Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate

by Sally Berneathy

  “Let him go,” I said, and the female officer unlocked the handcuffs—reluctantly, I thought.

  Rick rubbed his wrists, glared some more and, when it became apparent the cops weren’t leaving until he did, stalked off toward his vehicle. He peeled away from the curb, burning a little rubber.

  As I watched him leave, it occurred to me that I really was getting a divorce from the man, that I wanted a divorce from him, wanted him out of my life…forever, just as he’d promised.

  The realization made me a little sad.

  It was over.

  All the good times we’d shared seemed to crumble into the darkness like a beautiful but unstable old building imploding into a pile of rubble.

  I watched Rick’s tail lights turn the corner and disappear just as those eight years seemed to disappear, as if all the fun times we’d shared had never happened.

  No matter how you looked at it, this divorce business was a lose/lose situation.

  Chapter Twelve

  To say I was not at my best when I got to the shop the next morning would be the quintessential understatement. Even after two Cokes and another piece of the left over Brownie Nut Fudge Pie, I was still operating in a fog.

  I’d opened Rick’s present after he left last night. I had stared at the package a long time trying to decide if I should mail it back to him. Finally my curiosity got the better of me. He knew it would.

  The small box contained a silver necklace and matching earrings. I’ve always preferred silver to gold though Rick thought I was nuts. Actually, knowing his obsession with “the finer things,” the setting could have been platinum. I don’t know enough about jewelry to tell the difference.

  But it was the motif that brought tears to my eyes and poignant dreams to my restless sleep. The jewelry was obviously custom made, the design consisting of two intertwined hearts, each set with a different stone…one amethyst and one diamond…my birthstone and his. It matched the ring he’d given me years ago.

  As I sat there staring at the jewelry, Henry climbed into my lap and brushed his face against my cheek as if he understood that I needed affection and comfort. He was right.

  Now, a few hours later, I rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes and tried to concentrate on preparing the morning pastries, an activity that had come automatically yesterday.

  Paula wasn’t in any better shape. Her tension level had escalated back to arrival day heights. I didn’t bring up her strange comments from the night before about turning herself in and my rescuing Zach. Even if the place wasn’t bugged, I feared any little push would send her over the edge and then I’d have to make the morning cappuccino and lose every customer who came in.

  When she dropped an egg on the floor, you’d have thought she’d done something to doom the place to bankruptcy, the wrecking ball, and maybe even a live, on-site volcano. I tried to assure her that life would go on in spite of the loss of one egg. I even offered to clean it up myself, but then I burst into tears. I don’t think I was very successful in my reassurances.

  However, it worked out okay because that gave Paula the chance to chide me for my terrible diet of chocolate and Coke, and to force me to eat a cheese omelet with picante sauce. I hate to admit it, but that did clear away some of the fog, and by the time we finished with the breakfast customers and closed to fix lunch, my hands were steady enough to measure cocoa.

  Paula left to take Zach to the nursery and I decided to make my Brownies with Raspberry Jam and Butter Cream Frosting for the special Dessert Du Jour. The recipe was time consuming and required concentration. Maybe that would keep my mind away from all those other avenues I didn’t want it to take.

  The phone rang, and I jumped and dropped the can of cocoa. If this kept up, pretty soon we’d have a cake on the floor.

  I answered the phone, bracing myself to hear Rick’s voice. I was pleasantly surprised when it was my mother. That tells you how much I did not want to talk to Rick.

  “How are you doing, sweetheart?” she asked in a hushed, compassionate tone, as if worried I might explode any minute. She’d been doing that ever since Rick and I split up. Okay, so that pretty accurately described my state of mind, but she could have pretended not to notice. Then I wouldn’t have had to work twice as hard and do all the pretending.

  I’d been silly to think she and Dad would be pleased at the break-up just because they hadn’t wanted me to marry him in the first place. They were not, of course. I suppose I should count my blessings they hadn’t decided I was still young enough to go to law school.

