In Cold Chocolate

by Dorothy St. James

  Since it was nearing noon, a slow time for us because we didn’t offer a lunch menu, I followed Bertie like a lamb down a long corridor and toward an oversized kitchen at the back of the building. My grandmother used to hold chocolate making classes back there. It was large enough to accommodate a dozen students.

  An extra-long kitchen island spanned the center of the room. Burners lined two walls, and several sets of mismatched ovens covered the third wall. I flipped a switch. The overhead florescent lights flickered on. We didn’t really need the artificial lights. A series of windows that looked out over a small patio and the tall green grasses in the marsh beyond let in plenty of natural light.

  I retrieved the pen and notebook I kept in the kitchen, on one of the open shelves above a burner, to jot down what worked and what didn’t when I was cooking. Bertie hummed happily as she started pulling out ingredients. She had a box of brown sugar in her hand when the brass bell above the shop’s front door tinkled.

  “Customers,” Bertie sang out.

  “I’ll go take care of them,” I said, hoping whoever had come into the shop wouldn’t linger. Once I got a recipe idea in my head, it was difficult to stop thinking about it. Some might think that odd considering my dismal track record in the kitchen. But it wasn’t the act of making the chocolate treats that drove my obsession for making them. It was the promise of eating them.

  Since I’d inherited the shop last winter, I’d gone up a dress size. While a vain part of me was distressed by this, another much more relaxed part of me had been relieved. It’d been a relief to donate the clothes in my closet that no longer fit in more ways than one. Those stiff and rather uncomfortable dresses and suits represented my former life when I worked in advertising.

  Today I wore a pale blue sundress with low-heeled strappy sandals. The sundress represented the causal and comfortable lifestyle living on Camellia Beach demanded of its residents. It was a lifestyle I had come to embrace … most of the time.

  Over the sundress I wore a crisp white apron with “Chocolate is cheaper than therapy” embroidered in scrolling burgundy Victorian letters across the front.

  When I reached the front of the shop, I found Johnny Pane moving tables from the middle of the shop. His ladder was leaning against a wall. His paints, rags, and brushes were sitting next to it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, but swiftly added, “Not that I’m complaining. But I thought you were only going to be able to work on my ceiling after business hours.”

  Johnny set down the chair he’d been moving over to the wall. He turned to me and smiled. “Good afternoon to you, Ms. Penn. It’s already hot enough to make a pig sweat. I reckon everyone on the island will come begging for your milkshakes before the day is through.”

  I nodded and tried to hide my impatience. Many on the island—especially the older crowd—considered it rude to talk business before fully dissecting the weather. “I suppose you’re right about the heat. The humidity has made the air so heavy, I felt as if I was swimming when I took Stella for her morning walk.”

  He made a sympathetic “uh-uh” noise in the back of his throat. “If it continues like this, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of tropical cyclone bearing down on us soon.”

  We went on like this for several more minutes with me fighting my urge to jump back into talking about what had changed his work schedule. Finally, he said, “I reckon I’d better get started on that ceiling.”

  “So you aren’t working on the new house for Jody after all?” I asked as he worked to clear out his work area.

  “Don’t rightly need to rush over there anymore considering…”

  I waited for him to finish his thought. But he’d gone back to moving the tables and chairs. “Because Jody is in jail?” I prompted.

  Jody’s incarceration had surely lifted a heavy weight from the shoulders of many in Camellia Beach, myself included. Her continued efforts to sabotage the shop’s success had been draining. Watching her threaten to take Harley to family court every few months over their son was exhausting.

  Johnny shook his head but didn’t answer. Certainly, having Jody off his back is what had gotten rid of the worry that had clouded his pale brown eyes yesterday. He moved with his usual deliberate pace as he set up his ladder and the plastic curtain. He then turned to me with a look of a man who’d just won the lottery. “After last night, I’m beholden to no one but myself again. I work where I want. And I aim to finish this ceiling before moving on to my next job. Ain’t no one around to tell me otherwise.”

