Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (21 page)

Very slowly I turned the key…as if I could back off should a bomb start to explode. The battery cranked, and I jumped and turned loose of the key. It didn’t explode.

“I’m driving,” I said, my voice a little squeaky. I cleared my throat and tried to sound as if I hadn’t almost wet my pants a few seconds ago. “I drive faster than you do, and we’re in a hurry.”

“We’re only going around the block! How fast can you go in that amount of time?”

I turned the key again, and the engine caught. “I can go pretty damned fast if you’ll get out of my way.”

“I’m not moving until
you
get out of that car.”

“Paula, we don’t have time for this!”

“Fine. Then get out.”

Like I said, she may be little, but she’s stubborn. I compromised by sliding over into the passenger seat.

Paula got in, scooted the seat up, put the car in reverse and was backing out just as the police car came down the street and parked at the end of the driveway, effectively blocking our exit.

Paula hit the brake barely in time to avoid backing into the squad car. The sudden stop tilted us both backward, but then she sagged onto the steering wheel. “It’s all over,” she whispered.

“It’s not over until the red-haired lady sings, and I couldn’t carry a tune if I had to. Turn off the engine, then we’ll get out and bluff.”

She was ghostly pale, but she’d lost the panic and terror. Now she just seemed resigned to the inevitable. She’d given up.

In the rearview mirror, I could see Trent and Creighton walking toward the car, Creighton in his spiffy blue uniform and Trent in faded jeans and rumpled Kansas City Royals T-shirt.

“Paula Roberts,” I said, using her birth name, “if you don’t get out of this car and help me dazzle these cops with bullshit, I’m going to tell everyone at our shop that you use a mix for your cappuccino.”

“What?”

Okay, it was a pretty weak threat, but it was the best I could come up with while my own heart was pounding fear through my body fast enough to get it a speeding ticket. And the weak threat worked. It was so absurd, it pulled her out of her stupor.

But before either of us could reach for the door handle, Trent knocked on my window and Creighton appeared at Paula’s.

I rolled my window down and smiled. “We’ve got to stop meeting this way. My cat’s getting suspicious.”

“Going somewhere, ladies?” he asked, leaning down to look in.

“Ladies,” I repeated, looking at Paula. I really just wanted to see if she’d fainted yet. I turned back to
Trent and smiled. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

He wanted to smile back. I know he did. I could see it in his eyes. He was only looking exasperated because his cop training told him it was the appropriate expression.

“Whose car is this?” he demanded. Damn good cop training.

“I’d say by dint of possession, it’s Paula’s. A gift somebody left in her garage. There was no note, so we think it’s from her secret admirer. We were just taking it for a test spin.”

“Where were you planning to spin it to?”

“Oh, down to
the lake, come back by the grocery store. We need to get some Tampax.” My old stand-by to get rid of unwanted males.

Trent blushed, and for just a second, I thought it might work. But it didn’t. He looked down to his shoes then back up and sighed. “Why are you wearing gardening gloves?”

“We were planning to plant some flowers down at the lake.”

He shook his head. “Would both of you please step out of the car?”

I turned to Paula. “I know you had your heart set on planting those petunias down by the lake, but Detective Trent did say
please
. It’s so rare to find men with manners these days. I suppose we ought to do what he wants.”

She looked confused, but she complied and so did I.

About that time another squad car pulled up behind Creighton’s. Like I said, the cops in Pleasant Grove are strapped for entertainment. The whole force turns out to have a tailgate party when somebody complains about his neighbor’s television set being too loud.

Trent led us over to stand in the shade of a tree and took out his small notebook and pen while Creighton and the two recent arrivals checked the car.

“It’s Lester Mackey’s, isn’t it?” I asked.

“That’s right. How do
you know that?”

I shrugged. “The man’s been dogging us, he’s from
Texas, the car has Texas plates.”

Apparently Paula’s the only one who believes me when I lie.
Trent studied me intently for a long moment, and it was all I could do not to confess that Lester’s landlord had given me a description of the car. It’s a good thing I can make chocolate. I obviously have no talent for being a criminal.

“How did it come to be in your possession, Ms. Walters?”

Paula cringed and managed to look even smaller than she was. “I don’t know. I came home from the grocery store and saw that my garage door was open. The car was inside.”

“When was that?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, butting into the conversation. “Don’t tell me you got another anonymous phone call.”

He glared at me. “As a matter of fact, someone called to report seeing a car with Texas plates in Paula Walters’ garage. Only took a couple of minutes to match up the numbers with the ones Mackey’s apartment manager gave me.”

“Who’s making all these calls? Didn’t it ever occur to you that somebody’s trying to frame Paula? Look at her garage. You’d have to have awfully good eyesight to see a license plate from the street through all the trees.”

“If I knew who was making the calls, I couldn’t tell you. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t. They’re made from prepaid cell phones. That’s all we know.”

“So you agree it looks like she’s being set up?”

“I don’t agree and I don’t disagree. I’m just trying to get a few facts.”

“You keep clenching your teeth like that, you’ll wear off the enamel.
I know what I’m talking about.”

He turned away and faced Paula again. At least I’d managed to give her a few moments to regain a little composure. “So the car appeared in your garage while you were gone to the grocery store a few minutes ago?”

“I don’t know. I don’t put my car in the garage in good weather. The door’s too heavy. The last time I opened it was on Saturday to get out my lawnmower. The car wasn’t there.”

“So that means the car could have been put in your garage any time betw
een Saturday and this afternoon?”

She nodded.

Creighton came over. “Need to talk to you a minute.”

“Don’t go anywhere, ladies.”

I smiled. “We’ll be right here waiting for you, big boy.”

“What are we going to do?” Paula whispered as soon as he was out of hearing.

