Truffled to Death (A Chocolate Covered Mystery) (19 page)

As an answer, Lavender pulled a large manila envelope from her bag. “Here. Take it and go.”

Erica took the envelope and much to Lavender’s dismay, we slipped into chairs at her table. The dining room was almost empty and two women in white aprons were setting the tables for lunch.

“I’m really sorry to bother you with a few more questions,” I said. “We saw something on security footage at the El Diablo Restaurant—”

The way she stiffened let us know that she knew exactly what we were talking about.

“Did you know Dr. Moody was meeting with Carlo Morales?” I asked.

She lifted her chin as if to refuse to answer and then her whole body seemed to deflate. “Yes,” she said.

Erica took over. “Do you know why?”

Lavender nodded.

“Was he selling Maya antiquities to him?”

Lavender nodded again, looking down.

“Illegally?”

Lavender bit her lip.

Erica seemed stunned for just a moment that our suspicions were correct. “That wasn’t like him. Can you tell us how it started?”

Lavender played with the lace around the place mat for a minute. “A year ago, when Addison was having . . . all the trouble at the university, he got a phone call that he got very excited about,” she said. “He left the office right away saying it could be a way out of our problems.”

“Do you know who called?” Erica asked.

“No,” she said. “He started having these secret meetings every couple of weeks.”

“If they were secret, how did you know they were happening?” Erica asked.

“He’d have me reserve the time and put ‘Frederick’ in the calendar,” she said. “But he wouldn’t tell me anything else about them.”

“He wanted to protect you,” Erica said. “How did he appear before and after these meetings?”

When Lavender looked unsure, Erica added, “Was he nervous? Excited? Was he more generous afterward?”

Lavender thought for a minute. “All of those.”

Erica tilted her head. “You were curious, so you followed him,” she said, sounding sure.

Lavender started to shake her head and then stopped. “Yes,” she admitted. “I followed him once.”

“Of course,” Erica reassured her. “It was your job to take care of him even when he might not take care of himself.”

She was really piling it on.

“And you saw him meeting with Carlo?” Erica asked, keeping a close eye on Lavender’s face.

She nodded. “I didn’t know who he was at first. But Addison started to have more money and I asked him once where it came from.”

She stopped, staring out the window as if thinking back.

“And?” I couldn’t help but prompt her.

“He said I didn’t want to know,” she said.

“Did you recognize Carlo at the party?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Dr. Moody told the police that he didn’t know Carlo,” I said in an accusing tone.

Erica shot me a look that screamed
shut up
.

“He didn’t discuss it, but I can imagine he couldn’t afford for anyone to make the connection,” Lavender said. “I was in charge of invitations and I don’t know how Mr. Morales got one.”

“So Dr. Moody was selling Maya antiquities to him before the reception.” Erica’s voice was gentle. “Do you know where he got the art to sell?”

“No.” Lavender seemed relieved not to know something about her boss’s criminal activities.

“Did you try to find out?” Erica asked.

“A little,” she answered. “But not too hard. I didn’t really want to know more at that point.” Her face shone with a mixture of shame and grief.

“Do you have any ideas?” I pushed.

She looked at me. “He knows a lot of people who own this kinda stuff.”

Then I thought of something important. “Do you have any proof of any of this? Documents, receipts, anything?”

She shook her head, as if she was scared. “I did.” Her voice was practically a whisper.

“What do you mean?” Erica asked.

“A few months ago, Addison left me a letter to open only in the event of his death.”

“Oh my,” Erica said. “Did he say what he was worried about?”

Lavender’s face crumbled like she was about to cry. “No. He said it was just insurance.”

“Did you give it to the police?” I couldn’t help but feel terrible asking when she was distraught.

She shook her head. “It’s missing.”

Erica and I exchanged a glance. “How?” Erica asked.

“Someone searched my room the morning after he . . . died.” Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “I came out of the shower and my bag was dumped. It was gone. At first, I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”

“And then?”

She didn’t say anything.

“You read the letter, right? A long time ago?” I didn’t know how Erica could stay so calm. “And you didn’t want anyone to know what was in it.”

Lavender’s eyes leaked tears. “He admitted everything,” she said. “That he was selling art on the black market, and that Carlo Morales was the one making it happen. And that if anything happened to him, to tell the police.”

“Did the letter say where the art originated?” Erica asked.

“No.” Lavender sniffled.

Erica reached across the table to take her hand. “You have to tell Detective Lockett.”

Lavender pulled back quickly, her feet knocking against the table leg. “No! They can’t know. His reputation . . .”

