Death by Chocolate Marshmallow Pie by Sarah Graves

Author:Sarah Graves [Graves, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2023-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Nine

“Bob Arnold is onto us,” I told Ellie later that morning, when I got down to the Chocolate Moose.

It was just eight o’clock, too early to open, but I knew she’d be there, probably working on the chocolate marshmallow pie. And sure enough, the worktable in the kitchen was already littered with a lot of ingredients that I recognized: cocoa powder, chocolate chips, some chocolate syrup, et cetera.

There was even a bottle of chocolate liqueur; I gathered that the obstacle now was getting the pie filling to taste chocolaty enough. Marshmallows do tend to taste overwhelmingly like themselves, after all, no matter what.

“Ellie, did you hear what I just said?”

Even a truly generous topping of chocolate curls, followed by a quick run under the broiler, hadn’t done the trick, I saw by the way she looked up from the taste test she was doing.

Grimacing, she dumped the pie into the trash, which meant it was too awful even to give away. Then she turned to me.

“I heard you. And I wondered about it myself, that he’d swallow a story about paying a social call so late at night. But if Bob wanted to jump all over us about something, don’t you think he’d have done it on the spot?”

She rinsed her hands, then took a sip of coffee to do the same for the inside of her mouth. “Instead, he seemed as meek as a lamb.”

When she pulled off her apron smock, I saw that she was dressed for a normal day, in light khaki pants and a pink three-quarter-sleeved leotard top with a loose black T-shirt over it. The shirt’s front read BOOK CLUB in pink capital letters; the club’s rules were listed on the back, but of course she never talked about those.

“So why do you think he knows what we were doing?” she queried, pouring coffee for herself.

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but for one thing, he didn’t give us an ounce of side-eye, did he? No suspicious ‘What are you doing here?’ questions, and not a bit of skepticism about our story.” I took a breath. “Now, does that sound like Bob?”

It didn’t, and Ellie knew it.

“He’s just different lately,” I said.

He missed his ex-wife and his daughter, I knew that much. And he didn’t at all like Ellie being in the crosshairs of the law. That went without saying. But Bob didn’t talk a whole lot about his feelings, so I knew little more.

“Well, I guess we’ll find out why sooner or later,” said Ellie, sitting down at a café table with her coffee, a pencil, and a sheet of lined notebook paper. “Okay, now,” she said. “Buttery shortbread crust, check.”

And that in a nutshell was Ellie: maybe the cops would be coming for her later, but she’d done what she could about it, and now she had a different task to complete. I swear, if the angel Gabriel showed up with a big horn, she’d say, “Wait a minute, please,” then ask if I could stay back with her, too, because we had baking to finish.

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