Dying for Chocolate gs-2

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Despite much protestation from Arch, Julian and I tucked a cocoon of blankets around him. Tom Schulz moved chairs in for us all and then went in search of a vending machine. Within ten minutes he was back with a cardboard tray with four cups: one filled with water and three with steaming hot chocolate. Schulz mumbled an apology to Arch that the nurse had said clear liquids only. Arch smiled and said Schulz could buy him a milkshake when he got out of this place. Then he tossed off the pile of blankets and sat up to receive the water from Schulz’s big hands.

  “You should be down in the ER being treated with activated charcoal to get out the rest of that cantharidin,” I chided Schulz.

  He raised those wonderful tentlike bushy eyebrows at me, reached into his pocket, and pulled out some aspirin-shaped tablets. “Speaking of which,” he said, “a nurse in the ER gave me some when I identified myself and told her what happened. We can take it together.”

  I groaned, but took my medicine. Anything tastes good when you wash it down with chocolate.

  Then Schulz handed Julian a cup and demanded, “What happened to you?”

  Julian sipped. He said, “When I was doing some filing for the general, I found that letter from the Utah Bureau of Vital Records. It was a shock. I ran away. . . to think.” He told us briefly that he had seen the magazine erupt on his way back from Flicker Ridge, where he was going to practice camping skills the general had taught him the night he was supposed to have a date with Sissy. “I didn’t want anybody to know I might take off,” he said. “But I decided to come back. When I saw the explosions I knew there was only one place . . .”

  I told him Adele was gone. I said, “I’m sorry about Adele and Brian. Your . . . parents—”

  He said, “My parents are in Utah.” He paused. Dirt crusted along his hairline; he looked haggard. Arch gave Julian his adoring attention. Julian said, “Where’s Bo?”

  I told him. He sighed wearily. He said, “I really liked the general. I’d like to help him. You know, like be his support person when he’s going through his trial. That’s what Dr. Miller was always telling me. Everybody needs support.”

  I said nothing. I had tried to be supportive of Julian, but it had never worked out. And maybe Philip Miller had tried to be supportive of me. That had not worked out either, despite what may have been his intent. I conjured up Philip’s face. With some effort, I willed forgiveness.

  After a moment Julian turned to me. He said, “My scholarship at Elk Park runs through next year. I’d like to finish there. But I need a place to live and a part-time job.” He eyed me. His scalp under the bleached, clipped hair was covered with dried mud, like soil between parched rows of corn. There were dark smudges under his eyes. He put his cup down. I looked at Schulz, who raised his eyebrows.

  Julian went on, “You had a boarder once, Sissy told me. I know I’m not real. . . sophisticated.”

  “Julian—”

  “Let me finish. I’m asking if you would hire me to help cater. Teach me, like. Let me rent a room in your house. Please?” Before I could answer, he looked up at Arch and grinned. “I could help you with Arch, too. He likes me.”

  We were all silent.

  After a while Schulz said, “If she says no, you can come live with me.”

  I said, “She’s not going to say no.”

  Arch indicated he needed help getting into the bathroom, and Julian jumped to his aid. I looked at my watch. Time to phone John Richard.

  I was almost as surprised to reach John Richard at his house as he was to hear I was at the hospital. I told him Arch was fine, but that the Farquhars’ house had exploded. He demanded to know what the hell was going on, why the hysterical phone calls saying Arch was missing, unconscious, why the devil couldn’t I—

  I said, “You owe me.”

  He was stunned into silence. “Owe you what?”

  “Listen. Why did I have to go to the Farquhars in the first place? Because of you. You were jealous of Philip Miller. You tried to intimidate me.”

  The Jerk began to say, “Excuse me—”

  “You owe me,” I pressed on, “and you can either make it up to me now in terms of dollars and cents or you can wait for me to haul your stupid ass into court for breaking a bunch of flowerpots. That ought to be great publicity for your precious medical practice.”

  The Jerk hesitated. I could feel his rage through the telephone wire. He said, “What do you want?”

