Dying for Chocolate Read online

  The pool.

  I peeled off in the direction of Elk Park Prep.

  I was so used to that road I could whip around its curves and drink bottled water at the same time. The Perrier was a necessity to help dissipate whatever poison lingered in my system. I knew from reading about Spanish fly that some people became much sicker than others, and it didn’t necessarily depend on the dose. This would explain why Schulz had been sick before me. I shook my head from side to side. My brain felt woozy. I ordered myself to sharpen up. My sensibilities might be the only thing to save Arch.

  Luckily, some vestige of mental sharpness kicked in just when the van careened around the last curve and came up on the school entrance. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid smashing into the electrified gate.

  I cursed mightily and stepped gingerly out of the van. The gate was armed and the stone wall was too high to scale. I wished every flower behind Elk Park Prep’s deer-proof gate would burn in hell or be eaten by a marauding herd of wild animals.

  I stared at the electrified wires. I couldn’t risk touching it: I had heard too many stories of electric shock throwing unsuspecting humans for first-and-ten yardage. But I had to get through. Short of breaking the power circuit. . . But why break it? Why not keep it? I walked back to the van and got the general’s wire cutters and my jumper cables.

  I hustled back to the gate and began to attach the jumper cables to the wire. I thought that I would have given a year’s supply of unsalted butter for the presence of a rocket scientist. Ten years’ worth for an electrical engineer.

  I clipped the wire and didn’t die. Hallelujah. I cut savagely at the fence, tore out the hole I’d made, and began to run up to the school. I didn’t want them— whoever they were—to hear me coming.

  There were no infrared security lights here to detect human approach. Why should there be? They had electricity to keep Bambi out. Still, the shadows of trees cast long, fingered shadows across the road and made my heart pound in my chest. Voices carried through the night air from the pool site. Every fifteen yards up the driveway, short lanterns on poles shed disks of yellow light. Poppies and bluebells waved in the night breeze like fairy-sentries on their mounds. I focused straight ahead and walked fast until I was at the wire fence surrounding the construction area.

  Another damn fence.

  I knew it was six feet exactly, and that it was required by building code when a pool was under construction. If you wanted to get in easily, you had to go through the gate, now closed and locked. Adele had somehow wea-seled the code out of the construction workers, because I could see Arch. I could hear him splashing and calling to someone who was holding a flashlight and either reading or writing in a notebook next to the gate. But who was it? There was no car in the parking lot. The voice I could hear was female. If Adele was around, she was not visible. I listened and then recognized the voice: Sissy.

  Arch had known something was wrong. Why was he playing? Or was he?

  On the far side of the pool area behind the newly installed diving board, a small mountain of dirt bordered the concrete deck. The chain-link fence ran behind the dirt pile. On that side, the area behind the fence fell away sharply. I could hide behind that ridge, but what good would it do me? I had to get through the chain-link fence. Arch had signaled he was in trouble. Maybe Sissy had some kind of weapon. I didn’t want to find out by feeling it against my skull.

  I scanned the school grounds. The dark silhouette of the old hotel building rose ominously over the parking lots. Here and there in the darkness, floodlights shed tents of light. The tall evergreens that peppered the campus whooshed in the night wind.

  I crouched like an Indian and stumbled over to behind the fence. From where I was hidden, I could not see Arch. I gripped the wire cutters and began to clip. Arch must have been over by Sissy. Their voices were somewhat distant. They began to argue. “You . . . you . . .” Arch was saying. I couldn’t make the rest of it out.

  Then she said sharply, loudly, the way you do when you want to change the subject, “Forget about it! You have to do this thing with the manacles! Adele doesn’t want another messed-up magic trick in her pool!”

  Arch shrieked, “I don’t want to! My mom wouldn’t want me—”

  “Shut up, scaredy-cat. Besides, if you don’t do it, Adele’s going to fire your mother! Is that what you want?”

  I ran through the soft dirt to where I could see them. Dim light from a distant floodlamp cast long, thin shadows across the concrete deck. Sissy leaned over and appeared to be rummaging in a bag. Her notebook was on the ground, papers askew. Did she have a weapon? I couldn’t tell. Arch had his back to her. He put his hands behind him. Sissy took out a stick and two pieces of rope. My heart stopped.

