I depressed the button, got another dial tone and punched in 9-1, then stopped.
What would I do if the cops came and Henry promptly went outside, pottied, buried it and came back in?
I couldn’t decide if I was more terrified of facing an intruder or more worried about making a fool of myself and of having Trent find out about it.
“There’s nobody in my house,” I assured myself sternly. “And if there is, then I need to go down there and escort him out. This is my house. I refuse to allow uninvited guests.”
I set my jaw and hung up the phone.
Nevertheless, it took all my courage to get out of that bed and walk across the room. I started to put on a robe, then decided it was ridiculous to worry about a murderer seeing me in my over-sized T-shirt. Besides, long sleeves might restrict the motion of my arm in case I got a chance to whack him with the skillet. I drew in a deep breath, hefted the skillet high and yanked the door open.
The hallway was empty.
Henry darted past me and down the stairs.
I had to follow. What if Lester was in my house and he hurt my cat? Obviously Henry was so macho he thought he could handle it, but even though he might sound like a fully grown tiger, he was really only an overgrown pussy cat.
I hurried down the stairs, being as quiet as I could. Even so, I was pretty sure any intruder could hear my ragged breathing and my heart pounding against my ribs.
The living room appeared to be empty, though the glow from the street lamp wasn’t enough to see into the corners. I desperately wanted to flip the switch and flood the room with light, but then an intruder would be able to see me. Anyway, Henry wasn’t in the living room which surely meant the intruder wasn’t there either.
I gulped down the lump of terror in my throat, checked the front door to be sure it was still locked then tiptoed on through the dining room into the kitchen, halfway expecting at every moment to be attacked from behind.
Henry stood at the kitchen door as if trying to see underneath. When I walked into the room, he ambled to his water bowl.
“You were thirsty? You scared me half to death because you were thirsty?” I wanted to believe that. I really, really wanted to believe that.
But why had he been peering under the door?
Well, curiosity, maybe.
I checked the deadbolt on the kitchen door. It was secure.
I sagged against the counter, the adrenaline suddenly ebbing, bile surging up, bringing a bitter taste to my mouth.
“Henry, if I had the energy, I’d kill you.”
He looked at me, those blue eyes wide and complacent, then strutted across the room and rubbed against my leg.
As if expecting praise for running off an intruder?
I shook my head to try to clear it. When that paranoia gets a grip, it doesn’t let go! Okay, there really was a nut case skulking around out there, but he was after Paula, not me. He’d only come after me if Paula went to prison and I sicced Dad’s nonexistent Ninja lawyers on him.
I set the skillet down on the counter beside the pan of Chocolate Pudding Cake. That’s what I needed. A chocolate fix would make everything better.
With trembling fingers, I removed the plastic wrap from the pan then took a spoon from the drawer. Considering the way my hands were shaking, I decided not to bother with the middleman bowl but took the whole pan into the living room and sat down on the sofa.
With every bite, I became a little calmer even though the bitter taste in my mouth kept me from thoroughly savoring the dark, rich flavor.
“Henry, we’re going to have talk about this,” I said as soon as I got back enough breath to be able to speak. He had climbed onto the sofa beside me and was purring happily. “You’re obviously not the least bit concerned that you just took twenty years off my life!” I shook my spoon at him. “This is not a good thing! I appreciate the fact that you have ambition and want to be a watch cat, but you’ve got to learn to differentiate between a burglar and a thirst.”
I shoveled in more chocolate and chattered nervously to Henry. I still wasn’t completely convinced there hadn’t been an intruder in my house. However, I was beginning to feel calm enough to consider venturing back upstairs for another hour of sleep before I had to go to work.
Then I began to feel queasy. I looked down at the pan. Small wonder. I’d eaten all that remained of that entire pan of Chocolate Pudding Cake. That’s a lot of chocolate, even for a pro like me.
