by Nero Blanc
“Isn’t it beautiful, Rosco?” Belle said as she sipped her coffee and stared through a kitchen window. She cupped her mug in both hands while she studied the scene. “Our first snow of the year.… Isn’t it wonderful?” She sighed contentedly, then turned toward her husband. “Don’t think for a minute, however, that it’s going to delay my visit to Legendary Chocolates. No weather-wimp, am I.”
“Mm hm …” Rosco helped himself to a second cup of coffee. Although he’d already taken his morning run accompanied by the two dogs, he wasn’t necessarily fully conversant. Exercised, showered, shaved, and dressed, yes, but ready to have an intelligent dialogue, no. Belle, on the other hand, was primed for chat—just as she was every single morning. She actually woke up not only talking but often in mid sentence: the previous section of which had been left in her brain the night before.
“What time do you think the shop opens on Saturdays?” she asked with a cheery smile.
“Shop?” Rosco frowned in thought as he alternately stared at the coffee machine and his wife’s sunny face.
“Legendary Chocolates …”
“Chocolate …?”
At this point, Belle finally recognized that her mate wasn’t yet equipped for this kind of speedy give-and-take. She chortled, walked to his side, and gave him a smooch. “Remember? Last night? My plan to start the search for our mystery crossword constructor at Legendary Chocolates?”
“Ah, the antique cookbook.…”
Belle chuckled again. “You’re finally waking up. Congratulations. It’s a fine new day. And snowing, in case your hadn’t noticed.”
“Har har … The caffeine does begin to kick in eventually. Besides, I’ve already had my early morning encounter with the white stuff, remember?”
“What I don’t understand, Rosco, is how you can go out jogging when you’re still half in snoozeland.”
“It’s running, not jogging. And for all I know I’m moving my feet in my sleep. It’s not an activity that requires a debating degree.”
“Hmmm … The name for sleepwalking is somnambulism. What do you think sleep-running is? Somniernan?”
“What’s ‘iernan’?”
“Old English for run.”
Rosco shook his head. “I’m definitely going to need more coffee if you’re insisting on yammering about etymology.”
Belle raised a caustic eyebrow, then immediately jumped back to her earlier thought—a habitual activity that often made it difficult for her friends to keep up with her. “Well, let’s see … my guess is that Saturday’s a busy time in the confectionery world, and since Legendary prides itself on making its own products, someone in the family should be there by eight to crank up the machines or whatever they do, don’t you think?”
Rosco knew better than to reply. Belle was fond of posing questions she’d already answered. She glanced at the kitchen clock, an old-fashioned affair that needed winding every day and that seamlessly matched the retro appliances, the apple-green paint on the cabinets, and the dusty-rose linoleum floor: decor that had been in the house long before Belle and Rosco had come to inhabit it. “It’s now seven thirty-four.… If I leave now, allowing a little extra time for slippery road conditions, I should be at Legendary by—”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Rosco asked with an indulgent smile.
Belle forehead creased in thought. “The cookbook’s in my purse … car keys, too …” She looked at her feet, which were already clad in the lace-up boots she used for inclement weather. “Well, my coat, obviously, but I’ll grab that on my way out the door—”
“How about breakfast?”
“Breakfast?
“As in the stuff you eat first thing in the morning? The most important meal of the day, and all that?”
“Ah …” She gave him a wide grin. “I’m so accustomed to spending Saturday mornings with Sara and Al and the rest of the Breakfast Bunch down at Lawson’s that I forgot everyone was decorating the inn and we needed to rustle up our own grub today.”
“I don’t believe you for a second,” Rosco said, laughing. “You forgot about eating. Period.”
“Okay, so I might have had a momentary lapse—”
“Right. And when was the moment you were going to remember that you’d gone without an entire meal?”
Belle also laughed. “This is why we make such a compatible couple, Rosco. While I’m fretting about cerebral curiosities, you’re concentrating on life’s basic requirements: food, shelter, getting enough shut-eye, wearing foul-weather gear if it’s pouring … which is why I don’t have to worry about any of those things. You do it for me. It’s amazing how these things work out.”
