Murder A'la Mode. G. A. McKevett

my first book cover ten years ago. You might say she ‘discovered’ me.”

      “Working a soda fountain in Hollywood?”

      “No, nothing so glamorous.” A shadow crossed Lance’s face. Savannah noted the brief sadness in his eyes, but she wasn’t sure how to interpret it. He didn’t elaborate.

      “Well, like I said, I’m going back to bed.” Mary slid off her stool and patted Lance’s shoulder as she walked away. “You two have a nice breakfast and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be worse than today.”

      “Ah, something to look forward to,” Savannah said as she began to scrub the potatoes in the sink.

      “By the way,” Mary said, pausing in the doorway. “I don’t suppose you’ll have room for dessert after all that, but if you do…”

      “Yes?” Savannah perked up. “There’s always room for dessert.”

      “Then you might want to raid the big walk-in freezer downstairs, next to the wine cellar. Tess always has a big bowl of gourmet ice cream after dinner. She’s bound to have some stashed down there. Just don’t let her know I told you about it.”

      “Mary, you’re a gem of a woman!” Savannah said. “I owe you one.”

      “You’ll owe me more than that before this is all over.” With that, Mary disappeared, leaving Savannah deliciously alone with Lance.

      “Sounds ominous,” Savannah told him.

      “She’s just been on locations before with Tess and Alex. She knows the score.”

      “Sounds like you do, too.”

      “Let’s just say it’s been a long ten years.” He watched her quietly for a few moments as she popped the potatoes into the skillet and the steaks under the broiler. “What do you do, Savannah? Are you a chef?”

      She laughed. “Not even close. Although sometimes I feel like a greasy spoon short-order cook when I’m feeding a batch of my friends. Actually, I’m a private investigator.”

      “A private detective? Really? Wow!”

      She was accustomed to a bit of surprise when she told people her occupation, but not shock. Lance looked like she had just told him she was an international spy and then socked him in the solar plexus.

      “Yep,” she said. “That’s how I earn the cat food and potatoes around my house. It’s a living…most of the time.”

      “How did you get into that line of work?”

      “Well, a million years ago I was a cop, and then—”

      “A cop? You? Really?”

      She gave him a sly grin. “Handcuffs and everything.”

      Before he could respond, someone walked into the kitchen, and Savannah silently cursed them before even turning to see who it was.

      “What’s going on down here?” asked an abrasive voice that Savannah instantly recognized. Carisa swept across the room, wearing a marabou-trimmed, hot pink negligee with matching high-heeled slides.

      “Savannah’s making us some breakfast,” Lance told her. “Would you like to join us?”

      Savannah didn’t particularly like the gleam of interest in Lance’s eyes as he watched Carisa sashay over to the stool where he sat. And she certainly didn’t appreciate him offering her services to someone she didn’t even like. Cooking for Mary was one thing, but Miss Priss Carisa could rustle up her own grub.

      “Breakfast?” Carisa said, instantly interested. “What are we having?”

      “We are having steak and eggs,” Savannah replied coolly.

      “Oh, good.” Carisa sat on the stool next to Lance and began to play with a strand of her long, black hair. “I’m on a high-protein diet. I can have steak and eggs, but no toast.”

      “Then you’re in luck,” Savannah told her, “because there are at least three more steaks and a dozen eggs there in the refrigerator. Help yourself.”

      Carisa flipped her hair to the right, then the left, while batting her eyelashes at Lance. “But I don’t cook,” she said in a breathy tone that Savannah had only heard in cheap porn films.

      “Then you’ll be eating your steak raw,” Savannah said, “because I’m starving, and these suckers are about ready to eat.”

      Lance appeared to take pity on the starving actress. “Mary said that there’s some ice cream in the freezer downstairs,” he told her. “It’s Tess’s, but I won’t tell.”

      “That’s so-o-o not on my diet,” Carisa said. Then she reconsidered. “But I’m really hungry, so….”

      She glided across the kitchen, a pink cloud of feathers and billowing chiffon. After searching several cabinets and drawers, she found a bowl and spoon and disappeared through the rear door.

      Savannah grabbed a couple of plates and began to dish up their meal, while Lance looked on with acute interest. As she slid it under his nose with the panache of a diner waitress, she said, “There ya go. Sink your choppers into that, Sir Lance, and tell me if it hits the spot.”

      He cut off a large chunk of steak, and when he bit into it, his eyes rolled back in ecstasy. “Ah…oh…Savannah this is absolutely—”

      A terrible shriek split the air, cutting off his words, followed by another and another, coming from the direction of the rear door.

      “What the hell?” Savannah said.

      Lance jumped off his stool. “Carisa?”

      Another scream seemed to answer his question.

      Savannah dropped her plate onto the counter and raced to the door with Lance right behind her.

      They opened the door and saw a long flight of stairs that led down to the cellar. Another scream echoed upward from the darkness below.

      Instinctively, Savannah reached to her side for her Beretta and realized she was unarmed.

      Don’t enter a dark room and face a threat unarmed, she told herself.

      But the cries below were too horrible to hesitate. Someone was in trouble. Savannah took only a few seconds to make her decision…and run down the stairs into the castle’s dank, gloomy cellar.