The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle

by Joanna (Chocolate series 04) Carl

  “That was when Maggie thought Aubrey was going to tell whatever it is she doesn’t want told. She thought she was going to lose her job over it. But she and Ken weren’t communicating very well. He got the idea she wanted to build a house from scratch, maybe in a more rural area. So he tried to approach Silas about buying a lot.”

  “What a mix-up.”

  Aunt Nettie and Hogan came back to the table then. Apparently Hogan had had the right formula for cheering her up; Aunt Nettie looked pink and smiley.

  “Okay,” I said. “When is Aubrey going to come and get his dog?”

  Joe and Hogan cleared their throats and looked all around the room. Even Aunt Nettie changed her expression from happy to slightly guilty. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Hogan, you simply have to tell Lee what’s going on.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “We’re stuck with Monte.”

  Hogan laughed. “You are for a few days at least. I’m holding Aubrey for Wisconsin authorities.”

  “What! What did he do?”

  “They allege he ran a con in a small town, claiming he was going to make a movie there and looking for local investors. I got a notice about it a couple of weeks ago on a little e-mail news list I follow.”

  “So you knew he as a crook the minute he showed up! And you let Aunt Nettie get involved with him!”

  Aunt Nettie giggled. “Actually, I was encouraged to get involved with him.”

  “Hogan!” I was scandalized.

  “Lee, I couldn’t hold him without a warrant. And if he left Warner Pier the Wisconsin police would have to wait until he showed up someplace else. I thought if we made it look as if there was a strong possibility that a well-to-do businesswoman such as your aunt was interested in his project, he’d hang around. I didn’t think it would take more than forty-eight hours to settle the whole thing.”

  He reached over and squeezed Aunt Nettie’s hand. “I will admit I didn’t anticipate his actually taking her out. But he didn’t have any history of violence, and Nettie had the sense never to be alone with him for more than a few minutes.”

  Aunt Nettie laughed. “Just call me Undercover Auntie!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.

  “Well,” Hogan said, “you were so scandalized at the thought of your aunt going out on a date . . .”

  “Not on a date! On a date with a strange man I found very suspicious!”

  Hogan nodded. “And you were right to be suspicious, Lee. You rumbled Aubrey Andrews Armstrong right away. And so did Joe. He barely met the guy, and he came running to me about him.”

  Joe nodded. “Hogan recognized the description, including the dog, right away, and we decided to keep quiet until he could find out where Armstrong was wanted.”

  “But what about the other people in Warner Pier he cheated? Like Sarajane, at the B&B?”

  “I think there’s enough money in the Victim’s Compensation Fund to satisfy Armstrong’s local debts.”

  “Good. But that leaves my first question unanswered. What about Monte? Do Aunt Nettie and I have to build a fence and enroll in obedience classes?”

  “That I can’t answer,” Hogan said. “Monte still belongs to Armstrong. He’ll have to decide what to do about him. Since a purebred dog is worth quite a bit of money, Monte may be for sale.”

  I found out a few more things over the next few days.

  The antique money, Hogan learned, had been planted by Maia, as Aubrey and Joe had suspected. She apparently thought this would make her novel seem more authentic and attractive to a moviemaker.

  Aubrey Andrews Armstrong’s business card—the one I’d been looking for when I discovered the body of Silas Snow—had turned up in the trash can at the fruit stand. I’d never thought to ask Hogan if it had been found.

  The director of the Michigan Film Office e-mailed on the next Monday, telling me and Chuck O’Riley that a fake movie producer had been making the rounds of the upper Midwest and that we should contact law enforcement officials.

  Maggie never offered to tell any of us what threat Aubrey had used to blackmail her. I think, however, that she did tell Ken. He’s just as protective of her as ever. And they did buy Lindy and Tony’s house.

