Death Is Like a Box of Chocolates (A Chocolate Covered Mystery) (9 page)

I
arrived at my own home and looked at it as Colleen probably did. No bikes littering the front lawn. No one waiting for me in my apartment. A pang of disquiet hit me for the first time ever. Wow, was I growing up?

I shook off the wistful feeling and went in. Look where all that got Colleen. Lights were on in Erica’s apartment but my natural desire to avoid emotional conflicts still warred with my curiosity of what the heck was happening up there. Or more accurately, what the heck did it have to do with Denise’s murder? Did Mark really kill Denise? And use my chocolates to do it? It was hard to believe.

Plus, Erica and I were a team, and that team was in trouble.

I climbed the stairs quietly and peeked into her home office. Erica was near tears. Bean was scowling in anger. Mark sat slouched in a chair seeming defeated and defiant at the same time, like a teenager rebelling against the tyranny of curfew.

“I didn’t kill Denise,” Mark said as I walked in. He turned to me. “How is she?”

I ignored his intent. “Meeting with Fitzy the locksmith about now.”

Bean smiled with a little pride for his sister, and maybe a little nastiness for Mark. “Okay. You didn’t kill Denise. So you weren’t having an affair?”

Mark slumped down again. “No, that part is true.”

Bean made a disgusted sound and walked to the window. Erica looked shattered, feeling terrible for her sister.

“With your assistant?” I asked, taking over. Maybe for our project plan on the kitchen wall. And for Colleen. And a little bit for betrayed women everywhere.

“What? No,” he protested and then shook his head. “She’s in sales, like me. We met at a convention a year ago.”

“This has been going on for a year?” Bean asked, outraged.

“No,” Mark said. “We were friends. She was . . . fun.”

No one thought of Colleen as fun anymore.

“And a month or two ago, it became,” he paused, “more.”

He blushed and I realized it was worse than an affair. He was
in love
with her.

“So when you were getting ‘additional training,’ you were with her,” Erica said.

He nodded. “That’s what I told Colleen.”

Much as some nosy part of me wanted to pursue the sordid story, our main concern was the police. “Why did Lockett bring you in for questioning?”

He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “Denise got photos of me with Gretchen at a conference a couple of weeks ago. She told me I had to tell Colleen or she would. She’s been texting them to me all week and gave me an ultimatum. She said she was going to tell her yesterday morning.”

Erica stared at him, wide-eyed. “Yesterday morning?” she asked. “When Denise was killed?”

His eyes darted to all three of us. “I didn’t do it!”

He must have seen doubt in our eyes. “I was going to tell Colleen this weekend, but then the twins were crazy and Pru was already nervous about the dance recital and I just . . .” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “I decided to let whatever happens, happen. Then at least . . . it would be over.”

Bean took a step closer. “You didn’t have the guts to do it yourself. You’d let Denise, Colleen’s best friend, tell her that you were having an affair.”

“Yes,” Mark said, defeated. “And then Colleen could decide what she wanted to do.”

Bean’s hands clenched as if he wanted to beat him to a pulp, and then he headed for the door. “I guess it’s a good thing you have such a good lawyer.”

“Where are you going?” Mark asked, desperation creeping into his voice.

“To get one for Colleen,” Bean said grimly.

• • • • • • • • • 

E
rica and I walked Mark downstairs, past Bean who was pacing the living room with his phone pressed to his ear. “Don’t leave town,” Bean called out, his hand over the phone. “And do everything, I mean
everything
, exactly the way Marino tells you to. He’s your best chance of getting out of this mess.”

Erica waited with Mark for his friend to pick him up. I watched him through the window and wondered what the hell he was thinking. An affair? In this town? How long did he think he’d get away with it? And if Mark
was
having an affair, what else was going on in West Riverdale?

I decided to be useful and update the project plan on my kitchen wall, saving Erica from listing her brother-in-law as a suspect. He fit our little profile pretty well. He knew the security codes. He had access to my chocolate. And he certainly had a motive.

But I still couldn’t see mild-mannered Mark as a cold-blooded murderer.

I made breakfast, since it was still morning and cooking always helped me to think. I whipped up a batch of my pancakes and fried extra crispy bacon. Erica just picked at her food, worry creasing her forehead.

I’d never realized before just how entrenched we were in each other’s lives. Business partners, housemates, friends.

People believed that super-intellectuals like Erica were less feeling, but it wasn’t true. Erica felt things intensely, even if she didn’t show it. Like her brother, she had a deeply ingrained sense of justice and worked to make the world a better place.

I know she was scared for what her sister and the kids would have to go through. Horrified that Denise had died. And, just like me, worried for the future of our business.

I’d been selfishly allowing her to do all the consoling. “I’m sorry,” I said.

Her eyes met mine. “You didn’t cheat on my sister.”

“Not that,” I said. “I mean, for not realizing that this whole thing is just as hard on you as it is on me.”

“I understand,” she said. “It’s your chocolate, your babies, under scrutiny.”

“Which affects your business,” I insisted. “And now your sister . . .”

She nodded, somber. “We are going to be fine. Both of us.” She looked over at the plan hanging on the wall. “And we’re going to find out who did this, so those angels don’t grow up believing their father was a murderer.”

I let the angels comment slide.

Bean walked in as he hung up the phone, grabbed a piece of bacon and sat down. “Anything new?”

Erica shook her head and jumped to a new subject. “Did you know that some experts think a relationship can get stuck at the developmental stage it started?”

“So Colleen and Mark got stuck when they were just college kids?” I filled a mug of coffee for Bean and set it in front of him.

He nodded his thanks. “Others believe each partner can develop but sometimes in different directions.”

