The Chocolate Snowman Murders

by JoAnna Carl

  Ramona stared at him for a long moment. Then she spoke. “No!”

  “It might take the heat off you.”

  Ramona drew herself up, switched her ponytail again, and spoke loudly. “If I can’t stand some heat, I’d better get off the committee. We can’t do without you and Lee.”

  Then she turned and went back to the head of the table just as Gordon Hitchcock and his cameraman came in.

  “Welcome,” she said firmly. “Thanks for coming. The WinterFest committee was formed to publicize Warner Pier and bring business to our community. We’re delighted that a Grand Rapids news medium is covering our activities.”

  “Actually, we’re here to ask questions,” Gordon Hitchcock said.

  Ramona looked at her watch. “Then ask quickly. We’re all businesspeople. That’s why we’re meeting over lunch.”

  Gordon signaled, and his cameraman began to film.

  “Two people connected with the Warner Pier WinterFest have been murdered. Are you continuing with the scheduled activities?”

  “Of course.” Ramona’s voice was firm. “I’ve discussed this with the investigating officers, and they see no point in canceling our plans.”

  “Does that seem—well—heartless?”

  “We are all grieving for Mary Samson, who was a longtime member of our community and a friend to most of us. Of course, none of us knew Professor Mendenhall, so his death is not such a personal loss. However, the Warner Pier WinterFest has never pretended to be anything other than what it is—a business promotion for our town.”

  “But—” Gordon Hitchcock tried to say something, and Ramona stopped him with a gesture. She kept on talking.

  “Our business community has sunk a lot of money into preparing and promoting this year’s WinterFest. We would be failing our responsibilities if we simply dropped the whole thing because of these unfortunate occurrences.”

  “But what about danger to people who come to the WinterFest?”

  “There is no danger to WinterFest patrons. I’ve talked about this with our local police chief and with Lieutenant VanDam of the Michigan State Police. Neither of them feels that there’s any threat at all to people who come to our art show, who attend our musical and dramatic performances, who visit our terrific shops and art galleries, or who eat in our delightful restaurants. The danger is that they’ll stay home and miss the fun.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have killed Professor Mendenhall or Ms. Samson?”

  “No. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you and your camera. I’d pass that information along to the proper authorities.”

  Gordon and the cameraman stopped filming. They took seats near Chuck, where they drew curious gazes as the other committee members came in. George Jenkins looked more tweedy than ever, Amos Hart wore his bow tie and snow boots, Johnny Owen carried his doodling pad and pencil, and Sarajane wore a woodsman outfit of wool plaid shirt and jeans.

  Jason pulled up a small table for the press so they could eat, too. Only two committee members were not present by the time we had all ordered our food, and Ramona called the meeting to order. Maggie McNutt and Mozelle were not there.

  Maggie had a conflict with her duties as a teacher at Warner Pier High School, Ramona announced, and had phoned in a report that morning. But there was no explanation as to why Mozelle wasn’t there. Her absence seemed odd, because Mozelle was always there and always early.

  Sarajane passed out the minutes, giving copies to Gordon Hitchcock and to Chuck. We approved them. Then Ramona called for the financial report.

  The report had taken me an hour I didn’t have to spare, but I had it ready. I passed copies around the table and handed copies to Gordon Hitchcock and Chuck O’Riley. I read off the highlights.

  Then I heard a voice from the press section. Gordon Hitchcock was on his feet. “May I ask a question?”

  “Certainly,” Ramona said. “Although our committee, as a private organization, is not covered by the Michigan open-meeting law, our proceedings are completely public.”

  “Ms. Woodyard, I see by your financial report that the play, for example, is going to cost twice as much to produce as it is projected to bring in.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Then how can the festival make any money?”

  “The festival doesn’t intend to make money on individual events, Mr. Hitchcock. The events are planned to draw people to Warner Pier. We hope they’ll eat dinner, shop, maybe stay overnight in one of our bed-andbreakfast inns. We hope the events will break even. Any money the events make above their expenses is gravy. Seed money for next year.”

