Chocolate Most Deadly (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (19 page)

CHAPTER
40

It had been a few months since I
talked to Calvin Roth, but he was the first person I thought about as I left
Viveca’s place and headed for home. After trading my jeans and long-sleeved
pullover for my robe and slippers, I went into the living room and opened the
last unpacked box from my office in Chicago. The tattered leather journal that
had served as my official repository for telephone numbers was buried at the
bottom beneath wrinkled folders, coffee-stained notebooks and transcripts of
witness interviews. While I primarily relied on the contact list on my phone,
the journal served as my trusty backup in case the digital records were ever
lost.

I opened the journal to the page
marked
IT Consultants
, and smiled at the lone entry: Calvin Roth. When I
started working for Rodney in Chicago, I didn’t know how many computer gurus it
would take to manage our technology requirements. In the end, Calvin was the
only one we needed. In addition to installing all of our office equipment,
Calvin handled certain surreptitious and delicate information retrieval
missions.

“It’s called hacking,” I’d told
Rodney when he explained Calvin’s after-hours enterprise. “And it’s also
illegal.” My late, beloved boss had sneered at my self-righteous declaration.
“You’re new to the game,” he’d told me. “Wait until you’re on a case that’s
really tricky, when you’re dealing with some low-life con that’s kidnapped a
thirteen-year-old girl and the fastest way to find him is hacking a phone or
laptop. Get back to me then and I’ll give you Calvin’s number.”

Since I’d only been working as a PI
for a few weeks at that point, I accepted his comment as the musings of an
experienced mentor. I knew he was talking about a case that he’d worked before
I joined the agency, a situation that ended tragically. About six months later,
when I was working on something that involved a crushing deadline and
especially secretive individuals, I hired Calvin to do a little computerized
digging. I wasn’t wild about the thought of it, but the well-being of a small
child was at risk. During the years that followed, I used him sparingly and
only when I’d exhausted all other avenues.

After dialing Calvin’s number, I
walked into the kitchen, opened a Sky High box filled with day-old goodies and
reached for a snickerdoodle, figuring there would be time for one or two bites
before he answered. When he picked up on the first ring, the cookie went back
in the box.

“I thought you’d never call,” he
said in his distinctive monotone. “Did you come to your senses and move back to
Chicago?”

The question made me smile. “Not
yet,” I said. “How’s it going, Calvin?”

He coughed into the phone. “I’m
home with a cold,” he grumbled. “Eating pizza and watching the Cubs.”

“Sounds like a perfect night,” I
said. “Except for the cold.”

There was a flood of sniffling and
another soggy cough. “If I can’t be sailing the Mediterranean on a yacht with a
bunch of supermodels,” he joked, “I guess the Cubs will do.”

We made small talk for a few
minutes about the usual suspects: work, weather, pizza, Lake Michigan,
baseball. Then I told Calvin that I was calling to ask for his help.

“Whatever you need,” he said.

“I’m sort of working on something
here,” I explained. “I’d like to get background info on three women. They grew
up in Omaha, but moved to Denver within the last few years.”

“Anything specific?”

“High school or college
transcripts,” I said. “Anything that relates to chemistry, biology or
forensics.”

He was quiet for a moment or two. Then
he asked how the trio’s educational history was related to Sky High Pies.

“This isn’t for Sky High,” I
confessed. “And it’s a long story. Do you remember the Sheffield case?”

He snickered softly, but the laugh
turned into a slight cough that quickly grew into a deafening roar. I held the
phone down until he finished.

“Yeah,” he said, coming back on the
line. “Wasn’t that, like, four or five years ago?”

“Four years and three months,” I
said. “To be exact.”

“That was the one with Barbie and
Ken, right?”

“Those weren’t their real names,” I
said.

“Yeah,” Calvin said. “But she was
homecoming queen, he was the quarterback and someone blackmailed them ten years
after high school graduation for some risqué photos they took using part of the
school mascot costume, right?”

