Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  Two of the three surviving members of The Embers—Bubba was still missing—had crowded around the detective while he crouched down and examined the grill.

  Bixby had distanced himself from the investigation. Instead of staying out on the deck to answer questions, he’d moved to the beach house’s expansive living room as soon as the detective had arrived. While pacing like a caged animal in front of the open sliding doors, he called his agent and his makeup team to discuss not the murder attempt, but his damaged eyebrows.

  Bertie and I kept to the shade of the deck’s pergola, where we found two comfortable Adirondack chairs. From our vantage point, we could easily watch both what the detective was doing with the grill and what Bixby was doing inside.

  The sun was reaching its zenith. Even with the ocean breeze picking up speed, the summer day was turning into a scorcher. Thanks to the open sliding glass doors, though, we could enjoy the cool air pouring out of the house. Clearly, the band didn’t see anything wrong with leaving the air conditioner running full blast while having the doors and windows thrown open. After all, they weren’t the ones paying the utility bill.

  It didn’t take long for the band members to get bored with the investigation and seek the coolness of the indoors. I could hear plates clattering in the kitchen as the men fixed themselves lunch.

  Detective Gibbons dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief before joining Bertie and me in the shade. He sat on a chair next to mine.

  “Congressman Ezell had given Bixby the bag of chocolate bonbons I found at the bonfire,” I reminded Gibbons. “Any fan watching from the crowd could have seen Ezell hand it to him.”

  He nodded.

  “There’s a fan out there who wants to hurt Bixby,” I said, then began telling him the details of the fiery threats tied to rocks that kept coming at Bixby through plate glass windows.

  Gibbons wrote in his little notebook. After I finished, he remained silent for several minutes. His brows furrowed. “I need to see the letters. I assume Byrd has them?”

  I looked over at Bixby, who’d put away his cell phone. He was now leaning against the doorjamb, watching me.

  “The incidents at the shop and at the rental house haven’t been reported.” I winced as I said it.

  “Penn,” Gibbons bit off my name as he leaned forward in his chair. He sounded awfully like a stern father. “I’ve told you more than once that you are not the police and that you have no business—”

  “I tossed them,” Bixby said, as if that was what anyone would have done. “It’s not as if I haven’t had fans throw things at me before. I prefer it to be bras they toss, but some of my fans get carried away and throw harder items.”

  “Like rocks with threatening notes attached to them?” the detective asked.

  “It’s happened before. My fans can be …” He paused. I wondered if he was searching for a kinder way of saying dangerous. “Passionate,” was the word he finally picked.

  “You called them crazies yesterday,” I reminded him. “You changed your flight plans to get ahead of them.”

  “That’s the cost of fame. You get used to it.”

  “I don’t know how you can get used to people throwing rocks through your windows,” Bertie said. “That’s not normal behavior.”

  “There’s nothing normal about the music business,” Bixby said before going back to frowning at his scorched eyebrows in the compact mirror I’d given him. He honestly didn’t seem fazed by the rocks, the threats, or the possibility that someone might have tried to kill him.

  If that was what the music business was about, I couldn’t understand why anyone would want anything to do with it.

  “Stan was wearing leather pants and a black T-shirt last night,” I told Gibbons, although I was pretty sure he already knew that from the coroner’s report. But sometimes things needed to be said aloud to get the conversation moving in the right direction. “Bixby was also wearing leather pants and a black tee last night.”

  “The two men don’t look anything alike,” Gibbons pointed out.

  “Thank you,” Bixby said without looking up from the mirror. “I hope you think I’m the better looking of the two.”

  “Apparently my granddaughters do,” the detective grumbled. “They’ve been texting me questions to ask you all morning.”

  “It was dark last night,” I reminded them. “No moon. Bixby and Stan are about the same height. They were wearing similar clothes. And Stan had somehow gotten his hands on the chocolates the congressman had given Bixby.”

  “He must have dug it out of the trash bin,” Bixby wrinkled his nose as he said it. “Disgusting.”

