Asking for Truffle

by Dorothy St. James

  “I’m impressed. It is her chocolate. She gave me some bars. It’s a recipe I picked up in Brazil.” He smiled with true pleasure. “Unlike you, bro, I appreciate the finer things in life,” he said without taking his eyes off me. It made fluffy things dance around in my belly.

  Harley grunted.

  “Can you get me to the airport?” I asked Cal. Certainly a world traveler like him wouldn’t be afraid to drive in a dusting of snow.

  “Would love to, Penn. But the bridges are closed. We can’t get off the island. And even if we could, the airport is shut down,” Cal said, repeating what Harley had already told me. Still, I had trouble believing what they were saying could be true.

  “Everything is closed because of this?” I whined. “It’s just a dusting. Not even a dusting. I can still see the ground in most areas.”

  As if to mock me, a fat snowflake floated past my nose.

  “This is the South, Penn,” Cal said with a chuckle. “Winter storms rarely happen. But when they do, everything shuts down at the first sight of the white stuff. Might as well decide to enjoy the day, because no one is going anywhere.”

  “If that’s true, how’d you get onto the island?” I asked. “I thought you lived in Charleston.”

  “Stayed in Dad’s old beach house.” He hooked his finger toward a row of newer mansions lining the ocean a block south of the motel. At the end of the impressive row sat a small shack. I guessed that was his dad’s old beach house. “With everything that happened yesterday, I decided to stay on the island last night. I’m glad I did.”

  “Things should open up by tomorrow morning,” Harley said. “I can drive you to the airport then.”

  “You mean in that black sedan of yours?” Cal asked with a raised brow.

  “You drive a black sedan?” I demanded. “The car that had tried to run me off the road was a black sedan.”

  “He does,” Cal said. “A beat-up BMW. Come on, Penn. Let me buy you breakfast. I know a place that’ll serve your dog too.”

  * * *

  I still hadn’t given up hope that I’d be able to catch a flight home today. Once the government officials who’d foolishly closed the bridges and airport looked at the sky and saw it wasn’t really snowing, they’d open everything back up again. Wouldn’t they?

  With that in mind, I left my bags with Deloris in the lobby and then went with Cal to find some breakfast. As we walked toward the small downtown, Cal looped his arm with mine and pulled me snug against his side. He was so close I could feel his body heat through his leather coat. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him invading my personal space like that. On the other hand, I’d left my coat packed in my suitcase, so I appreciated the warmth.

  Much to Stella’s delight, it seemed as if most of the residents of Camellia Beach were on Main Street, bundled up like Eskimos, as they watched the “snowstorm.” She barked and growled at everyone we passed.

  Cal led the way to a newly renovated one-story building located smack-dab in the center of the island. The concrete-block structure had been painted a bright blue. The wooden trim was an equally bright shade of green. Despite the dusting of snow topping its asphalt roof, I liked the building’s bright island colors. A small signed beside the door featured a silhouette of a howling dog. Below it in fancy script was written, “The Dog-Eared Café.”

  “It’s hard to believe this building started out life as a laundry mat,” Cal said. “A group of surfers recently got together and renovated the heck out of the place. Jody helped finance it.”

  “It looks nice.” It looked as if it belonged in the Caribbean. “If only the rest of Camellia Beach looked as cute as this. Tourists would come by the busload.”

  “That’s what Jody has been saying. It’s the stubborn residents who won’t work with her. They say they don’t want change. And yet they want more tourists. She keeps telling them that they have to make some adjustments to their so-called perfect island life if they want to attract outsiders to come and spend their money here.” He stopped on the sidewalk in front of the café and turned toward me. “It’s too bad you’re not staying. Jody could use someone else on her side.”

  I hadn’t forgotten how Jody had argued with Mabel that first time I’d met them. “She wanted Mabel to sell the shop.”

  He grunted. “Sweet as that old woman was, if you look up ‘stubborn’ in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Miss Mabel. She was more set in her ways than a live oak.”

