Criminal Confections

by Colette London

  As a professional, I knew that. That’s why I did what I always do and went through the motions anyway. I got out my Moleskine notebook. I assembled my research materials. I spread my market analysis spreadsheets on the bed. I put my laptop in the middle (with Rex’s Melt portfolio acting as a makeshift lap desk), grabbed Adrienne’s notebook (for safekeeping), then climbed into the unholy nest I’d created. There, amid everything I needed, there could be no excuses. I was there to work.

  Since it was crunch time, that’s what I did. I squinted and recollected and typed. I reviewed and evaluated and typed some more. I proofread and edited, double-checked and expounded. By the time I was done, I had fifty pages of charts and graphs, recipes and recommendations, percentages and paragraphs. It was, as usual, a pretty kick-ass piece of consultancy work. I wasn’t too shy to say so. In my business, modesty gets you not hired.

  I sighed and looked up, bleary-eyed but pleased with the results I’d achieved. You might not believe me, but as loony as it seems, this is all part of my “chocolate whisperer” process.

  Part of my work is methodical. Part is analytical. But a big part of it is intuitive; the rest is creative. I need time for all those parts to gel into a cohesive whole. Technically, I’m delaying doing the typing. I’ll admit that. But while that’s going on, the chocolate-expertise centers in my brain are doing their own things behind the scenes, collating information, making connections, and spitting out useful ideas for me.

  It’s not a system that would work for everyone, sure. But it works for me. I get no complaints from my clients, and I have all the work I can handle, besides. So it’s all good.

  Tense from sitting still, parched from my marathon stint, I glanced out the window. Uh-oh. It was getting dark outside.

  That meant it was almost time for my rendezvous with Christian. Or maybe it was past time. I’d zoned out too hard.

  With a glimmer of panic, I picked up my phone. If I’d left for my spa-set meeting with Christian ten minutes ago, I’d only have been five minutes late. Argh. If chronic latecomer Danny could have seen me now, the irony would have killed him.

  Shoving aside that thought, I scrambled to collect my things. Danny and I had gone over our plan in detail after breakfast. He’d promised to alert his friend at the SFPD, then wait in the shadows while I made the exchange with Christian; I’d promised to sub one of my unused notebooks for Adrienne’s. That way, we wouldn’t be forced to surrender the real thing. Under the circumstances, a decoy would be sufficient, we’d decided.

  Besides, I was supposed to play it cool and not show the notebook until Christian had thoroughly implicated himself in Adrienne’s murder. Easy-peasy, right? I actually thought it might be. Given how much Christian liked to hear the sound of his own voice, it was possible he’d love blabbing about his misdeeds. Not that I especially wanted to hear them, but . . .

  That was part of the deal, I knew as I shoved everything I needed into my crossbody bag, slung it over my shoulder, then bolted out the door and down the (creepily deserted) service stairs. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous; I was. But just as with writing my report, the only way to have any peace of mind was to have this thing done with, once and for all. I needed to know who’d killed Adrienne (and maybe Rex). I couldn’t rest easy otherwise. I couldn’t exactly ramble around the world with my usual joie de vivre unless I knew I was safe, could I?

  Breathless, I exited onto the freshly watered, twilit grounds with a sense of purpose, then followed the path toward the spa. In the distance, I heard laughter and conversation, music and the clatter of kitchen workers. I wished I was among those line cooks and sous chefs tonight, instead of heading toward a furtive meeting. I wasn’t completely sure I could get Christian to come clean. But I figured I had as good a shot as anyone.

  Ahead of me, the luxurious spa building looked peaceful and dark. Only its security lighting was illuminated. Far away behind me, the Maison Lemaître cottages and outbuildings dotted the lawn, barely visible squares of darkness against the ever-deepening sky. I would have thought the need for stress relief and pampering offered by the spa would have been a 24/7 thing, but apparently (I’d learned) it wasn’t. Once happy hour rolled around, Portia and Britney had told me earlier, demand for spa services starting dipping; before dinnertime, it nose-dived.

  I guessed once people were able to start knocking back cocktails, they started feeling pretty stress free anyway.

