The Chocolate Bridal Bash

by JoAnna Carl

“You look wonderful, too, Mr. McKay. Could I give you a hug?”

  “Only if you’ll call me ’Mac’ afterward.”

  “Of course! Anybody I’m on hugging terms with gets called by their first name.”

  The hug turned out to be a joint effort, and Mac stood on tiptoe to give me a kiss on the cheek. He called out to someone in the kitchen, then hung up our coats and led us into a living room where a cheery fire burned. I seemed to raise myself further in his esteem by oohing and ahing over the handmade tiles that surrounded the fireplace. Each showed a different Michigan wildflower.

  “My late wife made those,” Mac said. “She was quite an artist.”

  A Hispanic housekeeper brought in a tray of canapés and a bottle of wine. Mac fussed about, pouring wine for me and scotch for Joe. Joe hates scotch, but he took it with a small grin. To a lawyer of Mac McKay’s age, scotch was the only suitable drink to offer a fellow attorney.

  Mac made sure I was seated close to the fire; then he sat in a wing chair facing us, raising his own glass of scotch in a wordless toast. He leaned forward.

  “What’s this about you two finding that old reprobate Carl Van Hoosier dead?”

  I gasped, but Joe only laughed. “So you’ve got a mole at Pleasant Creek.”

  “My former secretary lives there now. Ellen Thoms.”

  “I didn’t see her. Why didn’t she speak to me?”

  “Vanity, my boy. Vanity. She’s rather gnarled by arthritis these days, and she doesn’t like to be caught using her walker. But what happened to Carl? Ellen said our current sheriff was there. In person.”

  Joe quickly sketched the scene we’d found when we dropped in on Van Hoosier. When he described how Nurse Priddy had examined the dead man, Mac raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t simply declare it a natural death,” he said.

  “I was surprised, too,” Joe said. “I think the administrator recommended that finding, but Priddy stuck to his guns.”

  “Priddy said something about his throat,” I said. “And he looked at his eyelids.”

  Mac nodded like the former prosecutor he was. “Strangulation or suffocation—the first one almost always crushes the windpipe. And either cause of death leaves tiny little broken blood vessels in the eyelids.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “I thought I spotted the red specks.”

  “Maybe the nurse didn’t think he could cover it up after you’d seen them.”

  “I think he’d made his mind up before he knew I’d seen the specks,” Joe said. “Anyway, they’re going to do an autopsy.”

  “It’s poetic justice,” Mac said.

  Before we could ask him to explain, the housekeeper came in and said dinner was ready.

  “We’ll analyze Carl later,” Mac said. He led us into the dining room for a delicious dinner of beef stew, salad, and crusty rolls. While we ate, Mac made sure we kept the conversation general. He obviously was interested in a wide range of subjects, and he’d kept in touch with his former profession, displaying an up-to-the-minute knowledge about changes in the Michigan law on zoning, for example. The food was upper-Midwest home cooking, with a luscious tres leches cake for dessert as the only nod to the housekeeper’s ethnicity. She left before we finished, so Joe and I cleared the table, but Mac insisted on loading the dishwasher himself. We took our coffee to the living room, and Mac put another log on the fire.

  He sat in his easy chair looking expectant. “So, just what did you want to know about Carl Van Hoosier?”

  Joe answered. “Why did he get bounced out of office?”

  “Did one too many favors for my rich relatives.” Joe raised his eyebrows. “Then you are related to the McKay family who has the big place over at Warner Pier?”

  “I’m a poor relation. My grandfather was a brother to Benson McKay, the great-grandfather of the current head of McKay Chemicals, Quinn McKay.”

  Joe looked confused, and I spoke up. “So you and the guy who’s always giving Warner Pier grants are second cousins once removed.”

  “You know your genealogy, young lady. Not that the relationship matters to me. We’ve never had Thanksgiving dinner together or chatted at a family funeral. The connection is extremely remote. And after my round with Carl Van Hoosier, I assure you that the rich McKays want to keep it that way.” Mac rubbed his hands together gleefully.

