In Cold Chocolate

by Dorothy St. James

  In Cold Chocolate

  A SOUTHERN CHOCOLATE SHOP MYSTERY

  Dorothy St. James

  For Avery.

  (Your kisses are sweeter than chocolate.)

  Chapter One

  I love the taste of the ocean. After an early morning swim, the salty flavor lingers on my lips for hours. And at night, especially after a steamy August day, that same salty flavor floats in the air on tiny droplets of water imprinting the memory of how the moon shined against the backdrop of a twinkling starry sky. Or how I’d ohhed and ahhed over the dinoflagellates, those single-celled, ocean-drifting plankton, caught up in the tide as they glowed fantastic colors with each crashing wave. Or the excitement of finding evidence that a sea turtle had laid her eggs on our humble coast.

  Since moving to the small island town of Camellia Beach tucked away in the Lowcountry of South Carolina seven months ago, the taste of salt in my food (especially when paired with dark chocolate), has made me feel at one with the coast and all the teeming sea life that resides just beyond my adopted small town’s shoreline.

  On what seemed like an uneventful Tuesday night in the back kitchen of my boutique chocolate shop, the Chocolate Box, I set out to develop a sea salt chocolate turtle candy that captured the flavor and wonder of the ocean and its special creatures that live there.

  Sometimes, though, sometimes that same flavor mimics the salt of tears, serving as a bitter memory of painful losses and heartfelt failures. And fear.

  As midnight approached I hung my apron on its peg. The pecans had burned. My turtles oozed out of their molds. And they tasted nothing like the majestic ocean. Hopefully tomorrow I’d have better success.

  I exited the shop through the back door, locking it behind me as I stepped onto the building’s back patio. A few feet away the land faded into the grassy marsh. The summer wind playing in the tall cordgrass made soft swish-swish sounds. The night hung like a bar of unsweetened chocolate over the river. In a few hours the moon would rise. But, for now, the darkness made the world seem wider, emptier.

  Despite the disappointing mess I’d made in the kitchen (I was used to those) and despite the gloom outside, I smiled as I breathed in the salty air that made the island smell almost sugary sweet. This tiny piece of paradise was my home. I still couldn’t believe my good luck in finding it.

  That silly smile was still plastered on my face as I moved toward the exterior back stairs that led up to the building’s two second-story apartments. I didn’t see the movement in the shadows until it was too late.

  A dark figure jumped out in front of me.

  Startled, I swung my fist. The person ducked. I swung again. The shadowy person, who must have been some kind of master ninja, ducked again. Suddenly, fear beat like a drum in my throat. I screamed and clutched my chest as if I’d suffered a fatal heart attack and screamed again. You’d better believe I screamed.

  My assailant started laughing. It wasn’t a happy sound. But then again her laughs never sounded happy.

  “Jody Dalton, what are you doing? You scared me half to death,” I managed to say even though my heart was beating faster than a marathon runner’s at the end of a race. “If you’re here to see Harley, he’s not home. He’s attending some kind of lawyers’ conference in Columbia.”

  Harley Dalton lived in the apartment next to mine. He also had once served as my grandmother’s lawyer and now looked after my legal interests. I considered him a friend and felt rather protective of him, especially when it came to Jody, his ex-wife. She’d come by from time to time to cause him grief.

  I fisted my hands on my hips and stood my ground. Jody was a tall woman, taller than most men. I was as well, which meant we glared at each other on an equal plane. She wore her hair in a no-nonsense pixie cut. I did too. Her hair was silky black while mine was blonde and awfully frizzy in all of this humidity. She looked me up and down, lingering on my frizz, before she also put her hands on her hips.

  “You were just bursting to tell me that Harley’s away, weren’t you?” she snapped. Her snippy tone reminded me of my little papillon dog who nipped and snapped at pretty much anything that moved. “Were you hoping I’d be crushed to learn you knew something about that no-good ex of mine that I didn’t know? Don’t be. I know where he is.”

