The Chocolate Raccoon Rigmarole

by JoAnna Carl

  Because it was really nice. In Warner Pier our social events tend to be casual. Hot dogs and paper plates. Rarely did we get cut glass, fresh flowers, elegant food, and mimosas. Even if Joe and I weren’t drinking them.

  I moved toward the front door to try for some conversation with Garnet. Joe followed me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her.

  She immediately looked suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  “With Alex’s big enunciation—I mean, announcement! What’s he going to announce?”

  “Another special event. And it is a big deal.” Garnet glanced at her wristwatch. “I wish he’d go ahead and do it.”

  As if he had heard her, I saw Alex’s head appear above the crowd.

  “Good,” Garnet said. “He’s starting.”

  Alex was apparently on some sort of ladder, because his head and shoulders got higher and higher. He climbed toward the top, hooked a knee around one of the ladder’s legs, and waved his arms. For a moment I feared that the whole apparatus was going to topple over, but it stayed erect.

  “Okay!” Alex’s voice was jubilant. “Now for the big event!”

  The crowd applauded, and Alex leaned down. Someone handed him a large framed photograph, at least twelve-by-fourteen. Alex lifted it above his head, then turned from side to side, displaying it before the accumulated merchants of Warner Pier.

  He called out in a loud, clear voice, “The historic jewels of the grand duchess!” Then he carefully placed the photograph on one side of the lower shelf.

  Someone handed him another photo, and he repeated the procedure. This time he declared, “The historic jewels of the last czar.” He placed the photo on the other side of the lower shelf.

  A third photo was handed to him. This he declared “the historic jewels of the czarina!” And he placed the photograph on the top shelf.

  And he didn’t fall off.

  I joined in applauding the feat. My applause was sincere. I’d been sure that Alex would land in a heap on top of one of the glass showcases. But, no, Alex was still standing on his ladder, and he was going to make a speech. Everybody fell silent.

  “You’re probably wondering why we’re paying tribute to three photographs,” Alex said. “But we’re not paying tribute to the photos. We’re paying tribute to the jewels displayed in them!

  “In a week—only one week—the reproductions of the genuine jewels in the photographs will be displayed here in Warner Pier. These historical replicas of the famed jewels—on their way from Minneapolis to a two-month exhibition in Chicago—will make a three-day stopover right here in Warner Pier, in Gold’s Jewelry.”

  Everyone applauded. I joined in. I did not care about fancy historic jewelry, but I liked Alex a lot.

  And, of course, the purpose of Alex’s participation in the tour was to promote his shop, not to sell the czar’s jewels.

  Hardly any of the tourists or summer people who visited Warner Pier would want to buy expensive jewelry, certainly not world-famous historic jewels. Their interests lay in moderately priced earrings and necklaces made by local artists. But an exhibition of priceless jewels would show the world we could appeal to the wealthy and connected as well as to middle-American families.

  The crowd was breaking apart now, with some attendees congratulating Alex, then heading for the front door, likely going to their own shops. Garnet was still at her post, letting guests in and out, doing her hostess act.

  I noticed Garnet shaking Hogan’s hand as he left. Was Aunt Nettie with him? No, I saw her toward the back of the shop. Hogan was leaving alone. That seemed odd. I moved toward the front of the shop myself.

  That’s when I saw the car from the Warner County Sheriff’s Department in front of the store. I rushed toward the door and followed Hogan out. He was approaching Sheriff Ben Vinton, who was just getting out of his car.

  “Well, Hogan,” Vinton said, “has your burglar finally been caught?”

  I gasped. What was the sheriff talking about? Nobody had been arrested.

  Almost immediately, however, I realized that the sheriff was not claiming that a burglar had been arrested. He was asking—asking if someone had been arrested. It was one of Vinton’s usual stupid remarks. Of course, as soon as his words were repeated to the breakfast buffet in the jewelry store, the people inside rushed out and the people outside rushed in.

  The report just about ended the festivities at Gold’s Jewelry. Everybody wanted to know who had been arrested and how they got caught.

  I felt sympathy for Alex; his big announcement was completely upstaged.

  Then Hogan began a quiet conversation with Vinton.

  Tony Herrera and Joe joined me, staring at Hogan and Vinton.

  Tony murmured, “What’s all this about, Joe?”

  Joe shrugged. “I have no idea.” He stepped aside and pulled out his telephone, punching in a number as Tony moved away.

  I wasn’t surprised to see Hogan glance at his own phone, or then watch Joe key in additional letters. I looked over Joe’s shoulder and saw letters appear on Joe’s screen, apparently replying to Joe’s message.

  “No,” it said. “Talk to you later.”

  Joe nodded and turned away. Then he led me back into the jewelry store.

  We were once again greeted by Garnet. “Sorry,” Joe said. “Can I hide in your back room while I make a call?”

  Garnet smiled. “Sure. Lee will keep us entertained.”

  I apologized to Garnet and Alex for dodging out of their grand-opening party early.

  Garnet shrugged the whole thing off, but Alex wanted to talk about it. “Bill Vanderwerp tried to tell me the raccoon trapper, Watt Wicker, is the burglar.” Alex sounded incredulous.

