Dangerously Dark (3 page)

“Coming right up!” Carissa grabbed an aluminum container, then busied herself adding a chocolaty-liquid ice-cream base to it. “I designed the churning machine myself,” she went on as she fixed the container beneath a spiroid paddle. The whole outfit was reminiscent of the KitchenAid stand mixer you might have at home—with an important difference: one wrong move and this one could give its user irreversible frostbite. “I designed and patented custom software to calibrate precisely how much liquid nitrogen to use for each batch. Faster freezing means fewer—”

“Ice crystals!” I blurted, eager to atone for my gaffe with her ring.
This
subject I could ace, unlike engagement ring etiquette. “Which means smoother ice cream and fresher flavor.”

With ice cream, as with chocolate, it's all about details.

Carissa brightened. “That's right! Most people zone out when I talk about the technical stuff. Or they laugh. I don't know why people insist on thinking I'm dumb! It's
infuriating
!”

She pouted over the idea. I gave an inward wince, knowing I'd doubted her intelligence myself just minutes ago. Bygones.

“I'm a culinary professional,” I reminded her, sidestepping the issue of her newfound aptitude for science for the time being. “I can connect the dots. I'm impressed, Carissa.”

I was. I've known a lot of people who've followed their dreams—and a lot
more
people who've wanted to but never tried. Carissa was part of the first group. My hat was off to her.

She tossed me a grateful smile, then turned back to the churning machine. “Get ready for this to knock your socks off!”

Dramatically, she flipped a switch. Nothing happened.

She frowned. “I said, ‘Get ready for this to—'”

Another flip. Again, nothing. Carissa muttered a swearword.

With forced brightness, she regrouped. “Okay. Something must be wrong with the tanks inside. Pretend this never happened. I'll be back in a sec, and then you'll
really
be amazed!”

Carissa unzipped her messenger bag to search for her keys. I waited, mouth watering in anticipation of tasting chocolate. (I'm predictable that way.) Even early in the morning, bittersweet-chocolate ice cream sounded
très délicieuse
to me.

Come on . . . you can't tell me
you
wouldn't eat ice cream at 10:00
A.M.
It's made from milk and eggs, right? Practically breakfast.

I scanned Cartorama, then wandered a short distance away to watch another vendor begin setting up for the day. That whole “Go-Go-Gadget” thing the food carts had going on was fascinating. Behind me, Carissa unearthed her keys. They jangled as she used them to unlock her trailer's door, step inside . . .

. . .
and scream.
Her shriek made all the birds take flight.

An instant later, I heard a sickening thud.
Carissa.

I wheeled around and headed for her trailer, hoping I wasn't too late to deal with whatever had just happened to my friend.

Two

You would think that once you've stumbled upon an honest-to-god murder, you'd be prepared for anything, right? No matter how ghastly or unlikely. But I wasn't prepared for what greeted me inside Carissa's Airstream trailer. I wasn't prepared at all.

I vaulted inside, heart pounding, and glimpsed Carissa collapsed on the floor. She seemed to have fallen on top of . . .
something.
Something bulky and long. Bags of sugar, maybe?

Trying to see what it was, I edged closer. I couldn't see clearly, though. A ghostly vapor filled the space where Carissa kept her equipment and inventory, partly obscuring my vision.

Plus, I felt downright woozy. Short of breath, too. Spots swam before my eyes. I was terrified a homicidal maniac might burst from a dark corner at any moment. After all,
someone
must have gotten in here. On the alert for a potential attacker, I blinked and moved closer, shivering from the chill. It was as if the Airstream was refrigerated—and now so was I. Shakily veering from side to side, I tried not to think of haunted houses and horror movies, dead bodies and killers lurking in the shadows.

It didn't work.
Murder
was all I could think of.

“Carissa!” I crouched beside my unmoving friend. I touched her limp arm. I peered at her face. Her stillness scared me.

A faint hissing sound filled the trailer. My raspy breath overrode it. I was freaked out and not afraid to admit it. At least now the mist was subsiding. That meant I could see.

In that moment, I almost wished I couldn't.

“Carissa?” Gently, I tried to jostle her, feeling on the verge of tears. I'm not a crybaby, but these were extraordinary circumstances. I swallowed hard. “Carissa, are you okay?”

Clearly, she wasn't. Confused about what might have happened in here, I grabbed her arm, hoping I could drag her outside the same way she'd good-naturedly lugged me to Churn PDX. Or maybe just hoping I could make her wake up.
Wake up!

That's when I caught sight of what Carissa had fallen on top of:
a body.
Startled, I tottered backward, almost tripping on the metal Dewars scattered on the floor. I gawked at the man sprawled beneath my friend. His face was squished into the industrial rubber kitchen mat underfoot in an awkward way that
definitely
suggested he wasn't here innocently napping.

