“Penn? Are you still there?” Detective Gibbons called out to me. His sharp voice startled me.
“Yes. Yes, I’m here.” I drew a deep breath. “Have you been able to follow up on the letter from the DNA company you found on Skinny’s body?”
He was quiet for a long time. “You shouldn’t know about that,” he said.
“Then you should tell Camellia Beach’s police chief not to shove confidential reports under my nose.”
Gibbons growled. “That man is a . . .”
“Yes?”
“A thorn. Do me a favor and forget you saw any of that, okay?”
“Sorry, I can’t do that. Were you able to get a copy of the letter from the genetic testing company? I tried, but they wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“Nor should they. You’re not a cop. They have to respect privacy laws.” Papers rustled on his desk. “Look, I can tell you we’ve sent a search warrant to the company. We should have a copy of what they had sent to Skinny McGee by the end of the day tomorrow.”
“So you think the information you’re going to get from the DNA company will provide you with a motive for Skinny’s murder? Is that why the rest of the letter is missing?”
“I don’t know, Penn. We are following up on several leads, including the ones you’ve provided for us.” He heaved a deep sigh. “If some of these last pieces of evidence pan out, I hope to make an arrest by the end of the week.”
“It sounds like you know who that might be.”
“I can’t discuss—”
“I know, I know. I’m just saying that it sounds as if you’re homing in on one suspect.”
“We might be. Thank you for letting me know about Derek Maybank’s money trouble. I’ll pass that information on to Chief Byrd. I’m sure he’ll want to question Mr. Maybank in connection with your recent break-in.”
I started to ask another question, but Gibbons didn’t give me the chance. “Call me if you hear anything else,” he said, his voice beating sharply against my ear. “And, Penn, stop playing detective. It’ll only get you hurt.”
* * *
Althea fell uncharacteristically silent after I told her what the county police detective had told me. Mabel’s nitroglycerin pills had been replaced with chocolate-filled placebos. But what really hit her hard was learning that the detective was also in the process of getting a copy of the DNA report they’d found on Skinny’s body.
“That’s it, then,” she said as she sank back down on the sofa. “That’s it. Everyone in town is going to know Harley is not Gavin’s father. Can you imagine what that’ll do to that sweet little boy? Not to mention that Harley will likely go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.”
I returned to the chair I’d been sitting in and finally took a sip of my now-chilled hot chocolate. “Are you sure Harley is innocent? I mean, I know you’re his friend, but you have to face facts. He has a pretty strong motive for the murder. He was trying to protect his son. He even publically threatened to kill Skinny.”
“Harley might threaten someone in the heat of anger, especially if Gavin was in danger. But hurt someone? Never. I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
“Not even to protect his son?”
Her frown deepened as she seemed to ponder that question. “What about Mabel?” she suddenly blurted out. “Why would he kill Mabel?”
“There might be two murderers running loose in your perfect little beach town.” But even as I said it, I didn’t believe it. What were the chances that two separate murderers would both use chocolate to kill their victims?
It had to be the same person.
Was it Harley?
As Althea had already pointed out, why would he kill Mabel? Unless . . . did she know about Skinny’s relationship to Gavin? It could be a motive.
And what about Derek? I’d been banking on that DNA letter being about me. With that off the table, Mabel’s son really didn’t have much of a reason to kill Skinny.
So who else was there?
Jody? She had a motive—two motives, really. If she, like many of the others in the surfing community, didn’t know about Skinny’s riches, she would resent Skinny popping in from nowhere and telling people Gavin was his son. Had he threatened to sue for custody? Such a move might have sent Jody, who needed to be the one in control, over the proverbial cliff.
She also desperately needed Mabel to sell the shop to her development company, since she needed that land in order to start construction on their expensive condos and high-end shops.
Did she have an alibi? I couldn’t remember if I’d even asked her about one. She’d been so eager to tell me what everyone else was doing at the time of Skinny’s murder that she’d completely deflected my attentions whenever they’d focused on her.
I swallowed the rest of my not-so-hot chocolate in one gulp and jumped up from my chair. Stella started running around my legs, barking. Since she hadn’t been outside for a while, I snapped the leash to her collar.
“I’m sorry to run off like this, Althea, but I just remembered something I need to do.”
“What?” She jumped up from her chair as well. “I can tell by that look in your eyes that you’ve thought of something, something important. What is it, Penn? Where are you going?”
With Stella at my side, I hurried across the room to put the hot chocolate mug in the kitchen sink and grab my purse. I swung open the door. “I have to go talk with a lawyer.”
“Which one? Harley or Edward?”
I groaned. “Probably both.”
“Penn”—Althea rushed across the room so she could cradle my hands in hers—“thank you.”
I slid my hands free. “For what?”
“For not telling that detective what I told you just now.”
I clasped my hands behind my back so she wouldn’t be tempted to grab them again. “I don’t know why you’re thanking me. He’s going to find out about it soon enough.”
“Yes, but you didn’t tell him. Which means you bought us some time to figure out what really happened that night. So thank you.”