  Well, it didn’t take a corporate accountant to figure that one. I said, “I need money for two things. Number one, I’ve already started to put in a security system. You can pay for it. Number two, I need to change my name.”

  He said, “Again?”

  I told him briefly about George Pettigrew and Three Bears Catering, and that I needed money for legal fees.

  “How much?”

  I said, “I’ll send you the bill,” and hung up.

  Arch came out of the bathroom. Julian helped him back into bed and resettled the IV. Then they silently toasted each other with their cups of cocoa and water. Schulz took my hand and held it determinedly. I asked him if he was feeling all right and he said he was.

  He said, “Just tell me this. How come your ex-husband isn’t jealous of me?”

  I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

  Schulz said, “So what are you going to change your name to? Would you consider Schulz?”

  Oh my God. Julian gagged on his hot chocolate. I looked at Arch, who tilted his head and gave me a serene smile. I was utterly flabbergasted. Speechless, for once.

  Finally I said, “I can’t answer that one right now. Let me think about it. Thanks. Sheesh! I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well then,” Schulz went on, “for now, how about B-a-e-r? Sounds the same without the grizzly connotation. Of course, you could make it B-a-r-e, but people might get the wrong idea. Schulz has a better ring to it.”

  I smiled.

  “Well,” he said, “I’m not going to force the issue.”

  We were all quiet for a few minutes. I reflected on the people who had come to inhabit my life in the last month. That was what everyone wanted: to force love’s issue. Adele and Weezie adored Brian and had tried to make the adoration mutual. I had cherished the illusion that Adele was my friend and confidante. Julian was enamored of Sissy. Sissy in turn had great affection for the idea of being married to a doctor. And I wanted to make Arch love me, so that he would choose to live with me instead of his father.

  “Mom,” Arch said, as if he were reading my mind. He put down his cup. “I’m sorry I said that about going to live with Dad. I’d like to stay with you. I mean, if you want me to.” I got up to hug him. Schulz joined us. Julian held back, but after a moment he put a hand on my shoulder and a hand on Arch’s back.

  When we were all hugging, Arch said, “Can Julian share my room?”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her family. She is the author of eleven bestselling culinary mysteries.

  If you enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s Dying for Chocolate, you won’t want to miss any of the tantalizing mysteries in her nationally bestselling culinary mystery series!

  Look for CHOPPING SPREE the newest mystery, at your favorite bookseller’s.

  CHOPPING

  SPREE

  by

  Diane

  Mott

  Davidson

  Turn the page for an exciting preview. . . .

  Success can kill you.

  So my best friend had been telling me, anyway. Too much success is like arsenic in chocolate cake. Eat a slice a day, Marla announced with a sweep of her plump, bejeweled fingers, and you’ll get cancer. Gobble the whole cake?. You’ll keel over and die on the spot.

  These observations, made over the course of a snowy March, had not cheered me. Besides, I’d have thought that Marla, with her inherited wealth and passion for shopping, would applaud the upward leap of my catering business. But she said she was worried a
bout me.

  Frankly, I was worried about me, too.

  In mid-March I’d invited Marla over to taste cookies. Despite a sudden but typical Colorado blizzard, she’d roared over to our small house off Aspen Meadow’s Main Street in her shiny new BMW four-wheel drive. Sitting in our commercial kitchen, she’d munched on ginger snaps and spice cookies, and harped on the fact that the newly frantic pace of my work had coincided with my fourteen-year-old son Arch’s increasingly rotten behavior. I knew Marla doted on Arch.

  But in this, too, she was right.

  Arch’s foray into athletics, begun that winter with snowboarding and a stint on his school’s fencing team, had ended with a trophy, a sprained ankle, and an unprecedented burst of physical self-confidence. He’d been eager to plunge into spring sports. When he’d decided on lacrosse, I’d been happy for him. That changed when I attended the first game. Watching my son forcefully shove an opponent aside and steal the ball, I’d felt queasy. With Arch’s father—a rich doctor who’d had many violent episodes himself—now serving time for parole violation, all that slashing and hitting was more than I could take.

