Asking for Truffle: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery

by Dorothy St. James

  Would they then look in Harley’s direction? Maybe.

  While Cal unlocked the shop’s front door, my gaze roamed around its interior. Long shadows seemed to reach across the space and seep into the corners, hiding secrets. The air felt still, as if the building was holding its breath in anticipation of some disaster. Perhaps it already knew I was the disaster.

  What did I know about making chocolates? Although I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of Mabel’s classes, I’d barely managed to make anything edible this past week. And that was with Mabel’s close supervision.

  With a shiver, I started turning on the overhead lights. Wait a minute. Where had all the chocolates gone? Someone had emptied out the display cases. Would I have to start from scratch and make an entire inventory of sweets in a matter of days?

  I couldn’t do that.

  What was I thinking? I couldn’t do any of this. I couldn’t make Mabel’s magically delicious chocolates. I couldn’t find Skinny’s killer. I didn’t even know the right questions to ask. Only a fool would think she could do these things. And I wasn’t a fool.

  “Knock. Knock.” A lanky man in his midfifties poked his head through the front door. I’d seen him before but couldn’t figure out where. “I saw the lights were on,” he said.

  “Come on in, Derek,” Cal called out as if he ran the place.

  Upon hearing Derek’s name, I froze. While I may not have remembered his unremarkable face, I definitely remembered the name. Derek Maybank was Mabel’s youngest son.

  He was an unassuming sort of guy. The kind people tended to forget immediately after he left the room. He wasn’t short or tall, fat or thin. He wore expensively made, but bland, tan clothes that seemed to match his bland complexion. Even his winter overcoat was tan. His thinning hair, graying in spots, looked more tan than blond.

  As he stepped fully into the shop, Stella rushed forward and started barking. Good thing I still had my hand on her leash or she might have ripped a hole in his pricy tan pants.

  “I-I wanted to . . . um . . . to apologize . . . for yesterday,” he stammered as he closed the shop door behind him, the bell on the door tinkling a happy note. “I was in shock, you see. I never expected that she’d—” He drew a long breath. “I behaved badly. We all did.” His eyes, eyes identical to his mother’s, bore down on me. “Can you forgive me? And let us start over?”

  “I’m not keeping the shop,” I blurted out. Yep, that’s me: always cool under pressure.

  He seemed taken aback by my abrupt pronouncement. He held up his hands much like Izzy had back at the café after I’d warned her that Stella bites. “I’d heard you’d decided to go back home. Where are you from again?”

  Now it was my turn to stumble. Where was I from? As a child, I’d been shuttled from place to place, from boarding school to boarding school. Where was my home? Was Granny Mae’s tiny house my home? I’d only moved there temporarily when I took the job for the Cheese King. And I didn’t even have that job anymore. “I’m going back to Wisconsin,” I finally said.

  “Wisconsin, eh? So people actually live there? I thought it was just one of those states that had nothing but cows.” His eyes, wrinkled at the corners, had his mother’s mischievous spark in them.

  “Yep, people live there,” I said dryly. “And not just farmers. My former boss made cheese.”

  He hooted a sharp laugh. “I like you, Penn. You don’t take yourself too seriously.”

  My spine stiffened, which was my normal reaction to someone saying he liked me. I’d learned time and again that such statements weren’t compliments but traps. He hadn’t come all this way to apologize. He wanted something from me.

  “How did you get out to the island?” I demanded. “The bridges are closed.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes. Well. After yesterday’s shock, I went straight to the Low Tide for a drink and . . . er, um . . . it got late. I ended up bunking in one of the rooms at the Pelican.”

  “Don’t you remember? He was sitting at the table next to ours at the Dog-Eared this morning,” Cal added.

  I hadn’t noticed, which made me wonder what else I hadn’t noticed since coming to Camellia Beach. Despite years of watching detective shows and reading every mystery novel I could get my hands on, my sleuthing skills seemed to be about on par with my ability to cook.

