The Diva Steals a Chocolate Kiss (15 page)

Dear Natasha,

My husband is wild for chocolate liqueur. I thought it would be fun to make some for him. Is that possible?

—Loving Wife in Boozeville Mountain, Georgia

Dear Loving Wife,

It’s actually easy to make chocolate liqueur. Add cocoa nibs and sugar to a bottle of vodka. Or dissolve unsweetened cocoa powder and sugar in hot water and add it to a bottle of vodka. The water may dilute it a bit so the nibs might make a stronger chocolate flavor. Spark it up by adding vanilla, raspberries, or coffee! Let it stand until the flavors develop.

—Natasha

I extricated myself from Coco and wandered into the kitchen. A box of chocolates lay open on the counter. They looked exactly like the mysterious anonymous ones I had
received. Six chocolates in crimped white paper had been in the red box. Only one remained uneaten. I examined the box. No company name or logo. Plain as could be. Had Randy been getting the chocolate delivered to him, too?

Near the stove I found what I was looking for—a telltale aluminum macchinetta just like the one at Joe’s house. I opened a cabinet and discovered Italian pottery dishes and mugs. And, as if there was any doubt left in my mind, on the refrigerator hung a selfie of Randy and Coco being cozy at the beach.

They were an unlikely couple. I never would have put the chubby handyman and the socialite together, but evidently they had found something in each other. No wonder Coco needed an alibi. She wasn’t worried about being accused of murder. She was afraid of Mitch finding out about her affair.

I returned to the living room. “Mitch doesn’t know about your relationship with Randy?”

Nina jerked forward in astonishment, her eyes wide.

Coco sank back, dabbing at her nose with a paper towel. “We worked hard at keeping it a secret. Mitch dotes on me. He would have fired Randy.”

Nina sputtered, “Oh, come on. Mitch isn’t stupid. He must have noticed that you weren’t home.”

Coco sighed. “We’ve been living apart in the same house for years. Separate bedrooms, separate lives. Mitch doesn’t want a divorce because we’re Catholic. He won’t hear of it. I might have gone ahead with a divorce anyway, but it would probably kill Nonni if I did. So we pretend to be a couple. I don’t keep tabs on him, and I come and go as I please. When he asks, I tell him I’m going to Dad’s house or out to some meeting.”

“Did you come here the night your dad disappeared?”

Coco winced. “No. I went home with Mitch. But he could easily have left without me knowing it. I moved up to the third-floor suite a couple of years ago, and he uses the second-floor master bedroom.” Her fist coiled into a ball around the paper towel. “It’s my fault. I should have moved
home with Dad and Nonni. I would have been there that night. I would have known what happened to Dad.”

Coco looked from Nina to me. “There hasn’t been a word from him. Not a hint of what might have happened. How can that be? How can a person disappear without a clue?”

How indeed? Nonni had called Mitch a rooster. I wondered if she would really have been upset by a divorce. Maybe so. Coco’s revelation that they hadn’t been together the night Joe vanished, as Mitch had claimed, made me wonder if he had a hand in it.

There was so much I wanted to ask her. But it wasn’t really fair to take advantage of her at the moment. I feared that inquiring about Kara might make things worse. I went for an answer to one other thing I hadn’t been able to ask her in front of Mitch.

“Coco, who is in the locked room upstairs in Joe’s house?”

Coco blinked at me. “How did you know about that? Oh right, you went upstairs to look around Daddy’s room. Of course, you probably heard her. It’s my mom.”

“You keep her locked up?” Nina was aghast.

Coco sighed. “You make it sound so awful. It’s not like that. It’s for her own safety. Mom was in a terrible car accident a very long time ago. She’s been an invalid ever since. Brain damage left her unable to speak much or to reason. A few years ago, she managed to propel her wheelchair to the top of the stairs when the nurse wasn’t looking, and Mom very nearly toppled down them. She would have broken her neck. After that near miss, we decided that it would be wisest to keep the door locked.” She scowled at Nina. “The nurse brings her downstairs. It’s not as though she’s locked up. We try to take her outside every day. Weather permitting, she sits in the garden with Bacio in her lap.”

