Asking for Truffle

by Dorothy St. James

  Part of me sorely wanted to stay and take Mabel’s place and experiment with flavors that could thrill people like this truffle had for me.

  “Certainly someone in your family wants to keep the shop going. If not one of you, one of Mabel’s grandchildren?”

  “The shop is a relic from the past,” Peach said in that gentle voice of hers. “You’ve seen this town. It’s coming down all around us. The best thing we can do is sell the land to a developer who has the power to breathe new life into the place.”

  “Someone like Jody?” I said.

  Peach smiled. “You talked with her?”

  “You can’t sell to her. We have an agreement with her already,” Florence snapped.

  “No, you don’t.” Bertie had remained at the open door. Her hand tightened on the knob. “Up until yesterday, Mabel had complete control over the building. And she would not sell. Not to Jody or to anyone.”

  “Because she was too sentimental to see what’s best,” Florence countered. “If we don’t tear it down, the next storm will do it for us.”

  “It’s stood for over a hundred years. I think it can last a little longer,” Althea said. “Besides, everyone knows the coastal fairies have always liked and protected your family’s shop.”

  Fairies? She couldn’t be serious.

  I laughed.

  No one else did. Instead, they stared at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  I tried to cover with a cough—a lame move that I’m sure no one bought.

  “Thank you for dropping by, Peach and Florence. You are welcome to come back tomorrow or another day to pick up your mama’s personal belongings. Now, if you’d excuse us, I’d like to have some words with the new owner,” Bertie said.

  “She’s the new owner over my dead body,” Florence said as she thundered out.

  “It was nice to meet you.” Peach took my hand in hers. “I’m sorry it had to be under such sad conditions. Hopefully we’ll see you around.”

  “I am sincerely sorry about your mother. She seemed like a . . .”

  A con woman who’d tried to trick me into coming to this town?

  A murderess who’d killed my friend?

  Or simply a nice old lady who’d treated me with kindness?

  Tears filled Peach’s pretty blue eyes as she nodded. “She was,” she said. “She was.”

  Chapter 9

  As soon as I found myself alone with Bertie and her woo-woo, crystal-loving, fairy-believing daughter in Mabel’s apartment, my entire body started to tremble with anger. Anger at the situation. Anger at them. Anger at Mabel.

  “Why in the world didn’t she give you the shop?” I demanded. My hands coiled into fists at my hips. Had someone killed Skinny because Mabel had left me her stupid shop in her stupid will?

  “I’m an old woman, Penn.” Bertie sounded so calm, so sure of herself. It only made me ache to scream even more.

  “Give me a break! You’re not that old. You must be at least twenty years younger than Mabel.”

  “Fifteen. But still, I don’t want the shop. Don’t get me wrong—I’ll gladly help until you get your feet under you. But then I’m retiring.”

  “Forget that. I don’t want it. I’m not keeping it. If not you, why not let your daughter run it?”

  “I have to take care of my crystals. I’m providing an important service to the community,” Althea said with a straight face.

  Bertie rolled her eyes. “She has her shop.”

  “And why did the three of you—or was Harley involved too—send that phony letter telling me I’d won a prize to this stupid place?”

  For a long time, neither of them said anything. Finally, Althea spoke. “Harley didn’t know anything about that.” She carefully placed her teacup down and pushed up from the chair. She crossed the room to stand shoulder to shoulder with her mother in the kitchen. “It was Miss Mabel’s idea. But I sent the letter.”

  “Your trickery got Skinny killed!” I shouted. “Don’t you understand that? My friend is dead because I asked him to come here and investigate why you sent that letter.”

  Shouting accusations—not a smart move on my part. Mother and daughter, one or both potentially killers, stood within arm’s reach of a set of lethal kitchen knives.

  In case I needed to make a run for it, I edged toward the door. “Did you kill him because you were worried he’d tell me the truth?” Though I tried to get my emotions under control, my voice kept getting louder and louder. “Did he find out you were scheming to thrust this money pit on me? Did you think I’d be grateful when I found out? Did you think I wanted this?”

