In Cold Chocolate

by Dorothy St. James

  “He was big,” Gavin said in a rush. “Not wolf big. I’ve seen the wolves at Charlestowne Landing. Those things look like giant fluffy dogs. The coyote looked more like a half-starved stray. Did you see it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I saw … something.”

  “What’s going on?” Harley came up the road to join his son. He also had a surfboard tucked under one arm and was wearing a pair of board shorts and navy blue rash guard. He gave a pointed look at my closed fist. A bit of yellow from the sticky note was peeking out at him.

  I crumpled the paper even tighter in my haste to get it completely out of sight. I then asked him the one thing about that note that suddenly bugged me. “You don’t think I have a pointy nose, do you?”

  “What?” Harley asked.

  “Your nose is fine, Miss Penn,” Gavin answered. “It’s not nearly as pointy as the coyote’s. Now that was a long face. You saw it, right?”

  “Not well enough, apparently.” Was it simply a coyote in the woods?

  “You saw a coyote?” Harley asked.

  “Uh-huh, right there, Dad.” While Gavin pointed, I stuffed the note in the pocket of my blue and white striped sundress.

  Harley noticed. “Go on up to our place, Gavin, and get some dry clothes on. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Gavin hesitated. “Miss Penn, have you made any progress? My classes start on Thursday. And I’m starting a new school this year.”

  “I can take you, son,” Harley said before I could answer him. “I already have the day blocked off on my calendar.”

  “But-but I want—” Gavin sputtered.

  “Go on upstairs and get dried off. We can talk about it later,” Harley said as I said, “I have several interesting lines of investigation going on right now. I can’t make any promises, but I’m feeling hopeful.”

  “Oh! Thank you! Thank you, Miss Penn! I knew you could do it!” he said, punctuating every sentence with at least one exclamation point. “Yes, Dad, I’m going. I’m going.”

  Harley watched Gavin run around the building, heading toward the back stairs that led up to the second story apartments.

  “I wish you hadn’t told him that,” Harley said, his voice low and tinged with anxiety. “You shouldn’t make promises to a little boy that you don’t know you can keep.”

  “But I think I can keep it. I simply need to find … Well, I need to find several people. But I’m pretty sure one of them is responsible for Cassidy’s death.”

  “You weren’t feeling nearly this hopeful last night,” he warned. “What changed?”

  “Ummm…” I didn’t want to tell him about the note because I didn’t know how he’d react.

  Thankfully, he let it drop. “Pointy nose?” he asked instead.

  My hand automatically went to my face. Did my nose extend out too far? Was it freakishly skinny? “You don’t think it’s too pointy, do you?”

  “I think it’s perfect for your face.” He leaned his surfboard against the side of the white clapboard building.

  “That’s not exactly the answer a girl wants to hear.”

  He smiled at that. “Why are you asking about your nose?”

  “Oh, you know, womanly insecurities. They tend to rear their ugly heads without warning.” Not quite a lie—the pointy nose dig had gotten to me—but still I could feel my face getting all hot and blotchy.

  “Womanly … insecurities?” Harley knew I wasn’t a wilting flower with womanly insecurities. My insecurities were full-blown giant-sized ones I carried around with me twenty-four-seven. “What’s in your pocket, Penn?”

  “A sticky note,” I answered without hesitation because the truth always worked better than a lie.

  “What’s on the sticky note?” he had the nerve to ask.

  “It’s a sticky note. There’s a note jotted on it. That’s what they’re for. Notes.”

  He started to put his hand on my shoulder but stopped himself. He closed his open hand and lowered it to his side. I hated that our relationship was like this now. When we’d first met—well, after I’d socked him in the nose—it seemed as if our relationship had been on the road to blossoming into something beautiful. But then my sister, Tina, had meddled. She’d tried to hook me up with an uber-famous, single, and devastatingly handsome rock star. Having a rock star hanging around the shop and making outrageous passes kind of put the brakes on anything that might have happened between Harley and me. And now his ex-wife was in jail.

