Chocolate a'la Murder

Book 4: A Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Mystery

by Kirsten Weiss

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Paranormal Cozy Mysteries; Animal Cozy Mysteries; humor; Cozy Mystery; light paranormal

Synopsis

Maddie gets rattled by a candy-coated murder

It's Wine and Chocolate Days in San Benedetto, and paranormal museum owner Maddie Kosloski has sweet dreams about her new Magic of Chocolate exhibit. Her latest attraction is a haunted Mexican whisk called a molinillo that rattles if someone lies. When Maddie visits the town's new boutique chocolate shop, she finds one of the owners dead and covered in melted cocoa.

Maddie's determined to catch the killer, and she soon uncovers deadly dealings in the world of artisan chocolate. But the deception surrounding those dealings are enough to make the molinillo rattle all night. Will Maddie have to temper her passion for sleuthing before a killer makes her fate a bittersweet one?

Start reading this quirky cozy mystery now!

Release date: June 11, 2020

Publisher: misterio press

Print pages: 314

Sample

one

 

I adjusted the Aztec priest and frowned.

Afternoon sunlight painted the black-and-white floor tiles. Black pedestals dotted the room. Displayed on each was a different aspect of The Magic of Chocolate.

I shifted a gilded cocoa pod on the Chocolate Alchemy pedestal, so it leaned against a dusty alchemical beaker.

Normally, the tiny Gallery room in my paranormal museum was filled with quirky local art. This weekend, the San Benedetto Wine and Visitors Bureau was kicking off Wine and Chocolate days. Since the local wineries had the wine side handled, I was going with a chocolate theme at the museum.

And I had no chocolate.

My stomach butterflied, that feeling of nerves and excitement common to the self-employed. This would be okay. I had an amazing if odd museum, with ever-changing exhibits that kept me on my toes. An amazing and definitely-not-odd boyfriend. Plus, amazing friends—Adele and Harper. The chocolate would arrive in time.

“I’ve got it!” Harper hurried into the room, her olive cheeks dusky-rose from exertion.

I wished sweat made me sexy like it did my friend, the Penelope Cruz clone. I could feel the grit clinging to my damp forehead.

Harper carried a picture frame beneath her arm, and my shoulders slumped. For one relieved moment, I’d thought she’d come bearing chocolate. But Harper was a financial planner, not a delivery girl.

“Sorry I’m late.” Chest heaving, she adjusted the lapel of her pinstriped pantsuit. “Am I too late?”

“You’re right on time. I was just finishing up.” Knotting my brown hair into a ponytail, I motioned around the room.

She handed me the ornately framed poster. “You didn’t get it from me,” she said. On the hand-drawn poster was a modern witch’s perspective on chocolate.

“Of course not,” I said. “You were only doing me a favor and picking up a framed …” Spell? Meditation? Whatever it was, the poster looked spooky, written in Harper’s elegant script and bordered by a cabernet-red mat and black frame.

Harper was a secret strega, a classical Italian witch. But she kept that aspect of her life firmly in the broom closet. It didn’t fit her high-powered, financially savvy image.

She shivered, her expression becoming a careful blank.

“Harper?” I asked, suddenly alert.

Slowly, she turned and walked to the pedestal closest to the door to the museum proper. On it, a whisk from Mexico called a molinillo stood upright in a ceramic jar. Used for mixing Mexican hot chocolate, the molinillo was a thing of beauty. Decorative geometric shapes had been whittled into the pale wood and burned black for contrast. A feminine hand had been carved at the top of the spindle. Beside the display, a tent card read: Haunted Molinillo—Rattles When a Lie Is Told.

Circling, Harper bent toward the pedestal and slipped her hands into the pocket of her pinstriped blazer. “What have you got here?”

“A molinillo. I can’t believe I found one that was haunted.”

She glanced from me to the molinillo. “I’ll say.” Abruptly, she straightened. “My name is Adele Nakamoto,” she deadpanned. She stared intently at the display. “Strange. It’s not rattling.”

“That’s because it’s not a very important lie.” I pushed a wisp of hair behind my ear. Was my witchy friend sensing something I hadn’t? “And besides, I know you’re lying. The molinillo doesn’t need to give me a warning.”

Harper arched a brow.

“Okay,” I admitted. “I don’t know why it’s not rattling, but that’s the legend.”

She tugged on her plump bottom lip. “What’s its story?”

“It’s a little vague. My collector—”

“Herb? You’re trusting him after the cursed cowbell incident?”

“In fairness,” I said, “the riot wasn’t his fault.” And Herb wasn’t exactly my collector. He was a paranormal collector who occasionally dropped by the museum peddling his wares. “Anyway, I got lucky. He turned up with a haunted molinillo right when I needed something chocolate-themed.” Which, on reflection, seemed somewhat suspicious. “I’ll change the sign so it’s clear only important lies set off the molinillo.”

Harper pointed to a corner of the Gallery, where I’d arranged a red-velvet canopy above a round table covered in a star-spangled black cloth. “What’s happening there?”

