Cocoa Crush

by Jessica Beck

  “I’m certain that your husband is more than qualified,” Bernard said, making it clear that he was not sure of any such thing at all. “But honestly, why should he bother? When the power comes back on, we can summon the real police and be done with it.”

  “I am the real police,” Jake said as he walked into the room.

  “You said that you were retired,” Lara reminded him.

  “That may be true, but I still hold reserve state police inspector status for life,” Jake said matter-of-factly. “Just because I’m not actively on the force doesn’t mean that I don’t have all of the powers of an active-duty law enforcement officer.”

  That was news to me, but then again, Jake kept a great deal about his past professional life to himself.

  “Be that as it may, that still doesn’t cover her,” Lara said as she pointed a finger at me.

  “I’m pretty sure we all know that you’re talking about me without needing any visual clarification,” I answered with a wry smile.

  Jake shook his head. “As a matter of fact, this time it covers my wife, too. I have the right to designate a deputy under certain extenuating circumstances, and I am officially naming Suzanne as such right now.”

  Wow, I’d never been a deputy before. “Cool,” I said without meaning to say it out loud. It may not have been the best response I could have made, but it was indeed neat that my husband had officially named me as his assistant.

  “I don’t choose to acknowledge either one of you as having authority over me. I believe that we should wait for the active police to arrive,” Cheyenne said bluntly. She was forcing Jake’s hand, and I wasn’t sure how my husband would react to it. One thing was certain; I knew that he wouldn’t back down.

  Jake didn’t disappoint me, either. “Fine. If you’ll follow me, please.”

  “Where are we going?” Cheyenne asked him.

  “Anyone, and I mean anyone, who refuses to answer questions will be sequestered until reinforcements arrive.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Bernard Mallory asked as he took a step forward.

  “I’m locking her up in one of the suites until I have more backup on the scene,” Jake explained.

  “I’m going with her, if that’s the case,” Joan said. I hadn’t thought they were friends, but evidently Joan felt a little more loyalty to her coworker than Cheyenne clearly felt toward her.

  Jake turned and studied the accountant carefully for three seconds before he answered. “No. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” It was short and sweet, and it left no room for debate.

  Joan appeared to consider pushing him a bit, but after studying my husband’s dour expression for a second, she clearly decided that it wasn’t an issue she wished to pursue. It was a smart decision, since Jake was clearly in no mood to argue with anyone.

  Instead, she turned to Cheyenne and said, “Why don’t you just do what he says? There’s really no reason to make such a fuss.”

  Candida surprised us all by saying, “She doesn’t have to, and neither do any of the rest of us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think he has any right to bully us like this.”

  Bernard clearly didn’t care for his companion speaking up. “Candida, we need to cooperate with the authorities. Fully. Do you understand?” The last bit was said in a chilling voice. Was the man actually threatening her in front of all of us? I wanted to say something, but what was there I could say?

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, her resolve instantly broken. Whether her apology was directed toward Jake or Bernard I didn’t know, but it was clear that Candida would be cooperating from here on out, and just as obvious who the true bully was. What kind of hold did Bernard have over the former barista?

  “Fine, I give in. I’ll cooperate! How are we going to do this?” Cheyenne asked. Her eyes were red, and I had to guess that she’d been crying. Was it over her lost boyfriend or the life that she may have created in a fantasy about them living happily ever after once Elizabeth was out of the way? Surprisingly, it appeared that Joan had been crying as well. I had to wonder what had driven her to tears. Had she been that close to her former employer, or was it simply a reaction to a sudden and violent death? I knew from firsthand experience that murder up close could be a shattering experience to endure.

  Jake took in a deep breath, and then he let it out slowly before answering Cheyenne’s question. “I’m going to take each of you into my suite, one by one. When we are there, we are going to have a brief conversation about what happened, and after we’re finished, you are going to come back in here. Now listen carefully, because this is very important. You will not discuss anything with each other before or after I speak with you, and Suzanne is going to be here to make sure you obey that request. Is that understood?”

  There were a few noted “yeses” and even more nods. Apparently everyone had decided to cooperate after Cheyenne had been censured.

  At least that’s what I thought.

  Before Jake could call his first interview subject though, Henry spoke up softly. “She made a good point, you know, and you never really addressed it.”

  “What point might that be?” Jake asked.

  I knew the answer, and I had a hunch that Jake did, too, but he was going to make the man say it out loud.

  “We should wait for the active police, for want of a better term,” he said reluctantly. “My friend deserves at least that much.”

  “And what happens if someone else dies while we’re standing around waiting for the power to come back on and the local authorities to show up?” Jake asked him. “Do you want that blood on your hands, Henry? Do any of you? Because I can tell you for sure that I for one certainly do not.”

  “What makes you think whoever killed Jason is going to strike again?” Lara asked with a hint of hesitation in her voice. Her icy demeanor was beginning to show a few cracks around the edges, and I had to believe that the woman was truly frightened. Then again, why wouldn’t she be? As far as I was concerned, it was the only sane reaction to have at the moment.

