Ganache with Panache: Book 2 in The Chocolate Cafe Series (9 page)

“It’s the sister. She’s trying to cash in on her dead brother’s drawings.”

“Ow…how do you know that?” Vanessa allowed herself to be dragged, still holding the back of her head where the man had clobbered her.

“I saw her arms when I went up there today. She has obviously been a pretty heavy user. Actually she probably still is, by the look of them.”

The women raced down the steps, Vanessa’s undone hair still flopping around her face.

“If she’s crooked enough to steal her brother’s drawings, who’s to say she isn’t crooked enough to have, you know—”

Mac stopped outside her car and turned to Vanessa, who was fumbling with the code on the shop security system. Under the streetlight, she looked absolutely alive. The shop secure behind her, Vanessa walked to her side, almost magnetized by the sheer brilliance coming out of her new friend’s eyes. Mac’s odd prettiness was only the tip of the iceberg, that was plain to see.

“She’s crooked enough to have been the one to kill him.” Mac announced.

“Whoa. Wait. No. We definitely need to get the cops involved.” Vanessa watched, helplessly as Mac rolled her eyes.

“Yes, I know. We will.” Mac opened Vanessa’s door for her, motioning impatiently for her to get in “I’ll call on the way there.”

Hesitantly, Vanessa stepped into the vehicle; Toby hustling his hugeness into the backseat. Mac smiled at her in what should’ve been a comforting way as she closed her door.

“The way where?”

Mac looked at Vanessa as if she’d just been born. Her jaw even dropped with wonder.

“To the crime scene.” She spoke as if no one had ever asked such a simplistic question. “Obviously.”

Mac didn’t call on the way to the Strand Hotel, despite her repeated assurances to her passenger. Rather, she stared straight ahead like a woman possessed, her jaw muscles working as she battled what looked like a pretty formidable demon.

After a while, Vanessa gave up. She probably should’ve been more nervous but there was something about Mac that gave her the impression that she’d been in the situation before, a couple of times, maybe.

By the time they reached the hotel, a storm was beginning to roll in from the beach. When they turned the corner into the cul-de-sac that connected the cabins, the bare bulbs that were strung up overhead were swaying ominously overhead with the wind. Although they didn’t give off a great deal of light, it was enough to show that the hotel was practically deserted.

Except for the police cruiser parked squarely in front of the door to Maple Cabin.

Mac gasped and cursed.

“What? Who is it?”

Leaning against the trunk of the car, arms crossed over his chest, was the owner of the police car. The headlights of Mac’s car caught on the badge hanging off his rain jacket.

Vanessa couldn’t help but feel more than a bit relieved. “Thank goodness, the police are already here.”

Mac stopped the car and put it in park. Before she switched off the headlights, they clearly illuminated the man’s face and it was far from welcoming.

“It’s my boy…my friend.” Mac mumbled. “That’s the guy I was supposed to be calling.”

Vanessa nodded, the pieces of the puzzle coming together quite quickly indeed—Mac’s enthusiasm for all things crime related, her overconfidence, the bookishly handsome man’s look of great disdain. She had been correct in her assumption that this wasn’t Mac’s first rodeo.

“Stay.” Mac commanded Toby, who was practically leaping over the front seat to get to the detective. “Be a good boy.”

Vanessa turned to look at Mac. That fire she had noticed before certainly hadn’t been put out, but there was sheepishness to it now.

“You should probably stay, too,” she said. Vanessa shook her head. She pulled off one of the ever-present elastics she wore around her wrist and tied back her hair.

“No way, man. I didn’t get walloped on the head for nothing. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.” Regardless of Louis’s stern glare practically melting the windshield, Mac couldn’t help but beam at her new friend.

“I like your style, young lady,” she said, “Let’s go.”

Louis didn’t bother to uncross his arms as the girls approached, nor did he break his glare. He simply fixed Mac in his sight as she approached, his mouth a hard, disapproving slash.

