“Good! There are too many of us trying to do that already. But you’d be great at client presentations.”
“Oh, I can’t do oval—I mean . . .” I stopped, formed the words in my mind, and said them slowly. “Oral presentations. I can add like crazy, and I know an asset from a debit. But I don’t talk well.”
Ainsley looked quizzical. “But according to this morning’s Chicago Tribune, you’ve done the beauty pageant circuit, so you didn’t just fall off a turnip wagon. I judged a few pageants, some years past. They require a lot of poise.”
“If the reporters get around to checking my pageant scores, they’ll reveal that I did okay in bathing suit and evening gown and so-so in talent. But I completely bombed the interviews.” I decided it was time to change the subject. “Now your career has been really remarkable, Mr. Ainsley. Why were you drawn to investments?”
“Just like to be around money, I guess.” He grinned. “You’re like all the other girls. Just interested in me because I know . . .” He mentioned a famous movie actor.
“I admit I’d love to know what he’s really like,” I said.
For the next fifteen minutes, Duncan entertained Aunt Nettie and me. He told me the in-stuff about that actor, about a certain rock star, about a well-known author of trash novels, about a soap opera star I had idolized as a teenager. It was amusing and just slightly wicked. I enjoyed it thoroughly. At the same time, I had the feeling I was watching a well-rehearsed and carefully developed stand-up act. He’d told those stories a lot of times, and he knew just when to pause for a laugh.
But it was still a pleasant interlude, and I hadn’t had many of those lately. I was almost sorry when Chief Jones came in.
“Ms. McKinney,” he said, “it seems the Warner Pier Police Department has assumed the duties of your social secretary. I have a phone message for you.”
“A phone message? Oh, with the phone at the house out of order . . .”
“Right. The caller couldn’t get through. Since the call seemed to be of a personal nature and the dispatcher said the party was pretty concerned about you, I said I’d hand it along.”
“Thank you, Chief Jones.” He handed me a pink message slip. “It’s a Dallas number,” I told Aunt Nettie. “It must be Mom. I thought she was in the Caymans. She must have read about all this mess in the newspaper.”
“You’d better call her.”
Lindy showed me a telephone in the kitchen. I found my credit card and dialed the number. The phone was picked up on the first ring.
“Lee?”
It wasn’t my mother. It was Rich Godfrey, my ex.
“Rich? Why are you calling?”
“Honey, I just heard about this situation up there. I’m getting on the first plane to Detroit.”
“Detroit?”
“I’ll rent a car and be there by this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Lee honey, you’re going to need money—money for attorneys, for public relations consultants. You don’t have to face this alone.”
“I see.”
And I did see. It was more of the stupid Lee syndrome. It works this way: A. Lee is attractive. B. Lee has a problem with saying the wrong word, so she’s stupid.
Rich thought I was too stupid to handle the situation. And maybe Lieutenant VanDam thought I was stupid enough and Aunt Nettie was naive enough that one of us would incriminate herself and admit we had poisoned Clementine Ripley’s chocolates.
I’d been trying to protect Aunt Nettie by taking an active interest in what was going on, but now I saw that “active” wasn’t going to be good enough. I needed to move up to “aggressive.”
But first I had to take care of Rich.
“Rich,” I said, “if I need help, I’ll call on someone who knows Lake Michigan from Lake Erie.”
“Huh?”
“You said you were going to fly to Detroit. Warner Pier is on Lake Michigan and Detroit is closer to Lake Erie—a couple of hundred miles from Warner Pier. And if you show up here, I’ll throw you to the tabloid press. Get out of my life! And take your money with you!”
I hung up and took two deep breaths.
Lindy laughed. “Right on!” she said.
I pumped my fist at her and headed back into the reception room.
“Aunt Nettie!”
I must have sounded different, because her eyes were wide when she swung around to look at me. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is that I’m tired of people pushing us around. Burglars. State police. Cops and robbers. It’s time we stood up for ourselves.”
Aunt Nettie smiled. “What do you suggest?
“I suggest we ask Lieutenant VanDam to step down here and then we insist he assign his best officers to search the chocolate shop and the house. Right now!”
