The Chocolate Castle Clue (28 page)

Shep growled. “Margo and Charlie.”

Joe nodded. “Actually, although I feel sure Charlie killed Mrs. Rice, I don't know why. And blackmail makes such a good motive.”

“Joe,” I said, “I think it was the other way around. I think Charlie had been blackmailing Mrs. Rice.”

Joe frowned, and I outlined the reasons I had come up with earlier—ending with her allowing her house to be used for wild parties and nude sunbathing.

“I don't know what Charlie knew,” I concluded, “but Mrs. Rice by all accounts was a woman who cared a lot about respectability and her position in the community. A person like that, frankly, is easy to blackmail.”

Joe didn't look convinced. “But what would he have been blackmailing her about?”

“Drugs,” Shep said. “Charlie was selling drugs, back in the old days. He could have convinced Mrs. Rice that Dan was in on the deal.”

“Drugs!” All the Pier-O-Ettes burst out. “Drugs!”

But I didn't say anything. I was remembering how Charlie had several times described—almost proudly—the Warner Pier drug scene of forty-five years earlier.

“Oh, he kept it quiet,” Shep said. “I worked with Charlie two summers before I figured it out. But he and his buddy Phin were selling pot and pills, right there on the deck of the Castle Ballroom.”

Every eye swung toward Julie. She nodded. “I'm afraid that's right. When I figured it out, I broke up with Phin. But I didn't tell anyone why.”

“Charlie bragged about how he was able to start his business the year he left the Castle,” I said.

Shep spoke again. “I sure wasn't able to save that much money working there. Charlie always had more money than his salary and the few tips we got. When I figured out what was going on with the drugs, I should have gone to the cops, but—the truth is, I was scared to. I was afraid they were in on it. Back then the sheriff had a bad reputation.”

I leaned forward. “Shep, did you see Mrs. Rice the night she died?”

He stared at me. “What makes you think that?”

“You said she'd been a good-looking woman forty-five years ago. Then you referred to her as ‘looking like a witch and acting like a bitch.' So I thought you had seen her recently.”

“I wanted to talk to a lawyer before I said anything,” Shep said.

Joe nodded. “That might be a good idea, Shep. Even in an informal gathering like this one.”

But Shep shook his head. “It's not as if I did anything to her. She contacted me.”

“With that letter?”

“That first. But she came to the motel . . .” He paused. “I guess I'd better begin with my take on what happened the night Dan was shot.”

There were murmurs of assent.

“I didn't know anything about Kathy and Phin or anything else,” Shep said. “After we closed up, at midnight that last night at the Castle, Dan sent Charlie and me home. He'd been trying to cut our hours to save money. He said he could finish up the few things that still needed to be done.

“So I was getting ready for bed a little after one a.m., and the phone rang. It was Dan, and he was—well, like Margo says, he was the maddest man I ever talked to. And he says, ‘Can you swim?' Of course, I don't have any idea what he's talking about, and he doesn't explain. He tells me to come back to the Castle.”

Joe frowned. “He didn't make you dive into that river water, did he?”

“That may have been what he had in mind. He wasn't making a lot of sense. Anyway, when I get to the Castle around one a.m., it's like Kathy and Margo say—Dan was wearing nothing but two aprons.”

Margo broke in. “Was he hurt?”

“Not that I could see,” Shep said. “Like I said, he was furious. But he wasn't bleeding or anything.”

“Thank God.” Margo barely breathed the words.

Shep went on. “Dan hands me his camera, and he tells me to keep it. ‘Don't let anybody have it,' he says. Then he says his clothes are over the side of the deck, and he needs something else to wear. ‘I wasn't thinking straight, or I would have told you to bring me your tux,' he says. ‘I can wear it home and make Verna think it's mine.'

“Of course, I wanted to know what the heck had happened. He told me he got some nude pictures of Kathy, and that all the Pier-O-Ettes came and took some of him to get even. Then he laughs. ‘I fooled them. I gave them the wrong film. But don't lose the roll in that camera. There are some other pictures on it that are worth a lot of money.' ”

Shep turned to Margo. “He said a shot had been fired. Then he laughed. ‘It went out the window, of all the dumb luck.' ”

Shep took a swig of beer. “So I went home to get my tux for Dan, and when I got back Charlie was coming out of the office. He grabs me, turns me around, pushes me back to my car. He whispers in my ear. ‘Dan's dead! He's committed suicide!'

“I told him we had to call the cops. But he says, ‘Listen, there's no reason for you and me to get involved.' ”

Shep sighed deeply. “I'm ashamed of this. But I let him talk me into it. We both went back to our rooms—we roomed in the same place—and we waited until we heard the sirens. Then we walked back.”

Joe frowned. “Did you think that Dan had committed suicide, Shep?”

Shep considered Joe's question seriously. “It didn't seem impossible. He'd been completely frantic when I had left him in the office. Charlie told me some big story about how Dan had been involved in the drug business, and how he'd been afraid of his drug supplier. Charlie claimed he'd been there when Dan pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the heart.”

Joe's voice was carefully neutral. “Did you believe his story?”

“I convinced myself it was true. And it did have a certain logic to it. Except for one thing.”

We were all hanging on his words. Three of us spoke. “What? What made his story illogical?”

“The gun. When I left to get Dan my tux, his pistol had been lying on the desk. Charlie said Dan had opened his right-hand desk drawer and pulled it out to shoot himself.”

