The Chocolate Cat Caper (16 page)

“Of course not,” Aunt Nettie said. “That’s your business. It has nothing to do with TenHuis Chocolade. Can we leave now? We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. We couldn’t get into the shop to start work until the state police crew was out. They did agree to start on the office, so that we’d be able to get in there as soon as possible. Aunt Nettie went over to the shop with Underwood, and Chief Jones took me out to the house to get Aunt Nettie’s car. I still didn’t want to drive that conspicuous Texas tag around town, so I left my van behind the Baileys’ garage for the moment.

“Okay, Chief,” I said as we drove away from the Ripley house. “Are we doing the right thing?”

“Yeah, I think so. Us coppers get real suspicious of people who insist on search warrants. Normally an innocent person reacts like your aunt; they see the necessity for the search and want to get it over with. The only time people are likely to stand on their rights is if they’re involved, or if they are afraid some member of their family is involved.”

“What about talking to the press?”

“That’s probably a good idea, too. But my relations with the press were so bad at one time—I’m not the one to ask.”

He glanced over at me. “When it comes to motive, VanDam knows I belong at the top of the list.”

“I heard that you tangled with Clementine Ripley on the witness stand.”

“If I’d known she was going to move to Warner Pier, I’d have retired someplace in Wisconsin.”

He spoke with his usual easygoing drawl, but his hands were clutching the steering wheel tightly. As if he were strangling it.

I decided to ask one more nosy question, concealing it as well as I could. “You might have a motive, but you didn’t have opportunity, did you?”

“Yes, I did. Clementine Ripley summoned me out to the house Friday afternoon. She wanted to tell me how she wanted my boys to handle the extra traffic for the benefit. We talked in that office back by the garage, and I had to wait for her for a while. And I think that box of candy was sitting on the desk the whole time. Now I’m told it had her name on it, a big hint that it was for her exclusive consumption.”

So Chief Jones wasn’t kidding when he said he was a suspect. Maybe that would work to Aunt Nettie’s advantage.

The press had deserted the house. I grabbed a khaki skirt and a chocolate-brown shirt with a TenHuis logo from Aunt Nettie’s closet and a TenHuis shirt and khaki slacks from mine, then headed back. By the time I got to the shop Aunt Nettie and I were allowed to begin working in the office, so I booted up the computer and wrote a simple news release. I never had a class in public relations, but I took several business communications courses, so I just wrote a letter and left off the salutation. It might not be slickly professional, but we wanted to look like a folksy small-town business. I also called the
Grand Rapids Press
, the Grand Rapids office of the Associated Press, and a couple of the television stations to tell them about our “press conference.” I refused to answer any questions, but told them we’d have a statement at two p.m. at the shop.

While I did that, Aunt Nettie cut up a large white cardboard box and used a marker to write PRESS CONFERENCE 2 P.M. in big black letters. She wrote, HERE, in slightly smaller letters just underneath. She offered to add something about door prizes, but we decided that was a little too silly. We wanted to look like mid-America, not Hicksville.

She stuck the sign in the window, and almost immediately it got attention. A crowd gathered out front, and some people knocked at the street door, but we didn’t answer, and the search team didn’t either. They were using the back door to go in and out.

I was running off twenty-five copies of the statement I’d written when a member of the search team stuck her head into the office. “There’s a guy in the alley who wants to see you, Mrs. TenHuis. He says he’s the mayor.”

“Mike Herrera?” I said.

“I’ll talk to him,” Aunt Nettie said. I went with her.

Herrera had switched from his black-and-white caterer outfit to navy-blue shorts and a polo shirt.

“Mike!” Aunt Nettie said. “What can I do for you?”

“Tell me what you’re up to,” Herrera said. “This town has gone loco. I’m having to neglect my restaurants to hang around city hall all day. That never has happened before!”

“Come in, quick,” Aunt Nettie said.

We got Mike inside and took him into the office. Then Aunt Nettie gleefully explained that we were going to try negative psychology on the press. Instead of running from them, we were going to demand their attention.

Herrera shook his head sadly. “I’ve been answering questions from those guys all day.”