  “Because Jody is in jail?” I asked again, feeling awfully pleased I wouldn’t have to deal with her and her mercurial moods ever again.

  “Perhaps we should be thanking her instead of locking her behind bars,” he said as he slid his leg into his white painting coveralls. “Perhaps she’d done us all a favor.”

  I started to ask him what he meant by that when the brass bell on the door rang with sudden urgency. A small figure darted into the shop so quickly the movement looked like a blur. A shouted, “Miss Penn! Miss Penn!” accompanied it.

  I recognized the voice and the blur’s blue and tan board shorts. They belonged to Gavin, Harley’s and Jody’s ten-year-old son. He came to a screeching halt right next to me. Tears streamed down his ruddy cheeks. They’d dampened the collar of his white T-shirt. “Miss Penn!” he cried and latched onto my leg. The puddling tears soaked through my cotton sundress almost instantly. “Tell them they are wrong. Please, you’ve done it before. Tell them they are wrong. Pleeease.”

  I awkwardly patted his head. “Tell who?”

  He was crying too hard for me to understand his answer.

  By this time Harley, Gavin’s father, had jogged into the shop. His hair was in disarray. His suit, an off-the-rack midpriced suit that didn’t quite fit right, was wrinkled. His green eyes were wide and troubled.

  Their obvious distress shamed me.

  Here I’d been, overjoyed that Jody’s arrest would put a halt to whatever mischief she’d been planning for me and the Chocolate Box. But for both Gavin and Harley, her troubles must have felt as if their world was coming apart at the seams.

  “Gavin”—Harley’s voice was gentle—“we’ve already discussed this. Penn can’t convince the police to release your mother any more than I could.”

  With an apologetic look, he tried to pry his son from his death grip around my middle. Gavin only tightened his hold.

  “Nooo!” he screamed. “She-she could find who k-k-k-killed Mr. Cassidy. She-she could if-if she-she wanted to. Mommy d-d-didn’t do what they’re saying s-s-she did! She didn’t!”

  His pain gripped my heart as if it were my own. I knew that pain. I grew up without a mother in my life. Worse, I heard from my family endless tales of how my mother was a conniving fortune teller and a criminal who cared more for herself than for the child she’d abandoned in my father’s unprepared arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. I don’t know if Harley was apologizing to his son or to me.

  “She has to help us. She does. School will start next week. Mommy always takes me shopping. She always takes me to class on the first day.”

  “Please, Gavin.” Harley tried again to pry his son from the death grip he had on my legs. “I’ll take care of those things for you. I’ll take you shopping. I’ll be there on your first day. It’ll be okay.”

  “I need Mommy.” Gavin looked up at me. Tears still flowed like a river. “You understand. Please, Miss Penn. Help me. Pleeease.”

  “Gavin, I know you’re hurting and scared, but we can’t ask Penn to do something like this. She isn’t an investigator. She isn’t—”

  “I’ll do it.” The words popped out of my mouth without my brain’s consent. But it was true. I looked into Gavin’s teary eyes—kind green eyes that looked so much like his father’s—and I knew I’d move heaven and earth to heal his shattering heart even if it meant bringing his mother back to him … and her back into my life.

 
; I hadn’t the first clue how I was going to manage it. As everyone had already pointed out, the evidence against Jody was stacked so high it probably violated some kind of municipal height ordinance. We all saw her with the gun. We all saw her shoot me. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind. She was guilty.

  Heaven help me, had I just promised a heartbroken little boy I’d prove her innocence? How in the world was I going to manage that? And in less than a week? His school started next Thursday.

  Chapter Seven

  “Have you lost your ever-blooming mind?” Althea asked a few hours later. She’d met me as I walked Stella down the narrow path that followed the marsh at the backside of the island. My five-pound brown, black, and white papillon, who delighted in challenging anything larger than her (which was nearly everything), charged toward Althea. Her enormous ears flapped like butterfly wings with each menacing bark.

