The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery

by JoAnna Carl

  I got back to the house without finding another hint of what had happened to Gina.

  With a sort of desperation, I called her name again as I came in the door. No answer. A quick check, upstairs and down, confirmed that she had not returned while I was roaming around looking for her.

  By now my stomach was in a knot. Where had she gone? What had happened to her?

  The situation might not require the police, but I decided it was definitely odd enough for a call to Joe.

  His cell phone rang several times before he answered, and then his words were terse. Or his word was terse.

  “Yes.”

  “Joe?”

  “I’ll call you back.” He broke the connection.

  I made some guttural sound that signified frustration. “How can you hang up?” I asked the phone. “Gina is your aunt, not mine!”

  Then I reminded myself that Joe was out in a boat, though I hadn’t heard the motor. He might be facing some serious situation—bailing madly because there was a hole in the bottom maybe, or on a collision course with a big yacht.

  “He’d better be facing a life-or-death situation,” I said aloud. “If he isn’t now, he will be when he gets home.”

  I debated calling him back. But then I had another idea. I went to the desk in the corner of the bedroom and dug around until I found a scrap of paper. “Aha!” I held it up.

  Pete’s cell, the scrap of paper read. Some scrawled numbers followed.

  Since Pete seemed to know so much more about what was going on in my house than I did, I’d call him.

  He answered on the second ring, and at first he sounded as terse as Joe had. But he let me tell him why I’d called.

  I was feeling silly by the time I came to the end of my story. “So she might have simply gone out for a walk,” I said lamely. “I may be panicking over nothing.”

  “I don’t think so,” Pete said. “I’ll come help look for her.”

  I felt relieved at his answer. Unfortunately, he’d hung up without telling me where he was, so I had no idea how long it would take for him to get to the house. I was quite excited when a car drove in from Lake Shore Drive about ten minutes after I’d hung up, and I felt quite let down when Brenda and Tracy got out of it.

  “Hey, Lee,” Tracy said. “We’re both broke. Do you mind if we fix ourselves a sandwich?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “You didn’t see Gina walking down Lake Shore Drive, did you?”

  Both girls popped their eyes, and Brenda yelled in astonishment, “Gina went out?”

  I shushed them quickly and sent them to the kitchen to make their own sandwiches. My stomach was so full of knots that I couldn’t consider eating. Besides, it was only eleven thirty a.m. I stood on the front porch watching for Pete. But he didn’t come.

  It began to drizzle rain again. I was almost glad. If Gina was simply out walking around, surely she’d head for the house when she began to get wet. But she didn’t show up.

  I tried calling Joe again. He’d turned his phone off. Or maybe he’d dropped it in the lake. Or maybe he’d fallen in himself.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I went back out on the front porch and stood there looking out into the drizzle, sweating and wringing my hands.

  Just then Darrell came walking down the drive, coming from the direction of the Baileys’ house.

  Darrell had left with Joe a couple of hours earlier. If he was back, then Joe was back. A sense of relief flooded me.

  “Joe!” I passed Darrell without a nod and ran up the drive toward the Baileys’ house. Joe and Darrell had apparently come in the back way and parked over there.

  Joe’s blue truck was parked in the Baileys’ drive, but there was no sign of Joe himself.

  For a minute I couldn’t figure it out; if Darrell was there, where was Joe? Then I realized that Joe must have sent Darrell home in the truck and had himself stayed with the boat. But why?

  I could ask Darrell. I turned around and started back down the sandy lane to our house. And now I thought about Gina’s tracks. Had I ruined them in my headlong dash to the Baileys’? Had the drizzle destroyed them?

  No, I found the tiptoe tracks still visible. But there were new marks beside them. Blunt semicircles had been dug in. What were they? For a moment I stared blankly. Then I looked at my own shoe. The blunt semicircles matched the toes of my shoes. But where was the rest of the track? Why had only the toes made a mark?

  It was because I’d been running.

  I compared my tracks to Gina’s. They were nothing alike, of course. Hers were from bare feet, and I’d been wearing tennis shoes. The single similarity was that only the toes had made marks.