  I opened and closed my mouth while I continued to worry about what was going on in my chest. My heart still didn’t feel as if it was working quite right. Until tonight, I only knew of one person who could elude my carefully honed self-defense moves. And that was my halfsister Tina. It startled me to realize my skills weren’t quite as invincible as I’d once thought.

  “If you knew he was away, what are you doing here? And why in the world are you jumping out at me in the middle of the night like some kind of madwoman?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t jump—” she started to say. But she abruptly stopped when my business partner and roommate, Bertie Bays, called down the stairs, “Are you okay down there, Penn? I heard screaming.”

  “Jody’s here,” I yelled back because I didn’t know how else to answer the question. Was I okay?

  “Tell her Harley’s away at that conference,” Bertie called down to me. She’d leaned so far over the porch’s railing it looked as if the bright yellow scarf she’d used to tie back her hair might slip over her face.

  “I know full well where he is!” Jody shouted. She then said to me, “I’m here because Gavin left his board shorts up there. He’s got an early morning surf competition, and he thinks those pants of his lucky.” Her voice suddenly sharpened as she bit out, “I don’t need to explain myself to the likes of you. Get out of my way.”

  “Harley lets you go into his home when he’s not there?” I moved to block the stairs. Just last month Jody had called the police simply because Harley had parked his car in front of her house while Gavin, their ten-year-old son, had run inside to pick up his laptop computer. She told the police that she’d felt her ex’s presence outside her home had constituted a threat. She’d wanted them to arrest him. They didn’t.

  I knew this, not because Harley had told me. He hadn’t told anybody about it. It was their son who’d come into the shop, tears flooding his eyes. Gavin had begged me to tell him why his mother hated his father so much. Unable to explain what even I didn’t understand, I’d wound my arms around the skinny boy, hugged him, and told him that both his parents loved him and that was all that mattered.

  “Harley has no say in this. My son’s belongings are in his apartment. As Gavin’s mother, I have every right to go in there and get them.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Where’s Gavin?”

  “He’s spending the night with a friend. Get out of my way.”

  I stood my ground. “Call Harley. Get his permission. And then I’ll move.”

  “Oh, I’ll call him.” She started to move away. But then she turned back to me and smiled viciously. “Be warned, Penn.” She took a step toward me. “You think this town actually loves you? You think you can wave your chocolates around and charm Harley? You think you can take over as Gavin’s mother?”

  Did she really think I wanted to date Harley? He’d made it clear that he considered me his friend and only a friend. Did she think I wanted to take her place in Gavin’s life? “I would never try to take your place.”

  “Watch yourself, Penn. I know you. I’ve also heard all about the lies you’ve been telling everyone.”

  “Lies?” I abhorred lies.

  “Don’t pretend to be innocent. Not to me. I know all about who you are … and more importantly who you aren’t.” With a look of triumph, she crowed loud enough for even Bertie (who was still standing at the top of the stairs in her quilted housecoat) to hear, “Mark my words. As soon as th
e truth comes out, Charity Penn, Sunset Development will own your chocolate shop. And you’ll have nothing. You don’t belong here. You’ve never belonged here.”

  “What are you talking about?” No one could take my shop away from me. My maternal grandmother had left it to me in her will.

  Jody didn’t answer. Instead, with a sharp laugh, she said as she walked back toward the road, “I’m going to enjoy seeing everything you don’t deserve stripped away from you. It’s time people around here start realizing the emperor has no clothes.” She was halfway down the road. Her voice seemed to echo in the darkness as she called over her shoulder, “In case you’re too dense to get it—you’re the emperor and those clothes of yours are sorely lacking.”

  Chapter Two

  “Would it kill you to move a little faster?” I asked the painter a little over a week later. He’d been repairing and repainting the Chocolate Box’s stained and lumpy ceiling for the past eight days.

  I stood next to his ladder, tilted my head back, and squinted as I looked up. His brush moved like a snail sliding across a leaf. However, the ceiling looked perfectly smooth.

