Death is Semisweet Read Free Page B

like a story from
Dallas
, the old TV show, believe me. Question number one?”
    “What about your aunt and uncle? Do they live in Kansas City? I bet your uncle was pissed to be cheated like one of the girls.”
    Stephanie snapped her mirrored compact shut. “You know, I’d never thought of it like that. David’s gay. He’s a professor at Duke or somewhere like that. I rarely see him but maybe he lost that good old male bloodlust along with his company shares. My aunt Carol lives right out in Independence. She and her husband retired a couple of years ago, bought one of those motor homes, and now they travel around. I don’t think Carol or my mom give it much thought anymore. It turned out their husbands were good providers, not that that makes it okay. Then there’s my cousin, but that’s another story. Enough family history. Question two?”
    Heaven was signing the credit card receipt when a sharp retort sounded from outside. The Plaza was noisy with tourists and Salvation Army bell ringers and Christmas carols being piped outside all over the area but this sound cut through all the normal shopping sounds.
Crack.
There it was again.
Crack.
And again. It bounded like gunfire. Heaven looked around and saw Charlene Welling leave the hostess desk and head for the door, concern on her face. “Did you hear that?” Heaven asked.
    Stephanie got up and slipped her coat on, a gorgeous red wool number that set off her blond hair. Shelooked out the glass doors that lined the front of the restaurant. “Something’s going on because people are running down the street,” she said, pointing outside. “I hope my chocolate shop hasn’t been robbed or isn’t on fire or anything.”
    Heaven and Stephanie hurried to the door. Now the crowd was running in the opposite direction, looking behind them fearfully. The inordinate number of Santas gave the whole crowd a surrealistic look. Children were shrieking and clutching their parents.
    Heaven and Stephanie stepped outside just in time to see the Foster’s Chocolate blimp come crashing into the Plaza, its giant pink mass getting hung up on the three-quarters-size replica of the Seville Tower that was a centerpiece of the shopping center. There it swayed, looking like the deflated Claes Oldenburg sculpture of a blimp instead of the real thing.
    Suddenly a man dropped like dead weight out of the cockpit to the ground.
    S ergeant Bonnie Weber of the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department sat on a stool in the back room of the Chocolate Queen, eating a chocolate truffle and drinking espresso. Heaven was there too, holding a huge hunk of chocolate-covered popcorn that looked like a dirty, uneven popcorn ball. She had decided on the ladylike approach to eating it and was breaking off chunks and popping them in her mouth, as opposed to just biting into it like an apple. Stephanie was assembling a gift basket for a customer.
    “I can’t believe you two knew that was the sound of a high-powered rifle going off,” Bonnie said.
    Heaven tossed her head, getting ready to brag, thenthought better of it. “Well, maybe not exactly a high-powered rifle, but it was definitely gunshots, that part was plain. You know, Bonnie, after all the school shootings and workplace massacres, if you think you hear gunshots, it really gets your attention. Who knows, you may have time to hide. We were sittings ducks up there in the front of the Classic Cup, what with all that glass.”
    Stephanie had been subdued since the accident. “I thought my shop was being robbed, of course. I never would have guessed it was a sharpshooter taking out the pilot of the Foster blimp. That’s too outrageous.” She sounded as if she still couldn’t believe what she’d seen.
    “Well, it is a homicide, and that’s why I’m here, of course,” Bonnie said as she reached for another truffle. “But it remains to be seen if the shooter was actually aiming for the pilot or just shooting at the blimp in general and hit the