His face was screwed up. With anger? That wouldn’t have surprised me. But when he spoke his voice didn’t sound angry. I wasn’t sure what emotion it had, but it didn’t seem to be anger.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to Maia, but I shouldn’t have bothered her.”
Vernon came in the front door. “Maia! Where did you go?”
“Just over to the Peach Street B&B, Vernon.” There was an undertone of guilt in Maia’s voice.
“You should have taken your medicine.” Vernon shifted his stare from Maia to me. “Why did you want to talk to her?”
“I’m still trying to find some black gown on Aubrey.” Vernon’s jaw dropped, and I felt like an idiot. “Background! I mean, I’m trying to find some background about Aubrey.”
I went on quickly, determined to change the subject to one that wouldn’t make me feel nervous. “By the way, Vernon, I grew up in farming and ranching country, you know, and I want to tell you how impressive your layout is.”
“My layout?”
“Ensminger’s Orchards. The barns and storage buildings just sparkle. The equipment looks great. The orchards are neat as a pin. How much help do you have?”
I asked a few more questions. This seemed to thaw Vernon. He began to look calm, then even to show a bit of enthusiasm. I tried another question. “Did you grow up on a fruit fly? I mean, farm! Did you grow up on a fruit farm?”
“No, I didn’t know a thing about farming before Mae and I got married. Everything I know about orchards I learned from Silas.”
“Then his death must have been a double shock to you, Vernon.”
He nodded. But he didn’t say anything.
I tried to look understanding. “I know. The police inquiry and everything. It’s dreadful.”
Vernon sighed. “Mae and I have been over it and over it. We came home about four. Mae took a bath, then laid down for a while. I worked on my crop report. Then I took a shower. We got dressed and went out to dinner. Aubrey and Nettie picked us up at seven.”
Vernon was answering a question I hadn’t asked. And we seemed to be covering old territory. I headed for the door. “I’m sorry I bothered you all. Maia needs to get some rest.”
“She will. I’ll see to that.”
I paused in the doorway and asked one more question.
“As you can tell, I’m not familiar with fruit growing. There’s one piece of equipment that’s always stumped me. The three-legged ladder. Why is it better than a regular ladder?”
Maia giggled. I stared at her, but Vernon ignored her. “It’s really just a stepladder,” he said. “It rests against the branches. But the leg keeps the weight of the ladder and the picker off the tree. Besides, the leg can snake through the branches and keep the ladder steady.”
Maia shook her tousled head. “Forget the ladder,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about any ladder.”
Vernon and I stared at her. She giggled vigorously. “I’m just a secretary. Maybe an answering machine.”
She was repeating the comment she’d made a few minutes earlier. I decided to try for information.
“You mean being asked to take messages for Aubrey? Who asked you to do that?”
“That newspaper guy.”
“Chuck O’Riley? What did he want?”
“Nosy. Jus’ nosy.”
Vernon’s face looked as if he’d been kicked. It reminded me that he had sobbed at the funeral home. When I said good-bye he mumbled an answer. Then he walked out on the porch and watched until I drove off.
I certainly hadn’t gotten any real information from Maia. But she had sparked an idea. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
As soon as I got to my desk I called Chuck O’Riley.
Chapter 12
Calling Chuck may have been my intent, but life intervened. My working life that is. I’d been gone most of the afternoon, but TenHuis Chocolade had been rocking along. Before I could call anybody I had to go through a pile of messages Aunt Nettie had taken while I’d been gone. Most of them could wait, but I had to call the bank, then do an invoice for five pounds of crème de menthe bonbons, which would adorn the pillows of the new Gray Gables Conference Center. Aunt Nettie had already boxed them up. I’d deliver them on my way home.
When I finally called Chuck, he sounded harassed. “You barely caught me,” he said. “This is supposed to be my day off.”
“I guess I knew that, Chuck. Since the Gazette came out today. But I’ll trade you a half pound of TenHuis’s best for the answer to a question.”
“What’s the question?”
“Have you looked into the background of Aubrey Andrews Armstrong?”
There was a long silence. Chuck cleared his throat. Then he spoke. “Why do you ask?”
“I tried to look him up on the Internet, just out of curiosity. And I couldn’t find him there. I wondered if you had better sources.”
“I hadn’t tried to find out anything about him until he disappeared. I couldn’t find out anything on the Internet either. So I called the Michigan Film Office.”
“I e-mailed them. The director was out of town.”
“She still is, but someone should call me back pretty quick.”
“Did Aubrey give you a business card? Or anything in writing?”
“No. Lee, why do you want to know this?”
“I need to find Aubrey. I guess you’ve heard that he dumped his dog on Aunt Nettie and me.”
“I also heard the dog was poisoned. I wasn’t going to do the story today, since I can’t get it in the paper until next week, but what’s the deal on that? A dog poisoner would be worth a story.”
That was something I didn’t mind talking about. I told Chuck all about it. When I’d finished, he spoke. “What are you going to do about the dog when he’s well?”
“I hope Aubrey will be back by then.”
