Chocolate Most Deadly (Sky High Pies Cozy Mysteries Book 2) by Mary Maxwell Page A

so?”
    She smiled, giving me a quick
glance as the truck carefully swung a little to the right and turned the
corner. “I could just tell.” She flashed a quick grin. “By the way you said his
name.”
    I smirked. “Trent. Samuel. Walsh,”
I said, carefully articulating every syllable. “Deputy Chief Trent Walsh.” I
paused, but she was snickering softly. “Okay, so there are two different
versions, but they don’t sound like huge clues to anything at all. What’s so
special about the way I said his name?”
    She didn’t respond for a few
seconds. Then she reached over and patted my leg. “It’s okay, Kate. I’m still
carrying a flame for my high school sweetheart, too.”
    “Oh, I see what you’re getting at,”
I said. “I’d like you to know that is so not what I’m doing, okay?”
    She giggled again. “Oh, absolutely.
But remember this, my friend: Denial is a powerful force of nature.”
    I moaned, dropped back against the headrest
and closed my eyes. “Oh, c’mon! First my sister and now you? You’re both acting
like matchmakers, trying to push me into starting over where Trent and I
stopped—he and Dina smooching in the corner at a high school dance and me
kicked to the curb with a broken heart.”
    Her giggle had stopped. Now she was
nodding her head in a sideways motion and whispering something under her
breath.
    “And would you please speak up?” I
demanded. “I can’t tell what you’re saying!”
    She stopped bobbing her head. “Love
is love, Kate. That’s what I’m saying. And I’ll bet that’s what Olivia meant.
Love is love. Once you found Trent, he won your heart.” I opened my mouth to
deny the claim, but she held up a finger. “And you won his. The two of you are
perfect together. I don’t understand why you can’t see what everyone else is
talking about.”
    I waited to make sure she was
finished. Then I took a slow breath and turned slightly in my seat. “I don’t
see what everyone else is talking about,” I said, “because there’s nothing to
look at.”

CHAPTER
9
     
     
    The apartment building was on Franklin
Street between Colfax Avenue and Cheesman Park. I knew the neighborhood; my
parents would tell you that I knew it too well. When I was in high school, my
friends and I would drive to the city to catch our favorite bands at the
Bluebird Theater, waste countless hours in the park or wander down Colfax
searching for things we didn’t need and couldn’t afford.
    As Viveca steered her car to a spot
at the curb, I surveyed the three-story tan brick art deco building. A short,
curvy woman wearing a faux fur jacket came out of the front door and walked
slowly toward the street. She had a phone clamped between her chin and
shoulder, wraparound sunglasses over her eyes and an unlit cigarette wedged in
the corner of her mouth. A plastic KFC bag dangled from one hand and a six-pack
of Diet Coke from the other.
    “Don’t look now,” I said. “My inner
child is coming this way.”
    Viveca swiveled in her seat,
glanced at the woman and then smirked. “If that’s your inner child,” she said,
“you’re doing a very good job of faking it in the real world.”
    She silenced the engine, plucked
the keys from the ignition and grabbed her purse. I was already on the sidewalk
by the time she climbed out and locked the doors. We both watched the woman in
the fur jacket teeter on bright red stilettos toward a battered brown Ford
Taurus.
    “I hope your inner child doesn’t
trip and break anything,” Viveca said with a muted giggle.
    I joined in the laughter as we
stood on the sidewalk and inspected the front of Tim’s building.
    “How long has your brother lived
here?” I asked.
    “A couple of months. He was sharing
a house with another guy. But his roommate left town, so Tim and Bad Dog came
here. It’s a sublease arrangement with a creepy guy named Toby. Delilah was
already living there in another unit that Toby had.”
    “Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot