Playing with Bonbon Fire

by Dorothy St. James

  I opened my eyes in time to watch panic tighten Florence’s expression. “No, you can’t do that. You have to understand. No one can know about this.”

  Harley, bless him, squeezed my hand a little tighter. “If that’s the case, Mrs. Corners, why are you here today? What did you think this confession of yours would accomplish?”

  Florence rose from the sofa. “I wanted to give Charity the information she was seeking, that’s why I’m here. I wanted to make it so she understood …” She hitched her purse—a pricy bright blue leather Prada bag—over her shoulder. “I suppose you don’t see it that way.”

  “The lawsuit,” Harley pressed. He released my hand and rose from his chair in an effort to block her path to the door. “I cannot sit on this information and let the business’s assets remain tied up in court. Don’t forget, your brother had the court put a freeze on the Chocolate Box’s bank account and the money your mother set aside for the upkeep of the building. Because of that, Penn has already had to take out a loan just to cover the day-to-day costs necessary to keep your mother’s shop open.”

  Florence’s nervous gaze jumped from the door beyond Harley’s shoulder and back to me several times before she heaved a deep sigh. “Very well. If I talk to Edward and get him to withdraw his objections to Mother’s will, will that be enough for you to honor my wish to keep my secret?”

  Was it?

  Did I want to pursue a relationship with Florence? Did I want another indifferent parent in my life?

  “I cannot recommend to my client that she agree to such a deception. You need to—” Harley started to say.

  “Do you have any children?” I asked, surprised I didn’t already know the answer.

  “No,” Florence answered right away. She then paled as she realized her mistake. She quickly licked her lips. “Other than you, that is,” she said. “My husband was never interested in raising children.”

  I nodded, glad to know there’d be no awkward meetings with siblings where I’d have to pretend we weren’t related.

  “What do you expect from me in exchange for convincing Edward to drop the lawsuit contesting my grandmother’s will?” I asked. “Do you expect me to lie about being related to any of you?”

  “That would be preferable.” She adjusted how her purse hung from her shoulder. “You have to understand that secrets are best kept secret.”

  Chapter 25

  “I’m not going to lie and tell people that Mabel isn’t my grandmother,” I told Harley after Florence had left. I freed Troubadour from Bertie’s bedroom. He hissed at me as if I was the cause of his banishment and made a beeline for Harley’s inviting ankles. “I’m Mabel’s granddaughter. Whether her ungrateful children believe it or not, it’s the truth. I’m not going to let their hatred take away my heritage.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir here.” Harley bent down and scratched behind the kitty’s bald ears.

  “Do you think she’ll convince Edward to drop the lawsuit?” I grabbed a piece of dark chocolate from the candy dish on the end table en route to letting Stella out of my bedroom. “Holding a clear title to the building and having access to the business’s bank account would make my life easier.”

  Stella poked her nose out the bedroom door and sniffed. She then bounded out into the living room with a Papillon’s burst of energy. Barking, she ran a circle around Harley and Troubadour several times before finding her favorite toy, a yellow rubber ducky, under the armchair. She squeaked it, tossed it in the air, pounced on it, and then, with the rubber duck in her mouth, pranced around the room while squeak-squeaking the toy.

  “I don’t see any reason why Edward would back down,” Harley said. “I’ve never known Florence to have that kind of sway over his decisions. Does your dog ever stop moving?”

  “Not when she’s excited.” As I passed the candy dish again, I grabbed a handful of chocolates, no longer pretending I was going to eat just a few. I knew, and I suspected Harley knew, that in a few minutes the dish would be empty. “She’s like a tiny Border Collie with her endless energy.”

  Stella barked and ran around with her rubber ducky when she was nervous. I ate chocolate.

  “Let’s go to my office.” He grabbed one of the chocolates out of my hand and popped it into his mouth before I could protest. “We need to document what took place during this meeting and get Miss Bunny to notarize it.”

  “But it’s still our word against hers,” I pointed out as we left.

  “True. But it takes two people to make a child. Now that you know which of Mabel’s daughters gave birth to you, you can take that information to your father. Provide him with photographs of Florence from around thirty-six years ago and let him identify her as your mother.”

  Go to my father? Several months ago, shortly after learning Mabel was my grandmother, I had asked him about my mother. He’d dismissed me. He’d said it had happened so long ago that he really didn’t remember much about their short time together. She was nothing more than an iterant fortune teller, he’d said, repeating the story I’d heard my entire life.

  If I sent him a photo, would he give me more information? Would he recognize Florence? “I don’t want to hear him tell me again how unimportant my mother was in his life. Who knows if he’d even look at the photo?”

  Harley nodded. “Florence told us she was a student away from home for the first time and that she’d traveled to Chicago with her friends. She didn’t say anything about pretending to be a fortune teller.”

  “So?” The tale had been such a large part of the fabric of my life, shaping every important decision, that I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Harley could be suggesting. The tale had been told to me so many times as if it were gospel truth that it had to be true. How could it not be true?

  He gave me a kind look. “Penn, I think it’s worth a conversation with your father. It might be a waste of your time, or it might give you some important answers.”

  “Because Florence isn’t going to tell me anything?”

