by JoAnna Carl
“I’m sorry I got distracted and didn’t tell you earlier. But I’d sure love to know who this Bob is. Surely it’s not the same one Mike threatened.”
“I might have to ask Mike about that,” Hogan said. “What else happened?”
“Last night at the hospital Paige acted strange when Mike came in.”
I described the way she had screamed, apparently in amazement, when she saw him. “She sounded really shocked, Hogan. Surprised. And she left right after he showed up. Practically ran out. I didn’t understand it at all.”
“I’ll put that on my list,” Hogan said. “It could use an explanation.”
Hogan hung up then, and I looked at my computer screen, pretending to think about work, while I tried to figure out what was going on. Was Paige in trouble or even danger? Or just shirking her job, as she’d apparently done in the past?
I tried to concentrate on my own work. But it didn’t go well. The phone kept ringing, and each call came from someone I needed to talk to, but who then was in no hurry to hang up. They all kept talking and talking. When I finally got them off the line, Aunt Nettie and her chocolate ladies kept bringing me requests that slowed me down—days off to schedule, lists of items to order, and similar small administrative headaches. This was my job, true, but what I really needed to work on was a plan for Christmas sales. By six o’clock I still had not made a dent in that.
Finally I called Joe and told him he was on his own for dinner.
“I’ve got some cheese crackers here,” I said, “not to mention maybe a thousand pounds of chocolate. I’ll nibble on that if I get hungry. You can either take yourself somewhere or warm up the last of the meat loaf and heat a can of green beans.”
“I could bring you a hamburger.”
“I appreciate the thought, Joe, but you know how much I’d rather talk to you than work. I’d better avoid distractions.”
“Okay. As long as you keep the back of the shop locked up tight. Promise?”
“I promise. Besides, the counter girls will be here until eight or eight thirty. I’ll try to leave when they do.”
I grabbed a Diet Coke from the break room, made sure the locks on the alley doors were secure, and settled in. For the rest of the evening, I vowed, I’d ignore the telephone and get my work done while the counter girls, Barbara and Dale, handled the customers and the calls.
Last year, Aunt Nettie and I had indulged ourselves in expanding and remodeling the shop. At that time, I acquired some fancy shades that allowed me to have privacy while I worked. The shades covered the glass interior walls of my office, allowing me to see out, but preventing people on the street and customers from seeing in. Now I lowered them and went to my desk. There I stopped for a moment to enjoy the passing scene outside.
The sun hadn’t set yet, and the street was still crowded. Teenagers were walking up and down in groups, flirting. Burly guys were flexing their muscles to display T-shirts with tacky slogans printed on the front. Older women were limping by, likely having developed blisters from their new beach sandals.
Two young women in particular drew my attention; they seemed familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen them before. One was blond and the other brunette. Were they customers? Were they among the waitresses at the Sidewalk Café? Or were they simply people who walked up and down the sidewalk now and then? As I watched, the two of them faced our show window, put their hands on either side of their faces, and stuck their tongues out, making faces at Barbara and Dale. Barbara and Dale made faces back, and all four of them laughed.
I joined the chuckles as the two girls waved and walked on down the street.
I called out, “Hey! Who are those girls?”
Dale came to my office door. “They work at the shoe store,” she said. “They come in for a bonbon every couple of days. I don’t remember how the crazy face game started. We try not to do it in front of customers.”
“Please don’t! Our customers are crazy enough. But I needed a laugh.”
We all giggled, and I went back to work.
The phone stopped ringing after six o’clock, and everything began to go more smoothly. We had enough customers to keep Barbara and Dale busy, but not so many that I had to leave my desk to help them at the display counter. I drank my Diet Coke and ate a small sack of cheese crackers while typing up information for the Christmas sales brochure my assistant, Bunny, was to design for me. I was making great headway.
When Barbara finally stuck her head into the office to tell me she and Dale were ready to leave, I looked up in surprise.
“Yikes!” I said. “I’m nearly through, too. Maybe I should work late every night. I seem to get more done.”
Barbara laughed. “I keep telling you that it would be easier to sell chocolate if the customers would quit dropping by to bother you by buying it.”
“Yes, if the customers would just stay home . . .”
“And Joe called and ordered Dale and me to walk you out to your van tonight.”
“Oh, he did, did he? He ordered you? I thought I was in charge of TenHuis Chocolade. When did Joe start giving the orders?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I noticed that your aunt gave you the alley parking spot today.”
“That’s true.”
“So if we all go out the back, you could give Dale and me a ride to the municipal parking lot.”
“You’re parked there? Well, that municipal lot is kind of far and snaky. It would be a good idea for the three of us to leave together.”
“We can wait until you’re ready.”
“I’m nearly ready. I’ll just grab my stuff.”
I closed out my computer and gathered up my belongings, saying, “Tomorrow our new security system is going to be installed.”
Barbara grinned at me. “Hopefully, that’ll mean the end of the concern about break-ins for us.”
“And maybe the start of a lot of false alarms, too, until we get used to it. But the salesman promised the new equipment is simple to operate.”