  “Oh, lordy!” I said. “Gina wasn’t tiptoeing! She was running!”

  What could have happened to make Gina not only leave our house, but run down the drive toward the neighbor’s carport?

  I definitely needed to tell Joe about this. And I wanted him to see those tracks.

  I whirled and ran back to the Baileys’. It took me only a moment to get a tarp from the back of Joe’s truck. I spread it over the damp sand, covering the patch of ground that held Gina’s tracks. Then I went to our front door, opened it, and yelled at Brenda and Tracy, “Come out here on the porch and eat your sandwiches, please!”

  They stared. “It’s wet out there.” Tracy sounded incredulous.

  “I know, but I need you to stop tragedy. I mean, traffic! I don’t want any cars to drive over that tarp.”

  I guess my excitement convinced them that my request was important. They came out and sat in the porch chairs, eating their sandwiches and looking confused. I explained that they were to stop any vehicles from driving over the tarp I’d spread out.

  I ran around the house to Darrell’s camper and banged on the door. “Darrell! I have to find Joe. Where is he?”

  Darrell didn’t answer. I almost decided he hadn’t gone inside when I heard a sniffle. He was there.

  “Darrell! Why did Joe send you home? Where is he?”

  Still no answer.

  “Listen, Darrell, I’ve got an emergency here. I need Joe. It’s vital! I have to reach him. And he’s got his phone turned off. So, where is he and what’s happened to him?”

  I heard Darrell again, but he didn’t answer.

  “Darrell! Answer me!”

  He didn’t.

  “Then I’ll have to call the police department!” I turned away and flounced toward the house.

  As I got to the back porch, the phone rang. I ran inside, letting the door slam behind me. But Tracy had gotten there first.

  “Hi, Gina,” she said. “How’re you doin’?”

  “Give me that!” I snatched the phone away from her. “Gina! Where are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. But I wanted you to know I’m all right.”

  “Thank God! You scared me. Shall I come and get you?”

  “No, no! I think I’d better stay where I am for a while.”

  “Gina! Where are you?”

  “I’m in a safe place, hon. Now don’t worry.”

  She hung up.

  Chapter 11

  I growled and stared at the telephone. I would have liked to use it to bop Gina on the head.

  Why hadn’t we gotten caller ID? But if Gina was using her cell phone and didn’t want to talk, knowing the number wouldn’t help me, anyway.

  At that point Pete drove up. I was so glad to see a person who seemed to be taking me seriously, who shared my concern about Gina—even Pete—that I had to fight the impulse to run to his SUV, haul him out, and hug the male chauvinist pig. I think I maintained proper decorum only because he saw that Brenda and Tracy were trying to get out of the drive—by then it was time for them to go back to work. He started to go past our drive to the Baileys’ house, and he almost ran over the tarp. So I ran out yelling, but I didn’t hug him. I signaled for him to stop.

  Pete had to back clear out to Lake Shore Drive to let the girls out. By the time he had p
arked in his usual spot I had my emotions under control.

  “Finally!” I said. “Finally I’ve got someone to look at these tracks. Though it may not be as important now as it was a half hour ago.”

  I told Pete about Gina’s phone call. He listened seriously, but all he said was, “I’ll take a look at the tracks, since you’ve preserved them.”

  Naturally, it then began to rain in earnest and the sky grew as dark as a Jamaican Rum Truffle (“the ultimate dark chocolate truffle”). I got a flashlight, and Pete and I held the tarp up like a floppy tent and he looked at the tracks. We both got muddy. And hot. The rain hadn’t cooled anything off.

  “So Gina wouldn’t say where she was,” he said.

  “No! Somebody must have picked her up.”

  “She’s not being held prisoner if she can get to a phone.”

  “Unless someone forced her to call.”

  Pete nodded. He was still concentrating on the ground. “Can you hold the tarp by yourself?”

  “Maybe.”