Chapter 24
Miss Bunny shook her head. The movement made her blue beehive jiggle. “Harleston isn’t available. Won’t be available for the rest of the day.”
I could hear the low rumble of his voice coming from his adjoining office. “But he’s here. Could you at least tell him that I need to talk with him? Please? I’m willing to wait.”
To prove my determination, I planted myself on the waiting room’s Naugahyde sofa and crossed my arms over my chest. Stella, acting surprisingly tame, plopped down at my feet and wagged her tail at the older lady.
Miss Bunny’s beehive hairdo did another little dance as she had a quiet discussion with herself about what she should do about me. Her matching blue eyebrows scrunched together when she looked up and glared in my direction.
I smiled.
With a huff, she rose from her desk and tapped on Harley’s office door. She’d knocked so lightly, Stella didn’t even lift her head from where she’d laid it on her paws.
“See?” Miss Bunny whispered. “He’s too busy to talk to anyone. Even me.”
“I can wait,” I answered loudly. Miss Bunny glared again.
Inside the office, Harley’s low rumble came to a halt. After a short pause, it started up again, but only briefly before the door swung open.
Miss Bunny suddenly found herself standing nose to nose with her employer. “I tried to tell her that you’re too busy to see anyone,” she protested.
He rose up on his toes and craned to one side so he could see over Miss Bunny’s shoulder.
“Penn?” Half his face smiled, while the other half frowned as if he wasn’t sure if he was glad to see me or not. I supposed I deserved that reaction, considering how I’d been the reason Detective Gibbons had picked him up for questioning in the middle of the night. “What are you doing here?”
“I told her you didn’t have time to meet with anyone today,” Miss Bunny repeated, lou
der this time.
“It’s okay, Miss Bunny.” He stepped around his bulldog of a secretary, patting her shoulder as he did so. He stopped several feet from the sofa where I was seated, remaining well out of hitting (and biting) range. “I can spare a few minutes. Is this about the will?”
“Maybe,” I answered as I rose from the sofa. I glared back at Miss Bunny, who was still giving me a wickedly sharp stink eye. Stella jumped to her feet and started barking at him. “Can we talk in your office?”
He gave Stella a hard look before finally saying, “Of course, of course.” He stepped back, giving me plenty of space as he motioned for Stella and me to precede him into his office. “Please, have a seat,” he said as he closed the office door behind him.
I couldn’t sit down, not now that I was finally in Harley’s office, having a face-to-face conversation with him. My body hummed with energy. I felt as if I was this close, and I mean this close, to solving Skinny’s murder. I simply needed to get a few things straight in my mind. With Stella’s leash hooked around my wrist, I laced my fingers behind my back and started to pace. My pup followed along. Her long, silky fur flowed gracefully around her, making her resemble a white cloud sailing around the room.
“I just had an interesting conversation with Althea,” I said. “The two of you are close. You share almost everything with her, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve known her since grade school.”
“And you secretly dated her when she was in high school,” I added. I turned and paced in the other direction.
He dragged a hand through his already unruly hair. “She shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Her mother told me. Apparently, she knew all along that the two of you were sneaking around.”
“She did? She knew? Bertie knew? In all my born days, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to face her again.”
I nodded, which made him grimace. “That tears it. I am not going to be able to face Bertie again. I’m going to have to move. Thank you for coming here to tell me. If you’ll excuse me, I have some packing to do.”
I wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. He looked serious, but he didn’t open his office door. Instead, he went over to his desk chair. “Please, Penn, have a seat,” he said. “My mama raised me to remain standing until the lady is seated. And I have to confess, I’m operating on very few hours of sleep. If I don’t sit down right now, I am going to fall over.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, I noticed how he was listing alarmingly to the right. So I did him a kindness and sat my anxious body in the wooden guest chair directly across from his desk. As soon as I did so, he dropped into his own chair and heaved a long, exhausted sigh. “Thank you. Now tell me why you’re really here.”
Stella clearly wanted to continue pacing. She tugged on her leash and made such distressing choking sounds, I set her loose in the office.
Harley lifted his legs. He frowned as he watched my tiny beastie running around near his toes, which was silly. His well-shod toes were safe within his leather loafers. After a few tense moments, in which he watched Stella while clearly holding his breath, he shrugged and turned his attention back to me.
Stella, on the other hand, ignored both of us. She was much more interested in licking the office’s ancient carpeting.
Not sure how to broach a subject Harley had been so keen on not discussing, I decided the ripping-off-a-bandage method was the way to go. So I sat back in the chair, drew a deep breath, and said, “I know why you threatened Skinny the night of his murder.”
He gave me a patronizing look. “You mean you think you know.”
Obviously the bandage had failed to come off. So I tried again. “You didn’t want Skinny telling everyone that Gavin is actually his son. You didn’t like that he was waving a DNA report around.”
He jerked back as if I’d sucker-punched him in the nose again. “I suppose Skinny told you that. I suppose he bragged to everyone how he was going to sue for the right to raise my son.”
“Skinny said that?” A heavy weight landed in the pit of my stomach, reminding me once again that I didn’t know my friend nearly as well as I’d thought I had.
