14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse (2 page)

In midwinter in Michigan, we all dream of the South Seas.

Snow usually starts here in November. In December it’s fun—skiing, snowmobiling, skating, and Christmas. January . . . Well, by then the winter routine has set in, and we can live with it. February is a good time to catch up with your reading and to watch a bunch of DVDs; plus, I’m usually busy then because Warner Pier holds its annual winter tourism promotion that month, and I serve on the tourism committee. But when March starts, and the snow and cold seem to have no end, that’s when most of us are ready for the funny farm—as long as that farm is located someplace warm.

Joe and I usually take a vacation in December or January. I need to check in with my parents in Texas, and from there we go on down to the Gulf of Mexico or over to Phoenix or someplace else that is warm and sunny for a couple of weeks. Then we can face February or March, when Aunt Nettie and Hogan try to get away. It’s best for TenHuis Chocolade if Aunt Nettie and I don’t leave town at the same time.

This winter Aunt Nettie and Hogan had decided to splurge on Samoa and Tahiti—and they were going in late February.
They were even booked for a week on a sailing ship, completely out of touch with civilization. No phones. Limited e-mail. Hogan found a retired sheriff’s deputy to stand in as police chief, and they began to pack lightweight clothes in flowery patterns.

As usual, TenHuis Chocolade and I were both up to our ears in the annual winter promotion of the Chamber of Commerce tourism committee. This year the theme was Clown Week, so our shop was full of foil-wrapped molded clowns and molded clown hats in one-inch, two-inch, and four-inch sizes.

Not only was I heavily involved, but my best friend Lindy and her whole family had also been sucked in. Lindy and I have been friends for half our lives, and we’re an example of how small-town lives can become entangled.

Lindy and I worked together at TenHuis Chocolade when we were both sixteen. At eighteen she married Tony Herrera, who just happened to have a close friend named Joe Woodyard. Twelve years later I married Joe Woodyard. (It gets even more complicated.)

Lindy and Tony have three kids. Tony’s dad, Mike Herrera, is a successful restaurant owner, and Lindy is catering manager for her father-in-law. Mike was elected mayor of Warner Pier, and in the middle of his third term he married my mother-in-law, Mercy Woodyard.

Anybody who can understand all this without drawing a diagram is a genius. And it largely came about because Joe and Tony both went out for high school wrestling.

So I wondered what was going to happen when Lindy told me her son, Tony Junior, now in ninth grade, had signed up for the wrestling team at Warner Pier High School.

“I’m almost surprised,” I said. “His dad will be a hard act to follow, after competing on the team that won State . . .”

“Oh sure. Haven’t you and I heard about that glorious event a million times?”

“At least half a million, anyway.” I laughed. “Is Tony Senior excited about Tony Junior—”

“Puh-leeze! There is no more ‘Tony Junior.’”

“What’s happened to him?”

“Now that he’s a high school athlete, he’s known as T.J.”

“Hmmm. It’s a good enough nickname, but how is Tony Senior taking it?”

“About like you’d expect. He doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t know whether he should be angry or hurt. Anyway, he accidentally pushed Ton—I mean T.J.—toward wrestling because they’re having a long-term hassle.”

“What about?”

“Wrestling! Professional wrestling.”

“I’m under the impression that all amateur wrestlers hate the pros.”

“You’re pretty close to right. Tony—Tony Senior—froths at the mouth when he catches T.J. watching those shows. Uses words like ‘stupid’ and ‘phony.’ It’s caused some homemade matches I haven’t enjoyed. The kind that include yelling and pouting.”

“Doesn’t Tony see that if he’d drop it, T.J. would probably lose interest?”

“Heavens! I wish one of them would lose interest. They’re driving me nuts. That’s why I talked both of them into working on Clown Week. But not together.”

“What are they going to do?”

“Tony has agreed to supervise the skating rink.”

“Oh good! Joe says he was always the best skater in their gang, growing up. And he’s big enough to keep any rambunctious skaters in line.”

Lindy nodded. “And T.J. is going to work on the sledding hill.”

“Learning to handle the public, huh? His grandfather will have him working as a waiter PDQ.”

“Oh, Marcia’s already going to work at the Sidewalk Café during Clown Week.”

Marcia was Lindy’s older daughter, now sixteen.

I laughed. “Send her around if she wants some hints on how to get good tips. Waiting tables saved my bacon several times before I landed in the chocolate business.”

*   *   *

Between Clown Week and Aunt Nettie and Hogan’s trip, I nearly forgot that odd phone call to the police station. A few days after it came, Joe and I drove Hogan and Aunt Nettie to the Grand Rapids airport and enviously waved as they lugged their carry-ons down to the departure gate. When they reached Sydney they e-mailed to let us know they arrived safely and were about to set sail.

Their first day at sea was the day Moe Davidson’s store went on the market.

As business manager of TenHuis Chocolade, I had long lusted after the building next door.

Moe Davidson had owned that building, but I didn’t know who inherited it. He was survived by a wife, Emma, and he had two grown children from a previous marriage. The Warner Pier gossip mill reported that Moe and the kids had hardly spoken for years. Both son and daughter were in their early thirties. I hadn’t ever seen Moe’s daughter, but I had heard that her name was Lorraine. I had met the son, Chuck, briefly, when he visited the shop.

Emma and Moe had been married about two years, and she had occasionally worked in the Clowning Around shop, but nobody in Warner Pier knew her well. The Davidsons hadn’t spent the past two winters in Warner Pier; lots of tourist-oriented businesses close up in the off-season. Emma and Moe had gone to her home in Indiana. In addition, Emma hadn’t taken much part in local affairs when she was there. I’d never met her, and I’d heard she didn’t have much to say for herself.

