Fit to Die: A Supper Club Mystery

c h a p t e r o n e: é c l a i r



"Would you care for an éclair, sir?"

Serving Size: 1 éclair ? 4 oz.

Witness to Fitness Points: 8

James Henry stared at the attractive, chocolate-covered delight nestled in its crinkled paper cup. He knew he shouldn't even think of eating the tantalizing pastry.

He was supposed to be on a diet. For the last six months he was supposed to have been on a good-carbohydrate, good-fat diet. And at first he was good–almost a saint–but lately, more and more, his cravings for forbidden foods had overpowered him and he had cheated. Just a little bit at first, but as the months went by, he found himself eating something deliciously fattening every day. What began with a slice of pizza once a week had morphed into a jelly donut on the way to work, a small bag of cheese puffs at lunchtime, a tub of buttered popcorn at the movies, or a candy bar during evening television. It was when he began eating the cheese puffs again that James knew his diet had officially become a failure.

All his life, James Henry had had a love affair with cheese puffs. The crunchy, salty, cheesy ambrosia that seemed to be comprised of baked air and that addictive, electric-orange dust drove James to his knees. During the first two months of the diet, in which he was determined to lose weight alongside his new friends and supper club members, James had resolutely passed by the snack food aisle in the grocery store. If he didn't go anywhere near a bag of cheese puffs, he could resist buying them. He had been so strong and the pounds had come off. Slowly at first, just a few a week, as he had been told was healthy. In two months, he lost more than twelve of the extra fifty-plus pounds he carried on his tall frame and had felt confident and hopeful for the first time in years.

That was back in autumn, though. Then Thanksgiving had come, and Christmas. It was during the holiday season that he and the other members of the supper club, who had humorously dubbed themselves the Flab Five, could be seen sneaking little sugary treats on the sly. "What's a piece of sweet potato pie here or a little candy cane there?" they reasoned with one another. At their last supper club dinner, Gillian, the barrel-shaped pet groomer with the nest of wild orange hair and garish clothing sense, admitted that she had already gained back half of the weight she had lost over the fall. Now, in March, James Henry, head librarian of the Shenandoah County Library Branch, also ruefully confessed that he had steadily been gaining weight instead of losing it.

Shrugging his shoulders as if to brush off all thoughts of dieting, James finally accepted the éclair from the woman wearing a green apron and an artificial smile. He popped the soft pastry into his mouth and happily exhaled as warm custard oozed onto his tongue. He licked a centimeter-sized smudge of chocolate from his left knuckle and pushed his cart farther up the frozen food aisle. He really had no reason to be walking down this aisle. If he admitted the truth to himself, which he wouldn't, James would have to acknowledge that the only reason he came over to this side of the store was that it took him closer to the display of jumbo-sized bags of tortilla chips, potato chips, pretzel rods, and of course, cheese puffs.

As head librarian, James made quarterly runs to the discount warehouse in Harrisonburg, Virginia. His purpose was to restock necessary office supplies such as Scotch tape, staples, printer paper, ink cartridges, and the like. The small town of Quincy's Gap, where James worked, was nestled in a verdant valley beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains and didn't support a large enough population to have more than one grocery store, let alone a mammoth warehouse store. James had grown up in Quincy's Gap, so he was accustomed to driving to larger towns like Harrisonburg or Charlottesville for specialty items. And even though James worked a Monday?Friday schedule at the library, he deliberately came to the warehouse during his time off over the weekend in order to partake of the food samples.

Steering a cart the size of a compact car down the wide yet congested aisles of refrigerated food, James paused in front of a shelf containing tubs of chocolate-chip cookie dough before noticing that another green-aproned woman was serving samples of pizza bagels up ahead. James darted forward and immediately stuffed one into his mouth, ignoring the molten tomato sauce, bubbling mozzarella cheese, and the woman's sales pitch as he greedily pivoted toward the juice sampler station behind him. Tossing back the doll-sized Dixie cup filled with sugary berry juice as if he were doing a shot at a bar, James blotted his purple-stained lips with a napkin and hustled in the direction of what could only be a cart set up to offer samples of chocolate.

A clot of eager customers surrounded this particular sampling station, which was strategically located at the section of the store displaying a contradictory combination of health foods and candies. James pushed his cart into a side aisle and shoved his bulk in front of a small boy, fearing that all the free samples might be given away before he could get his share. Glancing at the stacks of cartons containing sugar-free gum, honey-roasted peanuts, and protein bars in disdain, James elbowed forward until he could see the surface of the white stand being manned by a hassled-looking elderly lady. The poor woman was cutting up squares of chocolate from a slab the size of a shoebox as fast as she could. Shoppers grabbed a square and rapidly returned to their carts, like snakes seeking some privacy in order to properly swallow their prey.

"Hey! You cut!" the boy behind James whined.

Ignoring him, James stretched a long arm through a narrow gap between the hips of two chatting women and snagged a piece of chocolate. As he attempted to retrieve both his limb and what he now saw was a caramel-filled confection, one of the women abruptly turned. Her purse, acting like a thirty-pound pendulum, smacked James roughly in the arm, which he was holding high in the air in order to avoid having his chocolate touched as he reeled it in toward his salivating mouth. He watched in horror as his caramel-chocolate square flew out of his battered hand and above a tower of granola bars. Taking advantage of James's dismay, the disgruntled boy lunged forward, seized the last square on the tray and melted away into the crowd.

"Damn!" James muttered. He cast a sidelong glance at the old woman with the green apron. "Are you going to cut another piece?" he asked, hating the pathetic tone of his plea, but unable to stop himself from making it.

The woman fixed a pair of angry, blue eyes on him. "Not only am I not going to open a new bar," she seethed, "but I am going right home to read the paper."

James was confused. What did reading have to do with sampling chocolates? "The paper?"

"Yes. The classifieds! I'm going to find another job!" the woman squawked. "I've never seen such rudeness or gluttony in my whole entire life. And mine hasn't been a short one, mind you. For Pete's sake! It's just a piece of candy. I'm not handing out hundred-dollar bills here!"

James flushed, wondering why he had been fortunate enough to have been the sole recipient of this woman's tirade. Seeing the combination of an empty tray and a lack of activity on the sampler's part, most of the other shoppers had dissipated like mist.

"I'm sorry." James offered a weak apology to the woman. Then, in a final attempt to coerce her into renewing her sampling, he decided to lie. "I don't know about the rest of these people but I forgot to have breakfast today. Suddenly, that piece of chocolate...