Sweet Revenge (Cocoa Narel Chocolate Shop Mysteries Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter 19

I waited patiently, listening for signs of life inside Carl’s house. After a full minute, I tried ringing the door bell again. Finally, I heard footsteps from inside. The door opened wide, revealing a smiling and tired looking Carl.

“Narel! I’m so sorry. I fell asleep on the sofa after you called. How long have you been waiting?” he asked, concerned.

“Not long,” I lied. We’d both been under a lot of stress, so I could hardly blame him for catching up on sleep. The last thing I wanted was to make him feel bad about it. “Oh, I brought you these,” I said as I handed him two large boxes.

“Oh, thanks!” He beamed. “Uh, what are they?”

“Oh, it’s just a nice raw lasagna with cilantro pesto and marinated vegetables.” I smiled at Carl’s shocked reaction.

“That’s great, Narel. Thanks,” Carl said in a less than convincing tone.

“I’m kidding,” I said, playfully punching his arm. “One’s full of chocolates; the other’s full of chocolate cake. I’ve included some of my favorite chocolates. There are cinnamon ones, which are filled with cinnamon-infused cream and honey, dipped in dark chocolate, and then dusted with cinnamon. This one’s coffee-flavored, which is basically the same as the last one only with coffee-infused cream and it’s covered with caramelized coffee beans rather than cinnamon. Another has toasted almonds mixed with dried cherries in a hazelnut ganache. And the cake is actually a chocolate mousse cake with chocolate mascarpone.”

Carl stared blankly at me for a long time before he spoke. “Narel, I appreciate all this; I really do. But you could’ve just that they were chocolates and cake.” He laughed.

I felt a little embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s good to be passionate about my work though, right?”

“Right you are. Anyway, go on in. I’ll get your bags, and Mongrel.” He stepped back from the front door and beckoned me inside his house.

I waved to the police officer waiting outside in the car. Mongrel had growled and hissed from his basket the whole way to Carl’s place.

Despite the fact I had seen it a million times before, I was struck by how white the interior of his house was: white chairs, white carpet, white walls. Luckily it was impossible to buy things like book interiors and plants in white, or the house would be hard to navigate. It was a strange look, but gave weight to certain elements, creating a bizarre contrast of flat white furniture and bright colored accessories and utilities.

Carl put the cake in the fridge and sat the box of chocolates on his living room table. He opened them up for us to share and I immediately took two or three. Okay, I took five. Carl walked over to me. “We’ll have to make sure to keep Louis the Fourteenth and Mongrel separate while you’re staying here. Louis’s asleep on my bed at the moment, so I’ve shut my bedroom door. You can open Mongrel’s basket now, if you like.”

I shuddered. “Why don’t you, Carl?” It had taken every ounce of bravery for me to shut the basket door for the ride over.

Carl gingerly opened the door, and while Mongrel made terribly scary sounds, he kept his huge paws to himself. Carl walked over to a large whiteboard sitting in the center of the room and grabbed a black marker.

“We’ll need to update our list of suspects first, I suppose,” he said.

I’d come here to discuss the murders with him, but hearing him say that so flatly put me on edge. “Is that the best place to start?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not exactly a veteran crime solver, but shouldn’t we start with motives?”

Carl laughed when I asked. “I think you’re right. We’ll concentrate on our list of victims.” Carl scribbled on the whiteboard. When he was done he stepped back, revealing five names in total.

“Lucinda?” I asked. “She’s not a victim.”

“Only by blind luck,” Carl reminded me. “We should treat her as a victim, I think, since I’m sure the killer will try to, well, kill her.” I nodded in response, realizing that he had a point. He continued. “So, we have the five victims, or rather, four victims and a possible victim-to-be. But what if the killer was actually one of the victims and has since died?”

“That doesn’t add up,” I pointed out. “The murderer is still at large. I think it’s a wild leap to assume that somebody has killed the original killer and then moved on to kill the others. It’s certainly all the work of the same person.”

