“A contest I didn’t enter. You don’t seem to understand—”
“I understand you sent your surfer friend here to poke his nose around. And he brought his drug-dealing friends to town with him.”
“He didn’t use drugs!” I shouted in frustration. “Someone must have planted those drugs on him!”
The police chief took a menacing step toward me and then stopped himself. He drew a deep breath. “There is no crime in Camellia Beach. Sure, there might be a domestic disturbance now and again. And some kids from the city might think the road running along the length of the beach is a choice spot for drag racing. But there’s no serious crime out here. People aren’t robbed, scammed, or murdered. At least they weren’t until you and your friend arrived.”
“Are you saying we brought this trouble on ourselves?”
“I’m saying there’s no serious crime in our gentle beach community, and I aim to keep it that way. Do something with that noisy dog of yours already.” And with that, he spun around and marched out of the motel room, slamming the door behind him with enough force that the thin walls shook.
I suppose I should have been happy he didn’t write me a ticket for disturbing the peace.
Before the police chief had arrived, I’d been ready to pack my bags and run home, thankful I didn’t get hurt during tonight’s attempted break-in. His dismissal of my problems and of my friend’s death only made me that much more determined to find out what Skinny had found out about that phony prize letter and why it had gotten him killed.
* * *
Thanks to our harrowing night, both Stella and I ended up sleeping past nine the next morning. When I did finally start to stir in the bed, I felt awfully foolish. Had I overreacted to what I believed had been an attempted break-in? I’d probably overreacted.
I wiggled the doorknob on my way out to the beach to walk Stella. The lock did seem loose. Perhaps Chief Byrd was right. Perhaps the wind had blown the door open.
The first thing I noticed when we hit the wet sand was the subtle warmth in the air. The sun had managed to break through the heavy winter clouds. The wind had died down. The vast ocean sat nearly as still as a lake. Golden sunlight glinted off its glassy surface. For the first time since I’d arrived in Camellia Beach, the waves didn’t look like angry hands trying to reach out and drown someone.
After Stella had finished her walk and gobbled her breakfast, I tried to lock her back into the bathroom. She refused to go inside. Instead, she looked up at me with those big brown eyes of hers, eyes that were almost too big for her body, and gave her tail a little wag.
“Go on in,” I said. “I won’t be gone long.”
She didn’t budge.
I squeaked her rubber ducky and tossed it into the bathroom. She gave a little woof, but she didn’t chase it.
“You don’t want to be left alone? Is that it?” I felt silly talking to the little monster. It wasn’t as if she could understand me. But she did seem to understand that when I reached for the leash, she was coming with me. She only lightly nipped my fingers as I snapped the leash to her pink collar.
As we made our way down Main Street, she walked alongside me, barking at anyone she happened to see. I didn’t know where we were headed until I neared the Chocolate Box.
Every morning, they offered fresh coffee and chocolate croissants, my favorite breakfast combo. Mabel and Bertie also had answers. Something I dearly needed.
So many questions bounced around in my head, I didn’t quite know where to start. Yesterday, on the last day of my classes, neither Mabel nor Bertie had asked me to write a check or make an investment or even pay for the classes I’d taken.
Wouldn’t they have at least asked for payment for the cooking classes? What if they weren’t interested in my money? Then what were they up to? What had Skinny learned about them? And why would that information get him killed?
Did that information get him killed? Or was it something else? Like the letter from that DNA company?
Both Althea and that surfer, Harley, had said nearly the same thing about my friend—that he was a troublemaker who’d gotten what he’d deserved. That description sounded nothing like the somewhat shy Skinny I knew. He’d routinely go out of his way to help others, not cause trouble.
I needed to have a frank talk with Mabel and Bertie. Perhaps they could shed some light on Skinny’s last days. I also needed to know why Mabel and Bertie had sent that letter telling me I’d won a trip to the beach. What did they want from me?
