Subtly, I wiggled to make room for myself. No dice.
Well, he probably wouldn’t linger. Not if doing so would mean incurring the wrath of Isabel. From all indications, the grapevine was alive and well at the retreat. She’d find out.
“So, how are things coming along with the police?” Bernard asked me, eyeing my overstuffed plate of tapas. “Did they locate Adrienne’s next of kin yet? Do they have leads on her death?”
Befuddled, I stared at him. He stared back, his kindly expression firmly intact. His eyes looked a little hazy, though.
Was Bernard . . . senile? He seemed to have confused me and Nina. She was the one who’d been dealing with the police, with all the details, with collecting Adrienne’s personal effects. Not me.
I didn’t want to embarrass Bernard. So I shook my head.
“Not yet.” I was going to hell for misleading him. “Sorry.”
I swilled a mouthful of my port, then bit into a sizzling bite of patatas bravas—served in this instance with a fiery chocolate mole sauce—while surreptitiously examining Bernard.
If he was suffering from some mild form of dementia, it occurred to me, his being forced out of Lemaître made a lot more sense. So did Isabel’s joke about Bernard needing erectile dysfunction medication. Maybe I’d been too harsh on Christian.
Nah. That was impossible. Christian was a tool.
“It was a lovely memorial this morning,” Bernard went on. Tears glimmered in his eyes. With an unsteady hand, he brushed them away. He sighed. “Poor Adrienne. I’m going to miss her.”
“I am, too.” I felt awful for him. I touched his hand.
It felt papery with wrinkles. But strong. He clutched me.
He clutched me a little too hard, in fact. Confused, I tried to pull away. But Bernard held fast. What the hell?
“Don’t let your feelings get the better of you, though, Hayden,” he said in a clear, rumbling voice. His hand squeezed painfully on mine. “Nothing good can come of that. Nothing.”
Was Bernard warning me? Disturbed, I pulled away.
“I’m not going to just forget Adrienne,” I told him.
Maybe it was the port I’d swigged. Or maybe I was just being stupid. But I didn’t want to back down. Not about this.
My friend deserved better than that.
“Everybody has to forget sometime!” Bernard announced cheerfully. Then, ominously, “The sooner, the better, in your case.” He nodded at my plate. “Try the alfajor de chocolate next,” he advised. “Adding bittersweet chocolate to Argentinian dulce de leche”—Bernard kissed his fingers—“exquisito!”
Then he chuckled and slid out of my banquette. He was gone before I could be sure I hadn’t imagined him. My still-aching fingers were a reminder that Bernard’s threat had been real, though. If he had been warning me to quit asking around about Adrienne’s death . . . well, it would fit right in with the way he’d gone all frosty on me this morning when I’d asked if he’d had a few final moments with his former mistress. On the other hand . . .
Bernard had seemed convinced, for a moment there, that I’d been Nina. So maybe his grasp on current events wasn’t quite as razor sharp as it should have been. Plus, I’d glugged at least half a glass of fortified port while filling my tapas plate.
I wasn’t the most reliable judge of lucidity just then. Me, plus a peculiar day, plus high-proof port on an empty stomach . . .
Deciding that being safe was better than being sorry, I finished my port, spooned up my thimble-size portion of rye-infused chocolate pots de crème, then reached for my cookie.
It was the alfajor de chocolate—the chocolate-covered double-decker treat sandwiched with burnt caramel—that Bernard had recommended. While an upscale Oreo probably wouldn’t kill me, in light of recent events, I opted to skip it.
If I was imagining the threatening look in Bernard’s eyes, I was going to regret passing up that alfajor, I knew. I’d done some consulting with Maison Lemaître’s head pastry chef as part of my assignment; I knew she was incredibly skilled. But thirty minutes later—after chatting with a few more retreat attendees as I left the lobby bar—I was back in my hotel room and too busy getting ready for the cocktail party to get too caught up in missed opportunities. . . even one-of-a-kind chocolate-themed ones.
I was flipping through Adrienne’s handwritten notebook, rubbing my fingers over chocolate splatters and trying not to think too hard about missing the woman who’d made them, when someone knocked on my door. With a twitch, I looked that way.