“There’s always a nurse with her?” I asked.

“We wanted to keep her at home. Someone is with her around the clock. At first it was Nonni and me.” Coco lifted a weary hand to her face and massaged her temple. “My
grandfather, Nonni’s husband, died in the same accident. Arnie had just left me, and I thought my life was over. I tried to put on a brave face but I spent hours weeping in my room, just devastated. Daddy finally insisted that I go back to college, which was a blessing for me. I felt like a traitor at the time, like I was giving up on my mom, but Dad was right. He hired nurses and that’s how it has been ever since.”

“Then there must have been a nurse in Joe’s house the night he went missing.”

Coco nodded. “She didn’t hear a thing. Not the doorbell, not a knock on the door, not the phone ringing, nothing. She was as shocked as everyone else to learn he was gone.”

“Your mother didn’t come to the chocolate tasting,” observed Nina.

Coco bowed her head. “Heavens no. She would have been terrified and confused. She lives a very quiet life.”

“I’m so sorry, Coco. It must have been terribly hard on you.”

“The most awful time in my life . . . until now. Why did Randy have to die? They say trouble comes in threes, you know.”

She didn’t say it but she didn’t really have to. She was thinking her dad was probably dead, too.

“Coco, you shouldn’t be alone tonight. Would you like to come home with me?” I asked.

“That’s very kind of you. But no, thanks.” Coco slipped on the bracelet that lay on the side table. “I need a little time to pull myself together. It will do me good to walk to Dad’s house. Then I’ll have to break the news”—her voice wavered—“to Nonni, Dan, and Mitch.”

The three of us and the two dogs filed out the front door. Coco turned off the lights and locked up. It felt horrifically final, like she was closing the door on Randy’s life. Coco headed for Joe’s house while Nina and I walked slowly back to our street.

“How come you didn’t tell me they were having an affair?” asked Nina.

“I didn’t even suspect it until we were inside Randy’s house.”

“You know, now that I think back, Randy did seem to be around a lot. He didn’t say much, but he sort of hovered near Coco. Do you think Mitch suspects?”

“I don’t know. Coco said he dotes on her.”

Nina
tsk
ed. “I bet he knows.”

“What worries me more is how quickly Mitch insisted that he was home with Coco the night that her father vanished. Coco doesn’t really know where he was. How convenient.”

“So he felt he needed an alibi,” murmured Nina. She stopped walking. “You looked in the wrong house!”

“What?”

“If Coco doesn’t pay attention to Mitch, what’s to stop him from hiding Joe at their house? Or worse, burying Joe in their garden?”

I wanted to say that was ridiculous. That her imagination was running wild. But I wasn’t at all sure that was such a preposterous suggestion. “Surely Coco would have noticed something like that. Chances are that Joe left with someone he trusted or went to meet someone he trusted.”

“If Mitch had asked Joe to come to the office or meet him somewhere, wouldn’t Joe have gone?” asked Nina. “I bet he would have. So we find out where Mitch and Coco live, and you figure out how to get inside the house.”

“I love the way you always say
I’ll
figure out how to get in. No way.”

“We can walk by at least. Check the windows.”

“You think Joe put up a sign that says,
I’m being held captive
?”

“We can look in the garden to see if any dirt has been freshly turned over.”

We had reached our block. “Okay. We might not be able to see it at all, but we can give it a try.”

We said good night, and I ambled home with Daisy leading the way.

Mars appeared to have dozed off. I moved his book to the table and turned out the lights in the family room. Daisy
and I were in the kitchen before Mochie showed up, stretching as though we’d interrupted a great catnap. He didn’t seem to mind, though, when he realized that sliced turkey dinner for cats was being doled out.

It had been a rugged few days. I poured myself half a glass of white wine, added a little cranberry juice and topped it with sparkling water. I carried my drink into the sunroom and turned on only the tiny lights strung overhead against the glass.

