The Chocolate Cat Caper
Page 13
Aunt Nettie opened by saying, “We don’t make fudge.” That got a laugh; fudge is the saltwater taffy of western Michigan—on sale everywhere. Then Aunt Nettie talked about how hard she worked to make her chocolates of the highest quality, about how she and my uncle had gone to the Netherlands for a year to learn how to make chocolates, and how proud she was of her employees.
“If I find out who has damaged the reputation of my business—well, if that person has a penny left after he’s convicted of murder, then he’ll also face a serious lawsuit from me,” she said. “My husband and I worked for thirty years to build this business, and I’m not going to sit on my hands and see it destroyed.”
“When will you reopen?” some reporter on the back row asked.
“Tomorrow. Unless the state police want me to stay closed. We’re cooperating in every way.”
She handled the whole thing very well. She was completely natural. Completely Aunt Nettie. I was proud of her.
The reporters and photographers seemed to love her. The bulbs flashed; the tape recorders were out. I saw that this cute little old gray-haired chocolatemaker was going to be good copy.
For a few minutes I thought I was going to escape without having to say anything. But then somebody yelled my name. “Hey, Ms. McKinney! Is it true that Ripley’s ex was your high school sweetheart?”
Aunt Nettie looked at me, handing the question off just like the straight man handing off the joke for a punch line.
Think, Lee, I told myself. “If you mean Joe Woodyard,” I said, “the answer is a firm no. For one thing, I didn’t even go to high school in Warner Pier. For another, I never exchanged two words with him until day before yesterday.”
A woman reporter on the front row spoke up. “But you were here summers, working for your aunt.”
“Three summers.”
“Did you know Woodyard then?”
“I knew who he was, because the girls I ran around with knew him. I don’t recall ever having the nerve to speak to him.”
“Why would speaking to Joe Woodyard have required nerve?”
I’d gotten myself into a mess. Don’t say something stupid, I told myself. I took a deep breath. “Joe was a college guy! He scared me spitless. Weren’t you ever sixteen?”
Evidently she had been, because she laughed, and most of the other reporters joined in. The moment passed, and I relaxed. Too soon. The next question nearly got me.
It came from the same reporter, the woman in the front row.
“Still, I imagine you joined most of the people in Warner Pier in thinking Joe Woodyard had made a foolish marriage?”
I just stared at her. I couldn’t believe what she had said.
So she spoke again. “At least, that’s the gossip I’ve picked up around here. People don’t seem to feel that he behaved very sensibly.”
I saw what she was trying to do, of course. They couldn’t get me to say anything nice about Joe, so this reporter had decided to settle for getting me to say something naughty about him. It was infuriating.
“That’s none of my busybody,” I said.
The whole front row of reporters looked confused, and I knew immediately that I’d botched up. “Business,” I said. “It’s none of my business.”
I took Aunt Nettie’s arm and we got off the little platform that the park superintendent had improvised out of forklift pallets and plywood. We went back into the shop with as much dignity as we could gather around us, considering that twenty reporters were yelling out more questions.
Aunt Nettie locked the door and smiled. We went inside and locked the door. “That went about as well as we could expect,” she said.
“Until the end, when I tied my tongue in a knot,” I said.
I became aware then that one of VanDam’s technicians had walked up to us. “The lieutenant wants to see you,” she said.
We followed the woman into the break room, where VanDam and Underwood were looking at something in a small paper sack. VanDam hastily put the sack down before he spoke. “Is either of you ladies diabetic?”
“No, thank heavens!” Aunt Nettie said. “That would make it difficult to handle the chocolate business.”
“Does either of you use injections of any sort?”
“Drugs? Of course not!” I said.
“Injections are not necessarily illegal, Ms. McKinney. Lots of medications are injected.”
“Not by me. Not by Aunt Nettie. I take nothing but vitamin capsules.”
“And I take nothing but Premarin, calcium, vitamins, and the occasional Tylenol. All by mouth,” Aunt Nettie said. “Why do you ask?”
