In Cold Chocolate

by Dorothy St. James

Gibbons rose and dusted sand off his pants. Only then did he look over at Byrd. “The county attends all murder investigations on Camellia Beach. We provide the manpower and technical staff your department doesn’t have,” he said in that calm voice of his. “You know that.”

  “You attend at my request.” The police chief didn’t sound nearly as calm. “I didn’t call you. She did.” Byrd pointed an accusing finger in my direction.

  Gibbons turned fully toward where Harriett, Althea, Lidia, and I had been watching from the edge of the crime scene tape. “I swear, Penn, I should start calling you a bad Penny,” he said in a Southern accent that had been refined to the point that he nearly sounded British. It was an accent that reminded the locals he wasn’t from Camellia Beach. He’d come over the bridge from Charleston’s pricy historic district known as the South of Broad, or sometimes simply as SOB.

  “The name’s Penn, not Penny.” He knew that. We’d first met after someone had killed my friend in a vat of chocolate.

  “You turn up wherever there’s trouble. In my book, that’s a bad penny,” he said.

  Police Chief Byrd crossed his arms over his wide chest and grinned. “That’s what I was saying. She had no right to call you. She’s always causing trouble, not following the rules.”

  “We also called nine-one-one,” Althea pointed out.

  Hank and his men had arrived almost immediately. One of the officers had looked at my shoulder, rubbed it with some kind of stinging antiseptic and had slapped a bandage on the wound—just as Lidia had said needed to be done. While the police led Jody away in handcuffs and then turned the beach into a brightly lit crime scene, the turtle crew and I stood watch. It looked like something out of the movies.

  “How’s the arm?” Gibbons asked with a nod toward my shoulder.

  “It still burns,” I said.

  He grimaced. “A little aspirin should help. Now I’m going to have to question each one of you separately,” he warned. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “We’re not leaving,” Lidia said in that booming voice of hers. “We have a nest to attend.”

  “And these lights are going to have to go off as soon as the babies start to emerge,” Althea added.

  “What are you talking about?” Detective Gibbons sounded appalled at the idea anyone would interfere with his work. “We can’t turn off these lights in the middle of an investigation.”

  “Federal law requires—” Lidia started to say.

  “You don’t need to fret about federal laws,” Hank Byrd interrupted. “Don’t you worry your pretty heads over there. I’ll see that the sea turtles are protected. At the first sign of them, the lights will go off. I guarantee it.”

  “We can’t turn off a murder investigation because a few turtles are popping out of a nest,” Gibbons argued.

  “It ain’t as if we don’t know who did it, now is it? A few hours delay in poking around won’t change who shot Cassidy,” Byrd argued right back.

  Gibbons grunted and promised nothing.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. The baby turtles never did emerge from their nest. Althea continued to watch the mound of sand, her brows furrowed with concern. Didn’t she say earlier that the turtles were already past their hatching date?

  The sun was rising over the ocean by the time the police started wrapping up their work. Althea had decided to head home as well. I was helping her pack up her supplies when I spotted Hank Byrd plodding through the sand toward us. A shorter man wearing a stained chef’s coat struggled to keep up with him. It wasn’t that Byrd was moving that fast. A product of the South that had raised him, Camellia Beach’s police chief’s movements often looked as if he was working his way through a jar of molasses. It was the smaller man’s oversized straw sunhat that slowed him down. Every few steps, the wind blew it off and he’d have to run after the floppy hat and then jog to catch up to Byrd whose purposeful stride never altered its pace.

  “Ooh.” Lidia leaned toward me. Her loud voice slammed against my ear. “Don’t look now. But here comes that police chief we met last night.”

  “Don’t let him bully you,” I said. “Detective Frank Gibbons from the county Sheriff’s office takes the lead on murder investigations in Camellia Beach. Byrd doesn’t have the manpower or facilities to handle an investigation of this magnitude.”

