Dangerously Dark (22 page)

“Wow, that's pretty observant of Declan.”

“He was looking at me pretty closely.” Lauren appeared used to having that effect on men. Maybe my theory about her still being hung up on her ugly-duckling past couldn't hold water. “Anyhow,
I
thought Declan was just feeding me a line. But I gave him credit for a unique come-on and let him buy my next drink.”

“And the rest was history?”

She nodded. Forlornly. “Complete with a tragic ending.”

I must have given her a peculiar look—mostly due to my wondering where Declan's engagement to Carissa fit into this heartrending, epic love story she was weaving—because Lauren rushed to explain. “It wasn't just a line. I double-checked with Tommy later. If you drink liquid nitrogen, it freezes and expands inside you. It can, like, rupture your internal organs.”

“And cause death by internal bleeding,” I surmised.

I didn't need a
How to Kill with Liquid Nitrogen
manual. I'd done some research into how Declan had died. I'd wanted to make sure what little exposure I'd had in Carissa's trailer wouldn't cause a superslow death by asphyxiation. I was safe.

Sometimes I have more imagination than is good for me.

“Yes! Slowly and painfully, too.” Lauren shuddered, plainly disturbed. “As horrible as Declan's death must have been, at least he wasn't awake for it,” she said. “I mean,
drinking
that stuff sounds way worse than breathing it. I got away lucky.”

“Thanks to Declan.” I believed her story about how they'd met. Hooking up in a bar fit with the kind of approach an already-involved man would have taken. “Weren't you already both working at Cartorama, though? Wouldn't you have met there?”

“Oh, that was before Declan moved here. When we first met, we were both at Comic Con Portland.” Lauren gave me a kittenish look. “I like a little cosplay now and then. How about you?”

I almost laughed. Me? Dressing up in an elaborate costume inspired by my favorite manga, anime, video game, movie, or graphic novel character? It was probably fun, but . . . “I can't even be bothered with lipstick, remember? I don't think I have the ingenuity for that. I usually go everywhere as me. Period.”

“Hmm. Sounds boring. Life is better with a little adventure,” Lauren advised me. “You should try it sometime.”

Maybe. But I was more interested in the fact that Austin, Declan,
and
Lauren had all attended Comic Con. It was funny that, apparently, the one thing that Declan had authentically been interested in—geeky gaming—was the only thing he'd denied liking . . . publicly and vociferously. Hurtfully, for Austin.

“Maybe,” I dodged, meaning
no way am I doing that.
“But if you meet someone in costume—the way you and Declan did—isn't it disappointing when you go back to being your real selves? What if you don't like each other without all the cosplay?”

Lauren gave me a tight smile. “If that happens, then I guess you get engaged to a prissy, preppy little bitch like Carissa and forget how much you liked your ‘edgy' girlfriend's tattoos and piercings and ‘extreme lifestyle.'”

Whoa.
Lauren's sudden rancor gave me pause. Maybe she
wasn't
all sweetness and heart-shaped picture frames.

“Declan said that to you?” I asked, trying for a girlfriend-to-girlfriend vibe that might eke out the truth.

“He didn't have to.” Decisively, Lauren put down that photograph. “When he skipped out on dinner with me, my little brother, Will, and my parents
and
got engaged to Carissa on that very same night, his actions pretty much said it for him.”

“That
jerk
!” It just came out. I couldn't help it.

I was sorry Declan was dead, but sisterhood came first.

Lauren gave me the ghost of a smile. “Yeah, I wish I could have forgiven him for that. But I couldn't. And then he died.”

I stood there, frozen, jolted out of our newfound just-us-girls solidarity by the awful implications of that statement.

Had Lauren
killed
Declan to exact revenge for his cruel treatment of her? Had she felt as betrayed as she still sounded and decided to get even with him? Had their very meeting—over almost deadly liquid nitrogen cocktails—given her the blueprint?

If so, did she feel okay about it, because she thought inhaling liquid nitrogen was a
slightly
less ghastly way to die?

