Chocolate To Die For: Funny Cozy Mystery Series (Cocoa Narel Chocolate Shop Mysteries Book 4)

by Morgana Best

  I thought that over. “But what about the bottle?”

  Palmer frowned. “What bottle?”

  “If he brought redback spiders in a bottle, wouldn’t he have dropped the bottle when he dropped the syringe?”

  Palmer shook his head. “There are an awful lot of bottles behind the outdoor toilet. No doubt he left the bottle there.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense.” There were, indeed, many old glass bottles behind the outdoor toilet. The local antique dealer had come and taken the old castor oil bottles and the pretty coloured bottles to sell in his shop, but there were still many plain jars and bottles left.

  I was on my third cup of coffee when Thompson returned with my statement to sign. I skimmed the contents and signed in a hurry, because my caffeine-infused bladder was now in desperate need of a bathroom. When I had asked Palmer where the bathroom was, he had pointed out the window to an outdoor dunny. Hell would freeze over before I would use that.

  I drove home to my bathroom as fast as I could, fuelled by thoughts of redback spider-infested dunny seats.

  Chapter 6

  It was a Sunday, so I didn’t have to go into my shop. After my bathroom break, I texted Carl to say I was on my way over to his place. He texted back to ask me to give him half an hour.

  I found that suspicious in itself. Surely Carl would be home on a Sunday morning. What was he up to? If he was in a new relationship, he would have told me. In fact, I would hear about it at length. No, I quickly discounted that one, until I had second thoughts. What if this time it was true love? Maybe he would keep that close to his chest.

  Nevertheless, I was concerned. On my way home, I had put two and two together. The police had asked me whether Carl had a garden and whether he had pests. The murder weapon was an organophosphate poison, and organophosphate poisons were used as pesticides and herbicides. To my way of thinking, that meant that Carl was a suspect.

  I paced up and down the house, counting down the minutes until I could leave. To make matters worse, I hadn’t heard from Tom since the previous day. There had been no text or call to ask me if I had been murdered in the night. I knew Tom cared about me, but I still hadn’t established whether or not he had friend-zoned me. After all, we had been friends back in high school, so maybe things hadn’t changed.

  Mongrel glared at me as I paced backwards and forwards past his carrier basket. I fetched him a cat treat from the kitchen to placate him. I certainly wanted to stay on his good side.

  After twenty minutes, I decided to leave for Carl’s place and drive there slowly. Anything was better than waiting around. I was close to Carl’s street when I had an incoming call from Tom. I immediately pulled over and took the call.

  “Did you have a safe night? Did anything happen?” he asked me.

  I was about to answer when I saw Carl’s car going past the road directly in front of the street in which I was parked. “It was uneventful, but Carl stayed over again,” I told him. “I had to give my witness statement to the police this morning.”

  “I know,” he said. “I had to show a house this morning to the husband of one of the receptionists at the vet’s, and he said his wife told him that one of your neighbours saw you waiting at the temporary police station.”

  “I wonder who that could have been?” I said, more to myself than anything.

  “She found a possum and took it to the vet to be checked out,” he said.

  “Oh.” I didn’t even know that woman was a neighbour. I would have to be more observant. “I’m just on my way to Carl’s now,” I told Tom, not wanting to add that the police likely saw Carl as a suspect. “Oh! I forgot. They said Bob Jones was murdered, for sure, and with organophosphate poison. They said it was injected into him with the syringe they found.”

  “I know,” Tom said. “On my way to showing the house, I dropped in for coffee at one of the local cafés, and everyone there was talking about it.”

  I pulled a face. No one was able to keep a secret in a small country town, no one. Maybe. Except a murderer. Still, Carl was doing a good job of keeping a secret from me.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Tom said. “That guy said he’d call me back and make an offer. He’s calling now.”

  I said goodbye and hung up, and then proceeded to Carl’s place. He opened the door, looking red in the face. “Where have you been?” I asked him.

  “Been?” he asked, his face a picture of innocence. “I’ve been home all morning.”

