Death By Chocolate: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Shoppe Mysteries - Book 1)

by Cora Wilkins

  “Anne…red…food…dye.”

  With that he keeled over, unconscious, and my hand flew to my mouth. It wasn’t possible. I never used any sort of food colorings in my fudge, especially the chocolate flavor. Why would I? I moved closer, pushing through the crowd of people who were now gathered around his motionless body. I pressed two fingers to his neck, looking for a pulse, but deep down I knew he was gone.

  “Don’t go near him!” someone called out, pulling me away.

  “What? Why?” I asked, yanking my arm away from their grip.

  “You heard what he said. We all did. It was you. You poisoned him!”

  ***

  Half an hour later, the crowd had died down. Most of the festival-goers had gone home after either hearing or seeing the tragic demise of Mr. Frobisher, and a few others were huddled around in groups, whispering fervently and casting suspicious glances in my direction.

  Emergency medical technicians had shown up at the scene quite fast after the teenage girl had called 911, and they had tried to revive him to no avail. An emergency tracheotomy to open up his airways didn’t have any effect, and pumping adrenalin into his veins to stave off the allergic reaction did nothing. It was simply too late; he was already long gone by the time they arrived.

  The police had also been called, and the entire area had been cordoned off with yellow and black police tape. Mr. Frobisher’s body lay under a sheet for now, until the medical examiner was ready to take him to the morgue in the next town over. York was too small for facilities like that, and I’d overheard Deputy Ted saying an autopsy would be necessary to confirm that it was red food dye Mr. Frobisher had ingested. It could have been a horrible accident, but it could also prove foul play and intent to kill if that was the case, which was far more serious than if he had simply choked on a large piece of fudge like I had originally assumed was happening.

  While the police went around talking to everyone who was still at the festival, Chris stood by me, one arm around my shoulder and the other squeezing my hand.

  “Don’t worry,” he murmured as yet another person glared at me. “We know you didn’t do this. There has to be some other explanation. Perhaps he was allergic to something else he’d eaten today, and the reaction only just happened to finally occur as he was eating your fudge. A coincidence.”

  I slowly nodded. “I suppose so.”

  Kaye and Rosie had been furtively roaming around the park, gleaning information from the huddled groups of onlookers. They returned and spoke to Chris and me, their eyes wide.

  “Word is he knew it was an allergic reaction, and he was trying to reach into his pocket for an epi-pen,” Rosie said in a low voice. “But it wasn’t there.”

  That explained why he’d been frantically patting his front pocket earlier. Kaye let out a long sigh. “I still can’t believe he’s gone, just like that. He only just moved here, for heaven’s sake! The poor man.”

  Chris narrowed his eyes. “Hold on, hold on. Yes, I realize this is an extremely tragic event, but why is no one wondering why the epi-pen wasn’t in his pocket? A man who’s so allergic to something he could die within three minutes…wouldn’t you think he’d make sure he had one at all times?”

  Kaye wrinkled her nose. “You’re right. That is strange. Perhaps it fell out earlier on and he didn’t notice.”

  “Or maybe someone took it out,” I replied, casting a lingering glance around the park. Mr. Lilley was still there, and he was talking in hushed tones to Reverend Barker.

  Deputy Ted approached us a moment later. “Anne, I’m very sorry for the way people are talking about you,” he said. “I’m sure you had nothing to do with this, and I promise we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Thank you, Ted,” I said, nodding. “It’s just so awful. He really was a nice person.”

  Ted’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Yes, he was nice to some. Others not so much. Not the most popular man, overall. Anyway, obviously I can’t say much to you about this case while we’re still working on it, but I am going to have to come by to ask you a few questions in the next few days. All of you,” he said, looking at me and then glancing at Rosie and Kaye.

  “I understand.”

  He gave us a curt nod and then walked away, and Kaye’s husband Daniel hurriedly approached us soon afterwards.

