Criminal Confections

by Colette London

  But I couldn’t putter around getting my procrastination on all morning. Despite the rampant murder and confusion, I still had a consulting report to finish—and just hours to do it in before the plan Danny and I had brainstormed went into motion. I intended to finish writing my analysis of Lemaître Chocolates, for sure, today. I’d been working on my report in bits and pieces until now. All that remained was tying things together and formalizing my recommendations. All the necessary details were clear in my mind. Nothing was going to stop me. It couldn’t.

  Well, except for breakfast, I reasoned, swapping out my clutch for my reliable crossbody bag. No reasonable person would have denied me breakfast. I needed brainpower, didn’t I? And I needed both hands free to navigate all the mouthwatering things on offer at the resort’s ever-popular all-chocolate buffet.

  Ordinarily, the buffet was a weekends-only thing at Maison Lemaître, designed to entice resort-goers and coax local city dwellers into making the trip across the bay. Today, though, I’d learned that the chocolate-chip brioche French toast, chocolate waffles, pancakes with cacao nibs and fudge sauce, almond mocha scones, white chocolate cherry muffins, and everything else were going to be available in honor of the retreat’s penultimate day.

  It was a decision I applauded as I slipped out of my room, then eyed the door to Danny’s room in indecision. Deciding in the end to leave him to his beauty sleep, I headed for the nearest stairs. The fire door clanged behind me with just as much hollow creepiness as usual, sealing me inside the typically uninhabited service stairwell. Shrugging into Danny’s jacket, I descended the stairs at double speed, jostling my headache.

  At least it wasn’t a concussion headache, I figured as I emerged onto the Maison Lemaître grounds and followed the sweet scents of chocolate and freshly brewed coffee toward the patio. What I was suffering from was a good old-fashioned overdose of lukewarm cut-rate beer (not to mention the ill-advised burritos we’d later stopped the taxi in the Mission to chase it down with).

  In the buffet area, the lavishly dressed tables were full of retreat attendees. The sound of chocolate-business chatter rose to greet me; so did a few people I’d become friends with.

  Getting to the end of the buffet spread took me a lot longer this time. Now that it wasn’t dawn (or the early days of the retreat), my chocolatier cohorts were clearly feeling chatty. I entertained a couple of offers of consulting work (delivered on the QT, naturally), a few more offers of between-the-sheets “consulting” (Rex wasn’t the only smarmy entrepreneur in my biz), and made a lot of promises to keep in touch with various suppliers, restaurateurs, and shop owners.

  By the time I left the chocolate buffet, I had no memory of what I’d haphazardly dished onto my plate. Waving to the last friend I’d chatted with (the vivacious Torrance Chocolates rep), I veered toward an available table, then sat and took a look.

  An overflowing plate looked back at me, chockablock with pastries, chocolate-chunk breakfast foods, a big smear of Nutella, whipped cream, and a mini ramekin of hot-fudge sauce. It was hardly balanced or complete, but that wasn’t the point.

  In my line of work, I see (and taste) a lot of chocolate. But I don’t ordinarily get to do so off the clock, for my own pleasure. Eagerly anticipating doing exactly that, I unfurled my fancy napkin, fished out my heavy silver cutlery, then got down to business. With a never-ending supply of coffee coming from the attentive servers, a refreshing breeze blowing in across the grass and ruffling the nearby flowers, and no workshops, I was—

  —unsurprisingly interrupted before I’d taken a single bite.

  “Hayden!” Nina hustled over, smiling at me. Her gaze dipped to my overflowing plate. Her smile dimmed. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m about to be, as soon as I tuck into all this.”

  “No, I mean . . .” After casting a hasty look around, Nina hugged her clipboards. She took a seat next to me, then leaned in. “Are you okay after Rex? How are you handling things?” Her concerned gaze searched mine, then wandered to my breakfast. “I mean, you and Rex seemed pretty close. You wouldn’t be the first person to try to drown her heartache in chocolate sauce.”

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. “Me? And Rex?”

  She seemed taken aback. So did the people who glanced toward us at the sound of my chortle. Smiling, I waved them off.

  “I’m not drowning my sorrows, Nina. I promise.”

