Death is Semisweet (10 page)

Claude stopped his lion act and became the invisible man again. The reminder that there was still a police investigation to cope with made him shrink even further.
He continued down the hall without another word.

Heaven turned around to follow him and jumped. A stern-looking woman had appeared out of nowhere and looked like she was ready to take Heaven apart for eavesdropping.

“May I help you?” Marie Whitmer said frostily.

“No, no, just leaving,” Heaven murmered.

Heaven made a beeline for the parking lot. She knew she should tell Bonnie what she’d just heard but it was Friday and her business needed her. She’d call her from the kitchen.

H
as Bonnie called me back yet?” Heaven yelled out to no one in particular.

The face of Murray Steinblatz popped up in the pass-through window from the kitchen to the dining room. “No is the answer, just like it was the answer ten minutes ago. Calm down, Heaven.”

“I should have gone back in there and told her what I heard before I left the factory. She’s going to yell at me.”

“Heaven,” Murray said, “from what little you’ve told me about what happened today, and what I heard on the radio in the car, Bonnie’s got her hands full. She’ll get back to you when she gets a minute. You don’t honestly think Stephanie had anything to do with this guy ending up in the, what’d you call it?”

“Conching machine, and no, of course not. I think curiosity killed the cat, or in Stephanie’s case curiosity made her a murder suspect. I don’t know what killed Mr. Bodden. Since Stephanie herself has opened a chocolate business, I’m sure she’s more interested in her mother’s family business than she was when she was
a lawyer’s wife. So when I told her about this press conference, she just couldn’t resist.”

“Oh, so it’s your fault?” Murray teased.

“As usual,” Heaven said with a smile. The aroma of lemon oil perfumed the kitchen. She was intently poking a lemon with a fork, rolling it to get punctures all over it. Then she put it in the cavity of one of twenty chickens she was prepping for roasted lemon chicken.

Heaven asked the farmer she bought her poultry from to bring her pullets, hens just six weeks old, so she could serve them whole. She varied the preparation, sometimes roasting them with a sesame/soy/chili sauce glaze, sometimes with garlic and basil stuck under the skin, sometimes this way, with the flavor of lemon permeating the flesh. It was hard to find a good roast chicken in a restaurant in Kansas City so however they were presented, they sold out most nights. Heaven knew that lots of restaurants had chickens that had been precooked and then finished in the oven when they were ordered. This method usually meant that you didn’t run out, but it also wasn’t a truly fresh-roasted chicken. She took the chance on making it to the end of the evening with her fresh birds and tried to study the buying patterns of her customers to make sure she prepared enough. They usually sold thirty to forty chickens on Friday and Saturday nights. Jack was prepping the other twenty birds and they would go in the oven after Heaven’s batch was finished and moved to the warming oven.

Heaven thought about Bonnie again. She really should know that the Foster brothers had a motive for getting rid of Oliver Bodden. It wasn’t the kind of thing that the men were likely to have brought up to the detective on their own. She walked over to the phone and
dialed. “Bonnie, by the time you get this I’ll be unavailable, but we need to talk. Meet me at Sal’s in the morning at nine. Okay, bye.” She wished the detective had picked up but at least she’d made an attempt. She dialed again. “I know Stephanie can’t talk but tell her to meet me at nine at Sal’s. Oh, it’s Heaven Lee,” she said and hung up. Now she’d better get ready for the early guests who wanted to eat and get to a movie or the theater. She started setting up the saute station for the Friday night crowd.

S
tephanie was finishing her news. “So, Janie, who never calls me, called to tell me that when she came in to work yesterday there were burned cocoa beans being thrown away. Janie says thousands of dollars worth.”

Heaven nodded. “I saw a burned place on the brand new concrete palette. What’s that about?”

“It was as if she was trying to tell me something that pointed to the brothers having a motive. But of course she did it in the most excruciating, roundabout way. I was so busy and she was totally unaware, as usual,” Stephanie said.

“What’s the deal on this cousin?” Bonnie asked as she carefully spread cream cheese on a bagel. Heaven had stopped for food supplies before she got to Sal’s.