  Little Tony Herrera, ten-year-old son of my pal Lindy, listened to his parents talking about the case and got the idea that Monte was going to have to go to jail with his master. He cried all night. When his grandfather, Warner Pier mayor Mike Herrera, heard about this, he drove to the Warner County Jail and made Aubrey Andrews Armstrong a cash offer for the dog. Aubrey, who definitely needed money at that moment, agreed to sell. He did make Mike promise that Tony and Monte would enroll in obedience training. So Monte now lives with Tony, Lindy, Little Tony, Marcia, Alicia, and Pinto in the Vandermeer house—with a bedroom for each kid and a big backyard. Pinto still rules that backyard.

  The most surprising outcome was revealed after Joe and Hogan left on the night the arrests were made. Aunt Nettie and I stood on the front porch to wave both of them off. Then she turned and gave me a big hug.

  “I’m all right now,” I said. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “I’m not worried! I’m excited!”

  “What about?”

  “Lee! Hogan asked me to go out to dinner with him!”

  I squealed. Aunt Nettie squealed. We hopped around like sixteen-year-olds planning for the junior prom.

  “That’s wonderful!” I said. “He’s the catch of Warner Pier. You’ll be the envy of all your friends.”

  “Yes.” Aunt Nettie smiled her sweetest smile. “But that’s not why I want to go.”

  As for Joe and me—well, I advised him to go with the white tile for the bathroom in his new apartment. Then he could put up a patterned wallpaper. And, yes, I went along to help pick out the wallpaper.

  The wedding’s set for May.

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  Read on for a preview of JoAnna Carl’s

  next mouthwatering Chocoholic Mystery

  featuring charming sleuth Lee McKinney

  The Chocolate

  Mouse Mystery

  Available in Fall 2005 from Signet

  “I’m sick and tired of deleting this stupid inspira tional junk,” I said. “If Julie Singletree doesn’t stop sending it, I’m going to kill her, as well as her messages.”

  I’d been talking to myself, but when I raised my eyes from the computer screen, I realized I was also snarling at Aunt Nettie. She had nothing to do with the e-mail that had been driving me crazy, but she had innocently walked into my office, making herself a handy target for a glare.

  Aunt Nettie smiled placidly; she’d understood that I was mad at my e-mail, not her. “Are you talking about that silly girl who’s a party planner?”

  “Yes. I know she got us that big order for the chocolate mice, but I’m beginning to think the business she could throw our way can’t be worth the nausea brought on by these daily doses of Victorian sentiment.”

  Aunt Nettie settled her solid Dutch figure into a chair and adjusted the white food-service hairnet that covered her hair—blond, streaked with gray. I don’t know how she works with chocolate all day long and keeps her white tunic and pants so sparkling clean.

  “Victorian sentiment certainly isn’t your style, Lee,” she said.

  “Julie is sending five of us half a dozen messages every day, and I am not interested in her childish hearts-and-flowers view of life. She alternates between ain’t-life-grand and ain’t-like-a-bitch, but both versions are coated with silly sugar. She never has anything clever or witty. Just dumb.”

  “Why haven’t you asked to be taken off her list?”

  I sighed and reached into my top desk drawer to raid my stash of Bailey’s Irish Cream bonbons. (“Classic cream liqueur interior in dark chocolate.”) Nothing soothes the troubled mind like a dose of chocolate.

  “I suppose I kept thinking that if I didn’t respond she’d simply drop me from her jokes-and-junk list,” I said.r />
  “You didn’t even want to tell her you don’t want to receive any more spam?”

  “Oh, it’s not spam. She’d made up a little list of us—it’s all west Michigan people connected with the fine foods and parties trade. Lindy’s on it, thanks to her new job in catering. There’s Jason Foster—he has a restaurant in Saugatuck. There’s Carolyn Rose at Warner Pier Floral. Margaret Van Meter, the cake decorating gal. And the Denhams at Hideaway Inn.”

  I gestured toward the screen. “This message is typical. ‘A Prayer for the Working Woman.’ I haven’t read it, but I already know what it says.”

  “What?” Aunt Nettie smiled. “Since I’ve worked all my life, I might benefit from a little prayer.”

  “I can make you a printout, if you can stand the grossly lush roses Julie uses as a border.” I punched the appropriate keys as I talked. “I predict it will be about how downtrodden women are today because most of us work.”

