Behind Chocolate Bars (14 page)

We said our good-byes and Erica came in when I was contemplating if “giving me a key” meant more than checking on Truffles. Erica had given Bean a key to our house as soon as he'd come back into town but that wasn't the same thing at all.

“What did Lockett want?” she asked.

“Both Newell and Ullman have alibis,” I said, sounding a little bitter.

“That was fast,” she said.

“Do we have any more information on the people she knew that she didn't date?” I asked. “What about her family?”

Erica went into her thoughtful mode. “Maybe we can ask Chuck about that.”

I nodded and looked over my own notes. “I still think we should talk to that guy who had a crush on her in high school.”

Erica looked up from the list. “Wade Overton?”

“Yes,” I said. “Did Zane find out any information on him?”

She clicked a few times on her computer. “He's a mechanic in Hagerstown. He's not on any social media.”

“Not even Facebook?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“That's all Zane gave you?” He was usually more thorough.

“He had a lot of people to go through,” Erica reminded me. “Maybe you can take my car in for a checkup and ask Wade some questions.”

“Good idea,” I said.

*   *   *

I
waited until closing time to approach Erica. “Did Bean give you a key so I could check on Truffles?”

“Yes,” she said. She pulled it out of her pocket, and it was on the most basic key ring. It looked less like a
want to live with me?
key ring, and more like a casual, neighborly
can you bring my mail in?
key ring. I was definitely not reading anything into it.

“I'm going to stop at Bean's on the way home tonight,”
I said. With no Sunday-night date and no Halloween Festival prep scheduled, I didn't know what to do with myself.

“I'll go with you,” she said. “I want to see the little guy. I'll bet he's grown.”

“It's been less than a week since you saw him,” I pointed out.

“You're right,” she said. “But it's been a very long week.”

It took only a few minutes to drive over to Bean's house. He'd left a few lights on and the house looked welcoming. He'd carved a jack-o'-lantern out of an enormous pumpkin and placed it in the corner of the porch under an elaborate spiderweb.

We let ourselves in and Truffles popped his head up from the couch, stretched and started mewing to be picked up. Who could resist?

We gave him new food and water and spent a half hour playing with him until we all ended up on the couch. Once he settled in between us, Erica hypnotically petted him until he fell back asleep. We carefully got up from the couch and tiptoed out, the sight of the sleeping cutie-pie making us smile.

T
he next day was not my normal Monday. My best client, a boutique hotel in Washington, DC, that catered to the political elite, had decided to include a trio of cheese and chocolate pairings as a unique dessert option. They planned to pair my Fleur de Sel Caramels with an aged Bijou goat cheese; my spicy Mayan Warriors with Spanish Manchego; and Royal Blue Stilton with my Extra Dark Mochas. I brought both Kona and Kayla in early to work on these special orders, and didn't have time for any new truffle inventions.

We were almost done by the time Kona had to open up the store, so Kayla and I finished. It felt good to push everything else aside and focus on the fun part of my mission in life. Making little bits of happiness for other people. I played a game that I hadn't thought about in quite a while:
imagining who might be on the other end, opening up the box, but this time I substituted taking a bite from an elegant dessert dish. Would it be a businesswoman taking a client out to dinner in the fancy hotel restaurant? Maybe she'd be anxious about making a deal, but taking a bite of a truffle would make her stop for a moment and relax, just to enjoy her indulgence. Maybe she and the client would make a connection over their love of chocolate, and she'd win that contract.

Perhaps it would be a child enjoying a Halloween treat with his grandmother, a treat that tasted so much better than everything else in his loot bag. Or a middle-aged man, on his first date since his wife unexpectedly divorced him. Maybe they too would bond over a love of my chocolates.

I returned to the real world from my Candyland daydream with a sigh. I walked to the front of the store, and all conversation died. Kona looked at me with anxious eyes from behind the counter. She jerked her head toward the back, and I went straight to Erica's office without talking to anyone. Erica looked up from her computer, distraught.

“Reese?” I asked.

She nodded. Front and center was one of the photos that poor excuse for a journalist had taken when Dylan was brought in for questioning. Erica and I were holding up our hands in response to her obnoxious flash, but it looked like we were trying to duck and run.

The headline screamed,
Detective Duo Out for Blood
.

“That freakin' . . .” I couldn't say what I wanted to call her out loud.

I read on.
By day, you'll find West Riverdale citizens Erica Russell and Michelle Serrano running their Main
Street store, Chocolates and Chapters. By night, you'll find them volunteering at the West Riverdale Boys and Girls Club, preparing for the annual Halloween Festival. But what many citizens don't realize is that behind this community-oriented facade lies a manic desire to act as suburban vigilantes to bring down the criminals behind the spate of recent murders in our town. To get in the way of our excellent state and town police professionals . . .