“So anything can happen?” I asked. “Is this about you and Bobby?”

Erica scowled. “No.”

I went on. “Because from what I saw this morning, Colleen just unstuck herself.”

We all looked out the window when a car drove up with Reese the loco reporter. She walked right up to the door and rang the doorbell. Of course we ignored her.

“I know you’re in there, Michelle,” she said.

I half expected her to cup her hands on the window to see inside.

“A source has told me that the police found poison in your store,” she called out, obviously enunciating for her own camera. “Wouldn’t you like to tell the public your side?”

“Lying bitch,” I muttered. “No way did they find poison in my store.” Then I remembered Detective Lockett asking if I kept rat poison there. Had the police really found something? Had someone tried to make it seem like I was responsible?

“Interesting,” Bean said, talking quietly as if Reese might overhear. “Maybe she knows someone in the police department. Or Lockett leaked that to her on purpose to see what she could dig up.”

After a few more determined knocks, she left, with a purposeful grimace on her face.

I turned to Bean. “Do you know something I don’t?”

He shook his head. “Just wondering if Lockett is using her.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“He asked you about the poison for a reason,” Bean said. “Don’t underestimate him.”

Ten minutes later, Erica got a call from Colleen that Reese was knocking on her door and wouldn’t leave.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“On her front porch,” Erica acted as go-between.

“That’s private property,” I said. “I’ll call the police.”

• • • • • • • • • 

B
obby threatened Reese with trespassing and she left under protest. Sure enough, a half hour later a video of her visits to our homes and interaction with Bobby popped up on her blog with the headline,
Local Police Protecting Murder Suspects
.

And of course she repeated the video of my X-rated chocolates flying through the air.

“Bitch” was too nice a word for her.

A little later, Colleen called to say the Baltimore crime-scene techs had arrived at her house with the warrant. The schools had some kind of teacher in-service day and she had taken the kids to daycare so they didn’t see anything.

“That was fast,” Bean murmured.

I looked around my own house. How horrible to have someone searching through every single item in your home, no matter how personal. Erica left to stay with Colleen while Bean went upstairs to make more calls.

I dusted the living room and then went back to the kitchen, not sure what to do with myself.

It made me realize how all-consuming my shop was, and how happy I’d been just yesterday morning.

I’d bounced around to a lot of jobs: lifeguard at the YMCA until they said I had to teach kids how to swim; a waitress at the diner until I couldn’t get time off for the Labor Day softball tournament; apple picking in the summer until my hands were red and raw; and working the front desk in an auto shop.

I wasn’t qualified for much, and just one class at the Frederick Community College convinced me college wasn’t for me. That caused the biggest argument Leo and I ever had. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was pretty clear on what I didn’t want to do. To his credit, he’d never used guilt to get me to go, and with what he had given up to raise me, he certainly could have.

With all the idealism of any eighteen-year-old, I knew I’d figure it out.

Still, I lived for the times I wasn’t working and could just hang out with friends. It wasn’t until I begged my way into becoming a salesperson at a chocolate shop in the next town that I found what I was meant to do.

At first, I wanted to work there so I could eat the chocolate. But then I took one chocolate-making class and I fell in love with the artistry of creating something beautiful
and
delicious.

I apprenticed under the shop owner, Astrid Trenton, who loved my enthusiasm and taught me to use my weird sense of smell to my advantage. When she retired, I returned home and opened up my own shop. I got to make happiness for a living.

The project plan on the wall called to me. I texted Erica that I was going to track down Opal. She texted back.
Try her studio
.
Tell her we need someone to photograph Hillary Punkin for the fudge cook-off and she’ll get the photo credit.
Erica was even giving me my cover story.

Opal’s studio was in a small strip mall at the end of Jasper Street. It was centuries newer than a lot of the buildings in town. According to a lot of people in town, that meant it lacked character. But since it was built in the early eighties, it probably didn’t need to have the whole electricity system rewired to handle a state-of-the-art humidifier, like our store.

Our renovation was way more expensive than it should’ve been. I swore our building inspector was really working for our landlord, Yuli Gorshkov. When we’d made the deal with Yuli to pay for the renovations ourselves in exchange for a rent reduction for two years, we didn’t realize all kinds of new code requirements would be lumped in, codes he was aware of and hadn’t yet implemented.

As soon as I pulled into Opal’s lot, I realized my mistake. Her studio was directly across the street from a coffee shop that the local police frequented and Chief Noonan was staring right at me through the front window. Since I’d driven by the coffee shop’s parking lot, and the other stores in the strip mall ranged from a discount DUI lawyer, a tax accountant who closed up shop for a few months after tax day and an eyebrow threading salon, Noonan could only assume that I’d come to see Opal.

“Lost?” he said as he ambled over.

“Um.” Erica’s clever cover story got jumbled around in my brain while he stared at me over his reading glasses.

“I just wanted to ask Opal if she’d take photos at the fudge cook-off.” I tried to send out innocent vibes but they obviously didn’t work.

“Oh, really.” He tucked his thumbs into his pants pockets and leaned back, which shouldn’t have looked threatening, but was.

“I’ve learned that it’s usually more effective to ask someone to volunteer in person rather than over the phone,” I said as if passing on sage wisdom.

He made an “after you” gesture. “Go ahead.”

I walked toward Opal’s studio door with the chief at my side. “We need a professional photographer to take photos when Hillary Punkin’s here,” I lied. “It’s part of the deal with her.”

His face softened. “My wife loves that Hillary.”

I tried the door. It was locked, so I knocked. No answer. Which was good because no way was I asking Opal questions with the chief breathing down my neck.