I held my breath until Erica said, “I think it’s more important to find out who killed him, don’t you think? And make sure he doesn’t kill again.”

Lavender looked down, defeated, and then nodded. “Do you know I can’t even go to his funeral?”

“I’m really sorry,” Erica said gently. “That must be very painful for you.”

“His parents are holding one in Chicago,” she said. “And I’m not allowed to leave the state.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

“I
really need a diagram of all this,” I said, while Erica drove back to the store. “There are just too many moving parts for me.”

“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said. “Moody started selling Maya antiquities to Carlo a year ago but we still don’t know where he got them.”

“Jennie took a class from him six months before that,” I said. “Maybe she has a houseful of them we don’t know about.” Then I remembered something. “Wait. Wasn’t he meeting with a former student the day he was murdered?”

Our eyes met, and then I said, “It’s impossible. She’s just a lost kid.”

Erica added, “If she was selling art, it would be unlikely she’d support making such a significant donation to the museum.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling a little relieved that neither one of us could imagine Jennie as a killer. “But only some of the donations were stolen. Maybe Jennie didn’t agree with the sale and took them back. Maybe because of Dr. Moody’s class, she knew how valuable that million-dollar vase was.”

Erica shook her head. “An entry-level class most likely wouldn’t cover something like that.”

“You know, Adam is some kind of brilliant businessman,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t he do the research to figure out what the pieces were worth, independent of Dr. Moody’s evaluation?”

Erica nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “Too bad we can’t get to him.”

“But we can ask Gary,” I said.

Kona called when we were approaching West Riverdale. “We’re having a run on the Flag Furls,” she said. “Mayor Abby wants them for a staff meeting this afternoon. You have some at home, right? Can you swing by and bring them in?”

“Sure,” I said. The red, white and blue spray-painted white chocolate in flag shapes had been one of my popular items all summer, and I had a few trays of them in one of the coolers in my kitchen.

I directed Erica to detour by the house. “I’ll be out in a minute,” I said and ran into the kitchen.

Bean was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table with his eyes closed, holding a bloody towel to his arm.

“O
h my God! What happened?” I asked.

He swayed in the chair. It was then that I noticed the amount of blood on the floor. I ran to put more pressure on his wound. “We need to get you to a doctor.”

“No,” he said, almost mumbling. “Gunshot wound.”

Panic set in, making my hands shake. “Okay, then we need to get you to the doctor, like,
now
.”

“No,” he said, more insistent. “They’ll be forced to call the police. No police.”

“Not even Bobby?” I asked and he shook his head.

I heard the front door open. Erica must’ve realized I was taking too long. “Erica!” I yelled.

She rushed in, her worried face turning to alarm at the sight of her brother bleeding.

“He said no police,” I told her, my voice cracking. “What do we do?”

“Call Tonya,” Erica grabbed a clean towel and took over applying pressure to the wound. “Tell her we have an emergency but she has to keep it a secret. She trusts you.”

Tonya was on my softball team and worked as a nurse at West Riverdale Urgent Care. She’d spent many hours studying in our shop, where I gave her endless refills of coffee.

She didn’t ask any questions when I called to say we needed her for an emergency at our house but she couldn’t tell anyone. “I’ll be right there.”

We moved Bean to my bed, and he groaned loudly, making me wonder if we were doing the right thing. Especially when he passed out.

Luckily, Tonya arrived before I passed out as well from worry. She was in serious nurse mode, carrying a medical bag just like on TV. Usually, her face was as expressive as a mime on steroids, but now she was totally professional.

“What happened?” She gestured for Erica to move aside and looked under the towel at the wound. Blood burst through and she put the towel back. “Gunshot?”

“We’re not sure,” Erica hedged. “But he’s working undercover on a big story and said he can’t have the police notified.”

Tonya shook her head. “Hold on.” She expertly applied a tourniquet. “He needs to be hospitalized.”

I could see Erica wavering. “What about Leo’s friend Oakes?” I suggested. “He was a medic in Iraq.”

“Oh yeah,” Tonya said. “He’s a rock star. He could definitely take care of this.”

I left the room to call Leo and told him an abbreviated version of what was happening, my voice quavering.

Leo wasted no time. “We’ll be right over.”

Tonya evaluated Bean further. “He might need a transfusion. I can give him some antibiotics, but if he spikes a fever, you won’t have any choice but to take him in.”

“Okay,” Erica said. “But we’re going to do everything we can to stay right here.”

