Death is Semisweet (9 page)

Before Claude could get it out of his mouth, some reporter asked if there was alcohol in chocolate liquor. While Claude was explaining there wasn’t, Heaven pulled on her friend’s arm. “I guess I should have expected you to show up. Is this kinda like going to a victim’s funeral and slinking around to see who shows up?” Heaven asked Bonnie.

Bonnie laughed. “A more tasteful version of that, yes. If the shooter wasn’t after the pilot, then he may be planning some more nasty surprises for the company. Or not. Maybe it was someone who hates shopping on the Plaza. Anyway, I thought I’d show up, just for fun. I’d hate it if our mayor got put in a hostage situation and I wasn’t around to save him.”

Heaven stopped walking. “Did you get a threat?” she asked.

“No way. If we’d gotten a real threat, this wouldn’t be such a casual appearance on my part and the mayor wouldn’t be here at all. Now stop asking me dumb questions and listen.” Bonnie gave Heaven a little shove toward Junior, who had taken the mic back from his sickly looking brother. Heaven noticed Claude heading away from the crowd in a hurry.

Junior was explaining how Europeans only drank chocolate mixed with sugar and spices for many years. They couldn’t understand the allure of eating grainy,
bitter, greasy chocolate until one of those clever Dutch men figured out this next step, the giant screw press to separate the cocoa butter from the solids. Everyone was suitably impressed as the hydraulic press smooched the chocolate liquor and substances came out two different troughs. Heaven guessed one was the heavier cocoa butter and the other was the cocoa. This machine reminded her of the cream separator that they used to have on the farm. She could see her father pouring the fresh, raw milk in the top of the machine, the cream oozing out of one spout, the milk rushing out of another spout into pails. The crowd shifted and Heaven came back to Earth.

“Now, we’ll just step in the next area where the conching takes place. This process takes up to seventy-two hours and keeps smoothing the chocolate under heat in giant troughs.” Of course someone asked why it was called conching and while Junior was explaining the term, another pair of foreign workers were opening a huge sliding metal door so the large group could move to the next room.

As the doors slowly opened, a ripple of sound started through the crowd. Sounds of concern and alarm. Before Heaven could see what had caused the oohing and ahhhing, Harold Foster cried out into the microphone, “Oh, no. How did
he
get there?”

The “he” was Oliver Bodden, although not many of the guests knew him from Adam. He was nattily attired in suit and tie, although not up to his usual impeccable standards. Oliver was in the conching machine, stuck like a rubber bath toy caught in the bathtub drain when the plug had been pulled on the bathwater. He bobbed silently as he was rolled over by giant metal tubes covered
with melted chocolate. His eyes were closed. Right next to the giant machine stood Stephanie Simpson, holding a long piece of wire that was dripping not with blood but with the first batch of Foster’s new chocolate.

I
don’t remember asking for you,” Bonnie barked.

Heaven stood at the edge of the hallway outside Junior Foster’s office door, now Bonnie Weber’s temporary command post. “You didn’t,” Heaven snapped back, “but I’ll be damned if I let you rip into Stephanie all by herself.” Standing behind Heaven was Stephanie, tears in her eyes, her hands on Heaven’s shoulders like a child hiding behind her mother. “And beside, I really need to get back to the restaurant. I told them I’d be gone for a couple of hours and it’s been four. Can’t we talk to you together?”

“Get in here. I’ll start with both of you, but just know I might have to talk to ol’ Stephanie, here, by herself.”

Heaven and Stephanie hurried in and closed the door before Bonnie changed her mind. They both started talking at once, Heaven using her hands to gesture wildly and Stephanie shaking her head for emphasis.

“Stop!” Bonnie ordered, standing up and stretching her arms. Bonnie was tall, almost six feet, and she wore
high heels to push her advantage further. Now she slipped off the dark red pumps. “Shit. My feet are killing me. If I’d known this would be a day-long ordeal, I woulda worn old shoes.”

“Nice color,” Heaven offered. “Are they Manolo Blahniks?”

