The Chocolate Bridal Bash by JoAnna Carl

Author:JoAnna Carl [Carl, JoAnna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Joe called then and asked me to meet him for lunch. I dumped the responsibility for TenHuis Chocolade’s retail sales on Dolly Jolly and left. I was tired of answering questions. Joe already knew how we’d happened to stumble across a dead body the previous afternoon, and he had a pretty good idea of how I felt about it, so we could talk about something different.

Unless he’d managed to ask Rollie about Bill Dykstra. But he hadn’t done that yet, Joe told me. I was relieved.

After an hour of talking with Joe about topics such as Mike Herrera insisting on buying champagne for our reception, I felt refreshed and reenergized and headed back to work. And I did work. The phone did not ring, the front door did not open, and I accomplished quite a bit.

By four thirty, when the front door did open again, I was feeling triumphant. I looked up to see a stranger, the second stranger who’d been in that day. This one was also shrouded in Michigan winter wear, although instead of a stocking cap he had the hood of his parka pulled down over his face.

I got up and went to the counter. “May I help you?”

“Hi, Ms. McKinney,” the man said. He shoved the hood back and revealed a completely bald head.

Then I did know him. It was Elmer Priddy, RN, the man who had confirmed the death of Carl Van Hoosier twenty-four hours earlier.

“Hello! I didn’t expect to see you again.”

“I heard you tell the deputy you worked here. I get over to Warner Pier on my days off. Look at an art gallery, eat in a good restaurant. Get a little culture with a capital K.”

“You’ll have to include chocolate.” I gestured at the display counter. “Pick a sample.”

This called for a bit of discussion, of course. I defy anyone to simply pick a TenHuis bonbon or truffle without debating between the round coconut-covered one and the dark chocolate square with one dot of milk chocolate in the center. But after a couple of minutes Priddy was munching a dark chocolate square, known to TenHuis fans as a lemon canache bonbon (“tangy lemon interior with dark chocolate coating”). Canache—pronounced “ca-nosh”—is a type of filling, sort of a soft jelly. We don’t make hard-jellied centers.

As Priddy rolled his eyes in bliss, I brought up the unpleasant events of the previous afternoon. “I don’t suppose there’s an official report on what killed Van Hoosier.”

“Not yet.”

“Joe and I were a little surprised that you agreed with him about Van Hoosier’s death being suspicious.”

“Your fiancé identified the main thing right away. The red dots in the conjunctivae, the inside of the eyelid. It’s hard to miss. And Van Hoosier had that lump on the side of his head; I could tell that easily. So when the doctor agreed . . .” He shrugged.

“Did the blow kill him?”

“Oh, no. In fact”—he leaned across the counter—“there was a pillow—I think the killer tried to smother him, but Van Hoosier was feistier than he’d expected.

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