Fatal Chocolate Obsession (Death by Chocolate Book 5) Read online

  “Of course.” My answer was automatic, but it took me a moment to figure out what I was supposed to be ready for. In the course of being a person of interest, I’d forgotten about the proposed visit to Peterson.

  “What are you wearing?” he asked.

  I looked at my blue jeans and red knit shirt, both with traces of chocolate on them. “Black suit,” I lied.

  “Good. Come on over.” He hung up.

  I raced upstairs and changed into my trusty black suit, the one I only wear to funerals, visits to mobsters and other excursions with Fred. That suit is getting a little worn, and I haven’t been to a funeral in a long time.

  Henry accompanied me to Fred’s then left to pursue his own agenda. I fervently hoped I would return home to an empty porch—no mice, no flowers, no bottles of wine. After Ginger’s demise, I assumed Rick’s offerings would cease, but Henry’s would likely continue. With all the little critters scurrying around, busily preparing for winter, he might even double up.

  Fred, wearing a dark suit and tie, opened the door and stepped out. “Why did you arrive home so late?”

  Further evidence he didn’t know everything. I wasn’t sure if I was elated or disappointed. “Cops.”

  “Lindsay, whether you think those speed limits are valid or not, they’re going to give you a ticket when you exceed them.”

  “Only when they catch me.” I followed him to the driveway where his vintage white Mercedes waited. If I kept my Celica a few more years, would it change from old to vintage? “Anyway, that’s not what they hauled me in for. They think I killed Ginger.”

  He halted, his hand on the passenger door. “Ginger’s dead? They think you killed her?”

  “Yes and yes. I’m shocked you didn’t know all that.”

  He opened the door and I slid onto the soft leather seat.

  “I’ve been busy today,” he said.

  “With Sophie?”

  He closed my door, walked around to the driver’s side, and got in. “We’re going to visit A-Plus Construction. There may be more to Bob’s death than I first thought.”

  “You found out something about Nick Peterson, didn’t you?”

  He eased the car from the driveway onto the street. I have no idea why he rigidly adheres to the speed limit. I’ve been with him when he drove like Jeff Gordon, and with his hacking skills, he could get out of any tickets.

  “Maybe,” he said in response to my question. “His real name is Nicholas Peretti. Remember my friend, Donato Orsini?”

  “Like I could ever forget meeting a mobster and you telling the man he shouldn’t be smoking in his own office! I thought we’d both soon be wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of the Missouri River.”

  “Donato’s finally decided to quit smoking. I was forced to get his wife involved.”

  “So you snitched off the mob guy to his wife? Why not just tell on him to his mother?”

  He moved onto the freeway, driving at precisely the speed limit. “His mother’s not in the best of health. I didn’t want to worry her.”

  “Of course you didn’t. So getting back to Nick Peterson-Peretti, what did you find out about him?”

  “He and Donato go back a long way.”

  “You mean Nick’s a member of the mob? You think he had Bob killed? Why would he offer him a job and then put out a hit on him?”

  Fred proceeded calmly down the highway as if I wasn’t freaking out in the seat next to him. “Donato said Nick’s a straight-up guy and has been out of that world for several years. Nevertheless, he may know something. It’s quite a coincidence that Bob was killed right after he accepted a job with Nick.”

  “Wow, that sounds familiar! Oh, yeah, I said it last night.”

  “On the other hand, coincidences do happen or we wouldn’t have a word for them.”

  I was already in a bad mood with Trent, and Fred’s ambivalent attitude wasn’t helping my disposition. However, we were on our way to talk to Nick Peterson-Peretti, a meeting I’d pushed for, so I refrained from expressing my irritation.

  We drove to a warehouse type building north of the city. The structure was one story and ordinary in design but neat and sturdy. A few large pieces of equipment dotted the parking lot with lots of space in between. I assumed the machines that usually occupied the empty slots were off somewhere digging basements and building houses.

  Fred parked close to the front door and we got out.

  “Who are we?” I asked as we approached the door.

