Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  He crossed the worn Persian carpet and paused by the ornate carved mantel, fingering the grimy samovar perched on it as wistfully as if it held memories instead of dead tea leaves.

  “I didn’t believe the door story and I told him so,” said Norm. “I advised him to make a police report about it.”

  Remembering this, he let a small smile curve his lips, softening his bitter expression. “Big kid,” he recalled of Andy Devine. “Strong, too, you could tell he’s not just some overbuilt gym rat.”

  “He didn’t even say anything about going to the police?” Ellie asked.

  She picked up a cat and cradled it like an infant, which it obviously enjoyed; I swear that woman is so sympatico with all kinds of animals, she could make a pet out of a vampire bat.

  “Prutt,” the cat uttered; Norm’s look softened further.

  Then his eyes narrowed calculatingly as he plucked up a pair of fingernail clippers from the coffee table. “Just hold him like that for a sec, will you?”

  He approached the animal. “Here I’m a veterinarian and even I can never get him to let me—”

  Sensing trouble, the cat stiffened, then sprang from Ellie’s arms with a betrayed-sounding yowl and streaked from the room.

  Norman looked philosophical. “Oh, well,” he said, dropping the clippers into his dressing-gown pocket. “Maybe I’ll just sedate him and do it that way.”

  He followed us to the hall. “It doesn’t matter much, though, he’s got most of the stuffing out of the furniture with those sharp claws, already.”

  “Norman.” I stood by the front door. Between the dust and the cat dander and the smell of cabbage cooking in the too-warm cottage, I was dying to get outside. “Norm, darn it all, what more did Andy Devine say? About the police, or anything else?”

  “Oh! Right.” He opened the door. From outside, the cool fresh air and soft perfume of the rosebushes beckoned.

  “What he said was that I shouldn’t worry about it. Because—”

  From another room came the unmistakable sound of a cat scratching in a sandbox. I stepped hastily through the doorway and Ellie joined me.

  “Andy said that I shouldn’t worry about it because the important thing was, his assailant wouldn’t be hurting anyone ever again,” Norm McHale told us flatly.

  Ever again . . .

  And then he closed the door on us.

  * * *

  Ordinarily, one or both of us would return to The Chocolate Moose in the evening, to get started on tomorrow’s baking. But neither Ellie nor I felt very enthusiastic about that idea today, so we decided to get it over with right now and not have to come back.

  “I’ll get started in the kitchen,” said Ellie, “and you do the necessary out here, okay?”

  “Fine with me,” I said, and began straightening up the shop area.

  In the glass-fronted display case only a few lonely cake fragments and cookie crumbs remained. Nothing wrong with our product, in other words. It was our shaky business model that was nailing our hides to the wall, as my father would’ve put it.

  The thought reminded me that I hadn’t seen him since earlier in the day. Now, checking my phone, I found three urgent text messages from Bella, inquiring about him.

  “She seems to think I can just drop everything and go out looking for him,” I groused irritably, dampening a paper towel with Windex to wipe off the display case’s glass front.

  In the kitchen, the exhaust fan went on, the cooler door clicked shut, and then the pan rack rattled as she got sauce pots and mixing bowls down from it.

  “Maybe you should,” she said.

  I blinked. Our baking for tomorrow included chocolate-frosted pistachio logs, a raspberry jam-filled fudge layer cake, and a flat chocolate wafer cookie, frosted like the pistachio logs but with a sliver of white chocolate stuck into the top.

  A lot of work, in other words. She came to the door. Behind her one of the fluorescent overhead lights buzzed, flickering. I put it on my mental to-buy list—that is, if we ever had money again, which I doubted we would.

  “I said, maybe you should go.” Her tone was resolute.

  I followed her back out into the kitchen. The makings of the wafer cookies were assembled on our work table: flour, sugar, butter, eggs, a little salt and some leavening, and the cocoa powder.

  “Bella would appreciate it,” she added. She’d tied a white apron on over her T-shirt and jeans, and popped a hairnet on.

