The chocolate frog frame-up: a chocoholic mystery

by JoAnna Carl

  Joe grinned. ”I defended a few guys who shot people who were fooling around with their wives. The thought of the husband with a gun sure makes adultery unattractive.”

  “Do you think Trey has a gun?”

  “Probably not. It might wrinkle his pocket protector.” Joe stared at his glass again. ”I’m not sure what to tell you about Maggie – I mean, Meg. She was Maggie Mae in high school.”

  “I’m not asking for high school confessions.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “We’d all be better off if we could erase our teenage years from our memories. But if you knew Meg back then, or more recently, can you figure out what her motive was in telling me all that stuff about you chasing her?”

  “Just trying to make herself appear attractive, I guess. She always thought all the men were after her.”

  “Were they?”

  “Some were. That was one thing that got her talked about. She was illegitimate, for another thing. And, well – her mother was illegitimate, too. Warner Pier can be a really small town about that sort of thing. My mom’s not anymore narrow minded than most, but she really didn’t like my dating Meg.”

  “You were popular in high school, Joe. Class president and wrestling champ. I don’t see you taking out the school slut.”

  “Meg’s reputation was nothing like that. She wasn’t ‘easy.’ She was just a girl who lacked ‘background.’ Or that’s what my mom thought. Meg talked wilder than she acted. I always thought she was dramatizing herself.”

  “A pretty normal teenage trait.”

  Joe contemplated his drinks seriously, then looked at me. ”They say a gentleman never tells, Lee. But as far as Meg went, well, I finally decided she was more of a tease than anything else. If anybody showed an interest in her, she bragged about it.”

  “That’s – well, is ‘pitiful’ the right word?”

  Joe shook his head. ”I’m no therapist, but Meg… Okay, let’s admit it. All us Warner Pier locals look at the summer people with at least a little bit of envy. They have more money than most of us do. They have more status in the larger world. They’ve seen the larger world, and us small-town guys haven’t! Some, like Trey’s family, are what passes for ‘aristocratic’ in America. It takes lots of us a few years to get that envy out of our systems.”

  I knew Joe was talking about himself and his disastrous marriage to a rich and famous summer visitor; her glamour had been one thing that attracted him to her. I’d seen the same feelings displayed by other locals. ”Is that why Lindy told me not to date a summer guy if I didn’t want to ruin my reputation with the Warner Pier guys?”

  “Exactly! That’s all based on envy. The Warner Pier guys don’t think they can compete, so they badmouth any girl who goes out with a summer visitor. But Meg broke that taboo. And she got away with it.”

  “How’d she manage that?”

  “She didn’t give a hoot about what the local guy said. The first time she saw she could catch the eye of the summer guy – and not just as a sexual plaything – all the Warner Pier guys, including me, were history.”

  I sipped my drink. ”This morning she indicated that Trey – or Trey’s family money and connections – were exactly what she’d been looking for in life. I wonder what Trey saw in her.”

  “A sexy little piece, probably. I hope he wasn’t disappointedlifted his glass. ”Here’s to Meg. May she get every damn thing she wants in life, and may she never bother us again.”

  “Hear, hear!” I said. ”And may we never again talk about her or about Hershel Perkins or about the Toadfrog.”

  And we didn’t for at least an hour and a half. We stuffed ourselves with the deluxe dinner for two – including Pupu tray. I let Joe worry about paying for it. Then we drove half an hour across Grand Rapids to a beautiful neighborhood where an executive of an office furniture manufacturing company lived. He proudly showed Joe the boat he bought, a twenty foot 1955 Chris-Craft Continental. It looked to me as if it needed a lot of work. His wife made coffee, and the guy insisted on telling the whole yarn of how he’d found the boat in an old barn. Joe made admiring noises, looked the trailer to his pickup’s hitch, and told the guy he wasn’t promising any particular delivery date.

  “It’ll take a lot of hand finishing,” Joe said.

  “I know, I know,” the man said. ”I’ve always dreamed of owning a boat like this. I don’t want slapdash job.”

  When we left it was nearly dark. By the time Joe and I had driven back across Grand Rapids and entered I-196 heading south, there was hardly any light in the western sky.

  We were almost back to Warner Pier before the next excitement started.

  Chocolate Chat

  _____________

  Cacao Cash

  Cacao was money – literally – to the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican natives. They used the beans as currency, as well as grinding them up and using them to make drinks.

  An early Spanish visitor to what is today Nicaragua reported a rabbit could be purchased for ten beans, a slave for a hundred beans, and a visit to a prostitute for 8 to 10 beans. Naturally, counterfeiting developed.

  The Aztecs did not away cacao beans but measured by counting individual beans. Approximately 24,000 beings would fit in one of the backpacks carried by traders. One early Spanish reporter claimed that the warehouse of the Emperor Montezuma held forty thousand such loads, or 960 million cacao beans. Most of these, of course, would have been used for pain soldiers or serpents and for buying supplies for the Emperor’s household, but the household also drank a lot chocolate.

