Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 03 - The Great Chocolate Scam

by Sally Berneathy

  The Great Chocolate Scam

  Copyright ©2012 Sally Berneathy.

  http://www.sallyberneathy.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of pure fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental (except Fred and King Henry).

  Original cover art by Alicia Hope, http://www.aliciahopeauthor.blogspot.com/

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  Real life Fred with the author

  Real life King Henry

  Chapter One

  I sat in the client chair in my lawyer’s office, tapping my foot and fidgeting. Rick was fifteen minutes late for our appointment to sign the divorce papers.

  Based on the last year and a half of his alternating between I want a divorce and I want you back, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. But this time he’d seemed desperate to get it done as soon as possible. In fact, he was disappointed we had to wait a week for our attorneys to find a mutually available time to get together.

  I figured he was in love again. He hadn’t said so, but that was usually the reason he was ready to sign off on the divorce. Rick fell in love regularly. He fell out just as quickly, but that would soon no longer be my problem.

  I was looking forward to being a free woman with no more ties to Rickhead, to owning one hundred percent of my little restaurant, Death by Chocolate located in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Kansas City, and to dating Detective Adam Trent officially. Soon Rick couldn’t show up at my front door with protestations of eternal love or plans for some barely-legal scheme that somehow involved me. Well, he could still show up and try to involve me, but he wouldn’t be able to use the lever of signing the divorce papers to get me to aid and abet him.

  I had even bought a new outfit to wear to my lawyer’s office for the big event, a dark purple raw silk pantsuit with a turquoise and lavender scarf. Very elegant and stylish. My friend, Paula, went with me to pick it out. When clothing goes beyond blue jeans and tee-shirts, I’m lost.

  So I sat there in the office of Jason Beckwirth of Hoskins, Grier, Morris and Beckwirth, looking elegant and stylish and irritated, waiting for my former knight in tarnished armor to show up and make me the happiest woman in the world by agreeing to unmarry me.

  Why wasn’t I waiting at my father’s law firm? Because divorce is beneath them. They’re corporate lawyers handling real estate deals, tax law, estate planning, that sort of respectable law. Besides that, he and Mom blamed me for the failure of a marriage they’d tried to prevent. After trashing him for years, suddenly when I announced I was divorcing Rick, he became their favorite son-in-law. I’m an only child, so that was really no great feat.

  Jason looked up from the papers he was studying and smiled. He has a deceptively genial expression, looks like the boy next door, but he turns into the cut-throat lawyer next door in the courtroom. “Relax,” he said. “They’ll be here any minute. You know Rick will be late to his own funeral.”

  I crossed my legs and changed to swinging instead of tapping. “This waiting makes me nervous. I don’t trust him.”

  Jason nodded. “With good reason. But when I talked to his lawyer last week, he said Rick was adamant about going through with this. You sure I can’t get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, but a Coke would be good.” I’d only had one so far that day. Our breakfast and lunch crowds at the restaurant were hectic and hungry, so Paula and I had been too busy to do much eating or drinking ourselves. My stomach rumbled and reminded me about the eating part.

  Jason called his assistant, and she brought me a glass of Coke with ice. I preferred my Coke straight, no melting ice to dilute it, but at that moment, I would have settled for a Pepsi.

  I finished the soft drink, swung my right leg then my left, tapped my feet, drummed my fingers and waited.

  No Rick.

  The beige phone on Jason’s desk jangled—in a dignified manner, of course. Jason glanced at the display. “It’s Bert,” he said and lifted the receiver.

  Bert Hanson, Rick’s lawyer.

  I inhaled sharply. I tried to tell myself he was probably calling to say they were stuck in traffic, but my heart sank down to the tip of my little toe. I had a horrible feeling Rick was jacking me around again. His lawyer was calling to say he’d cancelled.

  I watched Jason’s face, listened to every word he said, strained to hear the other side of the conversation. I couldn’t, of course. My neighbor Fred probably could have if he’d been there. I’m pretty sure Fred has super powers. Not that I’ve seen him flying or anything like that.

  Yet.

  Jason didn’t say much. “I see.” He looked at me and shook his head. That was a bad sign. “Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know.”

  He cradled the receiver, then lifted his gaze and folded his hands on his desk. “Lindsay—”

  “He’s not coming, is he?”

  Jason sighed and shook his head. “It doesn’t look like it. He didn’t show up at Bert’s office, and Bert hasn’t been able to reach him by phone.”

  “Damn it!” I slammed my hand on the arm of the chair, shot up and spun around. I needed to go outside, run, hit something, eat huge quantities of chocolate. I needed to vent the anger that flared up inside me. This time I’d dared to hope. This time I really thought it was going to happen. This time the disappointment was even worse than usual.

  I thought about the night on the town Trent and I had planned in celebration. The Divorcement Party I’d scheduled for Saturday night. None of it was going to happen. Rick was still causing problems, still controlling my life.