VanDam lifted the paper sack. “Can either of you identify this?” He dumped a plastic bag containing a few pieces of plastic out onto the table.
I stared at the sack. Somehow its contents seemed familiar. But the memory eluded me.
“I don’t know anything about them,” Aunt Nettie said.
“It’s a broken syringe,” VanDam said. “We found it in the Dumpster out in the alley.”
CHOCOLATE CHAT:
TYPES
• Bitter chocolate is the simplest form of processed chocolate—basically cooking chocolate. It contains no sugar and must be from fifty percent to fifty-eight percent cocoa butter. The remaining content is chocolate liquor.
• Bittersweet chocolate contains sugar, but is not as sweet as sweet chocolate. In the United States it must be at least thirty-five percent cocoa butter.
• Sweet chocolate is similar to bittersweet, except that it contains more sugar. Since it contains more other ingredients—sugar, cocoa butter, perhaps a slight amount of milk—it contains less chocolate liquor.
• Milk chocolate contains less chocolate and more milk, sugar and flavorings. Because it contains less cocoa, only the beans with the strongest flavor are used in milk chocolate.
• Cocoa is basically chocolate liquor with almost all the cocoa butter pressed out. It then becomes a dry cake that can be made crumbly. But cocoa does usually contain some cocoa butter. Most brands contain between fourteen percent and twenty-five percent.
• White chocolate contains no chocolate liquor, but it does contain cocoa butter.
Chapter 12
“Any body could have put that there.” I spoke quickly, but my voice sounded weak. Just about as weak as my stomach felt.
VanDam nodded. “Right. That alley obviously gets a lot of use.”
“So the syringe doesn’t prove anything,” Aunt Nettie said. “Some drug user might have walked through there and tossed it in the trash.”
“Right,” VanDam said. “It will have to go to the lab for testing.”
I spoke again, and I tried to make my voice a little stronger. “Even if it was used to poison the truffles, the only thing that would prove is that somebody is trying to make sure my aunt and I are the prime suspects. After all, our Dumpster is plainly marked with TenHuis Chocolade.”
VanDam kept his face deadpan, but Underwood looked skeptical. I could understand why. The broken syringe was circumstantial evidence, of course, and it could easily have been planted. But it was right at our back door, so it pointed to us. Though it was hard to visualize either Aunt Nettie or me being dumb enough to put the broken syringe in our own Dumpster, then demand that the state police search our business.
Any of the numerous suspects in the murder of Clementine Ripley could have gotten hold of a syringe. Greg Glossop sold them. Chief Jones probably had an evidence locker full of them. Any of the rest of us—Mike Herrera and his crew; the inmates of the Ripley house, Marion McCoy and Duncan Ainsley; Joe Woodyard; even Aunt Nettie and me—any of us could have stolen one from a diabetic friend or gone behind the counter at the Superette pharmacy or pocketed one from the cabinet in a doctor’s office. This was a small town, after all.
Any one of us was smart enough to go to the library in a large city—like Grand Rapids, less than a hundred miles away—quietly take a book on poisons from the shelf, look up how to make cyanid
e, get hold of either peach or cherry pits and follow the recipe, fill our stolen syringe, then go to Clementine Ripley’s house prepared to kill her by injecting the poison into some sort of food. The appearance of the chocolates in a box particularly set aside for her would have been—what’s the word?—serendipitous.
Greg Glossop did have the edge in one regard. As a pharmacist he ought to know how to manufacture cyanide from cherry or peach pits without looking it up. He could have injected cyanide directly into Clementine Ripley’s body, then also injected cyanide into the chocolates, which were still around after he got there. Hard to do, but not impossible. In fact, he might have even doctored some prescription he’d filled for her, causing her to fall ill. As an EMT he’d know he would be called in if she collapsed.
Actually, as far as I was concerned, Glossop was the leading suspect. Maybe that was simply because I didn’t like him. I wasn’t even sure he had a motive. But I was willing to bet that he’d had some unusual run-in with Clementine Ripley.
