Death is Semisweet (4 page)

When Hank plugged in the lights the tree was beautiful, the rows of lights orderly but not perfect and anal retentive. It was just the way Heaven would do them if she had the patience to do them, which she didn’t, but
Hank did. They had decided against twinkling, at least for now.

“Hurrah,” Heaven said, and clapped her hands. “We already have the best Christmas tree in town and it doesn’t have an ornament on it. Now I’m going to stop daydreaming and fly into action.” She walked over to Hank and slipped her arms around his neck. “This really is much better than the one-sided tree of last year. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Hank said. “Now will you answer my question of ten minutes ago, which was, ‘Why don’t blimps burst into flames any more?’”

Heaven was already busy at work on the tree, placing an ornament, then standing back and squinting at it, then moving the ornament a hair one way or the other. “Well, it still could if you hit the fuel tank. They have to have some kind of fuel to get around. The gas just fills up the blimp part, makes it lighter than air, it doesn’t power it. But the sniper didn’t hit the fuel tank. He tore some holes in the body of the blimp and the gas escaped and that made it fall. And of course the sniper also killed the pilot, who might have been able to make a better landing if he’d been, you know …”

“Alive?”

“Yeah, that,” Heaven said, engrossed in her job. “The famous fire one, the Hindenburg, was filled with the wrong stuff. Either it was filled with hydrogen and it should have been helium, or vice versa. Whatever it was, they don’t do that anymore.”

“Thanks for the precise scientific explanation,” Hank said, shaking his head. “I think I’ll ask my old chemistry professor at the hospital about it. But right now I’m going to fix us a little something to eat while you do your ornaments.”

“And why don’t you—”

Hank interrupted. He knew what she was going to say. “And why don’t I bring us a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. After all, decorating our Christmas tree is worth a bottle of champagne.”

“You read my mind,” Heaven said without looking around. She’d let the “our Christmas tree” slide. It was, even if she couldn’t admit it.

L
ater, Heaven sat in her robe in the dark watching the tree glow. She’d turned it on again when she remembered the laundry.

Just as she was dozing off, cradled in the curve of Hank’s body, she thought of the last load of wash that needed to be put in the dryer. She went down into the kitchen, where the washer and dryer were, turned on the Christmas tree, and changed the load of tights and jeans over to the dryer, then brought the underwear and tee shirts that were dry over to the couch, and folded her clean clothes by Christmas tree light. Because the first floor was one big open space, the whole room sparkled, the lights on the tree reflecting off all the metal surfaces in the kitchen.

Now she sat there clutching the pile of sweet-smelling laundry, burying her nose in it every once in a while. She still used Downy fabric softener, because her mother had. It was a little smell connection that took her through the years. You could smell those Downy clothes and be a protected, loved kid again.

It was like breathing the air someone you loved had breathed in before you, gulping it in as soon as it was exhaled, comforting and sad all at the same time.

S
o now I know why all those Santas were running from the blimp disaster yesterday,” Heaven said, her voice coming from the interior of a newspaper. The cover photo looked lovely with Heaven’s red hair erupting from the top of it, the bright pink blimp draped over the faux Spanish building incongruously, especially when you noticed the six or so Santas in various interpretations of that outfit standing in the foreground of the photo and pointing up at the remains of the blimp.

Sal was already cutting the hair of a businessman who must not have been satisfied with his collar line in the mirror this morning and decided to stop by Sal’s for a trim on the way to the office. It was just eight-thirty. Sal looked at Heaven through the mirrors that lined the barber shop and shifted his unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “I didn’t get to the second page yet,” he said and jerked his head toward the businessman. Obviously, Sal had been interrupted by this customer before he was finished with the paper. Heaven
knew Sal started at the sports section and worked forward.

“The Plaza was having a big Santa contest and the grand prize winner gets a cruise to Alaska next summer.” She peeked around the edge of the paper at her audience. “Santa, Alaska, near the North Pole, get it? The judges had just started looking them over when the shooting and stuff happened, so they’re going to have the contest again next Sunday. Just one of the fun little sidebars that newspapers find to soften the news of tragedy.” Heaven went on to another section.

Sal shook his head. “A blimp crashes into Seville Tower, the pilot’s taken out by a sharpshooter, and some slob who doesn’t have the sense not to go out of the house in one of those stupid red suits wants to make sure he can still get his damn prize.”

Heaven looked up and smiled. “You can even make the feature fluff piece sound dark. That’s one of the things I love about you, Sal.”

“And of course, I shoulda known when I saw it on the news last night that you were right there in the middle of it. Did Bonnie get the call?” Sal asked.

“Bonnie got the call. They got the body out of there pretty fast, since where he landed wasn’t exactly the crime scene and since the whole thing was balling up holiday traffic something fierce,” Heaven explained without looking up from the paper. “Bonnie examined the body and told the guy from the coroner’s office she’d leave it to him, if anything strange popped up to let her know. He definitely was shot, probably that’s what killed him, but you never know. She also sent for the firearms specialist from the evidence team to examine the body and make a few guesses. Bonnie didn’t go up on the cherry picker to examine the blimp, said she’d
check it out at the warehouse today, said the evidence guys knew better than her what to look for. Of course she didn’t really mean that. Bonnie still thinks she’s the best at evidence retrieval but I happen to know she’s a little afraid of heights.”

Sal whisked the neck of his customer with a soft little brush to remove the loose hairs. “I feel sorry for the poor suckers that had to do the door-to-door. Hundreds of shoppers and each one had a different version, I bet.”

