Behind Chocolate Bars (8 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Just that she paid his rent once in a while. I suspect it was when his folks cut him off,” he said.

“Thanks so much for your time,” Bean said. “We have to go. We have an appointment with Detective Lockett to see if he can provide any safety information for our piece.”

Floyd nodded. “You're plenty welcome.”

“I hope it's okay if we come back. My editor may want some more information,” Bean said as Floyd walked us to the door.

“Sure, sure,” he said.

After quick good-byes he shut it behind us, but we still kept an eye out until we were sure he wasn't watching
us. Then we made our way back to the building beside Faith's.

I called Zane. “Any chance your map isn't so accurate?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could it be in the next building over?”

“I guess,” he said. “It's not military accuracy or anything.”

“Thanks.” I hung up.

We went through our knocking-on-doors routine again and got no answer on the ground floor. On the second floor, someone was working out to an exercise video—the pounding music and stomping feet gave that away. We moved to the other door and Bean knocked.

Nothing. The scent of stale beer and pot smoke oozed out. The super had said Chuck was a pothead.

“Chuck?” I called out.

Nothing.

“Pizza delivery.” Bean tried the doorknob and then pulled something from his pocket.

“Really?” I hissed as I recognized lock picks.

“Block the view from the street.” He pulled black gloves from his pocket, handed me a pair, and put his own on.

I turned my body as I put on the gloves. My heart was beating wildly as I searched the area, feeling like a total criminal. Nothing moved. This was serious breaking and entering, which didn't seem to be outside Bean's experience. In a few clicks, the door was unlocked and we walked into a mess.

The inside smelled like a college dorm, not that I knew much about that. Dirty laundry, rotting food and cigarettes. I was startled to see a young man with disheveled hair
sprawled facedown on the couch. He didn't move at all when we entered.

The furniture appeared to be high quality, but was scarred with burn marks, and warped and stained by dark liquids. Beer cans and take-out food containers littered the floor.

“This guy needs help,” I whispered to Bean.

He stood over Chuck for a minute and watched him. “Just passed out. He's breathing fine and his color is good,” he whispered.

Then he walked to the dining room table, which was covered with electronics. A laptop was open. I typed in the password Zane had given me and the home page appeared.

“It worked!” My voice came out in a squeak. I looked over at the sleeping man. Whoa. We'd found the burglar. Had we also found Faith's killer?

Bean pulled a thumb drive from his pocket and handed it to me. “Copy all of the documents.”

Then a loud knock sounded on the front door and I nearly jumped through the roof.

Oh. My. God.

I
looked at Bean with wide eyes. He shook his head, and then pointed to the computer. With shaking hands, I put the thumb drive in and dragged the mouse over the Documents icon to copy them.

A loud knock came from the door again. “Michelle.” It was Leo! “I know you're in there.”

Chuck snorted and turned over on the couch.

Panic curled up my stomach.

Bean stayed calm, his eyes on the computer. “Get all the photos and download files too. I'll see if there's another way out.” He walked over to peek into the kitchen and pointed. “Back door,” he said quietly.

My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out. Leo was calling me. I put it back.

Leo tried the doorknob. “Bean, if you don't open this door . . .”

“Let's go!” I reached to pull out the thumb drive and he walked over to stop me.

“One minute won't hurt,” he said. “Let it finish.”

Then Bean went into the bathroom, and I heard water running while I watched the Copying bar slowly fill in until it said
Complete
. Finally!

Bean came out of the bathroom, leaving the water running.

“What are you doing? We have to go.” I'd been attempting to play it cool but the screech in my voice negated all that.

“Come on,” he said, and headed toward the kitchen.

Then I heard someone stomping up the back steps. It had to be Leo. I pulled Bean back and we went out the front door, running down the stairs to the car. For some reason, I felt like giggling, like a kid getting one over on a parent.

As we drove away, I looked back and saw Leo limp around from the back. My breathless laughter died. I called him. “What are you doing?” I asked with no attempt at pretending we hadn't been there.

“Having fun running from the cripple?” Leo said, making my whole body burn with shame.

“I'm—”

He interrupted me. “Tell Bean his ass is grass.” He hung up.

*   *   *

W
e stayed quiet on the drive back to West Riverdale.

“I guess it's a good thing you moved out,” I said.

Bean nodded. “As long as we're in trouble,” he started, trying to sound lighthearted, but I could hear the strain. He wasn't happy about upsetting Leo either.

“What?”

“Let's go check out Green Meadows Estates,” he said. “Maybe the police finished the investigation of the site.”

“What?” My voice was a little alarmed. I cleared my throat and knocked my tone down an octave. “It's getting dark.”