Bonnie gave her a look and she shrank back and shut up.

“How are the tech guys doing?” Bonnie asked as she circled the desk and sat down on the edge of it close to where Stephanie perched on a straight-backed chair. Bonnie had moved Junior’s comfortable visitor chairs back against the wall and found some uncomfortable straight-backed chairs in a storage room at the end of the hall and moved them into Junior’s office.

“Still busy,” Heaven piped up. “The chocolate is a problem for them in gathering evidence. And the poor uniforms who are taking statements. It was pretty funny watching all those reporters arguing who should be interviewed by your team first. They all wanted to get out of here and file a story in the worst way. Your guys had to threaten them all with detention time if they didn’t form an orderly line and behave.”

Bonnie chuckled. “They want to go write a big story, ‘I saw a dead body at the chocolate factory.’ Now, Stephanie, ‘ol’ buddy, do you want to tell me what made you decide to break the family feud and visit your uncles on this particular morning?”

Stephanie nodded her head, took a big gulp of air and started in. “Well, the other day when Heaven was at the store, she told me that Foster’s was doing this big thing with all these famous chefs and that they’d asked her to be at this super important press conference and I just couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

“And so you decided to crash the party,” Bonnie said, her arms crossed across her chest. “I’ve got that part. Now, how did you end up holding what I’d bet is the murder weapon over the body of poor old what’s-his-name?”

“Oliver Bodden,” Heaven said softly.

Bonnie didn’t take her eyes off Stephanie, staring at her like the cobra gazing at the mongoose. “Over the body of Oliver Bodden. According to your uncle, he’s a consultant to Foster’s. Poor Oliver, who was dead and stuck in the conching machine, or perhaps killed in the conching machine, although I doubt that. This might be the damnedest of all these ridiculous food-related murders I’ve had to deal with—most of them because of you,” she said with a look over her shoulder at Heaven.

Heaven wasn’t going to bite this time. The more she talked back, the longer this would take. And she was just as curious as Bonnie to hear what explanation Stephanie would have. What was she doing there and why would she pick up something that obviously was a prime piece of evidence? Hadn’t she learned anything about dead bodies and not touching weapons and stuff from hanging out with Heaven?

Stephanie, her usually perfect makeup job in complete disarray, dabbed at her mascara-mussed eyes with a tissue. “Well, I didn’t know they’d built a new wing so I waited until everyone else had gone around to the back, then I went in the main part of the factory. I wandered around in there until someone assumed I was a member of the press who’d gotten lost, and they pointed the way to the new building. But I came in to the new building through the old building. The conching machine and the tempering station and the machine that forms the ten-pound chocolate blocks were all in
that first section of the new wing. And you were all in the second section, the farthest part from the old factory. I heard my uncle talking and I started to go toward his voice. I could hear something thumping, the engine of the conching machine was obviously straining. So I went over there and …” Stephanie sniffled. “I looked down and saw the man and I bent closer to see who it was. I didn’t recognize him, of course, but I spotted something else in the chocolate. The metal caught my eye and I just grabbed it, the wire I mean, and”—Stephanie gulped for air— “I didn’t realize that it was still attached to the, uh, person’s neck until just before the doors opened and I was face-to-face with the entire press establishment of Kansas City, plus the mayor and half the city council.”

“If you’re going to get caught, get caught big, I always say,” Bonnie said.

Stephanie sniffed. “I swear, Bonnie—”

“Bonnie,” Heaven cut in, “why in the world would Stephanie garrote some African chocolate expert she’d never laid eyes on before?”

“Why did someone kill the airship pilot? I bet the shooter had never laid eyes on him before either,” Bonnie said with a shrug. “By the way, that’s the official name for them: ‘airship.’”

Heaven hadn’t even thought about the fact that this was the second Foster’s-related death in a week. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I was so worried about Stephanie, I forgot about Sunday and the blimp.”

“I bet the reporters didn’t forget,” Stephanie said peevishly.