  “Who are you kidding, Penn?” Harriett said. “Even Byrd can handle an open-and-shut case as easy as this one. We all saw Jody run down the beach waving that huge pistol around. We all heard the gunshots. We all saw her standing there with not one but two guns in her hands. Heck, she even shot you! And you told us yourself that you heard Jody say yesterday that she believed she was in an exclusive relationship with Cassidy.” She snorted. “As if a chaser like Cassidy could ever be true to anyone. Sure as we’re standing here, we know what happened. Jody saw Cassidy with another woman and shot him straight through his roaming heart.”

  “Chief Byrd.” Althea stepped forward and greeted the men as they approached. She’d plastered on a broad smile despite not having slept last night and her obvious frustration over the failed turtle nest. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘good morning’ me, missy,” he grumbled. “There’s nothing good about the morning after a murder in my town.”

  He glanced in my direction. I held my breath expecting him to somehow blame me for Cassidy’s death. According to him, Camellia Beach had been a peaceful town completely devoid of any crime … until I moved here. “Penn,” was all he said.

  His lack of accusations both last night and this morning surprised me a little. But, really, what could he say? Cassidy Jones had been a longtime resident. And Jody Dalton had moved to Camellia Beach a couple of years before I did. There was no possible way he could blame me for the trouble that had happened last night.

  “Chief,” I said with a head bob.

  He gave a loud sniff in return then shifted his attention to Harriett. With a much more cordial tone, he shook her hand and asked after her health. Her husband had served as mayor of Camellia Beach. That had been decades ago, but as Althea had once explained, memories run long and deep in a small town like this one.

  During the course of the night I learned that because Harriett was once Camellia Beach’s First Lady, it afforded her an elevated status in town. Byrd, with a look that could almost be called a smile, introduced Harriett to the man in the chef’s coat and floppy straw hat. He told the chef that Harriett was someone he needed to know on the island. He didn’t say anything about the rest of us.

  “And Harriett,” he continued with his proper introductions, “you must meet our latest resident, Chef Bailey Grassi. We’re real lucky to have him. He’s from Baltimore, but we won’t hold that against him. He opened up that new restaurant in Charleston’s historic district this past winter. It’s the one that has been getting all those awards. And out of all the places in the Lowcountry he could have settled, he decided to make Camellia Beach his home.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Bailey.” Harriett yawned as she offered her hand to the restaurateur. “What’s the name of your establishment?”

  Instead of taking her hand, Bailey rubbed his own bandaged hand. “It’s Grilled to Perfection. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” He awkwardly offered her his left hand to shake. “Sorry, I had a little accident in the kitchen last night.” He looked to be a few years older than my thirty-seven years. His brown hair was tied into a man bun, and he sported a shaggy beard that was peppered with gray.

  Harriett introduced the rest of us, telling him that we were volunteers with the turtle team. His eyes lit up at the mention of my name.

  “Penn?” His tired eyes widened. “As in Charity Penn?”

  “It’s just Penn,” I corrected.

  “Of course, Penn. I heard the gunwoman shot you as well. Are you … are you okay?”

  “The bullet just grazed me.” My hand instinctively reached for my shoulder, which was a mistake. It was still raw and tender. I quickly drew my hand away.
“Other than a scrape and bruise, I’m fine.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” He nodded vigorously. “Despite these unfortunate conditions, I’m glad to finally meet you. I’ve been meaning to visit your shop,” he said with a sudden burst of excitement. “The Chocolate Box’s chocolates are legendary in the culinary world. You’ve inherited quite a legacy. If you’re amenable, I’d like to talk about the possibility of having your shop provide some of its special chocolate to both my restaurant and online store. I’m building a clientele who appreciate the rare and finely crafted.”

  “Well, the Amar cacao beans we use to make our special dark chocolates are as rare as they come,” I warned. “The beans only grow on one narrow slope deep within the Brazilian rainforest.”

  I’d heard from more than one chocolate expert that the surprisingly rich flavor comes from the harsh soils and the unique variety of cacao bean that produces a chocolate with the perfect combination of flavors. The Brazilian villagers who have grown the bean for generations claim the amazing flavors of their Amar chocolate beans comes straight from their Aztec gods. Those same villagers have cultivated and protected the cacao bean since the beginning of the ancient village’s existence.

