Steve glanced up from the pile of documents on his desk as Cheryl came into their office. From the look on her face, the folder she was holding was as unhelpful as the majority of papers he had been perusing. "Ragsdale's personnel file?"

She placed it with disturbing precision on top of his stack, then collapsed gracefully into his other chair, avoiding the equally useless pile on her own desk. "Yes. And a more innocuous individual probably doesn't exist, at least for our purposes."

He picked up the report, riffled through it, and came to the same conclusion. "So why Mr. Ragsdale? Or does someone have it in for the Easter Bunny?"

"Maybe we've got some type of major health food nut on our hands."

He blinked. Cheryl was usually the last to be critical of people who actually cared about the type of food they put inside them, and he would ordinarily have expected some biting comment about stuffing children full of sugary, non-nutritious candy. "Death by chocolate?"

She shook her head. "Not necessarily. You saw Amanda's report – death by asphyxiation. He was just knocked out with the chocolate bunny."

"And?" Steve asked, intrigued.

"And," Cheryl continued, mentally steeling herself for a sarcastic response to her theory, since she wasn't quite sure how she felt about it herself, "maybe it's got nothing to do with Ragsdale himself. He was just an unfortunate –"

"By-rabbit?"

She threatened him with a fist, and he threw up a hand in mock terror. "Okay, okay. Sorry. So you think it's something to do with – what, the chocolate?"

Cheryl nodded. "Look at the McDonald's lawsuits, all those idiots who thought the chain was responsible for the fact that they thought it was okay to make junk food a staple of their kids' diets. Maybe someone really, really has a problem with the concept of Easter candy."

Steve was about to respond when his phone rang, and he picked it up. "Sloan." His expression, startled at first, grew grim as he listened. "Okay, thanks. We'll be right there." He hung up and turned to his partner. "We've got another one – and he also works for Benson's as an Easter Bunny." He grinned at Cheryl. "Want to make a bet they're the connection?"

"Huh. Last time I took a sucker bet from you I ended up buying lunch at Bob's for a week. I'll take your word for it." She unfolded herself with her usual agility and slid on her sunglasses. "But I'll let you drive."

The newest scene had the same disturbing chaos as the first, its victim dispatched with similar violence and lavish smears of chocolate. There was one marked difference, however; in plain view was a large candy rabbit with a sizeable dent in its head, matching the dent in the victim's. Clearly the murderer had some reason for ensuring that the apparently perilous quality of the chocolate did not go unnoticed, Steve reflected, as Cheryl quietly voiced the same thought.

"If that's not a message of some kind, I'll go on foot patrol for a week."

Steve shook his head. "I don't think you're going to be doing that any time soon – I agree. I mean, after all, if you're going to suffocate your victim, why make an issue of how you knocked him out?"

"Has anyone taken a look at the candy?" Mark asked a few hours later, as they let their dinners settle. Steve had deliberately waited until after the meal was over before giving his father and Jesse a quick synopsis of his newest case, and the group was relaxing on the deck, watching the sunset. "After all, there must have been some reason for it being left in such a prominent place."

"CS has a sample or two to analyze," Steve replied. "And it turns out that Benson's may have had some idea that this could happen."

Horrified, Amanda exclaimed, "What do you mean, Steve?"

"Apparently," Cheryl commented, "Benson's got a call a few days before the first murder. Someone with an electronically altered voice told them to remove the bunnies from their shelves."

"Or?" Mark asked.

Steve looked disgusted. "Or, this mysterious someone apparently wasn't specific about that part of it. So the person who took the call didn't take it seriously – until now."

"So," Mark mused, "the question is why. Is there something wrong with the candy? Or are we dealing with an enraged competitor?"

"Possibly both. Benson's changed its contract fairly recently, from Fairweather's Finest to Choc-o-Fine. I couldn't get anyone to tell me why, but I did manage to get samples of both types of chocolate." Steve rose and retrieved the bag he had left in the kitchen. "Here you go, Jess. Interested in a little analysis?"

Jesse's eyes widened. "You think there's something in the candy, don't you."

Steve nodded. "I'm going to pursue the competition angle, but something tells me there's something else involved. Let me know what you find, okay?"