The Chocolate Castle Clue

by JoAnna Carl

  But there weren’t all that many garages in downtown Warner Pier. Which meant I knew where nearly all of them were.

  I pored over the map. Where was the garage nearest to TenHuis Chocolade?

  In ten seconds I was laughing.

  The nearest garage was right behind our shop.

  It was the garage and storeroom that TenHuis Chocolade had rented for twenty-five years and which Dolly Jolly had used for her Jeep until the owner of the building wanted it back.

  The garage was right across the alley from where my van had been parked when its tires were slashed. And that garage was empty and nearly cleared out. Dolly and I, with Joe’s help, had seen to that the previous Friday.

  We would turn the garage and the adjoining storeroom back to the landlord as soon as Joe and I took the final load of junk to the dump. And since it held nothing valuable, I’d left it unlocked.

  But it sure seemed to be a far-fetched hiding place. It simply was too crazy. I was amused by the idea, but I didn’t believe it.

  I toyed with the idea of going back downtown and looking in the garage, just to see if there was any evidence that a motor scooter had been hidden there.

  Immediately I heard Joe’s voice—just as loudly as if he’d been in the room. And the voice was saying, “Stupid. Stupid, Lee. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  In fact, it was saying, “Don’t do anything else stupid.”

  No, it wouldn’t be smart for me to go down a lonely alley, late on a fall afternoon, with the sun beginning to go down and the light getting dim. Not only would it be stupid; I simply didn’t want to do that.

  So I sat there, staring at the television, not seeing what was on the screen, and wondering if I should call Joe—or the Warner Pier PD or the Michigan State Police or somebody—and tell them about my latest brainstorm.

  But it seemed so far-fetched.

  I probably wouldn’t have done anything about it if Joe hadn’t called me.

  He called to say he had an appointment with Shep at five o’clock, so he would be late coming home.

  “Okay,” I said. “Joe . . . there was one thing I might mention to you.”

  When I told him about the garage idea, he sounded more exasperated than interested. But he listened. And he didn’t say it was stupid. I think he’d figured out that he’d better not.

  What he did say was, “We need to check on that storeroom anyway. I’ll run by and see if there’s any sign that somebody’s been fooling around in there.”

  “I guess it’s a far-fetched idea.”

  “It won’t hurt to check. But even if the guy hid the scooter there last night, he’s probably gotten it out by now.”

  “When could he do that?”

  “Oh, probably around six this morning. The Warner Pier business district isn’t exactly thronged with people at any hour this time of the year, but it’s definitely deserted then.”

  Relieved to have shifted the responsibility for my idea, I settled back to watch the TV. And another thought began to nudge my imagination.

  I began to think about the Garretts’ Cadillac sedan, now parked on their driveway, near their cottage. I idly wondered about the strange vehicle I had seen there Friday night. Had the driver of the truck simply been someone who stopped to gawk at Mrs. Rice’s accident? The van’s license tag figures—7214—still lingered in my number-oriented brain.

  I had ignored the letters on the license plate, but the numbers were easy for me to remember.

  That strange vehicle kept bugging me. It reminded me of something. But what? The only thing I’d even noticed about it was the dark color and the tag number.

  I don’t notice every car tag number I pass on the street. The only other one I’d noticed lately was the tag on Good-Time Charlie’s antique Corvette. That one was 7321.

  So?

  Both numbers began with seven. Again, so what? A license tag number has to begin with something.

  But—

  I sat up straight on the couch. Both numbers followed the same pattern. They began with seven, and if the seven was multiplied by the second number, you got the final two numbers.

  Charlie had told Joe and me that he deliberately sought out tag numbers that were sevens and multiples of seven.

  It could be.

  All Michigan vehicle owners are encouraged to buy tags by computer, so most Michigan license plates were issued at random. But it is possible to go to a secretary of state office and get a tag. Considering how much business a car dealer like Charlie might do at such an office, he could well be able to get a small favor—such as a special number request—from the clerk behind the counter.

