Kernel of Truth

by Kristi Abbott

  I stared back at her. “I have no idea.”

  “Well, wherever he got it, you can keep it. It’s got dog slobber on it now.” She handed it back to me.

  Eighteen

  Pearl buzzed Garrett as soon as I walked in the door. “She’s here.”

  “Send her in,” his tinny voice said over the intercom.

  “I believe you know the way,” she said.

  I let myself into his office.

  “You’re generating a lot of business for me,” Garrett said. He got up and offered me a chair.

  He smelled nice. I’m used to good smells. With the amount of baking I do, I’m surrounded by the scent of butter and cinnamon and chocolate all the time. This was different, though. This was a starchy smell, and I don’t mean like a potato. I handed him the envelope that Leslie Stephens had given me that morning. “What kind of cologne do you wear?”

  He read over the papers. “I don’t wear cologne and I also don’t think you’re focusing. This is a cease and desist order from Jessica regarding your popcorn fudge.”

  “You mean my Coco Pop Fudge,” I corrected.

  “Yeah, I do, and that’s part of the problem. She wants you to stop using that name. She wants you to stop using anything with the word ‘Coco’ in it.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “That’s not trademarked,” I pointed out.

  “Yet,” he countered.

  “Well, when it is I’ll cease and desist.” I started to get back up. That had been easier than I’d expected.

  “That’s not all, Rebecca.” He motioned for me to sit back down. “She wants you to prove that you’re not using Coco’s fudge recipe.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Garrett. Jessica knows I’m not using Coco’s recipe. She tasted Coco Pop Fudge and Tuxedo Coco Pop Fudge. I could tell by the look on her face that she knew it was a brand-new direction. Plus, I have all the recipes that Coco and I made together.” I flung myself back in the chair. Nothing is ever easy. Nothing.

  That got his attention. He leaned forward onto his elbows. “You have documentation?”

  “Well, they’re my notes that I made while we were working on them, but if you want to call it documentation that’s fine with me.” I ran my thumbnail along the outside seam of my jeans.

  “That’s excellent.” He nodded and stared out into space for a second. “I might have to actually taste this Coco Pop Fudge to be absolutely sure.”

  I had anticipated that request. I reached into my bag and plopped a wrapped box onto his desk. “Have at it, Perry Mason.”

  I watched as he unwrapped the box and took out a square. He took a sip of water first and then bit into the fudge. I could see the moment the sweet and salty main notes hit the front of his tongue and when the spice of it hit the back of his tongue. “Oh, my word, Rebecca. I think I love you,” was all he could manage to say.

  “Thank you, although I do generally expect at least one date before a guy professes his undying love.” Either that or I expected him to have at least tasted my béarnaise.

  He brushed his hands off and stood. “We’ll see what we can do about that after we deal with this cease and desist nonsense. I’m going to file for a declaratory judgment.”

  So far, deciding not to be the victim was working out okay for me. I had Coco’s business plan for us. My Coco Pop Fudge was a hit with the people of Grand Lake and had elicited a declaration of love. So maybe I had a little court case going. I felt like I was definitely going to put that one in the win column as well. I was feeling less and less like a loser on a minute-by-minute basis. I decided to push it a little farther.

  * * *

  Before heading back to the shop, I went to the park to look for Jasper. He was the only other person who had been on Coco’s back porch between when Annie had left the sachets there and when I had gone running in the next morning. At least, the only other person who I knew of for sure. The only other person who wasn’t the murderer. Had he seen them? Dan was barely speaking to me. I didn’t want to ask him, especially when I wasn’t sure if it was significant or not.

  Jasper wasn’t there. Tom Moffat was holding forth on the biological details of why we should never elect a woman president. He stopped spouting supposed scientific data on women’s hormone fluctuations long enough to tell me that he hadn’t seen Jasper since Jasper had been released from jail. Then he suggested that my life would be a lot easier if I had stayed with my husband and that most of my troubles could be traced back to the fact that I didn’t properly respect the men in my life. When he started to discuss his theories about my losing my father at an early age, I left without saying good-bye.

