Ganache with Panache: Book 2 in The Chocolate Cafe Series

by Valley Sams

  “Stay.” Mac commanded Toby, who was practically leaping over the front seat to get to the detective. “Be a good boy.”

  Vanessa turned to look at Mac. That fire she had noticed before certainly hadn’t been put out, but there was sheepishness to it now.

  “You should probably stay, too,” she said. Vanessa shook her head. She pulled off one of the ever-present elastics she wore around her wrist and tied back her hair.

  “No way, man. I didn’t get walloped on the head for nothing. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.” Regardless of Louis’s stern glare practically melting the windshield, Mac couldn’t help but beam at her new friend.

  “I like your style, young lady,” she said, “Let’s go.”

  Louis didn’t bother to uncross his arms as the girls approached, nor did he break his glare. He simply fixed Mac in his sight as she approached, his mouth a hard, disapproving slash.

  “I was going to call, I swear,” she began as she neared him.

  Louis uncrossed his arms and dangled a single key between them.

  “You wouldn’t have gotten very far without the key,” he told them. “Or were you planning on breaking in again?”

  Vanessa watched Mac’s face turn a shade of pink of bright enough to be visible even in the middle of a nighttime windstorm.

  “No. Maybe. Well, probably not.” Louis crossed the space between them with two steps. He took Mac’s hand and pressed the key into her palm.

  “I give up.” He said. “We’ve been at a dead end on this case for the last two weeks. If Sabrina hadn’t called and told me everything—no…” he held up a warning finger when Mac frowned. “No. That girl has your best interests at heart, and you know it.”

  “I didn’t think it would lead to anything. I really didn’t,” Mac said, as she gripped Louis’s hand. “Vanessa recognized the designs as direct copies and we started to put two and two together.”

  “Especially after they broke into my place and knocked me out.”

  “They did what?” Louis was alarmed.

  “Lau’s sister and some guy broke into Vanessa’s apartment and stole the…”

  Mac’s explanation came to a sudden stop when there was a loud thump from the inside of Maple Cabin. Immediately and with impressive swiftness, Louis unholstered his gun and headed noiselessly toward the door. He turned back to the girls and motioned for them to get back in the car.

  Vanessa grabbed Mac’s arm before she could jump forward and follow the detective, “No you don’t,” she hissed. “Let’s get in the car.”

  ***

  Louis held his gun at his side; he turned the doorknob as silently as possible. As he had suspected, it was locked, so he readied the key when he heard two voices arguing. He flattened himself against the wall between the window and the door and listened. Of course, all he really wanted to do was give the door a swift kick and get this nonsense over with, but something told him to stop. From his vantage point, he could pick up almost every word.

  “Are you going to do it here? Can’t you wait?’ The man’s voice was annoyed.

  “No, I can’t wait. Can you? How long do we have to stay in this hellhole? I’m dying here.”

  There was another thump and a shadow passed by the curtains.

  “Oh very droll. Very witty, Kyra. You’re dying here. Let’s just get the stuff you left and get out. I hate being here, It makes me sick.”

  There was cruel laughter from the woman

  “You’re such a colossal drag. No wonder Mr. Sober was so in love with you.” Louis heard the woman sniff. There was pause and the sound of a slight sigh before she continued, her tone suddenly more ragged than before. “You were the one who said it was a good idea. You even liked the whole heroin idea. Once a junkie always a junkie, right?”

  “Shut up.” The man mumbled.

  The woman continued, “You were the one that begged me to do it. Now that it’s done, you don’t want to take responsibility for your own mess?”

  “Listen.” Louis gripped his gun a little tighter as the man’s voice turned into an enraged growl. “We don’t talk about this again, right? We go back to the city, you take over the business, I get my inheritance and we never set foot in another backwater little pit like this again. It never happened. Get it? None of this ever happened.”