“Chief Jones seems to think something has happened to the guy. What do you think?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I hope Aubrey has taken off on some sort of trip. And I also hope he’ll be back soon to take responsibility for Monte. That’s why I was asking if you had some contact information for him.”
“I interviewed him, of course. Anything I learned about him is in today’s Gazette, Lee.”
I began to wonder if the Gazette had information on other topics. “How complete are your files, Chuck?”
“We’ve got all the back issues. Either bound or on microfilm.”
“How about files on people?”
“You mean, like Lee McKinney is named business manager of TenHuis Chocolade? Or Joe Woodyard takes job as city attorney? Yeah, we’ve got stuff like that.”
“Do you let the public look at it?”
“Sure. You’re welcome to come by the office and look at our files. But not today. Tomorrow morning. Okay?”
I could hardly ask Chuck to stick around on his day off just to satisfy my curiosity. I agreed to wait until morning. Then I hung up and gave myself a pep talk about getting my own work done. That resolve lasted about ten minutes, until Dolly Jolly appeared in the door of my office.
Her voice boomed. “Lee! I wanted to talk to you before I left!”
I tried not to grimace as I looked up. After all, I was supposed to be running the paycheck and health insurance side of TenHuis Chocolade. I couldn’t refuse to speak to employees.
“What can I do for you, Dolly?”
Dolly lowered her voice to a low roar. “It’s sort of private.”
Oh, gosh. It was something important. Or personal. Did she need time off? Was she sick? I hoped she hadn’t already decided she hated the chocolate business; Aunt Nettie was really pleased at how quickly Dolly was catching on.
My uneasiness grew when Dolly came in and closed the door, isolating the two of us in the glass cubicle. I waved her to a chair. “This looks serious, Dolly.”
“It’s serious to me,” she said. Dolly’s freckled face was
getting red. She didn’t go on immediately, but took several deep breaths before she spoke again.
“This Mae Ensminger,” she said. “Do you think she’s mentally ill?”
I was astonished. Why on earth would Dolly ask such a question? And why would she ask me? Anyway, the answer popped out.
“How the heck would I know?”
Then I felt terrible, because Dolly looked more miserable than ever. She had obviously wanted something more than a smart-aleck answer.
“You’ve been around her a lot,” she said. “You’re a smart person. I’m just asking you for your opinion, not for a diagnosis.”
“Why do you care?”
Dolly looked down and did something I’d never seen her do before. She mumbled. “I guess I don’t really have a good excuse,” she said. “I just wondered if insanity runs in her family. Her uncle was kind of odd. And if her real grandfather was like the one in the book . . .”
This was certainly the strangest conversation I’d had in a long time. But it was very serious to Dolly. I didn’t want to give her a brush-off, but I didn’t know what to answer.
“Dolly, I never heard that any of them were hospitalized for mental problems,” I said. “You could ask Aunt Nettie. Or Hazel. They’re the natives here.”
“I thought I could ask you, and you wouldn’t tell anybody I wanted to know.”
“I won’t mention it if you don’t want me to.”
“I just wanted your opinion.”
Dolly was still keeping her voice very low, an action that forced her to concentrate. She was naturally a loud person, and speaking in a low voice was hard for her. So I knew this was very serious to her. I tried to give her an intelligent assessment of the Snow clan.
“As for Silas,” I said, “Judging by the one time I saw him and by what Vernon said about him, I think he was old-fashioned and cantankerous. But that’s a long way from being mentally ill. When it comes to Maia—or Mae—I don’t understand what’s going on at all. But I think that having that book published went to her head. It certainly changed her personality.”
“You think she was okay before this book deal came up?”
“She certainly became a different person. Mae was always colorless. She struck me as really dull. Now . . . it’s as if she’s working to be a caricature of a novelist.”
I had an inspiration. “Listen, Dolly, tomorrow morning I’m going to the Gazette office to look up some information. Maybe they have some files on Silas. I’m sure they’ll have some on Maia. I’ll see what I can find out there.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
Dolly stood up and moved toward the door. I allowed myself to think that our interview was over.
Then she turned around again. “It’s just hard to figure how Maia could get so excited over a vanity book.”
After dropping that bombshell, she opened the door and left the office.
I had to take a minute to absorb what she’d said. Then I was out the door after her. “Wait a minute, Dolly! Come back in here.”
She came. This time I was the one who closed the door and dropped my voice.
“A ‘vanity book’? Are you saying Maia paid to get her book published?”
“She must have, Lee.”
“How do you know?”
“I wrote a regional cookbook, remember? I talked to every publisher in Michigan—and you’d be surprised at how many there are. That particular publisher told me they do only ‘author participation’ books. I would have had to come up with around five thousand dollars, then do all my own promotion and distribution. I certainly wasn’t interested in that. Not when I got a reputable regional press interested in my book. They didn’t pay a lot, but it didn’t cost me money to get it published. And they do the publicity and distribution. I don’t have to create my own press kit and ship my own books.”
“Then I could write something—The ABCs of Office Management, maybe—and they’d publish it?”
“For a price. They’d print any number you wanted. Then they’d send all the books to you, and you’d sell them. Or store them in your garage.”
“Which would be a likely fate for any book I’d write.”
