The Chocolate Castle Clue (12 page)

“You know how kids say, ‘You're not the boss of me.' Well, Margo always was the boss of Kathy. I don't know if that made Kathy dependent or it made Margo dominant.”

“Probably both.”

Aunt Nettie nodded unhappily. “I admit they have a warped relationship. But, Lee, Margo really does love Kathy. It's not—exploitive. Margo wants what's best for her sister.”

I stood there and thought about all this.

“People sure are funny,” I said finally. “I'll ask around and see what I can find out about the football game.”

My answer pleased Aunt Nettie. “You can start with Maggie McNutt,” she said. “The Drama Club was selling concessions last night. Maggie was right by the front gate, running the popcorn machine.”

Aunt Nettie went inside then and began to gather the Pier-O-Ettes together to go out to lunch. Afterward they were to meet with the Warner Pier High School choir director to rehearse their numbers for the reunion. They politely invited me along, but I declined. I used lunch with Joe as an excuse, even though I wasn't sure I could find him.

I did one more thing before they left. I got the old friends to pose while I took a photo with my cell phone. No one demurred. I also took several snapshots while they were climbing into Julie's fancy limo. It was what I call a rock-star limo—with a horseshoe-shaped seat lining the back and the left-hand side, lots of flashing lights, and spaces for ice and bottles of refreshments. It was a playful vehicle, and the Pier-O-Ettes were enjoying it.

They'd driven off before I realized I'd forgotten to ask Aunt Nettie one of my key questions: Why did Kathy ask Julie to forgive her? I'd have to find another opportunity to ask that one.

As soon as they were out of sight, I went to TenHuis Chocolade, called Joe's cell phone, and arranged to meet him for lunch in an hour. I raided the throwaway bin in the back room, helping myself to a mystery chocolate. It turned out to have an exterior decorated to look like a crème de menthe bonbon—a dark chocolate square with white chocolate covering the top—but the interior was raspberry cream. Yummy, but we couldn't sell it.

Then I spent forty-five minutes on the computer, working on the Pier-O-Ette photos I'd taken with my cell phone. I printed up six copies of the group shot, so I could give each of them one as a souvenir. Then I printed close-ups of each of the “girls.” When I got through, I had passable individual pictures of each Pier-O-Ette. That might help me in the probably fruitless effort to trace their movements.

At the proper time I walked down to the Sidewalk Café to meet Joe for lunch. The Sidewalk is just a block from my office, and it's one of the few restaurants open in Warner Pier after the Columbus Day weekend, the time when the summer tourist season is finally, definitely over.

Because of that, it wasn't too surprising to see Charlie McCoy's antique Corvette parked near the entrance. He and Shep had to eat lunch somewhere.

I pointed the sports car out to Joe, and we looked it over. “It's a beauty,” Joe said.

“Right!” A voice boomed behind us. “And you can own it for only ten times what it cost originally.”

It was Good-Time Charlie, of course. He had come out of the Sidewalk when he saw us looking at the car. I introduced him to Joe, and Charlie told us about the Corvette.

“It belonged to a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sunday.”

“Sure,” I said. “Pull the other one.”

Charlie grinned. “Actually, it was a high school graduation gift to a girl from a well-to-do Grand Rapids family. She took it to college, but after her freshman year she got married and joined the station-wagon crowd. Somehow the Vette got stored away in her parents' garage. Nobody drove it regularly, but nobody sold it either. Last year the parents' home went on the market, and the lady in question—now well into middle age—finally sold it. I will say she had a very firm grasp of how much it was worth.”

“I love it,” I said. “Judging by the fact that you don't have a dealer's tag on it, you love it, too. It's your personal car, right?”

Charlie nodded. “Right. It's the car I always wanted when I was a young guy. Actually, now that I think about it, I dreamed of being a taxi driver, but I just couldn't hack it.”

Joe and I gave the expected groans. I tapped the Corvette's license plate. The figures on it were 7321.

“Seven times three is twenty-one,” I said.

Charlie laughed. “You noticed that.”

“I'm a number person. I see patterns in numbers all the time.”

“You've guessed my secret. Seven is my lucky number, and so are multiples of seven. But people rarely catch on.”

“Joe can tell you I remember numbers,” I said. “But sometimes I can't remember why.”

“Yes,” Joe said. “Early on I learned not to forget her birthday.”

I ignored him. “There was some car I saw recently that had a number with a similar pattern. But that one was seven times two equals fourteen.”

Charlie stared at me for a moment. “You really are a number person,” he said. “Listen, Shep and I just ordered lunch. Why don't you two nice people join us?”

Before I could say no, Joe agreed. I wasn't pleased. I wanted to consult Joe about Aunt Nettie's request, and I couldn't do that in front of Charlie and Shep.

Our lunch was fine, I guess. The Sidewalk food is always good, and the ambiance is fun. The restaurant's décor is inspired by children's sidewalk games, with hopscotch diagrams painted on the floor and with roller skates, antique scooters, and jacks hanging on the walls. It's one of the three restaurants operated by Joe's stepfather, Mike Herrera. Mike wasn't there to come over and greet us, so we didn't mention the connection. We won't let Mike give us a discount.

I couldn't figure out why Joe wanted to eat lunch with Shep and Charlie. The meal was almost over before I caught on.

“I guess you guys both knew Mrs. Rice, back in the old days,” Joe said. Shep and Charlie probably thought Joe was just making conversation, but the casualness of his voice told me he'd come to the point.

Joe didn't get an immediate answer. Shep and Charlie just looked at each other. Then they both laughed.

