Chocolate Covered Murder

by Leslie Meier

  If shooting broke out, Lucy decided, her only chance would be to try to tip the chair over and fall to the ground. That plan was flawed, however, because she’d have to survive the first volley of shots and her exposed position made that unlikely. Mind whirling, she remembered hearing somewhere that if you ever found yourself in a hostage situation you should try to develop a friendly relationship with your captor. It was worth a try, she thought. “I’m supposed to be making brownies and meat loaf,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “This wasn’t exactly on my agenda,” muttered Trey, sounding nervous.

  She decided to keep up the small talk. “Do you have a date for tonight?” she asked. “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

  Trey had positioned himself behind a heavy oak filing cabinet, probably a relic from the sardine cannery, and was staring out the window.

  “I was going to call my mom.”

  This whole situation was surreal, thought Lucy, and getting even weirder. “That’s nice,” she said, feeling a bit more confident. “I was going to make meat loaf for my husband, it’s his favorite. With mashed potatoes and gravy. And I was going to have ice cream for dessert. We have two daughters... .”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” said Trey, just as the phone rang. “Answer it,” he said. “Put it on speakerphone.”

  Lucy slid the chair closer to the nearest desk and reached for the phone with her free hand, getting it on the fourth ring. “Hello,” she said.

  “I’m Brian Sullivan. I’m a trained negotiator.” A warm, relaxed voice filled the room.

  “I’m Lucy Stone,” she replied, looking at Trey for permission to continue. When he nodded, she said, “I’m the hostage. I’m handcuffed to a chair.”

  “We’re going to get you out of this, Lucy. Are you the only hostage?”

  Getting a shake of the head from Trey she replied. “I don’t know.”

  “Who is with you?”

  Lucy looked once again to Trey but this time he drew his finger across his throat. “I have to go,” she said, and hung up.

  Develop a relationship, she reminded herself. “He sounded nice,” she said.

  “Nice!” barked Trey. “They want to put me in jail for life.”

  “Not for life,” said Lucy. “You don’t get life for dealing.”

  He looked at her. “I think we both know I did more than that.”

  “There were mitigating circumstances,” said Lucy. “Max tried to blackmail you, didn’t he? He knew what happened in Mexico, with Wes Teasdale.”

  “Wes? Wes drowned. He was a lousy surfer.” Trey scratched his chin with the gun. “No, Max wasn’t blackmailing me. He wanted in on the drugs.”

  “He knew about the drugs?” asked Lucy.

  “Yeah. From Mexico. We did some stuff together a long time ago. He knew the chocolate business was a good front—I used the cocoa shipments to smuggle in coke, heroin, even oxy; you can get it cheap down there.”

  The phone rang again, but Trey shook his head, signaling she shouldn’t answer it. The rings continued for a while, and Lucy could hardly stand it. She felt panic rising in her chest with every ring and tried to concentrate on breathing, just breathing. Finally the rings stopped. “That was annoying,” she said.

  “Yeah,” agreed Trey.

  “It was really clever, the way you killed Max. The cops thought it was an accident.”

  “Max helped, he was really drunk. It was easy.”

  “Did you plan it?”

  “No. We’d set up a meeting on the ice, he liked to fish at night. Said he’d show me how it was done. One thing led to another. He got mad, took a swing at me. I swung back and he went down, fell on his gear, and got tangled up. That’s what gave me the idea to kind of embellish his body.”

  “The thing I wondered about is how you got him through the ice—how’d you do that?”

  “I knew there was that punky spot and I just slid him over—the trick was not to go through myself. It was a near thing, I almost did.”

  Lucy wished he had, she wished it more than anything she’d ever wished, but she wasn’t about to let him know that. “That was lucky,” she said, trying to sound as if she meant it.

  “I don’t think you really mean that,” he said, with a crooked smile. Lucy almost liked him, she realized, wondering if this was that Stockholm syndrome she’d heard so much about.

  “What about Tamzin?”

  “She opened a package of cocoa beans and found a brick of coke. She said she wouldn’t tell anyone but I didn’t trust her, she was always talking about that ex-husband of hers and what a hero he was. I couldn’t risk it.”

  “Why the chocolate coating?” she asked.

  “I wanted to make it look like Dora did it,” he said.

  “Very clever,” said Lucy, as the phone started ringing again.

  Trey was looking out the window, where the parking lot was filling up fast with official vehicles with red and blue flashing lights. “It’s like Christmas out there,” he muttered. Then, in a tone of amazement, he added, “Look at that sky.”

  A spectacular winter sunset had tinted the overarching sky a gorgeous shade of pink and a handful of fluffy white clouds were rimmed with gold. It seemed as if God himself could reach down and touch the earth, making everything right.

  “I’m not going to jail,” said Trey. His voice was low and decisive. “If I’m going out, I might as well do it in a blaze of glory.”

  Then he was gone and Lucy was left alone with the ringing phone. She answered it. “He’s left. I don’t know where... .”

  Just then a dark shape tumbled past the window, landing with a heart-stopping thud.

