Criminal Confections

by Colette London

  “Seriously. Ask at the front desk,” Danny suggested.

  Rex nodded. The moment he distractedly entered the distant elevator and I heard the doors ding shut, I turned to Danny.

  “You idiot!” Frowning, I held out my palm. “Hand it over.”

  “Hand over what?” he asked with exaggerated guilelessness.

  “You know what. Rex Rader’s wallet. I know you lifted it.”

  Danny shrugged, unbothered by my theory. My heart sank at his tacit acknowledgment that I was right. He’d promised me more than once that he would shed his shady past and go wholly legit.

  Today’s antics only proved he hadn’t. I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised. This wasn’t the first time Danny’s easy-fingered ways had gotten us both out of a sticky situation.

  If I knew us, it wouldn’t be the last time, either.

  As expected, Danny brandished Rex’s expensive wallet. He grinned unrepentantly. “We should at least riffle through it once, just to make sure Rader’s on the up-and-up,” he said by way of a compromise. “Then I’ll turn it in to the front desk.”

  Like the world’s most audacious con artist, Danny crossed his hand over his heart. The fact that he used his stolen-wallet-holding hand didn’t add much authenticity to the gesture.

  I gave in. “Fine. Just quit giving me those puppy-dog eyes. I’m trying to be mad at you for being late to the retreat.”

  “Yeah. It seems like a real classy affair so far, what with you being mauled in the hallway and everything.” With a wry look, Danny stuffed Rex’s wallet in his jacket. “Why didn’t you just drop him cold, like that would-be mugger in Barcelona?”

  At the memory of that incident, I cringed. I wasn’t proud of fighting back—it had been dumb, frankly—but I’d survived.

  “I’m here at Maison Lemaître to network,” I reminded him crisply, “not to become the ultimate fighting champion.”

  “Right. How’s that working out for you so far?”

  “I’m still optimistic. And you’re still late.”

  “The more things change . . .” Danny flashed me a carefree grin. He looked me up and down. “You look great, by the way. Nice T-shirt.”

  Then he produced a glossy keycard, opened my hotel room with it, and chivalrously stepped back to allow me to enter first. Always a consummate gentleman—that was Danny. I was so happy to see him that it almost didn’t occur to me to wonder . . .

  How had Danny gotten ahold of my hotel room keycard?

  In the minutes before we were due at the Lemaître welcome reception in the ballroom downstairs, I intended to find out the answer to that question. In the meantime, I decided to hug him.

  As you might have predicted by now, I didn’t wrangle any answers from Danny—not about my hotel keycard, not about his late arrival, and not about what he’d been up to lately, either.

  At my first question (about my keycard), he merely raised his eyebrows in a “who do you think you’re dealing with?” way that told me all I really needed to know about my (mostly) former-thief friend . . . although he swore he “only used his powers for good” these days. At my second question, he simply changed the subject. At my third, he began stripping to put on a suit for the gala welcome reception. I was forced to improvise and push his chortling, partly naked self into his own adjoining room.

  I’d glimpsed enough bare skin and rippling muscles, though, to know Danny wasn’t all talk when it came to his freelance security business in L.A. He was capable of action, too.

  Now, ensconced in the midst of the welcome reception, I had more important things to think about than Danny’s secrets, his musculature, and that whopper of a kiss. I had to get serious.

  The atmosphere should have made that easy. The ballroom was spectacular, furnished with chocolate brown wallpaper, plenty of mirrored surfaces, lots of gleaming marble, and gold accents galore. A string quartet played, filling the room—and the moonlit patio visible through the opened French doors that lined one wall—with classical music. Waiters passed drinks and canapés and chocolate delicacies; fancily dressed chocolate-industry bigwigs surrounded me, conducting laughing conversations.

  I’d dived in an hour ago, having entered the room with Danny, only to split up almost instantly to circulate.

  So far, I’d conversed with at least a dozen people, gabbing with the kind of loquaciousness that could only come from my gypsy upbringing in multiple countries. I’d even managed not to fidget too much, which counted as a big victory for me.

  But while my initial apprehension faded, I noticed that Adrienne’s had never left her. If anything, it had increased.

