The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery

by JoAnna Carl

  Only Pete kept his seat. I wondered if he was waiting until Joe and I cleared out of the living room, since his porch opened off it, and he might want to go to bed with some privacy. So I patted Joe on the knee. “I guess I’ll say good night, too.”

  But Pete leaned forward, looking serious. “Would you mind talking to me for a minute first?”

  “Sure,” I said. Was I actually going to have a conversation with Pete Falconer? Emboldened by the harrowing experiences I’d had that evening, I made a vow: If Joe wasn’t going to tell me what Pete was up to, I’d ask him myself.

  “Let me get my stuff,” Pete said. He went out onto the porch, turned on the light, and dug through his belongings. Somehow I wasn’t surprised when he came back with his camera.

  Joe and I sat on the couch, and Pete pulled a wicker rocker over so that our six knees were nearly touching.

  “This looks awfully official, Pete,” I said, “coming from a bird-watcher.”

  Pete grinned his macho grin. “I wanted to show you a few snapshots.” He kept his voice just above a whisper, and I thought of Gina, just six or eight feet above our heads. Over the past few days Pete had learned how easy it was to eavesdrop in our house.

  Pete brought pictures up on his camera one at a time, and showed them to me. He’d called them snapshots, and that was what they were, at least technically. They were very ordinary pictures of two guys walking up and down the beach. Both of them wore standard Warner Pier garb—khaki shorts and T-shirts. One was tall and slim and wore a green shirt. The other was short and round and wore a navy or black shirt with lettering on the front.

  The subjects didn’t seem to be aware of the camera at all, and the photos had been taken from the bank above the beach, not from the beach itself.

  I was sure the people in the pictures hadn’t known they were being photographed.

  “Pretty unusual birds you’ve been photographing, Pete,” I said. “What did you do? Set up a deer stand in the bushes?”

  Pete looked surprised, and Joe gave a guttural laugh. “I told you she was smart,” he said.

  “These were obviously taken repetitiously,” I said. “I mean, surreptitiously! The people didn’t know they were having their pictures taken. What’s the deal?”

  “First, do you recognize either of the men in the photos?”

  I looked at them again. “That’s our beach, of course. Beech Tree Public Access Area, right down the road. That tree—that’s the one the kids from down the road tried to build a tree house in last year. As for the people, no, I don’t recognize them.”

  “I wanted to make sure neither of these guys was the one who came to the door yesterday.”

  “Joe told you about that? No, I’m sure he isn’t one of them. I can’t see the face of the one in the dark shirt, but he looks too short. And the tall one’s hair is too dark.”

  “Could they be the guys who invaded the Garretts’ house?”

  I looked at the pictures carefully. “They could be, Pete. All I could tell about the robbers was that the first one was taller and slimmer than the second one, and the second one was shorter and rounder than the first. And that would certainly describe these two. But I’m sure neither of the guys in these pictures is the man who came from upstairs.”

  I tapped the camera. “However, I certainly couldn’t pick any of the three guys who were at the Garretts out of a lineup. Unless I saw the one guy’s feet.”

  “Feet?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “Lee says the guy who rummaged around upstairs had a bunion.”

  “Big deal,” I said. “The state police didn’t seem impressed by that observation.”

  Pete frowned, and I spoke again. “Are those all your questions, Pete?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you can answer a couple from me.” I took a deep breath. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  Pete frowned, and Joe laughed. They looked at each other; then Pete spoke. “I’m just an innocent bird-watcher, Lee. And I’m going to bed.”

  He stood up, said good-night, and left for the bathroom.

  I was furious. I jumped to my feet and started after Pete. But Joe had jumped to his feet, too, and he grabbed me. “Wait a minute, Lee!”

  “Joe! This is my house. I deserve to know what’s going on!”

  Joe didn’t say a word. He kissed me.

  I shoved him away, but it took me a minute. Joe’s a great kisser. But I ducked out of his arms.

  “Cut it out, Joe! I’m serious!” I stormed after Pete.