“Henry, it would seem my gluttony for chocolate has finally caught up with me.” I sat very still, taking deep breaths, trying to relax my stomach muscles, but it rapidly became apparent that I was going to lose the battle and the chocolate.
I set the pan on the coffee table, charged into the bathroom and proceeded to empty my stomach of all contents. Half a pan of Chocolate Pudding Cake, partially digested, is not a pretty sight.
When there was nothing left but my stomach lining, I finally staggered up from hugging the commode, rinsed my mouth and brushed my teeth. By that time, I was so dizzy, I could barely stand. I needed to clean off the toilet bowl, but I didn’t think I could do it right now.
Paula was right. I shouldn’t eat so much sugar, especially on an empty stomach. Maybe if I ate some cheese, the protein would counteract some of that sugar, and I’d feel better.
I stumbled back through the living room, trying to make it to the kitchen and promising myself I would never again, as long as I lived, pig out on chocolate, so help me, God! I doubt if God believed me.
But something was wrong beyond my stomach problems. I was pretty sure the room shouldn’t be spinning in circles and there shouldn’t be three blue-eyed cats hurrying toward me with concerned looks on their faces.
I had a hard time keeping my balance as the room spun round and round. Walking was out of the question. Just in time the floor came up to catch me and solved that problem. When I first landed, I thought I was going to throw up again, but the blackness closed around me and I sank into it gratefully.
Chapter Fourteen
I was having a terrible dream about being dragged all over my high school gymnasium while Rick and Fred shouted at me and tortured me with needles to make me tell Trent my secret recipes. They beat me with iron skillets and pans of Chocolate Pudding Cake while hundreds of people in the stands booed me when I tried to tell them there was no secret. Finally Trent handcuffed me and carted off to the dungeon where I was put on the rack and tortured some more.
I was happy to wake from that dream even though my throat hurt, my mouth tasted like I’d been eating Henry’s cat food or maybe his litter box, and my body ached all over. On second thought, I didn’t really want to wake up. The dreams were over and the alarm wasn’t screaming at me. Surely I could go back to sleep for a little while.
“She’s coming around!” someone shouted.
There shouldn’t be anybody in my bedroom! Damn! Surely I hadn’t let Rick smooth talk me into spending the night again? It didn’t sound like Rick, though. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Lindsay? Can you hear me?” A female voice, too? In my bedroom? Omigawd! Did we have an orgy? That certainly wasn’t on my list of things to do, but, judging from the way I felt, I could have been drugged and then done about anything. The question of what had made my throat sore bothered me a lot. I didn’t want to go there. The only place I wanted to go was back to sleep.
I was drifting downward, hoping this supposed awakening was just another bad dream, when somebody else shouted at me. Did these people think I was deaf?
“Ms. Powell, can you open your eyes?”
Oh, God, please tell me I didn’t orgy with somebody who calls me Ms. Powell!
“No!” I tried to shout, but it came out a whisper. In fact, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain it came out at all.
Someone took my hand. “Lindsay, you need to wake up now.” Fred. That was a good sign. I was positive Fastidious Fred would never be involved in anything as unorganized an
d messy as an orgy.
I opened one eye a crack but the painful glare slammed it shut again. “Bright,” I whispered. “Hurts.”
“Close the curtain,” the owner of the Ms. Powell voice said. An open curtain was another good sign. I was pretty sure people didn’t orgy with open curtains. “You’re going to be fine,” the man assured me.
I opened the other eye a crack, blinked a couple of times then managed to keep it open. The man leaning over me was dressed in white. A doctor. Now I understood. I was in the hospital. I’d finally had that car wreck all my friends kept predicting.
“Go away,” I whispered.
“Lindsay, I need you to tell me what happened.” It was the first voice again, and this time I recognized it. Trent.
My eyelids flew wide open, blinked closed a couple of times, but finally adapted to the light, remained open and focused.
Trent and the guy in white leaned over me on one side with Paula and Fred on the other.