  “Can’t rightly rush if you want me to do what needs to be done,” he drawled. His Southern accent, unique to the natives of Camellia Beach, lacked the hard twang most people associated with the South. While the island accent was sometimes difficult to understand, the slow cadence of his words sounded melodious to my Midwestern ears. “The layers of paint up here tell the story of the hacks with a paintbrush who have done this ceiling wrong. Takes precious time to fix it.”

  I squinted up some more, admiring his work. The Chocolate Box had been selling the world’s best chocolates for nearly a hundred years. When I’d inherited the building (which included this shop, the Drop In Surf Shop next door, and two upstairs apartments), the roof leaked, the stairs were rotting, and the water-stained ceiling looked as if it might fall. Johnny Pane’s efforts with spackle and paint were impressive. But that didn’t keep me from wishing he’d hurry up and finish already.

  Since I couldn’t afford to close the shop while we waited for him to finish, we had to block off half the shop with a curtain of plastic that surrounded his ladder. In doing so we had to remove the tables and chairs from the area where he was working, which meant we’d lost about a third of the seating area for our customers.

  On this particularly sticky Thursday afternoon, the Chocolate Box was packed with residents and beachgoers in search of a cool break from the seemingly endless August heat. I needed that seating area.

  Despite the ocean breezes, the beach in August felt like the inside of an oven. The unrelenting heat prickled the nerves of even the incurably happy. But inside the shop, which had survived hurricanes and murders, the newly renovated air conditioner provided a welcomed blast of cold air. Laughter filled the space as Bertie and I each carried trays of gourmet chocolate milkshakes to our eager customers.

  I handed a tall, frosty glass to Bubba Crowley, the president of Camellia Beach’s business association. I still couldn’t believe my good fortune. And I don’t mean the kind of fortune that could be spent in a store. That kind of fortune rarely made anyone smile. I meant the kind that came with finding a place where I was surrounded by friends, a place where I felt like I belonged. No matter what Jody had claimed, I wasn’t going to let anyone take this place away from me.

  “The shop looks fantastic,” Bubba said in his jovial booming voice after he took a long sip of the wintry milkshake. Bubba was a big man around town, not just because of his positive influence on the business community. He resembled a small-sized giant. “Adding milkshakes to your menu was a stroke of genius.” He took another sip. “Plus, like everything else in here, these are remarkably delicious.”

  “That’s high praise indeed. Thank you.” After I’d inherited the shop, Bubba was one of the first and most vocal supporters of my efforts to keep it open. “I’m always drinking chocolate milkshakes in the summer. I figured since I was making it for myself, I might as well start making extras to share with everyone else.”

  He nodded as he sipped some more. “Makes sense. Good business sense.” His gaze traveled around the busy shop. “They certainly are a hit with…” His voice trailed off.

  His roaming eyes had come to an abrupt halt. His mouth tightened as if suddenly pained. “What is it?” I started to ask with concern. But then I saw what he’d seen: Bertie Bays.

  Bertie had been my grandmother’s best friend. For decades she lived with Mabel Maybank in one of the upstairs apartments and worked with her in the shop. Despite her seventy-plus years, Bertie had more energy than I did when I was in my twenties. She loved Camellia Beach and this shop nearly as much as Mabel had. After Mabel’s death, Bertie had agreed to stay on (temporarily) as my partner. She’d told me more than once that she planned to retire and move to a retirement resort community in Florida after I mastered the recipes.

  I never wanted her to leave. I’d be lost without her. Luckily, it didn’t look as if I’d ever learn Mabel’s recipes. I was a disaster in the kitchen.

  Dressed in mom jeans and a faded blue “Chocolate Box” T-shirt, Bertie served a trio of milkshakes to a table of giddy teenage girls. Her dark skin glowed with a youthful luster she claimed was from good genes and not an antiaging serum. It had to be true. I’d searched our apartment more than once for her hidden stash of facial creams and found nothing.

  Bubba lowered his voice and asked, “Has she said anything? I mean, about me?”

  “Not a word,” I whispered back. “Have you said anything to her?”

  His head dropped to his chest. “Haven’t had the nerve.”

