Death by Chocolate (20 page)

Hurrying to the garage, she
got as far as the bottom of the stairs that led up to the apartment’s door when
the screen door banged open and a red-faced, furious Louise stomped out. “I’ll
call the cops if I have to,” she was shouting over her shoulder. “You get your
shit together and clear out of here by the time I get back from L.A., or I
swear I’ll throw it all in the Dumpster and change the locks on you!”

“This isn’t right, Louise,”
a male voice shouted back. “You know it, too. You never think about anybody but
yourself. You’re just like your mother, you selfish bitch!”

Rather than loiter around,
waiting for Louise to see her, Savannah ducked behind a tall wooden fence that
enclosed several recycle garbage cans and a small Dumpster. No point in making
her presence obvious at what was, obviously, an emotionally charged moment.

Let the two of them have
their privacy; she was perfectly content to eavesdrop.

From between the fence
slats, she watched as Louise marched past the cars parked along the driveway
and up the road to her gatekeeper’s cottage. She was so angry she didn’t even
seem to notice Savannah’s bright red Mustang sitting among them.

As soon as Louise reached
her place, Savannah heard a car engine roar to life, and a black Lexus shot out
from behind the cottage and up the road, then through the front gates. Louise
must be on her way to L.A., Savannah surmised.

She wasted no time leaving
her hiding place among the refuse and making her way to the staircase. Above,
she could hear the slamming and banging of somebody who was grandly ticked off.

She smiled, happy to be
exactly where she was at the moment. There was nothing like getting somebody
when they were riled. Irate people often said all sorts of interesting things
that they wouldn’t have divulged under more serene circumstances.

Of course, they also tended
to throw things and occasionally strike out at or shoot others... so she
assumed a cautious posture as she crept up the staircase to the door.

Through the screen she
could see Sydney ripping pictures off the wall and tossing them onto the sofa.
He was muttering to himself, and although she listened closely, she couldn’t
distinguish any particular words. And his handsome face looked as stricken as
he was angry.

“Sydney,” she said, softly
knocking on the door frame. “It’s me, Savannah Reid. May I come in?”

He turned to the door and
stared vacantly at her for several long seconds before recognition dawned in
his eyes. At first, she thought he was going to burst into tears, but he seemed
to gather himself and his volatile feelings together and walked over to the
door. She stepped back as he pushed it open and allowed her inside.

Dressed in a grease-stained
T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days, he looked the part of a handyman
more than that of an elegant, tea-serving butler.

His dark hair with its
silver sideburns was mussed and his eyes bloodshot. She thought she could smell
booze on his breath.

He looked terribly unhappy.

“Are you all right?” she
asked. “I saw Louise leaving and...”

“She fired me,” he said.
“I’ve worked for her family for eight years, and she comes in here and says,
‘Get out. I don’t want you around anymore.’ She fired Marie, too.”

Savannah thought of Marie
and her cozy apartment that she had made into a comfortable home. She looked
around Sydney Linton’s place and, even though it wasn’t as quaint as Marie’s, it
looked comfortable, as if he had been settled in for a long time.

One entire wall was covered
with a giant state-of-the-art entertainment center with a big-screen television
and high-tech stereo system. The other walls were adorned with posters of vintage
automobiles.

In a place of prominence
over the gray leather sofa hung a childish crayon drawing done on a piece of
cardboard and framed with red construction paper. The picture was of three
people: a man, a woman in a black and white uniform with a white cap, and a
little girl. All three were holding hands, the girl in the middle. Behind them,
suspended beneath a beaming sun and a slightly crooked rainbow, was a long
black automobile that must have been the classic Jaguar in the garage.

Savannah thought of what
Louise had said about throwing his belongings into the Dumpster, and she
winced.

Everybody lost a job from
time to time. But these people were losing more than a place of employment;
they were being torn out of their homes, as well. It was a lot for anyone to
handle on top of the previous week’s stresses.

“I’m so sorry,” Savannah
said, “for you and for Marie, too. But, you know, you have certain rights as a
tenant, and Louise can’t demand that you vacate the premises in a matter of
hours. As much as she likes to think she’s in charge, she has to play by the
rules, too.”