  “We definitely need to talk,” Bailey said, his eyes shining. “That is exactly the kind of high-quality foods I serve.”

  “The bean is rare,” I warned again. For nearly a century, the Chocolate Box has held exclusive rights to buy the bean from the village of Cabruca where it’s grown. “We barely have enough to sell in our own shop. I usually use only a little of the Amar chocolates in our recipes.”

  “Oh, so the idea of us collaborating is out of the question?” The sparkle suddenly left his eyes.

  “I’m not saying that. I’m willing to talk.” No harm could come from talking. “I’m simply saying I can’t make any promises that we can work something out.”

  “Well then, I’m looking forward to convincing you to partner with me,” he said.

  “Don’t waste your time with her,” the police chief grumbled when he saw what I’m sure he assumed was rude behavior on my part. “From what I’ve been hearing around town, ownership of the Chocolate Box will soon go to the original owner’s children.”

  “What?” Althea, Harriett, and I all cried.

  “What?” Lidia cried a beat later. She’d cupped her hand to her ear.

  “Who’s been telling you that nonsense?” I demanded.

  The police chief shrugged. The movement made his belly rise and fall like a surging wave. “As I’ve said, islanders all around town are saying you stole Mabel’s shop from her family.”

  “She gave it to me.” How could anyone believe otherwise? Mabel Maybank was my grandmother. Plus, I wanted the shop. None of Mabel’s many children could say that. None of them wanted to keep the shop and continue the business their predecessors had built. I did.

  Byrd shrugged again.

  Bailey’s thick brows dipped low as he watched the police chief. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble. Not now and not last night. I didn’t understand the importance of protecting the sea turtles. I didn’t even realize they nested on Camellia Beach.”

  “We get over a hundred nests a year on our beach. Many of the sea turtles that visit our shoreline are either threatened or endangered,” Harriett explained gently.

  “Unfortunately, the same beaches the turtles use for nesting are also prime vacation spots,” Althea added. “That’s why we give them all the help we can in hopes that the next generation of turtles will thrive.”

  “I am sorry about the deck lights.” He put his hand on his chest and bowed his head. “I didn’t know. I was at the restaurant until a few hours ago. The lights are on a timer because I get home so late. It’s a security feature. I didn’t know about the turtles. Honestly, I didn’t. I grew up in the suburbs of D.C. The closest beach was about three hours away. I rarely ever got to the ocean and have never seen a sea turtle.” He said it all in such a rush and with such angst, it was impossible not to forgive him. “And I never thought my deck lights could be the cause of a man’s death,” he nearly whimpered.

  “Jody shot that poor man, not you, dear,” Harriett said as she smothered another yawn. “The two of them were an item. At least she thought so.”

  “Is that true?” Bailey asked the police chief. “No one told me.”

  “I—um—um—I didn’t know,” Byrd stammered. He glanced at me as if I were the one who’d made him look ignorant. “I’d heard rumors, of course. But Cassidy Jones dated many women. All of them knew he couldn’t stay true to one lady.”

  “Well, then.” Bailey drew up his slumping shoulders, which gave him a few more inches. “I’ll get the lights fixed and make sure they don’t turn on during turtle nesting season.”

  Hank Byrd and the chef had started to walk back toward Bailey’s house when Lidia, preening like a fluffed-up chick, waved her hand in the air and called, “Yoo-hoo, Chief Byrd.” Her normally booming voice had suddenly turned all breathy and dripping with enough southern drawl to make Scarlet O’Hara cringe. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, despite the horrible reason we’d had to call you. I’ve heard so much about how you keep our town safe. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself last night. I’m Lidia Vanderhorst.” She held out her hand as if it were a limp rag. He stared at it for a moment before giving it a little squeeze.

  Althea gave me a look of surprise. I’m sure my face mirrored back the same astonishment. Was Lidia actually flirting with the police chief?