“I bet you’re right,” Heaven said. “The reporters that got stuck with the boring press conference at some
candy factory now get another murder with operatic overtones.”

Bonnie shook her head. “Operatic overtones? Oh, brother. That’s it for you. You’re history. Get back to 39th Street right now.”

“Don’t you want to question me about what I saw?” Heaven asked defensively.

“I know what you saw because I was right beside you and saw the same thing. And I know there is no way to stop you from calling me several times this weekend with various wild theories about what all this means. Now go.”

“Yeah, you were right next to me but did you see the puny Foster brother rush off in the middle of the tour?” Heaven asked, hoping to cast more doubt on Stephanie’s potential guilt, not that she thought for a minute that Bonnie would try to pin this on Stephanie.

“The Foster brothers are next. They have lots to explain. Now go away,” Bonnie commanded.

“Stephanie, did you call the people who work at your store? Are they okay? Do you want me to go down there and help them?” Heaven asked, doubtful that she would really be much help.

Bonnie shook her head. “That won’t be necessary because Stephanie gets to leave too, in just a minute. Now, H, will you get?”

Heaven bent over and gave Stephanie a kiss on the cheek. “I wish I had a picture of you standing over the body with that wire in your hand, chocolate everywhere, your eyes bulging out.”

Stephanie sniffed tragically. “I’m sure you’ll see it on every station on the news tonight. The still photographers might not have been fast enough but the TV guys were already shooting film. I saw them aiming those awful
cameras at me. No one will ever come to my store again.”

“Nonsense,” Heaven said. “Murder has always been good for my business. People are ghouls. You’ll see.” With that she left the office before Bonnie lost her temper.

What a morning. As she walked down the hall, trying to remember in which direction the stairs were, she heard agitated voices coming out of the office next to the one Bonnie was encamped in. She slowed down just to check it out. A few more seconds weren’t going to make any difference at this point. When she’d called the café to report the latest dead body, the day crew sounded like they had it under control. Of course, that could change in a minute at a restaurant, when the chicken order doesn’t show up or the dishwashing machine breaks again.

“Of course, I’m happy,” admitted a voice that Heaven thought belonged to Claude Foster. “The man was an animal. He loaned us money to expand so he could ruin our company and take it over. But I guess what you’re inferring is that because of all that, I killed him.”

“Look, Claude, I’m just asking you straight out.” Heaven took that voice to be Harold Foster’s. “Do we have anything to worry about? You were pretty upset last night.”

“Just because I punched my brother in the jaw for the first time in sixty some years, you think I went right on and took one of those wires we put around mailing crates—”

“Claude, calm down,” Harold interrupted. “This will all be over soon. I think I’ve found someone to loan us the money to buy out West African Cacao.”

“Who is it, someone from Columbus Park? Some mob guy?

Heaven shifted uncomfortably outside the door. That was her neighborhood he was talking about. The remaining Italians were mostly sweet little old ladies.

“Claude, you’re just going to have to get over this and trust me. Yesterday, I went downtown to the two locally owned banks that are left here. They understand the importance of keeping Foster’s control in Kansas City. They said they would have financed the addition in the first place if I’d just… Well enough of that. Don’t act dumb, Claude. You were there right beside me when we went to the Ivory Coast and you knew what we were doing.”

“What makes you think they’ll let go?”

“The so-called advisors told me they were flying home tonight, to get new instructions and take home the body of their boss. They said they wouldn’t return until after the holidays. That gives us some time. I think they’ll go for it because I’m going to offer them a premium to get out, that’s why.” Heaven could hear the resignation in Harold Foster’s voice.

“Great, just great,” his brother said bitterly, and before Heaven could get out of the way the door opened and the pale ghost, Claude Foster, stormed out, right into Heaven’s rather curvaceous chest. “What in the world?” he thundered.

“What indeed!” Heaven said with disapproval, as if Claude had been trying to cop a feel. “I was just leaving the interrogation room. Has Sergeant Weber talked to you yet?”