Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 04 - Chocolate Mousse Attack (19 page)

Fred put an arm around me. “Let’s get both of you to the emergency room
, have Rickie checked and your nose taken care of.”

Rickie came up on my other side and wrapped a skinny arm around my waist. “Does it hurt much?”

“Yes. Does it hurt where he gave you a shot?”

“No.”

“Do you feel sleepy?”

“No.”

Across the room a million miles away Trent guarded his prisoner. “Thanks for taking them, Fred. I’m sorry, Lindsay. I’ve got back-up on the way. As soon as somebody else gets here, I’ll meet you at the emergency room.”

D
efinitely a few downsides to having a cop for a boyfriend.

*~*~*

Rickie got checked first at the hospital in spite of the fact that I was the one who was bleeding. They were worried he’d been poisoned and was going to pass out at any minute. I knew better. That kid was tough.

“Are you his parents?” the young doctor asked.

“No,” Fred and I said at the same time.

Rickie sat on the cold steel table looking so pitiful that I felt sorry for him even though I knew it was all an act. But he had tried to save my life. “I’m sort of his…” I gulped. “His step
—” I gulped again— “mother.”

Fred gasped.

Rickie smiled.

I groaned inwardly. Was this like the common-law marriage thing where, if you told enough people you were married, it became true?

The doctor examined Rickie and decreed that he seemed fine. “If he was injected with a sedative, it must have been a small amount. He’s showing no signs of it. Keep an eye on him tonight. Wake him up every hour. If you can’t wake him up, bring him back in.”

I personally thought the kid had received the full dose and was just so hyper, it
only made him a little calmer than usual. He hadn’t broken any of the instruments in the examining room. That pretty much proved my theory.

Rickie and Fred stood by while the doctor examined my nose.

“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Take some aspirin and put an ice bag on your nose tonight. If the swelling doesn’t go down in a few days, contact your regular physician.”

That was it? I was attacked by a murderer, thrown to the floor, got my nose broken, threatened with death, and that guy thought aspirin and an ice bag would make everything all right?

Trent and Sophie met us as we walked out of the hospital and into the summer evening. She rushed to Rickie, and Trent came to me, wrapping me in a big bear hug. I felt a little better.

“I’ll take
the kid home with me,” Fred offered. “Somebody has to check on him every hour, and Lindsay needs to get some rest.”

“No,” Sophie said, holding Rickie’s hand and smiling down at him. “Let him
spend the night with me.”

Rickie clutched her hand tightly. “I want to go with her, not you.”

Sophie did the ineffectual hair smoothing thing again. “You’re my hero.” She looked at me. “And you’re my hero. I’m so sorry you had to go through this horrible nightmare.”

“It was no big deal.” I touched my nose and tried to look brave.

“It was a very big deal. I’m deeply indebted to all of you for finding the man who murdered my parents and my friend. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

“
Now maybe you won’t have nightmares and end up in Fred’s house in the middle of the night.” I watched her carefully to see if she’d blush or look secretive, like maybe she planned to go back to Fred’s house in the middle of the night when she wasn’t sleepwalking.

She laughed softly and gave Fred a meaningful look. Or maybe it was a meaningless look. It was hard to tell with my eyes swollen half-shut. “Yes, I think Fred will once again be free from my uninvited nightly visitations.”

That was an ambiguous statement.
Uninvited
as opposed to
invited
?

Fred
smiled at her. “And you should also be free of uninvited nighttime visitors. No more gas leaks or men with hypodermic needles.”

“Nevertheless, I think I’m going to look into getting a security service.”

I waited for Fred to offer to help her set up something since he’d done it for his own house.

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” he said.

Good grief. Did I need to have a talk with him about the facts of life?

“I am so lucky to have such wonderful neighbors. Next weekend we’re going to have steaks and champagne at my place.”

“Can we go now?” Rickie had been quiet so long I’d almost forgotten about him. He’d definitely got a hefty dose of sedative.

“Yes,” Sophie said. “Let’
s go home and get you to bed.”

“Have you got bugs at your house?”

“No, but I have ice cream.”

“You can ride with me.” Fred draped a casual arm about her waist and she smiled up at him.

Ahhh.

Trent slid an arm about my waist. “And you can ride with me.”