  “When you were county attorney,” Joe said, “you usually tried to get along with citizens, even citizens who were just summer people. Why do you feel differently about the McKays?”

  “They got too blatant, Joe. They had bought old Carl, and maybe that wasn’t a big deal when it came to a few speeding tickets or some extra security when they had a party. They’d been paying Van Hoosier off for little favors like that for years. But when it came to vehicular homicide, I drew the line.”

  “Who killed whom?”

  “It was the father of Quinn, Benson the third. He was driving his Porsche, drunk, with a girl from another of the summer families along. Ben always liked young women, as the age of his widow testifies. She’s just a year older than Quinn. Anyway, Ben hit a tree on Lake Shore Drive. Ben survived. The girl didn’t.”

  “Rough on the girl and her family.”

  “Rough on the girl. I didn’t have much sympathy for her family. Within a week of the funeral, they were giving signals that a major cash settlement would ease their grief substantially. But I thought Ben should stand trial. When I heard that Carl had lost the blood sample we needed to convict, I guess I lost my temper. From then on it was war between Carl Van Hoosier and me.”

  “How did you manage to win the war and get him out of office?”

  “I got the state police behind me, subpoenaed Carl’s bank records. Looked at property transfers. The McKays had sold Carl some property way below market value, and he resold it immediately. Made a killing.” Mac shrugged. “I might never have convinced a jury, but I was able to put enough pressure on Carl to get him to resign. Besides, the public had had enough by then. And ol’ Carl had made a big enough pile to retire on, so he went fairly quietly.”

  I leaned forward. “How about the rumor that he would—well, exploit courting couples?”

  “Handcuff the boy and rape the girl?” Mac frowned. “I know every kid in Warner County believed that, but I could never pin it down. I finally concluded it was a sort of Warner County folk tale. Especially when the rumor continued after Carl left office. And after his successor left office.”

  Joe nodded. “I admit I heard it when I was in high school, but I hadn’t realized until recently that it was a continuation of the tale my mother had believed. So Van Hoosier’s main problem was doing too many favors for the summer residents?”

  “And accepting money for it—though we never proved exactly where the money came from. But pandering to the summer people is a stupid thing for a county official to do. The summer people don’t vote here.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “And the locals resent special treatment for them.”

  “Right. I wasn’t able to send my second cousin to prison, but he managed to stay out of trouble until he died a couple of years later.”

  “Was this the father of the McKay who was kidnapped?”

  Mac scowled. “Quinn,” he said. “I’ve always wondered if Benson was sorry he turned up alive.”

  Chapter 10

  I guess my surprise showed, because Mac McKay looked a little embarrassed.

  “I���m just repeating the gossip of the time,” he said. “Talk along the lakeshore was that Ben the third didn’t approve of his son. But he seemed like a nice kid to me, thirty-four years ago.”

  “You knew him?” I’m sure I sounded surprised.

  “He did an internship for me the summer before he was kidnapped.” Then Mac smiled. “But we’ve gotten away from Carl Van Hoosier. Why do Carl’s problems of twenty-five years ago have any interest for you two?”

  Joe and I exchanged a glance. He shrugged slightly, tossing the ball to me. T
elling Mac McKay the whole story was my option. Did I want to?

  Mac seemed very trustworthy. I leaned forward and spoke. “I don’t suppose you remember the suicide of a young man named Bill Dykstra?” I said. I told him the date.

  Mac leaned back and scratched his head. “Was that the runaway-bride case?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I just recently found out that my mom was the run-away bride. She’s never talked to me about it.”

  “And you’d like to know just what happened.”

  “Of course.”

  Mac sighed. “So would I. I always thought that whole situation was screwy, but I had no evidence, so I didn’t feel that I could get involved. Bill Dykstra’s parents were furious, of course, and I understood their attitude, since Bill Dykstra had no known history of drug abuse.”

  Drug abuse? I sat there rigid. I must have looked like a piece of Lake Michigan driftwood half-buried in sand. How did drug abuse figure in Bill Dykstra’s death? Finally I gasped. Then I spoke. Or rather yelled.

  “Drug abuse!”