“A fortune-teller’s coming in to do chocolate scrying for customers.” I bounced on my toes. It was going to be awesome. I’d been promoting her all over town. Though it worried me a little that Harper hadn’t seen my flyers and advertisements. I was also a little concerned about melted chocolate being used during the scrying process and the potential for burns. But the fortune-teller had assured me she had it handled. “She’s also promised to read with the chocolate tarot cards,” I said. I’d be giving everyone who bought a ticket to the museum a single chocolate tarot card-of-the-day as a free gift.

“Are the cards actually made of chocolate? Because that sounds sticky.”

Sticky and delicious! “Sadly, no. They’re paper and ink, just chocolate-themed.” As a confirmed cacaophile, chocolate tarot cards were something I could get behind.

Harper turned to the shelves on the wall opposite the windows. Aside from one that was filled with the boxes of tarot and oracle cards, they were empty. “And the empty shelf space?”

I hung her framed offering over a small ebony table between the shelves. “Actual chocolate, if it ever gets here. The delivery man’s late. He was supposed to arrive this morning.”

“Where are you getting the chocolate?”

“From Reign.”

Harper whistled. “That new place? Good stuff. I’ve been giving their chocolate away as thank-yous to my clients.”

I nodded. Reign’s chocolate was expensive and beautiful, but it tasted just okay to me. My favorite was still See’s Candy, a West Coast institution. That I Love Lucy scene with Lucy and Ethel working the chocolate conveyer belt? Filmed at See’s.

“Listen,” Harper said, her expression turning serious. “I’m thinking of—”

“Where is it?” Our friend Adele Nakamoto, chic in a slim, ice-blue skirt and ivory blouse beneath her Fox and Fennel apron, bustled into the Gallery. She looked around wildly. “Is it here?”

Harper pointed to the black frame.

Adele tossed her head and a wisp of ebony hair floated free from her chignon. “That’s not chocolate. Where’s the chocolate?”

Uh oh. “It hasn’t arrived yet,” I said, fighting a reflexive cringe.

She planted her fists on her slim hips. “But I need it now. Twenty retirees are going to arrive in my tearoom in fifteen minutes, and they expect Reign chocolate.” Adele’s tearoom, the Fox and Fennel, was conveniently located right next door to the museum. “Plus, Allie is out sick, and our main oven stopped working this morning. I’ve already had to cancel my appointment with the caterer. This week has been a disaster. Even Pug has a cold.”

“Oh no,” I said, frowning. Adele’s pug was sweet as a sugar cube—I cut a glance at GD—unlike some animals I knew. The black cat sneezed, turned, and sauntered into the main room.

“You’ve hired a caterer for your own tearoom?” Harper asked.

“No, for the wedding.” Adele paced, her apron strings flying out behind her. “Dieter and I are getting married in three months,” she wailed, “and we haven’t even finalized the menu.”

Easygoing Dieter Finkielkraut and uptight Adele Nakamoto seemed an unlikely couple at first glance. But I believed they had what it took. Unfortunately, Adele was caught in the iron grip of the bridal-industrial complex.

“Let me see what the holdup is.” Hastily, I pulled my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans and called the chocolate shop.

No one answered.

After the fifth ring, a machine picked up. I left a message and pocketed the phone. “I’m sure they’ll call back.” Preferably before Adele went nuclear.

“Will they? You don’t know that.” Adele’s fingers dug into her ebony hair. “Twenty retirees!”

Ignoring my pleading look, Harper backed out of the Gallery. “I’d help you with your little chocolate problem—”

“Little!” Adele’s eyes bulged.

“—but I’ve got a client meeting.” Harper turned and sprinted into the museum’s main room. The bell above the front door jangled.

I smiled tightly. “It’s fine.” Jussst fine. I brushed off my hands. “The delivery’s probably on its way, but I’ll go to Reign and pick up some chocolate in the meantime. Leo can run the museum without me.” My assistant would have no trouble managing things. The place was depressingly empty this afternoon; Wednesdays are not boom times for paranormal museums.

“How much do you need?” I asked Adele as I walked past her into the main room. It smelled of old objects and furniture polish, and I inhaled a calming breath. I checked the black crown molding for spiderwebs and found none. Freestanding shelves displayed haunted objects and creepy dolls. On the opposite wall, a door disguised as a bookcase led to Adele’s tearoom. I loved that secret door, and not just because there were scones on the other side.

Leo, seated behind the glass counter, poured over a college textbook. His thin frame hunched in a comma shape beside the antique cash register. My assistant’s black leather jacket hung over the back of his tall chair. He glanced at me and flashed a grin, and then his head dipped again to the book.

“I need the amount of chocolate I ordered,” Adele said, waspish. “But if I can get seven of each of their bars, it will get me through the retirement party.”

“No problem,” I said lightly. “Leo, do you mind watching the museum while I’m away? I’ll be gone for about thirty minutes.”

“Yeah … sure.” His dyed-black hair fell forward, hiding his eyes. The heater whirred behind him.

“He’s got an exam coming up,” I said in a low voice to Adele.

“Education first,” she chirped.

