Truffled to Death (A Chocolate Covered Mystery) (5 page)

“Have you talked to Chief Noonan? Maybe they’re, I don’t know, working together on something to do with the robbery?” I suggested.

“I did!” Lavender practically wailed. “He hasn’t spoken to Addison since this morning.”

Now I was getting an uneasy feeling, which was reflected in Erica’s expression for a moment before she hid it. “What did the chief recommend?” Erica asked.

“He told me to file a missing persons report tomorrow.” Her voice quivered at the words.

A missing persons report? The thought made me feel a little quivery too.

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

W
e finally got rid of Lavender at two in the morning.

“Where do you think the professor is?” I asked Erica.

“I have no idea.” Now that we were alone, she allowed her worry to show. “But none of the possibilities are good. He either had something to do with the robbery—”

I broke in. “And he’s basking on some tropical island now while Lavender pines away for him.”

Erica continued. “Which doesn’t make much sense, because the Rivers’ collection could make his new career.”
She continued. “Or Lavender is right and something . . . bad has happened to him.”

Then I remembered something. “Did you leave the house at like midnight?” I wasn’t sure if I’d dreamed it.

Erica flushed a deep red.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. “I’ve never seen you blush like that! What did you do?”

“Nothing.” She kept her voice calm, but her eyes slid away.

“Come on. Spill it.”

Erica’s face went solid red again. “This whole day was a little upsetting and I decided that maybe I should explain it all to Bobby.”

“Explain?” I paused. “Wait. You went on a booty call?”

“Shush!” she said, instinctively looking around.

“Shush, what?” I said. “It’s two in the morning. The only people awake in West Riverdale are you, me and kooky Lavender.”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “I drove to his house and it was dark. I changed my mind and came home.”

“Likely story,” I said. “You probably had a quickie and got home in time to entertain our unexpected guest.”

“No.” She shook her head, laughing at herself. “I chickened out.”

That I could believe. “So what the heck’s going on with you two?”

“We’re doing fine,” she said, as if reassuring herself. “I think he’s waiting for me to make the, you know, first move.”

“Like a midnight booty call,” I teased.

She blushed again.

“That’s going to be the name of my next dark chocolate truffle,” I said. “The Midnight Booty Call.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

T
he sky was a deep blue and felt huge to me, as if the possibilities were endless. The late afternoon temperature was both warm in the sun and cool in the shade, perfect for exercise. A beautiful day in Maryland.

I was in mile three of my four-mile route, feeling strong. After being up so late with Lavender, I’d put off running so I could be rested for my morning frenzy of chocolate making and spent my favorite day of the week doing my favorite thing. I’d loved my new fall creations and got to see my customers loading up on them. Pumpkin Treats with a tinge of allspice. Sweet Temptations Truffles which were dark chocolate cups filled with sweet potato mousse. And the most risky, Butternut Squash Squares with cookie crumbles on top. I’d left early with Kona in charge until closing so I could sneak in a run before dinner.

Then a state police car crested the hill in front of me. I stopped, resisting the urge to run into the stand of trees on my right, knowing that trouble was about to ruin my day.

I waited on the side of the road, hands on my hips as I heaved a little. Sweat pooled on my lower back, not all of it a result of my exercise. I was sure my face was flushed deep red, which always highlighted my freckles. My hair was plastered to my skull, but most likely had some bizarre strawberry blond tufts sticking up.

Sure enough, Detective Roger Lockett slowed to a stop beside me, his arm on the open window and his bicep straining the sleeve of his uniform. He looked at me through reflective sunglasses, smiling a little. Probably because I was a sweaty mess.

The last time I’d seen him was when he’d grudgingly told me the inside scoop on the deal to put two murderers behind bars for a long time. Two murderers that Erica and I had helped uncover. And then he’d demanded that I stay far away from police work in the future.

I’d readily agreed, convinced I’d never need to.

“Bad news?” I asked.

“That’s the only kind I deliver,” he said. He had a strong Pittsburgh accent that came through even in that short statement.

My chest constricted at his confirmation. “Leo?”

“No,” he said emphatically. “Your brother’s fine. At least as far as I know. It’s about Dr. Moody.”

I relaxed just a little. “Did he take off to Bora Bora with his ill-gotten gains?”

“Nope,” he said, his eyes on me. “He’s dead.”

I
gaped at him, probably looking like a fish, the kind with a big, wide mouth. “The professor is dead?” My face felt numb with shock.

The detective clicked open the locks. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll drive you back to your house.”

“Really? I’m all gross,” I said, not really waiting for his answer. It seemed easier to think about the mundane than the professor.

“I’ll keep the windows open,” he said.

I started around the front of the car and went to open the passenger door. “Nope,” he said. “In the back.”

“What?” I said, outraged. “Like a criminal?”

He shrugged, clearly amused. “State law.”

I stomped over and got in, slamming the door.

I think I saw him wince in the rearview mirror, although the cage between us made it difficult to see him clearly. “Hey,” he said. “That’s government property.”

The seat was hard plastic, and my sweaty legs stuck to it. “What happened to him?” I asked as he wheeled the car around and headed back to my house.