  “If you say so.” Her gaze skittered back to my face. “I did see the two of you cuddled up together fairly often, though.”

  That was because he’d been putting the moves on me. Ugh.

  “I swear I’m not heartbroken over Rex. What happened to him is a tragedy, of course, but . . .” I put down my fork. It was apparent I wasn’t going to be able to properly savor my praline pain au chocolat. “He wanted to consult with me. That’s all.”

  Nina’s next glance at my cacao smorgasbord disagreed. She evidently couldn’t fathom eating all that food unless racked with grief. Which made no sense to me. I lose my appetite when stressed. Who wants to eat when everything tastes like sawdust?

  “I don’t know why Rex would need to consult with anyone!” Nina brushed back her hair—as if a single strand would dare to be out of place. As usual, her appearance was immaculate—whereas (thanks to my very late night last night) I looked like something Poopsie had dragged in . . . then chewed on, then slobbered on, then dragged back outside. “Melt is one of the premier chocolatiers in the city!” Nina said. “Rex was very successful.”

  Skeptically, I shook my head. “Nobody else says that.”

  “Well, if you’ve heard otherwise, you’ve heard wrong!”

  Too late, I remembered that Nina was the one who’d been close to Rex. They’d been the ones who’d cuddled up together. Right near this buffet, in fact. Maybe elsewhere, too, I realized belatedly. After all, Nina hadn’t seemed 100 percent opposed to getting extramarital with Danny (at least not until she’d learned about his wrong-side-of-the-tracks past). Maybe she’d been more serious about Rex than I’d realized?

  Either way, I was being insensitive. Rex’s death had been a shocking surprise. Nina was probably still reeling from it.

  “Those business rumors don’t matter now,” I assured her in a gentle voice, patting her suit-covered forearm. “Rex was very well thought of in the end.” Maybe she’d seen the TV news reports, too. “I’m sure he’ll be missed by many people.”

  Including you? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  Mostly because Nina was getting worked up again.

  “Who told you Rex was struggling?” she wanted to know. “Was it that Chocolat Monthly reporter? Eden had it in for Rex, you know. You can’t take anything she says at face value.”

  “Nina . . .” I had to come clean. I could trust her with the truth. “I’ve seen Melt’s business portfolio. Rex really was in financial trouble. I’m sorry if you didn’t know that.”

  She fidgeted, then flung out her arm. “Well, that doesn’t matter to me.” She laughed, turning almost as pink as I’d been after my wrap adventure yesterday. “I just didn’t want you to come away with the wrong idea, that’s all. If you liked Rex, I wanted you to leave here with good impressions of him.”

  Oh? “That’s sweet of you, Nina. But not necessary.”

  A breeze sent a whiff of chocolate wafting upward from my plate. I felt keenly aware of my rapidly cooling brioche waffle. Also, I remembered too late that I’d forgotten (in my postdive haze) to look at Travis’s email about Nina’s husband.

  Probably, when I did, I’d learn that Calvin Wheeler had done something heinous like mix recyclables with trash. It was hard to say what kinds of things an organized, straight-arrow type like Travis would find outrageous. For all I knew, my late-night barhop with Danny had put me on Travis’s naughty list.

  “You know,” I mused, unable to resist nibbling a muffin for strength, “I heard that Rex offered Adrienne a job at Melt. But she turned him down. Or was that just gossip, too? Do you kn
ow?”

  It wasn’t the most smooth or subtle segue, I’ll admit. The link between Rex and Adrienne was tenuous. But Nina had known Adrienne even longer than I had. Maybe she could shed some light on one of the few things that still niggled at me about her.

  Nina bit her lip. Her complexion had gone from embarrassed pink to mottled pink and white. I was glad I wasn’t a redhead. For fair-skinned types like Nina, being out in the sun (the way we were on the serene and chocolate-scented patio) was brutal.

  She gave the other breakfasters a cautious look. “No, that one is true,” Nina finally confided in a low tone. “Rex offered to pay Adrienne a lot of money to take over as head chocolatier at Melt. He was too busy pressing the flesh to do it himself.”

  “That sounds like a dream opportunity,” I said. Even idiosyncratic, often nomadic restaurant workers enjoyed a big payday. “Do you know why Adrienne turned him down?”