  “There’s nothing disgusting about Penn’s chocolates,” Bertie spoke up to defend me. Or perhaps she was defending herself. She was the one who had whipped up the successful batch of sweet and savory bonbons, not me. “You can’t find chocolate like hers anywhere else in the world.”

  That last bit was definitely true. The beans the shop used were an extremely rare variety that, when combined with the tough growing conditions in the Brazilian rainforest, produced a symphony of flavors unmatched by any other chocolate.

  “I didn’t mean to disparage your work, Penn. I love chocolate. It’s one of my favorite sweets to eat. I simply don’t eat food given to me by a stranger.” Bixby lowered his hand. He’d been patting his damaged eyebrows as if that could fix them. He looked up from the compact mirror. “What I meant was that it’s disgusting that someone would take food out of the trash. That’s gross.”

  “It’s desperation, son,” Bertie said. “That man desperately wanted to be you.”

  Bixby smiled and shook his head. “Who doesn’t?”

  Detective Gibbons, who’d been sitting back and listening, sat forward again. His entire body seemed to spring to life as he questioned Bixby about his security. Much to my surprise, Bixby admitted that he did have a security team protecting him. He nodded toward the beach to a pair of gentlemen walking past. They were dressed in Bermuda shorts and white button-up shirts, with wide-brimmed straw hats pulled down low on their heads. Large cameras hung like albatrosses around their necks. They looked like typical middle-aged tourists.

  Although they didn’t appear to be watching the house or Bixby in any way—they were chatting with each other as they strolled—both men had instantly noticed Bixby’s nod in their direction and nodded back at him. One of the men raised his hand in a brief wave.

  “What do those two say about the explosion?” I asked just as Gibbons said, “I’ll need to talk with your team.”

  “I can have my assistant set that up,” Bixby answered Gibbons first. He then turned toward me before saying, “They both told me they thought it was a freak accident. You’re worrying about me for nothing. I’m fine, Penn. You have to believe me. I’ve been dealing with the crazies for enough years now to know when I need to be concerned.”

  “I’d feel better if I knew who’s been throwing rocks at you.”

  “It’s just one of my crazies,” he said.

  “Who knew that you’d changed your flight?” Bertie asked.

  “That’s right,” I said. “If you changed your flight to an earlier one to keep one step ahead of your rabid fans, how did the stone thrower find out your updated schedule and manage to arrive at the shop minutes after you?”

  Bixby shrugged. “I don’t know. If my fans know where I’m heading, they’ll often arrive several days in advance and watch for me.”

  Although Detective Gibbons didn’t seem at all convinced by my theory that the killer had intended to kill Bixby, not Stan, he did start scratching notes in his casebook when the conversation shifted to the trouble Bixby had experienced with his fans. Before then, he’d just been using his little notebook to fan himself.

  “Son, you really need to report these kinds of incidences to the police,” Gibbons said in his slow, deceptively lazy drawl. “We can’t help you if we don’t know there’s a problem.”

  “No offense to your inv
estigative force, but I have my security team to help me keep the worst of my fans at bay. They’re the best of the best.”

  “But certainly the police can—” I tried to interject.

  Bixby wasn’t listening. “Sure, a few things, like rocks, may occasionally break through security. But I’ve learned the hard way that reporting every little thing to the police only creates news reports, and in the end it’s a PR disaster. Rarely does it result in an arrest or stop the harassment. Often it encourages others to do something similar. So really, it’s best for everyone if I keep my mouth shut.”

  “If you change your mind or something else happens, call.” Gibbons handed Bixby his card as he rose from the Adirondack chair. It was the same card Gibbons had given me several months earlier. Only, when Gibbons had handed me that card, he’d lectured me on the dangers of not calling the police and insisted I call him instead of investigating any odd activities on my own. Of course, unlike Bixby I didn’t have a security team watching out for me twenty-four/seven.

