Cocoa Crush

by Jessica Beck

  The trash can was empty, and there wasn’t much space to hide something in the powder room. To be thorough though, I opened the vanity door and saw something pushed all the way toward the back.

  It was a washcloth with a bit of blood on it.

  Grabbing a hand towel, I reached in and pulled it out.

  Sure enough, a shattered crystal tumbler was inside the loose folds, and there were a few drops of blood on some of the pieces.

  It appeared that Lara had been telling the truth, about that, at any rate.

  But that didn’t make her innocent of murder. She could have cut her hand on the geode bookend and then staged the glass breakage to cover her tracks. It would have been a clever move, but I was on to her.

  As things stood, it was just another piece of information to file away. I decided not to return the broken glass to its hiding spot, and as I opened the door, I had the washcloth secured in the crook of my arm.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to take those out of the restroom,” Hazel said as she met me.

  “I need it for something,” I told her.

  She didn’t even push me on it. “Suzanne, we need to talk.”

  “That was my sentiment exactly,” I said. “I was just about to come looking for you.”

  “Why do you need to speak with me?” she asked me quizzically.

  “I understand that you had hard words with Jason just before he died,” I said, doing my best to watch her expression as I said it. She was a good friend of mine, someone I liked and admired, but that didn’t exempt her from our investigation. I knew firsthand that sometimes killers could be nice people pushed into extraordinary situations. Just because Hazel was a friend didn’t give her a free pass. I needed to push her just as hard as I did our other suspects, no matter what it might do to our friendship later if she turned out to be innocent. I’d lost friends before in the course of my investigations, but no matter how much it pained me, I couldn’t let that stop me from pursuing the truth.

  Hazel was taken aback by my statement. She wanted to be angry, I could see it in her eyes, but after a moment, the irritation segued into resignation.

  “You’re right. We might as well get this over with. I need to tell you the truth.”

  Was my friend about to confess to murder right then and there? “Did you do it, Hazel?” I asked her softly, hoping against hope that it wasn’t true.

  “Did I what? Kill him? Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied. After a moment’s thought, she added, “Given the circumstances, I don’t suppose it’s that ridiculous a question after all. No, I was angry enough to slap him hard in the face, but I never would have killed the man. It was awful finding him like that, wasn’t it?”

  It had been quite a bit worse for Jason, but I knew what she meant. “If you didn’t kill him, then what exactly did you want to tell me?”

  “Just that I slapped his face and told him that he didn’t deserve Elizabeth,” Hazel said. “It wasn’t a love tap, either. I hit him hard enough to get his attention, and it left an angry red mark on his cheek! I couldn’t believe he had the gall to bring his mistress to the party!”

  Was that his greatest sin in her eyes, when he’d seemed to commit so many others? “How did he react to your slap?” I asked her.

  “He laughed at me! The truth is that it made me even more furious with him,” Hazel admitted, her eyes blazing for a moment.

  “What did you do then?”

  “Given the circumstances, I’m not sure what I would have done, but Jennifer came in at the very end and witnessed the last bit. She grabbed me and pulled me out of that bedroom suite before I could do anything else. I was angry with her at the time for butting in, but now I’m glad that she cared enough to do it.”

  I supposed that it was an alibi of sorts, but I needed confirmation. I looked around for Jennifer to see if I could ask her, but she was nowhere in sight. Why did people keep disappearing when Jake and I had asked them to stay in one place?

  Hazel must have read my mind. “If you’re looking for Jennifer, she’s back talking to Jake.”

  “I didn’t even see him come out after he spoke with Cheyenne,” I admitted.

  “He was just here for a second,” Hazel admitted. “We need to figure out how to get out of here, Suzanne. Elizabeth is close to breaking down.”

  “Shouldn’t you be with her, then?” I asked her. It was spoken more out of compassion for our mutual friend than my role as an assistant in the investigation, but sometimes I needed to be a friend, too.

  “You’re right. I’m going to go to her now,” Hazel said, and then she was gone, not even looking back in my direction.

  I’d learned more than I’d expected, but my thoughts were just as confused as ever. I hoped Jake was getting a little clarity from his part of our investigation, and I couldn’t wait to compare notes with him. So far, it seemed that no one was exempted from our suspicion.

  I was about to go looking for Jake when we lost our backup power, too.

  Instantly, the entire room was plunged in darkness.

  I’d only thought that everything had been bathed in shadows before.

  But I’d been wrong.

  Now the entire room was pitch black.

  At least the total darkness was brief.

  After a few moments, the lights came back on in all of their glory.

  The brightness stung my eyes, and as I recovered my vision, I looked around to see how everyone else was reacting to the sudden influx of light.

  The scene was rather illuminating.

  Bernard had Candida by the arm, and she was wincing from the tightness of his grip. She looked terrified by her companion, and I wondered what had just transpired between them. Lara was inching her way toward the door to the vestibule, while her husband was clearly looking for her over by the bar. She looked guilty when we made eye contact, and I had to wonder if she’d been trying to slip away yet again. The three women in my book club had been gathered together on one of the sofas, and they were looking at each other as though one of them had just said something shocking, while Cheyenne and Joan were missing entirely. Were they in their suite, or had they already made their escape in the darkness? I realized they were still in their room when Cheyenne came barreling out of the suite area with Joan fast on her heels just as the main lights died again and we were forced to get by with backup lighting only.

