The Chocolate Castle Clue

by JoAnna Carl

  “What we did had nothing to do with his death. To tell the truth, I’ve always thought Mrs. Rice shot him herself.”

  Chapter 20

  I was so surprised that I ran my right front tire up onto Aunt Nettie’s curb.

  “Rats!” I said. “If I ruin one of my new tires, Joe and I really will go to fist city.”

  “Oh dear, Lee! Are you and Joe having problems?”

  “No! I’m joking. He wasn’t very happy about me chasing that guy last night. But we’ll work it out without coming to blows. I’m more concerned about the news you just announced. Let’s go over that again. You think that Verna Rice killed her husband?”

  “I don’t know what happened to him, but I’ve always thought it was likely. She was mean enough.”

  “Okay. That’s a given. And if she found him nude, with his clothes over the side of the deck, she was probably mad enough. It doesn’t sound as if that situation would have appealed to her sense of humor. But do you have any actual evidence against her?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know whose gun shot Dan Rice?”

  “No. But it wasn’t one of our guns. We took them all away with us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Margo made us show them before we left.”

  “Margo should have been a general. But she left a bullet from her own gun.”

  Aunt Nettie laughed. “Lee, she fired it into a pail of sand.”

  “A pail of sand. Where did she get a pail of sand?”

  “It was for the smokers. Everybody smoked back then. There were ashtrays on every table in every restaurant, for example. Businesses with outdoor areas, like the Castle’s deck, had big pails of sand sitting around for people to put their cigarettes out in. Margo brought one of the pails into the office so she’d have it handy for target practice. When she wanted to make a believer out of Mr. Rice, she fired her pistol into it. Then she put the pail outside again.”

  “Did she sift the sand to get the bullet out?”

  Aunt Nettie laughed. “Not to my knowledge. Who was going to look for it?”

  “After Dan Rice was shot . . .”

  “Lee, they had the bullet—and the gun—that killed him. No officer was going to sift a bucket of sand full of cigarette butts on the off chance that he’d find a stray bullet. They thought Dan Rice shot himself, after all. They didn’t search too hard.”

  “True. But this whole thing adds up to the craziest story I ever heard in my life.”

  “Maybe so. However, it’s the truth.” Aunt Nettie got out of the van. “But you see why we didn’t want to tell the police about all this.”

  “Yes, I certainly see that!”

  “Anyway, thanks for the ride. I’d better get the house open and some crackers and cheese out before everyone gets here.”

  “Aunt Nettie! We can’t just leave things like this.”

  “Like what, Lee?”

  “You’ve told me all this. I feel—well, shouldn’t we do something about it?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Lee, you kept probing around until Kathy told you the beginning of the story, so I felt that I had to tell the rest, the part she doesn’t know. Kathy is too innocent to think about you passing the story on. But I would never have told you my part if I hadn’t felt I could trust you not to repeat this. Even to Joe.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve never told Hogan.” Aunt Nettie’s voice was firm. That statement put an end to the whole thing as far as she was concerned.

  She slammed the van’s door and leaned toward the open window. “I’ll see you later, Lee. Bye for now. And you be real nice to Joe. Make things up with him.”

  “Wait just a dadgum minute, Aunt Nettie. What did you do with the film?”

  “The pictures we took? Margo destroyed that film years ago.”

  “What about the film of Kathy?”

  “Oh. Margo destroyed that, too.”

  I must have looked worried, because Aunt Nettie used her most reassuring voice. “Now, Lee, it’s been forty-five years since all that happened. So I think we can forget about it. Now, you run on home.”

  She walked away, leaving me sitting in my van feeling as blank as I’ve ever felt in my life. That was the craziest story I’d ever heard. I banged my head against the steering wheel.

  But Aunt Nettie was calling back to me. “Now, Lee, you go home, and be really nice to Joe.”

  I should be nice to him? He was the one who’d used the word “stupid.” I thought that, but I didn’t say anything. I needed to absorb what Aunt Nettie had said. I couldn’t worry about Joe right that moment.

  Aunt Nettie went away, leaving me feeling as if the world had turned upside down.

  Aunt Nettie forcing two men to strip off their clothes? Holding them at gunpoint? Aunt Nettie did that? My dear, kind aunt Nettie?

  It was as if the sky had fallen. As if the whole natural order of things had gone kerflop.

  But what could I do about it? Aunt Nettie was right about one thing. It had all happened forty-five years earlier. There was very little chance it had even a remote connection with the present-day problem, the killing of Mrs. Rice. So I couldn’t feel that I was concealing evidence in any current crime investigation.

  I started the van’s motor, carefully backed off the curb, and drove to the office. Maybe if I did routine things—like my job—I could move the earth back into its normal orbit.

  But no. That wasn’t going to happen. When I parked in front of the shop, I saw Charlie McCoy’s flashy white Corvette sitting at the curb.

  What did Good-Time Charlie want? Somehow I doubted that he’d simply come by for a pound of crème de menthe bonbons, especially since we weren’t open that afternoon.

  I parked beside the Vette, and he got out of the low-slung car quite gracefully considering what a tubby guy he was. His only concession to cool was sunglasses.