  Nina’s gaze swiveled to mine. She sighed. “Because of me.”

  I was surprised. “Because of you? What do you mean?”

  She squeezed her clipboards, clearly reluctant to talk.

  “I won’t tell anyone, Nina,” I promised. “Especially not Christian, if that’s what you’re worried about. I swear.”

  She gave me a ghost of a smile. “I heard he’s trying to get his hooks into you next,” Nina ventured. “Are you going to—”

  I didn’t want to talk about my nonexistent future with Lemaître Chocolates. I’d already made my peace with not having that Victorian house, those window box flowers, that cable car ride, or that adorable four-legged friend of my own. Besides, I wasn’t sure how to explain my reluctance to work for Christian without inadvertently slamming Nina’s ongoing employment with him. Nina was sensitive. I didn’t want to spark a new tic.

  “You can’t sidetrack me,” I interrupted with a smile, calling her out on her (probably automatic) PR gamesmanship. “How could Adrienne have turned down a job because of you?”

  “It wasn’t long after Christian took over,” Nina admitted. “We were all under the gun, worried about how things would turn out. With Bernard at the helm, I’d been at the top—choice corner office, big salary, all the perks and privileges . . . you know.” Her wave suggested those things were par for the course in our industry. Sometimes they were. Not always. “But all new execs like to make their mark. They like to put their stamp on things. Christian was no different. I thought he might bring in his own people. Adrienne did, too. We were both scared for our jobs.”

  That made sense. “Bernard recruited you and Adrienne, after all. Right? You were both part of the old guard.”

  “That’s right.” Nina nodded, warming up to what were clearly difficult memories. Absently, she scratched her neck. “But Christian didn’t want to make those kinds of changes, after all. He’s a devotee of new management tactics—strategies designed to bring in new blood and fresh thinking. We all got foosball tables, big-screen TVs, junk food in the break room—”

  “Like one of those tech companies,” I said, thinking of Google, Amazon, Twitter . . . any number of Silicon Valley start-ups.

  “Exactly. We also got ‘exciting’ new cubicles instead of offices. They were supposed to foster teamwork and creativity.”

  I nodded. “You lost your nice corner office, didn’t you?”

  Nina nodded. “It wasn’t that bad. Because I still had Adrienne! We were already friends. The new layout only brought us closer. After that, the kitchens weren’t miles away from the PR zone anymore. We used to have coffee together every day.”

  That sounded nice. I was never in one place long enough to forge workplace routines with anyone. “With all the turmoil going on, Adrienne didn’t want to leave you alone,” I guessed, putting two and two together. I remembered how considerate my chocolatier friend had been. “That’s why she turned down Rex’s job offer. So you wouldn’t have to deal with Christian alone.”

  Nina looked away. She fussed with her cuticles, then thoughtlessly nibbled on her fingernail. Then, “I’m afraid so.”

  I understood. “It does make it easier, you know,” I told her, seeing how distressed she seemed. “If I didn’t have you to talk to about Christian, I’d think I was going crazy for sure!”

  At that, Nina laughed. She made a fist with her hands, seeming to realize belatedly that she’d started gnawing again.

  “See? Now I’m going crazy!” she joked. “Thanks, Hayden. You always know just the right thing to say. I’ve been feeling so bad about all of this lately. I mean, if not for me, Adrienne—”

  “Would have had a much less happy work life, I’m sure,” I butted in. I didn’t want to hear another person (after Bernard) beat themselves up for a past decision that might (or might not) have wound up affecting Adrienne’s well-being. “Believe me, I know how special Adrienne was. I do.” I had very fond memories of our time together. “That’s why”—I’m determined to track down her killer—

  “I’ll be so sad to leave Maison Lemaître tomorrow.”

  Nina gave a perceptive head shake. “You hesitated there, Hayden. I saw it!” She leaned in. “What’s your plan, anyway?”

  Lure Christian out in the open, make him confess what he did, then let Danny’s police “associate” take it from there.

  Nope. That sounded preposterous. It honestly did.

