14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse (7 page)

The Maya followed the Olmecs, settling on the Yucatán Peninsula and in what is today Guatemala. According to some accounts, the Mayan name for the cacao tree was simply “tree.” They may have felt cacao was so important that it didn’t need a specific name.

They believed that the cacao tree belonged to the gods, and its pods were gifts to humankind. Ancient drawings indicate that the pods were used in religious rituals.

Apparently the Maya originated chocolate as a drink. This was a bitter concoction, spiced with peppers and sometimes thickened with cornmeal. It was used for religious rituals, not just as an ordinary beverage.

The scientific name for the cacao tree,
Theobroma cacao,
means “food of the gods.” The name was selected by Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who came up with the method for naming plants. He named it after the Mayan belief that the trees belonged to the gods.

Images of cacao pods were carved into the walls of Mayan palaces and temples, and apparently were the symbols of life and fertility.

At nine the next morning, Joe started calling Emma Davidson. At two o’clock that afternoon, they had not made contact.

He began with the Davidson house, talking to Chuck three separate times. Emma was out calling on friends, Chuck said. He had no idea when she would be back. Would she be home for lunch? Chuck had no idea about that either. And he had no idea exactly which friends Emma had intended to visit.

On the off chance that she might come home to eat lunch, Joe went by the Davidson house at twelve thirty. Lorraine opened the door. This time, Joe said, she didn’t yell and swear at him, but she didn’t invite him in either. The only information Joe got was that her stepmother was out, and Lorraine didn’t know when she would be home.

“But,” Joe had observed, “there are three cars in your driveway. One each for Lorraine, Chuck, and Emma.”

“Some friend picked Emma up,” Lorraine had said. She did agree to give Joe’s phone number to Emma if her stepmom should happen to check in.

I got all this secondhand, of course, when Joe met me for a late lunch and reported on his frustrating morning.

“Is Emma giving you the runaround?” I asked.

“Very likely. If she hasn’t spoken to anybody about her husband’s death yet, she probably still doesn’t want to say anything.”

“Did she talk to the sheriff’s office after Moe died?”

“Not in any official way.”

I grazed at my salad a minute before I went on. “Are you overreacting? Maybe Emma went shopping with her friend. If they went to Grand Rapids, they could easily spend the whole day at the mall.”

Joe shook his head. “Chuck and Lorraine didn’t have their stories quite straight. Chuck told me Emma had gone out to ‘pay some calls on her Warner Pier friends.’ But when I pointed out to Lorraine that Emma’s car seemed to be in the driveway, she said someone had picked Emma up. So their stories don’t match.”

“One of them could have honestly been mistaken.”

Joe spoke grimly. “I can attest to that. They’re definitely mistaken if they think I’m going to give up.”

No, I knew all the Davidsons were in for a surprise if they believed Joe would simply disappear because Emma was avoiding him. Joe doesn’t yell and scream and beat on his chest, but he can wear down any opponent.

Joe smiled philosophically. “Let’s think about something else while we’re eating. How was your morning?”

I laughed. “That’s not changing the subject. I spent most of the morning thinking about the Davidsons’ building.”

“You’d still like to get hold of it.”

“Sure. I went over and talked to Tilda. She thinks there may be a good chance. But the guy I saw with her definitely has an interest.”

“Chuck doesn’t seem to object to you as a buyer.”

“No, he’s a realist. But I’m not going to pay more than the building is worth just to butter the Davidsons up. So it may be a lost cause. I don’t like their asking price.”

“Are you going to view the building again?”

“Tilda’s coming over to show it for me at five o’clock.”

“I’ll stay out of the way.”

We both laughed. Yes, even if Lorraine hadn’t been rude to Joe that morning, the less contact they had, the better.

Life became more normal when I got back to the office. Dolly Jolly, who was in charge of making the chocolate while Aunt Nettie was in the South Seas, was working on the big clown figure that was to be the star of our exhibit for Clown Week.

The three-dimensional figure stood two feet tall, and Dolly had named him Warner Whacko.

