“Oh, no!” I said. “What’s happened?”
“Gail is dead,” Joe said grimly. “And Mom found Jeff standing over her body.”
Chapter 9
My stomach hit my feet with a thud. What was going on? Was Jeff under arrest?
I went to the patrol car and tried to open the door to the backseat. It wouldn’t open, so I opened the door to the front seat, opposite the driver.
Jerry Cherry was behind the wheel. He turned and gaped at me. “Lee!” he said. “You can’t get in.”
“What is Jeff doing in a police car?” I said.
“We’re trying to preserve evidence,” Jerry said. “And the chief wants to question him.”
“Is he under arrest?”
Jerry shook his head. “No. We want some lab work on his clothes and his hands.”
Jeff looked miserable. He held up his hands, and I saw that they were stained. The light inside the car wasn’t good, but the stains looked like blood.
“Does he need a lawyer?”
Jeff spoke. “I haven’t done anything! I don’t need a lawyer!”
I stood there, half in and half out of the patrol car, dithering. In spite of what Jeff said, I thought he might well need a lawyer. But that was not a realistic thing to want in the middle of the night in Warner Pier, Michigan. The nearest lawyer was at the county seat, thirty miles away.
Unless Joe . . . I glanced at him. Joe was a lawyer, true. He wasn’t practicing, although as far as I knew he was still licensed in the state of Michigan. But his mom had discovered Jeff standing over Gail Hess’s body, apparently with blood on his hands. Besides, Joe had been down on Jeff ever since he arrived in town. He wasn’t the right person to involve.
Hart VanHorn was also a lawyer. I doubted that his fancy law firm practiced criminal law. He might recommend someone, but I couldn’t call him in the middle of the night.
No, if Jeff needed help and advice right this minute, he might have to rely on his ex-stepmother. So I’d better figure out what was going on.
“Lee,” Jerry Cherry said, “either get in or get out. The chief took Jeff’s jacket, and I’m trying to keep the car warm.”
“I’ll be back,” I said to Jeff. Then I slammed the door.
Joe was standing behind me. I grabbed his arm. “Okay,” I said. “What happened?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Lee.”
“How did you get involved?”
“I got back from Grand Rapids about twelve, and about one thirty Mom called me from her cell phone. She said she’d found Gail dead on the sidewalk. She sounded scared to death. I came right down. Maybe you’d better get the story from her.”
He took my arm and led me across the street to Mercy’s office. She unlocked the door as we approached, then locked it again as soon as we were inside. Only one dim light was on in the office, and Mercy looked pinched and scared.
I reminded myself to act sympathetic. “Mercy, what a terrible experience! What happened?”
“I’d been working late—in the back room, sorting some things. . . .” Mercy’s eyes dodged away from mine. “When I started to leave, by the alley, sometime after one, I saw headlights down there by your aunt’s shop. After the burglary last night, well, I thought I’d turn down and see what was going on.”
I nodded. “Then what happened?”
“When I got around the corner I saw that Jeff’s SUV was parked facing the shop. And I could see Jeff leaning over something on the sidewalk. When I pulled in beside his car—well, he took off running, Lee.”
“He ran? Ran where?”
“Just down to the corner, I guess. He didn’t have anything on his head, and I’d seen him with Nettie yesterday afternoon, so I recognized him. I put the window partway down and yelled. Then he came back, and he told me he’d just found Gail lying on the sidewalk and asked me to use my cell phone to call 911.”
“Did you look at Gail?”
“After I made the call.” Mercy’s teeth chattered. “There wasn’t much point in calling the EMTs. But they came anyway, of course.”
“When I saw Jeff—there in the patrol car—he seemed to have blood on his hands.”
Mercy nodded. “I saw it.”
“How did Gail die?”
Mercy put a hand to her lips and shook her head. Joe put one arm around her shoulders, then answered my question. “The medical examiner hasn’t looked at her yet, Lee,” he said.
I snapped at him. “Don’t talk like a lawyer! Did you see her?”