My blood pressure skyrocketed. I told myself the jumpiness I was feeling was only excitement, then marched to the door.
When I opened it, Danny scowled at me. “At least look through the peephole next time, dummy. Do you want to get strangled? Knifed? Beaten? Shot? Pushed out the window?”
“Your imagination is terrifying.” I stepped aside as my broad-shouldered friend strode in. His warning jolted me, though. Ordinarily, as a woman traveling solo, I was a lot more cautious than this. I shut the door, taking absurd comfort in its solid autolocking clunk. “I knew it was you, Paranoid Pete.”
“It’s not paranoia when people are dropping dead.”
“One person.” As distressing as that was. “Not me.”
“That’s because I’m watching over you.” Danny prowled the corners of my deluxe room. He nudged aside cast-off clothing choices (basically my whole fits-in-a-suitcase wardrobe, which I’d been mixing and matching), peeked under the bed, looked out the window, and checked the armoire. I thought he might nose into Adrienne’s notebook, which I’d left conspicuously open on the pillow-piled bed, but he didn’t. “You’re a slob, Hayden.”
That was it. No concerned “Are you okay?” or “Did Bernard Lemaître just go cuckoo and possibly threaten you?” Just “You’re a slob, Hayden.” As if I didn’t know that already. As far as I’m concerned, a certain amount of clutter makes impersonal spaces (like hotel rooms, train compartments, and yurts) feel personal.
“Nice to see you, too.” There was no time like the present for a little tit for tat. “Did you have a nice workout?”
Danny’s gung ho Booya! attitude ground to a halt. I could have sworn a flush climbed his cheeks. His nonstop beard stubble made it hard to tell. As far as I knew, he never got flustered.
Just then, I was on a mission to change that. Dressed up in my flat strappy sandals, bare legs, my ex’s silk button-up shirt partnered with a chunky belt (which officially made it double as a breezy minidress, in my book) plus a tangle of silvery chains sparkling at my décolletage, I kept at him. “I knew your fast getaway at brunch seemed suspicious this morning.” I could barely keep up my (admittedly nonexistent) poker face as I added mildly, “Who knew you were aching to feel the burn?”
My reference to Danny’s physical exertion made him groan. He paced, never content (like me) to stay in one place too long.
“I ‘got away’ at brunch so you could network,” he said.
“Nice try. But I can network with you present.”
“I figured Nina would open up to you more alone.”
“That’s very generous of you. Pump any iron lately?”
I had no intention of letting this slide. Not after the hard time Danny had given Travis about his “health freak” ways.
Privately, I enjoyed thinking about Travis getting his workout on. I might have never met my financial advisor in person, but that hadn’t stopped me from imagining the way he’d look, all slick and muscular from the pool. With a calculator.
What can I say? My imagination has its quirks.
“I knew you’d do this,” Danny complained. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.” With a grin, he gestured at his rugged build. “You didn’t think all this happened by accident, did you?”
“I thought it happened courtesy of beer and hot wings,” I deadpanned. “Apparently not. That was just your cover story.”
“Okay, you’ve had your fun. Just let up, okay?”
As if that was g
oing to happen. I had him on the ropes now.
“Maybe it’s something in the water around here,” I mused, pretending to consider it. “I saw Rex running earlier, too.”
“Not on the ridge, I hope.” Danny surprised me by speaking seriously. “I doubt he’s got the stamina and agility to navigate that rocky path. One wrong step, and it’s a long way down.”
“Right. Just because he’s not you, he’s a crash test dummy waiting to happen? He’s not that much of a buffoon.”
Except he was. What was I doing? Defending Rex? This had gone too far. I outfitted a clutch with necessities from my trusty crossbody bag, intent on finishing my prep for the party.
“I mean it,” Danny insisted. “Maison Lemaître ought to fence off those bluffs. Or at least post warning signs.”
“Spoken like a true security expert.” I primped. “I didn’t think resort liability issues were your area of expertise.”
“There are things,” Danny said, “you don’t know about me.”
