Dying for Chocolate

go back. . . .”

Schulz raised his coppery eyebrows at Adele. He said, “Go back where?”

She said nothing, only glared at him, as if she were waiting for his own response to the question. But all he did was sip the coffee. I could hear the clock ticking the minutes away. My hands itched with anxiety for Arch. If the general had harmed Philip Miller, then why had Philip warned Brian Harrington? The coffee was not clarifying my mind.

Finally I said, “Perhaps you are as concerned about your son as I am about mine.”

Her eyelids flickered in appraising me.

She said, “You can’t imagine what I’ve been through.”

I nodded. Schulz’s gaze traveled from one to the other of us.

He said, “Why don’t you tell us? We’re especially interested in the last couple of weeks.”

Adele ignored him. “You know,” she said to me, “a death is like a divorce in many ways. You are left alone, whether you like it or not. When you’re divorced, you can’t express your sadness. When you’re widowed, it’s not considered proper to express . . . anger. And in either case, the financial burdens are tremendous.”

I said, “You seem to have weathered the financial part okay.”

“Oh, you think so?” Adele raised her thin eyebrows at me, then flicked more invisible lint from the beige sweater. “I’ve seen the way men eye Sissy for her body. Imagine being sized up for your dollars.” She cleared her throat. “At least in Sissy’s case, when men tell her she’s beautiful, they’re not lying.”

“Did Brian Harrington say you were beautiful?”

She paused. She said, “Many times.”

I looked over at Schulz. His face had gone pale and was filmy with sweat. He excused himself quietly. Adele dismissed him with a wave.

I said, “Was this before or after he was married to Weezie?”

She looked at me, the corners of her mouth turned down. Water was running in the hall bathroom.

She said, “Both.”

I said, “Did he know Julian was his son?”

Her face and composure crumpled. She shuddered, rubbed her cheeks and pulled herself together.

She said, “He knew so little. There were things he chose not to know. He had a single purpose. To get the woman with the money or land to fall in love with him. He did it with Weezie and he did it with me.” As tears leaked from the edges of her eyes, she wiped them off with her index finger.

“You don’t need to talk,” I said. In fact, I wondered why she was talking about this to me at all. Where was Schulz? Was he in danger from the general?

“Yes I do,” Adele was saying. “It was a terrible rejection. Rejection! My God, that sounds like the way we used to talk in adolescence. I was thirty-one when I was with Brian. I felt all my anger, all my grief dissipate in that time with him. You hear about affairs. You think, oh, illicit sex.” She regarded me with disgust. “Sex is incidental.” She looked wistfully at the mantelpiece that had held the Waterford vase destroyed in the garden-explosion. “It’s being loved that we all want.” She sighed with a kind of moan. “Brian loved me. He wrapped me in love. All my anger, my grief over losing my first husband dissipated. And do you know what? I didn’t even feel guilty. I even thought Marcus Keely had had his heart attack so I could find Brian. My true love. Ha!” She cackled.

My gastrointestinal tract was doing flip-flops. I put it down to caffeine on an empty stomach. I wanted to get this over with, to untangle the past and find out what was going on in the present.

I said, “You got pregnant.”

Her eyes wandered back to me. “Yes. After I’d invested in the Meadowview area of Aspen Meadow Country Club. I was the first one to buy a two-acre homesite, and Brian was the second, buying the parcel right next to mine. Forever together, he’d said. He also said he wanted to get the ball rolling for the business. He wanted to be able to say, We’ve had some sales but there are a few parcels left. I kept thinking he would ask me to marry him. . . . He said he wasn’t ready.

“When I was four months along and unable to hide the pregnancy any longer, I left and went down to Utah. To collect pottery and whatnot,” she said with another hideous laugh and wave. “But really it was to have a baby and arrange a private adoption in Bluff. I found out about a Navajo woman who had married an Anglo. The Anglo was opening a candy store. They had been unable to have children. When you have money,” she said with a sniff, “you can arrange adoptions any way you want.”

I nodded and looked around. I had not seen Schulz for a while and was worried. Perhaps the general was awake. But Schulz could take care of himself; I couldn’t risk Adele shutting down on me. I stayed put.

“If you arranged to have the adoption done,” I said, still preoccupied with thoughts of Schulz, “why did you arrange to have it undone?”

“It fell into place. I thought, again foolishly, that it was for a reason. Bo’s adoration embarrassed me terribly. I hated Washington and was all too glad to move out here once the Pentagon forced Bo’s retirement. I had the land; I’d never sold it. And then I felt such a strong pull, to see Brian again, to live next door . . . and I thought maybe if I could get Julian here, that we could—” She broke off, lost in reverie.

“You were the one who said you can’t go back.”

“I know,” she said, her voice shrill, “don’t I? So much work, so many preparations. Arranging the scholarship for Julian when I found out that the boarding department at Elk Park Prep was about to close down. Building this house next to Brian and that inane woman, Weezie!” She spat out the name, then softened. “And Julian. God, Julian.” She broke off then and stared at the fireplace in a way that seemed to signal the end of the conversation.

I remembered her words: Whatever you do for your children, they don’t appreciate you.

And then it all fell into place. A wave of cold fear swept over me. She was the one. I thought I’d needed her information to finger Weezie or the general or even Sissy. I was wrong.

I said, “You tried to seduce Brian again, didn’t you? By the pool. I heard you splashing around. But he showed an unhealthy sexual attraction for Sissy instead. That must have made you furious. The general loved you, but it wasn’t enough. And . . . you’re the one who started the rumor about Weezie sleeping with Philip Miller. Yes?”

She sucked in a sob and pursed her lips, then opened reddened eyes and nodded. Proudly, I thought. And then the full force of what she could have done struck me. I thought of the calendar in Philip’s office. She had had one of the last appointments with him.

I said, “You went to see Philip Miller. Because Julian was living with you and having problems, Philip had called you. He must have wanted to see you and the general together.” She did not move. I wasn’t even sure she was listening. “But you went alone, because of what you were afraid would come out. Philip told you Julian wanted to research who his biological parents were. You must have told him the truth.”

Her eyes blazed. “Yes, I told Philip Miller the truth,” she said fiercely. “I didn’t want to, but he just kept egging me on with all his questions, just like you are now. How did we come to have Julian in our house? he wanted to know. How were we relating to him? How did he think I was going to relate to my own son whom I hadn’t seen since birth?” Her face contorted. “And I said the biological father, Brian Harrington, had shown no interest in his son. I said I wanted to kill Brian Harrington. I had learned about getting things on the black market from Bo. I’d gotten Spanish fly and I was going to use it, because so many women had wanted Brian to love them. It would serve him right.”

“But Philip took it from you—”

“Yes, he took it! He threatened to call the police right away if I didn’t give it to him. Said I needed help, and that he was going to have to notify Brian that his life was in danger.” She smiled. “But he didn’t get my whole supply of Spanish fly. And the black market wasn’t the only thing I’d learned from Bo. After I’d seen Philip Miller, later that afternoon, I created a distraction. Pretended I’d left my cane in his office. The receptionist went to look for it and I memorized Miller’s calendar. I knew I’d have to act quickly before he turned me in. The eye doctor appointment was perfect.”

The abdominal pains in my stomach had turned to cramps. I felt hot. How I wanted this conversation to be over. How I wanted Schulz to come back. And most of all, how I wanted to know where Arch was, to be assured that he was all right.

Adele was talking. I struggled to focus on her voice.

“I’d just had the glaucoma test myself, so I knew they used anesthetic. And Bo had told me all about