“Oh, Mike! I’m sorry,” Aunt Nettie said. “I’ve been so worried about my own problems that I didn’t think about your position.”

“Yah,” he said. “My whole crew is being questioned, since we were on the scene. But I never saw those chocolates, and I don’t think any of my people did either.”

He patted his well-gelled hair. “But maybe you got the best idea about how to deal with those reporters,” he said. “You could borrow the little sound system from city hall.”

“Oh, Mike! That would be such a help.”

Herrera grinned. “You need something to stand on, too. A platform. I’ll call the park superintendent. We’ll see what we can come up with.”

Aunt Nettie sighed admiringly. I had no idea she could be so flirtatious. “I’d be happy to pay a rental fee.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Herrera leaned over, and only Aunt Nettie and I heard him whisper. “If you killed her, you could submit a bill, and the city council would pay it without discussion.” He closed his eyes. “That woman, she went back on her word. Made me look stupid.” His eyes opened again. “I thought I was tellin’ the council the truth—but she changed her mind. She made me a liar. It was a matter of honor. I hated her.”

Aunt Nettie patted his hand. “I did, too,” she said softly. “I thought of killing her a million times.”

“Shut up!” I whispered, too, but I was emphatic. “Both of you! Yecch!”

Aunt Nettie giggled and whispered, “Oh, Lee, everybody knows neither Mike nor I would actually do anything to hurt anyone.”

“You’re wrong, Aunt Nettie. Not everyone knows that. We’re surrounded by a whole group of people who don’t know it and who could testify about your jokes.”

Honestly! Sometimes I thought Aunt Nettie had chocolate for brains. But Mike Herrera should be a little more sophisticated, if he was going to be a politician.

At least he offered to bring us a sandwich from Mike’s Sidewalk Café. We accepted. “Business is good down there,” he said. “Humans is crazy people. They act like they doan have good sense. Act bad. And it’s just curiosity.”

His comment made me remember my own curiosity. “Okay, y’all,” I said. “I’ve got my own problem with curiosity, and you can just help me figure something out.”

Aunt Nettie looked politely interested, and Mike Herrera frowned. I told them about what Greg Glossop had said during the ride to the Ripley house.

“He definitely had it in for her,” I said. “It was more than just a general dislike. Do either of you know anything about this?”

Mike frowned. “I haven’t heard anything about that. Seems like Clementine Ripley left trouble everywhere she went.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll get your sandwiches.”

The state police had almost finished their search by the time two p.m. came, and we were ready to face the press. Chief Jones sent Patrolman Jerry Cherry down with some crime scene tape to mark off an area for the reporters, keeping the hordes of tourists outside the area. Prime viewing space became the broad windows of the Upstairs Club, right across the street from us. If everybody who was pressed up against the screens over there bought lunch, the “upstairs” must have had a big blip on their profit chart. Whoever lived in the apartment next door to the upstairs must have cashed in, too. They removed their screens and rented their windows to two different TV crews.

Mike Herrera, now wearing long pants and a dignified stance, opened the event with a few remarks about the many attractions of Warner Pier as a vacation paradise and citing what a valuable asset TenHuis Chocolade was to the community. Tracy and Stacy had showed up, mainly to see what was going on, and they handed out samples of chocolate. (“It’s a Bailey’s Irish Cream bonbon,” I heard Tracy say to one reporter. “It has a classic cream liquor interior.” I made a mental note to talk to her about how to pronounce “liqueur.”)

Most of the reporters were brave enough to dip into a box. The two girls also handed out the press releases. We’d stapled each release to a sheet describing all the varieties of bonbons and truffles produced and sold by TenHuis Chocolade and to a price list, including an order blank. As we’d hoped, our flagrantly commercial ploy seemed to cool the press’s interest in us more than anything else had.

Aunt Nettie opened by saying, “We don’t make fudge.” That got a laugh; fudge is the saltwater taffy of western Michigan—on sale everywhere. Then Aunt Nettie talked about how hard she worked to make her chocolates of the highest quality, about how she and my uncle had gone to the Netherlands for a year to learn how to make chocolates, and how proud she was of her employees.

