Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  “And the wife wants custody of the kids.”

  The ones I’d seen swimming with the dogs out there, maybe. “Go on.”

  “And she knew that if hubby’s in jail for what she knows they’ve been doing, and she knows where they’ve been doing it—”

  The lightbulb went on. “Likely she’d win custody of the kids.”

  “Bingo. So she drove down and planted one of their business cards at the scene of one of their most recent crimes,” Bob said.

  “That way it would be there when the copper-pipe theft out of that house was discovered and the cops would know—”

  “Who did it,” Bob finished approvingly for me. “In fact, she was just about to call in an anonymous tip about it when instead all this other stuff happened.”

  Then he told me one more very interesting thing about Moran’s murder and spread his hands. “And that’s it. No big mystery, no . . .”

  No coinky-dink. Just then Jenna Waldrop danced by with her curls bouncing and her bracelets clinking, wrapped in the arms of one of Andy Devine’s handsome Coast Guard colleagues.

  Glowering from one of the folding chairs lined up along the wall, Henrietta Waldrop sat clutching her rubber-tipped cane, watching the dancers. Mrs. Waldrop’s dark, glittering eyes raked the dance floor from beneath eyelids heavy and wrinkled as old draperies. Her toe, however, tapped to the music, which I regarded as a good sign.

  Then my dad spotted me and gestured that I should follow him outside, and with a last glance around the room full of good cheer, good music, and delicious cake, I knew my work here was complete.

  So I did go with him.

  * * *

  “Your mother-in-law tells me you and Ellie are still planning to close up The Chocolate Moose this week.”

  We were in his red pickup truck, headed out Route 190 past the bank and the hair salon. Outside was all spring-green trees, indigo water, and azure sky streaked with a few high summer clouds.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Money situation’s a little worse than I thought, even. And if Ellie’s going to make a move she wants to do it soon, she says, so that in the autumn Lee can start school where she’s going to be for the rest of the year.”

  It was a boiled-down version of what Ellie had shared with me that morning, that they were still leaving.

  “George has got a job offer now, too, over in Bangor, with health insurance and other benefits. And you know those don’t grow on trees,” I added disconsolately. “He can’t very well not take it.”

  My dad turned left onto the old Eastport Road. “Anyway, about the question you asked me earlier?”

  When he came into the shop only an hour before the wedding, I’d been finishing cake decorations: roses and forget-me-nots, made from the kind of frosting that looks much better than it tastes but holds its shape like plaster of Paris.

  So I couldn’t talk with him then. But now: “You wanted to know about what Norm was burying that day, down at Jasper Beach,” I said, then went on. “It was the big needle and syringe that Marienbad used on Toby Moran,” I told my dad, and he turned, surprised.

  “Yeah, it was her,” I said. “Norm tried, took the milkshake and the cyanide-loaded syringe with him. But he chickened out.”

  It was the last thing Bob Arnold had told me just now. A sharp laugh burst out of my dad.

  “Oh, beware the deadly female of the species,” he intoned.

  “Right, and you know why?” I retorted. “Thousands and thousands of years of really good motivation, that’s—”

  “I know, I know,” he put his hands up in a warding-off gesture, then dropped them back onto the steering wheel. Then, “So it was Marienbad,” he repeated to himself. “Damn, I guess I blew up the wrong barn, then.”

  I turned to him. “You what? Dad, don’t tell me you—”

  Rumor around town was that Norm McHale’s car barn had blown up due to faulty wiring and careless oily-rag storage, plus improper ventilation. Why it had blown up just when it did, though, was so far not being discussed much, the pair of murders having sucked up most of the conversational oxygen in town lately.

  Luckily for my dad, maybe. “Never mind,” he said hastily now. “It’s nothing you need to be worried about at all, I was just thinking out loud.”

  “Well, think a little quieter,” I told him. “No need to remind anyone about that.”

