Ganache with Panache: Book 2 in The Chocolate Cafe Series (7 page)

The view from Vanessa’s old apartment in the city had been of the back of a government-subsidized retirement home—not the most uplifting of vistas. She had started every morning standing at her own small, cracked window with a cup of tea in her hands. She waited there until she had a chance to wave to at least a half dozen of the tenants. She couldn’t start work if she didn’t. Vanessa needed those toothless smiles. She had to have the slack-muscled waves in order to know her day had started.

Now, rather than crumbling brick and graffiti, Vanessa had the ocean to greet and inspire her. Not that she needed it. Her one afternoon with Amelia in the magical garden was enough to set Vanessa’s imagination off and running. After ten long years designing for shallow, cruel people, it was a gift to create something that would not only be appreciated, but cherished. She felt a little guilty even taking money for it.

Vanessa took a deep sip of her warm tea. She had two hours before she had to open the shop which, judging by the amount of ideas she had in her head, would be plenty of time to design a dress worthy of the kind and almost unsettlingly charming Miss Amelia.

Waving to a seagull (old habits die hard), Vanessa turned to her drafting board and desk. She wrapped her housecoat around her a bit tighter before sitting down. Like Sabrina, she had made the top of her shop her studio. However, she had found the warped old wood and chilly drafts so inspiring that she had lugged her mattress up there as well. It felt like her own little crow’s nest where she could collect all the interesting and beautiful things that caught her eye.

She placed a piece of spotless paper on the drafting board and clicked the light on above. As she reached for her jar of pencils and watercolor pens, her cell phone came alive on the desk beside her.

Really? At 6:30 in the morning? Everyone she knew in the city would still be sleeping off a night of drinking and being seen.

Not surprisingly, the caller ID read ‘unavailable’.

“Hello.” Vanessa said. She put the phone on speaker as she prepared her tools. There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Hello?” Vanessa said again.

A muffled, slurred voice came through the speaker. “Stay away from Amelia Moore.”

Vanessa froze, a pencil sharpener in her hand.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Forget designing for her. Stay away and you won’t get hurt.” Vanessa’s heartbeat began to thud, adrenaline making her scalp tingle. She put down the pencil and sharpener and quickly checked the caller ID again. Unavailable.

“Who is this?” she asked again, her voice growing louder with her alarm. “Won’t get hurt? What do you mean by that?”

“Stay out of the way and nothing will happen. Keep it up and things are going to get serious. Quick.” The woman sounded gravelly, half as if she was trying to disguise her voice, half as if she had been drinking.

Vanessa sat down on her stool, unconsciously clutching her robe to her throat.

“This is your first warning. There won’t be a second.” There was a click and the line went dead.

Vanessa’s ears felt as if they were filled with blood, pulsing with her rapid heartbeat. She had just been threatened. Who threatens a fashion designer? She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She stood up on shaky legs, jabbing at her phone in a futile attempt to what? Trace the call? She went to her recent call log and pressed on the ‘unavailable’ at the top.

She had been threatened and she’d be damned if she was going to take it. Thankfully anger had replaced her nerves and she paced as the phone rang, and rang, and rang.

A sudden knocking at the door downstairs made her jump.

“Oh my gosh. What now?” Vanessa mumbled. She scrambled over her bed to peer out the window at the street below. She half expected to see a lynch mob with torches below. Instead of a horde of fashion-enraged peasants, she was relieved to see Catharine Mackenzie, drenched in sweat and looking just as nervous as she did.

Vanessa leaped off the unmade bed and ran to the stairs. Her robe now undone, she jumped down the steps two at time and into the shop.

“I just had the strangest phone call,” Vanessa said breathlessly, as soon as she opened the door. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Mac, who looked worried before, looked suddenly even more so.

“Funnily enough, I’ve just been kidnapped and told to make you stop designing Amelia’s gown.”

Vanessa reached out and yanked Mac by the sweaty shirt into the shop. She locked the door, fighting the urge to look to see if she was being watched.

“What is going on?” she said, turning to face Mac. “It’s just a dress. What is wrong with people in this town? Murder? Threats? The city was safer.”

“What did they say on the phone?” Mac was still out of breath and was doing her best to slow down her gulps of air.

“Are you okay?” Vanessa asked, concerned. She slipped out of her robe and passed it to Mac. “Here, wipe yourself off.”

Mac took it thankfully. “Olivia Hood and her beast of a daughter Harper. They picked me up on my run and told me they were going to
make
you design her gown now that Lau was dead. They dropped me,” she drew a few more deep breaths, “half an hour out of town. I ran back to tell you not to bother.”

Vanessa held up her phone, her round eyes narrowing with anger.

“Well, someone else beat you to it.”

“What did they say?” Mac asked. Having only met her a few days ago, Vanessa was momentarily taken aback by the sudden darkness that came over her otherwise sunny new friend. Everything delicate about her disappeared and she took on a brilliant sharpness that she had only ever seen in her most gifted friends and favorite professors.

“Um…well, it was some woman who sounded, honestly like she’d been drinking or just woken up after a night of it.” Mac nodded. “She told me to stay away from Amelia or things would start to happen. You don’t think?” Vanessa put her hand to her mouth. “You don’t think it was those two women, the Hoods, do you? Would they do that?”

“Apparently they are capable of a lot more than bridge games and liposuction,” Mac said.

“Well, we need to do something. We need to call the police.” Vanessa said, turning once more to her phone. She was surprised when Mac reached out and gently stayed her hand. She fixed Vanessa with her icy, almond eyes.

“Not yet. I think a visit may be in order.”

“Don’t you think the police would be better…” The intensity in Mac’s eyes grew. There was something obsessive about it that Vanessa found both exciting and a little alarming at the same time. She knew she was about to be whisked off on an adventure and she was certain there was nothing much she could do to stop it.