  While I wasn’t the touchy-feely type, my foolish heart seemed to be all gaga about Harley. And I had promised myself that I would tell him today how I felt about him. But now? It didn’t seem like the right time. Yet I had to do something to keep the moment from getting even more awkward. So I forced my hand to reach across the expanse between us and closed my fingers over his.

  He glanced down at my hand touching his and the corners of his lips lifted a fraction. That was definitely a step in the right direction relationship-wise.

  His gaze touched mine. He looked confused.

  The silence between us felt uncomfortable.

  Perhaps I’d moved too quickly. Perhaps I’d been too forward. Relationships were like puzzles that I never knew how to put together right. I was constantly forcing pieces in the wrong places. The more I cared about someone, the more I’d say or do stupid things.

  I was about to throw my hands in the air and walk away embarrassed and defeated when he tightened his fingers around mine. His upturned lips turned into a real smile.

  Sure, his grin was tinged with sadness. But it was the biggest smile I’d seen on his face since Jody’s arrest.

  “Pointy nose, huh?” he said.

  “What?” I slapped my hand over my nose. Did he think it was pointy? Did everyone think it was pointy?

  He gestured toward the corner of the crumpled sticky note that was still poking out of my pocket. “Let me guess. Someone taped a note to the Chocolate Box’s door. There’s an insult on it about your nose being pointy. And there’s also a threat.”

  How would he know? “Did you put it there?”

  “Penn, now why would I do something like that?” He walked over to the door. “The tape is still on the glass. And you wouldn’t ask me to critique your looks unless someone put that idea in your head.” He held out his hand. “Can I see the note?”

  I squinted at the tiny piece of tape on the door. He saw that? He saw that tiny piece of tape and then figured the rest out? “Dang, you have some mad investigative skills. And I did like having you at my side last night. If you ask nicely, you can stay on as my sidekick.”

  He sighed. He still had his hand out like a beggar. “Can I see the note? Please?”

  Since he pretty much already knew what it said, there was no reason to keep it from him. Perhaps some of those detective skills of his would help me suss out what was going on.

  I smoothed out the worst of the wrinkles and handed it to him. “Do you happen to recognize the handwriting?”

  He studied the short note for several long minutes before saying, “Penn, this is serious. I think you need to back off.”

  “I think you’re missing the point,” I argued, feeling more than a little defensive. “The person who wrote this believes I have a pointy nose.”

  “No, your nose is the least of your worries.”

  “Are you saying I need to start worrying about my nose?”

  “Of course I’m not. I’m not a fool. What I’m saying is that you’re asking questions about the secrets Cassidy Jones has been keeping. You’re making people nervous, nervous enough for someone to tape this threat to your door. You could get hurt … or killed.”

  “No, no, no. You’re reading too much into what the note is saying. It said, ‘or else.’ That could mean any number of things could happen that aren’t at all violent or scary. The people in Camellia Beach are good people. They wouldn’t hurt me. Just ask the police chief. He’s constantly telling me how there’s no crime on the island.”

  �
��You left out the part where he says that there’s no crime on the island unless it involves you,” Harley reminded me quite unhelpfully. “And we both know that Camellia Beach is like anywhere else. Circumstances can push people to do horrible things. Just look at what Jody did.”

  “She didn’t do anything.”

  “She shot you.”

  “Other than that.”

  “You need to be careful,” he said.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine.” Those words hadn’t fully emerged from my mouth when someone hidden in the darkened wooded lot across the street tossed a stuffed toy dog at the two of us.

  It landed at our feet like an unexploded grenade.

  I screamed.

  Harley kicked the toy and then wrapped his arms around me as if he was ready to use his body as a shield from a bomb blast.

  We both held our breaths as we waited for the brown and white plush puppy with a stitched oversized smile to go ka-boom. Someone (not necessarily saying it was me) held onto him for dear life. Harley’s body felt damp and cool from spending hours surfing in the ocean.