  “Yes,” Ramona said. “The concerts, the play, the art show—those are gifts to the public. That’s why we keep the tickets cheap. Our merchants donate money for those. They hope to make it up, as Lee said, in meals, shopping, overnight stays.”

  “Oh.” Gordon Hitchcock sat down. He looked puzzled.

  I leaned toward him. “Talk to your ad director,” I said. “It’s similar to what Wal-Mart calls a ‘loss leader.’ The point is to get the people into the stores.”

  I guess my report really did make the news media need a nap. Anyway, I’d hardly finished when Gordon and his cameraman got up and left. Chuck followed them out.

  “They missed the chocolates,” I said. “I forgot to put them out before the meeting. I brought snowmen this time.”

  “It’s better to have them after lunch, anyway,” Ramona said. “I don’t mind not offering to share with the LMTV crew.”

  Amos Hart drew a breath that practically took all the oxygen out of the room. “Now that they’re gone—perhaps we don’t have to try so hard to present a united front.”

  Ramona’s tone was brisk. “Actually, Amos, we don’t have to present a united front at any time. Is your item a committee report or should it come under new business?”

  Amos seemed to sag as he exhaled. It seemed he didn’t like to be reminded that Ramona ran our meetings according to Robert’s Rules of Order. He said he’d wait for his report. He took a milk chocolate snowman and laid it beside his water glass. And just then the waitress brought our meals in, and action stopped while we were all served. Jason brought in a sandwich for himself and sat down with us.

  The meeting went on as soon as we all had butter and salt and pepper, but as we chewed, all of us had plenty of time to get curious before Ramona called on Amos for his report.

  He inhaled again. “I hate to sound like a martyr,” he said, “but I really feel that the choral activities of this year’s WinterFest are being slighted.”

  “But your chorus doesn’t sing until next weekend, Amos.” Ramona sounded patient.

  “Yes! That means there should be publicity in the Grand Rapids papers and on the television stations this week.”

  “I know. Losing Mary really messed the publicity up. I’m not sure what she’d turned in and what she hadn’t. And I’m not sure how to find out.”

  “Chuck might be able to help you,” Joe said. “She probably sent all the news releases out at the same time, and he ought to know if the Gazette received one.”

  The discussion went on as discussions do—pointless and nitpicky. Amos began moaning about extraneous subjects. He driveled on because he didn’t want to have to drive to Grand Rapids for something or other, because the last time he’d driven up there he’d gotten caught in a snowstorm, but if the stoles for the choir—the ones in bright, holiday colors—didn’t come in, he’d have to go, and the WinterFest committee ought to pay for his gas, and even though more people took part in the chorus than in any other WinterFest activity, all the committee did was talk about the art show. And why make the effort to get the stoles? Because if no news media paid attention to the chorus, no one would come to their performances anyway.

  It was so annoying I could have pulled my hair out by handfuls. I tried to think about something else. Like the snowman. Listening to Amos drivel on reminded me that he’d said he had seen them before they were revealed to
the public. I still wondered where. He kept talking. After eight minutes, I spoke up. “Listen, Amos. I know Mary had all the news releases roughed out before the WinterFest even started. I’ll bet I can find them in her computer and—”

  Joe interrupted. “Her computer is still part of a crime scene, Lee.”

  “Drat!”

  There was a moment of silence; then Joe spoke again. “I’ll talk to Hogan and Alex VanDam. Maybe they’ll let you into Mary’s house to look at her computer, Lee.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “She’s probably got a list of fax numbers for the news media, too,” Joe said, “or their e-mails. Mary had contacts in Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Detroit, all over the area. She must have had a master list. Lee and I can try to piece it together this evening and get the last-minute releases off by tomorrow.”

  Amos looked mollified for a moment. Then he looked astonished. He was staring at something behind us, and Joe and I both whipped our heads around to see what it was.