  I knew that was a blatant lie, and I hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to call him on it or simply to go along with his story. Finally, I could stand it no longer. “Tom just called me, so I pulled over to take the call and saw your car going along the road in front of me.”

  Carl looked shocked. “Oh, I only stepped out for some, um, cat food.”

  “But you always have plenty of cat food,” I protested. “Last time I looked, you had a cupboard full of it.”

  Carl frowned. “Louis the Fourteenth doesn’t like the same brand for too long. He stops eating it, so I have to rush right out and buy him a different variety.”

  That was a lie if ever I’d heard one. “Carl, are you keeping something from me?”

  The mask was back on his face. “Of course not. Anyway, I need your help. I have it on good authority that I’m a suspect.”

  I gasped and touched his arm. “Who told you?”

  Carl’s face flushed red. “I’m not supposed to say, but it was Detective Clyde.”

  That figured. Well, I was glad that one police officer seemed to have Carl’s back.

  Carl all but dragged me over to a large whiteboard in the middle of his pristine, white living room. He clung to my elbow and then must have realised it was the injured one. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore. Why are you a suspect, Carl?” I shot him a penetrating look.

  Carl shifted from one foot to the other. “Detective Clyde knew I’d had a falling out with Bob Jones at one point, so the detectives from Sydney must know that.”

  “I didn’t know you’d had a falling out with Bob! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Carl looked down at his shoes. “Well, I didn’t want to put you off using him. He was a good plumber; it’s just that he overcharged. I didn’t want to influence you with my personal opinion of the man.”

  “But Carl, your house hasn’t ever needed a plumber, surely?”

  Carl shook his head. “I actually did need to get some plumbing work done, and he ripped me off.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Carl shrugged. “I didn’t want to bother you,” he said in an offhand manner.

  I knew that wasn’t true. Carl did, in fact, like to bother me about every little thing that happened to him. If a shop assistant was rude to him, I heard about it at length, and for weeks. I found it awfully strange that he hadn’t told me about his argument with Bob Jones.

  “Narel, you have to help me solve this murder,” he said in a pleading tone. “We can’t leave it to the police. They want to pin it on me. I promise you solemnly, Narel, that I didn’t murder Bob Jones.”

  “I know you didn’t, Carl. You don’t need to convince me. I do have some bad news for you, though.”

  Carl threw himself back on his sofa in a dramatic fashion and fanned himself with a brochure for hot yoga. “What is it?” he said in a small voice, and then covered his face with his hands.

  I sat next to him and patted him on the shoulder. “I don’t want to upset you, but it’s best that you know the truth. The detectives asked me how well I knew you.”

  Carl gasped, and removed his hands from his eyes. “They did? Why did they mention me?”

  “It gets worse,” I admitted. “They asked me if you had a big garden, or had any pests in your house.”

  “Pets?” Carl asked, surprised.

  I shook my head. “Pests,” I repeated. “Insects, cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes, flies, creepy crawlies.”

  “Why would they a
sk that?”

  I realised that Carl hadn’t heard the news. “They told me that Bob Jones was indeed murdered with that syringe that they found near the scene, and it had organophosphate poison in it. The initial testing on the body showed that that’s how Bob Jones was killed.”

  Carl’s eyes grew wide. “And they think I did it!” His voice was shrill. He jumped to his feet, unsettling Louis the Fourteenth.

  I tugged on his arm and made him sit back down. “You don’t know that.”

  “But I do,” he protested. “Organophosphates are herbicides and insecticides. That’s why they asked you if I had a garden or an insect problem. Oh Narel, they’re going to pin the murder on me. I just know it!”

  “Well, I won’t let them,” I said, filled with resolve. “If the police can’t do a good job, then we will solve the murder. It’s not as if we haven’t had any practice. Carl, grab your whiteboard marker and we’ll make a list of suspects.”

  Carl jumped to his feet. He snatched up a whiteboard marker and stood with it poised over the whiteboard. “Whose name will we write?”

