by Sarah Graves
Then the guy must’ve noticed that the sausage was gone, because he roared out onto the porch, too, just in time to see the cat’s tail vanishing.
Or I assume that’s what must have happened, since next the guy’s face appeared at the window, and the series of expressions on it when he saw us—surprise, confusion, and an urgent desire to murder us both with his bare hands were the main ones, it looked like—would have been hilarious if I hadn’t been so distracted.
Fleeing for one’s life, as it turns out, doesn’t concentrate the mind very well at all. The guy was way too big to get through the window; as he stomped back into the house and began rattling the office doorknob—Ellie had thought to lock it, for which I resolved to be forever grateful if only I lived long enough—the only thing I could think of was to cram myself into the filing cabinet.
But since the cat was already in there, gnawing contentedly on his smoky link, I doubted I would fit.
“Psst!” It was Ellie, already halfway out the window. “Jake, what’re you waiting for?”
She had a file folder under her arm. Meanwhile, on the other side of the office door, the guy yanked out kitchen drawers, loudly scattering silverware and utensils in search of—
“Ha!” he barked triumphantly, and then something jingled. A key ring . . .
Oh, damn it all to hell, anyway. I hurled myself at the window as the guy tried keys, one after another, snarling and cursing. The window opening was just barely bigger than my own posterior—that pie of Bella’s really was very delicious, and so were all the many other wonderful things she cooked—but I was extremely motivated, and I’d made it almost halfway out when my pant leg snagged on something.
Swatting my flailing arms away, Ellie reached in and grabbed my belt, and hauled hard on it; a ripping sound came from behind me and then I tumbled out, hitting the porch deck with a thud.
A double thud, actually: one for the heel of each hand, which was where I landed, sending sharp pain shooting up both arms. By comparison my ankle, still twinging, was suddenly a nonissue.
But whatever I might’ve broken, it was nothing compared to what that guy in there had in store for me, and from the sound of it he was coming through the door behind me this very instant.
So I hotfooted it off the porch, down the asphalt driveway, and across the wet street right behind Ellie, and scrambled into the car. And through some miracle of good timing, by the time we zoomed away, the guy still hadn’t appeared out in front of the house.
“I don’t think he saw us,” said Ellie optimistically when she could speak again; it was a very narrow escape.
“What’re you talking about? When he stuck his head in that window, he looked straight at us,” I said.
The visit wasn’t a complete failure. I was pretty sure we now knew why Miss Halligan was sleeping in her shop. Some young guy—Her son, maybe? I mean, who else but a relative would just move in on an older lady like that?—had taken over her place.
He was even using her lemon cologne as an aftershave, it seemed; the light, dry fragrance, suitable for a man or woman now that I thought of it, had been coming off him in waves through the open office window just a minute ago.
On the other hand, he apparently wanted to kill us and now he knew who we were. I said as much, but Ellie was unimpressed.
“He wore glasses.” She clutched the folder she’d taken.
“What?” Out on the bay a Coast Guard boat had a scallop dragger in tow, the larger vessel bulling its way through surging waves to haul the crippled boat to safety.
“He wore thick glasses,” Ellie repeated patiently as we pulled to the curb in front of the shop.
Right, I’d glimpsed them on him last night at the hospital, and they’d been on the kitchen table just now in Miss Halligan’s kitchen.
Not on him, and if he hadn’t seen us well enough to recognize us, I could at least go home without worrying about leading him there.
Across the street a crew of men battled to wrestle down the vendors’ tents and bundle them up while gusts scattered the tent poles and ripped at the large, unwieldy canvas sections, turning them into sails.
Inside the Chocolate Moose the smell of salt air mixed with the usual lovely chocolate aromas. The powerful wind gusts were coming in around the door and windows.
But there was nothing we could do about that, so while Ellie prepped for cake decorating, I pulled on a fresh apron and got the shop opened for business. I turned on the lights and the fans, readied the cash register and the credit card reader.
“What about her?” I angled my head toward next door and Miss Halligan. “Should we ask her about him?”