“At least the cold hasn’t affected
your memory,” I teased. “The thing I’m working on right now is similar to that
case. It involves jealous siblings, a couple of murders and acetonitrile-laced
cupcakes.”

“Uh-huh,” Calvin said slowly. “Tell
me more.”

“I have a hunch,” I told him.
“Beginning with the fact that not everyone knows that acetonitrile is
metabolized by the body as cyanide.”

Calvin was quiet while he
considered the comment. “But you suspect that one of the three women does
know?”

“Bingo,” I said. “I’d like to take
a peek at their high school and college transcripts. Just to see if there’s a
chance one or more of them became enlightened on the subject somewhere along
the way.”

“Okay, sure,” Calvin said. “But
does studying matter, energy and the subatomic realm necessarily mean they’ll
know how deadly acetonitrile can be?”

I smiled at his casual use of
the
subatomic realm
. Calvin was one of the smartest people that I’d ever met;
even when discussing something simple he could sound scholarly.

“It’s just a hunch,” I said. “If I
find out that one of them studied chemistry and learned about the toxic
qualities of acetonitrile and other substances, I might try to leverage it into
an admonition of guilt.”

He asked how quickly I needed the
information.

“Well, yesterday would be the best
case scenario,” I replied. “But I hate to be a pest.”

“Give me an hour or so,” he said.
“Some school districts have juiced their firewalls in the past few years. I
won’t know if their schools have until I get cracking.”

“I’ll text you the names and birth
dates in a sec,” I said. “So you don’t have to worry about writing anything
down.”

After I thanked him again and
promised to send a selection of Sky High’s most popular pies by FedEx, Calvin
finished the call with a loud sneeze and a garbled apology. While I waited for
him to burrow a digital hole through the ether, I arranged two snickerdoodles
on a plate, fixed a cup of decaf blackberry mint tea and settled into bed with
The
Body in the Library
.

“At last,” I said to the empty
room. “Peace, quiet and something sweet.”

When the phone vibrated two hours
later, I was facedown in a crumb-covered pillow with the Agatha Christie novel
wedged under one hip. There was a new text from Calvin:
Check your email.
Found the HS transcripts for Hannah Z, Heidi Z and Lois J. Looks like your
hunch is correct!
I sent a quick reply of thanks, swept the crumbs into the
trashcan beside the bed and switched on my laptop.

The email from Calvin was short and
snappy:
All three were honor students. All three took HS chemistry (advanced
classes). But only one took advanced chem in college. And here’s the kicker—she
also wrote an article for an AP journal about Jean-Baptiste Dumas—the French
chemist who first prepared acetonitrile in 1847. Her article mentioned the
connection between acetonitrile and cyanide. All transcripts attached. Good
luck, Kate!

I quickly opened the attachment,
scanned the school transcripts and smiled. My theory was still intact; one of
the three women was most likely responsible for delivering the poisoned
cupcakes to Tim’s apartment. But the byline on the article about the French
chemist and the acetonitrile-cyanide connection was a genuine surprise.

“Calvin Roth!” I shouted gleefully.
“You are the
best
in the world!”

CHAPTER
41

When I pulled up in front of the
AltaVista Apartments on Franklin the next afternoon, I spotted the
paint-spattered aluminum ladder on the south side of the building, extending from
the ground to the windows on the third floor. The painter that Viveca and I saw
during our first visit was perched near the top of the ladder. Still dressed in
bib overalls, a long-sleeved shirt and boots, the guy looked away when he saw
that I was walking toward him.

“Excuse me,” I called, cupping both
hands around my mouth. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

He ignored my question, so I gently
tapped on the ladder.

“Sir?”

He stopped painting and glared at
me. “I’m on a tight schedule,” he grumbled. “The landlord isn’t paying me to
talk. He’s paying me to paint. And he’ll be really unhappy if I don’t get this
done today.”

I apologized for the intrusion and
promised that it would only take a moment.

“If I answer your question,” the
guy said, peering at me from above, “will you go away and leave me alone?”

“Cross my heart,” I said. “I’ll
never bother you again, sir.”

