Chapter 5 of 7A Terrible Falling Out

Simon Trent had been Annelise Vogel's lawyer for twenty years, and Thea Quinn needed a straight answer from him: had Annelise ever had a partner?

The tax bill on The Gilded Truffle sat unpaid. The partnership law book she had found upstairs showed another name being taken off every piece of paper in 1999. If that name belonged to someone other than Annelise, then half of what Thea had inherited was not hers to sell, and a chocolate shop that cannot sell its recipes is a room with a stove in it.

Monday came in cold and bright, fog still caught in the trees along the ridge and the mountains showing themselves over the rooftops of Cascade Ridge. Inside The Gilded Truffle on Main Street, Fina Moss stood on the step stool by the window, taping a clean sheet of butcher paper over the spot where the gold lettering had flaked away.

"You're up before the sun again," Fina said.

"There's a lot to do before we open."

"Reading that lawyer book isn't on the list."

"It's at the top of it."

Thea set the tray of hazelnut pralines on the cooling rack and slid it back from the door, where the draft would firm the chocolate too fast and leave the tops dull. The nuts were Ben Coleman's, from the last sack he hauled down from the farm, and the estate still owed him for them, a note written and not yet in an envelope.

"Simon's coming by this morning," Fina said.

"He told me Saturday."

"He left a message too."

"He did." Thea folded the cloth and ran it along the counter's edge, catching crumbs that had dried overnight. "I want you out front when he comes."

Fina stepped down off the stool. "Why?"

"Because I'm going to ask him one question, then ask it again a different way. I want a witness to how he answers."

"You have one ready? A question?"

"I do."

The front door scraped across the threshold, and Simon came in with his coat still buttoned and his briefcase in his hand. He stopped just inside and turned a slow circle, taking in the clean marble, the washed jars, the light through glass that had not been clear in years.

"It smells like a kitchen again," he said.

"It's always been a kitchen."

"Well, that's one way of looking at it." He set the briefcase against the wall and came up to the counter. "I won't keep you. I came to see how you're getting on, and to ask if you've thought more about the tax notice."

"I think about it every day."

"Good. That's more than the last owner did for a while."

He said it lightly, then looked at the register, where a faded Safeway receipt was still taped to the side, two ninety-nine for heavy cream from a week when the shop was still open.

"Before you go," Thea said, "I need to ask about Annelise."

"You can ask."

"Did she ever have a business partner?"

Simon's hands went still on the counter. He did not answer straight away, and when he did, he had moved down a step and was choosing his words one at a time.

"Where did that come from?"

"From her belongings."

"Then I'd have to tell you I don't discuss a client's affairs. A will doesn't open a door on everything that came before it."

"She's dead, Simon."

"That has never been the part that stops me."

Thea reached under the counter, brought out the law book, and set it down between them, open to the page with the turned-down corner. Simon looked at it. He did not touch it.

"Where did you find that?"

"In her apartment, in a box under a pile of winter sweaters."

"That is not a document I drew up."

"No. Someone else did. Read the margin."

He leaned in, hands at his sides, and read the small slanted writing down the edge, the same hand on every page and the same year in every corner. At the bottom of the last one, pressed hard enough to leave a groove in the paper: Her name comes off everything.

Nobody said anything. Fina had stopped pretending to work.

"I can't help you with a book I've never seen," Simon said.

"You just read it."

"I read a note. A note is not a document, and it is not a question I am allowed to answer." He straightened and picked up his briefcase. His phone began to buzz in his coat pocket. He looked at it, then at the door. "I'm sorry. I have to take this."

He went out to the sidewalk. Through the window she watched him pace the glass, his free hand pushed into his pocket, his head down.

"He didn't touch it," Fina said.

"No."

"People touch things they shouldn't. It's the first thing anybody does with a book they've never seen before."

"He has seen it before. He wasn't going to put his hands on it and be the man whose prints were in it."

Fina left the window and stood at Thea's shoulder. "So you've got a list."

"I've got a list."

"Say it out loud, then."

Thea pressed a fingertip to the marble, once for each name before she said it. "Javier Rios wants this building. If those recipes turn out not to have been Annelise's, the shop gets cheaper by the day, and he is the one standing there with cash when it does."

"He offered you money before he ever met you. That's reason enough on its own."

"Eleanor Penhaligon is writing the town's tribute to Annelise, and thirty years of friendship go into it. That tribute only works if Annelise wrote every recipe herself."

Fina made a small sound through her nose. "She looked at me like I'd put a scratch in her cardigan."

"Ben Coleman supplied this kitchen before either of us walked into it, and he is the one who told me Annelise was not always this way. He is also owed money by this estate, and a debt is a reason to leave the past alone."

"And Simon."

"And Simon, who has known about that book long enough to have said something, and who answered every question with his face before he answered it with his mouth."

Outside, Simon had stopped pacing, the phone against his ear, his eyes on the shop window. Fina let out a long breath.

"I don't like any of them," she said.

"You're not meant to like them. You're meant to notice them."

The door scraped again. Simon came back in with his collar turned up and a tired set to his jaw, and he kept the briefcase in his hand this time.

"Sorry about that. The office."

"It's Monday."

"It's always Monday." He stood with his back to the register, one hand on the leather handle, his eyes on the closed book, and something in him gave way. "You asked whether she had a partner."

"I did."

"Yes. There was someone, before I drew up a single paper for her. They built this place together and then had a falling out. A terrible one. The kind that ends with two people in two rooms and a lawyer in the middle."

Thea kept her hands still on the marble and waited.

"And after the falling out?"

"And then she passed away," Simon said. "That is what Annelise told me, and I had no reason to doubt her for a very long time."

Fina had gone quiet by the door, the cloth still in her hand.

"What was her name?" Thea asked.

Simon lifted the briefcase and held it against his coat. "That," he said, "is the thing she never told me. Not in twenty years."