He threw it at me instead. “Take this.” He gave my make-do cocktail dress a frown. “Next time, go to the party less naked.”
Naked? As if Danny would ever notice. I could gallivant around wearing nothing but gym socks and tasseled pasties, and Danny would treat me (mostly) like a kid sister. As proof? His suit coat, which rocketed at me like a 90 mph fastball. I caught it while it was still warm from his body. That heat was enough to convince me to put it on, despite my exasperation with him.
Ah. Warmth enveloped me in instant bliss. Except for the part where we had just seen one of my friends—my friends!—die.
But I didn’t want to talk about that. I couldn’t.
“It’s not my fault Christian is too cheap to heat this place properly.” I stamped my feet, wishing I’d worn my motorcycle boots. But they lived at Travis’s place, where all my stuff that didn’t pack well—but had sentimental value—cooled its heels. Possibly in alphabetical order, knowing my accountant.
“Big news. Christian’s an ass, even when it comes to utility payments.” Impatiently, Danny gestured. “Ready now?”
I wasn’t. “Do you think she’s really dead?” I whispered.
Danny wasn’t having any part of my incipient meltdown.
“If you’re angling for me to carry you—” Dubiously, he eyed my glammed-up ensemble. And me in it. “I’m not going to.”
“Real chivalrous.” He did think Adrienne was dead. Oh no.
“We’ve still got two flights to go,” he argued further.
“You’re up for the challenge, He-Man.”
But even before he shook his head, I started moving. I knew better than to rely on anybody else for help. Even my old pal.
Another flight up, on the next landing, I stopped again. Danny’s now what? expression was not enough to budge me.
“I should have stayed with her.” My head swam with visions of poor Adrienne, blood splattered and limp. “You know, to—”
“To keep her company on her ride to the morgue?” He shook his head, probably wishing he’d turned down that gratis LAX to SFO plane trip I’d offered. “She won’t know any better.”
“Danny!”
“Besides,” he added in a softer tone, “Nina was there.”
That was true. She had been. Adrienne hadn’t been alone.
I was glad about that. I was. Not for the first time, though, I wondered about Danny’s pragmatic side. It tended to veer toward merciless sometimes. At least it did with outsiders. He hadn’t done much more than exchange nods and hellos with Adrienne. He wasn’t invested in her. Not the same way I was.
A clatter of footsteps—and accompanying voices—from the landing below sent Danny into motion again. He grabbed me.
Moments later we lurched into my room upstairs, me still shivering and him still stone-faced. He pocketed his room key.
Scratch that. My room key. “Where did you get that?”
“Do you really want to talk about that now?”
I didn’t. But I wanted to do something my way. I had my pride. Like I said, humility isn’t exactly my forte.
Besides, being annoyed at him felt better than being freaked out and upset about Adrienne. Poor Adrienne.
“Yes, I want to talk about that now.” I watched Danny stalk to the window, then look out. He pushed the button that drew the drapes. With silent, luxurious efficiency, they obscured the expansive view. Bye-bye, sliver of the Golden Gate Bridge. Bye-bye, moonlit night. Bye-bye, Adrienne. I refocused. “So spill.”
Instead, he faced me. The concern in his face made me wonder if he’d glimpsed Armageddon outside. Nothing else could have made Danny look so . . . tender. Even with his rampaging beard stubble and tattoos.
“Have you been sweating?” he demanded.
“Sweating?” I crossed my arms. “That’s a new kink you’ve got there. You like a little Slip ‘N Slide action these days?”
Impatiently, he crossed the plush carpet. He stuck the back of his hand against my forehead. He squinted into my eyes.
“Easy, there, killer!” I joked, giving him a shove. “This routine might work with most women, but I’m not most women.”
“You’re still shivering. You might be in shock.”
The tone of his voice gave me goose bumps. “Maybe. Or . . . ?”
“Or you might be experiencing what Adrienne did tonight.”
“What?” No wonder Danny looked tender. He was mentally composing my eulogy. Instantly panicked, I rushed to the mirror. I don’t know what I expected to find. Spots, maybe. Hair falling out in formerly ponytailed clumps. Blood gushing from my nose. Something macabre and pandemic-like. Instead, my own ordinary face, a lot paler than usual, stared back. “I do feel dizzy.”