  “I can see her attachment. Sure, her building looks like it’s about to fall over, but didn’t she say it’s over a hundred years old?”

  “And yet it doesn’t have any historical value. Not really.”

  “If Mabel had so much money, why didn’t she use some of it to fix up her beloved building? I feel tired just thinking about the amount of work it needs,” I said.

  Cal shook his head. “She was an odd bird. From what I could tell, she gave away every dollar she could get her hands on to various charity projects. You’d rarely see her in a new dress. I don’t think she even saw the disrepair of her own place. Those last years of his life, my dad did the same thing. The beach cottage was falling down around him, but all he saw was how the place looked in happier times. He resisted our efforts to make repairs or change anything.”

  “I can’t believe she didn’t see the rot on the stairs going up to her apartment or the way the building lists to one side. It needs so much work.”

  Cal agreed. “Jody could do so much for this town. She’s got this fantastic vision of what it can be. You should talk with her.”

  “Are you sure you want me to do that? She’s your brother’s ex, after all. How does Harley feel about your supporting her?” In my family, exes—and there were plenty of them—quickly found themselves persona non grata and in a position nearly as bad as mine. Their pet charities would lose support from the Penn Foundation. They’d lose any board positions they might have held in social clubs and groups. And forget about getting a coveted invitation to one of Grandmother Cristobel’s family holiday celebrations.

  “He hates it, of course,” Cal said. “Says I should be supporting him by speaking out against her crazy ideas. But her ideas aren’t crazy. Her development plans are exactly what this town needs. We could have high-rise condos and high-end shops in less than two years if Jody had some cooperation with a few key property owners. Property owners like you.”

  “Like me?” I shook my head with such vehemence Stella started barking. “No. Not me. I’m not keeping the property. You should talk with the townspeople, Cal. They should listen to you. You grew up here.”

  “I wish they would listen, but they won’t. I’m not Harley. I didn’t take over Dad’s law practice. Once you move away and make your home in some other place, even if it is just thirty minutes away in downtown Charleston, you no longer get to have a voice. I’ve become an outsider.”

  “I’m an outsider too,” I reminded him.

  He nudged me toward the café. “Yeah, but Mabel gave you the Chocolate Box. Her vote of confidence will put you on the fast-track to being accepted in Camellia.”

  We walked up the few wooden steps. “But I’m not staying.” Why didn’t anyone seem to believe me when I told them that? “I’m not keeping the shop.”

  “But you’re here now. And that’s all that matters in some people’s minds. You’ll see.” Cal pointed to the spacious covered area that spanned the front of the building. The bright-purple wooden porch looked like a newer addition. “Since you have your dog, we’ll have to eat out here. I’ll let the server know we’re taking a table.”

  Cal disappeared into the café, which by the looks of it was packed. Many of the residents on the island who were wandering around in the snow must have decided to go out for breakfast.

  Portable heaters had been set up on the café’s wide porch, creating a comfortable bubble of warmth within the space. Like the rest of the café, the porch was crowded with locals . . . and their dogs.

  Stella
took one look at the collection of pooches dining with their owners and froze. She hunched down and growled a warning to any invaders that might come her way. And she refused to move. I scooped her up as I crossed the porch to a small round table in a corner where hopefully Stella could feel safe.

  “Cute dog,” a woman said as she passed by the table. She stopped and stooped down to get a closer look.

  “She’s not exactly friendly,” I warned, questioning the wisdom of taking Stella with me to the café.

  The woman held her hands up and smiled. “I’m not usually friendly either. So I think we’ll get along,” she said to my little monster.

  Stella seemed to like her tone of voice and that the woman wasn’t reaching down to pet her. She wagged her tail.

  “You look familiar,” she said to me as she stood again. “Have we met?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m just in town for a few days. Actually, I was supposed to leave today, but then that happened.” I nodded toward the few fat flakes that were still floating around on the wind.

