Six Sweets Under, page 3
I glanced up the shore again once I was in my kayak, but I couldn’t tell if Archie had been placed under arrest or not. If his fist had connected with my face, he would have been, but I was glad that hadn’t happened. I was even more relieved that he hadn’t managed to strike my grandfather.
I tried to enjoy the rest of my paddle along the lakeshore, but the incident had left me unsettled. Now that the police were involved, I hoped Archie would dial down his antagonistic behavior, but something told me that wasn’t likely to happen.
* * *
• • •
To my relief, the next few days passed without any further drama caused by Archie Smith. I heard that he hadn’t been arrested after the incident at the Boat Barn, and judging by the gossip flying around town, that wasn’t a popular decision. So far Archie hadn’t attempted to vandalize the gondolas again, and I hoped that would hold true. The races were only two days away now, and everyone aside from Archie was hoping they’d go smoothly.
On another gorgeous summer day, I set out on my walk to work, enjoying the peace and quiet of the early morning. There were signs of life on Venice Avenue, but aside from the local coffee shop, the stores and restaurants wouldn’t open for another hour or two. I liked starting my workday early, at least in the summer, when I could make the short trip to the shop in daylight. My morning walk gave me a chance to soak up the charm of my hometown and to appreciate the change of pace from my former life in LA.
As I crossed the final bridge that would take me to Venice Avenue, I noticed a poster tacked to a tree. Signs and posters weren’t supposed to be placed on trees, buildings, or any of the old-fashioned lampposts around Larch Haven. They were thought to detract from the aesthetic of the town. There were a couple of community noticeboards where people could advertise various events, and any rogue signs that made it onto trees or lampposts were typically swiftly removed.
Apparently, none of the official or self-proclaimed enforcers of the rule had spotted this poster. Or maybe no one had the heart to remove it even if they had seen it. That possibility occurred to me when I drew close enough to read the sign.
The poster stated that a candlelight vigil would be held to mark the tenth anniversary since local teen Lexi Derendorf had gone missing. Lexi had disappeared while I was away at college. I hadn’t known her personally, other than by sight. She was a few years younger than me and our paths hadn’t really crossed, but I remembered hearing about her disappearance.
She was seventeen at the time and had stormed out of her house after having a fight with her parents, Karl and Susan Derendorf. Initially, it was thought that she’d run away and would return before long, but no one ever heard from her again. Half the town had gone out searching for her, to no avail. No one knew what had happened to her. Or if they did, they weren’t saying.
The poster featured a picture of Lexi—probably a school portrait. Her dark hair cascaded over her shoulder as she smiled at the camera. She wore a Viking rune pendant on a leather cord. I recalled from reading about the story online that she always wore that necklace. The police had mentioned it in their pleas for information. It was hoped that the necklace would help to identify Lexi.
I felt terrible for her parents. Ten years later and still no closure.
I certainly wasn’t going to take down the poster, so I kept on walking.
On my way along the avenue, I took in the sight of the new town house development up on a hill overlooking the lake. I hadn’t been past the site recently, but from what I could see from my current vantage point, it appeared as though the development was almost complete. The homes were built in the timber and frame style, so they matched the character of the rest of Larch Haven. The project wouldn’t have been given the green light if that hadn’t been the case.
I wondered what Archie Smith thought about the new homes, which would likely attract new residents. Then I decided not to think about Archie any longer.
“On your way to the shop?”
I turned toward the voice, already knowing it belonged to Sawyer. He was in uniform, with sunglasses shading his eyes. The summer sunshine had bronzed his usually light brown skin, and his hair, which was such a dark shade of brown that it was almost black, ruffled slightly in the gentle morning breeze.
“Lots of chocolates to make,” I said in response to his question.
“I hear you’ve got a new peanut butter truffle.”
“You heard right. You should come by and try one sometime.”
Sawyer had always loved peanut butter.
“I might just do that,” he said as we watched a gondola cruise past. “Are you racing this year?”
“Me? No way.”
He seemed amused by my answer. “Don’t tell me you still don’t know how to row a gondola.”
“I’ve been busy since I moved back.”
Sawyer was shaking his head before I finished speaking. “You visited a few times over the years. And you should have learned long before that, anyway. You were born and raised here. It’s practically sacrilege that you’ve never learned.”
“That may be, but I’m not about to risk falling in the water.” I pointed at a gondolier as he guided his craft past us. “Look how precariously he’s perched there!”
“Seriously, Becks? Have you ever seen a gondolier fall in?”
“Tanner Gibson did,” I reminded him.
Even though I couldn’t see Sawyer’s eyes through his sunglasses, I knew he was rolling them.
“He was three sheets to the wind at the time,” he pointed out. “Besides, you’re a strong swimmer, so what’s the problem?”
I bit down on my lower lip, not keen to answer his question.
Unfortunately, he knew me well enough to interpret my hesitation.
“Hold on,” he said. “Don’t tell me this is about the fictional lake monster you were scared of as a kid.”
