by JoAnna Carl
Alex made his call, and I tried to open the back door. In a second, a piercing alarm stabbed my ears. I hastily stuck my fingers in them, and Alex tapped a code into the panel near the door. Silence fell immediately.
The noise was certainly effective. Alex had pasted sheets of brown paper over the front windows, but I could tell by the shadows against the glass that passersby were stopping to see what had caused the din.
“That ought to scare off an intruder,” Alex said.
“That’ll send them running for the hills,” I agreed. “I only hope our system works as well.”
Alex leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Did you ever wonder if these break-ins are secretly orchestrated by alarm companies?”
“Huh?”
“Sure. Look how many systems they’re selling because all the Warner Pier merchants are scared out of their khakis over these intruders.”
We laughed. Then Alex showed me around the shop and explained where everything would go. He pointed out the display cases, the hidden cameras, the office with a one-way window overlooking the sales room, and the safe, where a lot of the stock would be tucked away each evening. A nook with a small table would allow customers to sit down and try on items they were drooling over.
The color scheme was black-and-white. “It’s got to suit both modern items and antiques,” Alex said.
“And engagement rings?” I asked.
“Of course. It’s not a jewelry store without engagement rings. But our emphasis will be antique and handmade jewelry. Some of it will be—well, folksy. It will have a handcrafted look.”
I saw that Alex had been eating his own lunch in the back room. A colorful book with beautiful photographs of showy jewelry sat in front of his carton of yogurt.
I pointed to it. “I see you think about jewelry even during meals.”
Alex laughed, but the sound seemed a bit forced. “I’m a fifth-generation jeweler, Lee. Our blood runs ruby red.”
He reached over and picked up a small bag of potato chips with one hand, then closed the book with the other. Then he dropped the chips, which somehow managed to land on the title of the book.
Then he looked at me rather slyly. For a moment I felt that I’d surprised Alex looking at dirty pictures, not beautiful jewels.
I swallowed a giggle as I said good-bye and headed to the back door. Alex promised to set the new alarm system while he was in the building alone.
“Even though there’s nothing valuable here now,” he said.
“You’re here! None of us could get along without you.”
I said good-bye and left through the back door. I pondered the Gold family as I walked back to the shop. Alex’s mother had been the famed opera singer Opal Diamonte. She married a well-to-do jeweler named Reuben Gold. Since Rubin means “ruby” in German, and diamante translates from Italian as “diamond,” they each had two names that were similar to precious stones or precious metals. This inspired the Golds to name their children after jewels—Ruby, Pearl, and Alexandrite, which was Alex’s full name. Alex also had two nieces, Garnet and Jade.
But Garnet, our neighbor across Lake Shore Drive, and her sister, Jade, had declared an end to the jewel names. Garnet’s children were named Mary and Richard Junior, and Jade’s daughters were Carol and Beth.
The Gold family’s unusual names brought my thoughts back to Dolly Jolly, who had a sister named Molly. Despite a lot of good-natured teasing, they denied that they had an aunt named Polly or a brother named Wally.
That thought made me smile, but also brought a tear to my eye. Where was Dolly? She was my friend, and I missed her. And I was terribly worried about her, even if she claimed to be perfectly safe.
I swallowed my worry and went through the back door of TenHuis Chocolade. I was immediately waylaid by Aunt Nettie, who whispered in my ear, “Look at your e-mail! Quick!”
The first item was from Dolly.
Aunt Nettie and I hugged each other enthusiastically, even though the e-mail was merely a copy of an order sent to our nut supplier. Wherever she was, Dolly was on the job.
I whispered, “Oh, Aunt Nettie! I feel so much better.”
I tried again to e-mail and text Dolly, but she didn’t answer. Still, wherever she was, she was working. This discovery helped me feel ready to meet the installer from the security company a half hour later.
The installer worked efficiently, walking around the shop with Aunt Nettie and me, describing what he could install to make our doors and windows safe from intruders. He also checked our fire alarms. Then he produced a tool kit, and in less than an hour, we were all set up with a sophisticated alarm system.
I was impressed and admitted it out loud. “This is great!”
The installer smiled. “I hope you never need it. But if you ever do, it will call the police and our regional office.”
As he left, Aunt Nettie presented him with a half-pound box of strawberry truffles (“white chocolate interior enrobed in dark chocolate and decorated with dark chocolate sprinkles”) and mocha pyramids (“milky coffee interior inside a dark chocolate pyramid”).
“I’m surprised at how much more secure I feel already,” I said.
“I feel secure, too,” Aunt Nettie said. “And it didn’t take long.”
Then I laughed. “We’ll be safe from intruders, but not from raccoons,” I said. “An electronic system won’t help a bit with stopping them. And with Watt Wicker still out, that project has come to a standstill.”
Aunt Nettie sighed. “I hate to replace Watt after he was injured. I’ll call Hogan and ask what his status is. I meant to ask at lunch.”
In a few minutes she came into my office. She was frowning.
“I talked to Hogan,” she said. “And it seems that Watt is out of pocket, too.”
“What?! Like Dolly?”