In September Moe had closed the store for the winter, though he had originally planned to reopen for Clown Week. None of us knew if that would work out now. The apartment over the store, a common facility in downtown Warner Pier, had been vacant for a couple of years.

Even though I didn’t know just who now owned the building next door, I knew I wanted to buy it from them. So the new For Sale sign got my attention fast.

Nearly forty years earlier Aunt Nettie and her first husband, Phil TenHuis—my mother’s brother—had spent a year in the Netherlands learning to make luxury, European-style chocolates. They then rented a shop in their hometown and opened a business catering to the tourists who visited one of Lake Michigan’s prime resorts, Warner Pier.

Due to Aunt Nettie’s and Uncle Phil’s hard work and expertise, plus the good business climate of Warner Pier, TenHuis Chocolade had prospered. As time went by they had bought the original building, the shop had expanded to fill its whole downstairs, and they had remodeled several times.

Five years earlier Uncle Phil had been killed in a traffic accident. By then I was a five-foot-eleven blond divorcee with an accounting degree, so I moved up from Texas and joined TenHuis as business manager. I met Joe, got married, and settled
into the community. I was proud of being part of TenHuis Chocolade and proud because we had tripled the mail-order side of the business. Today the business depends on mail order as much as on tourism. This keeps us busy year-round, unlike the Warner Pier merchants who depend solely on summer visitors.

I thought TenHuis had lots of potential for even more expansion, and to expand we needed more space. I needed a larger office staff, but we had no place to put desks or people. We needed at least one sales rep out there calling on corporations and convention planners. We needed a larger shipping department. We needed a catalog and direct-mail department, a catering specialist, a larger workroom for producing truffles and bonbons, and a dozen other things that we couldn’t have because we had no place to house them.

So I’d had my eye on the store next door as an investment for TenHuis Chocolade ever since I came to work for Aunt Nettie. It would double our available space while keeping TenHuis in its prime location, in the heart of Warner Pier’s picturesque business district. We could expand without the inconvenience of changing our address.

However, I had always thought of the building as a purchase for TenHuis as a company. But the company couldn’t buy a pricy piece of property—and I’m happy to say that downtown Warner Pier property is expensive—without Aunt Nettie’s approval. She is president of the company.

But if the building went on sale while Aunt Nettie was out of the country, and I had to move quickly to get it—well, I might have to buy it on my own.

The thought was terrifying. I’d have to talk to Joe, of course, since he’d be linked to me as a purchaser. I’d also have to
consult my banker. But a sale was probably doable. I fought down a panic attack, took two deep breaths, and called the Realtor.

That the sign even went up showed how out of touch Moe Davidson’s kids—or wife, or whoever was handling his estate—were. Warner Pier is small enough to rely on word of mouth. If a piece of property in the business district goes on the market, the rest of the business community gets advance warning in the post office line or the drugstore or the coffee shop. Rarely do we find out something’s for sale by seeing a sign.

At least the name of the real estate firm was familiar. I’d served on a Chamber of Commerce committee with the local agent, Tilda VanAust.

I saw the sign at ten thirty and was on the phone with Tilda by ten thirty-five.

“How did the Davidsons get the store on the market so fast?” I asked.

“Actually,” Tilda said, “Moe had signed the property over to Emma for tax reasons, so it didn’t have to go through probate. Emma’s signing it back to Chuck and Lorraine. She’s here to help them close the building out, but she won’t share in the proceeds.”

“Interesting. How much are they asking?”

I held my breath. The asking price she mentioned was, of course, way too high, but I told her I’d definitely like to view the property.

I tried to sound cool. “Of course, Tilda, you know that business was not so hot this year in Warner Pier. But my aunt and I would like to consider expansion at some future date. So we might look at it as an investment.”

“Lee, you know that this property is in a prime location. There’s been a lot of interest in it already. I’m expecting an offer this week.”

Sure. As if I believed that, since nobody had known it was going on the market. But now that it was officially for sale, I expected Tilda would be getting some calls. I definitely wanted to be first in line, but I didn’t want to act so eager that Tilda saw me as a sucker.

Tilda said she had some time that very day, so we agreed to tour the building at three o’clock.

As soon as I hung up I tried to figure out what time it was for Aunt Nettie and Hogan. Actually, I decided, it didn’t matter. The best way to reach them was by e-mail. Hogan had said he’d check that whenever he had access to it. I fired off an electronic message.

Then I sat back and faced facts. I was on my own. It was unlikely that I’d be able to reach Aunt Nettie to get her approval in the next few days.

If I wanted advice, I had a perfectly good husband who had a law degree and also knew a lot about construction. Joe would be glad to advise me. Besides, if I had to act on my own, any buying I did would involve him legally, so he’d have to go along with it anyway.

Joe works three days a week for an agency similar to the Legal Aid Society. It’s located in Holland, thirty miles away, and specializes in poverty law. I picked up the phone and called his office.

“Sorry, Lee,” the administrative assistant said. “He had to go see a judge down in Warner County.”

“In our county? But nearly all his cases are in Holland.”

“I know. He was surprised by the call. But he went. You could call his cell.”

“I don’t want to do that. Either he’d have it turned off or I’d interrupt something he doesn’t want interrupted. I’ll send him a text. But if you hear from him, ask him to call me.”

I hung up and began to chew my nails and consider the possibilities.

I might not be able to talk the Davidson family down to a figure I thought was fair, and I’d have to give the whole project up. But even if we did reach an agreement, Aunt Nettie might not think it was a good idea.

Or if I couldn’t reach Aunt Nettie, I could decide to buy it on my own, only to find that Aunt Nettie didn’t want it.

Joe and I would wind up owning a downtown building we didn’t really want. Then we could either resell it or rent it out. It might be a good financial investment.

Or we could fail to find a buyer or a leaser and lose a lot of money we couldn’t afford to lose.