  I tried, but my attempt wasn’t very successful. Pete squatted down, and we draped the tarp over his back, leaving his rump out in the rain. I stood up with my arms held out in front, doing my impression of tent poles, while Pete ducked down. Then Pete suddenly stood up, and the two of us were nose-to-nose.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been so mad at Joe I wouldn’t have noticed our closeness.

  Pete backed up slightly. “I don’t know a lot about tracks,” he said. “But it does look as if Gina was running.”

  “Is it worth calling the police about?” I asked.

  “I don’t think we could report her as a missing person until she’s been gone longer. Not after that phone call.”

  We were still standing there, still nose-to-nose, when I heard Joe laugh.

  “What the heck are you two doing?” he said. “You look like an amateur show elephant.”

  I dropped my hands, and the tarp slipped off to one side. The next thing I knew I had grabbed Joe in a stranglehold that nearly kept him from breathing. Joe held me for a long moment.

  Rain was running down my neck. “Darn, Joe!” I said. “You startled me so much I forgot I was mad at you.”

  “What were you mad about?”

  I let go of him. “It’s a long story. Get Pete to tell you. I’ll go in the house and make some sandwiches. You experts decide what to do about Gina.”

  “Gina?” Joe’s voice was puzzled. I didn’t answer.

  Joe and Pete stood out in the rain, and I could see Pete gesturing toward the ground, so I gathered that he did tell Joe about the big Gina chase. But they apparently decided to do nothing, because when I looked out the window they had folded the tarp up and were heading toward the house.

  By then I’d determined that I’d act absolutely normal with Pete. I’d treat him strictly as Joe’s friend. That was the ticket. It was just so weird to find myself attracted to a man I’d have sworn I didn’t even like, a man I’d described as reminding me of my ex-husband.

  Of course, at one time I’d been very strongly attracted to Rich or I wouldn’t have married him.

  I met Joe and Pete at the front door. “Y’all might as well talk to Darrell before you come in,” I said. “As if we didn’t have enough perversity—I mean personality! If we didn’t have enough personality conflicts around here, Darrell has locked himself in his camper, and he wouldn’t answer when I knocked.”

  Joe and Pete did their wordless communication act. Then Joe sighed. “I’ll go.”

  “See if he’ll come in to lunch,” I said.

  Joe plodded off around the house, and Pete came inside, wiping his feet on a rug near the door.

  “What is Darrell’s problem, anyway?” I said.

  “He’s had a lot of rough breaks, with his dad and all.”

  “His dad?”

  Pete rolled his eyes. “I guess Joe hasn’t told you about Darrell’s dad.”

  “No. But I hope you will.”

  “When Darrell was twelve years old, his dad was beating his mom. Darrell got involved. His dad wound up dead with a butcher knife in his side.”

  “How horrible! Did Darrell stab him? Or was it his mom?”

  “No one really knows. Even Darrell may not know. The scene had turned into a melee. But Darrell was the one who got the knife from the kitchen and told his dad to back off. He was never charged.”

  “I should think not!”

  Pete smiled cynically. “Things aren’t always as simple as they sound.”

  “Do you think it was deliberate?”

  “I’m not saying that. But whatever happened, a thing like that’s going to leave a mark.”

  I went back to the kitchen and got out some lettuce for the sandwiches. As I drained it on paper towels, I tried to calm down the emotions that the account of Darrell’s involvement in his father’s death had brought out. I may have blinked back a couple of tears.

  What a sad, sad thing to happen to a twelve-year-old kid. But as Pete said, there are a lot of ramifications to crime—particularly crimes within a family. Who knows what had really happened?

  But Darrell had faced a lot in less than twenty-five years of life. His own involvement—justified or not—in his father’s death; then wrongful conviction for a home invasion and a resulting death; then five years in prison. And he’d apparently coped with it all by retreating within himself and learning to hide his emotions.

  No wonder Darrell always made me feel nervous. He must have a bomb inside his head. Ticking. There had to be oceans of emotion inside his stoic exterior. He needed some way to let it out.

  Darrell came in the back door, his head hanging. He wore a cap that left his drab hair sticking out around the edges. Joe’s hand was on his shoulder.