I wanted to keep needling him about “feeling the burn.” But that was too good an opening to pass up. “Such as why you were late getting here? Why was that, anyway? Care to share?”
“Nope.”
“Let’s give it a go, anyway.”
“Fine.” Danny eyed me with reluctance. He turned his back to me, looking out at the enviable view. “One of my buddies was just paroled. I’m letting him crash at my place. He got held up, so I caught a later plane. Now I’m here. End of story.”
“Danny!” I protested, having visions of him coming home to an empty apartment—one devoid of pawnworthy TVs and accessible cash. “You told me you were going to quit hanging around those people!”
“‘Those people’ are my friends.” His face looked stormy as he turned again. “Just like you are. I like problem cases.”
His knowing grin as he added that last bit put me on edge. I wasn’t a problem case. Not when it came to him, at least.
“But now that you know about that,” he added before I could set him straight, “I might as well tell you about Rex Rader.”
I was duly baited and switched. “What about Rex Rader?”
“Well, you know how I found his wallet yesterday?”
I bit my tongue so hard, I could have added a DIY dumbbell piercing and called it a day. Not that I don’t have a piercing or two. I do. But I’m certainly not telling you where they are.
“I asked one of ‘those people’ to run financials on Rex.”
I knew what he was saying. Danny had used his underground connections to find out more about Rex Rader. He’d leveraged the contents of Rex’s stolen wallet to investigate the Melt CEO.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I told him.
“Why? Because you were going to ask Travis to do it?” Danny shook his head, typically cocksure. “My way is faster.”
I shouldn’t have endorsed his tactics. Not even obliquely.
But I just couldn’t help it. “What did you find out?”
“That Melt is going down fast. That Rex is up to his manscaped eyebrows in personal debt. That he needs a fix.”
“That fix was supposed to be me, I thought.” I told Danny about my run-in with Rex, then gave him a roundup of the day’s events. Bernard, Christian, Isabel, Rex, Bernard again . . . all of it. I needed to get it all out with someone I trusted. “I had no idea there were so many things going on behind the scenes here.”
“Every place has its conspiracies.” Danny didn’t seem daunted. In contrast, everything sounded twice as unbelievable to me. “Usually, money is at the root of everything.”
“I have to involve Travis, then! He’ll know what to—”
Do, I meant to say, but Danny cut me off before I could.
“You can’t.” His voice was rough. Suddenly, he looked really intense. “If you do that, you know what he’ll do.”
“Find out more details for me? Legally? Ooh, scary.”
“He’ll pressure you to settle down. To be safe”—Danny made scornful air quotes around the word—“his way. You’d hate that.”
I didn’t say so, but a teeny-tiny part of me—the part that yearned for an Irish setter and a place to keep doggie chew toys for more than a month at a time—actually kinda liked the idea of settling down. But that was impossible. So it didn’t merit thinking about. Wanting distraction, I shrugged. I grabbed the Maison Lemaître body lotion from nearby, propped my foot on the upholstered divan, and smoothed some on. Hmm. I still needed to pitch Christian about refining the formula. The whole “orange Kool-Aid meets Yoo-hoo” vibe was a turnoff in toiletries.
I caught Danny watching me and stopped short. Too late, I realized I’d hiked up my shirtdress to a nearly indecent degree. I’d known Danny so long that sometimes I forgot he wasn’t one of my girlfriends getting ready for a ladies’ night out with me.
“At least no one wants to off me so far.” I laughed, then rubbed the remaining lotion onto my hands. “No enemies here.”
Danny appeared skeptical. “Are you sure? Think harder.”
“Hey! Are you insinuating that I’m an airhead?”
“No. But you don’t specialize in eradicating risk. I do. The first step is always reconnaissance, so let’s go deeper.”
He wouldn’t be satisfied until I cooperated. So I did.
“Okay. Well, I do sometimes meet a few unsavory characters during my consulting gigs,” I admitted. “Occasionally, I’m offered a bribe to wreck a competitor’s product line. Sometimes I refuse to work with someone, and they get touchy about it.”