  There was a series of soft sighs that Louis recognized instantly. All addicts made the same noise as their poison of choice hit their system; had he really seen so much of it that he could recognize it by the ecstatic sounds the junkies made? He’d heard enough.

  Looking quickly to see that the girls were still safely in the car, he stepped back and sent one leg kicking out with enough force to knock the rotting cabin door off its hinges.

  What happened next was a blur, but in the detective’s experience it always was. Louis, his gun an extension of his lean body, entered the cabin barking commands. He was able to focus after a moment and he could clearly make out the two people standing in the center of the room.

  The man, whom Louis instantly recognized from pictures as Zach Lau’s bereaved partner, did exactly as he commanded and with no hesitation. He dropped to his knees obediently, his face twisted into a classic mask of fear and guilt.

  The woman however, as tiny as she was, was glittering with drug-fueled mania. She made eye contact with Louis as soon as he burst into the room and there was nothing much sober or human in her heavily made-up gaze.

  He knew instantly that she would bolt and bolt she did.

  As her companion obediently fell to his knees, blabbering apologies and begging for forgiveness, the tiny woman turned on her heels and practically leaped through the back door that led to the beach.

  Louis cursed loudly, the gun still pointed at the now weeping man on the floor. Why hadn’t he called for backup?

  “I got her!” Mac’s voice yelled from the open door behind him. Louis turned his head quickly enough to see Mac streaking past the window, her ponytail flying out behind her and her arms pumping.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to call for that backup after all.

  Moving with the same skilled grace as before, Louis slipped a pair of handcuffs around John’s trembling wrists, attaching one end to the carved four-poster bed.

  “Stay here,” he growled and was out of the door in an instant.

  ***

  Mac’s legs ached as she tore up the cliff that rose up from the beach. The wind buffered her like a giant icy hand doing its best to slow her down. Hardly. There was too much adrenaline rushing through her for any of these obstacles to register. She was as focused as a drone, scrambling up the ever-rising embankment after Ms. Lau.

  Faster, she told herself. You can do this. You’ve run marathons; you can catch a fifty-pound fraud. However, she reconsidered when the security lights flickered on as Kyra ran past; Mac saw something alarming in the tiny woman’s eyes as she glared at her pursuer.

  Just a little faster. Mac told herself. It was one of her favorite places to take Toby on her morning runs. It was a steep climb until a sudden drop to what the locals called the Devil’s punchbowl—a vortex of rocks and frothing, angry ocean that had seen more than a few shipwrecks in its time. Whatever sightseeing trail was there had long since been overtaken by brambles and long blades of rough sea grass. Even though Mac had the advantage of knowing the way, she still found herself stumbling and stinging from the thorns that grabbed her as she ran.

  There was no way that woman could make it all the way to the top.

  Kyra was shouting obscenities at Mac as she ran without noticing the sharp grasses on the trail.

  Mac was getting closer, her breath slicing out of her chest with every exhalation. She didn’t have the breath to yell back, to tell the woman to stop. All she needed to do was get close enough to tackle her, to stop her falling over the ridge.

  She was near enough now that she could hear Kyra’s breath, even more rapid and painful sounding than hers. She reached out her hand toward Kyra’s jacke
t. One more inch. Her thighs burning, she lunged and finally managed to grab the fabric. Mac dug her heels into the ground and yanked back with all her strength.

  Kyra screamed like a banshee, her voice loud enough to carry along the winds that tore violently up from the Devil’s punchbowl only a few feet from them.

  Now on the ground, Kyra writhed beneath Mac. She struck out at her face, the jewels on her long acrylic nails scraping against her cheek. Mac grit her teeth and grabbed her thin wrists, feeling Kyra’s pulse battering against her skin.

  “I can’t!” Kyra howled. “I can’t.”

  “Just calm down.” Mac yelled, placing all her weight on Kyra’s bony hips. “Stop it.”

  Realizing she couldn’t do anything but struggle, Kyra looked directly into Mac’s eyes, her body going limp underneath her.

