Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (23 page)

I didn’t want to talk about that again. “I think I’ll have some more cake,” I said. “You want some?”

He looked longingly at his bowl, and I knew he did. But he stood, set Henry on the floor, and began to brush off the hair. “If you’re going to be the quiet type, I’ll just go home. Tomorrow’s another long day. The owner of that house across the street is sending us a key and his permission to search it. Think you could do me a favor and stay away from there in the meantime? Avoid tampering with any more evidence?”

I shuddered. “You think I’d go near that place knowing that creepy guy could be over there?”

He drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. “Lindsay Powell, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything you did. I’d just like to think that if there’s a dead body lying around, it’ll still be there for me to find instead of winding up in your garbage disposal.”

“Oh, gross!”

He strode to the door. I was right behind him. I wasn’t going to let that door remain unlocked for longer than a few seconds.

When he suddenly stopped and turned around, I ran into him. I put my hands on his chest to balance myself, and he put his on my shoulders. Kind of an intriguing position, and for just a minute I thought he was going to say, or maybe even do, something interesting. We had kind of bonded, shared war stories about our ex-spouses. For just a minute I thought I wanted him to
do something interesting. Must have been the chocolate.

“Thanks for the cake. It was really good.”

“Welcome. Come by the shop sometime and I’ll show you what else I can do.” Oh, God! Did that sound like I thought it sounded? “Chocolate, I mean,” I added hastily, removing any doubt that I knew my first comment could be taken as something else. When would I learn to keep my mouth shut and settle for embarrassment instead of total humiliation?

“I’ll take you up on that.” He smiled and
I prayed for a live volcano to open up under the floor and swallow me. “Chocolate, I mean,” he added, making it worse. I wished for a volcano and a hurricane. “Be sure to lock up after I leave.”

He left
, and I closed the door behind him then turned the deadbolt and leaned against it for a minute, berating myself. I had no control over my mouth or my curly hair. I’d given up on the hair years ago. I hated to admit defeat with regard to the mouth, but I might have to.

I took the rusty skillet upstairs with me when Henry and I went to bed. Locking the door was a good idea, but Lester and Fred had both slipped past Paula’s locks without a problem. Didn’t make me feel really safe. The skillet had the potential to crack a skull as well as give the crackee tetanus. Tomorrow I’d buy some mace and maybe some pepper spray, too.

And maybe a muzzle for my mouth.

***

I was dreaming about a creepy man with moles all over his face trying to smother me with his hair piece when Henry woke me. He was making those horrible jungle noises again.

I sat upright in bed, heart pounding, afraid to put my feet on the floor. I just knew if I did,  Lester would reach out from under the bed with big, nicotine-stained fingers and grab my ankles.

“Having another attack of gas?” I asked Henry, trying to convince myself. It had made a nice theory earlier, but that unearthly sound in the middle of the night conjured up images of monsters and madmen, not gas attacks.

I swallowed hard and retrieved the rusty iron skillet from my nightstand. “He’s here again, isn’t he?”

But Henry wasn’t looking out the window…the window I had closed and locked just in case Lester decided to use a ladder. Henry was pacing back and forth from the bed to the bedroom door. Was Lester in the hallway?

I listened between Henry’s yowls and didn’t hear any boards creaking.

“I’ll bet you need to go outside and potty, don’t you?” I asked hopefully, clutching my skillet with both hands. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You really, really need to go to the bathroom. I know how that is. Terrible feeling. I’ll just go downstairs and let you out and then you’ll feel better and so will I.”

It sounded logical, but logic didn’t stand up to a cat pacing back and forth from my bed to the door, making noises like an alien creature. I couldn’t convince myself to put my feet on the floor, to move out of that bed.

I have a phone on the night stand. All I had to do was lift the receiver and call Fred or 911. But if I lifted that receiver and found the phone lines had been cut, I’d probably die of a heart attack right on the spot, and Henry would have to learn to use the can opener himself.

Nevertheless, I made myself pick up the phone. I don’t think I’ve ever lived through a longer split second waiting for the dial tone to kick in. It did, of course. I was overreacting. I felt silly.

I punched in the first three digits of Fred’s phone number then stopped. Either Henry needed to go to the bathroom, or Lester really was down there. In the first case, I’d be waking Fred for no reason, and in the second, I’d be putting him in danger.

I depressed the button, got another dial tone and punched in 9-1, then stopped.

What would I do if the cops came and Henry promptly went outside, pottied, buried it and came back in?

I couldn’t decide if I was more terrified of facing an intruder or more worried about making a fool of myself and of having
Trent find out about it.

“There’s nobody in my house,” I assured myself sternly. “And if there is, then I need to go down there and escort him out. This is my house. I refuse to allow uninvited guests.”

I set my jaw and hung up the phone.

Nevertheless, it took all my courage to get out of that bed and walk across the room. I started to put on a robe, then decided it was ridiculous to worry about a murde
rer seeing me in my over-sized T-shirt. Besides, long sleeves might restrict the motion of my arm in case I got a chance to whack him with the skillet. I drew in a deep breath, hefted the skillet high and yanked the door open.

The hallway was empty.

Henry darted past me and down the stairs.

I had to follow. What if Lester was in my house and he hurt my cat? Obviously Henry was so macho he thought he could handle it, but even though he might sound like a fully grown tiger, he was really only an overgrown pussy cat.

I hurried down the stairs, being as quiet as I could. Even so, I was pretty sure any intruder could hear my ragged breathing and my heart pounding against my ribs.

The living room appeared to be empty, though the glow from the street lamp wasn’t enough to see into the corners. I desperately wanted to flip the switch and flood the room with light, but then an intruder would be able to see me. Anyway, Henry wasn’t in the living room which surely meant the intruder wasn’t there either.

