by Leslie Meier
Maybe, she thought, swallowing down the coffee and bile taste that filled her mouth once again, maybe she should have had something more than black coffee for breakfast. Of course, she reminded herself, she hadn’t had time to eat anything because she’d put off getting out of bed to the very last minute. Behavior like that wouldn’t win her the mother-of-the-year award, or the wife-of-the-year award, either. She usually got up and made breakfast for Bill and the girls, but this morning she simply hadn’t had the energy. Even now she had to resist the urge to turn the car around and go back home and back to bed, just like the snoring old man in the nursery rhyme who went to bed and bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning.
Really, there was something to be said for opting out, especially on a day like this when she had to photograph Terrible Tamzin. Talk about adding insult to injury. If there were ever a day she’d like to skip, a day she’d like to pretend never happened, it was this Friday, actually the twelfth, but it felt like an unlucky Friday the thirteenth. There was nothing to look forward to even after the photo session. When she finished at Chanticleer she had to go back to the office to write up the water commission’s meeting, the highlight of which was the superintendent’s assurance that the town had plenty of water.
Sure they did, thought Lucy, remembering last summer’s floods and casting her eyes at the dark clouds filling the sky. Water in all its forms—ice, snow, rain, sleet, salty ocean, freshwater ponds, and streams—was one thing they had plenty of and, frankly, she could do with less of it.
She remembered a commercial for Aruba she’d seen on TV last night and pictured the sunshine, the sandy beach and turquoise Caribbean water. Boy, what she wouldn’t give to be there. Now, that would be a great way to celebrate Valentine’s Day: in a swimsuit, pale white skin slathered with sunscreen, sipping a piña colada, while Bill nibbled on her toes.
Not that Bill would ever do such a thing, she thought resentfully. Some men had foot fetishes, but Bill could truly be said to have a foot phobia. He didn’t even like to see her barefoot. And instead of her being the focus of his adoring attention on Valentine’s Day, this most personal of holidays had turned into a marathon. She had a to-do list that was a mile long. She had to make a dessert for the contest, pick up Bill’s suit, jolly him into wearing it, and somehow find a way to stuff herself into her tight black skirt. Maybe skipping breakfast hadn’t been such a bad idea after all, she decided, patting her now almost-flat tummy.
There was no problem finding a parking spot today. Main Street was practically deserted and Lucy thought of her old friend Miss Tilley’s assertion that there was so little traffic when she was a girl that she and her friends used to play tennis in the road right in front of Slack’s Hardware. Lucy parked in front of Chanticleer Chocolate and sat for a minute, lost in thought.
She was thinking of how things had changed even in her lifetime. When she and Bill first came to Tinker’s Cove, the town had been more self-sufficient—you could get everything you needed right in town. There was a grocery store, drugstore, post office, liquor store, hardware store, a five and dime, and even a small department store with household linens and clothes to fit everyone in the family from newborn babies to grandmas. Through the years many of those old, established businesses had vanished, one by one, replaced by national chains. Now, if you wanted a new set of sheets or some pot holders, good luck to you. You had to travel to one of the big box stores that had sprung up out by the interstate or else you had to take your chances and order from the Internet.
Holidays were simpler, too. They were primarily family events, nobody thought of capitalizing on a holiday to bring tourists to town. Lucy remembered the kids making valentines for friends and family out of lace doilies and red construction paper. She’d make cupcakes for dessert, with pink icing and conversation hearts on top. Bill would bring home a box of Whitman’s chocolates for her, which she shared with the kids after she’d plucked out her favorite caramels (easily identified from the chart on the inside of the box top), and that was that.
Sighing, she decided she’d put it off long enough, it was time to face the music. Or rather, Tamzin, with her fake boobs and false eyelashes, the glistening lips and the jeans that were so tight you wondered how she ever got them on, not to mention tucked inside those thigh-high boots.
