Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (5 page)

This trip down
Memory Lane was much more seductive than all the caresses of the night before.

Behind us something thudded and made a hideous
rowring
noise.

We both whirled around. The cat stood on the coffee table, tail in the air, back arched, his blue eyes looking suddenly demonic with their black vertical slits. He opened his mouth to make that noise again, and his fangs looked half an inch long. He seemed twice as big as I remembered. I had one instant of panic, wondering if he was rabid or something, but his glare was focused solely on Rick.

“Something’s wrong with that cat,” Rick said, backing away. “We better call Animal Control.”

The cat in question dipped his head and peered into the mug Rick had been drinking from, then gave a cat sneeze or maybe a snort of disgust. He was acting strange, but he’d given me the diversion I needed to find some of my common sense and maybe a smidgen of pride. I pulled away from Rick and went over to the cat who now looked as docile as ever though he still had that
I am cat; I am your superior
expression.

I leaned down to pet him in order to give myself a few more seconds to recover from the Invasion of Rick. As I did, I peered idly at the dark liquid in the cup, curious as to what Rick might be drinking that the cat found so disgusting. It had to be either Coke, tea, or water. That’s all I had in the house.

It didn’t look like any of those. There was a remote possibility he could have made hot chocolate, but it didn’t look like that, either. What it
did
look like was—

“What are you drinking?” I demanded. “I don’t have any coffee in the house.”

“I had a jar of instant in my briefcase.”

He’d brought his own coffee.

I could feel the steam suddenly pouring from my ears, just like in one of those cartoons.

Obviously the arrogant man had intended to spend the night all along!

I looked around for a blunt weapon.

That’s what comes from having a clean house. There wasn’t a weapon in sight.

I stomped to the end of the sofa, grabbed his briefcase, and tossed it at him with as much force as I could muster.

It hit smack in his stomach, a bit higher than I’d been aiming. Too bad.

“Ow! That hurt!”

“Good. Now get out.” I glared at him and pointed toward the door.

“Calm down, babe. I’ll go get some chocolate doughnuts and we’ll talk about this
—”

That final reminder of his deceptions was what it took to send me over the edge. I went ballistic. “If you call me
babe
one more time or remain in my house one more minute, I’m going to get my brand new double-barreled shotgun and change you from a bull to a steer right here in my living room, and that’s one mess I won’t mind cleaning up!”

He grabbed the briefcase, held it in front of him and gave a nervous laugh. “I know you. You’d never buy a gun.” But I could tell he wasn’t sure. Sweat popped out on his forehead.

I fisted my hands on my hips. “Wouldn’t I? Remember all those times when I questioned your late night appointments and the perfume on your shirts and you told me I was crazy? Well, guess what? You were right! I am crazy! I bought a gun and I’m going to shoot off your public-property penis and grind it up in the garbage disposal and they’ll give me Prozac and therapy and I won’t even have to go to jail because I’m crazy!” I moved to the coat closet and wrapped my hand around the doorknob.

“Now, babe
—”

I glared at him again, turned the knob and yanked the door open. I had so much stuff in there, I knew he couldn’t tell if I was hiding a cannon. I pushed aside some coats and groped behind the vacuum cleaner.

“Uh, listen, ba—uh, Lindsay, I gotta go. I’ll call you.”

He dashed out the front door. I didn’t watch him go. I just stood there beside the coat closet that held several coats, my snow boots, an ice bucket with no lid, a vacuum cleaner, a broom, an ironing board and other odds and ends…but no shotgun.

I had successfully scammed Rick into leaving my house. I felt good, real good. The adrenaline was surging. I laughed and danced an uncoordinated little jig around my living room.

My empty living room.

Yep, I’d managed to get Rick to leave. Accomplished what I set out to do, what I needed to do. I’d done good.

When that adrenaline rush passed, it sure did leave a nasty residue behind.

Damn his sorry hide! I’d been doing okay. Maybe not great, but okay. Now I was pretty much back to that day I’d come home from the shop early with a stomach virus and caught him and Tuffy in my bed.

Between bouts of hanging my head over the commode, I’d packed a suitcase with my college scrapbook, two pairs of blue jeans but no shirts, a red silk dress and other odds and ends chosen randomly since my brain wasn’t functioning at that point, then walked out the door. With every article I put in that suitcase and every step toward that door, I’d repeated to myself that
I’d just been through the worst, that it could only get better.

Well, this morning wasn’t any worse than that day, but it wasn’t much better, either

I had only myself to blame for this setback. I should have sent him packing last night.

But I’d been a total idiot. I hadn’t even asked where Ms. Huffy was. I guess I’d sort of hoped his visit meant they’d already split.

Considering his apology to me, his admission that he’d made a mistake, and the number of missed calls on his cell phone, maybe they had. Or maybe she’d gone to visit her sick mother for the night and he’d seized the opportunity and she’d returned home early.

It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t take him back even if he came crawling and begging my forgiveness. Oh, I’d like to see him crawl and beg, of course. So I could kick him in the teeth. Okay, truth…so I could kick him in the testicles. So I could put on my cowboy boots with the pointed, steel-reinforced toe and kick him in the balls.

But I’d never take him back under any circumstances.

I was absolutely positive about that.

Well, almost absolutely positive.

The cat
—King Henry, I’d called him, and that seemed to fit—came over to rub against my leg.

“Thanks, buddy. I appreciate the reassurance.”

He purred and rubbed some more.

“Forget it,” I admonished him. “I’m not a cat person and even if I were, you belong to somebody else. Unlike some people I could name, I don’t mess with other people’s husbands or cats. We’re going to find your owner right now.”

