A Decadent Way to Die

by G. A. McKevett

  Savannah poured herself a large glass of tea and tossed in some ice cubes. Then she joined Dirk and Tammy at the table.

  “You know,” Dirk said, “even if the lab finds something in those samples, we’re not going to be able to nail anybody with just that and some loose dirt on a path.”

  “I know.” Savannah traced the top of the frosty glass with her fingertip. “But it’s a start.”

  “What did the gardener have to say about that soft spot on the road?” Tammy asked, glancing at her watch.

  “We showed it to him when he was taking us to the house,” Savannah said. “He acted like it was the first time he’d seen it or heard anything about it.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Savannah shrugged. “I guess. I swear people are better at lying than they used to be. It’s getting harder and harder to tell.”

  “But if the gardener rescued her off the cliff,” Tammy reasoned, “and the trench was the cause of her accident, it would have still been there. It seems like he would have seen it.”

  “She says she hung there on the cliff for half an hour, yelling for somebody to help her before he came along,” Dirk said. “Whoever dug it in the first place would have had enough time to fill it back in.”

  Savannah nodded. “If I’d set up an accident like that, I wouldn’t be able to resist hanging around in the bushes somewhere, waiting to see if it worked.”

  Dirk walked over to the waste can and disposed of his drumstick bone. Pulling some paper towels off the roll, he said, “It wouldn’t take more than two minutes to shovel that dirt back in place and stomp it down.”

  He wiped his fingers and his face, then pitched the towels into the garbage. “He could have had everything looking normal before the gardener even heard her cries for help.”

  “Or the gardener himself could have done it all,” Tammy said. “He may have set her up, and then changed his mind when he heard her yelling and pulled her off the cliff.”

  Savannah shook her head. “I doubt it. Why go to all that trouble and risk your own life to save her if you’re just going to poison her later?”

  “I didn’t like his wife,” Dirk said. “She acted hinky when she first saw us.”

  “Yeah.” Savannah took a sip of tea. “And I heard her say something on the phone in Spanish. It sounded like, ‘be careful what you say.’”

  “A lot of people are paranoid. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve broken the law,” Tammy said, glancing up at Savannah’s cat clock with its swinging tail and rolling eyes.

  “You got someplace you gotta be, sugar?” Savannah asked her.

  Tammy grinned. “Actually, someone’s dropping by in a few minutes to get me.”

  Savannah was all ears. “Oh? Someone special? Like maybe that new boyfriend we keep hearing about?”

  Blushing, Tammy nodded. “Yeah … but you have to be nice to him.”

  “Nice?” Dirk said. “We have to be nice? To heck with ‘nice.’ How much fun would that be?”

  “We’ll be absolutely adorable to your new honey-bunny,” Savannah said, kicking Dirk under the table. “I’ll give him cookies and milk, and Dirk can ask him if he’s on parole or—”

  “Oh, God … I’m doomed.” Tammy put her hands over her face.

  The oven timer went off and the phone rang simultaneously. Savannah jumped up and ran to the stove. Tammy hurried to the counter and grabbed the phone.

  “Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency,” she said in her breathiest, most sultry tone.

  Once Savannah had suggested that she sounded more like she was answering the phone on a Talk-Dirty-to-Me-Because-I’m-A-Loser-with-No-Love-Life line. Tammy had taken the gentle criticism to heart … for one day. Then it was back to her usual, wannabe Marilyn Monroe.

  As Savannah pulled the cookie sheet from the oven, she heard Tammy say, “Oh, hi, Eileen. Yes, she’s just taking your cookies out right now. Let me get her for you.”

  Savannah glanced over at Dirk and saw her own anxious anticipation on his face.

  She took the phone from Tammy. “Hey, girl. What’s shakin’ over there?”

  “You were right.”

  Savannah had to admit, as a general rule, those words were sweet to hear—even when spoken by Eileen in that gravelly, deep voice. But this time, Savannah would have preferred to hear that she was mistaken.

  It wasn’t always a blessing … being right.

  “What did you find?” she asked, nodding to Dirk.

  He sat up straight in his chair.

  “We found,” Eileen said, “Zolpedone in the cocoa, just like you suspected.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, let me explain it like this: If you were to use the entire container of cocoa to make one cup of hot chocolate—impossible, obviously—you’d consume enough to kill a horse. But the amount you’d use for one nightly mug full … it would be the equivalent of a triple dose. Certainly not a healthy amount, but probably not fatal.”

  “Which would explain why it didn’t kill her, just knocked her out for hours,” Savannah mused. “Anything else?”

  “That’s all we found. The sugar, vanilla, and half-and-half were uncontaminated.”

  “Thank you, Eileen. I owe you.” She looked over at the golden brown cookies cooling on the baking sheet. “In fact, your bribery payment just came out of the oven.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eileen replied. “I love your cookies, but, considering our results, I’m sure you have more important things to do. Like saving that lady’s life.”