  “What was that all about?” Cheyenne asked. “Is it gone again already? I thought we were going to have power again.”

  “It was just a surge,” Jake said.

  “I thought you were a cop, not an electrician,” Lara said, her face a little flushed.

  “Hey, I know things,” Jake answered with a shrug.

  “So do I,” Cheyenne said.

  “About electricity?” Henry asked.

  “No, about our hostess,” she said.

  “You need to be very careful about what you say next,” Elizabeth said as she started to stand. Hazel and Jennifer immediately stood to stop her, but I wasn’t sure that even the two of them could manage it given Elizabeth’s expression.

  “Why, are you going to sic your goons on me?” Cheyenne asked. “You are weak and pathetic, and what’s worse, you don’t even know it! You don’t even realize that I’ve got a part of Jason that you can never take away from me, and I’m certainly not afraid of your entourage of middle-aged hags.”

  “Who are you calling middle aged?” Hazel asked, displaying a flare of temper I hadn’t known she’d possessed. It was interesting to me that she hadn’t objected to being called a hag but to being categorized as middle aged.

  Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to restrain her friend. After Hazel was calmer, Elizabeth said icily, “You know nothing about me.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “I’m curious. What do you think you know?”

  “Plenty. For instance, I know that Jason told me that he was afraid you were going to try to kill him,” Cheyenne said.

&nb
sp; “Take that back! That’s a lie,” Elizabeth snarled. She was still grieving the loss of her husband, and her emotions were all on the surface.

  “We both know that it’s true, and I won’t be bullied by the likes of you,” Cheyenne said as she turned to Jake. “Ask her about the insurance policy she made Jason take out on his life a few weeks ago.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elizabeth said. “It was his idea, not mine.”

  “That’s not what he told us,” Cheyenne said.

  “Us?” Jennifer asked her.

  “Joan knew about it, too,” Cheyenne said. “Go on, ask her. Joan, tell them,” she urged as she turned to her coworker.

  “I had to process the check,” Joan explained almost apologetically.

  “That covers the fact that there was a new insurance policy taken out but not whose idea it was originally,” Hazel said.

  “Mr. Martin told me jokingly that he was worried about why his wife suddenly wanted to insure him,” Joan admitted. “I’m so sorry,” she said as she apologized to the recent widow.

  “I never said or did any such thing!” Elizabeth said loudly.

  “You can deny it all you want, but that doesn’t make it so,” Cheyenne said tauntingly.

  “That’s enough, ladies,” Bernard said. “Things are bad enough without the two of you squabbling.”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t want him dead, too,” Henry Jackson said. His outburst surprised me. So far I’d thought him to be a rather meek member of the party, but he was obviously furious now.

  “That’s ludicrous,” Bernard said.

  “There’s no use denying it. I heard you two arguing earlier,” Henry explained, not backing down under the man’s glare.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bernard answered, trying to blow the claim off.

  “Maybe I should refresh your memory then. You told him that if he didn’t have the interest payment he owed you by Monday morning, you’d break him down to nothing and make him wish he were never born.”

  Bernard looked at Henry as though he was a mosquito buzzing around his head. “I admit that we had words, and it is true that Jason was late with his payments, but as I told the inspector earlier, I needed the man alive if I were ever going to recoup my initial investment.”

  “Is that what they’re calling loansharking these days?” Henry asked defiantly.

  “You, sir, need to watch your tongue,” Bernard said as he took a step toward Henry. “You had more reason to kill our host than I did. He lost your life savings, didn’t he?”

  “It was a deal that went bad. I keep telling everyone that it wasn’t Jason’s fault.”

  Bernard shrugged off his response and turned to Lara instead. “Is that how you feel about it, Mrs. Jackson?”

  “No, of course not, but it was only money. I wouldn’t kill anyone because of it, even him.”

  “So you say,” Candida replied, trying to back up Bernard’s attack.

  From where I was standing, I couldn’t tell who was more annoyed by her interjection, the Jacksons or Bernard Mallory.

  “Stay out of this, Candida,” Bernard told her.

  “You know that you don’t have to let him talk to you that way, don’t you?” Joan asked, surprising everyone by coming to Candida’s defense. First she’d tried to help Cheyenne, and now she was doing her best to support Candida.

  “Do you truly want to involve yourself in this?” Bernard asked her with a wicked smile. “What happened, did Jason rebuff your advances and you punished him for it?”

  Joan’s face reddened, and two women in particular looked at her harshly at the same time. I was certain that Cheyenne and Elizabeth had both been surprised by the accusation, based on their mirror expressions. “It never happened.”

  “So you say,” Bernard answered.

  “What about that group over there?” Lara asked as she pointed to the three members of the book club. “Maybe they all did it together.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Elizabeth said. “My friends are here to support me.”

