The Chocolate Bear Burglary

by Carl, Joanna (Chocolate series 02)

  I opened the van’s window and leaned out. “Jeff! What are you up to?”

  “Lee?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Oh, God, you’re here!”

  “Yes. And so are you. Why?”

  He waved frantically and whispered again. “Be quiet! Call the cops! Somebody’s broken into the store!”

  I got out of the van. “That’s silly. This is Warner Pier.”

  “I don’t care if it’s the moon! The glass is broken out of the front door! And I saw somebody moving around. Now they’re in the back room. They’ve got a flashlight!”

  The whole thing was ridiculous. Burglaries don’t happen in Warner Pier, at least not in winter. I moved toward Jeff, into my headlights.

  “Warner Pier has practically no crime in the wintertime,” I said. “The tourists take it home with them.”

  I could see myself reflected in the shop window as I crossed the sidewalk. But when I moved in front of the entrance door, my reflection disappeared.

  For a moment I was reminded of a funhouse mirror—now you see it, now you don’t. But when I stretched out my hand toward the door, my glove went right through the glass part of the door.

  “The glass is gone,” I said stupidly.

  Jeff whispered again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The glass in the door is smashed, and there was somebody moving around inside.”

  Right then we heard a motor start, followed by squealing tires.

  “They’re getting away!” Jeff ran toward the corner.

  I had an awful vision of Jeff tackling burglars, ruthless and desperate burglars armed with guns and knives.

  “Jeff! Stop!” I ran after him.

  It was half a block to Fourth Street, and we pounded along until we got there. But when Jeff reached the streetlight at the corner he stopped abruptly. I careened into him, and we both slipped on a patch of ice. I grabbed Jeff, he grabbed me, we both grabbed the base of the streetlight. We wound up sitting on the sidewalk, but neither of us hit the ground very hard.

  Jeff was still facing up Fourth Street. “There they go! And I didn’t get a good look at the car.”

  I twisted around in time to see taillights disappearing around a corner. “He turned on Blueberry,” I said. “Or I think he did. And his taillights look funny.”

  “The left one is out,” Jeff said, “but that’s not going to be a lot of help. I think it was some kind of sports car. Maybe.”

  We walked back to the store. “You don’t have a cell phone, do you?” Jeff asked. He made it sound like a major personality flaw.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But I have a key to the shop.”

  “We shouldn’t go in the front. We might destroy evidence.”

  “Well, I’m not going around to the alley,” I said. “It’s too dark and snaky back there. Besides, the burglar must have gone out the back door, it’s easy to open from inside.”

  “How far is the police station?”

  “Just a couple of blocks, but there’s nobody there. We have to call the county dispatcher.”

  There was little glass on the sidewalk, of course, because the burglar had knocked the glass inside. We gingerly walked in.

  “If the burglars came in this way,” Jeff said, “they’re gonna have glass in the soles of their shoes.”

  I turned on the lights and looked at the display shelves.

  “Thank God!” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. “The molds are still there.”

  Since the moment the word “burglar” had sprung into my mind, I’d been dreading finding the Hart collection of chocolate molds gone. They were the only thing in the shop that was valuable.

  I called the dispatcher, and in about ten minutes a patrol car pulled up. I was relieved to see a tall, lanky figure get out—Abraham Lincoln in a stocking cap.

  “It’s Chief Jones,” I said.

  The chief waved at me. “Just what have you been up to now, Lee?”

  “I’m a victim, Chief. Or at least TenHuis Chocolade is.”

  The chief stepped in through the broken glass, and I introduced him to Jeff. “You two better go in the office and close the door,” the chief said. “We’ll hurry up out here.”

  “Yeah. Chocolate gets funny-looking if it freezes. I’ll call Handy Hans and see if he can do something about that door.”

  “Have you called Nettie?”

  “No. I’ll do that, too.”

  Telling Aunt Nettie that someone had broken into her beloved shop wasn’t easy, but she took it calmly.

  “Nobody’s hurt?”

