The Chocolate Book Bandit

by JoAnna Carl

  At that Aunt Nettie and I left, carting along the eggs and the vegetables. I was glad to go. By then it was six thirty, and I knew Joe was likely to be home. I was eager to see him. I always am.

  But when Aunt Nettie and I pulled into our drive—she’d left her car there—there was no truck sitting in Joe’s parking place. I felt disappointed, but not too surprised. Joe had gone to his office in Holland that afternoon, and he often runs late.

  Aunt Nettie insisted that I keep the food we’d brought from Abigail’s house. As she drove away, she lowered her car window and called out to me. “Hogan sent you a message, and I forgot to give it to you.”

  “What was it?”

  “He said he’s relying on you for the inside poop. I don’t know what he meant.”

  Unfortunately, I did. I went in the house, feeling like a failure. I’d merely stumbled around, trying to figure out the personal dynamics of the library board. My questions had been useless. I hadn’t learned a thing.

  Joe. Maybe Joe would encourage me.

  But when I got inside the telephone answering machine was flashing, and the message was from Joe. “Sorry, Lee, but I have to stay in Holland for dinner. I should be home by nine. Or ten.”

  Another kick in the stomach.

  Joe didn’t say why he had to have dinner in Holland. No excuses. No explanations. What was I to think but the worst?

  Mechanically, I began to put the things I’d brought from Abigail’s house into my refrigerator. I looked at Abigail’s eggs and wondered if I should scramble a couple, put on my pajamas, and turn on HGTV. An evening to veg out and feel sorry for myself sounded good.

  I don’t think I’ve ever felt as blue in my life. My Texas grandma would have said I was ready to cut my suspenders and go straight up.

  Instead I went out and picked up two single guys.

  Not that I did that deliberately. But Abigail’s eggs didn’t look appealing. Eggs are better with English muffins, and I didn’t have any in the house. That was enough justification for going out to eat.

  So there, Joe Woodyard.

  After all, I reminded myself, I lived in a community that had good restaurants, even when the tourist season was over. I combed my hair, redid my makeup, and headed for Herrera’s. It was pure coincidence that I ran into Butch Cassidy and Corny Cornwall having dinner together there.

  When I came in they were still at the martini stage and hadn’t ordered dinner yet. Mr. Cornwall invited me to join them.

  I assured myself that I wasn’t sneaking around. After all, Herrera’s belongs to my husband’s stepfather, and even if Mike isn’t there, he hears about who comes in. So the word would get back to Joe, even if I didn’t tell him about it. Which I planned to do. I spread my napkin over my lap and ordered a glass of pinot noir.

  Of course, simmering right under my consciousness was the knowledge that I was having dinner with a man to whom I was strongly attracted and that he’d shown some signs that he was attracted to me.

  Or was that my imagination?

  “Cheers,” Butch said. He lifted his martini toward me, and our eyes met.

  No, it wasn’t my imagination. We both looked away quickly.

  I focused my attention on the older man. “Dr. Cornwall . . . oh, I’m sorry! I haven’t forgotten that you prefer to be called mister.”

  “I wish you could bring yourself to call an old man Corny,” he said.

  “Of course, if that’s what you prefer, Corny.”

  “I wasn’t very polite about my title this afternoon, and I’d like to explain. It’s all Abigail’s fault.”

  “How?”

  “At the college where I taught for most of my academic career, somehow I got grandfathered in. I was the only faculty member in the history department who never received a doctorate. It’s unbelievable by today’s standards.” He leaned closer and smiled. “All I have is an ABD.”

  I grinned back. “All but Dissertation?”

  “Right. I finished off all the requirements for my doctorate and I wrote the dissertation, but I never got it through the idiotic committee. Which changed four times.”

  “You mean the committee changed?”

  “Yes. The personnel on the committee. Of course, each group wanted a different approach to the material. New research. After five years, I told the dean he’d just have to fire me. I wasn’t going to fool with it anymore, even if I had to teach in high school again.”