  I glimpsed her running around behind the scenes, wearing a pristine white chef’s coat over her party dress, darting into the ballroom with refills of ordinary (non-nutraceutical) Lemaître chocolates. Evidently, Christian had ordered her to wait until the right moment to unveil the caffeinated version.

  I hoped the line succeeded. I still had my doubts. But more than that, I was concerned about Adrienne. She seemed unusually tense and pale. Her ordinarily springy blond curls were lank—from the heat of the hotel kitchen, no doubt—and her face was shiny with perspiration. Sweat even darkened the underarms of her whites. When she headed back to the kitchen, she swayed.

  Worried, I followed her. But by the time I caught up with Adrienne in the hotel kitchen, she insisted she was fine.

  “Look! I’ve got my patented instant-energy healthy green juice to keep me going!” Manically, she brandished a carafe full of icy green slush. She poured two tall glasses of it, handed one to me, then clinked glasses. “Cheers!”

  I took a tentative sip. I made a face. “What is this?”

  “Kale, banana, powdered greens, avocado, pineapple, lemon . . .” With a confiding air, Adrienne leaned closer. “And a teensy bit of my booster powder, of course.” She nodded toward her supply of anhydrous caffeine, waiting where we’d left it earlier, next to the supersensitive culinary scale. “Just enough to keep me going,” she added when she saw my dubious expression. “It’s like coffee, only better! You were right, Hayden. I did need something healthy.” Adrienne toasted me. “This is it!”

  I stared at its dismal color. “This looks like something a socialite would try to ‘detox’ with. How about some water?”

  “No time now! Gotta run!” Adrienne pointed at my mostly untouched glass. “Drink up, Hayden. It’s good for you.”

  “I don’t know about this, Adrienne,” I called after her, raising my voice to be heard above the music and the sound of a hundred-odd noisy voices. “I think I’ll help you instead.”

  But by then, my fellow chocolatier was gone, vanished into the ballroom again. When I looked at the array of serving trays Adrienne had lined up—clearly with an elaborate system in mind—I wasn’t sure which one to choose. When I glanced at the leftover blocks of chocolate, whisks, and waiting stainless-steel bowls, I couldn’t be sure what she’d been working on, either.

  With no other alternative, I headed back to the ballroom.

  Isabel was the first to notice my homebrew “energy” drink.

  “Hayden! What in the world are you drinking?” Tipsily, she peered at my glass. I’d forgotten I was still holding it. Isabel weaved in place, dressed to kill and clearly drunk—but interested. “It looks disgusting. Just like my detox drink!”

  I saluted Isabel with it, grinned, and kept mingling. I spoke with Nina and Bernard, Christian (briefly) and Rex Rader (ditto). I gave Adrienne an “are you okay?” nod as she passed me. I traded back-of-the-house war stories with a local pastry chef. At the urging of a photographer for a local newspaper, I even posed along with everyone else for a group photo op.

  “I’m sure I looked horrible!” Adrienne whispered to me as we all regrouped afterward. “I don’t take good photos.”

  “Nobody thinks they take good photos,” I assured her. “Believe me. Everyone looks better in real life than on film.”

  “Isabel Lemaître doesn’t,” Adrienne gr
oused. She examined the assorted drinks that had been temporarily abandoned on a nearby table during the photography session, then chose one. Her (very recognizable) green juice, of course. She handed me mine. “Someone told me Isabel used to be a lingerie model.”

  I believed it. “That explains why she went braless today,” I joked. “I guess she’s already worn her lifetime bra quota.”

  Adrienne guffawed. She almost snorted green juice.

  I wanted to hang around and make Adrienne laugh again—if only to make up for the potential devastation I might wreak on her nutraceutical chocolate line after my report to Christian was turned in—but I spied Danny giving me a panicked-looking “head scratch” signal just then and had to run to his rescue.

  After I’d extracted him from a clingy blogger from a San Francisco-based culinary site, I pantomimed scratching my head.

  “You’d better watch that, pal. Might be dandruff.”

