Grand Openings Can Be Murder

Chapter One

Thursday

I’m sitting in a tall chair at the kitchen island, scrolling through pictures from my recent trip to Colombia. I’m trying to decide which ones are social-media worthy, when I spot a picture of my late husband, in between a close up shot of a cacao pod and a picture of me smiling from between two chocolate farmers in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

My breath catches, and I sit there staring at it, re-memorizing the curve of his face, imagining the sound of his laugh, lost inside myself.

The smoke alarm goes off, making me jump. I’d lost all track of time.

Aunt Naomi rushes into the kitchen wearing paint spattered jeans and a tee that says World’s Best Mom. She turns off the oven, before I’ve even registered the smoke that is rapidly filling the room. Felicity!  What’s with you today?

I look up from my laptop screen, still feeling a bit hazy, and grab a cookie sheet. After sliding off my shoes, I climb up onto the chair I’d been sitting in, and from there onto the island, a modern addition to this historic home, waving the smoke away from the device until it finally quiets. Why on Earth were Victorian houses built with ceilings that were twelve feet tall?  Sorry. It’s just . . . you know.

I pull the phone out of my jeans pocket. I’d set a timer when I’d put the cacao beans in the oven. Unfortunately . . . I’d forgotten to press start, though I usually catch the smell of brownies or the first pop of the beans without it. Flavors in chocolate develop by the second. I’d completely lost my focus. How long had I been staring at that photograph?

Oh, honey.  My aunt opens up the windows and back door before coming over.  She holds a hand up to help me down from my precarious perch. Sympathy shines in her warm brown eyes. She’s barely forty, only eight years older than me, and we bear a passing resemblance to each other, with lightly freckled cheeks and long dark hair, and pale skin that goes red in the sun but never tans. I’m taller, though, by several inches.

I stifle a cough. I’m prone to asthma, and the last thing I want is Aunt Naomi thinking the smoke in the air will give me an attack. She’s already worried enough about me making chocolate, with the heat and dust involved. There- I start, but my voice cracks. Getting the words out feels a little like someone is stepping on my chest. Grief hits you hard, and weird, and at unexpected times. I wave my hand at the laptop screen, with the picture still up. There was a picture of Kevin in with all the Colombia shots. I must have copied it off of my phone by mistake.

Oh, honey, Aunt Naomi says. I wish she wouldn’t call me that. The more often she says it in a conversation, the more she’s pitying me. It’s next week, isn’t it?

I nod. Next week, on Monday, is my wedding anniversary. Only – Wednesday will be the first anniversary of my husband’s death. And I’m not sure I can handle it. He’d been so vibrant, so young. We’d thought we had all the time in the world. Three years ago, we’d been toying around with ideas for starting our own business together, when Kevin hit his buy-in for retirement benefits. Even early retirement had seemed so far away. At least another decade. And then Kevin had had his accident, out on a boat he’d helped design. And then hours later he’d just been gone.

But I don’t want to talk about that again with my aunt. Instead, I fake a smile. Monday’s the grand opening party.  Which she well knows. She’s been social-media-ing about it like crazy, and helping me put up fliers all over the Island, and as far inland as Friendswood and even Houston. Greetings and Felicitations will be up and running.

The name had been Kevin’s idea, something he’d come up with in those last hours between his accident and his death. It was a play on his favorite book as a child. The line from Charlotte’s Web had actually been, Greetings and Salutations.  But everything in his life had been about us as a couple. And knowing how brief his life was going to be, he’d wanted me to read about Charlotte again.

Then let’s leave that mess, Naomi gestures with her chin over at the oven. And go shopping.

You’re the one that asked me to work here today.  I move over to the oven and cautiously open the door. The cacao beans inside are beyond burned. More smoke billows out.

I didn’t want you spending all day alone. Again. When those assistants of yours aren’t available-  Aunt Naomi scrunches up her nose. What smells like old chicory coffee?

Chocolate gone horribly wrong.  I say it like it’s the punch line to a joke. It falls flat.