I groaned and put my head down on the desk, exhausted by the spite behind her words. When would she stop? “I can't finish it. Just give me the highlights. Or low points. Whatever.”

Even normally cool and composed Erica seemed flustered. “Basically, she accused us of having giant egos and using our investigation to make sure our friends Dylan and Oscar, the guilty parties, are cleared. That we're searching desperately to find innocent people to accuse. And that everyone should avoid us, so we don't cast our nasty aspersions on them.”

“She used the word ‘aspersions'?” I asked.

Erica nodded. “And that we are enlisting the comic book club in our efforts.”

“Nice,” I said. “So anyone who's following the news coverage about Faith's murder can see that we're asking questions now. What does your Geek Team think of all this?”

“I've only heard from Tommy, who told me to ignore it,” she said.

Then I figured it out. “She's trying to sabotage us,” I said with an
aha!
tone to my voice.

Erica knew what I was talking about right away. “Reese? Could be,” she admitted. “But why?”

“Maybe she realized we were figuring things out before her,” I said. “And maybe she's tired of being the laughingstock of the whole town.” I didn't even want to bring up Reese's sense of rivalry left over from our high school basketball team days.

Reese needn't have bothered. We didn't seem to be making much progress. Unless she knew something that we didn't.

*   *   *

E
rica and I had planned to spend the day in the back, away from curious stares. After we finished the order for the hotel, I worked with new milk chocolate recipes, trying to make up for my heavily dark-chocolate schedule from the week before, and then I got antsy.

“Forget Reese,” I told Erica when I found her hiding in the office. “It's time to see Wade for a tune-up. We have to make progress. Can I take your car?” My chocolate-themed van would get too much attention.

She looked up from her computer. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Let's hope that the people in Hagerstown have better things to do than read her nonsense.”

I hadn't been to Hagerstown for years, and wondered why as I drove through the beautiful hills and came into the center of town. I had a flashback to my father telling me all about the Stonehenge limestone that was mined there and used to make many of its older buildings. At the time, I'd gotten confused about the real Stonehenge in England, and demanded to go see it. Luckily, he'd set me straight before we made the road trip.

Erica called as I drove into town, making sure I stayed
under the speed limit. “I found out why Reese wrote that article.”

“Why? Besides being a horrible person.”

“Iris was telling someone at the diner how she tricked Reese into starting that social media campaign and that it was our idea,” she said. “She didn't know Reese had come in while she was on a smoking break and was in one of the booths. Reese heard everything and stormed out.”

“Oh great,” I said. “She's going to think of us as her enemies even more.” She might be an idiot, but her website gave her a big bullhorn in our area.

I walked into the garage area of a large car repair station on the north side of the town, ignoring the small lobby where customers were supposed to sign away their firstborn to pay for car repairs. The smell of oil and burning metal assaulted my nose. The first mechanic I stumbled across had
Wade
stenciled across the pocket of his gray mechanic jumpsuit, which was covered with oil splotches. We'd found Wade's photo on an online yearbook site, but unfortunately, he didn't look anything like his high school photo. I knew people changed, but I doubt he could change from a blond-haired man with a round face who looked like he came from Iowa to this man with olive skin and black hair.

“Are you Wade Overton?” I asked.

The man looked puzzled. “No?” he said with a Spanish accent.

I pointed to his name on his pocket, and he laughed. “Wrong uniform.” He looked around and yelled, “Wade!” with his hands making a trumpet around his mouth.

A man standing under a raised car stuck his head out around the tire. “Yeah?”

Fake Wade stuck his thumb out to point to me. “Someone's here to see you.”

Real Wade, who looked only slightly older than his teenage photo, pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands while he walked over. “Can I help you?” He must have been over six feet tall, towering above me.

“Hi!” I went right into ditzy mode. “My friend said you were the best mechanic in Maryland, so I'm hoping you can work on my car?” Ditzy Michelle ended a lot of her sentences with a question mark.

“What kind of car?” he asked.

“A Nissan,” I said. “I think the dealership messed something up so I wanted to ask you some questions before you actually work on it.”

He looked at me like he thought I was crazy but he'd humor me. “Sure.”

“I know, like, interviewing your mechanic is unusual, but they had to fix it, like, three times and now I'm kinda nervous.” I might be overdoing it. “First, my friend Faith recommended you but I wanted to find out how you knew her? Like, she's not getting paid to tell people about you, is she?”

He blinked. “Faith?”

