Dying for Chocolate

by Diane Mott Davidson

  It was my ex-husband.

  He gave me a broad smile in the closed-circuit camera. He lifted up his hands to show he was unarmed.

  I let his car through and felt sick. In my state of confusion over the accident and the work for the dinner party, I had forgotten to call up to Arch and make sure he was ready. I stared at the intercom. If I could mince with a Cuisinart, I could master this. I pressed buttons and called hopefully throughout the house. No answer. I made my way out to the front porch. There was no way I was letting him into the house.

  “Heard you lost your boyfriend,” he said once I came through the door.

  I looked around for neighbors, the general, Julian, anybody. The only thing I saw were the little marble and clay pots that the general was supposed to fill with geraniums and impatiens sometime during the weekend.

  I said, “News travels fast.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m listening,” I said as I sidled away from him, moved a couple of unpotted plants aside, and tentatively sat.

  “I didn’t say I wanted to go to bed with you. I just said I wanted to talk.”

  “I can hear you just fine. And if you want to talk, you’re going to have to watch your mouth.”

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head, then smiled at me indulgently.

  John Richard Korman’s extraordinary handsomeness, his boyish sensitive face, brown hair, and light blue eyes, always made me feel light-headed. He also played his doctor aura to good effect. He did this not just with me but with all manner of women, I came to find out after we were married. It was this type of man Henry Kissinger had been talking about when he said that power was the great aphrodisiac.

  This was the man I used to love, the man who had slapped me when he was drunk, the man who did not love me. I knew to guard against his disarming good looks by keeping the conversation short. Kissinger, I reasoned, was probably talking about himself.

  I pressed my fingers down into the dirt around one of the geraniums waiting to be planted. It needed water. Then I brought out a paring knife I had slipped into my apron pocket and put it down next to the plant, where John Richard couldn’t see it. Just in case.

  He said, “A female friend of mine is going to teach Arch a few magic tricks.”

  I said, “Oh, please. Your last girlfriend tried to teach him geometry and he’s gotten D’s ever since.”

  “Maybe that’s because someone’s too busy catering to help him with his homework.”

  I closed my eyes. I did not want to get into a fight. When I opened my eyes, John Richard was giving me his toothy innocent smile.

  He said, “So where are Marla’s sister and her famous husband? What’s his name—Rommel?”

  “Don’t.”

  He looked at the sky, then said, “Well, let me ask you this. Who’re you cooking for tonight?”

  “The Harringtons.”

  He laughed. He guffawed, started to say something, and then snickered and wouldn’t quit. I was not going to give him the satisfaction of asking what the joke was. He said, “This is just ironic as hell.”

  “Why’s that?” This conversation was strange, but familiar. One subject, then another, laughing one minute, then. . . my neck snapped up involuntarily. Too late.

  John Richard picked up a clay pot and threw it at the front door. The crack of the shatter reverberated in my ears. Then a second pot smashed against the house.

  “Stop it, stop it,” I squealed and buried my face in my hands. My throat was raw, like in those nightmares when you call for help but have no voice. I looked up in time to see him kick a third pot. Fragments went spinning away from the porch steps.

  “Okay! Okay!” My voice begged. I looked helplessly at the knife. What did I think I was going to do with it, anyway? “Whatever it is, you can have it,” I cried. “Just stop. Arch is on his way out here.”

  John Richard glared at me. He spat out each word. “You’ve ruined my life. My family’s gone, my practice has lost business. All your fault, you bitch. So listen up. If I want my son to learn magic, he’s going to learn.”

  “All right! Just calm down, for God’s sake! I’ve got a party to do tonight, and I don’t want trouble!”

  He picked up another pot and threatened me with it. I could hear my heart beating in my chest. “Don’t want trouble?” he mimicked in a high voice. “Don’t want trouble?”

  Before I could answer, there was General Bo suddenly behind John Richard. The general grabbed The Jerk’s neck with both hands. John Richard dropped to his knees like a rag doll. The clay pot fell out of his hands and rolled down the driveway.