  “Not Jeff or me. I hope whoever broke in slashed their wrists on broken glass.”

  “Any sign of that?”

  “Nope. Apparently they—he—parked around behind, but he must not have been able to open the back door from the outside. So he came around to the front, smashed the window in the door, and got in that way. But Jeff must have disturbed him right away, and the guy ran back to the break room, opened the door to the alley and got out the back.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Aunt Nettie’s big Buick showed up within fifteen minutes. By then a second patrol car had arrived and Patrolman Jerry Cherry was taking pictures. The chief had allowed Jeff and me to start cleaning up the glass, so Aunt Nettie was able to enter the shop in a more traditional manner.

  Soon afterward Handy Hans—his last name is VanRiin—arrived with a sheet of plywood, which he used as a stopgap measure against the cold, and Aunt Nettie joined Jeff and me in the office.

  She looked puzzled. “What I don’t understand is why you two were down here in the middle of the night. And why did you come in separate cars?”

  Jeff glowered and stared at the floor.

  I was going to have to tell them that I had followed Jeff. “I heard Jeff leaving,” I said, “and my curlicue got the best of me. I mean my curiosity! I admit it, Jeff. I wanted to know where you were going, so I followed you.”

  Glower and mutter. He shot a glare at me.

  I felt embarrassed and angry. “If it’s any consolation, you lost me, and I found you again just a few blocks before you pulled up in front of the shop.” I thought Jeff looked relieved, but he didn’t speak. I went on. “I feel responsible for you, Jeff. You won’t tell us why you showed up here. I can’t get hold of your parents. I need to know what you’re up to!”

  “Good question.” The comment came from the door to the office, and I looked up to see Chief Jones come in. He unwrapped a mile of wool scarf from around his neck, pulled off his stocking cap, and took a chair.

  “Okay. Jeff, you did good work, scaring the burglar off like that. But what the heck were you doing down here anyway?”

  Jeff’s lips pursed, and his brows knitted. He looked as if he were trying to decide whether he should yell or burst into tears.

  But before he could do either, Aunt Nettie took over. “Chief, does Warner Pier have a curfew?”

  “No, Nettie. You know it doesn’t.”

  “Then is there any legal reason that Jeff shouldn’t have been driving around in Warner Pier, even if he did it after midnight?”

  “No, there isn’t, Nettie. He wasn’t breaking any law by merely driving around the business district. It’s just a little unusual.”

  She turned to me. “Lee, Jeff isn’t a little boy anymore, and you’re not married to his father anymore. So, if he wants to drive around all night every night, he’s welcome to do so.”

  Then she addressed the chief. “It’s getting to be time for breakfast. Let’s form a caravan out to the house—you and Jerry are invited. I’ve got a couple of pounds of sausage in the freezer, and I’ve got a dozen eggs. Let’s go eat.”

  She zipped her heavy blue jacket and pulled on her own woolly cap and gloves. She shook a bulky finger at us. “And not one of you is going to ask Jeff a single question. He saved the Hart molds, and I’ll be eternally grateful to him.”

  She sailed out the door—solid as a tugboat, but regal as an ocean liner.r />
  When I looked at Jeff, he had tears in his eyes.

  Chapter 5

  Of course, Aunt Nettie was right.

  Or I had convinced myself that she was by the time I had driven out to the house. My Texas grandmother would have said Jeff was simply “bowing his neck,” acting like a mule fighting the harness. He wasn’t going to be badgered into telling us anything. The only way we were likely to find out why he’d come to Michigan was by killing him with kindness. It was the same technique Aunt Nettie had used twelve years earlier, when she was saddled with an angry sixteen-year-old niece for the summer.

  We had to let Jeff learn that he could trust us. Which made me a little ashamed that I had followed him. But not too ashamed. When I finally got hold of his mom or his dad, they were likely to have a fit because he had left college in the middle of the semester and driven to Michigan. I didn’t want to quarrel with them, and they wouldn’t like it if I had let him wander around western Michigan in the snow and hadn’t even tried to figure out what he was up to.

