The Chocolate Snowman Murders

by JoAnna Carl

  “It’s really late.”

  “Call her.”

  I punched in Mary’s number. The phone rang four times and was picked up by the answering machine.

  I waited for the beep. “Mary, are you there? It’s Lee.”

  Mary didn’t answer the phone.

  I frowned at the gadget in my hand. “I don’t like that. Mary certainly seemed to be planning to go straight home from the reception.”

  “She might be in the shower,” Joe said. “She might be in bed.”

  “I’ll call again.”

  Once again I punched in Mary’s number. Once again I got the answering machine. I hollered at it. “Mary! It’s Lee! I need to talk to you!”

  Once again Mary failed to pick the phone up.

  Joe and I looked at each other. Then we spoke in unison. “Let’s call Hogan.”

  I felt pretty confident that Hogan and Aunt Nettie wouldn’t be in bed yet, since we’d all left Herrera’s less than an hour earlier. Sure enough, Hogan answered on the second ring. I quickly outlined my suspicion that the call to Mendenhall’s cell phone had come from Mary Samson’s phone.

  Hogan spoke firmly. “It won’t hurt if we run a welfare check on her.”

  “Joe and I can go over there,” I said. “If the patrol car pulls up in her drive, it might scare poor Mary to death.”

  “You don’t need to get out again.”

  “I’d feel better if we did.”

  Joe was already pulling on his jeans. We were on our way to Mary’s house within five minutes.

  Hogan and Aunt Nettie met us at the bridge over the Warner River. Hogan blinked his lights, and they followed us. I had trouble finding the house. Like us, Mary lived in a semirural part of Warner Pier, though she was near the river, and we were near the lake. We missed her turn the first time, but finally our van and Aunt Nettie’s blue Buick pulled up in the drive.

  Mary’s house—as I said, she had inherited it from her parents—was a small 1940s frame house with a steep roof. The front porch light wasn’t on, but there was a light on the garage, where it would illuminate the path from the drive to the house.

  Joe and I got a flashlight from the glove compartment, and we tramped through the snow to get to the front porch. We both stamped the snow off our feet on the porch, then I looked for a doorbell.

  “I’d have thought Mary would have heard the cars and looked out to see who’s here,” I said. I pushed the doorbell button, and I could hear the bell peal inside the house.

  But no one came to the door. No one seemed to be moving inside the house. I pushed the button again.

  By that time Hogan was behind us. “I’ll walk around and check the back,” he said. He stepped off the porch, keeping his own flashlight trained on the snow.

  I rang the doorbell. Then I knocked. Then I called out, “Mary! It’s Lee and Joe! Let us in!”

  Finally—finally—I heard movement inside. “Here she is! I guess we woke her up.”

  But when the door opened, the person who opened it wasn’t Mary. It was Hogan.

  “Hogan!” I said. “How did you get in?”

  “Back door was standing open.”

  “Where’s Mary?”

  “Lee, you and Nettie go on home.”

  “Go home? Hogan, what’s wrong?”

  “I’ve already called for the EMTs, but . . .”

  “What’s happened to Mary?”

  “She’s on the kitchen floor, Lee. I’m sure she’s dead.”

  Chapter 10

  Joe, Aunt Nettie, and I sat in the van until the Warner Pier patrol car—the only one on duty—got there. Then we left.

  Hogan had made it clear he didn’t want us contaminating his crime scene, so we hadn’t gone inside the house. But I felt bad about leaving Mary.

  “If I’d talked to Mary at the party, maybe this wouldn’t have happened,” I said. I didn’t have a Kleenex, so I snuffled loudly.

  “That’s silly, Lee,” Aunt Nettie said. She handed me a tissue. “First, you don’t know that Mary’s death had anything to do with whatever she wanted to tell you. Second, if she had told you, it might not have made any difference. Third, if she’d made a real effort to talk to you, you would have listened.”

  “Mary was too shy to make a real effort,” Joe said, “about anything that involved talking, at least.”