  “Crazy, right? It’s a freaking winter wonderland out there. I haven’t seen snow in years. Makes me wish I owned a sled.”

  I wouldn’t consider the spots of snow on the ground a wonderland or sled-worthy, but I figured if you weren’t used to seeing the white stuff, it would be exciting.

  “Are you from around here?” I asked. “Does it really never snow like this?”

  “Born and raised,” she said, her words bursting with pride. She gave her blunt cut, shoulder-length hair a flip. Her dark hair had a purple rinse. At least a dozen braided friendship bracelets hung from her wrists. Metal hoops and studs stood like tiny soldiers up and down her ears. She was dressed casually in a fluffy white wool sweater and jeans. “I’m Izzy. This is my café. Well, it’s me and two guys, but they prefer working in the kitchen. So I end up being the face of the place.”

  “I heard the owners are surfers. Do you surf?” My heart started to beat a little faster. “Competitively, I mean?”

  “I do.” Her easygoing smile widened. “Now that we’ve opened the shop, we’re limiting ourselves to competitions that aren’t more than a day’s drive from Camellia. We’re even trying to bring a competition here. Why? Are you a surfer?”

  “Me? No. But a close friend of mine was. Perhaps you knew him? Skinny McGee?”

  “Skinny?” Her tan cheeks paled a bit at the mention of his name. The smile disappeared.

  “He was my friend,” I said again. “I came here to find out what happened to him, what really happened.”

  “You were his friend?” Her shoulders dropped. “I am sorry. It’s a terrible thing that happened.”

  “He didn’t use drugs,” I said, feeling suddenly defensive.

  “Definitely didn’t,” she agreed. “He was all about the surfing.” Her pencil-thin brows flattened. “But not this trip. He’d been asking all sorts of questions. Every time I saw him, he was talking with another member of that Maybank family.”

  “He was?”

  “It was weird. He seemed to be obsessed with them, which didn’t make sense.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “You know, I’d never known him to hang with rich brats. He was like us: poor as dirt and down to earth. Looked down his nose at lazy rich kids. Especially old, lazy rich kids.”

  “Like the Maybanks?” The McGees, Skinny’s family, could buy and sell a family like the Maybanks. His surfer friends really didn’t know that?

  Even though I knew why he’d come to Camellia Beach, I asked Izzy, “Why do you think he was talking with them?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. It almost seemed like he was investigating them, you know?”

  Finally, I found someone willing to talk to me about Skinny, someone who didn’t automatically write him off as a drug user. “Can you take some time to sit down with me and answer a few questions about Skinny’s last couple of days?” I asked. “Please?”

  She looked around at the crowd on the porch. The loud rumble of conversations floated out the door from the indoor seating area.

  “I suppose the place won’t burst into flames if I sit with you for just a moment,” she said and slid into the chair next to mine.

  “He’d come to Camellia Beach to look into a strange letter I’d received from someone here. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head. “I just figured he’d followed Jody here. The two of them have a history.”

  “A history? With Jody? You don’t mean a romantic history?” For as long as I’d known Skinny, I’d never known him to date. He was the nerdy outsider in prep school. And then, well, to be honest, after that, I didn’t think about that side of him. He never expressed an interest in women—or in men, for that matter.

  “Some say he’s the one who broke up Harley and Jody’s marriage. Don’t know if that’s true or not. Skinny and Jody were together a few years before she hooked up with Harley.”

  I leaned forward. “Really? Are you saying Harley stole Jody away from Skinny?”

  She laughed. “Have you met Jody? She goes exactly where and does exactly what she wants. I’m sure she’s the one who made the decision to move on from Skinny.”

  “But then she went back to him?”

  “That’s what I heard. When he got here, he had some heated words with the Dalton boys. As you might imagine, he and Harley hated each other. At the surf contests, it sometimes seemed like they’d try to sabotage each other, like getting in the other’s way to cause a wipeout.”

  Sabotage? That didn’t sound like the Skinny I knew. But then again, everything I’d been hearing about him made me think I didn’t know my friend very well at all.

