A Decadent Way to Die: A Savannah Reid Mystery Read online

  “That’ll do.” Eileen snatched the bag out of her hand, opened it, and smelled the contents. “Oh, my God … I can feel my mood rising already.”

  At a nearby computer, a young red-haired woman watched and listened, eyeing the bag. “Enough in there to share?”

  “Yes,” Savannah said, “but whether she will or not …?”

  “You work here over forty years, like I have,” Eileen told her, “you can accept bribes, too. Till then, get back to those prints.”

  The redhead sighed and turned back to her computer screen, where a pair of latent prints were being analyzed and compared.

  To the right, a young man sat at a lab bench, staring through a microscope. On the wall to the left, another guy was examining a bed sheet with an ultraviolet light.

  Savannah cringed to think what he was seeing through his goggles. Years before, she had made the mistake of looking at a hotel bedspread with a UV light. And ever since, when she’d spent the night somewhere other than her own bed, she had packed her sleeping bag along with her pajamas and toothbrush.

  Too much knowledge could ruin almost anything.

  “So,” Eileen said around a bite of cookie, “what have you got for me?”

  Savannah reached into her purse and pulled out four small, brown evidence bags. Handing them to Eileen, she said, “I have a client, a wonderful lady, eighty-plus years old, who thinks somebody’s been trying to kill her. And I think she’s right.”

  “That bites.”

  “Darned right, it does. I’ve got a granny that age.”

  “My mom’s eighty-five. If somebody tried to hurt her, I’d take them out in a heartbeat … in the most painful way possible.”

  Dirk perked up. “And what way would that be?”

  “Like I’m going to tell you.” Eileen shot him a look, then turned back to Savannah. “What’s in these bags?”

  “Food from her kitchen. She drank her nightly hot chocolate and passed out cold. They took her to the hospital, where she slept for hours.”

  “And you think somebody put sleeping pills, or whatever, in her drink?”

  Savannah nodded. “We took samples from her cocoa tin, sugar canister, and her half-and-half carton, and a bottle of vanilla.”

  Eileen opened one of the envelopes and peered inside. “Any idea what we’re looking for?”

  “She had a prescription for a sleep medication called Zolpe-done,” Dirk said. “But when we counted the pills and compared them to what’s left, it didn’t look like any were missing.”

  “Okey dokey.” Eileen popped the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “We’ll get on it.”

  “You’ll get on it right away?” Dirk asked.

  Savannah nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. She gave Eileen a bright smile. “It would probably take me a few hours to go home, bake up a batch of those chocolate chip pecan cookies you’re so fond of, and get back here.”

  Eileen returned the smile. “The universe is just filled with coincidences. That’s exactly how long it’ll take us to run these samples.”

  Chapter 6

  Savannah took bribery very seriously. And as soon as she got home, she hauled her bowls, measuring cups, and mixer out of the cupboards and got busy making chocolate chip pecan cookies.

  Dirk and Tammy kept her company, sitting at her kitchen table, watching, waiting, and offering advice.

  When Savannah dumped in a cup full of brown sugar, Tammy grimaced and took a swig from a glass filled with her favorite beverage—filtered, organic, pure, mountain spring water.

  Until Savannah met Tammy, she wasn’t aware there was such a thing as “organic” water. And she was pretty sure that, in spite of the high price and fancy labeling, the sparkling, crystalline stuff was coming from somebody’s backyard garden hose in Ox-nard.

  “You know,” Tammy said, “you could put honey and whole wheat flour in those cookies, and they’d be a lot healthier.”

  “Or …” Dirk added for good measure, “… you could triple the recipe and give me a care package to take home with me.”

  “Or I could ignore the two of you and do things the way I want to.”

  Tammy nodded. “That’s always an option. Not the best one, but …”

  “Hush up and drink your water, Nature Girl.” Savannah tossed twice the amount of chocolate chips into the dough. She’d learned long ago not to scrimp on the goodies when concocting a bribe.

  “How long till those things will be ready?” Dirk asked for the fourth time since he had sat down at her table.