Chapter 11
Aunt Nettie beamed at me. “Lee, that’s a wonderful idea!”
But Duncan Ainsley jumped to his feet, looking horrified. “Lee! Mrs. TenHeist! What are y’all thinking of?”
Ainsley almost squeaked out the words, including the extra “t” he put at the end of Aunt Nettie’s name.
“Ask any lawyer!” he said. “The authorities should get a warrant.”
“What on earth for?” Aunt Nettie said.
“You can’t just allow the police into your home.”
“I’ve begged them to come twice in the last two days, thanks to our burglar,” she said. “A piece of chocolate from my business contained poison. I know it didn’t get poisoned at the shop, but the police don’t. So the authorities are going to have to search the shop sometime. Besides, if somebody’s put something poisonous in my house or my shop or my car, I want to know about it. I want the police to look in every nook and cranny. I want them to test every bottle on the flavoring shelf, check out every bar of chocolate in the storage room, look under every chocolate mold, behind every pot and in every pan.”
I was glad she saw it the same way I did. I knew that Aunt Nettie and I hadn’t poisoned the chocolates. I felt sure none of the hairnet ladies or the teenage counter girls had done it. And the police knew we’d had two break-ins—or one break-in and an attempted break-in. If they found evidence in the garbage can full of bird seed on the back porch at Aunt Nettie’s house or in the plastic bin of cherry filling in the shop’s storeroom or in a shoe box in my closet, good enough. I wanted them to have it.
But Ainsley was still arguing. “Ask your lawyer,” he said. “He’d be ready to cut his suspenders and go straight up!”
Aunt Nettie waved his objections away. “Don’t be silly. If our break-ins are related to a poisoning, we need to search the whole house anyway, just to make sure the burglar didn’t leave any surprises for Lee and me. If the state police are willing to do it for us—and to check out the shop at the same time—well, I hope it’s a complete waste of public funds, but I appreciate their doing it.”
Joe came out of the hall right then, and Ainsley appealed to him. “Joe, you’re a lawyer. Tell this nice lady she shouldn’t encourage a search of her premises.”
“I’m not a lawyer anymore,” Joe said. But he did react in a lawyerly fashion, I guess. At least he asked Aunt Nettie to explain her side before he expressed an opinion.
“Clem would have gone for the search warrant,” he said. “But I don’t think you need to insist on one.” He turned to look back toward the hall, and I saw VanDam standing there looking at us. “After all,” Joe said, “the police are fully aware that you’ve had a break-in at the house. It’s possible that something was planted. You need to know.”
“Exactly.” Aunt Nettie beamed. She struggled up from the couch. “Let’s go on and get started. I’ve got a lot of work I need to do at the shop, and I can’t do it until we get this over with.”
“Ahem!” I said loudly. “And I have another suggestion. Aunt Nettie and I need to stop avoiding the press.”
Duncan Ainsley frowned, Joe glared, and Aunt Nettie looked dubious.
But I w
ent on. “We need to write a statement pointing out that the reputation and the business of TenHuis Chocolade are threatened by this investigation, demanding that the police proceed as quickly as possible, and telling the world we’re asking the authorities to make a complete search of our premises.”
Aunt Nettie smiled. “That’s an excellent idea, Lee. And we’ll both wear TenHuis shirts, and we’ll insist on getting the shop’s logo in every photograph.”
Joe laughed. “Maybe you’ve got something. If they don’t kill you.”
I ignored him. “We’ll meet them on the sidewalk in front of the shop, where they can’t miss the sign in the window. We’ll pass out chocolates, if Lieutenant VanDam will allow it, and we’ll include copies of that fact sheet on all the different varieties of chocolate.”
“And a price list,” Aunt Nettie said happily.
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll even offer to answer questions, but no matter what they ask, we’ll talk about chocolate.”
Even VanDam grinned at that, but Joe was still glaring.
“That’s a good plan,” Aunt Nettie said. “Can we start the search of the premises now?”
