The Chocolate Bridal Bash (17 page)

“We didn’t talk about what we’d do this evening,” I said after I got in his truck. “Did you have a plan?”

“I thought we’d go into Holland for dinner, but I told Rollie Taylor we’d meet him for a drink first.”

I hadn’t been expecting that, so I thought about it. “Have you asked him about Bill Dykstra?”

“Not yet. I called him a couple of times. He just called back a few minutes ago. This seemed to be the best way to get together with him. Is that okay with you?”

I couldn’t think of any reason to object. “Sure,” I said. “And let me tell you what I found out this afternoon.”

I quickly sketched the comments Elmer Priddy had made, claiming Van Hoosier had linked my mom’s name to a kidnapping. Joe was as surprised as I had been. Since we knew of no kidnapping that had occurred the year Mom left Warner Pier, the whole thing sounded like the ramblings of a senile mind.

Then I told Joe about Tom and his feeling that murder was a more likely scenario for Bill’s death.

“I asked Hogan about it,” I said, “and he said he’d look into the case.”

“You realize that you might prove Bill was murdered and make your mom suspect number one.”

“Don’t be silly!”

I scoffed, but the idea was chilling. I had been messing around in my mother’s past—just to satisfy my own curiosity. But if I finally discovered the reason she left Warner Pier—the reason Bill Dykstra sent her away—it might turn out to be something I wished I hadn’t dredged up.

I was feeling a bit nervous when Joe parked in front of the Sidewalk Café. “I see Rollie’s car is already here,” he said.

One reason Joe had suggested the Sidewalk Café was that it’s fairly quiet in the winter. Mike plays cool jazz on the sound system, and it’s usually possible to talk.

Rollie was sitting at one of the front tables, holding a beer bottle in his hand. He rose when we came in. “Hi, Lee, Joe,” he said. “Did you know that if Rosie O’Donnell married one of the Bush brothers—and decided to take a more formal name to suit her new status—she’d be Rose Bush?”

We groaned, then ditched our coats and ordered our own drinks. A glass of white wine for me, and scotch for Joe. The scotch request surprised me, since I know Joe hates the stuff. Then I realized he didn’t really plan to drink it, since he was driving. The drink was simply stage dressing.

I left the talking to Joe.

“You know that Lee’s been trying to understand what happened thirty-odd years ago, when her mom became Warner Pier’s runaway bride.”

“Yes, that was a seven-day wonder.” Rollie nodded and smiled his usual smile, the one I didn’t understand. “It caused more comment than that trip to Lansing.”

Joe ignored the Lansing reference and spoke again. “We found out that you were a bearer at Bill Dykstra’s funeral. So you must have known him pretty well. What did you think of him?”

Rollie chuckled. “I wasn’t really buddies with Bill, of course. I’d taught him. His mom and I taught together.”

“Why did they ask you to be a bearer?”

“I don’t have any idea, but it’s not a request you can refuse. As for Bill, well—I guess until that summer I’d thought he was an ordinary guy. Mr. Straight. Like his older brother the Eagle Scout, but then Ed went nuts—I guess you’ve heard about that?”

We both nodded, and Rollie went on. “Yeah, Ed infuriated his dad by going to Canada. It was Bill who stayed home and acted like Mr. Good Guy. Then he committed suicide. Who’da thunk it?”

“So Bill’s suicide really surprised you?”

“At the time it did, Joe. Later, well, you remember things you didn’t give any significance at the time.”

“Such as?”

“Bill was getting desperate to get away from home. I see it now. I guess that’s why . . .” His voice trailed off.

I spoke then. “I’ve gathered that both my mom and Bill were eager to get away from their families. I recognize that’s probably a major reason they wanted to get married.”

Rollie laughed again. “That was one reason. But thirty years ago things were different, Lee. Kids wanted to get married—how can I put this delicately? Because it was the only way to guarantee a regular . . .”

“Sex life?” I said.

I was pleased to see Rollie blush slightly. “Well, yes. Of course, we’d been through the sixties, and things were changing. But change hadn’t hit Warner Pier yet. Some doctors were still refusing to prescribe the pill to unmarried girls, for example. We all thought Bill and Sally wanted to get married for the usual reasons, the reasons people had married young for centuries.