“Let’s wait for the chief to fill you in,” he said.

“So how bad is this?” I asked.

He shot me a look in the mirror. “That depends. Did you do it?”

I rolled my eyes at him. “Of course not. Well, at least you’re not closing my shop this time.”

“Not yet,” he said.

I’d learned to take his tough attitude with a grain of salt but I still scowled at him.

“How ya doin’?” He pushed his Pittsburgh accent for me. I’d had a roommate from Pittsburgh for a while, and he knew I delighted in the unique expressions.

“Good,” I said. “You bin back to the ’Burgh since I saw you in May?” I had a lot of practice copying that accent.

“Once,” he said. “Fourth of July.”

“Didja see the fireworks at the Point?”

Pittsburgh’s Point State Park sat right where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers met to form the Ohio River. Since I had few relatives, my roommate had been kind enough to invite me on several of her family visits, and we’d had a lot picnics there.

“Yep,” he said. “With the whole family.”

“Nice,” I said. “West Riverdale’s fireworks were cancelled, so we went to Frederick.” Our new mayor, Abby Brenton, was
trying to get the town back on track after the previous mayor’s debacle and had promised to have a celebration next year.

I focused on what he’d said. Family? “Do you have kids?” I asked. I’d never thought about his personal life.

“Nope.” We pulled up to the house, and the chief’s police car was parked in front for all the neighbors to see. Erica’s car was plugged into its special charging station, so she must have come home early too.

“Lieutenant Bobby here?” I asked.

He gave me a sarcastic look. “Whatta ya think? I’m stupid?” He was well aware of the history between Erica and Bobby but maybe not the current state of their relationship.

I walked inside, the chief looking out of place at our kitchen table. Erica had given him coffee and a banana nut muffin, despite looking shocked at the news.

Luckily, the pantry room door where I’d written the beginnings of our robbery suspect list was still closed. Neither Chief Noonan nor Lockett appreciated our investigative efforts in the past.

I poured a cup of coffee for Lockett and handed him the cream and sugar bowls in the shape of monkeys with their arms as the handles. “Let’s just get this out of the way,” I said. “Where were we on the night of . . . ?”

The chief stopped in the middle of peeling the paper from his muffin. “How do you know it happened at night?”

“I don’t,” I said. “It was a joke. You know, ‘
Where were you on the night of June thirteenth?
’ They say it on all the cop shows.”

He sighed one of his sighs that showed how deeply disappointed he was in me that I wasn’t taking this seriously.
He was right. Someone was dead. Even though I hated what the professor had done to Erica, it was still tragic that he was alive yesterday and dead today.

And it meant another murder that affected little West Riverdale, what we used to call “The Mayberry of Maryland.” How was that even possible?

Erica’s cell phone rang. She grabbed it and pushed the button to reject the call. It immediately rang again.

Then my phone rang. It was Leo. “I have to take this,” I said and stood up to take the call in the hallway. “Hey, Leo.”

“Worst day of your life?” he asked right away. It was our way of making sure the other one was okay. The absolute worst day of our lives was when our parents died, although Leo had too many days that were close to his worst when he was in Afghanistan.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Talking to my best friend Lockett.”

He laughed. “Call me later.”

I went back into the kitchen. “I guess we better turn these off.” If this news had already hit the town, then everyone would be calling us. After yesterday’s scene, all of West Riverdale knew we hated the professor.

I decided to jump right in. “Lavender came here at one in the morning looking for her boss,” I said. “I don’t know why she thought he might be here.”

The chief looked over his glasses at Erica. “Before he disappeared, he mentioned having a meeting with a former student. Was that you?”

“No,” she said calmly. “I was at the store until closing and then here.”

“He must have a lot of former students,” I insisted.

“True,” Detective Lockett said. “But not that many who wanted him dead.”

My eyes popped open. “Why would you think we wanted . . . that?”

Too bad Lockett was such a smart guy and realized I hadn’t disagreed with him. “Didn’t you?”

“No! Just because we couldn’t stand the guy and wanted him to leave West Riverdale and not come back doesn’t mean we wanted him dead.” And maybe lose his job, his hair, his teeth, and all of his friends.

Lockett stared at me.

“Let’s keep this simple,” I said. “Lavender said he left at noon yesterday. Both of us were at the store until closing. Then Reese stopped by. And then we came home and were here all night.”

“Can you prove it?” Lockett waited with his pen poised for an answer.

“You mean, beyond vouching for each other? I don’t know. We were both on our computers. Can’t you track them or something? Our cell phones were here.” I saw Erica’s face flinch a little and remembered that she’d left the house at midnight. I rushed on. “What else do we need to do to prove it?”

The chief and Lockett exchanged glances and I sighed. “You’re going to separate us, aren’t you?”

Detective Lockett stood up. “You come with me,” he said. “Outside.”

“Why do I have to be the one who goes outside?”

“Cuz you smell,” he said.

Oh yeah. I’d forgotten the whole sweaty mess thing.

We sat on the wooden rocking chairs and he looked out
over the field across from our house, rocking a little. “I have a bad feeling about this, Michelle.”