As I said it, a wave of nausea passed over me. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. Everything felt slightly surreal—the way it did when you’ve been awake twenty-four hours straight, crossing time zones and getting increasingly jet-lagged.
Except I hadn’t been traveling. Not for weeks.
I should have been getting itchy feet just realizing it.
“How much of Adrienne’s green juice did you drink?”
I frowned, thinking. “A few sips. That stuff was vile. You know I’m not much for the health-freak routine.” I widened my eyes, suddenly catching Danny’s drift. “You don’t think—”
“Maybe.” His stony expression said it all. He did think.
Now I felt really woozy. But also hyperaware. I know it sounds weird, but I swear I could feel my pulse. In my ear. Ugh.
It occurred to me that Adrienne had been conspicuously sweaty earlier. Uh-oh. If that was one of the warning signs . . .
“You weren’t out there when the shit hit the fan.” Danny paced, casting wary glances at the window and door. “I was. The paramedics said Adrienne might have overdosed on something.”
Instantly, I was indignant. “Adrienne wasn’t on drugs! She was a nice, hardworking, strawberry-daiquiri-loving woman.”
I remembered our chatty after-work drinks sessions. Those wouldn’t be happening anymore. I sat on the king-size bed. Hard.
“She was only in her forties,” Danny persisted. “And she died of a heart arrhythmia. That’s the theory the EMTs were working with, anyway. That doesn’t happen randomly.”
“A heart arrhythmia doesn’t cause someone to bleed all over!” I shivered, remembering the ghastly sight of Adrienne in Nina’s arms. I knew I’d never forget it. I’d never seen a dead person before. Now I had. I didn’t know how to feel about that.
“No, but an overdose might,” Danny said. “Adrienne might have been vomiting blood. That would explain the splatters.”
Yikes. He’d accurately diagnosed blood splatters?
“Your life is vastly different from mine. You know that?”
Danny wasn’t bothered by my non sequitur. “That could have been Adrienne reacting to whatever she overdosed on. Your body does its best to protect you from your dumbass brain. Like when you go full bore on those strawberry daiquiris and wind up puking your guts out.” Still looking tense, he glanced outside again. Evidently, he’d gone into hard-core security-expert mode on me. “Only sometimes the fail-safe doesn’t work as designed.”
I didn’t want to know how Danny knew that. Also, gross.
But he had a point. “You think I might overdose, too?”
“Maybe you were supposed to.” His gaze turned hard. “Maybe Adrienne got the dose meant for you. Do you have enemies here?”
At his dire tone, I couldn’t help laughing. “Danny! This isn’t a movie. It’s me. At a chocolate retreat. At a chichi resort with its own security force. Nobody tried to overdose me tonight.” I gave him a long look. “You’re just being paranoid.”
He didn’t give in. “Did anyone give you a drink?”
I tried to remember. Rex? I shrugged. “Only Adrienne.”
Danny made a face. “That disgusting swamp juice?”
Another shrug. “Sometime I migh
t get healthy.”
“That’ll be the day.” He flashed me a grin. “You mainline chocolate like it’s your job.” A pause. “Oh, wait. It is.”
“Hey. Chocolate contains valuable antioxidant flavonoids,” I informed him. “Cacao is very rich in phytochemicals. Those are good for you. They come from plants. Plus, a third of the fat in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which doesn’t raise cholesterol levels.” Warming up to my lecture, I added, “Chocolate can help with chronic fatigue syndrome, improve arterial blood flow, ease depression, and help prevent heart attacks. So, technically—”
Usually, Danny did his best to nod and look interested when I went into professorial mode. Tonight, though, he only seemed worried. That wasn’t like him. Nothing ever fazed Danny.
“So, technically, Adrienne should have been less likely to die of a heart attack, rather than more,” he finished for me.
For once, our synchronicity was scary, not simpatico.