  Overhead, the big old paddle-bladed fan turned slowly. “And it’s not going to make any difference to us, after all,” she added. “I’m just doing this baking because I don’t know what else to do.”

  I understood. Things looked dreadful for Andy Devine, and what he’d said to Norm about Toby Moran never hurting anyone again made it all seem even worse.

  And his imminent downfall now meant ours was nearly certain. But I still didn’t want to leave Ellie alone; there was too much work in front of her, for one thing, and for another, she looked too sad.

  She measured out the sugar. Then she softened some butter in a mixing bowl in the microwave and slid the bowl across the table to me along with a wooden spoon.

  Perched on a stool, I began working the sugar into the butter; I didn’t know what else to do, either. While I creamed the mixture in the bowl, my phone buzzed with another incoming text: Any news?

  It was Bella again, and this time I wasn’t going to reply. I was certain that my dad was fine, just off the radar for a little while, and although I found it almost as annoying as Bella did, that also was probably a good sign.

  He was, I told myself, a stubborn old coot enjoying his newly regained independence, and he’d come home when he was done feeling his oats.

  At least somebody was having fun. “Ellie,” I said.

  She looked very glum. The butter and sugar mixture was done; I set it aside and began shelling nuts for the pistachio log.

  “Ellie, I know it’s disappointing.” I tried consoling her.

  She shrugged, sifting cocoa powder and flour together. “I’m not disappointed,” she declared unconvincingly. “It’ll be fine. Once we’ve closed the place, sold off all the equipment, and so on—”

  She stopped, sighing heavily, then got eggs from the cooler and cracked them into the butter and sugar mixture along with some vanilla extract.

  Real vanilla extract, that is, not the imitation stuff. It had been Ellie’s vision from the start to do everything the old-fashioned way, with genuine ingredients. She wouldn’t even use an egg that she hadn’t gathered from the hens in the fenced area behind her house.

  At least she hadn’t insisted on churning the butter and refining the sugar. “And as for me, I’ll find something else to do,” she said.

  A pistachio flew from between my fingers and plinked against her mixing bowl. She managed a shaky smile.

  “After all, it’s not the end of the world if . . . if . . .”

  I got up, put my arm around her shoulders, and handed her a tissue. “Oh, honey,” I said as she gave it a long blow.

  And then, of course, she had to wash her hands, and while she was at it I made her wash her face and comb her hair, and when she’d finished all that I fixed her a cold cloth to press against her eyes.

  “There, now,” I said, sitting her down at one of the café tables out front. “Better?”

  I’d been busy, too; now I set a tall glass in front of her.

  She bit her lip, not looking up. “Jake, this bakery’s not a hobby for me. It was supposed to be the way I helped make money for my family.”

  I’d known that. “Not that I think you don’t care just as much as I do,” she added hastily.

  She knew I was as committed to our business as anyone could be: late nights, early mornings, whatever it took. But the fact was that my husband Wade Sorenson had one of the most secure jobs in the world, as a harbor pilot for Eastport’s port authority.

  And Ellie’s didn’t. “George is over in Bangor again,” she said. “Livi
ng in a trailer with other men during the week, putting up a new medical center building. Comes home on weekends.”

  “Or when it rains, or snows, or the wind blows too hard, or the materials don’t get delivered on time so they can’t work,” I said.

  Freelance construction, even skilled work of the type that George did, was not exactly a secure occupation. Income rose in summer and dropped in winter; jobs came and went.

  Ellie noticed the glass I’d brought her. “What is that?” She sniffed curiously. “Is that a milkshake?”

  She’d been in the washroom. “Maybe. Taste it and see.”

  I already had; tasted it, that is. And, after all, how can you go wrong with milk, ice cream, and chocolate syrup?

  So I was pretty sure it would pass muster, especially since in one of our cupboards I’d located what I was fairly certain was Ellie’s hidden stash of her secret ingredient.