We all took that in. Margo spoke. “It was lying on the desk when Kathy and I left.”

“I guess I was a coward about the whole thing. First, I hadn't had any connection with Dan's death, and I didn't want to get involved with the law over it. Or some drug dealer.”

He stared at his feet. “Second, I had that film of Kathy. I didn't—well, I'm not the biggest gentleman in the world, but I didn't want that crummy sheriff to get it!”

I remembered stories about the man who had been sheriff in those days. No, I wouldn't have wanted him to get hold of that film either.

“The next day I took the film out of the camera, and I got a new roll. I took half a roll of pictures—you know, lake and beach shots. The kind Dan always took. Then I returned the camera to Mrs. Rice. I just didn't say anything about the first roll that had been in it.

“But now—well, ever since I got back to Warner Pier, Charlie's been hanging around hinting that he'd like to see any ‘old pictures' from those days.”

Joe's voice was eager. “What was on the roll, Shep?”

“I've never developed it.”

Kathy gave a little gasp.

“Would the pictures still be good?” Joe said.

Shep shrugged. “I don't know why not. I kept the film cool.”

“What do you think they might show?”

“I told you Dan was experimenting with available light. Now that all this has come to a head, I wonder if he didn't get some pictures of Charlie that would prove he'd been selling drugs. I wouldn't want to guess what he planned to do with them. Give them to the cops? Or make Charlie cut him in? It's hard to guess.”

Shep pulled a roll of 35-millimeter film from his pocket. “I guess I'll have to share 'em with the cops. They'll probably want to develop them themselves.”

 

 

After the film was developed, Shep handed half the roll over to Margo, and she burned it. The other pictures did show Charlie with a man who was identified from later mug shots as a drug distributor from forty-five years ago. Of course, all that was so long ago that Charlie's past as a drug dealer seemed to be of little importance, at least next to the case against him for killing Mrs. Rice.

And somehow a flashlight with blood on it turned up in the dark panel truck. So I didn't have to go on the witness stand to explain my convoluted reasoning about license plates.

Eventually, on the advice of a very sharp lawyer, Charlie told Lieutenant Jackson he had been sitting beside Mrs. Rice when she infuriated him so much he hit her. He claimed he hadn't intended to kill her.

In the van, the state police also found a little gadget, a sort of clipper. A person who knows how can use it to make a duplicate car key. It's especially easy, the police technician told me, with older cars. He said people who make car loans—such as big used-car lots—and might want to repossess one learn to use them.

Charlie admitted Mrs. Rice had known her husband suspected him of dealing drugs. He had kept her quiet by threatening to tell the cops Dan was in on the deal. He denied blackmailing Mrs. Rice, of course, but I didn't believe him.

One big letdown for Margo was that for all these years she thought that she had destroyed the film with the naked pictures of Kathy. And all the time Shep had had it.

Mrs. Rice had apparently believed that Shep had the film all along, or at least since about the time he left Warner Pier. But she didn't know how to find him. I'll always believe that she mastered the library's computers so she could track him down.

It turned out not to be a smart action, since finding Shep indirectly led to her death.

One small mystery was cleared up by Kathy. She got that sly look again, and she took me aside and whispered in my ear, “Margo has a boyfriend.”

“That's nice,” I said.

“Yes. That's why she snuck out of the football game,” Kathy said. “She wanted to talk to him without anybody hearing. I tell her it would be all right if he moved in with us. I like him fine. But he never has.”

One more romance seemed to bud, just slightly, after that week. Shep decided not to go back to Kentucky right away. He paid a long visit to Grand Rapids, and Julie entertained him.

Joe and I saw our romance bud, too. Maybe it flowered completely. But he's never used the word “stupid” around me again. And if he ever does—well, I just won't hear it.

The reunion went off fine. The old classmates had a great time at the picnic, the boat excursion, and the banquet. The weather was perfect. The foliage was beautiful.

And the Pier-O-Ettes were fabulous.

 

Authors are often asked to speak about writing, and my favorite topic is research. I call my research speech “Just Ask Somebody.”

I learned to research as a newspaper reporter. For nearly every story, a reporter needs a “source.” This is a person who can explain the topic simply enough for an ordinary reader to understand it and can provide colorful quotes while doing it.

As a fiction writer I rely on two kinds of sources: people I already know and people I have to find.

For this book, the people I knew were Jeff Smith, my insurance agent; the late Don Fisher, a collector of puns; Jim Avance, retired lawman; Jeff Dixon, photographer; Elizabeth Garber, chocolatier; and Dr. Ralph Alexander, professor of psychology.

The people I had to go out and find were Clarence and Ginny Weber, of Jeff 's Keys, and Tommie Ledford, operations manager for the local Yamaha dealer. In each case, I just walked into their place of business and started asking questions. All three of them cheerfully helped me.

Many writers seem to be afraid to ask questions, especially of strangers. They shouldn't be. Everyone is an expert on something, and they are happy to tell the world what they know.

And if something in the book is wrong—I did it. All of these people gave me accurate information.

ALSO BY JOANNA CARL

The Chocolate Cat Caper
The Chocolate Bear Burglary
The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up
The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle
The Chocolate Mouse Trap
Crime de Cocoa
(anthology)
The Chocolate Bridal Bash
The Chocolate Jewel Case
The Chocolate Snowman Murders
The Chocolate Cupid Killings
Chocolate to Die For
(omnibus edition)
The Chocolate Pirate Plot