“Brawn versus brain, cereal versus cerebral, is that what you’re saying?” Rosco asked as he pulled two bowls from a cabinet and filled them with granola.
Belle crossed behind him to open the refrigerator door and retrieve the yogurt they liked to spoon on top. As she passed her husband, she landed a quick peck on his cheek. “It’s not an either/or situation, Rosco.… It’s really brain and brawn. You get to do the physical bit because you’re a he-man and cute.” Then her brain made another rapid shift. “So what are you going to do while I’m on the trail of our elusive cook?”
“Oh, I thought I’d do some shelter activities: unclog all the drains, completely overhaul the furnace, fix any potential leaks in the roof, clean the gutters, maybe go out and shoot some bacon.”
It took a moment before Belle realized he was joking. “Seriously, what are you up to this morning? You finished your last case, right? So now what?”
“But not the support paperwork, and the final written report. Insurance companies are very fond of having all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed … so I guess I’ll be forced to use my sluggish intellect.”
“Very funny.”
OLD Karl Liebig himself was at the cash register when Belle entered Legendary Chocolates. He was a short, frail man with thin white hair, a hearing aid, and an old world German formality. “Lee-bick” is how he pronounced his surname; the “Karl” was as guttural as a growl. Despite being a chocolate maker for over half a century, it was unusual to see him in a position of responsibility. A stroke, combined with age, had robbed him of a good deal of his memory; and his son, the current owner, generally provided his father with easier activities such as serving as a welcoming presence in the front of the shop. Karl Liebig might forget names or the year or any number of supposedly hard facts, but he still possessed a radiant smile and could produce a compliment for any age group and any occasion. He reminded Belle of one of Santa’s most senior and jovial elves—albeit a slender one.
“Hi, Mr. Liebig,” Belle called as she walked in. She waved, as well, in case he’d heard the words but didn’t immediately know who’d spoken them.
His response was a beatific beam. “Good afternoon,” he said in the accent that proudly proclaimed his heritage. He gave Belle a courtly bow, bending from the waist like an antique mechanical doll. The gesture, combined with the stained-glass mural that filled the wall behind him, the shop’s white marble countertops, and the curlicued, solid brass brackets that supported the shelves displaying the day’s special wares, created a sense of elegance almost unknown in the twenty-first century food business. No shrink-wrapped, microwavable convenience goodies here. This was a place for discussion, consultation, and savoring possibilities. Should the caramels be covered with milk or dark chocolate? Would raspberry cream be preferable to butter-vanilla or nougat as a filling? Should the truffle have a mocha center or hazelnut or perhaps a hint of pistachio? Or what about hand-dipped fruit? Or cordial cherries spun in a chocolate skin? And that was just for starters.
There was also the aroma, which Belle considered wildly seductive. Why the men and women making and selling the sweets didn’t each weigh four hundred pounds was anybody’s guess. But there they were already bustling about: the three women and two men arranging the newest batch of treats in mouth-watering trays were not only not ov
erweight, they seemed ageless; they could have been in their thirties or grandmothers of grandfathers of sixty plus. Maybe Legendary had discovered a new dietary fad.
“Good morning, Mr. Liebig,” was Belle’s warm but slightly embarrassed reply to his “Good afternoon.” How did you respond to what was clearly a mistake without making the other person feel awkward?
She needn’t have worried. Old Karl Liebig had already forgotten her and turned his concentration to the glass case that sat atop the central counter, repositioning a dish of hand-decorated peppermints as if he were rearranging a display of gemstones.
His son, “Young Karl,” walked up the steps from the lower-level cooking and cooling rooms at that moment. Now nearing sixty, he’d been called Young Karl since the day he’d been born and doubtless would be long after his father was gone. This was Newcastle, after all, where memories outlasted one brief generation, and where patrons of the city’s various businesses remembered visiting the city’s shops with their own parents—or even their grandparents. If Stanley Hatch of Hatch’s Hardware still found patrons who referred to him as “Old Mr. Hatch’s grandson,” then the current owner and manager of Legendary Chocolates didn’t stand a chance of taking over his dad’s name—at least for those in the fifty-and-up category. Belle, however, was in her thirties. To her, Mr. Liebig’s son was simply Karl.