“The fictional part is up for debate.”
“You know your brother told you that story to scare you, right?”
“That doesn’t mean the story isn’t true,” I countered. “As I got older, I thought it was just a story too, but then I distinctly felt something brush against my leg one time when I was swimming back from Mad Hatter Island.”
“A fish,” Sawyer said. “Or a plant.”
“That’s not what it felt like.” The mere memory nearly made me shiver.
Sawyer shook his head again. “I’ve been swimming in that lake every summer of my life, and I’ve never seen any sign of a monster.”
“That’s because it’s good at hiding.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I really was. Whatever had brushed up against me had been bigger than a typical fish. I was certain of that. I didn’t mind swimming in pools or other clear water, but anywhere I couldn’t see what might be lurking beneath the surface was a no-go for me. That included the canals and any parts of the lake deeper than a few feet.
“Ask Dizzy,” I said. “She’ll tell you that the possibility of some large, prehistoric creature living in the lake really isn’t that out there.”
“Ask Dizzy?” Sawyer echoed. “She’s always ‘out there.’ ”
I crossed my arms, glaring at him.
“Monday is my day off,” he said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“That’s when I’m teaching you how to be a gondolier.” He took a step backward. “Six a.m. at the main dock. Don’t be late.”
He walked off.
“What if I’m busy?” I called.
He kept walking.
I jogged after him.
A woman’s scream stopped us both in our tracks.
By the time I turned in the direction of the sound, Sawyer was already sprinting past me. I broke into a run and followed him down Venice Avenue and across a stone bridge. I didn’t catch up to him until he stopped at the edge of the canal, not far from where it connected to the lake.
A blond woman stood on the bank, her hands over her mouth as she stared at the water.
As soon as I reached Sawyer’s side, I saw why the woman had screamed.
A body floated facedown in the canal.
Chapter Four
I retreated to a nearby bench, one that offered a view of Shadow Lake rather than the canal. Two other police officers had joined Sawyer on the scene, and I didn’t want to watch when they retrieved the body. If it had been in the water for more than a short time, it likely wouldn’t be a pretty sight. It was bad enough that I’d seen the gruesome gash on the back of the head.
The owners of the closest cottage had come running at the sound of the scream, just as Sawyer and I had. The middle-aged couple had since taken the sobbing blond woman into their home to calm her down. I hoped she’d be all right.
As much as I didn’t want to recall what I’d seen in vivid detail, I focused on the memory of the body bobbing gently in the canal. All I’d seen was that he had short gray hair and was wearing jeans and a dark green shirt. There were plenty of tourists in town at the moment, and since I’d been living across the country for the past seven years there were many local residents I didn’t know. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew the drowned man’s identity. The size and build of the body and the thinning gray hair matched what I remembered about Archie Smith.
If Archie was the dead man, that would explain why he hadn’t caused any more problems in town since the incident at the Boat Barn. Having grown up next to a lake, I knew that drowning victims often stayed beneath the water for a few days before floating to the surface. That meant Archie could have died soon after I’d last seen him.
I tried my best to push all those thoughts away from the center of my mind, but I didn’t have much success. My gaze drifted off to my left, toward where Sawyer and his colleagues stood on the bank of the canal. Another officer appeared, putting along in a small motor boat, likely there to retrieve the body.
I resolutely turned away again, not wanting to see what would happen next. Closing my eyes, I breathed in the fresh summer air and imagined myself lying in the sun on the top of the rocks on Mad Hatter Island. It was a trick I’d used often in Los Angeles whenever I felt nervous about an audition or when my anxiety became overwhelming.
I tried to tune out the sounds around me, but the splashes from the canal were hard to ignore, and a new murmur of voices had joined that of the police. My eyes popped open when I heard footsteps heading my way.
“You okay, Becca?” Sawyer asked as he stopped next to the bench where I was seated.
“Better than Archie. It is Archie, isn’t it?”
“He hasn’t been formally identified yet.” Sawyer’s expression gave nothing away.
I rubbed my arms, even though the morning sunlight had warmed my skin.
Sawyer rested a hand on my shoulder. “Seriously, Becca. Are you all right?”
I stood up and his hand fell away from my shoulder. “I’m good. How about you? Have you come across a lot of dead bodies as a police officer?”
“A few, unfortunately.”
That didn’t surprise me. No doubt he’d seen other drownings as well as accidents on the highway that led out of town, not to mention the natural deaths that must happen now and then.
“You don’t need to stick around,” he said. “Were you on your way to the shop?”
I nodded. It seemed like ages ago that I’d set off from home, even though it probably hadn’t even been a full hour yet.
“Can I go back the way we came?” I asked.
More police officers had arrived and were preventing boats and people from getting close to the location where the body was found.
“Go ahead,” Sawyer said with a nod.
I averted my eyes from the canal as I hurried along the pathway to the nearest bridge.
“What happened?”
“Did someone die?”
“What’s going on?”
