In Cold Chocolate

by Dorothy St. James

  “Just do what needs to be done.” I didn’t have the energy to worry about the paint job. I’d figure out how to pay for it later.

  Right now I needed to focus on my promise to Gavin. I hadn’t forgotten that today was Tuesday. Middle school started early Thursday morning, which meant I needed to get Jody cleared of all charges and out of jail by tomorrow. And I needed to do it without putting anyone in danger.

  I looked around the crowded shop again. That’s when I spotted Bubba. As president of the downtown business association, he knew pretty much everything about everybody.

  “Have you talked to her?” I asked Bubba as I placed a frothy double dark and white chocolate milkshake in front of him. He’d been practically living at our shop this past week. His choice of clothing was usually shabby shorts paired with a bowling shirt worn over a faded and threadbare graphic T-shirt. Today he’d upgraded to khaki pants and a crisply pressed button up shirt. Did that mean he finally planned to talk to Bertie?

  He glanced over at her as she served milkshakes to a group of tourists. His face lit up. “She’s so dang beautiful, it makes my eyes ache to look at her.”

  Gracious, he had it bad. Bertie could look beautiful when she took the effort. On Sunday’s she wore her best dress and styled her salt-and-pepper hair into an elegant bob. But today she was dressed in her favorite cheap mom jeans and one of the corny Camellia Beach T-shirts she bought whenever they were on five for five dollars clearance sale at the downtown tourist shops. A big-eyed lizard with a leering smile and a beer clutched in its claws spanned the length of her shirt. “Lounge lizard,” was written in bold letters underneath the green reptile. She hadn’t even bothered with makeup, not that her smooth dark complexion really needed any enhancements beyond a subtle shade of lipstick.

  I nudged his shoulder. “Go talk to her.”

  “Tomorrow.” He took a long sip of his milkshake. “I see you have a new employee.”

  Good old Bubba, he took the conversation where I wanted it to go without any prodding on my part. Fletcher was working the blender. He noticed us watching him and raised his brows as if asking a question.

  I smiled. “He’s a good worker. Have you known him a long time?”

  Bubba had just started to tell me how Fletcher had grown up on the island when Bertie called my name and pointed to two trays filled with milkshakes that were waiting to be served.

  I was glad someone had their mind focused on serving the public, because all I could think about as I walked through the shop—filled with our regular customers and gawkers who wanted to see the aftermath of the shooting—was that one of my customers sitting inside the shop right now had probably killed Cassidy Jones. That same person then also used the Chocolate Box for target practice.

  When looking at the world through such a dim lens, every face looked like a mask. Every smile came across as cold and calculating. And every kind word spoken sounded like a lie. At least two of the islanders, lovely people I’d thought I could trust, had threatened me. One of them had tried to kill me. How could I possibly trust anyone?

  I needed to get back to Bubba and ask him more about my main suspects and what he knew about them. I was working my way back over to his table when a sudden chill shuddered through me.

  “Lidia?” I nearly dropped the tray of milkshakes I was carrying when I spotted her following me across the room. The way she was standing too close and the way her eyes darted from side-to-side made me feel as nervous as Stella in a room filled with strangers. “What are you doing here? We didn’t have a lesson set up for today, did we?”

  “Our next training session is scheduled for tomorrow, not today,” she said and then added sternly, “But be sure to work with Stella a few times today to make up for all that nervous energy last night’s shooting has caused for you.”

  “I will. I will.” I steadied the milkshake tray and started to hand the drinks to the waiting customers.

  Lidia continued to follow too closely alongside me. “I do, however, need to talk with you,” she hissed loudly in my ear.

  “About what?”

  She pressed a finger to her lips and glanced over at Fletcher who was watching us. “Not here.”

  I quickly served the drinks on my tray. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I called over to Bertie.

  I could feel the press of Fletcher’s hard gaze as I led Lidia through the long hallway and out toward the back patio.

  The afternoon sun was high in the sky as it beat down on the patio’s stone pavers. I cupped my hand over my eyes to block the glare. Lidia did the same.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “Muumuu Woman,” her booming voice seemed to echo across the open marsh.