“Faith Monette?” I said. “She said she went to high school with you? And that you were a really good mechanic.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We both went to Buckey High.” He paused, looking a little suspicious. “How do you know her?”

“She's, like, my neighbor, and she saw me having trouble with my car a while ago and said I should bring it to you.”

“She said I was a good mechanic?” He smiled a little, as if her opinion mattered.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “So, you didn't, like, give her money to tell people that, did you?”

“No. That's not something mechanics do.” He said it slowly, as if talking to an idiot.

“Oh good,” I said. “Isn't it terrible what happened to her?” I carefully watched his face.

Now he just looked confused. “Something happened to her?”

I brought my hand to my mouth. “Didn't you hear? She was murdered!”

He looked stunned. “What?”

I took a step toward him and grabbed his hand. “I'm sorry that I sprung it on you like that, but it's been all over the news.”

He stared at me.

“Did you know her well?” I asked, covering his hand with mine in a little hand sandwich. I hoped it was soothing rather than strange.

“We went to high school together but . . .” He gave a
not really
shrug. “She was in here a few months ago, and I recognized her right away.”

“Oh,” I said in my most understanding tone. “You were friends way back in school.”

He shook his head. “Oh no. She was real popular, and I was just . . . you know.”

“Oh,” I needed more platitudes in my questioning arsenal. “I think she mentioned a reunion or something.”

He nodded. “I was hoping—” He stopped, clearly embarrassed.

“Yes?”

“It's stupid,” he said. “But I thought if I bought her a drink
at the reunion, that maybe she'd go out with me or something.”

“That's so romantic,” I said.

“Yeah, well. She probably has—had—a lot of men who wanted to date her,” he said.

He had no idea.

“But she told you I was a good mechanic?” His tone was probably more wistful than he intended.

“Best in Maryland,” I said. “She also said you gave her the friends-and-family discount.” I was totally fishing at that point.

He looked over his shoulder. “I kinda made that up,” he said. “Don't tell my boss.”

From what I'd learned about Faith, she'd probably asked for a discount, based on nothing but being a fellow alumni. “Oh,” I said in a disappointed tone. “I won't. You know, I'm surprised you didn't connect on Facebook with her before this.”

He shook his head. “I'm not into computers. Plus, that whole thing seems to be a bunch of showing off.”

Which is why we didn't find him on any social media. “I thought I was the only one who thought that!”

“So what's wrong with your car?” he asked.

*   *   *

A
s soon as Wade saw that I was driving a Nissan Leaf, he'd apologized and told me that only the dealer could work on those cars. He'd watched me drive away, and I couldn't read the expression on his face.

I was about to park back at the store when Bean called me, his voice urgent. “Can you take a break and help me?”

“Sure,” I said.

“The kids let Truffles out and he's in a tree in the backyard,” he said. “He'll probably come down for you.”

“I'll be right there,” I said, and drove just a little too fast to his house.

I went around the back and Colleen's two-year-old twins ran right up to me. “Auntie Schmell,” they said together. Then they pointed and talked to me in a mixture of English and toddler speak. All I could hear was “kitty,” several times, but I got the gist from their expressions that it wasn't their fault. No matter what anyone said.

“It's okay,” I said. “I'll get him down.”

Bean stood at the bottom of a large oak tree, and I could see Truffles was busy exploring a wide branch. “Boys,” Bean said as they fluttered around me, pointing and explaining. “I bet you could see the cat better from the porch.”

They stared at the porch as if evaluating it, then at each other, and they ran, stomping up the two steps and watching us over the railing. Luckily, a box of large building blocks grabbed their attention and they plopped down and started playing.

“Truffles,” I called.

He looked down at me and was immediately distracted by a moving leaf.

“Truffles,” I said in a singsong voice. “Come on down for a treat.”

He stopped swatting at the leaf to meow piteously.

I talked out of the corner of my mouth. “You still have treats, don't you?”

“Of course,” Bean said. “What do you think about a ladder?”

“Let's wait a minute,” I said and then turned my attention back to Truffles. “You can come down,” I said. “You can do it.”

Truffles tumbled a little down to a branch closer to the ground, his short fall making me inhale sharply. “It's okay,” I said.

His success must have made him more confident, because he hopped down the next two branches quickly. The closest branch to me was still pretty high up. “Let's go,” I told him. “Time for a nap.”

He started and stopped several times, and I said to Bean, “Maybe we do need that ladder,” just as Truffles tentatively took a few steps toward me, head down, and slipped. His nails were not made for coming down headfirst, and I suspected he was too young to figure out how to back down.

“On its way,” he said and went to his garage.