  But whether she knew it or not, Nina could help make that happen. She had the direct line to Christian that I lacked. If my request to meet with him came through her . . . maybe that would be better than the approach Danny and I had dreamed up last night.

  “I can’t say,” I told her, indulging in my best cloak-and-dagger routine to coordinate with my ninja outfit. “But it all starts with Christian.” Handily, Nina would think I was talking about his job offer with Lemaître Chocolates. She clearly knew about it. So she wouldn’t be suspicious when I said, “Do you think you can pass along a message to him for me, though?”

  She stared at me fixedly, clearly sensing my covert vibe. “Absolutely,” Nina promised. “What should I tell Christian?”

  “Tell him . . .” I paused, relishing the drama of the moment. This might be the only time I ever actively participated in bringing down a killer. Even if Danny thought Christian was just the first guy to knock off our suspect list, I knew better. Christian was the one! Besides, let’s be real: It was going to be the only time I ever helped to catch a murderer. “Tell him I have something very important to give him,” I said. “Tell him he’s definitely going to want this information. Tell him it’s more than what he’s been waiting for—more than I promised.”

  Okay, sure. I was overselling it a tad. But I was a newbie.

  “Right.” Gravely, Nina nodded. “Got it. I’ll tell him.”

  “Tell him . . .” I stopped, realizing that maybe it would be smart to go even more off plan. Just a little. After all, Danny and I had been fairly tipsy last night when we’d conceived of this whole thing. I frowned. “Where’s a good place to stage a clandestine meeting?” I asked Nina. “To exchange something?”

  She wouldn’t know that I meant Adrienne’s chocolate notebook. That’s what Danny and I had decided to use as bait to lure each of our suspects into the open. They all wanted it.

  “The spa,” Nina told me confidently. “It’s deserted after hours. Even the staff members don’t linger. You can meet there.”

  “Good idea.” We broke down the specifics. “Thanks, Nina.”

  “Any time.” She drummed her fingers on her clipboard. One of her omnipresent cell phones rang. At its tone, Nina jumped. Apologizing, she pulled it out. “I’ve really got to run.”

  “I know. I’m sorry to keep you so long.” I felt bad for her. It was evident her stressful time hadn’t ended yet. “I bet you’ll be glad when the chocolate retreat is over with, right?”

  Nina’s newly flustered gaze met mine while she juggled her other ringing phone. For a heartbeat, she paused to look at me. “I’ll be so glad when it’s all over with,” she said i
n a heartfelt tone. “It’s been so stressful. You have no idea.”

  Then she scurried away, leaving me and my all-chocolate breakfast in peace. I looked down at it, considered having it reheated, then decided speed was utmost in this instance.

  By now, Danny would be up. I’d need my strength to tell him that I’d gone (infinitesimally) off plan. Plus, there was always the risk he’d pester me to jog again. With a groan, I dug in.

  Chapter 16

  You know that feeling you get when you’re trying to clear customs or waiting in line at the DMV or standing behind that one person at the supermarket who still keeps a checkbook? It’s as though glaciers are melting while you watch. As though roses are blooming and dying in slo-mo time lapse all around you. As though time is absolutely crawling by, with no beginning or end. See, that’s how I typically feel while thinking about working on any individual consulting report. I just. Don’t. Want. To do it.

  Actually, writing my report is fine. Always. Detailing all my analysis, explaining my recommendations, describing potential solutions for clients . . . I like those things. But every time I’m faced with breaking out my laptop and getting down to brass tacks, I feel the same old inertia trying to suck me down again.

  In this frame of mind, going outside sounds awesome, for instance. So does taste-testing chocolates (to be double-triple-quadruple certain my initial impressions were accurate). Even reorganizing my duffel bag seems like a stellar idea. While trying to get psyched up to finish my report for Lemaître Chocolates, I’m not proud to say that I wound up engaging in all those time-tested pro-procrastination activities. And then some!

  Maybe you’ve been there, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe you haven’t. . . . In which case, you must be from Mars or something (sorry). In my universe, procrastination follows responsibility as night follows day. The only way out, I knew, was to channel Nike and “just do it.” Because waiting to feel “inspired” to work was about as futile as waiting to feel four inches taller. It just wasn’t going to happen.