“Well, chocolate isn’t wheatgrass and quinoa,” I amended, feeling confused. But warmer. And not as if I’d just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl. My symptoms—if that’s what they were—seemed to be subsiding. “But it’s not going to kill anyone. Not right away. Plus, Adrienne was trying to be healthy. That’s why she—”
“Drank that swamp juice. Just like you did. So, again—”
“I’m fine, Danny. I am.” I was spooked, though. Seriously spooked. Could someone really have overdosed sweet, responsible Adrienne? Or (gulp) me? I didn’t think I had any real enemies anywhere—much less in the City by the Bay, among my chocolate peeps. “I’m sure what happened to Adrienne was an accident.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the juice,” he persisted. “Maybe it was something else.” He turned to me. “What was she working on?”
A doomed project, thanks to my unfinished report.
Pricked with guilt, I looked away. “Nothing deadly.”
“Hayden.”
“A line of nutraceutical chocolates.” Maybe it was a good thing the official unveiling hadn’t happened yet. I didn’t say so, though. I didn’t want Danny grilling me about my truffle-munching habits. All that caffeine might have explained why my heart had raced when I’d seen Adrienne, though. Why I’d been so chilled. Why I’d been dizzy, too. I didn’t want to worry Danny any further, so I shrugged, instead. “More healthy stuff.”
“Healthy? Damn.” Danny quit pacing. For a nanosecond, his broad, burly shoulders relaxed. He looked nice, even sans suit jacket, in an open-collared shirt. “Why do I feel like packing down a huge double-bacon cheeseburger and fries right now?”
Him and me both. Suddenly, healthy felt deadly.
“Don’t worry. Maison Lemaître specializes in decadence. You missed the all-chocolate English tea this afternoon, but we can still make it to the all-chocolate brunch buffet tomorrow.”
He looked skeptical. “Do they serve until three P.M.?”
“Ha-ha.” Leave it to Danny to remember my notorious reputation as a before-noon zombie. I only survived A.M. consults by pretending I’d been up all night. There was a reason I was a freelancer who set her own hours. “We should try it tomorrow.”
That is, if I could behave normally, without collapsing into tears. My emotions were all over the place. I didn’t know the status of the chocolate retreat now. It seemed likely that Christian Lemaître would cancel it. That would be the decent thing to do. But Christian was hardly the king of decency.
Danny indulged my non-homicide-related digression with a nod. “Sure. Brunch sounds like a good networking op for you.”
I stifled a groan. Danny was more obsessed with growing my business than I was. I chalked that up to his impoverished youth. “It sounds like chocolate-chip scones with chocolate butter to me,” I shot back. “Chocolate-dipped strawberries. Chocolate waffles with hot-fudge sauce. And cocoa-nib bacon.”
Unbelievably, he made a face. I’d forgotten that Danny didn’t share my sweet tooth—or my adoration of chocolate. He preferred things on the savory-salty-hot “blow your doors off” side of the street. Nachos. Hot wings. Sriracha. Vinegar chips.
In critical ways, we were fundamentally incompatible.
Nevertheless, we had a date. For chocolate brunch.
Until then, I’d had all I wanted of analyzing a tragic death. I’d go crazy if I spent all night ruminating over it.
Besides, I was the kind of girl who moved on quickly. The stipulations of my uncle Ross’s will ensured that fact for me.
To feel better, I needed to do something besides talk.
“Hey.” I gave Danny a poke as he passed by on his next patrol-my-hotel-room round. “Thanks for coming here for me.”
He only shrugged. Evidently, I felt mushier than he did.
Probably that was because I’d survived a potential attempt on my life tonight. That kind of thing probably wreaked havoc on a girl’s sense of equanimity. If it was real.
I remained convinced it wasn’t. But just in case . . . I figured I needed to take care of a few things. Downstairs. Without my makeshift bodyguard dogging my every move and asking questions.
The way I saw it, if I could get ahold of some of the things Adrienne and I had both come into contact with tonight (like a few nutraceutical truffles and/or some green juice) and send them to Travis for analysis, I could put my mind at ease. Maybe.
“Seriously, though,” I pressed, knowing there was only one guaranteed way to get Danny to quit hovering like a bossy big brother. “Why were you so late getting here? I expected you hours earlier. Then you strolled in, all light-fingered and—”
“Everything looks safe for now,” he butted in. “You okay?”