  Derek rubbed the back of his neck again. “I had another reason for sticking around. After hearing how you didn’t plan to keep the shop, I knew I needed to talk with you.”

  I crossed my arms and waited to hear what he needed from me. Money? Did he think I’d sign the shop and property over to him and cut the rest of his siblings out of the inheritance?

  “Well?” I said when he hesitated.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask.” He spoke with great care. “And I know you’re not interested in keeping the shop open, but the Sweets on the Beach festival was a pet project of Mother’s. I was hoping”—he turned away from me and stared into the empty display case—“that you might consider staying and keeping the shop open. Just until the end of the festival.”

  He wanted me to keep the shop open?

  My jaw dropped.

  “It-it would mean so much to Mother if you did at least that much. I could help.”

  “Can you make the chocolates? Did Mabel teach you?” I asked.

  The look of horror he gave me almost made me giggle. It was an embarrassing habit—I giggled whenever I was on the verge of making an utterly stupid decision, like deciding to stay in Camellia Beach to run a chocolate shop.

  “Mother tried to teach me, but it didn’t take. She was such a perfectionist when it came to her chocolates. She’d slap my hand if I made even the slightest mistake. She’d make me too nervous to think. I can man the counter and the register, though. I have tons of experience with that. Mother used to make us all work here after school and every summer.”

  “It’d just be temporary,” I said.

  I looked at Cal, who shrugged.

  “I’m not keeping the shop,” I warned.

  I looked at Derek, who nodded.

  Was I really going to do this? A tiny giggle escaped.

  “I’ll need all the help I can get.”

  I needed Bertie.

  Chapter 12

  “Of course I’ll help.” Bertie’s face immediately lit up when I told her I planned to keep the Chocolate Box open. Cal and Derek both nodded in agreement.

  I’d called Bertie immediately after deciding that I’d keep the shop open just long enough for the festival. She’d promised to come right over and had rushed through the Chocolate Box’s front door so quickly, I suspected she’d come from Mabel’s apartment just upstairs.

  She bounced on the balls of her feet as she started listing what needed to be done. A few minutes into the list making, she sobered. “Are you sure you think it’s safe to stay?”

  “I’ll only keep it open temporarily. Just until after next weekend’s Sweets on the Beach festival. And I’m telling everyone who’ll listen that I’m not keeping the shop.”

  Bertie nodded thoughtfully. “If you’re not leaving right away, we need to get you out of that motel. I know!” She clapped her hands. “You can stay in Mabel’s apartment. It’s perfect since it’s right upstairs from the shop. And as long as you hold off signing over the building to her family, the apartment is yours. All this is yours.”

  I cringed at the thought of staying in a place where I felt like an interloper. But I’d been going through my savings pretty quickly on this trip. And since I didn’t have a job to go back to, I needed to economize.

  “I suppose Mabel’s apartment will work.” As a temporary arrangement, I silently added. It would only be temporary. “So what do we need to do?” I asked, looking around the shop. “Where do I begin?”

  “You open the shop,” Bertie said as if it were as easy as that. She’d peeled off her winter coat. I followed like a lost puppy as she went and hung it on a hook in the small office where I’d
put Stella.

  The little dog lifted her head and gave a little woof before snuggling back down into the warm nest I’d made for her out of a pile of tablecloths I’d found in an old maple cabinet in one of the back storage rooms.

  Bertie sniffed when she saw what I’d done. “Those are for the display tables. If you’re going to let your dog nap in them, you’ll have to have them laundered before Friday.”

  “I can do that.” I might not be overly fond of the little dog the Cheese King had given me, but I wasn’t going to punish her for my ex’s bad judgment. If I had to lock her away, she needed a comfortable spot to rest.

  Bertie nodded and then dropped a crisp white apron on over another one of her silly sweat shirts. This one had a fat orange cat sunning itself on the beach with “Camellia Beach” scrawled across the chest. She’d paired the sweat shirt with black jeans and black loafers that were designed not for looks but for comfort.