  Byrd, keen investigator that he wasn’t, appeared oblivious. He curtly welcomed her to Camellia Beach and started to follow Bailey back to his house, but then he apparently had second thoughts. He abruptly turned back and wagged an accusing finger in Althea’s direction.

  “I thought I made it clear last year that under no circumstance could Jody continue her volunteer activities,” he scolded. “I could have you up on charges for disobeying that order.”

  “This is a public beach, Chief. I can’t exactly stop the public from coming out to witness a hatching. As soon as I knew she had a gun, I did try to stop her. But Jody has the longest legs and is as wily as a fox. Not even Penn could catch her. Not that I would have asked any of my volunteers to chase down an armed crazy woman.”

  “Has Jody said anything?” I asked as I rubbed my bruised shoulder. I bit back a whimper. Why did I keep touching it? “She and I may have had our disagreements”—a gross understatement—“but I find it hard to believe she’d actually kill anyone.” Well … that wasn’t quite true. For a while this past winter, I’d suspected she’d drowned my friend from prepschool in a large vat of chocolate.

  But Jody was a mother. Although she often used her young son as a way to hurt her ex, she appeared to genuinely love the boy. She wouldn’t do something that would jeopardize her time with him, would she?

  Apparently, she had. We all saw her with the gun. We all saw her shoot me. And Cassidy had been shot through the heart. What more evidence did a rational person need? The police had arrested her. She was as good as gone from Camellia Beach forever.

  This should have been the end of the story, but the back of my neck prickled a warning. I feared something deeper lurked behind Cassidy’s murder. I feared that “something” involved my mother and her desire to steal the Chocolate Box away from me.

  Chapter Six

  “Chocolate moon cookies,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else, much later that same day. I was working alongside Bertie at the Chocolate Box. The idea for a new recipe had started to form as I spent the night standing under the full moon waiting for the turtles that had never arrived.

  It was better to think about chocolate than about Cassidy Jones’ murder. While I’d never met the man, that still didn’t blunt the shock of finding his dead body in the sand or the horror of seeing Jody looming nearby with a smoking gun in each hand. Or the shock that she had shot me.

  Chocolate was safer. Chocolate would never turn on me.
r />   “What’s that, dear?” Bertie asked.

  “It’s an idea I’ve been playing with this morning,” I said. “Chocolate moon cookies.”

  “We sell chocolates, not cookies,” she reminded me as she carefully placed several of her sea salt chocolate caramels into a gift box.

  “I know that.” The sign outside the shop simply said CHOCOLATE. I loved that sign. It was direct and concise, with no question about what you’d find inside. “These will be chocolates. I’m picturing an ultrathin, perfectly round cookie coated with white chocolate on one side and dark chocolate on the other to represent the bright and dark sides of the moon. My main stumbling block is I don’t know what kind of cookie would hold its own with the competing white and dark chocolate flavors.”

  “Benne wafers would work,” she said without even looking up from her task.

  I frowned. “Benne whats?”

  “Not ‘whats,’ child.” She closed the gift box she’d filled and looked up at me. “Wafers. They’re thin, crisp sesame seed cookies. They should be able to hold up when sandwiched between your chocolate layers.”

  “Sesame seeds, huh?” The strong flavor of the sesame seeds might be just what I need to complement the white and dark chocolates. “Do you have a recipe?”

  “Don’t need a recipe. Like my mother and her mother before her, I’ve been making them my entire life.”

  “And—” This is where I hesitated. “Do you think you could teach me how to make them?”

  It wasn’t that I doubted her teaching abilities. No one topped Bertie when it came to patience in the kitchen. What I was really asking was if she thought I could learn how to make her cookies.

  She patted my arm in a kind, motherly way. “Of course you can learn it.” She knew me almost too well. “The trick to making the wafer is in how long you leave them in the oven. There’s no one here right now. I could show you.”

  “That would be wonderful! If they’re any good, we’ll sell them along with our sea salted turtles and also donate a portion of the profits to the Camellia Beach Turtle Foundation.”