  I’m not sure what I’d expected after my emotional explosion. Shouting? Denials? One of them to grab a knife? Or what my family usually gave me, the silent treatment?

  What I hadn’t expected was the hug Bertie wrapped around me like a warm blanket. “I’m sorry, child. So, so sorry,” she crooned. “Let it out. Just let it out.” She held me tightly and simply stood there in the middle of Mabel’s living room until it felt as if all my broken pieces had been pressed back together.

  I drew several unsteady breaths before pulling away. “I’m leaving in the morning,” I announced.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Bertie said. “Mabel wanted you to—”

  “I only came here to prove Skinny wasn’t a victim of a drug deal gone wrong. And I haven’t even managed to do that.”

  “Please, sit down,” Althea said. “I’ve brewed a pot of chamomile tea.”

  “Because it’s got some kind of magical powers?”

  “No, because it’s soothing. Please.” She indicated a spot on the sofa closest to the door. “You came looking for answers. Don’t run away before getting them.”

  That’s what I did best, though. Run. Hide. Forget.

  “Please.” Althea motioned to the sofa again.

  I perched on the edge of the seat and took a tentative sip of the tea she’d poured into a dainty bone-china cup.

  “You can relax. No one in this room wants to hurt you,” Althea said. “Yes, we did try to trick you into coming here by sending that letter. And I’m sorry for that.”

  “Why did Mabel pick me?”

  Bertie shook her head slowly. “Child, I honestly don’t know. But I do have something to show you.” She ambled over to an old pie cabinet in the spotless but outdated kitchen. She opened the front to reveal a stack of magazines. I recognized the issue she took from the top. It was one of those gossip magazines, the kind that warped the truth. On the cover, a pop star who’d faded into oblivion years ago smiled like she owned the world.

  My gut clenched at the sight of it, because I knew what was inside.

  “Mabel saw something in this article.” Bertie flipped open to a page near the back. “I don’t know what it was exactly that caught her eye. But she must have read it a hundred times.”

  There I was on page 213, smiling like that stupid pop star on the cover. A professional photographer had snapped the picture. He’d made me feel special, like I’d meant something. And then a slippery reporter had written the article.

  “Penn Industries’ Bastard Black Sheep Speaks,” the headline screamed. Both my grandmother and my father had been furious with me for agreeing to the interview without consulting with them first. I’d embarrassed them. My place was in the shadows, not in the magazines, Grandmother Cristobel had repeatedly told me while waving the magazine in my face.

  And though their words had hurt, what had hurt more was that I’d trusted the reporter who’d contacted me. He’d said he’d wanted to do a story about my achievements at college. And I’d believed him. I’d been about to graduate at the top of my class. An article in a major magazine would have helped me land one of those impossible-to-get jobs at a Chicago advertising firm. Wouldn’t that make my father proud?

  I’d been so eager. And so painfully naïve.

  The reporter had written a much different article than the one he’d promised. It was an article about my bastard birth and u
pbringing. Instead of focusing on my achievements, it detailed how I’d been shuttled from boarding school to boarding school, occasionally raised by my grandmother’s housekeepers in their homes; how I’d been the only member of my father’s growing family to be excluded from Penn Industries parties and events; and how I’d never even made it onto a family Christmas card portrait.

  “This article came out more than fifteen years ago,” I said, refusing to take the magazine from Bertie. “She’s held onto it that long?”

  “No, honey, she found it in her cardiologist’s waiting room last year. You know how they never change out their magazines. After she came home with it, she started this file.” Bertie returned with a manila file folder crammed with papers.

  I flipped through the pages, pages that were my life. A copy of my birth certificate—no mother listed. Lists of places I’d lived. Jobs I’d held. She even had the article I’d written dubbing my now ex-boyfriend the “Cheese King.”

