But lately he’d been pressing me harder and harder about setting a wedding date. But since I’d found Silas Snow’s body, he hadn’t mentioned Aunt Nettie or getting married at all. As I crossed the street toward the new apartment, I hoped he’d continue that policy.
The apartment’s entrance was a door between a gift shop and an art gallery. It was unlocked. I went inside, then called out as I went upstairs. “It’s me!”
“Come on up!”
Joe was in the newly painted kitchen. He had set the secondhand maple table he’d acquired with his two plastic place mats. I happened to know he’d scrounged them from his mother; they were patterned with blue checks. A sack from the Sidewalk Café sat in the middle, and he was pouring a Diet Coke.
“Roast beef with horseradish sauce,” he said. “On thin rye.”
“Yum, yum. All that and a dill pickle.”
Joe shared out the sandwiches (his was ham and swiss) and piled chips in the middle of the table.
“I guess I’m starving,” I said. “I don’t remember much about breakfast.”
“I’ve got a package of Oreos, if you want dessert.”
We ate in silence for ten minutes, and it was comforting. As Joe swallowed his last bite of ham and cheese, he poured more Diet Coke. Then he finally spoke.
“Still upset about Silas?”
“Not for the past hour or so. I haven’t had time to think about it.”
“Something new?”
“Well, yeah.” I chewed, swallowed, and decided I still wasn’t sure what to tell him about Aubrey. “But you said you needed advice.”
“I need your opinion on some tile for the bathroom.”
“Tile? You’re putting new tile in the bathroom? I thought the landlord said he wouldn’t replace the tile in there, since it’s not cracked or anything.”
“I’ll buy it myself. You said you didn’t like green.”
“My opinion doesn’t count.”
“Sure it does. I don’t want to get something that will drive you crazy.” He got up and brought a small box over to the table, then pulled out several pieces of ceramic tile. “I tried to get light colors. Do you like the pink? The white? The light blue? Or do you want to go for the fifties look with the oatmeal fleck?”
“I don’t want to pick out tile for somebody else’s apartment.”
Joe’s jaw tightened, and his eyebrows got that thundery look that means he’s mad. He dropped the tile back into the box and stood up. “That remark makes your intentions pretty plain.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I want to get married, and you don’t. At least not to me.”
“The bathroom tile tells you that?”
“Well, calling this ‘somebody else’s apartment’ makes it pretty plain you don’t think you’ll ever live here.”
“I don’t know that! I just—oh, we’ve been over this before. I botched things so badly the first time. You know how I feel.”
“I’m beginning to think I do.”
“Joe, I didn’t come over here to make a plan for the rest of my life!”
“Why did you come?”
“You invited me to lunch. Plus I’m just a weakling. I’m upset about Aunt Nettie and I wanted a shoulder to cry on.”
“What’s wrong with Nettie?”
“Oh, she’s gone out to lunch with this nutty guy who claims he’s a movie producer.”
“So? I thought the chief told you not to worry about that.”
“How can I help it? Joe, I know he’s a crook.”
“How do you know?”
I left out any reference to Maggie, of course, as I sketched for Joe my Internet search and its lack of results. It was better than talking about bathroom tile and all its implications.
“And now he’s talking to her about investing in this supposed movie he claims to be making.”
Joe grinned. “Lee, you’re perfectly right to be concerned, but you really don’t have to worry about Nettie.”
“I know she’s no dummy! I’m not worried about her losing her money! I’m worried about her losing her—her pride. Her self-respect. I’m worried about her friends laughing at her. I’m worried that if a really nice guy comes along, she’ll be afraid he’s just trying to exploit her like Aubrey the creep.”
Joe was grinning more broadly. He took my hand. “Lee, you’re a sweetheart. But you really don’t need to worry about—”
A loud rapping sounded, and Joe quit talking in the middle of his sentence.
“Is that someone downstairs? At the door?” I asked.
I followed as Joe walked through the living room and threw up one of the windows that overlooked the street. The screens were off, so he stuck his head out. “Hi, Nettie.”
