Death by Chocolate

by Steven Henry

  “I’m not bringing you a severed finger.”

  “Aw, man,” he said. “I never get to do anything fun.”

  So Erin took the phone down to the morgue, and fifteen seconds later, she had her access. The first thing she looked at was text messages. She didn’t find anything, which suggested Ridgeway had deleted his texts. Back to tech support she went.

  Retrieving the deleted files was almost as quick as unlocking the phone. While they were at it, they disabled the security and did a full data dump.

  “This what you’re looking for, Detective?” the techie asked. He pointed to his computer monitor, where a sequence of flirty texts from a number labeled “Vivian” marched down the screen. They were interspersed with several to and from “Amber.”

  “Looks like it,” Erin said, impressed and disgusted at the way the dentist had been simultaneously juggling two girlfriends’ conversations. Some of the texts overlapped by mere minutes. “I’ll need everything off the phone.”

  “Sure thing,” the other officer said. “I’ll send you the package in a few.”

  “Thanks.” Erin took down Vivian’s number and went back upstairs. Webb was still talking with the Feds, or more accurately, he was waiting on hold. She dialed Vivian’s number from her desk phone.

  “Hello?” a female voice answered. She sounded cautious, and Erin didn’t blame her. An unsolicited call from an unidentified number was most likely unwelcome.

  “Hello, Vivian?” Erin guessed.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  “My name’s Detective O’Reilly, ma’am. I’m with the New York Police Department. I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Vivian retorted. Then she laughed. “Hold on, you’re Monica, aren’t you. Yeah, okay, good one. You got me. I believed you for a second.”

  “No, ma’am, this isn’t a joke,” Erin said. “What’s your last name, please?”

  “Hold on,” Vivian said. “You’re a cop, and you’re calling me, but you don’t know my name? How’d you get this number, anyway?”

  “Norman Ridgeway,” Erin said.

  “Norman?” Vivian sounded surprised, then annoyed. “Geez, for real? He put the cops on me? What a jackass. And there I thought he was an okay guy. Look, it was his idea. I told him it was stupid.”

  Erin sat forward. “What’d he do?” she asked.

  “I didn’t even know it was illegal,” Vivian said. “But maybe it is. If it is, it was his idea, like I said.”

  “Vivian,” Erin said, leaning forward and speaking more urgently. “If you’re mixed up in something, I can help you. But I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “The restaurant,” she said. “On Valentine’s Day. We jumped the line.”

  “What restaurant?”

  “Le Bernardin. On West 51st. Norm said we didn’t need a reservation, we’d just wait for a name to be called that wasn’t answered in the first ten seconds. Then he pretended to be the guy, and got us a table.”

  Erin sat back again in her chair, deflated. “He stole a guy’s dinner reservation? That’s what you’re worried about?”

  “Well, yeah,” Vivian said. “But it’s not like he took something for real. I mean, we paid for the meal. Why’s a detective going after us for that, anyway? Don’t you have, y’know, crimes to solve? Like, drug dealers or murderers or something?”

  Maybe both, Erin thought. “I need to talk to you about Norman,” she said. “What’s your full name, please, ma’am?”

  The other woman sighed audibly. “Vivian Berkley.”

  “Can you come in to the station?”

  Vivian sighed again. “Do I have to?”

  “It’d be a big help,” Erin said. “But we can come to you if you’d rather.”

  “Okay,” Vivian said, sounding like a pouty teenager agreeing to an unreasonable request. “Where are you?”

  “Precinct 8,” Erin said, giving the address. “When can you be here?”

  Unexpectedly, Vivian giggled. “I’ll tell Mom I’m helping with an important police investigation. She’ll be pissed, but she can’t say anything about it. I guess I can get there in an hour.”

  “Ms. Berkley, how old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Jesus, Erin thought. Norman Ridgeway had been a real piece of work. “I’ll see you in an hour,” she said. “Tell the sergeant at the front desk that you need to see Detective O’Reilly.”

  Webb was still on hold. He glanced at Erin as she hung up. “You got another suspect for us?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s nineteen. I don’t see a teenage girl doing something like this. She sounded like she was practically in high school.”

