Death Is Like a Box of Chocolates (A Chocolate Covered Mystery) (15 page)

I added, “Jake Hale said Denise had a fight with a guy at the Ear over some photographs. We’re going to take a photo—not
that
one—to see if that guy was Larry.”

Bean looked thoughtful. “Do you think she was capable of blackmail?”

“I think we’re all capable of many things when our back is to the wall,” Erica said.

A tingle of unease tickled the back of my neck.

Bean pointed to something colorful in the corner of the photograph. “Can you blow that up and see what it is?”

“Sure,” Zane said. With a few clicks, a part of a neon sign appeared. Blurry, but obviously from the sleazy motel with a reputation for bedbugs in Normal, the next town over from West Riverdale.

Bean got an intrigued expression on his face. “Maybe I should take a trip over there tonight.”

“Why?” Erica said. “Don’t you have a phone interview with
The Guardian
?”

“This publicity stuff is boring as hell.” He stared at the photo, but this time he had the look of a predator hunting his prey. “Do me a favor and wait until tomorrow to give Bobby the flash drive. I just want to see if I can talk to Larry before Bobby does.”

I found myself holding my breath for Erica’s response.

“Why?” Erica asked.

“Maybe I can get a story out of it,” he said.

She didn’t back down. “You don’t do local stories.”

“All news is local news,” he said. “Besides, I need something to do while I’m in town.”

“No way,” she said.

I let out my breath with a soft
whew
.

“Not without me,” she said, surprising the heck out of me.

“What?” I said, even though it made me feel like a wuss. What was she thinking? Bean was used to dealing with dangerous situations, not Erica. “I’m going too.” I felt a nervous quiver in my stomach.

Bean said to Erica, “You’re babysitting.” And to me, “Be ready at eight.”

I could feel my face freeze, which of course Erica noticed. “You don’t have to go.”

Bean grinned at me and it felt like a dare. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.
What was I thinking?

His energy level had jumped a few levels as he walked out, totally expecting me to join him.

“Are you sure?” Erica asked, knowing I didn’t go in for adventure.

“It’s our store,” I said. “And our fudge cook-off.” I took a deep breath. “And our friend.” Besides, even Larry wouldn’t be stupid enough to go back to the same motel.

I
let Erica lock up and I drove over to the hardware store to get a new air filter for spray-painting my chocolates. I had put off making several of my truffles until the next day, knowing my display case would be more appealing with a multicolored mix. I had limited molds and distinguished between different flavors by using different colors. It also made it easier for us to memorize what was inside, and for our customers to be reminded of their favorites.

Just as I was about to go in, I heard a familiar gruff voice say, “Hand it over,” from the side parking lot.

I snuck over and peeked around the corner. I saw Howard pull a thick, folded-up envelope from his red Duncan Hardware apron pocket and hand it to the building inspector, a man I disliked with every fiber of my being. He’d made our renovation as painful as he could. I swore he was a sociopath who delighted in the misfortune of others and had the perfect job to make that misfortune happen.

It was the guilty expression on Howard’s face that made me slam my body up against the wall so they couldn’t see me. I peeked around the corner again and saw the building inspector reach into the envelope and pull out a wad of cash.

What?

He fanned it as if counting it by touch and then shoved it back into the envelope.

Beatrice slammed open the store’s side screen door and yelled, “Howard! You need to get a ladder down!” in the you’re-an-idiot tone of the long married.

“A minute!” he yelled back.

“Customer waiting!” she responded.

The building inspector snorted and got back into his car, muttering something about wearing the pants in the family. Howard went back into the store.

I waited, breathing hard, as the inspector drove away.

If I hadn’t needed that air filter so bad, I would’ve run back right away and told Erica what I’d seen. Instead, I calmed myself down and went in the front door. “Hi, Beatrice!” I spoke too loudly but she was busy checking out a customer and didn’t seem to notice. “I’m just here to get a new filter.”

“Okay,” she said over the beeps of her machine. “You guys must be busy in there today.”

“Yep,” I said. “Right back.” I went down the aisle and picked up two filters. I glanced toward the back and saw Howard putting the ladder away on a rack. I guess the customer hadn’t wanted it after all.

“Any news from that Hillary lady?” she asked when I returned to the front.

“No,” I said. “Right now we’re just focused on the opening. And Denise’s funeral.”

She tsk-tsked. “Such a shame.” She put my filters in a bag. “I’ll be there, but I’m so sad that I won’t be able to buy much chocolate.” She glanced back at Howard. “Money’s tight these days.”