  The Chinese manacles. Arch’s favorite trick. The magician appears to be shackled at the wrists with the ropes, which are threaded back through the tube and drawn tight by one or more assistants. The trick is that a tiny piece of string attaches the ropes. When the trick is done right, the assistant who puts the magician into the shackle breaks the string by appearing to pull the ropes taut. Sissy accompanied the cuffed Arch over to the diving board.

  I clawed madly at the dirt to get back around to the fence. Blood beat in my ears. I sent clods of soil flying. God, help me, I begged as I cut as fast as I could. I could not imagine what Adele had used to replace the string inside the manacles.

  “I think you need to be over here next to me while I’m doing this,” came Arch’s voice, much closer now. He must have been on the diving board. Sissy said something indistinguishable. “Okay!” cried Arch. “You pull it tight and then I’ll go off the board. Then it’ll look like I get out of them underwater.”

  “Oh, all right,” came Sissy’s voice.

  I clipped the last two wires and ripped out the hunk of fence just as a splash erupted from the pool. Seconds ticked off in my head—one, two, three, four, five—as I tore up the dirt mound behind the diving board. Sissy, fully clothed, was still standing on the board. I leaped up on the board and pushed her into the water. She shrieked before splashing in.

  Arch’s head emerged from the water. He sputtered and coughed. Yelled, “I can’t seem to get them off!” His voice was full of panic.

  The water was like ink. I jumped away from the board and Arch’s voice. The cold was a shock. Once in the water, I couldn’t see a thing. Fear seized my body. Arch was thrashing nearby. Sissy was yelling, “Who is it?” but I had no intention of answering. I swam to where I thought Arch was. With my arms rigid in front of me, I dove. I was hoping to reach Arch, but only nicked the bottom of the pool. I brought my legs to the pool floor and pushed upward. Sissy had scrambled out of the pool. I heard her voice but could not see her. A few feet behind me, Arch surfaced and yelped. I lunged for him.

  “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!” I screamed when I had hold of one of his arms.

  He was screaming and thrashing in a complete panic. “Mom!” he sobbed. “Mom! I can’t get out of these things!”

  I put my arm across his chest. Treading water madly, I pushed up on his head and shoulders so they were above the water. With his arms locked in the handcuffs, Arch’s body was heavy, hard to grip. He thrashed against the constraints and gagged helplessly on the water.

  “Hold still! Stop moving!” I yelled. The water raged with his kicking and jerking. I couldn’t hold on to him. My hair fell like cold seaweed over my eyes and I was blinded. A sudden unwanted memory of being caught by the undertow on the Jersey shore rolled over me. The dark water had sucked me down like a muscled giant, and I had had the very clear thought, at age eleven, that I was about to die.

  My lungs burned as I heaved up again and caught Arch under his armpits. Come on, honey, come on, I sent my thoughts to him the way I had prayed in childbirth. If we can just get through the next five minutes, I thought, if we can just get through . . .

  His slippery body quieted. His cough was still ragged, but he had stopped fighting the water so hard. I b
egan a one-armed crawl to the side. Slowly, slowly, I kicked and pulled and fought off sheer panic. My eyes burned. I swallowed the heavily chlorinated water. I couldn’t see the pool’s edge, but in a minute my head cracked the cement.

  “Okay, carefully, carefully,” I said to Arch. He shook loose from me, his hands still bound, and walked suddenly up the submerged concrete steps.

  “Goldy, it’s you!” said an astonished, shivering Sissy. “What happened in there? Did you push me in? What happened to Arch?”

  I glanced around at my son. Despite the burn from the chlorine, my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. He had crouched down to bring his hands close to his feet. Savagely, he tromped on the bamboo pole with its ropes that pinned his wrists. Within a moment the bamboo broke and he wriggled his arms free.

