by JoAnna Carl
“Did the call scare your mother?”
“I think she felt the same way I did. Jeremy was always overdramatic. Neither of us took it seriously.”
“Did you know Jeremy was in Warner Pier for the summer?”
“I sure didn’t, and I don’t know how he found out I was here. My arrival got very little attention.”
“This is a small town. Maybe he saw you on the street.”
“I didn’t see him. Besides, I’ve only been here a few weeks, and I’ve been hanging around the boatyard. I’ve only been downtown a few times.” He smiled at me. “You know, for chocolate. The people at the boatyard ate the box you gave me, so I had to go buy more.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
“I do. And the girls are always—you know, pleasant.”
I hoped Byron hadn’t tried to date any of the girls. Then they might not have been so pleasant. I was sure they’d have said no. He certainly wasn’t love’s young dream.
Joe wrote down the phone number Jeremy had left with Byron’s mother, then thought the whole thing over a few minutes before he spoke again. “Byron, could I talk to your mom directly?”
Byron thought. “Sure. It’s Sunday. She ought to be home. Maybe her story will make more sense to someone else.”
He produced a cell phone from his pocket and called the number for us. After his mom answered, he explained why he had called and said Joe wanted a firsthand account of Jeremy’s call. Then he put the phone on the speaker setting so all three of us could follow the conversation.
Not that it turned out to be much of a conversation. The only thing notable was that Mrs. Wendt had a nasal Jersey accent. That struck me as odd, because her son’s accent wasn’t so pronounced. Okay, okay—I minored in speech, and I think regional accents are interesting, though they’re disappearing fast, largely because of the influence of television. So I notice the way people talk.
But whatever her accent, Mrs. Wendt didn’t have a lot to add to the story Byron had already told us.
“Jeremy said a dangerous situation had arisen,” she said. “He said Byron needed to know about it. And he said that he’d explain it all to you, and Byron could call you if he wasn’t able to reach him. Reach Jeremy, I mean. Did Jeremy tell you what’s going on?”
“No,” Joe said. “As far as I know he didn’t even try to call me.”
“Maybe the whole thing is a hoax,” she said.
“What would be Jeremy’s purpose in starting such a hoax?”
“That I don’t know. But why did he call me, anyway? Calling a mother to tell her that her son may be in a dangerous situation—and then not describing the situation—well, I admit that I hope it was a hoax.”
Byron spoke then. “I thought it was a hoax. Or a joke of some kind. I was going to just ignore the call until I heard that Jeremy had disappeared.”
Joe asked Mrs. Wendt exactly when Jeremy had called. The call had come in two days earlier, about ten o’clock in the evening, she told us. “I told him it was kinda late.”
“Huh.” Joe grunted, then sat silently, apparently thinking over what she had said.
So I took the opportunity to ask a question.
“Mrs. Wendt, were there any sounds in the background when Jeremy made his call?”
“Sounds?”
“Dogs barking. Horns honking. Ice cream trucks tinkling.”
“None of those things.” She laughed. “I did get a snatch of Elvis.”
Joe, Byron, and I all spoke in unison. “Elvis?”
“Yeah. It was some recording of an Elvis Presley song. ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog.’ I heard it for just a minute. It wasn’t loud. Then the sound went dead. At the time I thought Jeremy had hung up. But maybe he put his hand over the speaker. Or maybe it was a radio or some other phone cutting in.”
“And you didn’t hear the sound again?”
“No, just that few seconds of ‘Hound Dog.’ Elvis complaining that he was crying all the time. Or some other part of the lyric.”
That seemed to cover the subject. Joe took Mrs. Wendt’s number, asking her to call him if Jeremy phoned her again. He gave her his cell number. Then all four of us said good-bye. And I left for the office. I couldn’t put off going in any longer.