Lucy pulled the fur-lined hood of her parka over her head and climbed out of the car. Ducking her head to avoid the sleet that pelted her face, she ran around the car and onto the sidewalk, seeking the shelter of the yellow Chanticleer awning. She was reaching for the door handle when the door flew open and Roger Faircloth barreled into her.
The man was obviously upset. He grabbed her by the shoulders with shaking hands and Lucy grabbed his sides, afraid he would fall. Noticing his pale face, shiny with sweat, and his panicked expression, Lucy thought he was having a heart attack.
“Roger, what’s wrong? Shall I call the rescue squad?”
He couldn’t manage to speak but nodded. Lucy needed to be able to reach inside her purse for her cell phone but she was still supporting Roger, she couldn’t let go of him for fear he would fall. She decided the best thing would be to go inside the shop, where they would be out of the weather, Roger could sit on one of those oh-so-cute café chairs, and Tamzin could make the call.
But when she suggested going inside the shop to Roger he became frantic, shaking his head and saying no over and over. Lucy didn’t know what to do, all that came to mind were those old black-and-white westerns where the cowboy hero was always slapping some hysterical woman. She couldn’t slap Roger, she had to get help for him.
“Come on, Roger,” she said, “we can’t stay out here in the weather.”
The man was sobbing and shaking, but he finally allowed her to guide him toward the door. Pulling it open, she heard the musical chimes ring once again and her nostrils were filled with the heavy scent of chocolate. Chocolate and something else. But what?
“Tamzin, I need help,” she yelled. “Call nine-one-one.”
There was no answering cry from Tamzin, which Lucy figured was typical. The woman was so self-absorbed, she was probably putting on fresh lip gloss or something and was too busy to make the call. She looked around the shop, past the tables stacked with blue-and-yellow boxes of chocolates and behind the counter, searching for the phone. It was then Lucy suddenly understood why Roger was so upset. At first, she thought it was just some sort of promotion, a giant chocolate displayed on the marble table behind the counter. A giant chocolate in the shape of a naked woman, a “Sexsational Chocolate” bigger and fancier than anything Dora ever dreamed of. But when she took a closer look, she realized it was Tamzin; her naked body had been stretched out on the table and coated with chocolate.
Lucy’s stomach heaved and, dragging Roger with her, she ran out of the store and stood on the sidewalk, gasping for fresh air. Tamzin was dead, somebody had killed her. Somebody with a wicked sense of humor.
Chapter Twelve
Lucy’s car was parked right outside the shop so she helped Roger across the slippery sidewalk and opened the door for him. He made no attempt to seat himself, but stood, obviously in shock, leaning heavily on her arm and unaware of the globs of icy sleet that were falling on their heads and sliding down their faces. Lucy wasn’t feeling too good herself. She was shaking and nauseous and realized a dark shadow was falling across her vision. She knew she had to sit down and lower her head or she’d faint and then she’d be no good to anyone.
“Come on, Roger,” she said, coaxing him. “You’ve got to get in the car. We’ll sit here and I’ll call nine-one-one.”
A glimmer of understanding flitted across his blank, staring eyes. Lucy turned him ’round and, imitating the maneuver she’d seen Rachel use with Miss Tilley, she guided him into the seat and lifted his legs one by one until he was properly seated. Bending down to seat him cleared her head, but she still felt dizzy and queasy when she took the driver’s seat and started rooting in her big purse for
her cell phone.
Finding it, she rested her head on the steering wheel and pressed the numbered keys. The dispatcher answered right away and Lucy told her she’d found Tamzin Graves’s body at Chanticleer Chocolate.
“Is the victim conscious?” asked the dispatcher.
“No.”
“Is the victim breathing?”
“No.”
“Can you perform CPR?”
“Yes, I can,” answered Lucy, who’d taken a course soon after her grandson Patrick’s birth. “But there’s no point. She’s been dead for a while.”
“Are you sure?”
Lucy was losing patience. “She’s covered with chocolate!”
“Like she fell into it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve got an elderly man here who discovered her and he’s in shock and we need some help.”