  “This is creepy. She hired someone to gather this information . . . on me?”

  “She was pretty savvy on the computer. She did most of this herself. And after she’d collected this information on you, she changed her will.” Bertie handed me a chocolate truffle, as if that could make everything they did seem okay.

  I ate it. Not because I thought it would help but because, hey, it was chocolate. Excellent chocolate.

  “She learned about my sorry life and took pity on me? Is that what she was thinking? Because if she was—”

  Bertie lifted my chin. “No, baby. I’m sure she saw your strength.”

  “My strength?” I snorted a nervous sort of laugh. “There are much stronger people in the world. Why didn’t she give one of them her shop?”

  Bertie gentled her voice even more. “I think Mabel saw in you a kindred spirit. She trusted you’d do the right thing.”

  The right thing.

  “You don’t think . . . you don’t think she picked me because she thought that I might”—my mouth suddenly turned dry—“that I might be somehow related to her?”

  Bertie frowned as she sat down next to me. “If she did, she didn’t say anything to me about that.”

  I searched her face, wondering if she was lying. But why lie? Wouldn’t finding out something like that only increase the chances that I’d follow Mabel’s wishes and keep the shop?

  “Then why send me the fake prize letter? What was the purpose of that?”

  Althea was the one who answered that question. “Miss Mabel desperately wanted to meet you.”

  That made sense, I supposed. What woman, crazy or otherwise, would want to give her beloved shop to a complete stranger? Of course she’d want to meet me first.

  I took another sip of the tea. Althea had been right about the tea. It soothed my jangled nerves. I let my body sink into the sofa’s soft cushions. I then told them about both the near miss with the car right before I’d met Althea for the first time and the break-in at the motel.

  Bertie pressed her hand over her mouth in horror. “Did you tell the police?”

  I nodded. “I talked with Police Chief Byrd. He suggested I was imagining things since, other than my friend’s pesky murder, there’s absolutely no crime in Camellia Beach.”

  “That Hank Byrd doesn’t know anything about anything, and he doesn’t know the first thing about how to handle a crime as big as a murder. The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office is handling the investigation. That’s who you need to go talk to.”

  “Really?” That was good news. “I’ll call the sheriff’s office after I get settled back in Madison.” I set down the empty teacup. “I’d better get back to the motel and feed Stella. I am sorry about Mabel. I wish she had lived long enough to warn me about what she’d been planning. That way I could have politely refused her offer.”

  “You need to tell her,” Althea said to her mother as I started toward the door.

  I paused with my hand on the door handle. “Tell me what?” I reluctantly asked.

  “Mama didn’t tell you about the—”

  “About the break-in,” Bertie said a little too quickly. “Yes, I should warn you that Mabel had another file folder on you. When I went through her things today, it was missing.”

  “No, Mama, I meant about the—” Althea said.

  “She knows all she needs to know. There’s something funny going on here in Camellia Beach,” Bertie said firmly. She turned back to me. “I think it’s best for everyone if you go back to Wisconsin.”

  Chapter 10

  That night my dreams flowed from one chocolate-scented nightmare to another and another. “You can never leave,” came an eerie whisper. “You can never leave. You’ll die here.” Mabel’s ghostly arm grabbed me. And tugged. And tugged.

  I woke with a start to find I’d somehow gotten myself completely tangled up like a mummy in the motel’s scratchy sheets. Stella growled and tugged at a corner of the sheet that dangled off the bed.

  She growled and tugged again.

  “I’m coming,” I said sleepily right before my head fell back on the pillow.

  Stella ran to the door and started to bark loudly enough to wake the dead.

  “I’m coming,” I said again and actually managed to roll out of the bed. With a yawn, I looked at my phone.

  No messages.

  What I saw instead on the tiny screen hit me like a splash of icy water. The time.

  Crud.

  I’d overslept. My flight was scheduled to leave in a little over an hour. Nothing short of a miracle would get me to the airport before they closed the boarding gate.