  I felt so out of place as I followed her around. She went straight to a cooler in the back of the store where she unloaded several trays of the chocolates I’d feared were missing. After putting them in the display case, she turned over the sign on the front door from “Closed” to “Open.” Finally, she powered up the ancient cash register. It sounded like a small plane taking off as it warmed up.

  “Doubt we’ll have many customers on a day like today,” Bertie said. “The wretched weather will keep most of our regulars indoors.”

  Derek cleared his throat several times. I jumped. Honestly, I’d forgotten about Mabel’s bland son. “I know how to get customers into the shop,” he said. “Mother’s done it before on cold, miserable days. She sells hot chocolate.”

  “We always sell hot chocolate,” Bertie snapped.

  “No. No, you don’t understand. I remember when I was nine or ten, it had snowed like this. She put a sign on the street, added her special chocolate to her regular recipe, and the line was out the door.”

  “You should charge at least triple if you’re going to use Miss Mabel’s special chocolates. Call it your gourmet blend,” Cal suggested. He leaned against the display counter as if he had nowhere else in the world to be. A slow smile spread across his lips as his expressive green eyes met mine. “Could make you a nice pile of money.”

  “I’m not interested in making money. I’m simply sticking around to help the town,” I argued. “Besides, I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to because this teeny storm has apparently shut down the entire state.”

  “Everyone is interested in making money,” Derek said with a chuckle.

  “Not me.” I’d seen firsthand the ugliness that went with large fortunes. “As long as I have enough to get by and have done the best job I can do, I’m happy.”

  “They say you come from money.” Derek waggled his finger as he advanced on me. “More money than even my family has. Naturally people who have money also have the luxury of denying they need it.”

  I started to tell him that I’d never had free access to my family’s money, not like my half brothers and sisters, but he didn’t give me the chance. “I also know possessing a great deal of money creates a hunger in the belly, one that cannot be sated.” His tan cheeks took on a pinkish hue. He waggled his slightly crooked finger at me again. “I know. I’ve seen the results. It’s ugly. You should be careful. You need to recognize how money can threaten you instead of pretending it doesn’t play a role in your life.”

  I stepped back. “I’m sure you’re right. Triple the price, and let’s start making hot chocolate. Bertie, do you have a recipe?”

  “You know I do. We can do hot chocolate shots as well.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said, imitating Mabel’s dramatic flair. “You’ll see.”

  Bertie produced a chalkboard sandwich board from one of the storage rooms. On a napkin, I quickly jotted down snappy ad copy that emphasized the use of Mabel’s special Amar chocolates. Cal volunteered to write it on the board. Derek volunteered to man the front counter and run the register while Bertie and I went back into the kitchen to brew the hot chocolate.

  Once in the kitchen, she handed me one of the student aprons to wear. The melangeur Mabel and I had set up two days ago to grind the beans and sugar together was still churning away. I peeked into the grinder. Surprisingly, the mixture had turned into a silky smooth liquid.

  “That’s the chocolate liquor,” Bertie said as she moved around the kitchen, pulling out pots and supplies. “It’ll need at least another several hours of conching and refining.”

  “Conching?” I asked.

  “Just a chocolatier’s fancy way of saying grinding.” She hefted a large bag of sugar onto the main counter.

  Mabel had warned me that the process of making chocolate—really good chocolate—took time. So I tried my best to forget about the churning melangeur that contained Mabel’s final batch of Amar chocolates and went to help Bertie.

  Instead of using cocoa powder, she took Mabel’s cask of special chocolate off the shelf and carefully removed three bars. As she unwrapped the silver foil from the dark-as-midnight bars, the room filled with that deep espresso scent I’d already come to crave.

  She directed me to put a large pot on the stove. In it, I heated a mixture of milk, corn starch, and dried milk to a low boil. While Bertie kept an eagle eye on my progress, correcting me whenever it looked as if I might burn the concoction, she deftly whipped up a bowl of heavy cream until it resembled summer clouds.