“You know, they have these newfangled things called flashlights,” he reached into the floor of the backseat and pulled out a huge Maglite, put it on my lap, and then pulled out another one.

He brought two of them? “You planned this?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I'm just always prepared.”

I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Okay,” he admitted. “I thought it would be a good idea if we had the time.”

“Can't it wait until tomorrow?” I definitely sounded wimpy.

“Sure,” he said, and then clucked like a chicken.

“Wow. Peer pressure.” I laughed. “Okay, let's go.”

He smiled like he'd won. “Let's stop for dinner first and wait for it to get darker, so it'll be harder for anyone to ID us.”

We went through a drive-thru, and then parked to eat in the car. It was dusk when we made it to Green Meadows Estates. The lights that would have shone on the entrance sign no longer worked, but a street lamp showed us the way. Most of the homes were empty, but it looked like a few brave souls still lived there, their houses lit against the oppressive dark.

The half-built houses were even more depressing, looking like the contractors had left in mid–hammer hit, with half-done roofs, partial walls and muddy yards.

We drove by a house that was actually lived in. It was
close to the community center, where Faith had been found. The owners had put out pumpkins for Halloween, but there wasn't a chance of them getting any trick-or-treaters.

The unfinished community center loomed ahead, the car's headlights casting spooky shadows on the wooden framing, reminding me of the skeletons in the Halloween Festival.

Bean parked, leaving his headlights turned on, and we got out. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The ground around the building was crunchy with overgrown grass that had folded over and dried out in place. Wind whispered in the trees overhead and I jumped when I saw one end of the crime scene tape flap around.

“What are we looking for?” I asked, my voice sounding too loud in the hushed quiet. “All the evidence must have been prepped and taken by the crime scene techs already.”

“I just want to see where she was found,” he said. “Maybe something will pop out that helps us clear Dylan.”

I tripped over something, and when I shined the flashlight on it I saw that it was a white hose from the no-longer-functioning sprinkler system. We walked up the simple wooden steps through what looked to be the main doorway, and went into the lobby area.

It would have been grand, I thought, with a soaring atrium and ballroom beyond. But now it was rotting away, open to the elements for far too long.

Bean followed the crime scene tape. “Here,” he said.

Even with the strong flashlight beams, I couldn't see anything different. Until I focused on a dark spot on the floor. “Is that . . . ?”

“You don't have to look,” he said, but I couldn't keep my
eyes off it. I knew Faith hadn't been killed here, but all the evidence tags left behind meant something had happened. Right there.

Bean examined the site from all angles, shining his light along the walls and even getting his face close to the floor to check every inch.

He walked back to the doorway, and then all around, looking at the floor. “Any idea how much she weighs?”

“She claimed one hundred and ten on her dating site,” I said.

“Does Dylan work out?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

“What does he weigh?”

“I don't know. One twenty-five?” I answered. “Soaking wet.”

“There aren't any drag marks,” he said. “She was carried in.”

I shuddered at the thought of someone carrying the lifeless woman into the building. Completely in the dark. But I saw what he was getting at. “So even if she was telling the truth about her weight, there's no way Dylan could've carried her in.”

“Lockett must realize it as well,” he said, his face lost in the shadow of the flashlight.

“He said there might have been more than one assailant,” I said slowly, wondering if two boys could carry a dead body. Like Tommy, who was big but not necessarily strong, and Dylan together.

“Lots of footprints here,” Bean said. “Could be the police, but that might be the reason Lockett is looking for more than one killer.”

Just then a minivan drove toward one of the few houses
with lights on. It paused as it drove by, clearly checking out who was at the crime scene at night. The woman driver looked vaguely familiar. “Shoot,” I said.

“It's okay,” Bean said, turning his flashlight to peer at the doorway once again. “It's too dark for anyone to recognize us.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, not wanting to be that obvious about our investigation.

“Yep,” he said. “And we're done here anyway.”

*   *   *

B
efore sunrise the next morning, Reese knocked on the front door as soon as I stumbled my way to turn on a light in the kitchen. She must have been waiting for some kind of indication that Erica or I was awake. If I'd been alert enough to check who was at the door at such an ungodly hour, I certainly wouldn't have opened it.

She was wearing a pen camera in her front pocket, even though the whole town knew what it was by now. “What do you think of the arrest of Chuck Sinsle for the murder of Faith Monette? Are you going to stop messing around and let the real police do their work?”

No one should have to face that nonsense so early in the morning. I shut the door in her face without a word and went back to the kitchen to put water on to boil. I'd had a tough night, worrying about Leo. He hadn't taken any of my calls and hadn't responded at all to my apologetic messages or texts.