I put my head out, too. Aunt Nettie, Aubrey, and Monte were on the sidewalk below, looking up at us.
“Come on up,” Joe said.
“You come down,” Aunt Nettie said. “Aubrey’s offered to take me out to see the site of the big romance, the cottage where Dennis Grundy courted Julia Snow. I knew you wanted to see it, too, Lee. Why don’t the two of you come with us?
Chapter 8
“Vernon said it would be all right,” Aunt Nettie said. “I haven’t been out there in years.”
Aunt Nettie was sounding a bit urgent. I concluded that she wanted someone to go with her. I agreed; I didn’t want her wandering off to remote spots alone with Aubrey. Not after what I’d been told by Maggie.
To cinch the deal, Joe spoke. “I’d like to go. I’ve never been out there when I wasn’t trespassing.”
Ten minutes later Joe and I had cleared away our lunch debris and were waiting on the sidewalk when Aubrey pulled his SUV up in front of Joe’s apartment. As we got in, Monte gave us a welcoming bark from his heavy plastic traveling crate in the rear deck.
“Chuck O’Riley wanted to shoot some pictures out there,” Aubrey said. “He interviewed Vernon at the police station for his news story on Silas’s murder, and at the same time he asked if he could take some pictures at the cottage. Newsmen are nervy! I almost thought he was going to ask Maia to come along. I wouldn’t have had the courage. Chuck’s going to meet us there.”
“If Vernon gave Chuck permission then Maia must be Silas’s heir?” I asked.
“If Silas had a will, I’m sure it hasn’t been read,” Joe said. “But Vernon seems to be in charge at the moment. You can’t just ignore a farm until the courts act. Somebody has to make sure the stock is fed and the garden watered. It would be normal for a neighbor, especially one who’s a relative, to step in.”
For once Aubrey didn’t have much to say. In fact, we all grew quiet as we reached the Haven Road exit and turned toward Silas Snow’s fruit stand. The area was still marked off by police tape, and one lone sheriff’s deputy was stationed there. We went west on Haven Road, then turned south when we reached Lake Shore Drive, maybe two-tenths of a mile west of the interstate.
The cottage was at what might be considered the back of Silas Snow’s property, since his house was near the interstate. The one-lane road that led to the cottage was less than a mile south of Aunt Nettie’s house, which is on the inland side of Lake Shore Drive. The Grundy cottage lane also turned inland off Lake Shore Drive, and the house wasn’t far off the road. I’d been by there dozens of times, but the area was so overgrown that I’d never realized any sort of structure was behind the trees and bushes.
“The cottage isn’t much to look at,” Aubrey said, “but the historical context makes it interesting.”
I thought “historical context” was a pretty fancy term for “rented by minor gangster for three months seventy-five years ago,” but I kept my mouth shut.
After Aubrey pulled into the sandy drive, we all sat in the SUV and surveyed the cottage. I’d been expecting Dennis Grundy’s old cottage to be a ruin, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t in the best repair, but it was a sturdy little Michigan cottage of the type built around 1920. An ancient coat of white paint st
ill clung to the siding, and rusted screen wire surrounded what had been a sleeping porch where the frame of an old metal cot stood at one end.
The vegetation apparently hadn’t been cleared in several years. It was thinner around the house than near the road, but saplings were growing next to the foundation and the grass and weeds in the yard were high. Trees hung thickly above the cottage, and its roof was speckled with patches of moss. It looked lonely and uncared-for, but it wasn’t falling down.
“I’d have expected Silas Snow to sell this place,” Joe said. “The house isn’t worth anything, but the lot is. Walking distance to the lake, after all. It should bring a good price.”
“Snow apparently continued to rent the cottage to vacationers up until about ten years ago,” Aubrey said. He got out of the SUV, and the rest of us followed his lead.
“It’s spooky,” I said. “Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if Dennis Grundy’s Model A came chugchugging down the drive.”
Aunt Nettie gave a nervous laugh, but before she could hit her third “hee-hee,” I heard a strange sound. I clutched Joe’s arm and gasped.
It was the chug-chug of an old motor.
