Death by Chocolate

lemon
groves. The smell of the sun-warmed fruit reminded her of the previous
evening’s treat, and she marveled once again at its healing properties.
    When she had awakened in
the morning, her head had been completely clear, and other than a nagging
sadness and an ache of guilt, she was happy to be in the land of the living.
    In the distance, the sun
sparkled on the blue of the Pacific, and she could see the palm-lined streets
leading to some of the most beautiful beaches on the West Coast.
    The station was centrally
located in town, on the older, more picturesque Main Street. Like most of the
mission-founded towns along the coastline, San Carmelita had begun at an old
adobe church a hundred or so years before. The town had grown gracefully,
filling the space from the ocean to the foothills with first citrus groves,
then stores and houses. From the tiny white bungalows with red-tiled roofs
crowded side by side on the beach to multimillion-dollar mansions perched on
the hillsides, the town had a lazy, gentle feel about it. And in the years that
it had been her home, Savannah had done all she could as a cop and an
investigator to keep it that way.
    The older she got, the more
she realized the intrinsic value of “lazy” and “gentle.”
    The thought that someone
might have been “less than gentle” with her most recent client was so
disturbing that she put the idea aside with an effort and promised herself not
to worry about it until she knew more.
    She needed information. And
the police station— specifically, Dirk’s desk—was the place to start.
    Every time she pulled into
the station-house parking lot, she felt a tug of nostalgia, a twinge of
resentment. She had worked hard at being a cop. She had been a damned good one.
But years ago she had investigated some people in high places and toppled a
couple of political icons and had been kicked off the force for her efforts.
    The whole fiasco had been
horribly unfair. But she wasn’t bitter, and the resentment was only a twinge.
She loved her present life as a private detective, and if she hadn’t gotten the
boot, she’d still be on the force, answering to the schmucks who’d unjustly
fired her.
    Through the glass front of
the building, she could see that the front desk was occupied by one of her least
favorite cops, Kenny Bates, a stud-muffin, at least in his own opinion. Kenny
didn’t seem to notice that for a womanizer, he led a fairly female-free
existence. Gals weren’t exactly lining up to take a bite out of his cupcake.
Savannah strongly suspected that Kenny Boy hadn’t had a nibble or even a sniff
in years.
    The last time she had seen
him, he had been working the front desk at the coroner’s office. He must have
been promoted—or, considering it was Kenny, demoted.
    “Hey, hey, hey, Savannah
baby!” he proclaimed as she walked through the door. ‘Just couldn’t stay away,
huh?”
    She glanced at the
too-thick, slightly askew toupee, the uniform that was two sizes too small,
causing his buttons to strain across his ample belly. She caught the fairly
pungent odor of nacho cheese chips on his breath as he slid the clipboard
across the counter for her to sign.
    “Oh, yeah.... Bates. I live
for these moments together.” She scrawled “Daisy Duck” on the ledger and passed
it back to him. She had been signing in with assorted cartoon character names
since she had been canned... and the vigilant Kenneth Bates had never even
noticed.
    Ken lit up at her words.
She shook her head. Dissing him was just too easy, hardly any challenge at all.
    “Really? Me too,” he
gushed. “Hey, why don’t you come over to my place tonight, and we can watch TV
together. I’ve got that new ‘adult’ channel—it’s channel sixty-nine! Get it?
Sixty-nine!” He guffawed at his own joke, reminding her of a buck-toothed
donkey she once knew in Georgia. “Maybe we can get us some ideas from watching
it, huh?”
    She shoved the clipboard
back at him and took off down the hall, eager to breathe fresh,
non-nacho-scented air. “Eat dirt and die, Bates, you friggin’ maggot,” she said
over her shoulder.
    “Yeah, well, if you change
your mind, give me a ring,” he called after her.
    She found Dirk at his desk
in the squad room. As usual, he was fighting with his computer. Dirk had never
recovered from the shock of having to upgrade from his Underwood typewriter to
a computer keyboard and mouse.
    “Damned thing,” he swore as
she walked up behind him and