“’Morning, Belle,” he said. “I thought you’d be up at the inn with Sisters-in-Stitches.… I’m just finishing work on the chocolate village scene we’re contributing to this year’s holiday decor … dark, white, and milk: houses, people, and all. We even made molds of barns and buckboards and livestock. We can do that kind of thing fairly simply with polycarbonates. In my dad’s time, we would have needed tin or steel.… The trees we’re going to do in shortbread with cookie cutters and decorate them with greens sprinkles and white frosting for snow.”
“I can smell the results,” Belle said. “Or I can smell something fabulous.… Actually, I’m here because of a book I found yesterday. It’s a cookbook, and it contains dessert recipes that are chocolate-based.” She retrieved the slim volume from her purse. “Mitchell Marz couldn’t remember where he’d found it, but I thought you might have records dating from the period, and that maybe—” Even as Belle said the words, she realized how foolish they sounded. A handwritten book by an anonymous author, circa 1944 to ’46 and it wasn’t even certain the other person came from Newcastle or even Massachusetts.
“And that maybe?” Karl prompted.
Belle’s brow crinkled. “I know it’s a long shot—a very long shot—but do your records list any of your clients’ personal information: adults’ or kids’ birthdays or anniversaries—dates when they might have ordered something special? In other words, is there any way I might find a clue as to the person who created this volume? She dedicated it to her daughter, but the book hasn’t been used. In fact, it seems almost like new, which leads me to wonder whether the daughter in question was a young child when her mother wrote these recipes for her … too young to know of the cookbook’s existence.”
Karl smiled; he had the same winning expression as his father, although in his case the smile had a wide-open Americanism instead of his dad’s European decorum.
“Actually, what you’re asking is a terrific question. We do keep those kind of personal records. And we pride ourselves on making sure they’re up to date, sending out reminders about grandkids’ birthdays—or greatgrandkids or parents or in-laws as the case may be, as well as special events. The files are computerized now, but I’m sure my dad kept previous lists. It would take me a while to turn them up, though, if I can, which is a big if. Dad has always been a bit of a pack rat; he had his own system of storing information. As you can imagine, it’s not easy accessing it any longer.”
Belle regarded the old man, who was now sunnily moving about the shop as if he had never had a care in the world.
As if he knew Belle was thinking about him, he turned toward her. “Would you care to see how we make chocolates here at Legendary?” he asked.
“Dad, Belle came here hoping to access some of our stored files,” his son interjected, but the old man merely gazed at his offspring as though he wasn’t certain they’d met before.
Then he began walking calmly toward the stairs that led down to the rooms where the candy was produced. “In my father’s time, the molds for our holiday chocolates were often made of coin silver. Nowadays it’s tin or steel. Not so pretty, but more economical. We do a handsome Kris Kringle just like my father remembers from the old country—two feet tall, in dark, milk, and white. White isn’t technically chocolate, Miss, but cocoa butter, of course. We’ve found it’s easier for customers to think of it as a color instead of a different substance.… And milk chocolate wasn’t produced until 1875, which was only …” the old man paused, as though he’d lost his way through his journey through time, then his face suddenly brightened. “Ah! Our famous Kris Kringle.… As you can imagine, Miss, a mold as large as that formed out of silver would be prohibitively expensive.”
“Dad. I’m not sure Belle has time for a tour,” Karl interrupted, but his father ignored this suggestion as well.
“What did you say your name was, Miss?”
“Belle … Belle Graham.”
Old Mr. Liebig laughed. “As in Alexander Graham Bell, or like jingle bell?”
