Chocolate Quake Read Online Free PDF Page A

since the mid-nineteenth century.”
    “I’m sitting by a big window. Isn’t that dangerous?”
    Margaret waved vaguely toward the other customers. “You don’t see anyone taking notice, do you? Now eat your hazelnut thing. It looks wonderful.” Then she gave into temptation and tried the disheveled shortcake with a sigh of delight.
    “What evidence?” I asked, trying not to look and feel terrified. The Hazelnut on Chocolate, etc., helped. Even in disarray, it was delicious. “She didn’t kill anyone, so there couldn’t be evidence that—”
    “Well, she was covered with Denise’s blood. Not that I saw her. Pictures, of course. The cops took pictures. But I didn’t see the real thing. I was passing a kidney stone at the time, which is, believe me, worse than giving birth, and then you don’t have anything to show for it. But that’s the last one, believe you-me. They’re going to put me in a bathtub and blast my kidneys with a laser. New technique. Turns a kidney stone to powder.”
    She’d finished off the parfait and two more of the cookies. “Besides the blood all over your mother-in-law, there was the argument. They had a humdinger—Denise and Vera—just that afternoon. Something about feminist books. Denise said there wasn’t enough money for a library of them. Vera got very shirty, as the English say. Lord, I could hear them all the way in my office, one section over and one floor up. And poor Denise. She doesn’t like to argue, and she only took over as the center’s accountant and fund-raiser because Myra Fox got breast cancer. Myra kept the books before she went under the knife, and Denise headed the Battered Women’s Advocacy.
    “So there you are. Discovered at the scene of the crime with the victim’s blood all over her after a nasty argument just that day, and then Vera admitted to the police that they were back on the subject of books in the office that night.”
    “No she didn’t,” I protested. “She told them Denise said the word books twice before she died. Vera didn’t say anything, except to call out for help when she saw that Denise had been attacked. Did they find the weapon?”
    “Not that I know of. If they did, they’ll have to say so on discovery.”
    “Well, how could Vera have used it, got covered with blood, hidden it, and then come back to help her victim? That’s both impossible and implausible.”
    “Very good point, my dear. Something the cops should look into. They won’t, of course. They think they’ve got their murderer.”
    “A small, elderly woman? That’s ridiculous. Couldn’t they tell from the angle of the wounds that someone taller did it? In fact, it had to be a man. What woman would kill another with multiple stab wounds?”
    “And with a big knife, according to my sources at Homicide.”
    “There. You see. Where would Vera get a big knife?”
    “Beats me. The kitchen?”
    “She’s not at all domestic.”
    “Good point. What’s your first name, dear?”
    “Carolyn.”
    She had finished off the shortcake and the other cookies as we talked and was draining her coffee cup, which had been refilled twice at her request. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’d do, Carolyn. I’d get a good private detective to look into who might have killed Denise if it wasn’t Vera. Unfortunately, the center doesn’t have a detective. We’re lucky to have a rent-a-cop at the front door. So I can’t provide one, and Vera would probably refuse if I could. However, I’m sure the city is full of them. The famous detective William Burns, who eventually had his own agency, was hired to help clear out our crooked politicians after the 1906 quake. Sometimes it takes a good shaking up to set things to rights in this town.”
    I hoped that she wasn’t wishing a major earthquake on the city, and I had to agree that my mother-in-law was unlikely to favor hiring a detective. However, I myself could ask questions at the center if the police weren’t willing to do