  Joe’s interference had allowed Pete enough time to get into the bathroom and lock the door before I could go through the kitchen and reach the back hall. I raised my hand to bang on the door, but stopped. I didn’t want to cause a commotion that would bring Gina and the girls downstairs. Especially not Tracy. She was trying hard not to gossip, but a shouting match with Pete might be too tempting a tidbit to keep quiet. It might be all over town by ten tomorrow morning.

  Besides, if Pete was determined not to tell me what was going on, I could bang on the door all night and he probably wouldn’t change his mind.

  I lowered my fist, spun around, and went into our bedroom by its back door. Joe followed me.

  “Lee, you’ll just have to trust Pete and me on this,” he said.

  “I’ll be glad to trust you, Joe, but I don’t know Pete well enough to trust him. How long have you known him?”

  “Since I got out of law school. I’ve always found him very reliable.”

  “Is he another of your former clients?”

  Joe laughed. “Actually, I guess he is. Lee . . .”

  I held up my hand in a gesture I hoped said, halt. “I don’t want to know,” I said. Joe seemed determined to fill the house with people who’d once been accused of some crime or other, and I was not very happy about it.

  Joe and I stared at each other for what seemed to be five minutes, but was actually about five seconds. Then Joe spoke. “I’ll lock the house up.”

  “That’ll do a lot of good,” I said. “Lock all the doors, but leave the windows wide open so we won’t smother. Lordy! I’m tired of this heat!”

  Joe left me to snarl at the bedspread as I yanked it off the bed. I was in a foul temper, and I knew I should cool down. But how could I cool off emotionally when it was after midnight and it was so hot I was ready to simply burn up and the humidity was so high that I couldn’t burn, I could only boil?

  An evening with cool air from the pitiful little window unit at the Garretts’ house had left me feeling terribly sorry for myself. Because of the casement windows my great-grandfather had installed in our house, there wasn’t a single place where we could put an air conditioner without cutting a hole in a wall. Our fans only blew the humid air around. My skin was covered with a film of sweat.

  I couldn’t even take my clothes off, because the cops and Harold Glick—and probably a dozen other people—were roaming around the neighborhood, and we couldn’t close our windows or pull our curtains because of the heat. The only place I could dress and undress after sundown was the bathroom, where we did have coverings for the windows, and Pete—darn him anyway!—was in there.

  Once I had the bed down to the bottom sheet, I did lie down on it with the window fan blowing right on me. By the time Joe came back in, I was calm enough to tell him I was sorry for yelling. “I’m not sorry for what I said,” I told him, “but I’m sorry I said it in an ugly voice.”

  “I’m sorry Pete annoys you so much. I’m not sure I understand why. Frankly, most women like him.”

  “Maybe that’s one thing I don’t like about him—that air of being God’s gift to the opposite sex.” I rolled over and leaned on my elbow. “Let’s be frank here. I think he reminds me of Rich.”

  I wasn’t sure I should have told Joe that. Rich was my first husband.

  Joe laughed. “I guess I should be happy to hear that,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shoes. “This heat is wearing
us all down. Surely it will break soon.”

  I rolled back over, then spoke. “Joe, do you think the robbery tonight is part of the lakeshore crime wave?”

  “It breaks the pattern. All the other crimes were what you might call standard burglaries—second-degree burglary, a break-in when no one was threatened. The other houses were empty.”

  “And this was a home invasion,” I said.

  “Yes. Aggravated robbery, robbery when the robber is armed with a deadly weapon. A different crime legally.”

  “Not entirely different, Joe. As I reconstruct what happened, the upstairs guy broke in and was looking for the jewels while the other two kept watch. If he’d found the jewels before we saw the group outside, he would have left the same way he came in—by an upstairs window or however he got in. His pals would have crept away after him, and none of us would have been the wiser until Alex wanted to put his dirty underwear in his denim bag.”

  “You blew their plan, Lee, when you saw the guy on the porch.”