  In small-town Texas, where I grew up, it would have been a snap. Local officials like to keep their constituents sweet. I was willing to bet it wouldn’t be too hard in Michigan either.

  Of course, Michigan auto owners can order special tags—vanity tags. But I didn’t think these had been vanity tags. Those usually had words on them. And these had followed the standard Michigan pattern of a three-letter prefix followed by numbers.

  But the two tags had followed the same pattern, and this coincidence could be checked. If the SUV was registered to Good-Time Charlie, the state of Michigan would know. I called the Warner Pier PD and asked for Jerry Cherry. He wasn’t there, but the secretary-dispatcher said she’d have him call me. I felt confident that Jerry would check the license numbers if I asked him to. Of course, since I didn’t know the letters, it might take a while. Quite a while.

  And again, so what? If I proved that both license tags were for cars registered to Charlie McCoy, would it matter?

  Yes, I decided. Because Charlie had told the state police that he hadn’t been in Warner Pier Friday night. He had told me that until Saturday he hadn’t been to Warner Pier for forty-five years. But that small panel truck sure had been there. In fact, it had been about a block from where Mrs. Rice was killed. A shudder ran down my back. I hadn’t considered Charlie—joking Charlie with all the puns—as a killer.

  But when I did consider him as a killer, I came up with another factor that was interesting. Charlie owned a whole car lot full of vehicles. Charlie could easily have access to a motor scooter and a small commercial van, as well as a flashy Corvette.

  But wouldn’t they have dealers’ tags? Not, I decided, if Charlie was planning to use them for some nefarious purpose. Dealers’ tags would be much more noticeable. Charlie could borrow a truck from his lot if he needed one, then switch one of his own tags to it.

  And that small panel truck I’d seen—the one with the numbers 7214 on its tag—was big enough to haul a motor scooter away. It had solid side panels. And it might even have a mechanical lift, making it easy to get an object like a motor scooter in through the back doors.

  I assured myself that I was letting my imagination run away with me. Then I settled back on my couch, took a drink of my Diet Coke, and checked the television.

  But I couldn’t pay attention to it. I clicked the set off and considered Charlie as a killer. What motive would he have for killing Mrs. Rice?

  I had no answer. He had known her for nearly fifty years. He had worked for her husband.

  But what motive could he have? Charlie had told me he had never come back to Warner Pier.

  When Joe’s mom had told me Mrs. Rice told her—talk about hearsay—that she rented her house to a Holland car dealer, the name of Good-Time Charlie had immediately popped into my mind. I had, however, rejected that idea because I would have called Charlie a used-car salesman, not a car dealer. I would reserve that term for someone who had a manufacturer’s franchise. A Chevy dealer, a Cadillac dealer.

  But what if Charlie had been the person who rented the house? The person who allowed “unprim and improper” people to use it?

  Why would Mrs. Rice agree to that?

  Because she was forced to?

  Bingo! Blackmail!

  If Good-Time Charlie had something on Mrs. Rice, he might want money to keep it quiet. But Mr
s. Rice had only a limited amount of money to begin with. And this rental deal happened around twenty years after Dan Rice died. By then Mrs. Rice might have had no more money to pay a blackmailer. So Charlie might have forced her to let him use her house.

  Margo said Mrs. Rice had tried to blackmail her. Maybe she got the idea from Charlie.

  I wondered if an audit of finances for Charlie’s original car lot would show Mrs. Rice as an investor.

  But why would Charlie stop demanding money and kill Mrs. Rice?

  Because something had happened to change their relationship. Charlie had been exploiting Mrs. Rice. And she was willing to pay up. But after forty-five years of submitting to blackmail, she found “new evidence” and rebelled.

  I was sure this was right. After all, the last person Mrs. Rice had spoken to was Joe. And she had told him she had “new evidence” in her husband’s death. How could Mrs. Rice have found “new evidence” at nine o’clock on a Friday night? What had happened on that Friday that might have produced new evidence about an event that happened forty-five years earlier?