  “Apparently the dean didn’t take you at your word.”

  “No. He kept me on semester to semester for a while. Then I became one of the only permanent faculty members without a doctorate. A couple of new administrations tried to oust me. But none of them succeeded.” He smiled wickedly. “The alumni loved me. They got together and endowed a chair to be held only by me. I even received an honorary doctorate when I retired.”

  “Then you are entitled to be called doctor.”

  “It would be only a courtesy title. I prefer simply to be Corny. The situation didn’t seem to matter until I retired to Warner Pier. People I met here began to call me doctor. I corrected them for a while, but it called for long explanations. I finally just let it go.”

  “How did Abigail Montgomery affect the situation?”

  Corny sipped his martini. “The damn woman was a hell of a researcher. I admit that.”

  “Oh! She discovered the history of your academic title.”

  “Don’t ask me how. Or why she bothered. But all of a sudden I was getting these innuendoes about my academic career. From her.”

  “How annoying!”

  “That’s a good word. ‘Annoying.’”

  “It seems pointless,” I said. “Unless she wanted money or something else valuable to keep quiet.”

  “No! She never seemed to want to gain any advantage with her knowledge. It embarrassed me, but not seriously. It didn’t cost me a job or break up a love affair or anything. I found her actions a great mystery.”

  At that point the waiter came with our salads. The break in conversation recalled me to my manners. Since the moment I sat down, Corny and I had done all the talking. It was time to include Butch. But I wanted to continue to focus on Abigail.

  “Butch, did you ever meet Abigail?”

  “Only once.” He nodded to Corny. “At that interview meeting with the board. She gave me the same treatment she gave you, Corny. She’d done more research on my personal life than I was comfortable with. Not my professional life. She was certainly entitled to look that over thoroughly. But she had found out things about my past I didn’t want to discuss. Frankly, I’m a little relieved to hear you say that she treated someone else that way.”

  “I noticed she made several people on the library board uncomfortable.” Corny stabbed a piece of tomato. “I finally decided there was nothing malicious in it.”

  “I thought perhaps she was trying to gain power,” Butch said. “Emotional power.”

  “If she was, she never seemed to use it.”

  I waved my own salad fork around. “But people cited examples of when she influenced board action. Halting the payment on parts of the building, for example. Not that that wasn’t a good thing to do.”

  “Abigail never seemed to use her nosiness to put pressure on people,” Corny said. “I mean, she was quite open about things she wanted. She cited chapter and verse. Abigail was curious, but she didn’t appear mean.”

  Butch leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Corny, do you know of any run-in Abigail had with Betty Blake?”

  “Betty? The circulation-desk clerk? No, I don’t.”

  “There seems to be bad feeling there.”

  “Over what?”

  Butch shook his head. “I’ve probably said too much.”

  That was interesting. Maybe it was something Hogan ought to know about.

  We lef
t the subject then. It seemed to be time to talk about something besides Abigail Montgomery.

  So Corny and I described a few of Warner Pier’s traditional events to Butch, starting with the Fall Rinkydink and the midwinter tourism promotion.

  The Rinkydink marks the day our one traffic light is turned into a blinking light for the winter. We all get together for a benefit picnic lunch in our waterfront park. Then we cheer the city crew as they switch the light over.

  The midwinter promotion has a different theme every year, and that year the theme was to be clowns. Butch liked that idea. He immediately had some great ideas about projects the library could do involving clowns. I was impressed with his imagination.

  But I kept thinking about Betty Blake disliking Abigail. If I was checking out a book, Betty seemed to be the most docile person in the world. The idea that she could even get mad—and mad at one of the library board members—was a surprise.

  Butch and Corny—I was getting used to calling him that—were good company, and it turned out to be a pleasant evening.

  Until we all got up to leave. That’s when those questions about Joe surfaced again in my little brain. Why hadn’t he come home for dinner? And whom was he having dinner with? Should I worry? Or was I simply borrowing trouble?