  I changed the subject. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  The road we’d turned onto paralleled Route 1 but was even more narrow, twisty, and rural, running between newly placed factory-built houses, old family graveyards, and overgrown woodlots.

  My dad shrugged. “I felt like going out for a drive, that’s all.” He paused. “Although I’ve got something to tell you, too, actually.”

  Uh-oh. Back at the house they’d have begun wondering about us, asking one another if anyone had seen us. Any minute now my cell phone was going to start ringing.

  “Dad? What is it?” All I could think of was that he was sick again, only this time with something we wouldn’t be able to medicate.

  He turned left again. “Well, I was down at the Waco Diner and I overheard something this morning. You know, those fellows over at the Coast Guard Station think a lot of Andy Devine.”

  The truck dipped into a little valley with a stream at the bottom of it, chuckling over a stone spillway. “And?” I prodded him.

  His bushy eyebrows knit. “And it seems they’d got up a reward for whoever cleared Andy. You know, the whole information-leading-to bit.”

  I began to see where this might be going. “But, Dad—”

  Because this was about the Moose, I was sure of it. He thought a lump sum award might pull the shop out of the dire straits it was in.

  And then Ellie wouldn’t have to go, which was the lump in my throat that I just couldn’t seem to swallow no matter how I tried.

  “And you two are going to get it, is what I heard. In fact,” he added a little shamefacedly, “in fact, I went over and asked the guys about it, to make sure I did hear right. And they confirmed it.”

  Wonderful. But: “Dad, that’s very nice and I’m sure for Ellie especially it will come in handy. I mean, assuming it does happen,” I said, and he nodded, accepting this.

  Because in this world, as we’d all just learned yet again in our different ways, nothing is certain.

  “But it’s not going to be enough to—”

  “Ten thousand dollars,” he pronounced.

  I just stared at him.

  “Also,” he said, ignoring my expression, “I learned one other thing while I was at it.”

  I half-expected him to say he’d discovered the secret to world peace; after that first bombshell, anything was possible.

  “Two things, actually,” he amended as we climbed out of the valley. Here the granite hills thrust sharply upward, thinly covered with soil so that grassy chunks of it sagged downhill like frosting.

  “The first thing,” he said, his knobby hands curved around the wheel competently, “is that according to Bob Arnold, nobody who’s in any authority to do anything about it is worrying too much about why that damned barn blew. And,” he added, “they’re not going to be.”

  I turned to him. “Dad! You mean you really did—”

  His skinny shoulders moved up and down. “Jacobia, I had to do it. I had no phone, no weapon, and with nobody else around—”

  Right, I thought, it must’ve been pretty scary. He went on. “I couldn’t very well go charging in there with just my . . . well.”

  He’d been about to say something rude about having something in his hand; I appreciated his restraint. But . . .

  “You used explosives?” I couldn’t believe it; I’d thought he’d given up the really dangerous parts of that old past life. But now I recalled the cardboard box in the truck bed that day, and understood.

  “So I had a few old things lying around, so sue me,” he said. “It wasn’t even anything big, just maybe the size of cherry bombs was
all. I wanted them off the property, anyway.”

  Because of the baby, he meant. “In fact, I was in the midst of getting rid of them that day when . . . well, at any rate they’re all gone now, so you don’t have to worry about them anymore,” he finished as we rolled up onto a bluff overlooking the bay.

  Gone because he’d used them. I couldn’t help it; a laugh burst out of me. “Man, that barn really went up, didn’t it?” I said, recalling how relieved I’d been. Like, really relieved, as Sam would’ve said.

  “It sure did,” my dad agreed, accepting the compliment as we drove on. Soon the road narrowed, and when we reached the water’s edge where the old toll bridge’s seaweed-draped remains stuck skeletally out of the water, we stopped.

  “Beautiful,” he said, and it was, too, the islands out in the bay showing mistily through a fog so thin that the sun still shone in it.

  “Thickening up, though,” he observed, turning the truck around to head back. To our south, the horizon was already cloud shrouded.