“No. No, Hogan thinks Watt simply wandered away from where Mike and Hogan had hidden him. There’s no reason to think he’s in danger, but they don’t know where he is.”
“Can I help search for him?”
“Hogan says no. He’s got Mike back in his hiding place and wants him to stay there. I think he feels that Watt is simply wandering and will turn up. Then they’ll find a better hiding place.”
She gave me a pat on the back. “Lee, you seem awfully tired. Why don’t you go home?”
“It’s only four o’clock.”
“But you came in an hour early.”
She was right, and I agreed that I’d had such a bad night the previous night that I was ready to take a hot shower, eat a cheese sandwich and some tomato soup, and hit the rack.
I kissed Aunt Nettie on the cheek. “And I recommend that you do the same thing.”
“I might,” she said. “I could leave Bunny in charge.”
“She can handle it until closing. I’ll go over the new lockup rules with her.”
I was still parking at the municipal lot, since Watt’s raccoon trap was taking my parking space. After I talked to Bunny, I gathered my belongings and headed out the front door. I was absolutely exhausted, and I still had to walk uphill for four blocks to get to my car.
I’ll swear I fell asleep at Warner Pier’s one stoplight as I left town. But I made it out to Lake Shore Drive to our lane, stopped to pick up the mail, then parked the van in my usual spot in the drive. The click of the key in the back door’s lock sounded like the door to heaven opening, and I quietly went inside.
I walked into the dining room, stood by the table, and started sorting the mail. As usual, it was mostly junk.
I had just reached the third charity donation request when the upstairs shower came on.
Cheese for Fudge?
(The Chocolate Falcon Fraud)
Nearly every summer I visit the Mystery Readers Book Club at the Herrick District Library in Holland, Michigan. At one of the meetings, member Carri
e Stroh mentioned that she always used a recipe for fudge that called for Velveeta cheese. The recipe came from her mother. Intrigued, to say the least, I knew I had to try it.
Velveeta Cheese Fudge
1 pound margarine or butter
1 pound Velveeta
1 cup cocoa
4 pounds powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
Melt together 1 pound of margarine or butter and 1 pound of Velveeta.
Sift together 1 cup cocoa and 4 pounds of powdered sugar. (That’s a lot of powdered sugar. Use the biggest bowl in the kitchen.)
Mix the sifted cocoa and sugar thoroughly, then add the melted butter and cheese. Add 1 tablespoon vanilla. (I added the vanilla to the butter and cheese first.)
Carrie says, “Stir, stir, stir until your hand cramps. Spread evenly in a buttered 9-inch-by-13-inch pan. Cool and cut into squares.”
I interpreted “Stir, stir, stir” as “beat,” as with traditional fudge. But when I first made the recipe, I discovered that mixing the cheese-butter mixture with the sugar-cocoa mixture is a Job with a capital J. It’s extremely stiff. Beating this would be impossible. But the resulting fudge is perfectly smooth and absolutely delicious.
Chapter 13
Talk about being startled.
My first impulse was to run out the back door, climb into my van, and back out of the drive, steering with my left hand and calling 9-1-1 with my right.
But I stopped to think. What the heck kind of an intruder would break in to take a shower?
That made no sense at all. Except once our neighbor’s house had been entered by a homeless person who didn’t otherwise have access to a shower. In our neighborhood, just a mile off the interstate with its attraction to hitchhikers, that could happen. But it usually happened in the winter, when homeless people needed warm places. Currently, the weather was great; I wouldn’t expect people needing shelter to break into houses. And if they felt dirty, they could take a swim in Lake Michigan.
And it wasn’t likely that the person in the shower was Joe. He might have come home and decided to take a shower, but he wouldn’t use the upstairs shower instead of the one downstairs, adjoining our bedroom. Besides, his truck wasn’t there, at our house.
A friend? Did we know anyone who might drop by and decide to take a shower? Unlikely.
A relative? That seemed too odd even for our oddest relatives. And how would a friend or relative get in? Only a few of them had keys, and a quick circuit of the downstairs revealed that all the doors and windows were properly locked.
I could still hear the shower running as I decided to leave. I had exhausted the possibilities of people who might legitimately be taking a shower.
I grabbed my purse and ran out the kitchen door, headed for my van. I was opening its door before I noticed that the side door of the garage was firmly closed. I skidded to a stop. That door is usually slightly ajar; we have to slam it hard to get it to fit.
Our “garage” actually functions as a storage shed. The little building was built as a garage, true. But that was in the 1930s, when cars—and therefore garages—were much smaller than today. Neither my van, which doubles as a delivery truck for TenHuis Chocolade, nor Joe’s truck, which is big enough to haul an extra-long boat, would fit into that garage. We use the building to store things like yard furniture or picnic supplies. None of it is valuable, and we’re careless about closing it firmly.
Breaking into our house to take a shower was odd; breaking into a garage filled with hoes, rakes, and lawn chairs was even odder.
I changed the direction of my flight from my van to that door. I threw the door open and reached inside to turn on the light.
Inside was a red Volkswagen. Not an antique-ish one left over from the ’50s or ’60s. This one was bright, new—one of the final Beetles made. And I knew who owned it.