  On one recorded occasion, when Montezuma was a prisoner of the Spanish, servants of the foreign invaders broke into his storehouses and spent the night making off with thousands and thousands of beans. The beans were stored, it was reported, and huge wicker beans, which were coded with clay.

  Chapter 12

  Looking back, we made it easy for the guy.

  One of the disadvantages of living in a quaint and beautiful tourist town, of course, is that a lot of day-to-day items, such as gasoline and groceries, are so that tourist prices. As Warner Pier business people, Aunt Nettie and I – and Joe, too – try to patronize other local businesses. But when gasoline is a nickel higher per gallon in Warner Pier, some of us are not eager to cough up the difference.

  The Marathon station ten miles north of Warner Pier, at the Willard exit, always has gasoline $.08-$.10 cheaper than the Warner Pier stations. So Warner Pier locals have gone to Grand Rapids or Holland universally follow the habit of stopping there to buy gas on their way back into town. As long as we’re there, we figured we might as well top off the tank. Besides, the restaurants are usually clean.

  Joe hadn’t hurried as we left Grand Rapids. First, he’s not one of these immature guys who has to pass everything on the highway. Second, he tries to use as little gasoline as possible, though being forced to drive a pickup truck with enough moxie to haul a big boat means he can’t worry too much about mileage. Plus, I-196 traffic is heavy day and night, weekdays and weekends.

  Joe didn’t even mention his plan to stop for gas. He’d just pulled off the interstate at the Willard exit and hauled the boat over to an open gas pump. When I asked him if he wanted a Coke, he said, “I can get them,” and I answered, “Oh, I’ll do it. If you want a candy bar, you’re on your own.”

  I got out of the truck, visited the ladies room, then bought two one liter bottles of soda – one Diet Coke and one regular. As I was going back out to the pickup, I noticed a big black panel truck – the kind a plumber or electrician might drive – parked off to one side. I noticed it for a silly reason. It had tinted windows, and it looked empty, but just when I happened to be looking at it, it moved. It rocked back and forth, just slightly. The motion made me wonder just what was going on inside. I grinned as I got into the pickup, and I pointed the panel truck out to Joe when he came back.

  He laughed. ”I guess I’ll have to get my windows tinted,” he said. ”Turn the pickup int
o a love nest.”

  He drove out of the station and onto the entrance ramp, paused until the interstate traffic cleared, then gunned the pickup until he was up to highway speed. He reached up to adjust his rearview mirror so that it didn’t the headlights of the vehicle behind us. ”Jerk’s following too close,” he said.

  I looked back, and I realized the vehicle behind us wasn’t only to close. It was coming up really fast, too.

  “You’d almost think he was trying to ram us!” I said.

  “He’d better not hit that boat,” Joe said grimly.

  There was no one in the left-hand lane, and the vehicle moved out to pass us.

  “He could be drunk,” I said. ”I hope he stays in his own lane while he gets by.”

  Joe’s voice was level. ”He’s not staying there,” he said. ”He’s coming over. Hang on.”

  Joe hit the brakes, hard. The boat began to fishtail. Joe edged over to the right, fighting to keep control of the truck and the trailer. I thought we were leaving the road – until I looked out the window. We were on a bridge. The railing was really close. We weren’t going to be pulling off on that side. The guy on our left was trying to crush us against the railing.

  I took a deep breath and held it. The vehicle kept coming over into our lane. Joe hit the brakes again, whipping the boat back and forth and slowing the pickup.

  The speeder missed our front fender by maybe an inch, then shot ahead of us.

  Joe touched his accelerator gently, and as we speeded up, the trailer we were telling straightened out.

  I exhaled. ”Yee-haw! That was close. Good driving!”

  “The cell phone’s in the glove box,” Joe said. ”Try to call 911. We need to report that guy.”

  I was staring at the vehicle that had just gone around us. It was square in the pickup’s headlights and moving away rapidly. I could see that it was a black panel truck. ”Is that the truck we saw back at the Willard station?”

  “It looks like it. Can you read the tag number?”

  “Not the letters.” I was reaching into the glove box while I talked. ”I think the numbers are eight, eight, four.”

  The black panel truck was moving away fast, already disappearing around a semi-. I found the cell phone and punched in 911. I spoke as soon as I heard a voice. We want to report a reckless driver on I – 196 just south of the Willard exit. He nearly ran us off the road.”

  “Where?”

  “I-196, maybe a mile south of Willard.”

  “What state is that in?”

  “Michigan!”

  “We’re Wisconsin.”

  “Rats,” I said. ”Joe, the cell phone bounced us across the lake.”

  “Hang up,” Joe said. ”We’ll call the Warner Pier dispatcher. She can call the state police. We’ll try to follow that panel truck, see where the guy goes.”

  “Sorry,” I told the phone. ”We’ll try a local number.”