  Wishing I’d thought to grab a tequila shot for courage (a handy tactic I’d picked up in Mexico City), I approached the spa’s imposing entrance. As predicted, everything was quiet.

  I glanced around, looking for Danny. Predictably, he and his SFPD friend were nowhere in sight. But they were the experts, right? They shouldn’t have been visible. Unlike me.

  I hauled in a breath, reminded myself of Danny’s promise to have my back, then knocked on the spa door. Thrice.

  That was supposed to be the signal I’d arranged. Using it felt ridiculously clandestine. Also, just plain ridiculous. I wished I’d arranged this liaison inside Christian’s office.

  Three (long) minutes later, I really wished I’d arranged to meet the younger Lemaître indoors. I hadn’t thought to grab Danny’s purloined jacket. It was getting chilly now that the sun had completely set. Shivering, I paced in the spa’s entryway.

  Was Christian standing me up? It looked that way, but I just couldn’t believe it. He really wanted Adrienne’s notebook, and I’d done a masterful job of (over)selling it. Frowning, I gazed across the darkened grounds, looking for him. Nada.

  Unsure whether to stay or go, I pulled out my phone to check for messages. There was a confirmation text from Danny, letting me know he was at the Maison Lemaître bar with his law enforcement pal, a reminder to myself to read Travis’s email, and a notification about my upcoming departing flight from SFO, but nothing from Christian. Grumbling with uncertainty, I decided to kill a few more minutes reading Travis’s email.

  It wasn’t easy to view the whole thing on my phone’s tiny screen, but I got the gist readily enough. Calvin Wheeler wasn’t a thoughtless nonrecycler or an abusive husband, as it turned out—but he was unemployed. Travis’s contact had turned up details of Calvin’s arrest for “harassing” his former employer and making threats after having been dismissed from the firm.

  The arrest was four months old, though. Calvin’s accounting firm hadn’t pressed charges. The whole matter had been dropped.

  Its timing did make me wonder, though....

  Suddenly, the spa’s door silently whooshed open.

  Nina stood in the entryway, unsurprised to see me.

  “Nina!” I blurted, quite surprised to see her. “Where’s Christian?” Surely she’d understood that she’d been supposed to arrange the meeting, not be present for it. Then I thought of another possible explanation for her being there. “Was tonight our spa date with Calvin and Danny? I should let him know.”

  She waved. “You don’t have to do that.”

  But I whipped off a quick text to Danny anyway, just in case. A girl couldn’t be too safe. “It’s okay. Already done.”

  With my plan engaged, I stepped inside the low-lit spa’s reception area, eager to get this over with. It was probably going to be a no-go if Nina was there, though, I realized. Christian would be unlikely to spill the beans in her presence.

  I wouldn’t have wanted to confess to murder in front of her, either. Nina’s enviable grooming, impeccable posture, and nonstop organizational skills were fairly intimidating. Heck, I wouldn’t have wanted to confess to a hangnail in her hearing. Although, I noticed as I looked at her now, today Nina’s manicure was history. She seemed to have finished what she’d started at breakfast this morning by gnawing all her newly polished nails to the quick. The end result looked . . . painful.

  That wasn’t all, either. Nina’s blotchy complexion was back as she turned to me, then dropped her gaze to my bulging bag.

  “Did you bring it?” she asked.


  Her tone suggested we were swapping spreadsheets or finalizing marketing campaign plans, not (potentially) trading corporate secrets. But then, Nina didn’t know all the details.

  I doubted Christian would have enlightened her.

  “I brought something for Christian,” I specified, putting my hand protectively over the spot where I’d stashed the decoy notebook. I looked around. “Is he here? Or is he running late?”

  I hoped he was running late. That would disguise my own tardiness. I had a professional image to uphold, after all.

  “Why don’t you come this way?” Nina gestured toward the treatment rooms. A few feet away, the Zen fountain sparkled.

  “Okay.” I was thrown by her being there, but I shrugged and followed in her wake, anyway. “I guess Christian just won’t stage a meeting without turning it into a big production, huh?”