Warner wore traditional clown whiteface—made of white chocolate, of course—with dark chocolate eyes and milk chocolate hair. His baggy suit was of white and milk chocolate in a Harlequin pattern, and his slippers were dark chocolate, with white chocolate pompons. He had a white chocolate ruff, edged in milk chocolate. This was the first time Aunt Nettie had turned a major display piece over to Dolly, and Dolly had produced a work of art. Clown Week visitors were going to ooh and aah as they passed our window.

Warner was simply for show, of course. The clowns we would be selling in the shop were much simpler in design. They were also solid chocolate. A chocolate piece as large as Warner would work only if it was partially hollow. But, like Warner, the smaller clowns also had Harlequin suits and white ruffs, as well as merry expressions on their white chocolate faces.

When I stopped to watch her, Dolly was adding eyelashes to the face of the big Warner.

“He’s gorgeous!” I said.

“He’s a lotta work!” Dolly yelled. Dolly is over six feet tall and big-boned, with a larynx to match her size. Even when she tries to whisper, her voice comes out as a shout.

“I wish I could make him more colorful!” she said.

“You could have dyed the white chocolate any color you like.”

“Nettie didn’t want to do that! She wanted him to look like chocolate!”

“I think she was right, Dolly. Warner might not have looked so subtle and sophisticated in bright colors.”

“There’s nothing sophisticated about a clown! Remember Moe and his squirt bottle?”

“Only too well. Hey, at five o’clock Tilda’s going to show me that building. Do you want to come along?”

“I have an appointment for a haircut, but I could change it!”

“That’s up to you. I won’t commit to anything until you’ve looked the situation over.”

Dolly leaned close to me, and I could tell she wanted to talk quietly. But being Dolly, she bellowed in my ear. “What are you going to do if the Davidson kids want an immediate commitment to buy?”

“I don’t see why they should. The building just went on the market yesterday. I’ll just tell them we have to wait until Aunt Nettie gets home. That will be less than a month.”

But my stomach did a little dance as I walked back to my office. I didn’t want to commit to buying that building without consulting Aunt Nettie. I didn’t have the authority to buy it in the name of TenHuis Chocolade. Joe and I didn’t have the
money to do it on our own, and getting a loan on my own hook might be a hassle. I could, I supposed, mortgage our home to get the money, but I really didn’t want to do that, and I wasn’t sure Joe would go along with it. He was already up to his ears in mortgage payments for the boat shop. His legal activities had grown so—well, active—that his time at the shop had suffered. Now the shop was barely breaking even.

No, I wanted to wait until Aunt Nettie came home to make a final decision on the purchase of the Clowning Around building.

But at five o’clock I learned that might not happen.

At that time Tilda was sitting in my visitor’s chair, managing to look alternately sympathetic and excited. Her artificially red hair was standing on end, and the nap on her fake fur jacket seemed to be imitating it. Her cute little face was having a hard time taking the right expression at any given moment, because she had brought news—good and bad. Good for her, and bad for me.

“Lee, I was totally astonished. The phone call came out of nowhere. Yes, I showed the guy the building yesterday—you saw us. But I didn’t expect him to make an offer! Not this quick.”

Ecstasy took over her face for a moment. Then Tilda remembered to look concerned and sympathetic. I understood her mixed feelings. As a Realtor, Tilda represented the Davidson heirs. Her job was to get the most money for their property that she could. Doing that also increased her fee. But as a Warner Pier businesswoman, Tilda wanted to get along with the locals. Like me. She didn’t want to sell some outsider a building I was interested in if it left me with hard feelings. A dissatisfied local customer could cause her a lot of problems.

“Did the caller make a good offer?” I asked.

Tilda nodded. “Above asking.”

“And who is this guy?”

“His name is Philip Montague, and he represents a development company. I don’t know any more than that. Montague made it clear he was acting for the company, not for himself.”

I knew Tilda wouldn’t tell me the amount of their offer until she had an okay from the Davidsons. Her face was still flashing between the exaltation brought on by getting a good offer and the sympathy she thought she should offer me.

I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t want to display my feelings. I tried to make my face deadpan. “Have you presented the offer to Emma, Chuck, and Lorraine?”

“Not yet.”

“Is there any point in my looking at the building?”