  Next I tried the diner. Megan said she hadn’t seen Jasper, either. That is, she did when I could get her to acknowledge my existence. Coco Pop Fudge was apparently not enough to get Megan back on my side. She either still thought I was a potential murderess or she was upset about Jessica’s shoulder or maybe both. Either way, she practically ground her teeth while she told me that she hadn’t seen Jasper since Dan released him from jail.

  The library was the only other place to look. No luck there, either. Or at least, no Jasper. He’d apparently been lying low since his release from the hoosegow.

  There didn’t seem to be an alternative, so I walked down to the south end of town to Jasper’s house. I picked my way around a metal bed frame and two bicycles that looked like they’d been scavenged for parts. Eventually I made it to Jasper’s front door with Sprocket right at my heels. Four large garbage bags slumped on the sagging porch. No wonder Dan got the heebie-jeebies talking about going inside this place. It was a walking advertisement for keeping your tetanus shots up to date.

  I knocked on the door, almost hoping that Jasper wasn’t home. I didn’t really relish the idea of being told what a loser I was again, but I needed to talk to him.

  I supposed I didn’t blame him. I’d certainly felt the weight of shame in my life. I could see not wanting to face the townspeople you’d essentially hoodwinked for years. I knocked on the door.

  A man answered. “Rebecca,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  I stared at him, trying to fit the familiar voice into the very unfamiliar face I was looking at. “Jasper?”

  “One and the same.” He pulled the door open wider. “Come in. I’m trying to do a little straightening up, so watch your step.”

  I stood in the doorway and stared at him. The long gray shaggy hair had been cut close to his scalp, almost a Caesar. The beard that had often appeared to serve as a storage place for snacks was gone. So were the layers of baggy dirt-crusted clothes. He had on a pair of clean Levi’s and an untucked dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up over a T-shirt. He looked . . . good. He looked like a regular guy on the street. In fact, he looked a little better than most of the regular guys on the street. He looked a little like Richard Dean Anderson. He looked like someone I’d be tempted to fix up with Annie. Maybe I should. I was seriously doubting her taste in men.

  Jasper turned back when he realized I hadn’t moved. “I decided to make some changes.”

  “I should say so.” I still didn’t move. It wasn’t just the clothes and the hygiene. He stood different. Taller. Straighter. Who knew his shoulders were that broad?

  Several garbage bags and boxes stood open around the room, partially filled. He gestured to them. “I’m going to clean this place up. Make it a decent place to live. I finally realized that I deserve that in my life.” Then he pointed at me. “And I have you to thank for it.”

  I took a few steps into the room. “Jasper, I’m flattered, but I can’t imagine what I did that helped you.”

  “You looked me in the eye and made it clear that you didn’t care what anybody else thought about you. You were going to hold your head high and keep going until you made it all work.” He sat down on the couch. “You weren’t going to let what anybody else might
whisper behind your back stop you in your tracks for decades. You weren’t going to waste your time hiding behind a façade of erratic behavior and filth.”

  That sounded a little more heroic than my general internal dialogue, but I figured I’d let that go. “So you decided not to care about what people thought, either? Is that what this is about?”

  He nodded. “You got it. I’m not going to hide behind the hair and the clothes and the dirt. I’m going to get myself cleaned up. I’m going to get this house cleaned up. I’m going to finish my degree.”

  “Then what?” I asked, almost breathless at the transformation I was witnessing.

  “I think I might want to teach.” He leaned back and took a deep breath, settling his shoulders.

  I perched across from him on the edge of an armchair that seemed to not have any really big chunks of detritus on it. “That’s wonderful, Jasper. I had no idea.”

  “I’m not sure I did before you came to talk to me in jail.” He shook his head. “I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I knew what I was all about. I was so wrong. You didn’t preach at me. You didn’t lecture me. You just set an example I couldn’t ignore.”