When I got back to the shop, Erica was still there, and she didn’t take the news well. Everyone loved Howard Duncan. Could he be paying off the building inspector to get approvals for something he shouldn’t? I guess my attempts to get on the inspector’s good side with chocolates wasn’t what worked on someone like him.

Had Denise found out about it? I knew I was reaching, but did Denise have more than one blackmail victim?

• • • • • • • • • 

B
efore I risked my life tracking down the criminally minded Larry, I wanted to make sure we were going after the right person, so Erica and I decided to catch dinner at the Ear in order to show Jake a photo of Larry. We hoped to hit a double and talk to Opal as well. She hadn’t returned my call yet. I still didn’t know what we’d ask her. “Did you kill Denise?” probably wouldn’t work.

Jake gave us a warm wave when we walked in. The bar was pretty empty, so we sat there. We ordered appetizers for dinner, my idea of culinary heaven. The only food I was snobby about was chocolate. Opal was nowhere in sight, but maybe it was too early for her.

When Jake delivered our beers, Erica pulled out the photo with Larry’s face enlarged to see it better. “So, Jake,” she said, trying to be casual. “Is this the guy who had an argument with Denise?”

He checked it out. “That’s him.” He set our glasses on napkins and then he realized what we were doing. “Wait. Where’d you get that?”

“It was just in a file . . . ” I tried.

“What are you doing? Playing Nancy Drew?” He took out a small bowl, poured in a spicy nut mixture, and placed it in front of us.

“What do you mean?”

“I heard you guys were asking people questions.” He looked amused. “Just leave it to the cops.”

“Of course,” Erica said. “We’re just gathering information for them and we wanted to confirm a theory.”

“What theory?” he asked with some sarcasm.

“We’ll let you know when we prove it,” she said. “So Opal is one of your very good customers, is she not?”

Is she not?
I sent Erica an are-you-kidding look.

Jake smiled. “If you say so. She’s here sometimes.”

“Was she here Sunday night?”

His smile disappeared. “Look, I kinda have a Vegas thing going in here with the regulars. What happens at the Ear stays at the Ear.”

“That’s commendable,” Erica said. “But I’m sure it doesn’t hurt anyone to answer the question. It could actually help her. So how late was she here?”

“Late,” he admitted. “We’re supposed to close up early on Sundays but we started these pool tournaments and sometimes they go after closing. The blue law says we have until midnight, but that doesn’t sit too well with our neighbors if the customers get a little loud. So I lock the door at ten except for the regulars.”

“Who was here?” I asked.

“Why you gotta know that?” he complained.

“If they were here, they weren’t killing Denise,” I said which sounded way more shocking out loud than in my head.

Jake winced and Erica took over. “It’ll eliminate them as suspects,” she said in a reasonable tone.

“Why are you getting involved in all this suspect stuff?” But it was more of a grumble than a real question.

“We heard that Opal’s been ranting about Denise,” I said. “Was she talking about her on Sunday?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She was on a tear.”

“What did she say?” Erica asked, her pen poised over her notebook.

He shrugged. “Some crap about Denise sleeping with someone to get that school gig so fast.”

“Did anyone pay attention to her?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “She was just outta control. Peter got her calmed down.”

“Peter who?” I asked.

“Palladine,” he said.

“The principal?” I wasn’t exactly shocked. It just seemed weird that he had a real social life.

“Yeah,” he said. “He comes here sometimes when his wife is doing overnights at her clinic.”

“What did he say to calm her down?” Erica asked.

“I didn’t pay that much attention,” he said. “I have a job to do, you know.”

“Did you hear any of it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Peter told her he’d look into it for her.”

“And that worked?”

“Eventually,” Jake said. “Except then she said maybe he was the one who slept with Denise, but some others told her that was bull and to shut her mouth. She’s always a pain in the ass when she drinks Scotch.”

“When did Opal leave?” Erica asked.

“A little after ten,” he answered without looking at us.

“She was okay to drive?” I asked.

“No way,” Jake said. “I asked someone to drive her home.”

“So she was incapacitated,” Erica said.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “She was hitting it that night. Hard.”

“Who took her home?”

“What does that matter?” he said. “Her car was still here in the morning so she must have passed out at home. No way she was able to do anything in that condition.”

“So you’re sure she didn’t have the wherewithal to . . .”

“No she didn’t have the ‘wherewithal’ to kill Denise,” he finished for her. He moved to the other end of the bar, totally sulking.

Well, that cleared suspect number two.

Somehow I couldn’t imagine Principal Palladine sitting at the end of the bar nursing a beer. Did he wear his sports jacket with the suede elbow patches?