Ellie slotted a Celtic harp CD into the player—her choice, don’t blame me—and music so sweet it should’ve come with a shot of insulin poured from the speakers.
“No. Not yet. And we did learn a few things,” she added as I started the coffeemaker and set sample cookies out on a plate.
She laid the manila file folder she’d been examining on the counter by the cookie plate and opened it. Inside, printouts of a dozen newspaper articles from all over New England bore headlines having to do with an arrest after a major crime wave.
I peered over her shoulder. A string of car break-ins, some burglaries, a rash of thefts, and a few brazen daylight robberies were detailed in the clippings. There were at least a couple of linked crimes from each of the northeastern states, starting as far south as Connecticut.
I looked up. “These are about him.” Several clips included mug shots of the guy we’d just seen, and who’d chased us the night before; Miss Halligan’s creepy tenant had a serious rap sheet, it seemed.
His name, the clippings all agreed, was Clark Carmody. Ellie poured coffee, dosed mine with sugar and cream.
“Read all the way down to the bottom of that one,” she said, pointing.
So I did, discovering that... “Holy smokes!”
In the kitchen the oven timer let out a piercing brrringg! I followed Ellie out to where a dozen fresh cheesecakes, now all cool enough for us to work on, sat awaiting their final trimmings.
“Okay, now,” Ellie recited to herself, “first the swirls and then the curls.”
Melted and shaved in that order for the cake tops, in other words. The piped-on chocolate ganache would come last. While she shaved more curls off a block of semisweet with the vegetable peeler, the rich, intoxicating aroma of melting chocolate wafted from the top pan of the double boiler.
We were not, of course, using the electric melting pot that Matt Muldoon had been found in—and, anyway, the police had taken it to the crime lab so we couldn’t.
I got out the ganache ingredients: more chocolate and some heavy cream. It was still too early to actually make the stuff; like the cakes themselves, it needed to be the right temperature.
So I started chopping the chocolate with a big butcher knife, holding the blade lightly about midspine between my fingertips and rocking the wooden handle in a pumping motion so the blade’s sharp edge moved rhythmically up and down.
Outside, squalls blew and subsided as the first real effects of the storm began thundering in. People scooted past our front window, gust shoved from behind and holding on to their hats.
But in here, at least, we were busy and content. I knew we were in trouble and Ellie did, too; for one thing, the state crime lab in Augusta would be open again right after the holiday ended, and checking for fingerprints on that murder weapon/pastry needle was surely right up there on their to-do list.
Still, Ellie worked serenely. “The part about him committing all those robberies and burglaries was interesting,” she said, referencing the clippings about Clark Carmody’s past crimes. “Right?”
I weighed chocolate shreds on our kitchen scale: nine ounces, which meant I’d need a cup of cream; the frosting made in batches, not all at once. “You think he’s up to his old tricks?”
Ellie shook her head; she’d popped a hairnet onto it before we began. I had, too, and it itche
d miserably, but I didn’t hate it as much as I’d have hated finding a hair in the ganache.
Or worse, having someone else find one. “No,” she replied, “there was way too much money in Marla’s cellar for him to have gotten it all from that kind of crime, wouldn’t you say?”
She was right. Thinking back, I recalled that the bills had all been hundreds; to amass that much cash around here, he’d have had to rob everyone in downeast Maine, and some of them twice.
Ellie finished drizzling thin lines of melted chocolate over the butter-colored, lightly browned tops of four cheesecakes. Next came the cherries, a ruby-red slather of fruity deliciousness, with plenty of whole cherries glistening in the mixture.
“But whatever he’s been doing, he’s sure getting paid really well,” she went on as she worked.
I’d have to try again at getting more info out of Marla, I decided. She’d insisted she didn’t know about the source of the money, but I wasn’t convinced.
Just then, “Hello?” Miss Halligan tapped on the glass of our shop’s front door, which I’d left locked on account of possible roving murderers, et cetera.
