Death by Chocolate

usually even
admit to being cheerful.”
    “How true.”
    “So, when are we going to
review what you’ve got on the case?”
    “Right after the peach and
blackberry cobbler.”
    “What? No chocolate cake?”
    She made a face. “Please, I
may never eat chocolate cake again. The phone’s been ringing off the hook with
reporters wanting to get a statement from me. Apparently, it was leaked that
Eleanor, Queen of Chocolate, didn’t die of natural causes, and they all want to
talk to her so-called bodyguard who blew it.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Yeah, between losing a
client and nursing a cold, I’ve had better weeks. But then, compared to Eleanor
Maxwell’s week....”
    Dirk sauntered over to the
grill, his empty plate in his hand and an expectant look on his face.
    “Okay, okay, here you go.”
She plopped a couple more chops on his plate. “Don’t ever say that we don’t
feed you around here.”
    “When I dish the dirt about
you, Van, I never mention that.”
    She raised one eyebrow and
shook her tongs at him. “Never say ‘dirt’ to somebody who prepares your food.”
He gave his chops a suspicious look but walked back to his chaise and dug in
anyway.
    Savannah chuckled. “It
takes a lot more than the fear of a little contamination to put Dirk Coulter
off his chow,” she said.
    Later, as they gathered
around the kitchen table to have dessert and coffee, Savannah slid a bowl of
cobbler laden with vanilla ice cream in front of Cordele.
    “You do still eat cobbler,
don’t you?” Savannah said. “It used to be your favorite. You always asked for
that instead of a birthday cake, remember?”
    A look of agony crossed
Cordele’s face as she wrestled with the decision on whether to indulge or
refrain.
    Tammy sat down beside her
and picked up a spoon. “Ah, go ahead. A little refined sugar and flour once in
a while won’t hurt you. It’s a special occasion.”
    Soon everyone had a bowl of
warm cobbler à la mode and was happily munching away.
    “Remember when we used to
go picking blackberries by the roadsides in the fall?” Savannah said, trying to
draw Cordele into some sort of meaningful social interaction with her friends.
“That was fun, huh?”
    Cordele didn’t look up from
her bowl. ‘Yeah, I remember. We used to get our arms all scratched up. It hurt
something fierce.”
    Silence around the table.
Everyone exchanged awkward glances, but nobody said anything.
    “My brothers and I used to
raid a neighbor’s apple orchard,” Ryan finally offered.
    “Oh, that sounds like fun,”
Savannah said brightly. Cordele took a deep breath. “Remember when we were
picking berries on the side of the highway that time, and we found a dead cat
caught in the briars? I remember that like it was yesterday. That ol’ cat was
half-rotten and had flies buzzin’ all over it.”
    Savannah sat, frozen, spoon
halfway to her mouth, staring at her sister.
    “I gotta tell you,” Cordele
continued. “It took the fun out of berry picking for me. Between finding that
rotten cat and the briars scratching you all up, it just wasn’t worth it.”
    Slowly Savannah stood and
walked, trancelike, from the kitchen and into the living room. Tammy got up
from her seat and followed her.
    “Where are you going?”
Tammy whispered, tugging at her sweater sleeve.
    “To get a weapon,” Savannah
replied. “What do you figure would be best: a rope, a knife, a candlestick, or
a gun?”
    “That depends,” Tammy said.
“Are you talking homicide or suicide?”
    “I figure I’ll kill her
first, then myself.”
    “I see. Well, in that
case....” Tammy gave it several moments of serious thought. “Gun. Yeah,
definitely the Beretta.”
    “Really? You think so?
Why?”
    “It would be too much work
bludgeoning yourself to death with a candlestick.”
    She nodded. “Good point.
Thanks.”
    “Anytime. What are friends
for?”
     
     
    With the dishes done, the
cats fed, and Cordele in the living room reading her mystery novel, the
Moonlight Magnolia team sat around the dining room table, studying the files
that Dirk had confiscated from Martin Streck.
    After comparing facts and
figures for about an hour, they came to the same conclusion. “Streck’s been
embezzling from Eleanor for a long time,” Tammy said.
    “No kidding,” Ryan replied.
“He’s just about bled her estate dry.”
    “And didn’t you mention,”
John added, “that she and her husband had a recent parting of the ways, so to
speak?”
    “Their divorce