  I greeted him warily, waiting for a bad joke, but for once his mood seemed to be serious.

  “Lee! I just heard about your awful experience last night.”

  “I seem to be recovering.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. You’re a brave young woman. But that must have been terribly frightening.”

  “I’m only sorry I didn’t get a good look at the guy.”

  “From what I hear, you tried.”

  “Not very effectively.” It was time to change the subject.

  “What are you up to today?”

  “Shep called and told me about your adventure. I was coming down to Warner Pier this afternoon anyway, so I thought I’d drop by.”

  “You’ve been around Warner Pier a lot lately. Is this a regular thing for you?”

  “No. When the Castle closed—back in the dim days of my youth—I moved to Holland, and a few months later I opened my first car lot. I’ve never been here again, even though it was so close. Horning in on the Pier-O-Ette reunion enticed me back. Saturday was the first time I’d been in town in forty-five years.”

  “I guess the town has changed a lot.”

  “Wooee, hasn’t it! But the whole country has changed a lot. Forty-five years ago there was a drug dealer on every corner.”

  “In Warner Pier?”

  “Everywhere. Grand Rapids, Detroit, Chicago—you could buy stuff anywhere.”

  “Joe says the Warner Pier City Council of that day tried to crack down.”

  “He’s right. They did. But there was always a guy wearing a psychedelic shirt sitting over there by the drugstore with a ready supply.”

  “Right on Peach Street?”

  “Yes, sirree. And there was another guy who worked at Warner Pier Beach.”

  “Were drugs a problem at the Castle?”

  Charlie sounded suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  “A problem for the bouncers. You and Shep said the Rices tried to keep the hippie element out, and the two of you were supposed to be keeping order.”

  “Oh.
The Castle didn’t appeal to the drug crowd. That’s why it was losing money, I guess. That and Mrs. Rice.”

  “Was she involved in managing the Castle?”

  “No.” Charlie laughed. “She was too good to work in a dance hall. Or that was what she handed out. If she had been involved, she and Dan probably would have made money. At least they would have kept it. She was the type who never lets go of a penny. But she stayed away from the operations of the place, except to make sure Dan wasn’t chasing the help.”

  “Then how could she have had anything to do with the Castle’s downward financial slide?”

  “She insisted that Dan hire musicians who were old-fashioned. She encouraged him to go with the ‘family-fun’ theme. But families had stopped going to places like the Castle. She needed to cater to young people.”

  “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll? The way you described the era at lunch yesterday?”

  Charlie laughed. “If she and Dan had turned the Castle into a disco—well, it sounds old-fashioned now, but at the time . . .”

  “It might have saved the day?”

  “Some people made big money then.” Charlie moved toward his car. “I didn’t mean to chew your ear off talking about the bad old days. I was just going to say I’m sorry you had that scary experience.”

  “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “Your home phone is in the directory. No one was there, so I tried Joe’s shop. He said you were working down here this afternoon.”

  I assured Charlie I appreciated his dropping by, then watched as he climbed into his beautiful Corvette, gunned the engine loudly, and drove off with a roar.

  I spoke aloud. “And what,” I said, “was that all about?” Yes, I wondered, why had Charlie McCoy come by? He said he came to express sympathy for my scary experience, but there was no reason that he needed to do that. I barely knew him. If Aunt Nettie or Joe’s mom or my best friend, Lindy, called to check or came by with a shoulder for me to cry on, it would be because they loved me and really cared. But Charlie McCoy was practically a stranger to me. I certainly wasn’t about to confide in him, and he obviously hadn’t expected me to pour out my heart.

  In fact, he hadn’t even asked any questions. And that was odd, too. If something like a man hiding in the backseat of your car happens, and strangers talk about it, it usually means they want more details than they’re entitled to know.

  And speaking of details, I suddenly had a question for Aunt Nettie. As soon as I was in my office, I picked up the phone and punched in her number. It was answered on the first ring, but the person on the line wasn’t Aunt Nettie. It was Margo Street.

  Aunt Nettie, she said, wasn’t available.

  “Oh.” I said. “I’ll call back.”

  Margo sounded exasperated. “I suppose Nettie told you we all have to meet with that Lieutenant Jackson again tomorrow morning.”

  My question answered. “I forgot to ask her. But I was wondering if you all had worked that out.”

  Again I wondered whom Margo had called from the stadium, and why she’d left during the game. But I didn’t have the courage to ask her.

  She was speaking once more. “I suppose we have to talk to him, but I still don’t see how our harmless little omissions could impede a murder investigation.”

  “Joe thinks—”

  “Oh, I know what Joe thinks, but I assure you there were plenty of reasons that someone might have wanted to kill Mrs. Rice—and for her own sins, behavior that had nothing to do with her husband’s death.”

  “I know she was irritating.”

  “Irritating! People can stand irritating. She was crooked!”

  “Crooked? I hadn’t heard that.”

  “I’m not making it up. The old bat tried to blackmail me!”

  Chocolate Chat

  Chocolate Places: Santa Fe

  The official state vegetables of New Mexico are the chile pepper and the frijole, but chocolate grabs plenty of attention, too.