  “He shouldn’t have gotten so close to the window.”

  “True. He goofed. Once he’d been spotted, they had to come in and tie us all up. But if you hadn’t seen them, it would have been simply a burglary. So maybe it does fit the MO.”

  “But they definitely were after the Diamonte jewels. They didn’t take my ring or make you and Dick empty your wallets.”

  That seemed to be all either of us had to say on the subject, and I heard Pete come out of the bathroom, so I went in. About the time I turned off my tepid shower it began to rain gently. Considering how hot and miserable the weather had been, that could have been a good thing. But instead of breaking the miserable humidity, the rain seemed simply to accentuate it. So in addition to having a nervous night—being held at gunpoint always disturbs my rest—Joe and I were also physically miserable, lying on damp sheets with a fan blowing wet air over us. If God had wanted people to live with high humidity, He wouldn’t have invented central air.

  I finally fell soundly asleep about four a.m. and didn’t wake up until after eight. Luckily, Gina had made coffee for the gang. Double luckily, it was my day off. The skies were still gray, but the drizzle had stopped.

  When I staggered to the table, barefoot and still in the T-shirt and shorts I’d slept in, Gina and Joe were sitting on either side of the toaster. Joe wore gym shorts and a T-shirt. Gina wore tight pink pants, a bright blue tunic, and pink high heels. On her shoulder was a pin featuring a poodle with a semiclear pink tummy, and pink plastic earrings hung from her ears.

  I roused enough to ask about the rest of the houseguests, and Gina said everyone else had eaten. Joe said Pete had gone someplace to watch birds—like I believed that—and Brenda and Tracy had left for the shop. Darrell was in his camper. I could see all his doors and windows were open, and his fan was going so hard it must have been like a wind tunnel in there.

  I was drinking coffee and wondering if I had enough energy to drop a piece of bread in the toaster, when someone knocked at the back door. Gina rapidly tiptoed into the living room, and Joe went into the kitchen.

  The door was standing open, of course. I could hear Alice scratch on the screen.

  “Hi, Harold,” Joe said.

  “Joe! I’ve got a great idea about how to fight these burglaries. We need to form a neighborhood watch.”

  I let my head sink into my hands. All I wanted to do was go back to bed, and here was Harold, ready to hold a meeting.

  I’m happy to say that Joe didn’t invite Harold in. He stepped out onto the porch to talk to him. But I could hear every word they said.

  “A neighborhood watch?” Joe said. “I don’t know how that would work out here where the houses aren’t very close together.”

  “That’s why we need one!” Alice gave a yap, apparently to encourage him.

  Harold went on. “We could have patrols.”

  “A lot of the summer places have alarms,” Joe said.

  “I know. But they don’t seem to be doing much good.”

  “I don’t know, Harold. It seems to me that the main value of a neighborhood watch is to encourage people to get to know their neighbors—you know, so they know who’s out of town and stuff like that. And out here . . . well, we pretty much know one another already.”

  “You and Lee do, maybe. I know most of the permanent residents. But the summer people—I don’t know them at all.”

  “You will before the end of the summer.”

  Harold took Joe’s comment as a compliment. “I try,” he said modestly. “And Alice helps. Everybody likes Alice.”

  I grinned. Yes, the lonely Harold with his cute mutt would know everybody for miles around by the end of the summer.

  I barely caught Joe’s sigh. “It’s certainly an idea, Harold. Why don’t you talk to the city clerk on Monday? She’ll tell you how to go about setting up a neighborhood watch. But it won’t be easy, because of the summer people. They’re not interested in going to meetings.”

  “If we had lists of everybody’s license tag numbers,” Harold said, “if we knew who was supposed to be in the neighborhood and who wasn’t, then we might be able to catch those guys in the act.”

  “The summer people have houseguests all the time, Harold. That’s one of the reasons people buy these places. So it would be hard to keep track of license numbers.”

  Harold nodded. “I know, I know. But they still hear things. Like last night—maybe I wasn’t the only person who heard someone running around at the time of the robbery at the Garretts’ house.”