  “You’re Lindsay Powell and I’m Fred Sommers.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I worry about you, Lindsay. Have you been snorting Henry’s catnip?”

  “I meant—”

  Fred swung the door open.

  I stopped talking.

  The receptionist looked up from her crossword puzzle.

  Fred handed her a card. “Fred Sommers and Lindsay Powell to see Nick Peterson.”

  It would have been nice if he’d let me see that card before we walked in. We might be Fred Sommers and Lindsay Powell, but I was pretty sure we weren’t entering Nick Peterson’s office as a chocolatier and her strange neighbor.

  The receptionist advised her boss of our presence. A moment later a tall, thin man in khakis and a white cotton shirt with rolled-up sleeves strode through the door at the side of the room. Steel gray at his temples emphasized the blackness of hair combed straight back from his forehead. A huge smile brightened his tan face. He grabbed my hand in one of his, and moisture shone in his dark eyes. “I’m glad to get to meet you, Lindsay. Bob told me all about what you did for him.”

  I was speechless. We really were there as a chocolatier and her strange neighbor.

  He turned to Fred and gave him an enthusiastic handshake. “And you must be Fred. Come in, come in.” He released Fred’s hand and waved toward the open door. “Leslie, would you get us three coffees? Cream? Sugar?”

  Fred flinched. He’s very finicky about his coffee. Grinds his own beans. He may grow them for all I know. “Black for me.” The fact he didn’t refuse the coffee told me he was more concerned about sucking up to Nick Peretti than about guarding his taste buds.

  I lifted a hand and shook my head. “Thank you, none for me.” I’d accepted coffee in Donato Orsino’s office and even tried to drink it because I was intimidated. I was not going to do that again. Fred would have to suck up enough for both of us.

  “Soda? Tea?”

  “Do you have Coke?”

  “Sure. Leslie, please bring us two black coffees and a Coke.”

  We followed Nick into his office. It was like the exterior of the building…sturdy, practical, no frills. A large metal desk covered with papers dominated the room, and a large window looked out onto the parking lot. Not a great view, but perhaps looking at his machines was a great view for him.

  Nick sat behind the desk and motioned Fred and me to a couple of brown vinyl chairs. He leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk top. His smile faded. “So what’s going on with Bob? His death wasn’t just some scumbag wanting to rob him, was it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “We’re not sure.” Fred just had to disagree with me.

  Leslie entered the room with a tray holding two brown mugs and one beautiful red can. She set one mug in front of Fred, the other in front of Nick, and I took the red can. Just the way I like it…cold and straight, no ice diluting it.

  Leslie left, closing the door behind her. Fred took a sip of his coffee, grimaced slightly, and set the cup back on the desk. I took a long pull on my Coke. Nothing like being grilled by the cops to work up a thirst.

  “Who do you think killed Bob?” Nick asked.

  “We were hoping you could help us figure it out. My friend, Donato Orsini, said you might be able to give us some information about Bob’s past associates.”

  Nick’s smile returned. “You must be the Fred who blabbed to Donato’s wife about his smoking. She nagged him until he agreed to stop.”

  “I am.”

&
nbsp; Nick picked up his coffee, sat back and laughed. “You got balls. That woman’s a holy terror.”

  “Marie and I go way back.”

  Nick nodded. “Yep, yep. I knew her before they got married. Me and Donato go way back too. Had some interesting times.”

  “How about Bob? Did he run with the same crowd?”

  Nick shook his head. “Not like you mean. Bob was…” He looked around the room as if searching for hidden microphones. If they were hidden, he wasn’t likely to find them. “Bob was a straight arrow. Him and me, we started out in the construction business about the same time.” He held up a hand as if to restrain whatever we were going to say. “You may think that meant we were rivals, but we weren’t. Bob started a few months before me, and we met at one of those industry get-togethers. Bob helped me with a lot of my startup things. I had different…” He paused and looked from one to the other of us. “I had different assets. You know what I mean? So I was able to help him too.”

