Fatal Chocolate Obsession (Death by Chocolate Book 5) (7 page)

Fred proceeded calmly down the highway as if I wasn’t freaking out in the seat next to him. “Donato said Nick’s a straight-up guy and has been out of that world for several years. Nevertheless, he may know something. It’s quite a coincidence that Bob was killed right after he accepted a job with Nick.”

“Wow, that sounds familiar! Oh, yeah, I said it last night.”

“On the other hand, coincidences do happen or we wouldn’t have a word for them.”

I was already in a bad mood with Trent, and Fred’s ambivalent attitude wasn’t helping my disposition. However, we were on our way to talk to Nick Peterson-Peretti, a meeting I’d pushed for, so I refrained from expressing my irritation.

We drove to a warehouse type building north of the city. The structure was one story and ordinary in design but neat and sturdy. A few large pieces of equipment dotted the parking lot with lots of space in between. I assumed the machines that usually occupied the empty slots were off somewhere digging basements and building houses.

Fred parked close to the front door and we got out.

“Who are we?” I asked as we approached the door.

“You’re Lindsay Powell and I’m Fred Sommers.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I worry about you, Lindsay. Have you been snorting Henry’s catnip?”

“I meant—”

Fred swung the door open.

I stopped talking.

The receptionist looked up from her crossword puzzle.

Fred handed her a card. “Fred Sommers and Lindsay Powell to see Nick Peterson.”

It would have been nice if he’d let me see that card before we walked in. We might be Fred Sommers and Lindsay Powell, but I was pretty sure we weren’t entering Nick Peterson’s office as a chocolatier and her strange neighbor.

The receptionist advised her boss of our presence. A moment later a tall, thin man in khakis and a white cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves strode through the door at the side of the room. Steel gray at his temples emphasized the blackness of hair combed straight back from his forehead. A huge smile brightened his tan face. He grabbed my hand in one of his, and moisture shone in his dark eyes. “I’m glad to get to meet you, Lindsay. Bob told me all about what you did for him.”

I was speechless. We really were there as a chocolatier and her strange neighbor.

He turned to Fred and gave him an enthusiastic handshake. “And you must be Fred. Come in, come in.” He released Fred’s hand and waved toward the open door. “Leslie, would you get us three coffees? Cream? Sugar?”

Fred flinched. He’s very finicky about his coffee. Grinds his own beans. He may grow them for all I know. “Black for me.” The fact he didn’t refuse the coffee told me he was more concerned about sucking up to Nick Peretti than about guarding his taste buds.

I lifted a hand and shook my head. “Thank you, none for me.” I’d accepted coffee in Donato Orsino’s office and even tried to drink it because I was intimidated. I was not going to do that again. Fred would have to suck up enough for both of us.

“Soda? Tea?”

“Do you have Coke?”

“Sure. Leslie, please bring us two black coffees and a Coke.”

We followed Nick into his office. It was like the exterior of the building…sturdy, practical, no frills. A large metal desk covered with papers dominated the room, and a large window looked out onto the parking lot. Not a great view, but perhaps looking at his machines was a great view for him.

Nick sat behind the desk and motioned Fred and me to a couple of brown vinyl chairs. He leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk top. His smile faded. “So what’s going on with Bob? His death wasn’t just some scumbag wanting to rob him, was it?”

“No,” I said.

“We’re not sure.” Fred just had to disagree with me.

Leslie entered the room with a tray holding two brown mugs and one beautiful red can. She set one mug in front of Fred, the other in front of Nick, and I took the red can. Just the way I like it…cold and straight, no ice diluting it.

Leslie left, closing the door behind her. Fred took a sip of his coffee, grimaced slightly, and set the cup back on the desk. I took a long pull on my Coke. Nothing like being grilled by the cops to work up a thirst.

“Who do you think killed Bob?” Nick asked.

“We were hoping you could help us figure it out. My friend, Donato Orsini, said you might be able to give us some information about Bob’s past associates.”

Nick’s smile returned. “You must be the Fred who blabbed to Donato’s wife about his smoking. She nagged him until he agreed to stop.”

“I am.”

Nick picked up his coffee, sat back and laughed. “You got balls. That woman’s a holy terror.”

“Marie and I go way back.”

Nick nodded. “Yep, yep. I knew her before they got married. Me and Donato go way back too. Had some interesting times.”

“How about Bob? Did he run with the same crowd?”

