In Cold Chocolate

by Dorothy St. James

  “I still want to distribute it,” he said before I’d even finished describing the chocolate-making process. He spoke quickly, sounding a little too eager. “Connoisseurs from all over the world are searching for unique foods just like your Amar chocolates. It’s exactly the kind of delicacy I aim to provide for the hand-selected clientele I serve in my carefully curated online business.”

  Harley pushed end on his phone and came to stand next to me. “Penn doesn’t have time to talk business expansions,” he said. Sirens blared in the not-too-far distance. It was, after all, a small sea island. “She has other things to worry about right now.”

  “Of course she has more pressing things on her mind,” Bailey agreed. “I didn’t mean to downplay what just happened.” He grabbed both my hands. I struggled to keep myself from flinching. He’s not a stranger, I reminded myself. He’s the guy who is going to start dating my best friend.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “What happened? I was driving by on my way to the restaurant and saw the broken window.”

  “Someone took multiple shots at her,” Harley said. “Did you see anyone or anything as you drove up?”

  Bailey dropped my hands as he shook his head. “Just a few tourists walking toward the beach. Who are you?” he demanded as soon as he finished looking Harley up and down. It was actually more up than down since Harley had nearly a foot of height on Bailey.

  While I introduced the two men, Bertie came limping in from the back door. “I heard a crash.”

  She came to an abrupt stop when she saw the smashed display case, shattered window, and bullet holes in the far wall. Her hands flew to her lips. “Oh no, child. This is exactly what Ethel had warned would happen. Is everyone okay?”

  Before I had a chance to reassure her, Lidia came running in the front door, followed by Bubba and, a few moments later, Ethel.

  On their heels was Chief Byrd. He drew his hands over his ample belly as his lips blew a low, slow whistle. “You sure made someone hoppin’ mad with your meddling ways, sugar pie.”

  I was no one’s sugar pie, but telling him that would only reinforce his impression that I was one of those uppity northern female troublemakers. So I gritted my teeth and nearly popped a vein in my temple as I forced myself to keep my mouth closed.

  Harley sent a surprised look in my direction before stepping forward and shaking the police chief’s hand. He took over, acting both as my personal lawyer and as the main eyewitness to the shooting (not that either of us saw anything since we’d spent the entire time huddled together on the floor.)

  “Y’all are walking all over my crime scene,” Byrd complained and instructed the two officers that had arrived with him to clear everyone out of the shop.

  The seven of us left the building as a group and stood under the thick, sprawling branches of the ancient oak tree that reached toward the sky in front of the Chocolate Box. Bailey kept looking at his watch. He called his restaurant several times. And cursed under his breath a few times as well.

  “I need to get downtown to my restaurant,” he told the police chief. “Even if I leave right now, I’ll still be late.”

  “You’re going to have to resign yourself to being late, son. A shooting happened on the island. That’s not something we take lightly around here. And as I already told you, we’re waiting for the county folks to arrive before we begin processing the crime scene and questioning the witnesses,” Byrd said.

  “And I already told you I didn’t see anything. None of us saw anything.” Bailey’s voice grew louder. “Save for Penn and her freakishly tall lawyer, we all got here after the shooting had stopped.”

  “Y’all are just going to have to wait,” Chief Byrd drawled. “So you might as well simmer down. Sit tight. I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

  Bailey thrust his hands into his pockets and walked away. I thought he’d simply leave like the woman in the muumuu had done after Cassidy’s murder. But he didn’t leave. He stopped in the middle of the road.

  What was he holding? It looked red … and familiar. I started to walk toward him. But Byrd grabbed my arm.

  I froze.

  “We need to talk,” the police chief said as he started to lead me away from the rest of the group.

  “Not without me,” Harley said. He deftly removed the police chief’s hand from my arm.

  Byrd curled his lip, but kept his hands to himself as he led the two of us around the back of the shop where another one of his officers was standing with his fingers touching his sidearm.