  I stomped to one side of the room then back to the other, cursing with vehemence and sincerity. “Damn it, damn it, damn it! I knew it! That sorry, worthless, no-good—”

  My cell phone began to play George Strait’s Blue Clear Sky, Trent’s ringtone.

  “I’m sorry.” I strode over to my purse and pulled out the phone to shut it off and send the call straight to voice mail, but then decided maybe I should answer and tell Trent I’d return his call in a couple of minutes. There was no reason for me to stay in Jason’s office any longer. We weren’t going to do business that day.

  “Hi, Trent. Can I call you right back?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I need to talk to you right now. I wanted you to hear this from me before you see it on television.”

  On television? No good news ever got reported on television. “Okay, fine, hang on and let me say good-bye to Jason. I’m just leaving my attorney’s office. Rick was a no show.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?” Fred was the one who always knew things. Apparently Trent had just developed psychic abilities too.

  “There’s been an accident.”

  My insides went cold at that sentence, and I sank back down into my chair. The cops on TV s
aid those words when they came to tell a family about a death. Images of the people I cared about most whirled through my mind. My parents, Fred, Paula, Zach, Henry… “What kind of accident? Who?”

  He paused for what seemed like an hour but was probably closer to a second. “It’s Rick. There was an explosion. His car was blown up in his driveway.”

  I frowned, relieved and puzzled. That explained why he hadn’t shown up for our meeting. He’d have trouble driving if his car exploded. “An accident? Rick’s a terrible mechanic, but blowing up his own car seems like quite a feat even for him.”

  “He didn’t blow it up. Somebody else did. Lindsay, you need to come down to the station.”

  “Why? Are you craving my chocolate chip cookies?” I was grasping at straws. I could tell from the somber tone of his voice that he wasn’t trying to wheedle cookies.

  “We need to ask you some questions.” He paused again, and I could hear him draw in a deep breath. “Rick was in the car when it blew up. Lindsay, Rick’s dead.”

  Chapter Two

  I left Jason’s office in a daze.

  Rick was dead.

  A man I’d once loved, been married to, planned a life with, was gone forever from this earth. I’d never again see those blue eyes enhanced by colored contacts, that arrogant smile, that carefully streaked blond hair.

  A part of me was sad, but I have to admit that a tiny part of me was just a little bit relieved. Rick had driven me crazy with his cheating while we were married, then after we separated he’d switched to just driving me crazy in general. Even though the separation was his idea…out with the old (Lindsay), in with the new (Muffy)…as soon as he and Muffy broke up, he decided he wanted me back. I, on the other hand, decided that one burst of insanity—marrying him in the first place—was enough for one lifetime and told him I wasn’t coming back.

  He didn’t get to be top salesman for Rheims Commercial Real Estate by accepting no for an answer, and he had no intention of accepting no from me. I became a challenge, that big sale he was having trouble closing.

  Then he met Becky and backed off for a while until Becky became history. After that came Carolyn, Vanessa, Lisa and probably a few more I didn’t know about. The last couple of years had been stressful, frustrating and maddening. This sudden and very final resolution seemed somehow too abrupt and a little anticlimactic. After all the hassle, it just couldn’t be this easy.

  I drove to the police station, and Trent met me at the front desk. He was a welcome sight in his rumpled jacket and slacks. He has great eyes, brown with hints of green. The happier he is, the more green shows in his eyes. That day his eyes were brown like the bark on a tree in winter, and his expression was grim.

  He came over to me, wrapped me in his arms and hugged me in front of God, the dispatcher and everybody. Since my divorce wasn’t final, we had never indulged in public displays of affection. This public hug made the new circumstances suddenly real. My divorce was final.

  “I’m sorry, Lindsay,” Trent murmured in my ear.

  As soon as he released me, his partner, Gerald Lawson took his place, embracing me gently. My nickname for Gerald is Granite Man. He’s tall and thin with structured gray hair and a face that never shows emotion. From the first time I met him, I’ve had a goal to break him down, to make him show some kind of emotion, maybe even toss caution to the wind and laugh without restraint. Seems I cracked the granite that day, but not the way I intended. When he pulled back, his expression was marked with sadness and sympathy.

  I felt a little guilty, accepting all that compassion under false pretenses. Sure, I was upset that Rick was dead, but in a detached sort of way, the same way I’d feel upset over the death of a stranger. That’s what he had become. An annoying stranger.

  The boys led me into an interrogation room with a scarred wooden table, uncomfortable wooden chairs and a one-way mirror. Suddenly I felt like a criminal rather than the object of sympathy. Surely they didn’t think…

  “We’re sorry for your loss.” Lawson sat across from me. He had resumed his Granite Man face.

  “My loss?”

  “Your deceased husband.”