Everything seemed so calm as I gazed out at my garden. It was hard to imagine that Randy was dead. At least he hadn’t been murdered. Unless . . . the stress of being involved in Joe’s disappearance or Arnaud’s death had been too much for him and led to his heart attack. Stress could bring on a heart attack, couldn’t it?

I sat there for a long time, thinking about Coco and the tragedies in her life. You just never knew what kinds of burdens people carried. From the outside Coco seemed to have it all, but tangible things hadn’t prevented her from suffering more than her fair share of sorrows. She lost her grandfather. Her mother had survived but spent her days locked in a room. Coco’s marriage was over. Her lover had died, and her first love had been murdered. I hoped her father wasn’t dead, too. How much could one person endure?

The next morning, Mars still slept when I rose. I let Daisy out and back in, and fed Mochie. By the time I had showered and dressed in a pleated navy blue skirt with a forgiving waistband, that—
oof!
—was getting to be a little less forgiving, a white sleeveless cotton blouse, and white sandals, Mochie and Daisy had gone back to bed with Mars.

I made a cup of tea and grabbed a leftover muffin for breakfast. Closing the door quietly behind me, I locked it, and set off for the hotel in the gloriously refreshing summer morning.

Happily, all my escorts were present and waiting. Groups
of winners would be going to various studios for television appearances.

I spied Lori Speer, looking none the worse for her encounter with Wolf. “Good morning!”

Lori bubbled with her usual enthusiasm. “Isn’t it a hoot that I’m a suspect?”

“Not everyone would feel that way.”

“The real killer must have dumped those pills into my champagne glass after I set it down. That’s the only logical explanation.”

It was a good explanation. And plausible. “But why?”

Her eyes narrowed and a breeze lifted her wild hair. “That’s what I’ve been wondering. Either to throw everyone off track, or he intended to poison Arnaud but something went wrong, and he had to strangle him instead. I figure it must have been someone who is married. You know, someone whose spouse or lover might have found the pills so the killer couldn’t dispose of them at home.”

“You’ve been giving this a lot of thought.”

“You bet. The old cop in me loves a puzzle like this.” Lori paused and motioned me away from the rest of the winners. “Arnaud Turnèbe ruined my brother’s life by stealing his chocolate recipe. Arnaud made a fortune, and my brother got nothing out of it at all. Nothing. He left the business he loved, the career that was meant for him, and it was because of Arnaud and his sleazy tactics. I didn’t kill him, but I’m not surprised that he got his comeuppance from someone. Arnaud was a cheat. He crossed one too many people, and it finally caught up with him.”

I watched her board a van. She was right about Arnaud. I barely knew him but so far the only nice thing anyone had mentioned were his chocolates, which, if one believed Lori, were really the creation of her brother. Maybe Mars wasn’t off base with his ideas about Lori.

The vans pulled out, and I found myself standing alone
on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Confident that everything was on track, I took a little hike down to Amore headquarters. After all, Mitch had suggested I check out Joe’s office. It wouldn’t be polite of me not to talk to Marla while I was there . . .

The building was oddly quiet. Vince, the ponytailed handyman who had helped Randy, walked through with his head bowed. I suspected all the Amore employees would feel melancholy today.

The receptionist in front recognized me and forced a feeble smile.

“I’m so sorry about Randy,” I said.

The receptionist burst into tears and reached for a box of tissues, which was empty. Wiping her face with her fingers, she said, “I can’t believe he’s gone. We’re all broken up about it.”

“I hate to be a bother, but Mitch asked me to come by.”

“Sure,” she sniffled. She waved her hand toward the stairs. “You know the way.”

I walked up the steps, listening to her soft sobs. On the second floor, I passed the glass partition that enclosed the conference room and stopped at the door with Joe’s name next to it.

Marla Eldridge looked up from her work. A dimple took shape next to her mouth when she smiled. Her highly streaked hair wasn’t as perfectly coiffed as usual. In fact, she appeared a bit disheveled, as though she hadn’t bothered to run a brush through her hair that morning. A half-eaten sandwich in an open foam box lay on a console behind her. “Sophie! What can I do for you?”