by Valley Sams
Louis’ voice changed, the way it always did when he was working - when he was on a case. Staring down at Benson’s mouth as chocolate tinted foam began to froth up and roll down his cheek like a science fair volcano, Mac had no doubt that that’s what this was turning out to be.
“I’m sending help right now. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It took less than five minutes for the paramedics to show up, ten minutes for them to pronounce Bevacqua dead and twenty for the detectives and poison control to pack up every single edible object in the hall.
Of course the first spot they scoured was Brie’s booth. She stood trembling beside Mac as Louis systematically and with great care bagged the remainders of her sample. When she saw him, Brie had the overwhelming urge to run to him for comfort like the old friend he was. She didn’t however. There was something about the set of his jaw and the tidy machinations of his team that lead her to believe that would be a huge mistake.
Instead, all she could do was hold Mac’s hand in hers and try to shut out the sound of the Food Channel’s favorite celebrity weeping like a distraught widow.
As soon as they pulled the sheet over Benson’s head, Brenda burst into an epic crying fit. She threw herself into Samuel’s arms, but it could’ve been any man who was near. The couple beside Brie’s booth had wisely moved away.
Samuel held her, his posture even stiffer than usual as rivers of mascara ran down her face, pooling with her powder and staining his jacket. Every time an emergency response team member came near, she raised her voice to get their attention. It didn’t matter if it was a paramedic or the most inexperienced member of the team…she was sure to turn the splatter painting that was her face to them and wail.
“It ain’t natural!” she sobbed. “It wasn’t his time. Someone did this. Someone is to blame.” When Louis finally passed her, his gloved hands holding Brie’s half eaten chocolate in an evidence bag, she reached out and grabbed him.
“You check what’s in that bag you got there, boy. This is murder.” The dramatic import of the word seemed to deeply affect her and she burst into a renewed howl. The word obviously didn’t have the same effect on the detective. He raised his dark brows and waited patiently for her to finish.
“Can you take her out of here, please?” he said calmly, motioning to Samuel to pry her off of him. “We’ll contact you later, but this…” He made a dismissive gesture at the heavily bleached head that was now nestled almost in his armpit.
“This isn’t helping at all. Thank you.”
Samuel turned a bright red, obviously embarrassed for his colleague. He mumbled a few apologies and managed, with a tiny struggle, to untangle Brenda from Louis’ lean frame.
For the first time, Mac heard Brie let out what sounded like a muffled sob.
“Oh my god. She said murder. She said murder and Louis has my chocolate. You don’t think that…”
Mac shook her head vehemently. “No, absolutely not. You didn’t do a thing. They’ll see that soon enough…” However, her voice sounded hollow in her own ears. Particularly when Louis finally focused his attention on them. He had handed the half eaten chocolate off to an efficient looking woman in a black windbreaker and jeans. She was gone as quickly as she appeared and now he was striding toward them.
The girls held their breath as he approached. His eyes were dark, his jaw set in that way it got every time they found themselves in situations like this…which was often. Too often. Brie had barely half a year between dead bodies…surely they earned a vacation by now.
When he was near enough to the girls, he softened. He squeezed Brie’s arm and his voice was the soft tenor they had gotten used to over nights of binge watching television shows and pub trivia.
“How are you doing?” he asked. Brie’s eyes welled up and she found herself fighting a sizable lump in her throat.
“I don’t know what happened, Louis, I really don’t. One minute he was being really nasty and the next he was unconscious. He’d been drinking before…do they think it was that?”
“We won’t know until later.” Louis watched as a tear slid down Brie’s flushed cheeks. “We’ve got a lot of interviewing to do and a lot of tests to run. Look, why don’t you head outside and get some fresh air. I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”
“Do you want me to take you?” Mac asked, her hand still clasped in Brie’s.
“Actually, we’re going to start the interview process with you.” Louis turned to Mac. His eyes were unreadable, shielded almost. He was still in there somewhere, wasn’t he? Despite herself, Mac felt a surge of nerves in her belly.
“I’ll get one of the officers to be sure she’s ok.”
Mac waited for her stomach to settle, but it didn’t. The fluttering in the depth of her belly only increased as she followed the lead detective (her boyfriend, right?) out of the hall and toward the Crime Scene Unit Van that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.
****
Mac had never been interviewed at a crime scene by someone she loved before. She had given up denying the fact that she loved the intense man in front of her. The man who was at the moment, looking like he had never even met her before, let alone posed for selfies with the dog he had given her for protection. That man was gone. Instead, she was pinned like a bug on a board by his grim frown and the way he and his fellow officer scribbled in their books every time she spoke.