  “Really?” Webb was unimpressed. “A teenage girl doesn’t have the heart for revenge? Where’d you go to high school? She’s on the list.”

  Erin sighed. “Yeah, she’s on the list.”

  Chapter 5

  Vic joined the other two detectives while they waited for Vivian to show up. The big Russian cracked his knuckles and smiled, leaning back in his chair.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Erin said. “What’d you get out of Nicoletti?”

  “Nothing much,” he said. “I got a couple of his buyers. I’ll kick it over to SNEU.”

  Erin knew all about the Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit. They were the notorious cowboys of the NYPD, running plainclothes operations against low-level drug dealers. She’d toyed with the idea of joining them, back when she was new on the force. Her dad had advised her not to.

  “They’re too close to the street,” he’d said. “All that cash, all those drugs, just lying around. Working plainclothes, doing buy-and-bust, getting too chummy with dealers and CIs. It’s just a baby step from that to being a gangster yourself.”

  Erin wondered what he’d say if he knew about her boyfriend. How the hell was she ever supposed to break the news?

  “Why are you so happy, then?” she asked Vic, pushing her worries to the back of her mind. Drug buyers were a pretty low priority for the NYPD these days.

  He shrugged. “Any day I can make a low-level perp cry isn’t a day wasted. It beats the hell out of paperwork.”

  “You made him cry?”

  “Only a little.” Vic was still grinning. “I’ve dealt with hardcore criminals, and this Nicoletti’s just a small-time punk. It’s like if a Chihuahua was growling at Rolf, and we locked them in a room together.”

  “Chihuahuas can be nasty,” Erin said. “They’re more likely to bite you than pit bulls.”

  “But you’re more likely to remember a bite from a pit bull,” Vic retorted. “Trust me, this guy’s a little yappy dog. Rolf takes on a Chihuahua, he’ll eat everything but the bark.”

  Erin dropped a hand and scratched Rolf behind the ears. “You’re not kidding. But he didn’t confess to the poison?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did he know his girl was sleeping with her boss?”

  Vic snorted. “He says he didn’t. But he did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He had to pretend. It’d make him less of a man otherwise.”

  “Little dogs want to look like big dogs,” she agreed. “So he’s still a suspect?”

  “Yeah. And with him ratting out his dealer, the Narcs can hold him while we sort this out. When’s this chick coming to see you?”

  “An hour, give or take.”

  “Good,” Webb broke in. “That’ll give Neshenko time to fill out his DD-5 for Nicoletti.”

  “And just like that, the good feeling’s gone,” Erin said, smiling sweetly at Vic.

  He winked and gave her an air-kiss.

  * * *

  Vivian Berkley swayed into the Major Crimes office on three-inch heels, wearing a tight sweater and a skirt a little too short for February in Manhattan. Her makeup and clothes were deliberately, self-consciously adult, but Erin, remembering their phone conversation, saw right th
rough it. This was a kid playing grown-up.

  “Miss Berkley?” Erin said, standing up.

  Vivian gave her a bright, artificial smile. “That’s me.”

  “I’m Detective O’Reilly. We can talk here, or we can go somewhere quieter.”

  The young woman glanced around the office with interest. “This is fine. Oh! You have a dog!”

  “This is Rolf. He’s a trained K-9.”

  Vivian carefully knelt to offer her hand to the Shepherd, tottering on her heels. Rolf gave the hand a polite sniff. “Can he smell, like, drugs and stuff?”

  “He’s trained in explosives detection, suspect tracking, and apprehension.”

  “Oh, yeah! I remember! You were the cop who did that thing at the Civic Center! They talked about you on the news!” Vivian’s eyes sparkled. “Wait till I post this. I got to meet a celebrity!”

  Erin made brief eye contact with Vic over Vivian’s shoulder. He rolled his eyes at her, clearly trying not to laugh. He’d been right beside her and Rolf as the three of them had stopped a terrorist plot at the last possible moment, but no one was fawning over him. Maybe because he was just about the least photogenic member of the NYPD. Erin reminded herself to give him some crap about that later. For the moment, she’d leverage her fifteen minutes of fame to get what she needed.