Surely, he wasn't
dead
, though, my jumbled thoughts insisted. I mean, he couldn't be, could he? For one thing, what were the odds I'd stumble upon two dead bodies inside of one week? They had to be infinitesimal. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he was a tanked-up, nicely dressed homeless man who'd startled Carissa and made her faint from shock, that's all. Sure. Okay.

He looks too handsome to be dead.
I couldn't help trying to reassure myself. But I wasn't having it. I rebutted:
Nobody who's livin'
la vida loca
lies facedown that way.

I was about to scream for help—the way Carissa had done—when the whole trailer swayed. Someone clomped inside behind me.

I surged upright, high on adrenaline, and confronted the man who stood there. I'm roughly average size for a woman, about five-six sans my sneakers. But I've got my share of tricks. If the new arrival wanted a taste of my go-to self-defense moves (hey, they'd thwarted a would-be mugger in Barcelona), then all he had to do was take another step.

He seemed to realize it, because he put up both hands.

“Whoa! I'm here to help.” He eyed my ready stance, then boldly came closer. But now I could see that he was hardly threatening. Husky, flannel-shirted, and bearded?
Yes.
Capable of murder?
Probably not.
I relaxed a fraction—but only that.

I recognized him as the vendor I'd seen setting up earlier.

“We've got to call for help,” I said, taking charge.

“We've got to get her out of here,” he disagreed. “Now.”

The whole incident—from hearing Carissa scream to entering the trailer to meeting Beardy—probably took twenty seconds, tops. But it seemed to be happening in super slo-mo.

At least to me, it did. Beardy was another story. He didn't have any problem operating in real time. He knelt beside Carissa with evident concern, then hoisted her in his massive arms. He turned, looked around, then galumphed down the steps with an involuntary grunt. The trailer shuddered again. I followed him outside, just in time to watch him lay Carissa on the ground.

Beardy stripped off his flannel shirt, heedless of the onlookers who'd begun gathering (other vendors, I surmised). Dressed only in his undershirt and baggy jeans, he bundled up his flannel button-down, then tenderly placed it beneath Carissa's head for a pillow. She moaned, then began to stir.

Thank God.
She wasn't dead. Shaking and feeling faint with what I assumed was leftover adrenaline, I hurried to her while digging for my cell phone. We still needed help. We needed an ambulance, paramedics, someone knowledgeable about killer vapor. . . .

Even as I had that ludicrous thought (
killer vapor?
), a siren cut through the springtime air. Help was already coming for Carissa, probably thanks to one of the other Cartorama vendors.
She'll be fine, she'll be fine
ran through my head like a comforting litany—then hit an awful, unsettling speed bump.

“The man! Inside!” I gestured wildly toward the trailer. “We've got to go back and get him. He's still in there.”

Beardy pursed his lips and very faintly shook his head. His pale face and drawn expression were trying to tell me something. In my fraught state, I didn't know what. I looked around at the onlookers, then singled out one person who appeared capable—a stocky, thirtyish blond woman wearing a T-shirt featuring a screen-printed piglet and the scripted words
BACON HAD A MOM.

Hey, if she was compassionate toward animals, she'd help.

“You.” I pointed. “Help me carry him out of there.”

“No!” Beardy heaved himself to his feet. He wiped his hands on his jeans-covered backside, then cast an apprehensive glance at Carissa. “I haven't turned off the safety valve yet.”

He was wasting time. I peeled off toward the Airstream trailer anyway, trusting my designated helper to follow me.

She didn't. I only made it a few steps before realizing as much. I glanced backward. Her face was as pale as Beardy's.

“Is it . . .” She faltered and knit her brow. “Who's in there?”

This was no time for discussion. Yet everyone around me seemed to be frozen in shock. The piglet T-shirt woman. Another vendor nearby, who was headed our way wearing a va-va-voom skintight vintage dress and an armful of tattoos. Even a tall, hipster-y man who'd wandered out of a nearby building, frowning at us with his arms crossed over his deep-V-necked T-shirt.

What was wrong with all of them? Couldn't they see this was an emergency? Ordinarily, people listen to me. When I'm on a consultation job, I'm the expert. Clients pay for my opinion, so they tend to comply with it. But here, I might as well have been invisible. I was no match for the stunned inertia around me.

Whatever. I didn't care if these people wanted to stand idly by in a crisis.
I
didn't. I'd drag out that man myself, one inch at a time, if I had to. There was no time to waste.

But just as I took another step, Carissa's voice pierced the sounds of distant traffic. “Declan?” she asked brokenly.

Oh no. Beardy turned to her. I couldn't see his face.

Carissa could. The sight made her burst into tears.

“Declan!” Muzzily, she lurched to her feet. With an awful wail, Carissa ran back to her trailer. She staggered inside.

My gaze met Beardy's. He looked dazed, sad . . . and
guilty
?

What the... ?
Before I could pursue that line of thought, I realized the awful truth. Carissa had just stumbled upon her fiancé's dead body.
Declan Murphy was dead.
I had to go to her.