It was just a statement. Isn’t that what he told her? All she wanted to do was reach up and shake those broad shoulders of his. Shake him back into her Louis again. Apparently the head of the Mackenzie Bay police department was a man she would never want to cross…
“So you said you saw him drinking earlier?” Louis asked, for what must have been the third time since the interview began. Mac nodded, squinting in the light off the water.
“Before the judging began, Brie and I saw him with a beer in his hand. He looked very drunk and had trouble walking. He needed someone to help him.”
“Do you know of anyone besides yourself of Sabrina who might have had access to the chocolates before you brought them to the hall?”
“No one. I watched her make and pack them herself. Why? She’s not a suspect is she?”
Louis didn’t look up from his pad, but his brow furrowed deeper. Mac didn’t think that was possible.
“Everyone is a suspect at this point.” The sheriff to his right said. His name was Mike and he had an intricate H scale hobby train in his basement. Of course, like Louis, that Mike seemed to be in hiding too.
Mac found herself getting frustrated. Of course Brie didn’t do anything. Who dies by chocolate anyway?
“Maybe he had an allergy to one of the ingredients? Something he didn’t know about?”
Mac was about to continue when the same young woman Louis had given the bag with Brie’s chocolate in it came out of the Crime Scene Van and walked toward them. Throughout the interview, Mac had had a perfect view of what she now knew was the poison control team, hunched over a half-eaten Halloween kitty.
It looked as if they had what they wanted.
The woman’s face was very serious but somehow triumphant as she touched Louis’ elbow for his attention. Louis didn’t look up from his notes.
“What have you got?” he asked.
The woman looked nervously at Mac and cleared her throat. At least she wasn’t the only one who the detective intimidated.
“We have some preliminary test results on the chocolate.” she said, clearing her throat. “We won’t know the cause of death definitively until the corner gets back to us, but we ran some quick test strips with what we have on the van.”
“Yes, obviously, and?”
She passed the tablet computer to Louis. He scanned the information, his face seemingly frozen.
“You’re absolutely certain?” he asked. He handed it back to her, avoiding Mac.
Why? Why wouldn’t he look at her?
Mac had to bite her
tongue to stop herself from yelling. What is it? Louis! What is it!! Instead, she managed to catch a glimpse of the screen as the officer dropped it to her side.
What she saw in that brief second made her heart constrict in her chest.
She had taken enough chemistry to understand perfectly what the results were.
Even with a quick glance it was clear.
Cyanide. There was cyanide in Sabrina’s chocolates.
CHAPTER SIX
Brenda had been pacing behind Louis the entire time he was interviewing Brie. She was fidgety; any remnants of the highly polished exterior she had displayed earlier were completely gone. Rather, she had the wild eyes of a very disturbed and very unstable woman. Even her perfect French roll had come undone and strands of her blond hair hung in front of her eyes, swishing like windshield wipers as she paced.
Sabrina had been trying to ignore her but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Come to think of it, trying to focus on anything was becoming a challenge. The man in front of her was almost unrecognizable in his sternness and efficiency. She found herself searching Louis’ eyes for some sort of spark of recognition but there wasn’t any. He was still kind and well-mannered – she couldn’t imagine him not being so. But it was as if a shield had fallen over his eyes, making the man her best friend loved a complete stranger to her.
“Can you go over with me again the events leading up to Mr. Bevacqua’s collapse at your booth?” Louis asked. His arms were crossed over his chest, wrinkling his tie. Brie had never seen him in a tie. She’d seen plenty of police officers in her time, however. She didn’t even think Mac was aware of how many times over the years she had been taken aside and questioned in the exact same manner. She was somewhat of an expert at these things. Still, this time there was an ache in her chest that told her this might be a bit more difficult to claw her way out of than petty theft or fraud. Not that she had ever done any of those things…
“We got to the shop around seven this morning and started packing everything up in the VW.”
“Did anyone else handle the chocolates besides yourself?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Is there a possibility that someone could have had access to them overnight when the shop was closed?”
Brie scoffed to herself.
“How? We lock that place up every night. Remember that security system you kept pushing Mac to buy? You wanted to pay for half? Remember that one?”
Brenda was circling closer, like an owl waiting to swoop in and pluck her off the ground in its talons.
“You set the alarm that night, then?” he asked.
Brie sighed. With the bright afternoon light and the efficient bustle around her, she was becoming quite weary of the whole scene.
“I didn’t do this, Louis.” she said. “Why would I do this? I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a murderer.”
Brenda, finally unable to control herself, soared in between them. She poked her red-tipped talon in Brie’s face. Her eyes were bright with rage.