Chief Jones, who had been a silent spectator to all this, joined the conversation at that point. “How about it, Alec? Can I ask a favor for one of my Warner Pier merchants?”
VanDam shook his head. “Well, I guess the lady is right. We do need to search the place. Might as well do it now. But when you face the press, no talk about the case, okay?”
“Of course not,” Aunt Nettie said. “That’s your business. It has nothing to do with TenHuis Chocolade. Can we leave now? We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. We couldn’t get into the shop to start work until the state police crew was out. They did agree to start on the office, so that we’d be able to get in there as soon as possible. Aunt Nettie went over to the shop with Underwood, and Chief Jones took me out to the house to get Aunt Nettie’s car. I still didn’t want to drive that conspicuous Texas tag around town, so I left my van behind the Baileys’ garage for the moment.
“Okay, Chief,” I said as we drove away from the Ripley house. “Are we doing the right thing?”
“Yeah, I think so. Us coppers get real suspicious of people who insist on search warrants. Normally an innocent person reacts like your aunt; they see the necessity for the search and want to get it over with. The only time people are likely to stand on their rights is if they’re involved, or if they are afraid some member of their family is involved.”
“What about talking to the press?”
“That’s probably a good idea, too. But my relations with the press were so bad at one time—I’m not the one to ask.”
He glanced over at me. “When it comes to motive, VanDam knows I belong at the top of the list.”
“I heard that you tangled with Clementine Ripley on the witness stand.”
“If I’d known she was going to move to Warner Pier, I’d have retired someplace in Wisconsin.”
He spoke with his usual easygoing drawl, but his hands were clutching the steering wheel tightly. As if he were strangling it.
I decided to ask one more nosy question, concealing it as well as I could. “You might have a motive, but you didn’t have opportunity, did you?”
“Yes, I did. Clementine Ripley summoned me out to the house Friday afternoon. She wanted to tell me how she wanted my boys to handle the extra traffic for the benefit. We talked in that office back by the garage, and I had to wait for her for a while. And I think that box of candy was sitting on the desk the whole time. Now I’m told it had her name on it, a big hint that it was for her exclusive consumption.”
So Chief Jones wasn’t kidding when he said he was a suspect. Maybe that would work to Aunt Nettie’s advantage.
The press had deserted the house. I grabbed a khaki skirt and a chocolate-brown shirt with a TenHuis logo from Aunt Nettie’s closet and a TenHuis shirt and khaki slacks from mine, then headed back. By the time I got to the shop Aunt Nettie and I were allowed to begin working in the office, so I booted up the computer and wrote a simple news release. I never had a class in public relations, but I took several business communications courses, so I just wrote a letter and left off the salutation. It might not be slickly professional, but we wanted to look like a folksy small-town business. I also called the Grand Rapids Press, the Grand Rapids office of the Associated Press, and a couple of the television stations to tell them about our “press conference.” I refused to answer any questions, but told them we’d have a statement at two p.m. at the shop.
While I did that, Aunt Nettie cut up a large white cardboard box and used a marker to write PRESS CONFERENCE 2 P.M. in big black letters. She wrote, HERE, in slightly smaller letters just underneath. She offered to add something about door prizes, but we decided that was a little too silly. We wanted to look like mid-America, not Hicksville.
She stuck the sign in the window, and almost immediately it got attention. A crowd gathered out front, and some people knocked at the street door, but we didn’t answer, and the search team didn’t either. They were using the back door to go in and out.
I was running off twenty-five copies of the statement I’d written when a member of the search team stuck her head into the office. “There’s a guy in the alley who wants to see you, Mrs. TenHuis. He says he’s the mayor.”
“Mike Herrera?” I said.
“I’ll talk to him,” Aunt Nettie said. I went with her.
Herrera had switched from his black-and-white caterer outfit to navy-blue shorts and a polo shirt.
“Mike!” Aunt Nettie said. “What can I do for you?”
“Tell me what you’re up to,” Herrera said. “This town has gone loco. I’m having to neglect my restaurants to hang around city hall all day. That never has happened before!”
“Come in, quick,” Aunt Nettie said.