  CHOCOLATE BOOKS

  The Emperors of Chocolate:

  Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars

  by Joel Glenn Brenner

  (RANDOM HOUSE)

  Joel Glenn Brenner takes a look at the largest chocolate makers of the United States, Hershey and Mars, both conglomerates of mind-boggling size.

  Her book outlines the history of each company and has a plot and cast of characters more interesting than most novels can boast. The leading actors are Milton Hershey, who built a giant company and then gave it away, and Forrest Mars Sr., who fought to found his own firm and then staged a takeover of the one his father had founded.

  Interestingly enough, the book also includes succinct descriptions of growing and manufacturing chocolate that are among the best I’ve read.

  Hersey developed his own recipe for chocolate, and the Hershey’s bar created the American market for chocolate. But Hershey’s never became popular in other parts of the world.

  Mars developed chocolate products more in line with European standards and made M&M’s the most popular candy in the United States.

  Chapter 9

  That got my attention. Harold had heard someone running? Joe and I had been sure the burglars had taken off by boat.

  “Running?” Joe said. “Where was this running?”

  “On Lake Shore Drive. Coming from the stairs.”

  “The stairs down to Beech Tree Public Access Area?”

  Harold nodded, and Joe went on. “Did you tell the police about this?”

  “Sure. I told them last night. They had cops going up and down the beach and the road first thing this morning. I guess they figured like I did—the people who held you guys up ran along the beach and got away up the stairs.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “But if the cops found anything, they didn’t let on.”

  “I doubt they did find anything,” Joe said. “It was too dry to leave tracks in the sand—tracks that could be identified, I mean. And I doubt any crook who ever watched television would be dumb enough to drop a button or a cigarette butt. The beach would be a pretty good escape route.”

  I thought about that while Joe and Harold talked a few minutes longer. Harold was right about the beach being a good escape route. If the guys who had held us at gunpoint had run along the shore, they could have been at the public access area in about two minutes. Then they could have crossed to the stairs that swimmers too
k down to the beach, gone up to the small parking area, gotten into a car left there or in a nearby driveway, and driven off for points unknown. And they could have easily done it before the cops arrived.

  Harold lingered until Joe’s replies to him reached the monosyllable stage. It was Alice who finally showed signs of leaving. I could hear her snuffling around in the flower bed. Then she stood up on her hind feet and looked in the dining room window at me.

  “Quit dancing around, Alice,” Harold said.

  Dancing. The word made me jump.

  Dancing? Dancing? I felt the word was significant, but I didn’t know why.

  Another cup of coffee might help. I poured some caffeine from the thermal carafe into my mug, and sipped it. The dining room is tiled and the floor felt cold to my feet. Lordy, I thought, no wonder my brain won’t work. I don’t even have my shoes on.

  Shoes. That did it. My blood got out of bed. My heart began to pound, and my brain began to race. When Joe came into the dining room, he faced a lively wife.

  “Joe! I just realized something about that third burglar!”

  “The guy who had been upstairs?”

  “Right! He was wearing dance shoes!”

  “Dance shoes? Ballet slippers?”

  “No! I think they’re called jazz shoes. They look like oxfords.”

  “When were you around men’s dance shoes?”

  “They’re worn by women as well as men. Sometimes. Dancing lessons were part of my mom’s attempt to turn me into a silk purse when she was grooming me for the pageant circuit.”

  “I knew you had dance lessons, but I pictured you as a little girl in a tutu.”

  “I started too late for ballet. I just had some simple movement classes. My mom thought it would miraculously make me graceful.”

  He grinned. “I guess it worked. You waft over the ground like a gazelle.”

  “More like a cow pony running through a rough pasture. But the lessons were helpful when I was doing all those pageants. Part of every competition is a big musical number to open the show, and all the contestants have to participate. The number had to be simple, of course, because some of us couldn’t dance. And the others usually couldn’t sing.”