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others since we’d all agreed to keep the news about the threatening notes quiet,” Byrd said, sounding terribly cross about it. “One of your letter writers has to be our shooter. So I need to know, what did you do over the past two days to cause this? I thought we all agreed you were going to give the investigating a rest.”

  “We did. I did,” I said. “I haven’t been asking questions. I’ve kept my mouth shut about Cassidy Jones.” Mostly.

  Harley started to back me up on this when Detective Gibbons came walking around the side of the building. “Was told I could find the three of you back here.” His brows dipped low on his forehead as he looked me over. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

  “It hurts me all over that my shop is full of bullet holes, if that counts. Luckily Harley and I were the only people in the Chocolate Box at the time.”

  “Lucky, perhaps.” He rubbed his chin. “Or the shooter planned it that way.”

  Byrd looked at Gibbons and started to rub his chin too. “Since you’ve been talking to nearly everyone who’d ever crossed paths with Cassidy, who do you think did this?” he asked me.

  Names came flying at me too fast for me to categorize. There was Fletcher Grimbal who lost his job because of Cassidy, the woman in the turquoise muumuu who was found standing over Cassidy’s dead body but felt her secrets too dear to stick around and talk to the police, Johnny Pane who’d been terrified by what Cassidy might say about him, and the island’s oldest resident, Ethel Crump who could outshoot anyone. Even my own mother, Florence Corners, had been skulking around with Cassidy.

  Anyone of them could have taken a gun and shot up the Chocolate Box. Considering how—according to Althea—everyone south of the Mason-Dixon Line owned a gun, with just a little more digging on my part, the list of suspects would surely grow longer. And that was what I told Byrd.

  I don’t think either man expected to hear any different. They both knew Cassidy Jones and the troubles he’d caused for everyone around him.

  About an hour later, the police finished their work and announced that the shop was no longer a crime scene. The technicians packed up their gear, pulled down the yellow caution tape, and left. On their way out, Byrd told me to keep my pointy nose out of his investigation. Gibbons asked me to stay safe.

  Harley, Ethel, Lidia, Bubba, and Bertie followed me back into the shop, which was still a mess. The ruined chocolates were still sitting out in their shattered display case. Glass crunched underfoot wherever anyone walked. The front window had completely fallen out. And tables and chairs had been haphazardly moved.

  The mood in the shop had a distinct funeral vibe. Everyone was speaking in hushed tones as they watched me take a hand broom and sweep the chocolates into a plastic trash bag.

  “I’ll be right back.” I carried the bag through the shop, down the long corridor, and out the backdoor to drop it into the trash container. I didn’t need to toss the bag immediately. It hadn’t even been half-full. I could have used the plastic trash bag to hold the shattered glass that needed to be swept from … everywhere.

  No, I’d taken out the trash simply because I couldn’t handle looking at my shop in its broken state for one moment longer. I needed to step outside and catch my breath.

  I leaned against the wall and took several deep breaths in a desperate attempt to get control over my emotions. It was simply a store. Those were simply things in a store that had been d
estroyed. It wasn’t as if anyone had gotten killed.

  The back door swung open. I steeled my spine as I waited to see who was coming out to join me. I really didn’t think I could handle the company right now. Any encouraging words right then would probably feel like a jabbing knife to my chest.

  Ethel stepped onto the back patio. She glanced at me, frowned, and then clasped her hands behind her back as she gazed out into the marsh.

  “Is this the last nail in the shop’s coffin?” I asked more to myself than to Ethel. All those repairs I’d made over the past several months, all those costly upgrades, had the money been wasted?

  “Clamp your teeth, girl,” Ethel rasped. “As sure as I’m standing here, you’ll make this right and go back to business as usual. You’re just like your grandmother—resilient as all get out. And as soon as you leave the sleuthing to the police, nothing like this will have to happen again.”

