Dying for Chocolate

publicity for your precious medical practice.”

The Jerk hesitated. I could feel his rage through the telephone wire. He said, “What do you want?”

Well, it didn’t take a corporate accountant to figure that one. I said, “I need money for two things. Number one, I’ve already started to put in a security system. You can pay for it. Number two, I need to change my name.”

He said, “Again?”

I told him briefly about George Pettigrew and Three Bears Catering, and that I needed money for legal fees.

“How much?”

I said, “I’ll send you the bill,” and hung up.

Arch came out of the bathroom. Julian helped him back into bed and resettled the IV. Then they silently toasted each other with their cups of cocoa and water. Schulz took my hand and held it determinedly. I asked him if he was feeling all right and he said he was.

He said, “Just tell me this. How come your ex-husband isn’t jealous of me?”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

Schulz said, “So what are you going to change your name to? Would you consider Schulz?”

Oh my God. Julian gagged on his hot chocolate. I looked at Arch, who tilted his head and gave me a serene smile. I was utterly flabbergasted. Speechless, for once.

Finally I said, “I can’t answer that one right now. Let me think about it. Thanks. Sheesh! I don’t know what to say.”

“Well then,” Schulz went on, “for now, how about B-a-e-r? Sounds the same without the grizzly connotation. Of course, you could make it B-a-r-e, but people might get the wrong idea. Schulz has a better ring to it.”

I smiled.

“Well,” he said, “I’m not going to force the issue.”

We were all quiet for a few minutes. I reflected on the people who had come to inhabit my life in the last month. That was what everyone wanted: to force love’s issue. Adele and Weezie adored Brian and had tried to make the adoration mutual. I had cherished the illusion that Adele was my friend and confidante. Julian was enamored of Sissy. Sissy in turn had great affection for the idea of being married to a doctor. And I wanted to make Arch love me, so that he would choose to live with me instead of his father.

“Mom,” Arch said, as if he were reading my mind. He put down his cup. “I’m sorry I said that about going to live with Dad. I’d like to stay with you. I mean, if you want me to.” I got up to hug him. Schulz joined us. Julian held back, but after a moment he put a hand on my shoulder and a hand on Arch’s back.

When we were all hugging, Arch said, “Can Julian share my room?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her family. She is the author of eleven bestselling culinary mysteries.

If you enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s Dying for Chocolate, you won’t want to miss any of the tantalizing mysteries in her nationally bestselling culinary mystery series!

Look for CHOPPING SPREE the newest mystery, at your favorite bookseller’s.

CHOPPING

SPREE

by

Diane

Mott

Davidson

Turn the page for an exciting preview. . . .

Success can kill you.

So my best friend had been telling me, anyway. Too much success is like arsenic in chocolate cake. Eat a slice a day, Marla announced with a sweep of her plump, bejeweled fingers, and you’ll get cancer. Gobble the whole cake?. You’ll keel over and die on the spot.

These observations, made over the course of a snowy March, had not cheered me. Besides, I’d have thought that Marla, with her inherited wealth and passion for shopping, would applaud the upward leap of my catering business. But she said she was worried about me.

Frankly, I was worried about me, too.

In mid-March I’d invited Marla over to taste cookies. Despite a sudden but typical Colorado blizzard, she’d roared over to our small house off Aspen Meadow’s Main Street in her shiny new BMW four-wheel drive. Sitting in our commercial kitchen, she’d munched on ginger snaps and spice cookies, and harped on the fact that the newly frantic pace of my work had coincided with my fourteen-year-old son Arch’s increasingly rotten behavior. I knew Marla doted on Arch.

But in this, too, she was right.

Arch’s foray into athletics, begun that winter with snowboarding and a stint on his school’s fencing team, had ended with a trophy, a sprained ankle, and an unprecedented burst of physical self-confidence. He’d been eager to plunge into spring sports. When he’d decided on lacrosse, I’d been happy for him. That changed when I attended the first game. Watching my son forcefully shove an opponent aside and steal the ball, I’d felt queasy. With Arch’s father—a rich doctor who’d had many violent episodes himself—now serving time for parole violation, all that slashing and hitting was more than I could take.

But even more worrisome than the sport itself, Marla and I agreed, were Arch’s new teammates: an unrepentant gang of spoiled, acquisitive brats. Unfortunately, Arch thought the lacrosse guys were beyond cool. He spent hours with them, claiming that he “forgot” to tell us where he was going after practice. We could have sent