  “There could be a dozen reasons,” Jake stated, “but I don’t feel like going over them one by one with each of you. Suffice it to say that none of us is safe until we figure out who the real killer is.” Jake looked around the room for a moment before he asked my friend, “Elizabeth, would you please come with me?”

  She looked absolutely shocked when he called her name, but I’d been expecting it myself. If I hadn’t known anyone involved, I would have started with her as well. The surviving spouse is always the first person to be interviewed in a case of homicide. After all, they usually had the most to gain, and the greatest motive as well.

  “You want to speak with me?” she asked, clearly incredulous at the impertinence of his request.

  “Don’t worry. It shouldn’t take long,” Jake said, trying his best to reassure her.

  “It’s all right, Elizabeth. I’m going in with you,” Jennifer said.

  “I am, too,” Hazel chimed in.

  Jake took a deep breath before turning to look at them each in turn. “I’m afraid that’s where you are both wrong, ladies. Just because you are friends with my wife doesn’t mean that you get any special favors in this investigation.”

  “It’s okay, Elizabeth,” I said, doing my best to reassure her that my husband would treat the matter delicately. “Jake’s a good guy.”

  “No offense, but I’m not sure that I can trust your opinion anymore, Suzanne,” Elizabeth said sourly.

  There was a real sting to her words, almost like a slap. It had been my experience in the past that whenever someone said “no offense,” that’s exactly what they meant to do, offend you. After a moment, she turned back to my husband and said, “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Jake shrugged in my direction, offering me his apologies for stirring things up, and then led her out of the room.

  I immediately walked over to Jennifer and Hazel and said, “I’m truly sorry abo
ut this, ladies.”

  Hazel frowned as she answered, “Suzanne, we’re not supposed to talk among ourselves while your husband is out of the room, remember?”

  In a way, she had a point. I couldn’t give myself special privileges, not when my friends were being grilled about their possible involvement in murder. I might be free to discuss the case with any of them I chose to, but it wasn’t fair for me to try to mend fences while everyone else had been cautioned not to speak.

  I just shrugged and walked back to one side of the room. At that moment, I couldn’t trust myself to speak. It was pretty clear how my friends felt about my role in this investigation, but there was nothing I could do about that. I had to follow Jake’s instructions, and that was all that mattered.

  Joan walked over to me a minute later and whispered, “Your friends aren’t being very nice to you, are they?”

  “They’re just under a lot of stress,” I said, making apologies for them, even though they had hurt my feelings.

  “That’s sweet of you to say, but friends don’t do that to friends,” she said.

  “We really shouldn’t be talking unless it’s about the case,” I reminded her.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Is there really any reason your husband even needs to speak with me? After all, I barely knew Jason.”

  “Apparently you knew him well enough to call him Jason, at any rate,” I said.

  “Everyone at work calls…called him that,” Joan explained. “I never should have accepted his invitation in the first place. He really didn’t need me here, at least not professionally.”

  “Are you saying that you were here because of a personal matter?” I asked, zeroing in on her words and what they might mean.

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” she said, flushing a bit as she did. “It’s just that…”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to each other,” Lara said as she looked pointedly at me.

  “I’m helping with the investigation, remember?” I asked. “We all just want the same thing, after all.”

  “What’s that, to make it out of here alive?” Candida asked timidly. One look from Bernard was enough to keep her from commenting further.

  It was a long six minutes, but Jake eventually led Elizabeth back into the room. “Mr. Mallory, come with me, please.”

  The only sign Bernard showed that the summons surprised him was a quickly raised eyebrow that was soon lowered again. “Of course,” he said.

  Jake gave me an inquisitive look, and in response, all I could do was shrug. I didn’t know anything that I hadn’t known before, and the odds of getting anything out of this group were growing less and less by the minute. This was one of the most challenging investigations I’d ever been a part of, and our isolation from civilization didn’t help matters any.

  In a very real way, we were on our own little island, and no one could escape.

  Then again, maybe that was a good thing.

  The killer, whether they liked it or not, was just as trapped by the storm as we all were.

  CHAPTER 13

  As Bernard followed Jake stoically into the other room, I decided to take advantage of the situation and go speak directly with Candida while I had the chance to get her full attention and, more importantly, chat with her away from the one person who seemed to have the most influence on her.

  “What do you want with me, Suzanne?” Candida said before I could get within three feet of her. “We aren’t supposed to be talking.”

  “You heard my husband. We’re working together on solving Jason’s murder, so you should feel free to chat with me,” I said.

  “Well, I certainly didn’t kill him. I had no reason to, for goodness’ sake,” she protested, her voice devolving into a whine. “What possible motive could I have had?”

  “Maybe he made a pass at you, and you lashed out in anger,” I said. I was grasping at straws, and we both knew it. After all, Candida had made a good point. Assuming that she didn’t have any immediate provocation, what motive could she possibly have? It was pretty obvious that she was somehow under the influence of her companion for the weekend, whether it was a good relationship or not, but I doubted that her willingness to please him included committing murder just because he asked her to.