I put on my light jacket and dug my purse out of my desk. I pulled my handheld alarm, car keys, and flashlight out of the purse, and I stuck them in the jacket pockets, where they’d be easy to grab if I needed them. I turned out most of the indoor lights, turned on the alley’s security lights, and headed for the back door. Dale and Barbara followed me.
I had just taken out the keys to the alley door when the screaming started.
At first I wasn’t frightened. Just startled. Then Dale grabbed my arm. I could see her lips move, but the screaming drowned out most of what she was saying.
“Someone’s being attacked!”
Dale was right. I pointed to the telephone. “Call 9-1-1! I’ll see what’s going on out back!”
Someone was now pounding on the alley door. I threw the lock, yanked the door open, and plunged outside.
The screaming grew frantic. “Help! Help!” I saw that two young women were huddling on our small back porch. Another door—the one to Dolly’s apartment—flew open as if it had exploded. Dolly leaped onto the porch, holding a golf club over her head. She yelled something I couldn’t understand.
At the sight of Dolly waving a golf club, the two girls screamed even louder.
“Get inside!” I yelled over the noise and motioned them past me. I’m sure no one heard me, though they seemed to understand. I grabbed one of the girls and shoved her inside our back door. Dolly grabbed the second one and shoved her inside. Then Dolly and I stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, looking around.
The alley was mostly black, with pools of light from a few security lights.
“Is anybody there?” Dolly yelled.
“Do you see anybody?” As I spoke, a loud clang echoed down the alley. Dolly and I both whirled toward the sound.
“Somebody’s moving down toward Dock Street!”
Dolly jumped down the porch steps, almost tumbling over the raccoon cage, and ran to her left.
“Wait!” I stumbled after her. I could see a vague outline of figures moving against the glare of Dock Street.
“Slow down, Dolly! We can’t just follow some strangers down a dark alley!”
Dolly was far ahead of me by that time. I had to chase her down and grab her arm before she would slow down. Then she dragged me along for several steps.
“Dolly! They could be armed!”
Finally we came to a stop, and I realized she had a flashlight, one of those big suckers. I dug out my own flashlight, but it was too small to spotlight the people we were chasing. I stuck my other hand into my jacket pocket, ready to sound my alarm.
I could hear feet pounding, moving away from us toward Dock Street. Lights were dancing along; the runners had pulled out their own flashlights.
Dolly yelled. “There they go!”
She took off toward their bouncing lights, pulling me along. We ran down the alley until we reached Dock Street. Then we skidded to a halt, and Dolly dropped the aim of her giant flash toward the pavement. We no longer needed a spotlight to recognize people.
Dock Street was curved, following the banks of the Warner River, a block away from us. We stood on the sidewalk, looking to the left, then to the right, hoping to see something suspicious.
But all we saw were the ordinary sights of Dock Street on a summer evening—the streetlights, the park across the street, and Herrera’s Restaurant catty-corner from us. Bill Vanderwerp was entering its door, just the way he did most evenings. Tourists, their ice cream cones dripping, were walking down the street. The display windows were brightly lit.
After a moment, I spoke. “What the heck are we looking for?”
“Darned if I know!”
“Did you see anybody, Dolly?”
“No! For a moment, maybe. But mainly I just heard the yelling and saw figures moving!”
I fought a desire to laugh. “I guess we’d better go back.”
We retreated down the alley until we reached the back door of TenHuis Chocolade. I felt pretty stupid, and I think Dolly did, too.
“What happened?” I said. “What was all that yelling about?”
“I sure don’t know, but it sounded like an emergency!”
At that point, I heard sirens, and within seconds, two Warner Pier patrol cars wheeled into the other end of the alley.
Dolly turned toward me, and I read her lips. “Yikes!” she said.
“That’s what I say,” I said. “Double yikes!”
Ten minutes later, two patrol officers were searching the alley while six women—Dolly, Barbara, Dale, the two girls who had screamed, and me—were sitting in our shop’s break room feeling like idiots. Or at least that’s how I felt.
I turned to the two newcomers. By then, I had recognized them. They were the two who had made faces at Barbara and Dale through our front window.
“You two work at Van’s Shoes, don’t you?” I said.
They nodded like bobbleheads, the brunette head and the blond head moving in unison, their eyes still big and round.
Both were tiny—petite little things. Both looked to be around twenty. Maybe even eighteen or nineteen. They wore tight skirts and T-shirts, and their cute sandals were embellished with beads. In other words, they looked like typical Warner Pier working girls—young women who held jobs in a tourist town.
“What were y’all doing in the alley?” I asked.
The dark-haired one spoke first. “Trying to get away!”
“Someone came out of the garage,” the other said. They explained that as part of their pay at the shoe shop, they were allowed to live in an apartment across the alley from Van’s Shoes.
“Bill Vanderwerp owns the building,” the blonde girl continued. “There’s an office downstairs, and we live upstairs. The garage goes with the apartment. But neither of us has a car. We get to work by just walking across the alley.”
