by JoAnna Carl
At that moment, something else big arrived. The waitress brought over a stack of boxes. There were two cardboard boxes I knew held eight-inch pizzas, plus two plastic boxes containing salads. Balanced one on top of another, they made a small tower.
Rhett jumped up. “Whoops! Better get on my way. Nice seeing you.” He was out the door like a whirlwind.
I waved good-bye. Then I turned to Joe. “Nice to know that Rhett has made a friend after only one day in Warner Pier.”
“A friend? He said he was having dinner in ‘lonely splendor.’ ”
“Yes, but he ordered two eight-inch pizzas and two salads.”
“Maybe he’s just hungry.”
We laughed and left it at that. I was a bit annoyed with Rhett. I had praised his tact to Joe, but the questions he had asked me—about the death of Derrick Valentine—had not been tactful. They’d been the kind of questions I’d expect from Greg Glossop. They’d left a bad taste in my mouth that my pizza wasn’t covering up.
Joe and I were putting our coats on when the restaurant’s door opened again, and a hulking figure came in. Of course, in February in Michigan everybody is wearing such heavy coats, hats, and scarves that most people appear hulking. But this guy was unusually tall, and he was wearing a gray down jacket with eye-catching yellow stripes.
Maybe I was unusually sensitive to hulking figures because of the big, ugly guy I’d seen talking to Joe and Hogan, then had run across again out at the Dome Home. The guy who hated Patricia Youngman so much that he cursed at the television set.
Potty Mouth had a big nose, as well as a shaved head. So I looked at the newcomer closely. The big guy coming in the door also had a big schnoz. My nerves jumped when I saw it. Then he pulled his hat off, and I realized it wasn’t the same man. This one had hair. Not a lot of hair, but more than Potty Mouth could have sprouted since noon that day. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I put on my own hat and zipped up my jacket, and Joe and I left. We said a warm good-bye in the parking lot, and I promised not to be at the office too long.
Then—I admit it—I pulled a Greg Gossip. I drove by the Lake Michigan Inn before I went back to the office. I just wanted to see if Rhett’s car was in the parking lot. And it was. A white Cadillac Escalade with an Illinois tag, the same one I’d seen parked at the Dome Home. Had Rhett managed to make a new friend in Warner Pier? Or had he imported a friend from Chicago?
I laughed, but then I noticed another car in the lot, a dark Buick sedan, also with an Illinois tag. It made me remember the two guys in city coats who had been in Hogan’s office the night Derrick Valentine was killed.
Was that their car? Or did it belong to someone else? Were they staying at the Lake Michigan Inn? Somehow I hadn’t had the feeling they’d be around that long. Who were they, anyway? Joe knew. Had he gone to the Lake Michigan Inn to see them? Why wouldn’t he tell me?
My curiosity bump was itching furiously.
I drove to the shop, and I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind. Then, for the first time all day, I got to work. For about an hour I churned it out, concentrating on paying bills for TenHuis Chocolade.
I was still concentrating when someone knocked at the door.
After I’d gulped three times to get my heart out of my throat and back down into my chest, I decided to ignore the knock. After all, we weren’t open for business.
Of course, it would be quite obvious to passersby that someone was there. Although shades covered our big show windows, I’d turned on the lights in the shop and in my office. Somehow I hadn’t wanted any shadows. And those lights would be leaking around the edges of the window shades.
But my plan to refuse to open up went by the way when the person outside began to rattle the door handle.
What if the person at the door broke in?
My heart was back up in my mouth. The shop isn’t exactly as secure as Fort Knox. Two years earlier, we’d been hit by a burglar who had simply kicked in the long glass panel in the front door and walked through. Since then we’d acquired an alarm system, but there was nothing to stop someone from getting in before the cops could respond.
Should I call the police? What would I tell them? A customer came to the door after hours, and I was too scared to even see who it was?
It might be someone I knew.
I took my cell phone from my purse and punched in 9-1-1. With my finger over the button that would send the call on its way, I went to the front door.