  The semi-ahead of us had slowed down, and Joe pulled into the left lane and passed it. He told me the number for the Warner Pier City Hall. ”How come you have that number memorized?” I said. He didn’t answer.

  I was punching in the numbers as Joe pulled up beside the semi-.

  “Where’d he go? He asked.

  The black panel truck had disappeared.

  “He can’t have been traveling that fast,” I said. ”He’d have to be driving the speed of light to had disappeared already.”

  Joe kept his speed up, passing a couple of cars, but nothing that looked remotely like the black panel truck appeared.

  “Weird,” he said. ”I don’t think we imagined it.” He settled into the right-hand lane and slowed down, several car lengths ahead of the cars he had passed.

  I was looking back. ”Oh, no! Somebodies coming up fast in the left-hand lane.”

  It was a replay of the whole first episode. The headlights came rushing at us – the driver must have the been hitting at least ninety. When the vehicle got beside us, I could see it was the same black panel truck. It was coming over into our lane. And once again the whole thing was happening on a bridge.

  “Look out!” I said.

  “Hang on!” Joe said.

  Again he hit the brakes. Again the boat whipped back and forth, while Joe fought to control the pickup. Again we edged toward the shoulder and slowed.

  This time I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the black panel truck was oozing in ahead of us. His tag was right out there in the headlights. Then the truck headed on up the road at warp speed, passing two cars and moving out of our line of sight.

  “This time I got the letters from the tag,” I said.

  I finished calling the Warner Pier dispatcher and told her about the whole episode, including the license plate number. She promised to call the Michigan State Police.

  “Scary,” Joe said.

  “How did he get behind us again? Where did he hide?”

  “He must have pulled onto the shoulder, waited until we’d gone by, then taken off again. If we were out beside the semi-, we wouldn’t have seen him.”

  “Why? He can’t have it in for us particularly.”

  “I don’t know why he would, but he seems to be able to pass anybody else without trying to shove ‘em off the road.”

  “Should we stop?”

  Joe thought a minute. ”Better not,” he said. ”We’re in danger in that pickup, but if he’s really after us, we might be in more serious danger if we aren’t moving.”

  There was no exit from the Interstate before Warner Pier. We drove on. Joe stayed in the right-hand lane. He didn’t pass anybody, the two cars we’d passed now past us. Joe drove conservatively. But his hands gripped the steering wheel as if it were the neck of the jerk in the black panel truck.

  Two miles before the exit to Warner Pier there’s a rest area. I’ve never stopped there – it’s too close to home – but I’m sure it’s a standard rest area, with parking for trucks and cars, restrooms, and machines dispensing soft drinks and snacks. That’s where the black panel truck ambushed us the third time.

  We had to just pulled past the exit from that rest area when the semi-behind us began to flash its lights and honk.

  “What’s he doing?” Joe said.

  I looked back. ”Oh, God, Joe! Here comes that panel truck again!”

  “He’s not going to get away with it this time,” Joe said. He pulled over to the left.

  “Joe! There’s another bridge! He can push us into the rail on either side!”

  “I’ve got to try something or he’s going to kill us.”

  The black truck was gaining fast. When he got within twenty-five feet of us, Joe suddenly moved right, straddling the center line. Then he hit the brakes, hard. The boat began to whip back and forth frantically.

  “It’s working!” I yelled. ”He’s dropping back.”

  Of course, Joe couldn’t keep the boat fishtailing. He had to gain speed or lose control of the pickup. And, of course, as soon as he let up on the brakes and began to speed up, the panel truck was right on us again.

  Again Job let him get closer. Again he hit the brakes, slewing the boat trailer all over the road. Again the panel truck was forced to drop back.

  Joe muttered. ”That’ll never work a third time.”

  “At least we’re off that bridge,” I said. ”We’re within a half-mile of the exit. Maybe…”

  “No. Here he comes again!”

  This time the panel truck didn’t let the boat. Can. He pulled out onto the left-hand shoulder, apparently determined to come up alongside us.

  I tried to keep my voice calm. ”He’s going out to the left,” I said.

  Joe fishtailed the boat again, and I felt a shock. ”The boat hit him!”

  “Not hard enough.”

  Joe pressed hard on the accelerator, and we pulled ahead. But the black truck wasn’t ready to give up. He was even with the pickup bed now, and he was so close I could see the Dodge hood ornament glittering, could see something shiny ins
ide the cab. Maybe a pair of glasses.

  “He’s coming over!”

  Now Joe suddenly swung the wheel right. The pickup veered across the highway, then off the highway, onto the shoulder. We were racing down the interstate, capitalize interstate but we weren’t on the pavement. We were on the shoulder. The black truck shot by us.

  Then we weren’t on the shoulder anymore. We were on the grass. Then we were in the bushes. Then we were heading down a slope. There were trees ahead.

  “Hang on,” Joe said. The pickup was slowing.