“‘Touchy’?” Danny gave a formidable frown. “Touchy, how?”
I shrugged. “Raised voices, maybe. That’s all. I keep a low profile, remember? I’m good at smoothing things over before they get out of hand. Believe me, I’m aware of the fact that by helping some companies, I might inadvertently hurt others. It’s business. It’s occasionally pretty cutthroat.” My gaze dropped to Adrienne’s notebook. I wondered who she’d been selling secrets to. “It’s not just cocoa beans and conching machines. There’s creativity involved in chocolate making, too. It won’t be easy to replace someone like Adrienne. She was talented.”
“Then her notebook is valuable?” Danny inferred.
I nodded. “To the right people, it is. You’d have to know how to use it.” I thought about the notes and formulas inside, some of which had been revelatory even to me. “But if you did, you’d be willing to do a lot to get ahold of it, for sure. It would be the next best thing to having Adrienne on payroll.”
I still didn’t know how I was going to delay giving it to Christian. As Adrienne’s employer, he had a legitimate claim on her work. But going against her wishes rubbed me the wrong way.
“Then I could sell that thing”—Danny nodded dubiously at Adrienne’s chocolate-smudged notebook—“for big bucks?”
“Theoretically, sure. But that doesn’t explain where I come in.” Except that Adrienne had given it to me. “Or why someone would want to kill her. Except maybe to avoid paying Adrienne her asking price for it?” I sighed. “Maybe I’m blowing all this out of proportion,” I told Danny. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Do you feel like it’s nothing?”
Reluctantly, I shook my head.
“Then it’s probably not nothing.”
I sighed. “Let’s just go to the party and forget about it.”
But Danny was having none of that. Not yet.
“Soon,” he promised. “But first . . . let’s go over this again.”
He’d always been slightly more disciplined than I was. In this case, that was probably a good thing. For my own well-being.
Together, we ran through what we knew so far. We knew that Adrienne had had a fling with Bernard. That she’d (reportedly) been selling secrets. That Christian had wanted to make her pay for her sabotage and/or had accidentally “hurried” her chocolate making too aggressively. That Bernard was either doddering or evil or (maybe) both at once. That Isabel was eit
her maniacally possessive or totally carefree, my ideal travel buddy or my pushiest (literally) spa-going nightmare. We knew that Rex Rader had a lot to gain from Adrienne’s death . . . and that he’d lied about Melt being prosperous. (I trusted Danny’s source more than Rex.)
Just then, my money was on Rex being the most murderous.
“I’m not sure this helps,” I admitted after our impromptu analysis was finished, “but I do feel better sharing with you.”
“Yeah. I knew you would.” Danny gave me a look that recalled all our barhopping days, our nights discovering indie bands, our longtime friendship, and our sometimes precarious efforts to keep that friendship (mostly) platonic. We were only human. For a while, we’d been too clueless to take reasonable precautions. “You’ll feel even better after you hire my security services,” he said next. “I’m not budging till you do.”
I laughed. “Come on, Danny. I’m fine. Really!”
“You’re wealthy enough that my salary won’t make a dent.”
Uncomfortably, I realized that was true. It would have been churlish of me to argue with him—and stupid of me to refuse. People paid big bucks for Danny’s freelance security expertise. He’d dropped everything to attend the chocolate retreat with me. I owed him. We were both cognizant of the background details.
I nodded. Once. That’s it. And that’s how Danny Jamieson became my official (off-the-record) bodyguard. For the moment.
With that decision, I ran out of reasons not to look into Adrienne’s untimely death. For better or worse, I realized as we finally headed downstairs to the cocktail party, I was committed to investigating further. But at least Danny would have my back while I did—just in case I was the one who’d been meant to die.
Chapter 8
When I tell you I was blindfolded, you’re going to think I was up to something perverted. When I add that I was being watched by hundreds of people while blindfolded, you’re going to think I was doing something really deviant. When I specify that all my senses were intimately involved in that activity . . . well, let’s just end the analogy right there. This wasn’t Fifty Shades of Grey territory, and I wasn’t doing anything remotely shady.
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