Belle winced. As long as she could remember, her name had caused jests, but she didn’t have time to respond, because Karl Liebig, Sr. was already marshaling her toward the stairs. “I only work in small batches, just like my grandfather did back in Germany before he emigrated to America.… Three generations of chocolate producers—which is a fine thing, isn’t it? Small batches are the only way to maintain the appropriate temperatures for melting and tempering. Good tempering of the product is imperative if you want to avoid fat bloom. Besides, those big commercial kettles frighten me. I have a little boy, you know. Young Karl, named after me. Ever since that woman up Boston-way fell into a thousand-pound vat of melting chocolate and died, I’ve worried about my child. They didn’t find the lady’s body for two days. A grown person … and no one missed her. Well, I would miss my boy.”
“What!” Belle gasped, but Mr. Liebig’s momentary return to his younger days had passed, and he gazed at her uncomprehending then abruptly turned away from the stairs to take up a post near the shop’s entrance instead.
“It’s an old story of Dad’s,” Karl murmured. “It happened during the Second World War when women were hired for many of the jobs men had previously taken. Supposedly, she was doing maintenance repair on a catwalk above the vats and fell. I gather she wasn’t on the regular payroll records, so no one missed her right off.”
“How awful,” Belle whispered. The image in her mind was not only ghoulish and gruesome, it was also horribly sad. A woman no one had missed. Hadn’t she had family or friends who’d noticed she’d gone? Or could foul play have been involved?
But the questions were to remain unanswered, because a trio of customers walked into the shop at that moment, all scraping snow from their shoes and dusting off their coats as they stood in the doorway. “Looks like we’re in for a heavier fall than they forecasted,” one of them said with a good-natured groan. “Over a foot, maybe, they’re saying now. The first snow of the year, and it’s gotta be a doozy. I predict, folks, that we don’t see the ground till springtime.”
Old Mr. Liebig and his son both shook their heads in rueful acceptance of this hypothesis. Then Young Karl turned back to Belle. “I’ll see if I can find Dad’s old records.… What are those dates you wanted?”
“Nineteen forty-four to ’46.” As she supplied the information, Belle couldn’t help but frown. The war years, she thought, when a woman had drowned in melting chocolate.
Five
WHILE Belle was in the midst of her unlikely quest at Legendary Chocolates, twelve-year-old E.T. Whitman was zipping up his parka, squashing his fleece-lined hat down on his head, and
tugging on his boots and waterproof mittens. He considered even the fiercest blizzard to be an absolutely terrific part of life. Not because he enjoyed playing outside, although he most certainly loved sledding, building weird and scary alien snow creatures, ambushing unwary passersby with snowballs from behind a “fort” of hedges just like any other boy his age. No, the real reason E.T. was so crazy about the white stuff was because of his job shoveling the pathways at the Paul Revere Inn. And it wasn’t just the money the Marz brothers paid him—although that was really, really nice—it was his sense of power and pride, which were two commodities in short supply in his home. At least, for him they were.
So as soon as the snow began to stick in earnest, accumulating in the crooks of the trees and coating the neighbors’ fancy gardens, E.T. was dressed, out the front door, on his bike, and peddling down the hill. His agility with this two-wheeled vehicle would have been the envy of any downhill skier. As he caromed along on his mission, he often imagined that his home was still part of the large farm that had spread into the western wilderness back when Newcastle was still a whaling port—instead of what the house really was: a funny old clapboard building with a lot of fancier, newer homes nearby.
E.T.’s “response time” (he liked to set records for himself) was usually under fourteen minutes: what he referred to as “observation of snow accumulation to delivery of services.” Zooming down the road, he considered how fortunate he was that it was a Saturday morning so he could spend all day at the inn, shoveling and reshoveling, putting out rock salt, deicing the steps. “Saturday A.M.,” he corrected himself in an officious tone. “Ante meridiem, which is Latin for ‘before noon.’ P.M. is post meridiem. Who doesn’t know that!”
He’d memorized a lot of similar facts, as well as other lesser-known but equally compelling expressions he found in the dictionary. The reference book was one of his all-time favorite reads (although this wasn’t information he shared with anyone), and he perused it as avidly as he did tales of pirates or space monsters or people who could travel back and forth through time. The words he gleaned from a section entitled “Foreign Words and Phrases” came in handy when the other kids at school ganged up on him.