The Chocolate Cupid Killings

by JoAnna Carl

  “Yes, I’m okay,” she said. “I’m just not sure I’m up to another challenge.”

  “Do you know Myrl?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Are you willing to go with her?”

  “I guess I have to.” She sounded regretful.

  “Ready or not . . .”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  I expected Pamela to toss the covers back, but she lay there without moving. I closed the door and started for the stairs, a bit surprised at her slow reaction. Maybe she was sleeping in the nude and didn’t want to jump out of bed in front of me.

  As I went into the kitchen and turned on the back porch and driveway lights, I heard movement upstairs, so I decided that Pamela was up.

  The mysterious Myrl didn’t get to the house in five minutes, but she made it inside of ten. She followed the clues of the lights, following the drive around the house and parking beside Joe’s truck. By the time she came up the walk to the back door, Pamela was coming down the stairs. I opened the door.

  Myrl was a raw-boned woman, nearly as tall as I am, with dark hair chopped short. She wore a heavy jacket and furry earmuffs. Her step was firm. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who would take any guff, from an abusive husband or anybody else. If Pamela had had previous contact with Myrl, I could see why Pamela was ready to obey her summons.

  “Hi, Myrl,” I said. “Can I make some coffee for y’all to take with you?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got a thermos in the car.” She stood awkwardly just inside the back door. “I hope Pamela doesn’t have a bunch of stuff.”

  Pamela’s voice answered. “I just have one duffel bag and a tote.” She came into the kitchen. I was surprised to see that in spite of the short notice she had had, Pamela had found time to put on her eye makeup.

  She walked up to Myrl. “I’m ready.” Her voice was almost challenging.

  Myrl gave a gasp so loud that I jumped. Pamela didn’t jump, though. She stared at Myrl with eyes like obsidian.

  I didn’t understand that gasp. “Myrl? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.” Now Myrl sounded amused. “Well, Pamela, are you ready to go? May I carry your bag for you?” She was almost laughing.

  I didn’t understand Myrl’s reaction—first surprise, and then amusement—but I knew there was one thing I needed to make sure of. “So Sarajane knows how to get hold of you?”

  “Oh, sure. But since nobody is staying at her place, she’ll have no reason to call me.”

  “Unless the police need to question Pamela.”

  Myrl stopped halfway through the back door. “The police? Why would the police need to question Pamela?”

  “Because that private detective who was looking for her was found dead.”

  “What!”

  “Didn’t Sarajane tell you?”

  “No, she did not. All she said was that he’d come looking for Pamela, and that later Pamela had received a threatening phone call.”

  She glared at Pamela.

  “Listen,” Pamela said. “I don’t know anything about the guy. Nothing about why he came looking for me. Nothing about how he wound up dead.”

  Myrl seemed to be turning the situation over in her mind. She stood staring at Pamela for at least thirty seconds. Then she abruptly turned toward her car. “There’s no point in keeping Lee standing out here in the cold.” Again her voice took a slightly sarcastic tone. “Come on, Pamela.”

  The two of them headed down the walk. And out of my life. Or so I hoped.

  But they took their time getting into the car. I heard the car’s trunk pop, and I saw its light go on. Then the two of them stood there, yammering at each other. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could hear their voices. And they were both angry.

  Oh, golly, I thought, is Pamela going to get mad and march back in?

  As I stood there staring through the storm door, the argument seemed to last five or ten minutes. Actually, it was probably only two or three minutes before I saw the light from the trunk go out and heard its lid slam. Then the two of them got into the car. The car started, the motor ran the thirty seconds it takes to fasten seat belts, and then the car backed out.

  Eager to be sure that they’d actually left, I went into the living room to watch them go down our lane. The car drove slowly past our front porch and out onto Lake Shore Drive. When Myrl put on her brakes and stopped to look both ways, I could even see the license plate. It was a Michigan plate, but I didn’t notice the letters, because I’m a number person. The numbers were 812.

  The car turned left onto Lake Shore Drive. Pamela and her problems were gone from my life.

