Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate

Chapter One

I could tell the minute I woke that it was Sunday, and not just because it was daylight and the alarm wasn’t shrieking. The songs of the birds and the September breezes coming through my open window had that
Sunday morning
sound and feel to them.

I rolled over and snuggled up against Rick’s warm body.

That’s when it hit me.

Rick and I were getting a divorce. There shouldn’t be a man in my bed.

I sat bolt upright, heart pounding. Who the hell was sleeping in my bed?

Good-looking, dark golden hair, streaked from the sun and Lady Clairol, nice tan, complacent expression even when he was asleep
.

Rick.

I suppressed a groan as I came fully awake and remembered his unexpected appearance on my front porch…and everything that followed…about the night before. I had clearly lost my mind.

Not that my mind ever had
much control where Rick was concerned.

When I’d opened the door to see him standing there yesterday evening, feet planted firmly on my doormat with its image of Taz shrieking in bright red letters,
Go away!
, I’d been glad to see him. Right then I should have called 911 to request that I be declared mentally incompetent and hauled off in chains for my own protection. I couldn’t possibly be glad to see Rick when I knew he’d already moved Muffy or Buffy or whatever her name was into
our
house and
our
bed.

Instead, I’d just stood there looking at him, and he’d looked back at me with those eyes that were bluer than the
Kansas City sky in the middle of summer. Of course, if that sky wore tinted contacts, it could be that blue, too.

I did
have enough presence of mind to snarl at him. “What do you want?” I demanded then attempted a sneer.

He smiled
—the smile that made him top salesman at Rheims Commercial Real Estate for the past six years. Somebody at a party once asked Rick what he sold. He gave the person that same smile and said, “Myself.”

And he did a damned good job of it.

So I snarled and sneered and he smiled. I knew he wanted to sell me something. Probably himself.

“Hi, Babe,” he said and waved a manila envelope. “We need to go over some more terms of the settlement agreement, so I thought I’d stop by in person.”

Yeah, right. I knew…and he knew that I knew…there were no more terms to go over. He’d demanded the lion’s share and I’d agreed because all I wanted was for the whole thing to be finished. I was asking for four things: this house (not the big one where he and Muffy/Buffy lived but this small one that used to be one of our rental properties), the rental house next door where my friend Paula lived, my coffee/lunch/dessert shop, Death by Chocolate, and my old but fast, red Toyota Celica.

However, I’d been facing another Saturday night alone with a book or playing Rummi-Kube with Paula, and it was one of those evenings when it’s not summer anymore, but not yet fall. The air was still warm though it had a nostalgic feel to it, as if remembering all the fun of the summer as it slowly faded into the past and dreading the cold winter on its way. Or maybe that was just how I was feeling.

Anyway, I asked Rick in.

And when I wasn’t looking, he ordered a pizza. Double pepperoni. My favorite kind.

Like I said, he’s a damned good salesman.

One dumb thing led to another and then another…and now here he was, sleeping in my bed.

I slid out very carefully, trying not to wake him. I needed some caffeine and sugar pumping through my veins before I could deal with his inevitable leaving again. Every time was like another knife straight to the gut. A dull, rusty, serrated knife. The kind I should take to his throat right now…or maybe some portion of his anatomy a bit lower.

Nah, he’d just bleed all over my new sheets and I’d have to clean it up. In eight years of marriage, he never cleaned up a single one of the messes he made.

I pulled on the T-shirt and cut-offs I’d been wearing when he came over last night, then fastened my unruly red hair into a pony tail, moving quietly so I wouldn’t wake him. As I started out of the room, I noticed his cell phone had fallen from his pants pockets, the pants he’d draped over my wooden rocking chair last night.

I told myself to move on, get out of that room as fast as I could, but the phone was blinking and a faint buzzing was coming from it. I remembered being surprised and pleased that nobody…like, for instance, that Buffy person…had called him last night. Guess now I knew why. Creep
had it on
vibrate
.

I picked up the phone. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to work it. My cell doesn’t do anything but make phone calls. Rick always had to have the latest in everything. His phone will order dinner, pick it up and hire someone to wash the dishes. 

