Death by Chocolate (7 page)

Louise’s eyes narrowed,
accenting the squint lines. “I don’t think I like you very much,” she said.
‘You’ve got a smart mouth and a lousy attitude.”

Savannah chuckled. ‘You
aren’t the first to express that sentiment. And you probably won’t be the last.
But, then, I don’t really give a fiddler’s fart, because I’m not here to make
friends. My job is to keep your mom safe, and I intend to do that.” Turning
away, she added, “Good luck with your assorted therapies. I hope you heal soon,
for your sake and for Gilly’s.”

As she walked across the
driveway toward the house, she heard Louise muttering behind her back.
Savannah?was pretty sure it was something like, “Good luck to you, too, bitch.
You’ll need it.”

Fine, she said to herself. Fine and
dandy. You, lady— and I use the term loosely—-just got moved to the top of my
shit list.

Savannah walked in the front door and
through the house without seeing a soul. The pile of dirty dishes in the
kitchen sink gave her a clue that it might be Marie’s, day off. The door
leading to the ocean side of the house, was open, and she thought she could
hear voices on the lawn.

She shuddered at the thought of
watching Eleanor Maxwell gobbling her breakfast again. But sooner or later, she
would have to face the lady of the house, grisly, as that prospect might be. So
she headed in that direction.

Just before she reached the door, she
heard a sound coming from the library, a small but cozy room off the dining
room. She recalled hearing Marie refer to it as. the “office.” Perhaps Eleanor
was attending to business and would be more amenable to being interrupted than
when she was eating.

She walked to the door of the library
and looked inside. Standing at the desk in the far corner of the room was a
fiftyish white-haired man in a pinstriped suit with a bright blue paisley tie
and a pink shirt. The last guy she had seen who was dressed that badly was
trying to sell her steak knives at a county fair.

But she was less concerned
about his fashion blunders than by the fact that he was reading a letter that
he was holding. By the tan color of the paper, she was pretty sure she
recognized it as one of the threatening messages Eleanor had received. 

So engrossed was he in what
he was reading that he didn’t notice her until she cleared her throat and said,
“Hello.”

He jumped as if someone had
shoved a hotwire down the back of his ugly pink shirt. Fumbling with the paper,
he shoved it first behind him, then dropped it onto the desk. “Yeah,” he said.
“Who are you?”

Quickly Savannah walked
across the room, her hand outstretched. “Savannah Reid. I’m working for Mrs.
Maxwell. And you are....?”

“Martin Streck, her manager
and accountant. If you’re working for her, why haven’t I heard of you?”

A certain arrogant gleam in
his close-set gray eyes told Savannah that Martin Streck was a man who prided
himself on knowing just about everything and anything worth knowing.

She gave him a saccharine
smile and batted her eyelashes. “Well, I don’t know, Mr. Streck. Maybe little
ol’ me wasn’t worth botherin’ you with. I’m sure Eleanor would have gotten
around to telling you about me sooner or later.”

He looked her up and down
with eyes that took in every detail. “What sort of work do you do for Eleanor?”
Again, she gave him the eyelash routine. “Why, sir.... I believe that’s
confidential. In fact, maybe that’s why you didn’t know about me. Maybe I’m one
of Eleanor’s secrets.”

She could feel him cringe
as she walked over to the desk and looked quite deliberately down at the paper
he had dropped. Yes, it was one of the letters she had seen the day before.

“But, then,” she said, “I
thought those letters were a bit of a secret, too. And it looks like everybody
and their dog’s brother’s cousin is getting to read them and handle them. Not a
good idea.”

“I’m not just anybody, Miss
Reid. I’m Eleanor’s accountant and I—”

“Ms.”

“What?”

“I said, Ms. Ms. Reid.”

Usually, she didn’t really give
a flip what she was . called, but a guy like Streck brought out the feminist in
her.

He took a deep, exasperated
breath. “Okay, Ms. Reid.... I’ve worked for Eleanor Maxwell and her husband for
ten years. I’ve been involved in the most intimate details of their lives. They
don’t keep secrets fromme.”

She nodded agreeably.
“Except for me.”

“What?”

“You need to get your
hearing checked, darlin’. I said, ‘Except for me.’ Or maybe she just forgot to
mention me the last time y’all talked over those intimate details.”

Casually, she opened her
purse and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves and a clean plastic bag... just
a couple of basics she had been carrying, along with a tube of lipstick, since
she had become a detective on the force years ago.

She put on the gloves,
lifted the letter by its corner and slipped it into the plastic bag. ‘The fewer
people who see this, let alone handle it, the better,” she told him as she
placed the bag, then the gloves, back into her purse. “I told Mrs. Maxwell as
much yesterday, but—”

“What—what do you think
you’re doing there?” he sputtered.