  And I did wonder about those tears in Jeff’s eyes.

  Jeff offset the tears, however, by pouting and sulking all through breakfast. By the time Aunt Nettie had fed Chief Jones, Jeff, me, and herself—Jerry Cherry hadn’t joined us—it was close to six a.m. The chief insisted on helping Aunt Nettie with the dishes, and Jeff delighted us all by going to bed. I was exhausted, but too keyed up to sleep. So I put on my jacket and boots, took my flashlight and walked down the drive to get the Grand Rapids paper out of the delivery box across the road.

  Getting out and walking around in the snow is another part of my campaign not to act like a Texan who’d never seen cold weather before. Actually, it can get darn cold in Texas, but it doesn’t last months and months, the way it does in Michigan.

  I’d just taken the newspaper out and turned to go back across the road when headlights came around the curve. I stopped to let them go by. But the headlights didn’t go by. A pickup screeched to a halt, and Joe Woodyard got out.

  “Are you okay?” He sounded all excited.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  “No, I’m pretty upset.” He came around the front of the pickup.

  “What are you upset about?”

  “You,” he said. And then he threw his arms around me.

  I tipped my head back and looked at him, astonished.

  So he kissed me. Thoroughly.

  I enjoyed it thoroughly, too. In fact, it felt so good I had to fight an impulse to throw him in the back of the pickup and tear his clothes off, beginning with his puffy nylon jacket and working down to the long underwear I could see peeking out at his cuff. But a little voice kept nagging in the back of my head. What brought this on? it asked. And, Is this a good idea?

  It was about five minutes before I could ask my questions out loud. “Wow!” I said. “I’ll have to upset you more often. What’s the occasion?”

  “Chasing burglars! What would have happened if you caught ’em? Don’t you know I couldn’t make it if anything happened to you?” Then he kissed me again. For just four and a half minutes this time.

  When he worked around to nibbling my neck, I was able to talk. “Nothing did happen to me,” I said. “I’m enjoying this, but I don’t quite understand it.”

  Joe moved his head back, but he didn’t let me go. We were standing sternum-to-sternum and talking nose-to-nose. “You and that kid! What were you two doing waltzing around with burglars?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, when you get down to it. How’d you find out about our adventure?”

  “I had coffee with Tony out at the truck stop.” Tony Herrera was married to one of my friends, Lindy. Tony, who happened to be the son of Warner Pier’s mayor, drove into Holland every day for his job as a machinist. He and Joe had been friends since elementary school.

  Joe went on. “We ran into Jerry Cherry.”

  “I see that the Warner Pier grapevine is in good shape. How come Jerry realized you’d want to know about our excitement?”

  “He didn’t. There was a whole table of us. I tried not to seem too interested.”

  He had tried not to seem too interested? Suddenly I was hopping mad. I pushed myself away from Joe.

  How could he act as if I mattered to him when we were alone or when we were talking on the telephone, but pretend he hardly knew me in public?

  “Oh, I think you could justify some interest in a local burglary,” I said. “After all, you’re a Warner Pier property owner. All the Warner Pier citizens are shocked and appalled by local crime, right?”

  “Sure. Everybody was interested. But—” He cocked his head. “Are you mad?”

  “No. I’m furious.”

  “About the burglary?”

  “Not exactly.” I stopped talking then. It was awfully hard to tell a guy that your relationship stunk when you didn’t have a relationship. I decided I’d better not try. “I suppose I’m just tired.”

  “Well, yeah. You’ve been up all night.”

  “That’s not what I meant, but I guess it’s close enough.”

  “Hop in, and I’ll drive you up to the house.”

  “Better not! Chief Jones is up there. He might see you.”

  I guess my sarcasm finally sank in. Joe’s lips tightened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I said. Then I pushed on past him, but he caught my arm.

  “If you think I like this situation, you’re wrong.”

  “If you think I like it, you’re wrong, too.”