  “I’m doing great, Mom,” I lied. “Really great.” One of my best friends is a killer, the other knows way too much about breaking and entering and spying on people, I just lost eight years out of my life, I didn’t get any real sleep last night and somebody’s probably going to call to claim my cat, but other than that, my life’s just fantastic! “How are you doing?”

  “My shoulder’s been bothering me again. I have an appointment with my massage therapist this afternoon. Your father’s cholesterol and blood pressure are up. He works too hard, and he worries about you.”

  I sighed. “Mom, I swear to you, there is no reason to worry about me. There’s no reason for him to work so hard, either. It’s not like you two would be dependent on food stamps if he took a little time off.”

  “He has obligations to his clients. He’s trying to find an assistant in his field, but first he has to find the time to look and interview and then train.”

  I sighed again, a long one this time. It was the old familiar guilt jerk about my failure to go into the family business and help my father. I’d better watch it. Maybe they didn’t think I was too old to go to law school after all.

  “I hope he finds someone soon. Well, it was good to talk to you. I need to get back to my chocolate.”

  “You work too hard, too, darling, getting up in the middle of the night and spending the day cooking.” I could almost hear the shudder that accompanied that last word. My mother had a full-time maid who prepared all the meals. I had no idea what they’d done in the lean days before Dad’s practice became lucrative. I was a late-in-life arrival, so by the time I came along, the maid was a well-established fixture. She even opened my jars of baby food.

  “I enjoy what I do, and I like getting up when everybody else is asleep. I have the whole world to myself for a couple of hours.” Except for Paula and Lester Bennett.

  “If you enjoy it, then that’s all that matters. I won’t keep you. I just called to see if you can come to dinner on Saturday.”

  “I think I can work it into my schedule.” I wasn’t about to admit it, but suddenly the idea of seeing my parents was very appealing. Having just lost eight years from my past, I guess I was eager to make sure the rest of it was still there, to hang onto what was left with both hands, even if it meant enduring a few veiled and not so veiled comments about my marriage.

  “Wonderful,” Mother said. “Dinner will be served at seven- thirty, but we’d like you to arrive at six. Your great aunt Catherine is flying in from Arizona, and I know she’d like some extra time to visit with you.”

  I was barely able to suppress a groan. Aunt Catherine, who had never been called Cathy, wasn’t related to the grandmother I’d loved, my dad’s mother. Aunt Catherine was my maternal grandmother’s sister. That grandmother had died when I was six, and all I remembered of her was that she had large nostrils. That was all I could see from my vantage point. She never lowered herself enough I could get another perspective. Aunt Catherine was her sister. Could have been her twin, judging from the size of the nostrils.

  “I’ll be there at six,” I said since I’d already committed myself. Maybe I’d get lucky and come down with a case of bubonic plague.

  “Oh, and one more thing.”

  I flinched. My mother only tacks on a rider when she knows I won’t like it. A rider to the Aunt Catherine announcement, bad enough in itself, had to be really awful.

  I considered telling her th
e place was on fire and I had to hang up, but she’d just call back. “What is the one more thing?” I asked and immediately prayed for a backhoe on a construction site somewhere across town to sever the phone line before she could answer.

  “Your father and I—” another bad phrase “—had a long talk with Rick yesterday, and he told us you two are trying to work out a reconciliation. We’ve asked him to come to dinner also. It would be nice if Aunt Catherine didn’t have to know there’d ever been a problem.”

  “I can’t believe you did that! Rick and I are not working on a reconciliation! He’s living with the Muffy Monster, for crying out loud! Why would you want me to reconcile with scum like that? Why would you invite him into your home?”

  “Lindsay, you’re raising your voice.”

  “I’m sorry, Mother,” I replied dutifully through clenched teeth.

  “Granted, Rick made a mistake, but he realizes it now. Men are different from us, and sometimes we have to overlook their little peccadilloes.”