Bingo. He’d reacted just the way I’d expected he would. Danny liked being interrogated about being late (and being skilled at petty thievery) the way I liked wearing stilettos. Meaning, not at all. Not if it was avoidable. It always was.
“I’m fine.” It was an effort not to singsong those two little words. Because I had a plan. I needed him to beat it.
“Then I’ve got a few things to do.” He hooked his thumb toward the door, then followed its lead all the way there. Over his shoulder, he tossed me a strangely intense glance. “Okay?”
I hesitated. Just for a second, I understood why women flocked to Danny. All that intensity was probably intoxicating—to the right woman, at the right time. But that woman wasn’t me. Not then and probably not ever. We both knew better than that.
“You don’t have to babysit me, Danny,” I told him, meaning it. “I can take care of myself. I dialed up your suit-wearing friend services, not your übermacho security-man services.”
I was trying to flatter him with that übermacho stuff. He didn’t bite. He only studied the suit jacket he’d hurled at me for warmth in the stairwell, now snuggled securely around me.
“Keep the jacket,” Danny said, then he was out of there.
The moment the door closed behind him, I shrugged out of his jacket, dropped it like it was hot, and got on my feet.
A quick trip to the window told me the retreat attendees had scattered, just as Danny and I had. They milled around the grounds of Maison Lemaître, talking in clumps of three or four. Some headed toward the discreet lobby bar. A few waited to retrieve their rides from the valets. It was evident that the welcome reception—which had run late, anyway—had broken up.
As soon as the coast was clear, I headed out myself.
Adrienne’s death probably had been a heartrending accident, I told myself as I crept downstairs again. It had probably been a case of bad timing writ large. Whatever undiagnosed ailment Adrienne had suffered from—a heart murmur, a blocked artery, or something just as dire but unknowable—it had come up against the stressful, super-long Lemaître welcome reception and just . . . popped.
I really, really needed to avoid stress in my life.
I couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that the whole thing might have been avoidable, though. It was that feeling that prodded me along the empty Maison Lem
aître service hallways after getting Danny to scram, listening for potential homicidal maniacs even as I told myself I was being ridiculous.
Homicidal maniacs were probably quiet types, anyway.
Wasn’t that what the next-door neighbors always told the media? Sure, he turned out to be a machete-wielding lunatic, they’d say on camera for the local evening newscast. But he seemed so nice! He kept to himself most of the time, really.
Hoping that “most of the time” encompassed the hours between eleven-fifteen and midnight, I glanced at my cell phone. I gripped it in my fist like the lifeline it was, just in case I needed to call for help. I wasn’t one of those daffy sorority girls in a slasher flick, heading down to the killer’s basement lair in my lingerie. I was taking all the necessary precautions. All I wanted was to find my abandoned glass of green “energy” juice—aka the potential murder weapon du jour.
In my imagination, my juice had already morphed into a glass full of deadly toxic waste. I couldn’t just leave it there, neon green and pulsing, waiting for its next hapless victim.
You know, just in case.
Just in case someone really had tried to kill me.
Trying to laugh off that overly dramatic idea, I squared my shoulders and pushed through the double swinging service doors into the ballroom-adjacent kitchen. Being there gave me the willies all over again. Inside, it was quiet and deserted. The worktables still stood cluttered with chocolate, knives, whisks, and bowls. It felt inhabited with the ghost of Adrienne past—a woman who’d been lively (if anxiety ridden), generous (if a little lonely), and far, far too young to die the way she had.
I guessed the police or Maison Lemaître security personnel or someone had shooed away the staff before they could clean up. It was almost as if Adrienne would rush in, hands aflutter and blond curls flying, to grab another tray of gilded truffles.
Spotting those platters full of gold-leafed nutraceutical chocolates, I strode straight toward them. A hasty head count told me they’d been left safely untouched—even, surprisingly, by Christian Lemaître. I guess he hadn’t needed a caffeine buzz to greet his adoring public earlier? I knew he’d had access to the truffles. I’d run into him while fleeing the crime scene.
Criminal Confections Page 6