Who would know for sure? The answer, of course, was Marion McCoy. But how could I ask her?
Why not try plain English?
The answer was so simple that it made me shake all over. Did I have the nerve to seek out the intimidating Marion McCoy and ask her a question about Greg Glossop and Clementine Ripley?
But even more terrifying was the thought that Aunt Nettie might be a suspect in Clementine Ripley’s murder. Compared to that, bearding Marion McCoy would be a snap.
I’d do it. But how could I get hold of Marion privately? If I went out to the Ripley estate, she’d probably tell the security guard to send me away. How could I get in?
If Joe Woodyard inherited, he’d actually have the say-so on who came in and out of “his” house. I could call him.
No. Joe and I hadn’t had friendly relations. I didn’t want to ask him for any favors. So how could I do it?
By then the search team was leaving. They were going to take a short break, the team leader told us, then head out to Aunt Nettie’s house to search there. I agreed to meet them in forty-five minutes.
I was so downhearted that I didn’t have much energy, but Aunt Nettie immediately went to the refrigerator and took out ten pounds of butter and two half gallons of heavy whipping cream. She paused and looked at me. “You’ll be here to help me lift the copper kettle, won’t you?”
“For half an hour. What are you going to make?”
“Crème de Menthe bonbons. We’re nearly out. Nancy Burton came in Friday and bought six dozen.”
“Who’s Nancy Burton and why on earth did she need that many Crème de Menthe bonbons?”
“Nancy manages the Deer Forest B-and-B. She puts our bonbons on the pillows when she turns the beds down, so she uses several dozen a week. Usually she warns us when she runs low, but Friday she got caught short. So we got caught short. We got the bojkie made yesterday, but I need to get them filled and ready to go into the enrober tomorrow.”
I thought I knew what she was talking about. The bojkie, a Dutch word pronounced “bokkie,” is the chocolate shell that holds the filling for a bonbon. The “enrober” is a key piece of equipment in making bonbons. As its name implies, the enrober coats—or “enrobes”—the filled bojkie to produce the finished bonbons.
The enrober is the reason that very good truffles can be made at home, but making good bonbons in a typical kitchen is a lot harder. Truffles are little balls of filling that are rolled by hand in melted chocolate, but bonbons are made by filling little cups molded from chocolate. The whole bonbon is then put through a sort of shower-bath of chocolate in this special machine, the enrober. Aunt Nettie explains the difference by saying truffles are made from the inside out and bonbons from the outside in.
A small chocolate shop like TenHuis Chocolade enrobes once or twice a week; the Brach’s Chocolate Cherry plant probably enrobes twenty-four hours a day. Our enrober is four feet long; theirs probably covers a city block. The theory is the same, but our chocolate doesn’t contain preservatives, and we think it tastes a lot better.
Aunt Nettie usually runs the enrober on Monday, which is usually her slowest day.
“Call me when you need me,” I said. I went into the office and began to balance out the cash register receipts from Saturday night, finishing up the chore I’d left undone when Tracy, Stacy, and I fled the reporters. As I counted nickles, quarters, dollars, and fives, I worried about how to get through to Marion McCoy.
When I glanced through the big window that overlooked the kitchen, I could see Aunt Nettie lighting the gas fire for the big copper kettle. That kettle is a beautiful object, but it’s made for use, not admiration. It has its own freestanding gas burner, about the size of a small charcoal cooker. Copper is used for the kettle because it heats more evenly, and Aunt Nettie always uses this particular kettle to make the “base”—the mix of butter, sugar, and cream that is then flavored and turned into all the different fillings for bonbons and truffles.
Aunt Nettie added sugar and lifted the kettle onto the gas burner—the kettle isn’t hard to lift when it’s not hot—and began to stir.
I had balanced the register and prepared my deposit, and steam was rising from the copper kettle when I suddenly knew how to get into the Ripley estate.
“Lindy,” I said. “Lindy will be there until four o’clock.”
