Death by Chocolate

dropped
the bag into it. “We’ve only got three guys on it—actually, one’s a broad—and
they’re on the other side of town, dusting for prints at a house burglary.”
    “Since when does a burglary
take a backseat to a homicide?” Savannah wanted to know.
    “When it’s the mayor’s
sister-in-law who got burgled.”
    “Oh.” Savannah peeled off
her gloves and tossed them into the trash heap. “So, you figure it was the
cake?”
    “That’s the last thing she
ate.” Dirk walked onto the set with its green marble counters and cozy,
stained-glass cupboards. ‘That redhead producer—”
    “Kaitlin Dover?” Savannah
followed him reluctantly onto the set. Only hours ago she had been kneeling
right there—in that spot between the counter and the oven—holding Eleanor
Maxwell, watching her die.
    “Yeah, Kaitlin.” Dirk
produced another bag from inside his jacket and took the remainder of the cake,
plate and all, that was sitting on the counter, and shoved it into the bag.
“She was by earlier, and I had her show me the film—the one they were taping
when it happened.” Tammy joined them on the set. “Could you tell anything from
looking at the tape?”
    “Just that she made the
cake, took a few bites, got sick, and kicked the bucket.”
    “Wait a minute.” Savannah
tapped her fingers on the marble. “A bunch of us had a bite of that cake. I ate
some myself, and I didn’t get sick.”
    “You aren’t on heart medications,”
Dirk reminded her. “It was the interaction that did her in, not the stuff
itself.”
    “But I should have had some
sort of symptoms if it was that concentrated in the cake.” Savannah turned to
Tammy. “What would the symptoms be? Do you remember from that Internet article
you read?”
    “I don’t think it said
anything about overdose symptoms, but I remember it was used for colds, to
clear congestion and...”
    Savannah raised one eyebrow
and poked Dirk in the chest with her forefinger. “Hot toddy, my hind end. You
didn’t cure me, big boy. I’ll bet you a plug nickel it was that bite of cake
that dried me out.”
    Dirk sniffed. “Well, that’s
appreciation. See if I ever make another one of my special toddies for you.”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t like
it. I said it wasn’t what dried up my nose. You wait till they run some tests
on that cake and you’ll see that it’s full of that stuff.”
    Dirk looked around the
kitchen. “Well, just in case it isn’t, I’ve gotta take everything else that I
can find around here in for tests, too. Anything remotely edible.”
    Savannah began opening
cupboards, but most were empty. “Why do I get the feeling they didn’t actually
do much cooking here in this kitchen?”
    “They didn’t,” Dirk
replied. “I already talked to Kaitlin about that. She said that Eleanor put
most of the stuff together down at the house and brought it up here after it
was cooked.”
    “Sure, that makes sense.”
Savannah found some pots and pans, but they were dusty and obviously hadn’t
been moved recently. She closed the door and kept looking as Dirk and Tammy did
the same. ‘You know... I’ll bet the cake we ate wasn’t even the one she mixed
up here on the show.”
    “What do you mean?” Dirk
said, his head in the refrigerator.
    “I mean... she mixes up one
here on camera to demonstrate how it’s done to her audience, but when she puts
it in the oven to ‘bake,’ she takes out the one that’s already been baked and
serves it.”
    Tammy nodded. “Sure. You
can’t wait for it to bake on a TV show.”
    Dirk had donned another
pair of gloves and was placing the items from the refrigerator into yet another
evidence box. “Well, that may be true, but we still have to take all this crap
in and have it checked, just in case.”
    “And all the stuff from the
kitchen in the house,” Savannah said. ‘They’re just gonna love you at the lab.”
Dirk growled, “If we can drag it all down there, the least they can do is run
the lousy tests.”
    Savannah grinned. ‘Yeah,
you be sure to put it to ‘em just like that. There’s nothing like that Coulter
charm to ensure cooperation.”
     
     
    This time when Savannah
stepped onto the mansion’s verandah with Dirk and Tammy in tow, the three
mini-hounds from hell didn’t even bother to get up from their comfortable
chairs where they were having their early afternoon snooze. Killer simply
opened one eye, blinked lazily, and closed it, then shoved his nose under