14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse

by JoAnna Carl

  I could see two things about Emma Davidson. First, there were tears in her eyes. Second, her face was covered with red speckles. That’s when I did reach out and pat her hand.

  “It’ll be all right,” I said. “The hospital is taking responsibility for keeping you safe.”

  I turned my head and glared at the administrator. “And I’m sure your doctor will explain that red speckling on your face.”

  I heard Officer Vanderberg take a deep breath. Maybe he was smart enough to know that sort of speckling can be caused by asphyxiation. On a previous occasion I had unfortunately learned firsthand that victims of strangulation are nearly always covered with tiny red dots, almost like a thousand pinpricks. They’re hard to see on a dark person, of course, but Emma was fair enough for them to stand out.

  At that point I touched my head and realized I was wearing a hat with an enormous bow pinned to the top. I snatched it off, feeling like a fool. I could hardly blame the hospital staff and law enforcement officials for also thinking I was an idiot. I clamped my jaw shut and vowed to keep quiet.

  So they let me leave. Nothing more was said about causing a breach of the peace, disturbing a whole floor of patients, or any other crimes I might have committed.

  It was one of the most ludicrous and humiliating events in a life that has been filled with ludicrous and humiliating events.

  Accompanied by the two cops, I collected my coat, guitar, and other belongings from the public information director’s office. My escorts did a bit of eye popping when I yanked open the Velcro down the front of the clown suit, but they hid any disappointment they felt when they saw flannel-lined jeans and a TenHuis T-shirt underneath. The public information director didn’t seem to have heard anything about the fiasco on the fifth floor, and she gushed at me about how wonderful the Warner Pier clowns had been, and how much all the children had loved them. I said thanks while I took off Joe’s tennis shoes and put on my winter boots.

  The policemen escorted me to my van. I didn’t say anything, but as I was unlocking the door, Vanderberg spoke. “Hey, were you one of the people who found the murdered guy at the Dorinda nursing home a couple of years ago?”

  “My husband and I did. It wasn’t fun.”

  “Then you’re related to Hogan Jones in some way.”

  “He married my aunt. I have nothing to do with law enforcement.” I got in the van and started the motor. Then I lowered the window. “But believe me, I’ll know how to raise a stink if anything happens to Emma Davidson.”

  I resisted the temptation to run over Officer Bush’s foot as I drove away. He had said less, but acted worse, bringing up the publicity stunt idea. The rat.

  The cops watched me until I moved on. I thought they might watch me until I crossed the city limits, but they let me drive away on my own.

  I did head for those city limits, until I saw a For Sale sign, and the realty name on it was the same company Tilda VanAust worked for. That reminded me about the Holland company—one Tilda didn’t seem to know much about—that had made an offer for the Clowning Around store: P.M. Development. The man who had called Tilda had been named Philip Montague.

  I flipped a U-turn at the next intersection and headed for the Holland Chamber of Commerce. They would at least let me look at a phone book. I could find out where the P.M. Development office was, and the chamber staff might even have some information on Philip Montague.

  At the Holland chamber, the pleasant young woman behind the desk said that Philip Montague was not a chamber member, and P.M. Development also didn’t belong as a company. I did find a Philip Montague under the business listings in the phone book, but there was no clue about what sort of business he was in. I checked the yellow pages for “Development Companies” and drew a blank.

  By then my search had intrigued the chamber staffer. “Just a minute,” she said. “It seems as if his name showed up on a list of membership prospects.”

  She whipped out a file and found him. Again there was no information except an address, the same one listed in the telephone book.

  “A mystery man,” I said. “But I guess I can go by this address and see what’s there.”

  The young woman leaned over the counter that separated us. “Be careful,” she said. “There’s an X by his name.”

  “An X?”

  “Yes. That’s our membership director’s code for ‘forget this one.’ It may just mean that he was unfriendly or uninterested in joining the chamber. But sometimes she uses it to mean the whole thing seems fishy or that someone came on too strong.”