  “Miss Berkley, have a seat,” she said, pulling a spare chair over to her desk. “Tell me about Norman Ridgeway.”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s the nature of your relationship with him?”

  Vivian giggled. “It’s not exactly a relationship. I mean, it’s not like we’re, you know, exclusive or anything.”

  “Is it physically intimate?”

  “You mean, like, sex?” Vivian giggled again and glanced sidelong at Webb and Vic. Webb was ignoring the whole thing, pretending to do paperwork. Vic was watching the two women with an eyebrow sardonically raised.

  “That’s right,” Erin said.

  “Well, duh! What do you think?”

  “You told me on the phone that you and Mr. Ridgeway had dinner together, night before last. Did you have an intimate encounter, either before or after dinner?”

  “Both.” Vivian giggled yet again. Erin was finding it more annoying each time.

  “Did he give you anything as a Valentine’s present?”

  “Yeah. I’m wearing it right now.”

  “What is it?” Erin looked the woman over.

  Vivian smiled slyly. “You can’t see it from here,” she whispered.

  Erin didn’t press for details. “Did you give him anything? Clothes, candy, anything like that?”

  The young woman shook her head. “No, he buys me gifts. He says it’s enough of a present that I’m there with him. Hey, what’s going on here, anyway? Did Norman do something wrong? I mean, besides the reservation.”

  “We’re trying to figure out what happened,” Erin said.

  “Is he under arrest?”

  “No,” she said truthfully.

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “Miss Berkley, do you know anyone who’d want to hurt him?”

  “The guy whose reservation he swiped,” she said with another giggle. Then she saw the look in Erin’s eye and the giggle died away. “Wait a second. You’re serious? Did someone hurt him? Is he okay?”

  Erin kept looking at her, watching for any sign of a lie, any guilt. What she saw was a girl, younger than she wanted to be, a little scared and getting more scared by the second as the silence stretched out.

  “Where is he?” Vivian asked. “How bad is he… what… how…”

  “He’s dead,” Erin said. It was harsh, but detectives couldn’t always play nice. She needed to see the girl’s reaction.

  “No, he’s not,” Vivian said. “I mean, I just had dinner with him two days ago. He had salmon… the organic salmon with… with peas and mint-tarragon sauce.”

  “Do you know Amber Hayward?” Erin asked.

  The girl shook her head. “We had Tahitian vanilla ice cream for dessert,” she went on. “At his place, afterward, he gave me champagne and strawberries, just like in Pretty Woman. He’s not dead. You made a mistake.”

  Erin stifled a sigh. “Miss Berkley, I need you to think. Did you see a box of chocolate at Mr. Ridgeway’s home?”

  “Chocolate?” Vivian looked confused.

  “One of those sampler boxes,” Erin explained. “Like you get at a drugstore.”

  “Oh.” Vivian’s brow wrinkled. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did you stay overnight?”

  “Of course not! Mom would kill me!” Vivian paused awkwardly. “I mean, she’d be mad. She wouldn’t actually kill me. Like, for real.”

  “Could you give me your address and your mother’s phone number?” Erin asked. “In case we need to double-check anything.”

  “You don’t have to tell her about Norman, do you?” Vivian asked. “Mom and Dad say he’s way too old for me. You’d think I was still sixteen or something. They just don’t get that I’m grown up now.”

  “Right,” Erin said, noticing that the girl seemed almost as upset at her parents’ view of her love life as she was at the news her boyfriend was dead. “If you could just write down that contact information, I think that’ll do it for now.”

  “Okay.” Vivian reached for the notepad on Erin’s desk, then paused. “Hey, can I get, like, a selfie with you?”

  Webb looked up from his paperwork and raised his eyebrows at Erin.

  “Police don’t give selfies during an ongoing investigation,” Erin said with a straight face. She was pretty sure that wasn’t in the Patrol Guide, but she was equally sure Vivian Berkley hadn’t read the Patrol Guide.