Stephanie finished a bite, then shrugged. “Janie’s my aunt’s only daughter. She went to the Kansas City Art Institute in graphic design, went to live in San Francisco for a while, then came back here when our uncle asked her to head up the graphics department for Foster’s. My
aunt had a fit, her being on the poor side of the family as I explained to you last week, but Janie said it was the best job she would ever be offered. Janie has a little self-image problem.”

“How much do those sacks of beans cost?” Bonnie asked, knowing none of them would know the answer. “Why would anyone burn up their own inventory?”

“Did you ask the fire department if they had a call?” Heaven said, mouth full.

“Now what a good idea,” Bonnie answered with plenty of sarcasm. “Since I just heard about this fire five minutes ago, I haven’t had a chance to do that but now that you suggested it—” She pulled her cell phone out of the big purse she always carried and walked over to the door to talk privately.

Through all of this bagel eating and reporting, Sal had been busy with a ten-year-old’s haircut, the first cut of the day. Sal had kept an eye on the proceedings through the mirrors on the walls of the barber shop. Now he paused and turned to the three women, his unlit cigar wobbling in the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “So Heaven here hears the brothers talk about how the African guy is ripping them off but we don’t know how. Then Stephanie’s cousin, who works for this outfit, drops the news that some cacao beans was burned for no good reason. How do these two things get us any closer to the killer, that’s what I want to know.”

For a moment, the three women were quiet. Bonnie, who’d been following the conversation as she talked to the fire department, finished her call and put her phone back in her purse. Then they all started talking at once.

“Hush,” Bonnie yelled quickly, and the other two reluctantly stopped talking. “Good question, Sal. That’s
why we like to have these think tanks over here at your joint, you ask good questions.” The boy in the barber chair had brought his Walkman and was bouncing along to the Backstreet Boys, oblivious to the adult conversation. Bonnie looked at him to make sure he wasn’t paying attention, then continued talking. “If Oliver was blackmailing or somehow conning the Fosters, that certainly goes on the motive page. Maybe the Fosters burned the cocoa beans themselves to prove a point to him.”

“Or Oliver burned them to prove a point to the Fosters,” Heaven said, excitement in her voice. “Then they were so mad, they strangled him and stuck him in …”

“Their brand new conching machine?” Stephanie said incredulously. “I don’t think so. My uncles may be capable of taking financial advantage of their siblings, maybe—what am I saying, they
are
capable of that. But they wouldn’t physically do harm, especially with a piece of wire. Ugh. Even if they hit him over the head first so he couldn’t fight, it’s hard for me to see them having the strength to strangle someone.”

“Well, there was a knot on his head so you may have something there. Whoever did it might have knocked him unconscious first. But it also could have been caused by that big thingamajig, the conch gadget, banging into him,” Bonnie said. “I do agree with Steph that the Foster boys seem more like the kind that let their lawyers do the dirty work.” She stood up and checked her phone. “I wonder why the fire captain hasn’t called me back. I am curious about that part of the story.”

“Oh, Janie told me something else I didn’t know about my family. My uncle David is already in town for the holidays. He arrived Thursday,” Stephanie said.

“Just in time to kill Oliver but not in time to be the
airship sniper,” Heaven observed, then realized how nonchalant she sounded about Stephanie’s relative.

Bonnie got up. “He could always hire it out. I’ll have to meet your other uncle. But not now. I’m going to be late for my daughter’s soccer game if I don’t get out of here. Sal, lovely of you to have us. Ladies, thanks for the info.”

Heaven stood up too, brushing crumbs from her chef’s jacket. “I have to get to work. They ate us out of house and home last night. Bonnie, I don’t remember you sharing much information with us. Don’t think I didn’t notice that.”

“I’m supposed to be the information gatherer, remember?” Bonnie said as she went out the door.

Stephanie went over to the newspaper on one of the chairs and picked up the front page, the one featuring her photo holding the wire. The angle of the shot hid the actual contents of the machine beside her. “I was wrong about the still photographers being slow.”

