Bonbons and Betrayal: Book 3 in The Chocolate Cafe Series (5 page)

Maybe Louis’ lack of empathy would end up being a good thing.

It was as if the entire universe rounded up all its mates, black holes and all, to join together to give Mac one big embarrassing ‘I told you so.’

It was six in the morning. It was far too early for a girl who had been out almost all night, being patient while the girl she loved made a fool of herself over some man who looked like he had stepped out of a 1930’s sports catalogue.

How much did Mac care for Brie? So much that she hadn’t even bothered to put on proper pants before leaving the house…

Just when she was about to fall asleep, her phone startled her into full consciousness. Reaching into the darkness, her dog grunting beside her, she was not surprised to see Sabrina’s name on the call display.

“You ok?” No formalities necessary, not after all these years. She had been groggy, but when she heard Brie’s breath catching in her chest, she was more awake than she had been for months.

Someone had hurt her. Brie never cried. Never.

“I woke up in the middle of the night,” she said, her voice hitching. “He was gone. The door was open; I was totally alone…he was just gone.”

It took less than a minute for Mac to feel the full import of her regret. Louis had been right. She should have said something. She should have ripped her blinders off and confronted Brie, told her what they had learned and saved her from what was evidently a major heartbreak.

Brie sounded foreign and far away, her voice alternately clear and thick with the waves of her emotion.

“We didn’t fight or anything. I know it’s probably not a big deal.” The tears began now, heavy like cotton, muffling the reception.

“I can’t figure him out, Mac…I’m so tired, Can you…”

There was no hesitation.

‘I’m coming…” Mac said. “Stay there. Give me half an hour, at least, but stay there,”

Now, dressed in Louis’s infamous Oxford t-shirt and a pair of fleece leopard print bottoms, she was doing all she could to not lay on the horn as she made her way through city traffic.

Mac was lucky to have secured a spot outside Paul’s apartment. In this part of the city, if you stopped for longer than a few seconds, someone would be there to demand money for valet parking.

She waited, impatiently, for Brie to make her way from the glass and concrete prison she had checked into.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. An hour or so away, her detective was practically wrapped around their dog, snoring peacefully. Unaware. Or smug…she couldn’t decide.

Finally, Sabrina appeared – first, framed by the elevator door then rushing past the concierge and then finally slipping into the seat beside her, Sabrina looked no bigger than she did when she was a child. Her body still tiny, her soul too big to hold it in, her best friend looked as lost as she had almost twenty years ago.

“We have to find him.” Sabrina said, haphazardly wrapping herself in a seat belt, “You have to help me find him and figure out what the hell is going on.”

******

The two girls stood in the shadows of the computer science department building at New York University. All the lights were out, seeing that it was only a few hours before the sun came up. The building stretched out before them, all brick and darkened windows in the chilly spring dawn.

Mac turned to Brie, who was shifting her weight in an almost psychotic manner. Right foot, left foot…all the while twirling one of her overlong stands of hair between her fingers.

Even though they had spoken about it in length for the last hour, even though it had been the first question Mac had flung at her friend…she had to ask again.

“You’re sure he’s here?” Mac said. She wrapped her arms around herself tighter, feeling the insistent April damp against her skin.

“No,” Brie said, glaring at Mac. “I am obviously not sure that he’s here. But it seems
like
the most logical spot.”

Mac couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Oh, so if he’s not with you, he’s at work…right?”

Sabrina’s mouth formed a tight little line that Mac had seldom seen. Her English country garden beauty seemed to dissolve in a second, leaving behind the kind of lines that only come from a hard life earned hourly.

“There’s no other place he’d be,” she said.

She turned to Mac. The light under the doorway of the offices was dim. A few moths danced around the blasé bulb with little to no commitment. “Something is wrong.” she said, fixing her giant brown eyes on Mac. “I wouldn’t have called you otherwise.”

Mac felt as if she had been slapped. Of course she wouldn’t. She knew Sabrina better than she knew herself and one thing Sabrina seldom did was call her in the middle of the night over a man, of all things.

Mac took a deep breath.

“You’re right.” she said. “Something is wrong. Go ahead.”

Brie rolled her eyes.

“With your blessing?”

“Absolutely.” There was a pause when Sabrina punched in the suite numbers on the intercom and waited. The girls barely breathed as the archaic system announced one…two…three…four rings. It remained unanswered echoing off the concrete corners of a perfectly beige, perfectly safe administration building.

Sabrina turned suddenly to Mac. Her jaw was set and her eyes glazed.

“I’m going around the back.” she said rapidly. “His office looks out onto the park out there…I’ll go knock.” Before Mac could stop her, she was gone.

What if he’s with another woman?!
she wanted to yell.
What if you catch him wallowing in the arms of another at 4am?

“Brie…” Mac shouted pleadingly. It was too late. She had already disappeared around the side of the building. Begrudgingly and with the kind of fuzzy thinking that comes from too little sleep, Mac followed her friend to the back.

Each of the ground floor offices had patio access out to the strangely manicured lawns that lead to a man-made lake. Mac wasn’t surprised when she discovered Sabrina making her way to one of the ground floor sliding glass doors.

Her head barely clearing the perfectly manicured hedge, Mac hissed, “Seriously? Brie, honey. Seriously?”