  “He had everything,” she said. “He always had everything.”

  Her voice was low, barely audible above the crash and hiss of the water below them. “He was so beautiful, so talented. All he had to do was put a pencil to paper and the most wonderful—” Tears began to roll as her face contorted with ugly sobs. “The most beautiful designs you had ever seen. It was effortless to him. But not to me. Never to me.”

  Mac could make out the sound of Louis shouting her name as he made his own way up the treacherous path. She considered turning back and telling him they were fine, that Mac had caught Kyra, but she had to know. “Is that why?” Mac leaned forward, starring into Kyra’s wet, intoxicated eyes. “Is that why you did it?”

  “I could sew. That’s all. Just sew. I was no better than a sweatshop worker.”

  Louis’s pounding feet were getting closer. He’d be cresting the ridge in a second. Mac kept her grip on Kyra, watching the tears streaming down her face, carving thick black trails through the makeup, down her sallow cheeks.

  The fight had left her; her face and body became slack beneath Mac’s grip.

  “I didn’t think—” she spoke so low that Mac had to lean in to hear her. “I didn’t understand that killing my own brother would be so much easier than coming up with my own designs.”

  CONCLUSION

  There was no press in attendance at Miss Amelia Moore’s wedding. There was no live Twitter feed and she received no monetary compensation for shots of the happy couple. The cream of the founding members of the town were not there and the symphony orchestra from the city did not play her down the aisle. In fact, there was barely even an aisle.

  What there was however, was a breathtaking amount of beauty and so many expressions of love that even the hardest of hearts melted, just a tiny bit.

  Catharine Mackenzie’s for example.

  Sitting in the garden with the other guests on simple wooden benches, Mac couldn’t help but begin to rethink her position on commitment. What she saw walking down the makeshift path, her bare feet sinking into the lush green grass, was a woman gifted with love and commitment.

  Amelia glowed. If the garden had somehow been plunged into darkness, she would’ve emitted enough light to illuminate the entire space. Her dress, not surprisingly, was perfect for her—crafted as an enhancement of her considerable natural beauty, cut to showcase her youth and all her hopes. Vanessa was gifted, that was certain.

  Despite herself, Mac felt a lump growing in her throat as she watched Amelia and her brother make their way to where her fiancé waited at the altar. The great Dr. Zimmerman watched his bride approach with a look of absolute certainty and pride. Mac took a deep breath, hoping to push the lump down deeper into her chest.

  It didn’t go down.

  Would anyone ever look at her that way? Would she let them? She felt a rustling at her hand and looked down to see Louis pressing a handkerchief into her hand.

  He was smiling at her slyly. A kind of ‘I caught you’ grin that made him look as far away from the door-kicking detective as possible. He looked back to the ceremony as the officiant began to speak.

  Mac didn’t.

  Borrowed handkerchief in her hand, she found herself staring instead at her boyfriend. Yes, she could admit it: that’s what he was. Her boyfriend. Here was a lanky puzzle of a man who had not only showed up with the key to a crime scene to save her having to break in, but who had practically made her an honorary member of the force when she decided to tackle a murderers on the cliff for kicks.

  Here was a strangely beautiful, beak-nosed Brit who had a whole life behind him that he barely spoke about. A man who looked as if he had interrogated more people than she had kissed in her lifetime. A man who slept (with his socks on) between herself and a bull mastiff and didn’t complain. A man that she could imagine herself—

  Mac felt a firework burst in her chest and she looked away quickly. Imagine herself what? Spending the rest of her life with?

  Marrying?

  That firework crackled down her neck, dissolving the lump immediately. It moved to her head, making it feel as if the top of her updo was going to launch into the stratosphere. She was in love. She was in love with a detective from England.

  One thing was certain. If she did decide to walk down the aisle to Louis? Just to make Brie nuts, she would insist on a chocolate fountain unlike no other. And swans. Lots of swans.