Death by Chocolate

everything
that’s going on in the house they work in. She’s probably got some juicy stuff
to tell.”
    Savannah gave him a
sideways look and a nudge in the ribs. “Squeeze her? Please. The woman’s
obviously distraught. I was just going to offer her a shoulder to cry on if she
needed it.”
    She closed the door and
walked back to the kitchen. “Of course,” she added, “if I get the opportunity
to squeeze her a bit while she’s crying, so be it. You know, housekeepers are a
fount of information.... not to mention good ol’-fashioned gossip.”
     
     
    By the time Tammy joined
them in the kitchen, Savannah and Dirk had already collected several boxes of
staples from the kitchen cupboards and pantry.
    “We found the recipe for
the Death by Chocolate Cake,” Savannah told her, “and we’re taking what’s left
of the ingredients, like flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cocoa, and so on.”
    “That way you can tell
which one was contaminated?” Tammy pulled on a pair of gloves before looking
through the items in the boxes.
    “That’s right, kiddo,” Dirk
told her. “If there’s phenylprophedrine in the cake itself, it probably came
from one of those ingredients.”
    “You figure the killer knew
what she was going to be baking and put it into one of these?”
    “That’s what I’d do,”
Savannah said. “It would be a lot easier than trying to contaminate the actual
batter when she was baking it.”
    “That’s the problem with
poisoning...” Dirk began to put each item into its own bag and affix the orange
evidence labels to seal them. “Unlike a shooting or stabbing, or even a
strangling, the killer doesn’t have to be present at that actual moment of
death. Conceivably, they could plant the stuff weeks before. Although I don’t
think that happened in this case.”
    “Why not?” Tammy asked.
    “Because,” he replied,
“according to Kaitlin Dover, the show’s producer, Eleanor didn’t announce what
dish she was going to cook until just a day or less before the show.”
    Savannah walked over to the
broom closet and pulled out the loaded shotgun that Eleanor had mentioned.
“Whoever it was,” she said, “had to know what ingredients she’d be using ahead
of time to contaminate one or more of them.”
    “What’s that doing there?”
Tammy asked, pointing to the gun.
    “Just your standard,
double-barreled, twelve-gauge home protection device,” Savannah replied,
cracking the breech and removing the shells. “With a child on the premises—not
to mention possibly a killer—we don’t really need to have this thing loaded.”
    She popped the shells into
her pocket. Searching a nearby shelf, she found a box full of ammo next to some
corn flakes. She removed those, too, and replaced the gun.
    “So, are we about done
here?” she asked Dirk.
    He looked around the
kitchen, down at the boxes filled with their bags of potential evidence, and
nodded. ‘Yeah, I think this should be enough to send the boys and girls at the
lab into a tizzy. They hate this much work anytime, let alone on a Friday
afternoon, when they’re all looking forward to starting their weekend.”
    “Too bad,” Savannah said.
“If I have to work on the weekend, why shouldn’t they?”
    “Were you planning on
working this weekend?” Tammy asked as they each took a box and started for the
door.
    “Heck yeah,” she replied.
“What do you think I’m going to do? Sit around the house with Cordele and
rehash old family grievances?”
    Dirk nodded. “I see your
point. Investigating a homicide is a lot more fun than that rehashing family
crap.”
    “Much more fun,” Savannah
agreed. “But then, so is getting a triple root canal... a Pap smear.... a
mammogram...”
     
     
    They were loading the boxes
into the trunk and backseat of Dirk’s Buick when they saw Louise Maxwell
walking down the driveway toward them. She was wearing bright red short-shorts
and matching cropped tee that showed several inches of bare midriff. She walked
with a definite sashay to her hips that south of the Mason-Dixon Line might
have branded her as a loose woman.
    “Oh, goody gumdrop,”
Savannah said. “Just the person I wanted to see.”
    “Who’s she?” Tammy asked.
    “The daughter, Louise.
Otherwise known as the person least likely to grieve Eleanor’s passing and the
most likely to benefit from her demise.”
    Dirk perked up. “Oh yeah?
Well, I think we should get acquainted.”
    Savannah noted Louise’s
purposeful