Death by Chocolate

four...”

Chapter

6
     
     
     
    “I ‘ve probably been more
bummed than I am right now at some time in my life,” Savannah observed as she
watched the county coroner’s van pull away with her latest client. “But I don’t
rightly recall when.” Tammy put her arm around Savannah’s shoulder and gave her
a sideways hug. “It wasn’t your fault. Dr. Liu said it was probably a heart
attack. We did the CPR. It was just her time.”
    Savannah walked across the
lawn to the gazebo where she had talked to Gilly only the night before. Now it
seemed like ten years ago.
    Savannah pulled her sweater
more tightly around her and shivered, although the night air was decidedly
warm. Her head ached, and every muscle in her body cried out for a hot bath and
a bed. She wasn’t sure how much of her misery was due to her cold and how much
to having a client die in her arms.
    “That poor little Gilly,”
she said. “Her grandmother may have been a drunk, but she cared about the kid.
I had a tea party with them just this after—”
    Savannah’s throat started
to close up as a sob rose to the surface. She quickly swallowed it. If she
started to cry now, she’d fall to pieces. And that was another one of her
professional standards: never come unglued on the job. Wait until you’re home,
and make sure you have several pints of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey in
the freezer. Then slip into your comfy robe, grab a box of tissues and a large
spoon.... and let ‘er rip.
    But at the moment she was a
long ways from the freezer or her blue terry-cloth robe. So she sucked it
inside and pushed it down—to explode another time.
    Dirk exited the studio, a
roll of yellow perimeter tape in one hand. He looked around and, spotting them
in the gazebo, walked their way.
    “I’m glad you caught the
case,” Savannah said as he approached.
    “Well, I’m not,” he
grumbled. “Did you get a load of those camera crews lined up outside the gate?
This is gonna be a media circus. Hell, you’d think Martha Stewart or Emeril
kicked the bucket, not some two-bit hustler like that old broad was.”
    Savannah bristled. “Excuse
me. The poor woman’s dead.”
    “Then she won’t mind what I
say about her, will she.” He sighed and sank down onto the cushioned bench
beside Savannah. “Anyway, how come she’s a ‘poor woman’ now? You called her a
bitch this morning, right there at the breakfast table. I heard you.”
    “Oh, shut up, Dirko,” Tammy
snapped. “Sometimes you’ve got the sensitivity of an armadillo.”
    “A what?”
    “Never mind, just watch
what you say. Savannah’s feeling bad about this.”
    Dirk actually seemed
surprised. “Really? Why? She was fat, she was old, and she croaked. It happens
all the time.”
    Savannah sprang to her feet
and stepped back a few feet to put a safe distance between herself and Dirk
before she did him serious physical harm.
    “One of these days, Dirk,
I’m going to slap you stupid and it won’t take long. In the first place,
Eleanor was only a few years older than we are, buddy, and secondly, she wasn’t
fat, she was.... a lady of abundant proportions.”
    “Well, excuse me,” he said with
a sniff. “I don’t always keep up on the most current p.c. terms.”
    “Oh, screw p.c. and screw
you, Coulter. It’s a matter of having the sense to understand that everybody
doesn’t come in one size or shape. Women’s bodies are beautiful, and that goes
for the big ones as well as the smaller ones. It’s believing that any human
body that’s walking around—seeing, hearing, speaking, feeling, functioning—is a
miracle of nature and worthy of respect. And so is the person who inhabits that
body.”
    The emotions that she had
shoved down came boiling to the surface and choked off the rest of her speech.
She dissolved in wracking sobs.
    So much for not coming
unglued while on duty.
    “Savannah!” Dirk was
standing... walking toward her, his arms outstretched. “What’s the matter with
you, Van?”
    A moment later he was
holding her and she was crying all over the front of his shirt. Tammy was
patting her back and murmuring, “There, there.”
    “What is it, hon? Why are
you crying like that?” he said, stroking her hair.
    Tammy supplied the answer.
“She thinks she killed Eleanor, you idiot.”
    “What? Why?”
    Dirk wasn’t always the most
perceptive, but Savannah decided to forgive him, because it felt so good to
have his big, strong arms wrapped around her. And his shirt