Ganache with Panache: Book 2 in The Chocolate Cafe Series (5 page)

“You,” she growled. “You’ll never work in this town again.”

Mac laughed. “Oh my, that’s good. You sounded just like her.”

“Did she actually say that? Those tired old words? People still talk like that?” Louis took the wet piece of driftwood out of Toby’s mouth and tossed it back into the ocean. The dog was gone in an instant, his shimmering grey body galloping into the icy water without a moment’s hesitation.

“People like her do.” Mac said, her eyes following the dog as his form melted into the rapidly darkening water. It was twilight and the end of what had turned out to be a very long, very dramatic day.

“You’re not going to still do it, are you?” Louis asked. There was a moment when her two friends watched Brie intently. There was no logical reason why she should.

“I think you know where I stand when it comes to chocolate fountains,” she said, leaping down from the rock. Her tattered bike boots sank into the wet sand on impact.

“You’ve made that clear,” Mac said, smiling that crooked smile that the detective was finding more irresistible every time he saw it.

Brie started walking up the beach toward where Toby was thundering toward them, his prize stick in his mouth.

“I’m going to take it as a challenge.” Brie said, “I know we don’t need the money thanks to the lovely Ms. Mackenzie here. But really? How can I call myself an artist if I don’t test my limitations?”

“Burst through creative barriers,” Louis said.

“Challenge your skill level,” Mac said, that smile still making her kittenish face lopsided.

“I am going to make the best damn chocolate fountain that this fine country has ever seen.” Brie yelled to the wind, “And it’s going to be white chocolate. Tacky, tasteless, white chocolate. And my swans?”

“Godiva couldn’t do better.” Mac wrapped her arm around her friend’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. She was tenacious as well as brilliant—an amazing combination, to say the least.

“What about poor Zachary Lau?” Louis asked.

“Oh, he quit.” the girls spoke simultaneously.

“The second Olivia left the room, he packed up his stuff and practically ran out. A designer like him doesn’t need that kind of hassle.”

Now that Toby had returned to them, the three started to make their way up to the street. It was almost completely dark now and the lights were coming on up along the main drag, one by one. To her surprise, Mac felt her hand slip naturally into Louis’s. This was good. Flanked by her two best friends with a giant, wet dog leading the way. Maybe commitment wasn’t the all-powerful demon she had always feared.

“You know what,” Brie said, “I’m going to give him a call. He gave me his number before he stormed out. I think he’s just looking for free chocolate, frankly.”

“That’s a good idea. We can see if he wants to go for a drink or something.”

“I doubt it. The man hasn’t even been out of rehab for longer than half a year.” Louis said. Mac looked at him, amused.

“According to police files?” she asked.

Louis shrugged his lean shoulders.

“According to the internet.” Both women halted and looked at him incredulously. “Look, McKenzie Bay is hardly London. Most of the time I just respond to noise complaints. Last week, I even tried to help find a kitten! There’s really not a lot for me to do. A man has to keep busy.”

Brie laughed, shaking her head.

“All right, let’s see if Mr. Lau wants to meet for ice cream instead.”

There was a brief conversation as they walked up the steps built into the stone wall that separated the beach from the town. Once up on the sidewalk, Brie slid her phone back into her pocket. She looked troubled.

“He’s into it, but he sounded upset,” she reported.

“It’s been a long day for him, from the sounds of it.” Louis said, buckling Toby into his leash.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Brie said. “Anyway, he’s staying with his sister at the Strand Hotel by Agate Beach. We’re supposed to meet up with him there.”

“Ice cream with a world famous fashion designer. If my dear old mum could see me now.” He took Mac’s hand again, intertwining his fingers with hers. That wonderful warmth she had felt on the beach bloomed suddenly in her heart again. This was a hand she could get used to holding.

