Chocolate Hearts and Murder

by Patti Larsen

  She glanced over her shoulder at her boyfriend, looking slightly ashamed of herself. “We decided we needed to get Ethan to confess and then we were going to help him escape.”

  He gaped at her. “You what?”

  Ava ignored his hurt reaction, returning her attention to me. “I couldn’t have pulled off this happy ending without you.” She was so much like me, I now realized, I worried about her and the mooning young man behind her. But when she stepped back and twined her fingers in his, Ethan’s expression softened and I figured they’d earned the right to sort out if they’d be okay or not.

  “We’re off to Colorado,” Ava said, bright with cheer. “Ethan was right. We need to move on and the jobs he set up are still waiting for us.”

  “Helps the national snowboarding team is there for the next three weeks,” Ethan said, sadness returning, though I doubted Ava spotted it.

  She squealed softly and bounced on her toes. “It’s perfect.” The smile she shared with him was real enough. “We’re just going to see how things go from here.”

  “And Noah?” I didn’t see him anywhere.

  “Staying,” Ethan said. “Figures he’s the big fish in the small pond until Adler and Day figure out he’s a hack and replace him.” He shrugged like that was old news about his brother. “I’m sure he’ll come crawling to Aspen in the next month or so and ask us to take him in.”

  From the firm denial on Ava’s face, Noah would be in for a rough ride or Ethan would be out on his ass with his freeloader brother. Either way, I had no doubt that particular young lady was in no danger of being held back from what she wanted. And wished her the best of luck.

  They left me then and I felt like I needed to get out of there or I’d be in an endless cycle of saying goodbye without the real energy to do more farewells justice. Though, as Petunia and I exited onto the front step, I spotted the final person I really wanted to talk to before we left.

  Bill waved and joined us, Moose and Petunia meeting happy noses. The pair had made fast friends after Moose stopped Jenny and I found the pairing of fat fawn pug and shaggy bear of a Newfoundland hilarious.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” I said. “And offer you a job if you need one.”

  Bill’s look of surprise warmed my heart and made me sad at the same time.

  “Thank you, Fiona,” he said, “but Mr. Day and Mr. Adler want me to stay on. Said my loyalty to the lodge in the face of danger earned me a place here for as long as I want it.” Thank goodness for that. He’d gone running the second I filled him in and though I knew the threat had been neutralized at the source, I had been too busy to follow up until now. “Clever, that trick of hers, feeding them natural gas.” He shrugged, almost looked impressed. “If she’d been able to keep the small generator running on her way out the whole genset would have likely caught fire and blown like you said she’d planned them to.” Bill sighed. “If she wasn’t crazy, I’d have asked her to work for me.”

  As kind of nuts as that sounded, I totally understood.

  “Listen, if you change your mind and go looking for contracts, you get in touch,” I said. “Petunia’s could use your expertise. And I know there’s other people in Reading who could use a hand.”

  He blushed, actually smiling so bright I grinned back.

  “I’d be happy to help,” he said. “You just say the word.”

  For now, that was good enough for me. I looked down at Petunia who squatted her fat butt on the toes of my boots and stared up at me with that expression I loved so much.

  “Ready to go home, your highness?” I was so ready.

  She smacked her lips and farted. For some reason, I found her response incredibly hilarious and, waving goodbye to Bill and Moose, laughed all the way to my car.

  ***

  Chapter Thirty Six

  I had to keep exhaling and inhaling on purpose in order to force calm into my body, catching the bob of my foot at the end of my crossed legs before I could kick the desk in front of me one more time. My fingers, wound together tight enough I felt the impression of the key they held embedding itself permanently into my flesh, refused to unlock or let it go while I waited, heart pounding, for Tom Brackshaw to return.

  With the safety deposit box my grandmother left for me.