  She’d definitely caught my attention. “Yes?”

  “I found her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Remember that cottage I’d wanted to rent?” Lidia asked as she paced the patio. “I went by there yesterday after the shooting just to see if it was still empty. If it was, I’d planned to contact someone at the real estate office where Cassidy had worked to inquire about it. Well, it wasn’t vacant anymore. A woman was living there. Your woman. Muumuu Woman.”

  “Really?” I could hardly believe it. Before I realized what I was doing, I’d untied the shop’s apron and had lifted it off over my head. “Can you take me there? Now?”

  As soon as I’d said those words a thought flashed through my head. I couldn’t go with Lidia. Not alone. I’d promised, well, pretty much everyone I wouldn’t go anywhere alone. And while I wasn’t alone, I didn’t trust Lidia. Not completely. Not yet.

  Perhaps it went back to my trouble with trusting anyone, which showed that big flaw in my personality that made even my own dog so nervous she liked to bite me. Or perhaps it was that I wasn’t a stupid heroine in a horror movie. I didn’t want to end up dead.

  I couldn’t go with her. Not alone.

  “Harley will want to be in on this,” I told her as I fished my cell phone out of my pocket. The call went to his voicemail. I called his office and talked with Bunny, his secretary. Apparently, Harley was in court for the next hour. Well, drat.

  I could call Detective Gibbons. But if I did that, he’d insist I let him handle questioning our missing witness. And since Gibbons was already convinced of Jody’s guilt, I doubted he’d ask the questions I’d want to ask. And even if he did ask the questions that needed to be asked, he wouldn’t share with me anything he learned from her. Instead he’d tell me he couldn’t discuss an ongoing investigation, which is what he always said.

  If I was going to have any hope of getting Jody cleared of the murder charge and out of jail by tomorrow, I needed to get over to the cottage and talk with this woman. Now.

  Even though Althea was working at her crystal shop, I called her. Luckily for me, one of her part-time clerks was in the shop to help unload a shipment of new inventory. “Give me five minutes,” Althea said. “I can meet you at the Chocolate Box.”

  “Can you just leave like this?” Lidia asked after I’d disconnected the call. “It looked awfully busy in there.”

  “It is, but that’s why we hired Fletcher. He can fill in when one of us has to run a quick errand.”

  And that’s what I told both Bertie and Fletcher when I went inside to hang up my apron: that I needed to go run an errand. Neither of them looked as if they believed me. But it didn’t matter. I grabbed my purse and hurried out the door anyhow. Lidia hesitated for a moment before running after me.

  “Where is this cottage?” I asked as we stood on the Chocolate Box’s front porch. “Is it walking distance? Or do I need to drive?”

  Lidia eyed my shoes. I was wearing flip-flops with a braided leather thong. The sight of them made her frown. I glanced down at her feet. She’d worn sensible sneakers, the kind with the chunky soles. “It is a few blocks away.” She sounded skeptical that I’d be able to handle it.

  I could run a few blocks in high heels. I could walk the entire len
gth of the beach in these flip flops. “I think we’ll be fine walking,” I said just as Althea walked up.

  Althea, dressed in a long flowy skirt and white bohemian blouse, gave us both tight hugs. Her eyes were bright with excitement. “Today really is our lucky day. This morning we found a new turtle nest down on the west end of the beach. And now this. I can’t believe you found her.”

  “It wasn’t as if I was looking for her,” Lidia explained as she led the way across the island. “It was dumb luck, really. I was looking at the cottage I want to rent.”

  Althea and I followed as Lidia walked briskly down the street. We ended up in the far west end of the island a few blocks from Bubba’s house. Many of the homes on the street were newer, clad in varying shades of plastic siding, with attached garages that took up most of the front façade. All of them looked as if they belonged in a neighborhood in the Midwest instead of on a beach island.