Sabrina’s hand was already wrapped around the smooth plastic handle of the patio door. Mac had to stop herself from breaking into a full volume yelp.

“You don’t know what you’re going to find in…”

Sabrina turned to Mac and silenced her immediately. It wasn’t the sadness in her eyes that stopped her, but the disappointment. It was deep. It was dark. There was a least a few months’ recovery time, waiting for the two of them, burbling deep in there.

“No one.” Brie hissed, “NO one has
ever left me in the middle of the night. No one…” Her voice grew thick again with emotion. “No one has ever made me wait like this. I need to know…”

Mac moved past the hedgerows that functioned as barriers between the office patios. Now that she was closer, Mac could see the tears on Brie’s cheeks.

“You’re right,” Mac said, now close enough to whisper. “You need to know….” Despite the obvious misery that Brie was feeling, Mac thought she detected an amount of gratitude. Brie turned to try the sliding glass door to see if it was locked.

It wasn’t.

The door slid open easily, noiselessly scooting along its path…allowing the girls full access to what lay behind it.

Her hand on the door, the thick black behind her, Brie turned to Mac.

“Are you…”

“Nope.” Mac stopped her before she could continue, holding her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “It’s all yours. I’ll be here for the getaway…should need the need arise.”

“I love you,” Brie said, hastily embracing Mac. The next second she was gone, swallowed up into the darkness that was Paul Creed’s office.

First the light came on. Then the screams began. Every inch of Mac’s flesh seemed to sizzle with adrenaline. Emerging from the darkness behind the mild, suburban-style sliding glass door, Mac could hear the worst noise imaginable. The sound of her best friend’s heart being ripped to pieces.

Without a moments pause, Mac ran into the darkness. As soon as she entered the room she was immediately blind. Unable to distinguish anything, all she could make out was Brie’s choking sobs and a tiny sliver of light hovering above the floor a few feet off.

“Sabrina…” Mac shouted, her own voice shaky and unimpressive in the humid darkness. Even though it was spring, the apartment was dank with trapped heat.

She stumbled toward the yellow slash that indicated a doorway. Still shaking with every shriek Brie made, she managed to open the door.

The first thing Mac saw was Sabrina’s back. Still dressed in a heavy knit cardigan thrown over her pajamas, Brie was stooped with horror. Her body shook with sobs, too appalled by whatever was in front of her to even notice Mac’s loud entrance.

“Brie…what….” Mac rushed to her side to take her into her arms but stopped.

It was all she could do to stop her own scream from joining Sabrina’s almost constant shrieks of loss.

Face down on the desk, Paul Creed’s body was doing its best to spread as much blood around his office as it could.

Although his face was buried in the mass of papers on his desk, the part of his head that was visible was as lurid, moist and appalling as a squirrel lying dead by the side of the road.

Everything was crimson. But not one shade, as one would expect…but a variety of tones. From the dried, darker shade to the parts that…god knows how many hours later, were still glistening in the light from his desk lamp.

His hands were spread out on either side of him, large fingered and absolutely useless. His struggle had ended.

“Sabrina. Here…no…”. What was she saying? None of it made much sense. No? No what? No, don’t look at the dead body of your lover? No, don’t get used to what must have been the third of such crimes the two of them had stumbled across in the last half year? Trouble had its eye on the two of them, that was for sure.

Sabrina was frozen, her hands to her mouth. Her face was mottled pink and deadly white…her eyes blank with horror. Despite Mac’s insistence, she continued to stare…

Mac grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward her. It was difficult. Her strong body was stiff and it took Mac forcibly turning her head to face her to make eye contact. Brie was gasping for air, her chest hitching.

“That’s him. It’s him!
Why would someone…why would…”

“Honey, I need you to go back to the car,“ Mac said. Despite her best friend’s tears, despite the hollow, insane look in her eyes, she could think of only one thing. Call Louis.

“Is he dead?” Brie, her tangled hair hanging like vines, her legs kicking out under her nightshirt, struggled to get free from Mac’s grip. “Let me see if he’s dead, Mac. He might be…”

“Sabrina!” Mac hollered. She pulled out her most authoritative voice, despite her heartbeat thumping in her throat as if she’s swallowed a rabbit. “We need to get back to the car and get some help, ok?”

In her arms, Brie suddenly shrank like a popped balloon. Mac felt the full weight of her against her smaller, reedier frame. Safely in her best friend’s arms, Brie turned her face against Mac’s shoulder and allowed herself to sob.

“Call Louis,” Brie said, almost gagging against her sobs. “Please call Louis.”

“It took a while, but she’s asleep.” Mac sighed, sliding into the window nook gratefully. She picked up the mug of tea Louis had made and cradled it in her freezing hands. Louis, his tall frame awkwardly arranged in the tight nook starred past Mac at the grey ocean pounding against the empty beach. He was deep in thought. Deeply troubled, was more like it. His tea was going cold in front of him, the cheerful cat mug in stark contrast to his dark demeanor.

“I should’ve said something,” he said finally, more to himself than to Mac. “How many more indications did I need that he wasn’t the most well liked of all people.”

Mac shook her head.

“She was so happy,” she said. “It would take a special kind of coldness to ruin that.”