Chocolate Most Deadly (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 2) Read Free

I said a moment
later, placing one steaming cup near Viveca as she dried her eyes with a
shredded paper napkin. “A little tea. A little chocolate. And some friendly
conversation.”
    She stared at the plate of cookies.
Then she reached for the tea and took a tiny sip.
    “Thanks, Kate. I’m sorry to burst
through the door in such a state, but my brother thinks somebody tried to kill
him two days ago.” She sighed again as her mouth settled into a quivering
frown. “And now, as if that isn’t bad enough, I had a dream last night that it
was all true.” Her voice trembled and dropped in volume. “And in my dream,” she
whispered, “the murderer actually got away with it!”
    The bombshell announcement
shattered any hope that tea and cookies would remedy my neighbor’s frantic
state. After years as a PI in Chicago, I’d seen it all before: the tears, the
smeared eyeliner, the fractured sentences spinning in haphazard loops from one
incomplete thought to the next. I knew that the best way to manage someone in
such a state was to stay calm and ask simple questions.
    “Okay, Viv,” I said, offering a
serene smile. “Let’s take it slow. I want to try and understand what happened.”
I waited for her to nod before continuing. “What’s your brother’s name?”
    “Timmy,” she whispered. “Well, Tim.
I mean, he’s a grownup and so…” She pulled in a long, slow breath. “His name is
Tim England,” she said, managing a cheerless smile. “Same last name as me.”
    I nodded. “When was the last time
you saw him?”
    She squinted. “Um, maybe a couple
of months ago.”
    “Did he seem okay?” I asked. “Was
anything going on in his life that might’ve been out of the ordinary or—”
    “Tim’s whole life is strange,” she said.
“It always has been. He’s a free spirit, like someone who…” She paused, tilting
her head slightly. “What’s that saying? Someone who drums to the sound of…”
    “Marches to the beat of their own
drum?”
    “Yeah, that’s it. My brother’s like
that.”
    “And Tim thinks someone tried to
kill him?”
    She swallowed hard and gulped in a
breath. “With poisoned cupcakes.” Her voice was a frayed murmur. “The police
already determined it was cyanide.”
    I kept my gaze on her face as she
recounted the story. When Tim returned to his apartment three days earlier, he
found four chocolate cupcakes in a white paperboard box beside the door. His
first name was written in the center of the lid—three carefully printed letters
surrounded by a heart-shaped border. There were a few pale green smudges on the
box—faint traces of paint, chalk or dye—but no other distinguishing marks.
After looking inside, Tim knocked on the door across the hall and offered the
baked treats to his neighbor.
    “Why would he do that?” I asked.
“It seems like the box was intended as some sort of anonymous gift for your
bother.”
    Viveca shook her head, sending
another cascade of bangs into her eyes. “Tim never eats sweets,” she said,
tucking the hair behind one ear. “And he’s horribly allergic to chocolate.”
    “Maybe the cupcakes were from a
secret admirer,” I suggested. “Or one of his friends.”
    “That’s impossible. Anybody that
knows my brother would also know that he never eats chocolate.”
    I thought about the comment for a
moment. “Then maybe they don’t,” I said.
    She frowned. “Don’t what?”
    “Don’t really know him.”
    The suggestion elicited a murmured
agreement.
    “And if that’s the case,” I
continued, “the person that put cyanide in the cupcakes was almost certainly
trying to harm your brother.”
    Viveca closed her eyes and shuddered.
“I know, I know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about that nonstop since Tim
called.”
    “How did he find out they were
poisoned?”
    “The police.”
    I waited while she sipped her tea.
Then I asked if she could elaborate.
    “One of the detectives told Tim they
ran tests in the forensics