Death of a Chocolate Cheater: A Food Festival Mystery

by Penny Pike

  “So you turned him in,” Jake said softly.

  He rubbed his eyes. “All I did was supply them with some evidence. They promised my name would be kept out of it. I didn’t want my father to find out what I’d done.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “There was a lot of pressure on him to change the way his chocolate was produced. There were boycotts. Cheap labor disappeared. Costs went up. He stopped making a profit and began losing money. When he tried to sell, no one wanted to buy—not even the Nudos. Now he owes his creditors, his lawyers, his employees. He’s lost just about everything, thanks to me.” Simon shook his head.

  I didn’t know what to say. Simon had essentially done the right thing, but he’d destroyed his family in doing so.

  “I lost everything too,” Simon continued. “No more money coming in from my father. About all I have left is my relationship with my dad,” Simon said. “But if he ever finds out what I’ve done, I won’t even have that.”

  I felt for Simon, and for Isabel. Both had secrets they didn’t want exposed, for good reason. But they still had strong motives for killing Polly.

  “All right,” I said. “If neither of you killed Polly, do you have any clue as to who might have done it?”

  “No,” Simon said.

  Isabel pursed her lips. She looked as if she was about to say something.

  “Isabel?” I asked. “Did you think of someone?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Last night, at the party, while Polly made the rounds, chatting up everyone as if they were her best friends, I might have overheard—”

  “Isabel!” Simon said, glaring at her.

  “You said they might be able to help us,” Isabel said to him. “Why not tell them the rest?”

  “What did you overhear?” I asked.

  “Polly told a bunch of the contestants that she was going to vote for them . . . ,” Isabel said.

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  Isabel nodded. “But only if they shared the winnings with her.”

  Whoa.

  “How did you manage to hear all that?” I asked.

  Isabel stole a glance at Simon. He nodded his consent.

  “I . . . slipped a listening device into her Coach bag—the one she carried all night. Simon bought the device at that Spy Shop on Beach Street. I dropped it in when she wasn’t looking; then Simon and I took turns listening to her conversations with an earpiece.”

  “You’re kidding!” I was having a hard time picturing these two as amateur spies.

  Simon got up and went to a drawer in the kitchen. He pulled out a tiny earpiece the size of a pea and a small portable microphone. When he returned to the living area, he stuck the earpiece inside his right ear.

  “Wow. It’s almost invisible,” I said, staring at his ear.

  He dropped the portable mic in my pocket, then went down the hall, entered a room, and closed the door.

  “Say something,” Isabel said.

  “Uh, testing, one, two, three . . . ,” I said.

  Seconds later Simon returned to the living area again. “Testing, one, two, three? That’s the best you could come up with?” He pulled a small magnet out of his pocket and held it up to his ear. The tiny pink earpiece popped out and he placed it in his open palm. “It’s Bluetooth. State-of-the-art. On sale for two hundred bucks.”

  Jake picked it up and examined it. “They use these in law enforcement sometimes.”

  “But why did you listen in on her conversations?” I asked.

  “We thought she might say something . . . incriminating. Something we could use to blackmail her back.”

  “Did she?” Jake asked.

  Isabel smiled. “She said a lot. You’d be surprised at how powerful those little mics are.”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “Like I said, she told some of the contestants that she would vote for them as long as they split the money with her.”

  Jake shook his head. “She didn’t talk to me.”

  “I’m pretty sure she didn’t talk to Aunt Abby, either.” At least, I didn’t think so. “Who did she talk to?”

  “First it was that pretty gal from I Scream Cakes—Monet,” Isabel said. “Then Frankie Nudo. Then . . . let me think . . . Griffin, the Pie Guy. And Harrison.”

  “And she promised each of them a vote if they’d split the prize money with her?”

  “Yes,” Isabel said.

  “What about Wendy Spellman? Did she try to bribe her too?”

  Isabel shook her head. “That’s the strange part. Wendy was the only one Polly talked to and told the opposite—that she wouldn’t be voting for her. I got the feeling something happened between those two in the past and Polly still carried a grudge. Wendy told Polly she didn’t need her vote and stormed off.”

  “Did you tell any of this to the police?” Jake asked.

  “Goodness, no!” Isabel said. “That slope is slipperier than a mountain covered in icing. If one thing led to another, that detective would quickly learn too much about us. That’s why we kept our mouths shut.”

  “Then we’re back to square one,” I said, sighing. “Who killed Polly?”

  Simon spoke up. “I still think someone is going around killing the judges. I just can’t figure out why. When Wendy got arrested, I briefly wondered if she killed Polly because Polly wasn’t going to vote for her. But it’s not much of a motive, and I don’t really believe it.”

  “So you two still holed up here,” I said.

  “Yes,” Isabel said. “Better to be safe than sorry. I still think someone is after the last two Chocolate Festival judges. And I don’t intend to be next.”

  Chapter 15

  “Do you believe they didn’t kill Polly?” I asked Jake when we were back in the car.