  I flinched and stole a glance at Trent who sat next to Lawson, catty cornered to me. We’d been sort of dating for several months, waiting for my divorce to be final before putting a name to our relationship, and I wondered how he felt about his partner’s reference to my husband. However, at that moment Trent, whom Fred referred to as Mr. Stone Face because of the stern way his chiseled features looked when he was playing cop, wasn’t showing much more expression than Granite Man.

  “My ex husband,” I said.

  “Your divorce wasn’t final.”

  “I think it is now. I think this is about as final as it’s going to get.”

  Lawson nodded and looked down at the papers lying on the table in front of him before once again lifting his steely gaze. “Where were you at three o’clock this afternoon?”

  I half rose out of my chair. “Where was I? You think I blew him up? You seriously think I would go to all the trouble to blow him up when I was just about to get what I wanted from him?”

  “No!” Trent reached a hand across the table toward me. I refused to meet him halfway and take his hand, but I did sit back down.

  “We have to ask,” Lawson said.

  “I was sitting in my lawyer’s office, waiting for Rick to arrive and sign the divorce papers.” I gave them Jason’s name and phone number. “You can check with him, and I’ll give you a copy of his bill for all that wasted time.” I glared at both of them in turn. See if I ever made them any more chocolate chip cookies.

  “So Rick was on his way to your lawyer’s office?”

  “He was going to his lawyer’s office first, and then the two of them would come to Jason’s office together. He never made it to his lawyer’s.” I studied the two of them, so sympathetic and caring one minute, so official the next. “If one of you could tell me exactly what happened, I might be able to answer your questions a little better.”

  Trent looked at me, holding my gaze as if he could support me by the power of his eyes. “The explosion occurred just after three o’clock in Rick’s driveway. Nobody saw it happen, so we’re not sure if he had just backed out of the garage or if the car had been sitting there for a while. We believe he had just pulled out since the door was open.”

  “He’s just pulled out. He never left his car sitting in the driveway. He thought that looked tacky, not befitting his status in the neighborhood.”

  Trent nodded. “The neighbors heard a loud explosion, and parts from the car flew all around the cul-de-sac.”

  I swallowed and straightened, trying to absorb the image of Rick’s green SUV flying around the neighborhood along with pieces of Rick—a blue contact lens in Mrs. Hawkins’ driveway, a perfectly creased trouser leg hanging on the street sign. “Do I need to—” I cleared my throat. “Do I need to identify the body?” My voice dropped lower with each word, ending in a whisper.

  Trent and Lawson exchanged glances. “No,” Lawson said in his matter-of-fact tone. “The body was also blown into a large number of pieces. No one piece is readily identifiable.”

  I thought I might be sick.

  “You’re still his wife,” Lawson said. “That makes you his next of kin.”

  I was certain I was going to be sick.

  “Do you have the names of other family members?” he continued.

  I shook my head and wrapped my arms around myself.

  “Did he have other family members?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t really know. I never met his family. In the beginning, he told me they were on vacation in the Bahamas and couldn’t make the wedding. Once he said they lived in New York, then he said they lived abroad. Next his dad was a member of the CIA, and the whole family was on a secret assignment so I couldn’t meet them. The next time I asked about his family, he said they were all dead, victims of a terrorist plot, and he’d
grown up in orphanages and foster homes. By that time, I’d figured out that pretty much everything Rick said was a lie, so I have no idea if he ever had a family. For all I know, he was actually an alien, stranded here when the mother ship left without him. That would explain a lot.”

  Lawson nodded. “As next of kin, we will release the victim’s remains to you when we conclude our examination of the crime scene.”

  I turned to Trent. “What did he just say? Am I going to get a box in the mail with two hairs, one toenail and whatever’s left of Rick’s pancreas?”

  Trent flinched. “Not in the mail, but, yeah, that’s basically what he said.”

  “Can’t I waive that right? Let you keep whatever you find?”

  Trent rose and came around the table to stand beside me. “We’ll talk about all that later. How about I drive you home right now? We’ll pick up a pizza on the way.”

  I rose, surprised to find my legs a little shaky. That image of the victim’s remains didn’t set well. “I’m really not hungry right now and I’ve got my car, but if you want to follow behind and give me a police escort, I’m good with that.”

  Trent slid an arm around my waist. “I can do that.”

  I wasn’t about to let him know how glad I was for the support. I looked up at him and tried for a smile. “Flashing lights and siren, and I can speed without getting a ticket?”

  “No.”

  I shrugged. “Never hurts to ask.”

  Chapter Three

  I could hear my landline phone ringing as soon as I walked onto my front porch. I opened the door and my cat, King Henry, trotted up, meowing as if in protest at the noise of the phone. Sometimes that cat seems a little psychic, and my first thought was that he was protesting because Rick was on the other end of that phone connection. He never did like Rick. However, my second thought was how unlikely that was. Successful scam artist that he was, even Rick couldn’t call from the Great Beyond.