  Corny had had three martinis, so I was glad to learn he lived only a block away from Herrera’s. Butch—he and I had each had only one drink—offered to walk home with him, and the two of them escorted me to my van. This meant Butch and I had no opportunity for private conversation.

  Which was a good thing. We were doing well enough with eye contact alone. He did touch my arm as I got in the van. I pretended not to notice.

  “Good night,” Corny said. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Long for me, too,” I said. “I’m ready for bed.” The parking lot was not well lit. I hoped Butch couldn’t see that my face got hot. And why should a routine remark like that embarrass me?

  As I drove home I grew more depressed by the moment. Where was Joe? Had he been with Meg? Were we having a crisis? Was I all excited over nothing?

  Joe’s truck was in its proper spot when I pulled into the drive. I didn’t know if I should feel happy or angry or full of dread. I took a deep breath and went in the house.

  Joe met me at the kitchen door. We spoke in unison. “Where’ve you been?”

  And we answered in unison. “Out to dinner.”

  Then the conversation seemed to flag. “Good,” I said finally. “You’ve eaten. Where did you go?”

  “Oh, just down the street to Pepe’s. Webb and I had a case we wanted to talk about.”

  A load lifted from my shoulders. Webb Bartlett is one of Joe’s fellow lawyers. In fact, he founded the agency where Joe works, though he maintains a private practice and rarely gets involved in their cases. But it certainly wasn’t unusual for Joe and Webb to confer.

  “How is Webb?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s fine. Where’d you go?”

  “I’m now on a nickname basis with Corny Cornwall.” I described my dinner. Maybe I downplayed Butch Cassidy, just a little bit. But I didn’t fudge the facts.

  “And earlier,” I said, “Aunt Nettie and I cleaned out Abigail Montgomery’s refrigerator.”

  I reported on that visit as well, ending with a description of the mysterious key.

  “Odd,” Joe said. “Did the key look like a genuine antique or a copy?”

  “It looked new and shiny.”

  “The only place to get a key copied in Warner Pier is the hardware store. Guy Reardon might remember if Mrs. Montgomery brought a key in to be copied.”

  “Should I mention this to Hogan? Or let Tim handle it?”

  “Tim or Hart ought to tell Hogan, I guess. Or maybe all of us should just forget it.”

  I had hoped my detailed story about my day would encourage Joe to give me a bit more detail about his. But no such report was forthcoming. We seemed to run out of conversation. Joe wandered around, and after a few minutes got into the shower. And I turned to HGTV, just as I had threatened earlier in the evening. We both climbed in bed early, but we each brought reading material with us. The only communication was, “What time shall I set the alarm for?”

  Of course, by then it had occurred to me that if Joe had a problem—such as an old girlfriend—that he wanted to discuss with a trusted adviser, Webb would have been a likely candidate for the role. So I propped up on my pillows, held my book, and didn’t read it. It was one o’clock before I turned out my light, and then I didn’t sleep well.

  The next morning I got up determined to finish up the chore Hogan had requested so I could concentrate on my own life. Betty Blake was my next victim, I decided.

  Butch had said she had some problem with Abigail. I needed to find out what it was. I considered several ways to accomplish this and finally decided I should just ask her. As soon as I got to the office I found Betty’s home phone number and called her. She readily agreed to meet me for lunch. I told her I wanted to discuss day-to-day operations at the library.

  “Well, I know all about that,” she said firmly. “Though you might not think so, judging by the amount of attention I get.”

  Chocolate Chat

  Food Network Magazine did a special issue on chocolate, and one of their articles was on chocolate-covered everything.

  The magazine’s test cooks tempered semisweet and milk chocolate, then dipped dozens of foods in the yummy coatings.