She gave him a big grin as
she sashayed across the room to the door. ‘Just earning my keep.” Another
eyelash flutter... and she was gone.

Even if she hadn’t heard
voices on the patio, Savannah would have headed outside for some fresh air. She
found herself hungry for the company of somebody who didn’t give her the
creeps, and those wholesome souls seemed to be few and far between at the
castie that chocolate built.

A dolphin swimming by would
be good, but even a seagull would do. Anything with a friendly face.

The scene she found on the
patio was even more whimsical than she could have hoped.

A formal tea party.
Attended by Gilly and Eleanor, a life-sized baby doll, and a teddy bear. All
were elegantly attired for the occasion. The doll wore a long, lacy christening
gown, the bear a red plaid vest and black top hat, while Gilly and her
grandmother were decked out in enormous sun hats festooned with feathers and
silk flowers. Copious amounts of gaudy jewelry were draped about their necks
and wrists, dripping from their ears and sparkling on every finger. Gilly’s
tiny body was almost completely cocooned in a pink feather boa, while Eleanor
wore a bright purple and red kimono.

“Lord have mercy,” Savannah
said, her hand shielding her eyes. “I’m nearly blinded by all this splendor.
Whatever are you fine ladies doing out here this afternoon?”

“We’re having tea,” Gilly
said in an aristocratic English accent that rivaled her grandma’s TV persona. “High
tea, that is. Would you care to join us?” She dropped the accent and turned to
her grandmother. “She can play with us, too, huh, Nana? I like her. She’s a
friend of mine.” Eleanor looked up at Savannah with a gentler, kinder face than
Savannah had ever seen her wear before. Gilly seemed to have a positive,
calming effect on her grandmother.

“I suppose she can, if she
wants to,” Eleanor said. “But where will she sit?”

Gilly climbed off her own
chair, getting momentarily tangled in her boa. ‘Teddy can sit over here with
Marjorie, and Savannah can have his seat.”

Having rearranged the toys,
Gilly grabbed Savannah’s hand and pulled her to the empty chair.

“Are you sure Teddy and
Marjorie won’t mind?” Savannah asked Gilly.

“Oh no. They like sitting
together. They’re very good friends.”

Gilly returned to her own
seat, adjusted the wide-brimmed hat on her tiny head and tossed one end of the
boa over her shoulder with the panache of a silver screen glamorpuss. “Now, we
have to get you some tea and—” She looked across the table at Savannah, and her
smile disappeared. “Have you been crying?”

Savannah was touched by the
girl’s depth of concern, though a bit confused. “No, why do you ask?” ‘Your
nose is all red, and your eyes are poofy.”

“Poofy? Oh... no, I haven’t
been crying. I woke up this morning with a bit of a cold.”

“And you brought it over
here?” Eleanor snapped, suddenly alert “I hired you to protect me, not infect
me!”

“I’ll be very careful to cover
my mouth when I sneeze,” Savannah told her with an exaggerated patience that
she didn’t feel. “And you’ve already warned me about breathing down your neck,
so....”

Eleanor glared at her for a
few seconds, and Savannah could practically hear her mental cogs spinning; she
was debating whether to kick her and her cold germs off the property or to let
it slide for the moment.

Apparently the lady was in
a mellow frame of mind. Instead of ejecting Savannah from her chair she turned
toward the house and gave an unceremonious whistle, like a New Yorker signaling
a cab.

A second later the kitchen
door opened, and a man in a tuxedo appeared. Hurrying over to the table, a
snowy linen towel draped over his left forearm, he said a bit breathlessly,
“Yes, ma’am. More tea? Crumpets? Sandwiches?”

“Yes, more of everything.”
Eleanor waved an airy hand, signifying the whole spread, which Savannah had
just noticed was quite impressive. Crumpets with lemon curd and raspberry jam,
tiny sandwiches that had been cut into the shapes of hearts and diamonds,
adorned with thin slices of cucumber and the occasional dot of red caviar.

Suddenly, Dirk’s coffee and
cinnamon roll seemed hours away.

“And my friend is joining
us,” Gilly said, spreading on the accent thick. “Will you please bring her a
spot of tea, too, Sydney?”

The formally attired fellow
with the white towel nodded his head graciously. “Certainly, Miss Gilly. Right
away.”

So, this was Sydney, the
chauffeur and occasional tea-time butler. Savannah decided that he was about her
age but looked a bit older due to his salt-and-pepper hair, which he still had
in abundance. Dirk would have been jealous.

