Death is Semisweet (14 page)

Heaven felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. This guy had issues. “I’m glad to meet you. I was telling Steph that someone should probably call her mother, before it appears on the six o’clock news.”

David nodded. “I’ll take care of that if you want me to, Steph. And I’ll call my other sis and try not to crow,” he said as he moved to the phone on the desk.

Stephanie looked at her friend with a helpless expression.

“I’m glad it was him and not you,” Heaven said and patted her friend on the behind. “The popcorn is all mixed up but I can’t stay and bag it. I’ve got to go to work. My baby girl is coming home tonight with her elderly boyfriend. Do you want to come have dinner with us?”

“I have to stay here until nine, and I can’t imagine I’ll be good company after that. But I’m looking forward to Christmas Eve.”

“Remember, the first Christmas in retail on the Plaza is the hardest.”

Stephanie gave a weak smile. “And just in case it wasn’t hard enough, the fates have added a little family scandal. Heaven, I forgot to ask. Surely Claude wasn’t charged with the blimp shooting too, was he?”

“No, I think that one is still up for grabs,” Heaven said as she went out the side door with a handful of chocolate popcorn.

H
eaven hurried into the kitchen. “Sorry I’m late. Has anything terrible happened?”

Jumpin’ Jack turned from the work table and smiled at Heaven. “Your daughter called. She said they were stuck at JFK and they won’t be in at six as scheduled. She’ll call as they’re getting on the plane. She said Stuart had ordered a car for them so they’d come right to the restaurant to meet you for dinner.”

“Oh, okay,” Heaven said, disappointment flooding her system. She hated the part about Stuart hiring a car, but she supposed it was better than waiting at the airport
for hours. Now a hired driver could do the waiting. “What are you working on, Jack?”

Jack had been employed in the kitchen for only a few months. Before that he had been a local 39th Street character who dressed only in camo, thought he’d been to Vietnam but hadn’t and helped Heaven with her sleuthing occasionally. Then he went a little too crazy and went to Menninger’s, the famous mental hospital in Topeka, Kansas, gave up the camo and asked for a real job at the restaurant when he got out of the hospital. Jack hadn’t ever needed a job because his rich parents paid him to stay out of their hair. The shrinks suggested, however, that earning his own way might be a good thing, self-esteem-wise. It seemed to be working.

“I just made the salad dressing for the Blu Heaven and now I’m going to fry the pecans. I’m doing salads tonight,” he said proudly.

“Good man. Did the rabbits come in?”

Jack moved quickly to the walk-in and brought out a plastic container. “Here they are. What are you doing with them?”

Heaven went over to the bulletin board by the kitchen door and squinted at a recipe. “It’s an Italian hunter’s sauce kind of thing, without the blood, which is an ingredient in classic hunter’s sauces. Mine has red wine and herbs and some chocolate at the end. That’s why I was attracted to the dish, because of the chocolate. I prepared it last year in the winter and it’s very good.”

“Heaven,” Murray Steinblatz yelled from the dining room. “Your friend Dale is here.”

“That was quick,” Heaven muttered. “At least I got to spend ten minutes in the kitchen.” She took off the apron she had just put on and slipped on a 1950s shark
skin men’s jacket that she kept in the kitchen on a coat hanger.

Dale Traver was drinking coffee with Murray, standing by the bar at Murray’s spot. The two men laughed at something Murray said as Heaven crossed the dining room, walking into a shaft of sunlight coming in the front windows. She loved this time of day. It was that twilight zone for restaurants, the time between lunch and dinner service when things slowed down slightly. The only other person in the room was a wholesale liquor delivery man, bringing in wine. Murray was checking in the order as he talked.

Heaven gave Dale the two-cheek air kiss. “How’s my favorite sleuth?” Dale asked.

“Full of news. You probably don’t know this yet, but Claude Foster was arrested this morning for the murder, well, manslaughter, of Oliver Bodden, Friday’s victim.”

“They don’t think he shot down his own airship, do they?”

“No, I don’t think that was part of the charges.”

He cocked his head at Heaven. “Well, Heaven, you were so right about my photographer Santa. I think I’ve talked to everyone in the building now, everyone who hasn’t left yet for Palm Springs or Arizona. No one hired a Santa photographer for their Christmas party that Sunday, or any kind of Santa, for that matter. I was most likely polite to the airship sniper. I was almost in the same elevator with him,” Dale said with excitement in his voice.

“We don’t know that for sure. But with what you found out, and I can’t thank you enough for that, it does look like the Santa could be the bad guy.”

Dale took Heaven’s hand. “It was my pleasure, I assure you. I’ve never known so much about my building
and its occupants. I’ve got to go. Have a good holiday.”

“Wait. I want you come to my house on Christmas Eve, if you’re not busy with family.”

“No, I’m not having dinner with my niece and her family out in Overland Park until Christmas Day.”

“Come down any time after seven.” Heaven grabbed a restaurant business card and scribbled on it. “Here’s my address. You must see Iris all grown up now. She’s home from England, or will be in a few hours.”

“I can hardly wait. I’ll bring champagne,” Dale said and he left with a cheery wave.

Heaven was excited. Her hunch about the Santa was right, she just knew it was. Not that it did them much good, since Bonnie wouldn’t call her back. Besides, identifying a Santa on the Plaza that particular day would be like finding a needle in a haystack. She hurried back to the kitchen to fix the rabbit.

H
eaven was pacing. She said she was working the room, but really she was pacing. Because of Iris’s arrival tonight, Heaven had replaced herself in the kitchen, and now it was seven and Iris wasn’t here and all she could do was pace. Oh, she talked to every table, wished them a happy holiday season, but she was wound up and the whole staff was avoiding her as much as possible.

“Heaven, why don’t you have a nice glass of wine,” Murray said, like he was talking to a small child and offering chocolate milk.

“When did she say they got in?” Heaven asked, for the tenth time.

“Six forty-six. But even with a limo waiting for them, it’s going to be another half hour. So, what would you like?”

“I didn’t see that four top in the back. That’s Eric, our dried herb and spice guy and his wife. I’ll just pop back and say hi,” Heaven said and took off for the back of the room.

Murray sighed. Just then, Bonnie Weber came charging through the door. “I need a beer,” she bellowed.

Tony, behind the bar, pointed at her. “Boulevard pale ale, right?”

“I’d drink anything with a little kick to it right now. In fact, Tony, change that to a Stoli martini straight up with a twist.”

She plopped down on the bar stool nearest Murray. “Where’s the Queen of Thirty-ninth Street?”

“She’s jumping out of her skin, waiting for her daughter.”

“Iris is coming home for Christmas? That must be making Heaven happy.”

“Yes, except she’s bringing her boyfriend, Stuart Watts,” Murray said under his breath, not wanting Heaven to catch them talking about Stuart.

Bonnie accepted her drink from Tony and held it up in salute to Murray, then took a sip. “Ah, yes, this was a better idea than beer. I didn’t know that Iris was involved with Watts.” She used the musician’s last name like she was talking about a suspect. “Isn’t he in her father’s band?”

“Yes, and that’s what’s bothering Heaven. She thinks he’s too old and she knows him too well.”

Before Bonnie could ask another question, Heaven swirled up beside her. “Oh, my God. I thought you’d abandoned me. How dare you make an arrest without telling me first?”

Bonnie looked at Murray. “She is a little high-strung tonight, isn’t she?”
Murray hurried off to seat a deuce that had just arrived, hoping Heaven wouldn’t explode.

She didn’t. In fact, she was so glad to see Bonnie she didn’t even yell at her about not returning the phone calls. “So, what made you arrest Claude?” she asked even before she ordered a drink. “Tony, may I have a glass of Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc?”

“No martini?” Bonnie challenged.

“No, I have to stay fairly sober tonight, so I don’t go off on Iris’s boyfriend.”

“I want to hear about that,” Bonnie said. “After we discuss my superior criminalist work. I guess we always knew Claude had the motive, or at least we knew that once we started looking into the business practices at Foster’s. Oliver Bodden was a partner who was somehow squeezing the brothers. I do know they’ve been trying to finance a buyout of the West African Cacao Company, going around to local banks. And you weren’t the only one to hear Claude talking bad about the Bodden fellow. Everyone in the plant had seen or heard something. You also weren’t the only one to see brother Claude leave the press show, although I must tell you I’m pissed that I missed that myself. I’m sure he thought his speeches would give him an alibi. So he has opportunity, he certainly has the motive if this guy is trying to steal the business, and the means, those packing wires, were piled in a big box not three feet from where the victim was found. And his fingerprints were found all over the conch machine.”