  “Um, I’ve drawn a blank,” I admitted. “I know! Write, ‘Customers.’ Can you think of anyone else?” I asked hopefully.

  Carl tapped his whiteboard marker on his chin. “We need to make a list of customers he ripped off. One who springs to mind is Peter Patterson.”

  “The Purr-suader?” I asked him. Peter Patterson, known as The Purr-suader, was a famous Cat Whisperer, and Carl had bought his services as a gift to me. Not surprisingly, Mongrel had not turned out to be the best client. That was something of an understatement.

  I looked up to see Carl nodding. “The very same. I’m sure Peter didn’t do it, but he should have some valuable information on Bob Jones.”

  I stroked Louis the Fourteenth, who purred contentedly. “You’re going to have to fill me in, Carl. How does Peter know Bob Jones?”

  “Well, you know how Peter Patterson decided to stay in town?”

  I nodded. Carl pressed on. “You know he bought that Victorian miner’s cottage on the main road?” I continued to nod. “It had the most dreadful bathroom you could ever imagine. It was truly ghastly, an add-on with a corrugated iron roof. He was expecting the new one to cost him a lot of money, but he didn’t realise quite how much. He got Bob Jones to do it, but Bob Jones told him it was a long way from the council drains and charged him an extra few thousand dollars, ostensibly to lay metres and metres of pipe. Peter went to the council on a different matter, to see if he could subdivide his large block and happened to mention it. They told him that Bob Jones had ripped him off, to put it in a nutshell. I don’t know the ins and outs of plumbing or all the technical terms, but that’s the bottom line.”

  “But does anyone really murder anyone over a plumbing bill, no matter how exorbitant?” I asked Carl. “That seems a little far-fetched to me. There would be no plumbers left in Australia.”

  Carl readily agreed. “Yet why does anyone murder anyone?” he asked me. “The usual reasons are money, love, wrong-place-wrong-time. Actually, when I googled it, I thought there was one more reason, but I can’t remember it right now. No matter. We’ll have to ask Peter The Purr-suader what he knew about Bob Jones. In fact, I’ve invited Peter to come over. He’ll be here soon.”

  Chapter 7

  I was in admiration. “Carl, I’m impressed. How on earth did you get him to come over to give you information on Bob Jones?”

  Carl’s mouth fell open. “Are you crazy, Narel? Of course I didn’t tell him I’d invited him over to ask him about Bob Jones. He probably wouldn’t have come if I had told him that.”

  I frowned. “So you invited him under false pretences?”

  Carl smiled. “Of course I did.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “What did you tell him?”

  “I paid him for another consultation, of course. Obviously, it’s a remote consultation because he’s scared of Mongrel, but I told him that you wanted to ask questions about Mongrel.”

  I opened my mouth to tell Carl what I thought of that idea, when there was a knock on the door.

  “It’s him,” Carl said, pushing past me.

  I grabbed his arm. “What questions? What will I say?”

  Carl hesitated. “You’ll just have to make something up on the spot.” He hurried over to open the door, while I stood there, fuming silently.

  Peter walked in carrying a large briefcase. “Oh, hello, Narel. Your cat isn’t here, is he?” He used the briefcase to shield himself.

  “No, he isn’t.”

  Peter smiled widely.

  “Let’s get down to business,” Carl said, still avoiding my gaze. “Peter, you and Narel sit on the sofa and I’ll fix us something to eat and drink. Coffee, cake, anyone?”

  “I’d like coffee and chocolates, please Carl,” I said.

  “Coffee would be good for me, too,” Peter said, still looking around the room. I guess he didn’t quite believe me that Mongrel wasn’t here.

  When Carl left the room, Peter turned to me. “Well then, how is your cat going?”

  “He’s going quite well,” I said, “but then again, no one has been to the house with rope, not since the last time that man tried to kill us both.”

  Peter paled visibly. “Um, err, that’s um, good,” he stammered. “I think. Anyway, Carl said you had some specific questions to ask me?”