  “You’ll have to assert yourself, Lee. Tell her you don’t like her e-mails.”

  I sighed. “About the time I tell her that, she’ll land a big wedding, and the bride will want enough bonbons and truffles for four hundred people, and we’ll lose out on a couple of thousand dollars in business. Or Schrader Laboratories will plan another banquet and want an additional three hundred souvenir boxes of mice.”

  I gestured toward the decorated gift box on the corner of my desk. Aunt Nettie had shipped off the whole order two weeks before, but I’d saved one as a sample. The box contained a dozen one-inch chocolate mice—six replicas of laboratory mice in white chocolate and six tiny versions of a computer mouse, half in milk chocolate and half in dark.

  Schrader Laboratories is a Grand Rapids firm that does product testing—sometimes using laboratory mice and sometimes computers. A special item like the souvenir made for their annual dinner meant risk-free profit for TenHuis Chocolade; we know they’re sold before we order the boxes they’ll be packed in.

  “That was a nice bit of business Julie threw our way, even if she did get the order from a relative,” I said. “I can put up with a certain amount of gooey sentiment for that amount of money.”

  “It might be cheaper to give it up than to hire a psychiatrist. You’ve got plenty to do. Tell Julie your mean old boss has cracked down on nonbusiness e-mail.”

  Aunt Nettie smiled her usual sweet smile. “And I really am going to add to your chores. We need Amaretto.”

  “I’ll get some on my way home.”

  Amaretto is used to flavor a truffle that is extremely popular with our customers. Its mainly white color makes it an ideal accent for boxes of Valentine candy and at that moment we were just two weeks away from Valentine’s Day. I knew Aunt Nettie and the twenty-five ladies who actually make TenHuis chocolates had been using a lot of Amaretto as they got ready for the major chocolate holiday. But liqueurs go a long way when used only for flavoring; one bottle would probably see us through the rush.

  I handed Aunt Nettie the printout of Julie’s dumb e-mail, all six pages of it. Julie never cleans the previous messages off the bottom of e-mails she forwards or replies to. Then Aunt Nettie went back to her antiseptically clean workroom.

  I wrote “Amaretto” on a Post-it and stuck the note to the side of my handbag before I turned back to my computer. I manipulated my mouse until the arrow was on “Reply All” and clicked it. Then I stared at the screen, trying to figure out how to be tactful and still stop Julie’s daily drivel.

  “Dear Group,” I typed. Maybe Julie wouldn’t feel that I’d singled her out. “This is one of the busiest seasons for the chocolate business, and my aunt and I have decided we simply have to crack down on nonbusiness e-mail. As you know, at least half our orders come in by e-mail, so I spend a lot of time clearing it. As great as the jokes and inspirational material that we exchange on this list can be,” I lied, “I just can’t justify the time I spend reading them. So please drop me from the joke/inspiration list. But please continue to include me in the business tips!”

  I sent the message to the whole list, feeling smug. I was genuinely hopeful that I’d managed to drop the cornball philosophy without dropping some valuable business associates along with it.

  I wasn’t prepared the next day when I got a call from Lindy Herrera, my best friend and a manager for Herrera Catering.

  “Lee!” Lindy sounded frantic. “Have you had the television on?”

  “No, why?”

  “I was watching the early morning news—Oh, Lee, it’s awful!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Julie Singletree! She’s been murdered!”

  About the Author

  JoAnna Carl is the pseudonym of a multipublished mystery writer. She spent more than twenty-five years in the newspaper business, working as a reporter, feature writer, editor, and columnist. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and also studied in the O.U. Professional Writing Program. She lives in Oklahoma, but spends much of each summer at a cottage on Lake Michigan near several communities similar to the fictional town of Warner Pier. She and her husband of fortyplus years have three children and three grandchildren. As a writer, she shamelessly exploits the skills of her children: one daughter who works for a chocolate maker, another daughter who is a CPA, and a son who is a librarian. She may be reached through her Web site at www.joannacarl.com.

  Also by JoAnna Carl

  The Chocolate Cat Caper

  The Chocolate Bear Burglary

  The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up