The place was crowded when I arrived. Instead of going to my office, I joined Tracy and Brenda behind the counter, boxing up bonbons, truffles, and molded chocolates as quickly as possible. I’m always surprised at the way tourists buy our chocolate. After all, a chocolate fanatic could buy a half dozen Cadbury Caram-ello bars—that happens to be my own favorite mass-market chocolate bar—for about what he or she would spend for a quarter of a pound of TenHuis Dutch caramel bonbons. Yes, our bonbons are better, but superficially the product description is the same for either product: “creamy, European-style caramel filling coated in dark chocolate.” Well, maybe the Cara-mello is coated in milk chocolate.
After about twenty minutes, the three of us had caught up with the rush, and I was able to talk to the girls for a few minutes.
“How was the movie?”
They looked at each other, but neither answered.
“Yesterday,” I said. “I ran into Will, Brenda, and he said you all were going into Holland to a movie. What did you see?”
“We didn’t go,” Brenda said. “We changed our minds.”
Tracy couldn’t stand it any longer. She blurted out what she knew. “They stayed home and had a big fight!”
“Oh, gee!” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that. Fights are never fun.”
I looked closely at Brenda. She didn’t seem distraught. In fact, her mouth had a grim appearance that looked more angry than upset.
Throughout the summer’s troubles with Will, I’d tried hard to keep from telling Brenda what to do about them. I tried to keep from even hinting at how she should handle her problems with Will. For one thing, I’m not her mother. For another, telling kids how to handle their romances sensibly is almost certain to cause them to do the opposite of what you suggest—in other words, to handle them stupidly. It’s a no-win situation, and I wanted to stay out of it.
So I didn’t say anything else. Instead, I went into my office and sat at my desk. To my surprise Brenda followed me, closing the door behind her. So she apparently wanted to talk to me.
When she spoke, she kept her voice low, and I concluded that she still hadn’t confided in Tracy. “It’s this Marco Spear thing again. Will keeps nagging me about it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that!”
“I’m getting really tired of it.” She leaned over my desk and spoke firmly. “And I’m not planning to marry someone who can’t take a joke. No matter how sexy he is.”
She gave a firm nod, straightened up, and went back into the retail shop.
So there.
She still hadn’t asked my advice. Good.
I tried to do my own work, but I couldn’t help keeping an eye on Tracy. My dad, a small-town Texas mechanic, would have said she was “about to bust a gut.” She was so curious about what Brenda had told me that she could hardly keep from jumping up and down and screaming.
Twice she made some excuse to come into the office and talk to me about nothing. When she spoke to Brenda, she was obviously trying to pretend nothing was wrong. I concluded that she had quizzed Brenda earlier and had been refused information. Tracy didn’t act angry; after all, she couldn’t admit to being mad at Brenda for refusing to share her personal business.
At least Tracy’s reaction was funny. I wasn’t surprised when she came into my office a third time. I looked up as she came in, wondering what her excuse was now. To my surprise Tracy offered me an envelope.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “This fell out of the door when we opened up at twelve. I forgot all about it.”
At first I thought she was handing me a piece of trash. It was a preprinted envelope, a little bigger than six inches by three inches. It had probably come from some publication. It was the sort of envel
ope, usually begging me to subscribe, that annoys me by falling out when I try to read a magazine.
Not only was it a common, usually useless item, but it was also dirty. It was smudged with actual dirt, plus someone had scribbled all over the front of it with a marking pen.
In other words, it looked like a piece of trash. I’m sure I frowned at the sight.
“I nearly threw it out,” Tracy said. “Luckily, I looked at the back.”
I flipped the envelope over. It was sealed. And written across the flap was “Please deliver to Joe Woodyard.”
There was no name, street address, or box number for the sender, and the envelope had not been stamped.
When I looked at the front, I saw that the scribbling there wasn’t purposeless. The original address had been crossed out, and the word “Over” had been scrawled across the bottom.
“This was stuck into the door?” I probably sounded as puzzled as I felt.
“Right. Brenda and I thought it was kind of peculiar.”
“I think you’re right.”