I hurried to let her in, dusting my chocolate-streaked hands on my apron and hastily pulling off my hairnet, which I have on good authority—namely a mirror—makes me look as if I am all prepped and ready to undergo my very own autopsy.
Miss Halligan, by contrast, looked as usual as if she’d just stepped from a fashion magazine: short spiky hair, big dark eyes, trim figure. She was wearing a tunic with elaborate smocking on the bodice, black leggings with leather sandals, and a medallion with an amethyst in it, hanging on a silver chain.
“Good morning,” I greeted her. I figured I probably shouldn’t ask who her roommate was. After all, she didn’t know we’d as good as broken into her house a little while ago, and it was probably just as well to keep it that way for now.
“What can we do for you this not-fine summer morning?” I went on, waving at the display case overflowing with goodies, thanks to Ellie’s industry. “Biscotti again? Or a pinwheel cookie for a late breakfast?”
She mustered a smile. “No, I . . . I heard sounds over here so I thought I’d check, is all.” Glancing around nervously, she added, “Were you here all night?”
Translation: Did we know that she had been? Or that’s how I took it, anyway. “Oh . . . no,” I replied, diligently brushing a nonexistent crumb from the counter. “We both got a solid eight hours in our very own beds.”
Wade’s wasn’t the only nose that ought to be growing this morning, and I couldn’t have been very convincing. Despite the few hours of sleep I’d managed, I was still so tired that my face must have looked as if an army had marched over it.
But Miss Halligan didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, that’s good,” she said lightly, not quite able to hide her relief.
Why does it make so much difference to her, I wondered, that we not know she’s been . . .
Well, bullied out of her own home was my guess, and despite her sharp getup and as-usual-perfect grooming, the chic little vintage-clothing maven looked so woebegone that I nearly asked her about the guy, despite my resolution not to.
But I didn’t get the chance, because just then Ellie came out of the kitchen and she wasn’t as cautious as I was about upsetting applecarts. In fact, you could say doing it was her specialty.
“Miss Halligan! Just who I wanted to talk to.” Ellie set her coffee cup on the counter with a sharp, meaningful little click.
Our shop neighbor blinked nervously as Ellie went on: “Because I was wondering about the other night when Matt Muldoon died.”
Miss Halligan took a step back. Most days she looked like the greeter in an art gallery, or a big-city specialty-bookshop owner, maybe: smart, sophisticated, and cultured in the extreme.
But at the moment she just looked scared. “Ye-s-s,” she began doubtfully, but Ellie talked right over her.
“And what I was wondering was, did you hear that thing ring?” She waved at the shop door’s bell hanging over it.
You couldn’t silence the bell—not without a stepladder. If someone came in, it rang.
“I know you’re here late most nights,” Ellie went on, “and of course I’m sure the cops have probably asked you about it, but—”
“No!” Miss Halligan blurted. “I went home early that evening. I didn’t feel well. In fact, I think I left even before you did.”
Her powdered forehead furrowed. “I didn’t hear it before I went, though, either. I wonder,” she ventured, “if possibly your shop door had blown open already, so it couldn’t ring?”
“Interesting idea,” I remarked dryly, since she’d have seen it standing open if it had been. Miss Halligan didn’t miss much.
But she took my comment for agreement, or pretended to. Drawing in a nervous breath, she let out a whinnying laugh that wasn’t like her at all.
“And can you imagine that, me going home before you?” she added, trying to make a joke of it.
“Why, yes, it is unusual,” Ellie agreed, going along with the charade. But moments later when Miss Halligan had departed, Ellie turned to me.
“She’s lying. She was here, I saw the lights on, and I heard her over there, too. I’ll bet she was in her shop all night, just like last night.”
“So why doesn’t she just say so? Unless . . . unless maybe that bell wasn’t all she heard, and she doesn’t want to say that.”
Or unless she’d killed Muldoon herself. It seemed awfully unlikely; for one thing, I couldn’t envision the tiny shopkeeper hauling his body across the kitchen and down into the cellar to hide it from Ellie, then hauling the deadweight back up again and propping it against the chocolate warmer, blocking its feet against a heavy box to help keep it there.