“Anybody else hurt?” My voice cracked as the words rasped up the tender surface of my throat.
“Who else was with you when this happened?” Trent asked, his notebook in one hand and pen in the other.
“I don’t know,” I croaked.
“Lindsay, do you remember what happened?” Trent prompted.
I had absolutely no memory of the accident, but I wasn’t going to admit that to him. However, his nagging did bring back the memory of his coming to my house and grilling me, asking me a million questions, wanting to know everything about everybody, but refusing to answer my questions. Now he was harassing me again while I lay at death’s door. “Don’t wanna talk about me. Tell me about your ex.” That should shut him up.
“She’s still pretty much out of it,” the man in white said.
“Am not.” If I could tell such an outrageous lie, obviously the orgy folks hadn’t drugged me with truth serum.
“Do you want a drink of water? Your throat must be sore.”
“Water?” Note to self: Never orgy with a man who’d offer me a drink of water when I’d barely survived a terrible car wreck. “Coke.” I needed something to get the awful taste out of my mouth.
“Can she have a Coke?” Fred asked.
I was about to protest that I’d been having them for most of my life and wasn’t going to stop now, but the man in white spoke up and assured Fred that I could. How nice of him. As soon as I got my voice back, I’d tell him a thing or two about making decisions for me. “The caffeine and sugar will help her wake up,” the man went on, “but a Seven-Up might be easier on her throat and stomach.”
“I want a Coke.”
“I’ll get you one from the vending machine.” Fred left.
I turned to the man in white who obviously knew nothing about my drinking habits. “Who are you?”
“I’m Doctor Claxton. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been very sick.”
“I’m still very sick. Did I hit a train? Did a train hit me? How fast was I going? Did I get a ticket?” I must be getting close to the Pre-Paid Legal limit on how many tickets they’d get me out of annually.
“No ticket this time,” Trent said. His voice was sympathetic, and he wasn’t even scowling at me. I must be at death’s door. “There was no automobile accident. Did somebody come to visit you after I left last night?”
I shook my head, but then more events of the night before came back to me. “Henry was making that awful jungle-cat noise and I thought somebody broke in, but nobody did.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked.”
“Did you eat some more chocolate when you were looking?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right, I did.” I could feel a weak blush rising to my face. “I ate the whole thing, the rest of the pudding cake, and I got sick.” I looked at Paula. “You warned me. If I live through this, I swear I’ll never pig out again. I’ll eat lots of vegetables and chicken and give up sugar forever.”
Fred walked in the door carrying that familiar red can.
“Right after I have this Coke,” I amended. I reached for it with a hand that weighed a ton and had an IV attached. Yuck!
Doctor Claxton intercepted the pass.
I frowned. “Don’t take my Coke.”
“I’m just getting you a straw and then we’re going to raise the head of your bed so you can swallow better.”
That was kind of fun, sitting up without making an effort.
Drinking my Coke through a straw while the good doctor held the can wasn’t as much fun as gulping it down, but I decided to humor the man. It’s probably not a good idea to make your doctor mad, not if you felt as bad as I did.
After a few sips, I was more awake and those dancing bubbles had cleared away most of the disgusting taste in my mouth. The liquid stung my throat at first, but then it sort of numbed the pain. Everyone around me seemed totally absorbed with watching me drink. I do love attention, but that wasn’t really the kind I wanted.
The doctor tried to take the can away, but I grabbed it, and this time I had the strength to actually hold on. He released it to my custody and I felt I was once again regaining control of my life and my Coca-Cola intake.
“What time is it?” I asked. I could tell from the brightness of the sun that Paula and I should have been at the shop long ago.
Trent checked his watch. “A little after nine a.m.”
“I put a sign on the shop saying we’re closed for the day,” Paula said.
“Damn! Maybe we can still catch the lunch crowd.” I made an effort to get out of bed, but it was a futile effort. Holding the can of Coke took all my energy.