  The items that made the cut and were pictured in the magazine included:

  Shredded wheat biscuits

  Dried apples

  Corn chips

  Saltines and cheese crackers

  Melba toast

  Banana chips

  Red licorice

  Fruits, including orange sections and grapes

  Toaster waffles

  And—ta-da!—fried bacon

  Chapter 13

  And just what did Betty mean by that? I needed to find out. That was why we were going to have a talk.

  It was a beautiful fall day, so I suggested meeting at the outside area of the Sidewalk Café.

  The Sidewalk actually takes its name from the décor—which includes old outdoor toys such as scooters, roller skates, jacks, and marbles—but it has both indoor and outdoor dining rooms. It’s only a block from TenHuis Chocolade, and everybody in town walks by. It even has good food. It’s the most popular place in Warner Pier for lunch.

  To my surprise, Betty hesitated. “Maybe someplace more private would be better,” she said. “I know! I’ll make us a sandwich, and we can go to Riverside Park.”

  Hmmm. Warner Pier has a lovely park that runs beside the Warner River for several blocks. Right in downtown Warner Pier. But Betty wasn’t talking about that park. She was suggesting a park that’s rather hard to get to and has few amenities. Its main attraction is a boat ramp, and it’s up the river, a mile from downtown Warner Pier. Why did she want to go there?

  But it was okay with me. “That might be a better place to talk,” I said. “There’s never anybody there.”

  “That’s right. We shouldn’t run into anybody we don’t want to see us together.”

  Hmmm again. Why did she want our talk to be secret?

  I offered to pick up some of the Sidewalk’s roast beef sandwiches and grab soft drinks from the shop’s refrigerator. Betty said she had some homemade cookies. We agreed to meet at eleven thirty, since Betty went to work at one.

  “This is the afternoon for the after-school movie,” she said. “So I’ll have to be right on time so I can help Gwen get ready.”

  I knew Gwen Swain was the volunteer who ran that activity.

  I knew very little about Betty, so I quizzed Aunt Nettie, who rarely leaves the shop but still seems to know everybody in town. Aunt Nettie called to Nadine Vanderhill, one of the “
hairnet ladies,” the genius cooks who actually make TenHuis chocolates. Aunt Nettie told me Nadine went to the same church Betty did.

  Nadine is a cheerful gal—tall and blond and a bit husky, like most of us descendants of the original Dutch settlers of Western Michigan.

  “Why do you need to know about Betty?” Nadine asked. “She doesn’t have any new problems, does she?”

  I explained that I had been asked to serve on the board of the library and was trying to familiarize myself with its personnel and operations. I said nothing about getting together with Betty, since she apparently didn’t want that known.

  “I’m just being nosy,” I said. “Betty seems to be a very nice person.”

  “Oh, she is!” Nadine said. “But she’s had a lot of problems. Her husband went off and left her with two kids. One of the kids has needed speech therapy and tutoring and other things. You know, extra time and expense. And Betty’s house is old. She’s had lots of problems there. She’s just never been able to get ahead.”

  “How old are her kids?”

  “Early twenties. Her daughter works at a nursing home in Holland, and her son is at Walmart in South Haven. He got married just out of high school and had kids right away. So now it’s more problems with the grandkids.”

  “It sounds as if Betty has had a hard life.”

  “Lots of troubles. The church has tried to help Betty, but she’s had a struggle. I think she’s a real hard worker. And she’s smart. Through it all she’s kept on taking college classes.”

  “That can be hard,” I said. “I worked full-time while I went to college. It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t have kids.”

  “I think Betty finally finished her degree last spring. Maybe things will look up for her.”

  Armed with two roast beef sandwiches and a few facts about Betty, I headed for lunch. When I pulled into Riverside Park an old sedan was already there, and I saw Betty sitting at a picnic table.

  There was nothing very distinctive about her. She looked like a middle-aged woman. She had a round face, pale eyelashes, and mouse brown hair styled with a bad perm. She wore shapeless slacks, a baggy shirt, and run-over loafers. She probably needed to lose thirty pounds. To be honest, duplicates of Betty Blake can be found in any American supermarket.