“That’s the thing—because of the sleet we’ve had a bunch of accidents and I don’t have any units available. And if she’s already dead, there’s really no hurry.”
Lucy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She glanced at Roger, who was breathing heavily, his face pale and waxy. “I’ve got an elderly man here in shock, he needs help.”
“Maybe you could drive him to the ER?”
Give me a break, thought Lucy. “That would mean leaving a crime scene and I don’t think I should do that.”
“Are you sure it’s a crime? Maybe it was an accident.”
Lucy pictured Tamzin’s body in her mind, neatly arranged on the marble table with her hands crossed over her stomach and completely covered with shiny dark chocolate. Her killer must have spent most of the night creating the macabre scene. This was no hit-and-run killing. The murderer wasn’t content to simply eliminate Tamzin; he, or maybe she—Lucy conceded the killer could have been a woman—went to a lot of effort to humiliate her. It was on a par with Max’s murder, she realized with a start. The two had most likely been killed by the same person. But why? And why did the killer feel the need to arrange the bodies so dramatically? First it was Max, found trussed in fishline with a lure hooked to his lips, and now it was Tamzin, turned into a giant chocolate bar.
“Hello? Are you still there?” It was the dispatcher breaking into her thoughts.
“Yeah.”
“You’re in luck. I’ve got an available unit and I’m sending it right over.”
“Good,” said Lucy, noting with alarm that Roger was reaching for the door handle.
“No, Roger. You have to stay here and talk to the police.”
“I’ll buy chocolate for Helen another day,” he said, sounding like he’d just happened to find the store closed and needed to adjust his schedule. If he remembered finding Tamzin’s body, it seemed he was determined to forget it. “I want to see Helen.”
“You’ll see Helen soon,” said Lucy. “But first you have to talk to the police and tell them everything you saw.”
Roger was quiet for a few minutes, staring straight ahead at the icy drops plopping onto the windshield, following their descent down the glass. “I was only there a minute or two before you arrived,” he said. “I could go and you could tell them what you saw.”
“I could do that,” she said, “but they’d want to talk to you eventually.”
“You wouldn’t have to mention me at all. They don’t need to know I was here,” said Roger.
“No, Roger. You need to stay here. I think you might need medical attention.”
“I’m fit as a fiddle,” declared Roger, reaching once again for the door handle just as a police cruiser pulled up and parked at an angle, neatly blocking the Subaru.
“We’re not going anywhere, Roger,” said Lucy, watching as Officer Todd Kirwan stepped out of the cruiser and approached them; when he was beside the car she lowered the window. Inside the cruiser she could see Barney calling in to headquarters on the radio. At least that’s what she thought he was doing.
“What’s the problem?” asked Todd, leaning on the door. He was a tall, good-looking kid with a crew cut, one of Dot Kirwan’s brood.
“We found a body in the shop,” said Lucy, pointing at Chanticleer Chocolate. “And I’m a little worried about Roger here, it was a terrible shock for him.”
At that point Roger seemed to pass out, his head dropped forward and his whole body slumped against the car door. Todd quickly called for an ambulance on his walkie-talkie, then reached across Lucy and felt Roger’s neck to check his pulse. “Strong and steady,” he said, with a shrug. He’d barely finished extracting himself from the car when they heard a siren. Lucy saw Barney get out of the cruiser and make his way to the shop. He went inside at the same moment the ambulance arrived. Her attention turned back to Roger and she was sure she saw his eyelids flicker when the ambulance crew approached the car; for a brief second she wondered if he was faking unconsciousness to avoid being questioned. Then the door opened and the emergency medical technicians began the process of extracting him. Seeing nobody was paying attention to her, Lucy joined Barney in the shop.
He was a big man, bulky in official cold-weather blue from head to foot, and was standing with his legs planted far apart and his hands on his hips, studying the situation. Lucy could tell he was thinking hard because he’d drawn his eyebrows together and had lifted one hand to his face to scratch his chin.
“Somebody’s got a mean sense of humor,” she said.