“You have to come out sometime,” Reese yelled from the porch.

I pulled my laptop out of my backpack and found an article on what Reese was talking about. Chuck had been
arrested last night, based on the discovery of Faith's belongings in his apartment. It seemed his super saw them while responding to a minor flood in the apartment below.

I winced, hoping the flood had been caught before causing too much damage.

Erica walked down the stairs, ignoring Reese's repeated knocks, and looked over my shoulder. “Nice work.”

“It was Bean's idea.” I got up to grind the beans and pour the boiling water into a French press. “I just hope that the files tell us something. Did Zane tell you what he found?” I'd decided the night before that I didn't want any evidence of our little B&E on my computer, and Bean and I had delivered the thumb drive to Zane.

“Not yet. He'll call me when he wakes up.” She got the cream from the refrigerator. “What does Reese want?”

“Not sure,” I said. “She wants to know what I think about this arrest. Maybe she thinks she's rubbing it in that we didn't help figure out whodunit?”

Erica shrugged. Even a genius like her couldn't figure out Reese.

I sat down and read the article again. Something didn't feel right. Maybe because I wasn't sure this answered all of our questions.

“So, mystery solved?” Erica said, watching me.

We should be counting our lucky stars, but I couldn't quiet the sense that we weren't finished. “Do you think so?”

She shook her head. “I wish it was solved, but there are some remaining questions. And Lockett won't stop until he answers them.”

“I'm sure he wants to find out what Dylan's Green Lantern
key ring was doing there,” I said. And I wanted to find out what the comic book club was hiding.

She sighed. “To say the least.”

We were both silent as I pushed down the press and poured the coffee.

“Did you get in touch with Leo?” she asked. I'd told her the whole story the night before.

I shook my head. “Bean told me that before he moved out, Leo had started getting up really early and taking long motorcycle rides for hours. I was thinking of trying to talk to him when he comes back.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said. “You go out the back and I'll distract Reese. Maybe you can catch Leo before we open.”

*   *   *

I
knocked on Leo's apartment door but he didn't answer. His motorcycle was gone from his assigned parking spot in the garage. I waited on the steps leading up to the second floor for over an hour, the coffee cup I held for him getting cold, but he never showed up. I watched many of the apartments come to life with stirrings of his neighbors getting ready and leaving for work. Where was he?

I headed in to Chocolates and Chapters, feeling overwhelmed by my worry for Leo, on top of the investigation. Something was going on in his head about my investigation—following Bean and me to Chuck's proved that—and I couldn't help wondering if I was letting my brother down by helping Dylan.

The news of the arrest of Chuck Sinsle for the murder of
Faith Monette was the topic of conversation all morning. I kept my mouth shut about what had happened with Bean. Admitting to criminal activities was never a good idea, even to our closest friends and customers.

The bells on the door jingled, and Leo's girlfriend, Star, walked in. She was in dark blue workout clothes, which probably meant she was on her way to a personal training client.

“Hi!” I always acted too enthusiastic around her, like a mom trying to marry off her kid. “Latte this morning?”

“Sounds great. Nonfat please.” She took a seat at the counter, moving the silverware around nervously.

“Torte? Chocolate?” I asked while working on her espresso drink. “I have your favorite Dark Chocolate Lava Cakes.” She'd said many times that she loved the sensation of the chocolaty liquid center melting so quickly on her tongue and spreading its intense cocoa taste.

She seemed tempted, but shook her head. “I'm actually here to ask if you know . . .” She trailed off and then cleared her throat.

It was unlike Star to be so uncertain.

“How Leo is?” I prompted.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I seriously debated discussing this with you, but I'm a little worried. He hasn't seemed happy lately. Since the accident really.”

“Did you ask him about it?” I asked.

She nodded. “I tried. Several times. He never wants to talk. I thought you might know . . . something.”

“I'm sorry. He hasn't told me anything. But I noticed he's been acting strange,” I said. “Like worrying way too much.”

She bit her lip. “He freaked out when he heard about this woman.”

I went still. “Do you know why? He's never worried much before.”

Star twisted her hands together. “He's been kinda messed up since the accident.” She met my eyes. “I'm concerned.”

I covered her hands with one of mine. “Me too. I'm going to call his therapist. He won't tell me anything that Leo told him, but I want to make sure he knows that we're both concerned.”

She nodded, still worried, and then a group of preschool moms came in, with their passel of kids noisily lightening the mood. I served a bunch of coffees and warm cocoa, along with pastries and the last of my Earl Grey Tea–Infused Milks.

Star finished her coffee and waved good-bye as she left. I started formulating what I'd tell Leo's psychologist.