Criminal Confections (21 page)

“I really appreciate that, Nina,” I told her in a kinder tone. “If I'm ever alarmed by anything, I'll call for help.”

Proving it, the very next thing I did after saying good-bye to the PR rep was make a mental note to myself as I headed off to continue my search for Christian Lemaître. I didn't have my phone with me—since I'd thought I was going jogging that morning and hadn't been back to my room since—but as soon as I did, it was time for me to tap Travis's network again . . . and find out if Calvin Wheeler had “shady stuff” of his own to worry about.

Chapter 12

By now, you might not be surprised to learn that my fiery ire didn't even last the whole length of the walk back to Maison Lemaître's main building, where I expected to find Christian. On the way there, amid the flowers and fountains and bay views and acres of green grass, I spied one of those billowy white tents—the kind they'd used for the chocolate-themed scavenger hunt on the first day of the retreat—and slowed my steps in curiosity.

Judging by the crowd gathered around that tent, something major was going on. Judging by the sugary, caramelized scent of freshly baked waffle cones and hot fudge drifting on the breeze, it did not involve murder (for once). All of my expert senses suggested there was
chocolate
over there—chocolate
ice cream.

Reasoning that a nice, frosty treat might cool the lingering scorched-skin sensation I'd been left with after my chocolate-fondue body wrap mishap, I beelined in that direction. Like I said before, my monkey mind sometimes takes over. Today, it was urging me to have ice cream. Since I hadn't even eaten breakfast yet, I figured a couple of scoops of frozen freckled-chocolate ganache or mocha sorbet would tide me over as capably as brioche toast with Nutella and an espresso would have.

Ten minutes later, I held a plastic tulip-shaped bowl full of both of those flavors, plus some chocolate chunk mint-infusion gelato for a chaser. I'd opted to have the waffle cone broken into a makeshift topping (the better to preserve its crunch), and to forego the optional caramel and/or hot-fudge sauce (which would have turned the whole delectable concoction into soup within forty-five seconds) and whipped cream (no need to dilute all the chocolaty goodness with superfluous dairy). I am, after all, a professional at making these sorts of decisions.

My first bite made me moan. My second bite made my eyes roll back in my head.
How
had they made this ice cream
so
good? I didn't know if my rage attack had worked up a monster appetite or what, but I
did
know that I wasn't devouring that ice cream quickly. It deserved to be savored. Cradling it, I retreated to a bench not far from a riotously pink-flowering bauhinia tree, then curled up to indulge my outer chocoholic.
Yum, yum.

“Hayden!” It was Eden, the reporter. “Mind if I join you?”

I looked up from my blissful cacao haze to see the
Chocolat Monthly
headline chaser pointing her cell phone at me. I winced.

“Sure.” Warily, I eyed her phone. “Off the record.”

She hesitated, then shrugged and closed whatever app she'd (probably) been using to record everyone surreptitiously.

Satisfied, I pointed my spoon. “Have a seat.”

Eden joined me on the bench. She glanced at my icecream extravaganza with undisguised disdain. “Is it good?” she asked.

“It's
nirvana.”
I scooped up another bite. With relish.

“I don't like ice cream. Especially chocolate.”

Okay. That was it. I officially didn't trust her. I decided to get to the point. “You want to ask me about Rex, right?”

“Well, his death
is
a big story.” Eden's eyes gleamed. “What can you tell me about Rex Rader's final hours?”

Nope, I wasn't throwing anyone under the bus like that. Not even Rex. Now that he was gone, I felt sorry for him. “Nothing,” I told her. “What can you tell me about Isabel Lemaître?”

“Isabel?” Eden blinked as though she'd never heard the name before. “Isabel Lemaître? Bernard Lemaître's wife?”

“I assume you've been covering her disappearance, too?”

Eden gave me a suspicious look. I blithely licked my ice cream, waiting her out. She needed me more than I needed her.