Barney scowled at her. “You shouldn’t be here. This is a crime scene.”
“I know,” said Lucy. She heard the doors of the ambulance slam and the wail of the siren as Roger was carried off to the emergency room. The musical chimes on the little door rang and she turned to see Todd Kirwan enter.
Spotting Tamzin’s body, he stopped in his tracks and gave a low whistle. “That’s one hell of a chocolate tart,” he said.
Barney started to reprove him when the chimes sounded once more and the police chief, Todd’s brother, Jim Kirwan, arrived, accompanied by State Police Detective Lieutenant Horowitz.
Horowitz’s glance raked the shop, taking in the body and landing on Lucy. “Did you find the body?” he snapped.
“No. Roger Faircloth found her... .”
“He went into shock,” said Todd. “The ambulance just left with him.”
“I got here a minute or two after Roger,” said Lucy.
Horowitz cocked a pale eyebrow. “You’re losing your touch,” he said.
Lucy had worked with the lieutenant for years but she still never knew if he was joking or serious, whether he liked or disliked her. He never seemed to change; he’d looked gray and tired the day she first met him and that’s how he looked today, with his long upper lip, grayish eyes, and sardonic smirk.
“I was supposed to photograph her for an ad,” said Lucy. “I set it up yesterday; we agreed to meet at eight-thirty this morning, before the shop opened.”
“So what was that other guy, Faircloth, doing here?”
“I think he wanted to buy some chocolate for his wife. He said something like that before he passed out.”
Horowitz was writing it all down. The chief, meanwhile, had ordered the other officers to set up crime scene tape across the sidewalk where a small knot of curious townsfolk had gathered.
“So you came here with your camera ... ,” prompted Horowitz.
“Yeah, I’d just got to the door when Roger ran out, all upset. I thought he was having a heart attack so I brought him inside and yelled for Tamzin to call nine-one-one and that’s when I saw her body. I took Roger outside to my car and called from there on my cell.”
“Did you know the victim?”
It was the question she’d been dreading. “It’s a small town and I work for the newspaper. I know everybody.”
Horowitz sensed he was on to something. He lifted his pen, waiting for her to continue.
“My daughter Zoe, the youngest, had an after-school job here for one day.” Lucy shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”
Horowitz wasn’t about to let it go. “
How come?”
“She’s just a kid, she just turned fourteen. She wasn’t ready for a job.”
Horowitz looked skeptical. “I think there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“I didn’t want Zoe working here but Tamzin went behind my back and hired her but didn’t bother to get the work permit... .”
“And why didn’t you want Zoe working here?”
Lucy didn’t want to be the one to tell Horowitz about Tamzin’s reputation, it was bad enough the woman was dead. “Like I said, I thought she was too young. She should concentrate on her schoolwork.”
“Oh, right, and the moon is made of green cheese,” said Horowitz.
“Okay, okay. I saw Tamzin in a compromising situation with a neighbor of mine, a man who happens to be married.”
Horowitz didn’t actually exclaim ah-ha; it was there but unspoken. “Name?”
Lucy sighed. She didn’t want to involve Brad and Chris but she knew Horowitz wouldn’t give up. “Brad Cashman,” she said. “But he wouldn’t have anything to do with something like this.”
“That’s for me to decide,” said Horowitz. “Anything else you don’t want to tell me?”
“No, but I have some questions I’d like to ask you,” said Lucy, as the crime scene workers began arriving, shouldering her aside.
“No comment,” snapped Horowitz. “I may need to talk to you some more, so don’t leave town.”
“Darn,” said Lucy. “You mean I’ll have to cancel my Caribbean vacation?”
Horowitz grinned. “If I don’t go, you don’t go.”
Released from questioning, Lucy left the store and headed for her car, only to discover strips of yellow crime-scene tape were fastened to the antenna.
“Uh, what’s going on?” she asked the nearest officer, who happened to be Todd Kirwan. “Why can’t I drive my car? It’s not connected to the crime.”