  “I do.” I was silent for a few moments trying to think of a question, but drew a blank. I was never very good when I was put on the spot. If someone said something sarcastic to me, I would come up with a brilliant retort. The only trouble was that it was always a good five days later. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m feeling a bit flustered at the moment. I found a body the other night.”

  “So you did. Bob Jones, the plumber.”

  I nodded. “Did you know him?” This was going well—I was able to lead straight into questions about the plumber.

  “Oh yes. I don’t have a good word to say about him, and since they say you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, then I shouldn’t say anything at all.”

  Okay, so it wasn’t going as well as I thought. “No, please tell me what he did to you. He remodelled my bathroom and then I got him to cut off the water to the outdoor dunny because the council said I had to have it removed, and Carl said he was known for overcharging people.”

  Peter made a strangling sound. “I bought a nice little Victorian cottage, but it didn’t have a proper bathroom. You know how back in those days they just tacked one onto the outside, sort of a lean-to?”

  I nodded.

  “It was like that, and so he was supposed to remove it and then put in a new bathroom.”

  “And he didn’t do a good job?” I asked him.

  Peter shrugged. “It’s not that he didn’t do a good job, as such, because it looked fine. It’s just that he told me a lot of lies about how far away it was from the council lines. It ended up costing me thousands of dollars, and all for nothing.”

  Carl had already told me that, and I was looking for new information. “That’s dreadful,” I said in the most sympathetic tone I could muster. “Did you meet other people he ripped off? I expect there would be a lot of people who would want him dead.”

  “That’s for sure!” Peter’s tone was vehement. “He ripped off people all over town.”

  One thing puzzled me. “But if he was so bad, why did people keep using him?”

  “You used him, despite my better judgement,” Carl said as he deposited a tray on his white Ottoman that he used as a coffee table. I picked up the fluffy cushion next to me to move it, until I realised it was Louis the Fourteenth curled up into a ball.

  “Now that’s a well-behaved cat,” Peter said with approval.

  Carl apparently decided to take over the questioning. “Peter, do you think Bob Jones was murdered by an unhappy customer?”

  Peter did not appear to think the question strange. He rubbed his chin for a moment and looked far a
way, as far as one could in a small room. “Several people were angry with him because he overcharged them badly.”

  I nodded. I wondered what I could do to encourage Peter to keep talking about Bob. “I hope the police solve it soon,” I said, doing my best to look sad. “I was the one who found him, so I hope his killer is brought to justice.”

  Peter leaned over to me and fixed me with a steely gaze. “That must have been awful for you, finding a body.”

  “It was. I wonder if anyone else had a grudge against him besides his lover’s husband and all his customers.”

  Peter rubbed his head. “Well, he had a big argument with that journalist fellow.”

  “Graham Gibson?” I said, as Carl and I exchanged glances.

  “Yes, he’s the one, a most unpleasant fellow.” Peter nodded as he spoke. “Remember we had all that trouble with him?”

  “How could I forget?” I said with feeling. “What did he and Bob Jones have a falling out over?”

  “Oh, it was quite a big thing,” Peter said. “Graham Gibson wrote a big story for one of the Sydney papers on the sighting of the black cat.”

  “Black cat?” I echoed. “Whose black cat was that?”

  Peter laughed. “Not a black cat, I mean a puma-like cat. You know the Australian urban myth of the big black cat that looks just like a puma?”

  I nodded. “I’m not so sceptical, though. Too many people have seen them.”

  Peter shrugged. “True. Anyway, there was supposed to be a black cat sighting on Bob’s farm. Graham Gibson did a big article in it in one of those big Sydney newspaper Saturday editions.”

  “And what was the problem with that?” I prompted him.

  “Bob Jones said it was all a hoax and that Gibson had paid him to say he saw the black cat on his farm. Gibson got into quite some trouble over it. He was sacked from the Sydney paper, and that’s the very reason why he’s now here locally, working for this little paper in town that doesn’t pay much.”

  It took me a few moments to process all the information. “If Gibson did pay Bob to say he saw the creature, then why did Bob make that public?”