  Fred looked completely comfortable in the uncomfortable vinyl chair. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, listening to the almost-confession about possibly dubious business practices as if Peterson was discussing a couple of boys with lemonade stands. “So the two of you pooled your resources and each of you developed a successful company,” he said.

  “Exactly. Business was good, life was good. And then Linda got sick. They grew up next door to each other, got married right out of high school. Her death hit Bob pretty hard.”

  “So hard he lost his company?” Fred asked.

  Nick nodded. “He couldn’t get by without her. He stayed away from work a lot when she was sick, then after she died, he just didn’t seem to care. Didn’t have the will to work or to live. He disappeared, went away from all of us. Tell you the truth, until he showed up here last week looking for a job, I thought he was dead.”

  “And now he is,” I said. “As soon as he reappeared, somebody killed him. Does that seem to you to be a pretty big coincidence?”

  “Yeah, it does. I’ve thought about that over and over, tried to figure out who could have wanted Bob dead.”

  Fred didn’t speak. Neither did I. We both knew about the method the cops used to get suspects to talk. It had worked quite well on me.

  Nick looked down at his desk. “Bob was a good guy, but we all make mistakes, do things we wish we hadn’t done.” He lifted his head and looked directly at Fred then at me. “He loved Linda. But they went through a rough patch.”

  I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear any more about Bob’s rough patch. I wanted to continue to think of him as a good man who deserved a second chance. I took a big drink of my Coke and wished for a five-pound slab of chocolate.

  Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Bob was a good guy,” he repeated. “Him and Linda both wanted kids, but that just didn’t happen. I guess they blamed each other for a while. Then Tina came along. She was Bob’s bookkeeper, and the two of them spent some long hours together on the job.” He shrugged.

  “So Bob cheated on his wife?” The woman whose death had been so painful, it caused his downward spiral? Maybe he hadn’t deserved those extra cookies I gave him. I knew only too well what it felt like to be married to a cheater. Not a pleasant feeling.

  Would Trent ever cheat on me? With the hours he worked, he didn’t have time.

  Besides, he just wouldn’t. He played by the rules, colored inside the lines. He was too honest. Apparently Bob hadn’t been.

  “The affair didn’t mean anything,” Nick continued, “and it didn’t last long. When Linda came down with the cancer, he broke it off with Tina. The whole time Linda fought cancer, Bob was right there by her side, and it just about killed him when she died. She was his wife, his soul mate. He didn’t want to live without her, and he blamed himself. He thought the cancer was his punishment for cheating. That’s when he started drinking, quit caring and lost everything.”

  Maybe he really did regret what he’d done. As Nick said, we all make mistakes. Whatever Bob had done, he didn’t deserve to be murdered.

  “I helped him make a comeback so he could be killed.” I didn’t realize I’d spoken the words aloud until Nick scowled.

  “No,” he protested. “If he hadn’t quit drinking, he’d have been dead in a few months from the booze. You made him feel like he mattered, like he wasn’t worthless. He was getting back to his old self. He told me he had hope for the first time in a lot of years.”

  “You think this Tina could have killed him?” I asked.

  Nick shook his head. “Tina got upset when Bob dumped her, but she’s not violent, and she’s a little bitty thing, barely five feet. Bob was tall. No way she could have hit him over the head like that.” He tapped a finger on his desk several times and looked into the distance as if undecided about something. Finally his gaze returned to us. “But Ken, her husband—”

  “Husband? She was married too?” The story was becoming more sordid by the moment. Jerry Springer, here we come.

  “Still is married. Kenneth Wilson. He works for me. Worked for me then. Him and Tina weren’t getting along, and she was talking about leaving. Ken’s a good worker, but he didn’t treat Tina right. He’s pretty hot-tempered. When Bob needed a good bookkeeper, I told Tina about the job. Thought it would be a good deal for both of them. Bob would have a top-notch employee and Tina could get away from Ken.”

  “But she didn’t?” I asked.

  Peterson shook his head. “Linda got sick and Bob broke it off with Tina. She went back to Ken, and they had a baby. Got three of them now. I guess she feels pretty trapped.”