The blond girl identified herself as Katy, and the dark-haired one as Darcy. The two had been working alone at Van’s Shoes that night. The shoe shop closed at seven, and after locking up, the two of them had gone for sandwiches at the drugstore.
“We were trying to cheer ourselves up,” Darcy said.
“Someone we know has gone missing.”
“Paige?” I asked.
They nodded.
“Do you know her well?” I asked.
“Not really. But she lives in Dorinda, where we’re from, and she helped us get our jobs at Van’s.”
Tears welled up in Darcy’s eyes. “She’s a lot older than we are—practically thirty—but she’s been really nice. Never treats us like little kids. And her boss doesn’t seem to be worried about her at all!”
Because Katy and Darcy had closed the shop for the day, the shoe store had been empty. But as the two girls came back to their apartment, the garage door under it opened, and two big, lumpy figures stepped out.
Darcy and Katy reacted exactly the way many residents had been reacting to anything unexpected since the mysterious break-ins began. They screamed like banshees and took off down the alley.
“We saw your light come on,” Katy said. “So we thought there was someone here.”
That’s when Dolly and I had joined the fray, shoving the two girls into the shop and running down the alley after the vague figures. Then the sirens had joined us.
By the time everything settled down, Bill Vanderwerp had been called to check on his store. The sheriff’s deputies were waiting for him to arrive, and they had joined our group, huddled around Darcy and Katy.
“Can you describe the people you saw?” one of the deputies asked.
“They were great, big blobs,” Katy said. “I didn’t wait around to get a good look.”
The deputy sighed. “It sure would have been helpful if you had. You say Mrs. Woodyard had just turned on the lights in the alley. And if the unknown person ran toward Dock Street, he—or she—must have run right past you.”
“Behind us, maybe!” Darcy’s voice was still trembling. “I sure didn’t look around. I was trying to claw the door to the chocolate shop open—even if it was locked.”
“But you feel sure the figures were coming out of the garage?”
Katy and Darcy did their simultaneous nodding act again.
I jumped into the conversation at that point, turning to the deputy. “Have you looked in the garage?”
“We’re waiting for Bill Vanderwerp to bring a key,” the deputy said.
“Oh!” Darcy reached into her pocket. “I have a key,” she said. “I didn’t realize you needed to get in there.”
Silence fell over our little group. Well, duh.
“I’m sorry,” Darcy said. “I guess I’m rattled.” She handed the deputy a key ring, pointing out the garage key.
I felt pretty dumb about the whole thing, too. The girls had told us the garage went with their apartment, but when they said they didn’t use it, I’d assumed they gave up the key. Duh, to me!
The deputy took the garage key and went out our back door. “Let me through,” he said, weaving a path through the half-dozen law officers, including the sheriff, who were standing between him and the garage.
Vinton took the key, and the law officers all closed in behind him as he leaned over in front of the lock. We heard clicks as the lock turned.
I decided to stay on our porch. That was where the best view would be. Dolly and I stood shoulder to shoulder on the top step. The sound of muttering came from the group of lawmen, and I heard sentences. “Where’s the light switch?” “Try the wall.” “Is there a pull chain?”
It was too dark to see what was inside the garage, even from the vantage point of the top porch step. But whatever was inside was big and white.
Dolly gr
abbed my arm and spoke in a harsh whisper. “There’s a vehicle in there.”
I nodded.
Then the overhead light flashed on, giving us a fairly good view of what was inside. And in the silence that followed we saw a white SUV with the word sheriff in big black letters across the back.
It was a patrol car bearing the insignia of the Warner County Sheriff’s Department.
“Oh no!” I don’t know who said it.
That was the last thing anyone said as Sheriff Vinton edged alongside the car and opened the driver’s side door. We all watched silently as he caught the body that fell out. I think it was Vinton who finally spoke.
“Damn! I thought she’d gone off on a toot again!”
Chapter 11
Perhaps it’s understandable that the rest of the evening is a blur to me.
Mike arrived shortly after Paige’s body was discovered. He sat with us and held Dolly’s hand, softly talking in her ear. I remember she kept shaking her head, and he kept nodding his. But they were not disagreeing.
Joe and Hogan came later, showing up forty-five minutes after the garage door opened. They’d been having dinner together in Holland, and the dispatcher tracked them down. Hogan huddled with Mike and Dolly, then with Vinton. Joe stayed with me, then scurried over to the group clustered around Hogan. Back and forth.
Until they got there, Dolly and I had to be the adults. We were the ones who had to find the parents of Katy and Darcy and ask them to pick up the tearful girls and take them home to Dorinda. We had to make sure Barbara and Dale got home safely. We had to talk to Bill Vanderwerp calmly. Bill appeared understandably stunned that a young woman had been found dead on his property.
“I can’t believe this,” Bill said. “The only time I met Paige was when she came over about some shoplifting case.”
That confused me a bit. “Darcy and Katy said she helped them get jobs at your shop,” I said.
Bill shrugged. “I had printed up a flyer about summer jobs,” he said. “Maybe Paige picked one up and gave it to the girls.”
Paige’s family now lived in northeastern Michigan, we learned. Vinton got the responsibility of calling them.