  Security team or not, I couldn’t stop feeling nervous about the nameless, faceless fan who seemed obsessed with setting Bixby on fire.

  “But you are going to look into the grill’s explosion?” I pressed as Gibbons made his way toward the sliding glass door and the coolness of the beach house on his way back toward the street where he’d parked his unmarked cruiser. “Someone might have rigged it to explode.”

  “Yeah, I’ll send a tech to—” Gibbons’s seemingly lazy gaze suddenly snapped into eagle-sharp focus. He stared passed me toward the steps that led down from the elevated beach house to the sandy beach below.

  A commotion had erupted at the base of the stairs. Gibbons’s hand instinctively moved toward his belt, where he’d holstered a gun, as he moved closer to the stairs. The rest of us followed.

  Down on the beach, a woman dressed in jeans and bikini top and carrying a large duffle bag had charged toward the vacation house’s wooden stairs. She sported a short pixie cut, similar to mine, but with black hair instead of blonde. Even from this distance, I could make out the fiery determination in her gaze as she tried to push past Bixby’s security team.

  “That’s Jody,” I said.

  “Don’t you know who I am?” I could hear her saying to the two men who’d, by this time, grabbed each of her arms.

  “What’s she doing here?” Bertie said with a snarl. Jody, who was Harley Dalton’s ex-wife, had tried to bully my maternal grandmother into selling the Chocolate Box’s building. In doing so, she’d made a lifetime enemy of Bertie. “Neither she nor that high-priced development company she works for lifted a finger to help out with the music festival.”

  “I bet she’s here about the grill. Looks like she’s got tools with her,” I said.

  At that moment, Jody swung the heavy bag she was carrying and managed to hit the man on her right in the chest with it. With a loud “oaf,” he fell backward into the sand.

  “She’s from the management—” I yelled down, but not before his partner flipped Jody to the ground and pinned her there. He kept her pinned face-first in the sand with her arm twisted behind her until Bixby nodded, wordlessly indicating she had his permission to come up to the house.

  The burly security guard said something to Jody and offered his hand to help her back on her feet. She batted it away. Once she was standing, she brushed off the sand that clung to her clothes and skin like cornmeal. She then plucked the duffle bag from the ground as if it weighed nothing. The tools inside it clanked loudly.

  “I heard there was a complaint about a grill,” she called to us as she marched up the stairs and onto the deck as if she hadn’t just been tackled. Heck, she came up the stairs as if she owned the place. Well, she had the right to do that since her employer owned many of the new beach rentals in town, apparently including this one.

  “Are you okay?” I rushed over to offer assistance, comfort, whatever she might need. She’d just been knocked over by a burly guy. That had to leave bruises.

  “Of course I’m okay,” she answered as she dropped the duffle bag with a loud clatter. “And what are you doing here? Don’t you have your precious shop to run?”

  Bertie harrumphed.

  “Oh … both of you are here,” Jody said with a sarcastic edge to her already pinched voice. “Goodie.”

  “We’re here because the house’s grill exploded,” I explained. “It injured my friend, Bixby Lewis. It could have seriously hurt him.”

  She looked over at the superstar, who flashed one of his signature melt-a-woman-into-a-pile-of-goo smiles. Her jaw dropped.

  It was wrong of me, but I have to admit it felt kind of good to be able to knock Jody speechless. When we first met, she’d acted as if we were going to become best buddies. She’d even said she thought of me like a sister. Despite my inclination to distrust everyone, her whispered confidences and the fact that she, too, was an outsider in this close-knit town had softened the barriers I’d erected around me. I’d trusted her.

  Yet her kindness had proved false. She didn’t want friendship. Her confidences had nothing to do with our shared outsider status. She’d cozied up to me for one reason and one reason only. The development company she worked for had plans to create a high-density commercial complex with nearly a hundred residential apartments in the upper stories.

  The proposed development, which was her pet project, would be centered on the marshfront property where the Chocolate Box sat. Jody had pursued my friendship because she’d desperately wanted to purchase that land. And she’d hoped to win me over in order to convince me to sell it to her.