  “Oh, honey,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I heard what happened. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

  Because of Daniel’s busy career, he was frequently stuck at the office, but he was always there when it was most important. Kaye buried her head in his chest as he embraced her, and he looked over her shoulder at the rest of us.

  “You’re all welcome to come over,” he said. “I’m sure none of you feel much like being alone right now. We’ve got plenty of food.”

  “That sounds lovely,” I said. “Thank you, Daniel. Rosie, how about you? And Chris?”

  “I’ll go wherever you go,” Chris replied, squeezing my shoulder, and Rosie nodded and agreed to come along too.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were sitting in Kaye and Daniel’s lounge room, and Daniel went off to the kitchen to make us all some hot tea.

  “So, what are we going to do?” Kaye said, looking over at me. “Should we open the shop tomorrow?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure how many customers we’ll get if half the townspeople are convinced I somehow poisoned Mr. Frobisher with my fudge, accidentally or not.”

  Rosie chimed in, her eyes narrowed in thought. “If we don’t open, that might make us look even more suspicious,” she said. “Like we’re trying to hide something.”

  “You’re right,” Chris said, glancing at her and then back at me. “Anne, I know it’s hard, but I think you should open the store tomorrow. Hopefully everyone will realize this whole event has just been one horrible accident.”

  Guilt gnawed at my insides, and I bit my lower lip in thought. There was a big fat elephant in the room that no one was mentioning, and that elephant was practically trumpeting in my ear: This is your fault. You must have accidentally put something in the fudge! Even if it was an accident, it’d still be my fault Mr. Frobisher was gone. I racked my brains, trying to recall all the fudge making I’d done lately. Had I accidentally knocked anything into the fudge mixtures that might contain red food dye number forty-two? Surely not. I didn’t even keep food dyes in my kitchen.

  Kaye sighed heavily and then looked around at all of us. “Are we sure it was really an accident?” she said.

  Everyone’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling, and she frowned. “Oh come on, I can’t be the only one thinking this. New man in town makes a few enemies, and he just so happens to die from an allergic reaction when his epi-pen is nowhere in sight? Anne, you even suggested earlier that someone might have purposely taken it. And Deputy Ted really didn’t seem to think Mr. Frobisher was very well-liked around these parts.”

  “That’s true,” I admitted. “I suppose it’s just too horrible to even think about. I can’t believe there would be a killer in our town.”

  “Well, I think there is,” Kaye replied. “Nothing about this screams ‘accident’.”

  She was right, and we all lapsed into a deep silence. None of us had any idea what the next few days would hold, but we could all be sure of one thing. York would never be the same.

  ***

  I opened the Sweet Shoppe the next morning, a couple of hours later than usual, and surprisingly enough we had more customers than I’d thought we would. A news crew were outside filming the exterior of the shop for an article on Mr. Frobisher’s tragic death, so I suspected those customers wanted their faces to be seen on TV. Myself? I was keeping well away from the cameras and trying to draw as little attention to myself as possible.

  Deputy Ted had called me late last night to get my permission to search the store first thing this morning, and with a heavy heart I’d given him permission. I knew he wouldn’t find anything, and hopefully it was only a matter of time before my
name was cleared. As I dusted the candy shelves near a table of little old ladies, I overheard the women speaking, obviously unaware that I was nearby.

  “Did you hear? The police rushed the autopsy results, and it was definitely red food dye that killed him. He was horribly allergic,” one of them said.

  “How do you know?” another asked.

  “My son works for the police department. They didn’t say whether it was the fudge or not that contained the food dye, but it was certainly something he ate.”

  “I don’t believe for a second that it was the fudge,” the third lady said. “Anne has always made her own fudge, and she’s never used any additives like food colorings. I asked her once.”

  My heart soared a little. At least one person knew I hadn’t done anything. I returned to the counter and wiped it down, and the bell tinkled a moment later. Chris was at the door, and my heart soared even higher as I saw him enter. He was holding a black laptop bag, and he smiled as he put it down behind the counter and hugged me.