We got Mike inside and took him into the office. Then Aunt Nettie gleefully explained that we were going to try negative psychology on the press. Instead of running from them, we were going to demand their attention.
Herrera shook his head sadly. “I’ve been answering questions from those guys all day.”
“Oh, Mike! I’m sorry,” Aunt Nettie said. “I’ve been so worried about my own problems that I didn’t think about your position.”
“Yah,” he said. “My whole crew is being questioned, since we were on the scene. But I never saw those chocolates, and I don’t think any of my people did either.”
He patted his well-gelled hair. “But maybe you got the best idea about how to deal with those reporters,” he said. “You could borrow the little sound system from city hall.”
“Oh, Mike! That would be such a help.”
Herrera grinned. “You need something to stand on, too. A platform. I’ll call the park superintendent. We’ll see what we can come up with.”
Aunt Nettie sighed admiringly. I had no idea she could be so flirtatious. “I’d be happy to pay a rental fee.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Herrera leaned over, and only Aunt Nettie and I heard him whisper. “If you killed her, you could submit a bill, and the city council would pay it without discussion.” He closed his eyes. “That woman, she went back on her word. Made me look stupid.” His eyes opened again. “I thought I was tellin’ the council the truth—but she changed her mind. She made me a liar. It was a matter of honor. I hated her.”
Aunt Nettie patted his hand. “I did, too,” she said softly. “I thought of killing her a million times.”
“Shut up!” I whispered, too, but I was emphatic. “Both of you! Yecch!”
Aunt Nettie giggled and whispered, “Oh, Lee, everybody knows neither Mike nor I would actually do anything to hurt anyone.”
“You’re wrong, Aunt Nettie. Not everyone knows that. We’re surrounded by a whole group of people who don’t know it and who could testify about your jokes.”
Honestly! Sometimes I thought Aunt Nettie
had chocolate for brains. But Mike Herrera should be a little more sophisticated, if he was going to be a politician.
At least he offered to bring us a sandwich from Mike’s Sidewalk Café. We accepted. “Business is good down there,” he said. “Humans is crazy people. They act like they doan have good sense. Act bad. And it’s just curiosity.”
His comment made me remember my own curiosity. “Okay, y’all,” I said. “I’ve got my own problem with curiosity, and you can just help me figure something out.”
Aunt Nettie looked politely interested, and Mike Herrera frowned. I told them about what Greg Glossop had said during the ride to the Ripley house.
“He definitely had it in for her,” I said. “It was more than just a general dislike. Do either of you know anything about this?”
Mike frowned. “I haven’t heard anything about that. Seems like Clementine Ripley left trouble everywhere she went.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll get your sandwiches.”
The state police had almost finished their search by the time two p.m. came, and we were ready to face the press. Chief Jones sent Patrolman Jerry Cherry down with some crime scene tape to mark off an area for the reporters, keeping the hordes of tourists outside the area. Prime viewing space became the broad windows of the Upstairs Club, right across the street from us. If everybody who was pressed up against the screens over there bought lunch, the “upstairs” must have had a big blip on their profit chart. Whoever lived in the apartment next door to the upstairs must have cashed in, too. They removed their screens and rented their windows to two different TV crews.
Mike Herrera, now wearing long pants and a dignified stance, opened the event with a few remarks about the many attractions of Warner Pier as a vacation paradise and citing what a valuable asset TenHuis Chocolade was to the community. Tracy and Stacy had showed up, mainly to see what was going on, and they handed out samples of chocolate. (“It’s a Bailey’s Irish Cream bonbon,” I heard Tracy say to one reporter. “It has a classic cream liquor interior.” I made a mental note to talk to her about how to pronounce “liqueur.”)
Most of the reporters were brave enough to dip into a box. The two girls also handed out the press releases. We’d stapled each release to a sheet describing all the varieties of bonbons and truffles produced and sold by TenHuis Chocolade and to a price list, including an order blank. As we’d hoped, our flagrantly commercial ploy seemed to cool the press’s interest in us more than anything else had.
The Chocolate Cat Caper Page 12