He gave a wry chuckle.
“Since when? When you’ve got the money—or your parents do—you’ve got the power.
That’s the way of the world.”

“Not always. You and Marie should
stand up for your rights. Don’t take it lying down.”

He shrugged and moved some
of the pictures off the sofa. “I guess I’m folding, but I don’t really want to
be around here anymore. I’ve had enough. The only reason why I was staying was
because of little Gilly. With Marie and me gone—and her grandmother, too—I hate
to think what life’s going to be like for her. That pup is cute, but it doesn’t
take the place of a human being who cares about you. And we all know that
Louise doesn’t give a damn about the kid.”

Savannah opened her mouth
to say something about the legal system stepping in on Gilly’s behalf, but
decided to keep it to herself. What could she tell him anyway? According to
Angela, there wasn’t much anyone could do at the moment.

“Maybe Gilly’s situation
will improve,” she said. “Either way, you and Marie aren’t responsible for her.
I’m sure you’ve already given her all you can in the way of love and support.”
She nodded to the picture on the wall. “Looks like it made an impression on
her. She’ll keep that sense of having been loved, even after you’re gone.”
Sydney glanced at the picture, and Savannah was pretty sure she saw the glimmer
of tears in his eyes.

“How’s Marie taking it...
being let go, that is?” she asked.

“Better than I am. At least
she didn’t get into a screaming match with Louise.” Having moved most of the
pictures from the sofa, he plopped down on it. Motioning to the other end, he
added, “Have a seat if you want. I’m not in the mood to start packing yet.”

“Listen, Detective Coulter
is on his way here—I just spoke to him on the phone—and you can explain your
situation to him. He can put the fear o’ God into Louise, make her go through
the proper procedures to evict you, buy you some time.”

“I only need a couple of
days to find another place and pack up.”

“I understand.”

Savannah heard a car in the
driveway, and she was pretty sure she recognized the wheeze and sputter as the
driver killed the engine. “Speak of the devil, and he’ll appear,” she said,
going over to the screen door and looking out. “Yes, it’s Coulter all right.”

She opened the door and
leaned out. “Dirk. Up here,” she called.

Dirk quickly climbed the
stairs and entered the apartment. He looked tired and aggravated, but Savannah
didn’t read much into that. Dirk was frequently both. “What’s up?” he asked,
looking from her to Sydney. “Louise is cleaning house, so to speak,” she told
him. “She just canned both Sydney here and Marie, the housekeeper.”

“Why? She’ll still need
help with this place.... assuming she inherits it,” Dirk said. “I can’t imagine
her mowing the grass and washing the windows.”

“That’ll be the day, when
that spoiled brat does any kind of real work,” Sydney said. He was still
sitting on the sofa, looking dejected, his head in his hands.

Dirk took a couple of steps
toward him. “I was going to talk to Marie about this, but you might know as
well as her.”

“What’s that?” Sydney
looked up, mildly interested.

“I was wondering what
pharmacy you guys used. Not Eleanor; I know she got her prescriptions from
Sav-Mor on Nelson Highway. But how about everybody else around here?”

“You mean me.... and
Marie?” Sydney asked.

“And Louise.”

Sydney shrugged. “I’m not
sure about Marie. She’s asked me to pick up aspirin for her at the grocery
store a few times when she had a headache. I don’t take any kind of
prescription medications.” He thought for a moment, then perked up. “I’ve seen
a little white delivery car from The Rx Shop parked up at Louise’s—for a long
time, too. In fact, I was wondering if...”

His voice trailed away and
he looked uncomfortable. Dirk and Savannah both leaned forward a bit.

“Yes?” Dirk asked.

“Well, I don’t know for
sure, so I hate to say anything.”

“Say it,” Savannah prodded.
“Louise just canned you and threatened to dump your stuff in the trash. Now’s
not the time to be worrying about discretion.”