“I’m a bit like the girl that cried wolf around here. Let’s just go for a little visit and see if there’s anything we need to worry about before we call in the cavalry.”

There was a moment where Mac could almost see Vanessa make the decision. She looked down at herself in her pajamas then over to Mac in her soaked running clothes.

“Thank goodness there are lots of clothes around. We should probably get changed before we start knocking on people’s doors.”

“I’m starting to think that’s debatable.” Mac said, absently.

“What is, showing up unannounced in your pajamas?”

“No,” Mac said. “Whether those two could be classified as people.”

Mac was unsurprised that the butler who finally answered the Hoods’ door looked about as browbeaten as a punished dog. His eyes, rheumy and hardly focused, flitted over Mac and then to the car parked in the driveway.

“Are you expected?” he drawled from the side of his mouth, his lips barely moving.

“No,” Mac said. “Not at all.” There was a brief moment when the two of them locked gazes for a split second. No, she wasn’t expected and frankly, the butler couldn’t care less if she was.

He stepped back and let her in, motioning with an almost sarcastic gesture for her to make her way up the stairwell and into the ballroom.

This time, there were no shrieks echoing off the garish gold-framed portraits that hung on the walls. No screaming to shake the imported crystal and tacky statuettes. There was an eerie silence that would’ve normally made Mac nervous if she hadn’t been so enraged. She had had more than enough of the Hoods to last a lifetime.

Mac strode up the stairs, full of confidence. Of course, Vanessa’s clothes helped a great deal. Before they left, she had chosen an outfit specifically for Mac from the wonderland of perfectly tailored offerings on her racks. All black, sleek, and fitted to Mac’s surprisingly slender legs and perfect runner’s bottom like a custom-made suit, it gave Mac the look of an undercover vixen rather than a university dropout acting on a hunch.

Mac began to lose her nerve as she approached the top of the staircase. Vanessa was in the car after adamantly refusing to get out. Maybe she had the right idea. She said she would wait for Mac, like a driver of the getaway car, primed to tear out of the driveway at breakneck speeds should it be necessary.

Mac tried to convince her it probably wouldn’t be, but in all honesty, experience had proven otherwise.

When she entered the ballroom, she was surprised to find not the Hoods as she had expected, but a tall, handsome man and a tiny, Asian woman who could only be…

“Oh, I’m sorry…” Mac said. “I was looking for Mrs. Hood. You must be Zachary Lau’s sister.”

The two of them stiffened visibly as soon as she said his name. His sister, who bore such a strong resemblance that they might as well have been twins, seemed to cringe the most. Her head was shaved as her brother’s had been save for a long streak of bang that had been died an electric purple.

The sister looked to her companion nervously and then back to Mac. She advanced, nervous as a cat and offered her hand,

“Kyra Lau.” She said, her voice deep like a man’s. “We’re just…”

“Helping Miss Hood with her gown.” The man, considerably more polished, stepped forward and practically grabbed Mac’s hand as soon as the sister had completed her halfhearted shake.

“I’m so sorry about your loss.” Mac said, choosing her words carefully to examine their responses.

The man brought his hand to his heart and dropped his eyes in what might have seemed like genuine pain. Mac saw something completely different.

“I’m so sorry,” she asked, “were you close?” Zachary’s sister placed her hand on the man’s shoulder. Mac couldn’t help but notice that not only was her hand shaking slightly, but there was an interesting bruising on the inside of her arm. Bruises now caked with some kind of unsuccessful makeup application.

“John was his partner,” Kyra said, her voice hushed with what should’ve passed as reverence. It sounded phony to Mac, but then again, most things did.

John brushed a tear from his eye then made a grand show of trying to contain his misery by blinking furiously at the ceiling. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking, “It’s only been a week.” He sighed and made a show of pulling himself together. “I know we should be out of here by now and getting ready for the funeral,” he paused again. “But Zachary so wanted to help out the Hoods on their special day. I didn’t have the heart.”

“WE.” Kyra interrupted, placing her child-like hand on John’s broad chest. “We didn’t have the heart to leave. We felt we needed to finish what he started. He would’ve…he would’ve liked that…”

“Have a seat, Miss Lau.” Olivia Hood’s voice boomed throughout the ballroom. “Ms. Mackenzie has no business bothering you at a time like this.”

Mac spun around to see Olivia striding into the room. She had changed from the beige Chanel suit she had been wearing during the kidnap escapade to a pink, textured tartan. Did she have a different suit for every hour of the day? Goodness only knew.

Olivia glared at Mac, clicking across the hall, her expensive heels sounding like demon hooves against the cold floor.

“I thought we’d seen enough of each other this morning, Ms. Mackenzie.” Olivia announced, “Or maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough.”

“I don’t see how you could’ve made it clearer.” Mac said, crossing her arms. She was glad for Vanessa’s clothes. For the first time in two days she felt confident enough to handle the confrontation that was rolling her way…it was amazing how booty shorts and sci-fi tee shirts could hold you back.

Zachary’s partner made his shaky way to one of the couches that had been pulled out into a graceless position in the middle of the room. As previously, it was surrounded by fabric. Unlike last time, however, the delicate laces and tulles had been replaced with fuchsia satins and what to Mac’s uneducated eye looked like a bolt of black PVC.

“It is opportune, however,” Olivia said, breezing past Mac to where John was sitting on the couch, “that you popped in. Ms. Lau has offered
her
services to help us create the kind of dress Harper was
actually
looking for. We’ve found her to be much,
much
more, forgive me, John,
compliant
than her brother.”

There was a subtle click of a door opening and the group turned to see Harper emerging from the powder room that adjoined the ballroom.