  Izzy lowered her voice and nearly whispered what she said next. “The night your friend died, Skinny and Harley had gotten into a bitter argument at the Low Tide Bar and Grill. Nearly everyone there that night heard Harley shouting, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ Not that long after, Skinny left. And, well, I suppose you already know the rest.”

  “I’m afraid I do.” Since I needed time to digest all this new information, I dug around in my purse for my card. It was an old one from when I still worked for the Cheese King. But it listed my cell number. I handed it to her. “Please give me a call if you can remember anything else that that happened that night.”

  She stood while she read the card. Her eyes grew wide. “Penn? As in Charity Penn? The new owner of the Chocolate Box? That’s where I know you from. Your picture was on the cover of this morning’s Camellia Current.”

  “It’s just Penn,” I corrected. “And I’m not keeping the shop.”

  “But you have to. Without the Chocolate Box’s involvement, our first annual Sweets on the Beach festival won’t happen. As you might have noticed, the downtown is mostly a ghost town. Even the locals go off island to shop. We need to bring people to Camellia, or none of the businesses will survive much longer. Mabel came up with the idea. She was the driving force behind its planning. It’s her signature chocolates that are supposed to get people to drive out to Camellia Beach and spend their money for the day.”

  “This is the first I’m hearing about a festival. And I’m sorry I can’t help out. As soon as the snow clears, I’m leaving.”

  “B-but,” Izzy stuttered, “you can’t. You can’t abandon us. Camellia Beach needs the Chocolate Box. We need you.”

  Chapter 11

  You can’t abandon us. Izzy’s words haunted me long after I’d left the café. It didn’t help that while I’d breakfasted with Cal, Izzy had paraded the president of the business association and various shop owners by the table to pitch the case for keeping the chocolate shop open at least until after the inaugural Sweets on the Beach festival, scheduled for the next weekend.

  Her pleadings had led me to the Chocolate Box.

  “I don’t have a key,” I said to Cal, who’d followed me to the shop. We both stood on the front porch staring at the closed sign.

  “I can get you in through the back door,�
� Cal said. With a little wiggling of the knob, the lock on the back door popped open. I stared at Cal and then the open door with surprise.

  “That must be how the murderer got into the shop the night he killed Skinny. We need to find out who else knows about the broken lock. I could use that information to create a list of suspects for my friend’s death.”

  Cal shrugged. “As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone who’s a local knows about the shop’s broken lock. Anyway, there’s not much crime out here, so people rarely worry about locking up their houses or their cars.”

  Had Chief Byrd also known about the broken lock? Was that why he hadn’t felt a need to suspect either Mabel or Bertie of murder?

  Did I still suspect them?

  No. How could either of those sweet old ladies have killed Skinny?

  It had to be someone else who knew about the faulty back door. Even though Cal thought everyone in town knew about it, I doubted that was precisely true. I needed to make a list of who really knew. And after talking with Izzy, I had a bad feeling Harley would show up at the top of that list.

  He’d threatened Skinny. Jody suspected him. And apparently his own brother harbored doubts about his innocence. Cal had, after all, been the one to point out to me that Harley drove a black sedan.

  Of course none of that automatically proved he did the deed. Anger can make us say all sorts of stupid things. I needed to make that list of suspects. And I needed to start finding clues—the kind of clues I could take to the police.

  Did that mean I’d decided to stay? Would it be safe to stay? I’d told everyone I’d met today that I wouldn’t keep the shop. As soon as Harley drew up the paperwork, I planned to sign ownership over to Mabel’s family. With that done, who would have reason to want to hurt me?

  Perhaps with Bertie’s help, I could keep the shop open just long enough to help make the Sweets on the Beach festival a success. At the same time, I could keep investigating Skinny’s murder. I’d left a message with the detective on the Charleston County police force, asking him to contact me. Hopefully I could gather enough information to convince him and the police chief to look in another direction in their investigation.