Drop Dead Chocolate
Read Drop Dead Chocolate Online
Authors: Jessica Beck
Tags: #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Fiction
To my spouse,
for tasting all of the recipes with me,
the good ones I use, and the bad ones I don’t,
a true meaning of the phrase “for better or for worse”
“An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.”
—George Jean Nathan
CONTENTS
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Jessica Beck
CHAPTER 1
I guess you could say that the murder was partly my fault. After all, I was the one who urged my mother to run for mayor of April Springs. If I’d had the slightest idea what that would lead to, I like to think that I would have kept my mouth shut when the subject first came up and stuck with making donuts, the thing that I did best in this world.
But then again, knowing me, I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop myself, even with the foreknowledge of what was to come.
And one of our town’s citizens would be dead because of it.
Worse yet, suspicion would turn its gaze onto me and my family once again, and I would be thrown into another murder investigation that I didn’t ask for.
* * *
“This is outrageous,” my mother said as she stormed into the cottage we shared in April Springs, North Carolina, late one February afternoon.
“I agree wholeheartedly,” I said as I sat up from the couch where I’d been napping. I worked some pretty brutal hours at the donut shop I owned, so I tried my best to grab some shut-eye whenever the opportunity afforded itself. As I stretched, I asked, “What exactly are we upset about this time?”
Momma gave me that look she’d honed since I’d been a kid, the one that said my humor was not exactly hers. “Suzanne, I’m not in the mood for your witty banter. Our mayor has finally gone off the deep end. Did you read the newspaper this morning?”
As the owner and head baker at Donut Hearts, I got to work every morning at three a.m., well before the newspaper was even printed, and I didn’t exactly have time to sit around reading all morning. There were donuts and coffee to sell, tables to clean, and customers to greet. Emma Blake, my young assistant who worked with me, kept up with dishes in back while we were open, but the most important part of her day was helping me make the donuts six days a week. She got one day off to rest, but I was there every day that ended in
y
. I knew I could close one day, but I couldn’t stand giving up the income. It was all part of the joy of being a small business owner.
I stood up and stretched again. “Sorry, I didn’t have the time to look at it. What has Emma’s dad been up to now? Is he trying to stir up trouble to increase his circulation again?” The
April Springs Sentinel
was barely more than an advertising machine for local businesses, but every now and then Ray Blake liked to write an editorial or post a controversial interview in an attempt to boost his readership. Ray was barely one step above a tabloid as far as most folks around town were concerned, though I knew that deep in his heart, he considered himself a true journalist.
“There’s a story in here about our mayor,” Momma said as she smacked the paper in her hand. “You need to read this.”
As she handed me the paper, I said, “Why don’t you save us both some time and give me the condensed version?”
“Suzanne, this is important.”
I knew from her tone of voice that there was no escaping it, so I took the newspaper and unfolded it so that I could read the front page.
The banner headline blared out:
MAYOR CAM HAMILTON AWARDED COUNTY JOB. CAUSES BIG STINK.
“What’s this about?” I asked Momma.
“Read on,” she said, clearly too upset to add more until I’d read the entire article.
The story read, “This reporter has uncovered the carefully guarded secret that our mayor has submitted and won a contract to construct the new county waste disposal treatment plant on the edge of town. Normally happy to work on small jobs around our quaint fair city to leave more time for his mayoral duties, Hamilton has decided to go big time, and something doesn’t smell quite right about our commander in chief going after a taxpayer-funded job while he’s in office.”
“Can he do that?” I asked, looking up from the newspaper. “It doesn’t seem legal.”
Momma’s lips were pursed into a pair of thin lines before she spoke. “I checked, and there’s nothing specific in our town charter that forbids it, but one of his cronies is on the committee that awarded him the job. For once, I think the
Sentinel
got it right. There
should
be a big stink about this, despite the clever play on words for a treatment plant. Cam Hamilton needs to walk away from this.”
“Fat chance he’ll ever do that,” I said, remembering how self-important our mayor could be. He’d once told me that the police department worked for him, not the citizens of April Springs, and when I’d informed him that things didn’t work like that in our part of North Carolina, he’d nearly thrown me out of his office. The man did not enjoy being challenged on any level.
Momma said, “If he doesn’t withdraw, and I mean right now, I’ll make him sorry that he ever made that bid.”
“Why don’t you run against him?” I suggested. “You’d make a great mayor, and the election’s coming up soon. You’d do an excellent job.”
She looked at me askance, another expression I was used to. “Suzanne, I’m not a politician.”
“That’s why it’s so perfect,” I said, beginning to really warm to the idea. “Think about all of the good you could do as mayor. There wouldn’t be any of this nonsense, that’s for sure.”
Momma stood there for a second mulling it over, and then grabbed her coat and her purse as she headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Where do you think? I’m going to have a word with Cam Hamilton,” she said.