“Okay,” he said. “A few
times last month I saw that car up there for a long time, like more than an
hour each time—longer than you need to make a delivery. And then I saw this
young, skinny kid come out of Louise’s with a big, sappy grin on his face. I
wondered at the time if maybe.... you know…”

“Louise was gettin’ a
little extra-special attention with her deliveries?” Dirk supplied.

“Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first
time,” Sydney admitted. “Louise gets around.”

“So I gather.” Savannah
thought of the various affairs she had learned about in the past few days and
decided that the inhabitants and visitors to the Maxwell estate weren’t exactly
hard up in the hanky-panky department. “So, where is this Rx Shop?” Dirk asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Sydney
gave a vague wave of his hand. “Down the road a ways, I think, in one of those
strip malls north of here on the highway.”

“Thanks,” Dirk said. “I owe
you one.”

Savannah walked over and
laced her arm through Dirk’s. “And we know exactly how you can repay him,” she
said. ‘You see, somebody needs to have a little talk with Miss Louise about
what she can and can’t do with…”

Chapter

R
x Shop in the Sunset View Mall
was a member of
an endangered species: a privately owned
pharmacy that still served ice cream cones, sundaes, and malted shakes at a
marble-topped counter. The place reminded Savannah of the tiny drugstore in
McGill, Georgia, where she had been treated to a one-scoop cone on Saturday
afternoons while running errands for Gran. It had been a rare treat and one
that she had savored deep in her soul.

Over the years Savannah had
become quite the connoisseur of ice cream, having sampled all the Baskin Robbins
flavors as well as the Ben & Jerry’s assortment and Breyer’s best. But
no ice cream had ever tasted as good as that single scoop of strawberry served
at a cold marble counter, in an air-conditioned store on a hot and humid
Georgia afternoon.

It was a simpler, sweeter
time, when five cents could buy complete happiness.

Like that store, this one
had that distinctive drugstore smell, a mixture of ice cream and candies,
perfumes and soaps, mothballs and an underlying, clinical scent of
pharmaceuticals.

She followed Dirk to the
back of the store where the wall bore one sign that said
prescription drop-off
and another that
said
prescription pick-up.
There
was a grim determination in his walk and a grouchier than usual frown on his
face, so she decided to just coast along in his wake, to watch and listen.

Behind the counter stood a
large, stout, elderly woman in a white smock who made Grouchy Dirk look like
Mr. Smiley Face. A small plastic name tag on her lapel identified her simply as
mildred.
Her steel gray hair
matched the color of her eyes, as she glared at Dirk over the wire-rimmed
glasses that rested on her long, narrow nose.

“What?” she snapped.

Standing behind Dirk,
Savannah wondered if she was this crabby with her paying customers, or if she
could sense that Dirk wasn’t there to fork over money. But Dirk wasn’t the sort
to be deterred by a chilly greeting. He flipped out his badge and shoved it so
close to the end of her nose that she had to take a step backward just to see
it. “SCPD,” he barked back, just as curtly.

“I’m busy,” she said,
turning away from him and occupying herself with her pills and bottles on the
other side of the counter.

“So am I,” he said. “I’m
investigating a murder. You wanna talk here or down at the station?”

Savannah grinned to herself.
Dirk wasn’t likely to haul any hardworking pharmacist off to the station house
just to answer a few simple questions. Unless, of course, she really pissed him
off.

The druggist didn’t reply,
but she laid down the bottle she was filling and gave him her undivided glare.

Dirk reached into his shirt
pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “I need to know if you have any”—he
consulted his note—“phenylprophedrine in stock.”

“No,” she said. ‘That’s
been pulled off the shelves.”

“And after you pulled whatever
you had off the shelves,” he said with exaggerated patience, “what did you do
with it?”

“We usually send recalled
drugs back to the manufacturer for a refund.”

“And is that what you did
with your phenylprophedrine?”

Savannah saw a flicker of
doubt in those gray eyes before she said, “I believe so.”

Dirk gave her a smile that
looked more like a snarl. “Would you please check your records? I need to know
for sure.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a curious sort
of guy. That’s what you— the hardworking taxpayer—pay me the big bucks for.
Please check. I’ll wait.”

Meanwhile, a female
customer had approached and was waiting and watching at the counter.