  “Oh, stop! Stop!” I cried as I jumped to my feet. A ball of nausea collected in my stomach.

  General Bo Farquhar took no notice of me. He spoke down to John Richard’s head, which he had torqued around to force eye contact.

  “Now you listen to me, you little son of a bitch,” said the general with such ferocity that my whole body broke out in a sweat. “There’s a law in this state called Make My Day. You set foot on this property again, I’ll use it. I’ll show you how the Special Forces can kill people without making any noise. Is that clear?”

  John Richard made the throaty sound of a man about to be strangled. The front door opened. The general released John Richard into the freshly raked dirt at the side of the driveway just as Arch came out. Arch looked soundlessly from person to person, then pushed his glasses high up on his nose.

  He said, “Should I go back inside, Mom?”

  John Richard was wiping dirt from his nose. I wanted to say, Yes, yes, go back! But I could not. John Richard gave an almost imperceptible nod. I gestured to Arch to go. He plodded toward his father, who was brushing dirt off his polo shirt.

  The general moved toward the porch. He said quietly, “Goldy, I’d like to see you inside.”

  I nodded. But I could not take my eyes off John Richard, who was walking slowly with Arch toward his Jeep. John Richard whirled, and I cringed.

  He yelled to me, “Philip Miller was fucking Weezie Harrington!”

  9.

  I trudged up the steps as the Jeep roared away. The general leaned over broken clay fragments and pressed his lips together. He motioned me inside. Behind us he firmly shut the front door with a no-nonsense, deliberate sound: chook.

  I thought, At best I’ll get a lecture. At worst I’ll lose my job.

  He gazed at me with those piercing blue eyes.

  He said, “Don’t ever let that man through my gate again.”

  I nodded vigorously.

  “When he comes to pick up Arch,” he spoke the name delicately, as if Arch were his own son, “I will be the one to complete the transfer. Also,” he continued as he retrieved a short pole from a closet, “I want to show you this. It’s a portable door jam. If that man” (my mind supplied, the enemy) “somehow gets through the gate and tries to come through the front door, you expand it like this.” He clicked the steel rod open in his powerful hands. I had a sudden vision of Arch doing one of his magic tricks. “Then you wedge it under the doorknob.”

  The rubber-covered end squeaked across the tile floor like chalk on a board. When the jam was in place, General Bo ordered me to try to open the front door. Of course, it wouldn’t budge.

  “Thanks for—” I began in a wavering voice. Actually, I didn’t know how I felt about his help.

  “You’re part of the family,” he said solemnly. “Just make sure that when you wedge this thing in, it’s under a door that opens toward you.”

  And with that the lesson was over. No sentiment. No sure-you’re-all-right? The general took off down the hall with his long loping stride. It was the kind of walk people used to pace off a large distance. How could he get around the side of the house without my seeing him? How can you kill someone without making any noise? How could Philip have been having an affair with Weezie Harrington?

  Well. I had cooking to do. I went back to the kitchen and mixed the Dijon vinaigrette and, prete
nding it was The Jerk’s head, shook vigorously. I tried to focus on what Sissy had told me about the lust-inducing properties of onions and garlic and peppers. Concentrate, I told myself.

  But I couldn’t think. I couldn’t catch my breath. Arch would be all right. John Richard had never harmed him.

  Arch would be back tomorrow night.

  The avocados were impossible to skin without getting my hands slimy. I looked at my green-covered fingers. Would I always be a failure at relationships? Philip’s touch on my arm, the earnest look in his eyes, these came back. Had I been so bad a judge of character? Philip had been my age. Weezie was older. Not that an age difference made a difference anymore. Still, it was hard to believe that Philip and Weezie had been sexually intimate, when he and I had not.

  The phone rang. After the mess with The Jerk, I did not want to talk to anybody. But the phone rang and rang, and the machine did not pick up. I was grateful that the Farquhars allowed me to use their third line for my business. The theory was that I would answer “Farquhars” to two lines and “Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!” to the third. Usually by the time I figured out which line was ringing I forgot to do this last, and just answered “Farquhars” to all three. So far, my regular clients had recognized my voice.