  “As long as I’ve known her, she’s always put her needs first,” he said. “I don’t think she’ll change her ways now. But don’t you agree that it’s past time you learned the truth about your mother?”

  Chapter 26

  “I don’t know if I’d recognize the truth even if it were a crabby alligator that lurched out of the marsh and bit me on the—”

  “Althea!” I choked on the iced ginger tea she’d brewed for me. “What are you talking about?” The question sounded more like a strangled wheeze than a question, since I was still coughing and choking on the tea that had gone down the wrong way.

  My friend got up from the kitchen counter stool and came around the small peninsula to give me a few sharp pounds on my back. “Is that better?”

  I coughed a few more times before nodding.

  Although Florence’s words had been swirling around in my head along with my own denials—that woman couldn’t be my mother—Florence’s shocking revelation wasn’t why I’d rushed away from the shop to visit my friend at her house.

  I’d been forced to run because, quite frankly, her mother was twice as stubborn as a hungry badger and had continued to refuse to talk to me. And I needed to talk with someone about Stan’s murder and the subsequent attempts against Bixby and me.

  When I’d returned to the Chocolate Box around four o’clock, I’d found Bertie working alongside Tina. Althea, I was told, had gone home.

  Eager to find out what Bertie had been up to most of the day and if her activities had involved Bubba, I may have bombarded her with questions.

  With a big grin plastered on her face, she told me not to worry so much about her. “Penn, I’m an old woman. I’ve got experience enough to know how to take care of myself. I don’t need you fussing around me like a mother hen.”

  “You do look rather henlike right now,” Tina, who was stealing a sea salt chocolate caramel from our inventory, said with a laugh. “Leave the poor woman alone.”

&
nbsp; “Aren’t you a sweet dear?” Bertie said, patting Tina’s cheek. That tight grin was still plastered on Bertie’s face.

  I was an expert on those kinds of grins. I’d once used them as a lifeline. The tightness hid the expression that threatened to contort your face into another direction and shout to the world the hurt and sorrow threatening to consume you.

  Weren’t we a pair? I was wearing that same grin to hide the shock that currently had me reeling.

  “You worry about everyone around you.” Bertie pointed her timeworn finger at me. “What you need to do is start worrying about yourself. Those bullets were aimed at you, not me.”

  I edged my way to the door. “There’s someone I need to talk to about all this weird stuff that’s been going on at the concerts. You guys don’t mind closing up the shop, do you?”

  “Where are you going?” Tina demanded. She started to remove the white apron she’d donned sometime during the day. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, please stay and help Bertie. It’s not fair to leave her with all the work it takes to close up the shop.” That wasn’t at all true. Bertie and I often traded off the task of both opening and closing the shop in order to allow the other to attend an event, or go shopping, or simply have a life.

  Bertie, who could read me better than almost anyone, nodded gravely. She then said with a fake old-lady warble in her voice, “I would appreciate your help, Tina. If you don’t mind?”

  At least Bertie was still willing to play along when I needed to get away and poke my nose into places it didn’t belong. Though I was sure she wouldn’t have been so accommodating if she’d known I was also poking my nose into her business.

  Tina eyed me as if I were the last piece of chocolate in a candy dish. “I suppose, if you need my help,” she said to Bertie, sounding not at all enthusiastic, “I can stay.”

  “Thank you, Tina.” I ran over to her and planted a huge kiss on her cheek, which shocked both of us. “I’ve got to run.”

  That’s when I rushed straight to Althea’s house.

  Althea lived in a small cottage in the middle of the island. It was one of a dozen one- and two-bedroom cottages built in the 1950s. Her grandfather had built the cottages to give the black community, who during the height of segregation hadn’t been welcome in many of the beachfront inns up and down the Southern coastline, a vacation spot where they could relax and enjoy the cooling ocean breezes. The place had served as a blessed break from the summer’s humid and unrelenting heat.

  Years after desegregation, the demand for the vacation cottages dropped off. What had once been a bustling business gradually became a largely empty resort that barely covered the bills. Althea’s grandmother went to work as a maid in one of the beachfront inns to keep her children fed. And her grandfather started to sell off the cottages.

  The whitewashed clapboard homes with rusty tin roofs predated the building requirement that homes on the island be elevated to protect against flood damage. So, unlike many of the beachfront houses on the island with long runs of stairs leading up to the front door, only two low wooden steps led up to the small front porch. Ancient oaks, twisted from years of being battered and shaped by constant wind, formed a thick canopy over the collection of small cottages.

  Althea’s grandfather had kept one of the cottages for his family’s use. Eventually Bertie had moved there with her husband and raised Althea in the small two-bedroom home. And now it was Althea’s home. She’d planted a wide variety of herbs, wildflowers, mushrooms, and pineapples, making the approach to her home feel as if I were entering some secret fairy realm.

  Not that I believed in such things. I didn’t.

  Upon my knock, Althea took one look at me and ushered me inside.

  The inside of her house smelled earthy-sweet from the various diffused oils she said she used to keep the spirit world sated. The furniture in the tiny living room was eclectic and painted a rainbow of bright colors.