  The cottage that Lidia took me to looked much different from those homes. For one thing, it was a cottage with a generous wraparound porch. Unlike the houses around it, the cottage was set back from the road and at the top of the rise of one of the tall ancient sand dunes that still remained on the otherwise flat island.

  The cottage was too far from the ocean and too far from the river to offer any kind of water view. But at the same time, the large treed lot provided plenty of shade. Silvery Spanish moss hung like lace from the ancient oaks’ thick limbs.

  The whitewashed cottage, set up on concrete blocks, couldn’t have had many more than a few rooms inside. A white picket fence enclosed the entire yard. It’d be the perfect place for Lidia and any dogs she’d want to keep here. I wondered again why Cassidy had refused to rent it to her.

  “Do you think she’s in there?” I whispered as I swung open the front gate.

  Lidia shrugged. “When I saw her, she was carrying in a bag of groceries from her car.” Her voice, as always, boomed.

  A shiny red Mercedes convertible sat in the driveway. “That car?” I asked, still whispering.

  “That’s the one,” she shouted.

  So much for trying to surprise her. Not that I really knew why I thought I wanted to surprise the muumuu woman. What was I going to do? Ring the doorbell, hide, and jump out at her when she opened the door? Of course not.

  I simply wanted to have a civil conversation.

  Althea gave my hand a squeeze as we made our way to the front entrance. All of the window shades that opened to the porch had been pulled tightly closed. Lidia looked at me and smiled before she wrapped her knuckle on the pretty yellow door. My heart hammered in my throat while we waited. We all stared at the door. It didn’t open.

  This time I knocked. Banged on it, actually.

  The door creaked as it slowly opened no more than a sliver. I leaned forward. The inside was dark, too dark to see if there was anyone peering out at us.

  “Hello?” I said. “I was looking for the woman I helped on the beach the other night. The night Cassidy was killed. Is she home?”

  The door slammed shut.

  I banged on the yellow door again. I raised my voice. “I want to make sure she’s okay. I want to talk to her about what she saw.”

  “I know she’s staying here,” Lidia yelled. “I saw her.”

  “Maybe we should tell the police that you saw her instead of wasting our time trying to talk to her,” Althea said loudly.

  The door swung violently open. A slender pale arm appeared. One long finger gestured that we should come inside.

  Should we waltz inside the darkened home of someone who may be a killer? That seemed … stupid.

  I had no intention of doing anything dangerously stupid. At least not today, not so soon after being shot at.

  But Lidia had already hitched her purse higher on her shoulder and was walking into the house. I tried to grab her shirt to stop her but before I could, Althea waltzed inside too.

  Although my mind kept screaming at me to stay outside, I had to step inside to try and pull my two friends back out of the house and onto the relative safety of the porch. As soon as both my feet were on the cottage’s matted old carpeting, the door closed behind me with a bang that shook the walls.

  I whirled around to find a woman standing in the shadows. She had a flowered scarf tied over her hair. The first thing I noticed was that she was shorter than me. But then again, most women were. She was wearing another muumuu. This one was black with gold piping. It completely hid her shape. Although the shadows hid her features, I knew I’d finally found our mystery woman.

  “His death had nothing to do with me.” Her weak voice seemed to crack with age. And she spoke with an odd Eastern European accent. The night of Cassidy’s murder, she’d sounded young and vibrant. My ears had hurt for hours after hearing her scream and scream.

  I leaned forward. “You’re not the woman I found on the beach with his body.”

  “No, of course I’m not. You have the wrong person.” She started to open the door.

  I started to make my break for freedom. I didn’t know who this woman was, but the peculiar situation was making my skin crawl.

  Lidia stuck out her arm and blocked my exit. “This is the woman. She’s hunching her back and using a fake accent.”

  I looked at the strange woman and then back at Lidia. “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve trained dogs my entire life,” she said as if that answered my question.

  I waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t.

  “She’s not a dog,” I finally pointed out.

  “Yes, but after a lifetime of dog training, I’ve learned that reading human body language isn’t that much different from reading dog body language.” She pointed to the woman who was now snarling at us. “She’s hunching because she doesn’t want us to see her. And her voice is wrong. Only actors on bad sitcoms use accents like that.”

