Death by Chocolate

were performed were both closed. That usually meant a procedure was
underway.
    Savannah steeled her nerves
before opening the door. It was never particularly pleasant to watch an autopsy
performed, but she found it much harder when the body had belonged to someone
she knew. When she swung it open and looked inside, she was relieved to see
that the corpse on the table had already been wrapped in a white shroud and was
ready for the funeral home’s collection. From its general height and shape, she
figured it was the remains of Eleanor Maxwell.
    Dirk followed close behind
her. “Dr. Liu?” he called. “Anybody home?”
    A moment later, the county
coroner walked out of a back room and joined them beside the body on the
stainless-steel table. An exquisitely lovely, petite and slender Asian woman,
Dr. Jennifer Liu could have been cast as a runway model, a martial arts expert,
or a ballerina. But most people who met her would not have guessed she was a
medical examiner.
    Her long, glossy hair was tied
back with a blue paisley scarf, and she wore green surgical scrubs and
disposable paper booties over her sneakers. The scrubs were bloodstained.
    “Is this Maxwell?” Dirk
asked, nodding toward the body.
    “That’s her.” She turned to
Savannah. “Hey, girlfriend. How’s it going? Haven’t seen you for a while.”
Savannah decided not to mention that fact that she considered rare visits to
the coroner’s office a good thing. Not that she didn’t like Dr. Jen, but...
“Things have been pretty quiet with me,” she replied, then added, “Until this,
that is.”
    Dr. Liu nodded. ‘Yeah, Dirk
told me you were her bodyguard or something like that.”
    “Apparently, I was more
‘something’ than guard.” The doctor gave her a warm, comforting smile. ‘There’s
no reason to suspect foul play at this point,” she said. “She died of a heart
attack, and she was being treated for a heart condition. Natural causes.”
    “Oh yeah?” Dirk said.
“That’s good news, huh, Van?”
    “I guess.”
    Dr. Liu walked over to a
nearby table and picked up a manila folder. Opening it, she studied the papers
inside. “I talked to her physician, a Dr. Raymond Hynson, and he said she was
suffering from advanced heart disease.”
    “Was she taking meds for
it?” Dirk asked.
    “Dr. Hynson had prescribed
metosorbide for her. And once you inventory the contents of her medicine chest
at home, and I get the lab tests back, I’ll let you know if she was taking what
he’d prescribed.”
    “She drank quite a lot,”
Savannah offered. “Isn’t that a no-no for people taking metosorbide?”
    “Yes, it is.” Dr. Liu shook
her head and closed the folder. “What a shame. Some people just don’t realize
what they’re doing to themselves.”
    Savannah remembered sitting
on the patio, gazing out at the dark sea with Eleanor Maxwell—the tears on her
cheeks, her comments about how little joy there was in her life.
    “Maybe she did realize it,”
Savannah said. “There’s more than one way to commit suicide.”
    “Was Lady Eleanor, Queen of
Chocolate, that unhappy?” Dr. Liu asked, looking at the bundled body on her
table.
    “Oh yeah,” Savannah said.
“Definitely that unhappy. No doubt about it.”

Chapter

8
     
     
     
    “S o, it looks like you’re off
the hook,” Dirk said as k3he drove Savannah home. “Natural causes. Would have
happened no matter what you did, short of keeping her from drinking and
lowering her cholesterol.” Savannah watched the neighborhood whiz by the car
window, but she wasn’t seeing it. Her thoughts were elsewhere—on the plastic
bags she had given to Tammy the night before.
    “Hey, I’m not just talking
to hear my own head rattle, you know?” he said, nudging her.
    “What? Oh, yeah, right. I’m
off the hook. Except...”
    “Except what? There isn’t
anything else you can do for her.”
    “I still haven’t done what
she hired me to do.”
    “What are you talking
about? She doesn’t need protection anymore, she’s—”
    “I know.” Savannah sighed.
“But she didn’t hire me to protect her. She made that abundantly clear. In
fact, she was downright rude about it. All she wanted me to do was find out who
was writing her those threatening letters so that she could kill them.”
    “Is that what she said?”
Dirk was instantly alert. “She was going to kill them?”
    “I think she was speaking
figuratively.”
    “Well, I certainly hope
so.”
    “And I still need to do