  A woman was charging into the dining room, headed for our table. For a moment I didn’t recognize her. Then I realized it was Mozelle. She was not her usual calm, contained self.

  Her sleek chignon was not sleek. It was messy. There was a smudge on her nose. She was wearing a puffy down coat, which was askew. Her expression was deranged.

  “There you are!” Her voice was almost a scream. “One of you must know! Why was my page cut out of the art show catalog?”

  Really Sinful Chocolate

  Chocolate may have actually been “devil’s food” for one famed lover of the stuff—the fabled Marquis de Sade.

  De Sade, who inspired the word “sadism,” was born into an aristocratic French family in 1740. He had a long and strange life, with thirty years of it spent in madhouses. However, in the authoritative book A True History of Chocolate, authors Sophie D. and Michael D. Coe report that he may have been accused of atrocities he merely imagined for his “inflammatory, deeply subversive fiction.” Whatever the true story, de Sade was jailed by the French government both before and after the revolution. When he fled France, he was jailed in Sardinia.

  Through it all, de Sade loved sweets, particularly chocolate. He frequently asked his long-suffering wife, who never deserted him, to send packages to him in prison or in a madhouse. He requested chocolate candy, chocolate cakes, chocolate bars, chocolate for drinking, and even chocolate suppositories, then a remedy for piles.

  Chapter 18

  I could feel my jaw drop clear to my breastbone, and everyone else at the table was gaping just as widely. To Mozelle we must have looked like a stringer of Lake Michigan whitefish flopping in the bottom of a boat.

  It wasn’t the news that her page had been cut out of the catalog that was making me gape. After all, I knew that. The surprise was Mozelle herself. I had had no idea that she could lose her cool in public like that, and I don’t think the rest of the committee did either.

  Mozelle hadn’t found her cool either. She kept talking, and her voice was strident. “I find it hard to believe that anyone would stoop so low! I know everyone on this committee hates me, but I never thought anyone would actually do me deliberate harm.”

  Ramona spoke calmly. “Mozelle, what are you talking about?”

  Mozelle brandished an art show catalog as if it were a revolutionary pamphlet. “I’m talking about this! Your precious husband is in it! Johnny is in it! Every other entry in the show is in it. But my page has been sliced out!”

  She tossed the booklet down on the table, where it knocked over a small container of mayonnaise. Then she folded her arms and glared at us all in an attitude that combined defiance and fury.

  Ramona picked up the catalog and examined it. “You’re right, Mozelle. The page has been deliberately sliced out of this one. But surely they’re not all like that.”

  “They are! I’ve checked. All the ones on the table as you go into the show are like that. And all the ones in the storage room. Every single one!”

  “All of them?” That was George. His voice was awed. “All five hundred? All defaced?”

  “I suppose some were taken away last weekend,” Mozelle said. “I can’t check on those.”

  Ramona looked up, frowning. “Lee, can we afford to get the catalog reprinted?”

  “It would be expensive.” I looked through my papers, searching for the invoice from the printer. “I know the original cost was several thousand dollars. Mozelle, do you think we could print an insert? If we put an extra sheet in each copy, it might not be as good as having the page in its proper place. But that would be better than having you and Marie Fung not in at all.”

  Mozelle looked at me accusingly. “And just how did you know Marie Fung was on the back of the page?”

  “Because Joe and I went through the show last night, and we picked up a catalog, and we noticed then that the page with you on one side and Ms. Fung on the other had been cut out of the dozen or so booklets there by the door. I was going to ask George about it today. I thought—well, it had been done so neatly I thought there might have been some reason for cutting the page out.”

  “Oh, no,” George said. “I don’t know anything about it. This is terrible.”

  Ramona spoke to me. “Could the printer do an insert?”

  “I’m sure he could. TenHuis Chocolade deals with this same printer—we think they do the best color work in our area, and they’re competitive on price. They keep our sales material in their computer, and when we need a thousand more brochures, we call, and they print them out. I’d have to check, of course, but I imagine they’d still have the whole art show catalog available. It shouldn’t be any trick to print out those two pages.”

