Death by Chocolate

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