He was taller than six
feet, but his shoulders were badly hunched as though he had carried a heavy
burden most of his life.... or maybe just the past few years. Savannah imagined
that working for Eleanor Maxwell could cause one to age prematurely.

But she had to like a man
who smiled so warmly at a child and scurried away to do her bidding. She
remembered that Gilly had mentioned him the night before as one of the people
in her life who “liked” her.

“Do you two have tea
often?” Savannah asked, addressing her question more to Gilly than Eleanor, who
seemed a bit on the sullen side of the street this afternoon.

“The four of us,” Gilly whispered,
nodding discreetly toward the doll and bear.

“Oh, of course. The four of
you.”

“Just when I stay home sick
from school.”

Sydney appeared with a
silver tray that was laden with reinforcements for the half-empty plates of
goodies. As he set Savannah’s teacup in front of her, she noticed that he
lacked the grace and dignity of a professional butler. But he seemed to be
doing his best—for a guy who was usually a chauffeur and handyman.

“Will there be anything
else, miss?” he asked Gilly.

“That will be all for now,
Sydney,” the child replied with a graceful, dismissive wave of her hand.

“Hang around,” Eleanor
added. “I’ll yell if we need something. Go work on the kitchen. It’s a mess.
That damned Marie.... just had to go see her mother in L.A. Never mind whether
she’s needed around here or not.”

Sydney gave a slight bow in
Gilly’s direction and turned on his heel to leave. But a split second before he
walked away, Savannah saw him shoot a quick look at Eleanor Maxwell that
radiated pure hatred.

And although Savannah could
hardly blame him, she was surprised how completely that look changed his
otherwise pleasant face. She didn’t envy Eleanor, who seemed to have a knack
for bringing out the worst in everyone around her.

“Those are my favorites,
right there,” Gilly said, pointing to a crystal plate holding pink, yellow, and
white petit fours. ‘The pink ones have strawberry jam in the middle. The yellow
ones are lemon. Marie puts roses on the top of them, just for me, ‘cause she
knows I like roses.”

“And”—Eleanor interjected
as she shoved one of the cakes into her mouth and chewed—“because Grandma tells
her to.”

Gilly looked down at the
plate of sweets and shrugged. ‘Yeah,” she said, the sparkle gone from her
voice. “Everybody does what Grandma tells them to.... if they know what’s good
for them.”

Eleanor smiled broadly.

Savannah took a sip of her
tea and tried not to hate Eleanor Maxwell. It was a personal policy of hers:
Don’t hate the people who are paying your bills. At least, not so that they can
tell.

Chapter

S
avannah chased Eleanor
throughout the afternoon, trying to finagle a moment of quality time with her
uncooperative client. But Eleanor was too busy barking orders on the phone,
then taking a long, leisurely bath and an even longer nap to discuss something
as mundane as personal safety.

“Just find out who sent me
those damned letters and leave me alone!” she screamed when Savannah attempted
to present her with a list of suggestions to enhance security at the house and
studio.

Standing at the recently
slammed bedroom door, list in hand, Savannah resisted the urge to kick it open
and throttle the wicked queen.

“I’ve just about had my can
full of this,” she muttered to herself as she walked downstairs to the kitchen,
where Sydney was loading dishes into the dishwasher. He had shed his tuxedo
jacket, which was hanging on the pantry door, and his sleeves were rolled up to
the elbow.

At his feet, the three
terriers pranced about on tiptoes, their toenails clicking on the highly
polished oak floor. They were watching his every movement, hoping some food
tidbit might drop. One of them was even sitting up and begging quite
beguilingly.

But Sydney didn’t appear to
be beguilable. His face looked as glum as Savannah felt.

“There’s gotta be an easier
way to make a buck, Syd, my man,” she said, feeling an instant companionship
with anyone in Eleanor’s employ.

He chuckled and scraped
some leftover petit fours into the garbage compactor. The dogs yipped and ran
in circles around him, but they might have been invisible for all the attention
he gave them. “I was just thinking the same thing myself,” he said as he shook
some powdered soap into the washer’s dispenser. Just the flowery smell of the
detergent made Savannah’s nose tickle, but she pushed down the urge to sneeze.
Her head ached enough already.

“How long have you worked
for Eleanor?” she asked “Seems like my whole life, but it’s really only been
about seven or eight years.”

“Time flies when you’re
having fun, right?”

“Yeah, really. It’s been a
blast.” He laughed again, but there was no humor in the sound.

“So, why do you stay?”

He looked at her with eyes
that were deeply tired, reflecting a spirit whose life force was ebbing low. He
shrugged. “You get used to a place, you know, and the people.”