“Of course you’re a murderer. You don’t think we didn’t hear the things you were saying about him before…” Her voice became thick with tears. “You couldn’t keep your mouth shut even when he was being introduced. You insulted him to his damn face!” This close, Brie could practically make out the injection points for her Botox. “You called him a monster and then he died.”
She turned her saliva-speckled tirade on Louis
“What more do you people need? He ate her chocolate and then he died. Small town, hick police force…wouldn’t know a murderer if they walked into your office and asked to be locked up.”
Louis’ jaw began to jut out. He’d had enough.
“Look, Miss….”
The fact that Louis didn’t know her last name seemed to stoke her fury further. She leaned forward and grabbed that awkward looking tie of his, doing her best to pull all six feet something of him down to her eye level.
“It was poison, you bumpkin,” she hissed. “You’re all blind if you can’t see that.”
Louis’ hand wrapped around her bony wrist. Even though his expression hadn’t changed, Brie could see in the way that Brenda winced that he wasn’t gentle about it.
“If you’d like to take a little visit to our backwoods police station, I can arrange that,” he said, quietly. “Now, I suggest you let go and calm down before I book you on assault charges. I can only imagine how pleased the media would be with that. “
Brenda stepped back, her eyes wide like a chastised child. Her glossy pillow lips were trembling and she held her wrist as if he had broken it.
“Thank you,” Louis said. “Now…” He adjusted his tie, as placid as ever. “We can’t make any arrests or for that matter, say anything for certain until we’ve gotten the results back from every test and have all the evidence before us. Until that point, I suggest you stay in town.”
“Fine.” Brenda said. She had transformed once again from injured toddler to proud, maligned southern belle. “But you can expect to hear from my lawyer.”
Louis smiled for the first time that day. Brie was stunned by how cold it was. It was humorless and hungry – she imagined that’s what a python’s smile would look like, if it had the ability.
“I’ll anxiously await her call,” he said. Then, with the same icy terseness, he faced Sabrina.
“You, I’m afraid, are going to have to come down to the station with me. We’ve got a bit more chatting to do before we can get to the bottom of this.”
Again, this was not the first time Brie had heard that. There was a time when she spent more time in police stations than at doctor’s offices or grocery stores. She could think of worse ways to spend the day. Still…that part of her that wasn’t tough, that wasn’t the proud owner of an impressive, if mild criminal record…that part could see quite plainly that the odds were definitely NOT stacked in her favor. Not this time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Louis had just shut the back door of the cruiser on Sabrina and was turning to swing his long legs into the driver’s seat when he heard a familiar voice calling out his name.
Despite being fully immersed in work mode, his heart jumped in his chest at the sound. He was well trained. He was becoming a Pavlovian dog to her considerable charms.
He turned back to see Mac maneuvering through the still dense crowd. She looked stricken, her face as white as that horrible TV chef’s too tight dress. He rubbed his beard, exhaustedly. Wasn’t there a reasonable level of drama that a single day could hold? Of course there wasn’t. He of all people should know that.
Mac rushed up to him, breathless.
“You’re taking her!” she yelled. “Why are you taking her in??” Louis had been through enough with Mac to know that she had more emotional fortitude that most of the officers on his staff. However, when it came to Sabrina, that was a different story. Mac pressed her hand against the back window where Brie looked up through the glass at her. She looked strangely relaxed back there, Mac thought…. She, herself, was as far from relaxed as she could get.
Despite the lack of professionalism it implied, Louis wrapped her up in his arms for a brief hug. Before he knew it, he’d cupped her little elfin face in his hands and was planting a reassuring kiss on the crown of her head. He could feel her hitch a bit in his arms, no doubt trying to control the same wave of emotion that threatened to wash over him as well.
“O.K..” she said, turning her face up to him. “I’m sorry. I know why you’re taking her in. I know you have to.” The Louis who looked down at her was finally hers again, his brown eyes filled with sympathy.
“We won’t keep her long. We just need to ask her a few more questions. You should head back to the shop.”
Mac rolled her eyes.
“Yes…the break in. I forgot.” She went to pull away from him but he held her tight, his palms warm against her wind buffeted cheeks.
“Mac,” he said. “Try not to worry. We’ll figure this out. I won’t let any
thing happen to her. I promise.”
********
Mac was straining to get a look at the shop over the wide steering wheel of their van. A voice in her head was pleading, please, please, please, please don’t let it be our shop. The last thing they needed was further attention drawn to themselves to complicate what already seemed like a perfectly tangled web. The sun was reflecting off the windshield and she strained and grimaced, hoping against hope to see her precious vintage glass windows were still intact.
“Oh thank god…” she breathed. The windows were perfectly solid, the ‘closed’ placard Brie had hand painted hanging calmly on the front door. She slowed the van to a rattling stop outside the shop.
