The Chocolate Snowman Murders

by JoAnna Carl

  George Jenkins runs a successful art gallery on Peach Street. Like Mozelle, he’s active in a lot of community organizations; I know he served on the board of the Holland women’s shelter, and he has chaired numerous art shows. George is close to seventy, I’d guess. He always wears classic sweaters and tweed jackets, and his thick white hair is modishly cut. I towered over him, but I towered over nearly everybody on the committee.

  Maggie and I shed our winter jackets and sat down at the meeting table. George winked at us, and we both smiled back. All three of us knew what Mozelle’s real problem was.

  Her problem was that she was immediate past chair, not chair. Mozelle likes to run things. She’d been chair of the WinterFest the year before, and she’d expected to be chair again. But the Warner Pier Foundation—parent organization for the WinterFest—had picked a different person to head the committee. Mozelle hadn’t yet recovered from the shock. Even a tactful request from the new chair, asking Mozelle to be the official WinterFest spokesman, hadn’t changed her attitude. She acted as if being interviewed on television was an imposition, and she declared herself annoyed by calls from the Chicago Tribune and Detroit Free Press.

  Mozelle could have declined gracefully and left the committee—as past chair she was ex officio anyway—but she seemed to think we’d go astray without her moral guidance.

  Besides, the committee did need Mozelle as a spokesman. Our public relations chair, Mary Samson, was terrific with news releases and phone calls, but she was shy. She was not good on television or radio, and she knew it. Mary was happy to do the grunt work and let Mozelle handle the public appearances.

  Mary was the next person to arrive. Mary was another Warner Pier native who’d been away and come back. Local gossip was that she couldn’t find a job in her chosen field of communications, so she was squatting in the house she’d inherited from her parents until something turned up. Mary always looked as if she’d cut her dark brown hair with garden shears, and that day her sweatshirt seemed to have spaghetti sauce down the front. We all spoke to her, but the greeting she gave back was inaudible.

  Then she handed out a sheet headed “Festival Talking Points.” It was clear, concise, neat, complete, easy-to-read—everything public relations material should be.

  “This is great, Mary,” I said.

  Mary ducked her head and mumbled. The contrast between her shy, dithery persona and her polished product was astounding.

  Amos Hart, who was in charge of the musical aspects of the Artsfest, was the next arrival. He wore a hat with furry earflaps, a long overcoat, and boots that laced. As he shed the layers, his standard indoor attire came into view; Amos was one of the few men in Warner Pier who wore ties, and he was the only one who wore bow ties. Today he had on a red one, contrasting with a white shirt and black suit.

  “Hello, all,” Amos said. “Lee, we could still use another alto.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t learn even ‘Rockabye, Baby’ in two weeks.”

  Ever since Amos found out that my alleged talent was singing—back when I was on the Texas beauty pageant circuit—he’d been after me to join one of his choirs. A retired professor of music, he directed two choruses: the Warner Pier WinterFest Chorale and the choir of Warner Pier Non-Denominational Fellowship Church. I didn’t have the classical training he needed for the chorale, and I wasn’t comfortable with the philosophy of the church, so I had declined. He was good-natured about my refusals, but he kept asking.

  Amos was what my college friends and I used to call a “public pray-er.” Although he wasn’t ordained, he seemed to be down at that church more often than its minister. He and Mozelle held the church together. Or did they just think they did?

  As the group gathered, most of us visited the coffeepot in the corner of the room, and I passed the box of chocolates around. It held a variety of bonbons and truffles I’d collected from the discard tray at the chocolate shop. This didn’t mean they weren’t good—everything TenHuis Chocolade makes is delicious. No, it meant the Lemon Canache (“Tangy lemon interior with a dark chocolate coating”) had been decorated with a flower, instead of two dark chocolate stripes and one yellow dot. Or that the Baileys Irish Cream bonbon (“Dark chocolate with a classic cream liqueur interior”) was trimmed with milk chocolate, instead of a white chocolate. So we couldn’t sell them, but all the creamy interiors and coatings would be delicious.