I came to the Chocolate Box looking for answers, but the only thing I found was a “Closed” sign on the door. That was odd. The shop opened at nine, and it was half past ten by the time I’d arrived. I stepped off the porch and looked around for clues that might tell me why the shop was closed. The white clapboard building looked just as run down in the bright morning sunlight as it had during the deepest part of the storm. Nothing jumped out at me to explain why the shop’s interior was dark and the front door locked up tight.
Maybe I needed to talk with Althea again. She seemed to be just as involved in this scheme as her mother. My stomach growled, reminding me I still needed to find somewhere else to eat. I’d started to walk away when I heard my name.
“Ms. Penn?” a man called again as he hurried down a flight of stairs that ran along the side of the Chocolate Box’s building. The stairs led to what looked to be apartments on the second floor.
“Yes?” At first I didn’t recognize him. He’d traded his wet suit for a warm leather jacket with a crisply pressed white shirt and a conservative red-striped tie underneath.
“Harley, isn’t it?” I asked even though I not only had remembered his name but also knew from talking with Deloris—the elderly motel manager—that Harley had walked away from a position at a high-profile law firm in Atlanta and had returned to Camellia Beach to take over his father’s one-man law office.
Clearly Stella also remembered him from their first meeting on the beach and her successful toe chomping. With a happy yelp, she started a mad dash toward him. Luckily she was on a leash this time and could only get so far. She tugged at the end of the leash and growled. Her growls grew more ferocious as he approached.
“So you’re really not a Penny,” he said. Though his voice had that velvety-smooth Southern accent I could listen to all day, his green eyes were narrowed, and his handsome features had turned hard as rocks. He reached into an interior pocket in his jacket and pulled out an envelope. “Your name is Charity Penn?”
My entire body bristled at the mention of my full name. Charity. That’s what my grandmother had named me, because it was an act of charity that the Penn family had taken me in after my mother had left me on my father’s doorstep and my father had taken me to my grandmother’s house.
When I was sixteen, I’d tried to change my name, but Grandmother Cristobel had blocked my efforts. No one, but no one, goes against Cristobel Penn. Anyone who tries pays a steep price.
Or, in my mother’s case, I ended up paying the price for her having the nerve of becoming pregnant by Cristobel’s darling eldest son. Since mommy dearest had run away, I took the brunt of Cristobel’s anger.
“I suppose we should do formal introductions. I’m Harley Dalton,” he said, his expression grim. “Mabel Maybank’s attorney.”
“Her attorney?” Why was he telling me this? Was she going to sue me? Was that her game? “I don’t know what she told you—”
“She didn’t tell me much of anything. Between you and me, I told her it was a bad idea.”
“Well, tell her again.” I would have said more, but the color started draining from his tanned cheeks at such an alarming rate I worried he might faint, topple over, and land on both Stella and me. “What? What’s wrong?”
“You don’t know,” he said quietly. “No, of course you don’t. Deloris never gets up this early. And who else would have told you?”
“Of course I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Stella, as if to emphasize my
frustration, started barking and tugging at the end of her leash again. “That’s why I’m here. I came to this wreck of a town for one reason and one reason only. To get answers. My friend is dead.”
“Your friend? You mean Skinny McGee?” Harley closed his eyes and drew a long, slow breath. After all that, he uttered a rude word, which only urged Stella to bark louder.
I reached into my jacket pocket and produced a doggie bone for just this purpose. Eating muffled her barks, even when it didn’t stop them all together.
While I tossed Stella the bone, Harley apologized for his foul language. “That was unprofessional of me. I didn’t realize he was your friend. That’s why you were asking about him the other morning?” He swore again. “Despite what you might have heard, I didn’t kill him.”
Actually, I hadn’t heard that. People in this town seemed to be amazingly protective of their own. “But you know something. Are you ready to talk to me about it?”
He appeared to consider the question before shaking his head. He then held out the letter he’d been passing from one hand to the other. “She’s named you as an heir in her will.”