****

The Strand Hotel wasn’t nearly as elegant as it sounded. Apparently Lau’s people hadn’t realized that when they had booked him there for his stay. Off the main drag, it was actually a series of small, rundown cabins facing each other in a wide circle. Each cabin was named after a tree—Maple, Lilac, Dogwood—or an ocean dweller—Dolphin, Puffin, Humpback. The office was in the center and it doubled as an equally rundown fish and chips shop. The smell of grease and less-than-fresh seafood made the hotel a place frequented less by tourists and more by down-on-their-luck locals. It went without saying that Brie had lived at the Strand for a few months in high school.

She had seemed a little distracted since the phone call with Zach. Mac wondered if it had something to do with going back to one of her old neighborhoods, but when a series of police cars and emergency vehicles roared past them, both she and Louis broke into a run simultaneously.

“Oh geez, I knew it. I knew it.” Brie mumbled, easily matching Louis’s strides despite his being at least double her size. Toby, his own policing instincts activated, began to bray along with the sirens and once again yanked Mac forward.

Breathless, the three watched as the cacophony of red and blue lights tore through the gates of the hotel and came to a halt in front of one of the cabins.

Only seconds behind, they ran across the gravel toward the now open door of Lilac Cabin.

“That’s Zachary’s cabin.” Brie said, her voice cracking. A swarm of uniformed officers and paramedics poured from the vehicles. The owner of the hotel, a very large woman in a cat tee shirt, was wringing her hands and crying, her many chins trembling.

Still running, Louis turned to the girls. His face hardened, the mouth that so easily curled up into a goofy smile now a thin line.

“Stay here,” he said. “Don’t come in. Don’t ask anyone anything. Just. Behave.” He tore off into the crowd where the other officers immediately surrounded him, talking excitedly.

Brie and Mac stood, panting for breath on the outskirts of the action. Mac had to plant her feet to keep Toby from running forward after Louis. In the darkness, the lights swirled off the whitewashed cabins and cut sharp shadows into the girls’ faces.

Brie looked at her friend. The same lean, hungry look she got whenever something like this happened was back. She knew damn well what Mac wanted, and that was to get into that cabin and get the information that every fiber in her body was screaming for. If Mac were wearing a leash, she would be tugging at it as hard as Toby was at his.

“We should go,” Brie said, gently. “He’ll call us when he knows anything.”

“Mac.” Brie said again. “Seriously. Remember last time? We need to get out of the way.”

Hearing her name. Mac snapped out of her trance. She looked at Brie with what looked remarkably close to disappointment. “You’re right,” she said. “We’ll get a cab and head back to my place.”

There were approximately two days of relative calm before the story of internationally acclaimed designer Zachary Lau’s death became the top-ranked trending topic in the entertainment world. Overnight, Mackenzie Bay was overrun with reporters in fat, white vans ignoring all traffic signs, and morbidly curious lookie-loos, also impeding traffic and giving attitude to Mackenzie Bay residents.

For Mac, the most painful part of the whole murder investigation had been the waiting. The night that Louis had disappeared into the hotel cabin, Mac had paced through her home like a caged cat. Every window she passed she looked out, waiting for the headlights of his car as he came up the drive. She checked her phone obsessively. Her dinner went cold and uneaten on the table.

When Louis finally stood at her doorstep, he looked too exhausted to stand, let alone answer her barrage of questions. He was pale, spoke very little, and didn’t do much the entire night except absently pat Mac’s head, more as if to comfort himself than to put her at ease.

Before he fell asleep on the couch, he flickered his eyes open long enough to make stern contact with hers. “Mac, don’t do anything. I know it will be hard for you, but don’t. Don’t even look at the internet. Just stay out of it.” With that, he passed out just as the sun was coming up.

And she did.

She kept herself out of it for as long as she could. She went to work, she listened to the idle gossip. She barely raised an eyebrow when Brie came bursting into the shop announcing that Mrs. Olivia Hood was the number one suspect.

“Remember the big blow out? Her threats? You should’ve seen the look on her face when they were taking her into the station. I’ve never seen anyone so furious.”