  “Everything okay? I saw the news crew outside,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m fine. Ted and some other police were here early this morning, but they haven’t said anything to me yet. Hopefully it’s all okay.”

  “Yes, I hope so too. Well, I need to go over some numbers for work, so I’ll take my laptop and sit over there,” he said, pointing to a table near the window. “Shout out if you need anything.”

  The bell tinkled again ten minutes later. Looking up, I saw Deputy Ted entering, and he gave me a thin smile and a nod as he approached.

  “Anne,” he said with a brief nod. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “Of course,” I said, motioning towards a table in the corner of the shop. It was far away enough from the others that no one would hear us, and Kaye emerged from the kitchen along with Rosie, their faces etched with concern.

  Ted waved them over. “This concerns all of you,” he said. “So you may as well all sit. We’re going to have to get you to come down to the station and give individual statements, but for now we’ll just talk.”

  “Okay,” Kaye said. “What’s going on?”

  “Well, several things,” Ted replied. “It was the fudge that killed Mr. Frobisher. Someone made sure it contained red food dye.”

  I drew in a sharp breath, and he waved a hand at me to calm me down. “Anne, you aren’t under any suspicion as of yet. The first thing we look for in cases where we suspect foul play is motive, and with you there isn’t any that we can see. Anyway, when we were looking through your shop last night, we found something. Have any of you been in the store-room this morning?”

  “No,” I replied. “We haven’t needed to go in there.”

  “Well, we found a broken window in there,” he continued. “Glass on the inside, meaning someone broke it from the outside to get in. We’re thinking that someone knew Mr. Frobisher was a sucker for your double choc fudge, and they broke into the shop so they could somehow tamper with the fudge and put dye in it to induce an allergic reaction in him. Did you keep any trays of the fudge in the kitchen yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Kaye replied. “We were so busy with the festival and all the hungry customers that we had several spare trays of fudge and other sweets in the shop just in case. Rosie and I were running back and forth all day from the shop to the booth.”

  “And did either of you see or hear anything suspicious?”

  They both shook their heads. “We were only here for a few moments each time,” Rosie said. “We’d come back, unlock the shop, grab a spare tray or two, and then we’d head straight back to the booth at the festival.”

  “And you didn’t notice the broken window?”

  “No,” Kaye said. “Everything was prepped and ready in the kitchen, so we had no reason to go in the storeroom.”

  “I see,” Ted replied, taking a moment to jot down some notes. “Well, at any rate, we’ve dusted the store-room for prints, and the kitchen as well. We cleaned the kitchen because we knew you’d need it when you opened today, but we didn’t have time for the store-room.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “It’s just powder, right? I can easily clean that.”

  “Great. Now, Anne…did you actually know about Mr. Frobisher’s allergies?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding. “He told me about it when he first came in here. He wanted to make sure the fudge was safe for him to eat.”

  “And did you mention that to anyone? Also, did you happen mention to anyone in town that Mr. Frobisher greatly enjoyed your chocolate fudge?”

  I squinted my eyes, trying to think. “Only Kaye,” I replied. “I think. I can’t recall anyone else. But I might have.”

  “Let me know if you remember anyone else you may have mentioned it to,” he said.

  “Hold on a sec,” Kaye interjected. “How do you think this person might have actually tampered with the fudge?”

  “We aren’t sure right now,” Ted replied. “They could have put some food dye in a small syringe and injected it into each piece of fudge. It would only take a very small amount, and it wouldn’t be obvious in double choc fudge. It’s a very dark brown, so a tiny amount of red food dye in it is hardly going to be noticed. Anyway, that’s it for now, ladies. I’ll be back soon, and like I said, I’ll need to take proper statements. We’ll also have to take fingerprints from all of you, just to rule you out from any strange prints we might find when we look at the fingerprints we took from the kitchen and store-room. Obviously yours will be all over the place, all three of you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I just… I just can’t believe we might have a killer in our midst. York’s always been so safe.”