Fred, Sophie and Rickie walked off toward his car, and Trent and I went to his. He opened the door for me then leaned over to give me a kiss.

I pulled back. “Oh, no!”

“What? The onion on my burger at lunch? That was over twelve hours ago!”

I smiled. “I’d kiss you right after you’d eaten raw garlic. No, it’s Matthew.”

“What about Matthew? He had nothing to do with the murder. He was only about ten years old when it happened.”

“I know. He came here trying to find his sister. He deserves to know what happened to her.”

“I have no doubt you’ll take care of that.”

“I will. But what worries me most is
that Paula doesn’t know why Matthew came here.”

“So? You can tell her.”

“You don’t get it. He had an ulterior motive when he met her, a hidden agenda.”

“
And now he doesn’t.”

“But he did, and Paula doesn’t deal well with dishonest people. She had enough of that when she was married to Zach’s sperm donor.”

“She likes Matthew, and he seems like a good guy. It’ll be all right.”

“I’m not
so sure.”

“You can worry about Paula tomorrow. For what’s left of tonight, you need to relax and let me take care of you.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of. All I need is a couple of aspirin and an ice bag.” I didn’t mean it, of course. I wanted to be cared for, pampered, babied. But it had to be against my wishes or I’d sound like a wimp.

“In that case I’ll fix you a cup of hot chocolate and spend the night with you because I don’t want to drive home so late. You’ll be doing me a favor if you let me stay with you.”

“Okay, that’ll work.”

I was feeling better about things as I slid into Trent’s car. The murders of Sophie’s parents as well as Carolyn and her mother had been solved. Nobody would be trying to kill Sophie anymore. Jay would go to prison for the rest of his life or, depending on his lawyer, at least a portion thereof. Dr. Dan would be charged as an accessory.

The guy I…I cared a lot for was by my side and was going to stay there for a few hours. The night was warm with a starry sky and a full moon. Overall, things were good even though I was still stuck with keeping Rickie for a while and could only hope my big mouth hadn’t made me his common-law stepmother.

Chapter
Twenty-One

I walked into Death by Chocolate the next morning with two black eyes and a swollen nose. At least it was impossible to see the bags I doubtless had under my eyes from lack of sleep.

“Omigawd!” Paula looked up from the gravy she was stirring. “What happened to you?”

“You should see the other guy.”

“
The other guy? Who? Rickie?”

“No. Jay Jamison. And he’s way worse off. He’s in jail.” I gave her the details of the evening’s events.

She stirred the gravy and looked skeptical. “So Rickie came to your rescue?”

“Yeah, sort of. He said he couldn’t sleep and was worried about me so he climbed out of his window and came over to check on me. I think he was just doing his normal Rickie routine and prowling around. But he did pretty much save my life, especially
since Trent heard him when he jumped out of the tree so he called Fred, and the two of them surrounded us. Fred came in the front door and Trent came in the back.”

“How did Rickie get the back door
of Sophie’s house unlocked in the first place?”

“I have no idea. He swore it was unlocked when he got there. It wasn’t. I checked it before I went up to bed. Besides, I heard him scratching, trying to get it open.
Jay picked the lock on the front door to get in. I can only assume Rickie picked the back door lock. It seems locks only keep out honest people with no lock-picking skills or equipment.”

Speaking of honest people—

“We have to talk about Matthew.”

She set the gravy off the stove and laughed. Her eyes twinkled. “Okay, okay, you were right. I admit it. He seems pretty special.”

“Well, yeah, I think he is, but there are a few things you need to know about him.”

Her eyes stopped twinkling and her smile disappeared. “Like what?”

“He’s Sarah’s little brother. He came to town looking for her.” I told her about the conversation Fred and I had with Esther Jamison.

She took a pan of biscuits out of the oven and set them on the counter. Never by word or gesture did she indicate that she was upset except for the noticeable tension in her shoulders and her slightly jerky movements.

“So,” I concluded, “we can tell him what happened to his sister and he can put that all behind him, then you and he can see what happens with your relationship.”

She
moved the biscuits from the pan to the warming oven, again with the jerky movements.

“Right?” I asked. “It’s not like he lied to you. He just didn’t tell you
everything. That’s not the same thing at all.” I used that rationalization myself quite often.