“Of course, Lee! You may want to bid against these people.”

“I doubt it.” There was no point in making Tilda feel too sure of herself. “I’m not sure I would go as high as the asking price, much less above it. But I’d still like to see the building.” I made a grimace I hoped looked like a grin. “I may want to crow over the final purchaser—tell him why he was a dumb bunny to spend real money on that property.”

Tilda laughed nervously.

I stood up and reached for my jacket. “Let’s go.”

We had only to walk next door, of course, but it was closing time for the downtown businesses, so the street wasn’t as empty as we might have expected. In fact, the people at the wine store on the other side of Clowning Around were outside on ladders, putting up plywood clowns—painted in garish colors—above their show windows. They’re neighbors, so Tilda and I stopped to admire their decorations.

Then the out-of-town clowns—Kyle and Paige—came along. They were wearing their costumes and did a few handsprings
for us. This caused cries of “Watch out!” from Tilda and me and the wine shop owners. A patch of ice is always a possibility on a Michigan sidewalk in February.

Finally Tilda unlocked the door, and the two of us went into Clowning Around.

Once again I was oppressed by the masses of clowns. They were on the shelves, on the floor, on the walls, and hanging from the ceiling. Big photos of groups of clowns were massed behind the cash register. I could hardly breathe for clowns. And I recalled that the back rooms—the rooms for storage and staff work—were just as bad.

I hadn’t seen anybody working over there. I didn’t know how Lorraine, Chuck, and Emma were going to have everything ready to open the store for Clown Week. But that was their problem. Looking at the building was my concern.

“I saw most of the main floor,” I said. “How about starting the tour upstairs?”

Tilda led the way to the back of the building, where two closed doors were located side by side. “I can never remember which of these is the restroom and which the stairs,” she said. She produced another key and tried the left-hand door. It opened readily and revealed a narrow staircase.

“I guess the building was originally set up so that the store operator could live above it,” she said.

“There is a separate entrance to the upstairs off the alley, right?”

“Yes. Of course, I don’t think Moe rented his upstairs much. He used it for storage.”

“If his brain was as disorganized as this place, heaven knows what we’ll find up there.” I quit talking and followed Tilda upstairs. I didn’t mention that the building was also spooky. I
could swear ghosts were walking behind us, making the floor creak and causing drafts of the cold winter air to follow us.

The apartment was as big a mess as the downstairs. It was full of cardboard boxes and assorted stuff. Apparently that was simply the way Moe operated.

The area had other problems. The walls had patches of damp and peeling paint. The sinks had horrible brown stains from dripping water, and the appliances were old and dirty. If the apartment was to be rented, it would first require a complete renovation.

I pointed this out to Tilda. “The downstairs needs work, too,” I said. “I definitely think their price is way too high.”

“But, Lee, if you were changing this building into a modern, beautiful chocolate plant—with a workroom similar to the one you have now—you’d want a complete renovation anyway.”

“If we could rent the upstairs out, it would help offset the cost of the work. But this place would need more than a coat of paint.”

Tilda looked a bit dejected as we went back down the stairs. I didn’t blame her. The place made me feel dejected. In fact, I felt more than dejected. I felt nervous. Scared. Jumpy.

Why? It was just a building that needed to be cleared out and cleaned up. It wasn’t a haunted house or a torture chamber.

But the building not only looked spooky, it also sounded spooky. I kept hearing creaks, something almost like a door closing, and weird groans. I tried not to shudder.

Tilda turned on more lights in the workroom. Glaring light from bare bulbs beat down on us. It was a large open area—or would have been open if it weren’t crowded with shelving, cardboard boxes, and heaps of clown paraphernalia.

“There is that little kitchen area,” Tilda said. She pointed across the room.

I followed her. “Kitchen area” was a fancy name for a table with a Formica top and two metal folding chairs. An old refrigerator sat against the wall. An electric coffeepot was on the table. Water for the pot apparently came from a mop sink near the table. I will admit the sink was fairly clean, but it didn’t look as if anybody had ever mopped. A couch, covered in once-fashionable plaid, was between us and the table. It was the only thing in the whole building that looked fairly comfortable.