  I don’t think I’d ever considered myself a shining example before. In fact, I’m pretty sure most people thought of me as a terrible warning. “I don’t know what to say, Jasper.”

  “Nothing to say. It’s all on me and all I’ve got is ‘thank you.’” He balanced his elbows on his knees. “But I don’t think you came to talk to me about personal transformation. What brought you down to my neck of the woods?”

  I pulled the sachet out of my bag. “When you stopped by Coco’s that . . . well, that night, did you see a basket of these on the back porch?”

  He took the sachet from me. “Yeah. There was a little basket of them right in front of the door. I checked them out in case they were food. Coco left stuff every now and then.”

  “Did you take them? Do you still have them?” That would be one mystery solved, although figuring out where Sprocket got it was still beyond me.

  He shook his head. “They weren’t food or money, Rebecca. I left them where they were. I didn’t think they were for me.” He seemed sad, like he kind of wished the sachets had been for him.

  “But you saw them there at nine thirty?” Speaking of Sprocket, I tugged his leash to get his nose out of one of the boxes. He was going to have to get therapy for his kleptomania.

  “Absolutely. I remember sniffing them. Lavender’s so soothing.” He handed the sachet back to me.

  It wasn’t doing much to soothe me now. Whoever took those sachets had been on Coco’s back porch in between the time Jasper left and the time I went into Coco’s shop the next morning. The person most likely to have been there during that time was the person who had faked the break-in, and the person most likely to do that was the person who had killed Coco in the first place.

  I thanked Jasper and told him to let me know if there was anything else I could do to help on his new journey of personal transformation. He hugged me. I stiffened as he put his arms around me and then remembered that it wasn’t the same filthy, smelly Jasper I’d known all these years. This Jasper smelled a little like bay rum.

  As Sprocket and I walked back toward downtown Grand Lake, I tried to remember everyone who Sprocket had stolen stuff from in the past weeks. There’d been the baby’s woolly sheep toy. There’d been Leslie Stephens. Aw, hell, it could have been stolen from anybody who’d been in the store. He’d tried to take something from Jasper just now and he’d had his nose in Jessica’s purse. I pulled the sachet back out of my pocket and stared at it.

  * * *

  By the time I got back to the shop, we were in full fudge lockdown. Susanna and I hustled as hard as we could, but a line still stretched out the door. I even pressed Sam into service when he came by, probably looking to eat whatever mistakes I’d made in the kitchen that day. He had, after all, even eaten the popcorn breakfast bars with the raisins in them. He hadn’t liked them, but he’d eaten them.

  I didn’t even recognize some of the people who came through. I felt like I had at least seen the faces of pretty much everyone in Grand Lake, but there were men and women coming through the store who I’d never seen before.

  “Where are all these people coming from?” I whispered to Susanna as we rushed past each other behind the counter.

  “You don’t know?” She cut off a wedge of the new caramel popcorn fudge and wrapped it in wax paper.

  “I know a lot of stuff. I know all the state capitals. I know to turn a screw to the right to tighten it and that Pluto is no longer a planet, but I do not know where these crowds are coming from.” I took the wedge of fudge and boxed it.

  “You’re blowing up on Twitter.” Susanna rang up the fudge while I got another box ready.

  “I am? I’m not even on Twitter.” Or Facebook. Or Instagram. Or Tumblr. Or Pinterest.

  “Totally. Hashtag foodgasm. Hashtag fudge. Hashtag GrandLake. I don’t remember all of them. I’ll show you after the rush.” She took another order and cut off another hunk of fudge. “And tomorrow, we’re getting you on Twitter.”

  “Foodgasm?” Well, at least I was giving someone some kind of gasm.

