Dying for Chocolate

“Well, neither do I. I didn’t see him go out with Julian, but I do need to talk to you about that. Do you know when Arch left? Was it after the police finally drove off? I went to lie down for a while, it was all so trying.” She opened her eyes wide. “The police had quite a few questions about your argument with Brian Harrington last night.”

I said, “I didn’t kill him.” I took a deep breath. “My main concern is the whereabouts of Arch.”

“What in Bo’s study would tell you where Arch is?”

I thought wildly. “Well . . . I’m looking for some cards. They were Arch’s. Sometimes he tricks me. . . you know how he is. So if this is a trick, I need to play along. You know?” As I got up I pushed a box of pencils onto the floor with my left hand. With my right I moved some papers from the bottom of the pile to the top before setting the whole pile down. I leaned over to gather the pencils.

“Cards?” said Adele. “I don’t know. Perhaps he left them in the kitchen. Shall we look?”

I stood up. “Sure.” I felt in my right pocket and fingered the seven of spades. This would be my only chance to call Schulz undetected. I had to think of a way to pull this one out. What made it all worse was that I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. Or who the enemy was.

“No cards here, I’m afraid,” Adele said. She patted through the piles of bills, gardening catalogs, and manila envelopes in the kitchen desk drawers.

I slipped the card from my pocket into the knife drawer. “Oh, my goodness, look here,” I said. “He wanted to leave it where I would find it. Now we need to call the wizard.”

“I beg your pardon?” She stared at the card in my palm.

“Indulge me, Adele, maybe this is it. I promised Arch I would practice, and maybe this will help out,” I said as I punched in the buttons for Schulz’s number and prayed that he would be at his desk.

“Schulz.” His voice.

Adele said, “May I ask whom you are calling? Are you calling Weezie? Please give me the phone.”

I held up one finger and said, “Is the wizard there, please?”

“Oh, jeez, Goldy, don’t make me do this, what the hell is going on? Did you find Arch?”

I said again, more merrily, “Is the wizard there, please?”

He sighed. He began, “Clubs, diamonds, spades—”

“May I speak to him, please?”

“Okay,” said Schulz, “so spades? Now what? Let’s see, ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight, seven—”

“Hold the line, please.”

Before I could do anything, Adele took the phone from my hand and listened. She looked at the receiver and then at the card. She said, “No, thank you.” Then she shrugged. She tap-stepped across the kitchen floor and hung up the phone.

“Well?” I demanded. “Did he know it was the seven of spades?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “It was a man, and he said, ’Do you want me to come over?’ so I said I didn’t and that was that.”

Adele straightened up. She flicked one piece of lint off the beige cashmere sweater and another off the matching slacks. “I’m so tired, let’s sit down,” she said as she tap-stepped over the yellow Italian tile toward the living room. “I need to talk to you about Julian. He’s taken the camping equipment and gone off somewhere.” She paused by the pink sofa and looked around, apparently confused. She said, “Where’s Bo?”

This is what quicksand feels like, I thought. Nothing to hold on to and sinking deeper by the minute. But I had to keep Adele talking, no matter what.

I said, “Asleep on the porch. Had a bit too much to drink, I think.”

She shook her head and leaned awkwardly against the back of the sofa. “God! What’s happening? Brian drowned, and now, God knows.” She eyed me. I had come up beside her. We stood in silence, both unwilling to commit to speaking freely, much less to sitting down.

“You look exhausted,” she said. “Have you had anything to eat today?”

Schulz’s question. I said, “No.”

“Oh, Goldy. You of all people. You should have something to keep you going.”

A swell of fatigue made me shiver. I realized I had even missed my daily injection of espresso. All normal patterns of living had been disrupted by the discovery of Brian Harrington’s corpse.

I had to keep her talking. Had to make her feel I knew something, but perhaps not everything. I said, “Want coffee?” She shook her head. “I’ll be right back.” I made myself a double espresso and came back out to the living room, where Adele had settled into one of the lime-green damask chairs. I sat on the pink sofa, sipped, and waited. From the porch came the undulating noise of the general’s snores.

Finally Adele said, “Sissy and I went looking for Julian. He was so upset when the police were here. He talked to Arch for a long time. I just assumed they had gone off together.” She took a deep breath. “I’m afraid Julian may have found some very distressing correspondence and asked Weezie Harrington about it. This may have had the most dire consequences.”

I said, “Where do you think Julian could have gone after reading this correspondence?”

“To the Harringtons, perhaps. Oh, it’s such a long story—”

“Why to the Harringtons?”