Dark Chocolate Murder (2 page)

“Well, just go with it girl! Have you seen his picture?”

“Nope,” Belinda gulped.

“Uh-oh.  That can’t be good!” Lenore laughed huskily.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking.  But, oh, what the hell?  I’ll just go with it like you said.  I’ll text him and tell him I’m running a little late.  Listen, I gotta get back to my desk now and finish up this crap Jerry gave me.  I’ll tell you all about my date on Monday.”

“Can’t wait!  Try to enjoy yourself to
night, Belinda.  You deserve it,” Lenore encouraged, flashing her a dazzling white smile.

Spontaneously, Belinda gave Lenore a little hug before marching down the hall with
the hateful pile of papers in hand.  When she got back to her cubicle, Belinda sent a quick text to Justin before digging into her mountain of paperwork.

*****

Frazzled, Belinda rushed into the restaurant, scanning the room for her blind date.  Without an umbrella, she had raced around the rainy streets
of Boston on the gloomy March evening, searching for a notary public to stamp the documents Jerry forced on her.  After an hour in the rain, Belinda had shuffled back to the office to complete the filing and tie up other tedious loose ends before finally calling it a day.

She hadn’t even had a chance to go back to her apartment and change clothes.  Now, feeling unsexy in her
taupe raincoat and navy slacks with high collar sweater, Belinda searched in vain for her date, remembering that she didn’t have a clue what the man looked like.  Wondering if he had stood her up, and half hoping that he had, Belinda walked over to the hostess station.

“Good evening
, miss.  I’m here to meet Mr. Justin----um,” Belinda stalled, realizing she didn’t know her date’s last name either.  “I’m here to meet Justin,” she finished self-consciously.

With a slight smirk, the young hostess replied, “Yes, ma’am, there’s a Justin at Table 8.  I’ll take you there.” She grabbed a menu and indicated for Belinda to follow.

All Belinda could hear in her head was the word ‘ma’am.’ She didn’t get ‘ma’amed’ very often, but when she did it made her blood boil.  Belinda had spent years protecting her creamy skin from the sun (which wasn’t hard to do in Boston) and nurturing herself with natural beauty regimens.  But Belinda quickly considered the source of the dreaded ‘ma’am.’  The hostess looked no more than 20 years old and would naturally think of any woman over the age of 30 as a ‘ma’am.’

“Here you go.” The hostess motioned to a completely
gray haired man fiddling with his cell phone.

“Thank you,
” Belinda whispered.  “Hello, Justin?  I’m Belinda.”

Distractedly, the man rose from his seat and
shook her hand limply.  “Hey, what’s up?  I’m Justin.  Sit down.” He immediately returned his attention to the cell phone, tapping the touch screen and smirking as a new message beeped in.

As she sat down across from her date, Belinda immediately knew there was no chemistry between them.  It wasn’t because Justin’s face was weathered beyond his 47 years, or that his voice had a
n abrasive quality to it that felt like nails on a chalkboard.  Rather, it was his rudeness in greeting her and how he seemed so enraptured with his cell phone.

“You’r
e older than I thought you’d be,” Justin remarked casually.

Belinda’s mouth dropped
open at the tactless comment.  What audacity!  He was nearly a decade her senior and yet
she
was the old one?  Suddenly, her cubicle at work seemed a very appealing place to be.

“Anyway, tell me about yourself,
” Justin said mechanically, as though he were interviewing a job applicant.

Belinda didn’t feel inclined to tell the man anything about herself.  This date was already a monumental waste of time.  Why even bother with formalities?  Mentally, she concocted ways to get even with her friends for fixing her up with such a creep.

“I’m listening,” he prompted in that prickly voice.

Inhaling deeply, Belinda shared the least personal detail about herself she could think of: her meaningless job.  “
Well, I work downtown as an administrative assistant.  I’ve been at my office now for about five years.”

“You d
on’t sound too happy about that,” Justin observed, snickering.

Indignantly, Belinda replied, “Well, it’s not a very stimulating job.”