  I had not brought any of the special WinterFest items my aunt Nettie, the owner of TenHuis Chocolade, was planning. She had to special order the molds with the WinterFest snowman logo, and they weren’t due in for another twenty-four hours. I assured everyone that the snowmen would debut at the arts show opening Wednesday night.

  Johnny Owens, who represented the Warner Pier Artists Association, came into the meeting next. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, and his hair was in a buzz cut. Johnny was a sculptor who worked with a welding torch and sheet metal, but he also drew. His humorous doodles—cartoons and caricatures—were worthy of being framed. He had designed our snowman logo.

  Johnny was followed by my favorite committee member, the mayor’s representative, Joe Woodyard. Joe is a part-time city attorney, a part-time craftsman specializing in restoring antique motorboats, and a full-time husband—to me. He sat down beside me, and I was happy to get a pat on the shoulder and some eye contact from him. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms that morning, but I wasn’t mad any longer, and I hoped he wasn’t either. I reached under the table and stroked his knee. Joe’s a few inches taller than I am and has dark hair and blue eyes. I think he’s the best-looking man in West Michigan, but I’m prejudiced. Around Warner Pier he’s still known as the guy who was state high school debate champ and state wrestling champ the same year.

  Jason Foster, who was coordinating the food subcommittee, arrived, switching his long George Washington–style queue back and forth. He was followed by Sarajane Harding, who was in charge of the lodging for the promotion. Sarajane flashed her dimples at everyone. Sarajane is fiftyish. She always dressed in an almost masculine style, but had a very feminine face.

  That was everybody on the committee except our chair, Ramona VanWinkle-Snow.

  It was ten minutes past time for the meeting to begin, so I wasn’t too surprised when Mozelle gave her papers a final twitch, cleared her throat, and spoke. “Perhaps we’d better not wait for Ramona.” The virtuous tone of her voice was unmistakable.

  Before I could say, “Let’s give her another five minutes,” the door opened, and Ramona came in like the blast of fresh air she had been to Warner Pier. She greeted us with “Welcome, fellow Michiganders!”

  We replied according to our individual opinions on that label. George called out, “Michiganians!” Johnny Owens honked loudly, like a goose looking for a pond to light on. Maggie growled deep in her throat and said, “Personally, I’m a wolverine.” I said, “Yeehaw! You can take the gal out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the gal.” Mary Samson, Amos Hart, and Joe all grinned, and Mozelle gave a condescending smile that said, “Let the children have their fun.” Ramona went to the last seat open, apologizing for being late.

  “But I promise to have us out of here by five o’clock,” she said.

  Ramona looks like a leftover hippie. She wears her long gray hair in a braid down the center of her back and dresses “artsy,” in long print skirts, boots or sandals, and floppy sweaters.

  Ramona’s greeting was typical of the style she used to preside over our committee. The citizens of Michigan have never agreed on what to call themselves. Some prefer “Michigander” and some “Michiganian.” Either is acceptable, I’m told, but we must never, ever use “Michiganite.”

  So at every meeting Ramona greeted us with one word or the other, preceding it with “fellow.” The joke was that Ramona had been a “fellow” Michigander/ Michiganian for only three years. She and her husband had bought a photography business and moved to Warner Pier from California about the time I came up from Texas. Ra
mona took care of the portrait side and was the business manager. Bob, her husband, was a more artistic photographer; I loved his dramatic landscapes, though I didn’t love the prices they brought. He was frequently “best of show” in some exhibition.

  Growing up in the Southwest, I’d always been told that Northerners——we called them “Yankees,” even if they were not from New England—were not friendly. When I announced plans to move to my mother’s hometown, my dad the Texan and his family advised against it. “You’ll have to live there twenty years before anybody will even ignore you,” my stepmother had said.

  But I’d worked in Warner Pier as a teenager, and I still had friends I’d made then. My mother’s family had lived in Warner Pier for seventy-five years. Plus, my aunt and employer, Nettie TenHuis, was a much-loved and respected citizen. By huddling under her wings, I had slid into the community like a hot knife through butter, making friends easily. A romance with Joe Woodyard hadn’t hurt things; he’d grown up in Warner Pier and seemed to know all of the 2,500 people who lived there.