  “Fifteen minutes,” she replied, “unless you ask me again, and then it’ll be five days.”

  “Five days?” His face fell. “How come five days?”

  “’Cause it’ll probably be five days before I’m in the mood to do more baking.”

  “Oh.”

  “Get a chicken leg out of the ice box and gnaw on that while you’re waiting.”

  “Okay!” He jumped up from the table and nearly knocked her over as he passed her on his way to the refrigerator.

  Tammy shook her head. “When it comes to food, Dirko, you have no dignity at all.”

  “What’s dignity got to do with anything?” he asked, pulling out a cellophane-wrapped plate of fried chicken.

  “He’s getting revenge,” Savannah said with a snicker.

  “What?” Tammy watched him bite into a drumstick with gusto.

  “Long story,” he mumbled. “And a private one, Savannah. Keep it to yourself.”

  “Do you really think someone’s trying to kill our client’s grandmother?” Tammy asked, watching Savannah drop the spoonfuls of batter onto a cookie sheet.

  Savannah smiled, thinking how sweet it was that Tammy referred to every person who walked through Savannah’s front door as “our” client. Poor girl. She got precious little payment for her labors on behalf of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency.Whatever modicum of self-satisfaction she received from her mundane duties of answering the phone, doing paperwork, and computer research was well deserved.

  “I think it’s highly likely,” Savannah said. “And what really burns my biscuits is that they’re not only trying to do her harm, but trying to make her look like a doddering old fool in the process. I don’t cotton to that sort of mistreatment of the elderly.”

  Tammy grinned. “Granny Reid wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would she?”

  Savannah shoved the cookies into the oven with far more vigor than necessary. “I’m sure she’s a bit of a factor. When you’ve got somebody in your life, someone you love, who’s older, but full of life and vital, it makes you realize how disrespectfully our senior citizens are treated.”

  “Yeah,” Dirk said, “and the older you get, the more you realize you’re gonna be in the same boat someday. It makes you think.”

  Tammy nodded in solemn agreement. “That’s so true. And speaking of Granny Reid, when is she coming to see us again? I miss her.”

  Savannah wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked to the refrigerator. She reached inside and took out a pitcher of tea. “Not for a while. She started taking a class on art appreciation at the community college over in Halderville, and that’s filled up all her spare time.”

  Tammy sighed. “I hope I’m like her when I’m her age.”

  “Heck,” Savannah said, “I’d be happy to be like her at my age.”

  Savannah poured herself a large glass of tea and tossed in some ice cubes. Then she joined Dirk and Tammy at the table.

  “You know,” Dirk said, “even if the lab finds something in those samples, we’re not going to be able to nail anybody with just that and some loose dirt on a path.”

  “I know.” Savannah traced the top of the frosty glass with her fingertip. “But it’s a start.”

  “What did the gardener have to say about that soft spot on the road?” Tammy asked, glancing at her watch.

  “We showed it to him when he was taking us to the house,” Savannah said. “He acted like it was the
first time he’d seen it or heard anything about it.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Savannah shrugged. “I guess. I swear people are better at lying than they used to be. It’s getting harder and harder to tell.”

  “But if the gardener rescued her off the cliff,” Tammy reasoned, “and the trench was the cause of her accident, it would have still been there. It seems like he would have seen it.”

  “She says she hung there on the cliff for half an hour, yelling for somebody to help her before he came along,” Dirk said. “Whoever dug it in the first place would have had enough time to fill it back in.”

  Savannah nodded. “If I’d set up an accident like that, I wouldn’t be able to resist hanging around in the bushes somewhere, waiting to see if it worked.”

  Dirk walked over to the waste can and disposed of his drumstick bone. Pulling some paper towels off the roll, he said, “It wouldn’t take more than two minutes to shovel that dirt back in place and stomp it down.”

  He wiped his fingers and his face, then pitched the towels into the garbage. “He could have had everything looking normal before the gardener even heard her cries for help.”