  I continued to feel bad. When we got to Aunt Nettie and Hogan’s house, there was no discussion of our going home. Joe and I went in with her, and I got out the cups while Aunt Nettie made hot chocolate. The real kind, Mexican style, using solid chocolate melted slowly in milk, with stick cinnamon and two cloves added.

  Yes, chocolate helps meet all crises. I drank two cups and felt much calmer by the time Hogan called.

  Joe and I could go home, he said. Michigan State Police officials—they’re responsible for helping small towns investigate serious crime—were on the way. Hogan would stay on the scene. He left out the words “probably all night,” but we all knew that was what would happen.

  Joe and I urged Aunt Nettie to come home with us, and finally she agreed to be an overnight guest in what had once been her own home. I wouldn’t say any of us slept much, but at least we comforted one another.

  At seven a.m. I had just turned on the coffeemaker when I saw headlights in our drive, and Hogan came to the kitchen door.

  He looked exhausted, and he said only one word. “Coffee.”

  Joe, Aunt Nettie, and I took the hint, and none of us said anything until Hogan had had one cup of coffee, and the bacon, eggs, and English muffins were on the table.

  Then Hogan spoke. “You two will have to make statements for VanDam.”

  Joe and I both nodded. Alex VanDam is a state police lieutenant who has been assigned to the area that includes Warner Pier for several years. Joe and I both knew him, and I sighed with relief. VanDam would be a lot easier to deal with than Sergeant McCullough of the Lake Knapp police.

  That reminded me. “What about McCullough?”

  “He’ll still be involved, but VanDam may rein him in a little. We’re working on the assumption that the two deaths are connected.”

  Hogan had worked all night and hadn’t had the benefit of two cups of Aunt Nettie’s hot chocolate to make the time go easier. I bit my tongue, putting off my questions until he’d had time to eat. After his second egg over easy and his third English muffin and his fourth strip of bacon, he sighed deeply and refilled his coffee mug from the carafe on the table.

  “I suppose you all want to know what happened,” he said.

  We spoke in unison. “Yes.”

  Hogan said that Mary’s back door had been standing ajar, and he had found her body in the kitchen. Like Mendenhall, she’d been beaten to death.

  “Was there a weapon?” Joe asked.

  “Something flat and heavy. There was a lot of blood.” Hogan shrugged. I knew he would hedge until the lab report came back.

  He went on with his report. “Mary was wearing her coat and that dress she had on at the party. The bedroom window had been jimmied. Apparently somebody broke in and was waiting for her.”

  He took a drink of coffee. “But Mary had a lot of spunk. The kitchen was a mess. I think her attacker had to chase her all around the room. Chairs were turned over. Stuff had been swept off shelves.”

  I dried my eyes on my paper napkin. “I just can’t believe this. Poor Mary! She was so meek and mild. How could anyone be heartless enough to kill her?”

  At that point the phone rang. I answered. It was our neighbor, Charlie Bailey. “Did I see Hogan Jones over at your house?”

  “Yes, he’s here.”

  “Well, Annie Van Raalte called. She lives over by the Samson house. What happened over there?”

  I knew it was the first of many calls. The Warner Pier grapevine was in full swing already.

  Aunt Nettie and Hogan went home, and Joe and I let the answering machine pick up everything else. Neither of us had time to fool with a million phone cal
ls. We needed to get ready for work. When they didn’t get us at home, all those people would call my office or Joe’s boat shop anyway.

  When I headed for TenHuis Chocolade, I took along that list of WinterFest committee members—the one that listed their whereabouts at the time Mendenhall had been killed. Maybe I could make some phone calls of my own.

  I decided the first person I had to talk to—even though I already knew where she said she’d been Thursday night—was Ramona. As soon as I was at my desk, I punched in the number of Snow Photography.

  Ramona picked up the phone on the first ring. She spoke before I could identify myself. “Thanks for calling me back, Lee.”

  “Nice to know you have caller ID, Ramona.” I made a mental note that Ramona must have been one of the people whose calls we had ignored that morning. “How are you?”