Aunt Naomi forces a smile. You remember game nights at your Mawmaw’s house when the coffee smelled like this by the end of the evening?  I know she’d love to see you more at the condo.

I go when I can.  Though truthfully, I’ve pulled away from my family. They look so . . . sad by the time I leave.

I sigh and turn back to focus on the cacao. At least it’s not a huge batch of beans. For that, I would have used the commercial roaster at my tiny chocolate factory. This was just a roasting test using samples I’d brought back from a sourcing trip. When I first got interested in chocolate, I didn’t realize I would be networking with farmers in South America and Africa, visiting their small cacao farms to forge relationships and supporting their work so that mine can be successful.

I’m a bean-to-bar chocolate maker. What I produce has to be far superior to what my customers could get from larger companies’ blended-origin chocolate, both flavor-wise and from a production standards point of view. If people can’t taste the difference, they’ll go back to buying cheap chocolate.

I have to choose the beans I purchase wisely, because when you make single-origin chocolate bars, the beans’ unique flavor profiles can leave you delighted – or struggling to make up for bland chocolate with inclusions and added flavors. I’ve tasted chocolate where you would swear someone had added raisins and walnuts, but there was nothing in it but ground cacao and sugar. I’ve also tasted chocolates with notes of citrus and leather. Some of the most interesting chocolates, at least to me, have flavors that echo pepper, cinnamon, and coffee.

The specific soil and growing conditions found in an individual cacao plantation can make a vast difference. As can the use of different kinds of native wood in the fermentation boxes, and the fermentation, and drying time, and processes . . . and so many other factors specific to a particular farm. I want my chocolate to reflect the places I’ve visited, the experiences I’ve had, the sheer amount of life I’ve managed to soak up. I well know how fleeting life is. Perhaps it is fitting that my mementos should be just as fleeting, edible and delicious, bringing joy to others in a way a photo slideshow never could.

I’ve made half a dozen bars so far. My newest creation will be a wine-noted, caramelly Sierra Nevada bar, built from my most recent trip. I don’t need to go shopping. I bought decorations and paper goods on-line. Emma and Carmen are setting everything up on Sunday night. Carmen’s even making mini-cupcakes from the Chiapas chocolate.

Though I hadn’t visited the farm for that one, just split a purchase with another chocolate maker through a broker. But with bean-to-bar, the processes that happen after a chocolate maker receives the beans are just as important, so while we started with the same beans, we will create distinct chocolates. There’s a lot of trial and error involved, especially when roasting the beans, as time and temperature affect the flavor notes. And even the grinding and conching processes vary, impacting both flavor and texture inside my factory.

Then we should go get you a new dress. You never know if some handsome man might come to your opening. In my book, after a year, it’s perfectly alright if you want to start dating again.  Mischief sparkles in my aunt’s eyes. I get the idea that she already has someone in mind for me, and if somebody who is just my type happens to wander into my store on Monday, it won’t be by accident.

I close the oven door, leaving the ruined mess inside. I make steady eye contact with Aunt Naomi. I had love. Real love. The kind where you finish each other’s sentences and talk in movie and book quotes because you’ve shared that much. Where you can be dying, and care more about the pain of the person you’re leaving behind. Do you honestly think I’m going to find that again?

She shrugs, the gleam in her eyes subdued, replaced by determination. Honey, I honestly do. Someone who loved you like that wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone forever.

There’s a sudden repeated metallic clicking noise coming from the other side of the room. My lop-eared rabbit, who spends a lot of his daytime hours in the hollow behind the sofa, has hopped in to get a drink from the water bottle inside his cage. I point over to his little gray and white face. I’m not alone. I have Knightley. And you. And a ton of friends all over the globe, and the rest of our family, what, an hour away.

Mom and Dad had moved to the mainland after the last hurricane.

Aunt Naomi rolls her eyes. You know what I mean.