More quickly than I expected, she caved. “All I know is that Bernard reported Isabel missing this morning around six. Her clothes and things were gone. No one's seen her since last night.” Eden glanced toward the parking lot. “Her Mercedes is gone, but the valet didn't remember retrieving it for her.”

Every sign pointed to Isabel hotfooting it out of Maison Lemaître, that was for sure. I'd be willing to bet Isabel paid that valet to “forget” her. “Are the police investigating?”

“Investigating a runaway wife? Doubtful. Isabel seems to have packed all her things and left.” A pause. “So. About Rex—”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm late for an appointment.”
With Christian.
I still intended to give him a piece of my mind about the spa equipment—although now that I wasn't currently being roasted in chocolate, my mission did feel less critical.

I was up and headed away from the bench when Eden said, “Is it true that you've been consulting with Christian Lemaître?”

I skidded to a stop. “Who told you that?”

If word had gotten out about my consulting gig with Lemaître Chocolates . . . that would explain why Christian had come to my room yesterday. He probably thought
I'd
bragged about it.

I couldn't let such an unprofessional idea stand.

“Bernard told me,” Eden informed me. “I assumed he'd know?”

Whew.
This was manageable. “Bernard is no longer in charge of Lemaître,” I said, thankful for that obfuscating truth. “You really can't trust what he says about the business these days.”

“Not even,” Eden persisted, “when he says Lemaître Chocolates was supposed to have merged with Melt?”

That
was a scenario I hadn't anticipated. Rather than bringing Rex to Lemaître, maybe Bernard had been planning to bring Lemaître to Melt? Maybe
Bernard
had been selling company secrets to Rex, not Adrienne. I wanted to believe it was true.

Except for the part where it vilified an adored chocolate patriarch, of course. I didn't like that part at all.

“You know the chocolate industry,” I told Eden with a wave. “Rumors are rampant. You can't trust hearsay. Good luck with your story.”
You're going to need it. “
Try the ice cream!”

Then I headed toward the hotel, ready to call Travis.

My day
needed
a dose of husky sexiness . . . and so did I.

 

 

By the time I'd called Travis to ask him to check on Nina's (potentially abusive) husband, gone online to look at news reports about Rex's death, texted Danny to arrange a meet-up later, and arrived downstairs at Christian's office, my outrage was a shadow of its former self. You could even say it had mostly disappeared altogether. Because as many ways as Danny and I were alike, we could be mind-bogglingly different in others, too.

Unlike him,
I,
for example, do not hold a grudge
or
get revenge. I don't even know how to do that. Most of the time, I'm moving on before any one person could get on my nerves.

I'm a live-and-let-live type . . .
unless
someone is trying to bake me like a potato in a chocolate-fondue body wrap
,
I reminded myself. Then I had no problem taking the necessary actions to deal with things.

Maybe I
was
formidable. And intimidating. I certainly felt that way as I burst into Christian Lemaître's office and asked to see him immediately. Unfortunately, Christian's bombshell of an admin didn't pick up on my
don't mess with me
mojo.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, blond and bored.

“He'll see me,” I told her. “Hayden Mundy Moore.”

“I'm afraid Mr. Lemaître is not in right now.” Obviously unconvinced of my importance, she glanced up from her apathetic perusal of my shorts-plus-sweatshirt ensemble. “Sorry.”

I listened. “I can hear sounds coming from his office.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. He's in, but he's having his afternoon workout. He's not to be disturbed. For anything.”

This was taking
way
too long. “I'm disturbing him.”

Where the admin's ennui didn't help my ego, it
did
help my plan of action. I strode across the office and stepped inside.

Christian's inner sanctum was dimly lit. It smelled (not surprisingly) almost overwhelmingly of chocolate. The noise I'd heard was a deluxe treadmill, raising a commotion in one corner.

“You can't be in there!” the admin yelled, much too late.

I locked the door to prove that I could, then looked around. I identified Christian right away—mostly by the trail of candy bar wrappers that littered the floor. I followed them . . .

. . . all the way to Christian's desk, where the man himself sat in the spacious semidarkness, hands and face smeared unevenly with chocolate. In the background, the treadmill thumped away.