But half the town disliked Muldoon for one reason or another, so why shouldn’t she despise him, too? And people found strength when they really had to; I, for instance, had escaped my bad past life all those years ago.
“She could be protecting someone,” said Ellie.
She had finished chocolate-striping the cake tops and laying down the cherry glaze. Now it was time for the second-last step of the decorating operation, the chocolate shavings.
I’d made four piles of them, heaping them up on a sheet of baker’s parchment. I plucked a long curl of the shaved chocolate from one of the heaps, watched it bounce Slinky-like between my fingertips for a moment, then popped it into my mouth.
A burst of dark sweetness began on my tongue and spread rapidly all the way to my brainstem, firing off one burst of pure chocolate happiness after another.
“Mmm,” I said inadequately, because I grew up on Hershey’s, I still adore the stuff, and I’ll never apologize for it. But the chocolate that Marla Sykes made was something else again, satiny smooth and so intense, it was like a shot of . . .
Narcotics! Thinking this, I stood stock-still with that lovely dark chocolate curl still melting on my tongue, feeling as if it had just blown open about a million brain cells.
What could you smuggle out that would bring in lots of money? Drugs were the obvious answer. But I wasn’t sure where you’d be sending them from here; from what I knew, the reverse—money out, drugs in—was the way it generally worked.
Meanwhile, Ellie sprinkled chocolate curls evenly over the first cake, then mounded them at the top’s center. (The trick was to do it before the chocolate melted to your hands, but not so fast that the curls got distributed unevenly.)
“Or,” she said, angling her head at the wall between us and the Rose, “she might be afraid of someone.”
I nodded as more chocolate curls sifted from her fingertips. “Or . . . ,” I began.
But then I heard my own voice trail off; I really was tired, and it was all just so confusing, and in the next moment the shop door’s little bell rang behind me—I hadn’t locked it yet after Miss Halligan’s exit—and Ellie’s expression changed.
“Ohh,” she breathed happily.
T
urning, I had a moment to be glad I wasn’t holding one of those cheesecakes. If I had been, I’d have dropped it; as it was, I kept on trying to speak and couldn’t.
Instead I just stood there as a handsome young guy with dark hair, a lantern jaw, big long-lashed hazel eyes, and a wide grin lunged forward and wrapped his arms around me, sweeping me up into an embrace that lifted me off my feet.
“Sam,” I whispered. “Oh, Sam, I’m so glad to see you.”
Which may have been an understatement, and it’s possible that I sniffled a little, too. But I did not cry, I absolutely did not.
Finally my son put me down, as from behind him a young woman with straight black hair, dark brown eyes, and a mouth like a pink flower stepped shyly forward, and suddenly I knew the whole story.
Drawing her close with an arm around her shoulder, Sam spoke: “Mom, Ellie, this is Mika. We were married yesterday.”
Her smile was like sunshine. She held out her hand. “How do you do?” Her voice was music. “I’m very glad to meet you at last. Sam has told me so much about you.”
Something clinked faintly to the floor, but I was still too stunned to pay any attention. “Likewise,” I managed. “Not the part about telling me a lot about you, of course, but—”
Her merry laugh interrupted me. “Oh, my. Yes, we do have a lot to catch up on, don’t we?”
Ellie, who’d been watching the girl closely, now went to the cooler in the front of the shop and brought back a bottled water, which Mika accepted gratefully while Sam looked proud.
“What?” I said. They all seemed to be understanding something important and wonderful that I was still not getting. Then after a quick, assessing glance around the kitchen, Mika spoke up again.
“Mrs. Tiptree—” she began.
“Jake,” I interrupted her. “It’s Jake to my friends.”
She stopped. “Jake. I do so much wish you could’ve been there for our wedding.”
Yeah, me too, I thought, beginning to feel indignant. I mean how could he—
“We hope to make it up to you in about six months, though,” she went on, “when we present you with your first grandchild.”