  “Don’t know,” he said. “They both have motives, being blackmailed by Polly. Isabel served time for killing her abusive husband, so I suppose she’s capable. And Simon doesn’t want his father to find out what he did. But is that enough to make him commit murder?”

  “They’re both pretty angry people. Maybe they did it together.”

  “It’s possible,” Jake agreed. “He did get pretty defensive when you asked him if he’d had an affair with Polly.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “what was that about? Dillon said Polly was quite the ‘party girl,’ but would she really have slept with Simon? He’s so not attractive.”

  “Not your type, eh?” Jake said, grinning.

  I made a face. “Hey, maybe Simon is sleeping with Isabel and she got jealous.”

  Jake laughed. “They didn’t look like a couple to me. More like frenemies who are only connected by being in the same kind of hot mess.”

  I started the car, then pulled out my cell phone and punched in Dillon’s number using Bluetooth. “Dillon? Can you do some more digging on Simon Van Houten and Isabel Lau?” I filled him in on what we’d learned about Isabel’s history and name change and Simon’s betrayal of his father.

  “Sweet intel!” Dillon said. “How’d you find out all that?”

  “If I told you . . . ,” I began, mocking his response whenever I asked him where he got his information. “So, let me know if those leads take you anywhere, okay?”

  “Later,” Dillon said, and hung up.

  “If anyone can find out anything more about Simon, it’s Dillon,” I said. “He’s annoying as hell, but he does have his talents.”

  “So, what’s next?” Jake said, giving Simon’s house a last glance as I pulled into the street. “By the way, I don’t know if you noticed, but they’ve been watching us from the window.”

  I couldn’t see from my vantage point, but I could picture the two of them peering out from behind the curtains.

  I drove down the quiet avenue toward the freeway.
“Remember what Isabel said?”

  “What?”

  “About bugging Polly’s conversations?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Isabel said Polly talked to the other contestants in the competition—all but my aunt and you. She told each one she was going to vote for them if they split the prize money with her, remember? Everyone except Wendy.”

  He nodded. “You think one of the other contestants might have killed Polly?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “But why?” Jake asked, frowning. “They had no reason to kill her, especially if she promised to vote for them. Half the prize money is better than no prize money at all.”

  “True,” I agreed. “But maybe one of them did have a reason. Maybe the two judges weren’t the only ones Polly was blackmailing. Maybe she had something on those contestants too. And maybe she wanted more than just half the winnings.”

  “Then why would she tell all of them she was going to vote for them and make them winners? They couldn’t all win,” Jake argued.

  “Good question,” I said.

  I pulled onto the freeway, easing into traffic headed toward Ghirardelli Square and the Chocolate Festival. “I still think we need to talk to the other contestants—Monet, Frankie, Griffin, and Harrison—find out if they had any reason to get rid of Polly. And have Dillon see what he can find out about them.”

  My cell phone rang. I punched the phone icon on the dashboard and said hello.

  “Dude, guess what,” Dillon said with no other introduction.

  “What? Did you find out something?”

  “You might say that,” he said. “I hacked into Polly’s computer at the Chron and checked out the articles she’d been working on. You’re going to owe me big-time.”

  I glanced at Jake. “What did you learn?”

  “She was writing an exposé on the Van Houten family chocolate companies. It was all about how they were exploiting child labor at their factories. She had all the deets—names, ages, wages, working conditions. It was going to bring down the house of Van Houten and ruin the company.”

  “But Simon already turned his father in. What purpose would that serve?” I asked.

  “Don’t know, but I e-mailed you a copy of the article in case you want to read it. Looks like it was scheduled to run next week, after the Chocolate Festival was over. I wonder if they’ll kill it now.”

  I thanked Dillon, hung up, heard a ping, and handed the phone over to Jake so he could open the e-mail.

  “Read it to me,” I said.

  He clicked on the attachment and began reading.

  Chocolate Cheaters—A Rich Industry Getting Richer off the Poor

  By Polly Montgomery

  Readers, you know how much I love chocolate! If I don’t have a mocha first thing in the morning, followed by a chocolate croissant from Bean to Bar, I can’t function. And while I’ve heard all the good things chocolate does for a person—especially a woman—I’ve recently learned some disturbing news about my favorite sin. And I heard it from the son of one of the world’s most popular chocolate producers.

  “Whoa!” I said. “She was naming names! Go on.”

  Meet Simon Van Houten Sr., who created the Cote d’Ivoire Chocolate Industries fifty years ago by laying claim to one of the most productive places for growing chocolate—the Ivory Coast. That, my friends, is where one-third of the world’s cocoa is harvested. And since global demand for chocolate far exceeds supply, cocoa beans are at a premium. Unfortunately, inflation, processing, trade, and exporters have all affected the cost of the beans and cut into profits.

  For years, these companies have used child labor to harvest the cocoa pods, using machetes that can slice open a hand as quickly as a pod. The work is labor intensive, with long hours, little pay, and many health issues. In spite of this, child labor continues, due to the poverty of the laborers and the costs for the manufacturers.