  When I refused, I instantly became her enemy.

  To be fair, she also disliked me because I hadn’t joined her in trashing her ex. She’d told me many times that Harley was some kind of murderous devil. My decision not to take her word for it had put a strain on our budding friendship even before I’d told her that I’d planned to keep the Chocolate Box. Still, my decision to keep the shop had made her spitting mad. She could barely look in my direction without snarling and making some kind of snide comment.

  Bertie kept saying I never needed that kind of friendship in the first place. “That girl is meaner than a skillet full of rattlesnakes.”

  Even though I agreed with Bertie—dealing with Jody did feel awfully similar to getting involved with dangerous snakes; you never knew when she’d strike—I still felt bad about how things had ended between us. Although most of the town had objected to such a drastic change on the island, Jody seemed to truly believe that the mega-development her company had planned was exactly what the town needed to get the economy out of the gutter.

  Jody finally tore her gaze away from Bixby’s dazzlingly seductive eyes and glanced at me. She snapped her gaping mouth closed. “Liar. You’re not his friend,” she said, loud enough for my ears only.

  I shrugged.

  She hurried across the deck with her hand extended toward Bixby. “On behalf of Sunset Development, let me apologize for what happened. I’m Jody Dalton, senior project manager.” She sucked in a shaky breath when Bixby lifted her hand to his lips.

  “I’m impressed they sent someone so high up in the company to take care of the problem,” he said with a seductive rumble in his voice. “And someone so beautiful.”

  “Oh, oh, oh. I don’t usually do hands-on repairs. We have a handyman who handles these things. But he’s on vacation. So I’m filling in.”

  At that moment, Alvin came out onto the deck with a beer in one hand and a plate piled with food in the other. His grin took a dive when he saw Jody.

  “Jody,” he said, his grip tightening on his plate. “I done told the office to just bring by a new grill. You didn’t need to come.”

  “I’m not signing off on a new grill when we can fix the old one. I don’t know why you didn’t fix it yourself,” she said, then pointed to the beer in his hand. “Too busy drinking?”

  “There ain’t no fixin’ it,” he grumbled as he continued to take his
plate over to a large wooden table on the deck.

  Jody shook her head. “Alvin took the week off to ‘practice’ with the band. So I’m stuck covering for him. Just finished replacing a window AC down the block. And after I’m done with this, some jerk in the rental on the other side of the island broke out a window. Instead of eating lunch, I have to go sit and wait for the glaziers to show up.”

  “Er … sorry about the window,” Bixby said, but he didn’t sound sorry. “I’ll pay for the repairs. And I can arrange for someone to handle overseeing its replacement. I don’t want to put you out.”

  “The house with the broken bedroom window? That’s the house you’re renting?” Jody asked with breathless excitement.

  “It’s the one Penn got for me. Let me give my people a call. I’ll have someone over there right away to make sure the window gets fixed.”

  “No, no, no. No need. No need. I don’t mind giving you personal service. Now let me get this grill up and working.” She glared at Alvin. “We try to keep everything in perfect condition, but the renters are so careless with the furniture and appliances. What was practically new on move-in day is smashed to bits a few days later. I’m sure that’s what happened here.” She tilted her head and smiled at Bixby. “I’m glad you weren’t injured too badly when the grill failed. Let me see if I can’t get it working again.”

  “The grill exploded,” Bertie pointed out. “Not even a root doctor could bring it back from the dead.”

  Jody’s smile tightened. “Well, let me look at it anyhow.”

  Her smile froze when she saw the grill’s charred remains. “What in the world did you do to it?” she shouted over to Alvin.

  “Dang thing blew up,” he shouted back. “Scared me witless.”

  Jody poked around at it much like Gibbons had earlier. “Looks as if it was some kind of gas leak. I’ll send the cleaners in to get this taken care of and order a new one sent over.”