[02] Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson

Author:Diane Mott Davidson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780307427281
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1992-08-24T20:00:00+00:00

It would have been nearly impossible to find surroundings less like the tended lawns of Meadowview than the long dirt road to Tom Schulz’s place. He lived in a spacious three-room log house six miles west of Aspen Meadow. Of course, since Aspen Meadow was unincorporated (and proud of it), just about anything past two miles from Main Street was considered outside of town. In the absence of institutional government, real estate agents set the geographical boundaries.

Light from the setting sun glinted behind wet aspen leaves. The trees looked as if they were hung with emeralds. Melting hail had made recent tire tracks shiny ribbons of mud. As the van bumped along, overhanging trees shed branchloads of ice on the windshield. I turned on the wipers. When I arrived at his cabin, Tom Schulz was shoveling hail from the stone walk.

He scooped the last shovelful and heaved it over a gray rock outcropping that looked like a sleeping elephant. I unfastened the pie and carefully stepped out to avoid deep mud. The cool evening air was redolent with the sweet scent of chokecherry blossoms.

Schulz leaned against his shovel. “Something wrong? What happened to your arm?”

“Everything is wrong.”

He put down the shovel and came over to help me.

“I was attacked at Aspen Meadow Café.” I told him briefly about the mugging, including the admonition to let Philip Miller rest in peace.

“1 can’t believe you didn’t call me.” Schulz took the pie from my hands and laid it on a rock. “I cannot believe it, Miss G.” Schulz hugged me tenderly, carefully, to avoid inflicting more pain. I loved the rough feel of his jeans against my legs, the freshly laundered smell of his Izod shirt that had been yellow once.

When we disengaged, his face took on a puzzled expression. He said, “Where’s Arch?”

“At home. Angry that I wouldn’t let him swim in the hail.”

Schulz picked up the pie container, made appropriate mm-mm noises, then put his free arm around my shoulders as he led me up the stone path. “If you would take more care of yourself and less of Arch, everybody might be a lot better off, Goldy.” He looked down at me with an apologetic smile. “No offense.”

I made a gesture toward the pie. I said, “You want to eat that or wear it?”

“I’ll eat it, thanks,” he said as he swung it just out of my reach. “Come on in. I need to talk to you before we get into the business of food.”

The door to the house sported an elaborate carving of a naked woman involved in some kind of dance. The sculptor who had had this place built had thought of the woman as his muse. The sculptor, long gone, had been caught for back taxes. The house had been sold at one of those 1RS auctions for a fraction of its worth, and Schulz had lucked out. I had always been happy that he lived here. After long days working homicide, an investigator needed a remote place with a big fireplace inside and a porch swing that looked out on the mountains.

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