Leo attended the local community college, and he had bigger things in store than working at a paranormal museum. But I hoped I had a couple years left before my goth assistant moved on to greener and less haunted pastures.

The museum’s ghost-detecting cat meowed from the haunted rocking chair in the opposite corner. GD Cat rose rolled, stretched, and yawned. The old wooden rocking chair swayed beneath the black cat.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Adele pressed the spine of a book on the bookcase. The case pivoted outward, opening into her tearoom.

I grabbed a handful of postcards off the counter. “Wait—”

But she’d already vanished through the secret door. It snicked shut behind her.

I sighed and returned the postcards for my Magic of Chocolate exhibit. Last night, after a few glasses of wine from her family’s vineyard, Adele had agreed to stack them on the counter in the Fox and Fennel. I could give them to her later.

I glanced around the main room one last time. Everything was in order. Haunted photos of murderers stared down at me, their black frames gleaming. Rows of shelves containing haunted objects gleamed, dust free. From high atop a wall pedestal, a bronze skull seemed to wink.

“See you in thirty minutes,” I said.

“Mmph,” Leo grunted, not looking up.

I strolled through the bookcase and down the tearoom’s elegant, bamboo-plank hallway to the alley. Spring in San Benedetto could be iffy, and this was one of those days that couldn’t decide what it was going to be. Fog hung low in the sky. But it was warm enough for me to shrug out of my Paranormal Museum hoodie, exposing my museum T-shirt beneath. When you’re self-employed, fashion takes a back seat to advertising.

I drove down Main Street in my vintage red pickup. Yes, I could have walked, but there was a chance I’d be returning with a massive chocolate delivery, and for that I needed wheels.

I slowed in front of Reign. A burly, red-headed man in jeans and a slouchy blue T-shirt picketed in front of the chocolate shop’s windows.

Huh. Was a strike the cause of the late delivery? The chocolate shop didn’t seem like a big enough business to have organized labor.

Frowning, I turned the corner, looking for parking. I found a spot on the street beside the bank and walked back to Reign.

“Reign, unfair! Reign, unfair!” The man bobbed his sign, decorated with the single word: UNFAIR! He marched back and forth on the brick sidewalk.

Adele would kill me if I let a single picketer stop me. Averting my gaze, I scuttled past the man and through the glass door into the shop. The aroma of chocolate stopped me in my tracks. Tension dropped from my shoulders. Chocolate might not be magic, but it was great aromatherapy.

The shop’s cinderblock walls were painted light gray and glistened with a dreamlike sheen. A long, polished wood counter the color of dark honey stretched across the back of the store. Driftwood displays showed off jars of sauces and bars of chocolate wrapped in simple brown paper. Colored crowns in varying colors decorated the top of each bar. Rows of chocolate-covered fruits and nuts and truffles infused with wine lined a glass case on the counter.

My mouth pinched, and not with delight. No salesperson stood behind the chic counter. Was the guy on strike supposed to be manning the front of the store?

The heady scent of chocolate twined around me, and I told myself not to freak out. If I had to wait somewhere, this wasn’t a bad spot. An artisanal chocolate shop beat a paranormal museum, hands down. Of course, if I owned a chocolate shop, I’d probably be fifty pounds overweight instead of my usual ten.

Ignoring the temptations along the way, I marched to the cash register and rang the bell.

No one responded.

“Hello?” I called, leaning across the counter.

Silence.

If I returned empty-handed, Adele would have an aneurysm. And I needed chocolate for the museum too. Settling in to wait, I picked up a brochure and scanned through it.

After years spent working with European chefs and chocolatiers, friends Atticus Reine and Orson Malke began making hand-crafted, ethically sourced, single-origin chocolates in their San Francisco apartment. They opened their flagship branch in San Benedetto, close to the organically grown nuts and other ingredients which complement the subtle flavor of the cacao.

Their pledge? To forever change the way you look at chocolate bars. Because our craft chocolates are made in small batches from select beans, our chocolates are as complex as a fine wine. Sign up for our Chocolate of the Month Club and make sure you get the best of our chocolates when they’re made.

Mouth watering, I flipped past the photos of the owners to the page with wine and chocolate pairings. It listed wines from local vineyards, as well as a logo that proclaimed Reign an associate member of the Wine and Visitors Bureau. Plot 42, owned by Adele’s father, was on the winery list. No wonder my friend was hell-bent on including Reign chocolates at her tearoom.

Something metallic clanked in another room, like a heavy door closing.

My head jerked up. “Hello?”

No reply.

My scalp prickled, and I fisted my hands. I needed to get a grip. This was an innocent chocolate shop, for Pete’s sake. The counter guy was on strike outside, and an owner would have to show up eventually. I needed to stop thinking like I was in a haunted museum and lose the paranoia.

I returned to studying the brochure. I’d done a lot of research prepping my Magic of Chocolate exhibit, and the story of the cocoa bean and what people had done with it amazed me. How did the Mesoamericans figure out that the slimy cocoa bean could be fermented and turned into such a delicious drink? Casanova had drunk chocolate daily, believing it to be an aphrodisiac. The tryptophan in chocolate is part of serotonin, a chemical in the brain connected to sexual arousal.