Tracy’s tone was eager. “Are you going to open it?”
“It’s addressed to Joe. I’ll take it to him.”
“It sure is weird.” Tracy went back to work.
“Weird” did seem to be the word for it. A hand-delivered message was unusual enough. And the makeshift envelope—that was strange, too. And for it to be delivered to my office, not to Joe’s and not to our home—well, that was unexpected.
It was beyond weird. It was mysterious.
My mind immediately jumped to Hal and Jeremy—the two missing guys. And Hal had wanted to meet with Joe on a legal matter. Could this note be from Hal?
Heaven knows how I resisted the temptation to rip that envelope open.
Instead I picked up the telephone and called the boat shop.
Joe, darn him, wasn’t there. So I called his cell phone. It was turned off.
Where could Joe be?
I reviewed the day’s activities. We’d had brunch with Max Morgan, then talked with Byron Wendt about Jeremy.
Joe might think both conversations should be discussed with Hogan Jones.
I called the police station.
The phone was answered by the county dispatcher. It was Sunday, so all calls to the Warner Pier PD were being handled by the Warner County Sheriff’s Office, thirty miles away.
I apologized for bothering the dispatcher and hung up. But I wasn’t giving up. Next I tried Hogan’s cell phone.
And I nearly fell out of my chair when Joe answered it.
“Joe? I thought I called Hogan.”
“He’s busy. When he saw your number, he handed me the phone. What’s up?”
“You got a strange message. In writing. Delivered to TenHuis Chocolade.”
“That is odd. Who’s it from?”
“There’s no return address.” I picked the envelope up and examined it again while I described it to Joe.
He answered with a noncommittal grunt.
I was more curious than ever. “Where are you and Hogan?”
“At the police station.”
“That’s just a couple of blocks. I could bring the envelope over.”
“No. Hogan doesn’t need any callers this afternoon.”
“What’s going on?”
Joe lowered his voice. “You know that body we pulled out of the lake yesterday?”
“The drowned man? I’m not likely to forget it.”
“It turns out he wasn’t drowned.”
“Wasn’t drowned!”
“Nope. The preliminary autopsy found a bullet hole hidden in all that dark hair.”
Chocolate Chat
Gardeners Like Chocolate Plants
Cacao isn’t the only “chocolate” plant. Some gardeners grow flowers and vegetables that are “chocolate.”
These don’t taste like cocoa; the term describes their color. Most of them are that dark, rich brown verging on burgundy that we call chocolate.
The Cherokee Chocolate tomato, for example, is a dark red with a deeper, almost brown color near the stem. The plants are touted in magazines as producing tomatoes weighing from ten ounces to a pound.
Other “chocolate” plants include a cosmos, a sunflower, a viola, and the chocolate pincushion flower.
Near Langley, Washington, on Whidbey Island, is the Chocolate Flower Farm. The farm is actually a nursery specializing in dark-colored flowers, especially chocolate ones.
Chapter 13
I gasped. “Oh, no! Does Hogan know any more details?”
“Not yet. He just now found out about it.”
“Have they figured out who the guy is?”
“No.”
I had a million other questions. Had anyone been reported missing who might be the dead man? Were any of the marinas missing a boat? Were any swimmers missing? My questions came pouring out.
“Hang on!” Joe said. “Hogan is doing everything possible to find out about the guy, but it takes time. Somebody’s got to miss him before anyone knows he’s gone. It’s only been two days.”
“Could he have shot himself?”
“Not in the back of the head.”
“Oooh. Yuck.”
“I’m nearly through here at the police station. I brought Byron by to make sure he reported that phone call from Jeremy. When we got here Hogan had just heard the word about the guy in the lake being a shooting victim. I’ll leave in a few minutes and take Byron back to the boatyard—or wherever he needs to go. Then I’ll come over to your place to pick up that message.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to bring it over? It might be from Jeremy, if he isn’t dead. Or from Hal, if he isn’t dead either.”