It’s easy for her to be optimistic. She and her husband have been together since high school, and they have a son who just went away to college. My uncle is a field supervisor for a string of offshore rigs. He’s gone for weeks at a time, but when he’s here, Aunt Naomi and Uncle Greg give each other looks like newlyweds.

If I get the dress, and open myself up to the possibility of someday, will you promise not to set me up?  I’m already heading for my purse. I mean, you remember what happened with Emma.

Aunt Naomi blinks at me. Your assistant?

My aunt is not a big reader. I have always been a huge Jane Austen fan, and Emma my favorite Austen heroine . . . though Kevin would have argued for Elinor from Sense and Sensibility. He did always have a practical side. But I was lucky enough to find an engineer who reads, so who was I to quibble?

Austen’s Emma was a matchmaker and a busybody, but she got herself out of all the problems she caused. And I do have to admit, when I’d been considering assistants, Emma’s name alone had bumped her up a few points in my list. And the fact that until recently, Emma had worked at the local indie bookstore had helped even more, since I plan to sell a selection of books I collect on my travels in Felicitations. The one shelf from the trips to Columbia and Ecuador though, seems a little pitiful.

Aunt Naomi grabs her car keys, not even bothering to change out of her paint-spattered clothes. I promise. No matchmaking. 

I absolutely don’t believe her.

We get into the car and onto the road. You can smell the salt in the air, and feel the humidity, even though we’re in the Historic District, which is pretty close to the center of the East end of the island. We’re not close enough to see the Gulf or the Bay, not by blocks and blocks, but Galveston is a long, skinny barrier island, so it’s not a long drive from any point on it to the water. The houses flash by. On this street, the tri-color Victorian painted ladies are next door to fixer-uppers in desperate need of restoration which are next door to mansions with enough historic value to be surrounded by wrought-iron fences and tropical gardens and open for public tours. It’s inconsistent, and a little overwhelming, but there’s a grandeur to the neighborhood that’s comfortable.

I’m still trying to think of a way to get a sincere promise to leave my lack of a love life alone when Aunt Naomi suddenly turns off the main road, down a tiny, cramped side street.

Whah!  I try to grab onto something in the car to steady myself. "What’s with you today?"

Estate sale.  She points at a cardboard sign, a bit battered from today’s earlier rain shower. Which might have deterred some of the regular garage salers. There may actually be some good stuff left.

Cool! 

Aunt Naomi parks haphazardly in a tiny, sandy front yard. The walkway leading up to the house is framed with waist-high palm trees. You don’t see palms in most parts of Texas, but they’re everywhere on Galveston, along with oleander forming a lush hedge on the property across the street. There is clematis growing up this home’s porch posts and hibiscus growing in pots on the porch.

The house itself isn’t in great condition, but it’s got classic lines. I don’t know if my aunt will have finished fixing up the place we’re currently living in in time to flip it by the time this place comes on the market, but once we’re inside, I catch her examining the window frames, looking for signs of termite damage.

Leaving her to it, I make a beeline for the bookcase I can see through the open door into one of the rooms.

A girl in her twenties is sitting at a table in the main room. She sees where I’m heading and calls out to me, The furniture in there’s all sold, but I’ll take five hundred dollars for all the books.

I nod. Some of the books have been haphazardly tossed into boxes, some are still on the heavy oak shelves, but there’s enough here to make a decent-looking book section for my shop. Unless they’re all encyclopedia sets and cookbooks from the 1970’s. Which that first bookcase appears stacked full of. Fighting disappointment, I start digging through one box, picking up each of the books. They’re at least fiction. Old editions of the classics, lots of yellowed hardback mystery novels, not bad. The next box has a few covers that are falling apart. I pick up a book with an unassuming brown cover. I tilt it to the side and read the title. Sense and Sensibility, Volume I.

My heart squeezes. After what I’d been thinking about Kevin and Austen heroines, how could I have found this book? I flip it open carefully.