Not that I needed help in the romance department. I was still in the honeymoon stage of a relationship with the sexy Detective Jason Slate. No outside stimulants were necessary. But the honeymoon would end sometime. I hoped it wouldn’t end with the sort of painful discovery my last relationship had.

Folding the brochure, I jammed it into the rear pocket of my jeans. Where was everyone? “Hello?”

Silence.

Oh, come on! I couldn’t wait here all day. Not with Adele tapping her expensive shoes while waiting for my return.

I edged around the counter. A long, rectangular window in the gray cinderblock wall behind the register looked into the kitchen. I peered through the window and saw metal racks and metal counters and tall machines. Something in the kitchen whirred softly. But there was no one inside.

This was getting ridiculous. The store was open. The door was unlocked. The guy on strike couldn’t be the only employee working today.

Fuming, I pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen area and leaned inside. Metal racks of cooling chocolates were stacked high on wheeled carts. “Helloooo?”

No response.

Suddenly uneasy, I sidled into the room. Gleaming metal countertops with massive metal bowls. Black rubber fatigue mats on the floor. At the back, beside a glass-fronted wooden room, a well-lit hallway that cut along the left side of the room.

Promising-looking boxes sat stacked against the wall in the hallway, beside a closed office door. Were those our order? Maybe someone was in the office and couldn’t hear me?

I probably shouldn’t be in their kitchen, but Adele and I needed our order. I headed toward the open hallway.

The whirring sound grew louder behind me.

Hair prickling the back of my neck, I froze, then looked over my shoulder.

In the kitchen, a man lay supine on the floor beside two narrow metal vats. The vats angled downward, chocolate dripping onto his face and chest.

 

 

 

two

 

“Oh my god,” I whispered. Dizzy, I stepped around the chocolate pooling on the floor and knelt beside the slender man. He wore a brown Reign apron, so he must work here, but I couldn’t recognize him beneath the chocolate covering his face. His chocolate-coated beard looked obscene. “Sir? Are you all right?”

His arm was one of the few parts of his body that wasn’t covered in chocolate. Not having any better ideas, I grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse.

There wasn’t one.

My breath came in quick gasps. “Dammit.” I fumbled in my jean pocket for my cell phone and called for help.

“911, what is your emergency?”

“This is Maddie Kosloski,” I stammered. “I’m at Reign Chocolate on Main Street. There’s been an … ” Accident? Murder? “There’s a man lying on the floor in the kitchen. I can’t find a pulse. I’m alone here, and I don’t know what happened.”

“Is he breathing?”

“Um.” I studied his unmoving form. “No. But … he’s covered in chocolate.” My gaze darted around the gleaming kitchen.

“Excuse me?”

“Melted chocolate. He fell beneath some vats, and the chocolate’s all over him.”

“Hold please.” The dispatcher clicked off.

“Wait! What …?” Was there a special dispatcher for chocolate-related emergencies?

“Hello,” a man said. “This is Emergency Medical Services. Can you tell me what’s happening?”

I repeated my story.

“All right. Do you know CPR?”

“Yes, but—”

“Your friend may be choking, or even drowning. I need you to clear his air passage with your finger and turn his head sideways. Can you do that?”

“He’s not my—” Not important! “Yes. Yes. I’m putting the phone on speaker.” I set the phone on a dry spot on the thick black floor mat.

Steeling myself, I parted the man’s jaw and reached inside. I felt more squeamish about the process than I wanted to admit, but I did it anyway. I didn’t have much choice.

When I was done, I heaved the man onto his side. A glug of chocolate dribbled from his mouth.

“Okay,” I said, relieved that was over. “I did it. His throat is clear.” I wiped my hand on my jeans.

Far off, a siren wailed.

“Good work,” the medical dispatcher said. “Now you’re going to need to perform CPR.”

I stared at the chocolate-smeared face. Oh boy.

“Fine.” My voice cracked.

Unwrapping my Paranormal Museum hoodie from my hips, I wiped chocolate off the man’s mouth with a sleeve. I winced and pressed my mouth to his, then breathed into his mouth.

His lips were warm and slippery beneath mine.

I turned my head and sucked air in. The damp bristles of his beard tickled my cheek. Involuntarily, I licked melted chocolate from my lips. My stomach made a quick, unpleasant bolt toward my throat. Keep it together, Maddie. Grimacing, I repeated the process, punctuated by bouts of chest compressions.

“What’s happening?” the dispatcher barked, his voice thin over my cell phone’s speaker.

“Nothing,” I panted, tasting the bitter sweetness of dark chocolate. Oh, God, it was delicious. And that was so wrong for so many reasons. I shuddered.

“Keep at it,” he said. “You never know.”

The bell over the front door jingled.

“Police,” a woman called out.

My shoulders crumpled inward but I kept up the CPR. I knew that voice.

“Back here,” I shouted, my breathing ragged from the compressions. “In the kitchen.”