“Not close,” Joe said. “But her head—well, her head had been bleeding. Her hair was soaked, and there was a puddle on the ground.”
“Then Jeff could have gotten blood on himself if he—oh, tried to see if she was still alive.”
“Sure, he could have.” Joe’s voice was artificially encouraging.
“Jeff said he hasn’t done anything.”
Mercy spoke then. “I certainly didn’t see him do—” she repeated the word—“do anything. But, Lee, why was he down here in the middle of the night?”
That was the question, of course. It was the question Jeff had refused to answer the day before.
The three of us stood silently, looking out through the broad front window of Mercy’s office. The scene was busy. Warner Pier policemen and Michigan State Police were looking for evidence up and down the street. More merchants had turned up, afraid the previous night’s burglar had hit their businesses.
As we watched, Aunt Nettie came across the sidewalk. Mercy opened the door and let her in, then locked the door again behind her.
Aunt Nettie looked like the Snow Queen, with her solid body covered by a blue ski jacket and her soft white hair peeking out like fur around the edges of her blue cap.
She spoke placidly. “The door to Gail’s shop is open. The heat’s all getting out. Maybe I should go and close it.”
“No!” Joe and I spoke together.
“Better leave it to the police,” he said. “It may be a clue.”
“Oh,” Aunt Nettie said. “I thought the police must have opened it. But why don’t they take Gail away?”
“I think they want to get some pictures first,” Joe said. “Was Gail a close friend of yours?”
“Not real close. But all the Warner Pier merchants know each other.” She gestured toward Jerry Cherry’s patrol car. “Why do they have Jeff in there?”
“He found Gail Hess,” Joe said. “He’ll have to explain why he was down here.”
Aunt Nettie nodded. “Two nights in a row,” she said.
Why had Jeff been roaming around Warner Pier—a town with nothing open after midnight, a town where he knew no one except me and Aunt Nettie— in the middle of the night, two bitterly cold winter nights in a row?
The night before I’d been afraid he was trying to buy drugs. Now I’d be relieved if that was the reason.
“We’ll just have to wait until Chief Jones talks to him,” I said. “He’s got to have some kind of a story. Maybe they’ll let him go then.”
But Jeff’s story, when he finally told it, wasn’t the kind that cleared him of all suspicion.
Chief Jones had asked to keep Jeff’s SUV until the state police lab technicians had had time to check it over. I brought Jeff a change of clothes, and he washed up and changed. His first outfit was bagged as potential evidence.
I insisted that Aunt Nettie go home and stay home. Then I waited at the police station. Joe waited with me. He didn’t seem to be worried about it starting gossip.
It was after six a.m. before the chief called me into his office and let me listen to a tape recording he’d made of his interview with Jeff.
He had simply been driving around in the middle of the night, Jeff said. He’d seen something lying on the sidewalk in front of TenHuis Chocolade, so he’d stopped to see what it was. He had realized it was a person, lying on the frozen sidewalk, so he jumped out of his car to see what he could do to help.
“But as soon as I touched her, I kne
w it wasn’t any good,” he said. “I was going to go call the police when Mrs. Woodyard drove up. She said she had a cell phone, so I got her to call.”
“Why did you run when she called out to you?”
“At first I thought she was the killer! I thought he’d come back to get me! But when I got a look at her—” Jeff’s voice cut off quickly.
“Then what, Jeff?” The chief’s voice was silky.
“Nothing.”
“You hadn’t met Mrs. Woodyard, had you?”
“I’d seen her. Across the street. Mrs. TenHuis told me who she was.”
“But you still ran when she called out.”
“She scared me! It was the middle of the night. I’d just found a dead body.”
“Okay, it made sense for you to be scared when somebody yelled at you. So, why did you come back?”
“Huh?”
“First you thought Mrs. Woodyard might be the killer, returning to get you, too. So you ran. Then you saw Mrs. Woodyard and you changed your mind and came back. Why?”
“Her coat was wrong.”
“Her coat?”
“Yeah. The guy I saw earlier—” Jeff stopped abruptly.