  Ramona had not had those advantages, but she’d managed to become accepted in our small—sometimes too small—town even more easily than I had.

  Ramona was intelligent, efficient, and tactful. She got things done. And if she was ignorant of the local situation, she turned that ignorance into an advantage.

  Ramona called for a treasurer’s report. I handed copies around the table, pointing out a few details I thought were important.

  As usual, Ramona went straight to the point. “Then the only committee that’s overbudget is the play,” she said.

  “That’s because of the cost of the high school auditorium,” Maggie said. “The school board isn’t about to change its policy of refusing to forgive rent for nonschool functions, and I haven’t been able to find an angel. I’m still trying to get a grant from the Adkins Foundation.”

  Mozelle made a noise just slightly too ladylike to be a snort. “The Adkins Foundation will only assist schoolrelated projects,” she said. “You’re wasting your time there.”

  “I may have been able to help,” Ramona said. “Charles Adkins was in our shop last week, so I approached him about it.”

  “Oh!” Mozelle’s voice was scandalized. “Oh, Ramona! We don’t want to anger the Adkins Foundation. That could do the community untold harm!”

  Ramona looked at her blandly. “I don’t think it hurt anything, Mozelle. I described our plans to him, emphasizing the educational aspect and the student participation. And he wrote a note for me to send along with a new application. He’s only one board member, of course, but if we have his backing—well, I’m hopeful.”

  Mozelle had trouble keeping her virtuous smile. Ramona had turned her newcomer status into an advantage. In the past, Mozelle, aware of the Adkins Foundation’s strict policy, had been afraid to approach that body. Ramona had made it seem as if she were blundering in out of ignorance, and it looked as if she was going to score some money.

  Ramona was too tactful to gloat. She turned to the next report. “George, how’s the art show shaping up?”

  “Just fine,” George said. “Most of the entries are here already, and I’ve arranged to hang the show on Tuesday.” He looked at Jason Foster. The art show was to be held at the conference center.

  Jason nodded. “Tuesday should be fine. Talk to me after the meeting if you need ladders and such. The partitions are set up and ready to arrange.”

  “Right.” George turned back to Ramona. “There’s a small crisis over the juror, but that seems to be settled.” He explained the change in jurors to the rest of the committee.

  “If you’re satisfied with the new man’s credentials, that’s fine,” Ramona said. “Who is he?”

  George began to look through his papers. “He taught art at several colleges in the Washington, D.C., area, but he’s now retired. His own work is mainly in acrylics. He’s an experienced juror.” He pulled a paper out of the pile.

  “Here’s his résumé, if anybody wants to see it. His name is Fletcher Mendenhall.”

  I’d never heard of him, so I didn’t react. And no one else did either for about five seconds.

  Then Johnny Owens laughed.

  Chapter 2

  I happened to be looking at Mozelle when Johnny laughed, and she closed her eyes, looking even more like insulted virtue than usual. Her let’s-be-serious attitude was hard to take.

  George’s reaction was different. He looked concerned. “Do you know Fletcher Mendenhall?”

  Johnny got to his feet and walked over to the coffeepot. “I was at Waterford College when Fletcher Mendenhall was teaching there.”

  “Is there something we should know about him?”

  “He’s a shrimpy little guy with a big mouth. But he was a good teacher, and he ought to be fine as a juror.”

  “Why did you laugh when you heard his name?”

  Johnny concentrated on picking up a coffee cup. “I shouldn’t have laughed. Hearing his name reminded me of a funny incident.”

  Ramona looked at Johnny steadily. “Can you share it?”

  “It was stupid. Just a prank. Undergraduate humor at its worst. Origin of the word ‘sophomoric.’ ”

  Ramona didn’t speak. She just kept waiting. Johnny cleared his throat. He poured coffee, he sipped it, and he finally spoke.

  “There was this trustee, see—a trustee of the college. He was pushing for big budget cuts, and he’d singled out the art department. We were all mad at him. There was a demonstration. College-kid stuff.”

  “How did Fletcher Mendenhall fit in?”