Detective Laurel Hammer strode into the kitchen and stopped short. Tall, blond, and muscular, she stared down at me, her ice-blue eyes crackling with … surprise? Annoyance? With my old high school bully, it was hard to tell. In her view, I’d never been an innocent. Over time, her attitude toward me hadn’t relaxed. It had morphed into anger.

She gave herself a little shake, her short hair settling in place, then dropped to her knees on the other side of the fallen man. She grasped his wrist, pressed two fingers to his neck, and shook her head. “What have you done?”

Defensive, I sat back on my heels. “The dispatcher told me to—”

“Save it.” Her neck muscles corded. “I’ll take the chest compressions. You keep up the mouth-to-mouth.”

I blinked, then bent my head to the fallen man’s. We worked until the paramedics arrived a few minutes later and let them take over. I backed away, my knees groaning.

“And for God’s sake, wipe your face,” Laurel snapped. “You look like a fat kid let loose on a hot fudge sundae.”

“I’m not fat!” It was only an extra ten pounds. Roughly, I wiped my mouth with the back of one hand, but I couldn’t escape the taste of chocolate. Dark, delicious chocolate. I fought a gag. Wrong. Wrong!

I turned, feeling sick, and raced down the hallway. There had to be a bathroom down here somewhere.

“Hey!” Laurel shouted. “Where are you going?”

I ducked into a unisex bathroom and splashed water on my face. The heady scent of chocolate turned my stomach. In the mirror over the utilitarian sink, chocolate streaked my mouth and chin. Brown streaked my bare arms, and I was willing to bet if I looked hard enough, I’d find it dotting my black T-shirt. I looked like Count Chocula after a particularly messy snack.

Grabbing a paper towel from the bin on the wall, I scrubbed my face.

“Thanks for disappearing on me.” Laurel appeared in the open door and glared. “Getting rid of the evidence?”

“I don’t feel so good.”

“What happened to that guy’s not catching. I doubt the victim was poisoned.”

“Victim? Is he …” But of course he was dead. In my heart, I’d known he was gone.

“He’s dead.” The detective glanced down the hallway and nodded at someone beyond my vision. “What are you doing here, Kosloski?”

“Adele and I placed a big chocolate order last week. It was supposed to be delivered today, but it was late. When we tried calling Reign, no one answered. We thought the easiest solution was for me to drive here and collect whatever I could. No one was at the counter, so I walked into the kitchen and found … him.” I imagined the body and angled my head. Something wasn’t right.

No kidding, something wasn’t right. A man was dead.

“Did you recognize him?” she asked.

I tasted a bit of chocolate behind my front tooth and my stomach rolled. “Are you serious? Under all that chocolate? I mean, he was wearing a Reign apron. It looked like one of the owners, Atticus or Orson. They both have beards like …” I swallowed, remembering the man’s chocolate-covered bristles against my chin. “They look a lot alike.”

Laurel’s blue eyes narrowed. “You seem to know a lot about them.”

“Their pictures are in the brochure.” I waved vaguely toward the front of the shop, my sense of not-rightness growing.

“Did you see anyone?” she asked.

“Only the guy out front, picketing.”

“What guy?”

I rubbed my forehead. My hand was sticky, and I dropped it to my side. “One of the employees, I think. He was red-haired and about my age, or maybe younger.”

“Thirty-five?”

She knew I was a year younger than her. “Thirty-three. He was wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt.” I squinted. “I think he might have been the cashier, but I’m not sure. I’ve only been here twice before.”

“And yet you managed to find a dead body and mess up the crime scene. Again.”

“I didn’t know he was dead,” I bleated, as if that made it any better. “And the dispatcher told me—”

“Use your head next time.”

Laurel had been right there beside me giving him CPR! Or at least, we’d been together until I cut and ran. But if I’d stayed, I would have really messed up the scene.

I cleared my throat. “I did hear something when I was waiting by the counter. It sounded like a door closing in the back.”

“When was this?”

Time had done weird, Star Trek dilations since I’d entered the chocolate shop. Had I been here an hour? Twenty minutes? “It was only a minute or two before I went into the kitchen, I think. And then I called the dispatcher right away. Does that help?”

Her nostrils flared. “Does it sound like it helps?”

Detective Jason Slate, tall, dark, and commanding, appeared in the bathroom doorway behind Laurel. He wore his detective’s uniform, a navy business suit that he filled to perfection.

At the sight of my boyfriend, relief cascaded through me. I sagged against the bathroom’s tiled wall.

“Laurel, what’s …” His gaze met mine and he took a half-step back. His brown eyes, flecked with gold, widened. “Maddie?”

“I didn’t know he was dead,” I wailed. “I tried to fix it.”

“Did you break it?” Laurel asked.

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I just found him there. What was I supposed to do? Ignore the dispatcher and let him die? I didn’t know he was already dead.” But what if he hadn’t been dead when I’d found him? What if he was dead now because I’d done bad CPR? What if I hadn’t cleared his throat properly? What if he could have been saved? Bile swam up my throat. I raced to the nearby toilet and made it just in time.

