Chocolate Covered Murder

by Kate Bell

  I was excited beyond words. To think that we were finally going to end the stress of the motion to end the Halloween season made me giddy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I had filled my car with all of my belongings and drove over to my new house. Parking in the driveway, I got out, and just stood there looking at it. It was a cute little cottage painted white with black shutters, just like Ethan’s house across the street. Everything had happened so fast—I had filled out the application one day and the landlord had called first thing the next morning to give me the good news. Mom and Dad were surprised, and maybe a little sad that I was moving out. I had kept my move a secret from Ethan. I wanted it to be a surprise.

  The key was in my pocket and I pulled it out, heading to the front door. I was giddy as I stuck the key into the lock and turned it, pushing the door open. The scent of fresh paint still hung in the air, but I didn’t mind. I walked into the house and stopped, looking around, and imagined all the possibilities. It had honey-colored hardwood floors, and a lovely picture window in front. I would have to go shopping for furniture, but I didn’t mind.

  I dropped the duffle bag I was carrying onto the floor and brought the bag of cleaning supplies into the kitchen, setting it on the counter. The house was as clean as could be, but I still liked knowing it was up to my standards of clean. I planned on spending most of the morning cleaning.

  “I’m going to have to buy a lot of furniture,” I murmured to myself.

  I had left the front door open behind me, and when I turned around, there was a black cat sitting in my doorway. “Well, hello you,” I said to the cat. “Who do you belong to? Are you the welcoming committee?”

  I went to the cat, reached down, and scratched him between the ears. The cat looked up at me as if to say, are you my new friend? I scratched him under the chin and giggled.

  “I guess you can hang around, but don’t be surprised if I put you to work,” I said and stepped past the cat, heading back to my car. I had filled up garbage bags with clothes, shoes, toiletries, and everything else I owned. My mother gave me a couple of small cardboard boxes that I filled with books and other odds and ends, but all in all, it was a sad lot for a twenty-eight-year-old woman.

  I picked up four of the trash bags and headed back into the house with them, dropping them onto the living room floor. I needed book shelves as well as living room furniture. I went to my purse and pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen and began making a list of all the things I would need. I didn’t care that the house was empty, I was just excited that I had my own place again.

  When I made another trip out to my car, I saw Ethan standing out in his yard watering his tree. He looked at me, did a double-take, and then he smiled.

  “Hey Mia, what are you doing over there?” he called from across the street.

  I waved at him. “Just moving in. How are you this evening?” I glanced at my front door and saw that the cat had followed me out as far as the front steps and sat down to wait for me.

  “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “I’m as serious as I can be,” I laughed. “I’ve just got a few more things to bring into the house and I’m done moving.”

  Ethan turned the water off and then crossed the street. “Are you seriously moving in?” he asked again, grinning at me.

  “I told you I was,” I said with a laugh.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before now? Here, let me get that box for you,” he said and reached for the box still in my trunk.

  “Because I wasn’t sure if I was going to get the house, and I wanted to surprise you. You don’t mind me living this close to you, do you?” I asked and picked up the other box from the trunk.

  “Are you kidding me? Why would I mind?”

  He followed me into the house with the box and the cat trailed behind us.

  “You can just put that anywhere, I don’t have any furniture yet.”

  “We’ll have to get that situation fixed,” he said. “At least these houses come with a stove and refrigerator so you don’t have to buy those.”

  “I know, I’m so glad of that,” I said as the cat rubbed up against my legs. I squatted down and ran my hand along the cat’s back and up his tail. “Whose kitty is this?”

  “I don’t know who he belongs to,” Ethan said. “I’ve seen him in the neighborhood for the past month or so, and I occasionally put some food out for him. I don’t really know if he has a home or not.”

  “I guess he’s the welcoming committee then,” I said and rubbed the cat’s head. “I haven’t had a cat since I was a girl. Maybe he’ll hang out and keep me company.”

  I stood up and looked at Ethan. He still had a grin on his face and we stood there like two silly people just standing and looking at each other.

  “I’m glad you’re moving in,” he said after a minute. “It will be nice having you so close.”

  “I took your advice,” I said. “I did what I felt like I needed to do and got my own place. Thanks for the encouragement, I’ve been feeling a little awkward since I moved back to Pumpkin Hollow. Those Masters degrees seem kind of useless right now and living with my parents made it worse.”

  “I bet you’ll get some use out of those degrees,” he said. “It just takes time.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. I guess I better get to the store. I need to get clothes hangers, laundry soap, and—oh, my gosh, I forgot. I don’t have a washer and dryer. I guess I have to get one of each of those, too,” I laughed.

  “You can just cross the street and use mine, I don’t mind at all,” he said with a grin. “You’re more than welcome to help yourself to anything that you need at my house.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

  I was sure I was going to enjoy living across the street from Ethan. I loved the neighborhood, and I loved this little house. It was only one bedroom and one bath, and not very big at all, but it was perfect. Getting to decorate it the way I wanted to was going to be such fun.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was in the kitchen at the candy shop mixing sugar and corn syrup together when the back door opened. I looked up from the mixer and was surprised to see Carrie Green standing there. She smiled big at me, her blond hair put up in a bun on top of her head.