“But think about the guy’s physical appearance, Bonnie. He’s a ninety-eight-pound weakling. Do you really think he could choke Oliver Bodden with a wire hard enough to cut off his air? Come on.”

“I think he found Oliver, they had words and Oliver
turned his back on Claude—maybe he was leaning over checking the conch gadget. Claude was mad in the first place and having this dude be so unconcerned just took him over the top. He probably beaned him with something, he fell in the conching gizmo, Claude grabbed a metal wire from the shipping area and showed Oliver who was still boss at Foster’s. When you’re angry, you have that adrenaline strength. Or, Claude and he fought, Claude strangled him, then heard the group coming his way and shoved Bodden in the conch machine because he did know he wouldn’t be able to lug the big guy out of there successfully. Claude will tell us how it went down soon, I’m sure. I’m meeting with him and his attorney tomorrow. Regular joes like him always end up confessing. Speaking of confessing, now is the perfect time for you to tell me what you were doing at Foster’s today.”

Heaven ignored that. “What I don’t understand is the fire of all the cocoa beans. What’s that about?”

“That’s when I knew I had a case, my dear. I talked to the guys on the factory floor. Now, they seem to really like their bosses, the Fosters. It wasn’t like everyone was eager to see them go down. But I just played dumb, which I am about chocolate production, and certain facts came out. Here’s what I think happened. No one from the factory was around when the fire happened so I’m flying by the seat of my pants.”

“The secretary today told me that thousands of dollars of cocoa beans were burned and the brothers said it must be vandalism, but she wasn’t buying it,” Heaven added.

“Do you want to hear or not?” Bonnie asked impatiently. “No one went for the vandalism excuse. For one thing, the only cocoa beans that weren’t burned were
the ones from West African Cacao. Then, the foreman explained this whole nibs thing to me. The good chocolate companies have a secret blend of cocoa beans from all over the world, actually the nibs are the inside of the bean, that’s what they blend. A company will use up to twelve different kinds of nibs.”

“I knew that,” Heaven said, remembering her chocolate lecture from Stephanie.

“Except Foster’s was only using West African nibs in the new chocolate. They weren’t blending a thing. The foreman thought it was some kind of a strong-arm tactic on the part of Bodden, said it would ruin the taste of the chocolate. I examined the burned bags, at least a few I found in the back of the Dumpster. They were from Mexico and Costa Rica. I think Oliver Bodden burned up the beans from other countries to make a point.”

Heaven hugged Bonnie’s arm. “Good investigating, girlfriend. But I just want to tell you that I met the other brother, David, today at the Chocolate Queen and when I told him about Claude he was estactic—well, happy at least. It was very creepy. I think he could do anything to get even with his brothers for the old doublecross. I haven’t been able to get him out if my mind.”

Bonnie shrugged. “I’ll at least check with the airlines to see when he arrived in Kansas City. I’d love if he was a sharpshooter and secretly arrived weeks ago. I’d love to tie both of the Foster crimes up in a nice, tidy bundle. I can’t see Claude for the airship incident, can you?”

“Why would he? Oh, look, here’s my darling daughter,” Heaven practically squealed. She swooped toward the door and grabbed Iris in a bear hug. Behind her Stuart Watts stood tall in the doorway. His dark hair was spiked with gray, but he was still a handsome figure.

“Hi, Mom. Can we ride home with you? I told Stuart it was silly to have the driver wait.”

“Of course, honey. Just have the driver bring your bags in. We’ll stick them in the office.”

Iris went over to hug Murray and say hello to Bonnie, so Heaven turned to face Stuart. “Welcome to Kansas City,” she said.

Stuart bowed and took Heaven’s hand, kissed it and smiled up at her. “Heaven, I know you’re not thrilled about this, about Iris and me.”

“Stop it,” Heaven ordered, giving herself an internal warning about her tone of voice. “I’m just glad to have Iris home. Happy Holidays, Stuart.” She took his hand and led him to the bar. “Tony, get this man a drink.”