  I relocked the back door, turned out the outside lights, and crawled back into bed. Joe didn’t stir. And neither did I until the phone rang again.

  This time the clock read seven thirty. I growled before I answered, “Hello.”

  “Lee!”

  This was someone I recognized. “Sarajane? What’s wrong?”

  “How did you know something’s wrong?”

  “Your voice. I recognize that worried sound.”

  “I hope nothing’s wrong. Did Pamela and Myrl get off?”

  “Yes. I watched them until they turned onto Lake Shore Drive.”

  “When was that?”

  “Sometime around four a.m., I guess. Why?”

  “They were supposed to drive over to Kalamazoo.” Kalamazoo was about an hour away from us.

  “Supposed to?” I sat up. “What happened?”

  “We don’t know! They never got there!”

  Chapter 6

  “We’ve got to call the police,”I said. “No! No!”

  “Listen, Sarajane, if they’ve disappeared . . .”

  “Lee, I can’t believe anything has happened to them. Myrl is so—so competent.”

  “She seemed that way in the five minutes I talked to her. But someone needs to be looking for them.”

  “Believe me, Lee, someone is. Please don’t do anything until I call back.”

  The line clicked dead. I got out of bed and headed for the shower. The phone call had roused me quicker than any alarm clock could.

  After my shower I had time to go upstairs and strip Pamela’s bed before I went to work. She hadn’t been there long enough to get the room dirty, of course, and she’d seemed to have cleared everything out. The only item she had left behind was an odd one, however. As I yanked the sheets off the bed, a ring clunked onto the wooden floor. It was a class ring, a man’s gold ring with a blue stone, and it was hanging on a chain. It looked for all the world like a high school going-steady ring.

  I looked at it closely. The graduation date was twenty years earlier—which meshed with my idea of Pamela’s age. The school initials were “FSC.” A stylized cat’s head was superimposed on the stone. The cat was snarling.

  Maybe it was a college ring. Something State College? Pamela was supposedly from Ann Arbor. It certainly wasn’t a University of Michigan ring.

  I took the ring downstairs and put it in the pottery vase on the mantel—the place we reserve for useless junk. I didn’t really expect to hear from Pamela again, but if I did, I could mail her the ring.

  When I got to work our alley was blocked off with crime scene tape, so Aunt Nettie and I both parked in front of the shop. We got there at almost the same time. Hogan, she said, had come home just before she left and was now trying to get some sleep. And, yes, Sarajane had called her to say Myrl and Pamela were missing.

  “I told her we need to report this to the police,” I said, “but she says no.”

  “I think you’re right. Now that I don’t have to worry about bothering Hogan, I’ll phone Sarajane and try to talk her into calling either Hogan or the State Police.”

  Aunt Nettie went into my office, closing the door for privacy. She was still on the phone with Sarajane when she motioned me in. “Sarajane says we could report Myrl and Pamela missing as a possible traffic accident, but she doesn’t want us to say anything ab
out Pamela being in danger. She thinks you might be the best person to make the report, Lee. Since they were last seen at your house.”

  “I’ll be glad to. Does she know what kind of car they were in? I didn’t get a good look.”

  Aunt Nettie consulted the telephone. “A gray Camry. But Sarajane doesn’t know the license number.”

  “812.”

  “You know it?”

  “I don’t know the letters, but the numbers were 812.”

  I called the State Police office nearest Warner Pier, described the car and the route it would probably have taken to reach Kalamazoo. “They should have arrived hours ago,” I said.

  “No accidents have been reported,” the officer answered. “And since the driver and passenger were competent adults, they’re not considered missing.”

  “I know. I just keep picturing all those woods, and how easy it would be to skid off the road and not be visible to passing cars.”

  The State Police officer promised to alert patrol officers, asking them to watch for the Camry and for signs of an accident. I hung up, as worried as ever.

  But my concern was nothing to Aunt Nettie’s. She was literally wringing her hands. I decided I had to act calm, even if I didn’t feel that way. Maybe it would help her cope.