“Wait up, I’ll go with you.” I didn’t want my mother rampaging around city hall by herself. She was barely five feet tall and didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, but when she was on fire like this, there was no one in their right mind who wanted to go up against her. I was going not to protect her, but anyone who might be foolish enough to stand in her way.
“You don’t have to babysit me, young lady,” she said as I hurriedly put on my tennis shoes.
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I want a ringside seat for the fireworks.”
She didn’t seem to approve of me going with her, but then again, she didn’t actively protest it, so I ended up tagging along.
As she drove to city hall, I said, “You know, there’s a good chance that he may not even be there.”
Momma frowned. “If he’s not, I’ll hunt him down like the mad dog he is.”
“You might not want to open with that,” I said, trying to take a little sting out of her mood.
It clearly didn’t work. “If anything, I can only get angrier from here.”
Momma pulled up in front of city hall and was halfway up the steps before I caught up with her. I put a hand on her shoulder, and somehow managed to slow her down, at least momentarily. “Hang on a second.”
“What for?”
I looked into her eyes and said, “Momma, you need to take a deep breath and count to ten before you go in there.”
“Suzanne, I am in full control of my facilities,” she said. “There is no need for a childish exercise.”
“Humor me,” I said.
She didn’t want to, but I watched as Momma did as I asked. When she was finished, her breathing had slowed a little, and a touch of the fire had gone out of her eyes. “There. Are you satisfied?” she asked me.
“Absolutely. Thanks,” I said, knowing that if I got in her way much more, her ire would shift toward me, something I had no interest in experiencing.
We got to the mayor’s office, where Polly North, a retired librarian who worked the desk as the town hall secretary these days, was at her station. Like Momma, she was a woman of small stature, but she wasn’t someone worth crossing, either.
“Hello, Dorothy,” Polly said, not even acknowledging me by name, but offering me a quick glance before focusing on my mother.
“Is he in?” Momma asked as she looked at the mayor’s closed door.
Polly didn’t skip a bit as she replied, “Why, I’m fine. And you?”
Momma got it, and I could see her expression soften for just a moment. “Sorry, Polly. I’m not mad at you. It’s just that he’s gone too far this time. I need to see him right now.”
Polly pointed to the office door, smiled, and nodded, all the while saying, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid His Honor can’t be disturbed right now.”
Momma shot her a quick smile. “Got it. If anyone asks, I barged into the room uninvited.”
Returning the grin, Polly said in a happy voice, “I really must ask you not to go in there,” all the while nodding her head vigorously for us to go right in.
As Momma threw open the door, I saw that Cam was behind his desk, his feet propped up, a soda in one hand. There was a hot dog on his desk, and it wasn’t too tough to see why he’d put on weight since he’d played high school football many years before. Only his hair had stayed the same, carefully styled and sprayed, with nothing out of place.
“Ladies,” Cam said as he sat up in his chair. “Polly,” he added, nearly bellowing, “I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed.”
“Don’t blame her,” Momma said. “She tried to stop me, but I wouldn’t allow it. What is this nonsense about you making a bid on a county project while you’re mayor of April Springs?”
Cam dabbed at his lips with a napkin and said, “So, you’ve seen the newspaper.”
I could see the steam start to build in Momma’s eyes. “Everyone has. It’s wrong, Cam, and you know it.”
He looked as though that last bite of hot dog hadn’t agreed with him. “Dorothy, if you please, I’m happy to be called Cam on the street, but when I’m at my desk here at city hall, I ask that you respect the office. It’s Mr. Mayor.”
I thought Momma might have a stroke just then, but she took a deep breath, and then said almost cordially, “You really enjoy having that title, don’t you?”
He looked smugly at her as he replied, “Why shouldn’t I? It’s a perfect description of who I am.”
Momma shook her head. “There you’re wrong. It’s a job description, not a personal one. Whoever is mayor at the moment owns that title.”
He looked puzzled by her comment. “What’s your point? I am the mayor.”
“For now, perhaps.”
That clearly got his attention. He sat up in his chair and put his soda on his desktop. “What do you mean by that?”
“This is an election year, Mr. Mayor, or have you forgotten that? I know you haven’t bothered putting signs up yet, probably because you’d like folks to forget, but the filing deadline is tomorrow, and the election is in a week.” Our local political races ran in February, an odd time compared to the state and national election cycles, though no one I knew understood why.
“No one’s running against me,” he said. “It’s a safe bet that I’m going to retain my title as long as I care to have it.” Wow, he was so smug, if Momma didn’t run against him, I was considering it myself. That man needed to be taken down a few notches.
“Are you dead set on taking this project?” Momma asked in a soft voice that I knew meant that she was serious.
“It’s a done deal, Dorothy. I don’t know what the fuss is about. After all, I deserve the right to earn a living.”
“I’m not saying you don’t,” Momma said. “But this smells bad to everyone who is going to hear about it. It doesn’t just make
you
look bad. It’s a poor reflection on all of us.”