Joe laughed. “I believe you summoned up Dennis Grundy’s ghost, Lee. Or at least the ghost of his car.”
“What is it?”
“I think,” Joe said, “that it’s actually a Volkswagen.”
And sure enough, a red Volkswagen came down the lane from behind the house. It was a real, antique Volkswagen, not one of the new ones. And behind the wheel was Ken McNutt. He stopped when he saw us. The VW was nose to nose with Aubrey’s SUV.
Aunt Nettie, Joe, and I all laughed and waved. “I’ll have to move the SUV so he can get out,” Aubrey said. He got behind the wheel again and backed out onto Lake Shore Drive.
Joe spoke to Ken. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I had an hour’s break, and I wanted to see this place.” Ken nodded toward the cottage. “This is the site of Maia Michaelson’s big romance novel, isn’t it?”
Joe’s voice was curious. “How’d you find it?”
“The high school custodian drew me a map,” Ken said. “And now I’ve got to hurry, or I’ll be late for a parent conference.”
He drove on out the lane and waved to Aubrey. The VW gave a cheerful beep-beep as it turned onto Lake Shore Drive.
“I’d forgotten that Ken McNutt is a VW hobbyist,” Joe said. “I understand he has four of them. At least two are in driving condition.”
I stared after Ken. His Volkswagen was shiny and cared-for. It might have come straight off a production line of the late 1950s. The only modern thing about it was the Warner Pier High School bumper sticker in the back window.
Why did that seem familiar?
I caught my breath. I’d seen a red Volkswagen like that one. The night before, right after I discovered Silas Snow’s body, I’d pulled out onto Haven Road in a big hurry. And I’d nearly rear-ended a red VW with a Warner Pier High School bumper sticker in the back window. The sticker hadn’t been on the bumper. It had been inside the back window, just the way Ken’s sticker was, the way people who are picky about their cars’ finishes display bumper stickers.
I hadn’t gasped loudly, but Joe had heard me. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just remembered a prone call—I mean, a phone call! I forgot to call the bank. I’ll do it when I get back to the office.”
We walked toward the house, but my mind was racing. Was it Ken McNutt’s VW that I’d seen the night before, close to Silas Snow’s fruit stand? Right after Silas was killed?
If it had been, who had been driving? Ken? Or Maggie? Or was there another red Volkswagen in Warner Pier with a high school bumper sticker in the back window? After all, I hadn’t bothered to look at the license plate.
And why hadn’t I wanted to tell Joe I’d seen it there? The answer to that one wasn’t hard. If I told Joe right at that moment, I’d probably have to tell Aubrey. And I didn’t want to tell Aubrey anything that might involve Maggie.
I realized Joe was looking at me closely. He had said something, and I hadn’t even heard it. I pulled my mind back to my surroundings. Whatever the reason for the VW being near Snow’s fruit stand, I had to forget the whole thing and concentrate on the current moment. I’d decide what to do about the Volkswagen—if anything needed to be done—later.
By the time I gathered my thoughts, Aubrey had parked the SUV again and had taken Monte out of his crate. He pushed a fancy metal stake into the sandy earth near the corner of the cottage and hooked Monte to it by a long leash. I decided Aubrey must have the back of the SUV packed solid with puppy equipment.
Monte seemed content to frisk about, sniffing around under the bushes. Joe, Aunt Nettie, Aubrey, and I began to prowl in much the same way, peeking in the uncurtained windows of the house.
“I don’t have a key,” Aubrey said.
“I don’t think there’s anything inside but a thick layer of dust,” Aunt Nettie said. “We certainly don’t need to go in.”
The cottage originally had only two rooms, or so I guessed. There was a living room, with a kitchenette separated from it by a counter, and there was a bedroom. A bathroom now opened off the bedroom, but the fixtures and linoleum were forties-style. And the bathroom stood on piers made of cement blocks. The main part of the house had a solid foundation.
The views through the windows revealed only a few sticks of furniture, and they all looked too modern to have been used by Dennis Grundy.