  Hmmm.

  I took the magnetic TenHuis Chocolade sign off my van, so that my identity wouldn’t be obvious. Then I drove toward the address listed in the telephone book.

  Philip Montague’s neighborhood was in an older part of Holland, near the downtown, but was a residential area, not a business district. That doesn’t mean anything, I told myself. Lots of people work from home. I drove on.

  The neighborhood was a perfectly respectable one, as far as a person from Warner Pier could tell, but Philip Montague’s house somehow didn’t look too respectable.

  Holland, after all, was founded by Dutch immigrants, and it has that traditional scrubbed look that most people associate with the Netherlands. The flowerbeds always look neat, the houses are freshly painted, and old cars are rarely parked on the front lawn. Everywhere in Holland I expect to see old women in winged caps and wooden shoes on their knees scrubbing the sidewalk.

  Montague’s house didn’t fit the Holland pattern. It needed paint, and the hedge was overgrown. The sidewalk had too much snow on it to be scrubbed, even by an old lady on her knees.

  It wasn’t deserted, however. Two men wearing heavy hooded jackets were moving a chest of drawers through the front door. A white van was parked in the driveway, but there was no business sign on its side.

  As I passed, one of the men turned his head toward the street. The hood shadowed his features but his face was aimed straight in my direction.

  Chocolate Chat

  The Toltecs followed the Maya, and later the Aztecs came south to formerly Mayan territory from their original home in Mexico. Both peoples used cacao in their religious ceremonies.

  Many are familiar with the Aztec legend of Quetzalcoatl, the great leader who sailed away on a raft but promised to return one day. Surprisingly, this was originally a Toltec legend, but became part of the Aztec culture.

  This legend had, of course, dramatic effects on world history. When the Spanish arrived in vessels strange to the Aztecs of the early sixteenth century, the Aztecs believed their ordained leader had arrived to reestablish his kingdom. By the time they realized they were instead facing an invasion, they had pretty much lost the war. The result—which might have occurred in any case—was European domination of South and Central America.

  The cacao tree, however, conquered the Spanish, in a sense. The conquerors took the seeds back to Europe, and for a hundred years in European history only the Spanish had chocolate.

  Chapter 13

  All I could see was a pair of bushy black eyebrows.

  I circled the block and drove by again, slowly. The second time the men had gone inside.

  No sign identifying it as a business marked the house. I couldn’t think of a single sensible reason to go to the door, so I once more headed for the city limits.

  As soon as I was back at my office, I called the Warner Pier Chamber of Commerce office to see if the secretary could help me identify the hobo clown.

  Somehow I wasn’t surprised to learn that she couldn’t.

  “I don’t think any of our chamber clowns are wearing hobo costumes,” she said. “Of course, that’s a traditional clown outfit, but our logo for the promotion is a clown in a colorful, baggy suit, and we encouraged everyone to dress like that.”

  She had been the photographer for the event, and she c
hecked all her photos. The hobo clown wasn’t in any of them.

  “I remember seeing him,” she said, “but I never talked to him. The costume covered the person so completely I have no idea who was in it.”

  I hung up and decided it was time to indulge in my daily chocolates. Every TenHuis employee is allotted two truffles or bonbons each working day, and I always eat my allotment.

  We were pushing some leftover Christmas flavors, so I first ate a gingerbread truffle (“milk chocolate inside and out, flavored with ginger and dusted with natural cane sugar”). I next soothed myself with one of my very favorite truffles, cinnamon (“milk chocolate filling flavored with cinnamon, enrobed with dark chocolate and finished with a dusting of cinnamon”). Yum. I ate each of them slowly and savored every bit.

  I’d barely swallowed the last nibble when the phone rang. My caller ID told me it was Joe.

  Considering the way the day had gone so far, I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to him. But I answered. “Hi.”