Nick shook his head. “Not like you mean. Bob was…” He looked around the room as if searching for hidden microphones. If they were hidden, he wasn’t likely to find them. “Bob was a straight arrow. Him and me, we started out in the construction business about the same time.” He held up a hand as if to restrain whatever we were going to say. “You may think that meant we were rivals, but we weren’t. Bob started a few months before me, and we met at one of those industry get-togethers. Bob helped me with a lot of my startup things. I had different…” He paused and looked from one to the other of us. “I had different assets. You know what I mean? So I was able to help him too.”

Fred looked completely comfortable in the uncomfortable vinyl chair. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, listening to the almost-confession about possibly dubious business practices as if Peterson was discussing a couple of boys with lemonade stands. “So the two of you pooled your resources and each of you developed a successful company,” he said.

“Exactly. Business was good, life was good. And then Linda got sick. They grew up next door to each other, got married right out of high school. Her death hit Bob pretty hard.”

“So hard he lost his company?” Fred asked.

Nick nodded. “He couldn’t get by without her. He stayed away from work a lot when she was sick, then after she died, he just didn’t seem to care. Didn’t have the will to work or to live. He disappeared, went away from all of us. Tell you the truth, until he showed up here last week looking for a job, I thought he was dead.”

“And now he is,” I said. “As soon as he reappeared, somebody killed him. Does that seem to you to be a pretty big coincidence?”

“Yeah, it does. I’ve thought about that over and over, tried to figure out who could have wanted Bob dead.”

Fred didn’t speak. Neither did I. We both knew about the method the cops used to get suspects to talk. It had worked quite well on me. 

Nick looked down at his desk. “Bob was a good guy, but we all make mistakes, do things we wish we hadn’t done.” He lifted his head and looked directly at Fred then at me. “He loved Linda. But they went through a rough patch.”

I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear any more about Bob’s rough patch. I wanted to continue to think of him as a good man who deserved a second chance. I took a big drink of my Coke and wished for a five-pound slab of chocolate.

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Bob was a good guy,” he repeated. “Him and Linda both wanted kids, but that just didn’t happen. I guess they blamed each other for a while. Then Tina came along. She was Bob’s bookkeeper, and the two of them spent some long hours together on the job.” He shrugged.

“So Bob cheated on his wife?”
The woman whose death had been so painful, it caused his downward spiral?
Maybe he hadn’t deserved those extra cookies I gave him. I knew only too well what it felt like to be married to a cheater. Not a pleasant feeling.

Would Trent ever cheat on me? With the hours he worked, he didn’t have time.

Besides, he just wouldn’t. He played by the rules, colored inside the lines. He was too honest. Apparently Bob hadn’t been.

“The affair didn’t mean anything,” Nick continued, “and it didn’t last long. When Linda came down with the cancer, he broke it off with Tina. The whole time Linda fought cancer, Bob was right there by her side, and it just about killed him when she died. She was his wife, his soul mate. He didn’t want to live without her, and he blamed himself. He thought the cancer was his punishment for cheating. That’s when he started drinking, quit caring and lost everything.”

Maybe he really did regret what he’d done. As Nick said, we all make mistakes. Whatever Bob had done, he didn’t deserve to be murdered.

“I helped him make a comeback so he could be killed.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken the words aloud until Nick scowled.

“No,” he protested. “If he hadn’t quit drinking, he’d have been dead in a few months from the booze. You made him feel like he mattered, like he wasn’t worthless. He was getting back to his old self. He told me he had hope for the first time in a lot of years.”

“You think this Tina could have killed him?” I asked.

Nick shook his head. “Tina got upset when Bob dumped her, but she’s not violent, and she’s a little bitty thing, barely five feet. Bob was tall. No way she could have hit him over the head like that.” He tapped a finger on his desk several times and looked into the distance as if undecided about something. Finally his gaze returned to us. “But Ken, her husband—”

“Husband? She was married too?” The story was becoming more sordid by the moment.
Jerry Springer
, here we come.

“Still is married. Kenneth Wilson. He works for me. Worked for me then. Him and Tina weren’t getting along, and she was talking about leaving. Ken’s a good worker, but he didn’t treat Tina right. He’s pretty hot-tempered. When Bob needed a good bookkeeper, I told Tina about the job. Thought it would be a good deal for both of them. Bob would have a top-notch employee and Tina could get away from Ken.”

“But she didn’t?” I asked.