“What would you rather be doing?” Justin asked bluntly.

Beli
nda replied without hesitation, “Baking.”

The admission sent her into a series of mental flashbacks of her former life. 
Before her marriage to Daniel, Belinda had worked as a pastry chef for one of the most posh hotels in Boston.  She had adored every aspect of that job, especially the creative flow of energy from blending ingredients and whipping up indulgent treats.  As a pastry artist, she had delighted in inventing new sweets to surprise customers with, like chocolate covered brie cheese bites and vanilla bean cake infused with Chardonnay.  When she quit, Belinda had been on the verge of receiving a promotion from lowly Sous Chef to Executive Pastry Chef.

Daniel, whom she had only been dating for three months at the time, reacted disapprovingly to the news of her pending promotion.  He had convinced her that the hours would be too long and erratic.  He told her he was ready to settle down and wanted a wife with a nine to five job.  At 33 and eager to marry, Belinda had quit her
job at the hotel and fallen prey to the corporate grind.  Even during the best days of her marriage, the few that there were, Belinda had regretted the decision.  Since her divorce, Belinda was slowly becoming embittered from her bland job and didn’t like the taste at all.

“Baking?” Justin repeated, amused.  “Gotta watch the waistline.”

Belinda flinched.  Although she was not slender, she considered her body beautiful.  She was proud to be shaped like the voluptuous Hollywood stars of yesteryear who looked like women, not malnourished stick figures.

“My wa
istline is just fine, thank you,” Belinda said with a false smile.  “I guess you prefer the waif supermodel type?”

“Can’t blame a man, can you?”

Belinda didn’t respond, but instead chose to remember all the catcalls and doting attention she had received from men over the years, men who went gaga over her lush curves.

“Let’s order,
” Belinda clipped.

As she stared at the menu, she
dared to revisit a dream she hadn’t contemplated in years.  Tucked away in the hidden recesses of her mind was a fantasy that seemed too incredible to ever happen. 
Opening my own chocolate shop.
  The words danced around playfully in her head, and she smiled at the prospect of it.  Then she frowned, wondering all of a sudden what was holding her back.  She was single again, had a fair amount of money saved, and was stuck in a job she deplored. 
What’s stopping me?

Years of watching
The Oprah Winfrey Show
had taught her the importance of a woman’s “aha moment.”  She felt very strongly that she was having one of those right now, in this stuffy restaurant, sitting across from a man she wanted to send on a boat to Antarctica.

What’s stopping me? 
The question would not leave her alone.  All throughout the painful dinner date, that one question silently tugged at Belinda as though leading her to some unknown but inevitable place in the future.

*****

“
Bonjour, ma soeur
,” Belinda greeted her younger sister, Crystal, for their weekly Sunday phone call.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Crystal replied, “
Bonjour! Tu me manques
beaucoup
.”

“I miss you so much, too,
” Belinda answered sadly.

Ever since
Crystal had married a French businessman and moved to Monaco two years ago, the sisters had only seen each other once.  Crystal and her husband, Jean-Jacques, had flown into Boston to attend a relative’s wedding.  But since then, the close-knit sisters had been forced to communicate only by phone, kept apart by thousands of miles and different time zones.

“Then why don’t you finally visit?” Crystal implored.  “You need a vacation!  When was the last time you took any time off from work?”

Belinda reflected on that for a moment.  The last day off she had was in February when she came down with a nasty cold.  But before that?  She couldn’t remember.  And the memory of a vacation was even hazier.  Belinda thought in disbelief how her last vacation had been…her honeymoon?  Was that right?  She and Daniel had gotten off to a rocky start on their stressful honeymoon in Wyoming.  Pigheaded Daniel had insisted on going camping and roughing it in the wilderness. Belinda loved nature but had always pictured her honeymoon in a more romantic and relaxing venue than the inside of a vinyl tent.

“You know, I do need a vacation!  And I would love to see Monaco.  Maybe I could
even kick my high school French up a notch,” she laughed.

“That’s my girl! Let’s plan your trip right now!” Crystal enthused.

