Free The Chocolate Cat Caper by JoAnna Carl

said, as if quoting a headline. “Defense attorney’s toy boy husband flees toy box.”
    “Stop!” I’d had enough. “Hush up!”
    Joe shut up and glared.
    I glared back. “Why am I getting this lecture? No reporters will be interested in me.”
    “Oh, yes, they will. You were a witness. You’re involved.”
    “No, I’m not! And TenHuis Chocolade isn’t, either.”
    “That’s the spirit. Just remember that. No matter who calls you— Time magazine or the National Enquirer —just tell ’em they’ll have to talk to the police.”
    I did my thinking-about-it act for thirty seconds. “Why do you think you need to tell me this? Do I seem that stupid?”
    “No. I’m telling you because you’re going to be getting a lot of pressure.” He stopped and seemed to consider his next words. “And now I’d better get out of here before the correspondents arrive from Chicago, or you and your aunt are likely to get the full treatment.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Oh, the tabloids would love our getting together like this, in a quiet back room. Cinderella widower of famed lawyer has tête-à-tête with high school sweetheart.”
    “That’s not true! You and I weren’t sweethearts. We barely knew each other.”
    “The tabloids don’t care. They take one little lie and hang a whole string of phony implications on it. Didn’t my mom tell me you were in some beauty contest? They’ll dig that up. Famed attorney killed by beauty queen’s chocolates.”
    As Joe said the final, bitter word, I heard a loud gasp behind me. For a mad moment I thought the tabloid press had already arrived, and I swung around.
    I was relieved for a second. The gasp had come from Aunt Nettie. Then I saw the look on her face.
    “Chocolate? The chocolate killed Clementine Ripley? That’s just not possible!”
    I tried to soothe her. I explained that Gregory Glossop had picked up on the smell of almonds from the chocolates, but that the Amaretto flavoring was a more logical explanation for the aroma.
    Joe lost some of his glare when he talked to Aunt Nettie. “Lee jumped right in and told the chief about the flavoring,” he said. “Greg Glossop may be an idiot, but his opinion won’t count. The medical examiner will be running scientific tests to ascertain the cause of death. And I hope to God it’s natural causes.”
    He gestured. “Is that the alley door? Can I get out that way?”
    “Wait,” Aunt Nettie said. For the first time I realized that she was holding a TenHuis Chocolade box. “I’ve got something for you.”
    Joe took the box, looking perplexed. “Chocolates? Nettie, I don’t think this is a good time . . .”
    “It’s just a sandwich,” she said. “A chocolate box was all I had to put it in. A meat loaf sandwich and some carrot sticks. I’m sure you haven’t eaten anything. I wish I had something worth giving you.”
    For a moment Joe stared at her blankly. Then he gave a mocking laugh. “Nettie, you just don’t get it,” he said. “We can’t be friends right now! It will cause too much trouble. Lee, you explain it to her!”
    That made me madder than anything else he’d said.
    “I won’t tell her a thing!” I said. “Aunt Nettie is Aunt Nettie, and if she wants to feed the whole world, it’s all right with me.”
    “I give up,” Joe said. “Is that the alley door?”
    I opened it without a word, and he went out into the dark. “You two are going to be eaten alive,” he said.
    I resisted the temptation to slam the door after him. He hadn’t even thanked Aunt Nettie for his meat loaf sandwich. But he took it with him.

Chapter 6
    A unt Nettie made me eat a meat loaf sandwich, too. I sat at a stainless-steel worktable in the back of the shop, and she talked to me while I ate.
    As she talked she plucked bits of rum-flavored dark chocolate nougat—nougat is what the chocolate maker calls the filling of a truffle—from a plastic dish. This had been mixed earlier and set aside to get firm. Talking