‘Vinnie?’
Anna walked rapidly through the lounge towards the bedroom. ‘Vin, are you here?’
No response. She stuck her head around the door and glanced at the empty room. He wasn’t in the house. With quick, determined steps she went to the kitchen, out the back door and down the path towards the shed. The roller door was up and a truck was parked on the concrete apron. As she approached the entrance, she could see two men loading cardboard boxes onto the long table. Vinnie was checking their labels against a sheet in his hand. He looked up and smiled.
‘Hello, lovely. Nearly done.’
‘I need to talk to you, now.’ She kept her expression as composed as she could, but she knew her eyes were giving her away.
He frowned. ‘Okay, mystery woman.’
He followed her out of the shed and onto the lawn that led up to the house.
‘I’ve just had a call from Peter Harper.’
He pulled up abruptly. ‘Why? What’s happened?’
She could hear the immediate fear, and her heart rejoiced at what she was about to do to his life.
‘He had news, wonderful news.’
‘About?’
‘Marcus Lane. The bastard is dead.’
He stared at her for a moment, frowning, seemingly digesting the information.
‘How?’
‘All Peter could say was that he’d had some sort of breakdown and attacked a fellow inmate. They were transferring him to a psychiatric hospital, and the van blew up on the way. Two guards were killed as well.’
Vinnie nodded slowly. ‘And they’re sure? That it was his body?’
‘Well, they’ve announced his death, so you have to think they’ve checked. I don’t know how much of him was left, though, if it blew up.’
He pulled her to him and hugged her.
‘So maybe the running is over,’ she said.
She knew the excitement in her voice was obvious, and perhaps he thought that was inappropriate, but she felt dizzy with hope.
‘Maybe it is. What else did Peter say?’
‘Nothing, just to tell you and that he’ll be in touch again soon. He was on a burner cell phone.’
Vinnie, Anna and Mary had moved to a remote bay at the end of a long coastal road. Many of the houses were holiday homes and only occupied during the summer months. There was a pub, a general store with a post office counter, a petrol station and a primary school. The land around the bay was sheep country, softly rolling and prone to drought during the dry months.
They had bought a big rambling house made of native wood, with a veranda all around it and lots of windows that folded back to let in the sea breeze. The front lawn ran down to the beach, and they could lie in bed at night and listen to the waves breaking on the sand.
For a month they did nothing but walk Merlot on the beach, get to know others in the community and help Mary adjust to her new identity. Peter had suggested they buy a boat, and all three of them had discovered an instant love of fishing. It was a good way to blend in, and their neighbours were more than happy to provide instruction. The trauma of the confrontation with Norman Lane and the hasty exit from Rocky Bay started to melt away and, after yet another night of sitting outside and watching a sky aflame with stars, they all agreed that it was time to get to work.
The first project was to build a shed with a commercial-grade kitchen, cool storage and a packaging area for preparing boxes for transport. Vinnie and Anna searched the country and the internet for all the machinery they needed and the best sources of flavourings and fillings. It was still a work in progress, what with all the planning permissions and red-tape, and so Anna had limited the first release to four chocolates and three truffles, sold in boxes of four, seven, fourteen and twenty-eight pieces. She had researched a range of possibilities and fiddled in the kitchen for days, tweaking and experimenting. Vinnie and Mary had hung around watching, tasting and looking things up on the internet when required.
‘Ishpink.’
Vinnie looked up from the laptop and smiled. Anna stood in the doorway, latex gloves on her hands and a chocolate-smeared apron around her waist.
‘Same to you. Is this a new language known only to chocolatiers?’ he asked.
She smiled back. ‘It’s a spice, from Ecuador. Sort of a bit like nutmeg and cinnamon. See if we can get any.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Anything else?’
‘Try for combava, it’s a fruit. Apparently it smells like citronella and tastes like lemongrass.’
He shook his head in amazement. ‘Seriously?’
‘Of course. I thought of a white frankincense ganache, but it’s horrendously expensive.’
Eventually, she sat them down at the kitchen table in front of two plates. Five chocolates and five truffles sat in two neat rows on each plate.
‘Here they are. I want you to try the same one at the same time. Eat it slowly and then tell me what you can taste and give it a mark out of ten. At the end I want them ranked from one to ten. I need a final choice of seven.’
Both Vinnie and Mary nodded. Vinnie picked up a white chocolate.
‘I wish someone would create a distilled spirit and call it “Kindred”. Then we could make a chocolate filled with kindred spirit.’
Anna smiled at him. ‘Very droll. Get on with it, clever clogs.’
‘Let’s start with this one, then.’
Mary and Vinnie both popped the chocolate in their mouths and let it roll around.
‘Ginger,’ said Mary.
‘Chilli!’ Vinnie exclaimed.
‘And coconut. It tastes like … what does it taste like, Vin?’
Vinnie swallowed. ‘Warm and spicy, with a hit at the end. It sounds silly, but it tastes to me like a curry.’
Anna nodded. ‘And the rating?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Around a seven for me, I think it’s a chocolate you’d eat on its own. It’s quite strong,’ Mary said.
‘I agree. Let’s try this one next.’
Vinnie picked up a milk chocolate with grains of sea salt on it. Mary picked up the same one, and they grinned happily at each other as they put the chocolate in their mouths.