“Slow down, Crystal.  Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Is Daniel bothering you again?  Tell him you
don’t want to get back together!” Crystal said harshly.

Crystal despised her former brother-in-law.  First, the bozo had made Belinda give up her dream job, then he had verbally abused her
all throughout the marriage, calling her ‘lardass’ and other demeaning names.  In Crystal’s estimation, Daniel had gotten exactly what he had coming to him when Belinda finally served him with divorce papers.

“No, no, it’s nothing about Daniel.  He knows we’re not getting back together.  I wanted to talk to you a
bout making a change in my life,” she spoke slowly, unsure of how the word ‘change’ would sound out loud when she said it.  Other than for her divorce, change had been a foreign concept to her for many years.

“Go on,
” Crystal urged, her interest piqued.

Belinda drew in a deep breath. 
“You know how I’ve always wanted to open my own chocolate shop?”

“Yes!” Crystal cried, immediately sensing where Belinda was heading and feeling an irrational excitement for her.

“Well, I think I’m finally going to do it.  After all, what’s stopping me?” Belinda repeated the question that had haunted her during the appalling blind date and followed her into her dreams later that night.

“That’s what I’ve always said!  What’s stopping you?  Nothing and nobody! Oh,
I’m so excited for you, Belinda! Where are you going to open it?  And when?” Crystal demanded gleefully.

“Well, I hadn’t thought about
the particulars yet.  I guess I would set up shop somewhere here in Boston.  I’ll have to scope out locations and…”

Crystal interrupted, “But you’re not happy in Boston.  If you’re going to make a change, why don’t you go all the way?”

“You mean move out of state?” Belinda asked, intrigued.  The thought of leaving Massachusetts hadn’t occurred to her, but it was certainly an appealing idea.  Most comfortable in a sundress and sandals, Belinda had always dreamed of living someplace warm and summery.  Someplace like Monaco…

Reading her sister’s mind, Crystal burst out, “Not just out of state!  How about out of the country?  You could move here!”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous!  I barely speak French and I don’t have a work permit.  And you’ve told me how hard it is for foreigners to get approval to work in Monaco,” Belinda protested, although she whole-heartedly loved the idea and was already fantasizing about how she would tell Jerry that his reign of obnoxiousness was over.

“It’s not hard when you have family living here!  Jean-Jacques and I would help you every step of the way.  We could even open the store in our name for legal purposes.  You could just transfer the money to us to rent a storefront.  We would be like your silent partners, but all the profits would be yours! Oh, Belinda, don’t say no!”

Belinda laughed as her sister’s voice became squeaky with mounting eagerness.  It would be hard to say no to such an enthusiastic invitation, but there were so many details to sort through.

“How do you know that all
this would be okay with Jean-Jacques?” Belinda asked.

“I’ve got him wrapped around my
little finger, and you know it,” Crystal boasted.

It was true.  Jean-Jacques was a very laid back man with a comfortable amount of wealth and a consuming love for his American wife.  Belinda had no doubt that Crystal could persuade him to help with this endeavor.

“But what about the logistics?  I mean, it would be such a complicated move,” Belinda argued, as years of self-defeat threatened to steal this opportunity from her.

“Belinda, don’t worry about all that. Don’t overthink this.  You’re finally ready to grasp your dream and it’s right
here in front of you.  Don’t let it slip away,” Crystal pressed on.

Crystal’s encouragement was a powerful magnet that Belinda could not resist.  She had allowed herself to be trapped in a status quo existence for far too long.  How much older did she have to get before initiating a change in her life?  Deliciously, she thought how exciting it would be to celebrate her 39
th
birthday on the French Riviera rather than in Boston.  Her birthday was just two months away in May.  Could she make this move happen in time?  Or would she celebrate the swan song year of her thirties in an apartment she hated and at a job that made the word
hate
seem mild?   At that moment, Belinda didn’t know how she was going to make it happen, but she knew she would.  She had to.  This May, she would blow out the candles on her birthday cake on a picnic blanket next to the Mediterranean Sea…