The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery

by JoAnna Carl

  Harold smiled an angelic smile. “I didn’t mean to trespass, but it’s an awfully pleasant walk. Do you mind if Alice and I come through here?”

  “I wouldn’t do it at night. We might think you were a prowler.”

  “I wouldn’t want Joe to run out with a pistol.”

  I ignored that. “And watch out for cars. The drives are only one lane wide, as you see, and we have a bunch of people going in and out this year.”

  Harold nodded. “I walked by yesterday evening and saw that your drive was full. You must have company. Friends or relatives?”

  “Some of each.” I looked at my watch. “Sorry, Harold, but I’m late to work.”

  Harold smiled, Alice gave a friendly yip, and the two of them walked on toward our house. I got in my van and drove off.

  Harold was okay, but he was nosy as well as boring. I decided that his case of single guy syndrome was getting worse. Maybe Joe could get him to volunteer for some city committee. He might like to clean up the dog-walking area in the Dock Street Park. I snorted at the idea. Harold was none too conscientious about cleaning up after Alice.

  And he’d heard of another burglary. There had been a regular string of them along the lakeshore that spring and summer. I’d been too busy getting used to married life to worry about it, but at least a dozen summer cottages had been hit. Like the Tarletons, the owners often hadn’t discovered that they had been victims until the cottages were opened for the summer. The main loot had been antiques.

  For more than a hundred years, Warner Pier has been populated by three classes of people—locals, tourists, and summer people. Locals, of course, are like Joe and me; we live and work there all the time. Tourists come by car or bus and stay in motels or B and Bs for a weekend, a week, or two weeks. Summer people own cottages or condominiums and stay for a month, two months, or the whole summer.

  Lots of the cottages in Warner Pier and along the lakeshore are seventy-five to a hundred years old. Lots of the families have been coming to Warner Pier for seventy-five to a hundred years. Others have built cottages—I’d call some of them mansions—more recently. Some of those cottages have valuable furnishings; some don’t. None of us understood how the burglars had managed to hit the ones with valuable antiques every time.

  I drove on to the main part of Warner Pier, dashed by the library, tossed Gina’s romances into the return slot, and grabbed six more off the romance shelf. She likes the old ones, the ones with innocent heroines and no sex, not the newer ones with independent women and racy scenes.

  I went in the back door of TenHuis Chocolade only five minutes late. Ahh, air-conditioning. And ahh, chocolate. I took three deep breaths as I came in the back door. Just sniffing it made me feel better. The ultimate comfort food. And I needed comfort that summer.

  But the comfort didn’t last long. As I walked into the big, clean kitchen where the fabulous TenHuis chocolates are made, I was confronted with a red-haired giantess looming near the ceiling.

  “Oh, no!” Now I realized that the humidity was high, despite the cooler air inside. “Is the air-conditioning out again?”

  Dolly Jolly, Aunt Nettie’s second in command, was standing on a folding chair and holding her hand in front of the vent. She looked as if she were going to cry. “I’m afraid so,” she shouted. “And they swore they had it fixed yesterday.”

  Dolly is a food professional who had come to work for TenHuis Chocolade a year and a half earlier and who had taken to the chocolate business with the ease of a kid biting the ears off an Easter bunny. Dolly is even taller than I am and is broader, too. She has brilliant red hair and a face to match. With Aunt Nettie abroad, Dolly and I were in charge.

  “Have you called Vandemann?” I said.

  “No!” Dolly speaks out at a shout. “I’m afraid the young guy can’t handle it!”

  “I’ll try to get hold of Mrs. Vandemann. His mom runs the business side.” I held up my hand, offering Dolly support as she climbed down from her precarious perch.

  “We’ll have to move stock around!” she yelled.

  The skilled chocolate crew, the wonderful women I call the “hairnet ladies,” were already beginning to move boxes of chocolate and racks of bonbons into the front half of the big kitchen. Having our air-conditioning out wasn’t just an inconvenience. It could shut us down completely.

