The Chocolate Castle Clue

by JoAnna Carl

  I decided not to describe the arm-twisting Margo had used to get Kathy into the living room.

  Hazel had filled the carafe from the big coffeepot, and she was turning toward the door, obviously heading back to the living room. But I had one more question.

  “Hazel, yesterday when Kathy greeted Julie, she asked if Julie had forgiven her.”

  “Um.” Hazel kept walking.

  “What was that all about? Why did Julie need to forgive Kathy?”

  Hazel turned toward me. Her mouth was like a vise—straight and firm—and she gave me a look that made me feel as if I were being pinched by a vise.

  “Let’s not bring that up again,” she said. “He’s been dead more than forty years.”

  Hazel left the kitchen with a tread so determined it would have taken a bulldozer to stop her. She left me feeling completely blank.

  What in the world had she been talking about? At least I knew Kathy and Julie’s problem had involved a “he.” Probably a boyfriend, since both were teenagers the last time they’d seen each other.

  Had they been romantic rivals? It was an odd idea. Kathy was so childlike that the idea of her having a boyfriend was hard to picture. But that was definitely what Hazel’s answer had implied.

  I wondered who “he” had been. Someone who’d been dead for forty years. That described Dan Rice. But it described a lot of other people as well, of course.

  Dan Rice. Hmmm. Was he the reason Mrs. Rice had hated the Pier-O-Ettes? Had she been jealous? Had Dan Rice been one of those men who chase young girls? Hmmm, again.

  I left the kitchen. Aunt Nettie was just coming in from the screened-in porch, where Jackson had set up shop for his interviews. I followed her into the living room.

  “Who’s next?” Aunt Nettie said cheerfully.

  Ruby stood up. “I’ll go. Does he just want to know about what we were doing during the time we were at the football game?”

  “He wants to know about the whole evening,” Aunt Nettie said. “But especially the football game.”

  “That’s easy,” Ruby said. “I was right with you.”

  Aunt Nettie looked slightly surprised, but she didn’t say anything.

  She sat down, and I knelt beside her. “I guess I’m just in the way,” I said. “I’ll run along.”

  “No!” Aunt Nettie’s answer was quick. Then she spoke softly. “Stay for a while, Lee. I may need some help.”

  So I sat on the floor next to Aunt Nettie’s chair and listened. Some of the Pier-O-Ettes’ conversations were funny and some weren’t. Like any six different women, they’d had different experiences since they’d graduated from high school.

  Margo brushed off comments about marriage, but the reason she was single seemed pretty obvious to me—Kathy. As long as she felt responsible for giving her sister a home, it was hard to let a man into her life.

  “I always concentrated on getting ahead in the company,” Margo said. “And it paid off.”

  Did it ever. I’d read that Margo was among the fifty most highly paid women in American business.

  “Kathy has always worked, too,” Margo said. “She’s a nursery school music teacher.”

  Everyone made encouraging noises at Kathy. “How wonderful.” “That must be really rewarding.” “Now we know how you’ve kept your voice.”

  Kathy smiled slyly. “Sure. Singing ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ really makes you practice.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence, and Hazel spoke. “The only singing I’ve done was church choir.”

  “Church soloist,” Aunt Nettie said.

  Hazel shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is to the choir director,” Aunt Nettie said. “She’s told me how great it is to have a really good singer to rely on.”

  Kathy smiled brightly. “We’re both volunteers, Hazel.”

  Margo bit her lip.

  Watching the Pier-O-Ettes was like watching a soap opera.

  One by one the women went out to the screened-in porch to give their statements. One by one they came back. Nobody said much about what they had told Jackson until after he left. Then the conversation burst out.

  They also celebrated by passing the chocolates.

  A dish of TenHuis molded pastilles—flat pieces of chocolate—had been sitting on the coffee table all morning, and I hadn’t seen anybody touch one. As soon as Jackson left, Ruby gave a loud, “Whew!” and reached for the dish. She grabbed a pastille with a silhouette of the old high school and wolfed it down. Julie went for a milk chocolate version of the historic boat. Hazel took a dark chocolate diploma. Kathy nibbled a tiny mortarboard, and Margo ate a replica of the pioneer school. Even Aunt Nettie went for a dark chocolate version of the old Root Beer Barrel, and I had a tiny school.