  We stood there, glaring at each other. Then I pulled my arm away. “I’m completely out of patience with adolescent piccalillis—I mean peccadilloes.”

  “Thanks! I’m really thrilled at being lumped in with that kid.”

  “Actually, you and Jeff are acting quite differently. He won’t talk at all, and you won’t do anything else.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know! But it’s not real complimentary if you don’t even want people to know—” I broke off. “Oh, forget it! It’s a dead end anyway.”

  I stalked across the road. Joe followed me. “I didn’t come to quarrel,” he said.

  “Then why did you come?”

  “To see you. To make sure you were all right.”

  “You’ve seen me. I’m all right.”

  “And I wanted to find out just what that kid—”

  “That kid’s name is Jeff.”

  “Okay! To find out just what kind of a story Jeff told about the burglary.”

  “Jeff had nothing to do with the burglary. I was following him. I saw him pull up in front of the shop. I saw him get out of the SUV. He did not break the window.”

  “Maybe not, but Jerry said he doesn’t think the chief is satisfied with his story.”

  “I’m not satisfied with his story either. I want to know why he went into town in the first place. But I don’t think he broke the window. I do think he scared the burglar off.”

  “Maybe so, but . . . Jerry said that the burglar apparently went off in a car with a broken taillight.”

  “We think so.”

  “Well, Brad Michaels said—”

  “Who is Brad Michaels?”

  “He has the gas station south of town, down at Haven Road. Right on the interstate. And he says a kid driving a gold Lexus SUV with a Texas plate stopped there around seven a.m. yesterday. He didn’t buy gas, just candy bars and chips.”

  “Sounds like Jeff. So?”

  “So Brad says there were two Texas vehicles. The other driver didn’t get out, but Brad thinks they were together.”

  Maybe I would have reacted differently if I hadn’t already been mad. But I was mad. Plus tired and plain old out of sorts. I didn’t want any more bad news. So I tried to kill the messenger.

  “I suppose that your pal Brad says the other Texas car had a taillight out,” I said.

  “No, he—”

  “I suppose you asked him that.”


  “Yes, I—”

  “And I suppose you made sure he told Jerry about it.”

  “No! He didn’t mention it until Jerry had gone.”

  “But I suppose you urged him to tell Jerry. Or Chief Jones.”

  “They’re gonna find out. Warner Pier is a small town.”

  “Well, let them! But I’m not getting involved in any more efforts to quiz Jeff. He knows I want to find out just what he’s up to. He’ll tell me something when he’s ready. Or he’ll tell Aunt Nettie. Or the chief will question him. But right now I’m cold and I’m tired and I’m going back to the house.”

  I walked away without looking back. This time Joe didn’t follow me.

  When I got back to the house I took off all my outdoor paraphernalia, then sat in the living room pretending to read the paper. I felt pretty miserable. Joe was suspicious of Jeff even without knowing the most damning part of the situation. Nobody, including Chief Jones, knew that Jeff had been aware that the molds were valuable, but I did. Should I tell Chief Jones? Like Joe said, the chief was bound to find out. I just didn’t want to be the person who caused Jeff more problems, even though he was causing me a lot.

  Darn Joe Woodyard anyway! Why had he reminded me of Jeff’s odd behavior? And why did I care what Joe thought? I shook the newspaper angrily. How had I wound up in this dead-end relationship?

  For six months I’d been patient about Joe’s hangups over his ex-wife and about his fear of the tabloids, but right at that moment I was sick of the situation.

  Oh, maybe I’d brought part of it on myself, making it clear I wouldn’t sneak around to go out with him. He had to take me out in public, or I wasn’t going to go at all. And I certainly wasn’t going to get too cozy with a guy I wasn’t officially dating. So there’d been no weekends when we both just happened to be in Chicago and staying in the same hotel, no surreptitious meetings at the boat shop, no nights in a B&B a hundred miles up the lakeshore.

  Joe wasn’t the only one who had survived a bad marriage; I wasn’t interested in having my self-respect further flogged by a clandestine affair, an affair that would have made me feel cheap and used.