Death by Chocolate

a
strain on an already diseased heart. The combination could be fatal.”
    “But who would know
something like that?” Dirk asked. “You’d have to be a doctor, or somebody in
the medical profession, right?”
    “Not necessarily.” Eileen
replaced the folder on the stack. “When phenylprophedrine was recalled, there
were news stories on TV and in the papers that warned people with heart
conditions, especially people taking metosorbide, that it could be dangerous,
even deadly.”
    “So,” Savannah said. “We can
narrow it down to a doctor, a nurse, or somebody who watches TV or reads the Times. That helps a lot.”
    Dirk shoved his hands into
his jeans pockets and rattled his change—his “frustrated” gesture. “I don’t
suppose there were any prints on that cocoa box.”
    Eileen gave him one of her
irritating smirks. “Now wouldn’t that make it easy for you.” She walked over to
another table and another stack of files. This time she picked up a red folder.
Opening it, she shoved it under his nose.
    He looked it over before
handing it back.
    Savannah said, “Well?”
    “The victim’s,” he replied.
    “That’s all?”
    “Yep.” He gave Eileen a
“thanks for nothing” look. “After all, we wouldn’t want to make it too easy,
right?”
     
     
    Half an hour later Savannah
was dropping Dirk off in the police station parking lot.
    “Sorry, buddy,” she said.
“But now we know for sure it’s a homicide. All we’ve gotta do is find out who
spiked the cocoa.”
    He replied with an
inarticulate grumble.
    “Cheer up,” she added as he
walked away. “It’s barbecued pork chops and corn on the cob night at my house.
Ryan and John will be there. Bring those papers of Streck’s along, and we’ll go
over them again with you.” He just kept walking, head down, radiating gloom.
“Hey,” she shouted after him, “at least you don’t have to entertain my sister.
You don’t have a cold. You don’t have to shave your legs or color your gray.
You think you’ve got it rough? Boy, you don’t know what rough is.”

Chapter

13
     
     
     
    “T here’s nothing on earth
like a big, juicy pork chop JL to cheer that guy up,” Savannah told
Tammy as she threw a couple more pieces of meat on her backyard grill.
    Tammy glanced over at Dirk,
who was sprawled on a chaise lounge, a drowsy smile on his face, a beer in one
hand, his empty plate in the other. He was past “satisfied” and was coming
‘round the bend toward “sated.” Another chop should do the trick.
    With a pair of tongs,
Savannah removed a few more ears of foil-wrapped corn from the coals and placed
them on the platter that Tammy was holding. “Make sure John gets another one of
those,” she said. “Don’t let Dirk have them all.”
    As Tammy walked away with
the corn, Ryan left the picnic table where he had been sitting with John and
walked over to the grill. He gave her a smile that gave her shivers, in spite
of the warm evening and the proximity of the grill.
    “You’ve outdone yourself,
Savannah,” he told her. “As usual, dinner was fantastic. One of these nights
soon, you’ll have to let us take you out to Chez Antoine. He makes an amazing
chateaubriand, and his chocolate crème brûlée is orgasmic.”
    “I don’t think I’ll be free
for a while.” Savannah gave a little nod in Cordele’s direction. She was
sitting by herself in a chair under the arbor, staring into space, a bottle of
Tammy’s mineral water in her hand.
    “Ah, that’s all right. The
more Reid girls, the merrier.”
    “Not necessarily,” she
muttered, brushing some sauce on the chops and stifling a sneeze and a sniffle.
    Ryan studied Cordele
thoughtfully for a moment. ‘Your sister does seem a bit depressed this evening,”
he whispered. “Is anything wrong?”
    “Nothing out of the
ordinary. For her, ‘depressed’ is more of a lifestyle than a mood.”
    “That’s too bad. But still,
John and I would love to take the two of you out for dinner. Heaven knows, we
owe you some hospitality after all the great meals you’ve prepared for us
recently.”
    “Are you kidding? You don’t
owe me diddly-squat. Dirk is out of his funk—that’s worth a fortune right
there.”
    Ryan shrugged. “I don’t
know how much we had to do with that.”
    “More than you think. Just
knowing that he’s going to get some help with this case perked him right up. Of
course, he’d never admit that’s the reason he’s cheerful.”
    “He doesn’t