  But even more worrisome than the sport itself, Marla and I agreed, were Arch’s new teammates: an unrepentant gang of spoiled, acquisitive brats. Unfortunately, Arch thought the lacrosse guys were beyond cool. He spent hours with them, claiming that he “forgot” to tell us where he was going after practice. We could have sent him an e-mail telling him to call, Arch protested, if he only had what all his pals had, to wit, Internet-access watches. Your own watch could have told you what time it was, I’d told him, when I picked him up from the country-club estate where the senior who was supposed to drive him home had left him off.

  Arch ignored me. These new friends, he’d announced glumly, also had Global Positioning System calculators, Model Bezillion Palm pilots, and electric-acoustic guitars that cost eight hundred dollars—and up. These litanies were always accompanied with not-so-tactful reminders that his fifteenth birthday was right around the corner. He wanted everything on his list, he announced as he tucked a scroll of paper into my purse. After all, with all the parties I’d booked, I could finally afford to get him some really good stuff.

  And no telling what’ll happen if I don’t get what I want, he’d added darkly. (Marla informed me that he’d already given her a list.) I’d shrugged as Arch clopped into the house ahead of me. I’d started stuffing sautéed chicken breasts with wild rice and spinach. The next day, Tom had picked up Arch at another friend’s house. When my son waltzed into the kitchen, I almost didn’t recognize him.

  His head was shaved.

  “They Bic’d me,” he declared, tossing a lime into the air and catching it in the net of his lacrosse stick.

  “They bicked you?” I exclaimed incredulously.

  “Bic, Mom. Like the razor.” He rubbed his bare scalp, then flipped the lime again. “And I would have been home on time, if you’d bought me the Palm, to remind me to tell the guy shaving my head that I had to go.”

  I snagged the lime in midair. “Go start on your homework, buster. You got a C on the last anatomy test. And from now on, either Tom or I will pick you up right from practice.”

  On his way out of the kitchen, he whacked his lacrosse stick on the floor. I called after him please not to do that. I got no reply. The next day, much to Arch’s sulking chagrin, Tom had picked him up directly from practice. If being athletic is what success at that school looks like, Tom told me, then maybe Arch should take up painting. I kept mum. The next day, I was ashamed to admit, I’d pulled out Arch’s birthday list and bought him the Palm pilot.

  Call it working mom’s guilt, I’d thought, as I stuffed tiny cream puffs with shrimp salad. Still, I was not sorry I was making more money than ever before. I did not regret that Goldilocks’ Catering Where Everything Is Just Right! had gone from booked to overbooked. Finally, I was giving those caterers in Denver, forty miles to the east, a run for their shrimp rolls. This was what I’d always wanted, right?

  Take my best upcoming week, I’d explained to Marla as she moved on to test my cheesecake bars and raspberry brownies. The second week of April, I would make close to ten thousand dollars—a record. I’d booked an upscale cocktail party at Westside Mall, a wedding reception, and two big luncheons. Once I survived all that, Friday, April the fifteenth, was Arch’s birthday. By then, I’d finally have the cash to buy him something, as Arch himself had said, really good.

  “Goldy, don’t do all that,” Marla warned as she downed one of my new Spice-of-Life Cookies. The buttery cookies featured large amounts of ginger, cinnamon, and freshly grated nutmeg, and were as comforting as anything from Grandma’s kitchen. “You’ll be too exhausted even to make a birthday cake. Listen to me, now. You need to decrease your bookings, hire some help, be stricter with Arch, and take care of yourself for a change. If you don’t, you’re going to die.”

  Marla was always one for the insightful observation.

  I didn’t listen. At least, not soon enough.

  The time leading up to that lucrative week in April became even busier and more frenetic. Arch occasionally slipped away from practice before Tom, coming up from his investigative work at the sheriff’s department, could snag him. I was unable to remember the last time I’d had a decent night’s sleep. So I suppose it was inevitable that, at ten-twenty on the morning of April eleventh, I had what’s known in the shrink business as a crisis. At least, that’s what they’d called it years ago, during my pursuit of a singularly unhelpful degree in psychology.