  TenHuis Chocolade is completely air conditioned, of course. It has to be. Heat and humidity are the enemies of fine chocolate. People say, “I’m melting,” when it gets hot and humid. That’s just a metaphor. But it’s a fact for chocolate. A bonbon—or any other kind of high-quality chocolate—will get soft at eighty degrees and will actually lose its shape at ninety.

  And high-quality chocolate is expensive. The finished product is expensive, and the ingredients used in it—chocolate, sugar, cream, butter, flavorings, and fondant—are expensive. Heat and humidity can ruin all of them except the flavorings. So a heat wave is a potential disaster for a chocolate company, and problems with the air-conditioning are a guaranteed disaster.

  TenHuis Chocolade has three separate air-conditioning systems. One cools our retail shop and my office, and two cool the big workroom, the storage rooms, and the break room. If even one of them goes out, it’s a problem. But now, faced with a terrible heat wave, both the work-area AC systems had been acting up.

  “Did you turn it off and on?” I said. Sometimes that helps.

  Dolly nodded. “I tried! No use!”

  I shook my head and headed for the telephone. I had Vandemann’s air-conditioning on my speed dial, and I put in a panic call to Mrs. Vandemann. I pointed out that her son had worked on our AC only the day before, and hinted that if he couldn’t fix it, we’d appreciate his recommending someone who could.

  We try to patronize local businesses, but there is a limit.

  Mrs. Vandemann made soothing noises and assured me her son would be there immediately. Or almost immediately. He was fighting a similar emergency at the Warner Pier twenty-four-hour clinic, she said.

  I refused to be intimidated by sick people. They could live with fans; my chocolate couldn’t. I hung up, then reported Mrs. Vandemann’s assurances to Dolly, who was standing in my door.

  “But I’m going to call Barbara down at the bank,” I said. “First, if worse comes to worst, and we have to replace that unit, we’ll need credit. Second, she may recommend some other air-conditioning company.”

  Dolly frowned. “I hate for you to have to bother with this, Lee, when you have so many other problems.”

  “You mean the houseguests? Don’t worry. I make them wait on themselves.”

  “No, I meant Joe’s mom.” Dolly lowered her voice to that low rumble that she thinks is a whisper. “Is she all right?”

  “As far as I know. Why?”

  Dolly frowned. “Well, she came by, and she looked . . . worried.”

  “Did she say something was wrong?”

  “Not exactly. But she said she wasn’t going to replace her assistant.”

  “Oh? That is odd. I’ll ask her about it.”

  Joe’s mom, Mercy Woodyard, owns Warner Pier’s only independent insurance agency. She’s probably the most successful businesswoman in Warner Pier—a situation I approve of. Not only do Joe and I not have to worry about her finances, but she keeps so busy at the agency that she rarely bothers us. Mercy could be a formidable force if she decided to mix into our lives. She’s so efficient and energetic that she automatically assumes command of most situations.

  Mercy runs her office with the help of one assistant, and that assistant had recently announced she and her husband were moving to Lansing. Mercy had been interviewing replacements, but maybe she hadn’t been able to find anyone suitable.

  Dolly left, and I got busy. TenHuis Chocolade isn’t like most Warner Pier businesses—completely dependent on the summer tourist season. We ship chocolates to department stores, specialty shops, caterers, and individuals year-round. But summer is still busy for our retail shop
as Warner Pier’s tourists wander our quaint streets. We have plenty of locals and summer people as customers as well.

  I checked in with the two counter girls who would be working until Brenda and Tracy came at four o’clock; then I began on my e-mail. Most of our orders come by e-mail. I have to keep up on it.

  I’d finished with the e-mail and moved on to the regular mail by the time young Cal Vandemann came in. I turned him over to Dolly and kept working. Only a few minutes later, Tracy and Brenda came bounding in. I glanced at the clock at the back of the workshop—my office has glass walls, so I can see the retail shop and the workshop. And the clock astonished me. Brenda and Tracy were half an hour early.

  Brenda stopped near the door, but Tracy charged right into my office.

  “Listen, Lee,” she said. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

  “What have I done now?”

  “You haven’t done anything. It’s what we heard at the Superette.”