I looked down and saw drops of blood making a path from the back door and realized that Bean had taken all the same precautions to protect us, parking far away and walking across the field, even so badly injured.

There were way too many guns in my life.

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

I
cleaned as much of the kitchen as I could before Leo and Oakes arrived, the Harley roaring up over the sidewalk to the front porch where I was waiting. Oakes jumped off the back before Leo had even stopped, and ran up the stairs.

“Where’s the patient?” he asked. He was dressed in a camouflage T-shirt and beige shorts that had seen better days, and radiated both confidence and competence. I rushed him back to the bedroom, and he handed his medical bag to Tonya. “What ya got?” he asked her.

He took a look at the wound and I gasped. Without looking at me, Oakes said, “Out.” Then he spoke to Tonya. “I’ll need novocaine and a suture kit.”

Leo grabbed my arm and we went to the living room. While we waited, he paced, stopping every once in a while to reassure me. “Oakes is the best. Don’t worry. He’ll be good as new soon enough.”

Perhaps I should’ve worried about Leo’s reaction to all of this, but my mind was filled with the image of Bean’s blood dripping down his arm.

I had no idea how much time passed before Erica came in, looking relieved. “He’s going to be okay,” she said. “Calling Oakes was a genius move.” She gave me an intense look and held out her hand. “Come and see.”

Bean’s arm was bandaged up and he seemed to be sleeping normally, but was so pale and drawn that I had to fight back tears. What if he’d been too far gone and I’d pushed Erica to keep him here?

Leo stuck his head in. “Lookin’ good,” he said. “Nice job, Oakes.”

Oakes was packing his bag. “Back on his feet in no time.”

He tried to get Leo to loan him his Harley, but Leo just laughed.

Leo looked Erica in the eye before he left. “You call me when you need me to take a shift, okay? You both need to rest too.”

Tonya had weaseled a promise out of Erica to have their family doctor visit the next day, and Oakes had seconded the motion. The doctor was pushing ninety, but still practiced one day a week. A self-proclaimed crotchety old man, he just might be happy to break a few rules for them.

After I changed my bloody clothes, I dialed Kona, who had called my cell several times. She took my head off until I promised to explain in person. I told her I’d deliver the chocolates myself to the mayor’s office. Erica wasn’t going anywhere and Bean didn’t need both of us to keep an eye on him, much as I wanted to stay.

Erica watched over Bean from a chair in the corner, and I showed her the chocolates from the doorway so she’d know
what I was up to. He looked so different from the last time I’d seen him. He’d shaved the sides of his head and let his beard grow out, which probably gave him a much tougher look, at least when he wasn’t pale as a ghost. Tonya had cut off his dirty T-shirt and he had a dark tan in the shape of a tank top. The bandage practically glowed on his arm.

That was so not the way I wanted him to end up in my bed.

I delivered the chocolates to Mayor Abby, who was delighted to have them for her meeting, if a bit late.

Back at the store, I told Kona an abbreviated version of the story, and then let Colleen know the whole deal. She wanted to rush over to see her brother, but her ex-husband was about to deliver her kids. I reassured her that Erica was taking great care of Bean and she should visit later, alone.

I couldn’t concentrate, even though Erica and Leo had reassured me that Bean would be fine. I flitted to my kitchen, then my storage room, then to Erica’s office, like an agitated butterfly. Rifling through her papers, I found a copy of the spreadsheet I’d borrowed from Santiago.

Art sales? Wasn’t high-end art usually sold through auction houses? On a hunch, I retrieved my computer from behind the counter and returned to the office, bringing up the website of the only auction house I knew by name, Sotheby’s.

It listed completed auction information. I clicked on a date from May that matched the spreadsheet.

Oh. My. God. The lot was entitled
Maya Blackware Carved Cylinder Vessel Late Classic, CA A.D. 850-950.

I checked the spreadsheet codes.
BW CY VE AD850.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.

The dollar amounts—$9,300—matched exactly.

Zane walked into the office and I said loudly, “Look at this!”

He raised his eyebrows but looked at the computer screen. I jabbed my finger at the description on the website and then the spreadsheet, and he understood immediately.

“Can I check the next one?” he asked.

I was already getting out of my chair to let him work his computer magic. He quickly searched a few older dates. Not all of the sales on the spreadsheet were on the website.

“This is interesting.” He pointed to the column titled
SC
. “For each one of these sales that were handled by Sotheby’s, ten percent is deducted. Maybe this column is what was paid to Sincero.”

“And maybe the other ones are private sales,” I added. “He gets paid five percent, because the forgery doesn’t have to hold up as well.”