“What?” I took the envelope. It was identical to the one that had contained the “prize” trip. “Who named me as an heir? Mabel?”
Why was he telling me this now?
My gaze lifted from the envelope and traveled back to the “Closed” sign hanging on the front door of the Chocolate Box.
“No,” I whispered. That couldn’t be the reason. Not dear, sweet, scheming Mabel.
His color still hadn’t improved. He shook his head. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Miss Mabel passed away last night.”
“No.” I refused to believe it. She couldn’t be dead. I still had so much to learn about the special chocolate beans she used in her shop and, yes, also about why she had tried to lure me to her shop in the first place.
Maybe she’d started having second thoughts about what she and her accomplices had done to Skinny and had tried to do to me. Maybe last night’s aborted attempt to break into my motel room had been the tipping point for her. And when she’d tried to back out of whatever evil plan the town had hatched, they’d killed her.
“How was she murdered?” I demanded.
“Murdered? Mabel?” The idea knocked him back a few steps. “Are you serious?”
“Skinny didn’t use drugs. And I didn’t win a trip to take cooking lessons at some obscure chocolate shop.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about with the cooking lessons, but I do know Miss Mabel.” He briefly closed his eyes. “Knew her. She hasn’t been well for a long time. That she lasted so long . . . this . . . wasn’t unexpected.”
“Are you sure?”
“Bertie and I were both at her side the entire time.” His voice cracked as he spoke, his words halting. “She said she was ready.”
I nodded but was still unconvinced.
“And this?” I tapped the envelope.
He stared down at his leather loafers. “She was afraid you’d leave town, so she instructed me to set up the reading of the will immediately. Today. This afternoon. The old gal loved to create dramatic scenes, and even more than that, she loved an audience.”
I found it all hard to believe. Sure, he seemed upset by her death, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have something to do with it . . . that is, if she really had died.
The skin on the back of my neck prickled. My hand itched to shove the envelope back at him and run as fast and as far away from this town as possible.
The old me would have run.
But I’d stopped liking the old me—the wimp who’d believed nice people might actually exist in the world, the wimp who’d believed the Cheese King had loved her, the wimp who’d sent Skinny to his death instead of coming here herself.
“You seriously expect me to believe Mabel changed her will to include me after only knowing me for a few days?”
“No. That’s not how it happened,” he said. “She added you to her will about a month ago.”
“A month ago?” Before the phony prize letter had even been sent?
My gaze narrowed with suspicion, which brought the hard planes of Harley’s face into sharper focus. When we first met, he’d behaved as if he didn’t have a clue as to who I was, acting as if he thought Penn was short for Penny and all. And yet today, here he was, telling me Mabel had added me to her will before she even knew who I was, a will he had drawn up and was now acting as executor of.
“What kind of sick game is this? Tell me the truth, because I don’t believe a word of what you’re saying. Mabel’s not dead. She’s not dead. You just want me to believe that so I’ll let my defenses down and agree to hand over my money to you. And perhaps I’ll even convince my father to hand over his money while I’m at it. Well, I have news for you and for Mabel and whoever else is involved. I don’t have ready access to much more than the few hundred dollars in my savings account. And my father wouldn’t pay you a cent, not even if I asked him to—especially not if I asked him to.”
He touched my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ms. Penn. I understand you’re upset.”
He couldn’t begin to understand how upset I’d become in the last couple of minutes. The violent storm might have passed from Camellia Beach, but its fierce energy raged inside my chest.
“And what about Skinny?” I demanded. “He’s dead. What do you know about that?”
“All I know is Miss Mabel passed away last night, and for whatever reason—one she didn’t share with me—she wanted to include you in her will. I am sorry.” He sounded so calm, so . . . professional . . . it made me want to yell and scream and jump up and down like a lunatic.
Why wouldn’t anyone in this blasted place give me a straight answer?