“But looking back—after Bill’s suicide—I guess I did see more desperation in his outlook those past few months. That’s purely hindsight.”

We all sat quietly for a moment, then Joe leaned forward. “Rollie,” he said, “Lee said you offered to tell her mom something important about Bill Dykstra. Can you share that information with us instead?”

Rollie frowned and sipped his drink. “I’m not sure I should. Didn’t I hear that Sally’s coming for a visit this week? Why don’t I talk to her?”

“She’s just making a quick trip. She may not be able to see you.”

“I’m not sure, Joe. I know that Sally wouldn’t want this to get out . . .”

“You don’t trust us? Come on, Rollie. Lee’s trying to
protect
her mom. I don’t know what you knew about Bill Dykstra, but I definitely don’t think Lee should arrange for you to talk to her mom before she knows just what you’re going to tell her.”

Take that, Rollie, I thought. Tell us or don’t tell anybody. Joe had laid it on the line. But would Rollie buy?

For a minute I didn’t think he would. Our drinks came then, for one thing, and Rollie asked for a dish of peanuts. And he didn’t say a word while the waitress got them for us. Then Rollie ate a handful. And we still didn’t know if he was going to talk to us at all.

Then he leaned over the table. When he spoke, his voice was low. “Did you two know there was a lot of drug dealing going on in Warner County that summer?”

Joe shook his head, but I spoke. “I knew. I read all the
Gazettes
and
Dorinda News
issues for that summer.”

“You knew Ed had a record? He’d been arrested for possession?”

“Yes, I was also told that Bill was very angry with his brother for getting involved with the drug scene.”

Rollie grimaced. “I’m afraid his opinion changed that summer, Lee.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because Bill needed money—and all of a sudden he had a lot. He sure didn’t get it repairing television sets.”

W
hatever I’d been expecting, this wasn’t it.

“No way!” I said.

Joe gripped my knee. “Do you have any evidence, any facts to support that, Rollie?”

“I’m afraid not, Joe. But I knew Lovie pretty well in those days. I know she was worried about it.”

Rollie smiled his usual smile, crinkling his eyes into mere slits. “It does seem out of character for Bill, doesn’t it? But Bill and Sally were determined to move to Chicago. They were young and naïve. Bill told me they were shocked at how expensive renting an apartment was.”

That rang true. I could remember my first attempt at moving out of my mom’s place. I was nineteen, I’d found a roommate, and we looked at apartments near UT Dallas. My roommate said she’d get a student loan, but ol’ Lee—with a phobia about debt instilled by her parents’ hundreds of arguments over money—decided to stay with Mama another year. A year later, when I couldn’t stand my mom’s place any longer, I had to work full-time to support my housing and could only take half a college load each semester. I didn’t get my accounting degree until I was twenty-seven and had been married and divorced.

Anyway, I understood the financial pressure of establishing a home, even on the cheap. But getting money through selling drugs would be a risky way to earn an apartment deposit, and—morals aside—everybody who had known Bill had agreed that he was practical. I didn’t find Rollie’s speculations believable.

I might have argued with Rollie, but Joe nudged me, looked at his watch, and said that we’d better leave. Joe paid the tab; then we headed for Holland. I don’t think either of us said a word for the whole thirty miles. We were in a booth in the restaurant and had ordered dinner, raising our voices to be heard over the background noise, before we began to communicate again.

After the waitress left, Joe moved around to my side of the booth, bringing his silverware with him. I looked at him in some surprise. He wasn’t usually that insistent on close proximity in public.

He put his lips close to my ear. “I don’t want to yell about this,” he said, “but what did you think of Rollie’s idea?”

“The idea that Bill Dykstra sold drugs? I think it’s stupid.”

“I suppose it would be some sort of explanation, Lee. Bill might have been hauled in for questioning or something, made to see that the jig was up. So he decided to send your mom away to get her out of the mess, then committed suicide to get himself out of it. It could also explain your mom’s concern about the sheriff. He would have been the one to investigate rural drug deals.”

“But everybody agrees that Bill was very down-to-earth and practical, Joe. Selling drugs would be an awfully risky way to build up your savings account.”