Peterson shook his head. “Linda got sick and Bob broke it off with Tina. She went back to Ken, and they had a baby. Got three of them now. I guess she feels pretty trapped.”

“But you let this Ken keep working for you?” I sounded aghast. I was aghast.

Fred and Peterson both looked at me as if I were slightly nuts.

“He’s a good worker,” Peterson repeated. “They’re hard to come by. He does his job, never causes any problems at work. I wouldn’t know about his home life if Tina hadn’t told my wife.”

So abusing his wife is okay as long as he doesn’t bring it to work?
I bit my tongue and refrained from speaking since we were trying to get information out of Peterson. Reprimanding him for questionable morals wasn’t likely to help.

“Did he know Bob was coming to work for you?” Fred asked. He hadn’t moved from his relaxed posture, but I could tell he was no longer relaxed. Nothing physical, more like an aura. A hunting dog on point without actually pointing.

“Yeah. I told him. My company’s pretty good size. There wasn’t any reason he and Bob would ever have to see each other. Ken gave me some grief about it, but I told him Bob had paid for what he did.”

“So Ken knew about the affair?”

Nick grimaced. “Yeah. Bob confessed when the doctor told him Linda was dying. He thought if he admitted to what he’d done and asked for forgiveness, God would let Linda live.”

“Bargaining with God is a fairly common thing when somebody we love is dying.” Fred sounded as if he knew what he was talking about. Was this a clue to his past? Had somebody he loved died? Had he loved somebody?

I made a mental note to ask later. Not that I expected an answer. He even refused to answer when I asked him if he had a mother or came from a test tube.

“Did the police talk to Ken?” Fred asked.

“Hell, no. I didn’t tell the cops any of the story I just told you. I wouldn’t be telling you except you all are friends with Donato so you’re like a member of the family.”

Oh, good, I was included as a member of another dysfunctional family. Like my own wasn’t enough.

“Can we talk to Ken?” Fred asked. “Is he on a job site today?”

Nick drummed his fingers on the desktop—four of them this time—as he studied Fred and then me. Finally he picked up a pencil, wrote something on a piece of paper, and handed it to Fred. “This is his home address. Yesterday he asked me what the cops wanted and today he called in sick.”

Fred actually exceeded the speed limit by four miles an hour as we drove to Kenneth Wilson’s house.

“What was in that coffee?” I asked.

“Used motor oil, I believe. Why? Did you want to get a copy of the recipe for your shop?”

“I just wondered if it was spiked with meth or something. You’re driving over the speed limit. That’s not like you.”

“I want to get there before dark.”

The sun was sinking closer to the horizon as we zipped (speaking relatively) along the freeway. “Don’t tell me you’re scared to confront that man after dark.”

“If he runs, he’ll be easier to find in the daylight. Of course, he’s had twenty-four hours. He may be miles from here already.” He exited the freeway and turned onto a residential street.

“If he’s on the lam, we’ll hunt him down, right?”

“Of course.”

I wasn’t sure if Fred’s determination to catch Bob’s killer came from a need to find justice in an often unjust world or from his OCD nature, unwilling to rest until all ends were tidied up. Probably the latter.

I was still determined to find him for Bob’s sake. Yes, I’d just discovered the man wasn’t perfect, but he’d taken some hard knocks and was making an effort to rebuild his life. If Ken had killed him just because he didn’t want to have to work with his wife’s former lover—well, that certainly gave him the motive, but not the right. As often as I’d contemplated murdering Rick, I’d never thought about killing any of his bimbos. But I’d never been forced to work with them. That might have made a difference.

Fred pulled over to the curb in front of a mundane house in a mundane suburban neighborhood. It was the sort of area where both parents worked and left the kids at day care during the week then got together with the neighbors on weekends, barbecued hamburgers and drank beer. Kids were riding their bicycles along the sidewalk, and a guy two houses down was watering his lawn. Wholesome. Just the kind of neighborhood where a killer would live.

I opened my car door and stepped out. Fred took something from a canvas bag in the back seat and put it in his interior jacket pocket. Gun? Shiv? Blackjack?

He got out of the car and closed his door.

“What did you just put in your pocket?” I asked as we started up the walk toward the house with gray siding and closed curtains.

“Something I may need.”

“Well, duh. I didn’t think you were taking an empty soda can with you.” Though Fred might be able to find a use for that.

He didn’t respond, just kept walking. I don’t claim to be psychic, but that ordinary house seemed to radiate evil. I edged a bit closer to Fred.