The painter snorted. “Did you just
call me ‘sir’?”

“I don’t know your name. And I like
to be polite.”

“It’s Theo,” he said, shifting the
brush and paint can into one hand. “But most people call me Bones.”

As I chuckled in response, he made
his way down the ladder. After he stepped off and put the paint can on the
ground, I explained that I was trying to confirm if someone had visited the
building recently.

“I know it’s kind of weird,” I
said, digging for my phone. “But we keep missing one another.” I decided to
embellish my story a bit to make it seem more believable. “And she’s changed
her number about ten million times.”

Bones smirked. “That sounds like
something my ex-wife did when we were getting divorced,” he mumbled. “You from
a lawyer’s office?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I
don’t work for an attorney. I’m just trying to find out if a particular woman
stopped by here. Since it seems you’ve been working on the building for the
past few days, I thought there’s a slim chance that you might’ve seen her.”

He pulled a crumpled blue bandana
from his pocket and swept it across his brow. “One of the residents?”

“She doesn’t live here, but she knows
people that do.” I searched on my phone for the group photo that included Heidi
Zimmer, Lois Jordan and Anton Hall. When I found it, I used my thumb and
forefinger to make it as big as possible. “The woman on the far right,” I said,
holding the phone up. “Have you seen her lately?”

Bones tilted forward, pursed his
lips and looked at Lois. “Never saw her before in my life,” he said.

“Okay, well—”

“But that one.” He pointed at
Heidi. “That’s the chick with the green hair. She comes by all the time.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “And I mean that,” he
added. “All. The. Time.” He sneered and muttered a few impolite remarks. “I
don’t know why she doesn’t just move back in, you know? She’d save herself a
ton on gas money.”

From the way he was looking at the
paintbrush in his hand, I could tell he was ready to get back up on the ladder.

“I really appreciate your help with
this,” I said.

He accepted the thankfulness with a
silent shrug.

“Do you know if she was here on the
day that the guy was poisoned?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She was here. I
worked that whole weekend.”

“And how was she dressed?”

“I don’t know,” Bones said with a
shrug. “It was, like, a coat that reminded me of a quilt or something. She
wears it a lot when she visits.”

“A quilt?”

“Yeah, with all these scraps of different
fabric and stuff,” he answered. “And she was wearing this floppy hat with a
feather on it.”

I waited until he finished. Then I
asked if he’d actually seen the woman’s face that day.

He bit the inside of his cheek,
considering the question. “Not really,” he said finally. “I was up there.” He
gestured toward the ladder. “And, like I said, she hurried inside with her head
down the whole way.”

“Was she carrying anything?”

“Like a purse?”

“Yes,” I said. “Or a suitcase,
cardboard box or other large package.”

He thought for a moment, looking
down at his boots and kicking idly at a bare spot in the lawn. “Just a six-pack
of soda,” he said. “And a white box. Like the kind they put cookies in at a
bakery.”

I felt a surge of anticipation.
“Cookies?”

The toe of his boot sent a small
plume of dust into the air. “I don’t know what was in it,” he said. “Cookies.
Donuts. Sweet rolls. Maybe something like that. To be honest, I never really
pay all that much attention to her. She’s always running her mouth, talking about
a bunch of stuff that I couldn’t give two shakes about.” He frowned and dug at
the ground again with his boot. “Although, now that I’m thinking about it, that
was one thing that was different that day.”

“What’s that?”

“She didn’t say a peep,” he told me.
“And she kept her head down, staring at the ground the whole time. Almost like
she didn’t want me to see her or something. I noticed the coat and hat that she
always wears. And strands of the green hair. But she never said a word.”

I smiled at the remark. “Thank you,
Bones. That’s very helpful.”

He frowned, creasing his forehead
with dozens of deep wrinkles. “Yeah? How so?”

“It’s complicated,” I said. “And I
know you’re on a deadline, so I should let you get back to work.”

The frown vanished. “Yeah, I probably
should. This is my fourth week here. I’m already behind on another project that
I haven’t even started yet.”