  I grabbed a towel and picked up the phone. “Farquhars,” I announced, but was met with silence. There was hesitant throat-clearing as somebody checked to make sure this was the right number.

  “Is this Goldilocks the caterer?”

  “Yes indeed, what can I do for you?”

  “Is this Goldy Bear the caterer?”

  “Well, uh, yes,” I said.

  My name was not my fault. My first name was Gertrude. Goldy was my nickname from childhood, and I had disliked it. Korman was my last name in adulthood, and I had disliked it even more. But the resumption of my maiden last name, along with my nickname, made me sound like an escapee from a children’s story.

  “This is George Pettigrew from Three Bears Catering in Denver.”

  Right away, I knew we had trouble. (Don’t want trouble? I could hear John Richard’s mocking voice in my inner ear.) The ensuing conversation proved I was going to get it anyway.

  George and his wife had been in business for five years. They were strictly small-time. I mean, I had never heard of them. But they had read the article in the Mountain Journal and were loaded for bear, no joke. George was screaming about copyright infringement. How dare I use the name Bear? he wanted to know. Because it was mine, I said. But my divorce had taken place after George and his wife had started Three Bears. It was their name, he insisted. I said, Oh yeah? Then why not call it Two Pettigrews!

  He said he’d see me in court and hung up.

  I stared at the phone for what felt like an eternity. I couldn’t face a call to my lawyer, and this being Saturday, he wouldn’t be in anyway. I finished the shrimp dumplings and thawed a container of chicken stock I had brought from my house to the Farquhars. Together these two ingredients would make the soup course. Finally, I spent two hours putting together an enormous chocolate mousse cake. I began by making a three-layer chocolate cake. While it was cooling I made a smooth white chocolate mousse for one layer of filling, then a dark chocolate mousse flavored with framboise for the second layer of filling. I built the tower of cake-with-fillings as carefully as any architect, then covered the whole thing with a thin layer of tempered chocolate. I packed everything up.

  It was time to visit Weezie Harrington.

  The Harringtons lived next door. In New Jersey, living next door meant if you wanted to get from here to there you walked down your sidewalk, down the sidewalk by the street, and then up your neighbors’ sidewalk. But this was Colorado, and next door meant a steep driveway down from the Farquhars’ fenced property, a slanted stretch of street, and another driveway up to the Harringtons. These were daunting without a vehicle, so I decided to trek the back way, where the security fence had a back gate set to the same code as the front. Hoisting up two heavy-duty boxes, I trudged through the back door of the garage, past the extra-thick walls of the general’s magazine, where he kept his explosives. Then I carefully circled the garden-site crater and beat a path through the long field grass between the two houses.

  I wished I knew more about birds, I thought, as gaggles of feathered creatures flitted between bushes and trees. Philip had been devoted to the local Audubon Society and had asked if I’d consider catering one of their nature-hike picnics. Would they eat chicken? I wondered.

  I sat down to rest on a rock by the gate. In a nearby cluster of aspens, warm afternoon air stirred pale green leaves the size of mussel shells. An iridescent blue-green hummingbird zoomed by overhead. Then a shriek split the calm.

  “I don’t understand—” cried a high female voice.

  I peered through a stand of evergreens. I could just see the Harringtons’ enormous deck. It was actually an elaborate cantilevered patio surrounded by a balustrade and filled with delicate white wrought-iron furniture that was all romantic curls and scrolls. The two women on the deck were not sitting down. In fact, from their voices and stances they appeared to be having an argument. I leaned closer to try to make out the words and faces.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” came one voice, high, shrill, angry. I moved off the rock and sidled up to a blue spruce. It wasn’t that I was eavesdropping or nosy, I told myself. I just didn’t want to embarrass the combatants by suddenly arriving with a box of aphrodisiacal dumplings.

  “I can’t believe you could be so crass . . . to ask if he left anything to you—”

  “Oh, calm down, for Christ’s sake!”

