Free One Foot In The Gravy by Delia Rosen

hadn’t uncovered much except a treasure chest of “likes,” I knew Hoppy a little better. I had a theory. Not a unified theory, more like an impression. He made a decent amount of money from this shop and used that, and his own fortune, so he could be around people of influence. Not just movers and shakers on the hill here, but also in society. Whether he pursued women to pursue women, or pursued women to pursue access, I had no idea. But it was something worth investigating.

Chapter 7
    I decided to go home. I didn’t want to be distracted while I re-Googled the dead man. Now that he was a victim of homicide, all the top searches would be about that. I wanted stuff I didn’t know.
    I word-searched Hapford Hopewell Melanie.
    Duh. That still gave me his death and the nextof-kin. I added the word fortune . That gave me a biography in the Dessert Professional online magazine. I skimmed.
    “Hapford Hopewell, Jr. Born 1963, father was—aha. Father was the founder of the Checkers Sugar Corporation of Greenville, South Carolina. So he probably gets— got —his raw material at cost. Father died in 1998, mother committed suicide a month later— that’s love or debt—and Hopewell spent two years traveling the world—oh, this is rich—studying chocolate-making techniques while preparing to open his shop.”
    I brought up online Battleship, a habit I acquired during my accounting days to get my mind off numbers. I played while I considered that.
    “Hoppy lied about his interest in chocolate. He probably went around the world blowing his inheritance. But sister—”
    I minimized the game, looked up Melanie Hopewell. I added the word nuptials so I wouldn’t get more “survived by” references. There was an announcement in the Charleston Post and Courier from May 1981. I had to register with the website to read it—and remember to uncheck the box that would have sent me free offers—but it was worth it.
    “Melanie Hopewell married Dollarama Motel founder Waldo Tidyman in a ceremony . . . blah blah . . . daughter of. . . .”
    And there it was. Her mother’s name in blue. I clicked on it and was taken to an article about her death, which was still eighteen years off. The temporal magic of the Internet! I scanned it:
    “Barbara Cox Hopewell was found dead from an overdose of prescription barbiturates by her chauffeur . . . alerted by the barking dog . . . said to be depressed over financial woes revealed during a proxy battle following the death of her husband Hapford Sr.”
    Hello Ruth Madoff ! Hubby crashes and you find out you’re in the hole?
    I looked up Checkers Sugar, found out that the Agriculture Undersecretary investigated them in 1996 for driving up prices of cane and beet sugar by purchasing and shutting down domestic refiners in the United States to make their monopoly on raw Brazilian imports more desirable. The investigation caused stock prices to plummet, and sent Checkers into a borrowing frenzy. The three-year loans were personally guaranteed by Mr. Hopewell.
    “Oh, my.”
    So Hoppy Jr. only had the money on his back. He probably was on a round-the-world jaunt when he got the news, and decided to stay out of the country so he wouldn’t be dragged into it. According to another article, Checkers went public in 2001. I looked up the SEC filings—now I was in familiar territory—and guess who sold all their shares for one lowly nickel on the dollar? The Hopewell children.
    I went back to Battleship .
    What Hoppy thought was ten million dollars was actually one-twentieth of that. That’s half a million bucks. Not bad, but not what he thought he had to play with.
    Another hunch. Down went Battleship, up came the names of the sugar companies Checkers had forced to shut down.
    Score.
    Dryfoos Brands, based in Nashville. Purchase price: fifty grand. And with that, the title to all the recipes. Including, I was willing to bet, the cow patties.
    “He didn’t mention that in Dessert Professional, ” I