  “Apparently I’ve lost not only my mind, but also what little good sense I’d once possessed,” I said in a flat voice. I tossed Stella a bacon treat in an effort to distract her long enough for her to forget about barking.

  Tossing the treat made my shoulder ache. I stopped underneath a scrubby oak tree with branches that twisted and a trunk that leaned as if it was standing on a swimmer’s block while preparing to take a graceful dive into the marsh. “I suppose most of Camellia Beach knows what I told Gavin by now.”

  When she heard my voice, Stella barked some more. But with the promise of more bacon in my pocket, she no longer sounded as fierce as she had a moment ago. “Hush now, you know Althea. She’s always bringing you treats whenever she comes and visits.”

  “And despite that, Stella is always barking at me the entire time I’m at your apartment.” Althea shook her head in dismay. But then she smiled down at my little silky pup. “She’s such a pretty dog. I love her black and mahogany-brown markings on that pure white fur. I’d dearly like to pet her one day. Will you let me pet you, Stella?”

  Stella with her adorable little puppy dog face and expressive chocolate eyes looked up at Althea. And growled.

  “That’s what I thought.” Althea clasped her hands behind her back as if trying to protect them from Stella’s nubby but snappy teeth. “You’re as prickly as your owner. Although, you have to admit that Penn has come a long way. She now lets me give her hugs without acting as if my touch scalds. But Stella, you need to tell your owner she’s going to break that little boy’s heart. We all heard the gunshots. Jody shot your owner. And she shot that man in a fit of jealous rage. The best she can hope for now is that the jury will believe a plea of temporary insanity.”

  I tossed Stella another bacon treat. “What was I going to say to Gavin? What would you have said to him?”

  “I wouldn’t have promised to clear his mama of a murder we all saw her commit,” Althea answered without a moment of hesitation.

  “Well…” I drew out that one word for several seconds. “We didn’t actually see her shoot anyone, other than me that is,” I said more to convince myself than to convince Althea.

  “She was holding two guns. The morning newspaper said Cassidy died from a gunshot wound to his heart. He was still warm when we found him, which means he had to have been shot at the same time Jody was shooting those guns of hers. She was there. She had reason to be angry with him. Means. Motive. And opportunity. What other evidence does anyone need?”

  “But she—” What could I say? Althea was right. “Are you going to help me investigate or not?”

  “Of course, I’ll help you. You know I will. That’s why I’m here. That’s what friends do.” And that was why I loved Althea so much. I could always count on her loyalty. “But where do we start?”

  “If you could answer a few questions for me, that’d be great,” I said.

  “What do you need to know?” she asked as she walked alongside me.

  “First off, I need you to tell me why Jody was the island’s turtle lady last year. How in the world did she get herself in a position where she was in charge of all the volunteers for the turtle watch program on the island? She works for a company that is all about tearing apart the land and building bigger and bigger homes and businesses. It seems like a contradiction that she could be so eager to tear down the Chocolate Box to build a multistory resort complex that is completely out of scale for this island, and yet at the same time so trigger happy when it comes to a little light pollution that might harm a few baby turtles. What’s that all about?”

  Althea tapped her chin. “I’d never wondered after her motives before, at least not in that way. From the moment she moved to Camellia Beach, she’s been interested in the sea turtles. Don’t forget she’s also a competitive surfer, and surfers are great advocates when it comes to protecting the shore and the sea life there. After she’d moved to town, barely a week had passed before she contacted Harriett—the turtle lady at the time—to offer her services. A year after she was accepted as a volunteer, Harriett abruptly decided to step down from the role of turtle lady, and Jody took over.”

  “But why? What was it about the sea turtles that made her want to bring a gun out to the nest?”

  “This may come as a shock to you,” Althea whispered, “but Jody is a bit of a hothead.”

  “Really?” I reeled back in mock surprise. “After seeing how she’d interacted with Johnny Pane at my shop the other day, I would have never guessed.”