  “Hi Mia!” she said excitedly. “You’ll never believe this, but your mother hired me without even needing to look at my resume. She remembered me from when we were in school, not that I expected that she wouldn’t. But I came in here yesterday and bought some fudge and she hired me on the spot. I still have to finish up a few more shifts at Pizza Town because I don’t want to leave them in the lurch, but I get to work here!”

  “Wow, Carrie,” I said. “That’s exciting news! Are you working a shift right now? I forgot to ask my mom how the interviewing was going, but I’m glad she hired you.”

  “I start on Monday. I just thought I would stop in and see how you were doing. I’m so excited about this opportunity, I know I’m going to enjoy this job so much more than Pizza Town,” she said and walked over and peered into the bowl I was adding ingredients to. “What are you making?”

  “It’s saltwater taffy,” I said. “I’m going to make some orange and black licorice flavored taffy, but I’ll make some other flavors, too.”

  “Will I get to make candy, too?” she asked. “My sweet tooth is going to get me in trouble around here.”

  “If you want to learn, we’ll certainly teach you. Lisa has never made candy, she just helps out front. I’m sure Mom would be thrilled to have another candy maker on staff.”

  “I’d love to learn,” she said, watching as the big silver mixer mixed the sugar and other ingredients together. “Hey Mia, I heard you and Ethan are a thing. Is it true?”

  I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Well, if you want to know the truth, I guess I have to say it’s true. I can hardly believe he’s interested in me.”

  “Why would you say that?” she exclaimed. “You
’re a cute girl, and you’ve got a great personality.”

  I shrugged, looking at her. “I guess it’s that old high school thing following me around. I mean it’s not like I have low self-esteem or anything like that, it’s just that I always considered Ethan, well, one of the popular kids.”

  “And I bet if you asked him about it he wouldn’t know what you were talking about. I got to know Ethan a few years ago when he dated my cousin. He’s a very down-to-earth guy, and he’s very easy-going. I’m really glad you guys are together.”

  Carrie was right. Ethan was very down to earth and very sweet. It made me wonder if I had misjudged him all those years during junior high and high school.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said. I weighed out some butter on the scale. Several years earlier I had tried to convince my mother to weigh the ingredients instead of measuring them. She had always done what my grandmother had done, and it worked great for her, but I needed to use the scales. My mother and grandmother seemed instinctively to understand when a recipe needed a little more of this or a little more of that. I just wasn’t quite up to their candy making skills, but I was working on it.

  “Do you want to know something? Carrie asked me.

  I looked at her and nodded. “What?”

  “I wouldn’t bring this up, but you had asked me about Frank. Well, I have some news. Frank was caught stealing money out of the cash register at Pizza Town.”

  “Seriously? What happened?” I asked, turning to look at her.

  “I told you about his family helping him to keep his job at Pizza Town, so it’s not like they were going to call the police on him, but he had worked a shift and his register came up short. He tried to blame it on someone else, but you have to put a code in before you ring a customer up. And only one person uses a register at a time, so we all know what happened.”

  “Has this happened before?” I asked, placing the butter into the bowl of the mixer.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” she said, leaning against the counter. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if it had happened and his aunt kept it quiet. If you want to know the truth, I’ve often thought he was doing drugs. I mean, if you’re only working two or three hours a day, you can’t even afford to pay for rent. He lives with his mother some weeks and then other weeks he stays with his aunt. I’m sure any money he gets goes to drugs or alcohol or whatever.”

  I stopped and considered what she was saying. Frank certainly seemed to have his issues, but what did that mean? Had he killed Greg? There was no way really to know at this point since we didn’t even know why Greg was in the haunted house after hours. But it was something to think about and discuss with Ethan.

  “Do you know how much money he took?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I was closing that night, so when he turned up short, I helped him look for it. He made this big to-do about wondering how the money could have disappeared. He even searched underneath the counter like it could have slipped out of the drawer. That made no sense whatsoever to me, but I helped him count his drawer down. And he was short $322.12.”

  “Twelve cents?” I said. “That’s weird but maybe he did it to try to throw someone off?”

  Carrie nodded. “That’s exactly what I thought. For a minute I thought, how on earth could he have lost such an odd amount? But then I realized he probably did it on purpose because then he started claiming the register was computerized and that it had some sort of glitch. I’ll tell you what, I’m really glad to be getting out of there. It’s hard to work in a place where one employee is not only favored, but is covered for when he screws up or steals money.”

  “I don’t blame you a bit,” I said.

  Things were getting stranger and stranger. I really had a bad feeling about Frank. I didn’t like him. And what Carrie had just told me confirmed to me that my suspicions about him were right. Something just wasn’t right with him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hello there, Mia,” a voice said from behind me.