  “Or actresses,” I said, mentally slapping myself on the forehead for being so dense. “Luella Marie Banks? Is that you?”

  Ethel had gone on and on about that new role Luella Marie Banks had landed. The local actress had gotten the part despite the fact that some in Hollywood thought she was too old to land a leading lady spot. Arthur had said he’d heard she was planning on visiting Camellia Beach before filming started. And I’d been learning how Cassidy liked to torment the people in his life by dangling his knowledge of their secrets over them.

  “Lidia was supposed to rent this cottage,” I said. “But Cassidy rented it to you. He knew you needed a small, tucked away place where no one would think to look for you. I have a feeling that’s why he kept Lidia from taking the place, because he knew you’d need it.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” the woman said. She’d dropped the fake accent.

  “You needed a place where you could heal from plastic surgery without anyone knowing,” I said. “And Cassidy knew the perfect place for you to stay.”

  She stood a little taller. “Did he tell you that?”

  “He didn’t need to,” I said.

  “Honey, you just told us everything we need to know,” Lidia said.

  I held up my hands. “We’re not here to cause trouble. No one needs to know your secret.”

  I nudged Althea’s side with my elbow. “That’s right,” she chimed in to say. “We aren’t ones to blab.”

  “We’re not gossips,” Lidia said. “No ma’am, we’re not.”

  “We simply want to know what you saw the night of Cassidy’s death,” I said.

  Luella Marie huffed. “That terrible little man. He tried to act all helpful, but his help came at a price. Didn’t learn that until it was too late.”

  “What did he do?” Althea whispered.

  Luella Marie gestured toward a lumpy sofa. “Might as well sit. This might take a while.”

  So Lidia, Althea, and I sat in a tight row on the small, grimy sofa. A broken spring jammed into my upper thigh.

  Luella Marie moved with grace as she moved toward
a wicker rocking chair while keeping to the room’s deepest shadows.

  Now that she was closer to us, I could see the features she was trying to keep hidden. What I’d thought was a round face the night of the murder, I now saw was puffiness. What I’d thought was dark bags under her eyes, I now recognized as bruising from the surgery.

  “What were you doing with Cassidy that night?” I asked. “Were you two…?” I couldn’t make my lips finish that question.

  “He wished,” she said with a barking laugh. “I had stopped by to pay my rent—in cash—for my stay here. But he wasn’t alone.”

  “Jody was with him,” I guessed.

  She shook her head. “That hothead who shot him? No. The voice I heard was definitely male.”

  “He was with a man that night?” Althea gasped as she said it. “Cassidy? With a man?”

  “They were arguing,” Luella Marie said with an elegant shrug. “I did hear someone get slapped. What else they were doing together?” She waved her arm in a dramatic gesture. “I don’t care to speculate.”

  “But we found you outside with Cassidy. How did that happen?” I asked.

  She waved her arm again. “I’d started to leave when the man who’d been arguing with Cassidy stormed out of one of the sliding glass doors, the ones that opened up to the beach. Cassidy stood at the door and watched him go. He was laughing.”

  “Did you see the man who’d stormed out?” Lidia demanded. “Can you describe him?”

  Luella Marie shook her head. “It was too dark. But he did speak with a stuttering lisp.”

  “Fletcher Grimbal,” both Lidia and Althea said at the same time.

  “Savannah’s boy?” Luella Marie sounded surprised.

  “Savannah’s boy,” Althea said with a slow nod.

  “Last time I saw him, he was a little thing, always getting underfoot. Don’t remember him having a speech impediment.”

  “He developed it during puberty,” Althea said.

  “It grows stronger whenever he’s stressed,” I added.

  Luella Marie stood up with a spectacular flourish and sashayed over to the small corner of the room that was being used as a kitchen. “Well, t-t-that’s troubling to know.” She’d started talking with a stuttering lisp. “N-n-nervous ticks hint at all m-m-manner of inner turmoil. Guilty minds. S-s-secrets. Lies.”