  “Can’t I let you out for a minute without your getting in trouble?”

  Whew. He obviously had heard about my adventures at the hospital, but he sounded more amused than annoyed.

  “Who blabbed?” I asked.

  “Our stand-in police chief. Somebody from Holland called Clancy.”

  “I suppose he scolded you as if it were your problem.”

  “I’m sure his version was garbled. You can’t possibly have chased a clown through a hospital. Not one you believed might be a murderer.”

  I considered his question. “I hadn’t thought of it in that light, but I suppose that’s one interpretation. However, it’s not the interpretation the Holland police put on it.”

  “What happened?”

  I described the events at the hospital. “As you see, according to the hospital and law enforcement authorities, the whole thing was just a publicity stunt. The clown didn’t even exist, even though two of the nurses also saw him. So he couldn’t have been dangerous at all.”

  “I’m glad you’re all right. I’m on my way back from Dorinda. I’ll be there in half an hour.” Joe hung up.

  Until then, I guess, I had felt that the hospital chase was over. Now I saw that the repercussions were still echoing. I also saw that I’d better get my side of the story out to the public before the hospital and Clancy Pike got their side out. When that happened, my already flaky reputation was going to crumble like a fresh French pastry.

  So I called Tilda VanAust.

  Tilda was my contact with the Davidson family. I could ask her if I should talk to them directly.

  Luckily, Tilda was in her office, and she hadn’t heard anything about the hospital chase yet. I poured out the story, leaving out the part about Emma saying that Moe had come back from the grave to attack her.

  “So, Tilda, should I try to talk to Chuck or Lorraine? They’ve probably heard from the hospital by now. Heaven knows what they’ve been told.”

  “Oh my! I’ll have to call them, Lee. But I know you or Joe would never do anything so—well, weird—as a publicity stunt. But Chuck and Lorraine don’t know you guys as well as I do.”

  “I don’t care what they think about Joe and me. My concern is that someone tried to smother Emma Davidson. I’m convinced that’s what I saw. I want to make sure that she’s safe.”

  Tilda assured me that she understood and that she would talk to the Davidsons immediately. I hung up. Then I went back to our workshop and told Dolly I needed to talk to her. I took her into the break room and repeated the whole story of my adventure to her. And I just happened to do it within earshot of one of the chocolate ladies, Nadine Vanderhill. Nadine isn’t exactly a gossip, but she always wants to know what’s going on. If anyone asked, she’d tell my side of the story.

  After twenty minutes I went back to my desk, confident that I’d done as much damage control as I could.

  By the time Joe got to my office, I was tired of the whole thing. I told him that I’d answer any questions he had, but I’d rather hear about his meeting with Royal Hollis.

  Joe grinned at me. “My only question is, How do you get into these messes?”

  “I sure didn’t do it on purpose. But when you innocently peek in the door of a hospital room and find the person you’ve come to visit struggling for her life . . .” Tears stung my eyes. “Oh gosh, Joe. I’m afraid I’m going to cry.”

  “Hey! There’s no need for that. Though I will mention that I believe your whole story, and I told that big guy over at the police station that I did.”

  I gave him a hug, and I got one back. Right there in my glass-sided office.

  “Let’s go home,” he said. “I can’t tell you about Royal Hollis in a place this public.”

  We went home. Joe built a fire. We opened a bottle of wine. I dug out some crackers and cheese. We sat on the couch and snuggled up.

  “Gee,” I said, “I wish we had time for a session like this one every night.”

  “It’s too bad it takes a crisis to get us to pay some attention to each other.”

  “Aw, come on. Things aren’t that bad. I got some pretty effective attention a couple of nights ago.”

  Joe laughed, and I raised my glass. “Cheers! And, now: Is Royal Hollis crazy?”

  “I’m afraid not. But I’m no psychologist.”

  “You know, Joe, if he was the guy who raked leaves for us once, he didn’t strike me as crazy. Not an ordinary person, certainly, but not crazy.”