“There was someone there earlier?”
Long silence. “Well, I drove by once, and I saw somebody outside the shop. That’s why I came back to check.”
“So you found Gail the second time you came by the shop?”
“Yes.”
“And when was the first time, Jeff?”
“A little while earlier.”
“How long is ‘a little while’ in Texas?”
Another long silence. “Maybe fifteen minutes.”
“Then you did more than just drive around the block.” No answer. “So you saw a guy there, and you were sure he wasn’t Mrs. Woodyard. Were you sure it was a man?”
“No. It could have been a woman.”
“Did you see the person’s face?”
“No. It was just a shape. But it wasn’t Mrs. Woodyard. Her coat was wrong.”
“Wrong? What’s wrong with her coat?”
“It’s a coat—you know, long. And it’s smooth. Some kind of wool. The other guy had a bushy jacket on. Shorter than Mrs. Woodyard’s coat. And a bushy hat.”
And that, basically, was all Chief Jones got out of Jeff. He’d been driving around Warner Pier in the middle of the night, and he’d seen somebody in front of the shop. He drove on. But about fifteen minutes later he got curious and came down to see what was going on. And he found Gail Hess dead.
“What does he mean by ‘bushy’? What kind of a coat is ‘bushy’?” I asked.
“He’s a bit vague,” Chief Jones said. “It was bulky, and it wasn’t smooth. Not like Mercy’s coat.”
“Flannel,” I said. “Mercy’s coat is flannel.”
“This guy’s coat wasn’t flannel. And it wasn’t slick and bulky, like that down jacket you’re wearing. It could have been a blanket-type fabric, I guess.”
“Or a fake fur,” I said. I steeled myself and tried a finesse. “Now you’ve heard Jeff’s exploration—I mean, you’ve heard his explanation. So, can I take him home?”
“’Fraid not, Lee. A little more information is required.”
“Chief, his story makes sense.”
“Yes, as far as it goes. But he doesn’t have any explanation for one important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The baseball bat we found poked into the snowdrift at the end of the block. Right there at the corner Jeff ran up to.”
“A baseball bat?”
“Yep. We haven’t tested it yet, of course, but it sure looks as if it could be the murder weapon.”
“Where would Jeff get a baseball bat?”
“In Gail’s shop. It’s an antique, endorsed by Jackie Robinson. Quite a collector’s item, I expect. Gail’s assistant tells us it was part of a display of toys and sporting equipment at the back of the store. And the door to Gail’s shop was standing open. We figure Gail and her killer had some kind of confrontation in her shop. She was chased across the street and killed. Or Gail might have seen someone across the street and stepped outside to hail them. Maybe she took the baseball bat as some sort of protection.”
“Why did she have her jacket on?”
Chief Jones shrugged. “Who knows? She might have simply put the jacket on because the heat was turned down in the store, and she was cold.”
The chief let me say good-bye to Jeff, and I assured him that I’d get him a lawyer first thing the next morning. He nodded dully. His tough exterior had worn pretty thin.
When I reached the outer office, Joe was standing there, staring at a map of Warner Pier.
“They’re going to hold him,” I said. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs they keep for visitors and cried.
For a minute I thought Joe was going to put his arms around me, but instead he pulled a chair around facing me. He took one of my hands.
“I’ve got to find him a lawyer,” I said.
“I’ll call Webb Bartlett in Grand Rapids just as soon as his office opens. He’s good.”
I felt grateful. “Tell him Jeff’s dad has plenty of money. Tell him he’ll pay any kind of a fee.”
Joe squeezed my hand. “If I tell him that, he’ll charge any kind of a fee.”
“I don’t care! I can’t believe Jeff did this. He’s just a kid!”
Joe’s lips tightened. I remembered then that he’d been on the defense team for the Medichino case—a case in which two Detroit brothers admitted to killing their parents. He knew that kids can kill.