  “Their little peccadilloes?” I repeated incredulously. “I think this goes way beyond a little peccadillo!”

  “You’re raising your voice again, Lindsay. You’re becoming hysterical.”

  “Yes, I am!”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “All right, all right! I am now speaking in a soft voice. I am now grinding the final remnants of enamel off my molars.”

  She ignored me. “Thank you, dear. I’ll look forward to seeing you and Rick on Saturday at six.”

  “No! I am not coming to your house with that man and I am not overlooking his gigantic peccadillo. Mother, I caught them in bed together! Our bed!”

  “You must learn to forgive. Holding a grudge only hurts you and, in this case, it will destroy your marriage.”

  I’m not sure if there was something in her voice or if I had just become cynical, but a terrible thought flashed across my sleep-deprived brain. “Did Dad have his little peccadilloes? Did he ever cheat on you?”

  She waited a shadow of a second too long to answer. “Your father and I have a wonderful marriage.” And her reply wasn’t really an answer. “We’ll see you on Saturday. Please wear a nice dress.”

  I hung up the phone in shock. My father had cheated on my mother.

  I really ought to write down all the crazy things happening in my life. The list was getting too long to keep track mentally. I might forget something, and heaven knows, I wouldn’t want to forget any of these insane events.

  I picked up the recipe for Brownies with Raspberry Jam and Butter Cream Frosting, took one look at it and laid it aside. I’d better stick with something simple while half my brain cells were comatose from lack of sleep and the other half were having a nervous breakdown from the stress.

  A Chocolate Pudding Cake, made with a simple cake batter in an ungreased pan then topped with sugars and water which cooked through to the bottom to form the pudding, would stretch the limits of my mental abilities at that moment.

  I made a couple of extras pans. No leftover chocolate ever goes to waste, and today was already a double chocolate day. I couldn’t wait to see what the evening would bring. I might have to look into the possibility of hooking up a chocolate I.V.

  ***

  When we closed the shop that afternoon and walked out back to our cars, I did a careful reconnaissance of the area and decided, with the wind blowing, it would be safe to talk as long as we stayed away from anything that might be bugged, like buildings, utility poles, our vehicles, and large insects. Yes, I was getting paranoid. With good reason.

  I caught Paula’s arm before she could get too close to her car. “Why did you say that last night about possibly turning yourself in and me making sure your in-laws don’t get Zach? We were trying to calm old Lester down, not incite him to come after me!”

  She stared at me in shock and horror. “Oh, Lindsay, I’m so sorry! I never thought about that! I just wanted him to know that even if he succeeds in sending me to prison, he still won’t get Zach. I thought it might discourage him.”

  “I doubt if a man so bent on revenge is going to be deterred by the threat of a chocolate maker and her team of mythical lawyers.”

  “Mythical?”

  The bright sun hurt my eyes, and I could feel the perspiration start to trickle down my ribs under my loose T-shirt. “Oh, no. Please tell me you didn’t believe all that crap about the team of Ninja lawyers.”

  Now she really looked upset. “It wasn’t true? But your father’s a very successful attorney.”

  “In real estate law.”

  “He has other attorneys in his firm.”

  “Yeah. Taxes, probate, trust indentures, living trusts, corporations, partnerships, securities…anything like that you need, I’ll see to it that he fixes you right up.”

  “I thought—”

  I shook my head. “Why do you think I have somebody else handling my divorce?”

  “I assumed you were being independent.”

  “Well, you’re right. I wouldn’t have used Dad’s firm even if I could have, but I couldn’t. They don’t soil their lily-white, civil-law hands with that sort of sordid stuff. I even got Pre-Paid Legal so I could get my speeding tickets fixed. Dad can do that, but he doesn’t like to.” Although I now wondered if my father might be more conversant with the sordid side of life than I’d ever suspected.

  “I’ve really messed things up, haven’t I?”

