Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 04 - Chocolate Mousse Attack (8 page)

“I already kne
w all that. Sophie told me. It’s sad, but it’s not news. Old house. Defective gas heater. It happens.” I selected another piece of pizza and tried to
be patient.

“The house was old, but it was in good condition. The owners had everything checked before the Flemings moved in. But that’s not the really strange part.”

I waited patiently. Well, I pretended to be patient.

“Somebody deposited
a hundred thousand dollars into the Flemings’ bank account the day before Robert gave his notice at work.”

I sucked in a deep breath and leaned back in my chair. That
detail was worth waiting for. “I did not know that.” Fred probably didn’t know that. He’d been focusing on the residents of his house, not on Sophie’s family. Maybe I’d be able to tell him something. I love it when that happens. “Any idea where that money came from?”

Trent shook his head. “Bank account in the Caymans. I don’t have the time or the authority to track it further since I’m only doing this to satisfy my girlfriend’s curiosity, not to solve a crime.”

“Blood money,” I said. “Somebody paid Sophie’s father to kill her best friend. No wonder Sophie’s freaked out. Her father’s a murderer.”

Trent smiled and shook his head.
“You’ve been watching too many episodes of
Castle
. Not only is that a major leap in logic, but there’s also one big problem with your theory. I checked the records for six months before and six months after the time when the Flemings moved to Nebraska. No reports of a little girl named Carolyn going missing. No unsolved homicide of a small girl with blond hair.”

I sighed and took a long drink of Coke. “Yeah, that seems to be the major stumbling block. Even Fred can’t find any evidence Carolyn ever existed.”

I probably shouldn’t have said
even Fred
. Trent’s eyes narrowed. The two of them are friends in a distant, removed sort of way. Well, maybe not
friends
so much as
friendly
. Connected through me. Trent’s not always comfortable with how Fred does things, especially when he has no idea how Fred does things. But he can speculate, and he’s pretty sure Fred doesn’t always go through proper channels. Again with the overly moral stuff.

“We talked to the guy who owned Fred’s house,” I said. “He says it sat vacant for the
five years he owned it.” I told him about Dr. Daniel Jamison and his reactions when I mentioned Sophie’s family and Carolyn. “We don’t believe him. He’s a doctor, a plastic surgeon, so he has money now. But he said he was in medical school during that time, and med students are usually broke. You think he could have got a student loan big enough to pay for a murder? No, probably not.” I stuffed another piece of pizza into my mouth to keep it from saying something else silly.

Trent smiled. Most of the time he looks fierce and intimidating. A job requirement. But when he smiles, he looks like a mischievous little boy. I always kind of melt when he does that. “
You seem to be forgetting the big glitch in your theory. We have no proof anybody was murdered.”

I grinned. I couldn’t help it in the presence of that smile even though we were talking about murder. “You know what your problem is, Detective Adam Trent? You get hung up on the tiniest little details.”

He laughed. I laughed. We ate more pizza.

*~*~*

I was sleeping peacefully with Trent’s arms wrapped around me when Henry leapt off the bed and charged over to the window, growling deep in his throat.

“I thought you said Rick was in Hawaii,” Trent mumbled sleepily, his breath warm on my neck.

I looked at the clock. Just after two a.m. “It’s only Sophie making her nightly trek to Fred’s house. Go back to sleep.”

Apparently Henry thought I was talking to him. He leapt back onto the foot of the bed, yawned and closed his eyes.

But Trent was awake. “I’ve got to see this.” He rose and strode over to the window
, giving me a really nice view of his really nice butt in the moonlight.

“You’re right,” he said, his attention focused on the street. “She looks like a ghost, gliding across the street in that white gown. Fred must have been expecting her. He opened the door as soon as she walked onto the porch. She’s going inside. Fred, you dog! Oh, they’re both coming out again
. He’s walking her to her house.” He turned around and headed back to bed. “You’re right. That’s downright creepy. That woman has definitely had some trauma in her life.”

I opened my arms to him. “So have I. My boyfriend just left me in the middle of the night to watch another woman. He’s going to have to figure out a way to make me feel wanted again.”

Trent smiled and settled into bed beside me. “I accept the challenge.”

Things were just getting interesting when Henry suddenly made a jungle-cat noise, shot out of bed and over to the window and continued to snarl.

Trent stopped what he was doing. Damn. “Sophie again?”

“No, he doesn’t snarl at her. Maybe it’s the white car again.”

“The white car? What white car?”

My front doorbell rang.

Chapter Eight

Trent sat bolt upright and frowned. “You’re sure Rick’s in Hawaii?”

I shrugged. “I’m never sure of anything where he’s concerned. He said he was going, but he hasn’t sent me any pictures of the ocean and palm trees.”

“Stay here.” Trent was out of bed, into his blue jeans and out the door with gun in hand before I got my shorts zipped. That took a little longer. If my pants are ever loose enough I can zip them easily, I buy a smaller size.

Henry made it downstairs first
with Trent close behind. I was halfway down when he reached the door and flung it open while holding the gun behind his back. “What do you—what the devil?”

Henry arched his back and hissed.