  All of them reported that they had told the detective they stayed together. “Of course, I did go to the restroom,” Ruby said. “But I’d come to see Craig play, so I waited until the opposing team had the ball.”

  Aunt Nettie looked at her lap and frowned.

  “I did step around behind the bleachers to make a phone call,” Julie said. “I called my assistant.”

  Aunt Nettie frowned again.

  “I’m afraid I sat there like a lump,” Hazel said.

  Aunt Nettie looked a bit surprised.

  “I was with Margo,” Kathy said.

  Aunt Nettie studied her fingernails.

  Margo didn’t offer any report on her activities during the game. She obviously wasn’t in the habit of explaining her actions.

  Aunt Nettie stood up. “I’m going to call about our lunch reservation,” she said. “And, Lee, I’m going to ask you to do an errand for me. Come along, and I’ll explain it.”

  I obediently followed her into the kitchen, expecting her to use the phone there to call the restaurant where I knew the Pier-O-Ettes were booked for lunch. But Aunt Nettie walked right by the phone and out the back door. She crossed the yard, with me trailing along, headed for a large evergreen shrub in the corner. She went around the shrub, then turned to face me.

  “Lee,” she said. “They’re all fibbing, and I don’t know what to do about it. You’re going to have to help me.”

  Chapter 10

  I nearly dropped my teeth all over the lawn.

  “Fibbing? How do you know they’re all fibbing?” I said.

  “I was there, Lee. They did not spend the whole second half innocently sitting in the bleachers.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They wandered. When we got there, a lot of people had already gone home, so we found seats on the fifty-yard line, about halfway up the stands. Immediately—immediately—the girls began to go in different directions.”

  “I’d already figured out that leaving the stadium without anybody noticing would have been the easiest thing in the world.”

  “Of course it would! There’s always a mob in the stands when the game starts. But the numbers clear out late in the game. All the band parents begin to head for the exits after the halftime show, for example. And people go to the restrooms or to buy coffee—they keep milling around.”

  “Yes, but it’s hard to think of the Pier-O-Ettes joining the milling throng. Mostly people move around to talk to their friends, but three members of your group are from out of town these days. They hardly know anyone to mill with.”

  “They still got up and walked off. I don’t know where they went. I do know I did stay in the group of seats we’d picked. But I was the only one who was there the whole time. Even Ruby left, and she was the one who supposedly wanted to see the game. I was never alone—I mean, some of the girls were with me at all times, but the five of them were never with me all at once. To add to the confusion, of course, people who weren’t part of our group came over to talk.”

  She sighed. “I just can’t tell Sergeant Jackson all this.”

  “I doubt he’s even interested. It doesn’t really matter.”

  “It could matter, Lee. I’m relying on you to
figure it out.”

  Her remark didn’t make sense to me. “Figure it out? I doubt if anyone could ever figure it out.”

  “If anyone can, it’s you, Lee. And I’m asking you to give it a try.”

  “Are you asking me to check the Pier-O-Ettes’ alibis?”

  “Yes. You can talk to people. Maybe someone saw one of them leaving the stadium.”

  “What? Aunt Nettie, I can’t do that! It would take a trained corps of detectives weeks to check on where each of the Pier-O-Ettes was during the game. And even if I were able to do it logistically, Jackson wouldn’t like it at all. Why can’t you talk to him? If he needs to know, he’ll check up himself.”

  She looked at me pleadingly. She had tears in her eyes. “Lee, these are my oldest friends. I can’t tell the police that I don’t believe their stories.”

  “If you think one of them killed Mrs. Rice . . .”

  “No! I’m sure none of them would ever hurt anyone.”

  “Then why do you want their stories checked?”

  “Because they’ve forgotten how small a town this is. Jackson is sure to find out they’re not telling the truth. And that’s going to make them look bad. If I knew of any . . . discrepancies, then I could urge that person to tell Jackson herself. That would look much better.”