“We could steal the squad car and run or we could pray for an earthquake.”

“Lindsay, will you be serious! We’re in trouble!”

“We don’t know that. At least not for certain sure.”

Trent came back over. “There are traces of blood in the trunk. We’re going to see if it matches the blood on some pieces of toilet tissue in Lester Mackey’s apartment. In the meantime, Ms. Walters, we’d appreciate it if you didn’t leave town.”

How true it is, you only regret the things you didn’t do. Why didn’t I flush that bloody tissue paper when I had the chance?

Chapter
Thirteen

After the cops left, towing Lester’s old car away for evidence, Paula and I walked over to Fred’s house to retrieve Zach. Paula didn’t say much, and that worried me, so of course I babbled. I kept trying to assure her that everything was going to turn out fine, and she kept ignoring me. I didn’t blame her. Even I didn’t believe me.

Fred answered the door with two hairs out of place and a wild expression in his eyes. Zach toddled up behind him with a piece of ivy hanging over his shoulder, a silver candlestick in one hand and a white, partially gnawed candle in the other.

“Zach!” Paula exclaimed, stooping to take the items away from her son. “What have you been doing? Oh, Fred, I’m sorry!”

She handed everything back to Fred and scooped Zach up. “You’ve been a bad boy! What did you do to Uncle Fred’s house? Is anything broken?”

“It’s okay,” Fred said in a squeaky voice. He stared dismally at the tooth marks on the candle.

“Get over it,” I snapped, in no mood for trivialities when Paula was about to be charged with murder. “It’s only a candle.”

“Fred, if he’s destroyed anything, let me know, and I’ll replace it,” Paula offered.

“No.” Fred kept looking at that candle. “He didn’t destroy anything.”

“Are you going to let us come in?” I asked. “Or would you like to come to my house where the main concern is fending off giant dust bunnies, not obsessing over a stupid candle?” He looked at me blankly. Even taking his OCD personality into consideration, I was surprised he got so upset over such a minor incident. “We need to talk,” I said firmly. “Something else has happened.”

He stepped back, permitting us entrance. “Come in.” It was the most half-hearted invitation I’d ever heard. Zach must have done more than eat the candle and ravage the ivy. Surely Fred couldn’t be this disconcerted over a piece of wax and a messy plant. The house was still standing and so was Fred. I couldn’t begin to imagine what had happened.

“Lindsay, you can fill him in on the latest,” Paula said wearily. “I’ll take Zach home before he does something else he shouldn’t.”

I entered Fred’s house cautiously, but everything looked pretty much the same as before Hurricane Zach. A sauce pan sat on the middle cushion of his forest green sofa, and a couple of lids dotted the champagne carpet, but no real harm that I could see.

“I can’t believe you got all bent out of shape over one little candle,” I chided him.

Fred ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not the candle. I don’t care if he eats the candle. It’s my computer.”

“Your computer? He ate your computer?”

Fred scowled and for a second he looked like the old Fred. “Of course not! It’s
—” He cleared his throat and straightened as if preparing to face a firing squad. “It’s got problems. It crashed.”

He seemed to be in pain. I certainly was. I realized suddenly how much I’d been counting on Fred to pull a metaphorical rabbit out of cyberspace.

“Your computer crashed?” I repeated, hoping he’d correct me, tell me I misunderstood.

He nodded.

“You mean it doesn’t work anymore? It has to work!” I told him about Lester’s car and the blood in the trunk and Trent’s admonition to Paula that she shouldn’t leave town. “We need you to get on that computer and find out about the skeletons in Lester’s closet fast! What happened? Can you fix it?”

“I don’t know what happened!” He actually raised his voice, then immediately regained control. “I don’t think I’ve actually lost the hard drive. I think the problem lies in the
—” And I can’t repeat what he said then because it was in a foreign language…computer language. “Zach was sitting on the floor in my office, pretending that candlestick was a car while I worked,” he continued in a quiet, dead voice. “I got up to get another DVD, and when I turned back to the computer, Zach was hitting the keyboard with the candlestick. The whole system was going crazy. I have all my programs and data files backed up, of course, so it’s not the end of the world as we know it. I’m running diagnostics. I’ll have it up and going again. But it’s going to be a little while longer before we can find out anything about Paula’s father-in-law.”

“Damn! How much longer?”

“That depends on how soon I get back to work on it.” He glared at me pointedly.

“Oh! I was just leaving. How about if I bring you some
Chocolate Pudding Cake?”

He managed a tiny smile. “That should help. Thank you.”

I’d brought a large pan of the dessert home with me so I fixed Fred a huge serving bowl of the cake and pudding, then topped it with vanilla ice cream, nuts and chocolate sprinkles. That should help get him through the computer crisis or send him into a diabetic coma.

***

Later that evening Henry and I finished our respective cans of dinner and were settling down to have dessert (Chocolate Pudding Cake for me, catnip for him), then spend a couple of hours vegging in front of the television when the doorbell rang.

I stopped with my first bite halfway to my mouth. Henry looked up from his saucer of catnip but immediately went back to daintily sniffing and nibbling.

I told myself his lack of reaction meant the person at the door was not Lester, but I couldn’t be one hundred percent positive. I’d only been speculating as to the cause of Henry’s nighttime jungle sounds. I could be wrong. It might not be Lester at all he was reacting to. He could be having attacks of gas in the middle of the night and on the back porch of the house across the street.

Of course, Lester didn’t seem to make a habit of requesting entrance. It was unlikely he would be ringing my doorbell. I was getting paranoid with all that had been happening. My visitor was probably Rick. I didn’t want to see Rick, but I’d rather see him than some madman who felt the need to cut a hole in my heart the way he’d done with the bear so I couldn’t sic my father’s army of lawyers on him after Paula went to prison.