  “That’s pretty much what Simon told us,” I said. “What else does it say?”

  Jake read on.

  Some of the biggest names in chocolate are working toward ending this blight and funding schools to increase education and living standards. But it’s not happening fast enough.

  The Van Houten family needs to step up, change the way they do business, and figure out how to provide us chocolate lovers with our fix without taking advantage of these young workers. I want my chocolate, but not at this price.

  The irony—most of the workers have never even tasted a chocolate bar.

  “Wow,” I said when he was finished. “She comes off sounding like the Saint of Chocolate, while slamming Simon’s family business. Don’t you think it’s odd that Simon never told us about Polly’s plan to print an article? Was Simon lying to us? Or was it some kind of leverage? Maybe she never really intended to publish that story.”

  My cell phone rang. Jake answered using the car’s Bluetooth.

  “Did you read it?” Dillon asked before I could say hello. “Do you think Simon killed Polly to stop the article?”

  “It’s certainly possible,” I said. “We need to tell Detective Shelton about this, if he doesn’t already know about Polly’s work computer.”

  “Hold up!” Dillon said. “If Shelton finds out how I got all this dirt, I’m going to jail.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Well, if he hasn’t seen her files yet, I’ll figure out a way to get him to look at them.”

  “Darcy . . . ,” Dillon said. I could hear the warning in his voice.

  “I’ll be careful, Dillon,” I promised. Although I had no clue how I was going to tell the detective without putting Dillon in jeopardy. “By the way, see if you can find out more about the other contestants. I have a hunch they may have been under Polly’s thumb as well.”

  “Later,” Dillon said, and hung up.

  Crap. Another two steps forward and one back. The story of my life.

  * * *

  I pulled into the Chocolate Festival parking area designated for the food truckers and turned off the engine, still puzzled by what I’d learned from Dillon. Simon had told us he’d essentially ruined the family business by alerting authorities his father was using child labor, yet Polly was supposedly writing an exposé on the very same. What was really going on?

  Jake and I got out of the car and I turned to him. “So, Simon may have lied to us, Isabel is capable of murder, and they both bugged Polly’s purse to see if they could get something to blackmail her with—which they did. They overheard her promise several contestants that she’d vote for them as long as they shared the winnings. My list just grew by two more suspects.”

  “My money’s on Simon,” Jake said. “I don’t know what else he’s hiding, but why would he give up his family fortune so easily? There has to be something else behind it.”

  “How about we talk to the other contestants Polly tried to coerce and see if we can get them to tell us something. Dillon’s doing some digging, but I think a face-to-face works better sometimes. Then we’ll talk to Detective Shelton.”

  Jake checked the time on his cell phone. “It’s six. The festival closed down for the day two hours ago, but I’m guessing the chocolatiers are still around, getting ready for day two.”

  “I say we pay them each a visit,” I suggested. I was about to head for one of the trucks when Jake placed a hand on my arm.

  “Wait a minute. You’re going to need an excuse. You can’t just go up to them and start asking pointed questions about Polly’s offer to split the money if she agreed to vote for them.”

  I stopped. “You’re right.” I thought for a few minutes, then said, “What if we tell them we overheard Polly’s offer. They won’t know we’re lying—unless they’re good at reading tells. And I’ve got a good poker face from being a nosy reporter all these years.”

 
“Do you really think whoever is guilty will just fess up?” Jake said, shaking his head. “I doubt they’re going to admit they were planning to take the offer and then decided to kill off the offeree.”

  “Got a better idea?” I asked him.

  “It might be smarter to learn what kind of relationship each one had with Polly and see if one of them had another motive to murder her. Offing her because she promised to award them the prize doesn’t seem like a very strong motive.”

  “So what do we say?”

  “How about using your cookbook plan? Tell them about the food truck cookbook you’re writing and ask them if they want to contribute a recipe. While you’re chatting them up, use your journalism skills to bring up Polly and find out what they have to say about her. You’re good at that kind of thing.”

  “Great idea. But aren’t you coming with me?”

  “Darcy, it’s your cookbook. I think it would look odd if I came along.”

  Disappointed he wasn’t going to be my sidekick, I nodded.

  “See if you can find out how Wendy is doing,” I told Jake. “Aunt Abby will want to know. I’m sure she’s crazy with worry.”

  “Sure.”

  I was about to head off when Jake took my hand and stopped me again. He pulled me close. The wind brushed my face. The smell of chocolate tickled my nose. My heart raced.

  “Be careful,” he whispered.

  Kiss me, I wanted to whisper back. “I will,” I said instead.

  “One of those people could be a murderer, you know.” He brushed a few hairs away that had blown in my face.

  Kiss me, I thought. “I know.” I leaned in closer.

  “Don’t do anything stupid.” He looked soulfully into my eyes.

  Kiss me, dammit. I barely heard his words. “I won’t,” I promised breathlessly.

  Then he kissed me.

  Chapter 16

  Jake headed over to the school bus to talk to Dillon, leaving me to check out the food truckers who had been offered bribes by the deceased.