But he didn’t say anything about the Medichino boys. He just pulled me to my feet. “Come over here and look at what I found,” he said. He led me to a giant map of Warner Pier. “Now where did you first find Jeff last night? I mean, night before last, the night of the burglary?”
“At the Stop and Shop.”
“Didn’t you say his car was parked outside, but you couldn’t see him inside?”
“Yes.”
“And then he came out from the back of the store?”
“Right. So what?”
“Look at the map.” Joe pointed to the top of the map. “Here’s the Stop and Shop. And look at what’s behind it, over on the next block.”
“The Lake Michigan Inn. Again, so what?”
“Do you feel up to taking a ride out that way?”
“I don’t think I could sleep.”
I put on my jacket, and Joe and I went out to his truck. “Why are we doing this?” I asked.
“Maybe for no reason at all.”
Despite its picturesque name, the Lake Michigan Inn is a fairly standard motel. It looks like the 1950s to me; cars with big tail fins would look right at home in the parking lot. That morning the parking lot was almost empty. An SUV was parked in a shed at the back of the lot, and all the rooms were dark. The only lights came from the motel’s sign and from a light over the office door.
Joe parked under the office light—the winter sun was nowhere near the horizon, but the sky was growing light in the east—and we got out. Joe knocked on the office door. He knocked again. And again.
Finally the door opened and a bleary-eyed older man peered out. “Joe? What’s going on?” He looked at me, then grinned slyly. “Don’t tell me you want to rent a room?”
“Nope. But I’ve got an important question.”
“It better be damn important and not hard to answer.” When he spoke I saw that he didn’t have his lower plate in. He motioned us inside.
“Lee, this is Tuttle Ewing,” Joe said. “Tuttle, Lee McKinney.”
Tuttle Ewing was a short bald guy. “How’ja do,” he said. “You’re Nettie TenHuis’s niece.” I nodded, and he turned back to Joe. “Wha’ja need to know?”
“Lee’s stepson came to Warner Pier day before yesterday, and I wondered if he checked in here.”
I almost gasped. Jeff hadn’t checked in anyplace.
“Young guy? Kinda skinny?
Glasses? Stud in his lip? Crazy earlobes?”
“Right. Driving a Lexus RX300 with a Texas tag.”
“Yeah, he came by.”
“Did you rent him a room?”
“Yeah. He paid for three nights. Off-season rate. Funny thing though. I haven’t seen the SUV since.”
“Is there somebody in the room?”
“I dunno. The Do Not Disturb sign has been on the door ever since he checked in. So Maria—I’ve only got one maid, part-time, in the winter—she and I haven’t disturbed him.”
Joe and I exchanged looks. “I think we’d better disturb him now,” Joe said. I nodded.
“I can’t let you in the room.”
“Just tell us which room it is.”
“Twenty-three. Out back.”
Tuttle Ewing let us out, and Joe and I walked along the covered sidewalk, toward the back of the motel.
“This makes perfect sense!” I said. “Plus, it explains the second car with the Texas tag. I should have realized that Jeff wouldn’t have left college and come up here alone. He had some buddy with him, and he’s been sneaking into town to see him.”
“You knock at the door,” Joe said. “Whoever’s in there, a woman will seem less threatening. I’ll wait down here.” He positioned himself ten or twelve feet away, flat against the wall.
I had to knock several times before I even heard a movement inside. The door still didn’t open. I pictured a scared kid standing on the other side.
“Hey!” I said loudly. “Jeff’s in trouble. He needs help!”
Finally, the door opened a crack and one eye looked out.
“What is it?” The voice was a whisper.
“I’m Jeff’s stepmom. Jeff’s in trouble. I need to talk to you.”
“Did he tell you about me?”
“It’s a long story, and I’m freezing out here. Let me in, okay?”
The door closed, and I heard the clicking of the chain. When the door opened again, Joe suddenly appeared beside me. He pushed the door open wide, and we both were inside.
My impression was that we had started a bird from its nest. Something white flitted around the room.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We won’t hurt you. We’re just trying to help Jeff.”
The Chocolate Bear Burglary Page 10