  “Don’t be silly. They were already so messed up, you couldn’t possibly have made them any worse. Don’t worry about it. It’s my fault. I’m just too good at lying.”

  “What if Lester believed it and he comes after you?”

  “I doubt it. He’s got his agenda, and you’re it. Anyway, I have a vicious attack cat. Come on, let’s go home and see what our mild-mannered neighbor, the Fred-man, has done now.”

  In spite of my reassurances to Paula that I was in no danger, I was sure hoping Fred had dashed into the nearest phone booth, shed his glasses and donned his Fred-man cape then found a way to dispose of Lester before the lunatic disposed of all of us.

  ***

  The first thing I did when I got home was to call Fred. He had spent most of the day repairing Paula’s window and installing those bars across her doors. Of course each task had to be done to perfect specifications. Heaven forbid Fred should put in a screw crooked or leave a smudge of glue. But all that persnicketiness meant he hadn’t even started his computer search and had no news.

  The second thing I did was take a nap. My mind was all ready to fret and stew and worry some more, but my body took control and cancelled that plan. I was sleeping hard, making up for lost time, when the doorbell woke me…and woke me and woke me and woke me. Somebody was leaning on it. Had to be Rick.

  I staggered up and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. Henry opened his eyes, yawned and closed them again.

  Either my caller wasn’t Rick, or Henry had decided he was acceptable after all.

  Using those criteria, it could not be Rick.

  It was Paula.

  Balancing Zach on one hip, she pushed inside, her face a mask of terror. I woke up real fast, slammed and locked the door behind her.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “The car—it’s not mine—in my garage.”

  “Calm down,” I urged. “You’re not making sense.”

  Zach pointed to the stairs where Henry was sauntering down to join us. Paula set him on the floor, and he toddled over to maul the cat for a while.

  Paula covered her face with both hands as if she were going to cry, but then slid her fingers down her cheeks and drew in a deep breath, looking brave. “There’s a car in my garage.”

  Not usually a statement that would send cold chills down one’s spine, but it did this time. Somehow I knew exactly what that car looked like, and that chill ran all the way to my toes. “An old blue Oldsmobile with Texas plates?”

  She nodded, the movement so shaky, it was barely recognizabl
e. “This is going to make it look like I did something to Lester and tried to hide his car!”

  “Any idea how long it’s been there?”

  “No. I haven’t been in my garage in several days, not since I got out the lawnmower on Saturday. But when I came back from the store and pulled into the driveway, the door was standing wide open, and there it was!”

  “Which means he could have put it in there while you were at the store, or he could have done it several days ago, then got tired of waiting for you to find it and came over and opened the door while you were gone. I love all the trees and bushes in this neighborhood, but they sure do make it easy for somebody to sneak around unseen.”

  “He could be outside watching us right now! He’s closing in. You were right. What I said last night didn’t scare him at all. It caused him to hurry. Even you’ve got to admit, the only chance I have is to run.” She looked around at Zach where he sat on the floor, laughing as Henry’s big tail switched across his face. “It’s the only chance he has.”

  “Let’s go talk to Fred. He’ll know what to do.”

  “No! He’ll just try to talk me out of it. I have a plan, but I need your help. First, we go over to my house and talk about my leaving so Lester can hear us. Then we move my car as close to the house as possible and load it with empty suitcases. Next you change clothes with me, cover your hair, carry a bundled up blanket like it was a baby and get in the car. With all the trees, he won’t be able to see well enough to know it’s not me. You then drive away. After he leaves to follow you, I’ll get Zach and a few things and drive your car to the bus station.”

  “I think that plan sucks.”

  “Have you got a better one?”

  “Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. Why don’t we just move Lester’s car? Put it around behind that old house? Give it back to him?”

  “What if somebody sees us?”

  I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. He moves around without being seen. Why shouldn’t we? Maybe we ought to call Trent and tell him. It’s not like you murdered Lester and stole the car.”