Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (24 page)

“Close the curtain,” the owner of the
Ms. Powell
voice said. An open curtain was another good sign. I was pretty sure people didn’t orgy with open curtains. “You’re going to be fine,” the man assured me.

I opened the other eye a crack, blinked a couple of times then managed to keep it open. The man leaning over me was dressed in white. A doctor. Now I understood. I was in the hospital. I’d finally had that car wreck all my friends kept predicting.

“Go away,” I whispered.

“Lindsay, I need you to tell me what happened.” It was the first voice again, and this time I recognized it.
Trent.

My eyelids flew wide open, blinked closed a couple of times, but finally adapted to the light, remained open and focused.

Trent and the guy in white leaned over me on one side with Paula and Fred on the other.

“Anybody else hurt?” My voice cracked as the words rasped up the tender surface of my throat.

“Who else was with you when this happened?” Trent asked, his notebook in one hand and pen in the other.

“I don’t know,” I croaked.

“Lindsay, do you remember what happened?” Trent prompted.

I had absolutely no memory of the accident, but I wasn’t going to admit that to him. However, his nagging did bring back the memory of his coming to my house and grilling me, asking me a million questions, wanting to know everything about everybody, but refusing to answer my questions. Now he was harassing me again while I lay at death’s door. “Don’t wanna talk about me. Tell me about your ex.” That should shut him up.

“She’s still pretty much out of it,” the man in white said.

“Am not.” If I could tell such an outrageous lie, obviously the orgy folks hadn’t drugged me with truth serum.

“Do you want a drink of water? Your throat must be sore.”

“Water?” Not
e to self: Never orgy with a man who’d offer me a drink of water when I’d barely survived a terrible car wreck. “Coke.” I needed something to get the awful taste out of my mouth.

“Can she have a Coke?” Fred asked.

I was about to protest that I’d been having them for most of my life and wasn’t going to stop now, but the man in white spoke up and assured Fred that I could. How nice of him. As soon as I got my voice back, I’d tell him a thing or two about making decisions for me. “The caffeine and sugar will help her wake up,” the man went on, “but a Seven-Up might be easier on her throat and stomach.”

“I want a
Coke
.”

“I’ll get you one from the vending machine.” Fred left.

I turned to the man in white who obviously knew nothing about my drinking habits. “Who are you?”

“I’m Doctor Claxton. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been very sick.”

“I’m still very sick. Did I hit a train? Did a train hit me? How fast was I going? Did I get a ticket?” I must be getting close to the Pre-Paid Legal limit on how many tickets they’d get me out of annually.

“No ticket this time,”
Trent said. His voice was sympathetic, and he wasn’t even scowling at me. I must be at death’s door. “There was no automobile accident. Did somebody come to visit you after I left last night?”

I shook my head, but then more events of the night before came back to me. “Henry was making that awful jungle-cat noise and I thought somebody broke in, but nobody did.”

“How do you know?”

“I looked.”

“Did you eat some more chocolate when you were looking?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right, I did.” I could feel a weak blush rising to my face. “I ate the whole thing, the rest of the pudding cake, and I got sick.” I looked at Paula. “You warned me. If I live through this, I swear I’ll never pig out again. I’ll eat lots of vegetables and chicken and give up sugar forever.”

Fred walked in the door carrying that familiar red can.

“Right after I have this Coke,” I amended. I reached for it with a hand that weighed a ton and had an IV attached. Yuck!

Doctor Claxton intercepted the pass.

I frowned. “Don’t take my Coke.”

“I’m just getting you a straw and then we’re going to raise the head of your bed so you can swallow better.”

That was kind of fun, sitting up without making an effort.

Drinking my Coke through a straw while the good doctor held the can wasn’t as much fun as gulping it down, but I decided to humor the man. It’s probably not a good idea to make your doctor mad, not if you felt as bad as I did.

After a few sips, I was more awake and those dancing bubbles had cleared away most of the disgusting taste in my mouth. The liquid stung my throat at first, but then it sort of numbed the pain. Everyone around me seemed totally absorbed with watching me drink. I do love attention, but that wasn’t really the kind I wanted.

The doctor tried to take the can away, but I grabbed it, and this time I had the strength to actually hold on. He released it to my custody and I felt I was once again regaining control of my life and my Coca-Cola intake.

“What time is it?” I asked. I could tell from the brightness of the sun that Paula and I should have been at the shop long ago.

Trent checked his watch. “A little after nine a.m.”

“I put a sign on the shop saying we’re closed for the day,” Paula said.

“Damn! Maybe we can still catch the lunch crowd.” I made an effort to get out of bed, but it was a futile effort. Holding the can of Coke took all my energy.

Claxton laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. “You nearly died. You need a little rest.”

“Almost died?” I groaned. “You mean Death by Chocolate isn’t a joke? I almost died from eating too much chocolate?”

“Not exactly,”
Trent said. “We’re pretty sure that chocolate was laced with poison. Were you eating from the same pudding cake you gave me a piece of?”

“Poison?”

The doctor took my pulse. It was probably racing at that point. “We pumped your stomach,” he said. “That and your vomiting is why your throat’s so sore. There was nothing left in your stomach, but we gave you charcoal to absorb as much of any potential poison as possible from your stomach lining and intestines. Don’t be alarmed when you have your next bowel movement and pass the charcoal.”

Pumped my stomach? Gave me charcoal? Don’t be alarmed about charcoal in my next bowel movement?