When I figured it out, I saw there had been about fifteen calls, give or take a few, from “My Muffy.”

He was cheating on her just like he’d cheated on me. Poor “My Muffy.” I couldn’t restrain an evil smile as I laid down the phone, gathered my dignity about me and tiptoed downstairs, through my house.

I loved the sound of that.
My
house that held
my
furniture, most of it vintage garage sale or early American attic, but everything chosen because I wanted it there, not because Rick approved of something and decided we would get it. 

Except for Rick’s
elegant, expensive leather briefcase looking very out of place in my living room where it leaned incongruously against one end of my big, cushy sofa patterned with lots of brightly colored flowers.

I
rushed past, hurrying outside with the excuse of retrieving the paper from the front yard.

As I walked out barefoot,
I savored the feel of the weathered wood of my porch, the rough, cracked texture of my sidewalk, the dew-damp, cool green of the grass and weeds and clover in my yard. Since I no longer had a lawn service, I no longer had a golf-green lawn. The last tenants of this house were an older couple who either didn’t care if the lawn wasn’t perfect or couldn’t see well enough to tell.

I could see just fine, but I didn’t care. I’m not much into yard work. If it’s green, let it grow. Green or white. Clover’s pretty and smells good. And yellow dandelions are nice for contrast. Okay, the truth is, if a rock wants to sit in my yard and not even think about growing, that’s okay, too.

I kicked a puffy dandelion, sending the seeds scattering, and took a deep breath of the morning air. It was clear, clean, and cool with the promise of fall.

This place wasn’t really in
Kansas City, but in a small southeast suburb called Pleasant Grove. When Rick was looking for some investment property, I checked out this one because I loved the name. Pleasant Grove. And it was pleasant. Too hilly for good farmland, it still had lots of trees and was far enough away from downtown and from the factories north of the city that the air was clean and, well, pleasant.

Renters who wanted to live in the area were pleasant, too. Quiet people who paid on time, never wrote hot checks, and didn’t have wild parties that ended with them in jail and our house a disaster. We’d subsequently bought the house next door, Paula’s place, but this first one, eighty years old, two-stories, a big front porch and lots of trees, was still my favorite.

I picked up the bulky Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star, then stopped as I caught a glimpse of the sun glinting off Rick’s dark green Jeep Cherokee parked in my driveway.

For a millisecond there, I’d managed to put last night completely out of my mind. Well, at least
I’d relegated it to the back of my mind.

But there the damned car sat
, right in front of me, reminding me of what I had to deal with this morning. Rick in my bed. In the six weeks since we’d separated, I’d been working hard at getting on with my life and forgetting about him and Muffy/Buffy/Puffy. But last night swept away all the healing I’d done in those six weeks. The wound was raw and open and bleeding.

Something soft brushed my leg and I jumped.

A cat. A big cat, marked like a Siamese only gold where Siamese were brown.

He rubbed against my leg again and purred as if he knew I needed some affection right then.

I squatted to pet him. I was sure it was a
him
by the self-assured stance and the certainty of acceptance that shone in those bright blue eyes. Yeah, I’m a sucker for blue eyes. This pair didn’t even have tinted contacts. This pair didn’t contain any deceit or hidden depths, either.

He purred more loudly and arched into my hand as I stroked along his head and back. “You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you? Who do you belong to?”

“Lindsay!” For a second, I thought the cat had answered. Like I said, I should have had myself committed the night before. Hearing a cat talk was nothing compared to letting Rick back into my bedroom and my life.

I looked up to see Paula retrieving her paper next door.

Her son Zach, wearing only a diaper, spotted me, grinned, and charged across the yards and my driveway, shrieking, “Anlinny! Anlinny!”

I tossed the paper onto the porch, then reached down and scooped up the kid. “Good morning, Hot Shot!” I brushed his hair back, not because it was long enough to be in his face but just because it was such sweet baby hair, the color and texture of corn silk, and I loved to touch it.

He gave me a noisy smack on the cheek then babbled happily in that almost-language of his, ending with “Kee!” as he twisted in my arms to point down at the cat.

“Yes, that’s a kitty. A big one.”