  She sat, absorbing what had happened, and waited for the SWAT team to release her.

  “He was up on the tower,” one of the officers told her, as he unlocked the handcuffs. “He climbed up on a ledge and stood there, facing the sun. Then he stretched out his arms and just stepped off.”

  “Is he dead?” asked Lucy.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  She stood up and stretched, then, feeling woozy, thought better of it and sat back down.

  “Do you need a medic?” the officer asked.

  “No, I’ll be okay,” she said, noticing Larry Graves standing in the doorway. “Where were you?” she asked. “You were supposed to meet me here.”

  He shrugged, a sheepish expression on his face. “I got lost. The GPS didn’t work.” He paused, studying her face. “I’m really, really sorry.”

  Lucy tried standing again and this time she didn’t feel dizzy. She felt good, she decided. It was definitely good to be alive.

  “Don’t be,” she said. “You were right. I got a hell of a story.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The police had set up a temporary crisis management headquarters in a trailer in the parking lot outside the chocolate factory, and that’s where Lucy was taken to be debriefed. Brian Sullivan, the negotiator with the warm voice, interviewed her, and she was surprised to find he was short, slight, and balding, a complete contrast to the mental picture she’d built based on his voice.

  “I just want to go over the video with you,” he said. “We had a very sensitive listening device, but it didn’t pick up everything and I need you to fill in the blanks.”

  He pointed to a video monitor and when the snow cleared she saw a grainy picture of the office, shot through the windows. Meacham was a shadowy figure, never seen in full as he remained partially hidden behind the file cabinet. She, on the other hand, was front and center, handcuffed to the chair. It was an unsettling image.

  An audio technician arrived and was soon able to match his recording with the video and Lucy was able to see and hear the worst hour of her life all over again. It went excruciatingly slowly, however, because the process was halted frequently so Lucy could supply missing scraps of dialogue. She tried her best to be accurate, but oftentimes the technician would determine that her memory didn’t match the fragments of sound o
n the tape and she’d have to try all over again. She was completely exhausted when they finally said she could go.

  She wasn’t sure how she was going to get home and was trying to decide if she could manage to drive herself when the door opened and Bill arrived. She rushed into his arms and he held her tightly, smoothing her hair and covering her face with kisses, and that’s when she burst into hysterical tears.

  “It’s all over, you’re safe, you’re safe,” he said.

  “I know,” she blubbered, unable to stop sobbing.

  “The cops said you were amazing, really cool, did everything right.”

  “I want to go home,” she finally said, wiping her eyes with her hands.

  Bill gave her one of his big white handkerchiefs and just seeing it and holding it made her start crying all over again. “I love you,” she said, sputtering.

  He gave her a big squeeze. “You can show me later. But for now, you owe me a meat loaf dinner.”

  “Okay,” she said, letting him take her hand and lead her out into the night.

  On Monday morning Ted was already at his desk when she arrived. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Kind of shaky,” she said.

  The door opened and Phyllis came in, wrapped in a colorful poncho with matching hand-knitted hat and gloves. She was carrying a big bouquet of flowers. “These are for you,” she said, engulfing Lucy in a multicolored hug.

  It was all too much for Lucy, and the tears began flowing again.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, the story of the year and my ace reporter is too emotional to tell it,” muttered Ted, as the bell on the door jangled furiously and Frankie blew in, all in a dither.

  “The story of the year—that’s what I’ve got for you!” she exclaimed, waving a sheaf of papers in her gloved hand.

  “We’ve got it. Lucy was there when Trey committed suicide.”

  “Trey? Suicide?” Frankie was puzzled.

  “Haven’t you heard?” asked Ted.

  “Renee and I spent yesterday chez ma mère; she lives in Portsmouth. Why? What happened?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Lucy. “What’s your news?”

  Frankie couldn’t wait to tell them. “It’s the Faircloths. They’re gone!”

  “But I thought they were buying the McIntyre place,” said Lucy.

  “Yeah, so did I.” Frankie waved the papers. “I’ve got a purchase and sales agreement right here, but when I went over to the Salt Aire to get them to sign it, the desk clerk told me they’d left sometime in the night without paying their bill. It’s over five thousand dollars.”

  Lucy wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “They skipped out on their bill?”

  “Yeah. When housekeeping went in this morning, they were gone—and they even took the bathrobes!” Frankie paused. “But they did leave a twenty for the maid, along with a note thanking her for excellent service.”

  “Classy,” said Ted.

  “Not really,” muttered Frankie. “I devoted every waking moment to those people and now I’m out a hefty commission. I was counting on that money.”

  “They seemed so nice,” said Lucy. “I saw them dancing Saturday night at the ball and they made a lovely couple.”

  “Seemed is the operative word here,” said Phyllis.

  “You said it,” agreed Frankie. “It turns out they’re a pair of scam artists. They’ve been doing this for months, maybe years. They lost their house to foreclosure so they’ve been moving around to inns and B&Bs, living it up in the style to which they’re accustomed and leaving a trail of unpaid bills. The clerk at the Salt Aire said they got an e-mail from the innkeeper’s association just this morning, warning about them. They left a big bill at the Queen Vic, too.”