  She’d once told me how she’d remodeled the interior, knocking down the wall between the living room and the kitchen to add room for an island that included a breakfast bar. She’d then painted each wall a different color: a deep purple, a bright peach, a sunset red, and a robin’s-egg blue. They should have clashed. The varied pieces of furniture should have clashed with the walls and with each other. But, and I have no idea why, the room worked. The explosion of colors created a fun, welcoming space.

  “What’s happened, Penn?” she demanded after closing the door behind me. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. You didn’t, did you? See a ghost, I mean? The spirits have been unusually restless lately.”

  “You know I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s been windy. That’s what’s been restless. The wind,” I said as I paced back and forth the small distance between the front door—through the living room—and the kitchen.

  “Then tell me what has you looking like … like … like you didn’t see a ghost?”

  “It’s your mother that has me looking like this.” Oh, that wasn’t exactly true. Of course I was worried to death about Bertie’s behavior. But it was Florence’s words that had me feeling as if I couldn’t breathe.

  “My mother? What happened?” Her dark skin turned ashen. “Where is she? Don’t tell me she’s gone again.”

  “No, don’t panic.” I put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. Nothing’s happened to her. She’s fine. Really. It’s not just her running off that has me worried. It’s the fact that when she disappears, Bubba does too. And as much as I want to believe Bubba is innocent in Stan’s death, his uncharacteristic behavior ever since that horrible night is terribly suspicious.”

  “Wait. Bubba has been disappearing, too? At the same time that Mama is running off? It has to be a coincidence.”

  “It might be a coincidence, but I’m afraid that it’s not. This morning your mother got a phone call that upset her, and she went running out the door. Next thing I knew, Alvin and Fox started hanging out in the shop because Bubba had canceled their scheduled practice. I was hoping that if we put our heads together, perhaps we can figure out what’s going on. Perhaps we can get a better handle on who killed Stan and who shot at me this morning.”

  She gasped. “You don’t think—?”

  “Of course I don’t think your mother was involved in either event.” I prayed she wasn’t. “But she’s involved in something. And that something didn’t start until after Stan’s murder.”

  “Ohhh, I don’t know much of anything. I wish I did. I dearly do.” She moved over to her bright yellow sofa and began digging around in the red-and-white striped beach bag she used as a purse during the summer months. “I tried to find where she went today and saw her only after she’d returned to the shop. Now where is it?”

  “Where’s what?”

  “The note I found in Mama’s purse.”

  “You went snooping in your own mother’s purse?” I asked.

  She stopped searching and looked up at me. “Do you think I’m a terrible daughter?”

  “No, I’m wondering why I didn’t think of it. What did you find?”

  She started digging around in her beach bag again. “It’s not here. I’m sure I put it in here.”

  “Could that be it?” I pointed to her kitchen counter, where a small square of yellow paper was being used as a coaster for an oversized teacup.

  Althea let out a cry of frustration and then grabbed the paper, using her silky green shirt to wipe at the water ring that had formed. “I don’t know where my head has been lately. I keep doing stuff like that. I hope it’s not early dementia. You don’t think it might be dementia?”

  “I’m sure it’s not dementia, Althea. What’s on the paper you lifted from your mother’s purse?”

  “This.” She handed me the paper. “It doesn’t make much sense.”

  The handwriting on the paper was perfectly upright but looked as if it had been written by someone with a shaky hand. It wasn’t at all like Bertie’
s clean, tight-looped, sloping letters.

  “Secrets are deadly. Look at what happened to Stan.”

  Frowning, I looked up at Althea. “What does this mean?”

  “I wish I knew. It’s not Mama’s handwriting.”

  “Definitely not,” I agreed. Was it Candy’s? It looked different from that first threatening note she’d sent sailing through the shop window, but nerves could have made her handwriting shaky. “Is it a warning or a threat? It sounds like a threat. Is someone threatening to hurt your mother? But why? Did this note come from the same person who killed Stan? Does she know something that could lead us to the killer?”

  “I don’t know,” Althea wailed. “She won’t talk to me about anything. No one needed to send her this note. She clearly has no intention of sharing her secrets with anyone.”

  My mind went back to what Florence had said about keeping secrets. She didn’t want anyone to know she was my mother. Ugh. Just thinking about it made me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

  “Are you okay? You’re not getting sick, are you?” Althea asked with alarm.

  “I …” I couldn’t say it aloud. I simply couldn’t. “Sorry. My stomach is feeling queasy.”

  “Ginger tea should help with that.” She sounded relieved that my queasy stomach would give her something to do, a purpose. She moved with ease through the kitchen, filling a kettle with water and putting several bags of ginger tea into a teapot.

  “Do you have any idea what secret this note is referring to? Do you know of anything your mother may have done in her past that she (or someone else) might want to keep secret? Something that involved Stan?”

  “Secrets? Mama?” Althea snorted at the thought. “Goodness, no. She’s as straightlaced as anyone could be.”

  “Did you know she used to sing with The Embers?” I asked.

  “Get out of town!” In her excitement, she spun toward me with such speed that she spilled the kettle of water she’d been carrying to the stove. “Mama sang with those good old boys? No, that can’t be right.”