“It’s all my fault!” I didn’t know the words were coming out until I’d spoken them. “I suspected Timothy of being our burglar, because I learned he’d still owned his MGB as recently as a year ago. So I—I admit it—I broke into the storage barn at the compound looking for that car. When it wasn’t there, I looked in your mother’s garage.”
“And you found the MGB,” Hart said.
“Yes. And the taillight was broken. I was desperate to get Jeff out of jail.”
“I could have told you the car was there, but I didn’t know about the taillight.”
I decided to ignore that. “I thought your mother and Timothy had gone to Grand Rapids with you.”
“No, they went only as far as Holland. I had to pick up my SUV at the dealer’s there, so they dropped me off and came back. None of us went to Grand Rapids.”
“You said you had to see a man in Grand Rapids.”
Hart smiled gently. “I didn’t deliberately mislead you, Lee, but what I said was that I needed ‘to talk to a man in Grand Rapids.’ I never intended to go there to talk to him. I—well, I knew Mother was up to something, though I wasn’t sure just what. I wanted to talk to my psychologist about it. I called him from Holland because my cell phone works better up there.”
I clutched Joe’s hand, but I spoke to Hart. “Your mother caught me in the garage. First she acted quite friendly. She laughed! She invited me into the house. Then she said I was a burglar, and she was going to shoot me.”
Hart dropped his head.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it while I was running for my life.”
“Oh, I can believe it,” Hart said. “Mother was very coolheaded, and she had an extremely creative way of handling the truth. She wouldn’t have wanted anybody to know about that car. Any more than she wanted anybody to know I’d been seeing a psychologist.”
“She didn’t want people to know you’d seen a psychologist?” I was mystified. “So what? So who hasn’t? That’s nothing to get excited about.”
“It might have meant nothing to you, maybe, but to Mom it was the kiss of death to my political career.”
“Surely people are not that ignorant. . . .”
But Hart was shaking his head. “It wasn’t the mere fact that I was seeing a psychologist, Lee. It was what she was afraid I might tell him.”
“Oh.” Suddenly I didn’t want to know any more.
But it seemed I was going to, because Hart went on talking. “You see, I killed my father.”
I was silent, and Joe squeezed my hand.
Timothy spoke. “But this is stupid, my boy. Nobody killed your father. He fell! It was an accident. Nobody ever suggested it was anything else. And now both you and Olivia claim to have killed Vic.”
Hart smiled at his uncle. “Mother didn’t kill him, Uncle Tim. She was still trying to protect me. Me and my wonderful political career. But I can’t stand to lie about it anymore. I killed my father. Oh, it wasn’t murder—only manslaughter, I guess. Maybe even justifiable homicide.
“Fifteen years ago—when I was twenty—my father was drunk. He threatened my mother. I punched him, trying to protect her. He fell against the china cabinet, the one that held my grandmother’s collection of chocolate molds. The cabinet fell over. It landed on him, and the back of his head was smashed in.
“I was willing to call the police. At least an ambulance. But my mother wouldn’t hear of it. She got a wheelbarrow from the storage barn, and the two of us threw my father’s body over the bank into the lake. His death was accepted as an accident.
“The china cabinet was smashed, and it had blood on it, and one of the molds—some kind of a bear—had a lot of blood on it. I broke the cabinet up with an ax, and we burned it in the fireplace. But we couldn’t burn the doors, because of the metal and the glass. Mother washed the bear mold and tossed it and the other molds into a box in the basement of the bungalow. She put some other old kitchen utensils on top, made it look like a box of junk. The collection was too well known to simply get rid of, and I’m sure she figured it would end up going to a museum or something eventually.”
He patted his uncle on the shoulder. “Uncle Tim didn’t know anything about it. He found the kitchen utensils and molds in the basement and gave them to Gail to sell. The molds wound up being displayed at the TenHuis shop. At first Mother thought that was okay, but then she found out some expert on chocolate molds was going to come to look at them. Apparently Mother tried to break into TenHuis Chocolade and get hold of that bear mold before the expert could want to know why it had been treated badly. Gail must have figured out that the burglar used Uncle Tim’s MGB, because of the broken taillight.”
Tears were running down Timothy’s cheeks. “Gail had seen the MGB,” he said. “I showed it to her when she picked up the molds. She knew it had a broken taillight. She may have thought that I was the burglar.”
I was having trouble taking all this in. “Did your mother use the snowmobile to chase me?”
“She did have the snowmobile out yesterday,” Hart said.
“Why would she chase me?”
Hart rubbed a hand over his forehead. “I know that something you said upset her, when we talked outside the police station that morning. She must have decided you knew something. Maybe that Gail had told you about the MGB and its broken taillight.”
The chief came in then. The first thing he said was that Hart should get a lawyer. Then the chief instructed Jerry Cherry to let Jeff out of the holding cell, and he told me we could leave. He and Hart were still arguing about whether Hart should call a lawyer as Joe, Jeff, and I headed out into the winter dusk.
But as we stepped outside that dusk was shattered by strobe lights. I almost ran back inside. Two guys had been waiting, and I recognized them as part of the tabloid crew that had invaded Warner Pier the previous summer.
“Cool it!” Joe told them. “The story’s inside the police station! Not out here.”
The photographer laughed and flashed his strobe again. “That’s not what George said.”