I turned on the outside lights. Then I yanked at the roller shade and sent it flying up to the top of the window. It made a clatter that made me jump. But I peered through the window, faking calm annoyance and holding my cell phone, with my finger ready to hit the call button, in plain view.
I yelled, “We’re not open!”
Between the light from the shop and the streetlight two doors down, I could see the man standing there fairly clearly.
It was the hulking guy who had gone into the Dock Street Pizza Place as Joe and I were leaving.
He yelled back at me, “I need to talk to you!”
“Come back tomorrow!”
I pulled the blind back down. Then I waited, phone in hand, to see if he shattered the glass in the door.
He didn’t. Instead, after a moment I heard footsteps crunching as he walked away. Car lights bounced off our windows, and I heard a car drive off.
I felt weak all over as I went back to my desk. Before I left for home, I vowed, I would call the police dispatcher and ask that the lone night shift patrolman be sent to stand by as I opened that door to dash for my van.
I considered the man at the door. What had he wanted? Why was he so eager to talk to someone at TenHuis Chocolade that he had come at nine o’clock at night, rather than waiting until we were open the next day?
Who was he?
A memory tickled my brain. I reached into the file folder I had assembled on Christina Meachum. I pulled out the picture of her husband, Harold Belcher. Belcher the Butcher.
Chapter 11
It was only nine o’clock. I called Hogan.
After the usual sorry-to-bother-you remarks, I told him about the strange man who had come to the door.
“I feel stupid about this, Hogan, but I told you that I had looked Christina Meachum up on the Internet and found out she was the ex-wife of Harold Belcher.”
“Belcher the Butcher.”
“Right. I printed out a picture of Harold. It’s several years old, of course, but looking at that picture—well, the guy at the door could have been him.”
Hogan didn’t say anything.
I went on. “It definitely was not the guy you and Joe were talking to last night.”
“Why did you think of him?”
“Because if you described the two men, you’d use the same words. Big nose. Ugly. Bald. But the man who came to the door was not the same person. To begin with, he had hair around the edges of his scalp. He didn’t shave his head all over, the way your guy does.”
Hogan gave a grunt. “Don’t call him ‘my guy.’ He’s nothing to me but a pain in the neck. Are you going to be at the shop for a few more minutes?”
“I’m almost ready to leave. I admit I was thinking of calling Joe and asking him to drive down and escort me to my van.”
“Wait there. I need to talk to you. Then I’ll follow you home.”
Hogan was at the door in less than ten minutes. He knocked and called out my name, and I let him in.
“I’m probably being silly,” I said. “Probably the guy was looking for directions, and mine was the only light he saw.”
“No. I’m glad you called. If there’s a chance Harold Belcher is in town, I want to know about it. I already passed the word on to the State Police. Not that we can do anything.”
“Why not?”
“If what I read in the paper is right, Belcher is out on bond. As far as I know, he can go anywhere he wants to, at least in the state of Michigan, as long as he behaves himself. But if he’s
in my area, I’d prefer to keep an eye on him. I wanted to talk to you about something different.”
“Sure. Come in the office and sit down.” I led the way to my glassed-in room.
Hogan took off his jacket and hat and sat in the one visitor’s chair. “It’s Nettie. She’s having some sort of nervous crisis, and she won’t tell me what’s wrong. So I’m asking you. What’s going on with her?”
I think I kept from giving a guilty start, but I cleared my throat before I spoke. “She found a dead man in the alley last night. That might be preying on her mind.”
“No. She talks about that readily. It gives her the willies, but she’s coping. This is something different, something she doesn’t want to tell me.” Hogan gave me a long, level stare. “I thought you might know what it was.”
I blinked dully, wondering how to react.
Hogan pressed his point. “Do you know what’s wrong, Lee?”
“I’m trying to thick. I mean, think! Give me a minute.”