  Sissy’s hands were empty. No weapon. “Get a towel,” I ordered her, unwilling for the moment to accuse her of attempted murder or being an accessory thereto. Her face puzzled, she silently handed me a couple of small towels. I wrapped” both of them around Arch, who was sniffling hard and coughing.

  “Mom, I was trying to get away from her! I thought if I could get out of the manacles quickly, I’d be able to run away!”

  “It’s okay, Arch, it’s okay.” I grabbed a tarpaulin that was covering some pipes, then picked up one of the pipes. I looked around to where Sissy had been sitting. No weapon there, either—nothing but the bag, her flashlight, and her school notebook.

  “Let’s all get back to the van,” I said. I reached the long-handled flashlight before Sissy could get it. “I don’t want to be here if Adele comes back. And don’t touch me or Arch,” I warned Sissy fiercely as I brandished the pipe and the flashlight. She gaped at me.

  Arch said, “But, Mom, you have to look at her notebook! You have to—”

  “What we have to do is get out of here,” I said curtly. Sissy marched sulkily in front of us. When we were all in the van I turned the heat to high and handed Arch the pipe and flashlight. He knew what to do with them if he needed to. Greeted by a rush of cool air from a cold engine, I turned to Sissy as we lurched forward.

  “You want to tell me why you’re here?”

  “I was taking care of Arch,” she whined. “Just until Adele got back with you. I don’t know what happened to her.” She added, “She was paying me to keep him there.”

  “Did that include drowning him?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. “Of course not! Adele gave me the bag with the tricks and just told me to make sure he practiced with the Chinese manacles tonight. That’s all.”

  “And what about pushing me into the glass case at the café? Did she pay you for that, too, you little bitch?”

  Sissy snorted. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you!” she protested. “I was just supposed to warn you off. She’s Julian’s mother! She told me! She could do so much for him financially, for his future and everything. She said you were screwing it up!”

  I heard Arch gasp and cough upon hearing about Julian’s parentage.

  “And yes,” Sissy was saying, “she paid me to push you. She said it would save you from being hurt.”

  I was so angry I didn’t even want to talk to her. I said, “Arch? Did you see Adele with Brian Harrington out by the pool last night?”

  Sissy caught her breath. Arch snuffled mightily, then coughed again. He said, “Yeah, I guess. So what? I thought she’d tell on me for turning off the security system and sneaking in late from the pool. When she didn’t, I didn’t tell on her, either.”

  Ah, playground morality. I said, “You know she fixed your manacles not to work? You should have told me you saw her!” I could hear the scolding in my voice so I stopped. I was so happy to see Arch alive, I couldn’t imagine bawling him out.

  Arch coughed and tried to clear his throat repeatedly as we jounced and swerved along the road to Aspen Meadow. Whenever he stopped coughing, he sniveled and shivered. Where was I supposed to take him? I felt bad about Schulz. I knew I had to go back and check on him at the Farquhars. Arch’s clean, dry clothes would be there, too. But I would only go in if the entire Furman County Sheriff’s Department assured me it was safe.

  “Maman,” said Arch with a loud sniff. “Comment s’appelle felle?”

  “Oh, Arch,” I said, “I’m in no mood—”

  Sissy said, “This isn’t fair. My father’s the only one in my family who speaks French.”

  Arch coughed. He insisted, “Comment s’appelle feller

  What was Sissy’s name? What kind of question was that? I took a deep breath.

  I said, “Elle s’appelle Sissy.”

  “Et le surnom?” Arch persisted. “En français, s’il vous plaît. “

  I shook my head. Too much stuff going on in one evening. I was not in the mood, not in the mood . . .

  Slowly, my mind shifted French gears. I pulled the car over onto a narrow slice of shoulder. I turned with great deliberateness to Sissy. What was the word for stone in French?

  I glared at the teenager sitting next to me.

  I said, “Pierre.”

  30.

  “Tell me,” I said, “was the pseudonym your father’s idea?”

  She sulked. Said, “No, I got it from a dictionary.”

  I could feel my voice rising out of control. “Now tell me,” I shrieked, “what did I ever do to you?”