The druggist returned his
acrid smile and said, “I’ll check for you.... as soon as I’m finished with this
lady.” The instant she turned to wait on the woman, Mildred’s whole demeanor
changed to one of complete courtesy and cheer. “Good afternoon, Mrs.
Simington,” she gushed. “And how can I help you today?”

Dirk turned to Savannah.
“You know, when punk gangster kids give me no respect, I take it in stride. But
this gal is your average Jane Q. Public. What’s she got against me to give me a
hard time like that?”

“I don’t know, darlin’,”
Savannah replied, squeezing his arm at the elbow. “Cordele would probably say
your pharmacist here has authority issues.... or maybe she has a problem with
tall, dark, handsome men. Maybe your mere presence stirs deeply buried desires
that are simmering below the surface of her id or ego, or something,
threatening to—”

“Oh, shut up,” he said,
yanking his arm away. “I know when you’re messin’ with me.”

“Tall, dark, handsome—and
sharp as a basketball! No wonder she’s intimidated!”

Mildred took her good, easy
time while waiting on her customer, then sauntered over to a counter where a
computer displayed a kaleidoscope screensaver pattern. She began to type, and a
blue screen with a detailed list appeared. Eventually, she returned to the
counter where Dirk and Savannah were waiting.

“We had thirty-six bottles
in stock. We pulled them off the shelves,” she recited in a monotone completely
void of enthusiasm.

“And did you send them
back?” Dirk asked with an equally flat affect.

“Not yet.”

His face lit up with a
genuine smile, and Savannah could feel her own pulse quicken just a tad.

“Good. Let me see the
boxes.”

The steely eyes narrowed.
“Do you have a search warrant?”

Dirk’s eyes got just as
icy. “Do I need a friggin’ search warrant to count the friggin’ bottles? That
would mean I’d have to come back here again and have yet another one of these scintillating
conversations with you. And as appealing as that may be, I—”

“All right, all right. Come
on.”

She directed them behind
the closed counter and to a door in the back. With a key on the ring that she
had in her pocket, she unlocked the door and directed them inside. “Don’t touch
anything,” she said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,”
Dirk replied.

Savannah held up both
hands. “Me either.”

The druggist shuffled
around some boxes, rearranged some, and finally thrust one of them at Dirk.
‘There you are,” she said. ‘Thirty-six bottles of phenylprophedrine.”

It didn’t take Dirk long to
count. He skimmed his fingers over the contents of the box, looked up and gave
Savannah a broad grin. “Thirty-four,” he said.

“Thirty-
four
?” Mildred
snatched the box away from him and conducted her own tally. “You’re right,” she
said, although her tone suggested that those words were foreign in her
vocabulary. “Two of them are missing.”

“Who else has access to
this room?” he asked.

“Just myself and my
assistant, Karen, have keys.”

“Do you have a delivery
boy?”

She nodded.

“A young kid, tall and
skinny?”

“Well, yes. Tony’s slender
and tall. Why?”

“Does he ever come into
this room?”

“I... well... I suppose he
might from time to time.... to get something for me or for Karen if we ask him
to.” Mildred’s icy crust was beginning to develop some cracks. Her voice
quivered a bit as she said, “Did you say you’re investigating a murder? Tony’s
a good kid. He’d never—”

“I didn’t say he would,”
Dirk replied. “Where is Tony right now?”

“Out making a delivery.”

“When will he be back?”

“Anytime now. Sometimes his
old car breaks down and he’s gone a long time, but I think it’s been running
better lately.”

Dirk nodded. “Right. Well,
before he gets back I need you to do something else for me. I need to know how
many times Tony has made deliveries to a customer of yours, Louise Maxwell, and
the dates of those deliveries.”

“But... but...” Now
Mildred’s lower lip was trembling, and her hands shook as she replaced the box
of phenylprophedrine on the shelf. “I don’t want to get Tony in trouble. Like I
said, he's a good boy, my cousin's oldest son.”