  “I think you’re right. He’s coming out of deep left field. But he ought to be able to aid in his defense. The way the law requires.”

  “Does that mean he has no defense?”

  “I worried about that one all the way home.” Joe sipped his wine and seemed to go into a trance. I let him be for three or four minutes. Then he spoke. “He just can’t tell a story in a normal way.”

  “I remember how he talked when he was here.”

  “Then you probably understand. He’s simply not looking at the world the way most of us do. But when I got the story out of him, it was a completely different tale from the one the sheriff got.”

  “Oh? What does he say happened?”

  “He admits he’d been prowling around the Davidson house. He kept saying, ‘I never went inside.’ As if that was a defense. But he did go into the garage, and once or twice he apparently lit a fire in the charcoal grill. Inside the garage.”

  “Yikes! He’s lucky he didn’t burn the place down. Or asphyxiate himself.”

  “He said, ‘I opened the window a crack.’ So he’s aware that was a danger. You know, Lee, I think everything he did at the house was just to keep warm.”

  “Living outdoors like he did, with no shelter except an old shack, and considering that Moe hadn’t put his shutters on, I think that in his place I would have broken into the house.”

  “Well, Royal did have alternatives. If he could get to Holland, he could have gone to a shelter.”

  “But getting there is not easy. Thirty miles to hitchhike. Or walk.”

  “But he did break into one thing—the hot tub.” Joe laughed. “And I think he’s sort of proud of that. ‘A man’s got to keep clean.’ Or so he told me. But that’s not the part of the story that surprised me.”

  “Oh? What did he have to say?”

  “All along everybody involved in this case has told basically the same story. Moe came to the cottage and discovered Royal in the hot tub. Moe confronted Royal. They mixed it up.”

  “Of course, Moe was the householder. He had the right to order Royal off his property.”

  “Correct. But all the stories feature a confrontation between the two men. It includes Royal shoving Moe down.”

  “And Moe doesn’t get up.”

  “Yes, that’s the story that’s been told by everyone. By Chuck, who witnessed the quarrel. By the
neighbor, who came on the scene a few minutes later. By Sheriff Burt Ramsey and by Clancy Pike, in his former role as sheriff’s deputy. They weren’t witnesses, but they got a story out of Royal. And that’s the story they say Royal told. But Royal told me a different story today.”

  “What? What kind of story?”

  “Royal said he knew he was in the wrong, and that when Moe showed up, he didn’t argue with him. ‘It was his house.’ That’s what Royal told me. He claimed that he tried to run away. Of course, Royal can’t run much. Moe caught up with him immediately. And Moe shoved Royal down. Not the other way around.”

  “Joe, I don’t know about the law, but Moe had the right to use force to get Royal off his property. Or am I misunderstanding the law?”

  “No. Michigan is a ‘stand-your-ground’ state. Moe had the right to protect his property. And Royal says Moe did that. He shoved Royal down. But the rest of Royal’s story is different. Royal says that he got up immediately, and Emma—Emma!—ran up and began to lambaste Moe for shoving Royal.”

  “Emma? Lambasting Moe? But she’s so meek and mild. And she wasn’t even supposed to be there!”

  “Yes, that’s the mysterious part. First, no one else says Emma was there. Second, if she was there, it’s hard to picture her having the nerve to stand up for Royal. And apparently Moe didn’t take it well. He turned on Emma. They began to quarrel.”

  “What did Royal do?”

  “Royal got up and took to the woods. He ran into the woods, and incidentally he says he left his shoes behind. He continued to hear Emma and Moe yelling at each other. He swears he didn’t come back. But he had shoes when he was arrested.”

  Joe sat quietly a minute or two, then spoke again. “Of course, Vandercool—the neighbor—says he gave him a pair of shoes. Could Royal be trying not to tell that? He might have been afraid it would get Vandercool in trouble for helping him.”