  “Okay!” I said. “We’ve done all we can for the moment.”

  “I know, I know. But it’s such a dangerous situation. You don’t know.”

  “No, I don’t know, Aunt Nettie. Why don’t you try telling me?”

  I could see Aunt Nettie turn that over in her mind.

  “I’m getting a little tired of operating in the dark,” I said.

  “I guess so.” She leaned close and whispered. “Pamela’s ex-husband is Harold Belcher.”

  I felt blank. “Who is he?”

  “Maybe the Belcher case happened before you moved to Michigan.” Aunt Nettie shook her head sadly. “I’d better get the ladies started.”

  She left for the workroom. I turned on the computer and Googled Harold Belcher.

  A few newspaper files informed me of the background. I won’t go into all the details; Harold’s nickname, “Belcher the Butcher,” says enough.

  Harold ran a car theft ring and processed stolen cars in a Detroit chop shop. Supposedly the operation was mob-connected, though this was never proved in court. Bad things happened to some of Harold’s associates, but again no link to Harold himself had ever been proven.

  Whenever Harold got frustrated with his job he apparently took his unhappiness out on his wife, Christina. This proved his undoing. After a beating landed Christina Belcher in the hospital with a broken jaw and other injuries, she was approached by law enforcement. The FBI was involved because the car theft ring had been moving cars across state lines. Desperate to escape her miserable life, Christina agreed to testify not only against Harold, but against his associates. Several people went to prison, Harold among them, and Christina got a divorce, then disappeared. Gossip was that she had entered the federal Witness Protection Program, although she had not fingered any major mob figures.

  The trials had been held five years earlier. Now Harold’s prison sentence was over—he’d been convicted only on minor charges, not for the heinous crimes the public was convinced he’d committed—and he had recently faced a second trial for his assaults on Christina. Christina had been brought back to Detroit to testify against him. Harold was convicted, but he was appealing the verdict.

  Christina was supposedly guarded closely until she could be tucked back into the federal Witness Protection Program. No one had figured out how she had managed to disappear.

  Her bodyguards had gotten up one morning to find her gone. Harold’s involvement was suspected, but law enforcement had found no evidence against him. Christina was simply not around anymore.

  I snorted knowingly. If Christina had turned to Myrl, and Myrl was as competent as she looked and as Sarajane thought, I could understand how Christina managed to get away from both the authorities and her ex-husband.

  I printed out a picture of Harold, just so I’d have it for reference. He was a heavyset guy with dark, thinning hair. At least his hair had been thinning when the picture was taken six years earlier. His most eye-catching feature was a large, crooked nose, but he had a certain animal magnetism—I could see why he would be attractive to some women.

  I found a few pictures of Christina as well. The first was identical to the one Derrick Valentine had flopped onto our counter. “Meachum,” I learned from the Detroit Free Press files, was Christina’s maiden name.

  In another photo she looked young and pretty. Taken at some fancy party, the picture was a profile shot, showing Christina with her dark hair swept up onto the crown of her head. Her brown eyes sparkled, and in the lobe of her small, beautifully shaped ear was a pearl drop earring. A companion, head-on shot showed her sweet, heart-shaped face with a deep widow’s peak, pouty lips, and pointed chin.

  That pretty young Christina had turned into the haggard, haunted Pamela I knew, her face misshapen, her teeth missing, her makeup too heavy, her eyes red and watery. Harold Belcher should be sent up for life, I decided.

  But at the present, Harold was out on bond, and Christina was the prisoner.

  I printed out a couple of photos of Christina, and I had barely tucked them away in a file folder when the phone rang. It was Lindy.

  “Hi,” she said. “This is a quick business call. Though it might mean some fun, too.”

  “I love mixing business and pleasure. What’s up?”

  “You remember my mentioning that the Dome Home was being opened?”

  “I remember. You thought that the infamous Marson Endicott was coming to town.”