  We’d been out of the little packets that Ellie packaged the stuff in so as to avoid revealing its nature. But I’d found the can it came in, with the original label plus a set of helpful instructions printed on the side: how much to use, and so on.

  Also, I swear that vintage milkshake mixer was so gorgeous—bright stainless steel, shiny mint-green Bakelite, an Art Deco shape like the front of an old-fashioned streamliner locomotive. . .

  Well, you could pour dry plaster mix and turpentine into the stainless-steel mixer cup, I felt sure, and come up with something delicious.

  “Go on, have some,” I urged her. I’d poured a bit for myself, as well; now to encourage her I stuck in a fountain straw and took an eye-openingly delicious swallow of the cold, sweet mixture.

  “Oh, good heavens,” I sighed, as cautiously she followed suit. Then, “Well?” I waited for her reaction. “What do you think?”

  I was a little nervous about it, honestly. “Did I get it anywhere near right?”

  In reply she frowned thoughtfully, her eyes still sparkling liquidly with her earlier tears.

  “Jake,” she declared, “that’s the most delicious chocolate malted milkshake I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

  She drank some more of it, looking brighter and cheerier by the minute. It made me think they should stock this stuff in ambulances right along with the heart medications and IV fluids.

  “But . . .” She tapped the glass with a clean, clear-polished index fingertip. Never mind chickens; Ellie could keep elephants and still have an intact manicure, she was that meticulous.

  “Sweet, creamy, malty. And just thick enough,” she pronounced, and kept tasting. “But there’s something else in it, I think. Something . . . new.” She eyed me quizzically. “Isn’t there? Something . . .”

  So I was caught. “Yes, I put in some vanilla extract. A couple of drops, that’s all.”

  Her eyebrows rose minutely; she sipped once more. “Not enough to overpower. Just enough to . . . complexify.”

  She set the glass down. “It’s an improvement. It really is. Way to go, Jake, you’ve really done it. I think that now our Moose Milks are perfect.”

  I straightened proudly; coming from Ellie, this was high praise. But then her expression crumpled.

  “Too bad we’re not going to be open long enough to rehabilitate their reputation,” she said. “Because in time, people would stop being scared of them and start buying them again, don’t you think?”

  I did think so. But time was what we didn’t have. We wouldn’t even be baking for tomorrow except that we already had the ingredients and we didn’t want to waste them.

  “Rent,” I said quietly. “And insurance,” I added, since the moment you let it lapse, someone would trip over a pastry crumb or something and you’d be on the hook for the equivalent of a heart transplant.

  Which we also couldn’t afford. “Licenses and permits,” I added, “and the payments on that new stove.”

  I waved toward the double-oven cooking appliance that we’d bought the previous summer, back when the new-business stars were still in our eyes and at least some of our original startup money was in the checking account. Now if we didn’t manage to sell the stove, the balance would come out of my credit card.

  It was a little detail I hadn’t told Ellie at the time, and I didn’t mention it now, either; she already felt awful. In fact . . .

  I peered closely at her; really awful. “Ellie. Come on, now. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, Jake,” she blurted through them, “if we have to close the shop, I’ll have to . . . I’ll have to move away from Eastport!”

  “What? But I thought as long as George was working—”

  His presence at the Pickled Herring had been a treat. But he’d gone straight back to the job site afterward.

  “We’re okay money-wise as long as he keeps at it,” she went on, dabbing at her eyes with a paper napkin.

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket again. I ignored it. Bella would just have to wait.

  “But he can’t, Jake,” Ellie said. “It’s killing him being over there all the time, away from us, and the drive’s awful—”

  Between here and Bangor lay a hundred and twenty miles of bad road. No interstate; you either wanted to get there or you didn’t.

  “Lee’s growing up without him,” she said, “and as for me—”

  She bit her lip. Then, “It’s just really lonely, you know? I tell myself that I’ve got to be a grownup about it, but—”

  A picture of us all at the Herring popped into my head. George’s daughter had stuck to him like a happy barnacle, a situation he’d clearly enjoyed, and Ellie had been delighted, too.