Claxton laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. “You nearly died. You need a little rest.”
“Almost died?” I groaned. “You mean Death by Chocolate isn’t a joke? I almost died from eating too much chocolate?”
“Not exactly,” Trent said. “We’re pretty sure that chocolate was laced with poison. Were you eating from the same pudding cake you gave me a piece of?”
“Poison?”
The doctor took my pulse. It was probably racing at that point. “We pumped your stomach,” he said. “That and your vomiting is why your throat’s so sore. There was nothing left in your stomach, but we gave you charcoal to absorb as much of any potential poison as possible from your stomach lining and intestines. Don’t be alarmed when you have your next bowel movement and pass the charcoal.”
Pumped my stomach? Gave me charcoal? Don’t be alarmed about charcoal in my next bowel movement?
I gulped down the rest of that Coke and tried to figure out what it all meant…well, all except that last admonition. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
“We won’t get the lab results back for a few hours,” Trent continued, “but from your symptoms, the evidence of an intruder, and the piece of plastic wrap on your kitchen counter with six tiny punctures, we’re pretty sure someone came into your house after I left and used a hypodermic needle to inject the poison into the pudding part of your cake.”
I was having a hard time assimilating all this information, especially since the doctor was making a real pest of himself, shining a light in my eyes, poking and prodding my throat, stomach and back. I did my best to ignore him, but he was getting on my nerves and interfering with my concentration.
“Poison?” I repeated incredulously. “I did notice a slight bitter taste, but I was so scared when I went down to check for that intruder, my mouth already had a bitter taste.” I told him what happened. When I got to the part about not calling Fred or the cops, Fred, Paula and the cop all jumped my butt.
“That’s why you pay taxes,” Trent exclaimed, “for the privilege of calling us on a false alarm!”
“Lindsay, after all we’ve been through together, I can’t believe you didn’t call me!” Paula admonished.
“I was awake!” Fred protested. “I was working on my computer. Even if I’d been asleep, I wouldn’t have minded coming over! Did I complain the night you
woke me up to be sure I was all right after you dreamed an alien space ship came down and took me away to dissect my brain?”
“Yes, you did!”
He shrugged. “Okay, maybe I did get a little miffed that night, but not very much. And I wouldn’t have complained at all last night if you’d called me because you thought you had an intruder!”
“There wasn’t anybody in my house! I looked all over, and I checked the doors to be sure they were locked, which they were.”
Fred shook his head. “Your kitchen door was wide open when I got there.”
“No, it was closed and locked. I told you, I checked!” Then a horrible thought hit me. “Omigawd! Does that mean he was in the house when I came downstairs? He was there all the time, hiding and watching me?”
Paula gasped and even Fred flinched.
Trent folded his arms and tried to look macho. “I’d say that’s exactly what it means.”
I shuddered but then shook my head. “No way. When we went downstairs, Henry went straight to the back door but then settled down to have a drink of water. I don’t think the intruder was in the house then. I think he went out through the kitchen. If he’d still been there, Henry would not have been so calm and smug. He’d have led me to the man’s hiding place and demanded I get him out of there.”
Trent considered that for a moment. “Could be. The intruder could have left when he heard your door open upstairs, locked the door behind him and then came back later, leaving the door open when he left that second time. Where did you put the pan after you finished the cake?”
“It was on the coffee table when I got sick and went to the bathroom. I passed out before I got back over there. It must still be there.”
“No. We searched the entire house for a pan or bowl or anything that would have remnants of what you’d eaten so we could analyze the contents.”
“You searched my house without a search warrant?” I exclaimed indignantly, thinking of the unmade bed, the pile of junk still in the living room, the dirty clothes in the bathroom…especially the white cotton underpants. So much for that stupid admonition from our mothers to always wear clean underwear in case we’re in a car wreck! Always wear black silk underwear in case a hunky police officer searches your bathroom.
Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate Page 17