In the midst of my panic, I remembered the way Mabel would wrap her arms around me. Her hugs felt like Granny Mae’s hugs. They were all about love.
Had Mabel loved me? Or at least cared for me a little bit? Even if she’d wanted to take advantage of me, did she regret it?
Dear, sweet Mabel who could work magic—well, not literal magic, but the melt-in-your-mouth and I-think-I’ve-gone-to-heaven kind of magic—in the kitchen.
Was she gone?
I’d only known her for a few days. I didn’t trust her. And yet I felt her loss like a gaping hole in my chest.
Did that letter from Hodgkin DNA have something to do with why she’d written me into her will? Was she a long-lost grandmother, the loving kind of grandmother my aching heart needed in my life every single day for the past thirty-six years?
Tears sprang to my eyes. Gad, I hardly ever cried.
I cursed under my breath and hastily wiped at those wretched damp things with the back of my hand, which only made me get embarrassing hiccupping sobs.
Harley made a low sound in his throat before gathering me into his strong arms. I immediately tensed up. Instead of letting go, he only held me tighter and whispered, “I know, I know, Penn. I’m hurting too.”
I could feel by the way his arms trembled as he embraced me that he was telling the truth. His grief ran deep.
The prickly part of me started to fight off his unwelcome consoling. I didn’t want or need his support and sympathy. What kind of jerk touches a woman just because she drips a few tears?
Another part of me, the little girl who grew up in a house where hugs were scarce and came mainly from the paid staff, longed to cling to him until all the hurt and anger in my life disappeared.
“Leave that poor girl alone, Harley. Can’t you see you’re upsetting her? Of course you can’t see that. Get out of my way.” Jody, the tall dark-haired woman I’d briefly met during my first visit to the Chocolate Box, shoved at the lawyer. Through brute force, she managed to wedge herself between Harley and me.
“Don’t start with me, Jody. I’m only doing my job,” Harley muttered. He quickly wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “The reading is at four this afternoon in my office’s confer
ence room. The information is all in the letter,” he said and then marched off down the street.
I watched him go, unsure how I felt about him. His embrace had given me an unexpected warmth that, now gone, my entire body missed.
“What a jerk,” Jody said. She pushed a linen handkerchief into my hand. “Oh, what a cute dog. What’s its name?” Without asking permission, she reached down to pet my little nipper.
“Um, careful,” I said, pulling Stella away from her outstretched hand. “Stella bites.”
“That little bitty thing? She couldn’t trouble a fly. Besides, dogs love me.” She tousled the fur on Stella’s tiny head.
Stella might be kind to flies, but she really, really hates people touching her head. With an angry snarl, she snapped like a hungry alligator at the woman’s hand.
“Uff! It bit me!” Her eyes grew nearly as wide and wild as Stella’s. With a moan, she cradled her hand against her chest. Thankfully, it wasn’t bleeding.
“Stella! No!” I scolded.
The little dog plopped her rear down and looked up at me as if she hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I am so sorry. She bites.”
“So she does.” The woman gave a nervous laugh. “Funny, I’ve never met a dog who didn’t love me. Never. There must be something wrong with it.”
Though I might complain endlessly about my little beastie, it rankled me to hear someone saying something against her. “She’s not used to her new surroundings. It makes her nervous,” I said, even though it wasn’t true. Stella would have nipped this woman’s hand no matter what.
“Well, I can understand about that. I’m sort of new around here too.” Her Southern twang had a bit more country to it than anyone I’d met so far in the beach town. “I’m Jody.”
“Penn,” I said.
“As in Penny?” she asked.
“No.” I forced my lips into some semblance of a smile. “Just Penn.”
“Well, whatever. It’s nice to meet you, Penn.” She lowered her voice. “You might have noticed there aren’t too many women our age in town. And you’ll soon see those who are our age are flakier than cornflakes and not really worth knowing.”
Asking for Truffle: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery Page 7