  “A faculty art show was held about then, and Dr. Mendenhall exhibited a nude. Representational. An acrylic. The model was posed so that her face wasn’t visible. Well—this nude was shapely, and she had a birthmark on her fanny. And the word got around fast that the trustee’s wife had a birthmark like that one. All the students thought it was funny.”

  Ramona frowned. “The implication being that Mendenhall must have seen the trustee’s wife’s fanny.”

  “Yeah. Of course, if she did have a birthmark, Mendenhall could have learned about it from someone who saw her at the gym or something.”

  “But it wasn’t very tactful,” Ramona said. “What happened to Mendenhall?”

  “Nothing. The trustee couldn’t gripe about the birthmark without admitting his wife had one like it.”

  “And that would have been more humiliating than the painting.”

  “Right.” Johnny looked at his cup. “I said it was undergraduate humor.”

  “I can see why college kids would think it was funny, but it seems a bit immature for a professor,” I said. “And the joke was a little hard on Mrs. Trustee.”

  “I guess we didn’t think about her. She was a second, very young, wife the trustee had recently acquired. A former Waterford student. A trophy wife.”

  I felt as if Johnny had slapped me, but I guess I was able to hide my reaction until I spoke.

  “I guess we’re not hiring a juror to be a dipsomaniac,” I said. “I mean, a diplomat!”

  Rats! I only get my words twisted when I’m nervous. Would Johnny guess that he’d upset me?

  Amos Hart was the only person who tittered openly at my slip of the tongue. All these people knew me so well that they overlooked my habit of getting my tongue tangled, though Mozelle did give the first genuinelooking smile she’d smiled yet.

  I tried to go on as if I hadn’t made a fool of myself. “Does an art show juror have any public chores to do?”

  “No,” George said. “He has to come here to Warner Pier, look at the show firsthand, and name the winners.”

  “Dr. Mendenhall can do that,” Johnny said. “He’s a very sound artist. And he was a good teacher.”

  “He’s flying in Tuesday,” George said. “If we change jurors again, we’d have to find somebody from around here.”

  “And that’s not a good idea,” Ramona said briskly.

  “Mendenhall’s jokes of y
ears ago are no reason to reject him.” She turned to the next committee member. “Amos, how is the chorale coming along?”

  I listened with half an ear, hoping that nobody had caught on to how much the mention of a “trophy wife” had upset me. I told myself that Johnny wouldn’t have used the term if he’d known I was sensitive on the subject.

  I didn’t know Johnny very well. He had no way of knowing I’d spent five years as a trophy wife. Everybody in Warner Pier knew that both Joe and I had been married before. And our friends all knew that both of us had been married to people older than we were. That was stale gossip. There was no reason Johnny Owens would know more than that.

  I came back to the meeting mentally when Mary Samson handed me invoices for advertising she’d authorized. I reminded everyone they should turn in any other invoices as soon as possible, and Ramona asked if we were ready to adjourn.

  “One more thing,” George said. “I’m hanging the art show on Tuesday, and Mendenhall is flying into Grand Rapids at four that afternoon. I can’t be two places at once, so we need someone to pick him up. Any volunteers?”

  We all whipped out pocket calendars, and Joe was the first person to speak. “I have to be in Grand Rapids for an update on city finance laws that day. I ought to be through in time to pick him up.”

  “Joe would be the perfect escort for Dr. Mendenhall,” Johnny said, grinning again.

  I didn’t understand his comment, but I didn’t ask for an explanation. George promised to e-mail Mendenhall’s flight information and cell phone number to Joe, and the meeting ended—at four fifty-five p.m. Ramona had gotten us out before five o’clock. Or she would have if Mozelle hadn’t decided to drop a minor bombshell.

  Joe was giving me a ride, so Maggie left without me. Ramona, Mozelle, Joe, and I were the only people still there when Mozelle spoke.

  “Ramona, I can’t do any more of the television and radio interviews.”

  I stared at Mozelle in complete astonishment. We’d all applauded Ramona’s tact in giving her the job as WinterFest spokesman. It was the perfect job for a past chair who was on the committee only as a courtesy. She was allowed to appear publicly, but she didn’t have to do any real work.