“I agree.”

“It simply seems screwy to me.”

“Maybe Hogan can find out something.”

“And I can talk to Mom about it. After she gets here Saturday.”

Joe stayed on my side of the booth, and after a moment of silence, I turned to face him. “Joe, I’ve got a question.”

“Shoot.”

“For months now Rollie has been twitting you about Lansing.”

Joe gave a deep sigh. “I keep hoping he’ll get over that.”

“What is he talking about?”

“I guess Rollie’s trying to threaten me. I probably should put the whole story in the
Gazette
. Tell the world, and then he’d get off my back.”

“Forget it,” I said. “I don’t want to be part of Rollie’s little game.”

Joe laughed. “It’s just something stupid that happened when I was in high school.”

“We all did stupid things in high school.”

“Yes, but this was unusually stupid. A bunch of us went to Lansing for a speech competition held during the state fair. We stayed at a motel. Rollie was one of the chaperones.”

“Fat lot of good he’d be.”

“Well, he was better than a couple of the moms who were along. They went off to visit friends and left the whole group on its own for an evening. Didn’t get back until way after midnight.” He sighed. “I won’t go into all the details—they’d embarrass some otherwise innocent people—but we got some beer, held quite a party, and wound up skinny-dipping in the hotel pool around one a.m.”

“Oh, gee! Did Rollie catch you?”

“Yep. He chased us all back to our rooms.”

“And you were all in trouble.”

“Nope. He didn’t blab. But now and then, over the years, he’s hinted that he might yet tell the story.”

He turned and looked at me. “I figured out that he gets more fun out of threatening us than he would have seeing that we were properly disciplined at the time.”

“That’s ugly!”

“I agree. I guess that’s why I’ve always been wary of Rollie. He likes to feel as if he’s forcing people to do things.”

We sat through a movie that I now have no recollection of seeing, and Joe was dropping me off at Aunt Nettie’s when he caught his breath. “Oh! Is it Saturday your mom is flying in?”

“Yes. Three thirty.”

“I need to haul a boat to Grand Rapids Saturday. If she wouldn’t mind riding in the truck, we could pick her up.”

“She’s renting a car. I think it’s stupid—we’ve got my van and Aunt Nettie’s Buick, and neither of us minds sharing. But she insisted.”

“If you wanted to meet her, I could drop you at the airport. You could ride down to Warner Pier with her.”

I laughed. “I could surprise her. She might not like it, but we could talk on the way down here.”

We agreed that this was a good idea. One thirty was named as our departure time, since Grand Rapids is a little over an hour away.

On Friday morning I went by the police station and made a statement about finding Sheriff Van Hoosier’s body. After Hogan quizzed me, I quizzed him, trying to get an idea of how the investigation into Van Hoosier’s death was going. Hogan wasn’t directly involved, supposedly, but he’d obviously been talking to the Michigan State Police and the Warner County sheriff about the crime.

He didn’t tell me anything in plain English, but his questions focused on what time Joe and I had arrived at the Pleasant Creek Senior apartments. He also asked if we’d seen anybody come in the back door.

“Back door? I didn’t even notice a back door, Hogan.”

“They’ve got to have one, Lee. To use as a fire door, if nothing else.”

“That makes sense. I suppose it’s at the end of the hall, which would be right next door to Van Hoosier’s room. But it must have been closed. I didn’t notice a draft, anyway.”

“I guess the residents aren’t supposed to go out that door, and the visitors aren’t supposed to come in by it. But probably people who live down at that end let their visitors in and out that way.”

“If you parked at that end of the building, it would be a lot shorter than walking clear back to the central desk,” I said. “But I didn’t notice anything about it. Maybe Joe did.”

“He says not.”

That ended my session with Hogan. I called the shop to make sure nothing major was going on. Nothing was. So I went to the library to look at microfilm, finishing up my project to read all the papers from the summer my mother ran away from home. I’d brought a sandwich from home, so I could eat lunch at my desk to make up part of the time.

I tried to go over the twelve
Gazette
issues from that summer carefully, not reading every story, of course, but checking out every headline for connections with crime. I did come up with one thing that was interesting.