  “Fine. If you didn’t all do it, maybe one of you did it to protect your friend,” Lara replied.

  I wasn’t about to admit it, but that possibility had certainly crossed my mind as well. Was it really possible, though? I’d spent quality time with those ladies, and the idea that one of them might be a murderer turned my stomach. Still, Jake and I couldn’t just dismiss the possibility because of our friendships.

  Speaking of Jake, he chose that moment to walk over to me and ask softly, “Suzanne, are you okay?”

  “I’m a little shaky, to be honest with you. They’re turning on each other like rats on a sinking ship, aren’t they? How did the rest of your interviews go?”

  “Cheyenne has a wicked temper, Henry certainly has his own reason, no matter how much he might deny it, and Jennifer seems like the type of woman who would have no trouble killing someone threatening her friend. The fact of the matter is that everyone here had a reason to hate Jason. I’m frankly amazed that he lived as long as he did with so many enemies.”

  “Poor Elizabeth. Look at her over there. I’m so worried about her.” My friend was staring off into space at the moment, completely lost in her own thoughts and oblivious to the current arguments.

  “You realize that you can’t let your emotions rule you right now,” Jake reminded me.

  “I know. It’s hard, though. Those women are my friends.”

  “I understand completely. Suzanne, I need you to do something for me while they are engaging in tearing each other down.”

  “Anything. All you have to do is ask. You know that.”

  He patted my shoulder gently. “I knew I could count on you. While they are all distracted, why don’t you slip away and do a quick search of the suites? I’d love to go with you, but things might turn ugly here, and I have to be able to step in if that happens. Are you okay doing it alone?”

  “Are you telling me that I need to search Elizabeth and Jason’s suite too?” I asked, remembering what the dead man had looked like when we’d first found him.

  “If you don’t want to do it, I understand,” Jake said.

  “No, I agree. It needs to be done. Are you sure you trust me to do it? You’re trained for this sort of thing, not me.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” he said with a brief grin. “Now go on before they notice that you’re gone. Good luck.”

  “You, too,” I said as I moved back into the shadows and made my way to the suites we were all occupying.

  It was time to do a quick recon and see if I could find any evidence that might help us figure out who had killed our host while Jake monitored the flaring tempers in the main area. His job was undoubtedly the more dangerous of the two, but if I got caught riffling through other people’s things, I might be the one in jeopardy.

  The answer was simple, even if it was going to be hard to pull off.

  I needed to be quick, thorough, and stealthy, all at the same time.

  It was going to be harder than it sounded, and it sounded nearly impossible, but I was going to do my best not to let my husband down.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to do anything just yet, though.

  I was about to slip away when I heard someone suddenly start sobbing and screaming at the same time.

  I’d been wondering when the enormity of our situation was going to make someone crack.

  I just hadn’t expected it to be Candida.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Why are we all just standing around calmly as though nothing happened tonight?” she started yelling. “A man is dead, and whether we liked him or not, we can’t just do nothing! Why isn’t someone going for help?”

  “Get a grip on yourself,” Bernard said sternly as he stared at his companion. “The inspector is doing all that he can, given the circumstances.” It was unusual to say the least to have the criminal come to the defense of the cop.

  “I won�
��t! If you won’t do something, then I will!” She started toward the penthouse door when Bernard’s hand lashed out with a quickness I never would have expected from him. She recoiled as though his grip had been on fire. “Get your hands off me! You’ve touched me for the last time!”

  “I know you’re upset, but you need to watch yourself very carefully right now,” Bernard said with a coldness in his voice that chilled me to my core.

  “I won’t!” She raced for the exit, but Jake was there one step ahead of her. He quickly moved in front of her to block her escape.

  In calm tones, he said, “Candida, we’re all upset by what happened, but there’s nothing we can do but wait. The guard will be back tomorrow morning, and all we can do is keep our heads until he returns. The truth of the matter is that unless the power comes back on, nobody’s going anywhere.”

  “Why aren’t you doing something about that, then? You claim to have been a cop. Do something!” she shouted.

  “I’m doing everything in my power,” Jake said. He looked around for someone to step in and comfort her, and I started toward her before Jake glanced in my direction and shook his head quickly. He then made a darting motion with his eyes that told me I should go now, while everyone else was distracted by Candida’s outburst. I knew in my heart that he was right, but it was difficult not going to someone’s aid when they were clearly in need of comforting.

  “Joan, could you give me a hand here?” Jake asked.

  The accountant looked startled, and more than a little bit pleased, to be called on for help. “Of course,” she said. As she approached Candida, she paused long enough to give Bernard one quick and withering look. Wrapping her arm around Candida’s shoulder, Joan said, “Come on. Let’s get you something to drink. Would you like some coffee, or maybe something stronger?”

  “I hate coffee,” she said, which was odd coming from a former barista. Then again, maybe that was why she didn’t like the drink anymore. I’d had a friend in high school who had worked one summer at an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, and by the time September rolled around, she couldn’t even look a scoop of vanilla in the eye.