This would make a good Sunday project, get me out of the house, and keep me occupied so I wouldn’t think how empty this place had become now that Rick had appeared then left again. I’d sort of promised my mother I’d come by that afternoon, but that was pre-Rick. I just didn’t feel up to facing my parents for a few days.

Mom was disappointed but very understanding when I called to cancel. She’s always disappointed but very understanding when I’m undependable and irresponsible because she knows I’m an undependable
, irresponsible person. She tells me really often just so neither of us will forget it.

I didn’t mention Rick during our phone conversation
, and neither did she. They were pretty upset about the divorce, and even though they never said, I knew they thought the problem was my tendency to be undependable and irresponsible.

This is not to say that they had ever approved of the marriage. They’d adamantly opposed it even though they’d been as taken in by his charm as I was, but they’d wanted me to follow in dad’s footsteps and go to law school. I was just as determined not to go to law school as I was to marry Rick.

When I announced that I’d left him, however, they decided to become retroactively in favor of the marriage.

I think maybe I did something to please my parents when I was nine years old, but they could have been pretending that time.

After talking to my mother, I lifted Henry onto my shoulder and went to the house on the other side of me from Paula’s. Though the blinds were still drawn, I knew Fred Sommers would be up. Fred’s a computer nerd and old movie buff who lives alone with one bedroom allocated for him to sleep in, one for his computer and all the peripheral equipment that he uses in his work—and I’m not real sure what that work is—and the third for his collection of old movies. At this hour of the morning, he would be in the computer room. In the evenings, he visits his movies. Fred keeps a rigid schedule.

We met when Rick and I first bought the house next door. Fred and I bonded immediately, and he and Rick hated each other on sight. A good reference for Fred.

I rang the doorbell and waited on Fred’s perpetually clean porch with King Henry draped over my shoulder.

Fred’s house was at least as old if not older than mine, but his looked new. He kept everything in pristine order, including his lawn. His bushes wouldn’t dare grow an irregular leaf, and he always had lots of colorful flowers that never had a single dead or wilted bloom in sight. Either Fred snipped them in the middle of the night or the blossoms in his yard responded to his obsessive nature and didn’t die like ordinary blossoms.
When their life span was over, they immediately crumbled into dust and settled invisibly into the ground.

My yard gave him fits. I came home in the middle of the day one time shortly after I moved in and caught him mowing it. I pretended not to notice, then took him a pan of brownies the next day, and our friendship was cemented in chocolate.

I rang the doorbell a second time and was beginning to wonder if Fred was busy destroying the evidence of midnight blossom raids when he finally opened the door.

Probably in his mid-forties
, Fred was tall and lanky with white hair immaculately cut and styled. He wore wire-framed glasses that always looked perfectly clear, no smudges or lint like normal people get on their glasses.

“Hi, Lin,” he greeted, eyeing King Henry askance. “
The animal activists will probably be in favor of your using the live animal instead of just the fur, but you could run into problems in the coat room.”

“You know everything that goes on around here. Who does this belong to?” I held out the cat.

“I’ve never seen him before, but he seems to think he belongs to you. I’m making chicken salad for lunch if you’d like to lose the fur and come back in an hour.”

It gave me a much-needed boost that Fred wanted me to come for lunch. He believed politeness shouldn’t involve doing anything he didn’t want to do, so when he asked me over, I knew he really wanted to see me.

“Thanks. I’d like that.”

Back at home I dragged a couple of still-packed boxes up from the basement. Yes, I know I should have been completely unpacked by that time, but unpacking everything was like an admission that I was here permanently
, and some insane part of me—the same part that made love to Rick last night—wasn’t quite ready to do that.

I dumped the boxes in the middle of the living room floor. So much for my clean house. Well, I’d always known it wouldn’t last. I noticed, among other things, a rusty iron skillet, antique ice tongs, a chipped marble bookend, an old iron…all sorts of weapons I could have used earlier to scare Rick. Or to hurt him. Yeah, that clean house business was definitely overrated.

I got a knife from the kitchen—another nice weapon—and cut up the boxes then located a red magic marker and printed Henry’s description and my phone number on half a dozen cardboard signs to put up around the neighborhood.

First
stop was across the street to the house catty-cornered to mine and directly opposite Paula’s. The place had been vacant for over two months. The owner lived in Florida, so the odds were minimal that I’d get in trouble for using the tree in the front yard as a sign post. The chain link fence had, years ago, been totally consumed by a hedge about four feet high in front and back. A huge oak tree stood just on the other side in one corner. A perfect place to put my first sign.

I peered over the hedge and noticed with some satisfaction that the lawn was in worse shape than mine. Maybe I should
follow this example and put up some kind of a fence around my house to hide the clover and dandelions.

Nah. Why deprive my neighbors of the opportunity to feel superior?

Stretching on tiptoe and leaning over the hedge, I held one of my barely legible signs as high as I could reach up the trunk of the big oak, positioned a nail, drew back my hammer, smashed my thumb, and dropped the nail and hammer on the other side of the hedge.

Bending double with the pain, I clutched
my thumb with my uninjured hand and ran through my entire vocabulary of swear words. Finally the pain subsided to a throbbing agony rather than a piercing agony, and I realized I might as well deal with it and get on with things. There wasn’t anybody around to offer sympathy.

That empty, lonely feeling washed over me again
, and I considered sitting on the curb, sucking my sore thumb and feeling sorry for myself.

Instead, I decided to retrieve my hammer and hang that damned sign, then go home and make some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to take to Fred’s house. Chocolate was the next best thing to sympathy. Or was sympathy the next best thing to chocolate?