Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 04 - Chocolate Mousse Attack (5 page)

As I backed down Rick’s driveway, my brain registered the car on the far side of the garage. Ginger’s, I assumed. It was one of those really small cars and the color was blue
, not white. Definitely not the car I’d seen last night parked under the trees with a blond haired man at the wheel.

I smiled as I thought of what that could mean. Was Rick already cheating on Ginger with a woman who drove a white sedan?

Or maybe it hadn’t been Rick, just a stranger parked on my street at two o’clock in the morning. That sounded a little creepy.

Of the two possibilities, I found myself hoping it was Rick being his usual obnoxious but relatively harmless self.
I suppose that’s sort of like saying I’d prefer to be run over by a bus instead of a train.

Chapter
Five

Henry and I both had a restless night. He usually sleeps quite soundly, so when he got up to look out the bedroom window in the middle of the night, I got up too.

Sophie, wearing the same or a similar white nightgown, moved like a ghost through the moonlight across the street to Fred’s house. He must have been expecting her because he opened the door as soon as she reached it.

Sleepwalking or a tryst?

I’d never known Fred to have a girlfriend. Of course, he’s so secretive, he could have
had a different one every night for all I knew.

But a couple of minutes later Fred and Sophie came out of the house together. He walked her back to her house, one arm wrapped protectively around her waist. She turned at her door, looked up at him and smiled then gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

Fred blushed. Okay, it was dark and they were on her porch under the overhang, so I couldn’t really see the color of his face but I’m pretty sure it got red.

“We can go back to bed, Henry. Fred’s got the situation under control. He doesn’t need us.”

And that was a good thing. I was glad Fred didn’t call me to come over in the middle of the night and help him get Sophie out of his closet again. But I have to admit, I felt a little left out.

Fred paused in the middle of the street, looked up toward my
bedroom window and waved.

I waved back even though I was certain he couldn’t see me in the darkness. But if he couldn’t see me, why did he wave in the first place? More of the mystery that was Fred.

Henry and I went back to bed, but he got me up again half an hour later.

My quiet neighborhood was busy that night.

It was the white sedan again, driving slowly down the street. From my angle at the upstairs bedroom window, I couldn’t see who was in the car. Male, female, blond, brunette, monster, alien?

The car slowed almost to a stop in front of my house. Henry and I both leaned forward, watching intently. I half expected the passenger door to open and Rick to shove Rickie out of it.
But after a significant hesitation, it moved on.

Department of Health checking on my lawn? Rick had sent them after me once. But they probably didn’t sneak around in the middle of the night. The city would hav
e to pay the employees overtime. That wasn’t going to happen.

Henry’s first family looking for him, sneaking around in the middle of the night?
When he’d showed up and moved in, I’d put signs everywhere and nobody claimed him. After all this time, he was my cat and I was his can opener. Nobody was going to separate us, not even with a DNA test.

The cat in question turned away from the window and sauntered over to the bed. He wasn’t
worried.

I went back to bed too and had almost dozed off again when a strange thought occurred to me.

Perhaps the white sedan wasn’t stopping in front of my house. Perhaps it was stopping in front of Sophie’s house. We were right across the street from each other. And that woman had secrets, lots of secrets, secrets she was keeping from herself even.

Maybe she’d killed Carolyn.
That could be traumatic enough to give her nightmares and cause her to walk in her sleep.

A five year old dark haired kindergartener wearing a clown mask and wielding a bloody butcher knife?

Probably not.

I pulled the sheet over my head and ordered my mind to stop playing games and let me go back to sleep.

When I left for work that morning I halfway expected to find Rickie sitting in my porch swing. Nothing there but a small bit of Rickie’s candy and a few ants.

The happy couple should be on their way to the airport. Maybe they’d decided to take the kid along after all.

I laughed at my own joke.

*~*~*

Paula and I prepared to feed the hungry masses. I made half a dozen Double Chocolate Cream Pies. The masses needed chocolate.