  “I’m upset. What happened to Mary Samson?”

  I gave her a sketchy version. Very sketchy. I left out the parts about Mendenhall’s phone being found in my pocket and about the call on it coming from Mary’s house—maybe—and about someone chasing Mary around the kitchen with something heavy and flat. I didn’t even want to think about that part, and I was sure Hogan wouldn’t want me to tell it.

  Ramona didn’t comment until I was through. Then she asked a question. “Why did you call Mary? I mean, it must have been late.”

  I’d already prepared an answer to that one. “Mary asked me to call. She said she wanted to discuss something with me, and I said I’d call her when I got home. Did you talk to her at the reception?”

  “Only a few minutes.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Nothing unusual. I told her I was delighted with the turnout for the reception, and that I thought she deserved most of the credit because of the great publicity campaign she ran. You can imagine how she reacted.”

  “Turned red and stammered. I don’t suppose she said anything about a problem or question she had.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m looking for a clue to why she wanted me to call her.”

  “You won’t get one from me. Mary was so pitifully shy. She communicated so well in writing, but face-to-face . . .”

  “Yes, that was a different story.” I took a deep breath.

  “I have a question for you, Ramona. What was going on on Wednesday night?”

  “Wednesday night?”

  “Night before last. You and George said you were hashing out some problem.”

  “Oh. That.” Ramona was silent. “It was just something about one of the art show entries. It was the first time I’d seen them all.”

  “Oh. I thought you were at George’s gallery.”

  “We were.”

  “But the show was hung at Warner Point.” Ramona sighed. “It wasn’t a big deal, Lee. I went by Warner Point and looked at the show just after George had left. Jason let me in to see it. After I’d seen it, I had a question. So I tracked George down at the gallery and stopped to talk to him.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “I don’t really know.” Ramona was losing her patience. “He was obviously trying to leave for some reason, kept looking at his watch, so I didn’t stay long. Does it matter? George and I are not working by the hour.”

  Ramona had reminded me sternly about my place on the WinterFest committee. Finances. I was the bookkeeper, and that was all.

  “I guess it doesn’t,” I said. “I was just trying to figure out . . . I’m sure you were exhausted after the reception last night. Were you and Bob able to go straight home?”

  “I did. Bob had some darkroom work to do down here. Listen, Lee, I see customers hovering outside our door. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She hung up, leaving me wondering if I knew any more than I had before I called.

  I pulled out my yellow legal pad and noted her answers on my list. She had been with George Jenkins at his gallery early on the night Mendenhall died. Later she’d been home alone with her husband. On Thursday night, when Mary was killed, Ramona had been at home, and Bob had been doing some work at the shop.

  Next I called George Jenkins.

  George also had to hear all I knew about Mary’s death. But when I quizzed him on the problem he and Ramona had been hashing out, he laughed. “Ramona was having an attack of overconscientiousness.”

  “What about?”

  “About Bob’s entry in the art show. She hadn’t known that he entered until she peeked at the show after it had been hung.”

  “Do you mean the storm photograph that won best of show? I loved it.”

  “Yes, it’s great. In fact, both Ramona and I know enough about art to see that it was one of the best entries. Or most judges would place it near the top. Ramona was afraid that if it won, the sharper tongues of the local art scene would say it was nepotism.”

  “But at that time you all thought Mendenhall was going to be judging the show. Bob told Joe and me that Mendenhall hated photography and wouldn’t have given it the prize.”

  George gave a small whistle. “Ramona didn’t say anything about that, and I hadn’t heard it. Maybe she was really afraid that Bob’s work would be ignored. Anyway, we had a discussion about his entry, and I finally brought her around. I don’t think she relished the idea of telling Bob the photograph ought to be withdrawn, so she gave in.”

  “How late did this discussion last?”

  “Oh, until seven o’clock or so. Why?”

  “Just wondering who would have been available to talk to Mendenhall. If he called them.”

  “He called the gallery earlier—probably just after you dropped him off at the motel. The message he left was close to incoherent. But he didn’t call back on that phone, and when he called my cell, he didn’t make sense.”

