Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 04 - Chocolate Mousse Attack Read Online Free

filled a bucket with water and cleaner then returned to the front.
    Rick was sitting on a stool next to the dirty dish, holding the business card. “A history professor? Are you branching out from cops to men with brain s?”
    I snatched the card from him and stuck it in the pocket of my cutoffs. “I’m going to take some classes. Not that it’s any of your business.” I ignored the remark about cops . Now that Rick and I were divorced, I was dating Detective Adam Trent of the Pleasant Grove Police Department. Actually we’d been sort of dating for over a year while those papers were pending, but he refused to be the official man in my life until I was officially unmarried. He’s burdened with a lot of high moral standards that drive me freaking crazy sometimes. Not only did he make me wait that year, but he refuses to fix any of my speeding tickets. Sometimes people carry those moral standards a little too far.
    Since Rick had dated Muffy, Becky, Vanessa, Lisa, Susan, Mary, Julia, etc., etc., while we were married, he certainly had no right to complain about Trent, but Rick hates to lose any of his possessions, even the ones he doesn’t value.
    He spread his hands and smiled the smile that sold a lot of commercial real estate to gullible buyers and a lot of Rick to gullible women. Yes, I fell for it once and married him. But I was young and dumb in those days. Now I knew if he was smiling, that meant he wanted something.
    “No,” he said, “I don’t suppose it is any of my business.” His smile turned sad. “I screwed up and lost that right, didn’t I?”
    “Yes.” I reached into the display case, withdrew the last chocolate ch ip cookie and handed it to him on a napkin. “Compliments of the house. Now go. We need to lock up.”
    As if on cue, Paula appeared from the kitchen with the shop key in her hand and went over to stand beside the front door.
    Rick accepted the cookie and smiled again but made no move to leave. I sighed and waited.
    He took a bite and rolled his eyes as if in ecstasy. “You make the best chocolate chip cookies in the world.”
    “At least we agree on one thing.” I lifted the mop and let the water drain back into the bucket. “Now I really need to lock up and clean up. Everything left in here will get mopped.”
    Rick smiled sadly, combining two of his most effective expressions. This was going to be big!
    “I miss that sense of humor ,” he said.
    “You mean the one you used to call warped and sick and strange? That’s the sense of humor you miss?”
    He laughed.
    “Damn it, Rick, I’m busy, I’ve been up since two o’clock this morning and I’m in no mood for your garbage. You have thirty seconds to get out of here before I smack you in the face with this mop.”
    He blanched. If I’d threatened him with a gun he’d have laughed it off, but the thought of getting mop water on his perfect hair, perfect shirt and perfect pants terrified him.
    “I need a favor, Lindsay.” He cleared his throat. “And I’m willing to do a favor for you. We still have some properties to sign off on, and I’m willing to throw in a little extra.”
    The only things I’d asked for in the divorce were my shop, Death by Chocolate, the rental house where Paula and Zach lived and the house where I lived. Death by Chocolate brings in a decent income, but I’m not getting rich. And Rick had enough money stashed in offshore accounts to qualify as pretty close to rich. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to listen to what he wanted in exchange for some of his precious money.
    “How much extra?”
    He shrugged. “A thousand?”
    “Ten.”
    He lifted an eyebrow. “Thousand?”
    “Yep. And I already know that much wouldn’t even cause a ripple in your funds.”
    He drew in a deep breath. “Okay. So we have a deal?”
    My chest tightened in fear. If Rick agreed to part with that much money so readily, he must want a really big favor. Murder? An alibi?
    “Not until you tell me who you want me to