  “Now, Tracy, if you’ve been talking to Greg Glossop . . .” Greg Glossop is the pharmacist at Warner Pier’s only supermarket, and he’s the most notorious gossip in town.

  “No! I steered clear of Mr. Gossip, just the way you said I should. But I couldn’t help overhearing—”

  “Tracy! No gossip!”

  “Lee! This is important!”

  “Is it true?”

  “Of course it’s not true!”

  “Then I don’t want to hear it.”

  Tracy’s face twisted into a knot of agony. “Some-times gossip can be important, Lee. You need to hear this.”

  I sighed. “Sit down and tell me. Just don’t yell it so the whole shop can hear.”

  Tracy came in the office, pulled the door shut behind her, and sat in my visitor’s chair. She leaned across my desk and dropped her voice.

  “Brenda and I were in the cosmetics aisle, see, and you know that’s right next to the cereal.”

  “One aisle over. I know.”

  “Well, some summer lady was over there. I don’t know who she is, but I’ve seen her in the Superette before. A fake blonde. One of the ones who wears a bikini with a push-up bra.”

  “In this weather that’s a practical garment.”

  “She didn’t have a bikini on today, but I’ve seen her in one before.”

  “Okay, Tracy. I get the picture.” I began to be afraid the gossip would be that this bikinied blonde was pursuing my husband. I trusted Joe, but I didn’t want to hear even an unfounded rumor along those lines. “What did she say?”

  “She said that looking for a new insurance agent was such a pain.”

  “Insurance agent?”

  “Yes. Then the woman she was talking to—I looked at her later, and it was some older woman I don’t know—that woman said, ‘Oh, we’ve always been happy with Mrs. Woodyard.”’

  “I should think so.”

  “The first woman said, ‘Oh, we have, too. Until all these burglaries started.’ Then she lowered her voice—you know, the way you do when you’re pretending to tell a secret. She dropped her voice, but it was still loud enough for us to hear an aisle over. And she said, ‘It just seems awfully funny that only her clients are getting hit in these burglaries. I told Bob we simply can’t take the chance of giving a list of our belongings to a thief!’ ”

  For the third time that day, I was completely astonished.

  First my dead father-in-law had come to the door. Then I’d discovered that one of my houseguests was packing a pistol. Now I’d been told that my mother-in-law was suspected of being part of a burglary ring.

  If I’d had Pete’s pistol right at the moment, I might have tracked down the bleached blonde in the bikini with the push-up bra and shot her dead. How dare she say such a thing about Joe’s mom? No insurance agent in the world could be more conscientious about guarding the interests of her clients.

  Tracy was still looking at me, her eyes wide, eager to see my reaction. I tried to pull myself together and keep my temper. Losing it wouldn’t help Joe’s mom.

  “You were right, Tracy. I did need to hear this,” I said. “But no one else does.”

  Tracy shook her head vigorously. “I won’t say a word.”

  “I guess you and Brenda can talk about it with each other, since she heard it, too. But I’d appreciate your not saying anything to anybody else.”

  Tracy’s head shook so hard she could have scrambled her brain like an omelet.

  “Not the boyfriends.”

  She shook again.

  “Not the girlfriends.”

  Another shake.

  “Nobody. In fact, I feel sure that Mercy would have grounds for a lawsuit against anybody who speculated publicly about her professional reputation and behavior. Slander is a serious matter.”

  Tracy nodded, her eyes bigger than ever.

  “I do appreciate your telling me, and I’ll talk to Joe about it. Now you and Brenda have time for coffee before you come on duty.”

  I slipped them each money for a fancy cappuccino and gave Brenda the same caution I’d given Tracy. I hoped the mention of a lawsuit would keep the two of them quiet.

  Then I sat down and made a list of the things I needed to talk to Joe about.

  His friend Pete’s gun. His aunt using our house for a hideout. Our lack of privacy on what was still our honeymoon. This gossip about his mother. And the stranger who claimed to be his father.

  What else could come up?

  CHOCOLATE BOOKS

  Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of

  Dark and Light

  by Mort Rosenblum

  (NORTH POINT PRESS)

  Mort Rosenblum traveled the world to research this book, and it gives a multifaceted look at the wonderful stuff.