Mac had made some offhand comment and had gone back to diligently cleaning the espresso machine. None of her business right?

Until the murder scene pictures hit the internet.

Then all hell broke loose.

She had pored over the shots. Ignoring all the warnings of graphic content and to delve as deep into the morbid darkness of the Web as she could, she found every single black-and-white shot that had been taken.

It was horrific. Her heart ached for the man, even though she’d only met him the once. He was barely recognizable. The cause of death was officially torture and heroin poisoning, but to Mac Zach’s body looked like the result of pure, unadulterated rage.

What was even more horrific was the look on Zachary’s sister’s face in the few shots of her at the scene that made their way online. According to the press, she had also been staying at the hotel to help her brother with some of the technical aspects of his two bridal gowns. She had been his constant companion for years, second only to his partner. The look in her eyes in those few candid shots was hard to forget. She looked broken.

“It was the sister. Obviously.” Brie was trying to drum up some enthusiasm from Mac. She was used to seeing her friend burst into flame when any kind of mystery came to town. This time, however, she was strangely sedate. Almost calm.

“Nope. She was with his partner that night in the city. They have witnesses and everything. Do you have the camera with you?”

Mac, Brie, and Vanessa were driving up the coastline to Amelia Moore’s house to get a close look at the backyard venue. Vanessa had decided to tag along as an excuse to get away from the press heyday that had taken over downtown. Like the other two, dealing with all the speculation and intrusiveness of the scoop-hungry reporters had utterly exhausted her.

The three of them were more than happy to put up their respective closed signs and enjoy a short road trip. They had passed all of the monster homes a while back and were now making their way to the winding, narrow streets of what the locals referred to as the character neighborhood.

Wind ravaged and full of personality, these homes were some of the oldest in Mackenzie Bay, and certainly contained the most character. Windsocks fluttered from each one and the front doors were painted various bright, cheery shades.

In time they arrived at Amelia’s house—a modest arts and crafts home with a lush summer garden out the front. Two lazy, ginger cats blinked at the girls as they opened the warped gate to make their way to the front door.

“Don’t her parents have a ton of money? Her dad invented some software thing, right?” Mac whispered to Brie.

“They live in the next town over. Or two. Apparently sending her big fat checks every month is easier than admitting they’re too lame to look after their own son.” Brie whispered back.

Mac grunted her disapproval and knocked on the door. The ginger cats immediately wound themselves around the three women’s legs. There was no answer, so she tried again.

“We’re back here!” Amelia’s voice called out from the side of the house. Brie, Mac, and Vanessa picked their way past the affectionate kitties and made their way along the twisting stone pathway and through a thick hedge arc.

The backyard was magical. There was no better word for it. At first glance it looked as if nature had simply exploded in a riot of summer joy: butterflies, bumblebees, hanging vines, any number of flowers, all piled up and intertwined together. Of course, at second glance it was easy to see how much work had gone into making that way. It reminded Mac of the storybooks she had devoured as a child. She was immediately enchanted.

In the shade of a red maple, Amelia sat on a high-back wicker chair, her radiant hair spilling down over her shoulders. She stood up as soon as she saw them.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, embracing them briefly. She smelled of lilacs and sunscreen. “What a terrible couple of days.”

“I’m so sorry, you must be so disappointed.” Vanessa said. Amelia looked puzzled. Vanessa blushed. “I apologize. I’m Vanessa. Nice to meet you.”

“Disappointed?” Amelia asked, her blue eyes round and puzzled.

“Your dress?” Mac asked, a little surprised that a bride would forget such a typically important part of her wedding.

“Oh! Oh, no,” Amelia said. “Come see.” She beckoned them over to the table where she had been sitting. She picked up three pieces of paper and passed them to Mac. “Zach’s sister Kyra has come to the rescue. So kind of her, especially seeing what she’s having to go through right now. She said her brother was really excited about working with me and she wanted to be sure that he was still a part of it, in a way. She drew these up for me last night.”