While Paula flailed away at the cinnamon roll dough and I beat
cream for the topping, I told her about Sophie and Fred’s middle of the night encounter.

Paula spread the dough on a marble board and picked up
her institutional size rolling pin. “I’ve never thought about Fred being involved in a relationship.”

I added
sugar to the whipping cream. “He may have three wives and six children living across town. It’s hard to know about Fred.”

“I can see why he’d be attracted to Sophie. She’s beautiful.”

“And mysterious. Fred’s a sucker for a mystery.”

Paula laughed. “Fred’s a sucker for a beautiful face, a soft voice and big—”

“Don’t say it!” I pictured Ginger’s triple Ds. I didn’t want to think of any comparison between her and Sophie. Totally different people.

“Big brown eyes,” Paula finished. “What’d you think I was going to say?”

“Nothing. Pass me the vanilla.”

“Fred deserves somebody special in his life.”

“He has you, me and Zach. It doesn’t get any more special than us.”

Paula handed me the bottle of vanilla. “You know what I mean. You have Fred, Zach and me, but Trent fills a different place in your life.”

I couldn’t deny that. I’d thought I’d never become involved in another male/female relationship after being married to Rick-head and having my emotions beaten up, bullied and abused. But my feelings for Trent had sort of snuck up on me. Okay, maybe I shied away from examining those feelings too closely or putting a label on them, but whatever Trent and I had going on was good. It made me happy. I wanted Paula to find that same happiness.

“You’re right
,” I said. “Fred does deserve to have someone special in his life. And so do you.”

She turned back to her dough and gave it a vicious whack
with that rolling pin. I flinched. “When I get Zach raised, I’ll think about it.”

She had no intention of thinking about it.
I could only imagine how terrified she must be of ever trusting another man after the abusive, psychotic, murderous jerk she’d been married to. What I’d gone through with Rick was awful but nothing compared to the nightmare she’d lived through.

My efforts to get
Matthew Graham back to talk to her again could be wasted. He could fail to show. She might not talk to him again. He could show up and be a creep. Anything or nothing could happen.

But what if I’d refrained from getting involved with Trent because he was a cop and cops cause me a lot of grief by giving me all those unjustified speeding tickets? What if I’d taken Henry to a homeless shelter instead of adopting him?

Sometimes you have to take chances.

I let the subject drop, and we had a good day. Lots of people for breakfast, lots of people for lunch. Nobody died, nobody dropped off their kid and ran away. A very good day.

The lunch crowd was winding down when Matthew Graham, Associate Professor of History, came in and sat down at the counter.

Yes!

Paula was serving at the far end of the counter and I was heading back to the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes. Before I could dispose of the dishes, Paula moved down to take his order.

I really needed to get there first and do the free dessert thing.

He smiled at her. He had a nice smile, open and guileless. “I got your call about being your ten thousandth customer.” Pleasant voice. Soft.

She frowned. “What?”

Still clutching my tray of dirty dishes, I moved over beside her and gave Matthew my biggest smile. “Welcome! I’m so glad you came in! What would you like for your free dessert today? We have chocolate chip cookies, brownies and our special today, Double Chocolate Cream Pie with real whipped cream. The cookies and brownies have nuts. Sometimes we have cookies and brownies without nuts but today is a total nuts day. The pie has no nuts, though sometimes we have a wonderful fudge pie with nuts, but not today.”

Paula gripped my arm. Tightly. I stopped babbling.

“Why don’t you just take your time, sir,” she said, “and look over the desserts in the case to your right. If you’d like to order something besides dessert, we have grilled chicken sandwiches and hamburgers.” With the hand that wasn’t cutting off the blood in my arm, she indicated the chalk board behind us. “We’ll be back to take your order in a few minutes. Lindsay, let me help you carry that heavy tray to the kitchen.”

Busted.