  “Apparently he has arrived. I just got a call asking Herrera Catering to deliver sandwiches and soup for a dozen people at noon today.”

  “Make ’em pay cash.”

  Lindy laughed. “I will. If half the stuff I read in the paper is true, I’m not extending credit. But, Lee, I thought we might have some fun with it. I have to take the food out there. Why don’t you come with me?”

  I didn’t answer immediately. Lindy spoke again. “Wouldn’t you like to see the inside of that house?”

  “Umm.” I thought about it. The Endicott house was an amazing structure from the outside, and, yes, I’d like to see what was inside.

  Then I thought about Marty Ludlum. Joe had refused to confirm that he was on the Endicott team, and Marty hadn’t mentioned it either. But I couldn’t figure out any other reason that a high-powered defense attorney like Marty would show up in Warner Pier in the dead of winter.

  I needed more information. “Lindy, are you serving this lunch yourself?”

  “No. Endicott has someone called a ‘household manager.’ He’ll serve and clean up, but I’m going to go out about eleven thirty to set up. I wanted to see the layout and make sure everything’s right. I think I’ll be through by twelve fifteen or so. Then you and I could go by the Sidewalk Café and have lunch ourselves. We haven’t had a good gossip session lately, and I need to talk to you.”

  I guess it was the “gossip session” part that made me say no to going out to the Dome Home ahead of time. Right at that moment, there were too many things going on in my life that I couldn’t tell Lindy about—the strange men in the police station, the unexpected visit of Marty Ludlum, the disappearance of Pamela-Christina and Myrl Sawyer. I could probably keep quiet for the forty-five minutes it took to eat lunch, but not touching on the wrong subject for two hours might tax my tongue.

  “I could meet you for lunch,” I said, “but I just don’t have time to go out to the Dome Home ahead of time. Even if it would make us the envy of Warner Pier.” Yes, Warner Pier was really curious about the Endicott house. It loomed over our downtown—right across the river from our quaint business district, looking like three Monticellos.

  “Aw, com’on, Lee.”

  I was tempted, but I kept to my plan. I agreed to meet Lindy at the
Sidewalk Café after she had the Endicott luncheon under way.

  After I hung up, I did one more thing before I started work. I called Sarajane and gave her a deadline.

  “If you don’t hear from Myrl by two o’clock,” I told her, “I’m going to tell Hogan this whole story and take his advice on how to handle it.”

  She objected, but only halfheartedly. Even Sarajane knew the situation couldn’t go on.

  Then I got busy. I was in the back room, checking how much fondant we had in stock, when one of the ladies poked her head in and told me there was someone at the counter.

  “Do you want me to wait on him?” she said.

  “I’ll do it.”

  The man standing at the front counter was a stranger, but something about him was familiar. I was saying, “May I help you?” before I realized what it was.

  He was wearing Derrick Valentine’s jacket.

  It wasn’t the same jacket, of course. That one, with its blood-soaked polyester fur, would be in a State Police evidence room someplace. But this one looked as if it had come off the same rack.

  Except for size. Derrick Valentine had been tall and skinny. This guy was short, round, and cuddly, with wispy blond hair that almost curled. The two men had been named wrong. Valentine had been nothing like his name, but the guy wearing the identical jacket was a real live cupid.

  “You Mrs. Woodyard?” His voice squeaked.

  “Yes. And I’m terribly sorry about what happened to your partner.”

  His eyes popped just a little. “My partner?”

  “I was guessing that you were working with Derrick Valentine. I’m sorry if I was wrong.”

  “No, you’re not wrong. But how’d you know that?”

  “The jackets. They’re almost identical.”

  He fingered his jacket. “Oh. We bought jackets on our way here, just to last a week or so. But how did you know Derrick even had a partner?”

  “Strangers in Warner Pier are easy to pick out in wintertime. And the PDQ offices are in Atlanta, and I saw a Georgia car parked around on Peach Street yesterday afternoon. Someone was sitting in it. Was it you? I jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Valentine wasn’t working alone.”