Someone gently pulled my hair back from my shoulders.

I fell sideways, half onto my butt on the cold bathroom tiles.

Jason knelt beside me and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. Warmth seemed to flow through his broad palm. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yes,” I said weakly.

“Because you’re green,” he said.

“I think it’s the smell.” Normally I adored the scent of chocolate. I’d even bought a cocoa-based perfume once. Now the smell clung to me like a nauseating miasma.

“Laurel, will you give us a minute?”

The detective’s mouth twisted. She nodded and stepped from the bathroom.

“What happened?” He wrapped his hands around mine.

I ran him through everything. “I didn’t mean to find a body again.” I hiccupped. “What’s wrong with me? Why does this keep happening? You don’t think he was murdered, do you?”

Jason lifted me to my feet, his hand remaining on mine, firm and calming. It was all I could do not to lay my head on his chest. One of the best things about Jason was his even keel. He was a good man to have nearby in a crisis.

“It’s too early to say, but I think it looks like an accident,” he said. “He probably slipped, hit his head, and knocked over those vats on the way down.”

I frowned. “But there are rubber mats beside them. They’re non-slip.”

“Maddie, we don’t know what happened yet, and a good detective doesn’t make assumptions. We don’t have all the facts. In fact, we hardly have any facts.”

But I wasn’t a good detective. I wasn’t a detective at all. I was a paranormal museum owner, and I had a very bad feeling.

 

 

 

three

 

The next morning, I sat behind the glass counter in my museum. Fog pressed against the windows, sinking the museum in gloom. I unfolded the local paper. The death of the chocolate maker, Atticus Reine, was front-page news.

 

PROMINENT BUSINESS OWNER DEAD

Atticus Reine, co-owner of Reign Chocolate, was found dead in his San Benedetto shop yesterday. Investigators believe foul play may have been involved. Authorities say he suffered a head wound caused by an unknown trauma. The body was found, covered in chocolate, by a hysterical customer.

“The investigation is still in its preliminary stages,” said San Benedetto Detective Laurel Hammer. “Detectives and the medical examiner’s office are still looking into it. We’re asking anyone with information to come forward.”

Colleagues, family, and friends were shocked by the chocolate maker’s death. Orson Malke described his business partner as “a brilliant chocolate maker and good friend. We’re all devastated.”

Atticus Reine and his partner were at the forefront of the bean-to-bar chocolate movement. Reign Chocolate roasts ethically sourced raw beans to create “two-ingredient” chocolate—cocoa and sugar. The company adds local organic ingredients to create simple and elegant confections.

The exact cause of Mr. Reine’s death is still being investigated.

 

“I’ll bet not everyone’s devastated,” I muttered to the bronze skull on the pedestal. I should have stopped to talk to that picketer.

The skull didn’t reply.

But I had real sources, if I wanted information. Penny Beauvais might have some useful gossip about the murder. As president of the Wine and Visitors Bureau, she knew community members even remotely connected to wine. And Reign Chocolate had been an associate member of the Bureau.

GD, sprawled beside the tip jar on the counter, rolled onto his back and meowed.

“Nice try.” I wasn’t going to be fooled into a belly rub. The cat hated them and was looking for an excuse to sink his teeth into his favorite and only chew toy: me.

My cell phone rang, and I checked the screen. It was my mother.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Madelyn, this is your mother.”

“Yeah, I—” My mother would never understand caller ID. I rolled my eyes. “Hi.”

“Has Shane spoken with you recently?”

“No. Why?” Shane was my overachieving brother who worked for the State Department. He lived a charmed life, getting sent to all the posh posts. I’d be jealous, but I was happy staying put in California.

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering. Melanie’s seeing someone new. An Italian count.”

And that was my wunderkind sister, the opera singer. “And you wanted to know if Shane had a new girlfriend?”

“Is it wrong to be interested in your children’s love lives?”

“Um. Yeah.” Wrong in so many embarrassing and uncomfortable ways.

“Now, about that detective you’re seeing …”

The bell over the front door jingled.

“Sorry, Mom,” I said hurriedly. “Customer. I’ve got to go.”

“Make lots of money, dear! Bye!”

Relieved at the interruption, I pocketed the phone and looked up.

Harper, natty in a sleek caramel-colored jacket and suede pants, strolled into the museum. She looked around. “Slow day?”

“It’s Thursday morning,” I said by way of explanation, folding the newspaper.

She nodded toward it. “Tell me you weren’t the hysterical customer who discovered the body.”

“I was not hysterical.” I grimaced. “Until Laurel arrived.”

“Ohhhh. No.” Harper’s brown eyes widened. “She didn’t arrest you, did she?”

“No, but I could tell she wanted to.” Laurel and I had a long and tangled and public history. Needless to say, I was one hundred percent innocent. Mostly.

Harper braced one hip against the counter. “What did Jason say?”

“Not much. He can’t really talk about cases.” And I hadn’t spoken with him since we were at Reign yesterday. I was trying not to be bothered by that. We had a date scheduled for tonight—a surprise he’d been dangling in front of me for weeks—so maybe he figured he’d fill me in then. Besides, even if the police did now think foul play was involved, I couldn’t be a suspect, could I?