  “She’s not married anymore.” Bertie had been a widow for nearly twenty years. A few months ago, Bubba had confessed that when he was young and foolish, he’d fallen for Bertie. She’d been older and married, and he’d been engaged to another woman, so he hadn’t acted on his feelings. But now, forty years later, neither of them was married or dating. And he still cared for her.

  I nudged his shoulder. “You should sit up. She’s looking this way.”

  His head snapped to attention. His back straightened. An awkward, almost grotesque, grin took over his usually handsome features.

  Bertie noticed and laughed before turning her attention back to serving the milkshakes on her tray.

  I needed to do the same. “Call her. Ask her out for lunch. As friends, if it’s too scary to call it a date,” I suggested as I headed toward the next table.

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “Next week. Or perhaps the week after that.”

  “My gracious, Penn, you’ve been busy,” Ethel Crump, who was sitting with a couple of full-time residents from the Pink Pelican Inn, exclaimed when she looked up from her cross-stitch project and noticed me approaching their table. Her voice sounded hoarse, like the scraping of branches against a window. She cleared her throat. It didn’t help. “I was a little girl the last time this place looked this good.”

  Her friends both agreed with great enthusiasm that the shop had never looked better.

  “Thank you.” I set down napkins and drinks for Ethel and her friends. I dearly wanted to ask Ethel how many years had passed since she’d been a little girl coming to this shop. In a town where nearly all of its residents qualified for senior discounts and the local hotel, the Pink Pelican Inn, doubled as an informal retirement home, Ethel Crump was considered as ancient as the island’s weathered oaks with their twisted and gnarled branches. No one knew her age. And like a proper Southern lady, she wasn’t telling.

  Ethel set aside her needle and rubbed her knobby and stiff knuckles. The almost translucent skin on her face was loose and hung from her jowls like a pleated silk skirt. “Does the fact that you’re fixing up the building mean your grandmother’s children are no longer contesting her will?” she asked.

  Her question shouldn’t have surprised me. This was a small town. Of course everyone would know all about how Mabel’s children wanted to get their hand
s on the building. They didn’t want the shop, mind you. None of them seemed to care about keeping their family’s legacy alive with the chocolates. They only wanted the land so they could sell it to Sunset Development, the local development company where Jody worked.

  Why would Jody accuse me of lying? More than a week had passed since my late-night encounter with her, and I still had no idea why she’d said such a thing to me. Even if I had told a few lies (I hadn’t), how could a lie or two make me lose what Mabel had given me? This was my shop.

  “Mabel’s children have dropped the lawsuit,” I said more for my own benefit than for hers. While the funds Mabel had set aside for the building’s upkeep were still tied up in probate court, the objections to the will were now gone. “Even if they hadn’t dropped the lawsuit, it wouldn’t have mattered. No one is getting their hands on my shop,” I told the ladies.

  Ethel nodded. “You’re doing good work here. Mabel would be proud.”

  Again, her friends agreed.

  “Thank—thank you,” I stumbled over my words. I seemed to always stumble when it came to accepting compliments, especially when those compliments were in reference to my skills in the kitchen. They weren’t … stellar. If not for Bertie staying on after Mabel’s death and helping by making nearly all of the chocolate truffles and bonbons, I don’t think I would have been able to keep the shop open.

  But, as I’d already told Ethel and her friends, whether Mabel had made a good decision or not in naming me her heir, this was my shop now. No one was getting their hands on it.

  I was about to move away to serve the next table when Ethel wrapped her crooked fingers around my wrist. The strength of her grip surprised me.

  “How is your relationship with Florence these days?” she asked.

  “I—uh—uh—I—” I stumbled again.

  “I know you were hoping to discover proof that Mabel’s oldest girl, Carolina, was your mother. Shame about that poor girl, God rest her soul. It was such a shock to learn she’d died way back in nineteen seventy-five.” Which was five years before I was born. “You have to hand it to her sister Florence, though, for stepping up and finally doing the right thing when she admitted she’d birthed you.”