Asking for Truffle: A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery

by Dorothy St. James

  Last night the police had sounded certain that they’d caught their man, that they’d be able to quickly close all the cases: the robbery, the murders, and the attacks on me. Now he didn’t sound certain about anything.

  “What about this?” I pointed to my leg. “Are you going to tell me you don’t think he pushed me down the stairs? That you don’t think he attacked Cal? What was he doing hiding in Mabel’s apartment if he wasn’t responsible for all this?”

  Gibbons held up his hands. “We have to follow the facts. We have to gather the evidence. He may have robbed you. And he probably did push you down the stairs. However, his sister, once we got her to calm down, provided an ironclad alibi for her brother for the night of Skinny McGee’s murder.”

  “Impossible.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “What’s this alibi?”

  “She picked him up at the island bar and drove him straight to a rehab center. We called the facility. The time he was checked in lines up with when she said she picked him up. In fact, she must have exceeded the speed limits in order to have gotten him to the facility so quickly.”

  “He was in rehab?” I asked, unable to believe it.

  “Not for long. He checked himself out a few days later.”

  Bertie nodded. “That must have been the day he showed up suddenly at the shop. Mabel enjoyed his company, but . . .”

  “But—?” Gibbons prompted.

  “But the cash register never added up at the end of the day whenever he was around. I mentioned that once to Mabel, and she refused to address it. She’d said he was still her baby and that if he needed someone to take care of him, she’d do it.”

  “She wasn’t the only one taking care of him,” I said. “He’d told Jody that he had power of attorney over Mabel’s affairs and convinced her to pay him a large down payment for this shop.”

  “Is that so?” One of Gibbons’s bushy eyebrows popped up. He started writing in his notebook.

  Encouraged by that, I continued. “I don’t know how, but he killed Skinny and poisoned his own mother. With his constant need for money, he had the most to lose with Mabel’s new will. He needed the money, so he had to make sure the land and the shop went to his family and not to some stranger from the Midwest.”

  Gibbons shrugged. “He didn’t kill your friend. I don’t know about Mabel. The two deaths might not be related at all. As I said, the cases are still open, and we’ll keep investigating. Oh, crud, look at the time. I need to get going.”

  On his way out, Bertie asked Gibbons if he was going to make it to the funeral on Wednesday afternoon. He said he’d try.

  The funeral.

  Mabel’s funeral.

  It was just one more item on a growing list of things that desperately needed to be done, and a particularly unpleasant one at that. After the chilly reception I’d received from Mabel’s children at the will reading, I dreaded the inevitable confrontation. Would they blame me for their youngest brother’s death? Would they think I had somehow besmirched his name by accusing him of murder?

  My initial thought had been to skip the funeral. But Bertie used her special brand of charm to guilt me into accompanying her to the historic church in downtown Charleston.

  With the thought of confronting Mabel’s family weighing heavy on my mind, I spent the rest of the morning down in the Chocolate Box kitchen with Bertie and Althea. The three of us used the time to experiment with various recipes.

  First, we used the bags of the leftover Halloween candy in the pantry to make chocolate-covered candy bombs that were startlingly hard to bite into.

  Next, we tried to make something with the inexpensive ingredients I’d picked up at Bunky’s Corner Pantry. We dipped nuts and figs into a milk chocolate. We could sell these to the children who came to the festival. But nothing seemed good enough for the food critics who were coming from all around the region just to taste Mabel’s gourmet chocolates.

  By lunchtime, my swollen ankle was throbbing, my concussed head felt as if a metal band was squeezing the life out of it, and my bruised ribs made breathing feel like shredded glass had found its way into my lungs.

  “Let’s take a break,” Bertie suggested as she washed her hands in the sink. “We’re out of heavy cream anyhow. We can’t make the truffles without it.”

  “And you need to eat something, Mama,” Althea added.

  Bertie nodded, but the way she jutted out her chin made me suspect she was just going through the motions in an effort to avoid a confrontation with her daughter on what was already turning into an emotionally charged day.

  “How about we run over to the grocery store to pick up more supplies, Mama? On the way, we can grab one of those freshly made crab cake sandwiches at the Dog-Eared Café that you love so much.”

  Her mother’s harsh expression seemed to soften a bit at the mention of a crab cake sandwich. “I suppose we could do that. We do need to get busy if we’re going to accomplish anything before tomorrow’s service.”

  The kitchen suddenly felt as if it were missing its heart without Mabel’s vibrant presence. She was going to be sorely missed.

  I hobbled over to settle into the nearest chair to give my throbbing ankle a break. There was so much that needed to be done for the festival, and even with Bertie’s expert assistance, the chocolates we were making were going to be a pale imitation of the adventures in flavors Mabel would have produced.

  Perhaps it was a good thing I was planning on signing everything over to Mabel’s children instead of indulging my wild fantasies of taking over the business. It would be better to close up than to create chocolates that were less than perfect.

  “Penn?” Althea had apparently been talking to me while my thoughts wandered. “Penn? Are you okay?”