  “You’re a gem, Eileen.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  Savannah hung up the phone and turned to Dirk and Tammy. “The sleep-aid medication was in the cocoa.”

  “I gathered,” Dirk said. “And that makes it official—attempted murder.”

  “Who would want to kill an elderly woman who makes dolls?” Tammy said. “That’s sorta like trying to murder Mrs. Claus.”

  Savannah nodded. “And they’re not only mean, but a bit on the stupid side. At the very least, we know our would-be killer isn’t much of a cook. They had no clue how much cocoa it takes to make a cup of hot chocolate. And that’s probably what saved Helene Strauss’s life.”

  The doorbell rang, and Tammy jumped like someone had touched her backside with a live wire.

  “Oh! I’ll bet that’s him!” she said, racing out of the kitchen and through the living room to the front door.

  “Wow,” Savannah said to Dirk. “He must be something pretty special to get a rise like that out of her.”

  Dirk grunted. “Men. We’re scum buckets—every last one of us. And nobody knows that better than us guys. If you women knew half of what we’re up to, you’d kill us all in our sleep.”

  Savannah stared at him a moment, then slowly nodded. “Oookay. Good to know.”

  A couple of moments later, Tammy walked into the kitchen holding the hand of an extremely tall, blond stud muffin with a blinding white smile, bright blue eyes, and muscles that rippled inside his snug, designer polo shirt when he reached out to shake Savannah’s hand.

  “Hi,” he said, teeth flashing, eyes sparkling. “I’m Chad.”

  He squeezed Savannah’s hand so hard that she winced.

  “Most pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said through gritted teeth. She pulled her fingers out of his grasp and waved toward Dirk. “Chad, I’d like you to meet my friend, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter.”

  Dirk received a smile from Chad, too, though Savannah noted it wasn’t as bright as the one he had given her.

  The handshake was just as firm; she could tell by the way Dirk flinched and scowled.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Chad told him. “Tammy’s told me so much about you. I’m a great supporter of law enforcement.”

  “Are you, now …?” Dirk’s eyes bored into Chad’s, and Savannah could see the younger man grimace as Dirk returned the crushing grip—plus a bit more for good
measure.

  Tammy looked alarmed and whispered to Dirk, “Nice … nice …”

  Savannah jumped to the rescue. “How about some cookies, Chad? Chocolate chip … still warm and gooey.”

  She decided against offering him a glass of milk to go with it. Now that she had seen him in all of his six-feet, three-inch, two-hundred-twenty-pound frame, a kindergartner’s snack seemed inappropriate.

  “I can make a fresh pot of coffee to go with the cookies, if you’ve got time to sit a spell,” she said instead.

  “No, thanks,” Chad said, rubbing the fingers of his right hand, which no doubt ached after Dirk’s revenge shake. “We have to get going, or we’ll be late for the auto show. I want to be there when they open the doors. I don’t like being late.”

  He glanced up and down Tammy’s turquoise suit with an obvious look of disdain on his handsome face.

  Savannah decided it was a face that was getting less handsome by the moment, sparkling teeth or not.

  “I’m going to have to take you home first,” he told Tammy, “so you can change. You aren’t going anywhere with me wearing that outfit. Where did you buy that? The local thrift store?”

  When Savannah saw the hurt and embarrassment on Tammy’s face, her temper flared. For a moment, she imagined what it would be like to lop off Chad’s head with a sword and watch it roll across the floor.

  Would it still be smiling ear-to-ear, white teeth flashing?

  “We had a special client appointment this morning,” Savannah told him, keeping her voice low and even. “I asked Tammy to dress up a bit for the occasion.”

  “I guess I’ll have to teach you how to dress,” he told Tammy. “Anybody with a smokin’ hot body like yours shouldn’t wear something out of an old lady’s closet.”

  Savannah couldn’t hold back any longer. “Whoa, Chad, you really need to watch your—”

  “It’s okay,” Tammy said, grabbing Savannah’s arm. “Really. I do need to change before we go out. I don’t know what I was thinking wearing this. I just …”

  Tammy gazed up at her date with a mixture of adoration, nervousness, and fear that made Savannah’s stomach churn.

  “We have to go,” Tammy said, releasing Savannah and scurrying to pick up her purse from the table. “Chad is a very punctual person, and, well … I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Savannah watched as the two of them turned and walked toward the back door.

  “Nice meeting you,” Chad called back over his shoulder.

  He didn’t wait for a reply before he walked out the door, leaving Tammy to follow dutifully in his wake.

  Savannah barely waited for the door to close before she said, “Oh … oh, how I hate him.”

  She turned to Dirk, and one look at his face told her he was feeling the same as she was. Sick and furious.