Quandary with a capital Q. Of course, probably what Aunt Nettie was upset about was keeping quiet about Pamela—Pamela who turned out to be Christina and who had left in the middle of the night with Myrl. We both felt guilty about not telling Hogan her real identity. But Aunt Nettie’s best friend was determined that Myrl’s name must not appear in this, no matter what. So that left Aunt Nettie—and me—between the proverbial rock and the equally proverbial hard place.
Aunt Nettie wasn’t going to be happy with me if I blabbed to Hogan about Pamela. I sighed. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you a thing.”
He leaned back in his chair and eyed me casually. I remembered uneasily that over his forty years in law enforcement Hogan had interviewed hundreds of unwilling witnesses. My face began to feel hot.
“Seems as if a whole bunch of folks are disappearing around here,” he said.
“Success? I mean—Such as?” Now I’d done it. My tongue had twisted twice, and Hogan would know that meant I was nervous. “Who’s disappeared?”
“That detective who came to see you. The second guy.”
“O’Sullivan? I thought the State Police had hauled him in.”
“Nope. He fled the scene before they got to him.”
“Doesn’t that show that he feels guilty?”
“We all feel guilty about something. He’s probably headed back to Georgia. They’ll pick him up. I’m more concerned about that woman who disappeared.”
I made my voice as innocent as possible. “What woman?”
“Some woman who worked here in the shop. Nettie won’t tell me anything about her.”
“Then how did you know she disappeared?”
“Joe let it out. He said you’d been up and down last night because some woman came to the house, slept a few hours, then left.”
“Oh,” I said. We both sat silently for a few minutes.
Hogan finally spoke. “So, Lee, who was this woman?” I
sighed. “She was a temporary employee named Pamela Thompson. She had been having family problems. She called Aunt Nettie last night—while you were busy investigating Derrick Valentine’s death—and told her she thought the guy she was afraid of had found her.”
“Who was this guy?”
“Her ex-husband, I think. Anyway, Aunt Nettie met her at the Shell station out on the highway and brought her to our house.”
“Why didn’t she bring her to our place?”
“You’ll have to ask Aunt Nettie that one. But I think it was because she thought whoever was looking for Pamela would be less likely to find her at our house.”
“Where did this Pamela Thompson go?”
“I don’t know, Hogan. She had contacted a friend, and someone showed up to get her about five-thirty this morning.”
“Who picked her up?”
“I’d never seen the woman before, and Pamela didn’t introduce us.” That wasn’t exactly a lie. I went on hurriedly. “All I know is that Pamela went willingly.”
Hogan kept looking at me. I knew he was trying to get me to add to my story. I was determined that I wouldn’t do that.
After about two minutes of silence, Hogan won. I spoke. “Hogan, I don’t see how Pamela could have had anything to do with Derrick Valentine’s death. She never spoke to him. He never saw her. They had no contact.”
Hogan rubbed his eyes with both heels of his hands. He looked exhausted.
“I guess I’m getting tunnel vision,” he said. “It’s just that we have this dead detective. Then we have this missing detective. Then there’s this missing woman. Then we have the Marson Endicott bunch nagging us over their missing woman. Who turns up on CNN, so I guess she’s not missing anymore. And now you think Harold Belcher may be in town.”
He gave a deep sigh. “It’s a regular crime wave. And with all these things happening at the same time in a town this small, it seems as if they should fit together.”
“What could Pamela—a woman willing to take a temporary job doing unskilled work in a chocolate shop—have to do with a high flier like Marson Endicott?”
“Beats me.” He stood up. “You ready to go?”
“Let me call Joe and tell him I’m on the way.”
“Yeah. It’d be dumb to get escorted to your vehicle here on the main street, then run through the deep, dark woods to get into your house.”
I gathered up the last bit of work I’d hoped to accomplish—comparing the phone bill to my own record of long distance calls—and stuck my computer flash drive in my pocket. Now that you can load a mass of information on a gadget five-eighths of an inch by two and three-eighths inches, I try to take it home automatically, so that I can work at home if I need to.