“And the way they treat
you?”

He paused, then shook his
head. “No, I don’t think anybody really gets used to that.”

“What exactly do you do
here, when you aren’t playing butler for Gilly?”

He smiled and for a moment
Savannah could see that he would have been handsome when he was younger. And
less tired. He took one of the leftover chicken salad sandwiches, pulled it
into three parts, and gave one to each terrier. They attacked the tidbits like
famished wolfhounds. And once they had licked even the smallest crumb from the
floor, they left the room, tails wagging.

“Gilly’s the nicest part
about being here,” he said. “She’s a sweet kid. Louise needs to take better
care of her.”

Savannah bit her tongue and
simply nodded her agreement.

As he wiped down the marble
counters with a wad of paper towels, he gave her a list of his assorted duties.
“I’m supposed to be Eleanor’s driver—I live in the chauffeur’s apartment over
the garage and have for years— but I don’t take her out much, because she’s
agora.... agro.... something that makes you afraid to leave home.”

“Agoraphobic?”

“Yeah, that’s it. She
hardly ever leaves the property. Has everybody and everything brought to her.
So, I keep the cars in good shape, plant her precious lilies, prune her roses,
string gobs of lights all over the house at Christmas until it looks like a Las
Vegas casino. But I don’t know why we bother. She doesn’t throw parties
anymore. She doesn’t like having anybody in the house but us—you know, people
she knows really well.”

Savannah locked eyes with
him. “And does she know all of you... really well?”

He returned her pointed
look, then threw back his head and gave a hearty laugh that filled the house.
It echoed eerily, as though the sound were foreign within those walls. “No, I
don’t suppose she does,” he said. “If she knew half of what any of us say or
think about her, she’d send us all packing.”

Savannah laughed with him.
Then she decided to let him have it, verbally, in the diaphragm, just to see
what he would do.

“Who’s sending Eleanor
those hate letters, Sydney? Do you know?”

He stopped laughing
abruptly and stared at her, slightly openmouthed for a moment. Then he walked
over to the garbage compactor and tossed his handful of paper towels into it.
“Could be anybody, right?” he finally said, “Like a crazy fan or....”

“She thinks it’s somebody
she knows. Somebody here.”

He sighed and leaned
against the butcher-block island. “Could be one of us.”

“Us?”

“Somebody who works for
her: Marie, Kaitlin, Martin, a member of the film crew, one of the gardeners.”

“How about family?”

“She doesn’t have that much
family. She and Burt are split up and now she’s just got Louise and Gilly...
and her sister, Elizabeth.”

“Sister?”

He nodded. ‘Yeah, Liz and
Eleanor are twins. But Elizabeth’s a lot nicer and better looking than Eleanor.
Beauty is as beauty does and all that.”

Ah, Savannah thought,
there’s something to my evil-twin theory after all.

“Are they close?”

“They’re identical twins,
but Liz doesn’t come around here much. They’ve had a falling out. Eleanor’s
pretty much on the outs with everybody.”

“So I gathered.” She
paused, thinking of the woman locked inside this magnificent prison, with
herself as the warden. “She must be terribly lonely.”

But Sydney didn’t seem to
share her momentary pang of compassion. He shrugged and wiped his hands on a
dish towel. “If Eleanor’s alone and lonely, she deserves to be. She’s worked
really hard at it” Grabbing his tux jacket off the pantry doorknob, he said,
“Sorry, but I have to change the oil in the Jag and then separate some lily
bulbs. Catch you later.”

“Sure. Later.”

Savannah stood in the
kitchen, thinking for a minute or two, evaluating their conversation. She liked
Sydney, but she didn’t completely trust him. When she had asked him if he knew
who was sending the letters, he hadn’t answered her directly. And she had
learned long ago not to trust people who answered your questions with a
question of their own.

Sydney knew more than he
was telling her; she was sure of it. And why wouldn’t he? When you did things
as intimate for someone as emptying their garbage and doing their dishes, you
learned all sorts of things.

Of course, if you wanted to
remain employed, you also learned to keep such things to yourself.

She took the list she had
made for Eleanor out of her pocket and scanned it:

√ Reset security code on
house alarm system and activate it every night.

√ Same with entry gates.

√ Make sure all doors and
windows are secure before retiring.

√ Get the shotgun out of the
broom closet and stow it someplace safe.

√ Install better lighting
around house and some motion detectors.

√ Repair holes in property
perimeter fencing.

As Savannah’s eyes scanned the
page, she realized that Lady Eleanor wasn’t likely to do any of these things,
let alone all of them.