“Don't worry about it,
Mildred,” Dirk said with only a touch of sympathy warming his words. “I've got
a feeling that, with or without your help, Tony's already in trouble.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t
know Louise Maxwell, Tony, because I hate people who lie to me,” Dirk told the
teenager, “and you don’t want me hating you right now. I’m the only friend
you’ve got.”

Tony Doyle was doing
exactly what Dirk intended him to do in the “sweat box”: sweat—profusely. Of
course, with the temperature in the eight-by-ten-foot room being a balmy 85,
Dirk, Tony, and Savannah were all three damp of brow and moist of armpit. Tony
was sitting at a stainless-steel table, his hands clasped tightly in front of
him.

Savannah had pulled a chair
into the corner where she sat... and observed.... and listened. Watching Dirk
in action was always an entertaining pastime. With his flair for the dramatic,
he could have played Hamlet onstage. Only his aversion to tights and tunics had
kept him from a promising acting career.

He paced, as much as the
tiny room would allow, back and forth behind his interviewee, leaning over him,
raising his voice until it bounced off the gray walls and rattled the kid’s
nerves.

“You delivered drugs to her
house six times last month alone. And almost every time your ‘car broke down’
and you were gone for hours, right?”

Tony shrugged his
shoulders, which were broad for his age. He had the build of a football player
and was definitely what girls his age would have called “cute.” Savannah could
imagine women her own age—and Louise’s—thinking the same thing. With his curly
dark hair, bright green eyes, and muscular body, she understood why Louise
might have kept ordering from Rx Shop.

The question was, what else
had she asked him to do?

Dirk was getting around to
that.

“Did she give you an
extra-special tip?” Dirk said, leaning over the boy’s head and talking down at him.
“Was that why you were so late getting back to the store... because you were
busy collecting?”

“I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” Tony insisted. “I deliver a lot of stuff to a lot of people,
and most of them give me a tip.”

Dirk walked around the
table so that he could face Tony and let the kid read his expression when he
said, “You deliver a lot of phenylprophedrine? You have a lot of people who ask
you to sneak that out of the back room for them.... or is Louise the only one
who offered you a little nookie in exchange for that?”

Bull’s-eye. The boy’s face
turned a lovely shade of crimson. He stared down at his hands and clasped them
even tighter.

“N-n-n-oo,” he stammered.

“Oh, yeah. You did.” Dirk
leaned his hands on the table and stared at the boy, his face only a foot away
from his. “She asked you to get her a couple of bottles of phenylprophedrine,
and you did, and you got lucky. We already know that. We know all about it. Why
else do you think we dragged you in here?”

Tony’s eyes darted to Dirk,
to Savannah, and back. “I.... I don’t know why. I mean.... even if I did.... it
was just two bottles of some discontinued stuff. Is the shop saying I stole
from them? I can pay them back. They can take the money out of my paycheck.”

“We’re not worried about
petty theft here,” Dirk said. “Together the bottles were probably worth less
than ten bucks. It’s what they were used for.”

Savannah watched, noting
the confusion that flooded his face. Tony was a cutie, but he wasn’t clever
enough to be a good liar.

“What do you mean? It was
cold medicine. She had a runny nose and a cough.”

“Is that what she told
you?” Dirk said.

“Yeah, she said that
phenylprophedrine was the only thing that really dried up a cold for her, and
she couldn’t get it anymore because it had been pulled off the shelf.”

“Do you know why it had
been pulled?” Dirk asked. Tony thought for a moment. “Yeah. It wasn’t good for
people with bad hearts, or something like that. But she said she was healthy,
except for her stuffy nose and a cough.”

“You told her it wasn’t
good for people with heart conditions, and she told you she was healthy?”

“Yeah... well.... no. Her
note said that she knew it had been pulled off the shelves because it wasn’t
good for some people, but she said it wouldn’t hurt her, that she really needed
some for her cold.”

Savannah shot Dirk a quick
look. “Her note?” she said. “She asked you for the phenylprophedrine in a
note?”

“Yeah. She sent me notes
sometimes, left them in my mail slot at work, ‘cause I was always gone out on
deliveries.”

“What kind of notes?” Dirk
asked. “Love notes, stuff like that?”