  My grip tightened around him as we stood there watching the inanimate stuffed toy. It didn’t explode. It simply sat in the middle of the road grinning at us.

  “I don’t think it’s going to do anything,” Harley whispered after several breathless minutes.

  “I think you’re right,” I whispered back.

  “I should go check it out.”

  “But what if—” I started to object.

  “We wouldn’t want a passing car to drive over it.” He tried to move toward the plush pup. But my strangling grip held him back.

  “We can cuddle another time,” he said as he detangled his strong, blunt fingers from mine. “Let me get a closer look at that toy.”

  I kept glued to his side as he edged cautiously closer to the stuffed dog. As if hooked at the hip, we simultaneously crouched down next to it. There was writing on a paper dog tag that was hanging around his neck. Someone using a very different style of handwriting from the yellow sticky note had hastily scrawled:

  IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE HORRIBLY, KEEP OUT OF CASSIDY’S BUSINESS.

  Well, fudge cakes. There was no ambiguity about that note.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “No.” My hand closed over Harley’s in an attempt to keep him from using his phone to report the notes to the police. “Handing these over to Detective Gibbons will only add confusion to his investigation.”

  He stared at my hand touching his. We’d spent months avoiding even accidentally brushing against each other and now all of the sudden I couldn’t stop grabbing onto him.

  “Penn…” Was it my imagination, or did his voice sound husky? “I need to report what just happened. As your lawyer, as your friend, as your whatever, I can’t stand by and do nothing while your life is in danger.”

  I snorted. “My life isn’t in danger.”

  “Did you read that last threat?”

  “I read it, but—”

  “Horribly. It said you’d die horribly.”

  My shoulders slumped, and I released his hand. “Let me call.”

  He tried to hand me his cell phone.

  “You mean now? You want to call him now?” I squeaked. Sure, I was stalling. I really, really didn’t want to face this. I didn’t have time for another crisis. With the missing sea turtle eggs, the missing chocolate sea turtles, and the fact that I’d promised Gavin I’d get his mother cleared of the murder charge before his first day of school on Thursday, my plate was overflowing.

  “What I really want is for you to promise to stop asking questions about Cassidy’s murder,” he said.

  “You know I can’t do that. I already promised your son that I’d help him.”

  He framed his hands around my face. The intimacy of his touch should have had me jumping out of my skin with fear. I cared too much about Harley. I was terrified that if we got involved, he’d become just another one of my bad decisions. But gracious, his hands felt warm and strong against my cheeks. I suddenly had trouble thinking straight.

  “I care about you, Penn. What you’re doing is dangerous and sweet and it makes me want to do this.” His lips brushed tenderly against mine.

  Time must have stopped because I couldn’t tell you how long that kiss lasted. It tasted like forever. But when he pulled away, I wanted to cry out that it had ended too soon.

  We stared at each other, each of us breathing a little too hard. It was a tingly moment I wanted to grab onto and not ever let go.

  Did this mean we’d finally pushed through the awkwardness between us? Had we’d finally taken our relationship to where everyone in town believed it should go? And we’d done it without my having to make a grand (and terrifying) confession of my feelings for him? Was this the beginning of what could bloom into something exciting and crazy and everything I wanted from him? It sure felt like it could be. And yet …

  “We probably should pretend that didn’t happen,” I said.

  “But it did happen and—”

  “And with a killer running around and Gavin needing all of your attention, we can’t do this.” Oh, I wanted to slap myself silly for saying it. But it was the truth, and it needed to be said. “We can’t let ourselves get distracted. We have to put your son first.”

  Liar, a voice in the back of my mind said with a sneer. You’re terrified and are grasping for a reason to push this fine specimen of a man away.

  He turned away from me and watched an ant carry a leaf across the shop’s front step before saying, “Okay, but we’re still calling Hank. We’re still handing these notes over to him.”

  “Fine,” I snapped even though agreeing to pretend our kiss hadn’t nearly set the sky on fire felt anything but fine. I was upset and embarrassed and ready to stomp my feet like a bratty child. But since it was my idea—my stupid idea—to forget about the kiss, I had no choice but to pretend I was happy he didn’t argue with me about it.