“If I find out who has damaged the reputation of my business—well, if that person has a penny left after he’s convicted of murder, then he’ll also face a serious lawsuit from me,” she said. “My husband and I worked for thirty years to build this business, and I’m not going to sit on my hands and see it destroyed.”

“When will you reopen?” some reporter on the back row asked.

“Tomorrow. Unless the state police want me to stay closed. We’re cooperating in every way.”

She handled the whole thing very well. She was completely natural. Completely Aunt Nettie. I was proud of her.

The reporters and photographers seemed to love her. The bulbs flashed; the tape recorders were out. I saw that this cute little old gray-haired chocolatemaker was going to be good copy.

For a few minutes I thought I was going to escape without having to say anything. But then somebody yelled my name. “Hey, Ms. McKinney! Is it true that Ripley’s ex was your high school sweetheart?”

Aunt Nettie looked at me, handing the question off just like the straight man handing off the joke for a punch line.

Think, Lee,
I told myself. “If you mean Joe Woodyard,” I said, “the answer is a firm no. For one thing, I didn’t even go to high school in Warner Pier. For another, I never exchanged two words with him until day before yesterday.”

A woman reporter on the front row spoke up. “But you were here summers, working for your aunt.”

“Three summers.”

“Did you know Woodyard then?”

“I knew who he was, because the girls I ran around with knew him. I don’t recall ever having the nerve to speak to him.”

“Why would speaking to Joe Woodyard have required nerve?”

I’d gotten myself into a mess.
Don’t say something stupid,
I told myself. I took a deep breath. “Joe was a college guy! He scared me spitless. Weren’t you ever sixteen?”

Evidently she had been, because she laughed, and most of the other reporters joined in. The moment passed, and I relaxed. Too soon. The next question nearly got me.

It came from the same reporter, the woman in the front row.

“Still, I imagine you joined most of the people in Warner Pier in thinking Joe Woodyard had made a foolish marriage?”

I just stared at her. I couldn’t believe what she had said.

So she spoke again. “At least, that’s the gossip I’ve picked up around here. People don’t seem to feel that he behaved very sensibly.”

I saw what she was trying to do, of course. They couldn’t get me to say anything nice about Joe, so this reporter had decided to settle for getting me to say something naughty about him. It was infuriating.

“That’s none of my busybody,” I said.

The whole front row of reporters looked confused, and I knew immediately that I’d botched up. “Business,” I said. “It’s none of my business.”

I took Aunt Nettie’s arm and we got off the little platform that the park superintendent had improvised out of forklift pallets and plywood. We went back into the shop with as much dignity as we could gather around us, considering that twenty reporters were yelling out more questions.

Aunt Nettie locked the door and smiled. We went inside and locked the door. “That went about as well as we could expect,” she said.

“Until the end, when I tied my tongue in a knot,” I said.

I became aware then that one of VanDam’s technicians had walked up to us. “The lieutenant wants to see you,” she said.

We followed the woman into the break room, where VanDam and Underwood were looking at something in a small paper sack. VanDam hastily put the sack down before he spoke. “Is either of you ladies diabetic?”

“No, thank heavens!” Aunt Nettie said. “That would make it difficult to handle the chocolate business.”

“Does either of you use injections of any sort?”

“Drugs? Of course not!” I said.

“Injections are not necessarily illegal, Ms. McKinney. Lots of medications are injected.”

“Not by me. Not by Aunt Nettie. I take nothing but vitamin capsules.”

“And I take nothing but Premarin, calcium, vitamins, and the occasional Tylenol. All by mouth,” Aunt Nettie said. “Why do you ask?”

VanDam lifted the paper sack. “Can either of you identify this?” He dumped a plastic bag containing a few pieces of plastic out onto the table.

I stared at the sack. Somehow its contents seemed familiar. But the memory eluded me.

“I don’t know anything about them,” Aunt Nettie said.

“It’s a broken syringe,” VanDam said. “We found it in the Dumpster out in the alley.”