Another glance confirmed the setup he'd rigged. A hexagonal dumbbell had been tied to the treadmill's rigging with a length of stretchy exercise tubing. It was currently
thumping
along to simulate (I assumed) Christian's footsteps as he “worked out.”

I nodded at it. “That's going to void your warranty.”

He dropped his chocolate and gawked at me. “Get out!”

“Nope.” I moved to his desk. “That's not Lemaître chocolate.” Evidently, Christian had a hankering for cheap drugstore chocolate—the kind kids bought at the corner bodega.

“It's been a difficult day.” With a defiant expression, he stared at me. “The police, the questions,
another
person dying—” Christian broke off, his voice warbling. “I'm scared for my life! Aren't you? For God's sake, this place is a death trap!”

Completely unexpectedly, I felt sorry for him.

Christian Lemaître, one of the premier bullies of my industry, was
petrified.
With good reason, I had to admit. He'd holed up in here—probably after finishing talking with the police—to binge on comfort food.

Yes, I know. You're thinking I'm too soft, right?

Well, that's too bad. I didn't get to be famous for my insight with chocolate without having some of those intuitive skills transfer to the real world of people. That's how I am.

“As soon as word gets out, I'm
ruined
!” Christian went on. “The press will crucify me. The public will turn their backs on me. I'll be a laughingstock in the chocolate industry.”

All right. Forget what I said earlier. Christian didn't deserve
that
much sympathy. He was still 100 percent
me, me, ME.

“I can do something about that,” I told him, helping myself to a seat in one of his luxurious leather-bound executive chairs. (
Mm, cushy.
) “But you have to do something for me, too.”

“Nobody can do anything!” Christian wailed before I could exact my part of the bargain—a check-and-repair mission of the spa's malfunctioning wrap equipment. “My retreat is supposed to be my triumphal moment! Now it's ruined.” He pouted. “First Adrienne offed herself, making
me
look like a bad boss in the process—and
then
she took my new product launch with her!”

The Lemaître nutraceutical chocolates line, I surmised. I'd told Travis to keep the truffles. My report would (eventually) make clear my objections to them . . . and offer some alternatives.

“Then my uncle gave everyone an earful when he went all nuclear winter on my banquet last night,” Christian went on, continuing his insensitive diatribe, “and now
Rex
is dead!”

“Yeah. You must be really broken up about that.”

“I am! Everything is falling apart!” Looking distraught, Christian wiped his chocolaty fingers on his shirt.

That absentminded gesture of his niggled at me. Christian had also smeared chocolate on his shirt on the night that Adrienne had died, I remembered. Danny and I had both noticed that detail. But why had Christian been stressed on the night of the welcome reception? He'd been the boy wonder of the show.

“Not
everything
is falling apart,” I told him. “As soon as my report is finished, you'll see that you have options to—”

He held up his chocolate-smudged hand. “Don't even worry about your report. I've got bigger fish to fry.”

I was offended. “My report is
not
inconsequential.”

I might have postponed writing it, but that was . . . temporary.

“That's not what I mean.” Christian gave an impatient wave. “I've been trying to catch up with you for days.” Suddenly, he seemed much more astute. Maybe the sugar buzz was wearing off?

“I heard,” I said dryly. “Dunning me won't work.”

I don't respond well to pressure. Funnily enough, it makes me . . . procrastinate. Badgering
me
about delays is a zero-sum game.

Christian shook his head. “I want to offer you a job.”

I couldn't help perking up at that. At the same time . . .

Did I
really
want to do more work for this soap opera of a chocolate company? Lemaître had
not
been the idyll I'd expected.

“I don't know, Christian,” I demurred, wanting to be professional. “You remember that stipulation in our agreement that limits my consultation to three months? That's because—”

My uncle Ross's will demands that I keep moving
, I was going to say,
or go broke
. But I never had a chance.

“I
need
you, Hayden,” Christian begged. “Please do it!”