  I peered through the sweet-smelling branches of the prickly spruce. Elizabeth Miller had her arms folded across her narrow chest, and had turned away from Weezie Harrington.

  I had not seen Elizabeth since the accident. Why was she with Weezie? And what in the world could they be arguing about?

  “Please,” shouted Weezie. “Listen, will you? We were working on something together. He told me he would leave—”

  “You listen!” screamed Elizabeth. “He left his body to science, if that’s what you want to know.”

  There was a silence. I felt intrusive, even though I was sure they had not seen me. One of the women was crying; it was hard to tell which one. Returning to the rock, I picked up the boxes, backtracked over the damp ground through the pines and grass and back through the Farquhars’ house. By the time I made it to the front door of the Harringtons’ place I thought I would start counting the hours until I had my van back Monday morning. The voices became indistinguishable.

  The Harringtons’ house was a glass and stucco affair with a tile roof, the hybrid of Spanish colonial and French provincial that had been the rage in Aspen Meadow about fifteen years before. That is, insofar as any phenomenon in a town of thirty-five thousand people can be said to have been the rage.

  A brass coyote-head door knocker echoed klok klok klok through the quiet interior. For a moment the screeching female voices rose again. My chest felt as if it were in a hammerlock.

  Sometimes clients start drinking early on the day of a party. To relieve tension. Start the festivities early. Whatever. The problem was that this occasionally resulted in their canceling everything. Then all you got was your deposit, a whole lot of food, and anticipation of going to small-claims court, which I’d had to do from time to time. I fervently hoped that Weezie and Elizabeth had not added booze to their altercation. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the screeching stopped. I knocked again.

  No one answered. I leaned against the stucco and peered through one of the double-pane windows, a standard insulating feature in mountain homes. The glass was cloudy, as often happens when the window was getting old. It had been a while since Brian had been king of the hill in Aspen Meadow Country Club, and the people he’d sold land to hadn’t yet had the chance to build. The massive rough-hewn door, another hallmark of older club homes, swung open to
reveal Brian Harrington.

  “Sorry, Mr. Harrington,” I said, flustered and apologetic in my clumsy attempt to pull back from the window. “I’m the cate—”

  He stopped me with a wave of the hand and closed eyes. Silver chest hairs curled out of the V in his turquoise sport shirt. His shorts, a paler hue of turquoise, revealed muscular legs also covered with curly gray hair. Like everyone else in town, I had seen Brian’s elegant self strolling down Main Street in the company of bankers or a Cadillac-load of oil people from Dallas. But I had never seen that chiseled face up close. I took a deep breath. He was gorgeous, the human equivalent of a male silver-backed gorilla. If I were Weezie Harrington I’d get out the aphrodisiacs, too.

  My voice wobbled. “I’m the cate—”

  “Listen,” he interrupted, “there’s a bit of a problem out back.” He lifted the raised hand and ran it through his wiry hair, then shook his head.

  “Problem,” I echoed. With some effort I picked up a box. “Mr. Harrington,” I said with as much authority as I could muster, “I need to get started in your kitchen if you expect to have a party tonight.”

  “Oh, yes, sure,” he said absentmindedly as he opened the door all the way and I heaved the first of my boxes over the threshold. “Just follow me.” He turned away and started down a hallway. Bastard. He could have at least offered to take a box. Good looks, yes. Chivalry, no.

  The kitchen was one of those L-shaped affairs that made figuring out where to put and prepare things difficult. Again big Bri was no help. He promptly disappeared around the kitchen’s corner. Five minutes later, looking for a platter for the cake, I found him lurking by the back door that led to the patio.

  “Unbelievable,” he said. “Those women are still arguing.” He regarded me, his face pulled into puzzlement. Perhaps this was because his wife was one of those women. He shook his head and turned back to catch the sound of the again-raised voices. He closed the door abruptly and started toward me.

  “I wouldn’t mind two gals fighting over my body,” he said with a wink, “but not if I were dead.”