  “Anyway,” he said, “the other thing I learned at the Waco was—”

  I was still thinking about my dad racing down to that barn of Norm’s, placing whatever he’d used to create an explosive diversion and getting away uninjured.

  So he could save my life. Ellie’s, too, of course. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, feeling all at once like everything was hilarious.

  Like, really hilarious . . . “You’re welcome,” he replied gravely, but his crinkly old eyes twinkled; apparently he thought so, too.

  Just not the part about Ellie leaving; at the thought I felt downcast again. And then as we turned back onto Route 190, he told me.

  “Seems Andy and Sharon have changed their minds about going on a honeymoon. Instead they’ve decided to purchase the bakery building,” he said. “And not charge any rent to the two women who, as Andy put it, saved his bacon and his new wife’s, too.”

  I sat back in the big red truck’s plush leather passenger seat. It was heated, and had more positions than a yoga instructor.

  Also, the vehicle ran powerfully and smoothly, and it handled well, with none of that swerving and swaying around that a less-well-engineered vehicle might tend to display.

  “Wh-what did you say?” I managed, and then, “Are you sure?”

  Because that would change things tremendously: a lump sum plus much less monthly overhead expense would carry us through lean spots for a couple of years at the very least.

  My dad whisked us up onto the causeway toward Eastport. Tide ponds, clam flats, spruce trees, and sweetgrass fields flew by.

  He drove easily and well. “I’m sure. I went and talked to him this morning before the ceremony, wanted to get it right. He signed the sales agreement, soon as he got free and heard what happened.”

  We rolled past the city yards, where the big orange plows were parked for the summer, lined up at the very back edge of the gravel lot. Next came the campgrounds, the power plant, and the long curve leading around into Eastport.

  “And,” my father said, “not only that, but it seems the Coast Guard is looking for a civilian contractor for the Eastport station. Carpentry, maintenance, general repairs . . .”

  George’s specialties, in other words. It would mean he needn’t leave Eastport, either.

  “Oh,” I breathed, and moments later we pulled up outside my big old house on Key Street.

  I still couldn’t speak, my heart thumping with excitement and hope: could it be true? But when I looked out the truck window, there they all were, and the big smiles on their faces said that something wonderful had happened.

  “Jake!” Ellie cried breathlessly, running down from the porch to meet me. “You’re won’t believe what Andy and Sharon have decided—”

  So I let her tell me again, and about the reward, too, which we, of course, were going to donate part of, but still.

  “Jake, it means we can stay!” she rejoiced. “I mean, for a couple of years, anyway, and by then who knows what might happen!”

  From the porch rail where George leaned, grinning, I gathered he felt the same way. He’d never wanted to leave here; no one does.

  And there was one final surprise. Going up the front walk, my dad stopped me before a skeptical-looking Bella could get to him.

  “Listen, I thought I might just give Sam that truck,” he said.

  He angled his head back at the shiny red vehicle, then waved at the pile of yard-work tools that Sam had assembled. With them sat a truck ramp, a riding lawn mower, and some other yardish-looking items.

  All were cleaned and repaired. “Those tools and so on will all fit in that truck bed pretty well, don’t you think?” my dad asked.

  But he knew the answer, and so did Sam, who by the grin on his face as he jogged over to us had already been informed of the plan.

  “I’ve got a customer already,” he informed us happily. “That big house out on the point, with the lawns and manicured shrubberies.”

  He sloped off happily to join Mika and Ephraim, while Bella, finally persuaded by the smiles on all our faces, beamed down at them from the porch. Then Wade arrived, swinging into the driveway and hopping down from his own truck, making a beeline for me.

  “Hey.” He dropped an arm carefully around my shoulders. “How’re you doing?” He’d been helping the church ladies take home the serving dishes and utensils from the wedding reception.

  “Fine,” I breathed, leaning against him while the rest of the bunch went inside.