  In Santa Fe, the oldest capital city in what is now the United States, four chocolate companies have banded together to create the “Santa Fe Chocolate Trail.” C. G. Higgins Confections, The ChocolateSmith, Kakawa Chocolate House, and Todos Santos Chocolates all have received national attention for the high quality of their products. All offer chocolates that draw on the history and traditions of “the city different.”

  This seems suitable. After all, the Spanish discovered chocolate when they came to the New World. They took it back to Spain, where it was almost a state secret for centuries before a Spanish princess took it to France as part of her dowry. Somehow, it just feels right for chocolate to have an important presence in a city declared the capital of its region by conquistador Pedro de Peralta in 1610.

  Viva the Santa Fe Trail! And viva its cousin, the Santa Fe Chocolate Trail!

  Chapter 21

  Blackmail? Mrs. Rice had tried to blackmail Margo?

  I admit that the first thing that went through my mind was that Mrs. Rice had had more nerve than I had. I wouldn’t have blackmailed Margo if I’d found her standing over a murder victim with a smoking gun and she’d been begging me to take the hush money.

  Luckily, I didn’t blurt that out. But I did blurt out the second thing that popped into my mind.

  “You didn’t pay her!”

  “Certainly not! As somebody or other said, I told her to publish and be damned!”

  “Good for you!”

  I blurted that out, too, but apparently it was the right thing to say. Anyway, Margo replied smugly. “It’s the only way to deal with people like that.”

  “If you have the nerve.”

  “And if you don’t have too much to lose. Aren’t you going to ask me what she tried to blackmail me about?”

  “I suppose you’ll tell me if you want me to know.”

  “You already know. Nettie said she told you the whole story.”

  “About how the Pier-O-Ettes got even with Dan Rice?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did Mrs. Rice find out what had happened?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe that creep Phin told her before he left town.”

  “Dan Rice deserved what you gals gave him. My only qualm is—can you be sure it didn’t have anything to do with his death?”

  “Not unless Mrs. Rice found out that night and got so mad over the whole thing that she shot him. And if she did, I’m not going to feel guilty. If she was going to shoot him, she would have found a different excuse another time.”

  I approached the next question cautiously, using my least confrontational voice.

  “If Mrs. Rice killed her husband, then who killed her?”

  “I don’t know! And I don’t really care.”

  “Joe thinks the same person must be . . . involved.”

  “I know, I know. But forty-five years separated the two crimes—if Dan Rice’s death was a crime. I think they are two unconnected events.”

  I didn’t reply, but I had to admit her opinion sounded logical. Of course, Joe’s sounded logical, too.

  While Margo was in a confiding mood, I decided to try one more question.

  “Ms. Street,” I said, “why did the mere sight of the Pier-O-Ettes’ trophy upset your sister?”

  “I can’t answer that,” she said. And she hung up.

  She hadn’t said she didn’t know. She had said she couldn’t tell me. The question I’d just asked Margo—why did the trophy upset Kathy?—was the one I’d started with two days earlier. And I still had no answer.

  There were a lot of questions I couldn’t answer.

  Who invited Shep to the reunion? And why?

  Who was the guy on the motor scooter?

  Was he the killer of Mrs. Rice?

  Where did he go?

  Had I really—as Joe thought—uncovered something about him, something that made me a threat? Something that would make him want to kill me?

  But I didn’t know anything! It seemed to me I’d asked a million questio
ns, and I knew nothing.

  I decided to go home. I wasn’t accomplishing anything at the office, so I might as well stop occupying space. I got out my purse and car keys in a mood I admit was pretty close to a huff.

  But Margo’s comments had turned my thoughts in a different direction. Before I headed for the door, I considered Mrs. Rice.

  Where did she come from? How did she meet Dan Rice? Why had she spent forty-plus years devoted to his memory, although people who had known them as a couple said they had been quarrelsome and contemptuous of each other?

  Why had Mrs. Rice become a teacher, when her former students had universally said she was unhappy and miserable in the role? And if she had resigned as a teacher after Dan’s death, what had she lived on during the many years since his demise? No one had mentioned her holding a job.

  Hmmm. It was easy to check a few of these things. Joe’s mom had known her when Joe was growing up, known her well enough that she made Joe mow her lawn. Mercy must know something about her. Still sitting with my purse in my lap and my car keys in one hand, I picked up my phone and punched the speed-dial button for Mercy’s office. Luckily she was still there.

  “Just a quick question,” I said. “All these years that Mrs. Rice spent fighting for her insurance settlement—how did she live? I mean, if she didn’t get the insurance money, how did she support herself?”

  “I don’t know for sure, Lee, but apparently she inherited quite of bit of money from her parents.”

  “Who were her parents?”

  “I don’t know that either. She was from over around Alma.”

  “So she wasn’t a Warner Pier native?”

  “No, I’m sure she came here when she married Dan Rice. And if there was any possibility of an inheritance from him, she squandered it on legal battles. Of course, she made money renting out her house.”

  “She used her house as a summer rental?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s why she wanted Joe to mow her lawn. In fact, it was a sort of odd situation.”

  “How odd?”