“Got it under control.” That’s about as close as he comes to offering comfort.

We climbed the three steps to the front porch that was so small it barely qualified as such. Another thing I like about old houses. We have big porches.

Fred pushed the doorbell. It worked. I could hear the raucous sound through the door.

We waited.

No one came to the door.

Fred rang the bell again then knocked forcefully. “Open up! Immigration!”

“They’re not immigrants,” I whispered.

“Exactly. So they’ll open the door to tell me I have the wrong house.” He banged loudly again. “Don’t make me break down this door!”

“I think maybe it’s illegal to impersonate an immigration officer.”

“I’m not impersonating an immigration officer. I simply spoke the word ‘immigration.’ I can’t help what inference people take from that.”

I liked that logic. I was learning a lot from Fred.

The door swung open and a woman holding an ice bag to her face gazed at us from one eye. The other was swollen almost shut. Since she was short, slim and female, I assumed this was Tina.

Fred flashed some sort of badge. He did it so rapidly the woman couldn’t possibly have seen what it was. Neither could I. Police? CIA? FBI? Termite Inspector?

“I need to speak with Kenneth Wilson.”

The woman lifted her bruised chin. “Have you got a search warrant?”

She knew how this game was played. I wondered how Fred was going to deal with that request.

“I don’t need a search warrant.” He sounded confident and tough.

Her good eye widened.

A door slammed somewhere in the house.

“Excuse me.” Fred leapt from the porch and ran around the house toward the back yard. Apparently our suspect was on the lam.

Tina started to close the door but I grabbed it. “Did Kenneth do that to you?”

I expected her to deny it, try to convince me she’d fallen down the stairs.

“What if he did?” she asked. “It’s none of your concern.”

True, but that had never stopped me before. “You don’t have to take that. You can leave him.”

“Lady, you need to mind your own business.” She tried again to close the door, but I was stronger.

“I was Bob’s friend. Do you think he’d want you to tolerate this kind of treatment?”

Her grip on the door loosened and she became very still. I wasn’t sure if she was going to cry in grief or scream in anger.

“Bob’s dead.” The two lifeless words fell from her lips, making me feel her pain more surely than if she’d cried or screamed.

“I know he is, and there’s a good chance your husband killed him.”

She stared at me in silence. Her expression didn’t change. Either she’d already considered that possibility and dismissed it or she knew for a fact that Kenneth had killed her former lover.

“Are you going to let him get away with it?” I asked.

“He said he didn’t do it.”

They’d talked about it. “Does he always tell the truth?”

She laughed, a brief burst of hollow sound. Her open eye focused to the left of my face, refusing to look me in the eye. “Ken’s a good man. This hasn’t happened in a long time.” She bit her lip and returned her gaze to mine. “I’ve got three kids, and he takes care of all of us.”

“As he should.”

“Well, two of them. But my ten year old is Bob’s son.”

“Oh.” Add another layer of motive.

“You knew Bob?” she asked.

I nodded. “He came to my restaurant, Death by Chocolate.” No need to specify the exact location he came to—the trash bin behind the restaurant. “We talked. We became friends.”

“He told you about me?”

I considered the question. In a way he kind of, sort of, had told me. By telling me Nick was hiring him, he’d led me to Nick who had told me. If I wanted to get information from this woman, there could be only one answer. “Yes.”

“I loved him.”

“He cared for you.” Okay, that might have been an outright lie, but it might have been the truth. Surely he wouldn’t have had a relationship with her if he hadn’t cared for her.

Her swollen lips twitched into something resembling a smile. “I know. He cared for me, but he didn’t love me. He loved his wife.”

“Did you still love him after he confessed everything to your husband?”

She flinched. “I was angry with him for a long time. But I guess in the long run the truth is always better than lies.”

“Does Ken feel the same way about the truth thing?”

“Ken’s got a temper.”

Laughter sounded from the side yard, and I turned. Fred, immaculate in his black suit, white shirt and burgundy tie, came across the grass with one arm wrapped around the neck of a burly guy wearing a wife-beater T-shirt and stained blue jeans. Ken, I presumed. To my surprise, Fred wasn’t choking him. They seemed to be best buds.

“Lindsay, we’ve got the wrong house, but look who I found! We both went to the same high school!”

I doubted it.

“Come on in,” the man invited. “Let’s have a drink to the Bulldogs!”

They brushed past us into the house.

Judging from the sound of Ken’s voice and the smell of his breath, he had been drinking to the Bulldogs for quite a while.