“No,” she said stiffly.

Strictly speaking, that meant she agreed with me that omission wasn’t the same thing as lying. But I could tell from the way she spit out the word that she wasn’t agreeing with me. That small, two-letter word contained at least two pages of bad words and condemnations.

She took the first pan of cinnamon rolls from the oven and moved all around the kitchen without looking at me.

My  best course of action, I decided, was to keep my mouth shut and get busy making chocolate. She would have several hours to think about it all before Matthew got there. I hoped that would be enough.

Just to be sure
Matthew came as usual, I waited until we were busy serving breakfast, found Paula’s cell phone and texted him that she wanted to see him. He texted back that he would be there and added a smiley face. I hoped he’d still be smiling after he talked to her.

*~*~*

The day was winding down and I’d answered at least a million questions (figuratively, not literally) about my face when Matthew came in.

Paula disappeared into the kitchen.

I greeted him at the counter. His eyes widened and he blinked a couple of times when he saw me. I was getting used to that reaction.

“
Long story,” I said. “I have news about your sister.”

His
eyes got even wider.

“Yes,” I said, “I know who you are and why you came here.”

“Does—” He looked at the kitchen door where the back of Paula’s dress had last been seen.

I nodded.

“Is she—?”

I nodded again.

He sighed. “I met her because I was looking for Sarah, but that has nothing to do with how I feel about her.”

“I understand. As soon as I tell you about Sarah, I’ll take you back to the kitchen and you can see if you can talk sense to her.”

“Sarah’s dead, isn’t she? Daniel killed her, didn’t he?”

“She’s dead, but he didn’t kill her. It was his brother.” I gave him a
n overview of the events of the night before.

Matthew’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I knew she was dead but I kept hoping. She was my only sister. There were so many kids by the time I came along, Sarah helped raise me. She was more of a mother than my real mother. I hated all of them for the way they treated her after she had the baby. Then they tried to marry her off to that old man and she had to leave. I was the only one she told. She knew I wouldn’t try to stop her. She said she’d send for me as soon as she could. But she never did.”

“She would have.” I had no way of knowing that, but it seemed the right thing to say.

He nodded. “I know.
She wrote me letters after she left home. My mother hid the letters until the day I told her I was going to look for Sarah. Sarah loved that jerk, Daniel. She thought he loved her and was going to marry her, she’d send for me and we’d be one small, happy family.” He smiled weakly. “As opposed to the big, unhappy family she was born into.”

I put my hand over his. “He did
love her. He was going to divorce Natalie and marry her.”

He arched an eyebrow.
“If he’d done that when she first went to him, she’d still be alive and so would my little niece.”

“
Daniel loved her. He’s just a weak person. What he and his brother did can’t be undone, but they will be punished. And you’ve got to let it go and move on with your life.”

He lowered his head and rubbed his eyes, then finally looked up and
nodded.

“
Whenever you’re ready,” I said, “you can go talk to Paula.”

He stood
and squared his shoulders. “I’m ready.”

I opened the kitchen door and let him pass through.

“Can we talk?” he said.

“I’m really busy.”
Paula’s voice dripped ice cubes.

I checked the restaurant. The
two remaining people were eating. I could spare a few minutes for eavesdropping. It was the only way I’d ever know what was going on. Not like either one of them was going to tell me.

Then the bell over the front door tinkled and my chance to eavesdrop went right down the tube.

A small woman with bright red hair teased and sprayed within an inch of its life walked inside. She wore eyelashes and fingernails that obviously came from Wal-Mart and a pair of cutoffs that had been cut off a couple of inches too much. Grace. Rickie’s mother.

A tall, thin man with slicked back brown hair and a beard came in behind her.
He was wearing camouflage. My first thought was that Grace had come to accuse me of kidnapping her son, and the guy was a cop. On second thought, it was probably her new husband.

He looked like he could be mean. I edged away from the kitchen door
, my gaze searching the room for any potential source of help. The other people didn’t even look up from their food.

“
Oh, my goodness! You look just terrible!” Grace darted across the room toward me. She’s a hugger. I backed as far away as I could. She reached the edge of the counter and stopped, regarding me with that
bless her heart
expression. “Trent told me what happened last night. Don’t worry. I broke Rick’s nose once, and it healed just fine.”