  Aunt Nettie smiled through her tears. She seemed to think her convoluted reasoning was convincing, but it sure wasn’t to me. I opened my mouth, ready to give her a firm refusal.

  Then she put her hand on my arm. “Lee, please help me.”

  Bang. A direct hit. My life flashed before my eyes. I was sixteen and angry because my parents were getting a divorce. Aunt Nettie and Uncle Phil took me in for the summer. Uncle Phil taught me to balance the cash register and other elementary bookkeeping and made me feel grown-up. Aunt Nettie was ready to listen anytime I wanted to talk. Then I was twenty-eight and in despair over my own divorce, and Aunt Nettie took me in again. Again she listened when I wanted to talk, and she convinced me that I was the only person who could save her livelihood. She made me feel useful. I owed her—if not my present happy life, then at least the more normal elements of my mental health.

  I thought her desire to check the alibis of the Pier-O-Ettes was silly. But if she asked me to swim the one hundred miles across Lake Michigan, I’d go put on my bathing suit. I owed her.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll see what I can do. But if I can’t find anything out quickly, I’m going to drop the whole project.” I took a deep breath. “And you’re the first person I need to ask a few questions.”

  “Cross my heart, Lee. I sat right in those bleachers. I can give you a list of the people who stopped to talk to me.”

  “That list would be a good thing to have. But my questions are not about the football game. For beginners, let’s go back to yesterday afternoon. Why did Kathy get hysterical when I pulled out the trophy?”

  “You think that the trophy brought on her hysterical fit?”

  “Well, after you hid the trophy, she calmed down. So I assume you think it brought the whole thing on.”

  “I hid the trophy because Margo signaled for me to do that.”

  “Oh. But why was the trophy a problem?”

  She stared at the tree in front of us. “I have no idea, Lee.” “Did you ask Margo about it?”

  “No. We didn’t discuss it.”

  I went on to another question. “Why wouldn’t you let Shep come in the house yesterday? And why did you use Kathy’s emotional state as an excuse?”

  “Kathy tends to be afraid of men. I wanted Margo to prepare her.”

  “Now we come to the big question. What is Kathy’s problem?”

  “Her problem?”

  “Come on, Aunt Nettie! Don’t act innocent. Why is she so dependent on Margo?”

  That was the only question Aunt Nettie answered the same way that Hazel had. Kathy had some sort of brain damage, a birth injury, she said. The girls’ mother had always insisted that Margo help take care of her.

  “You know how kids say, ‘You’re not the boss of me.’ Well, Margo always was the boss of Kathy. I don’t know if that made Kathy dependent or it made Margo dominant.”

  “Probably both.”

  Aunt Nettie nodded unhappily. “I admit they have a warped relationship. But, Lee, Margo really does love Kathy. It’s not—exploitive. Margo wants what’s best for her sister.”

  I stood there and thought about all this.

  “People sure are funny,” I said finally. “I’ll ask around and see what I can find out about the football game.”

  My answer pleased Aunt Nettie. “You can start with Maggie McNutt,” she said. “The Drama Club was selling concessions last night. Maggie was right by the front gate, running the popcorn machine.”

  Aunt Nettie went inside then and began to gather the Pier-O-Ettes together to go out to lunch. Afterward they were to meet with the Warner Pier High School choir director to rehearse their numbers for the reunion. They politely invited me along, but I declined. I used lunch with Joe as an excuse, even though I wasn’t sure I could find him.

  I did one more thing before they left. I got the old friends to pose while I took a photo with my cell phone. No one demurred. I also took several snapshots while they were climbing into Julie’s fancy limo. It was what I call a rock-star limo—with a horseshoe-shaped seat lining the back and the left-hand side, lots of flashing lights, and spaces for ice and bottles of refreshments. It was a playful vehicle, and the Pier-O-Ettes were enjoying it.

  They’d driven off before I realized I’d forgotten to ask Aunt Nettie one of my key questions: Why did Kathy ask Julie to forgive her? I’d have to find another opportunity to ask that one.