‘Oh, this is gorgeous!’
Vinnie looked up at Anna and nodded. ‘It is – definitely a ten. This is really brilliant, darling. Tequila and lemon and salt.’
Anna smiled. ‘Top of the class. A tequila ganache in lemon oil–infused chocolate and topped with sea salt. Would you prefer lime? It’s sharper.’
‘I think so, the lemon might get a little lost … I just had a black thought.’
‘Really? How unusual. Spit it out before it gets lonely.’
Mary laughed. ‘You two are as funny as ever,’ she said.
‘Wait until you hear my black thought, you might not think we’re so hilarious.’
‘Go on, then,’ Anna said, as she picked up a chocolate and put it in her mouth.
‘I’ve used a bottle, a gun and a tank of must as murder weapons, quite successfully I might add.’
‘Vinnie!’
Mary tried hard to look shocked, but Vinnie could see she was suppressing her amusement.
‘So, how could you kill someone – in self-defence, naturally – using chocolate? Any ideas?’
Eventually Anna settled on her Secret Boozy Seven for Aunt Muriel’s Magnificent Chocolate Masterpieces. They were: a cognac, coffee bean and coffee powder very dark chocolate; a tequila ganache in lime-infused milk chocolate with sea salt on top; a white chocolate infused with coconut oil and filled with a blend of ginger, cardamom and chilli; a mulled wine truffle with red wine, lemon, cloves and cinnamon; a truffle made from a bourbon-infused ganache rolled in finely chopped peanuts; a salted caramel and whisky dark chocolate; and a piña-colada truffle with pineapple, coconut and white rum.
The truffles and chocolates looked incredible in their silver paper baskets, nestled in soft silver tissue and lined up in black boxes tied with a silver ribbon. They had employed a graphics company to create a cartoon image of a grey-haired, plump woman with a chocolate in her hand and a twinkle in her eye. This was ‘Aunt Muriel’, and the banner around her read: ‘Aunt Muriel’s Magnificent Chocolate Masterpieces’.
The three of them stood looking at the boxes on the table. Vinnie picked up a four-piece box.
‘They look so professional.’
Anna laughed. ‘I should hope so, the amount of money we’ve sunk into packaging and design!’
He nodded. ‘So now we send them out and see what happens.’
‘We do – to shops, media, chefs, hotels. Aunt Muriel will invade them all.’ She turned to Mary. ‘Are you ready, Aunt Muriel?’
Mary picked up a box and smiled at her. ‘I’ll capture every tastebud in the land and hold them to ransom.’
That drive for recognition had brought them more initial success than they could handle. Big orders meant more machinery, and Anna took on some of the local women and taught them the skills she could share. She still tasted a sample from every batch and set very strict rules about how the temperamental ingredients were handled.
Summer heat caused transport issues, so they started packing the consignments in cold store boxes. By the autumn the business had become a well-oiled machine. Anna was in charge of the creative side, Vinnie handled sales and orders, and Mary was Aunt Muriel, a chocolatier of many years standing who had recently emigrated from London and brought her love of mixing quality chocolate and wonderful flavourings with her. It was a performance role, which suited Mary’s love of amateur dramatics, and she happily did telephone interviews. When people requested a photograph, however, they were sent a high-resolution image of the logo, because that was how Aunt Muriel wanted to be known.
That evening the three of them sat on the veranda, sipping a glass of Rocky Bay Gravitas and talking about the news.
‘His protection in jail must have cost a fortune, and maybe the well ran dry, with Norman dead,’ Vinnie said.
‘I feel very sorry for the families of the guards,’ Mary said quietly.
Anna sipped her wine and looked up at the star-filled sky. ‘I wonder how they got the bomb onto the van,’ she said, ‘Do you think the van was stopped en route or did it leave prison with the bomb on board?’
Vinnie shrugged. ‘No way of knowing.’
‘So, he’s dead. Gone. We can stop looking over our shoulders.’ There was no excitement in Anna’s voice, only resignation.
Suddenly Vinnie sat up and put his drink down. ‘The teeth-mould trick,’ he said, almost under his breath.
‘The what?’ Anna asked, her curiosity aroused.
‘Nothing … just something I remember from my misspent youth. I met a rather shady dentist once, and his job was making replicas of teeth for mobsters, using real human teeth, so that if they needed to fake their own death they could put a few teeth in the wreckage. When there’s nothing left, dental records can then give a positive ID.’
Anna put her glass down and looked at him carefully. ‘Are you telling me that you think Marcus faked his own death?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. I’m sure he’d had death threats from other prisoners. Mob rivalry makes it a dangerous place.’
Anna shivered. ‘Still, it’s a horrendous thought.’
Mary hadn’t reacted to their conversation at all. Now she turned her head towards Vinnie. ‘Does this mean we could go home for a visit, Vinnie?’
Anna and Vinnie exchanged glances.
‘We’re dead, remember?’ Anna said.
‘But we could go as the Wilsons, on our new passports,’ Vinnie added.
‘Why? If we can’t go near home, see family and friends, why would we go?’ Her tone was a mixture of sadness and frustration.
Vinnie leaned over and touched her hand with his. ‘I’ll ask Peter.’