Like many egocentric
people, Eleanor didn’t really believe that she was mortal, that someone could
actually do her harm.

For so long she had
surrounded herself with people who only obeyed. It was beyond her mental grasp
to think that someone might kill her without her express permission.

And Savannah herself didn’t
really believe that the woman’s life was in danger. After all, many people
wrote nasty letters to people they didn’t like, especially celebrities. An
anonymous note was a coward’s way of venting hostility without taking any
personal risk. If you didn’t have a personal standard that prevented you from
acting like a jackass and a chickenshit, you could make an enemy crazy for the
price of a stamp.

It was a long, long way
from writing threatening words on a piece of paper to actually committing the
act of murder.

But... when you were
talking about the taking of human life, you didn’t think in terms of “What
usually happens is....” You took all possibilities under consideration.

And dammit, Savannah
thought, she’s got to be a little more careful. Queens have been assassinated
for centuries. Some of them even deserved it.

But, of course, whether
they derserved it or not didn’t matter. No queen—noble or wicked—died on her
watch. No way. She wouldn’t allow it.

So why was a little voice
in her head saying something nasty like, Famous last words, girl. Famous last
words.

“Oh, shut up,” she told her
inner demons as she headed upstairs to what would be certain rejection. “What
do you know about anything?”

But she felt sort of sick
inside, and it had nothing to do with the cold she was catching. It was a
tightness in her stomach, and she knew the cause. It was because she had
learned long ago.... those little devils were usually right.

Savannah stood in the
shadows at the edge of the set, watching the evening taping of the Lady
Eleanor, Queen of Chocolate, show. At her elbow stood a positively giddy Tammy,
so excited that she was about to dance out of her cargo shorts.

What was it about TV shows,
any TV show, that piqued people’s curiosity and inspired them to adore even the
least adorable?

With her nose running like
a faucet and her head throbbing like it was being hit by John Henry’s hammer,
she wasn’t in the mood to idolize anybody, let alone Eleanor the Crab. The
so-called lady had already snapped at two of her hapless crew and outright
screamed at another one, and still, Tammy gazed at her as though she were true
royalty.

“This is just too cool,”
Tammy whispered. “I’m so psyched that you invited me to see it.”

“It wasn’t exactly an
invitation. I need you. I want you to work.”

“Oh, I know. But it’s just
so fun to see it all happening right before your eyes.”

Savannah felt another
sneeze rising to the surface. She pressed her finger under her nose but half of
it escaped. “
Ach
—”

“Sh-h-h,” Kaitiin warned
them as she walked by, wearing her headphones and carrying her ubiquitous
notebook.

“Sorry.” Savannah nudged
Tammy and led her out of the converted barn with its hot lights and into the
cool night air.

“Ah, it’s better out here
anyway,” she said as they walked away from the crew’s parked cars and up the
driveway toward the gates and the main road.

Savannah reached into her
purse and pulled out several plastic bags that contained the letters Eleanor
had received. “I want you to take these to Dirk and ask him to get somebody to
dust them for prints. They’re probably covered, because they’ve been passing
them around here like hot potatoes, but it’s worth a try.”

“Okay, if I have to.”

Not a lot of love was lost
between Dirk and Tammy, and Savannah didn’t have to question Tammy’s
reluctance.

“Yes, you have to. And”—she
pulled another list out of her purse—“here are the names of the people who work
here and miscellaneous family members. Ask him to run them, see if anybody
comes up with a record.”

“Oh, he’s going to just
love that. Can’t I ask Ryan?” Like most females who weren’t dead, Tammy was madly
infatuated with Ryan Stone and refused to believe he was a lost romantic cause.
She never missed an opportunity to see, speak to, or touch him in hopes that
his sexual orientation might be reversed by the sheer power of her feminine
wiles.

“No, you can’t ask Ryan. He
and John aren’t actually in the bureau anymore, and we ask them for enough
favors as it is. Dirk owes me one.”

“Dirk owes you a million.”

“True, but we have to
collect one at a time so as not to shock his system.” She looked back toward
the studio and sniffed the air. “Do you smell that?”

“What?”

“I could swear I smell
chocolate. The recipe Eleanor’s doing tonight is a cake called Death by
Chocolate. If we go in and keep quiet like good little girls, maybe they’ll
give us a bite.”

When they reentered the
studio, Savannah saw to her delight that their timing was perfect. Lady Eleanor
was indeed dishing up pieces of a decadently rich dark chocolate cake to
members of the crew.

At first Savannah was
surprised with the grace and generosity she was displaying as she served up her
creation. Then she saw that the cameras were still rolling. This “feeding of
the hungry multitudes” was just part of the act.