Tina gave me a confused look. I shrugged. I doubted Ken was likely to have an aged bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon open and breathing, so Fred probably wasn’t doing this because he wanted to drink with the man. Doubtless he had a plan, but he hadn’t confided in me.

“Tina! Bring us a couple of beers,” Ken shouted from somewhere inside the house.

“If he’s too drunk or lazy to get them himself, he doesn’t need them,” I said.

Tina went inside.

I followed right behind her. From the living room I could see Fred and Ken seated at the kitchen table. “I was married to a jerk once,” I said quietly. “You don’t have to take this. We can have a confrontation right now with Fred and me to help you.”

She stopped halfway through the living room and turned back to me. “And then you’ll go home and just my kids and I will be here with him.”

“Where are your kids?”

“At my sister’s house until this blows over. Ken’s been drinking ever since he heard about Bob.” She continued through the kitchen door.

“About time!” Ken called.

She went straight to the refrigerator, took out two beers, popped them open and set them in front of Fred and Ken.

Fred wrapped his fingers around his can. “Thank you.”

Ken did not follow his polite example. Without comment he lifted the can to his lips. I had to resist the urge to shove that can up his nose.

Without waiting for an invitation…which wasn’t likely to come…I slid back a chair and sat down between the two men then scooted my chair as far away from Ken as possible.

Fear spread over Tina’s face as her gaze settled on Ken. I hoped he’d do something violent to protest my sitting at his table uninvited. I was looking forward to Fred taking him down. When he got him on the floor, I’d help by kicking him a few times.

“This your woman?” Ken asked.

I supposed it was a natural assumption since I was practically sitting in Fred’s lap in my effort to put distance between Ken and me.

“This is Lindsay,” Fred answered.

“Honey, get Fred’s woman a beer.”

“No, thank you.”

“Soda pop?”

“No, thank you.” I would have liked a Coke but I wasn’t going to accept anything from that creature.

Ken clutched his beer and pointed at Fred with one finger. “Hey, were you at that game a few years ago when our Bulldogs didn’t let the other team score even a field goal?”

“Great game. That player—” Fred imitated Ken’s gesture. “I can’t think of his name. You know the one I’m talking about.”

“Fields!”

“Yes! That’s him. Amazing!”

Fred was really good with BS.

As they talked about the football team they supposedly had in common, Tina got another can of beer for Ken then slid timidly into a chair next to her husband.

Ken set down the empty can and grabbed the full one.

“You hear about that awful murder a couple of days ago?” Apparently Fred thought Ken had consumed enough alcohol that he could safely change the subject. “Happened in the alley behind the restaurant where a friend of mine works.”

“No kidding? Right behind where your friend works?” Ken lifted his can for a big gulp.

“Yeah, some homeless guy got killed. What did the cops say his name was, Lindsay?”

“Bob. Bob Markham.” I watched Ken’s face closely.

I was not disappointed. His drunken camaraderie changed to anger. He glanced at Tina who sat rigidly in her chair. “Yeah, well, some people get what they deserve.”

I bit my lip to keep from mouthing off.

Fred nodded. “Know what you mean. Some druggie living off decent people who work and pay taxes.”

“Yeah, that’s all he was. Just some old drunk living on the streets.”

It did not escape my notice that Fred called Bob a
druggie
but Ken corrected it to
drunk
.

Fred lifted his beer to his lips, set it back on the table and nodded. “Beats me why the police are wasting so much time trying to find the killer. I mean, like you said, just some old drunk. He didn’t leave a lot of clues, but they’ve got this technology they can use to detect the pattern of shoe treads up to twenty-four hours after the person walked through the alley.”

Ken frowned. “Izzat right? How’s that work? Wouldn’t there be lots of shoe prints in that alley?”

“Not as many as you’d think. I hear they’ve nailed it down to one set of shoes.” Fred clutched his beer and smiled. “Mind if I use your little boy’s room? Stuff goes right through me. You know?”

I tensed. Fred had taken, at most, a couple of sips of his beer. He must be counting on Ken to be so drunk he wouldn’t notice.

“Yeah, sure. Use the one in our bedroom. The one in the hall’s a mess. Damn kids. Down the hall, last door on your right.”

Fred rose, still holding his beer. “Thanks. Be right back. Lindsay, tell my buddy Ken all about thermography and how the cops can identify individual shoe prints and track down the exact pair of shoes that made them. She’s better at this technical stuff than I am.”