Instead of answering, he turned his head away.
“Skinny didn’t tell me anything.” The bitterness in my voice surprised me. “I convinced Althea to tell me.”
His gaze spun back toward me. “Althea? Impossible. She wouldn’t—”
“She did, because I convinced her that if justice was going to have any chance at prevailing—for both you and me—I needed to know the truth. It wasn’t easy to pry the information out of her. She’s extremely protective of you and Gavin.”
“You think Althea killed—?”
“No!” I was surprised I had never really suspected her, even though she was the one who’d sent me that phony prize letter and had helped Mabel to try to con me into taking over the Chocolate Box. “Should I suspect her?”
“No! She would never . . .” He bit his bottom lip. He shook his head as if trying to shake away the thought that his friend might have killed to protect him. “I hate how this investigation is turning everyone in this community against each other.”
“Detective Gibbons said he’ll be making an arrest soon.”
“I suppose you told him about the DNA report?”
“No, I didn’t need to.”
“I don’t see how. Althea isn’t going to tell him.”
He shook his head as I told him about that tiny scrap of paper and how the detective had issued a warrant to Hodgkin DNA to get copies of the files. “They’ll have the report by the end of the day tomorrow.”
“Thank you for letting me know. You can go now,” he said without looking in my direction. He rose from his desk chair. “And please take your little dog with you.”
He walked over to the door and pulled it open. Stella darted out and headed straight to Miss Bunny. While she sniffed the older woman’s legs, I stayed put. Harley might be done with the conversation, but I wasn’t. I’d come to get information, not give it away.
“Does Jody know?” I demanded.
He finally looked at me. “You’re not going to leave it alone, are you?” His cheeks had turned red, and his mouth had tightened into an angry line.
“No,” I said. “Not if this proves you’re innocent.”
My statement made his brows shoot up into his hairline. “Proves it to whom?”
“To me.” I held up my hands to keep him from dismissing me before I had a chance to explain. “The killer took great pains to dip Skinny into a vat of chocolate. There are many easier ways to kill a man. He could have just hit Skinny one more time over the head and finished him off, but he didn’t. He’d taken the time to heat up a huge vat of chocolate and use it as a murder weapon. Is that the action of a man passionate about protecting his son? Or does it sound more like a plan carefully executed by someone who is coldly calculating and methodical?”
Perhaps someone like Jody?
I didn’t think he’d appreciate the direction of my thoughts on who committed the murders, so I kept them to myself.
He pushed the door closed before answering me. “I don’t want it to get out that I’m not Gavin’s biological father. Especially now that Skinny is dead, I don’t want Gavin to ever wonder about his family. But I suppose it’s too late for that. When it’s entered as evidence, it’ll become a public document.”
“Does Jody know?” I asked again.
“Yes, Jody knows. I’m pretty sure she’s known all along.”
“But you didn’t?”
He didn’t answer right away. And when he did, it was explosive. “I was there when Gavin was born. I wept as I held his tiny, warm body cradled in my arms. I was there for midnight feedings, diaper changes, first steps, first days of school, and his first surf competition. Skinny wasn’t there for any of those things. I was. I don’t care what a piece of paper says. That boy is my son.”
If only all fathers felt so p
assionate about their children.
“Did Mabel know about this?” I asked quietly.
He looked taken aback by the question. “Mabel? No. Why would she know about it?”
“No reason she would,” I said with a shrug. “I just had to ask because Mabel was murdered.”
“She wasn’t murdered,” he countered. “I was there when she died. She had a heart attack. Her pills didn’t help her.”
“Someone tampered with those pills to make sure they couldn’t save her. She was murdered. And I think it was for the same reason Skinny was killed.”
“And what would that reason be?”
“Chocolate.”
Chapter 25
Chocolate?
I don’t know why I said that. Jody didn’t want the chocolate. She wanted the right to tear down the chocolate shop and build a massive housing and retail complex.
Derek didn’t want the chocolate either. If what Cal and Jody had told me about him proved to be correct, he lusted after money. Not chocolate.
I supposed if I used my imagination, I could picture Derek using his mother’s beloved chocolate to kill both Skinny and Mabel as a way of jamming the very chocolate his mother had used to alienate her own children down Mabel’s throat. A poetic punishment? I wasn’t sure Derek had that kind of imagination in him.
And yet he was one of the few people who knew when Bertie and I had closed the shop the day of the robbery. He also knew we were going to change the locks.
Althea also knew about the locks, a voice in my head reminded me. But she had no reason to kill Mabel or to rob the shop. None at all.
As far as you know, that pesky voice returned to say.
In reaction to my pronouncement that Mabel’s special chocolates were at the heart of the murders, Harley leaned on the edge of his desk and frowned at me.
Since we really didn’t have much else to talk about and the awkwardness between us crackled like static electricity in the air, I decided to leave him in peace.
“Penn,” he said as he followed me to the door. His brows furrowed with a look of true concern. “Be careful. You do realize there are only two days left.”
Asking for Truffle: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery Page 21