We marched back to the kitchen and I set the dishes in the sink.

“You called that man and told him he was our ten thousandth customer and he should come in for a free dessert?” Paula accused in an angry whisper.

When I’d conceived the brilliant plan to get Matthew Graham back to the restaurant to talk to Paula, I hadn’t really thought it through. Sometimes I act a little impulsively. The plan did work. I just hadn’t considered the possibility that Paula would get to him before I could set things up.

I drew a deep breath and tried to think of something that would explain what I’d done, something other than the truth, of course.

“Yes, I did call him. He is our ten thousandth customer.”

“That’s ridiculous! We don’t have any system to count customers.”

“I have a really good memory.”

“Not that good. How did you even get his name and phone number?”

I squirmed and looked around for a Coke. Even an old flat one would help. “He left his business card.”

She threw her hands into the air. “So you called him and told him an outrageous lie to get him back in here? Why?”

“Why?” When stalling for time, answer a question with a question, even if it’s the same question.

“I’m going to take a wild guess. You didn’t do it because you’re finally free of Rick and want to explore the possibilities out there in the single world. You seem very happy with Trent.”

“Explore the possibilities? No! I am totally happy with Trent.”

“So my next wild guess is that you saw me talking to Matthew yesterday and decided to bring him back for me to play with.”

When all else fails, tell the truth. “I wouldn’t put it exactly like that. You seemed to be having a good time and he left his card which meant he wanted to see you again and I knew you’d never call him.”

She nodded. “You are correct. I would not have called him because I don’t want to talk to him.”

“He seems really nice.”

“Yes, he does, which makes it really bad that you lied to him.”

I shrugged. “He’s getting a free dessert out of it. That should make up for a teeny, tiny little lie.”

She turned to the sink and began rinsing the dishes. “Then go serve him his free dessert and get rid of him.”

I thought about that but only for a moment. “No.” I picked up the rinsed plates and put them in the dishwasher.

“What?”

“I’m not going out there to take his order. You can be rude and let him sit there until we’re ready to close then run him off, or you can go see what the nice man wants to eat.”

She was silent for a moment. With a sigh she dried her hands and started toward the entrance to the front area, turning back at the door. “I won’t forget this.”

I smiled. “You mean like I didn’t forget those first nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine customers?”

We have a swinging door between the restaurant area and the kitchen so
she couldn’t slam it behind her, but she tried.

She’d thank me later.

Or maybe not, but she’d never know if she didn’t give it a shot.

*~*~*

The two of them talked while he ate his chicken sandwich and chocolate cookie. I even caught her smiling once or twice. He dallied over that cookie a long time, waiting for everyone else to leave so he could talk to Paula some more.

Finally he left. Paula locked the front door and put up the “Closed” sign.

I’d already done most of the cleanup in the front area since that gave me the opportunity to eavesdrop. When I went back to the kitchen, I expected Paula to join me to clean in there. She didn’t. I looked out to see her wiping down tables I’d already wiped down, filling napkin holders I’d already filled.

She finally came back to get the bucket and mop.

“You seemed to enjoy talking to him,” I said.

She glared at me and went back to the front. I chose to interpret that as
meaning she had enjoyed the experience but didn’t want to admit it. Sometimes she refuses to confide in me. Took her over a year to admit she’d killed her husband. She hadn’t, of course, which was a shame. But that just goes to show she’s as secretive as Fred. My two best friends, and they both keep secrets while I tell everybody everything.

I’d done my part. Now
I could only wait to see if Matthew came back and if she talked to him again.

I returned home that afternoon to find my porch swing still unoccupied. Even the bit of candy and the ants were gone.

I fed Henry and let him outside then took a Double Chocolate Cream Pie over to Fred’s. I often took chocolate to Fred, but this was sort of a bribe. Although Matthew seemed nice enough and I liked his looks and smile, I probably ought to have him checked out before I meddled any more.