  For example, some of the growers he observed in Africa dried their cacao beans by spreading them on paved roadways. Another grower, on the island of Principe, had invented elaborate drying machinery. Rosenblum also investigated whether or not African cacao growers are guilty of using slave labor.

  Rosenblum visited some modern American makers of fine chocolate, but his book takes its closest looks at European chocolate makers, particularly those in the esoteric world of fine luxury chocolates. Plants and tiny artisan shops that produce elaborate chocolate sculptures and fabulous chocolate creations are described.

  Hint: If a maker of fine chocolate offers you a sample of anything in his stock, Rosenblum says to pick a plain dark chocolate. No embellishment. That way you really taste the chocolate.

  Chapter 5

  When Cal Vandemann reported on the air-conditioning an hour later, the news wasn’t good.

  “I’m trying not to replace that compressor,” he said. “But I’m afraid I have to.”

  “If we need a compressor, get us one.”

  “They’re really expensive, Lee.”

  “Not being able to do business is even more expensive, Cal. Get the compressor.”

  I tried to tell myself Cal couldn’t be as dumb as he looked, but his little-kid looks did not encourage confidence. His dad, who had died the previous winter, had been burly. He’d looked like a person who knew air-conditioning. I knew Cal was in his thirties, but he looked like a junior high kid.

  Cal scratched his head. “The problem is going to be finding a compressor.”

  “If we need it, we need it, Cal.”

  “I know, Lee. But it’s this heat wave. Everybody else’s compressors are out, too.”

  “Cal, I won’t balk at the price.” As a business manager, I hated to say that, but we were desperate. “Find one!”

  He left. But he didn’t look confident.

  At least my office was cool. I tried to work, resolutely ignoring the customers and clerks in the shop. I didn’t look up when I heard Tracy in an animated conversation with someone, but it didn’t save me from interruption. Tracy came to the office door and said, “One of your neighbors wants to talk to you, Lee.”

  I looked up to see an attractive woman of fifty or so. She was
petite and well proportioned and had strawberry blond hair in a fake but tasteful shade. Her coordinated sportswear outfit marked her as a summer person. She looked like the kind of customer who was likely to need a special order—silver trays full of truffles and bonbons, or a hundred souvenir bells for a fiftieth wedding anniversary.

  Tracy had said she was a neighbor, but I’d never seen her before. I decided she must be a neighbor from Warner Pier’s business district.

  She came into my office, and I stood up and tried to look pleasant. “Hi. Are you from the wine shop?”

  “Oh, no.” The woman smiled. “I’m a neighbor from across Lake Shore Drive. I wanted to introduce myself.”

  As far as I knew, no one had moved onto Lake Shore Drive since Harold Glick, and I didn’t think Harold had a wife. Besides, Harold didn’t live across the road. He lived down the road. So who could this woman be?

  I offered to shake hands. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we had a new neighbor.”

  “I’m not exactly new. Renewed, maybe. I’m Garnet Garrett. We’re at the Double Diamond cottage.”

  “Oh! Please sit down.”

  Double Diamond was a landmark along the lakeshore, and, yes, it was exactly across Lake Shore Drive from us, although we couldn’t see it because of the hundreds of trees between the two houses.

  We’re on the inland side of the road, but Double Diamond overlooks the lake. I’d seen the cottage from the beach. It was a large, comfortable-looking, Craftsman-style house, with porches on three sides and walls covered with weathered gray shingles. I thought it was surrounded with far too much thick brush, a landscaping style I call “mosquito heaven.” But nobody had asked me.

  Mrs. Garrett perched on the edge of a chair. “Dou-ble Diamond has been leased outside the family for twenty-five years, so I haven’t been here since I was a newlywed. But we’re planning a family reunion at the cottage later this month.”

  “I’m originally from Texas,” I said, “and when I first saw the cottage’s name, I thought a rancher had wandered up here.”

  She smiled. “The diamonds refer to jewels, not cattle brands. My grandmother was Opal Diamonte.”