Death by Chocolate

swallowed whatever he was going
to say.
    "We need you to keep
her busy for as long as you can,” Savannah said.
    “Yeah, at least half an
hour,” Dirk added. “I gotta search her place, and I don’t want her comin’ home
till We’re done.”
    “Do you have a warrant?”
Ryan asked, still looking through the binoculars.
    “Yeah, but I don’t wanna
give her a heads-up that we’re lookin’ at her just yet,” Dirk replied. “Not
till I see what I’ve got on her, if anything.”
    Ryan handed the glasses
back to Savannah and started to peel off his polo shirt. A second later, the
shorts came off, and Savannah could no longer speak.
    Glancing at his watch, Ryan
said, “Half an hour, starting now.”
    Dirk looked at his. ‘Yeah.
Startin’ now.”
    Ryan went back to his car,
tossed the clothes inside, and retrieved a San Carmelita Yacht Club towel.
Tossing it over his shoulder, he headed for the steps and the beach.
    “You wanna stick your eyes
back in your head?” Dirk finally said, shaking Savannah’s arm.
    She continued to stare at
what had to be the most incredibly perfect male body on the planet. The broad
shoulders, the toned muscles, the tiny waist and hips, the legs that—
    “You comin’ or not?” Dirk
said as he left her and marched back to the car.
    “Coming?” she whispered as
she continued to stare, transfixed, at the retreating figure on the beach. “No....
but I’m sure a-breathin’ hard.”
     
     
    Louise’s cottage was no
neater or cleaner than Savannah remembered it. If anything, even more movie
magazines, tabloid papers, empty fast-food containers, and soda cans lay about,
littering every horizontal surface in sight. The place stank of garbage.
    Savannah thought of little
Gilly, and her heart ached that a child, presumably born to wealth, was being
raised in such squalor. The only sign of joy in the small house was a
smattering of plastic dog toys scattered around the floor.
    But they saw no sign of the
dog, Gilly, or Louise— who was at that moment, being entertained by the
charming Ryan Stone.
    Tammy had met Savannah and
Dirk outside the mansion’s gates, and they had entered the cottage together.
For the first time since Eleanor’s demise, Savannah had some real hope that she
and her friends were within reach of a solution to her murder.
    “Gloves,” Dirk said as he
slipped on a pair of his own and offered some to the ladies.
    Savannah could recall a
day—that didn’t seem so long ago—when being a peace officer or a private
investigator could be done with one’s bare hands. But no more. If you weren’t
afraid of catching a deadly bug from somebody or safeguarding potential
evidence, you were warding off the possibility of being accused on the stand of
having done a sloppy crime-scene inspection, thereby jeopardizing the
prosecution’s case.
    Whatever the precautions,
Savannah longed for the good ol’ days when her sweaty palms hadn’t been encased
in latex and the only gloves she owned were the yellow ones under the bathroom
sink that she used to clean her toilet.
    “There’s the computer,”
Tammy piped up. “Want me to get started there?”
    “That’s what we brought you
for,” Dirk grumbled. “Certainly wasn’t for your good looks.”
    “No, the only one along for
his looks was Ryan,” Savannah said as she followed Tammy over to a corner desk
and an old, enormous and bulky desktop PC that sat on it. ‘Jeez, Tam... you
should get a load of Ryan in a swimsuit. He”—she cut an eye over to Dirk and
added—“never mind. I’ll tell ya later.”
    Tammy sat down at the desk
and switched on the computer. Savannah hovered over her shoulder as Dirk walked
around, opening drawers, cupboards, and closets.
    “Let’s see what we’ve got
here,” Tammy said as she browsed the desktop screen of the computer. “Windows
‘98... some computer games that are probably Gilly’s.... Internet access.... a
bunch of downloaded music.”
    “Did she write those damned
letters on there or not?” Dirk snapped as he meandered over toward them, having
momentarily satisfied his curiosity about the rest of the apartment.
    “Just give me a minute,
will you?” Tammy barked back. ‘Just how irritating can you be, Dirko? I—wait a
minute. Here we are. I’m into her word-processing program.” Savannah leaned
over her, staring at the screen. “What’s the default font?” she asked, barely
daring to breathe.
    Tammy’s face widened with a
broad smile. “Arial...