  It had been a busy day. Dolly and I had cleaned out the garage. The Pier-O-Ettes’ reunion had begun. And Shep had showed up in town.

  Well, I knew Dolly and I hadn’t found evidence in the garage. I was almost positive that none of the Pier-O-Ettes had talked to Mrs. Rice. That left Shep.

  Shep had to know something he had never told about the death of Dan Rice. Maybe even something he didn’t realize was important. Something that changed the whole relationship of Charlie and Mrs. Rice and forced Charlie to kill her.

  I stood up and walked around the living room, telling myself to calm down. This was more speculation than deduction. I forced myself to sit down again.

  After all, Mrs. Rice seemed to encourage people to dislike her. I’d met her for less than ten minutes, and I’d been ready to yell at her. But dislike and hatred are two different things. I might have bawled her out, but I wouldn’t have killed her.

  Then I remembered something Hogan Jones had told me once. Motive doesn’t matter.

  A professional law officer, he had said, wants to know who committed a particular crime. If knowing the motive helps, that’s a good thing. But knowing who did it and how they did it counts more than knowing why.

  “We can figure out why after the arrest,” he had said.

  So the first question was: Was it physically possible for Charlie to be the killer?

  First, I thought the killer had hidden his motor scooter in the garage off our alley. Did Charlie even know that garage existed?

  Yes, he did. I had told him myself on Saturday. I had mentioned that I found the Pier-O-Ette memorabilia while cleaning out a garage, and I described where it was.

  Second, could he have made a copy of the key to my car? Yes, if he had the skill to make one—a skill Sergeant Hugh Jackson said many used-car dealers would have—he’d gotten a good look at my keys that same morning. They hung on the outside of my purse.

  I was concentrating so hard on Good-Time Charlie and on what Hogan had said that when the phone rang I nearly fell off the couch. Then I nearly dropped the phone when I picked it up.

  “Lee? Miz Woodyard?”

  “Shep?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to bother you at home. Is Joe there?”

  “No. He said he was going to call you.”

  “Yes. We agreed to meet here at the Sidewalk Café half an hour ago, but he hasn’t shown up. I wondered if I had the place mixed up. Or the time. Or something.”

  “It’s not like Joe not to keep an appointment. Or at least call.”

  “He did call to say he’d be a few minutes late. He said he had to make a stop first. Is something wrong with his car? He said he wanted to check with the garage.”

  Chapter 23

  I had to swallow a yelp. “Garage” was a significant word for me right at that moment.

  Joe had told me he’d make a check on the TenHuis garage and storage room. But he’d indicated it would be a quick check of a location less than a block away from the Sidewalk Café. A routine check shouldn’t have taken as long as half an hour.

  I felt sure he’d run into trouble, but I didn’t tell Shep that. I promised Shep that I’d try to reach Joe; then I hung up rudely. Shep was still talking.

  I immediately called Joe’s cell, but after four rings I got the voice mail.

  I tried not to panic. Joe might have left his phone in the truck. Or he could be walking into the Sidewalk Café at that moment. But I didn’t believe it. I was afraid that Joe had gone to check out that garage and had met up with Good-Time Charlie. Or whoever had been riding the motor scooter.

  I’d called the garage to Joe’s attention before I began to suspect that Charlie was the person who had been involved with the big motor-scooter chase and tire-slashing episode. If Joe ran into Charlie, he wouldn’t see him as a threat. He would just see him as a buffoon.

  I stood there in the kitchen with the phone in one hand and the fingers of my other hand hovering over 9-1-1.

  But if I called the police, what could I tell them? That I was afraid we’d had an intruder in an almost empty garage? Warner Pier had only one patrolman on duty at a time. He wouldn’t give a call like that high priority.

  Could I ask some neighboring businessman to go and check on the garage? No, I couldn’t do that without endangering someone who had nothing to do with all this.

  I put the phone away and picked up my purse and car keys. I had to go downtown and look at that garage in person.