  “Har, har.” He got his revenge by pinching me as I sailed away, but I was okay with that. It was only fair that I helped him as much as he helped me. Danny didn’t know it, but that was partly what this impromptu retreat was all about: helping him. Specifically, helping him stay away from the lowbrow, bad-influence buddies who tended to congregate around him.

  I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before I realized I hadn’t seen Adrienne for a while. Despite the general sense of urgency, the reception had been running two steps behind all night. The nutraceutical line hadn’t even been unveiled yet, and it was getting late. Adrienne must be frantic by now. Thinking I might be able to help, I put down my “energy” drink and went to check on her. Partway there, I spied Rex Rader buttonholing a reporter—a woman who seemed far more interested in him than I’d been, judging by her enraptured expression—and I decided to make a detour to the ladies’ room first.

  Some needs, I figured—like Rex’s apparent need to be 100 percent smarmy, 100 percent of the time—just couldn’t wait.

  When I emerged, something was happening. The string quartet’s music had stopped. Raised voices rang from the ballroom. Shouts could be heard from the patio. Footsteps too.

  A hotel staff member ran past me, looking grave.

  Alarmed, I followed him to the ballroom. There, the retreat attendees streamed toward the open French doors leading to the patio. More guests pushed onto the patio itself, spilling onto the walkway and crowding between the potted topiaries and the tiled fountain that still burbled merrily in the moonlight.

  “They said it was one of the chocolatiers,” someone blurted near me. “One of the people who works for Lemaître.”

  “Maybe it’s Christian,” someone else said with ghoulish zeal, but I couldn’t stop to listen. I pushed my way past gawkers and bystanders, ignoring people whom I’d wanted to impress earlier.

  All I could think about was Adrienne. I had an uneasy feeling about her. I know it’s silly. I do. After the fact, anyone can say they had a premonition of disaster. Anyone can claim to have known, in their bones, that something was wrong.

  But not just anyone saw what I saw next.

  Between the onlookers, I glimpsed Nina. She sat on one of the low stone planters bordering the patio, cradling something. In the dim glow afforded by the now incongruously cheerful white light strings, I saw that she was crying. A man was trying to take something from her. I had the confused impression that Nina was fighting him off. Her agonized wail pierced all of us.

  There was anguish in that sound. I’d never heard anything like it. My heart pounded twice as fast. My mouth went dry. I felt dizzy, but I kept moving like an automaton. I had to.

  “I’m sorry.” Two men wearing uniforms stood. One silently collected his equipment. “There’s nothing more we can do.”

  Belatedly, I realized they were an EMT unit. The police had been called, too, along with the hotel staff. Hazily, I tried to peer around them—tried to see what was wrong with Nina.

  Instead, I saw Adrienne. Her limp body was propped in Nina’s arms, slumped at a strange angle. Her head lolled. Her chef’s coat was stained with blood. Her sleeves were speckled with it, too, as though she’d held up her arms to ward off . . . something.

  Something, I realized, that had killed her.

  Adrienne was . . . dead?

  It didn’t seem possible. But then suddenly Danny was there.

  He was fighting through the crowd, pulling me into his arms, tucking my head against his shoulder. “That’s enough now.”

  Oh, God. That’s when I knew it was true.

  Danny was pugnacious. Straight talking. Tough as nails. He didn’t believe in babying people. He would never have comforted me this way over anything less than a disaster.

  I raised my face to his. His gentle eyes looked back at me.

  I started trembling uncontrollably. That’s when Danny took charge. He nodded. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Right now.”

  Then he led me away.

  Chapter 4

  Danny, being Danny—and my doppelganger when it came to finding an escape hatch—had one destination in mind: the kitchen, with its superfast, behind-the-scenes stairwell.

  Unfortunately, getting there proved trickier than hailing a taxi on a Parisian street corner. Other retreat attendees blocked our path, turning what should have been an easy getaway into a five o’clock sharp traffic jam. I stared at the well-dressed industry types surrounding us and felt like screaming.

  Or maybe crying. I honestly wasn’t sure.

  Adrienne was dead. It didn’t seem possible.