Joe sighed. “I started to ask you to read it to me, but it might be a privileged communication. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
It was thirty minutes before Joe arrived, and if I had thought Tracy was going to bust a gut with curiosity about Brenda—well, I was definitely leading in the gut-busting contest during those thirty minutes. I was dying to know what was in that envelope. I longed to rip into it. It didn’t do any good to tell myself it was probably something like a bill or a receipt or a note asking Joe to serve on a committee. I couldn’t think of any reason that a bill or a receipt or an ordinary note would have been delivered to TenHuis Chocolade on a Sunday, rather than to the Vintage Boats post office box on a Monday morning. But why would a message to Joe from anybody at all come to TenHuis in the first place? And why in a makeshift envelope?
I was chewing my nails by the time Joe got there. Of course he could tell how curious I was, so he teased me. He dawdled around before he opened the odd note, looking at both sides of the envelope, holding it up to the light, pretending to sniff it, then acting as if he was going to slip it into his pocket unopened.
Finally I brandished my letter opener at him. It’s shaped like a miniature sword, and I held it up like a dagger. “In a mystery novel,” I said, “this would be a great murder weapon.”
Joe laughed. “Give me the letter opener—handle first, please.”
He slit the top of the envelope carefully, then spread the top open, turned it over, and made a motion as if he were emptying the contents. Nothing came out.
“No mysterious white powder,” he said.
Finally, Joe reached inside the envelope and pulled out a small sheet of lined paper. It had a ragged edge, as if it had been ripped from a notebook. He read it. Then he shook his head, rolled his eyes, and tossed the message over to me.
As I read it, he called out, “Tracy! Did you do this?”
“What? What have I done now?” Tracy came running into the office.
I held up the small sheet of paper, and she read it aloud.
“‘If Marco Spear comes to Warner Pier, he’ll be in danger!’”
Tracy’s eyes bugged. “Who would threaten Marco Spear?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t think anyone would, Tracy.”
“But this m
essage . . .”
“Is a fake,” he said. “Some kind of publicity stunt, maybe. Silliness.”
“What does it have to do with me? Did you think I would write something like that?”
I answered her. “We don’t really think that, Tracy. Joe just means it probably came from someone who knows how interested you and the other counter girls have been in the rumor about Marco Spear. Whoever wrote it was teasing you.”
“But then why was it addressed to Joe?”
“I don’t know. Joe? What do you think?”
“I have no idea. All I know is that someone has been trying to link us to the pirates all along, and now they’ve started on the top pirate, Marco Spear. I’m tired of it.”
“Do you think we should show it to Hogan?” I said.
“Hogan has a dead man on his hands. I don’t want to bother him with a silly note.”
Joe swore Tracy and Brenda to secrecy, asking them not to mention the note. “Let’s not start any new rumors,” he said.
Both agreed to keep the note quiet, especially because Joe said he was sure it was a joke of some sort and that the two of them might be intended targets of the joker. Joe and I both knew that asking for a direct promise was the best way to keep Tracy from talking. We’d sworn her to secrecy in the past, and she’d always kept her word. Brenda wasn’t quite as talkative. Or maybe, being a summer worker only, she didn’t know as many people to talk to. But it was good to make her promise not to talk about it, too.
I had been a bit surprised, however, that Joe showed the two girls the note at all, but he explained quietly that he thought satisfying their curiosity about it might keep them from talking. I hoped he was right.
Joe left, saying he was going to go back to the boat shop to try to do some work. “Varnishing a hull sounds real soothing right now,” he said. “I want to forget this whole business.”
I noticed that he took the odd note with him, although he left the envelope behind.
I wasn’t quite ready to forget the matter. I looked the envelope over. “Business Reply Mail.” The words were printed in big letters and enclosed in a rectangular box. Underneath that box, in smaller letters, it said, “Postage will be paid by addressee.” I had seen thousands of envelopes like it. Whenever I pick up a magazine, it seems that a half dozen of them fall out.