I would have liked to have seen that. “I appreciate the reassurance.
So, are you back from your honeymoon?”

“Yes, we are, and I just want to tell you how
grateful I am to you for keeping Rickie, Jr., so Chuck and I could enjoy our honeymoon.”

The
man I assumed was Chuck moved up next to her, and I saw Rickie behind him.

“Chuck, this is Lindsay, the one I told you about that makes all those wonderful cookies.”

Chuck nodded but didn’t smile. “Pleased to meet you, Lindsay.”

Rickie sidled up to the counter. Before he could even ask, I handed him a cookie then took out two more for Grace and Chuck. I had no idea why they were there
or what they wanted, but giving them chocolate couldn’t hurt.

“Why, thank you,” Grace said. “Chuck, we should of got her to make our wedding cake. Becky Carol made it, and it was
really dry.”

“Gosh, had I only known, I’d have been happy to make you a big, dense chocolate cake.”

“Maybe for our first anniversary party.” She looked at Chuck and giggled. He smiled down at her. A man of few words. That was probably a good thing considering how much Grace talked. “Rickie just had to come say good-bye. He said you took such good care of him after his worthless daddy dumped him on you.”

I forced myself to smile. “We had a
great time together.” I wasn’t sure what he’d told her, but I wasn’t going to volunteer anything. I’d already been accused of kidnapping. Child endangerment probably wasn’t far down the list after the events of the night before. It doesn’t look good for a cop’s girlfriend to be charged with those things.

“Say good-bye, Rickie.”

“Bye,” he mumbled.

“Wait! Let me give you some cookies to take with you.” I reached inside the case, took out all the leftover cookies and put them in a bag. Fred would just have to do without for one day.
Getting rid of Rickie was worth foregoing a few cookies. “And some brownies.” I added the nutless and nutted versions and handed the bag to Rickie.

“Say thank you, Rickie.”

“Thank you,” he mumbled.

I reached across the counter and touched his cheek. “Thank you,” I said.

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

“I’ll let you know the next time we need a babysitter,” Grace said, and the three of them turned to leave.

Oh, great.

As they walked out the door, I realized Trent had been standing behind them.

“Hey!” I gave him a genuine smile. “Sorry, I’m fresh out of cookies and brownies, but you can have the baker if you’d like.”

A wide grin stretched his lips as he strolled over. Green fire danced in his dark eyes, a sign he was happy. “I’d like.” He leaned across the counter and gently touched my face. “How are you doing?”

“Good. No worries. I just became childless again. With Rickie out of my house and my mind, I can deal with a little thing like a broken nose. I take it you had something to do with reuniting the happy family.”

“As a matter of fact, I did. I asked Fred to use his talents and find Grace and Chuck.
”

“Really? You asked Fred? Weren’t you afraid he’d do something illegal?”

Trent nodded, and the green in his eyes ramped up a notch. “I
knew
he would. But I figured it would be worth it. Another night with Rickie, and you’d have been the one climbing out your bedroom window to escape. I figured my lieutenant would cut me a little slack if I got involved in a slightly shady activity in the name of love.”

Oh, God! He said it again!
“So where did he find the happy couple? I assume it wasn’t far away.”

“
Turns out they’ve been half an hour from here the whole time. They were staying at the Fin and Fur Lodge out by the lake. The newlyweds were getting in a little fishing and hunting.”

“Hunting? Deer season doesn’t start for three months.”

“Rabbits and squirrels.”

“Well.
” I didn’t even want to think about that. “At least they won’t go hungry.”

“And they’ll have plenty of dessert. That was a nice thing you
did, giving them enough cookies and brownies to keep Rickie on a sugar high for a week.”

“Two days at most. He’s tough.”

He arched an eyebrow and his grin widened. “You say that like you almost admire him.”

I snorted. “You’re giving me way too much credit.”

The last customers came up to pay. Trent waited while I rang up the sale.

“Where’s Paula?” he asked when the door tinkled behind the
couple.

“In the kitchen with Matthew.”

He flinched. “Any explosions or sounds of pots and pans hitting the wall?”

“No, Paula’s the silent and deadly type. The quieter it is, the worse things are going.”

We listened to the silence for a few seconds.

“Sounds bad,” he said.

“Yeah.”