“I’m sure this place didn’t have indoor plumbing when Dennis Grundy rented it,” Aunt Nettie said. “The kitchen appliances and that counter you can eat at were added later, too. At least, I never saw a counter like that in a really old house.”
“The hole where the pipe from the wood stove would have been is still there,” I said. “Up there in the corner.”
“It wouldn’t have been a bad little cottage for a cheap vacation,” Joe said. “In the twenties lots of people still had outdoor plumbing and wood stoves.”
“It would have been like camping.” I gestured at the metal cot frame on the porch. “The porch might have been a really nice place to sleep. If you had plenty of blankets.”
“Where did you and Maia find the money buried?” Joe asked.
“Around behind the house.” Aubrey led the way to a little pile of dirt.
“That’s probably where the old fence corner would have been,” Joe said. He pointed to a stick of wood and a bit of wire. “At least, that looks like the remnants of a wire fence.”
“Did you say the money was in a mayonnaise jar?” Aunt Nettie wanted to know.
Aubrey laughed. “I know that’s a cliché. . . .”
“What else would Dennis have had to bury money in?” Aunt Nettie said. “Maybe a syrup tin. But he would have had to use something he could get hold of easily.”
“Burying the money has always sounded crazy to me,” I said. “Why? Why would he bury money anyway? How much was in the jar?”
“Just about a hundred dollars,” Aubrey said.
“That wasn’t much loot from a bank job, even in 1930. And why was the wallet buried with it? It doesn’t make sense.”
Joe answered. “It makes sense if the wallet was just stage dressing for the antique money.”
Aubrey grinned. “I didn’t say that. That’s strictly your idea, Joe.”
We kept wandering around, with me keeping a careful lookout for poison ivy, until another car pulled in and Chuck O’Riley got out.
Aubrey went to meet him, sweeping off his wide-brimmed hat, and Monte barked a greeting. Chuck shook hands with Aubrey, but then, to my surprise, he came toward me. “Lee, I want to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“About finding Silas Snow’s body. When I saw you earlier I didn’t realize you were the one who found him.”
I guess I stared. We all took the Warner Pier Gazette for granted as a source for local news. But Warner Pier n
ews rarely included crime. The Gazette was where I caught up on the school board meeting or the zoning commission. Or about visitors who claimed to be movie producers. I didn’t expect to read about murders there. I’d forgotten Chuck would be writing up Silas Snow’s murder, even though Aubrey had mentioned Chuck’s interviewing Vernon earlier.
I gathered my thoughts and answered Chuck’s questions as briefly as I could. I definitely slurred over my reasons for going to the Snow fruit stand in the first place, of course. And I tried to be matter-offact about finding the body.
“At first,” I said, “I thought the hand and foot must belong to a scarecrow.”
“What made you realize it was a body?”
The recollection of how that foot had wiggled sprang into my mind, and I couldn’t answer. I put my hand over my mouth and shook my head.
Joe moved in and put his arm around me. “I think that’s enough, Chuck.”
But I couldn’t let Joe protect me. I tried to speak. “I knelt down,” I said. “I troweled—I mean, I touched! I touched the boot. It didn’t move like a scarecrow’s boot would move.”
“What did you do then?”
“I ran through those pumpkins like a friend. I mean, a fiend!” I stopped and took a deep breath. “I ran like hell, Chuck.”
That seemed to settle Chuck’s curiosity. He thanked me and moved on to Aubrey, posing him on the porch of the cottage.
I guess I was still a bit shaken; I wanted to get away from Chuck before he thought of any more questions. So I walked away, following the sand lane further, toward wherever Ken McNutt had been. Joe followed me.
To my surprise, the bushes and trees behind the cottage thinned out quickly.
“What’s back there?” I said. Joe and I walked about a hundred feet and came out in an apple orchard.
“McIntosh?” I said.
Joe touched one of the hanging apples. “Looks more like Jonathan.”
“I guess we’ve reached the active part of the Snow farm.”
The trees weren’t too large. Fruit farmers, I’ve come to realize, don’t want their trees to get very tall. They’re easier to prune, spray, and pick if they’re shorter and wider.
The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle Page 8