Death by Chocolate

leaned over his shoulder. “It ate my document
again. I hit one button—I don’t even know which one— and poof! It’s gone. I
hate it when that happens. Stupid piece of crap.”
    She reached over him,
scrolled to the bottom of the page, and hit the “restore” icon. His form
instantly materialized.
    “It’s not the machine’s
fault. It’s operator error,” she said, pulling a chair from a nearby empty desk
and setting it next to his.
    “Tell me something new,” he
grumbled. “What I really hate is when the darned thing freezes up on me and I
have to turn it off the old-fashioned way, you know— with the on/off button—and
then when I turn it on again it yells at me for not closing it down properly.”
    “That is aggravating, it’s
true.” She looked around the room at the empty desks. Other than one guy whom
she didn’t even recognize standing at a filing cabinet on the other side of a
partition, Dirk was the only one in sight. “Where is everybody?”
    “What do you mean
everybody? I told you, the cutbacks are wicked. We’re down to three detectives.
That’s it. Ray took his retirement last year, and Bruce went out this year, and
they haven’t replaced either one of them.”
    “No wonder you’re always
asking me to go on stakeouts with you. You’re lonely, Coulter.”
    “Lonely, my butt. I’m just
keeping you off the streets and outta the pool halls.”
    She reached across him and
nabbed his coffee cup. “Hey, don’t drink outta that!” He tried to snatch it
back, but she was too quick. ‘You’ll give me your cold.” It was room
temperature. She grimaced and gave it back to him. “Lukewarm.... yum. I don’t
have my cold anymore. That toddy you made last night cured me.”
    “Completely?”
    “My nose is dry, and I
haven’t sneezed or coughed once since I woke up.”
    “Wow! I’ve discovered the
cure for the common cold.”
    “I think the Irish
discovered it long, long ago.” She studied the form he was filling out on the
screen. The words “Eleanor Maxwell” caught her eye. “What’re you working on?”
    “Nothing,” he said, too
quickly. ‘Just the usual crap.”
    “Did you get any sleep, or
did you stay up all night processing the scene?”
    He frowned. “Bimbo-head
wasn’t supposed to tell you about that.”
    “I pried it out of her—threaten
her with mutilation and she caves every time. What have you got?”
    “Nothing. Really.” He
closed the screen and switched off the computer.
    “Where’s the body?”
    “Dr. Liu’s got it.”
    “When is she going to do
the autopsy?”
    He shrugged. “Don’t know for
sure. Could be today, tomorrow. Depends on how many bodies she’s got piling up
down there.”
    She gave him a piercing
look. “Is she doing it right now, Dirk?”
    “Yeah. She’s probably just
about done.” He sighed. “And I suppose you want to come with me to the morgue.”
She nodded, reached over and ruffled his hair. He hated that. It would take him
five minutes to get those precious few strands combed just right to cover the
thin spots. ‘You betcha. Let’s go. Now’s as good a time as any for good
news.... or bad.”
     
     
    At the coroner’s office
Savannah and Dirk found Officer Rosa Ortez manning the front desk. Her smile
was bright, her manner professional as she asked them to sign in.
    “So, you’re Kenny’s
replacement, huh?” Savannah asked as she wrote her own name, not Minnie
Mouse’s, on the sheet.
    “Yes,” Rosa replied. “As of
Monday.”
    “How’d that happen?”
    Rosa grinned broadly. “He
pinched my butt; I took his job.”
    Dirk laughed. “Sounds fair
to me. But now I have to look at his ugly mug over at the station every morning.
You were a lot easier on the eyes.”
    She shrugged. “Sorry. This
is a lot closer to my babysitter. And Kenny hates working at the station, where
there’s actually something to do. Unlike here.” She waved her hand, indicating
the relatively silent and empty building. “Deadly quiet.”
    “Oo-o-o-o, bad one.”
Savannah placed the pen back in its holder and waved good-bye. “Keep a stiff
upper lip.”
    “Oh, like that’s any
better,” Rosa replied as they left the reception area and walked down the tiled
hallway toward the coroner’s autopsy suite in the back of the building.
    There was no point in
stopping at Dr. Jennifer Liu’s office halfway down the hall. She was hardly
ever behind a desk. The swinging double doors that opened into the rooms where
autopsies