Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

by Sarah Graves

  And of course we hadn’t enlightened her. Lying there in that bed, she’d looked sad and defeated, and I’d disliked her two horrid children very intensely.

  And Sarabelle Muldoon, too, of course. Now I understood why Miss Halligan had felt so venomous about the murder victim’s wife; the vintage-clothing seller had gone along with it all, and even helped when push came to shove.

  But as far as I was concerned, Miss Halligan hadn’t had much of a chance against the scheming husband-killer, or against her own two criminal kids, either; not really.

  Gathering up the shawl in my two hands, I pressed my face into it, breathing in its faint lemon fragrance.

  “Yeah,” Bob said, understanding me perfectly. “Pretty sad all the way around, isn’t it?”

  I agreed, and it was the last time any of us talked about any of it for a while because the Fourth of July events were all back on schedule for the day.

  These included, but were not limited to, the codfish relay race, the downhill bed races, the pie-eating contest, the musical entertainment, the greasy-pole contest, and of course the parade full of politicians glad-handing. There were also horse-and-wagon combos, baton-twirling marchers, bagpipes and flute-tooters, ball-gowned teen beauty-pageant winners, a steel band on a flatbed truck, a busload of fiftieth-anniversary high-school reunion attendees, and every single horn-and/or-siren-equipped emergency vehicle in downeast Maine.

  So by that evening, when the sun had set and the fireworks were imminent, we were all tired, sunburned, and half-deaf from the firecrackers and cherry bombs going off all over the island.

  But we were happy, crowded together on a blanket in the bed of Wade’s pickup truck parked at the end of the fish pier. We’d even hoisted my dad up there and he looked extremely pleased with himself, surveying it all from the throne we’d built for him out of a lawn recliner and pillows.

  “Oh!” breathed Mika softly when the first sparkling explosion burst across the night sky with a concussive boom.

  Beside her, Sam smiled, not saying anything; he didn’t have to. Earlier I’d suggested that we might get her estranged parents here for a visit soon, and she’d looked hopeful.

  So we were content, and the fireworks crowd was huge, filling the whole downtown; even the health inspector who’d been in the Moose the day before was in the audience, eating fried dough and drinking what looked like a local craft beer out of a bottle.

  He’d been in town, I learned later, to say all the complaints against us had been dropped. Matt Muldoon, as it turned out, had been a well-known gadfly at the health department, and no one who worked in any of its offices had ever believed a word he’d said.

  Now I leaned against Wade as a boatload of the kids from the special-education class puttered by, their excited cries drifting faintly across the water at us.

  “Hi,” Wade said comfortably as another bright flower spread its glittering petals overhead. “How’s your ankle?”

  “Hi, yourself.” The ankle was better; somewhere in all the activity lately, in fact, I’d forgotten all about it.

  Resting my head on his shoulder, I spied Millie Marquardt and Lester Vanacore from the Tides. Morris Whitcomb grinned and waved; Ellie and George were around here somewhere, too, with their daughter, Lee, since as George said, “What good was any more money if you couldn’t be with the only people you wanted to spend it on?”

  So he’d picked his daughter up on his way home, and here they were. “Ooh,” said the crowd as another bright bomb went off. Around us in the darkness the air smelled like cotton candy, fried dough, blooming onions, boat fuel, spilled beer, salt water, and backyard barbecues, all mingled with the sweet reek of burning gunpowder.

  And of chocolate; to celebrate our success, Ellie was giving away cupcakes. There’d been a lot of those leftover cherries.

  A toddler seated nearby with his family bit into one of the cupcakes. His grin widened around it as a red chrysanthemum with fiery white petal-tips burst overhead with a loud crackle.

  Chocolate spread messily on the kid’s face. “Yum!” he said.

  Which was my feeling, too, suddenly.

  About all of it.

  Delicious.

  CHOCOLATE CHERRY CHEESECAKE

  Baking a cheesecake is a big project, but much easier if you do it in steps.

  First, the crust: use a rolling pin to crush about 3 dozen chocolate wafers between two sheets of wax paper, reducing the wafers to fine crumbs. (You need about 2 cups of crumbs.) Melt 6 tablespoons of butter, add the melted butter to the crumbs in a bowl, and mix until all the crumbs are evenly moistened. Use your fingers to press the crumbs evenly into the bottom and about 1½ inches up the sides of a buttered 9” x 3” springform pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 10 minutes, remove the crust from the oven, and set it aside.

  Now turn the oven up to 375 degrees and put a shallow pan of water on the bottom shelf. This preheats and humidifies the oven so the cake doesn’t dry out when it’s baking.

  Next, make the filling: you’ll need 32 ounces of cream cheese, 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 1 teaspoon of grated lemon zest, 4 eggs, and a cup of sour cream.

  Use a wooden spoon to cream together the cheese, sugar, and lemon zest. Beat in the vanilla, the eggs one at a time, and the sour cream. Pour the batter into the already-made crust in the springform pan and bake for about 1¾ hours at 375 degrees. (Leave the pan of water in the oven during baking.)

  Chill the baked cake overnight. Then slip a thin knife blade very carefully between the crust and the pan’s side just to loosen it. Finally open the pan’s latch and remove the side.

  For the chocolate top: Put 4 ounces of chopped bittersweet chocolate in a bowl. Heat ½ cup of cream with a tablespoon of sugar to a simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate in the bowl, stir to dissolve the chocolate, let the mixture cool until it’s the thickness you want, and pour/spread it over the top of the cake, allowing some to run down the sides.

  For the cherries: 1 cup of frozen cherries, 1 tablespoon of sugar, ¾ tablespoon of cornstarch, ½ teaspoon of vanilla, ½ teaspoon of lemon juice, and (or so) of a cup of water. Mix the cornstarch with the sugar, add the cherries and stir, add the water and vanilla, and heat the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Then quickly turn the heat down to simmer, cook until thickened (this happens fast!), and taste it. Add a little more lemon juice or sugar if you wish.

  Group some of the cherries at the center of the cake top and distribute the rest evenly. Drizzle cherry syrup artistically.

  Finally shave bittersweet chocolate curls off a chunk of the stuff and sprinkle/arrange them generously on the cake. Take a moment to congratulate yourself on your achievement, and then—

  Enjoy!