Sense and Sensibility, a Novel in Three Volumes, by A Lady, 1811. My heart squeezes again, for an entirely different reason. Austen had originally published the book anonymously, paying for it herself. I’m not sure, but 1811 sounds about right for the first printing. I look down into the box, and there’s an identical brown cover. I pick it up. Volume II. And under that, Volume III.

It doesn’t matter what the rest of the books are. This alone has to be worth more than five hundred bucks.

I place the three volumes carefully back in the box and go out to talk to the girl running the garage sale, whose too-white makeup, dark eyeliner and big hair all seems a bit dated but might just be an old trend coming back around again. She can’t be one of those pros who organize and price estate sales, or these books would have been proudly on display. She’s probably this house’s owner’s granddaughter or something. My heart’s hammering guiltily as I approach her and ask, Are you sure they’re five hundred dollars?

She rolls her eyes. Alright. It’s already three in the afternoon. I’ll take three hundred and fifty.  She gives me a look, like she knows my kind, picking up bargains by being the last at a sale.

Which somehow makes me feel less guilty as I hand over the three hundred and fifty bucks, and take my box to the car, after making arrangements to come back for the rest in my truck. I lost track of Naomi inside the house, and thought I’d find her in the car waiting for me, but she isn’t out here. She drives an old car, the kind that still has manual door locks, and I realize that I’ve forgotten again to lock my door. I put my box in the back seat, and sit in the front, with the door open. Galveston can be humid and sticky on the best of days. Sitting in an enclosed car on a day like today with the engine off would be torture.

A seagull lands near my open door. It looks in at me, as though daring me not to give it something to eat. I stare right back. If I make a move that looks like I even might have something to offer, I’ll have a cloud of gulls on my hands. I don’t know what kind of radar gulls have that lets them do that.

But you know what?  I’m having a better day, with my unexpected find. I might as well share the feeling. Aunt Naomi usually has a packet of peanuts or two in her glove box for emergency snacking. I grab one, rip it open and throw nuts to the gull and its rapidly appearing friends.

After a while, Naomi comes out of the house. As she slides back behind the wheel, she tosses a Ziplock holding a set of cabinet knobs onto the back seat. Who other than my aunt carries a screwdriver in their purse, for just such a find?

Aunt Naomi tilts her head to the side studying me. What makes you suddenly look like the cat who ate the canary?

At least she hadn’t ended the question with honey.

I got a steal on some old books.  I don’t bother elaborating. She wouldn’t understand.

Aunt Naomi laughs. If that’s got you that excited, we really do need to get you that new dress.

Chapter Two

Friday

The next morning, I have an appointment with my GP, so I make my way across the island to Dr. Ricci’s office. I’m still thinking about my cool book find while I’m sitting in the waiting room. It is always weird being on this side of the exam area door. When Kevin and I had lived in Seattle, I’d finished school and become a physical therapist. The two of us had met when he’d come to Galveston to study marine engineering at the same A&M where I was doing part of my early coursework. I don’t tell that to a lot of people. The reaction you get when you tell someone you quit a thriving practice to follow your dream of making chocolate gets to be a bit soul-crushing. If I have to deal with one more pitying look coupled with a Willie Wonka reference I’m going to slap someone.

But honestly, dealing with the pain of watching someone I loved dying left me empty every time I had to walk in the door of the hospital that housed my office. And I just couldn’t face working with one person after another who was also in pain. I wanted to do something that would make people happy. And seriously, watching someone try craft chocolate for the first time. That’s happy.

And if people don’t know I was something else first, if they assume I was always a chocolate maker – well, they usually think it is cool and fun and adventurous.

The nurse finally calls me back, and Dr. Ricci puts a stethoscope on my back. His manner annoys me – he’s always in so much of a hurry to get from one patient to the next, he doesn’t really engage in conversation. He’s in his fifties sporting salt and pepper hair, obviously Italian, with a craggy nose, his swarthy skin even darker from a golfer’s tan.

I try to talk to him anyway, about his day, about the practice. He does seem willing to talk about my lungs. He’s impressed that the treatment that I’d started in Seattle and picked up here is working so well.