I gulped down the lump of terror in my throat, checked the front door to be sure it was still locked then tiptoed on through the dining room into the kitchen, halfway expecting at every moment to be attacked from behind.

Henry stood at the kitchen door as if trying to see underneath. When I walked into the room, he ambled to his water bowl.

“You were thirsty? You scared me half to death because you were thirsty?” I wanted to believe that. I really, really wanted to believe that.

But why had he been peering under the door?

Well, curiosity, maybe.

I checked the deadbolt on the kitchen door. It was secure.

I sagged against the counter, the adrenaline suddenly ebbing, bile surging up, bringing a bitter taste to my mouth.

“Henry, if I had the energy, I’d kill you.”

He looked at me, those blue eyes wide and complacent, then strutted across the room and rubbed against my leg.

As if expecting praise for running off an intruder?

I shook my head to try to clear it. When that paranoia gets a grip, it doesn’t let go! Okay, there really was a nut case skulking around out there, but he was after Paula, not me. He’d only come after me if Paula went to prison and I sicced Dad’s nonexistent Ninja lawyers on him.

I set the skillet down on
the counter beside the pan of Chocolate Pudding Cake. That’s what I needed. A chocolate fix would make everything better.

With trembling fingers, I removed the plastic wrap from the pan then took a spoon from the drawer. Considering the way my hands were shaking, I decided not to bother with the middleman bowl but took the whole pan into the living room and sat down on the sofa.

With every bite, I became a little calmer even though the bitter taste in my mouth kept me from thoroughly savoring the dark, rich flavor.

“Henry, we’re going to have talk about this,” I said as soon as I got back enough breath to be able to speak. He had climbed onto the sofa beside me and was purring happily. “You’re obviously not the least bit concerned that you just took twenty years off my life!” I shook my spoon at him. “This is not a good thing! I appreciate the fact that you have ambition and want to be a watch cat, but you’ve got to learn to differentiate between a burglar and a thirst.”

I shoveled in more chocolate and chattered nervously to Henry. I still wasn’t completely convinced there hadn’t been an intruder in my house. However, I was beginning to feel calm enough to consider venturing back upstairs for another hour of sleep before I had to go to work.

Then I began to feel queasy. I looked down at the pan. Small wonder. I’d eaten all that remained of that entire pan of
Chocolate Pudding Cake. That’s a lot of chocolate, even for a pro like me.

“Henry, it would seem my gluttony for chocolate has finally caught up with me.” I sat very still, taking deep breaths, trying to relax my stomach muscles, but it rapidly became apparent that I was going to lose the battle and the chocolate.

I set the pan on the coffee table, charged into the bathroom and proceeded to empty my stomach of all contents. Half a pan of Chocolate Pudding Cake, partially digested, is not a pretty sight.

When there was nothing left but my stomach lining, I finally staggered up from hugging the commode, rinsed my mouth and brushed my teeth. By that time, I was so dizzy, I could barely stand. I needed to clean off the toilet bowl, but I didn’t think I could do it right now.

Paula was right. I shouldn’t eat so much sugar, especially on an empty stomach. Maybe if I ate some cheese, the protein would counteract some of that sugar, and I’d feel better.

I stumbled back through the living room, trying to make it to the kitchen and promising myself I would never again, as long as I lived, pig out on chocolate, so help me, God! I doubt if God believed me.

But something was wrong beyond my stomach problems. I was pretty sure the room shouldn’t be spinning in circles and there shouldn’t be three blue-eyed cats hurrying toward me with concerned looks on their faces.

I had a hard time keeping my balance as the room spun round and round. Walking was out of the question. Just in time the floor came up to catch me and solved that problem. When I first landed, I thought I was going to throw up again, but the blackness closed around me and I sank into it gratefully.

Chapter Fourteen

I was having a terrible dream about being dragged all over my high school gymnasium while Rick and Fred shouted at me and tortured me with needles to make me tell Trent my secret recipes. They beat me with iron skillets and pans of Chocolate Pudding Cake while hundreds of people in the stands booed me when I tried to tell them there was no secret. Finally Trent handcuffed me and carted off to the dungeon where I was put on the rack and tortured some more.

I was happy to wake from that dream even though my throat hurt, my mouth tasted like I’d been eating Henry’s cat food or maybe his litter box, and my body ached all over. On second thought, I didn’t really want to wake up. The dreams were over and the alarm wasn’t screaming at me. Surely I could go back to sleep for a little while.

“She’s coming around!” someone shouted.

There shouldn’t be anybody in my bedroom! Damn! Surely I hadn’t let Rick smooth talk me into spending the night again? It didn’t sound like Rick, though. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Lindsay? Can you hear me?” A female voice, too? In my bedroom? Omigawd! Did we have an orgy? That certainly wasn’t on my list of things to do, but, judging from the way I felt, I could have been drugged and then done about anything. The question of what had made my throat sore bothered me a lot. I didn’t want to go there. The only place I wanted to go was back to sleep.

I was drifting downward, hoping this supposed awakening was just another bad dream, when somebody else shouted at me. Did these people think I was deaf?

“Ms. Powell, can you open your eyes?”

Oh, God, please tell me I didn’t orgy with somebody who calls me Ms. Powell!

“No!” I tried to shout, but it came out a whisper. In fact, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain it came out at all.

Someone took my hand. “Lindsay, you need to wake up now.” Fred. That was a good sign. I was positive Fastidious Fred would never be involved in anything as unorganized and messy as an orgy.

I opened one eye a crack but the painful glare slammed it shut again. “Bright,” I whispered. “Hurts.”