“I knew Atticus,” Harper said quietly. “He and his wife were clients.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“They were a fun couple.”

I rotated a pen between my fingers. “I don’t suppose he had any life insurance?” I asked, fishing.

She shot me a look. “You know I can’t talk about that.”

My cheeks burned. Of course she couldn’t. That sort of thing was confidential.

“But they didn’t have any children,” she said neutrally.

I straightened. Harper wouldn’t have taken them as clients if they had kids and didn’t have life insurance. Her own parents had died when she was young, and they’d had nothing in place. Her grandmother had raised her. Money had been tight, and Harper had never forgotten the worry and hardship.

“There are other kinds of insurance I recommend,” she continued, bland. “In business partnership arrangements, I like to recommend buy-sell insurance. That way, if one partner dies, the other partner gets an insurance payment to buy out the deceased partner’s spouse.”

“That sort of thing would make lots of sense for business owners like Atticus and Orson,” I said.

“Mmm,” she said, neither confirming nor denying. “Was it true he was covered in chocolate?”

“He was lying beside two chocolate vats. Not huge vats—probably five gallons. They’d tipped over.”

“Melangers,” she said.

“Huh?”

“They grind the cocoa beans into a liquid. It takes hours. Maybe days. I can’t remember. I got a tour of the kitchen when Reign opened. But the melangers tip so the chocolate can be poured out for the next stage in the process.”

A chill crawled up my spine. Jason had seemed to think that the melangers were accidentally knocked over. But if it was murder, had someone dumped the chocolate onto Atticus intentionally?

“Could his murder have been random?” Harper asked. “A robbery?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “The cash register was closed. Nothing looked disturbed, aside from, you know.” The chocolate-covered body. But a robbery in San Benedetto, especially one that ended in a murder, would be a very bad thing.

“If someone were to get this buy-sell insurance,” I said, “how would it work?”

“Well, you would have to have a business partner.”

“Which I don’t. I’m just curious. For my future paranormal museum empire.”

“Financial education is important,” my friend agreed. “If one were to get buy-sell insurance, one would have to value each partner’s share of the business. The insurance would cover the other partner’s share.”

“So, if you and I were partners, and our paranormal museum was valued at a million dollars—”

She raised a brow.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” I amended.

Harper stared.

“It could be worth that someday.” I flipped my ponytail over one shoulder. “I need to pick a number.”

“If the museum was worth a million, and we were equal partners, I’d have insurance on you for half a million. You’d insure me for the same. Then, if I died, you’d get the half million, so you could buy the business from my hypothetical husband. That way, you wouldn’t have to worry about my imaginary husband trying to tell you how to run the museum, and he’d get a quick payout.”

It was easy cash. And it would give Orson a motive for murder. Atticus’s wife, too, since she’d ultimately get the money when Orson bought her out. Of course, the victim’s spouse was always the prime suspect.

“Who has an imaginary husband?” The bookcase creaked open and Adele clacked into the museum on three-inch heels.

“No one,” Harper said quickly.

Adele flushed. “Maddie, I hate to ask, but did you get any idea what happened to our chocolate delivery? My father didn’t get his either, and he’s supposed to start wine and chocolate tastings at Plot 42 tomorrow.”

I hung my head. “Sorry. The only people I talked to were the police.”

She blew out her breath. “This is a disaster. No one’s answering the phone at Reign. I’ve been promoting our chocolate as part of Wine and Chocolate Days. Everyone’s asking about it, especially after the M-U-R-D-E-R.”

“Who are you spelling it out for?” I asked, bemused. “Harper? I’m pretty sure she can read.”

“Since kindergarten,” Harper agreed.

“For the C-A-T.” Adele placed her hands over GD’s ears.

“GD isn’t exactly sensitive to death. God knows how many mice he’s massacred.” The cat left them for me and only me on my chair. Leo never got a dead mouse surprise. I knew it was intentional.

“But killing mice is a cat’s job,” Adele said.

GD’s green eyes gazed up at me, and I swear they were filled with disappointment.

“The point is, customers have been understanding under the circumstances,” Adele said. “But I feel like I’ve been engaged in false advertising.”

“I know.” I glanced toward the Gallery room at my right. It had everything for my Magic of Chocolate exhibit but the chocolate. “We may need to come up with an alternative plan.”

Adele wrung her hands in her Fox and Fennel apron. “I suppose I can make some calls to other chocolate wholesalers.”

“Look,” I said, “Leo’s going to work in the museum this afternoon. Why don’t I swing by Reign again and see if they’re open? Since no delivery man came by yesterday, I assume our chocolate is still at the shop.” Besides, the museum got busy on Fridays and the weekends. If I didn’t have premium-priced chocolate in the Gallery by tomorrow, I’d lose sales.

Adele smiled. “Thank you. I’m sure with everything that’s happened, they’re too busy to think about deliveries. Maybe you could just bring back the delivery yourself? It would take some pressure off them. And me.”

