Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (19 page)

She stared at me in silence too long. I began waving my hands in a beckoning,
come on and say it!
motion.

“All right,” she finally agreed. I could only hope the microphone would distort her voice enough that she wouldn’t sound as phony to Lester as she did to me. Paula and I were going to have a talk at work tomorrow…assuming the shop wasn’t bugged. Maybe I’d write her a note.

On the way out, I tweaked Fred’s other big toe then went home to get a few hours of sleep.

My evening, up to that point, had not been the stuff of which memories were made. At least, not the kind of memories you treasure down through the years and tell your grandchildren about.

But when I walked out and saw two police officers handcuffing a struggling, furious Rick on my front porch, that scene pretty much made up for all the awful things that had happened.

You’re being mean-spirited
, I chided myself. Bad Lindsay! Revenge isn’t sweet. It’s ugly. Stop taking such delight in it.

Having properly chastised myself and given lip service to rising above my baser traits, I strolled over to enjoy every delicious moment. Henry sat in front of the door doing his guard cat duty and trying to look solemn and detached, but he had that Cheshire cat grin on his face.
He was enjoying it, too. I winked at him.

“Lindsay!” Rick shouted as the officers dragged him down the porch steps. “Tell them I’m your husband! They think I was breaking into your house!”

I folded my arms and studied him, this macho man struggling ineffectually against two police officers, one of whom was a slightly-built woman. “Were you breaking in?” I asked.

“Of course not!” he protested.

The officers halted and turned to look at me. “Ma’am,” the male officer said, “are you the party who called to report an intruder on your premises?”

“That would be me. I went
over to my neighbor’s house because this man refused to leave.”

Rick’s face changed from red to purple, and he gave such a huge lunge in his effort to get to me that the female officer stumbled before yanking him back. “Damn you, Lindsay!” he shouted.

“Hey!” The male officer gave an extra jerk on the handcuffs. “You don’t need to use that kind of language to the lady.”

“We caught him in the living room,” the woman said. “When we asked for proof that he lives here, he became belligerent. Is he your husband? Does he live here?”

“He’s my estranged husband,” I said, regretting my obsessive tendency to be honest. “Our divorce will be final any day. He does
not
live here, never has and never will.”

“Do you want to press charges for trespassing?”

I would have loved to, but it probably wasn’t a very good idea. I tilted my head to one side, trying to look thoughtful and undecided as I observed and savored every nuance of the situation. Rick’s eyes bulged from his purplish face in a most unattractive manner, and he continued to struggle even though he surely knew by now that it would only cause him more problems. But that was Rick—never give up!

“If he’ll promise to go away and leave me alone, I won’t press charges,” I said magnanimously.

Rick glared at me.

“Well?” the woman prompted. She didn’t appear to have fallen under the spell of Rick’s charm.

Rick’s glare intensified.

“Fine.” The officers turned to escort him down the sidewalk to the squad car.

“All right!” he snapped. “All right! If that’s what you want, Lindsay, I’ll leave you alone forever! You’ll never see me again!”

“Let him go,” I said, and the female officer unlocked the handcuffs—reluctantly, I thought.

Rick rubbed his wrists, glared some more and, when it became apparent the cops weren’t leaving until he did, stalked off toward his vehicle. He peeled away from the curb, burning a little rubber.

As I watched him leave, it occurred to me that I really was getting a divorce from the man, that I
wanted
a divorce from him, wanted him out of my life…forever, just as he’d promised.

The realization made me a little sad.

It was over.

All the good times we’d shared seemed to crumble into the darkness like a beautiful but unstable old building imploding into a pile of rubble.

I watched Rick’s tail lights turn the corner and disappear just as those eight years seemed to disappear, as if all the fun times we’d shared had never happened.

No matter how you looked at it, this divorce business was a lose/lose situation.

Chapter Twelve

To say I was not at my best when I got to the shop the next morning would be the quintessential understatement. Even after two Cokes and another piece of the left over Brownie Nut Fudge Pie, I was still operating in a fog.

I’d opened Rick’s present after he left last night. I had stared at the package a long time trying to decide if I should mail it back to him. Finally my curiosity got the better of me. He knew it would.

The small box contained a silver necklace and matching earrings. I’ve always preferred silver to gold though Rick thought I was nuts. Actually, knowing his obsession with “the finer things,” the setting could have been platinum. I don’t know enough about jewelry to tell the difference.

But it was the motif that brought tears to my eyes and poignant dreams to my restless sleep. The jewelry was obviously custom made, the design consisting of two intertwined hearts, each set with a different stone…one amethyst and one diamond…my birthstone and his. It matched the ring he’d given me years ago.

As I sat there staring at the jewelry, Henry climbed into my lap and brushed his face against my cheek as if he understood that I needed affection and comfort. He was right.

Now, a few hours later, I rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes and tried to concentrate on preparing the morning pastries, an activity that had come automatically yesterday.

Paula wasn’t in any better shape. Her tension level had escalated back to
arrival day
heights. I didn’t bring up her strange comments from the night before about turning herself in and my rescuing Zach. Even if the place wasn’t
bugged
, I feared any little push would send her over the edge and then I’d have to make the morning cappuccino and lose every customer who came in.

When she dropped an egg on the floor, you’d have thought she’d done something to doom the place to bankruptcy, the wrecking ball, and maybe even a live, on-site volcano. I tried to assure her that life would go on in spite of the loss of one egg. I even offered to clean it up myself, but then I burst into tears. I don’t think I was very successful in my reassurances.