  “There were a lot of people from out of town at the festival,” Ted replied. “For all we know, it was an outsider that perpetrated all of this.”

  He cast a hard, lingering glance over at Chris as he tapped away at his keyboard on the opposite side of the store, and then he abruptly stood up. “Well, I’ll be in contact. Call me if you remember anything you think might help.”

  He left, and my stomach did nervous flip-flops as I considered everything he’d said. Someone had broken into my shop, and I hadn’t even noticed. From now on, I needed to pay more attention to things. Living in a supposedly safe country town had made me soft; made me less likely to worry about danger. But now everything had changed.

  I headed into the store-room with Rosie and Kaye, and as Ted had told me, there was broken glass on the floor near the window. White fingerprint dust coated many of the surfaces, and I raised my eyebrows and glanced around.

  “Well, I guess we need to clean up,” I said. “Rosie, could you get the dustpan and brush?”

  “Sure.”

  She dashed off, and Kaye gingerly stepped towards the broken window.

  “I suppose insurance will cover this?” she asked.

  “It should do, yes,” I said, following her over to the window. Peering around, something pink and white caught my attention. It was sitting on the floor, half-lodged under a shelf. At first glance it looked like a candy wrapper, but at second glance I realized it was something else entirely.

  “Kaye!” I said, pointing to it. “Look! That’s a rose petal.”

  She squinted at it. “You’re right,” she said. “Do you think the police missed it?”

  “Either that or it blew through the window after they left,” I said. “But what if the killer had been near a garden before they came in, and some petals had attached themselves to his or her clothes? It could have fallen off in here, and honestly, it looks a lot like a candy wrapper. Maybe the police did miss it.”

  “We should tell Ted,” she said.

  “Rosie!” I called out. She returned holding the dustpan and brush.

  “Yes?”

  “Could you go into the kitchen and grab the gloves from under the sink, and also a zip-lock sandwich bag? We might have found something that the police missed, and obviously we don’t want to get our prints all over it.
”

  “Okay,” she said, passing the dustpan to Kaye and dashing off again.

  When she returned, I slid the gloves on and carefully pulled the rose petal out from under the shelf before putting it in the bag. Holding it up, I wrinkled my nose.

  “This petal looks awfully familiar,” I said. “Who do we know that grows this particular kind of rose?”

  Kaye and Rosie shrugged, and it suddenly came to me like a bolt of lightning. “Wait,” I said, my eyes widening. “Mrs. Barnaby grows these. Do you remember when that learner driver accidentally drove through her garden? There were pink and white petals all over the road for days afterwards.”

  “That’s true,” Kaye replied. “And Mrs. Barnaby certainly had a reason to dislike Mr. Frobisher. Do we really think she’s capable of murder, though?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m not sure. But she had been spending a lot of time with him before their tiff. She must have known about his allergies.”

  Rosie pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll call Deputy Ted and let him know what we found,” she said.

  Half an hour later, Ted returned to the store, and he took the bagged petal and examined it with narrowed eyes before sliding it into a proper evidence bag.

  “I’m not sure how we missed this,” he said. “We did look around the place quite carefully.”

  “We were thinking it may have simply blown through the window after you left,” I replied. “But we weren’t sure.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that is a possibility, but I have to admit there’s also a possibility that we missed it, so we can’t rule it out. I’ll take it down to the station to get it examined properly. It won’t be too hard to figure out where it came from. Only a few people in town grow these roses.”

  Kaye, Rosie and I exchanged uneasy glances, and Ted’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you know something?” he asked.

  “Well…” I said slowly, not wanting to throw Mrs. Barnaby under the bus, but knowing I had to tell Ted what we knew at the same time. “Mrs. Barnaby from the beauty parlor grows pink and white roses, and she had a falling out with Mr. Frobisher quite recently.”