  I turned to Mozelle. “We might have to pay a premium to get it done by the weekend, but I think we can find the money.”

  Mozelle didn’t look mollified. “If—if the printer still has the pages in his computer files.”

  I tried to sound confident. “I still have one of the catalogs George and Mary handed out as samples. That page is still in it. If the printer doesn’t have the original files, the type could be reset from that. And I’m sure George still has the original slides used to scan the artwork.”

  George nodded. “Oh, yes, I have the slides. I’m sure we can get an insert printed.”

  Mozelle deflated into a chair, but she was sitting up straight. She seemed calmer, more like her authoritative self. “It would be quite an expense.”

  “It must be done!” George’s voice was firm. “Mozelle, we want this to be a respected art show, one artists try hard to get in. We can’t expect top artists to enter if they’re not treated properly. If a mistake is made, we have to fix it.”

  A murmur of agreement went around the table. Jason, ever the restaurateur, jumped to his feet and offered to get Mozelle some lunch. Amos Hart patted her shoulder, though that didn’t seem to comfort Mozelle. Johnny Owens examined the catalog she’d tossed onto the table and muttered a few opinions about the ancestry of anybody who would do such a thing to an artist. Joe got up from the table and asked Jason if he could use the telephone. He received permission and left the room.

  Mozelle seemed genuinely appreciative of everyone’s concern. “Thank you. All of you. I apologize for losing my temper.”

  We all assured her that we understood her feelings, and the board quickly voted to fund the extra printing as a nonbudget item.

  In the lull that followed the vote, I spoke. “Now we call the police.”

  Joe was back. “I called them after George made it clear he knew of no reason for the page to be cut out of the catalog.”

  Ramona looked surprised. “Do we have to involve the police?”

  I spoke before Joe could. “Of course! Ramona, this was vandalism. Or malicious mischief. It’s going to cost the committee quite a lot money to rectify the situation. It was a crime!”

  “But it’s such bad publicity,” Ramona said.

  “I’m sorry about that. But we can’t s
imply ignore it.” I’m sure I sounded miffed. I was the one who was going to have to find the money.

  Joe did his lawyer thing at that point, clearing his throat in a way that made all eyes turn toward him. “We need to figure out who the heck cut that page out of the catalog, and why the heck they did it. And it’s not only because we can’t ignore vandalism. It’s a lot more important than that.”

  He had everybody’s attention. “Several strange things have happened in the past few days, and they all seem to center on this committee.”

  Ramona frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean two killings and an attempt on Lee’s life. And now this.”

  A mutter of objections broke out, but Joe spoke again and quelled the opposition. “Let’s face facts. First, Mendenhall, the juror for our art show, is killed. Of course, we all hoped it was nothing to do with us. We hoped he was killed because he was an obnoxious drunk who took up with the wrong drinking buddy. Or something.”

  “Wasn’t that the reason?” Sarajane asked the question.

  “I thought it might be to begin with, but Mary Samson’s death put an end to that theory.”

  Sarajane wasn’t convinced. “Mary was killed when she surprised a burglar!”

  “Mary was the only member of the committee who admitted talking to Mendenhall. We can’t ignore that link.”

  It was my turn to object. “But Mary said Mendenhall didn’t say anything intelligent. She thought he was just a crank caller. She hung up on him.”

  “There’s got to be a connection, Lee. It’s too coincidental. First Mendenhall, then Mary. Then, after Mary was killed, someone lured you out here to Warner Point before daybreak and tried to brain you with a snow shovel.” He patted my hand. “God knows why. I sure don’t, and you don’t seem to know either.”

  Then he turned back to the rest of the committee. “And now we have a case of vandalism. That’s not as serious as murder, true. But we can’t just assume that this committee is the target of a weird crime spree for no reason. There’s something that links all these things.”