  I was inside our walk-in refrigerator when I blacked out. Just before hitting the walk-in’s cold floor, I grabbed a metal shelf. Plastic bags of tomatoes, scallions, celery, shallots, and gingerroot spewed in every direction, and my bottom thumped the floor. I thought, I don’t have time for this.

  I struggled to get up, and belatedly realized this meltdown wasn’t that hard to figure out. I’d been up since five A.M. With one of the luncheon preps done, I was focusing on the mall cocktail party that evening. Or at least I had been focusing on it, before my eyes, legs, and back gave out.

  I groaned and quickly gathered the plastic bags. My back ached. My mind threw out the realization that I still did not know where Arch had been for three hours the previous afternoon, when lacrosse practice had been canceled. Neither Tom nor I had been aware of the calendar change. Tom had finally collected Arch from a seedy section of Denver’s Colfax Avenue. So what had this about-to-turn-fifteen-year-old been up to this time? Arch had refused to say.

  “Just do the catering,” I announced to the empty refrigerator. I replaced the plastic bags and asked the Almighty for perspective. Arch would get the third degree when he came down for breakfast. Meanwhile, I had work to do.

  Before falling on my behind, I’d been working on a concoction I’d dubbed Shoppers’ Chocolate Truffles. These rich goodies featured a dense, smooth chocolate interior coated with more satiny chocolate. So what had I been looking for in the refrigerator? I had no idea. I stomped out and slammed the door.

  I sagged against the counter and told myself the problem was fatigue. Or maybe my age—thirty-four—was kicking in. What would Marla say? She’d waggle a fork in my face and preach about the wages of success.

  I brushed myself off and quick-stepped to the sink. As water gushed over my hands, I remembered I’d been searching for the scoops of ganache, that sinfully rich mélange of melted bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, and liqueur that made up the heart of the truffles.

  I dried my hands and resolved to concentrate on dark chocolate, not the darker side of success. After all, I had followed one of Marla’s suggestions: I had hired help. But I had not cut back on parties. I’d forgotten what taking care of myself even felt like. And I seemed incapable of being stricter with Arch.

  I hustled over to my new kitchen computer and booted it up, intent on checking that evening’s assignment Soon my new printer was spitting out lists of needed foodstuffs, floor plans, and scheduled s
etup. I may have lost my mind, but I’d picked it right up again.

  “This is what happens when you give up caffeine!” I snarled at the ganache balls. Oops—that was twice I’d talked to myself in the last five minutes. Marla would not approve.

  I tugged the plastic wrap off the globes of ganache and spooned up a sample to check the consistency. The smooth, intense dark chocolate sent a zing of pleasure up my back. I moved to the stovetop, stirred the luxurious pool of melting chocolate, and took a whiff of the intoxicatingly rich scent. I told myself—silently—that everything was going to be all right. The party-goers were going to love me.

  The client for that night’s cocktail party was Barry Dean, an old friend who was now manager of Westside Mall, an upscale shopping center abutting the foothills west of Denver. I’d previously put on successful catered parties at Westside. Each time, the store-owners had raved. But Barry Dean, who’d only been managing the mall for six months, had seemed worried about the party’s dessert offering. I’d promised him his high-end spenders, for whom the party was geared, would flip over the truffles.

  Maybe I’d even get a big tip, I thought as I scraped down the sides of the double boiler. I could spend it on a new mattress. On it, I might eventually get some sleep.

  I stopped and took three deep breaths. My system craved coffee. Of course, I hadn’t given up espresso entirely. I was just trying to cut back from nine shots a day to two. Too much caffeine was causing my sleeplessness, Marla had declared. Of course, since we’d both been married to the same doctor—consecutively, not concurrently—she and I were self-proclaimed experts on all physical ailments. (Med Wives 101, we called it.) So I’d actually heeded her advice. My plan had been to have one shot at eight in the morning (a distant memory), another at four in the afternoon (too far in the future). Now my resolve was melting faster than the dark chocolate.