He takes out a pen from his pocket and scribbles a refill for my prescription onto an old-fashioned paper pad. I cringe. Who does that anymore?  It is so much simpler to call the prescriptions in for the patient. And then you have a typed paper trail. Maybe I should change doctors, but he’s supposed to be the best GP on the island.

Dr. Ricci tears the prescription off the pad and hands it to me. You’re doing a lot better. Another month, and you won’t even need this anymore.

I nod. I’d learned about this experimental treatment, ironically, at the hospital, where they hadn’t been able to offer any hope for Kevin. It had completely eliminated asthmatic symptoms in over 60 percent of patients. The drugs involved, though, require I severely limit my caffeine intake. One more month. I sigh happily. You don’t know how much I’ve missed my second cup of coffee.

Dr. Ricci laughs. I think everybody on this island knows how much you love coffee. And chocolate.

After the examination, I reach into my purse and give Dr. Ricci a postcard with details about the grand opening party. As I’m leaving the clinic, I text Miles. He’s one of Naomi’s son’s friends, who still seems to think of Naomi as a second mom, even with Wyatt away at college. Aunt Naomi sometimes pays Miles to help out with work when she’s flipping a house. Today, he’s supposed to help me haul books.

Hey!  I text. What do you want for lunch?  Will pick it up on the way to the estate house.

He texts back:  Aw, thanks, Mrs. Koerber!  Maybe a shrimp po boy?

I know just the place, The Asian Cajun, a fusion joint that serves both po boys and banh mi right on the seawall. You can also get tacos and soul food side dishes, alongside your Cajun-staple boudin balls and alligator tail, and all of it’s good – and super cheap. The major culinary traditions of the area together at one spot, it’s like a sampler of Galveston itself.

It doesn’t take me long to get there. I know what Emma and Carmen like from here, so I order them lunch too.

Miles meets me at the house from the estate sale. Together, we get the books packed up and loaded into my catering truck – which so far I’ve only used for transporting supplies -- and Miles follows me back to the shop in his Mini Cooper.

I walk towards my shop, balancing the box of books on my hip. Miles is carrying two boxes at once.

The Strand is a tourist draw, playing up its 19th Century history by highlighting the architecture. This makes for a fun juxtaposition of old against new, the vintage streetfront opening into modern, elegant shops that makes this such a great location. The narrow alley behind the strip of buildings is paved with red brick. The backs of the buildings look antiquated – mostly worn brick, covered in places with stucco, with mismatched windows, some arched, some covered with ugly shutters, some more modern. This is counterpointed by banks of electricity meters and bright green trash cans. It’s an unfinished version of the front of the buildings, which have been updated and restored.

I hold my breath as I pass the trash. But once I arrive at Felicitations, I inhale deeply as I open the back door, which leads directly into the small kitchen we use for making coffee, dirty horchata, truffles, and the occasional baked good starring one of my chocolates. It’s all shiny silver countertops and industrial burners and bakers’ racks stacked with baking pans. The smell of chocolate is even more intense than usual. Carmen is pulling out cupcakes, and the earthy, nutty tones of my Chiapas chocolate waft from the oven door. The familiar notes are mixed with sweetness and cinnamon. It smells delicious. Carmen is baking and freezing all the mini cupcakes days early, so that she will have time to take care of more urgent details on the day of the party.

She nods at me. Perfect timing. Taste one of these.

She breaks one open, and I pop a piece of it into my mouth. They’re good, warm, and soft from the oven. Carmen’s going to put more cinnamon into the frosting, in the form of cinnamon whiskey, lightened with an herbal hit of lemongrass which she’s infusing into the butter she’s using to make the buttercream. She’s talented, and easy to work with, even if she’s got a few gaps in her employment record after her scholarships to El Centro. But she seems to have gotten herself together now that she’s turned thirty. Second-generation Mexican American, she’s thin but athletic, from surfing and competing in half marathons and helping out at beach cleanup events.

I have a feeling Carmen won’t