  It was hard to wait this long, to control my excitement now that Jenny was in custody for Mason’s murder and our little town returning to normal after the stir the young Patterson’s death had caused. Crew had been thoughtful enough to let Dad know about Mason’s autopsy, to fill in the last detail that bothered me. Three minutes was a long time to struggle for air, to die. Even with the excitement of the balloons falling, surely someone besides Simone would have noticed his desperate flailing. Surely I would have. But, as it turned out, the kid didn’t stand a chance. According to the coroner, the allergy attack triggered a weakness in Mason Patterson’s heart. Impossible to diagnose if unsuspected, he’d suffered from a flaw in one of his arteries. It ruptured when he’d struggled for breath and killed him almost instantly. Turned out, even if he’d survived Jenny’s attack, it was likely he’d have dropped dead in the next six months.

  A tidbit to soothe my anxious mind as I contained my excitement for my visit to the bank. I’d forced myself to wait two whole days while plows and trucks cleaned the streets of Reading of the masses of snow that trapped residents and kept businesses closed. Two days entertaining my guests and helping Mary and Betty feed the hungry, bored visitors, two days of Petunia looking longingly into the snowy streets while power and typical small town life was restored.

  I hadn’t made an appointment, hoping I didn’t need one. Showed up at the front desk of Reading Savings Bank with the key and little else but hope and the lingering excitement I’d been nurturing since pulling the key out of the box of letters once more and hooking it on my car ring so I wouldn’t forget it this time. No chance of that. Tom’s reminder in the bar that fateful night of Mason’s death woke the curiosity in me all over again. To the point I could barely sleep from the wonder of what might be waiting for me.

  How had I forgotten the key and its hidden treasure all these months? Some detective.

  Thankfully, Tom spotted me when I arrived, caught me stammering to the receptionist what I was here to do and greeted me with that same robust jovial good nature that actually put me less at ease and not more.

  He guided me quickly into his office and left me there in a flurry of his own excitement. “I’ll bring it here so you don’t have to go downstairs,” he said. “I’ll be right back!” Meanwhile, the clock over the portrait behind his chair softly tick-tick-ticked away time while he went to the vault. I should have just went with him. How could he abandon me to my anxiety and excitement like this?

  No, not true anxiety. Much more on the holy crap I’m finally going to find out what this mystery was about side. And it served me right, having to wait this little time for the truth to come to me. I’d put it off for so long, somehow shunting the secret into the back of my memory in favor of the day-to-day. No longer. I was going to uncover the truth Grandmother Iris felt it so important to keep safe.

  Then again, for all I knew it was a silly nothing that Grandmother Iris was laughing over up in Heaven or wherever she ended up, likely cackling while she set it up before she had her stroke. But it seemed far more possible there was a very cool light at the end of this tunnel. Especially since she’d spilled—either mistakenly or on purpose—to the dearly departed Pete Wilkins a treasure was buried in her garden.

  Mind you, that came across a bit pornographic and slightly on the ewie side when I thought about it that way, reminding my poor aching brain of the brief image I’d conjured of me and Pete on a date. Yuck. But since there literally was a box buried in the ground, I could distract myself from the shudder my instincts generated and return to the bubbling anticipation that bobbed my knee, thudding my toe against the desk and locking my fingers around the key in my grasp.

  Tom’s door opened
suddenly, without warning, a slight meep of surprise escaping me before I laughed at the hilarity of my reaction. He bustled inside, smiling that cherub beaming joy at me I remembered from being a little girl. Tom gently and almost reverently set a long, slim metal box on the desk in front of me and folded his hands over the round of his belly, grinning like this was the most fun he’d ever had.

  Me too, though I doubted he could tell from my frozen state. “Thank you,” I said, unable to move, barely able to fumble out those two words. What was wrong with me, really?

  Tom’s smile faded a bit and he cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you alone then,” he said.

  I waved him back, freed from my moment of weirdness, shaking my head, laughing at last as the tension eased out of me. “You can stay if you want,” I said. “I’m sure you’re dying to know what’s in here.”

  “It’s your business,” he said with great grace and aplomb. “And my pleasure.” With that, he exited the room and closed the door, smiling again.

  Okay then. The key fell into my lap as I forced my hands open at last, fingers cramped, the line of the key a ridged mark in my index finger. I stared down at the little strip of metal on the black plastic tag and caught a giggle before lifting the key and sliding it into the lock. It turned smoothly, the top gliding up and back and I peeked inside, stomach quivering in anticipation.

  A small, elaborately carved—dare I say it, yet another—box sat inside the first, edges of painted gold and crimson reminding me of something I couldn’t put my finger on. I reached inside, pulling out the rectangle on small wooden legs and then had an ah-ha moment as my fingers encountered the metal protrusion at the back.

  Boxes and keys. What was Grandmother Iris trying to tell me? Well, the original one had a lock on it, but still. I made the connection as I turned the thin, metal key in the center back of the wooden box with its inlay of old red velvet and lifted the lid.

  Three notes pinged at me, and three only before the sound of grinding wound them down to nothing and the music box I remembered loving as a child—one I knew the tune to and could hum if I really tried—died as the mechanism inside seized and fell silent.

  For a brief moment I fought tears, the overwhelming need to sob over the little music box, the tiny ballerina still and quiet on her pedestal in the center of the opening. I gulped down the urge to cry as my throat burned and one of the loveliest memories of my childhood flared to ash and blew away.

  With shaking fingers I closed the lid on the frozen dancer, and as I did my grief died. Grandmother Iris cherished this box for some reason. And I’d left it here to gather dust, done nothing to retrieve it. For all I knew, it was my fault the thing was now broken. She’d wanted me to have this music box, something I coveted from childhood and now longed for with the kind of ache that came from a lifetime of failure and self-doubt.

  I stood, my grandmother’s gift cradled in my hands, purse draped over my arm, jaw aching as I turned to the door. I’d find a way to fix it, to restore the precious memory she left me. And this time I wouldn’t forget.

  ***

  ***

  ###

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  ***

  And now for a peek at the next Fiona Fleming Cozy Mystery…

  Fame and Fortune and Murder

  Fiona Fleming Cozy Mysteries #3

  ***

  Chapter One

  There was just something spectacular about a hot latte and a deliciously sunny April morning that stirred my optimism. Not that I had anything to complain about, really, but the beaming sunshine and perfectly roasted and sugared aroma of fresh coffee mixed with the smiling relief of small town residents recently released from the depressing gray of winter put an extra bounce in my step.

  Not just mine, either. As I passed through the glass doors of the most yummy smelling place in all of Reading, Vermont—who didn’t adore the scent of well-brewed Colombian?—and into the warm and welcoming arms of Spring, I nodded with excellent humor to everyone who returned the grin I shared like we had some secret we’d long been keeping to ourselves and were only now beginning to pass around.

  Even the air smelled of new beginnings, that particularly heavenly mix of freshness and damp earth mingling with the scent of crushed pine needles washing down from the mountains seemed to melt away the misery of the last three weeks. Now, allow me to be clear. We hadn’t just come through Armageddon or six snowstorms in a row or even a hurricane. Instead, the twenty-one days of pretty much incessant rainfall had turned our entire quaint town into a damp and mildewing mud ball. I’d given up on any chance of getting into the garden at Petunia’s, my bed and breakfast, before summer at that rate, each and every morning dragging me deeper into the gloom of misty patheticness fed by temperatures far too mild to even make snow.

  And thanks to the loss of cold weather, tourism dried up to the point I only had one set of guests in my normally packed house, a pair of patiently kind grandparents who’d come from Florida to enjoy spring in Vermont. At least now they’d be able to emerge from their hideout in the carriage house Blue Suite and explore town instead of spending endless hours playing our worn down Monopoly that I was positive was missing Boardwalk.