  “That’s what some people were saying,” I said. “But I don’t get it.”

  “He definitely wasn’t one of the men who tied me up!” Alex sounded annoyed, as if he’d been assaulted by an impostor.

  “They may try to say he was.”

  “But he’s just not, Lee. He’s the wrong size and shape. Too tall. Too skinny.”

  “I don’t think Hogan thinks Watt has done anything.”

  Joe appeared from the back room, took my arm, and said, “Come on, Lee, I told Aunt Nettie you’d be in soon, and we need to do an errand first.”

  Joe thanked Garnet and Alex for the use of their back room, and I gave them an awkward good-bye as Joe pushed me toward the street door. I could tell he had something on his mind, and it wasn’t escorting me to my office.

  “What’s up?” I whispered as I followed him out. But he was silent as he rushed me through the TenHuis Chocolade building and loaded me into the van.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “I called Watt,” Joe said. “I’m still his lawyer. And he’s not under arrest. He answered his cell phone from the hospital.”

  “So he’s okay?”

  “Right. Watt’s mind is not extremely clear at the moment, but he told me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Wildflower,” Joe said. “Watt said something like ‘Go to Wildflower. She’s got the trash.’ I think we’d better get out there and talk to her ASAP. The cops didn’t find anything at Watt’s place, nothing to do with trash or anything else. But I’m thinking maybe he hid something at Wildflower’s.”

  Chapter 21

  We got into my van, and Joe left Warner Pier headed east. In about twenty minutes he pulled into the drive at Watt’s place.

  I was surprised. “Aren’t we going to Wildflower’s?”

  “I thought we better make a quick check at Watt’s first.”

  “We can’t get into the cabin,” I said. “I gave Watt’s keys back to Hogan.”

  “We can get in. Watt told me where he hides a second set.”

  Naturally, Watt’s place still looked like a wreck,
just as the searchers had left it. We got out of the van and walked around a few minutes, just looking things over. Then Joe found Watt’s hidden keys and unlocked the cabin’s front door, and we went in.

  The sleeping bag was still torn off the bed, the mattress was askew, and magazines were dumped on the couch.

  “No trash in here,” Joe said, looking around.

  “Well,” I said, “just like Watt told us, we’re going to have to ask Wildflower.”

  “She seems to know everything else that goes on in this neighborhood.”

  “And she’s got cell phone service.” I pulled out my phone and called her. She answered on the third ring.

  I put the phone on speaker and explained our problem. “We just want to make sure that when they searched Watt’s place, the technical crew looked everywhere. And we wondered about the trash. But we can find hardly any! Did someone carry it off?”

  Wildflower chuckled. “It’s at my house,” she said.

  “Your house? Why?”

  “Because around here, we’re supposed to either drive it to the dump ourselves and pay them to take it, or we put it out for one of the commercial companies and pay them. Watt only had one bag a week—if that. So we made a deal. He did some gardening and digging chores for me, and I put his trash out for pickup with mine. It saves us both effort and money.”

  “And I suppose the official truck has already picked it up.”

  “Oh no. They don’t come until tomorrow. You’ll have to dig through it, but anything from his house ought to be over here.”

  “Be right there.”

  “Good. Because there’s one kinda odd thing you might want to look at.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  We headed out of the cabin, and as we were locking the door, a Warner County Sheriff’s Department car pulled in and stopped, blocking the drive. To my surprise, Sheriff Vinton got out.

  Joe spoke to me in a low voice. “Keep your mouth shut.”

  More loudly, he spoke to Vinton.

  “Hi, Sheriff. Do you patrol here?”

  “Paige did, mainly. What are you two doing here?”

  “Oh, the more we thought about the big search out here, the more I thought I’d like to look the place over peacefully.”

  Vinton smiled. “You mean you’re double-checking the state police?”

  “Not exactly. Just hoping that inspiration will strike. Do you visit the site every day?”

  “Hey! The big commotion out here was only yesterday. I haven’t been back since then. I asked all the deputies to keep an eye on the area, just routinely.”

  “Have you seen anything?”

  “Only Mr. and Mrs. Joe Woodyard.” He laughed.

  Joe and I laughed, too. All three of us sounded uncomfortable.

  “Everybody knows they’re up to no good,” I said. “It’s sure been an odd situation lately.”

  Vinton nodded. “That poor ol’ Watt can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”

  “Yes,” Joe said. “He’s my client. I hope they’ll keep him in the hospital, or wherever Hogan has him in protective custody, until they make sure he doesn’t have any health problems.”

  Then he gestured toward the drive. “You going to let us out?”

  Vinton agreed to move his car, and we followed him out to the county road. As we drove away, I started to call Wildflower to tell her we might be held up a few minutes. But Vinton turned his patrol car in the opposite direction from Wildflower’s house and put his toe down. He went flying toward the sheriff’s office while we drove sedately toward Warner Pier.

  “Is Vinton going to circle around and try to figure out if we go anyplace else?” I asked.

  “We’ve been friends with Wildflower for several years. I don’t see how a visit to her would raise any eyebrows,” Joe said. “We’re right in her neighborhood. It’s just a normal drop-in, right?”