Charlie finally spoke. “Are you trying to get us to speak ill of the dead, Joe?”

“Not unless there's ill to be spoken.”

Shep's voice was a growl. “There's not a lot of good. Mrs. Rice was always disagreeable. She was, oh, maybe around forty in those days, and still pretty good-looking. It must have been just recently that she began to look like a witch and act like a bitch. But she and Dan were a pair.”

“They fought?”

“Oh, sure. She was determined that the Castle would continue to be ‘family oriented.' Dan wanted it to make money.”

“I can understand that if he was about to lose the place.” Charlie leaned forward. “It was the sex, drugs, and rock'n' roll era, you know. Warner Pier was—Well, somebody was selling drugs on nearly every corner.”

Shep glared at Charlie. “It wasn't that bad.”

“Maybe not, but there was a lot of dealing. Of course, I'm not suggesting Dan could have saved the Castle by opening a drug emporium—not unless he wanted to go to jail. But the Castle was missing out on everything because Verna Rice didn't even want Dan to hire rock groups.” He folded his arms. “Some people made a lot of money in Warner Pier back then. But not Verna and Dan. All they did was fight about it.”

“It was kinkier than just a disagreement,” Shep said. “They liked fighting.”

“So they were one of these quarrelsome couples?” Joe said. “The ones who always have it in for each other?”

Shep answered. “They were sweetie-sweet to each other when anyone was around. Never a cross word. It was when the crowd left—when she went in the office and closed the door behind herself. That's when it broke loose.”

“I guess you could hear them fighting.”

“We couldn't miss it! They must have known that everything said in the inner office could be heard in the outer one.” Shep looked at Charlie, and Charlie slowly nodded.

Shep spoke again. “Dan would put the two of us to work in the outer office, see. Counting the gate. Then he and Verna would go into the inner office and go at it. She had a mouth on her!”

“So did he,” Charlie said.

“Did it ever come to blows?”

Shep and Charlie both shook their heads. “I used to think she might hit him,” Charlie said. “But nobody ever hit anybody while I was there.”

“What I can't get over,” Shep said, “is that I hear she spent the past forty years ‘devoted to his memory.' That's what Nettie called it anyway.”

Joe nodded. “That pretty much sums it up. She's fought the courts and the insurance company trying to prove he didn't shoot himself on purpose. She insisted his death must be an accident.”

“Of course,” Charlie said, “thinking he didn't kill himself and liking him are two different things.”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “But she apparently refused an insurance settlement because it didn't state clearly that Dan didn't commit suicide.”

“I assumed that his insurance had a suicide clause,” I said. “Wasn't she just trying to get more money?”

“It may have begun that way, but eventually the legal battle became counterproductive. The lawyers were going to get everything. And she was never able to find a buyer for the Castle property. The banks foreclosed. I doubt she got a penny.”

“Joe,” I said, “was there any evidence that Dan Rice's death was an accident?”

“I looked up the police report. Dan Rice was shot with his own gun. Accidently or on purpose? Who knows? I suppose it's even possible that somebody else got hold of his gun and shot him. But they did test his right hand for gunpowder residue, and Rice had fired a firearm recently.”

“Mrs. Rice's attitude was strange,” Shep said. “But if she didn't get the insurance, and she quit her teaching job, then what did she live on all these years?”

“That's a good question,” Joe said. “The state police are looking into that right now.”

Shep drained the last of his beer. “I'm wondering if she wasn't the one who wrote and asked me to come here.”

Why would Verna Rice have wanted Shep to come back to Warner Pier for the Pier-O-Ettes' reunion? Why would she have wanted that badly enough to write him a letter and sign Aunt Nettie's name to it?

“That's hard to believe,” I said. “Did the letter sound like something Aunt Nettie would have written?”

Shep shrugged. “I have no way of knowing. It had been more than forty years since I'd seen Nettie. I wouldn't recognize her handwriting or her writing style. It was a very plain little note.”

“Why would Mrs. Rice have written it?” Joe said.

“Because she was nuts!”

“No, I mean why would she want you to come back?” Shep repeated his previous opinion. “Because she was nuts!” Then he stood up. “Joe, I have no idea why she would have wanted me to come back.”

Shep motioned to the waitress for the check. “Come on, Charlie. I'd appreciate a ride back to the motel. And tomorrow I'm heading back to Kentucky.”

Joe, Shep, and Charlie argued over who was going to pay for lunch, and Charlie won. Then Charlie and Shep left. But before they could get out the door, Joe followed them. He talked to Shep a moment. Shep left shaking his head.

I waved at the waitress and asked her to refill our coffee cups. I didn't want to trail out of the restaurant hard on the heels of Charlie and Shep. Besides, now I finally had a chance to talk to Joe.

I moved my chair sideways so I was facing him. “Okay, big guy,” I said. “I need to talk to you about Aunt Nettie. But I'll start with an unrelated topic.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“First, how did you get a look at the file on Dan Rice's death? Frankly, I'm surprised such a thing still exists after forty-five years.”

“I've got an in with the chief of police. Married his niece.” Joe grinned. “A couple of years ago Hogan dug a copy out of some basement somewhere—he says—just because the case fascinates everybody in Warner Pier, and he wanted to know about it. I called him this morning, and he told me where I could find his copy.”

“Why all the questions for Charlie and Shep? Why are
you
interested in Mrs. Rice?”

“She's the victim, Lee. And I find the idea that she might have invited Shep here—pretending to be Aunt Nettie—very interesting.”

“I wonder if Shep still has the letter.”