I swear, the idea made me shudder with horror.

But Lauren seemed pretty cheerful. It was almost as though she felt perked up by all the girly camaraderie we'd shared.

“So,” she said brightly. “Ready? Should we head out?”

To the Chocolate After Dark tour.
In that moment, I didn't care about enlightening chocolate lovers about my favorite food. Just then, I wanted to get away from Lauren, but I was stuck.

I didn't have a car
or
the wherewithal to slowly make my way back to Cartorama on foot. My injured knee and hip hurt too much for that. For that matter, my sliced-up hands hurt too much for that. It was only thanks to a couple of over-the-counter pain relievers and the ample distraction of wondering if Lauren was an unrepentant murderer that they hadn't bothered me more.

I forced a smile. “Sure!” She wouldn't kill me on the way there. We were gal pals now, right? “Let's get going.”

Three minutes later, I tucked my pencil-skirted, bandaged-up self into Lauren's sedate, four-wheel-drive Subaru.

“Buckle up!” she told me, moonlight glinting off the silver ring on her pierced, penciled eyebrow as she got ready to drive.

Then we headed downtown, with me hoping to arrive alive.

 

 

Not too surprisingly, I made it. Probably that was because there was no reliable way to commit vehicular manslaughter on someone who was
in
the same vehicle as you. Still, I heaved a sigh of relief as Lauren turned on her signal, ponderously changed lanes, waved courteously to another driver, waited for a pedestrian to pass, turned off her signal, and finally parked.

She was an
extremely
safe driver.

“Portland born and bred!” Lauren informed me proudly when I remarked on it. “There's no point arriving dead, is there?”

Her jolly tone put me on edge. I'd heard that same aphorism (more or less) from a Parisian taxi driver. From him, it had sounded a lot less menacing—and that had been
after
navigating the insane roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile.

“Besides, old Subey won't let me down.” Lauren fondly patted the dash of her practical car. She and that car were an absurd match. “My parents got me this car. We don't see eye-to-eye on much, but we all agreed on Subey. And on Declan.”

I was back to feeling sorry for her again. Until I saw . . .

“Hey!” I peered through the windshield. “Is that Austin?”

It was. I glimpsed him through the lighted window of the chocolate tour's current stop, a shop selling cacao-based drinking chocolates, truffles, artisanal bars, and more.

Austin wasn't leading the tour, though. He was scarfing chocolate—specifically, a scoop of ice cream with an affogato-style shot of espresso and a generous pour of hot chocolate sauce on top.

It looked delicious. Deliciously
outrageous.
What was wrong with him? Leading a culinary tour wasn't about gorging on treats. It was about sharing, educating, clarifying . . . and yes, devouring the delicious goodies the sponsoring shops offered.

I was inside in a heartbeat, gimpy knee or not.

“. . . which is why Declan wanted to start Chocolate After Dark,” someone was saying as I came in with Lauren trailing me. The heady, delectable aroma of chocolate almost made me dizzy. “There are many,
many
devoted small-batch producers in the area, some of whom have developed very enthusiastic followings. At my own business, Churn PDX, lines develop around the block to taste the latest ice-cream flavors. Chocolate malt, chocolate with homemade marshmallow, chocolate vanilla bean—those are just some of our ‘always on' flavors. Our seasonal items inspire equal dedication among our clientele. Our Twitter followers number in the hundreds of thousands. I understand that's unprecedented for such a newly established business in the Portland market.”

Carissa.
While Austin satisfied his ice-cream jones at the shop's window-facing bar counter, she was valiantly trying to continue the tour. Clearly, the effort of coming up with chocolate trivia on the fly was too much for her, though. She was dishing out business minutia, instead—probably things she'd committed to memory while trying to get Churn PDX financed.

Around her, the six people who made up the tour group stood by in courteous resignation, tuning out Carissa as they sipped their shot-glass-size portions of drinking chocolate. If you've never had drinking chocolate, it's fantastic. Made like a very thin ganache, drinking chocolate is ordinary hot cocoa's much fancier stepsibling: a mixture of chocolate, sugar, milk or cream, and flavorings, all blended and served warmed. Given the chocolaty fragrance on the air, I could see why Austin was so engrossed. If that blend was what was on his ice cream . . .
yum.