“Shut up!” That came from his companion, a man with a notebook.
“You’d better get inside to talk to the chief,” Joe said. “I think you’re the first team on the scene, and this is going to be a big story.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Did somebody from Warner Pier call you? George? George who?”
“Never mind!” The reporter grabbed the photographer and the two of them hotfooted it into City Hall.
Jeff, Joe, and I stood looking after them. “George?” I said. “Surely he didn’t mean George Palmer?”
“Surely he did,” Joe said. “George is on the park commission. I thought one of the commission members had to be the tabloid source. They were the only people who knew I’d approached Mike Herrera about selling the Warner Point property to the city.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“I couldn’t rule out someone from the lawyer’s office blabbing. I tried to give George the benefit of the doubt.”
“He’s so obnoxious!”
Joe shrugged. “Well, I’ll tell Mike Herrera what we’ve deduced, and Mike will call George’s father-in-law, and maybe old George will have a new job pretty quick.”
“Wouldn’t that be great! Maybe Barbara can come back.”
Jeff’s jacket was still being held as evidence, so the three of us ran the two blocks to TenHuis Chocolade for a joyful reunion with Aunt Nettie and Tess. We were all in the workroom, jumping up and down and turning cartwheels, when someone came in the front door. One of the hairnet ladies went up to the counter.
I heard a deep voice with a Texas accent. “Ah’m lookin’ for Lee McKinney,” it said.
Jeff’s eyes suddenly were the size of dinner plates. “It’s Dad,” he said in a whisper.
I sighed. I had to face Rich sometime. “Bring him back to the shop,” I said.
Rich came in. Dina was with him. Dina’s eyes loc
ked on only one thing. “Jeff!” she said. “You’re here!”
Suddenly they were in a three-way hug. “I’m all right!” Jeff kept saying. “I’m all right.”
They finally loosened their grips and turned around toward the rest of us, all three of them with tearstreaked faces. And sometime in there Jeff’s lip stud had disappeared.
Jeff started talking. “Lee kept working ’til she figured out who really killed that woman. She got me out of jail.”
That led to more commotion, of course. Dina had to hug me—and after a minute, Rich did, too. They had to meet Tess. They had to confirm the news Jeff had told us earlier—they had gone to Mexico in an attempt at reconciliation.
Apparently it had worked. Dina held out her left hand and proudly showed off her new wedding ring. I was surprised at its appearance. It was a simple piece of Mexican silver. No clusters of diamonds. No ruby the size of an idol’s eye. It was definitely a sincere wedding ring, not one to show off to your business associates. Maybe Rich actually had changed his ways.
I hugged her. Dina had always been pretty nice to me. “I want you two to be really happy,” I said. I shook Rich’s hand.
Then they had to hear the whole story of our burglary and the murder of Gail Hess. Through all of this, Joe leaned against a worktable, saying nothing. It was nearly an hour later when Rich looked at his watch and said, “Are we going to be able to find a place to stay?”
I called the Inn on the Pier and was assured they had rooms available. “Good!” Rich said. “Now, I already noticed a restaurant open down the street. I’d like to take everyone to dinner.”
I looked at Aunt Nettie. She looked at Tess. Aunt Nettie used her mental telepathy powers and told both of us to say no.
“I think I’d better go home, take a hot shower and get into my flannel pj’s,” Aunt Nettie said.
“And I think I’d better go with you,” Tess said. “I have to call my parents.” Aunt Nettie patted her hand and smiled.
“Lee?” Rich looked at me.
Behind me Joe stirred. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m taking Lee to the Dock Street Pizza tonight.”
I went over to Joe. “You’re sure?”
“I’m not taking another chance on losing you, Lee.”
Then he put his arms around me, right in front of God and everybody. Which included Aunt Nettie, Rich, Dina, Jeff, Tess, and three of the hairnet ladies who hadn’t left yet.
But Aunt Nettie had one more comment. “Before the party breaks up,” she said, “would anybody like a sample chocolate?”
Rich had an Italian cherry bonbon and immediately began talking to Aunt Nettie about boxes to give as business gifts.
Dina told him to hush and picked out a raspberry cream bonbon (“Red raspberry puree in white chocolate cream interior”). “It smells heavenly in here,” she said.
Tess went for a double fudge bonbon and Jeff asked for a Jamaican rum truffle.
“Could Lee and I take ours in a little box?” Joe asked. He took a coffee truffle (“All milk chocolate, flavored with Caribbean coffee”) and I chose a Frangelico one. Aunt Nettie settled for solid chocolate with bits of hazelnut.
Ten minutes later—after we’d seen the others off and I’d locked up—Joe and I went out the front door. Joe took my hand again. “Our friendship is about to meet a new challenge,” Joe said. “The big question is, do you like anchovies on your pizza?”
“No!”
“Good! Come on.”
We got in Joe’s truck and headed for Dock Street Pizza. Right in front of God and everybody.
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About the Author
JoAnna Carl is the pseudonym for a multipublished mystery writer. She spent twenty-five years in the newspaper business, working as a reporter, a feature writer, an editor, and a columnist. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma and also studied in the O.U. Professional Writing program. She lives in Oklahoma but summers in Michigan, where the Chocoholic Mysteries are set. She has one daughter who works for a chocolate maker and another who is a CPA.
Also by JoAnna Carl
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