  The rush ended at about four thirty again. I had no idea what the psychology was there, but I’d figure it out eventually. Or I’d accept it and hire another counter person. Susanna showed me what was happening on Twitter. With Sam’s help, we tried to trace it back and followed the train of Retweets and favorites back to a food critic at the Toledo Times who had Tweeted a picture of Coco Pop Fudge with the caption: Best thing to hit Ohio since the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  “I didn’t even know a food critic had been to POPS.” I put my feet up on one of the kitchen chairs. I’d been on my feet that day almost as long as I used to be when I was a student. My feet were a lot older now, though. They hurt.

  “I’m not sure she was. She said someone gave her the fudge as a gift. Someone she calls LSteph.” Sam peered at his laptop.

  As in Leslie Stephens? “Who’s LSteph to the food critic?”

  He shrugged. “Girlfriend, I think.”

  I guess I’d have to forgive Leslie Stephens for serving me papers if she also served my fudge to a food critic. Antoine had no idea what he’d started.

  * * *

  I was still thinking about Antoine and Leslie Stephens when I finally got home. I glanced at the clock. It was eight o’clock here. I’d missed Friday night dinner. But it would only be six o’clock in California. Antoine would be elbow deep in cooking at L’Oiseau Gris. He’d be overseeing the kitchen and the serving staff. He’d be tasting and chopping and fixing the disasters that happened pretty much every night in a busy kitchen. It would be a terrible time to call him. He would be busy and distracted. I picked up my cell phone and dialed.

  He answered on the second ring. I knew he would. “Rebecca, is everything all right?”

  “I cannot believe you hired a private detective to follow me around.” I leaned back on the couch and put my feet up on the arm, stretching out my full length. I could hear voices and a lot of clanging and banging in the background. Antoine would be on his feet for at least another five hours, and he was even older than I was.

  “Ms. Stephens let me know you had, how did she say, made her?” He made it sound kind of sexy.

  “Yeah. I made her.” And served her fudge and coffee before she served me court papers.

  He sighed. “Rebecca, darling, I was concerned for you. You would not tell me what you were doing or how you were doing so I found a way to stay informed.”

  This was one of the problems with Antoine. He made everything sound so reasonable, including having hired a private detective to follow his ex-wife. I was pretty sure that he actually thought it was reasonable. It was so not. “I wasn’t keeping you informed because my life is none of your bu
siness. I’m not married to you anymore. Remember?”

  “You will always be my business. I will always love you.” I could imagine him standing in the middle of the kitchen with his hand on his heart as he said that. Chaos would be erupting around him. He would be like the eye in the center of a storm. It was actually kind of romantic. This kind of gesture was his meat and potatoes. It was exactly how he’d kept me with him for as long as he had. It was hard for a girl to resist that.

  “Oh, Antoine.” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Come home, Rebecca. Come back to me. Your little town is full of crazies. People are hitting little old ladies on the head. Teachers are driving into trees. You are being arrested every other day by your childhood friend. Come back to California.”

  Funny, the offer wasn’t so tempting anymore. Not so long ago, I’d felt a twinge every time he begged me to come back, a little something inside me that knew how much easier my life could be. The twinge was gone. I think I liked being the new action-oriented me. “No, Antoine. Thank you, but no.” I hung up.

  Nineteen

  For the past few nights, I’d been staying at the shop later and later every night, trying to keep up with the demand for the Coco Pop Fudge line. Every flavor was a huge hit. Saturday was the first night in three days that I’d managed to make it home while there was still a light on in Dan and Haley’s house.

  I tapped lightly at the door. Dan opened it a minute later. “Rebecca, you don’t have to knock. It’s kind of your house, too.”

  “I expect you to knock at my place,” I pointed out, walking in.

  “Your place is one big room. You could be naked.”

  He had a point. “I’ve been meaning to show you this.” I pulled out the sachet and handed it to him.

  “It’d be a nice little thing if it hadn’t been chewed.” Dan handed the sachet back to me and walked into the living room.

  I followed him and sat down on the rocking chair that had belonged to my grandmother. The embroidered seat was getting a little faded, but it was still comfy. “Do you have anything like it down at the station?”