  “Lunch is almost ready,” I said. I hoped my voice sounded normal.

  Joe nudged Darrell toward the bathroom, and he shuffled off, the picture of defeat.

  At lunch Joe had me go over Gina’s disappearance again. I described how I’d found that she wasn’t in her room, then searched the house and the immediate neighborhood for her. Darrell ignored us. He made himself a sandwich, but he ate it staring at his plate.

  Joe frowned. “Why did you go upstairs to talk to her in the first place?”

  “To find out about the calls to motels.”

  Joe and Pete looked at me with completely blank expressions.

  “Motels?” Joe sounded puzzled.

  “Didn’t I tell Pete about that? I heard her upstairs. The fan was on in the bathroom, so I guess she thought I was still in there. She was in the girls’ room using the telephone, and you know this house; I could hear every word she said.”

  Joe frowned, and he and Pete exchanged one of those significant stares.

  Pete gave a snort of disgust. “We should have thought of that,” he said.

  “If we’d known who to ask for,” Joe said.

  “That was the funny part,” I said. “Gina was looking for relatives.”

  “Relatives?”

  “Yes. First she asked for Mr. Atkins.”

  “Atkins!” Joe dropped his fork.

  “Yes. Wasn’t that her ex-husband’s name?”

  “Did she ask for Art Atkins?”

  “I think she just asked for Mr. Atkins. No first name. But Gina spent all this time avoiding him. Why would she be trying to find him now?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said.

  I shrugged. “I guess she might need to talk to him for some legal reason. It was the second name she asked for that caught my attention.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Andy Woodyard.”

  Joe stared at me blankly. Then his mouth grew tight. “This is getting old,” he said. “Who is this guy? And if Gina knew something about him, why didn’t she say so?”

  “If you mean the man who came to the door claiming to be your dad, I don’t think I ever mentioned him to Gina,” I said. “She didn’t know about his visit, unless you told her.”


  Joe slammed a fist on the table. “When I think of the length of time it took for me to realize that my dad was actually gone forever, the times I dreamed he came in the front door, and I said, ‘I thought you were dead,’ and he answered, ‘No, I’m alive. . . .’ ”

  I heard a huge gasp coming from Darrell’s side of the table. We all stared at him. Tears were welling in his eyes. He half rose from the table, looking panicky.

  Joe grabbed his arm. “It’s okay, Darrell.”

  Darrell rapidly blinked. “I thought I was the only person who had that dream,” he said.

  “Hell!” Pete said. “I have it, and my dad died of a heart attack at the age of seventy-five.”

  That killed the conversation for a few minutes, but Darrell sat down again, and we all took a few deep breaths.

  I turned to Pete, searching madly for some less emotionally charged subject to bring up. I didn’t think Joe and Darrell wanted the lunch table to turn into a therapy session.

  “Was your dad an outdoor type, Pete? Is that how you got interested in birds?”

  “Nope,” Pete said. “He served thirty years in the navy. The only bird he ever watched was a seagull.”

  That didn’t get a general laugh—Joe was too uptight, and Darrell was still looking tearful—but the atmosphere lightened up. After all three guys had finished their sandwiches and cookies, and had each indulged in a few pieces of the molded chocolates, still tasty if they were a bit misshapen from the heat, Joe asked Darrell if he wanted to work on the shelves at the TenHuis Chocolade that afternoon.

  “It’s an inside job,” he said. “There’s not much to do at the boat shop, it looks like it’s going to keep raining, and all the work on the bathroom addition is outside.”

  “Sure,” Darrell said. He cut his eyes at me, then looked at Joe as he got to his feet. “Sure. I’ll get started.”

  “I’d better check with Dolly,” I said. “Things are a mess down there because of the air-conditioning problems.”

  Sure enough, Dolly said Cal Vandemann had not shown up, though his mom had called to say he might have located a compressor. In Illinois. It would be difficult for Darrell to work in the storeroom where the shelves were to go, she said, because that was one of the few cool places in the plant.