  Skip the shower. Skip breakfast. You’ve already packed. You can do this. You’re not going to be stuck in this place for even one more day. You’re not going to die here.

  I hopped around the room as I brushed my teeth while pulling on a pair of black leggings. I tossed a thick navy wool sweater dress on over a white turtleneck. That should be warm enough for whatever crazy weather Wisconsin decided to throw at me when I landed.

  I grabbed my bag, Stella’s travel case, and my purse and was halfway out the door when Stella growled at me.

  “I haven’t forgotten about you. You can do what you need to do while we head over to the lobby. I need to order a taxi,” I said to the little dog as I snapped the leash to her pink collar.

  Her nubby little teeth clamped down on my hand hard enough to leave an angry welt.

  “I’m walking you, you ungrateful beast.”

  With my arms loaded down with bags and a leash, I stumbled out the door and into a blast of frigid air.

  What I saw shocked me. A light dusting of snow blanketed the sandy beach beyond the motel’s narrow concrete breezeway. I rubbed my eyes. I couldn’t be seeing what I was seeing. This was the South. It didn’t snow in the South.

  “It looks like you could use a hand,” a man said.

  I jumped and whirled and found myself standing face-to-face with Mabel’s surfing lawyer, Harley Dalton. He pushed up from where he’d been leaning against the wall next to my motel room’s door.

  “What are you doing here?” I unlatched Stella’s leash. She gave a happy yip and ran off to play in the sandy snow.

  Harley watched the small dog push a small pile of snow with her nose before answering. “You’d said someone was trying to hurt you.”

  I stared at him. He had a full day’s growth of stubble. His cheeks and nose were bright red. His lips were slightly blue. He stood a bit hunched, like he was trying to huddle within the full-length wool coat he was wearing. He shivered and gave his knit cap a tug until it completely covered his ears.

  “You’ve been out here all night? In the cold?”

  He shrugged. “On and off.”

  From the looks of it, I guessed “mostly on.”

  Did he seriously expect me to believe he’d guarded my door last night because I’d told him I was worried my life was in danger? Well, I didn’t believe it. Not for an instant.

  Instead, I suspected he’
d been watching my room to make sure I didn’t ask the right questions and find proof that he killed Skinny. And yet the way he was looking at me, with his green eyes flooded with concern, I kind of wanted to believe he’d spent an uncomfortable night in the cold just to protect me.

  “Are you for real?” I muttered. Oh, heck, it didn’t matter. I was leaving. I thrust my bags in his direction. “I need to get to the airport ASAP. Can you drive me there?”

  “Sorry. No can do.”

  “You have a car, don’t you?”

  “Of course I have a car.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The bridges are closed. The airport too.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s the snow,” Harley’s brother, Cal, said as he crossed the beach toward us. He looked as if the cold didn’t affect him. Sure, he was wearing his Indiana Jones leather coat. But he hadn’t even pulled up the collar against the frigid ocean wind. He shook his head with dismay when he saw the two of us and then smirked in his brother’s direction.

  “Here,” he said and handed me an insulated tumbler. “After the day you had yesterday, I thought you might need a pick-me-up this morning.”

  I took a sip and sighed with real pleasure. “Hot chocolate?”

  He flashed his perfect pearly white teeth. “I suspected you were a fan.”

  “Am I ever,” I said and took another sip. The thick, rich flavors almost made me forget all about the flight home I was about to miss. “Is this from the Chocolate Box? Did Bertie open the shop after all?”

  He jammed his hands in his khaki pockets. “Sadly, no. This is something I brewed this morning.”

  “You have talent. Serious talent.”

  “Give me a break,” Harley growled. “He opened a packet and poured in some milk. Anyone could do it.”

  “No.” I savored the thick, bitter drink in my mouth before swallowing. “No, this isn’t a mix. This was made with melted chocolate, am I right?”

  Cal nodded.

  I took another sip. “Maybe even some of Mabel’s special chocolate?”