  As soon as they were out of sight, I went to TenHuis Chocolade, called Joe’s cell phone, and arranged to meet him for lunch in an hour. I raided the throwaway bin in the back room, helping myself to a mystery chocolate. It turned out to have an exterior decorated to look like a crème de menthe bonbon—a dark chocolate square with white chocolate covering the top—but the interior was raspberry cream. Yummy, but we couldn’t sell it.

  Then I spent forty-five minutes on the computer, working on the Pier-O-Ette photos I’d taken with my cell phone. I printed up six copies of the group shot, so I could give each of them one as a souvenir. Then I printed close-ups of each of the “girls.” When I got through, I had passable individual pictures of each Pier-O-Ette. That might help me in the probably fruitless effort to trace their movements.

  At the proper time I walked down to the Sidewalk Café to meet Joe for lunch. The Sidewalk is just a block from my office, and it’s one of the few restaurants open in Warner Pier after the Columbus Day weekend, the time when the summer tourist season is finally, definitely over.

  Because of that, it wasn’t too surprising to see Charlie McCoy’s antique Corvette parked near the entrance. He and Shep had to eat lunch somewhere.

  I pointed the sports car out to Joe, and we looked it over. “It’s a beauty,” Joe said.

  “Right!” A voice boomed behind us. “And you can own it for only ten times what it cost originally.”

  It was Good-Time Charlie, of course. He had come out of the Sidewalk when he saw us looking at the car. I introduced him to Joe, and Charlie told us about the Corvette.

  “It belonged to a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Pull the other one.”

  Charlie grinned. “Actually, it was a high school graduation gift to a girl from a well-to-do Grand Rapids family. She took it to college, but after her freshman year she got married and joined the station-wagon crowd. Somehow the Vette got stored away in her parents’ garage. Nobody drove it regularly, but nobody sold it either. Last year the parents’ home went on the market, and the lady in question—now well into middle age—finally sold it. I will say she had a very firm grasp of how much it was worth.”

  “I love it,” I said. “Judging by the fact that you do
n’t have a dealer’s tag on it, you love it, too. It’s your personal car, right?”

  Charlie nodded. “Right. It’s the car I always wanted when I was a young guy. Actually, now that I think about it, I dreamed of being a taxi driver, but I just couldn’t hack it.”

  Joe and I gave the expected groans. I tapped the Corvette’s license plate. The figures on it were 7321.

  “Seven times three is twenty-one,” I said.

  Charlie laughed. “You noticed that.”

  “I’m a number person. I see patterns in numbers all the time.”

  “You’ve guessed my secret. Seven is my lucky number, and so are multiples of seven. But people rarely catch on.”

  “Joe can tell you I remember numbers,” I said. “But sometimes I can’t remember why.”

  “Yes,” Joe said. “Early on I learned not to forget her birthday.”

  I ignored him. “There was some car I saw recently that had a number with a similar pattern. But that one was seven times two equals fourteen.”

  Charlie stared at me for a moment. “You really are a number person,” he said. “Listen, Shep and I just ordered lunch. Why don’t you two nice people join us?”

  Before I could say no, Joe agreed. I wasn’t pleased. I wanted to consult Joe about Aunt Nettie’s request, and I couldn’t do that in front of Charlie and Shep.

  Our lunch was fine, I guess. The Sidewalk food is always good, and the ambiance is fun. The restaurant’s décor is inspired by children’s sidewalk games, with hopscotch diagrams painted on the floor and with roller skates, antique scooters, and jacks hanging on the walls. It’s one of the three restaurants operated by Joe’s stepfather, Mike Herrera. Mike wasn’t there to come over and greet us, so we didn’t mention the connection. We won’t let Mike give us a discount.

  I couldn’t figure out why Joe wanted to eat lunch with Shep and Charlie. The meal was almost over before I caught on.

  “I guess you guys both knew Mrs. Rice, back in the old days,” Joe said. Shep and Charlie probably thought Joe was just making conversation, but the casualness of his voice told me he’d come to the point.