  All the way I told myself I was being truly dumb. Stupid, just the way Joe had said. I vowed that if everything was all right, I’d never let Joe, or anyone else, know that I’d gone there looking for him. But I still felt compelled to go.

  I drove across the Warner River Bridge looking closely at every truck that came toward me. None of them were Joe’s. He wasn’t headed home. I turned onto Fifth Street and drove slowly down it. And there, at the curb half a block from the Sidewalk Café, I saw Joe’s truck.

  “Whew!” I gave a loud sigh of relief. I pulled in beside the truck, jumped out of my van, and ran inside the Sidewalk. Shep was sitting at the bar.

  “Lee?” He looked surprised.

  “Where’s Joe?”

  “I don’t know, Lee. I’m still waitin’, just like you said to do.”

  “His truck’s outside.”

  “Then he’s got to be someplace close by.”

  I didn’t say another word. I just turned around and went back out the door. I ran to the corner, cut across the street to the alley, and headed for that garage.

  It wasn’t dark yet, but sunset was near. There was sunlight on the street, but shadows made the alley dark. As soon as I was inside it, I began to walk carefully. It was an alley, after all, used for stuff like old boxes and trash. I wasn’t eager to fall over a tin can or slip on a banana peel. I watched where I was putting my feet, stepping gingerly.

  Our garage was almost halfway down the block, on the left. Because I was watching my footing, not looking straight ahead, I was well into the alley when I saw a dark panel truck outside the garage.

  If I’d been scared before, that truck sent me into absolute terror.

  I yanked out my cell phone, and for the second time in ten minutes, my fingers hovered over 9-1-1. But I didn’t punch the numbers.

  My certainty that a dark truck was involved in Mrs. Rice’s death was not based on any proof that would be accepted by investigators. It was just a wild guess on my part. I could be wrong. And if I involved the police, even the Warner Pier police, and I was wrong—well, the state police already thought I was some sort of nut. That would confirm their impression.

  So what? If it kept Joe safe, did I care what the state police thought of me?

  Not really. But I cared what Joe thought of me. If he were at the garage for some logical reason, if he didn’t want the police involved, if he wasn’t there at all—well, we were not on the best of terms anyway. I’d bet
ter not embarrass him.

  So I clutched that phone in my hand, and I hugged the wall, and I walked toward the truck and the garage as quietly as I could. I almost stepped on a bottle as I passed the wine shop’s Dumpster. I picked it up and kept tiptoeing along.

  As I got closer I heard the murmur of voices, and I realized the garage door was open. Not the ordinary door. That was the one that went into the storage side of the big room. It was the overhead door that was open. But its light wasn’t on. It took me a moment to remember that the bulb had been burned out.

  I felt for my “no-harm charm” chain. The tiny flashlight on it might prove to be valuable. And I kept walking as silently as possible, headed for that door.

  Then I heard a voice speaking clearly. And it wasn’t Joe.

  “Okay, Woodyard,” it said. “I’m sorry you got involved in this, but you and that pretty wife of yours—well, you’re just too damn curious. Now, you close the door, and then we can turn on the light.”

  I recognized the voice. It was Charlie. Good-Time Charlie. My wild guess had been right.

  Charlie wasn’t making any jokes this time. And neither was Joe. I could tell by his voice. He was deadly serious.

  “We could turn on the overhead light right now, Charlie. Nobody will see it. Not back in this alley.”

  “Close that door!” Charlie’s voice sounded as if he were talking to a junior salesman who had let an easy sale escape. “Now!”

  When I heard Charlie talking I had stopped walking, and now I discovered I was standing in front of the single door. I leaned back against it, and it moved slightly. The door wasn’t closed tightly.

  The overhead door rattled and began to move downward slowly.

  I was certain Charlie had killed Mrs. Rice. If the garage door was closed, Charlie could fire a gun and the noise would be muffled. That must be the reason he wanted it shut. If Joe was closed up in that garage with Charlie, I was sure Charlie would kill him.

  I reached into my purse, yanked out the garage door opener that had been there since the previous Friday, and punched the button.