The questions pelted me like hail as I threaded my way through the crowd of onlookers on the other side of the bridge.
“Someone drowned, I think,” I said without stopping. All I wanted to do was to get away from the questions and reach the familiar haven of the chocolate shop.
“Who?” several people asked.
“I’m not sure.” That was the truth. I thought Archie was the dead man, but I didn’t know for certain.
I broke free of the crowd and hurried away, not wanting to have to face any more questions. When I reached Venice Avenue, I jogged the rest of the way to the shop. I locked the door behind me and leaned against it, taking in a deep breath and allowing the familiar and delicious scent of chocolate to calm me.
My cousin Angie emerged from the back hallway while I was still leaning against the door. She had her curly dark hair tied back and wore a cardigan over her yellow sundress.
“There you are,” she said. “I was about to text you. You’re always here before me. Did you oversleep?”
“I wish that was what had happened.”
I quickly told her about the body floating in the canal.
“Oh my gosh.” Angie rested a hand over her heart. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I probably would have fainted.”
“I might have done that if I’d watched when they turned the body over.” I shuddered. “I’d better get to work.”
I checked the kitchen thermostat three times before the temperature reading registered in my mind. My brain felt scattered, my thoughts constantly trying to stray back to the canal. Forcing myself to focus, I got ready to work, satisfied that the kitchen was at the right temperature for making chocolates.
As I’d hoped, working helped to calm me down. I started out by making the fillings for piña colada bonbons and coffee creams. The piña colada bonbons were made of pineapple jelly and coconut rum ganache, encased in white chocolate. I painted the molds so the chocolate shells would be bright blue and yellow, like the sunshine and water of a tropical beach. I didn’t paint the coffee creams, which were encased in milk chocolate, but I used molds with a fancy swirl pattern that would imprint the top of the bonbons.
Once I had all the fillings prepared, I moved to the tempering machine, holding the molds beneath the waterfall of tempered chocolate. I scraped off the excess and set the molds aside so the chocolate could set before I added the fillings. I always found the process of making bonbons and truffles soothing and satisfying, and today it helped to ease the tension that had tightened my muscles ever since seeing the body in the canal. The delicious aroma of chocolate helped too.
I was in the midst of piping ganache into the molds for the piña colada bonbons when I heard my grandmother’s voice. I set aside the piping bag and hurried out into the shop. Angie had opened the store while I was working, and I now found several townsfolk gathered around Lolly.
“No one knows how Archie ended up drowning,” she was saying to the small crowd. “Maybe he simply lost his footing and fell in, hitting his head on the way down.”
“It was probably his paralysis that caused him to fall,” Delphi Snodgrass spoke up. She was a tall, thin woman with large glasses and gray hair that fell to her shoulder blades in frizzy waves. Her grayish-blue eyes gleamed, as they often did when gossip was flying around town. Delphi and her lifelong best friend, Luella Plank, loved nothing more than gossip, and they weren’t above starting wildly untrue rumors. It almost seemed to be a sport to them. They were known around Larch Haven as the Gossip Grannies. I didn’t know if Delphi and Luella were aware of the nickname or not.
“He wasn’t paralyzed,” Lolly said, shooting a stern look at Delphi. “He had some loss of feeling in his left hand, that’s all.”
Delphi didn’t seem bothered by the correction. “He had a terrible disease,” she whispered to the woman standing next to her.
I doubted that was true, simply because of the source of the information.
Several of the people in the shop peppered my grandmother with questions, but when she caught sight of me, she made her way through the crowd and pulled me into a hug.
“Rebecca, I heard you were there when the body was found.”
Everyone who overheard her now aimed their barrage of questions at me.
For a second, I felt completely overwhelmed, but then Lolly tucked her arm through mine and led me into the back, firmly shutting the door to the kitchen behind us.
“Thanks for getting me out of there,” I said with relief. “I thought they were about to eat me for lunch.”
“You know how curious people get when something out of the ordinary happens here in Larch Haven. Forget about them.” She put her hands to my cheeks. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Really.” My mind circled back to what I’d heard her say earlier. “Are you sure it was Archie Smith? I thought it was him, but Sawyer wouldn’t confirm or deny that.”
“There hasn’t been any formal identification,” Lolly said, “but I’ve heard that the dead man matched Archie’s description and was wearing the clothes he was last seen in. Plus, Archie’s wallet was in his pocket.”
That was confirmation enough for me.
“Will you be okay here?” Lolly asked. “I’m meeting Joan for a game of table tennis at the rec center.”
“Of course. Have fun.”
After Lolly left, I stayed in the kitchen, focusing on my work. I didn’t stop again until my stomach gave a loud rumble of hunger. I glanced at the clock on the wall and realized that it was well past noon. Sometimes I got so far into the chocolate-making zone that I lost track of time and the world around me, just like I did when reading a really good book.
I finished up my latest batch of chocolates and then stretched my arms over my head. My stomach gave another rumble. It was time to wrap up for the day and get myself some food.