  I turned to study Ethel. Her simple gingham print dress cinched at the waist. Her large black orthopedic shoes seemed too big for her thin frame. Although she appeared frail as if a strong wind would sweep her away, there was strength in the way she held her chin. Fletcher had claimed that Ethel, even with fingers bent with age, was an expert shot. He made it sound as if she was the best shooter on the island. And she had a strong reason to want Cassidy dead. Plus, she was clever. I could easily imagine her planning the murder so Jody would be framed for the crime.

  But why would she shoot at me?

  “Other than that stupid lawsuit Cassidy had filed against you, did he do anything else to you? Did he”—I cleared my throat—“have embarrassing information about you?”

  “Gracious, no. What are you trying to say?” Her faded blue rheumy eyes widened. “Oh my gracious sakes, you think I killed Cassidy and framed that little boy’s mother for the crime. You actually think that, don’t you? Only a monster would do something like that.” She set her bony hands on her hips. “And what, pray tell, do you think Cassidy might know about me that would drive me to shoot at my friends?”

  “Maybe he found out your age?”

  Ethel swatted my arm. “Shut your mouth, child. Not even my dear late Stanley knew my age. A proper lady doesn’t divulge—”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” I didn’t have time to listen to a lecture about a lady’s proper behavior. “But I also heard that no one around here rivals your abilities with a gun.”

  A sudden grin pulled Ethel’s loose skin tight. “That’s the truth!” She sounded proud of it. “Most folks around here couldn’t hit the fat side of a barn. But not me. Ain’t nothing wrong with my aim.”

  “So you could have done it,” I said.

  “Of course I could have done it.” She squinted at me. “Are you back to asking questions about Cassidy Jones and his misdeeds again? Did getting shot at teach you nothing?”

  “I’m not talking to the town about Cassidy’s death. I’m talking to you.”

  “Sounds like you’re accusing me of something.”

  “Should I be?”

  This exchange led to a staring contest. Both of us had our lips pursed, waiting for the other to break. This went on for several minutes. It would have gone on even longer if I hadn’t realized standing behind the shop silently staring at Ethel wasn’t accomplishing anything.

  “I think you’re the one who shot up the Chocolate Box just now.” There, I said it. “And I’m starting to think you killed Cassidy.”

  Ethel blinked. “You think that I…?” She started to say before pressing her lips tightly together again. She blinked some more.

  “I think you shot up the Chocolate Box,” I prompted again, since I wasn’t in the mood to start another staring contest.

  “Well, doesn’t that just beat all?” Ethel slapped her leg and hooted. “Penn, I knew I liked you, but now I really like you.” She slapped her leg again and then did a little jig right there in the middle of the patio.

  “Did you hear me correctly? I just accused you of shooting at me. And you’re saying that makes you like me?”

  “You’d better believe it.” She held onto the hem of her gingham dress as her legs stomped to a musical beat only she could hear. “You’re the first person in a long time who didn’t treat my age like it was an infirmary. ‘Oh, she’s as old as the trees. Must mean she can barely feed herself’ is what most people around here think when they talk to me. I can hear it in how their voices rise up an octave and how they slow their speech as if I wouldn’t be able to follow their inane conversations otherwise. But you didn’t do that. You took one look at me and thought, ‘By Heavens, there’s a woman who could be a mad murderess.’ I love it, Penn. I absolutely love it.”

  “Um … thank you?”

  She did a little twirl as the punctuation at the end of her victory dance before coming to stand directly in front of me. She sounded a little out of breath when she said, “Don’t know anyone else on the island other than Jody and me capable of shooting Cassidy through the heart at that distance. Take that to mean what you will because you won’t hear me talk about it again.”

  She walked with a bounce still in her step down the marsh trail that led toward her cottage. And I was left standing there wondering if she’d confessed to killing Cassidy or had she just now accused Jody of doing the deed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bertie and I had worked for hours that night melting down all of the chocolate we had left in our pantry so we’d have something to offer the buying public in the morning.