Carl looked up, clearly deep in thought. “What if it was more than one person?” he asked. “For all we know they were in on it together, and it’s all backfired. Maybe they started to kill each other!” he exclaimed.

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “I wasn’t exactly a fan of The Populars either, Carl, but I really don’t think they’re to blame for this. They’re quite clearly the victims here, and the killer is more likely to be someone like us, as I keep saying. Someone who was bullied by them, either back in school or more recently.”

Carl thought for a moment, before looking up at me and snapping his fingers. “I’ve got it! Coffee will help us.” He laughed. “Would you like some?”

I smiled. “Yes, please, that’s a great idea. This is bleak enough without caffeine.” After a few minutes, Carl returned with a coffee mug and placed it on the table in front of me. It was a pure white mug, of course. It’s a wonder he hadn’t figured out how to turn coffee white.

“Well,” Carl began, “we shouldn’t assume anything at this point, except that the victims—Lucinda excluded—are all quite dead. As such, we shouldn’t treat them as suspects.”

“I agree,” I said, nodding. “We’re likely to have a long enough list without them, and it seems unlikely. So where do we go from here?” I asked.

Carl looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“I thought that would be obvious. We look at who they’ve bullied,” he said, shrugging. “It seems like the most obvious route.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I admitted with a resigned sigh. “It’s just not something I really wanted to bring up again. All right, let’s make a new list. Who’s first?”

“First up is Wayne Sidebottom, who was born with the unfortunate kind of surname that guarantees at least some level of bullying.” Carl wrote Wayne’s full name on the board as he spoke.

“And what did they do to him?” I asked, swallowing hard. I knew this was going to bring back some painful memories, although it wasn’t as if they ever left.

“It’s about as straightforward as bullying goes, really. They almost lose marks for unoriginality, but they used to drag him behind the toilets, beat him up and literally take his lunch money.”

“Ouch,” I winced. “Did his dog eat his homework, too?”

“Probably,” Carl said, unimpressed with my stunning wit. “And given the fact that he recently bought the winery and moved back to town, the timing’s right.”

“What do you think could have triggered it?” I asked. “I mean, I get that the bullying could be enough, but it seems strange to deal with it all these years and then kill a group of people after buying a winery. His life doesn’t exactly seem like a bad one.”

“Maybe he bought the winery as a cover to move back to town?” Carl suggested.

I shook my head. “I seriously doubt it. If anything, it makes him more suspicious. It’s possible that something set him off again, but we’re not going to know that without some serious research,” I said, putting my head into my hands. “Who’s next?” I asked.

“Let’s see,” Carl thought for a moment. “Ah, yeah, Royston Jackson.” He nodded grimly. “I don’t doubt everyone remembers him.”

“Of course they do,” I sighed. “They pulled his pants down during the big public performance in front of that big crowd.”

Carl nodded.

“Oh, I hated those kids,” I sighed again, thinking that it probably wasn’t best to say that about people who had died. It was hard spending my whole life detesting a group of people only to start feeling sorry for them. “What would make Royston snap now, though?” I asked.

“No idea,” Carl said. “And as far as I can remember that was the only time they bullied him, as bad as it was.”

I nodded in agreement. “Probably not a prime suspect then, but we’ll keep him in mind. Who else is there?” I asked. We both sat in thought for a while. I took another sip of my coffee and noticed that Carl had eaten most of the chocolates when I wasn’t looking.

“Hmm, wait a minute,” Carl said. “The Populars actually did something to Royston more recently, remember? I’d forgotten about it. They keyed his BMW.”

“That’s right! What’s wrong with these people?”

Carl shrugged in response. “Anyway, that’s more motive for him, so I think he’s bumped up a little on the list. I’m sure that he wouldn’t kill anybody over something so small, but it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.”

We sat in silent thought for a moment.

“And is Frederick Flowers still our main suspect?”