The devil was at my front door in the middle of the night? I should have listened to my mother and gone to church more often.

Trent shoved his gun into his waistband and opened the screen door. He was inviting the devil inside? That might be taking the whole manners thing a little far. I hoped he didn’t expect me to serve him a Coke.

Henry gave a final snarl and darted outside. My cat deserted me.

At least
Trent stood his ground. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Help me.” A small thin form with big sad eyes
and a bulging canvas bag inched his way into my house.

Rickie. I might have been better off if it had been the devil.

Trent looked back at me helplessly.

“Rickie, what are you doing here?” I
peered around the boy, trying to see if Rick’s car was outside. “Where’s your father? Did he bring you over here?” I would chase him down and drag his sorry butt back if I had to swim all the way to Hawaii.

“Daddy and that woman left me all alone and I’m running out of food.”

I looked more closely at the kid. The first time I saw him he reminded me of an orphan from a Dickens’ novel. Once again he had that same
More, please,
look.

I reminded myself that he was not an orphan
. He possessed not only the requisite two parents, but also one new stepfather and one visiting, temporary, pseudo stepmother. Well, calling Ginger a stepmother of any description might be something of an exaggeration, but I was pretty sure about the
visiting, temporary
and
pseudo
parts.

“They left you alone?” Trent asked, and I was surprised at the shock and horror in the big bad cop’s voice. Wasn’t he supposed to be more suspicious of people?

Rickie nodded.

“When
? When did they leave?”

Ricki
e lifted his thin shoulders. “I dunno. When I got up Thursday morning, they were gone.”

Trent looked at me and I shrugged. I could see Rick doing that. His own mother had probably done it to him when he was growing up. Marissa wouldn’t win any Mother of the Year awards. On the other hand, I didn’t trust Rickie
either. He’d doubtless learned deceit before he learned his ABCs. Yet, there he was, alone on my front porch in the middle of the night.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“I walked. It’s a long way. I’m hungry. Have you got anything to eat?”

Trent dragged a hand through his hair, sighed and
closed the door behind Rickie. “We’ve got some leftover pizza.”

“I like pizza.” He did the soulful eyes thing again.

In the months before my divorce from Rick-head was final, I had many fantasies of the nights I would spend with Trent once I was a free woman. Not a single one of those fantasies included warming up pizza at three in the morning for my ex-husband’s runaway son. But I couldn’t very well send him back out into the night.

Rickie followed Trent and me into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “You got any more
cookies? I like cookies. And a Coke.”

I took two pieces of the leftover pizza from the refrigerator and popped them into the microwave.

While they heated, I called Rick’s cell phone. Of course it went straight to voice mail. I wasn’t sure if he was out of range in Hawaii or had just turned his phone off. I left a message about his son, but I had very little hope he’d call me back even if he got the message.

“Go on home,” I said to Trent. “Get some sleep. I’ll take care of this.” I inclined my head toward the seated boy.

“Not a chance.” He opened the refrigerator door and reached inside. “I don’t believe it. You actually have milk in here.”

“For dunking Oreos and making hot chocolate. Duh.”

He poured a glass of milk and set it in front of Rickie. The boy frowned and looked affronted. “I want a Coke.”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to sleep another four hours this morning. We don’t always get what we want. Lindsay, would you make me a cup of coffee?”

That probably sounds like an outrageous request since I’ve already admitted I don’t drink and can’t make coffee. But I can put a cup of water in the microwave for a minute then add a coffee bag.

After we got Rickie settled at the table with pizza and a glass of milk
—no, that combination doesn’t sound very good to me, either—Trent and I took our coffee and Coke and went from the brightly lighted kitchen to the dark living room.

I turned on a lamp, just one. I wasn’t ready to deal with bright light. “What am I going to do with him? I’ve got to go to work
in a few hours.”

Trent sank onto the sofa with a long sigh. “Just when I thought we were finished with your ex.”

I sat down beside him. “Thank goodness your ex is long gone.” I recalled the story he’d told me when we’d first met.
We got married, we lived together for three years, then we got a divorce and stopped living together. Well, actually it was the other way around. We stopped living together and then got a divorce.

He flinched and it seemed that a shadow flitted across his features, but it was hard to tell since the room was dark except for that one lamp. I was probably being paranoid. Not everybody’s ex was a nut job like mine.

“I’ll take Rickie home with me and contact social services,” he said quietly.

It was my turn to flinch. “Foster care? The system?”

Trent shrugged, took a sip of his coffee and made a face. He’d have made a worse face if I’d brewed it from scratch. “I don’t see anything else we can do. Grace and Rick have both abandoned the boy.”

“Will foster care take him permanently or temporarily?”

“I don’t know. If Grace and her new husband come back and show the court a stable home environment, she can probably get him back.”

“No!” The boy in question appeared like a ghost out of the gloom. He clutched a half-eaten piece of pizza in one hand and a Coke in the other. I considered snatching that Coke away from him but opted to let it go under the circumstances. “You stole my daddy! Don’t take away my m
ama too!”