  Confirming that it was, a uniformed SFPD officer was in the process of interviewing people. Her voice pierced the hubbub with authority. “Had she had anything to eat or drink tonight?”

  “I know the answer to that!” I stage-whispered to Danny.

  Adrienne had been mainlining chocolates and green “energy” juice, I knew. Plus whatever she’d eaten at the spa that day.

  I tried to veer in the officer’s direction, planning to say so. My hunky, suit-clad pal dragged me back, shaking his head. Tight-lipped, he carved a pathway for us both through the throng. “Not right now,” he said as everyone made way for him.

  Too late, I understood. Given Danny’s past, his wrong-side-of-the-tracks upbringing, his various run-ins with the law (and his recent pickpocketing escapade with Rex Rader) . . . well, it was no wonder he tensed up around anyone wielding handcuffs, a SIG Sauer sidearm, and a baton. Danny didn’t trust the police.

  Confirming my theory, he ducked his head. With his face obscured, he swerved deliberately away from the SFPD officer.

  Hmm. That wasn’t good. If he was up to his old ways . . .

  I didn’t have time to contemplate Danny’s miscreant past, though. Because just then, we passed the area where we’d all posed for that cheesy group photo. I remembered Adrienne’s goofy expression when we finished. I remembered her complaining about not being photogenic. I remembered cracking wise about Isabel Lemaître’s lifetime bra-wearing quota and making her laugh.

  Now Adrienne was dead. A sob escaped me.

  If anything, my momentary breakdown put Danny even further into “Hulk Smash” mode. Wearing a scowl, he got us to the kitchen.

  There, we almost collided with Christian Lemaître. All of us pulled up short—me with an embarrassingly girly squeal.

  Whoops. Ordinarily, I pride myself on not being your stereotypical girly girl. Fluff isn’t for me. It never has been. For one thing, “helpless, pink-loving princess” doesn’t play well worldwide—not when you’re hanging your own mosquito nets. But it had been a tough night. I’m only human. So shoot me.

  It was some consolation that Christian squealed, too. The sight of Danny on a mission tended to do that to people.

  Christian leaped out of our way, wide-eyed and flushed. He looked as if he’d been caught doing something devious. At that point, I have to admit, I was ready to think the worst of him. More than likely, I figured, he’d been in the kitchen firing someone, just for laughs. Or ma
ybe kicking puppies. The jerk.

  Or chowing down on chocolate, I realized, belatedly noticing the telltale brown smudges on his dress shirt. Some of them looked pretty distinct, almost like chocolaty fingerprints.

  But by then, Danny had tugged me past Lemaître’s personal Napoleon and into the service stairwell, and I was saved.

  “I should go back,” I said as soon as I realized it.

  Isn’t that the way of it, though? Superman bravery comes through ten minutes after the crisis has passed. Now that I was in the clear, I felt awful about not doing more to help.

  “You’re not going back.” Danny kept moving.

  In his wake, I did, too. Not that I could help it. His grip on my arm was like Iron Man’s. His attitude forbade argument.

  It was that attitude (predictably) that got my dander up.

  I yanked back, then stopped cold. Against Danny’s momentum, my efforts were pretty laughable. I basically skidded along the floor like a cartoon character. That only made me madder.

  I was a good person, wasn’t I? If I wanted to go back and help Adrienne, I would. So I dug in my (flats-wearing) heels and held my ground.

  “I could have done something,” I insisted.

  Sure, other people had seen what Adrienne had eaten and drunk that day. I wasn’t special. But I wanted to help.

  “It’s too late for anybody to do anything.”

  Just then, Danny’s usual pragmatism didn’t sit well with me. Neither did the dank atmosphere in the deserted stairwell.

  I was grateful for its echo-chamber silence, but I could have done without its subzero, frostbite-inducing temperature. I shivered. In fact, I shivered so hard that my teeth chattered.

  That’s probably what made Danny stop dragging me along like a recalcitrant three-year-old. He stopped and stared at me.

  Roughly, he took off his suit jacket. This is probably the part where you’re expecting him to gently tuck it around my shoulders for warmth, all Bogey-meets-Hepburn in Sabrina style. But that’s only because you don’t know Danny like I do.