Ten, or even five, percent of all of these sales was a lot of money. “Is there any way to find out who the seller is?” Could it be Santiago who was behind everything? This was his spreadsheet. But the tape at El Diablo Restaurant and Lavender’s confession pointed directly to Carlo.

“Yes,” he said. “But it means some serious hacking.”

Whoa. No way could I bother Erica with this decision tonight. “Erica’s . . . not feeling well,” I told Zane. “Don’t do anything yet. Can you, I don’t know, back all of this up somewhere and we’ll ask her what to do in the morning?” Suddenly I was exhausted and the whole investigation, and Bean’s injury, was just too much.

He squinted at me, but didn’t ask any questions. “Sure.”

“We have to make sure that you’re not messing up your future because of something like this.” I was getting emotional and his eyes widened. It seemed like every step we took had consequences for a lot of people, not just us. “Nothing we do is going to bring back Dr. Moody, so don’t jeopardize what’s going to be an incredible career for this, this, whatever it is. Okay?”

“Okay.” He stared at me in horror as I blinked back tears.

I choked out a wet little laugh. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not going to cry.”

When I got myself together and left the office, I was pretty sure I heard him give a big sigh of relief.

I was not my normally friendly self to my customers, but no one except Kona seemed to notice. “Your face is going to freeze that way,” she said, and pressed a finger between my eyebrows, where I was already developing wrinkles from worrying too much.

I tried to smile. “Sorry. Lots on my mind.”

“Well, stop thinking and go cook or something,” she said. “I’ll take care of the customers.”

An overwhelming need to escape hit me and I closed myself off in my kitchen. Breathing in the chocolate-filled air was usually all I needed to feel back to normal, but the Mint Juleps cooling on the racks weren’t enough to quell the anxiety rushing through me.

My cell phone buzzed with a text from Erica.
Bean’s sleeping peacefully.
Reading you know what. It ends with a bombshell that changes everything
.

I texted Erica to call me when she could. I couldn’t leave Kona alone yet again to man the store. She’d worked way
too many hours lately with me disappearing all the time to investigate.

A few minutes later, Erica called and spoke in a low but urgent voice. “You won’t believe this, but I think Bertrand’s diary was the target the whole time.”

“What? Not the million-dollar vase?”
Or my bowl?

“Bertrand River fell in love in the British Honduras,” she said. “He got married and had a child.”

Oh. My. God.

My head actually started to spin. “Hold on,” I told her and dropped the phone on the metal utility table with a clang. I sat down on a stool, put my face into my hands and took a few deep breaths. I could faintly hear her calling my name.

I picked up the phone. “Tell me again.”

“The analysis of the last few pages that were damaged came back,” she explained slowly as if to a child. “The diary is authentic. It belonged to Bertrand and is in remarkable condition given its age. And get this. Bertrand wrote about falling in love, getting married and having a child. In what was then the British Honduras. It’s now Belize.”

“So the River family has another branch?” I asked, imagining a map of an actual river. “Do you think they know?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But if one of the Rivers knew what was in that diary, getting rid of it would keep a lot of money in the family.”

I remembered Rose Hudson yelling about curses at the reception, the event that had caused this whole mess. “I think this is what we call a motive,” I said.

We were both silent for a minute, thinking about all the ramifications.

“Rose Hudson is the only one old enough to remember what happened,” Erica said.

“Wait. Should we be doing this now?” I asked.

“Let’s just talk to Rose,” she said. “And then we’re done.”

I decided not to keep the latest news from Erica. “And talk about a bombshell, you won’t believe what Zane and I figured out.”

•  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •  •

I
told the long-suffering Kona that I owed her big-time—maybe all-expenses-paid-vacation-in-Hawaii big-time—to hold down the store while we visited Rose. Monday afternoons were unpredictable in the store, but she’d be able to handle whatever happened.

Erica had called Leo, who was happy to watch over the still-sleeping Bean. She’d convinced herself that he’d want her to pursue any lead she could.

The grounds for the Village Retirement Community reminded me of a well-kept golf course, the grass trimmed to perfection and the trees and flowers placed with symmetrical precision.

We parked in the visitor parking lot and walked in the front door, narrowly avoiding what seemed to be a hundred-year-old man in a fast-moving golf cart. A huge flower arrangement with orange birds-of-paradise and striped tiger lilies sat on an ornate antique side table in the lobby. And I thought the mixed bouquet I’d picked up for Rose from May’s shop was big.

“Can I help you?” The uniformed customer service rep sat behind an information desk twice the size of my store counter.