No, I didn’t steal Rick from
Grace. I didn’t even know about her until recently, but that was the story Grace told her son. It made a better story than the truth, and that whole family of con artists was big into
good stories
. Rickie was just carrying on the family tradition.

“Nobody’s going to take your mother away,” Trent said. “We’re just trying to find a place where you can stay until your parents get back.”

“I can stay in that room you’ve got upstairs where Mama and me stayed before. It doesn’t have bugs. I liked staying there.”

Rickie is not the sort of child that makes one want to rush right out and have unprotected sex, but I found myself feeling sorry for him. With Rick for a father, Grace for a mother and Marissa for a grandmother, it wasn’t like the boy had any chance to be anything except obnoxious. Heredity and environment. Nature and nurture. All working toward the same end. If he had any chance at all, he didn’t need to be thrown into the foster care system. Surely there was some other option.

“When’s your mother coming back?”

“Lindsay, you’re not thinking about—”

“Tomorrow,” Rickie said, interrupting Trent’s protest and moving closer to me. “It’s just one more day. I knew you wouldn’t let those people put me in a home where they’ll beat me. I left a note on Daddy’s door so when Mama comes to get me tomorrow she’ll know where I am and she’ll call you. I promise I won’t be any trouble. You won’t even know I’m here.” He turned and went back to the kitchen.

Trent stood and started to go after Rickie then stopped and looked at me. “What just happened?”

I was only too familiar with that sort of happening. “Rickie’s paternal genes are showing. He’s learned how to close a deal…assume the answer is
yes
and proceed accordingly. I think he’s coming into his own.”

“I’ll take him home with me then call social services.”

That would certainly be the best idea. I really didn’t want Rickie in my house for even one day, and I’d be surprised if he was telling the truth about his mother coming back in one day. “Take him with you, but don’t call social services yet. Let me see if I can find one of Rick’s friends to keep him.”

“Rick has friends?”

“Okay, I’ll look on Craig’s List to see if I can find somebody to keep the kid.”

Trent looked toward the kitchen where Rickie sat at the table, finishing his pizza and Coke. The glass of milk sat untasted. “Are you sure?”

My doorbell rang. For an instant I actually had a fleeting hope that it would be Grace or Rick coming to retrieve Rickie. Silly me.

Sophie stood on my front porch, shivering
in the eighty degree temperature and looking terrified but wide awake. This time she was wearing a robe over her white nightgown. The robe was white too.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” she said. “I saw your light was on.” 

“Come in.” I stepped back so she could enter. “We were just having pizza with Coke and coffee. Please join us.” When the party’s already underway, what’s one more guest?

Henry darted past her, through the living room and into the kitchen. Perhaps he was going to attack Rickie.

She stepped inside then stopped. “Oh, you have company!”

“Yes, Sophie Fleming, this is Adam Trent, my…” Suddenly
boyfriend
seemed a little juvenile. My man? My significant other? My overnight guest? My lover? He was the man who made me happy. That was enough for me. There was no need to put a label on it.

Trent stepped forward and extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sophie. Lindsay told me you did great things with that house across the street.”

“This damn cat’s got a mouse!” Rickie called.

“Would you excuse me a minute, Sophie?” I marched into the kitchen, opened the back door and looked at Henry. “You know you’re not allowed to bring your
friends inside.”

Henry glared at me but carried the mouse outside.

I turned on Rickie. “When you were here before, you almost ruined my grandmother’s sewing machine, you broke two glasses and one lamp, you spilled Coke on my sofa and you tore my shower curtain.” I threw my hands in the air. “You are a walking disaster. I can deal with that, but you need to get one thing straight if you hope to spend one more minute in this house. You
will
treat my cat with respect.”

He shrugged, looked down at the table and took another sip of Coke. The glass of milk and an empty Coke can sat on the table beside his
empty pizza plate. “Whatever.”

Some other time I’d point out to him the difference between
whatever
and
yes, ma’am
. At that moment I needed to get back to Trent and Sophie and see what had brought her to my door in the middle of the night.

Actually, it was getting to be early morning.

Whatever.

I grabbed a couple of Cokes before Rickie drank them all and returned to the living room to find Trent sitting on one end of the sofa looking confused and Sophie hovering on the other end still looking terrified.

I sat down between them, opened both Cokes and handed one to Sophie. That actually brought a tentative smile to her face.

“Thank you. Fred told me about your Coke habit.”

“Fred can be a blabbermouth sometimes.”

She tilted the can to her mouth and took a sip. “It actually tastes pretty good right now.”

A convert.

“What’s wrong, Sophie? Did you have another nightmare?”

She clutched the can of soda in both hands and bit her lip. “This time it wasn’t a dream.” She looked uncertain. “At least, I don’t think it was.”

I braced myself to hear about another murder. “Tell me.”

She focused her gaze on Trent.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “You can trust him. He’s a cop.”

She gasped, and her eyes widened.

Maybe somebody who dreamed about murder didn’t want to tell a cop about it. “But he’s not on duty,” I added hastily.

Trent stood. “I think I’ll go to the kitchen with Rickie and make myself some more coffee. Kid’s probably ready for another glass of milk by now.” He grinned at his own joke then left the room.