Death by Chocolate

other way around. Now get out of here and leave me
alone. It’s time for me to start cooking.”
    Slowly, Savannah stood, feeling
the chill of the ocean’s night breeze as it swept over her skin. She paused
beside Eleanor’s chair, studying the woman who was burying her nose inside her
wineglass, a bitter and sad soul who needed far more from her fellow humans
than she, would ever admit. And if she continued to act as she was, she would
most surely never receive what she needed.
    “Good night, Mrs. Maxwell,”
she said. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.... with my suitcase. In a house
this size, I’m sure you can find room for me. And we will talk about the
measures we need to take to keep you safe. Be well till then. Lock your doors
and turn on your alarm system before you go to bed.”
    Eleanor shot her a poisoned
look but, for once, didn’t talk back. Savannah considered that a point for her
side. She also decided to leave while she was ahead.
    She walked away, around the
side of the house to’ where her Mustang was parked. She was eager to leave,
more than happy to put this sad world behind her for the day.
    But she paused, her key in
her car door as an uneasiness crept over her and a trickle of apprehension
skittered down the back of her neck. Was someone watching her from the shadows,
just there, near the garage where the limousine was parked? Had she actually
seen something from the corner of her eye? Heard someone moving in the bushes?
Or was she just feeling the heebie-jeebies from her unpleasant contact with
Eleanor?
    Maybe it was one of the
coyotes Gilly had mentioned, hunting rabbits or chasing birds in the
underbrush.
    But Savannah didn’t think
so. The hair on the nape of her neck didn’t prickle at coyotes or birds. The
only kind of varmints who raised her hackles were humans. The two-legged kind
were the ones you had to watch out for.
    She opened her car door,
twisted her key in the ignition, then flipped on her headlights.
    The beams lit the area but
revealed nothing unusual... if you didn’t consider a black Jaguar roughly the
size of a house unusual.
    But still, those cold
fingers of caution were tickling the back of her neck.
    “I know you’re there,” she
said to the darkness.... just in case. “Not only that: I know who you are and
what you’re up to.”
    Okay, so I don’t know
diddly-squat, she thought, but they don’t have to know that.
    “All I’ve got to say is, what
you’re figuring on doing... you’d just better not, ‘cause you won’t get away
with it.”
    She could have sworn the
silence grew heavier, the dark shadows darker. But, as she had expected, nobody
replied and nothing moved.
    Finally, she got into her
car, started the engine, and drove away. Ah, well, she thought as she passed
through the gates and headed toward the warmth of hearth and home. I don’t know
if that was enough to stop whomever from doing whatever, but it’ll give ‘em
something to think about. Oh, man, I need a hot bath and a couple of friendly,
furry faces that don’t bite.

Chapter

4
     
     
     
    A fter a restless eight hours
of nightmares, populated by monstrous chocolate-coated queens chasing her with an
ax and screaming, “Off with her head! Off with her head! ” Savannah woke to a
pounding on her front door. The cats leapt off the foot of her bed and headed
for cover under the dresser, their usual hiding place when someone visited.
    “Some watchcats you two
are,” she muttered as she hauled her tired body out of bed and slipped on her
favorite blue terrycloth robe. “It’s probably Tammy.... lost her key again.”
    The moment she stood, it
hit her: the dizziness and a throbbing pain across her forehead. She swallowed
and felt as though she had just taken a gulp of prickly pear cactus juice—with
the prickles.
    The loud pounding on the
door seemed to shoot into her ears and through her body, causing her aches to
ache and her hurts to hurt. She was sore in places she hadn’t known she had.
    “Oh, great, a cold,” she
grumbled in a voice that was half an octave lower than usual. “Just what I
need.”
    On the way to the door, she
grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on the coffee table and blew into them.
She was still blowing when she opened the door and found Dirk on her front
porch.
    “Oh, now that’s appealing,”
he said as he brushed by her and walked into the living room. “What’s the
matter, you sick or something?”
    “Yeah, I think I’ve got