  It was still only mid-afternoon, but the bright day was over; cool fog drifted up the street, billowing in gauzy plumes and settling an early dusk on the town.

  A foghorn honked. “So about the baby,” Wade began, and I looked up; this was the only part that still didn’t make sense to me.

  “I talked with Tabitha,” he said. “The teenaged babysitter Mika’s been using?”

  Right, from across the street; the one whose house we’d gone to and whose door Bob Arnold had pounded on when we were looking for the missing youngster.

  “But she wasn’t . . .” Home, I meant to finish. The girl had been asked about it in the days since the event.

  “Well, actually she was,” Wade corrected. “She’s just felt too scared and guilty to say so. And I’d had a feeling about that, so . . .”

  “A feeling about Tabitha?” I questioned, and he nodded firmly.

  “So I went over this morning while she was outside, had a little conversation with her,” he said. “Let her know that everyone here was still pretty worried, that it would help us out a lot if we just knew what happened.”

  “And that nobody would be mad at her,” I added. Which for having that kind of a conversation, there was no one better than Wade.

  “Yup. So in a little while, the story came out.”

  We walked slowly toward the house. “Tabitha was supposed to babysit that day, remember? Mika says the girl had arranged to take Ephraim over to her house and keep him inside the fenced area they’d set up. But when she came to our place for him, nobody was around.”

  Just the baby in his playpen. “So she took him, anyway.”

  “Uh-huh. She’s done it before if Bella’s upstairs for a minute or whatever. So Tabby took Ephraim across the street, put him down on the blanket inside the fence, and ran inside her own house to get him a toy and her workbook for a science project she’s doing at school.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Really opened up about the whole thing, didn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” Wade chuckled, “she was dying to tell, really. Scared she’d get in trouble, but—”

  “So then what?” I cut in. But I’d already guessed what must’ve happened, just not the details. “That’s when we all rushed out and finally spotted him there alone?”

  “Yup. She was inside, ready to run out again, but just then her dad called, she knew from the caller ID it was him. And he’s . . .”

  “Needy. Demanding. A pain in the . . .”

  “You got it,” Wade n
odded emphatically. “He’s yelled at her before, she told me, when she wouldn’t answer the phone. So she did, and then he didn’t believe her when she said she couldn’t talk right then. Guilt-tripped her and so on.”

  I understood. “So it took a while, and by then Bob was probably pounding on her door. So she got more scared and wouldn’t answer?”

  “Precisely,” agreed Wade as a relieved sigh whooshed out of me. I hadn’t put Ephraim in harm’s way, after all.

  “What did you tell Tabitha about all this?” I asked, already thinking about asking the girl to babysit again, maybe on a regular basis, so as to get Mika more involved in The Chocolate Moose.

  Bella could use more time with the house all to herself, too, I thought, the way it used to be. I’d ask Mika about that, as well.

  Wade put his other arm around me, squeezing gently. “I said that what she’d confessed was understandable, although, of course, it should not happen again, and she should come on over and tell you about it, too, and apologize for the fright she gave everyone.”

  In the thickening fog of an island summer evening in Maine, my big old house loomed whitely like a ship plowing through mist.

  “And she promised she would,” Wade went on. “So she felt better, and I felt better, and then I told her not to worry about it anymore, because . . .”

  The porch light went on, shedding a warm glow onto the fog-swept front lawn. The baby laughed, and from Sam and Mika’s room upstairs faint music began drifting.

  “ ‘All’s well that ends well,’ ” Wade said.

  Ginger Chocolate Biscotti

  The gingery heat in these biscotti gets mellowed by the rich, melty chocolate. They’re knockout good, and you make them this way:

  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and get out a cookie sheet. I don’t grease mine, but you know your own cookie sheets better than I do, so use your judgment. Assemble the ingredients:

  1 cup flour

  ¾ teaspoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon ground ginger

  ¼ cup softened butter

  ⅓ cup sugar

  1 egg