“I was going to call, I swear,” she began as she neared him.

Louis uncrossed his arms and dangled a single key between them.

“You wouldn’t have gotten very far without the key,” he told them. “Or were you planning on breaking in again?”

Vanessa watched Mac’s face turn a shade of pink of bright enough to be visible even in the middle of a nighttime windstorm.

“No. Maybe. Well, probably not.” Louis crossed the space between them with two steps. He took Mac’s hand and pressed the key into her palm.

“I give up.” He said. “We’ve been at a dead end on this case for the last two weeks. If Sabrina hadn’t called and told me everything—no…” he held up a warning finger when Mac frowned. “No. That girl has your best interests at heart, and you know it.”

“I didn’t think it would lead to anything. I really didn’t,” Mac said, as she gripped Louis’s hand. “Vanessa recognized the designs as direct copies and we started to put two and two together.”

“Especially after they broke into my place and knocked me out.”

“They did what?” Louis was alarmed.

“Lau’s sister and some guy broke into Vanessa’s apartment and stole the…”

Mac’s explanation came to a sudden stop when there was a loud thump from the inside of Maple Cabin. Immediately and with impressive swiftness, Louis unholstered his gun and headed noiselessly toward the door. He turned back to the girls and motioned for them to get back in the car.

Vanessa grabbed Mac’s arm before she could jump forward and follow the detective, “No you don’t,” she hissed. “Let’s get in the car.”

***

Louis held his gun at his side; he turned the doorknob as silently as possible. As he had suspected, it was locked, so he readied the key when he heard two voices arguing. He flattened himself against the wall between the window and the door and listened. Of course, all he really wanted to do was give the door a swift kick and get this nonsense over with, but something told him to stop. From his vantage point, he could pick up almost every word.

“Are you going to do it here? Can’t you wait?’ The man’s voice was annoyed.

“No, I can’t wait. Can you? How long do we have to stay in this hellhole? I’m dying here.”

There was another thump and a shadow passed by the curtains.

“Oh very droll. Very witty, Kyra. You’re dying here. Let’s just get the stuff you left and get out. I hate being here, It makes me sick.”

There was cruel laughter from the woman

“You’re such a colossal drag. No wonder Mr. Sober was so in love with you.” Louis heard the woman sniff. There was pause and the sound of a slight sigh before she continued, her tone suddenly more ragged than before. “You were the one who said it was a good idea. You even liked the whole heroin idea. Once a junkie always a junkie, right?”

“Shut up.” The man mumbled.

The woman continued, “You were the one that begged me to do it. Now that it’s done, you don’t want to take responsibility for your own mess?”

“Listen.” Louis gripped his gun a little tighter as the man’s voice turned into an enraged growl. “We don’t talk about this again, right? We go back to the city, you take over the business, I get my inheritance and we never set foot in another backwater little pit like this again. It never happened. Get it? None of this ever happened.”

There was a series of soft sighs that Louis recognized instantly. All addicts made the same noise as their poison of choice hit their system; had he really seen so much of it that he could recognize it by the ecstatic sounds the junkies made? He’d heard enough.

Looking quickly to see that the girls were still safely in the car, he stepped back and sent one leg kicking out with enough force to knock the rotting cabin door off its hinges.

What happened next was a blur, but in the detective’s experience it always was. Louis, his gun an extension of his lean body, entered the cabin barking commands. He was able to focus after a moment and he could clearly make out the two people standing in the center of the room.

The man, whom Louis instantly recognized from pictures as Zach Lau’s bereaved partner, did exactly as he commanded and with no hesitation. He dropped to his knees obediently, his face twisted into a classic mask of fear and guilt.

The woman however, as tiny as she was, was glittering with drug-fueled mania. She made eye contact with Louis as soon as he burst into the room and there was nothing much sober or human in her heavily made-up gaze.

