Dying for Chocolate

finger. Because. Because unknown to the Bureau of Vital Records, and unknown to Julian, someone else had been the first one to do the seeking.

I heard a small noise behind me. I looked up. My hands covered the address on the envelope. The ink seemed to burn through my fingertips.

Adele gave me a polite, inquiring look. She said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

28.

I bluffed. “Actually, no,” I said with a smile I hoped was both apologetic and casual. I had to get information from her, had to find out about Julian’s past and her own. And how much other people knew, like the general. I had to stall until Bo woke up. I also knew that in a potentially dangerous situation like this, I had to call Schulz.

I said, “Arch is missing. Have you seen him?”

She shook her head and pulled her mouth into an O of surprise. “No . . . where could he be?”

“I’ve looked all over the neighborhood, and Marla is calling his friends. Did you see him go out with Julian? The general doesn’t seem to know anything.”

“Well, neither do I. I didn’t see him go out with Julian, but I do need to talk to you about that. Do you know when Arch left? Was it after the police finally drove off? I went to lie down for a while, it was all so trying.” She opened her eyes wide. “The police had quite a few questions about your argument with Brian Harrington last night.”

I said, “I didn’t kill him.” I took a deep breath. “My main concern is the whereabouts of Arch.”

“What in Bo’s study would tell you where Arch is?”

I thought wildly. “Well . . . I’m looking for some cards. They were Arch’s. Sometimes he tricks me. . . you know how he is. So if this is a trick, I need to play along. You know?” As I got up I pushed a box of pencils onto the floor with my left hand. With my right I moved some papers from the bottom of the pile to the top before setting the whole pile down. I leaned over to gather the pencils.

“Cards?” said Adele. “I don’t know. Perhaps he left them in the kitchen. Shall we look?”

I stood up. “Sure.” I felt in my right pocket and fingered the seven of spades. This would be my only chance to call Schulz undetected. I had to think of a way to pull this one out. What made it all worse was that I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Or who the enemy was.

“No cards here, I’m afraid,” Adele said. She patted through the piles of bills, gardening catalogs, and manila envelopes in the kitchen desk drawers.

I slipped the card from my pocket into the knife drawer. “Oh, my goodness, look here,” I said. “He wanted to leave it where I would find it. Now we need to call the wizard.”

“I beg your pardon?” She stared at the card in my palm.

“Indulge me, Adele, maybe this is it. I promised Arch I would practice, and maybe this will help out,” I said as I punched in the buttons for Schulz’s number and prayed that he would be at his desk.

“Schulz.” His voice.

Adele said, “May I ask whom you are calling? Are you calling Weezie? Please give me the phone.”

I held up one finger and said, “Is the wizard there, please?”

“Oh, jeez, Goldy, don’t make me do this, what the hell is going on? Did you find Arch?”

I said again, more merrily, “Is the wizard there, please?”

He sighed. He began, “Clubs, diamonds, spades—”

“May I speak to him, please?”

“Okay,” said Schulz, “so spades? Now what? Let’s see, ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven—”

“Hold the line, please.”

Before I could do anything, Adele took the phone from my hand and listened. She looked at the receiver and then at the card. She said, “No, thank you.” Then she shrugged. She tap-stepped across the kitchen floor and hung up the phone.

“Well?” I demanded. “Did he know it was the seven of spades?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “It was a man, and he said, ’Do you want me to come over?’ so I said I didn’t and that was that.”

Adele straightened up. She flicked one piece of lint off the beige cashmere sweater and another off the matching slacks. “I’m so tired, let’s sit down,” she said as she tap-stepped over the yellow Italian tile toward the living room. “I need to talk to you about Julian. He’s taken the camping equipment and gone off somewhere.” She paused by the pink sofa and looked around, apparently confused. She said, “Where’s Bo?”

This is what quicksand feels like, I thought. Nothing to hold on to and sinking deeper by the minute. But I had to keep Adele talking, no matter what.

I said, “Asleep on the porch. Had a bit too much to drink, I think.”

She shook her head and leaned awkwardly against the back of the sofa. “God! What’s happening? Brian drowned, and now, God knows.” She eyed me. I had come up beside her. We stood in silence, both unwilling to commit to speaking freely, much less to sitting down.

“You look exhausted,” she said. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

Schulz’s question. I said, “No.”

“Oh, Goldy. You of all people. You should have something to keep you going.”

A swell of fatigue made me shiver. I realized I had even missed my daily injection of espresso. All normal patterns of living had been disrupted by the discovery of Brian Harrington’s corpse.

I had to keep her talking. Had to make her feel I knew something, but perhaps not everything. I said, “Want coffee?” She shook her head. “I’ll be right back.” I made myself a double espresso and came back out to the living room, where Adele had settled into one of the lime-green damask chairs. I sat on the pink sofa, sipped, and waited. From the porch came the undulating noise of the general’s snores.

Finally Adele said, “Sissy and I went looking for Julian. He was so upset when the police were here. He talked to Arch for a long time. I just assumed they had gone off together.” She took a deep breath. “I’m afraid Julian may have found some very distressing correspondence and asked Weezie Harrington about it. This may have had the most dire consequences.”

I said, “Where do you think Julian could have gone after reading this correspondence?”

“To the Harringtons, perhaps. Oh, it’s such a long story—”

“Why to the Harringtons?”

We both stopped talking at once. There was a long silence while we looked at each other.

I said, “Do you want to talk?”

Someone buzzed the security gate.

“Julian!” I said with false enthusiasm and leaped up to check the camera, press the admittance button, and open the front door. Schulz’s car ascended the driveway. I darted back to the study to make sure the general was still asleep. He was. But the Mace was gone.

“You okay?” Schulz asked when he came through the door. “The seven of spades a trick or not?”

“Just chatting with Adele. We think the general is asleep,” I said with a false sprightliness that hopefully warned him, Be careful. Then I introduced him to Adele.

She pulled herself up into a regal stance, limped over to take his hand, and said, “Can we get you something?”

Schulz regarded me: Is this some kind of game? I said, “Go on in and sit down with Adele. I’ll bring you some coffee.” I made him a double espresso. It was fast and I wanted him awake so he could help me look for Arch. Also, I did not trust anything else one might eat in this house.

When I handed him his cup, I said, “Adele was just telling me she thinks Julian might have seen correspondence that put Brian Harrington in danger.”

Schulz’s eyes looped around the room. “Oh yeah?” he said. “What was that?”

Adele looked from one to the other of us.

She said, “You can never go back. You think you can, but you can’t. That’s what the general thought with all his experimenting, but Philip Miller just thought he was crazy. I knew he had it in for him, and he wanted so badly to