  “Sorry,” I said. I leaned down and rubbed my ankle, which was a mistake. I hissed at the searing pain that shot up my leg. “What were you saying?”

  “When was the last time you took something for that?” she asked instead.

  “This morning?” I asked while I tried to remember the exact hour.

  “I reckon it’s high time you took another one. You’re turning green,” she said.

  While Althea rushed upstairs to get my prescription bottle, Bertie pulled a second chair over. Using extraordinary care, she eased my pulsating ankle onto the chair. “You need to keep it elevated, dear. Why don’t you head upstairs and rest? Let me finish making the chocolates for tomorrow.”

  “No, I couldn’t let you do that. It’s too much.”

  Bertie laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Honey, it’s you who has done too much already. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the effort you’ve put in, but Mabel wouldn’t have wanted this.” She indicated my ankle and bruised body. “She wouldn’t want to see you hurting.”

  “But—”

  “At least take a rest while Althea fusses over how much lunch I manage to eat today. Do it as a favor to me.”

  “A favor to you?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes, to me. You’ll be giving me one less thing I need to worry about.”

  She seemed so sincere I actually gave in and let her help me hobble upstairs. After downing the pain pill Althea had gotten for me, I crawled into bed and slept for a solid hour before waking with a start.

  The killer was still out there.

  I needed to call Granny Mae. She might have some new advice on what I needed to do. I started to dial her number when my cell phone rang.

  It was Tina, my half sister.

  “You didn’t call yesterday,” she said in place of a greeting.

  “With the shop and upcoming festival, I’ve been awfully busy.”

  There was a long pause on her end.

  “I called Granny Mae late last night,” she said quietly. “She told me what happened. With the stairs. The murder attempt.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. She’d caught me in a lie, and it shamed me. “I didn’t want to worry you. Honest, that’s the only reason I
didn’t tell you.”

  She fell silent again. This time it went on for so long, I wondered if she’d hung up on me.

  “Tina? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Do you really want to hear the truth about what’s going on?” I asked.

  “I do. I want to help you, Penn.”

  “You do?”

  “Truly.”

  “I don’t want you flying here. It’d just . . . complicate things, you know?”

  She sighed. “I know.”

  I didn’t intend to tell her everything. She’d worry. She’d get on a plane and fly to my rescue. And yet the words fell out of my mouth. I told her everything that had happened, everything I’d kept from her. I even told her that the reason I’d lied about the situation in Camellia Beach was because I was worried that she’d come and put herself in danger, which would only make Grandmother Cristobel hate me that much more. I ended my rushed speech, telling her how I needed to talk with Granny Mae.

  “You already know what Granny Mae is going to tell you,” she said.

  “And what is that?”

  “She’s going to tell you to read the articles she’s been sending you. Have you read them yet?”

  “Um . . . how do you know about the articles?”

  “I had a long conversation with Granny Mae yesterday, remember? She told me everything.”

  “She must have.”

  “She also told me what the Cheese King did to you. What a jerk. You aren’t really going to keep the vicious dog he gave you? Daddy is going to be livid when he finds out.”

  “You think our father will be upset when he finds out about Stella? That doesn’t make sense. Why would he care?”

  “No, silly, when he finds out about how the Cheese King is dragging your name, and our family name, through the mud up in Wisconsin. Grandmama is livid. She’s already trying to figure out how to get a message through to him even though he’s instructed everyone that there’s to be no outside contact until he’s completed his travels.”

  When I heard that, it suddenly felt like my heart had started pumping ice through my veins. Grandmother Cristobel could make life awfully hard for me. She’d done it before . . . many times. My father, who has never truly stood up to her, only compounded the trouble by agreeing with everything she did and scolding me for the trouble I brought on myself.

  “I don’t need this kind of difficulty now,” I whispered.

  “I know you don’t, Penn. But I couldn’t sit by and let you get blindsided by it either.”

  “What is the Cheese King doing?” I supposed I needed to know.

  “He’s saying you tried to seduce him. And when he rebuked you, you started a smear campaign against him and his company. He’s threatening to sue.”

  “I haven’t done anything!” I shot up in the bed, causing all sorts of aches and pains to go ballistic. Groaning, I quickly laid back down. “I haven’t done anything,” I repeated in a tight whisper once the blinding pain receded.

  “Of course you haven’t done anything, silly bean,” she said, using her childhood nickname for me. “I know that.”

  “I wish the rest of the family did.”

  “Yeah, me too. They never act much like a family to you. It makes me want to scream sometimes.”

  “What did you say just now?” I asked.

  “That I wanted to scream. Look, I—”

  “No, that other part, the part about family.”

  “What? That our family never acts like a family when it comes to you? Well, it’s true. Instead of supporting you, they like to jump to the worst kinds of conclusions, like thinking you’d actually try to seduce someone who refers to himself as a ‘Cheese King.’ I mean, come on. That’s not how a family is supposed to act. And that’s not how they act toward the other members of the family, except for the exes. But that’s an entirely different set of problems, isn’t it?”