  Early the next morning when the two of us came down to open up the shop, I was surprised to find Fletcher leaning against the back door with his arms crossed over his chest. For one thing, he’d said he’d show up at eight o’clock and it wasn’t even seven yet. And for another, after how he’d acted yesterday I figured working for me was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. I’d assumed he simply wouldn’t show up.

  True, the sour look on his face as he greeted us suggested he’d rather be anywhere than here. But he was clean shaven. No wrinkles or stains marred his plain white and khaki clothes. He looked ready to work.

  “Good morning,” I said brightly. “You’re early.”

  He shrugged. “G-got n-nowhere else to be.”

  “If you want to work with us”—Bertie frowned as she looked him over with that critical eye of hers—“you’re going to have to keep out of trouble. No getting into late night fights. No more arrests. You show up for work on time. And if I smell alcohol on your breath, I will send you home.”

  “I-I thought”—He smacked his lips and then continued forming each word with great care—“I thought Penn owned the shop, not you.”

  “I do. But Bertie has much more experience running this shop than I do, which means you’ll be working for the both of us. Do you have a problem with that?”

  He held up his hands. “N-n-no, no problem. I’m here to work.”

  “Good.” I unlocked the door. “There’s plenty of work that needs to be done.”

  The front window had a board where the glass should have been. While the shattered glass in the display case had been swept away, there were two bullet holes in the metal frame. And the tables and chairs were still in a state of disarray.

  Fletcher took one look and whistled. “You-you do need me,” he said in his slow, carefully enunciated cadence. “This place is a mess.”

  “It’ll look perfect by the time we open,” Bertie said.

  As much as I wished it, that wasn’t exactly true. The shop wouldn’t look perfect since there was nothing we could do about the half dozen or so bullet holes in the walls that had chipped off large sections of plaster. However we were paying the glaziers a ridiculous amount of money to replace the broken window and the glass in the display case before we opened to serve the public.

  While I was busy directing the glaziers who’d arrived not long after we’d flipped on the lights, Bertie took over showing Fletcher around the shop. She then had him fill out the pile of necessary employme
nt paperwork. He seemed to have left his attitude outside. Every time I glanced in their direction, Fletcher appeared to be listening intently. He even laughed a few times at something Bertie had said.

  Satisfied that things were going well with them, I gave the store a thorough sweeping. Sure both Bertie and I had swept up the glass twice the previous night, but it didn’t matter. My broom was still picking up those little glass shards. I had a feeling I’d be sweeping up those tiny buggers for days.

  By the time we unlocked the door and welcomed our first customers, the Chocolate Box was nearly back to normal. The tables and chairs had been set back up. And while the display case looked half-bare, we did have five varieties of chocolates for sale. Plus, I was introducing for the first time my chocolate moon benne wafers. To be fair, Bertie had baked the benne wafers. They turned out thin and crispy instead of the dry puffy things I’d kept churning out all week. I dipped one side of the wafer in white chocolate and the other side in a thin layer of our special dark Amar chocolate. They looked beautiful.

  All during the morning rush Fletcher moved through the store as if he’d always worked there. Anything that needed to be done, it seemed as if he’d already handled it. He kept the coffee urns filled and the tables cleared. Before I knew it the morning had flown by and we were preparing the blender and making sure we had enough milkshake ingredients for the afternoon rush.

  “Holy moly, Ms. Penn, this is worse than I’d heard,” Johnny Pane cried when he arrived shortly before noon. He dropped his tall ladder on the heart pine floor and hurried over to inspect the damaged walls. He tsked as he ran his hand over the plaster dislodging large chunks that fell to the floor with a puff of dust. “This is going to take me at least a week and a half to repair and paint.” Given how Johnny Pane’s estimates seemed to work, it’d take three weeks. And plenty more money.