“Aha!” I believe I shouted, then I whirled and rushed back into the house. The shower was no longer running. I ran up the stairs, ignoring the amount of noise I was making, and I banged on the bathroom door.
“Dolly! Dolly!” I yelled the name. “What the heck are you doing here?”
The door flew open, and I was facing a giant with wild red hair sticking up in all directions. She had a huge blue towel draped around her as a sarong.
“Lee!” she boomed out. “What are you doing home this early? I thought I could get a shower and be all ready to surprise you!”
“We’ve been so worried! Where have you been all day?”
“I drove into Holland and went to a motel! I registered under my mother’s name. I had her credit card because I’d been doing some shopping for her. Then I decided it would be more fun to ask you and Joe to take me in!”
“I’d hug you if you weren’t so darn wet!”
“Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be downstairs!” As usual, Dolly’s voice rumbled like thunder echoing over the lake.
“If I weren’t so glad to see you, I’d bawl you out,” I said.
“Be sure you pull the curtains! I don’t want your neighbors to know I’m here!”
By the time Dolly came downstairs—dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, with dry hair—I had made iced tea. When I poured her a glass, she snatched it up and took a big slurp.
“I tried to do some work today,” she said.
“We got at least one e-mail. It gave Aunt Nettie and me hope that you were okay. Your note was vague.”
“When I wrote that note, my hideout plan was vague,” Dolly said.
“I’ve closed the dining room curtains. Let’s sit in there, and you can Tell All.” I shook a finger at her. “But you’ll have to whisper, Dolly. In case one of the neighbors walks up to the back door. We’ve done enough yelling.”
We sat down with our iced tea and Dolly began her report.
As I had already been told, during their talk the previous evening Joe and Hogan had concluded that Mike had been the possible target of the attack that had injured Watt. They had been calling members of the coffee club to ask about this when I called and told them Paige’s body had been discovered. Their continued discussion—as they drove back to Warner Pier—had convinced them that there was a serious possibility the two events were connected.
Plus, as Hogan heard more about the discovery of Paige’s body, he began to fear that Dolly had been seen by the two “lumpy” people who had been near the garage where Paige was found.
So before Joe and Hogan arrived on the scene in our alley, the two of them tracked Mike down by phone and urged him to hide out and stay hidden from whoever had injured Watt. Plus, they wanted him to take Dolly with him. “Hogan wanted Mike and me to leave Warner Pier,” Dolly said. “They thought we should take cover in some secluded place. I won’t mention just where because they might still use it.”
She frowned. “I said I’d go, but later—while I was packing a bag—Mike hatched a new plan.”
Dolly’s face screwed up with distress. “He thought we should take Watt Wicker with us!”
“Watt? What on earth for? I mean, Hogan could find another hiding place for Watt.”
Dolly shook her head. “It was some harebrained idea Mike had. I hadn’t even realized Mike and Watt knew each other! Apparently they had been friends for years. Mike had never mentioned this to me before but he claimed they were pals, and he thought that he could get more information out of Watt than Hogan could.”
I stared at Dolly for a few seconds. “Frankly, Dolly, that sounds silly. Hogan has a good reputation as an interrogator. He’s well known in law enforcement circles for getting information out of people.”
“I know. But most of those people were criminals. Mike thought that he and Watt might come up with some helpful information by collaborating. About midnight Mike called and dropped the idea on me!”
“So when Watt left the hospital in the mid
dle of the night, he went with Mike?”
Dolly looked at me with eyes the size of bicycle tires. “You mean Mike actually took him?”
“I don’t know. I guess Watt went off with somebody.” I just stared back at Dolly.
Dolly shook her head. “Honestly! I really love that guy, but sometimes I don’t think he has the sense God gave a goose. Not that it’s going to matter after our last conversation!”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, Lee! Mike and I had a terrible fight! I told him I wouldn’t go anywhere with them!”
“But that was the whole plan, Dolly.”
“Not originally! At first Mike made it sound like this romantic rendezvous. Then I find out I’ll be keeping house for him and Watt!”
“He and Hogan also wanted to keep you in a safe place.”
“I felt safe until I heard Mike’s plan.” Dolly frowned. “Oh, I guess I acted childishly. But Mike had never before mentioned even knowing Watt Wicker, Lee. Now all of a sudden he wants the three of us to hide out together?” She looked up at me and glared. “Now I’m afraid I’ll never see Mike again! And I’m not sure I want to!”
I didn’t answer, purely because I didn’t know what to say. Dolly didn’t say anything either. But she sighed deeply, stood up, and walked into the kitchen, where I keep a box of tissues. Maybe she thought that blowing her nose would clear her brain.
Maybe the little pause cleared mine, because I thought of a simple question.
“Dolly, we’re glad that you’re here, glad you thought of us as a place where you can take refuge. But why? How did you pick this old farmhouse for a spot to light?”
Dolly looked at me and smiled. “You’re the only people I know with a guest room!”
We both began to laugh. Then, before I could say anything more, I heard footsteps on the back porch. Joe’s voice called out, “I’m home!”
Dolly grabbed my arm with both hands. “Does Joe have to know I’m here?”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “This is his house, too. You can wait in the stairwell in case he has someone with him.”