  “He wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me,” Candida said forcefully, and I could see that she utterly believed it.

  “What made you exempt from his attention?” I asked. “He apparently went after just about everyone else.”

  “That’s easy. He wouldn’t dare cross Bernard,” she explained.

  “Why wouldn’t he do that?” I asked.

  Candida said defiantly, “Because Bernard owned Jason. He was so far in debt that he was never going to get his head above water. All it would take would be one word from my boyfriend, and Jason’s world would come tumbling down in an instant.”

  “You might not have a motive, but you just gave Bernard one,” I said.

  “Really? Think about it. Now that Jason is dead, how is Bernard going to possibly recoup his losses? They didn’t exactly have a legal and binding contract. If Jason had a broken arm or leg, then you might be able to justify accusing Bernard, but with the man dead, he’s just out of luck.”

  “He could always go after the widow,” I said, remembering the life insurance policies the married couple had taken out on each other so recently. Was murder considered an accidental death in it? If so, I had a feeling that Elizabeth was about to be a wealthy woman, whether she realized it yet or not.

  “On what grounds could he go after her? It would call too much attention to him and his operation, and if there’s anything he hates, it’s the limelight. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you and your husband are looking at the wrong people as suspects. With the amount of money Jason owed Bernard, it would have been in his best interests to keep the man alive for a very long time.”

  “You make a good point, but I have a question for you. Do you happen to have an alibi for the time of the murder?” I asked her. She may have been a barista in a past life, but this woman was sharp, and I was starting to see her appeal to Bernard, her physical assets notwithstanding.

  “That depends. When exactly do you believe it happened?” she asked me.

  It was a fair question, and what was more, it was one I didn’t have an immediate answer for. I started thinking out loud. “Answer me this. When was the last time anyone saw Jason alive?”

  “Do you mean besides the murderer?” she asked me with one eyebrow arched. The young woman had a wicked sense of humor, which was ordinarily something I liked, but I felt it was out of place at the moment, given the circumstances.

  “Yes, of course, besides the killer,” I amended.

  “I don’t know about anyone else, but the last time I saw him was just after you two left with the caterers.”

  I glanced at my watch and saw that it had been less than forty-five minutes ago that we’d let them out of the building. Was that really possible? So much had happened since we’d come back upstairs to tell them all we were leaving and get the secret of how to open the door from Jason so we could make our escape. It was hard to believe that so little time had passed since then, but at least it gave us a firm timeline. We could even shave some time off of that, since Jason’s body had been cold to the touch when we’d found him. I remembered my fingertips on his throat as I’d searched for a pulse, and how chilled his skin had been. Jake and I had left with the caterers at ten after seven, and we’d returned to the penthouse half an hour later. That left a tight window, but there was one huge problem with the scenario: Jake and I had both been away when the murder had occurred. That meant that we would have to rely on our witnesses for a great deal of our information, and if I’d learned anything in the past, it was that recollections could be wrong, no matter how recent. Also, the murderer would have no incentive to tell us the truth. That left us both a great deal of detecting to do if we were going to find the killer. />
  “Excuse me,” Candida said, bringing my attention back to our conversation. “You seemed to have lost interest in our conversation. I’m sorry. Am I boring you?” It appeared that would be a capital crime, at least in her mind.

  “Sorry about that. I was just considering the possibilities,” I said. “So, do you have an alibi from seven ten to seven forty?”

  “I was with Bernard the entire time. He can vouch for me, and I can testify that he was with me, as well,” she said.

  “I’m sure that he’ll alibi you, too. Did anyone else happen to see either of you the entire time?”

  Candida frowned for a split second, and that’s when I knew that I’d struck pay dirt. I decided to push her while her companion was still being grilled by my husband. “When did you two split up, Candida? You might as well tell me, because if you don’t, I’m sure that someone else will. This place isn’t big enough to do anything without someone else noticing.”

  Candida looked as though she was ready to take her chances that it wouldn’t happen, but after a moment’s hesitation, she finally admitted, “That dreadful Hazel pulled me aside to get my opinion on interior design. I tried to shake her off, but she is like some kind of tick. When I finally shed myself of her, I looked up and saw…well, never mind what I saw.”

  “You might as well tell me all of it.” I pushed her a little harder.

  “What are you talking about so earnestly, ladies?” Bernard asked as he joined us. “Candida, do you have a moment?”

  She couldn’t have looked any guiltier if she’d had actual blood on her hands. “Of course. We were just discussing the weather.”

  Candida glanced at me, begging me to back her up. I wasn’t in the habit of lying to or for strangers, but then again, if I got her on my side, maybe she’d be an asset to me later. “Tell us, what do you think, Bernard? Do you believe the ice storm is going to hit us full force, or will it turn into rain pretty soon? If you ask me, I’m betting on rain,” I said.