“When I heard they were publishing Maia’s book, I didn’t want to say too much about it,” Dolly said. “Maia seemed so proud of her book. I figured she didn’t know the difference between vanity publishing and regular publishing. I have no reason to embarrass her.”
Dolly left, and I sat at my desk mulling over what Dolly had told me. It made Maia’s behavior look really peculiar. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with paying to publish a book, I told myself. If you wanted to see your family history or all your grandmother’s recipes in print, fine. If Maia’s life wasn’t going to be complete until Love Leads the Way was in print, paying to publish it was worth the money. But why was she acting as if the book’s publication were the literary event of the year?
I was aroused from my mulling when the telephone rang. It was Joe. “How about dinner?”
I looked at the work piled up on my desk and sighed. “I’d have to eat in a hurry. I was gone most of the afternoon.”
“Taking care of Monte?”
“Among other things. I’m going to have to work at least a couple of hours. I guess I’d better grab a sandwich and stick to my desk.”
“Maybe both of us could do that, then I’ll come by your office about nine. If you’re still hungry we’ll get a bite. If not—well, I’d like to see you.”
We left it at that. I hoped Joe wasn’t planning some sort of serious discussion of our future. I hadn’t had time to figure out where I stood on that.
So I planned to snag a snack from the break room and work on through. But again, someone else changed my plans. This time it was Aunt Nettie.
She came up to my office with a large box in her hands. “Here are the crème de menthe bonbons.”
I realized she was holding the five-pound box of crème de menthe bonbons Gray Gables had ordered. “Oh,” I said, “I forgot those. I was planning to work late.”
“I guess I can take them.” Aunt Nettie looked really tired. She had taken the news about Aubrey without flinching, but she’d had a long day. I knew she was dying to get home and get her shoes off.
“Oh, no. I can take them,” I said. “No problem.”
I told her I was planning to grab a sandwich sometime, so I’d drop off the bonbons when I went out. Then I’d go back to work until Joe picked me up around nine o’clock. She approved and left for home. I closed out the computer, put on my lightweight khaki jacket, and picked up the box of bonbons.
Gray Gables is a historic estate. The High Victorian home on the property was built in the 1890s by a former ambassador and is still owned by his descendants. And like many modern-day people who inherited these snazzy estates, the current owners were having trouble financing the place. Between the taxes for waterfront property in Warner Pier and the staff required to keep up the house and the grounds, the current owners had found themselves in a tight place financially.
So that summer they’d turned the property into a conference center. They took groups of at least twelve and charged a stiff rate. The food, or so I’d heard, was superb. And every night the beds were turned down and a TenHuis crème de menthe bonbon was placed on each pillow.
Usually the owner-operator picked the bonbons up, but today she’d requested that we bring them to her. Five pounds of bonbons was an order well worth driving two miles to deliver. I might even have told myself that a short drive would clear my head, except that I’d already driven all over western Michigan that afternoon, and I had grown more confused than ever.
But the weather had changed a little during the hour and a half I’d been indoors. The wind had switched to the west and had grown stronger. The fall leaves were flying down the street as the wind whipped them off the trees. It wasn’t much colder yet, but the change in wind direction meant the temperature was likely to drop into the thirties that night.
Anyway, I put the bonbons on the floor of the van’s front seat—I didn’t want to take a chance of them sliding off the seat if I should come to a sudden stop—then I drove across the Orchard Street Bridge. The river approaches the lake from the southeast, then makes a sharp right just as it comes to Warner Pier. From there it flows due west into Lake Michigan. Once the road crosses the Orchard Street Bridge, a right hand turn puts you on Lake Shore Drive, curving around along the lake and leading to houses, including the one Aunt Nettie and I shared. To reach Gray Gables I turned left onto Inland Road, which roughly follows the river. I mention all this because it turned out to be important.
The late afternoon sunlight was slanting through the trees, turning the woods to red, gold, orange, rust, purple, and all the glorious colors of fall. October is beautiful everywhere in the northern hemisphere, I guess, but sometimes it seemed as if western Michigan got more than its share of the goodies. I was quite annoyed to see the wind whipping the leaves around, tearing them off prematurely. I want the leaves to stay colorful as long as possible.
For the most part, however, the woods were still thick. That gave me a few qualms, but I reminded myself to look at the beautiful color, not think about how the trees blocked the view of the horizon.
My feelings about trees are typical of people born and raised on the plains, I guess. On the one hand we value trees highly. In my hometown, for example, a building lot with trees costs more than one without, and in plains cities architects design buildings with an eye to saving mature trees. But for us true plains natives, thick woods are scary, just as open plains are scary to people raised in the woods. Aunt Nettie says she felt “exposed” when she visited my North Texas hometown. There was nothing to hide behind. But I feel spooked when I’m in thick woods; something could be hiding behind those trees.
I felt safe in the van, however, and I poked along, enjoying the lovely colors.
There are lots of houses along Inland Road, but they are farther apart as you get near to Gray Gables. In fact, there were no houses for about a half mile before the road came to the estate, and Inland Road dead-ends at its gate. I felt sure the gate would be open, since the conference center was expecting guests, as well as me.
The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle Page 12