Death by Chocolate

to be a private citizen again without the “Detective” in front of her
name. No badge, just a P.I.’s license and a lot less headaches—if you didn’t
figure in the stress of self-employment. Or rather, the even more nerve-racking
bouts of self-unemployment.
    “Yeah, I’ll play decoy for you
tomorrow, too,” she said. “We’ve gotta get this guy before he really hurts
somebody. And as long as the San Carmelita P.D. is too cheap to assign you a
partner....”
    She was giving him the
benefit of the doubt, blaming his single status on departmental frugality. Last
she had heard, everybody else in the squad avoided partnering with Dirk with a
vengeance. Having worked with him for more than fifteen years, on and off the
force, she understood that Detective-Sergeant Dirk Coulter was an acquired
taste.
    She loved the crotchety
geezer. But she couldn’t think of any reason why anybody else would.
    “Really, we gotta get ‘im,”
Dirk said, the gleam of righteous indignation lighting his bloodshot eyes.
“Even if it’s a water pistol he’s using, sooner or later one of these poor old
ladies is going to fall over dead of a heart attack right in the middle of the
robbery.”
    She lifted her chin a notch
and nodded, her own eyes glittering with the same icy warmth. “Don’t worry.
We’ll put a stop to his nonsense, jerk a knot in his tail, and hang him up by
it.... somehow or another.”
    For the first time in
several days, she felt a sense of well-being trickle through her... along with
the mental picture of herself slamming some scumbag over the head with that
white purse, which carried not some vulnerable senior lady’s social security
check, but a brick from her backyard. She’d stand by, grinning like a goat
eating briars, while Dirk cuffed him and read him his rights. Yes, that would
certainly brighten her day.
    Maybe that was all that was
wrong with her. It had been too long since her last “Get the Bad Guy” fix.
Adrenaline and justice—it was a heady mix.
    Dirk guided the Buick off
the highway and onto a palm-tree-lined street that led up the hill and away
from the ocean and the downtown area where they had been playing decoy.
    “Hey, you’re not taking me
home, are you?” Savannah said, suddenly alert and suspicious.
    “Well, yeah.” He nodded but
stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact. “You said you were hungry and
wanted breakfast. I figured I’d get you home as fast as I could so that you
could scramble up some of those Western omelet things you make and maybe some
home fries and....”
    “Don’t you even start with
me, Coulter. You head this buggy for the nearest restaurant... like the pancake
house on Luther Avenue. If I haul my tired butt out of bed and dress up in this
garb and stroll up and down in front of an ATM for four hours, the least you
can do is feed me.”
    Dirk grumbled something
under his breath, and even though she caught only a couple of words, she got
his drift.
    “No money on you is no
excuse. There’s a bank right there on Luther, two doors down from the Flap Jack
Shack. We’ll stop there first. And you’d better get a bundle while you’re at
it, ‘cause I worked up quite an appetite on that stroll.”
     
     
    Rather than risk being
charged a fifty-cent ATM fee, Dirk pulled the Skylark into a spot in the bank’s
parking lot next to a meticulously restored 1963 Oldsmobile Starfire. “Hey,
look at that,” he said. “What a beauty! Same year as my Buick.”
    Savannah sniffed. “It ain’t
the years, darlin’; it’s the mileage, and I can hear this poor jalopy of yours
groaning with embarrassment just to be sitting next to that lovely machine.”
    She waited for him to flare,
as always, when she insulted his car, his driving, or his table manners. But he
sat there, his hand on the door handle, staring at the bank’s rear wall.
    Or more specifically, at
one of the two small windows.
    “Look at that,” he said.
    “I’m looking.”
    “What do you think?”
    She studied the small,
crudely scribbled paper sign that had been shoved between the glass and the
Venetian blinds in the window on the right. “I think somebody’s a bad speller,”
she replied.
    In writing that looked as
if it had been done by a five-year-old with a large black marker were the words We’re being robed.
    “Robed? Maybe they’re
having a pajama party. But I doubt it.” Dirk reached inside the old flannel
jacket that had completed his senior-citizen ensemble, and at the