  “When do we add the sugar?” I asked, quite certain the sugar had slipped her mind. When I made hot chocolate, I always doubled the sugar called for in the recipe.

  “This isn’t a children’s drink,” she said as she chopped the chocolate bars into small chunks.

  “But won’t it be bitter?” I didn’t want to waste three of Mabel’s rare chocolate bars to make a bitter drink no one would buy.

  I could tell Bertie was getting irritated with me. She drew a long, slow breath. “Let’s make it my way. If you don’t like how it tastes, we can always ruin—I mean fix it with your sugar idea.”

  Once the milk had started a slow, roiling boil, she turned down the heat and added the chocolate chunks. With a quick, skilled hand, she whisked the concoction until it became a thick, deep-reddish-brown liquid. The rich aroma released from the melting chocolate made my head spin.

  She took a white demitasse cup from a shelf and ladled a shot of the thick drink into it. “Taste it.”

  I took a tiny sip. Though it had the explosion of flavors that left me picturing the wildness of the Amazon forest, it wasn’t right. “This isn’t hot chocolate. It’s hot syrup.”

  Bertie took another deep breath. “We’ll sell these as the chocolate shots.”

  She took another large pot and started heating more milk. Once it was boiling, she added half the thick chocolate syrup to the milk and whisked until it was a frothy light-chocolate color. She then grabbed a larger mug from the shelf and poured.

  I hesitated before taking a tentative sip. I had a feeling that if I didn’t like it, Bertie and I would have a real problem on our hands. I swirled the drink in my mouth, letting the milk chocolaty flavors touch every taste bud. “It tastes like Easter.”

  “Is that a good thing?” she asked somewhat tersely.

  “It’s a very good thing.”

  A wide smile spread across her face. “Are you sure you don’t want me to add sugar?”

  “Don’t you dare!”

  * * *

  Derek hadn’t been exaggerating. By the time we emerged from the kitchen with the two large pots of hot chocolate and steaming chocolate shots, the line for the pricy specialty drinks snaked through the café area and was on the verge of spilling out the door. I have to admit, my heart skipped several beats at the sight of all those people and at the thought of how many hot chocolates we were looking to sell on that chilly Saturday morning.

  Residents and business owners who’d come to purchase hot chocolate
stayed to shake my hand, thanking me for keeping the Chocolate Box open.

  “It’s only temporary,” became my refrain. “I’m not keeping the shop.”

  “You’ll change your mind.” The towering Bubba Crowley, president of Camellia Beach’s business association, thrust out his meaty hand and grabbed mine to shake it with the enthusiasm Stella uses when she shakes her rubber ducky. “You’ll stay. Everyone who spends any time on our little spit of sand falls in love with the place. How could they not? It’s paradise. Just you wait and see. You’ll fall in love too.”

  I seriously doubted that. But I smiled, nodded, and managed to get my hand back.

  The only person who didn’t appear thrilled at the prospect of my opening the shop was Jody. She sipped her hot chocolate and scowled as if it had left a bad taste in her mouth. Concerned, I crossed the room to her.

  “Is everything okay with your drink?” I asked. The first lesson I learned in marketing was the importance of customer service. You could have the best campaign and a top-notch product, but subpar customer service would run off the buying public every time.

  She took another sip and kept on scowling. “It’s all right, I guess,” she said with a shrug before abandoning the mug on the nearest café table. That scowl didn’t ease one bit when she turned and started to walk away.

  Was she upset—as the long-term residents at the Pink Pelican Inn had predicted—that someone other than a family member had inherited Mabel’s shop? Well, if that was what had her in a snit, I knew a simple way of fixing that. “I’m not keeping the shop,” I told her.

  She stopped. Her shoulders tensed. “Then why did you open it? Why are you running it? The newspaper—”

  “The newspaper doesn’t know anything,” I said, even though I still hadn’t had a chance to read what they’d written. I was sure Granny Mae had already e-mailed me a copy. Oh, dear, I needed to try to catch up on reading the mountain of articles she’d already sent.