  But when we all went home together afterward, my family had gone home, while George had a dark, three-hour drive back to a shared house trailer with dirty socks and fast-food bags all over the place.

  “It’s no way for him to live, either,” Ellie said sadly.

  Outside, the long, spring afternoon was fading, a thin white moon rising over the harbor, where the fishing boats still puttered.

  “Bunking with roughnecks,” said Ellie, “showering in a locker room. And the food . . .”

  She straightened. “I haven’t wanted to say it, but if we do have to close the Moose I’ll be talking to George about . . . about . . .”

  Uh-oh, the waterworks were threatening again and neither of us wanted that. Besides . . .

  “You mean you haven’t? Told him we might be—”

  “Flat broke?” she suggested. “In over our heads? Up you-know-what creek without a—?” She laughed a little wildly. “Jake, you know how he is, he thinks I can do no wrong. That I’ve got the golden touch, or something.”

  More napkins, more dabbing. She sucked in a shuddery breath. “And he’s been working so hard, and he’s so happy when he is here, I didn’t have the heart to . . .”

  She drank a little more of the milkshake. “Well, I might not have exactly filled him in on the precise details,” she finished.

  “So not only are you broke, you’re alone with that information. And if you can’t get things back on track, you think you’ll have to . . .” I could barely bring myself to say the words. “To move away from Eastport. Sell your house, start all over again somewhere else.”

  She nodded again. But: “Not just think. We do have to. If we want to live together as a family anymore, in any way that actually counts. Because there’s not enough work here for him, Jake, there just isn’t.”

  She looked helplessly at me. “I don’t know how I’ll even bear it. I’ve lived here all my life. I know everyone, and everyone knows me.”

  A final sigh lifted her shoulders and subsided. “So that,” she finished sorrowfully, “is why I’ve been so stubborn about the shop.”

  I got up from the cast-iron café table that I’d bought with the rest of them and the matching chairs, too, at a garage sale back when we still thought The Chocolate Moose was going to be sensational.

  And it was, too; a sensational failure. To ke
ep our little bake shop alive, we’d done everything short of opening an artery.

  But it hadn’t worked. Outside, the soft, golden glow of late afternoon deepened to blue. Ellie leaving . . .

  What would I do without her? She’d cushioned my landing when I first got here, popping over with doughnuts and fresh gossip back when I was so new in Eastport, I barely understood her downeast accent.

  “Flippahs,” she’d say, meaning my son’s swim fins. Or “hah-bah,” which was where the boats came in, of course. And when my hideous ex-husband ended up coming here to die in my guest bedroom—hey, it’s a long story, and I’ll tell it to you some other time—Ellie came every day to visit with him and read to him, even though she despised him.

  And I don’t know about you, but I think that a woman who will sit reading Dickens every day to a guy whom she loathes just because he is on his deathbed is a woman worth doing things for.

  “Ellie,” I said, standing by the front window gazing out.

  Down in the boat basin, a ramshackle old scallop trawler motored unhesitatingly into the narrow space between the finger piers, pivoted in a tight one-eighty, and slotted itself against the dock.

  Meanwhile, a different mental picture replaced the one of my ex-husband, his eyes closed while Ellie read Great Expectations.

  “Ellie, were you watching when Toby Moran got thrown out of the Duck?”

  The flailing arms, the angry grimace; I could still see his denim jacket flapping and his boot-cleats glinting as he staggered away.

  Ellie nodded. And as usual, she was thinking the same way I was.

  “He didn’t look sober enough to throw a punch, did he? Much less connect with one.”

  But that’s not what Andy had said. “I’ve thought all along there was something odd about that,” she said. “About all of it, really.”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” I agreed. “I mean, if there’s more about Toby that we might want to know. And it’s not as if there’s more here we need to do right now,” I said.

  We did still have to bake all those cookies; besides eliminating waste, everything we sold meant more cash on hand and fewer debts outstanding, eventually. But it wouldn’t be the first time we’d pulled an all-nighter to get the display case stocked.