  Wildflower seemed happy enough to see us, and five minutes after our arrival, we were sitting on a tarp in her backyard with two black trash bags put to one side, and one white bag in front of us.

  “This is what I wanted you to see,” Wildflower said. She leaned down and turned the white bag over. It was taped shut, and on the side was a note, also taped in place. “Important! Keep safe.” The only signature was a large W written on the tape beside the note.

  Joe looked puzzled, and I’m sure I did, too. “Hmm,” he said. He turned the sack over and over.

  “I’m not about to open it,” Wildflower said.

  “I suppose that, as his lawyer, I could open it,” Joe said. “But it might be smarter to put it in a secure place.”

  He stood up, carried the sack to our van, and put it in the front seat.

  I could have popped him, just from pure curiosity and frustration. Wildflower looked as if she could, too. I was dying to tear into the white sack, and I’m sure she was, too.

  But neither Wildflower nor I gave in to the impulse to do that, and after a few more minutes of looking in the trash bags, Joe and I thanked Wildflower and said good-bye.

  Joe spoke as we drove away. “The boat shop! That’s the place!”

  “The place for what?”

  “Opening that sack! Aren’t you dying to see what’s in it?”

  “Of course I am, Joe! But you said . . .”

  “The boat shop is the nearest place I can think of where we can be undisturbed. I was dying to open it at Wildflower’s. But we couldn’t take the risk of that idiot sheriff interrupting us.”

  Laughing, I slid the white trash bag under my seat and tried to act calm while Joe took the van past the Rest-Stop and to Joe’s shop. He pulled into the drive, and we ran into the shop’s interior workroom.

  “Lock the door,” Joe said. “Just in case.”

  “What’s in this?” I said. “It sure is heavy.”

  We took it to a worktable and cleared space, then dumped a heavy book out of the sack. It was about an inch thick, about twelve inches tall, about nine inches wide, and had thick covers.

  “It’s a photo album!” Joe said. “And it’s got a nice little place to put a photo on the cover.”

  But there was no photo there.

  There were four or five dozen photos of people—men and women—wearing military garb. Some had names underneath—names or nicknames. G.I. Joe, the Beard, Bad Boy or Sgt. Roy Spence. Holcolm.

  The album had been treated with care—until it was tossed in with Watt’s trash.

  I almost whispered. “What a nice album.”

  “It sure seems like something that was prized and kept carefully.”

  “These are nice photos, too,” I said, turning the pages. “They were taken by a professional-quality photographer using a good camera. This is a record of someone’s army service.”

  There were pictures of men—and some women—receiving medals or standing beside military vehicles and other equipment with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Eating at formal luncheons or in extremely informal mess tents. Some of the subjects were smiling, some were glaring.

  “I can’t look at the whole thing right now,” I said. “But we can take it away. I mean, you have Watt’s authorization to do that, right?”

  “Oh, sure,” Joe said. “I’m still his attorney.” Joe and I looked a bit more, then repacked the album into the white garbage bag. We left, mystified, taking the album with us.

  “I wonder,” I said as we drove toward the chocolate shop. “I wonder if Watt took these photos?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because he does take photos. On his phone. I’ve seen him do it.”

  Joe didn’t answer. As he turned down Peach Street, he pointed at a jazzy red pickup parked in front of TenHuis Chocolade.

  I gave a yelp. “Hey! There’s Mike’s truck! He
and Dolly must be back. I hope they got an okay from Hogan!”

  I picked up the album, still in its bag, and we went in our back door. I’d expected that Mike and Dolly had gone up to her apartment, but they were standing in Aunt Nettie’s alcove office off the kitchen, talking to her. We all fell on one another’s necks with sincere greetings.

  “We got Hogan’s okay to simply keep a low profile,” Dolly said. “We’ll just be careful!”

  Aunt Nettie frowned at Joe and me. “Where have you two been?”

  “We went back out to Watt’s cabin to see what else was there,” Joe answered.

  Mike looked at him sharply. “Find anything?”

  “Nothing that explains anything. Just something that’s even more mysterious,” Joe said.

  I held out the heavy album, still in its bag, and Joe laid it on the corner of Aunt Nettie’s desk. He peeled the sack back, revealing the album, explained where it had been, and read off the message on the bag’s front.

  Aunt Nettie said, “My goodness!”

  I said, “We couldn’t believe it.”

  Joe said, “It was a big surprise.”

  Dolly said, “Who would even pretend to throw out something like that?”

  Only Mike didn’t say a word.

  His face was furious. Everyone was silent for a long moment.

  Then he spoke. “I told you there was no reason to drag all that up. It has nothing to do with this. I’m sure. Positive.”

  Worth the Suffering?

  (The Chocolate Moose Motive)

  Our grown son was home for the holidays, and in an after-dinner discussion, he mentioned that chocolate caused him to get sores on his tongue. Then he reached for a piece of Gran’s Fudge, a particularly creamy and luscious candy our family makes at Christmas.

  “Hey!” Mom cried.

  Son shrugged. “It’s already sore,” he said.

  Well, he’s an adult. If he’s willing to suffer so he can eat fudge once a year, that’s his choice.