and getting the cold-shoulder, silent treatment in return.

  “Why did you even invite me if you were just going to get me here and then dump me?” Cordele finally said, still staring out the window.

  “I told you when I asked you along that this would be a combination of business and pleasure. Let me take care of a little bit of business and then we’ll have some fun. We’ll go to Victoria’s Secret and sample their new perfumes and maybe go play with some puppies in the pet store.”

  “No. I never go to pet stores.”

  Savannah was afraid to ask why. But she had a feeling she would find out anyway, so....

  “Why don’t you go into pet stores, Cordele?”

  “Because it hurts too much. It reminds me that I never had a dog of my own when I was a kid. And I wanted a dog that—”

  “What about Gulliver? We had that old sheep dog for ages. And Colonel Beauregard. He’s the finest hound in the county.”

  “But they were the family’s dogs, not my own personal pet. I wanted an animal that was just mine, that I didn’t have to share with a thousand brothers and sisters. If I’d had a dog I would have taught him to fetch and to roll over and—”

  “Meet you in twenty minutes at the fountain in front of Sears.”

  Savannah got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. “I wish I’d known that not having a pet of your own would scar you for life, Cordele,” she muttered to herself as she walked across the lot to the mall entrance. “Hell, I would have gone out in the woods and trapped a skunk for you. That would’ve been fun.... watching you teach a polecat to fetch and roll over. Gr-r-r-rr.”

  She was dimly aware that several people were watching her with looks that varied from curious to alarmed. Obviously they thought this angry woman who was talking to herself and growling under her breath might present a threat to society.

  “Eh, screw ‘em,” she added at the end of her soliloquy. “If they had a sister like Cordele, they’d be nutty, too.”

  She located the restaurant on the mall map that was mounted just inside the entrance. Straight ahead and to her right. It had been years since she had visited the Twin Oaks Mall, and she was surprised at how much it had grown. They had added two new wings, where specialty shops sold everything from gourmet coffees to stained-glass lamps, silk flower arrangements to high-tech sports equipment and video games.

  Tucked between a bookstore and a candle shop was the Rain Forest Café. The restaurant was a br
ight and cheerful establishment with plenty of skylights, a profusion of green plants, and tropical-themed murals on the walls that gave it the ambiance of a South American jungle.

  Not that the sounds of parrots and monkeys caused Savannah to think of food. And apparently, the décor had a similar effect on the other mall visitors. Other than a family in a booth in the back and a teenage couple at a table up front, the restaurant was empty except for the employees.

  The bored waiters and waitresses wore khaki safari shirts and shorts with straw hats. The uniform looked almost cute on the younger ones, but ridiculous on the woman serving behind the bar—a middle-aged, heavy-set woman who was a dead ringer for Eleanor Maxwell.

  Savannah walked over to the bar, which served nothing but nonalcoholic smoothies, and waited for Elizabeth to come over. When she did, Savannah was greeted with a less than cordial, ‘Yeah.... what can I get you?”

  Hm-m-m, she thought, grumpy runs in the family. “A pineapple-strawberry flip,” she said.

  Elizabeth trudged down to the other end of the bar, threw some fruit and ice into a blender, and pushed the button. The concoction was quickly whipped into a froth, which she poured into a tall soda-fountain glass.

  Poking a straw into it, she shoved the drink under Savannah’s nose. ‘That’ll be five-fifty,” she announced, drumming her fingers impatiently on the bar.

  “Five-fifty? Wow! ” Savannah said. ‘That’s pricey for a milk shake with no milk in it.”

  Elizabeth reached out and seized the drink. “Do you want the smoothie or not, lady? I got work to do here.” Savannah made a point of looking deliberately up and down the empty bar. Then she said, “I’ll take it,” and handed the woman a ten-dollar bill.

  When Elizabeth brought her the change, Savannah decided to dive in.... although she had a distinct feeling that the water would be deep and cold.

  “I realize that you’re... busy,” she said with all the Dixie charm she could muster, “but could we talk for a couple of minutes? I’m—”