“One more question?” I asked
apologetically. “Do you know who owns the building?”

“Guy called Jake Breen. He bought
it a few months ago from the geezer that had it for, like, thirty years.”

I hadn’t expected the name. But it
somehow fit with the curious circumstances that had come to light since Viveca
showed up at my door with the news that her brother was the victim of a murder
plot. I was thinking about Tim, Delilah and all the rest when Bones started
climbing the ladder.

“Okay, so if he owns the building,”
I said, “then he would have keys to all the units, right?”

He stopped. “I thought you said one
more question.”

I gave him my most innocent smile.
“I’m sorry, Bones. I never was very good with math.”

After snickering darkly, he
confirmed my assumption. “Yeah, he’s got keys. Uses ’em whenever he wants to go
in and snoop around in the units. The guy’s a total loser.”

“Has he been here lately?”

Bones pursed his lips. “Yep, the
same day that the chick in the floppy hat came back. She carried beer and that
bakery box one day; wasn’t carrying anything a couple days later.”

“Oh, really?” I said.

He nodded. “I mean, other than the
backpack she’s always got,” he answered. “Like the kind a little girl would
carry. It had a cartoon character on it. Cora? Nora? Something like that. I
know because my daughter loves the show.”

“Are you thinking of Dora the
Explorer?” I suggested.

“Yep, that’s the one! Dora, not
Cora.”

I smiled. “Anything else you
remember about that day?”

“Not really,” he said. “Other than
the kid’s backpack, it was pretty much a carbon copy of the day she came with
the cookies. She hurried up the sidewalk, kept her head down and didn’t say a
word.”

“And when did Breen arrive?”

“I don’t know,” Bones answered.
“Maybe a half hour or so before that. I was getting ready to quit for the day,
so I’d gone around the building to rinse my brushes and rollers. As I came back
up here, I saw Breen’s car at the curb. Then I saw another guy going in the
front door.”

“Did you get a look at the other
man?”

Bones shook his head. “No, but I
know his name now.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” said Bones. “Because I
heard about him that night on the ten o’clock news.”

I connected the dots in a flash.
“The dead guy in Delilah Benson’s apartment?”

“That’s the one.”

“Did you tell all of this to the
police?”

He frowned. “What do you think?”

I nodded.

“That’s right,” Bones said. “As
soon as I saw the story on the news, I called 911. They sent a couple of guys
over to my place right away.”

“Was one of them Detective Adam
Caldwell?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.” He grinned.
“You know him, too?”

I raised one hand and twined my
middle and index fingers together. “We’re just like this,” I said as a smile
flickered on my lips. “We go way back.”

“You’re pulling my leg,” Bones
said.

“Maybe a little,” I agreed. “But I
have met the guy. He’s friendly with a couple of people I know up in Crescent
Creek.”

“That where you’re from?”

I smiled. “Home sweet home,” I
said. “I lived in Chicago for a while, but I came back earlier this year to
take over my family’s business.”

“Is that right? What kind of
business?”

“Sky High Pies,” I answered.

His eyes went wide with delight.
“Oh, man! I remember going there when I was a kid. My family drove to
Sacramento for summer vacations and we would go through Crescent Creek. My
parents always said that if my brother and I could behave in the backseat, we’d
stop for a slice of pie on the return trip.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

Bones chuckled. “It was perfect,”
he said. “Danny and I glared at one another the whole way there and back. No
funny stuff, no yelling. But after we stopped in Crescent Creek and got that
piece of pie, we made up for it on the rest of the drive into Denver.”

I smiled at the story. “Okay, you
should get back up there and finish what I interrupted,” I said. “Thanks again
for taking time to answer my questions.”

I watched as he climbed the ladder.
When he reached the top, he dipped the brush in the paint can and returned to
work.

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yes, but I’m leaving,” I said,
blinking away the whirl of thoughts in my mind. “I appreciate your help.”

He laughed again. “And I actually
appreciate the break,” he said. “Good luck finding whoever you’re looking for.”