However, it worked out okay because that gave Paula the chance to chide me for my terrible diet of chocolate and Coke, and to force me to eat a cheese omelet with picante sauce. I hate to admit it, but that did clear away some of the fog, and by the time we finished with the breakfast customers and closed to fix lunch, my hands were steady enough to measure cocoa.

Paula left to take Zach to the nursery and I decided to make my Brownies with Raspberry Jam and Butter Cream Frosting for the special Dessert Du Jour. The recipe was time consuming and required concentration. Maybe that would keep my mind away from all those other avenues I didn’t want it to take.

The phone rang, and I jumped and dropped the can of cocoa. If this kept up, pretty soon we’d have a cake on the floor.

I answered the phone, bracing myself to hear Rick’s voice. I was pleasantly surprised when it was my mother. That tells you how much I did not want to talk to Rick.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” she asked in a hushed, compassionate tone, as if worried I might explode any minute. She’d been doing that ever since Rick and I split up. Okay, so that pretty accurately described my state of mind, but she could have pretended not to notice. Then I wouldn’t have had to work twice as hard and do all the pretending.

I’d been silly to think she and Dad would be pleased at the break-up just because they hadn’t wanted me to marry him in the first place. They were not, of course. I suppose I should count my blessings they hadn’t decided I was still young enough to go to law school.

“I’m doing great, Mom,” I lied. “Really great.” One of my best friends is a killer, the other knows way too much about breaking and entering and spying on people, I just lost eight years out of my life, I didn’t get any real sleep last night and somebody’s probably going to call to claim my cat, but other than that, my life’s just fantastic! “How are you doing?”

“My shoulder’s been bothering me again. I have an appointment with my massage therapist this afternoon. Your father’s cholesterol and blood pressure are up. He works too hard, and he worries about you.”

I sighed. “Mom, I swear to you, there is no reason to worry about me. There’s no reason for him to work so hard, either. It’s not like you two would be dependent on food stamps if he took a little time off.”

“He has obligations to his clients. He’s trying to find an assistant in his field, but first he has to find the time to look and interview and then train.”

I sighed again, a long one this time. It was the old familiar guilt jerk about my failure to go into the family business and help my father. I’d better watch it. Maybe they didn’t think I was too old to go to law school after all.

“I hope he finds someone soon. Well, it was good to talk to you. I need to get back to my chocolate.”

“You work too hard, too, darling, getting up in the middle of the night and spending the day cooking.” I could almost hear the shudder that accompanied that last word. My mother had a full-time maid who prepared all the meals. I had no idea what they’d done in the lean days before Dad’s practice became lucrative. I was a late-in-life arrival, so by the time I came along, the maid was a well-established fixture. She even opened my jars of baby food.

“I enjoy what I do, and I like getting up when everybody else is asleep. I have the whole world to myself for a couple of hours.” Except for Paula and Lester Bennett.

“If you enjoy it, then that’s all that matters. I won’t keep you. I just called to see if you can come to dinner on Saturday.”

“I think I can work it into my schedule.” I wasn’t about to admit it, but suddenly the idea of seeing my parents was very appealing. Having just lost eight years from my past, I guess I was eager to make sure the rest of it was still there, to hang onto what was left with both hands, even if it meant enduring a few veiled and not so veiled comments about my marriage.

“Wonderful,” Mother said. “Dinner will be served at seven- thirty, but we’d like you to arrive at six. Your great aunt Catherine is flying in from Arizona, and I know she’d like some extra time to visit with you.”

I was barely able to suppress a groan. Aunt Catherine, who had never been called Cathy, wasn’t related to the grandmother I’d loved, my dad’s mother. Aunt Catherine was my maternal grandmother’s sister. That grandmother had died when I was six, and all I remembered of her was that she had large nostrils. That was all I could see from my vantage point. She never lowered herself enough I could get another perspective. Aunt Catherine was her sister. Could have been her twin, judging from the size of the nostrils.

“I’ll be there at six,” I said since I’d already committed myself. Maybe I’d get lucky and come down with a case of bubonic plague.

“Oh, and one more thing.”

I flinched. My mother only tacks on a rider when she knows I won’t like it. A rider to the Aunt Catherine announcement, bad enough in itself, had to be really awful.

I considered telling her the place was on fire and I had to hang up, but she’d just call back. “What is the
one more thing
?” I asked and immediately prayed for a backhoe on a construction site somewhere across town to sever the phone line before she could answer.

“Your father and I
—” another bad phrase “—had a long talk with Rick yesterday, and he told us you two are trying to work out a reconciliation. We’ve asked him to come to dinner also. It would be nice if Aunt Catherine didn’t have to know there’d ever been a problem.”

“I can’t believe you did that! Rick and I are
not
working on a reconciliation! He’s living with the Muffy Monster, for crying out loud! Why would you want me to reconcile with scum like that? Why would you invite him into your home?”

“Lindsay, you’re raising your voice.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” I replied dutifully through clenched teeth.

“Granted, Rick made a mistake, but he realizes it now. Men are different from us, and sometimes we have to overlook their little peccadilloes.”

“
Their little peccadilloes
?” I repeated incredulously. “I think this goes way beyond a little peccadillo!”

“You’re raising your voice again, Lindsay. You’re becoming hysterical.”

“Yes, I am!”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“All right, all right! I am now speaking in a soft voice. I am now grinding the final remnants of enamel off my molars.”

She ignored me. “Thank you, dear. I’ll look forward to seeing you and Rick on Saturday at six.”