Part of me didn't want to. I'm not proud of it, but it's true. It had been one thing when I'd thought the man merely needed to be helped out for some first aid. It was another now that I knew he was beyond first aid. Permanently.

Poor Carissa.
I heard her keening from inside her trailer and I was in motion before I could think up any reason not to be.

“Carissa?” I stepped into the tiny Airstream trailer through the open door, squinting to see in the gloom. It was still so cold in there.

Declan Murphy was still so unmoving. Handsome and lifeless.

I couldn't believe it. I suppose I was in shock. So was Carissa. She lay over Declan, her arms wrapped around him, sobbing against his big, broad, completely immobile chest.

“No, no, no,” she murmured in a shattered voice. “Please—”

Whatever she was about to plead for was drowned out by the sound of Beardy lurching into the trailer behind me. I turned to him, annoyed that he'd intrude on Carissa's heartbreak.

The look on his face stopped me. He appeared devastated.

Humbled, I watched as he moved across the trailer, past bags of sugar, containers of cocoa, and ten-pound blocks of chocolate arranged in tidy stacks. Comically, he appeared to be tiptoeing across the space, but he wasn't built for stealth. The whole place rumbled vaguely beneath his ungainly footsteps.

He hunched his undershirt-covered shoulders, looking embarrassed. But Carissa seemed to neither notice nor care.

Poor Carissa.
I went to her, then laid my hand on her shoulder. Comfortingly, I patted her. “I'm so sorry, Carissa.”

She sniffled, her thin shoulders shuddering. She looked up at me. When her gaze met mine, it was damp with tears, yet oddly bright with hope. “He'll be okay. Really, Declan is tough.”

It was the “really” that broke my heart. Carissa's hopefulness couldn't have been more obvious—or more agonizing.

I could see actual
frost
on Declan's waxy, slightly yellowed face. The situation was grim.

“We should all get out of here,” Beardy broke in, standing over both of us with a helpless mien. “Carissa, you know how dangerous the nitro is. I've got the safety valve shut now—”

He looked younger than me—probably in his midtwenties—but he seemed knowledgeable about the science involved. I couldn't forget his guilty expression earlier, though. What did it mean?

“—but it was totally hashed, and I don't know how stable my fix is.” Beardy spoke faster now as he gestured for us both to move. “It's better with the door open, but until all the nitro has dissipated, there's still a serious risk of displacement.”

It was all Greek to me. I'd majored in . . . well, a little of everything, really. You won't be surprised to learn that I wasn't the most decisive college student. Unlike Carissa, who'd seemed to have found her métier early on in art and design, I'd dabbled in all kinds of things. Eventually, chocolate found me.

But that's a story for another, less tragic day.

“I'm not leaving him.” Carissa nudged aside her glasses to wipe her teary eyes. The gesture made her look like a toddler—one who wanted no part of the nap that would help her feel better. “It's our engagement weekend! How can I leave him?”

Sobered by that, I went still. But Beardy didn't.

He came to Carissa, then took her arm. “Come on. Please.”

Outside, the siren I'd heard drew closer. I could hear what had to be an ambulance's doors banging shut. Footsteps neared.

“Just come outside for some fresh air,” Beardy insisted.

His stalwart stance reminded me of Danny. He and Carissa's friend couldn't have been more different, but this was exactly the way Danny had reacted when Adrienne Dowling had been found dead, only steps away from me, at Maison Lemaître. His strong and protective presence had helped me enormously that night.

There was never a good time to encounter your first dead body. It helped to have someone less emotionally invested on hand. Taking Beardy's lead, I patted Carissa's shoulder again.

“Come outside with us,” I urged. “There's help coming for Declan. We'll need to be out of the way of the paramedics.”

That seemed to get Carissa's attention. Her desperate gaze swerved to mine. Held. I thought I was getting through to her.

Then, “
They
can't help with Chocolate After Dark.”

I frowned. “‘Chocolate After Dark'?”

Carissa nodded. Her hair shielded her face. “Declan's—”

She wept, unable to continue. I looked to Beardy.

“Declan's culinary tour,” he explained, sotto voce, casting Carissa a fretful look. He clenched and unclenched his hands, shaking his head. “It was supposed to launch on Monday.”

“Not ‘was.'
Is!
” Carissa exclaimed heatedly. She jerked up her chin, even as voices outside penetrated the trailer. The Cartorama vendors, I assumed, directing the paramedics to the emergency. “It
is
launching on Monday! Declan's worked so hard for it! Chocolate After Dark
has
to go forward. It has to!”

Gloom fell over the trailer's interior as one of the EMTs stopped in the doorway. It was time to get serious.

“Yes,” I told Carissa. “Yes, of course it will go forward!”

“It can't without Declan!” Her scattered gaze flashed to the paramedics. She gulped. “
You
do it, Hayden.
You
do the tour. Just until things are . . . settled with Declan. Okay?” She focused in on me. “Promise me you will.
Please
do it.”