He knew instantly that she would bolt and bolt she did.

As her companion obediently fell to his knees, blabbering apologies and begging for forgiveness, the tiny woman turned on her heels and practically leaped through the back door that led to the beach.

Louis cursed loudly, the gun still pointed at the now weeping man on the floor. Why hadn’t he called for backup?

“I got her!” Mac’s voice yelled from the open door behind him. Louis turned his head quickly enough to see Mac streaking past the window, her ponytail flying out behind her and her arms pumping.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to call for that backup after all.

Moving with the same skilled grace as before, Louis slipped a pair of handcuffs around John’s trembling wrists, attaching one end to the carved four-poster bed.

“Stay here,” he growled and was out of the door in an instant.

***

Mac’s legs ached as she tore up the cliff that rose up from the beach. The wind buffered her like a giant icy hand doing its best to slow her down. Hardly. There was too much adrenaline rushing through her for any of these obstacles to register. She was as focused as a drone, scrambling up the ever-rising embankment after Ms. Lau.

Faster, she told herself. You can do this. You’ve run marathons; you can catch a fifty-pound fraud. However, she reconsidered when the security lights flickered on as Kyra ran past; Mac saw something alarming in the tiny woman’s eyes as she glared at her pursuer.

Just a little faster. Mac told herself. It was one of her favorite places to take Toby on her morning runs. It was a steep climb until a sudden drop to what the locals called the Devil’s punchbowl—a vortex of rocks and frothing, angry ocean that had seen more than a few shipwrecks in its time. Whatever sightseeing trail was there had long since been overtaken by brambles and long blades of rough sea grass. Even though Mac had the advantage of knowing the way, she still found herself stumbling and stinging from the thorns that grabbed her as she ran.

There was no way that woman could make it all the way to the top.

Kyra was shouting obscenities at Mac as she ran without noticing the sharp grasses on the trail.

Mac was getting closer, her breath slicing out of her chest with every exhalation. She didn’t have the breath to yell back, to tell the woman to stop. All she needed to do was get close enough to tackle her, to stop her falling over the ridge.

She was near enough now that she could hear Kyra’s breath, even more rapid and painful sounding than hers. She reached out her hand toward Kyra’s jacket. One more inch. Her thighs burning, she lunged and finally managed to grab the fabric. Mac dug her heels into the ground and yanked back with all her strength.

Kyra screamed like a banshee, her voice loud enough to carry along the winds that tore violently up from the Devil’s punchbowl only a few feet from them.

Now on the ground, Kyra writhed beneath Mac. She struck out at her face, the jewels on her long acrylic nails scraping against her cheek. Mac grit her teeth and grabbed her thin wrists, feeling Kyra’s pulse battering against her skin.

“I can’t!” Kyra howled. “I can’t.”

“Just calm down.” Mac yelled, placing all her weight on Kyra’s bony hips. “Stop it.”

Realizing she couldn’t do anything but struggle, Kyra looked directly into Mac’s eyes, her body going limp underneath her.

“He had everything,” she said. “He
always
had everything.”

Her voice was low, barely audible above the crash and hiss of the water below them. “He was so beautiful, so talented. All he had to do was put a pencil to paper and the most wonderful—” Tears began to roll as her face contorted with ugly sobs. “The most beautiful designs you had ever seen. It was effortless to him. But not to me. Never to me.”

Mac could make out the sound of Louis shouting her name as he made his own way up the treacherous path. She considered turning back and telling him they were fine, that Mac had caught Kyra, but she had to know. “Is that why?” Mac leaned forward, starring into Kyra’s wet, intoxicated eyes. “Is that why you did it?”

“I could sew. That’s all. Just sew. I was no better than a sweatshop worker.”

Louis’s pounding feet were getting closer. He’d be cresting the ridge in a second. Mac kept her grip on Kyra, watching the tears streaming down her face, carving thick black trails through the makeup, down her sallow cheeks.