Heaven took the paper out of her hand and waved at Sal as she pushed Stephanie out the door. They stood on the sidewalk for a minute. Heaven patted her friend’s arm. “Are you okay?”

Stephanie nodded. “This working for a living is a bitch. We are so busy and I know I have to make money now so I can pay my rent in January and February, but I’m whipped and the busiest day of the week is on top of me and I’m a murder suspect of someone I never saw alive.”

“Stop whining and have a profitable day,” Heaven ordered.

Stephanie nodded. “When I found out Uncle David was in town, at my grandmother’s, I called him and begged him to help. He’s going to work the cash register.”

Heaven was already exiting the bonbon shop. She gave Stephanie a thumbs-up and headed across 39th Street to the café as Stephanie gave her a pitiful wave and then got in her car. Heaven went right in the front door and out the back, stopping just long enough to check the prep list and make sure everyone had come to work that morning. The café wasn’t open for lunch on Saturdays so the kitchen crew was working at a slightly easier pace than on the weekdays. “I have an errand to run,” she said to no one in particular. Everyone looked up and nodded, busy at their stations. She went out the back to her van, jumped in and headed for the Plaza.

While Bonnie, Stephanie and Heaven had been talking over the latest Foster’s Chocolate murder, Heaven had had a brilliant idea about the first one. All of a sudden she remembered an old friend of hers from Kansas had recently moved to one of the big apartment buildings just north of the Plaza’s main drag. He’d moved to the penthouse. Heaven pulled in the circle drive and left the keys in the car.

The doorman, a rare bird in Kansas City, came to the door. “I’d love to see Dale Traver, if he’s home,” Heaven said before he could ask her business.

He opened the foyer up and went to a house phone and dialed. “Who shall I say is calling?”

“Heaven, ah, Katy O’Malley,” Heaven said, using her maiden name for a change. Dale was an antique dealer whom she had met years ago with her parents. He still thought of her as Katy.

The doorman got an answer and in a minute put the phone down. “You can go right up. Top floor,” he said as he opened the inner door and gestured toward the elevators. There was an arrangement of silk flowers in the lobby on a credenza.

“I bet Dale hates these,” Heaven muttered as she touched them lightly as she passed.

When she got to the penthouse level, Dale was standing at the elevator door, waiting to greet her. “What in the world brings you here on a Saturday morning?” he said as he held out his arms and gave her a big hug.

“I guess I can’t just say I was in the neighborhood, can I?”

“Not with any success.” Dale took Heaven’s arm and they went in to the apartment.

“Wow,” Heaven said, truly impressed for a change. The place was gorgeous, full of lovely French nineteenth century furniture mixed with art deco pieces, oriental rugs, and a great collection of old portraits from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The rooms reflected the kind of eclectic taste that Heaven also had, only Dale’s was worked out on a more expensive scale. Dale himself was an elegant silver-haired man, dressed in a Harris tweed sports jacket and dark green corduroy pants.

“Would you like some coffee?” Dale asked, a mischievous grin on his face.

“Yes, but what are you looking at me like that for? You look like the cat that swallowed the canary,” Heaven said as she went toward a beautiful silver service that just happened to be on the sideboard of the dining room with coffee and a plate of scones sitting nearby.

If he didn’t know I was coming, maybe he was expecting someone else, Heaven thought. Maybe someone else was here. Maybe that’s why he’s smiling so funny. “Dale, were you expecting someone else? Have I interrupted something?”

Dale poured her a cup. “You take cream, no sugar, right?” He handed her the cup and slipped a tiny scone
and a chocolate truffle on the saucer. “You’re sure full of questions. Let’s take them in order. I was smiling at you because I have a feeling you’re investigating one of your famous cases. I can just feel it. I look like the cat that swallowed the canary because I have a feeling you’re going to ask for my help. No, I wasn’t expecting anyone and you didn’t interrupt a thing except me reading the
Star
, which didn’t take long. I use my silver and my good china all the time. I’m not getting any younger and I’m not saving them for a special occasion. I enjoy using my beautiful things.” He sat down on a big, down-filled couch and patted a place next to him. “Now, what is it? An antiques scam of some kind?”