  “But you let this Ken keep working for you?” I sounded aghast. I was aghast.

  Fred and Peterson both looked at me as if I were slightly nuts.

  “He’s a good worker,” Peterson repeated. “They’re hard to come by. He does his job, never causes any problems at work. I wouldn’t know about his home life if Tina hadn’t told my wife.”

  So abusing his wife is okay as long as he doesn’t bring it to work? I bit my tongue and refrained from speaking since we were trying to get information out of Peterson. Reprimanding him for questionable morals wasn’t likely to help.

  “Did he know Bob was coming to work for you?” Fred asked. He hadn’t moved from his relaxed posture, but I could tell he was no longer relaxed. Nothing physical, more like an aura. A hunting dog on point without actually pointing.

  “Yeah. I told him. My company’s pretty good size. There wasn’t any reason he and Bob would ever have to see each other. Ken gave me some grief about it, but I told him Bob had paid for what he did.”

  “So Ken knew about the affair?”

  Nick grimaced. “Yeah. Bob confessed when the doctor told him Linda was dying. He thought if he admitted to what he’d done and asked for forgiveness, God would let Linda live.”

  “Bargaining with God is a fairly common thing when somebody we love is dying.” Fred sounded as if he knew what he was talking about. Was this a clue to his past? Had somebody he loved died? Had he loved somebody?

  I made a mental note to ask later. Not that I expected an answer. He even refused to answer when I asked him if he had a mother or came from a test tube.

  “Did the police talk to Ken?” Fred asked.

  “Hell, no. I didn’t tell the cops any of the story I just told you. I wouldn’t be telling you except you all are friends with Donato so you’re like a member of the family.”

  Oh, good, I was included as a member of another dysfunctional family. Like my own wasn’t enough.

  “Can we talk to Ken?” Fred asked. “Is he on a job site today?”

  Nick drummed his fingers on the desktop—four of them this time—as he studied Fred and then me. Finally he picked up a pencil, wrote something on a piece of paper, and handed it to Fred. “This is his home address. Yesterday he asked me what the cops wanted and today he called in sick.”

  Chapter Eight

  Fred actually exceeded the speed limit by four miles an hour as we
drove to Kenneth Wilson’s house.

  “What was in that coffee?” I asked.

  “Used motor oil, I believe. Why? Did you want to get a copy of the recipe for your shop?”

  “I just wondered if it was spiked with meth or something. You’re driving over the speed limit. That’s not like you.”

  “I want to get there before dark.”

  The sun was sinking closer to the horizon as we zipped (speaking relatively) along the freeway. “Don’t tell me you’re scared to confront that man after dark.”

  “If he runs, he’ll be easier to find in the daylight. Of course, he’s had twenty-four hours. He may be miles from here already.” He exited the freeway and turned onto a residential street.

  “If he’s on the lam, we’ll hunt him down, right?”

  “Of course.”

  I wasn’t sure if Fred’s determination to catch Bob’s killer came from a need to find justice in an often unjust world or from his OCD nature, unwilling to rest until all ends were tidied up. Probably the latter.

  I was still determined to find him for Bob’s sake. Yes, I’d just discovered the man wasn’t perfect, but he’d taken some hard knocks and was making an effort to rebuild his life. If Ken had killed him just because he didn’t want to have to work with his wife’s former lover—well, that certainly gave him the motive, but not the right. As often as I’d contemplated murdering Rick, I’d never thought about killing any of his bimbos. But I’d never been forced to work with them. That might have made a difference.

  Fred pulled over to the curb in front of a mundane house in a mundane suburban neighborhood. It was the sort of area where both parents worked and left the kids at day care during the week then got together with the neighbors on weekends, barbecued hamburgers and drank beer. Kids were riding their bicycles along the sidewalk, and a guy two houses down was watering his lawn. Wholesome. Just the kind of neighborhood where a killer would live.

  I opened my car door and stepped out. Fred took something from a canvas bag in the back seat and put it in his interior jacket pocket. Gun? Shiv? Blackjack?