  He obviously wanted Nina, his right-hand gal, to be there—probably for appearances. I didn’t know if Christian imagined himself as some sort of cartoon supervillain or what, but he did like to seem important. His hubris didn’t surprise me.

  Maybe I’d inadvertently caused this snafu by going off script. Danny had warned me that I shouldn’t have improvised.

  Speaking of him . . . I peeked at my phone as we traversed the spa’s silent and serene lounge area, then headed for the treatment rooms. “Christian had better not be planning on sharing chocolate-fondue body wraps with me!” I joked, glancing into that room as we passed it. “I’m off those for life.”

  Nina said nothing. Probably, she was as irked to be taking part in this sneaky scenario as I was to be instigating it. I would have preferred that Adrienne was still alive, creating wonderful chocolates, and Rex was still kicking, smarming it up.

  Nina was nothing if not forbearing, though. There was no trace of irritation in her expression as she showed me into the same room where I’d shared the hot-cocoa mud bath with Isabel.

  Automatically, I glanced overhead, looking for security cameras. Earlier (while I’d been procrastinating), Danny had explained how they worked at Maison Lemaître. I wasn’t surprised that there weren’t any cameras in the treatment room. That would have been a serious violation of guest privacy. Also, what were the spa workers going to steal in here? Towels and pricey mud?

  I didn’t see Christian. “He is late. That figures.”

  Nina turned. Her expression looked . . . pretty weird, frankly. The mottled pinkness I’d noticed earlier seemed to have spread from her face to her neck and lower, making her look blotchy all over. Her hands trembled. So did her voice, when she spoke.

  “Christian isn’t coming,” she said. “No one is coming.”

  I didn’t understand. “Didn’t you give him my message?”

  “He wants you to give me Adrienne’s notebook.”

  “Adrienne’s—” I broke off, confused. I studied her more closely. “I never said I was bringing Adrienne’s notebook.”

  “But that’s what it had to be, wasn’t it?” Nina’s voice echoed in the luxuriously tiled room. Nearby us, the hot-cocoa mud bath burbled away, making it feel vaguely steamy. I guessed the staff didn’t turn down the heat all the way—probably, it was too expensive to crank it completely up and down every day.

  “Either that,” Nina went on, clenching her fists, “or your consulting report.” She narrowed her eyes. “You found out lots of interesting things while working on that, didn’t you?”

  Her demeanor baffled me. The PR exec seemed more on edge than ever, but there weren’t any official events going on here.

  “I knew you had,” she told me before I could interrupt, pacing near the mud bath. Her businesslike pumps clicked on the sleek tiled floor. “You couldn’t resist taunting me about it, could you? Christian said you were the best. He was right.”

  Ordinarily, I liked hearing praise. Who didn’t?

  But Nina’s odd behavior bothered me. She was obviously upset about something. Her belligerent attitude seemed out of place, especially in such a tranquil setting—even for someone forced to act as Christian’s (unwilling) one-woman entourage.

  “He was more right than he knew about you,” Nina told me. “I guess when he gets his ‘report,’ he’ll get more than he counted on. Unless you never give it to him, that is.”

  Was that a dig at my procrastination habit? Confusedly, I shook my head. “Christian will get a pretty typical report from me,” I assured her. “I just finished writing it today.”

  “I heard you two talking about it at the scavenger hunt,” Nina said. “You and Christian.” She said his name as though it disgusted her. “The two of you were so gleeful, discussing your ‘fascinating’ assignment and the ‘problems’ at Lemaître.”

  Loosely, I remembered the exchange I’d had with Christian. He’d seemed determined to pester me about my overdue report. I remembered Nina leaving abruptly during our conversation.

  At the time, I’d thought she was annoyed, like I was, by Christian’s overbearing ways and heavy-handed tactics. But now, I couldn’t help wondering . . .

  “You knew we were talking about Lemaître? You guessed I’d been consulting for Christian?”

  So much for my super-stealth undercover MO.

  “I knew you were talking about me!” Nina corrected.

  Her eyes looked a little . . . wild to me. What was going on?

  “I knew, at that moment, that you’d figured out what was going on.”

  “I wish I could say the same thing,” I cracked, wanting to go back to the easy camaraderie I’d had with her. I shook my head, then softened my voice. “You seem upset, Nina.”