“Yes, I think so, considering they took photos of him on the toilet and uploaded them to the internet. He’s probably well and truly sick of people looking him up online. The photos are still there, too. We saw for ourselves that he has serious anger management issues.” Carl sat down and stretched his arms out in front of him.

“He says he’s a bouncer, but what if he’s an assassin?” I teased, realizing as I said it that the possibility was more scary than funny.

“That’s true, I guess,” Carl admitted. “I’ll keep him at the top of our list.”

I sipped my coffee slowly as we sat, thinking. “What about Susie Marington?” I asked. “I don’t remember her too well, but I’m sure she had a problem with them as well. She was younger than we were, but The Populars targeted her for some reason.”

“Ah, no, I looked her up already,” Carl said flatly. “She’s living abroad. In Italy, actually. She was a suspect considering what happened to her, but as far as I could tell she’s still there. Pictures of her in Italy have been uploaded to Facebook and everything over the last few days, so I don’t think she’s here.”

“She could have hired someone,” I suggested.

“True, but that’s hardly a lead. Anybody could have hired someone to do it.” Carl sighed and rubbed his face. “I’m not sure coffee’s a stiff enough drink for this,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” True to his word, Carl returned moments later with a bottle of what seemed to be vodka. Tracking down a murderer from our past definitely felt like the kind of activity that warranted hard liquor, so I didn’t protest.

Carl spoke up. “What about Tom, um, Borage Fletcher?” he asked. “I know you have a mega crush on him, but how’s your memory as far as he’s concerned? Can you remember what The Populars did to him?”

“Oh, I think I remember. He was on an excursion, and one of The Populars pretended to be Tom during roll call, right? So the school left without him, and he ended up being stranded at the camp until some strangers found him and called the school,” I said, remembering it sadly. “What was wrong with them?” I asked for the umpteenth time. As far as I knew they mostly had good home lives, so I couldn’t understand what made kids do such horrible things. I sighed loudly and took a drink. I grimaced as the vodka burned; Carl hadn’t skimped on cheap stuff.

“Yeah, that’s right. What’s worse is that it was in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Everybody had flown out by the time the people that found Tom called, so his parents had to go fly there to collect him themselves, poor guy.” Carl looked a bit put out.

Carl pulled some wool from Tom’s name and attached it under Hamilton Howes’s magnet.

Our Suspects List was already significant. We had Wayne Sidebottom, who was beaten up and had his money stolen routinely. There was Royston Jackson, who had his pants pulled down during an all-too-public performance, and Frederick Flowers, who similarly had photos of him on the toilet uploaded. Susie Marington, who we knew precious little about, but seemed unlikely. Finally, we had Tom Fletcher, who was abandoned in another state because of their actions. It was a long list, but didn’t lead to anything other than circumstantial evidence.

“I’m not sure this has gotten us anywhere,” I admitted, feeling upset. “If anything it’s just made me feel worse about all this.” I sighed.

Carl nodded softly in agreement. “I can’t think of anybody else,” he said, taking another drink. “Then again, there were a lot of kids that were on the receiving end of their bullying, and I don’t remember nearly all of them.” He sounded defeated.

I thought for a moment about what we could do. “Maybe it’s worth taking this information to the police,” I suggested. “I mean, it’s not exactly concrete evidence, I’ll admit. But maybe they already suspect one of these people, and this is what they’re missing.” I was started to feel hopeful. I figured that if the police suspected one of these people, maybe this was all they’d need to investigate further.

Carl was silent for a moment before he spoke. “After thinking back on all of this stuff, I’m not even sure if I want them to be arrested,” he said, shrugging at my look of shock. “I mean, think about what they’ve gone through. We went through hell, but it wasn’t as bad as some of these kids.”

“Carl, people have been murdered. Being bullied is awful, as we both know all too well, but that doesn’t excuse murder,” I said, surprised I had to explain this at all.

Carl sighed and nodded. “You’re right, of course. Maybe I’ve just had too much vodka. Speaking of which, if we’re going down to the station, we should probably either walk or get a taxi.” He laughed.