Death by Chocolate

Eleanor hired to protect her.”
    On closer examination,
Savannah decided that Louise’ had spent too many years in the California sun
without serious sunblock. While she appeared to be in her twenties from a
distance, she looked older up close, due to the webwork of squint wrinkles
around her eyes that could no longer be classified as “fine.” And the skin on
her abundant cleavage had turned mottled and leathery.
    “That’s right,” Savannah
said. “I’m here to watch out for your mom. Do you know anyone who might want to
hurt her?”
    “"Well, duh....”
Louise replied, rolling her eyes like an adolescent. “Who wouldn’t? She treats
everybody like crap and has for years.”
    “Even you?”
    A more astute person than
Louise Maxwell might have seen the suspicious glimmer in Savannah’s icy blues,
but the blonde prattled on, clueless.
    “Oh, especially me! Can you
imagine having a drunken witch like that for a mother? She messed me up good. I
mean, I have major issues because of her.”
    “Did you send her those
threatening letters, maybe as a means of working through some of your issues?”
    That time even Louise got
it. She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin a couple of
notches. “I did not. I haven’t said a word to my mother—or written anything to
her either—for three years. And I won’t, until she apologizes for messing me up
so bad. And, of course, we all know that won’t happen because Lady Eleanor
doesn’t apologize for anything to anyone. She’s much too high and mighty for
that.”
    “It must be pretty
stressful, living here on her estate and not speaking to her.”
    “Not really. We’ve learned
how to avoid each other.”
    “And meanwhile, your mother
supports you and your daughter?” Savannah asked evenly.
    Louise’s nostrils flared.
Savannah thought she might start snorting fire any minute. ‘That’s the least
she can do, considering what she’s done to me! The very least! My shrink bills
alone are $3,500 a month, not to mention my rebirthing therapy and my herbal
detoxing wraps and acupuncture remedies. She made me sick; she can pick up the
tab while I’m healing from her years of abuse.”
    Savannah said nothing for a
moment, just stood there, quietly observing and absorbing. “Okay,” she finally
said, ‘Whatever. But if you actually knew who was threatening your mother’s
life, you’d let me know, right? I mean.... if she croaked, who’d pay all those
bills?”
    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