I gulped down the rest of that Coke and tried to figure out what it all meant…well, all except that last admonition. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

“We won’t get the lab results back for a few hours,” Trent continued, “but from your symptoms, the evidence of an intruder, and the piece of plastic wrap on your kitchen counter with six tiny punctures, we’re pretty sure someone came into your house after I left and used a hypodermic needle to inject the poison into the pudding part of your cake.”

I was having a hard time assimilating all this information, especially since the doctor was making a real pest of himself, shining a light in my eyes, poking and prodding my throat, stomach and back. I did my best to ignore him, but he was getting on my nerves and interfering with my concentration.

“Poison?” I repeated incredulously. “I did notice a slight bitter taste, but I was so scared when I went down to check for that intruder, my mouth already had a bitter taste.” I told him what happened. When I got to the part about not calling Fred or the cops, Fred, Paula and the cop all jumped my butt.

“That’s why you pay taxes,” Trent exclaimed, “for the privilege of calling us on a false alarm!”

“Lindsay, after all we’ve been through together, I can’t believe you didn’t call me!” Paula admonished.

“I was awake!” Fred protested. “I was working on my computer. Even if I’d been asleep, I wouldn’t have minded coming over! Did I complain the night you woke me up to be sure I was all right after you dreamed an alien space ship came down and took me away to dissect my brain?”

“Yes, you did!”

He shrugged. “Okay, maybe I did get a little miffed that night, but not very much. And I wouldn’t have complained at all last night if you’d called me because you thought you had an intruder!”

“There wasn’t anybody in my house! I looked all over, and I checked the doors to be sure they were locked, which they were.”

Fred shook his head. “Your kitchen door was wide open when I got there.”

“No, it was closed and locked. I told you, I checked!” Then a horrible thought hit me. “Omigawd! Does that mean he was in the house when I came downstairs? He was there all the time, hiding and watching me?”

Paula gasped and even Fred flinched.

Trent folded his arms and tried to look macho. “I’d say that’s exactly what it means.”

I shuddered but then shook my head. “No way. When we went downstairs, Henry went straight to the back door but then settled down to have a drink of water. I don’t think the intruder was in the house then. I think he went out through the kitchen. If he’d still been there, Henry would not have been so calm and smug. He’d have led me to the man’s hiding place and demanded I get him out of there.”

Trent considered that for a moment. “Could be. The intruder could have left when he heard your door open upstairs, locked the door behind him and then came back later, leaving the door open when he left that second time. Where did you put the pan after you finished the cake?”

“It was on the coffee table when I got sick and went to the bathroom. I passed out before I got back over there. It must still be there.”

“No. We searched the entire house for a pan or bowl or anything that would have remnants of what you’d eaten so we could analyze the contents.”

“You searched my house without a search warrant?” I exclaimed indignantly, thinking of the unmade bed, the pile of junk still in the living room, the dirty clothes in the bathroom…especially the white cotton underpants. So much for that stupid admonition from our mothers to always wear clean underwear in case we’re in a car wreck! Always wear black silk underwear in case a hunky police officer searches your bathroom.

“Yeah, we searched your house.
We don’t need a search warrant when the back door’s wide open and the occupant is passed out in the middle of the living room floor.”

“I didn’t mean
—” I stopped myself since I had no intention of telling him what I did mean. “Did you find anything?”

“The only spoons and bowls we found were the ones you and I used. I took them to the lab, but I don’t think we’ll get anything from them. That would explain why the intruder came back after you passed out, to get rid of the evidence.”

“Then we’ll never know for sure if it was poisoned.”

Trent grinned. “We had plenty of samples in the bathroom where you vomited.”

I thought I might vomit again. I swallowed hard and resolved to keep that Coke in my stomach. “But how could somebody that careful forget to take the plastic wrap with the holes?”

“Failing to relock the kitchen door was a major glitch, too. Something must have made him leave in a hurry.”

I smiled as a vivid picture of half-inch claws and razor-sharp teeth crossed my mind. “I’d put my money on my guard-cat.”

I swear
Trent’s macho expression got kind of soft at the mention of Henry. “That’s what we figured, so we took him in to check his claws. We had a hell of a time getting scrapings. I can’t believe that wild animal was the same cat who curled up in my lap and made me pet him. He sure doesn’t like it when you start messing with his feet.”

“If you did get something, you need to try to match the DNA to the blood in Lester’s apartment and the trunk of his car. Did you get any prints off the glass door knob? That should hold prints really well. Did you find any prints in Lester’s apartment to match to?”

“Do you want me to see if we can put you on the department payroll?”

“
That’s so sweet of you to offer. I could be your special assistant. We’ll be a dynamite team. They might even want to make a television show about us. I can see it all now. Powell and Trent. Brains and brawn. What a combo!”

Paula giggled, Fred looked to the ceiling for help, the doctor snickered and
Trent had a really hard time trying not to laugh. At least, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason his face got all red.

“You’re going to have to include Henry on your team,” Fred said. “Your gluttony and your cat saved your life. Henry came to the window where I was working, scratched off half the screen and demanded in quite pithy language that I come out and follow him to your house. He led me right to where you were passed out on the floor. I called 911, but you’d already made yourself sick by eating too much and consequently emptied your stomach of most of the poison.”

Consequently emptied your stomach of most of the poison
. Fred would never say I’d pigged out then heaved up my guts. For the second time that day I found myself appreciating his fastidious nature.

I let out a long breath and lay back on the pillow. “I think I may have to change the name of my shop. Somehow, now that it almost became a reality,
Death by Chocolate doesn’t seem nearly as cute and darling as it did when I chose it. I’ll never look at that sign without thinking about that floor coming up to meet me then waking up in here with this needle in my vein and my friends on death-watch.”