  And like that, everything was awkward again.

  * * *

  “Have you heard about what happened this morning?” Ethel Crump asked loudly as she held court at a table in the center of the shop later that morning.

  I froze.

  Had someone watched as Harley and I kissed this morning?

  “Oh, I can hardly contain myself. I heard it from a friend who heard from a friend,” Ethel continued.

  My heart pounded in my throat. If she said what I was afraid she was going to say, I would die of embarrassment right here. Right next to the coffee urn.

  “No one is supposed to know,” Ethel said.

  I breathed a mini-sigh of relief. She wouldn’t say that if she was about to out Harley and I for kissing while standing in the street, would she?

  If she wasn’t talking about my love life, did that mean she was talking about the other thing that had happened this morning? Chief Byrd and Harley had both (reluctantly) agreed that we should keep the two threatening letters to ourselves. And though it pained me to do so, I hadn’t even told Bertie or Althea about them.

  If Ethel knew about the notes, her source for her gossip would have to be someone who had either written that I had a pointy nose or had threatened to make sure I died a horrible death. (I still wasn’t sure which bothered me more.)

  Byrd and Harley had agreed that the handwriting looked too different to have been penned by the same hand, which meant I’d prickled the nerves of at least two of Cassidy’s victims with my questions.

  “You didn’t hear it from me,” Ethel warned.

  “Just spit it out already,” one of her friends shouted.

  Tourists and locals alike had crowded into the shop to indulge in mocha coffees and the chocolate pastries we had shipped in from a Charleston bakery. According to Bertie, the Chocolate Box had long been a popular spot on Sundays after church. The islanders lived on gossip and Sundays seemed to be the best day for those who worked fulltime to catch up on the latest dirt.

  About a dozen
residents, men and women alike, had pulled chairs from neighboring tables so they could sit near Ethel and hear her talk. No one spoke. It seemed as if no one breathed as they waited to hear the news Ethel could barely contain.

  I used my nervous energy to rub down one of the tables by the door while pretending I wasn’t listening. I felt as if I was trembling from the inside out.

  The older woman was a natural born storyteller. In the thundering silence, Ethel drew a shaky breath. Her roaming gaze went from person to person. It felt as if her rheumy eyes lingered on mine for the longest.

  “Get this. Luella Marie Banks is going to start filming a new movie next month. And this one is already getting Oscar buzz,” Ethel announced finally to the delighted gasps of those in her audience.

  “Who is doing what?” I asked a bit more brusquely than I’d intended. Everyone in the shop turned to gape at me. I tried not to squirm. “Who is Luella Marie Banks?” I’d gentled my voice and no longer sounded like Stella when she was barking at anyone who dared come into the apartment. “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “You haven’t?” Johnny Pane cried from his perch on his ladder. His paint brush moved carefully over the ceiling, covering up the stains from what I hoped was a repaired water leak. “Haven’t you ever been to the movies?”

  “She’s a local who is about to hit it big in showbiz,” Ethel said.

  “She has more talent than any of us put together,” the woman sitting next to Ethel said.

  “And she’s quite a looker, too,” one of the men said. All the other men nodded.

  “How exciting,” I said, sounding anything but excited. What I really wanted the gossip crew to talk about was Cassidy Jones. “Did she and Cassidy Jones know each other? It seemed like he had his own kind of star power.”

  “Child,” Ethel drawled, “that man wasn’t in the same universe as our Luella Marie. Not by any measure. You’re not still thinking you can convince the police that Jody didn’t murder that no good bounder, are you?”

  “Give the girl some credit. She’s got more sense than to chase after rainbows and lost causes,” Arthur Jenkins, an octogenarian resident from the Pink Pelican Inn and regular customer, said as he sauntered slowly over to the display counter. He looked sharp in his blue and white striped seersucker suit, leather loafers with tassels, and natty straw hat.