I didn’t answer. His getting personal thing was probably just a cop trick. “We didn’t do anything.” I turned to watch the kids who lived across the street playing a form of tag that involved calling out colors of the rainbow.

“I know,” he said. “But you can’t stick your nebby nose into this one. It could be a whole heck of a lot bigger than that last one.”

“Really? You pulled out ‘nebby nose’ from your Pittsburgh grab bag?” I asked. Even my roommate had learned that no one outside of the ‘Burgh knew that meant nosey.

“You didn’t answer me,” he said. It was hard to get anything past this guy. “You gonna stay out of my police business?”

“Of course,” I said.

He didn’t look like he believed me.

“Where did they find . . . him?” I asked, suppressing a shudder.

“In Bluebird Park,” he said. His tone was casual but he couldn’t help his cop instincts to stare at me and evaluate my reaction.

“Outside Frederick?” I asked. “What was he doing there?” Besides being murdered.

“Crime scene techs think he was killed at a picnic table and dragged into a creek,” he said.

I shivered but managed a joke. “Don’t you mean a ‘crick’?” I was sure he was rolling his eyes internally. “How did . . . it happen?”

He gave me his
do you really think I’d tell you that?
look.

I tried to figure out a question the detective might answer. “What’s near the park?”

He raised his eyebrows. “There’s a self-storage business pretty close.”

“What a waste of money,” I said. “People need to learn to throw things away.”

Lockett smiled, as if he knew I was trying to distract him with nonsense so I could ask more questions.

“Was the professor’s car there?” I tried, knowing I was pushing it.

“Yes,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Are we playing twenty questions?”

“I get twenty?” I asked. “Who found him?”

“Someone was playing Frisbee golf—”

I interrupted him. “Frisbee golf?”

“Yes.”

“That’s, like, a real thing?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s a real thing.” He shifted in his chair, annoyed that he’d used my words. “A sport.”

“For old people?” I asked. “Like, bocce ball or something?”

He looked even more annoyed. “That’s really one of your questions?”

“Wait.” I pretended to be appalled. “You don’t play Frisbee golf, do you?”

He shook his head, more at me than to answer. “No.”

“Bocce ball?”

He smiled. “Maybe. I’m half Italian.”

“So how did this Frisbee golf super-athlete find . . .” My voice trailed off.

“A Frisbee ended up in a ‘crick’ and our witness climbed down to retrieve it,” Lockett said.

“Which is the most exercise he enjoyed during the whole game,” I said. “Wait, is it even called a game?”

“Let it go.” I’d pushed it too far. “When he slid down the small cliff, two vultures flew away and he saw the professor’s body.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “Vultures?”

“Unlucky for us, yes.” He was probably enjoying the look on my face. “The damn things attacked the body and most likely destroyed evidence, but the professor was definitely murdered.”

I sat in silence, but Lockett wasn’t finished. “One thing was lucky.”

“What’s that?”

“If it had rained like it was supposed to last night, that crick woulda been a river and who knows where the body would’ve ended up.”

I stared at him. “Do you think that was part of someone’s plan? That it was premeditated?”

“We’ll have to figure that out,” he said.

I remembered my outstanding question. “What did the professor say about Carlo Morales?”

He raised his eyebrows at me, knowing what I was hinting at. “That he’d never met him and didn’t know why anyone would think he cared if Mr. Morales was at the reception or not.”

I frowned. “I saw him. He was mad.”

He shrugged and changed the subject. “I hear Benjamin Russell was in town this weekend.”

I felt a little frisson of alarm at the studied casualness of his question. “Yes. He left on Saturday.”

“When’s he back?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

He stared at me. “Okay.” As if he sensed my disappointment and didn’t want to dig further. “We need to talk to him.”

“Question him, you mean,” I said.

“I expect he wasn’t too happy with the professor either,” the detective said.

“Was anyone?”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

T
hey finally left. The only good thing was that they were on their way to question Reese, just because I happened to mention that she was actively investigating the robbery and might have learned something to help.

“They wanted Bean’s new cell number,” I said. “His old one is turned off.”

“I don’t have it,” Erica said as if it didn’t matter. “He uses burner phones when he’s on assignment. But he wasn’t in town during the time in question. If he was anywhere close, he’d have stopped to see us.”

I wish I had her confidence in Bean’s desire to see us. I was still somewhat dumbfounded. How could it be that someone we knew was murdered? And that once again, we were implicated?

I stared at the floor, sneaking glances to see if Erica was ready to talk. She looked out the window, legs outstretched and arms crossed, one of her favorite thinking poses. “The professor’s murder must be tied to the robbery.”

“Deciding to investigate a murder is a much bigger deal than a robbery,” I reminded her, but the curious mixture of resignation, fear and excitement made me realize it was probably inevitable.

“We may need to,” she admitted. “Lavender believes I did it. Or she wants to believe it. She’s going to do her best to make sure the police focus on me.”

I thought of the venom she’d directed at Erica in the shop on Sunday. “Okay. Let’s talk suspects.”

Erica smiled.