  Petunia grunted next to me as she trotted along, doing her best to keep up. I’d spent the winter trying to regulate her diet and get her off the treats and sugar my best friend, Daisy, and own traitor mother had been sneaking her. But it was apparent either the pug named after my inherited business was finding ways to steal extra food or the two older ladies who worked for me were ignoring my orders not to give the dog anything not on her approved list. The post-it note stuck to the big stainless steel fridge had gone missing lately, I noticed, so I had a feeling it was the latter rather than the former.

  “Don’t think that donut hole you just ate is going to be a regular occurrence,” I said, unable to resist the offer when the perky young woman handed over the sugary confection. Petunia’s pathetic expression and bulging eyes showing the whites tweaked my heart strings and, I guess, the lovely day made me generous.

  Petunia didn’t even look up at me, likely plotting her next opportunity to bully someone into giving her food that made her flatulent. It wasn’t so much her round belly that concerned me as it was her unfortunate habit of farting on me in her sleep. My attempt to kick her off the bed had failed completely and she’d been curled up next to me every night since I gave in. But if she was going to keep expelling that level of gas it was quite possible I’d go to bed one night and just never wake up.

  Toxic pug gas slayed.

  I skipped around a small stack of pylons and a long, low barrier of white painted lumber while my deputy cousin unloaded more of the same from the back of the sheriff’s pickup. I beamed at Robert Carlisle, not because I adored him. Quite the opposite. I couldn’t stand the wretched little piece of loathing with his seventies-esque bush of a black mustache or his pompous superiority that he got to be a cop and I didn’t or his growing beer belly and hideous leer he liked to aim at any woman under the age of fifty. And the feeling was mutual, though none of the previous applied. I was sure Robert had his own list of things about me he despised, but I was positive his number one reason for hating my guts was the fact I was the daughter of former sheriff John Fleming and he would never, ever be.

  No, I grinned and waved out of sheer delight at his less than enthusiastic expression as he grunted his way through hefting a rather heavy looking barricade onto the sidewalk.

  “Exercise is good for you,” I said as I kept going without offering to help.

  “Your ass could use some lately, Fanny,” he shot after me.

  He did not just call me fat and Fanny in the same sentence. I spun back, good mood turned to snarling anger, and found Deputy Jillian Wagner smiling at me, shaking her head. Once I discovered Jill couldn’
t stand Robert either, I’d invited her over for coffee and her best advice hit me with that smile.

  Do not engage the troll.

  Instead, I paused next to her and completely ignored my cousin who glared at us. Jill took a break, her blonde ponytail tucked into the collar of her khaki uniform button up, white t-shirt showing at her collarbone. Nice to know another woman about my height, especially in Reading where everyone seemed to lean toward the petite side. While 5’7” wasn’t gigantic, I sometimes felt like I towered over other women, including my elderly employees, Mary and Betty Jones. Made me feel a bit awkward.

  “You staying around for the parade?” Jill’s voice always surprised me, sweet and light, and from what I heard she was a hell of a soprano.

  Oh, crap, right. I’d forgotten the parade. On purpose. “Ah,” I said, looking down at my latte.

  She laughed. “Gotcha. Gardening?” She sounded wistful.

  I beamed a smile. “Can’t wait to get into the beds now that the ground is drying out some. I might transfer some of the bushes but for now I’m going to clean up and prep for planting.” If any of my old friends from my five years living in New York City could have heard me they’d have fallen off their designer platforms and spilled their own expensive and impossible to order coffees. A lot had changed since my Grandmother Iris died and left me Petunia’s. Including two murders and a secret trail of clues that led me to a broken music box I was in the process of having restored.

  “I’ll pop over when I get the chance if that’s okay?” Jill lifted a pile of orange cones from the back of the truck. “I’d love to get slips of the two bushes near the front steps if that’s still all right?”

  I grinned, nodded. “I’ll be home all weekend,” I said. “Avoiding the fanfare.”