  I knew it wasn’t because of Calvin. Maybe Rex?

  “Of course I’m upset! You’ve been rubbing it in my face all this time. You think you’re so clever, Hayden, with your world-traveler ways and your expertise about chocolate. But you don’t know anything about me. You don’t know how hard I worked.”

  “I do,” I tried to soothe her. “You told me, remember?”

  “I didn’t tell you half of it,” Nina all but sneered. “Did you find out, anyway? Did you go back to your shady friend afterward and find out? Did the two of you laugh about it?”

  Danny. I remembered him . . . and kind of wished I’d sent him an SOS text instead of an innocuous “I’m in!” message.

  I may have been being a little overconfident at the time. I’d thought I’d been about to come face-to-face with Christian.

  “Of course we didn’t laugh about you,” I assured Nina, wishing I hadn’t jumped quite so eagerly on the idea of a deserted location for this meeting. I’d thought an out-of-the-way locale would encourage Christian to confess. He wasn’t likely to do that amid all the chocolate-retreat attendees. “I wouldn’t do that. I haven’t been rubbing anything in your face, either. I don’t—”

  I don’t understand what you’re talking about, I wanted to say. But Nina’s abrupt, humorless laugh cut me short. “You haven’t? What do you call ‘Christian is a brilliant and accomplished man’? Huh? You stood there with me and threw it in my face!”

  I frowned. “I asked, sure. But I just wanted to know—”

  “If I’d crack? Close to it!” Nina paced. Absently but furiously, she scratched her arm. “That ‘sympathetic listener’ routine you pulled on me at breakfast today was the last straw, though. I liked you, you know. In spite of everything, I did.” Her pleading, fast-blinking gaze met mine. “I thought maybe if I explained my situation, you would understand. I thought maybe you would leave me alone. Because you knew what it was like to be browbeaten by Christian. You knew how difficult it was!”

  “Your situation . . . doesn’t seem that bad,” I tried.

  Another harsh laugh. “Oh no? Getting demoted, losing my office, losing part of my salary, having my stock options cut.... None of those things sound ‘that bad’ to you?” Nina put her hands on her hips, then whirled to face me. The enmity in her expression startled me. “How about having all those things happen and then having your hu
sband lose his job? How about that, huh? How about having everything fall on your shoulders?”

  Aha. Now I knew where Calvin’s unemployment came in.

  “That sounds . . . I’m sorry, Nina. That sounds awful.” I still didn’t understand what she was driving at. “If you just want to vent until Christian shows up, I guess I get that, but—”

  “You ‘get that’? How very generous of you.” Again, Nina sounded almost beside herself with hostility. “You’re not as smart as everyone thinks you are. I already told you—Christian’s not coming.”

  “He’s not?” I wasn’t sure what to think. “Why not?”

  Maybe he wanted Nina to handle all the dirty work? But Nina couldn’t possibly know about Christian killing Adrienne.

  “Because he still doesn’t know what I did, and I intend to keep it that way.” She inhaled, then held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

  “Adrienne’s notebook? But why? You don’t know anything about chocolate.” She’d told me so before. “Why do you want—”

  Christian is a brilliant and accomplished man. The phrase I’d supposedly taunted Nina with. Belatedly, I remembered her referring to that phrase days ago. I remembered Bernard mentioning it. I remembered seeing it in Rex’s Melt portfolio.

  That was a watchword, I realized—a phrase that let all the players know who was in on selling chocolate secrets.

  “Adrienne’s notebook has Lemaître’s recipes in it, doesn’t it?” I asked as the truth dawned. “All those formulas, all those techniques . . . they weren’t the result of years’ worth of Adrienne’s personal chocolatier experience. They were all of the trade secrets that Lemaître uses to dominate the market—all handily written down for a competitor to use.” For Melt to use.

  “You can’t stall me by stating the obvious,” Nina said.

  But it hadn’t been obvious. Not to me. So far, I’d only heard two people say that phrase aloud: Nina and Bernard. A third person had written it down: Rex. But only two of those people had been using it to coordinate corporate espionage.