  Ted was reaching for the phone. “I’m calling the printery,” he said. “I think we’re going to need some extra pages this week.”

  Lucy was nodding. “And people say nothing happens here in the winter!”

  Punxsutawney Phil had predicted six more weeks of winter on Groundhog Day and for once he seemed to be right. March roared in like a lion, but this particular lion turned out to be a pussycat, bringing bright sunshine and warm temperatures. When Elizabeth came home for a long weekend before starting her next assignment at the brand new Cavendish Hotel on Cape Cod, the snow was gone and buds were swelling on the forsythia bushes. Lucy had cut some branches a week or so earlier and they were already in bloom, a yellow explosion on the dining room sideboard.

  Lucy was putting the finishing touches on her table, laying out the silver serving spoons, and the scent of cooking turkey was heavy in the air. A series of sharp barks from Libby announced the arrival of her dinner guests, Marge and Barney Culpepper and their son, Eddie.

  “It’s like Thanksgiving,” declared Zoe, when they were all sitting at the table.

  “We have a lot to be thankful for,” said Lucy.

  “You can say that again,” said Barney, with a nod to Eddie.

  He was fresh out of rehab and looked great, thought Lucy. He was letting his military brush cut grow in and the slightly longer, curly hair softened his appearance. He smiled often, paying special attention to Elizabeth. Lily, he said in answer to Lucy’s pointed inquiry, was away in Switzerland, apprenticing with a master chocolatier.

  Elizabeth seemed to be enjoying herself, which was a big change from her returns home during college breaks, when she complained about there being nothing to do and couldn’t wait to get back to Boston. Now that she was working and fending for herself she had a new appreciation for home, where Mom took care of the cooking and cleaning and even did her laundry.

  When they’d polished off the shrimp cocktail and turkey with stuffing and gravy and all the fixings—Bill’s payment for fixing the door at the Pennysaver—Lucy suggested moving into the living room for coffee. Sara and Zoe were delegated to clear the table and load the dishwasher; Elizabeth and Eddie went off together to hear a local band and catch up with high school friends at the Irish pub down by the harbor.

  “Eddie looks terrific,” said Lucy, pouring a cup of decaf for Marge.

  Bill lit the fire he had laid earlier. When he was satisfied that it had caught, he produced a bottle of brandy and, receiving a nod from Barney, poured two glasses. “What’s his legal situation?” he asked.

  Barney took the snifter and raised it to the light, admiring the golden liquid, then took a sip. “Mmmm,” he said. “Well, he took my advice for once and agreed to cooperate with the DA. He got a good deal, no jail time, probation for a year with random drug and alcohol tests, and of course rehab. You never know, but it looks like he’s staying clean.”

  “He’s thinking about going to college,” said Marge, holding her saucer with one hand and lifting the cup with the other. “He’s looking into physical therapy. Maybe because of the guys he knew who got wounded. He says he wants to help people.”

  “I guess he already has,” said Lucy, sitting down on the couch with her coffee. “He’s named some of the dealers Meacham was supplying The drug task force is finally making real progress.” She paused. “I didn’t realize that they’d been working on making a case against Meacham for months.”

  Barney nodded. “Nobody did. Those guys work undercover, way undercover. Even Horowitz didn’t know what they were doing. He was convinced Dora was the killer, and there was a lot of circumstantial evidence. But when Graves showed up with his story about Tamzin discovering the drugs, he contacted the task force and they set up the raid.” He took a sip of brandy. “Meacham had quite an operation, bringing the stuff in from Mexico with the cocoa beans and using the factory to distribute it. It turned out that Chanticleer Chocolate’s most popular flavors were heroin and OxyContin, along with pot, coke, and ecstasy. He had something for everyone, whatever their preference and budget.”

  “Who knew?” mused Marge, biting into a cookie. “He seemed so nice. I never would have guessed. And the scope—I couldn’t believe the amount of drugs they found in his warehouse.”


  Lucy nodded, remembering the photo Ted ran in the Pennysaver showing huge bottles of pills and hundreds of plastic bags of marijuana and cocaine, laid out so they completely covered the big conference table at the police station. “Ted said Trey was going to be the Chamber of Commerce’s Businessman of the Year.”

  “Some businessman,” snorted Bill. “It was all a big lie.”

  “What’s happening to all his drug customers?” asked Lucy. “They can’t all be in rehab.”

  “They’ve found other dealers,” said Barney, draining his glass. “Or they steal. There was a pharmacy break-in last night, over in Gilead.”

  Lucy shook her head. “What’s the solution? How do we stop this?”

  Barney set his empty glass on the mantel and stood studying the flames dancing in the fireplace. “I wish I knew,” he said. “I wish I knew.”

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2012 by Leslie Meier

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011937864

  ISBN: 978-0-7582-7819-7