  “Where were you later?”

  George paused. “Oh, I had to go to Wal-Mart. Lee, I have to get busy. I’ll talk to you later.” George hung up.

  That was the second brush-off I’d gotten. I made more notes on my yellow pad. By then it was a half hour after the time I should have been working, so I put the list aside and began to check my e-mail, printing out orders that had come in that way. Dolly Jolly, Aunt Nettie’s chief assistant, brought me a list of supplies she needed delivered.

  We set up a display of the small snowman, and I told Aunt Nettie that Amos Hart had said he admired them. “Did you give him an advance peek?”

  “No. He was just being polite, Lee. He’s that way. Always tries to give everyone a compliment.”

  The UPS man came, bringing some Christmas gift boxes Aunt Nettie seemed very glad to see. Tourists were wandering in, and the two teenage counter girls were selling boxes of snowmen, along with the occasional double-fudge bonbon (“layers of milk and dark chocolate fudge with a dark chocolate coating”) or Midori coconut truffle (“very creamy all-white chocolate truffle, flavored with melon and rolled in coconut”). The coconut truffles look like tiny snowballs, and they get very popular around the holidays.

  Mary Samson might be dead, but the regular routine was going on at TenHuis Chocolade, just the way it probably was all over Warner Pier. Regular routine is soothing to all of us, and the churning in my stomach slowed down.

  Until Sergeant McCullough of the Lake Knapp police came in.

  I hadn’t glanced up when the outside door opened, so I didn’t know McCullough was there until he was filling up the door to my office, blocking my exit, and making me feel trapped.

  His white hair and mustache were just as beautiful as ever, and his smile was just as broad. “Hell-o, Mrs. Woodyard.”

  I fought down panic. “Hello, Sergeant McCullough. Please have a sit. I mean, a seat!” I bit my tongue, but it was too late. I’d twisted my tongue and revealed my nervousness. I spoke again. “I’m waiting for Lieutenant VanDam to call me to make a statement.”

  “I am not waiting for you to make a statement. I am going to make one myself. Right now.” McCullough smiled more broadly than ever,
but now his smile was not friendly. It was aggressive, mean. He was doing his best to scare me. And he was succeeding.

  I sat completely still. Maybe I was too scared to move, but I like to think that my beauty pageant training kicked in. Keep quiet. Don’t say anything if you’re not sure what to say. Look poised, even if you don’t feel that way. So I simply sat there and looked at him.

  “Oh, you’ve got the cops down here buffaloed,” McCullough said. He was still smiling, and his voice was low. “Little Miss Texas beauty, batting your eyelashes and looking innocent. You fall over two bodies in two days. Two of ’em! You admit you were the last person to see one victim and among the last to see the other! But I mustn’t haul you in. Oh, no! A few questions might damage your looks!”

  He leaned across the desk. “Don’t count on it, babe! You can’t get by on looks forever. I can throw you to the wolves anytime I want to.”

  Then he stood up, still smiling. “And here’s the state police detective to ask you a few questions.”

  I guess I’d been hypnotized. Alex VanDam had walked right up to my office, and I hadn’t seen him coming.

  McCullough had kept his voice low. I realized that Alex VanDam hadn’t heard what the Lake Knapp detective had said.

  My head was spinning, and my heart was pounding. What should I do? Scream? Yell at McCullough? Burst into tears?

  My office was so small I had room for only one visitor’s chair. McCullough had to get up and go out into the shop to allow VanDam room to get in. While they were changing places, I decided what to do.

  I greeted VanDam and motioned him into the chair. Then I stepped to the door, craning my head around McCullough. I waved at the girl behind the counter.

  “Please bring a half dozen chocolates in for my guests,” I said. “An assortment.”

  I motioned to McCullough. “Sergeant, behind you, there in the shop, is an extra chair. If you want to talk to me, please feel free to bring it in and sit down.”

  I went back to my chair, and I sat on my hands so that neither McCullough nor VanDam could see that they were shaking.