Heaven chuckled as she folded the paper carefully. Sal didn’t like a messy paper in the shop. “It was a real cluster f—I mean, you got that right.” Heaven tried not to curse in front of Sal’s customers. “Just in the few minutes I stood there with Bonnie, I heard people say that the shots came from all four directions of the compass, I heard that someone had seen a Santa Claus with a compound bow and arrow, someone else was sure the blimp had exploded like a bomb. Bonnie said when you have too many eyewitnesses, you end up with squat.” She got up and gave a short salute at the door. “I’m going to work,” she announced and left.

As she walked across 39th Street to Café Heaven she felt guilty she hadn’t told Sal all the inside news about Foster’s chocolate company that she’d obtained from Stephanie Simpson. But somehow she hadn’t felt comfortable talking about it in front of Sal’s customer. Heaven certainly wouldn’t want to start the rumor that her friend Stephanie had bad blood with Foster’s Chocolates and had maybe hired a hit man for a blimp. The most innocent remark could turn into vicious gossip in Kansas City. She’d tell Sal later.

·  ·  ·

H
arold Foster, Jr. sat with his head in his hands. He was a big, handsome man, still with a full crop of wavy, gray hair. His brother, Claude, was pacing in front of Junior’s desk. Claude was as tall as his brother, 6’ 2” or so, but he had never filled out, didn’t have the broad shoulders of a football player like Junior. Now in his sixties, Claude’s suits wore him, hanging vacantly over his body. His hair was thin and limp and colorless, and this morning, in his nervousness, he kept pushing it back although nary a strand had crept down to his forehead.

“The insurance team from the company that owns the airship is on the way. I have a car picking them up at the airport and taking them to the police warehouse where the blimp’s being examined,” Claude said. “Our insurance guys are going to meet with the Plaza this morning. I don’t think we hurt their damn building a bit and I told our guys to not take any of that crap about it costing them holiday business. I bet the damn place is packed today with crime scene nuts.”

“What about the pilot’s family?” Junior asked morosely.

Claude nodded, indicating that that was under control. “He works for the airship people, not us. We’re just renting the thing for three months. He had benefits through them. He was driving the Goodyear blimp two months ago; they’re like chauffeurs. We don’t owe him. I told the guys in Communications to make some calls, find out if he had ten small children or was a Vietnam vet or something else that elicits pity. Also to call the widow and send flowers. You know someone in the press will do a story about the pilot. But I think we’re covered.”

“I can’t believe this happened. Do you think—”

“Junior, don’t try to make this more complicated than
it already is,” Claude said sharply. “This is just some nut. I think they killed the pilot when all they probably wanted to do was take down a blimp. The world is full of nuts.”

Junior drew his body up into a more businesslike position. He had to get a grip and then he had to tell his brother the bad news, not this inexplicable problem of the blimp being shot down. This bad news he, Harold Russell Foster, Jr., had in a sense created. The really bad news. Why had he been so ambitious? He was sixty-seven years old. If he didn’t own his own company he’d be retired by now; instead he’d started a big expansion of the business, an addition that was already threatening to destroy everything he’d worked for. “How are we looking for the press conference on Friday?”

Claude Foster grinned. Now they were back on familiar territory. “I’ve got something in my office to show you,” he said and went next door to his own office.

Junior got up and stood by the window, looking out at the workmen running in and out of the newly built addition to the plant, the addition that was the reason for the press conference on Friday.

The company had some corporate offices in downtown Kansas City, but Junior and Claude had always kept their personal offices in the plant. They’d been right here to oversee all this expansion because that’s how they liked to do things. Why, Claude had even moved to Texas for three months in 1995 when they had built the plant there. “If you don’t pay attention, no one else will,” Claude always said.

Claude walked back in with a ten-pound block of chocolate in his hands. It was wrapped in hot pink tin foil and then covered with a paper wrapper with the Foster’s logo. “Oh, I know we may tinker with this some
more, but we’re making up enough of these to give away at the press conference. What do you think?”

Junior Foster, as he had always been called, turned around to see the prototype in his brother’s hands, hearing the pride in his brother’s voice. “It looks great. I’ll be sure to call Janie and tell her they did a good job on the design.”

Claude nodded. “They did do a good job, didn’t they? I told Janie that this design is to launch our step into second-tier production, that we were going to join elite company.”

Junior felt weak, wanted to sit back down, but somehow he thought he had to do this standing up, man to man. “There aren’t many folks who process their own cocoa beans and make consumer products. The rest of them are just candy makers.”

Claude grinned and put the ten-pound block down on his brother’s desk. “This first one is for you. I signed it.”

Junior looked down and sure enough, his brother had scrawled,
Another big step for Foster’s Chocolates, Love and Thanks, Claude
, and the date, on the top of the package. Junior could feel his breathing become shallow.

“If you hadn’t put together the financing for the refining machines, we wouldn’t be up there with the big boys,” Claude said gratefully.

“Claude, I’ve made a bad mistake.”

“What? What bad mistake? If you think the placement of the—”

Junior cut him off. “Oliver Bodden is coming from Ghana today. He wants to be here for the unveiling of the refining facility.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. The second-stage
production man from West Africa who helped finance this, sure he’d want to come.”

“Oliver is insisting that we use only West African nibs, that we can’t blend. He says they’ll pull out if we don’t do it their way, says we still need more of their money for the distribution and all the new inventory.”

Claude shook his head vehemently. “What are you talking about? Every second-tier producer blends nibs from all over the world. That’s what makes a company’s chocolate have an individual taste. No one just uses cocoa from one place. That would be suicide.”

“I told him that. I asked why they would want to see us fail, that it was in their interests for us to have a product that would compete with all the Swiss and Belgian second-tier producers. He said …,” Junior paused, fighting for air. He thought he might just fall into a faint right then and there. “He said that would be a pity, now wouldn’t it, and they’d have to take over the company if we went under, that they were our largest lender.