Hogan escorted me to my van; then he followed me home. He pulled into the drive behind me, said, “Hello,” when Joe came out to meet us, and declined an invitation to come in.
He drove away leaving me mired in guilt so deep I could hardly walk into the house. I was longing to tell him the whole story, not the carefully expurgated version I’d handed out. I felt terrible. Hogan treated me almost like a daughter. He had been wonderful to me and to Joe.
Plus, he was a highly professional law officer. He might be able to use the information I was keeping to myself.
But I couldn’t say anything without getting Sarajane’s approval. I simply could not threaten the carefully built structure of her underground railroad.
I decided to make one more effort at getting Sarajane’s permission to tell Hogan the real story about Pamela-Christina.
Joe went back to some basketball game he’d been watching, and I went into the bedroom and called Sarajane. I nearly fell off the bed when a man answered.
“Good evening! Peach Street Bed-and-Breakfast!”
A man? Answering Sarajane’s phone?
I was even more surprised when I recognized the voice.
“Rhett?”
His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “P.J., what are you doing calling this number? Listen, I’m taking care of this end.”
“Rhett?”
He kept whispering. “I’ll call you on my cell. It may be an hour or so.”
Then he hung up.
I stared at the phone. That was the oddest phone call I’d ever taken part in.
For a moment I wondered if I’d called the right number. Then I remembered; Rhett had answered with “Peach Street Bed-and-Breakfast.” Yes, I had called Sarajane’s number, though I had no idea why Rhett answered it.
I began to laugh. Who did Rhett think I was? Obviously someone he didn’t want to talk to at the moment. That left a lot of possibilities, of course. It could be the person who ate the second pizza. It could be some business contact he was trying to dodge. Maybe it was someone he owed money. But I really couldn’t see any reason why it would be me.
In fact, he’d said a name. Or rather initials. “P.J.” They meant nothing to me.
I still needed to talk to Sarajane. I hit redial.
Rhett answered again. “Peach Street B
ed-and-Breakfast.”
This time I started with my name. “It’s Lee Woodyard, Rhett. I wanted to talk to Sarajane.”
Rhett gasped, then spoke. “Mrs. Woodyard? Did you call a moment ago?”
“Yep.”
“I’m so sorry I hung up. I thought you were someone else.”
“That’s what I figured. What are you doing at Sarajane’s?”
“I’m helping out with computer problems. We stuck Mrs. Harding with three of our guys, and one of them is having trouble checking his e-mail.”
“He’ll continue to have problems,” I said. “Warner Pier is still in the dark ages computer-wise. No wireless service.”
“I have a direct satellite link, so I brought my laptop over for him to use.”
“Where’s Sarajane?”
“Mrs. Harding is preparing bedtime snacks. She asked me to get the phone because she was halfway up the stairs with a tray of cheese, fruit, and cookies. Shall I have her call you back?”
At that point I heard a voice roar in the background. The roar faded to a rumble almost immediately, and I deduced that Rhett had put his hand over the receiver, blocking the sound. But I had caught three words, none of them fit to be used in polite company.
Poor Sarajane, I thought. Potty Mouth was one of her guests.
In thirty seconds or so Rhett was back on the line. “Sorry,” he said. “I had to take care of a problem.”
“Who is that guy?” I asked.
“Whom do you mean?”
“Potty Mouth. He was swearing at the television set this morning.”
“I believe you’re referring to Mr. Smith. Elliot J. Smith. Mr. Smith is chief financial officer of the Prodigal Corporation.”
I made a disgusted noise. “I can’t believe a man that crude has reached the upper echelons of an important corporation.”
“Oh, yes, it’s true.” Rhett’s voice was amused.
“You must have an extremely varied set of duties.”
“Yes, Mr. Smith is regarded as a financial genius. I think Mrs. Harding will be here shortly. Do you want to hold?”
“He’s standing there, right? And he’s mad because his e-mail won’t behave.”
“That is correct.”