  Joe echoed my words, but he didn’t yell. “Drug abuse? Mac, are you saying that Bill Dykstra had taken drugs?”

  Mac nodded. “That’s what the sheriff’s report said. ‘Drug paraphernalia’ was found in the car with him.”

  “What kind of drugs?” Joe said.

  “Oh, pot, as I recall. A roach and a small baggie, maybe. I’d have to look it up.”

  “That’s a surprise,” Joe said. “But I guess it shouldn’t be.”

  Mac nodded. “Yes, thirty-odd years ago smoking pot was pretty common. But his parents hadn’t known anything about it, and their older son had been picked up for possession, so I’d have expected them to recognize the symptoms. I think their reaction is the reason I remember the case—they were really shocked.”

  I got my voice back. “But Bill committed suicide by running a hose from his exhaust into his car. There was nothing in the newspaper report about drugs.”

  “He hadn’t overdosed or anything, Lee. He’d simply smoked some pot. It makes some people depressed, you know. So he drove out to a lonely place, and—like you said—used a garden hose and some duct tape—both of them identified as coming from his parents’ garage—to kill himself.”

  Joe frowned. “But where did Lee’s mom fit in? Why did she run away?”

  “Since nobody ever got to ask her, I have no idea. Maybe she realized he was taking drugs, decided she didn’t want to be married to a druggie, and got on a bus.” Mac turned to me. “Since Bill was dead by his own hand, and the drugs didn’t appear to be directly connected to his death, maybe they weren’t mentioned to the newspaper. Or the editor chose not to print it.”

  We left it at that. Joe and Mac caught up on a few people who had worked in the courthouse back when Joe had been an intern, then Joe and I excused ourselves and left. Mac assured us that he’d see us at our wedding reception. I was sure the feisty little guy would be the life of the party.

  Neither Joe nor I had much to say as we drove back to Warner Pier. I was assimilating the things Mac had told us, especially the part about Bill Dykstra smoking pot. It just didn’t seem possible. My mom had always been firmly against drugs of any sort. She had to be really sick before she took an aspirin. Maybe seeing her fiancé getting into the drug scene had made her run away. But, no, that wouldn’t work because it didn’t explain why she was terrified of Sheriff Carl Van Hoosier. The late Sheriff Carl Van Hoosier. Who, according to Mac McKay, had been run out of office because he did too many favors for Mac’s “rich relatives.”

  The whole thing made my head spin.

  Joe didn’t ask me to come home with him; I guess he could tell I wasn’t in a romantic mood. But after he pulled into Aunt Nettie’s drive, he put both arms around me.

  “You know what you’ve got to do, don’t you?” he said.

  I leaned against him and sighed. “Yeah. I’ve got to ask my mom what happened.”

  “Or drop the whole thing.”

  I laughed. “And leave my curiosity unsatisfied?”

  “Life’s always full of unanswered questions.”

  “Unless . . .” I hesitated, then spoke again. “I don’t suppose that Carl Van Hoosier’s death had anything to do with my asking questions.”

  Joe didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t see how asking questions about something that happened more than thirty years ago could be a motive for killing the old guy today. From the sound of him, Van Hoosier would have gone on making enemies after he was out of office.”

  I kissed Joe good night and went inside. Aunt Nettie was in bed, but awake, so I went in to report on our evening. She was properly horrified by our discovery of Carl Van Hoosier’s body, and listened sympathetically to my tale. But what she really wanted to know was how Inez was doing, and I was glad I could tell her Inez seemed to be fine. She smiled as I described Mac McKay, with his lively interest in the happenings of “his” county—past and present.

  “He more or less claimed to have forced Carl Van Hoosier out of office—all on his own,” I said. “Said Van Hoosier did ‘too many favors for my rich relatives.’ McKay is a second cousin once removed to the heir to the McKay fortune, Quinn McKay.”

  “The one who was kidnapped?”

  “Yep. Mac said he knew him, though he apparently doesn’t associate with the family.”

  I told her what Mac had said about his relatives, and she nodded wisely. “I think the father—that would be Benson McKay III—was married several times,” she said. “But the same Mrs. Benson McKay the Third has come into the shop ever since we opened, so I guess she’s the widow. I think she inherited the summer cottage—or got a life interest in it or something.”