  Startled, I jumped up from where I’d been dusting the bottom shelves in the candy shop. I looked up to see Veronica Richardson. “Hello Veronica,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  She gave me a sad smile. Her eyes were still puffy and red, and it broke my heart to see her that way. I couldn’t imagine my husband being murdered and then getting a phone call by way of explanation.

  “I guess I’m as good as I’m ever going to be,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with myself if you want to know the truth. I keep thinking of all the things I need to do for the funeral, but I don’t want to do it. I guess maybe I feel like if I don’t do any of it, maybe it will mean my husband’s not really dead. Silly, I know.” She gave me that sad smile again.

  “I think I can kind of understand that. It’s a hard thing to accept, and I certainly don’t blame you for feeling the way you do.”

  “Thanks,” she said softly. “I guess I’m just putting off the inevitable.”

  “I know it’s small comfort, but I know the police are doing all they can to find your husband’s killer,” I said. “I wish you had been able to find something among his personal effects that would have helped.”

  “Actually, now that you bring that up, I did find something. I finally remembered Greg’s email password, and I took a look at his email using my computer. There was very little email in there, but there was one from Charlie McGrath asking to meet with him,” she said looking at me pointedly.

  I stared at her a few seconds before answering. “Did your husband respond?” I asked.

  “If he did, he deleted it. It looked like he kept his inbox pretty well cleared out. There wasn’t much from before the day he died.”

  “That’s very interesting. Did Charlie say why he wanted to meet with him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m on my way over to speak to Ethan now. Maybe his email password is the same one for the laptop.”

  “Wow. That could be the information the police have been looking for,” I said thoughtfully. What if Charlie did, in fact, know something about why Greg was in the haunted house that night? And what if he actually killed Greg?

  “I think I’m going to have to try some of that pumpkin fudge,” she said pointing to the display case and changing the subject. “And then I’m going to head over and speak to Ethan Banks about what I found. The sooner they find my husband’s killer, the better.”

  I went around to the other side of the counter and opened up the back of the display case. “How much fudge would you like?”

  “A quarter of a pound,” she said. “I suppose Greg could have gone in there to enjoy the haunted house, and there was some derelict hanging around in there that took advantage of him and killed him. Or maybe Charlie had some other sort of business to attend to with him, although I can’t imagine what. Or maybe Charlie killed him. At this point, there’s no telling what happened.” She chuckled bitterly and shook her head.

  I cut a piece of fudge and took it to the scale, weighed it, and put it in a cute Halloween print paper bag. “Try not to jump to conclusions yet. Ethan will get to the bottom of all of this.” I said it as kindly as I could. It was clear she was already suffering and I didn’t want her to get too invested in thinking it was Charlie if he hadn’t murdered Greg.

  I didn’t want to speculate with her too much on who the murderer might be. I didn’t want to bring any more trouble to Pumpkin Hollow, and I knew Ethan was doing his best to find the killer. What she said made no sense though. A Friday night during Halloween season would mean plenty of guests in the haunted house. Then the house was searched before they locked it up. Although, at this point, I did somewhat doubt if any of Charlie’s employees would have done a very thorough job of searching it. It seemed that things were done very loosely at the haunted house and Charlie hadn’t done much to correct that situation. He hadn’t even checked to make sure that Gary had had new keys made. That meant that Greg might have stayed behind in the haunted house for some reas
on if he didn’t meet the killer there after hours. I could understand that teenagers did that kind of thing, but not a grown man.

  I rang up the fudge, and she paid with a debit card. “Thank you so much, Veronica,” I said.

  “Thank you, Mia,” she said taking the bag from me. “Well, wish me luck. This is just one more thing that I need to do concerning my husband’s death that will drive home the point that he’s really gone. He isn’t coming back.” Her voice cracked on the last part and tears sprang to her eyes. She nodded at me and turned around and walked out the door.

  I watched her go, feeling bad for her. I hoped Charlie hadn’t killed Greg, but I wanted whoever had done it to be caught as soon as possible. I just hoped Ethan could use the information contained in Greg’s emails to find the killer.

  Chapter Eighteen

  After work that evening I went across the street to see Ethan. I loved having him living so close to me. I reached out to knock on his door and glanced at the ground near my feet. Boo was sitting on the front step looking at Ethan’s front door expectantly. “What are you doing over here?” I asked him. He looked up at me and meowed. “Well, don’t be disappointed if he doesn’t let you in and don’t take it personally. He might be feeding you, but some people aren’t cat people.”

  I knocked and waited for him to answer. When Ethan opened the door, I gave him a big smile and tipped my head toward Boo.

  “Hey Mia, how are you doing?” he looked down at Boo. “And you brought a friend?”

  “I’m doing fine. I hope you don’t mind Boo coming along and making it a party,” I said and stepped through the door as he held it open for me.

  “A friend of yours is a friend of mine,” he said.