  “Or the gardener himself could have done it all,” Tammy said. “He may have set her up, and then changed his mind when he heard her yelling and pulled her off the cliff.”

  Savannah shook her head. “I doubt it. Why go to all that trouble and risk your own life to save her if you’re just going to poison her later?”

  “I didn’t like his wife,” Dirk said. “She acted hinky when she first saw us.”

  “Yeah.” Savannah took a sip of tea. “And I heard her say something on the phone in Spanish. It sounded like, ‘be careful what you say.’”

  “A lot of people are paranoid. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve broken the law,” Tammy said, glancing up at Savannah’s cat clock with its swinging tail and rolling eyes.

  “You got someplace you gotta be, sugar?” Savannah asked her.

  Tammy grinned. “Actually, someone’s dropping by in a few minutes to get me.”

  Savannah was all ears. “Oh? Someone special? Like maybe that new boyfriend we keep hearing about?”

  Blushing, Tammy nodded. “Yeah … but you have to be nice to him.”

  “Nice?” Dirk said. “We have to be nice? To heck with ‘nice.’ How much fun would that be?”

  “We’ll be absolutely adorable to your new honey-bunny,” Savannah said, kicking Dirk under the table. “I’ll give him cookies and milk, and Dirk can ask him if he’s on parole or—”

  “Oh, God … I’m doomed.” Tammy put her hands over her face.

  The oven timer went off and the phone rang simultaneously. Savannah jumped up and ran to the stove. Tammy hurried to the counter and grabbed the phone.

  “Moonlight Magnolia Detective Agency,” she said in her breathiest, most sultry tone.

  Once Savannah had suggested that she sounded more like she was answering the phone on a Talk-Dirty-to-Me-Because-I’m-A-Loser-with-No-Love-Life line. Tammy had taken the gentle criticism to heart … for one day. Then it was back to her usual, wannabe Marilyn Monroe.

  As Savannah pulled the cookie sheet from the oven, she heard Tammy say, “Oh, hi, Eileen. Yes, she’s just taking your cookies out right now. Let me get her for you.”

  Savannah glanced over at Dirk and saw her own anxious anticipation on his face.

  She took the phone from Tammy. “Hey, girl. What’s shakin’ over there?”

  “You were right.”

  Savannah had to admit, as a general rule, those words were sweet to hear—even when spoken by Eileen in that gravelly, deep voice. But this time, Savannah would have preferred to hear that she was mistaken.

  It wasn’t always a blessing … being right.

  “What did you find?” she asked, nodding to Dirk.

  He sat up straight in his chair.

  “We found,” Eileen said, “Zolpedone in the cocoa, just like you suspected.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, let me explain it like this: If you were to use the entire container of cocoa to make one cup of hot chocolate—impossible, obviously—you’d consume enough to kill a horse. But the amount you’d use for one nightly mug full … it would be the equivalent of a triple dose. Certainly not a healthy amount, but probably not fatal.”

  “Which would explain why it didn’t kill her, just knocked her out for hours,” Savannah mused. “Anything else?”

  “That’s all we found. The sugar, vanilla, and half-and-half were uncontaminated.”

  “Thank you, Eileen. I owe you.” She looked over at the golden brown cookies cooling on the baking sheet. “In fact, your bribery payment just came out of the oven.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eileen replied. “I love your cookies, but, considering our results, I’m sure you have more important things to do. Like saving that lady’s life.”

  “You’re a gem, Eileen.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  Savannah hung up the phone and turned to Dirk and Tammy. “The sleep-aid medication was in the cocoa.”

  “I gathered,” Dirk said. “And that makes it official—attempted murder.”

  “Who would want to kill an elderly woman who makes dolls?” Tammy said. “That’s sorta like trying to murder Mrs. Claus.”

  Savannah nodded. “And they’re not only mean, but a bit on the stupid side. At the very least, we know our would-be killer isn’t much of a cook. They had no clue how much cocoa it takes to make a cup of hot chocolate. And that’s probably what saved Helene Strauss’s life.”

  The doorbell rang, and Tammy jumped like someone had touched her backside with a live wire.