Still, abandoning the tour was unforgivable.

Especially if Austin had tried to hurt me to lead it.

“Carissa is right.” With a smile, I rushed to her rescue with some makeshift tour patter. “There are lots of unprecedented things here in Portland. For instance, there's no city sales tax—so buy all the chocolates you like!” A round of laughter greeted my interruption. “Also, you can't pump your own gas in Portland. You have to let an attendant do it for you—and you
can't
pay them in chocolate, either.” It was a silly joke, but it earned another round of chuckles. Not bad for a woman who was wildly improvising. “Also, Portland is the only city to have a dormant volcano within its city limits. You never know when it might decide to wake up, right?” I motioned to the shop's wares. “So don't hold back on sampling chocolate tonight!”

There were a few more chortles and one nervous titter. As far as I knew, Mount Tabor had no plans to go rogue. I hoped I could say the same thing about Lauren as she sidled up to Danny.

The man I'd shanghaied into chauffeur duty seemed happy to see her. Either that or driving tour attendees all over town in the Chocolate Orgy van was secretly one of Danny's preferred activities. I wished I could have seen the attendees' reactions to Declan's artistically challenged tour van. Although I kind of hoped it had been too dark for them to see it clearly.

“I'm Hayden Mundy Moore, everybody.” I gave a genial wave.

Oops.
At the sight of my bandaged hands, two women shied away. One man looked alarmed. Two men ogled Lauren. The last woman . . . coolly turned away to eat a chocolate-covered caramel.

Well, it wasn't surprising that
everyone
wasn't engrossed. Austin was a dreadful tour guide. “I'm your guide for Chocolate After Dark. I had a little accident, but I'm fine now. Thanks to Austin and Carissa for filling in for me.” I hugged my friend. She seemed startled to see me—and not quite as grateful for my help as I would have anticipated. “What do you all think of the drinking chocolate? Who's having which kinds? I'd love to know.”

I spent the next several minutes finding out just that, meeting with each of the tour attendees, one by one. I wanted to build a rapport with them, however tardily. Fortunately, doing that isn't difficult. All you have to do is be interested in people and then sincerely listen to them. I am, and I do.

The last woman was a challenge, though. A redhead wearing tortoiseshell glasses, she dodged my every attempt to meet her.

I tried to draw her into a conversation about sea-salted caramels versus traditional caramels. I tried to answer her question to the shopkeeper about take-home drinking chocolate mixes. I even tried to corner her for an introduction near the bar where Austin sat finishing his ice cream, pausing only to shoot me occasional deadly looks.

It was possible that his aura of annoyance spoiled my efforts to be sociable. I didn't know. But I
did
finally wise up and wait near the tour van's side door as everyone headed to the next destination. If the enigmatic redhead wanted to continue the tour, she
had
to come face-to-face with me. No excuses.

I only wanted to be friendly. And thorough. That's all.

Austin got there first. “
You
shouldn't be here.”

At his venomous tone, I jumped. “Austin! Hi.”

“I had this under control,” he informed me, using his bulky body as a bulwark between me and the van. “You should leave.”

“Leave?” Even though I thought Austin (might) have killed Declan, I was taken aback by his hostility. “I just got here.”

“I was doing fine without you. Just go! Don't come back.”

Now he seemed almost pleading. I didn't understand. “You weren't ‘doing fine,'” I told him as gently as I could. “All you were doing was eating ice cream. I know it's really good, but—”

“I was
connecting
with people. Just like Declan used to do. Just like he was good at.” Austin took a distraught step away from the van, probably trying not to be overheard. He lowered his voice. “You never knew him, but Declan was
awesome
at socializing. That's why he started the tour.”

“There's more to running a tour than chitchat,” I debated. “There are facts to be shared. Chocolatiering techniques to—”