  “What I just told you about all men being scum …?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s just us regular guys. That one there … he’s in another category all together.”

  Chapter 7

  Savannah wasn’t sure what she was expecting when she arrived at Strauss Doll Works, Inc. But whatever image her imagination might have conjured up as the birthplace of all those beautiful dolls, it hadn’t been this.

  She hadn’t thought she would find a Bavarian, storybook structure like the Strauss mansion in downtown Los Angeles. She had visited the neighborhood too many times to be that naïve. Nor had she believed it would look like a Santa’s workshop.

  But somehow, she hadn’t anticipated a suite of offices on the thirty-second floor of a steel, glass, and concrete high-rise.

  And as she stepped off the elevator and onto the plush, dove gray carpeting and walked toward the giant glass door with its gracefully etched “SDW” logo, it also occurred to her that doll making was a lucrative business. At least, for the Strauss family.

  On the other side of the door was a posh reception area with white leather chairs and sleek chrome tables. On the walls hung beautiful black-and-white photos of children playing with some of the better-known Strauss dolls … including the famous “He-lene” doll, like the one Savannah owned.

  She walked up to the receptionist, a sharply dressed young man in his twenties with a businesslike, barely civil half smile.

  “Good afternoon,” he said with a sigh, glancing down at his watch. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Savannah Reid, here to see Mrs. Strauss.”

  “By ‘Mrs. Strauss,’ I assume you mean Helene?” he asked with a slightly elevated nose.

  “Sorry. I keep forgetting. I’m just not accustomed to referring to my elders by their first names. Where I’m from, a youngun can get switched for that.”

  “I see.”

  She could tell he didn’t see. Had zero interest in seeing. But it didn’t bother her much.

  “Will you please inform Helene that I’m here?”

  He glanced down at an open, leather-bound scheduling book on the counter in front of him. “You have an appointment?”

  “I spoke to her earlier on the phone. She said I should come here to talk to her in person.”

  Once again, he glanced at his watch.

  Her last thread of patience unraveled. “Look. I know it’s seven minutes to five and you’re, no doubt, poised to bolt through that door in six minutes. But I just drove like a bat outta hell all the way from San Carmelita, through LA traffic and smog, to get here before five, so that I could talk to Mrs Miss Helene. And unless you want me to start a big ruckus that’ll last at least an hour and a half, you’d better tell her I’m here. Make it snappy.”

  Rolling his eyes like a petulant adolescent, he reached for the phone. He punched in a number and waited, tapping his fingers on the desk. “Yes, I’m sorry to bother you,” he said into the phone. “I know you’re getting ready to leave for the day”—He gave Savannah an annoyed look, which she returned with divi-dends—“there’s a Savannah Leed to see you.”

  “Reid.”

  “Excuse me. Reid.” He listened for a moment. Then he gave Savannah another quick look—one that held a smidgen of respect. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll bring her right back.”

  He hung up. “This way, please, Ms. Reid. She’s in Ms. Fischer’s office. I’d be glad to take you there.”

  As he escorted her down a long corridor, past what seemed like endless offices, he seemed nervous. All cockiness gone.

  “Apparently, you’re a … um … friend of Helene’s,” he said.

  “Apparently so,” she replied, wondering at this change in his behavior.

  “She doesn’t come to the offices very often. In fact, I’ve been here three months, and today was the first time I’ve ever seen her.”

  Savannah decided not to mention that, before today, she had never seen the lady either.

  “She seems to be in a bad mood,” he continued. “I mean, not ‘bad,’ just, well, she got kind of mad that I said your name wrong.”

  Savannah stopped in the middle of the hallway and laid one hand lightly on his arm. “Young man, I’m not going to make a big deal out of you getting my name wrong. In the overall scope of human events, that’s not a biggie.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “And I’m not going to mention to your boss that you acted like a jackass when you ‘greeted’ me at the desk. But you’ve got a job, and these days, a lot of folks don’t. You need to be a wee bit more grateful … and a sight better at it.”

  He nodded sheepishly.

  Ahead, at the end of the hall, was a doorway with silver lettering that said, ADA FISCHER, PRESIDENT. Savannah pointed to it. “I think I can find my own way from here.”

  As the receptionist trailed away, Savannah approached the office door and paused, ready to knock. But inside she could hear two women arguing, and she couldn’t resist hesitating just a moment to eavesdrop.

  “If you keep this up, Aunt Helene, I’m going to have to put you away somewhere,” one woman said, “wh
ere people can keep an eye on you. We can’t have you running around delusional like this. You could hurt yourself.”

  “I have no intention of hurting myself,” answered a strong, distinctive voice that Savannah instantly recognized as Helene’s. “If I hurt anybody around here, it’s going to be you! I came down here to warn you … do not mess with me!”

  Savannah thought she’d better intervene, so she knocked softly on the door.