  “Oh! I’ll bet that’s him!” she said, racing out of the kitchen and through the living room to the front door.

  “Wow,” Savannah said to Dirk. “He must be something pretty special to get a rise like that out of her.”

  Dirk grunted. “Men. We’re scum buckets—every last one of us. And nobody knows that better than us guys. If you women knew half of what we’re up to, you’d kill us all in our sleep.”

  Savannah stared at him a moment, then slowly nodded. “Oookay. Good to know.”

  A couple of moments later, Tammy walked into the kitchen holding the hand of an extremely tall, blond stud muffin with a blinding white smile, bright blue eyes, and muscles that rippled inside his snug, designer polo shirt when he reached out to shake Savannah’s hand.

  “Hi,” he said, teeth flashing, eyes sparkling. “I’m Chad.”

  He squeezed Savannah’s hand so hard that she winced.

  “Most pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said through gritted teeth. She pulled her fingers out of his grasp and waved toward Dirk. “Chad, I’d like you to meet my friend, Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter.”

  Dirk received a smile from Chad, too, though Savannah noted it wasn’t as bright as the one he had given her.

  The handshake was just as firm; she could tell by the way Dirk flinched and scowled.

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Chad told him. “Tammy’s told me so much about you. I’m a great supporter of law enforcement.”

  “Are you, now …?” Dirk’s eyes bored into Chad’s, and Savannah could see the younger man grimace as Dirk returned the crushing grip—plus a bit more for good measure.

  Tammy looked alarmed and whispered to Dirk, “Nice … nice …”

  Savannah jumped to the rescue. “How about some cookies, Chad? Chocolate chip … still warm and gooey.”

  She decided against offering him a glass of milk to go with it. Now that she had seen him in all of his six-feet, three-inch, two-hundred-twenty-pound frame, a kindergartner’s snack seemed inappropriate.

  “I can make a fresh pot of coffee to go with the cookies, if you’ve got time to sit a spell,” she said instead.

  “No, thanks,” Chad said, rubbing the fingers of his right hand, which no doubt ached after Dirk’s
revenge shake. “We have to get going, or we’ll be late for the auto show. I want to be there when they open the doors. I don’t like being late.”

  He glanced up and down Tammy’s turquoise suit with an obvious look of disdain on his handsome face.

  Savannah decided it was a face that was getting less handsome by the moment, sparkling teeth or not.

  “I’m going to have to take you home first,” he told Tammy, “so you can change. You aren’t going anywhere with me wearing that outfit. Where did you buy that? The local thrift store?”

  When Savannah saw the hurt and embarrassment on Tammy’s face, her temper flared. For a moment, she imagined what it would be like to lop off Chad’s head with a sword and watch it roll across the floor.

  Would it still be smiling ear-to-ear, white teeth flashing?

  “We had a special client appointment this morning,” Savannah told him, keeping her voice low and even. “I asked Tammy to dress up a bit for the occasion.”

  “I guess I’ll have to teach you how to dress,” he told Tammy. “Anybody with a smokin’ hot body like yours shouldn’t wear something out of an old lady’s closet.”

  Savannah couldn’t hold back any longer. “Whoa, Chad, you really need to watch your—”

  “It’s okay,” Tammy said, grabbing Savannah’s arm. “Really. I do need to change before we go out. I don’t know what I was thinking wearing this. I just …”

  Tammy gazed up at her date with a mixture of adoration, nervousness, and fear that made Savannah’s stomach churn.

  “We have to go,” Tammy said, releasing Savannah and scurrying to pick up her purse from the table. “Chad is a very punctual person, and, well … I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Savannah watched as the two of them turned and walked toward the back door.

  “Nice meeting you,” Chad called back over his shoulder.

  He didn’t wait for a reply before he walked out the door, leaving Tammy to follow dutifully in his wake.

  Savannah barely waited for the door to close before she said, “Oh … oh, how I hate him.”

  She turned to Dirk, and one look at his face told her he was feeling the same as she was. Sick and furious.