  * * *

  “Well?” Webb asked, as the echoing click of Vivian’s high heels died away in the stairwell. “Think she’s a murderer?”

  Erin shook her head. “I’m not seeing it. But I guess if she did want to kill him, it’d make sense to use poison. Maybe she wasn’t trying to take him out, just get his attention.”

  “Like with suicide attempts,” Webb said. Every cop who’d worked Patrol had been called to at least one scene where some unhappy girl had swallowed a bunch of pills. The victim often didn’t really want to die. That made it all the more tragically pointless when they sometimes died anyway.

  “If she gave him cyanide to get him to notice her, I’d hate to see what she’d do if she was pissed off,” Vic said.

  “We can’t rule it out,” Webb said. “O’Reilly, you worked that poisoning case last year, the Heartbreak Killer. Didn’t he use the same poison?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But that was a totally different MO. His scenes were always carefully staged. This? This is almost accidental. Anyone could’ve eaten those chocolates. Hell, the hygienist, Hayward, could’ve just as easily gone for an almond candy and it’d be her on a slab.”

  “That’s what I don’t like about it,” Webb said. “Has it occurred to anyone else that the candy might’ve been doctored before it was even sold?”

  Vic snapped his fingers. “Yeah. Like that asshole in Britain back in the Eighties. I forget his name. Rodney something-or-other. He was poisoning baby food on store shelves. Put some kids in the hospital. Didn’t Reader’s Digest do a story on him?”

  “I didn’t follow Reader’s Digest growing up,” Erin said. “But I remember hearing about that. My dad told us when they caught him. The thing I remember is, that guy was a former cop. That was how he kept ahead of the police for as long as he did. It was a blackmail attempt on the food company.” She looked at Webb. “Sir, you don’t think…?”

  “It’s a possibility,” he said, looking unhappy. “If that’s the case, we can expect some sort of demand for money, probably to the candy company.”

  “I can call them, see if they’ve gotten any blackmail letters,” Vic suggested.

  “If that’s what’s going on,” Erin said, “we can expect another poisoning or two.”

  �
�I’m aware of that,” Webb said.

  “Do you have any idea how much chocolate gets sold in New York for Valentine’s Day?” Vic asked rhetorically.

  “We’re not putting out a citywide warning,” Webb said. “Not unless New York is prepared for a multi-million-dollar lawsuit from every candy company on the eastern seaboard, not to mention a general panic.”

  “What if someone else gets poisoned?” Erin replied.

  “Then we inform the Captain, the Captain talks to the Commissioner, and the Commissioner takes it to the Mayor,” Webb replied. “This shit rolls uphill. Then we have a panic.”

  “On the plus side, maybe it’ll help New Yorkers with their diet programs,” Vic said.

  “I’ll put out the word so we hear about any other cyanide poisonings,” Webb said. “That’s as far as we’re going down that road. In the meantime, let’s assume this was a personal killing. I want to dig into Ridgeway, find out what other skeletons he’s got in his closet. This is the sort of guy who stole dinner reservations and juggled girlfriends. I don’t care if he liked to talk dinosaurs with little boys. Let’s face it, people were going to want to hurt him.”

  That was how Erin ended up spending her afternoon digging through a dead dentist’s financial records. Not for the first time, she found herself missing Kira Jones and her knack for sifting data. It was like doing someone else’s taxes, someone who didn’t save receipts but insisted on itemizing everything. She found some little irregularities, but nothing damning. By the time they knocked off for the day, she had a dull, pounding headache. What she wanted was to go home, get a stiff drink, and crash in front of the TV. But she had a prior obligation. Carlyle was expecting her.

  She had a little time to herself, at least. She took Rolf to the local park and did some detection training. She had training aids containing trace amounts of various explosives. She hid several fake items along with the real thing. Rolf unerringly detected the right sample, sitting in front of it and wagging his tail, but staying otherwise motionless. Erin rewarded him with his favorite chew-toy. Watching the K-9 happily gnawing, she felt a little better. Then it was time to shower, feed the dog and herself, and figure out what to wear.