  “That may be the reason Quinn McKay doesn’t come around here much. I was at city council last night, and the McKay Foundation had made a grant to the city. Apparently they’ve made a bunch of grants. If Quinn McKay doesn’t even come up here, I wonder why they’re interested in Warner Pier projects.”

  “Maybe the stepmother is a foundation trustee.”

  “Maybe so. Is the McKay place that big modern thing on the river?”

  “No, that’s a different McKay family. They’re from Detroit. The McKay cottage is about two miles south of this house and on the inland side of Lake Shore Drive. A big old farmhouse.”

  “The inland side? What? The McKays have all that money, and they haven’t bought a view of the lake?”

  Aunt Nettie smiled gently. “My understanding is that the house was inherited from the original McKay pioneers. It was the family farmhouse.”

  “Seems as if they would have traded up.”

  “Mrs. McKay could have inherited the cottage but not enough money to make major changes to it. She and her guests must swim at Badger Creek Beach. It’s just across Lake Shore Drive.”

  Aunt Nettie yawned then, so I said good night. I went up to my room, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at the telephone. I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock. That meant it was ten o’clock at my mother’s townhouse in Dallas.

  My Texas grandmother always told me not to call anyone before nine a.m. or after nine p.m. It was an absolute of Texas etiquette. I felt relieved. I could postpone calling my mom until the next day. Feeling smug, I collected my pajamas and went back downstairs to the bathroom for a shower. I wasn’t a chicken. I was simply being polite, or so I told myself.

  The next morning the Grand Rapids Press was full of the strange death of a retired sheriff in a Warner County retirement center. The current sheriff, Miles DeBoer Smith, said he was conferring with the Michigan State Police, which I knew was routine in rural counties. Neither Smith nor the state police spokesman had said much to the newspaper. They barely confirmed that Van Hoosier was dead, but the reporter had found out about the signs of a struggle in Van Hoosier’s room.

  “Controversial” was the adjective the Press used to describe Van Hoosier’s career in office. The rest of the story was pretty factual.

  Van
Hoosier had been born in Warner County and had attended public schools in Dorinda. “Boasts that his humble beginnings gave him an affinity for the working man were always part of his campaign rhetoric,” the Press article said.

  But Van Hoosier was apparently the last of his humble family. “Van Hoosier never married,” the article said, “Acquaintances said they knew of no close relatives.”

  Van Hoosier apparently hadn’t gone to college. He served in Korea with the U.S. Army, and after his discharge was a deputy for a previous sheriff until he ran for the office himself. He held the office twenty years. The newspaper report then said something I found really interesting.

  “Van Hoosier left office at the age of fifty-two. Since that time he had divided his time between a home in Dorinda and a houseboat he kept on the Florida Intracoastal Waterway. His boat won a national prize for interior design three years ago.”

  The old guy had retired at fifty-two? And he’d had a house in Dorinda plus a houseboat on the Intracoastal Waterway? A houseboat that won a prize for interior design?

  It sounded to me as if serving as a county official in Warner County, Michigan, had turned out to be pretty profitable for Carl Van Hoosier. Especially coming from those “humble beginnings.”

  “Van Hoosier suffered a stroke last summer while staying in Dorinda. He subsequently moved to the Dorinda retirement center,” the article concluded.

  I thought about the article as I got ready for work. I made several deductions. First, Carl Van Hoosier hadn’t been a very nice guy. I’d already decided that from what Mercy Woodyard had said, of course, but reading between the lines of the article on his death certainly confirmed it. The newspaper hadn’t interviewed his “friends,” for example. “Acquaintances” had been the best they could come up with.

  Second, Van Hoosier had apparently used the sheriff’s office to make a lot of money. When a guy who came from “humble beginnings” and who had no family to will him property winds up living in a prizewinning houseboat on a Florida waterway in the winter and spending the summer near the shore of Lake Michigan, he didn’t do it by saving his loose change in a pickle jar. I was willing to bet the McKays weren’t the only summer people he’d done favors for.