  She kept rambling like that for several more minutes while my mind raced.

  Family. That had been a vital clue I’d been ignoring. Well, not really ignoring; it was something I didn’t really understand. Most of my family treated me like I was something gross that needed to be scrubbed from the bottom of their shoes.

  But not all families acted like that. Althea and Bertie supported each other, even when they didn’t agree with each other. They took the time to see the best in the other instead of finding ways to tear each other down. Camellia Beach worked like one large family too, protecting their own while shunning outsiders who might disrupt their quaint and comfortable way of life.

  So if I was going to find the killer, I needed to start looking where families weren’t working. The most obvious dysfunctional family was Mabel’s own children. She had pushed them to take over the shop. And all her children had rebelled against her. Some, like Derek, had even conspired against her by trying to sell the shop out from under her to support his lust for money.

  Then there were Harley and Jody and their extremely broken relationship. Their lives had devolved into a battlefield. But I had a strong feeling that wasn’t the clue I was searching for.

  What other examples of dysfunction existed in Camellia?

  “Penn? Are you even listening to me?” Tina shouted in my ear.

  I jumped. “Um . . .”

  “I’m trying to help you here.”

  “I know, I know. And I’m grateful. You have helped me. Tremendously. In fact, I think you solved it.”

  “Solved what?” She sounded surprised.

  “The murder.”

  “What? How?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. I need to think about it. And I need to read those articles Granny Mae sent me. I need to see if they provide any supporting evidence for what I’m thinking right now.”

  “What? What are you thinking about?”

  “The murders, of course. What you said about family is spot on. Families see the best in each other and support each other, except when they don’t. Some families, like ours, are broken. That’s where I need to look. I need to look more closely at the broken families in town.”

  “I have no idea what that means. But if I helped you, I’m glad.”

  “You did help me.”

  “Once you figure out what’s going on there, you’re going to have to deal with the troubles brewing up here. Grandmama will insist on it.”

  I groaned. The sound seemed to satisfy her. She didn’t mention the Cheese King again. Instead, she said, “Penn, be careful. You know I love you, silly bean.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. She’d never said that to me before. No one in my family had ever said that to me.

  Hearing it now must have knocked loose a chunk of that thick wall I’d built up around my heart, because I quickly returned the phone to my ear and said, “Thanks, Tina. I love you too.”

  Chapter 28

  Since Bertie and Althea still hadn’t returned from their shopping excursion, I found myself with a few spare hours before I needed to get back to work in the shop. I took Tina’s advice and finally started reading the articles Granny Mae had sent.

  They covered a wide range of topics. Many were about Camellia Beach, and some others were about the chocolate industry in general. There were even articles on training difficult dogs and dozens of chocolate recipes.

  I propped my aching foot up on the sofa and shifted this way and that until I found a comfortable spot where I’d be able to scan through the articles. As I read them, one stood out in particular. The article described a murder. Not Skinny’s murder; it wasn’t even a murder that had taken place on this continent. But after reading it through twice, the suspicion that started with Tina’s phone call seemed to lock into place.

  I had a feeling that I was finally getting far enough away from the small pieces of information so that I could see the big picture that had eluded me for so long.

  The article described a reporter investigating working conditions on a chocolate plantation in
West Africa. The reporter had been stabbed to death with the same hooked knife workers used to harvest cacao beans from the trees. The holding company for the plantation in question had been accused in the past of using child slave labor to harvest and process the beans. The company had put out several statements about how they were now enforcing fair labor practices and banning the use of young children on their plantations. They had even included photos of happy workers. However, repeated requests to visit the plantation by news agencies had been denied, which was why the investigative reporter had gone undercover and, posing as a delivery driver, had gotten himself onto the plantation.

  The last line in the article read, “Although the death has never been solved, it should be pointed out that the chocolate industry is a billion-dollar industry. With stakes this high, companies have shown time and again how they will fervently protect both their reputation and their bottom line.”

  The main similarity between the murder in West Africa and the murders in Camellia Beach was that they were all committed because of greed. Pure, ugly greed.

  Tina’s mention of families supporting each other tickled in the back of my mind. Families that worked held each other up. They were so different from families like mine. Case in point: Grandmother Cristobel believed the Cheese King’s slander against me without bothering to ask for my side of the story. The woman would probably literally throw me under a bus if it made the family look good. And because of it, that’s the kind of behavior I expected in all families.

  Had Tina actually said she loved me?

  Had I dreamed that?

  Thanks to Tina, I now had a really good idea about who had killed both Skinny and Mabel. And why. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any evidence I could take to Detective Gibbons.

  The most I had was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I would get whenever I trusted the wrong person. Well, come to think of it, I had trusted the wrong person.

  I sat back and tapped my chin.

  “What’s the matter?” Bertie asked as she trudged into the kitchen with Althea following closely behind. Shopping bags, stuffed to the brims, were balanced precariously in both their arms.