“Sure. You know how I am,” I said, marveling at her newfound Zen and waiting for the other stiletto to drop. “Always thinking of others.” Plus, it was a great excuse to go back and snoop.

Harper narrowed her eyes at me.

“Now,” Adele said, “about the wedding.” She whipped a folded sheet of paper from her apron and spread it on the glass counter beside GD. “As you can see, we’re here.” She pointed to a spot on the timeline. “And we need to get all these things done before the big day.”

GD sneezed and hopped from the counter. He ducked beneath the rocking chair. I thought he had the right idea.

Adele parceled out tasks, argued herself out of and then back into almond favors, and got our opinions on how to ensure people didn’t give inappropriate toasts.

When she finally left through the bookcase, Harper gave a pained cry and fled the museum.

I sagged on my tall chair. Detail-oriented Adele was going to make sure her wedding was perfect, even if it killed us.

Shaking myself from my stupor, I grabbed the feather duster and walked into the Fortune Telling Room. This was my favorite part of the museum, filled with relics from America’s nineteenth-century spiritualist movement. I stopped in front of a tall piece of wooden furniture that looked like a wardrobe but was a spirit cabinet. Turn-of-the-century mediums would sit locked inside to perform their ghostly conjurations as “proof” they weren’t cheating. Since no one could see what they were doing inside the cabinet, this made it even easier for these early ghost whisperers to cheat.

I dusted the framed vintage Houdini poster beside the cabinet, then opened the doors.

A narrow, bespectacled man in a bow tie sat on the bench inside. “Hello.”

I shrieked, leaping backward and dropping the feather duster. “Herb!” I willed my heart to slow. “What … ? How did you get in there?” I’d been in the museum all morning, except for the few minutes when I’d slipped next door to sneak a blueberry scone from Adele. Had he been waiting here the whole time?

“I had to make sure the coast was clear,” he whispered. His eyes bulged behind coke-bottle glasses. “We’re alone, aren’t we?”

Grinding my teeth, I scooped up the feather duster. The paranormal collector had supplied most of the exhibits in my museum. He was also freakishly paranoid about police, a stance I couldn’t understand since as far as I could tell, he was on the up and up. “The coast is clear,” I said. “No police.”

“It’s not the cops I’m worried about.” Herb leaned forward and peered from the cabinet. “It’s the public.”

“Why? Is an angry mob on your tail?” Because it wouldn’t be the first time. I crossed my arms, the feather duster sticking out behind me like a misplaced tail.

“It’s the molinillo. I heard you were the one who found that dead chocolate maker at Reign.”

“Ye-es,” I said, baffled. What did that have to do with the molinillo?

“Last December—”

I brandished the feather duster like a duelist. “Don’t say it.”

“We have to consider the possibility—”

“No, we don’t.”

“It may be cursed.”

“I told you not to say that!” Last December, one of the supposedly-cursed objects in my museum had started a town-wide panic.

“It’s a supernatural molinillo,” he hissed. “For chocolate making. And now a chocolate maker is dead. Connect the dots.”

“There are no dots. It’s a coincidence. They do happen.”

He adjusted his thick glasses. “In the world we work in, they don’t,” he said portentously.

We? Good God. I was in Herb’s world now. “Right. Let’s back this up. You told me the molinillo is haunted, not cursed, and it rattles when someone lies.”

“Well, yes, that’s what I told you.”

My eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is there something you didn’t tell me?”

“Well … What I told you is what was told to me, but I wasn’t able to verify it from the original source. You know how stories can get distorted. And since the original owner in Mexico died, people might think it’s—”

“If you tell anyone it’s cursed—” I stepped closer.

Feathers brushed Herb’s nose and he reared backward, bonking his head on the rear of the wooden cabinet. “Ow! I won’t! What do you take me for? But I do think it’s worth taking extra precautions. Now, that shaman friend of mine, Xavier, is back in California. For seven hundred dollars, he can perform a binding spell—”

“Seven hundred?! It was five hundred last time.” And that had been way overpriced. I’d only paid because … long story.

“He was nearly killed.”

“You can’t blame me for that,” I groused. “And nearly killed is an exaggeration.”

“Be that as it may, he’s got a right to be cautious.”

“I will not hire Xavier for another exorcism.” The last time I tried one, I’d turned it into a public event to get more publicity. It had gone badly. Understatement. “It’s your duty to make sure your buyers have all the facts about the objects you sell and their haunted histories.” Paranormal collectors had to have some code of ethics, didn’t they? “If you really think it’s cursed, I want to know why. I want details, Herb. Names. Dates. Contact numbers.”

Herb’s shoulders slumped. “Fine. I’ll see what I can dig up on the molinillo. But if you want Xavier, let me know. A binding ritual wouldn’t be a bad precaution.”

“No to the exorcist.”

“Shaman.”

“Whatever.”

He shut the cabinet doors, barricading himself inside.

I blinked. Was Herb planning on apparating out of the spirit cabinet?

Leaving that mystery for another time, I returned to the main room, hoping for clients and a chocolate delivery.

Neither came.