I glanced at my watch. It was already three o’clock, and I couldn’t leave for a few minutes—until I’d helped Aunt Nettie with the kettle.
I shoved the deposit into a drawer, locked my desk, and went out to the workroom. “How quickly will the base be ready?”
“Maybe ten minutes. Why?”
“I thought of an errand I need to get done before I meet the search team. And I need to make a phone call.”
For once my accountant’s methodical mind was useful. When I had used my credit card to call Rich, I had written down the number I was calling from. It was the kitchen phone in the Ripley estate, and Lindy had told me it was a separate line. I found the number deep in my purse and called it. Lindy answered.
“It’s Lee. I need a favor.”
“Sure.”
“I need to talk to Marion McCoy. Can you tell the security guard to let me in?”
“Well . . . I guess so. I could tell him you’re bringing me a pound of coffee or something.”
“Great! What kind of coffee do you want?”
Lindy laughed. “I really could use some. They usually use the special blend from Valhalla Coffee and Tea. Drip grind.”
“I knew it wouldn’t be Folgers. Valhalla’s right down the block, so it’ll be easy to get some. Please don’t leave until I get here.”
I whipped down the block to Valhalla (“Coffee fit for the Gods”), one of Warner Pier’s three specialty coffeehouses, and picked up the coffee, getting back just in time to help Aunt Nettie lift the heavy kettle onto a metal worktable.
“Please call the police station and pass the word along that I may be a little late meeting the state police,” I said.
Aunt Nettie nodded. She was already in the storeroom looking for her Crème de Menthe. “Whatever you say, Lee. Oh, dear, they did move the flavorings around when they searched!”
I headed for the Ripley estate. After I identified myself as a coffee deliverer, the massive gate slid back, and I drove in. I circled the house and parked near the kitchen, in the gravel area where the catering vans had been two days before.
Lindy was looking out the kitchen door. I handed her the coffee.
“Now,” she said, “what’s this all about?”
“I need to talk to Marion McCoy. I hope I don’t get you fired.”
“Oh, this job’s only going to be for two or three days anyhow. And Joe’s the boss, not Marion. He won’t fire me if she gets annoyed. They can’t stand each other.”
“Do you know where Marion is?”
“In the office back by the garage. The cops finally left, and she went right in there and started working on the comp
uter. Mr. Ainsley was in there, too. But he went out for a walk. Listen! Why don’t I make Marion a cup of tea? You can take it in to her.”
Lindy said the kettle was already boiling, so I agreed. Lindy made the tea in a china pot and put it, along with a cup and saucer, sterling silver teaspoon and little sugar bowl, on a tray.
“I hope she doesn’t get so mad at me she throws the teapot,” I said.
“Oh, that wouldn’t be ‘being responsible for the estate,”’ Lindy said.
Actually, I nearly broke the teapot when Champion Yonkers decided to walk under my feet as I started out of the kitchen.
“You come over here, cat,” Lindy said. “Stay out of the way. Come on. I’ll give you a plastic cup to bat around on the floor.”
“I’m just glad he didn’t jump on me,” I said. “Well, here goes.”
I walked quickly down the peristyle, trying not to lose my nerve. I really don’t like unpleasant scenes, but the thought of Aunt Nettie in jail gave me courage. I gulped only once before I rapped on the office door.
Marion’s “Come in!” sounded exasperated. She frowned when she saw who was disturbing her. “What are you doing here?”
“I ran an errand for Lindy. She sent you some tea. But I wanted to ask you a question.”
I placed the tea on the credenza behind her desk, and I went on talking before she could call the security guard.
“Did Ms. Ripley have some problem with the pharmacist at the Superette?”
“That Glossop? She didn’t have the problem. He did. Did he tell you about it?”
“No. In fact, he wouldn’t say much—and that’s what made me feel they’d had trouble. He talks a lot about everything else. But he wouldn’t say anything about her.”
“He’s an officious ass.”
“No argument there. But was there some specific problem between them?”