Jake slapped down our plump crab cakes and baked potato skins, dripping with cheese.

“Can you let us know the next time Opal comes in?” Erica asked him, and he nodded.

I couldn’t resist one last question. “So what does everyone think about Peter being here?” It was hard not to call him Principal Palladine. “Don’t they worry he’ll write them up for detention?”

Jake smiled. “They didn’t like it at first, but they got used to it. Come to think of it, they behave better. Until he leaves, and then they revert to their normal revolting behavior.” He said it with such affection, I knew he was kidding.

• • • • • • • • • 

I
t was eight on the dot and Bean was still on the phone in the living room, where he had escaped to once Colleen had arrived with the twins. Ten minutes before, he’d started pacing, so I assumed he was growing impatient to get going.

Erica had the boys upstairs while Colleen and Mark met with his lawyer. They were driving into his office in DC; given the traffic, they’d probably get back to pick up the kids the next day. Or maybe the day after that.

I was happy to delay our attempt to track down Larry, and busied myself updating the project plan. Erica and I had discussed our latest suspect with relish: Wayne Chauncey, building inspector and general pain in the butt. Erica was sure he wasn’t a sociopath out to cause as much damage as he could. At the very least, he was the complete definition of “crotchety old man.” He knew every contractor trick in the book, and he didn’t trust my newfangled machinery, as he called it about a hundred times.

Anyone who required three visits to approve my state-of-the-art dehumidifier, a complete necessity to a chocolatier in the humidity of Maryland, was clearly unsuited to his job. I’d even enlisted members of the town council, showing them how awesome it was so that they’d encourage Chauncey to approve it.

But I couldn’t imagine that mild-mannered, generally henpecked Howard Duncan was capable of murder. He’d been the town handyman ever since he was a young man and was well known for being painstakingly honest. If a job ended up being harder or taking longer than he expected, he still stuck to the original quote. He and Beatrice had just won Lifetime Community Service awards from the West Riverdale Rotary Club, honors that were rarely bestowed. If anyone could be called a pillar of society in West Riverdale, it was Howard Duncan.

As soon as Erica could free herself from the little monsters, she was going to research what jobs Howard was working on that Wayne Chauncey had inspected. But we had no idea if it had anything to do with Denise’s murder. We just didn’t want to leave anything out.

Bean knocked on my door, looking energized. “Ready?”

“I guess.” I was dressed all in black. “Do I need anything?”

He looked me up and down and smiled. “Cell phone?” At my nod, he said, “That’s it. Let’s go.”

Bean had rented a car for his visit, a dark blue Ford Focus that seemed tiny inside compared to my minivan. His arm brushed my shoulder when he put his seatbelt on. I didn’t know if it was the excitement of the adventure or the spicy scent of him so close that had me breathing a little fast.

He patted my knee, which didn’t help. “Relax. He probably won’t even be there,” he said. “We’ll stake it out for a while.”

He asked about our day in the shop and I told him about all the chocolate we’d made. It took me a while to realize he was distracting me on purpose.

I turned it back on him. “So why do you do this? The adventure of it all?”

He shook his head, but then admitted, “Partly.”

“What else?” I asked.

He thought for a minute. “It’s hard to talk about it without sounding like a pompous ass, but if you can expose injustice, bring it out into the daylight, sometimes you can destroy it. I like to bring the bad guys to justice. There’s that moment when you know you have them, you found that one piece of information that makes everything come together.” He paused as if reliving it. “And it all clicks into place and now all you have to do is get the story written and out.”

He laughed. “Sometimes getting it out is the hardest part. But it’s worth it.”

“So if you expose injustice, you destroy it?” I asked.

“Not always,” he said.

“Not a pompous ass,” I said. “More like a card-carrying member of Erica’s Super Hero Geek Team.” Although his shoulders were a lot bigger than any of those comic book club members.

He laughed. “Yeah, like that.”

I didn’t want him to think I was discounting his commitment. “It’s kinda cool.”

“Cool?” His voice was teasing.

“Impressive.”

He smiled.

“Admirable,” I said. “Maybe even a little commendable.”

“Enough.”

“Whew,” I said. “I just exhausted my thesaurus.”

We drove through the town center of Normal to get to the motel we’d seen in the photo of Larry. It looked like a smaller version of West Riverdale’s town center, with much less upkeep. Bean drove past the motel and parked around the corner. My heart started pounding. Why oh why had I tagged along?

Bean opened his door and gave me a look that was clearly a challenge. “Coming?”