  Sissy’s nostrils flared in indignation. “Julian said he wanted to be a chef. He wanted to ask if he could apprentice with you! He was going to do that instead of be a doctor! Of course I had to make you look bad!”

  I should have known. The unfortunately named Goldy Bear. Julian’s grossly misguided quest. The undeniably pedantic use of language.

  I said, “Sissy, if you are worth anything, which I doubt, I’m going to sue you for it. Now shut up until we get to the Farquhars.”

  When we got to the end of Sam Snead Lane, lights from police cars flashed importantly at the top of the driveway. The place looked like a carnival. I drove up to the police line and asked for Schulz.

  After some conferring between officers, Schulz came walking slowly down the driveway.

  “Where did you go?” he demanded. His color was still awful, but his eyes were furious.

  “To the school,” I said. “To get Arch.”

  His face softened. “Thank God. Where is he?”

  “In the van. He’s still pretty cold, and he has an awful cough. Did you find Adele?”

  He rubbed his forehead. His tone was weary. “Yes and no. She got out on 1-70, turned off her lights, made a U-turn on the median. Hightailed it back here. She’s in that damn storage area screaming about a detonator. They’re trying to talk to her.”

  My heart quaked with fear for Bo. “What about the general—”

  “He’s okay, on his way to Denver in an ambulance. Soon as he recovers we’re going to book him.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. For what?”

  “For breaking every explosives-storage law on the books, thank you very much.”

  There was some shouting from the top of the driveway. A wave of police officers came running out toward their vehicles, shouting about clearing the area.

  Suddenly there was a flash and a boom. We were all thrown to the cement. Booms, hisses, more booms. I covered my head and hoped that the van had not been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Light erupted and then abruptly went out. The booms wouldn’t stop.

  There was a great roar. The garage was on fire. Debris showered around us: the remains of the magazine. There was one final, terrible explosion, then a silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire and my ragged breathing.

  “Arch!” I cried. Schulz grabbed for me, but missed. I ran back to the van. It had survived the explosion. As I was about to open the door I heard a loud meow and felt a wad of fur dash between my legs. I looked down at Scout. I scooped up the cat and climbed into the van.

  Sissy looked at me wide-eyed. Her wet hair was disheveled, her face white with fear. “Adele?”
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  “I’m sorry,” I said. I handed her the cat. Wordlessly, she opened the van door and climbed out holding Scout.

  Arch was coughing, choking. His chest heaved. He was having trouble breathing. Why, why, why? I asked myself.

  “Breathe for me, Arch. Take deep breaths,” I ordered. He wheezed and coughed. His history of virally induced asthma made this doubly frightening. He must have aspirated pool water. I gave myself a mental kick. This happened all the time to river rafters. The raft would capsize in rapids and rafters would aspirate river water. After initial coughing and gagging, they would appear to be fine. But water could get trapped in the air side of the lung wall, and an hour after being pulled out of the water, they drowned.

  Arch wheezed and could not get his breath. He gasped wildly before he went unconscious. I catapulted backward out of the van and went shrieking up to Schulz for help.

  After some initial confusion, a medic pulled Arch out and began to work on him in the driveway. He cleared out the airway while a second medic put in a call to Lutheran Hospital for permission to intubate. Once the medic got the permission, he checked with a laryngoscope and put down an endotracheal tube. Breathe, breathe, I prayed. The EMS team hooked Arch up to oxygen from their truck, then shooed me away.

  I told somebody to call Dr. John Richard Korman. I knelt down on the side of the driveway, aware for the first time in the last hour that cold wet clothes clung to my skin. There were people all around; I ignored them. All of them except for Schulz, who sat down heavily beside me and put two clean sweat suits in my hands.

  I said, “I’m a terrible mother.”

  Schulz said, “You are a wonderful mother. Now I risked my life getting these dry clothes for you and Arch, why don’t you find some place to put them on?”

  My arms reached for Schulz’s large body. While my head was buried in his shoulder he murmured, “Well, look who’s here.”

  I jerked back and whirled to face a very disheveled Julian Teller dressed in camouflage gear. He flopped down beside us. After a moment he said, “I was on my way back here when I saw the explosions.”