Death by Chocolate

here.”
    “Put the box down,” Dirk
said.
    Streck stuck out his chin.
“I will not. These belong to my client and—”
    “Belonged... belonged to
your client,” Dirk interjected. “She’s dead, and those files are part of my
crime scene. Put ‘em down. Now.”
    “Crime scene? What crime
has been committed?” A fine sprinkling of sweat popped out on Streck’s
forehead, and his breathing sounded as if he had just run a hundred-yard
sprint.
    “The one I’m investigating,
and that’s all you need to know.” Dirk handed the bag of medications to
Savannah, walked over and snatched the box out of Streck’s hands. “And you need
to leave before you interfere with my investigation.”
    Streck sputtered a few
seconds, then said, “I’m going to have a talk with your superior, Detective.
This is most improper. I—”
    “You are irritating me,”
Dirk told him, shoving his face close to the other man’s, “and that’s damned
close to interfering with me and my investigation.”
    “Yeah, you’d better make
some tracks,” Savannah added. “Coulter here is very irritable. Almost as
irritable as he is irritating, and that’s saying something.” ‘You haven’t heard
the last of this.” Streck huffed and snorted as he stomped across the foyer to
the door and jerked it open. ‘You have no right to keep me from fulfilling my
duties to my client. I’ve never seen such a...” He left, slamming the door
behind him.
    Savannah and Dirk both
looked down at the box in his arms. “He didn’t waste any time getting over here
and removing those files,” she said.
    “He sure didn’t. All the
more reason for me to take a look at them.”
    Savannah walked over to the
window and watched as Streck peeled out of the driveway, screeching his Lexus’s
tires as he left.
    “He’s plenty hot and
bothered,” she said.
    “Yeah.” Dirk grinned. “And
that’s why we’re going to give these files a long, thorough look.”

Chapter

9
     
     
     
    S avannah sat in her favorite
chair, an overstuffed, wingbacked monstrosity covered in a cabbage-rose chintz.
A matching ottoman supported her feet and a sleeping Diamante. Cleopatra stood
on the arm of the chair, batting at the fringe on the shade of the floorlamp
that supplied reading light for the person relaxing there.
    Dirk, Tammy, Ryan, and John
sat around her diningroom table in the next room, the files that Dirk had
confiscated that day spread out before them. Chatting among themselves, sipping
tea and coffee, and nibbling the chocolate chip cookies she had baked for them,
they made a cozy picture.
    It was a sight that would
have normally warmed Savannah’s heart. Usually, she would have been there with
them, sipping, nibbling, and chatting.... her favorite pastimes. But her job
for the evening was to read the journal she had found in Eleanor’s nightstand.
And the more she read, the sadder she felt.
    Eleanor’s writings had been
anything but eloquent. In the simplest and sometimes terse language she had
described her daily torments.
    Written in that large,
flowing hand with purple ink, her words touched Savannah, giving her a greater
appreciation for the woman than she had held before. No wonder Eleanor Maxwell
had been difficult: she was terribly unhappy and almost completely alone.
    A couple of passages
impressed Savannah as being particularly honest and poignant.
     
    My kid hates me. My only
child wishes I were dead. What does that say about me? She says I messed her
up, that it’s my fault she’s miserable. I guess it is. But I didn’t know I was
being such a rotten mother. I thought I was doing okay at the time, or I would
have done something different. The last thing any mother would want to do is
mess up her kid. Make her child hate her. She acts like I did it on purpose.
Out of spite. Who would ever deliberately do something like that?
     
    And other passages relating
to the breakup with her husband described the pain of betrayal.
     
    I know he’s in love with
someone else. I remember when he loved me, so I recognize the signs. I keep
thinking about them together. Picturing him making love to her, saying sweet
things to her like he used to say to me. But I can’t see her face. I wonder, is
she a stranger, someone I’ve never met, someone who‘s a member of his world and
not mine? Or is she a friend, somebody I see every day, someone who looks me
right in the eye and knows? And knows that I don’t know. And secretly laughs at
me.
    He lies