  We both laughed. Mine was a nervous laugh, tinged with worry that I was doomed to fail and that Gavin would lose his mother. On multiple occasions Jody had showed everyone on the island how she’d let her emotions rule her actions. Common sense told me to give up already. Jody was guilty of murder.

  But I couldn’t do that. For Gavin’s sake, I needed to find a different truth. Jody might not be a perfect mother, but Gavin loved her and needed her in his life. That was something my own mother had denied to me. Foolish or not, I intended to do everything in my power to keep Gavin from feeling the tearing grief I’d felt as a child.

  “Despite her faults, Jody is truly passionate about protecting the sea turtles,” Althea said, no longer laughing.

  “You’re serious?” I found that hard to believe. “If she cares about the turtles, then how can she work for a place like Sunset Development?”

  “I might not like the buildings they’re constructing or their philosophy that Camellia Beach needs to be renovated into something completely different, but they’ve been a good corporate friend to the sea turtle team.”

  She must have read the look of horror on my face. Sunset Development had been nothing but a pain for the shop ever since I’d told them I wasn’t going to sell them my building.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Althea said quickly, “I agree with you that the company is pushing to change what we love most about the island. If they succeed, we’ll lose our tight-knit community to a sea of corporate-owned vacation condos. But at the same time, without their sponsorship, the turtle program wouldn’t have been able to accomplish even a tenth of what it has been able to accomplish in the past few years.”

  “Okay, so Jody sees herself as an environmentalist?” I asked, still not quite able to believe it.

  “She once told me that tourists want to see the sea turtles and other wildlife and have healthy dunes just as much as they want big, shiny, new buildings to shop and stay in.”

  That part made sense. I might not agree with Jody that Camellia Beach needed to change into a mini-Miami Beach, but I could certainly understand her reasoning for wanting to protect the sea turtles if she thought it was good for business.

  “I also think Jody honestly enjoys being around seas turtles,” Althea added. “The turtle lady position demands a tremendous amount of time and commitment. That’s a lot of ask from a volunteer.”

  “Don’t forget how she likes being in charge,” I said.

  “That’s the truth. I just wish she hadn’t gotten into that stubborn head of hers that she needed to bring guns to the hatching.”

&nbs
p; “What was she doing toting guns around in the first place?” I asked. “She has a young son in her house for goodness sake. She shouldn’t even own a gun, much less carry it around with her.”

  Althea gave me an odd look.

  “What?” I asked.

  “This is the South, Penn.” She’d said it as if that pronouncement should explain everything. It didn’t explain anything.

  “So we’re in the South. What does that mean?”

  She huffed. “Everyone owns a gun.”

  “Everyone?” She had to be exaggerating. “No, not everyone. You don’t have one.”

  “Yeah, I do. I have my daddy’s old handgun in a gun safe under my bed.”

  “What?” She might have well told me that purple dragons lived underneath the island. The thought of Althea with a gun was simply too unbelievable. “Don’t tell me your mother has a gun, too.” I don’t know how I felt about living in an apartment with a gun in it.

  My father, despite all of his faults, abhorred firearms. He made it clear that there was no place in a home for weapons. He found hunting barbaric and believed handguns only exasperated the troubles facing the country today. I disagreed with my father about pretty much everything. But when it came to guns, we agreed. Then again, I did grow up in Chicago. Whenever someone talked about a gun, it was almost always in reference to a deadly shooting.

  “Does Mama keep a gun?” Althea repeated while she thought about that question. “You know, I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her. She and Mabel lived alone in that apartment of yours for decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a gun tucked away somewhere.”

  “But your mother seems so, so level-headed. And I’m still shocked to hear you have a gun in your house. You own a crystal shop. You believe in new age woo-woo stuff. You carry spiders outdoors instead of squishing them. I would have pegged you for a pacifist.”

  “I am a pacifist, Penn. I don’t want to hurt anyone. The gun belonged to my daddy. It’s a part of my heritage. I could no more give it away than I could stop being Southern.”