The Chocolate Cat Caper (8 page)

“Thank you, Mr. Ainsley.”

“Please call me Duncan.”

Well, that was peculiar. What did it matter what a peon like Lee McKinney called a man like Duncan Ainsley? He wasn’t coming on to me, was he? Back when I’d been a beauty queen, that had been known to happen. But now that I had gone in for the natural look . . . Ainsley mystified me.

“I appreciate your call,” I said lamely. “Then you’re leaving tonight?”

“The police asked me to stay overnight. It’s kind of awkward, being a house guest when the hostess dies. It’s not as if we were even close friends. Clementine just asked me to stay because I was a cosponsor for this event that didn’t come off. But I’m assuming the police will let me go in the morning, after they get this druggist fellow’s stupid ideas straightened out.”

“Then you don’t take the cyanide charge seriously?”

“Of course not! From what Marion said, I guess this man and Clementine had had some sort of disagreement earlier. But the thought of someone poisoning Clementine is plumb silly.”

“I thought she had a lot of enemies.”

“Well, yes. If a disgruntled client shot her—but to poison her in her own house? That’s ridiculous. Anyway, I do want to keep on top of the situation. Could I call you again?”

The request surprised me, and I reacted with my usual aplomb. I gasped and said, “What for?”

Ainsley chuckled. “You’re a bright young woman. Perhaps I might at least call on you for local knowledge as the situation develops?”

I was even more surprised at that idea. And right then another strange thing happened. I looked out into the shop—as I said, the office had glass windows that overlooked the workroom where the chocolates were made and the little retail shop—just as the street door opened.

Joe Woodyard walked in.

He looked through the several thicknesses of glass that separated us, and he glared at me.

I stood holding the phone, completely silent, until I heard Duncan Ainsley’s voice again. “Lee? May I call you? For local background?”

Suddenly I was very nervous. “I’ll be happy to help in any way I can,” I said. “But I’m not really a yokel.” And I hung up.

I stood there, feeling like a complete fool and staring at Joe Woodyard. This was all too strange. First a call from Duncan Ainsley. Then a visit from Joe Woodyard. I couldn’t believe my personal magnetism was suddenly attracting all the men I’d met that day.

Like other Warner Pier retailers, Aunt Nettie hired the children of friends to deal with the summer trade, and now Joe was talking to the teenager behind the counter, a girl with brown hair tucked into a stringy ponytail. She was no dippier than I had been the summer I was sixteen and worked for TenHuis Chocolade for the first time. She gestured behind her while she spoke to Joe. Then she came to the door to the shop and beckoned to me. “You have a visitor.”

I went to the counter.

Joe scowled. “I just wanted to talk to you about that scene out there. Marion has her reasons—”

Little Miss Teenage Counter Help was drinking in the whole conversation. I interrupted Joe. “Come on back.”

I ignored the disappointed look on the teenager—I’d just met her the day before, and I couldn’t remember her name. I decided the office was a little too close to the front counter, so I led Joe back to the break room. It’s more like an old-fashioned dining room, since it’s furnished with a heavy oak dining suite, including a tall china cupboard, which had belonged to Aunt Nettie’s grandmother, and with several mismatched easy chairs. The floor may be easyto-clean tile, and the only window may look out on an alley, but the room is bright and cheerful, and even decorated with several watercolors painted by local artists. Aunt Nettie and Uncle Phil used to eat dinner there a lot.

Joe Woodyard frowned. “I guess you and your aunt live here.”

It wasn’t such an odd thing to say. Nearly all the “downtown” businesses in Warner Pier have apartments upstairs, and some of the merchants do live over their shops.

“No,” I said. “But Aunt Nettie’s hours are so long she must feel as if she lives here. She comes to work before eight in the morning, and since Uncle Phil died she’s been staying until closing a lot of the time.” I turned to face Joe. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“About what happened out at Warner Point.” He frowned again. I was beginning to get impatient with Mr. Woodyard. Had he come down to the shop to bawl me out?

“Listen,” he said. “I can handle the situation. Don’t get any dumb ideas about helping me out. Just keep your mouth shut.”

Actually, his remarks made me open my mouth. I was so astonished at what he had said that my jaw dropped like a drawbridge. I was so surprised that I didn’t even get mad, at least right away.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Just because we once knew each other, that doesn’t mean you have to cover up for me or anything. Don’t let anybody get the idea that we’re friends.”

What in the world was he talking about? Did he think that I’d refused to repeat his remarks to Chief Jones because I had a personal interest in him?

Suddenly I was furious. What a jerk!

Joe spoke again. “If Marion heard what I said to Clem, then you must have heard it, too. But you’ll be better off if you just say no comment.”

“What?”

“I had a legitimate reason for asking Clem for money. I simply don’t want—”

By then I knew what I wanted to say, and I said it. “Stop! You keep
your
mouth shut!”

He obeyed so fast his jaws snapped, and I was the one who went on.

“What I said out there had nothing to do with you. If the chief asks me, I’ll tell him exactly what I heard. I just didn’t want Marion McCoy ordering me around. And frankly, I don’t want you ordering me around, either.”

“What do you mean? Ordering you around?”

“Why did you come by here to tell me how to handle the situation?”

“The situation? What are you talking about?”

“Chief Jones, of course.”

“I don’t care about him. Tell him any damn thing you want!”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to warn you about the tabloids.”

“Tabloids? I’m not interested in the tabloids.” Joe laughed harshly. “About this time tomorrow you will be.”

“What do you mean?”

“After the tabloid reporters hit town, ready to make big bucks from Clementine’s death, then you’ll care. When you’ve seen your life displayed for the grocerystore checkout line, you get sort of paranoid.”

Maybe I looked surprised, because he laughed again.

“Oh, nobody reads them! Or admits it. But somehow all the people you thought were your friends know what was in the latest issue.”

“Why would the tabloids be interested in Clementine Ripley? She was a lawyer, not a movie star.”

“True, but she represented a lot of celebrities. When the word got out that we were married—God! It was awful. I was still with Legal Aid, but all of a sudden I couldn’t get any work done. I didn’t have a staff to insulate me from the reporters, the way Clem did. Can you imagine trying to represent some woman whose ex-husband has been using his court-ordered visitation to beat their baby—and you have to do it with a dozen photographers swarming you every time you came out of the courtroom?”

“You may have had problems, but . . .”

Joe didn’t hear me. “When we split and I started the boat business, it was worse. For about a month every time I dipped a brush in varnish or sawed a board, a strobe flashed.”

“But . . .”

Joe smiled, but he didn’t look amused. “I guess I deserved it. Obscure young lawyer walks out on famous wife, chucks law for manual labor,” he said, as if quoting a headline. “Defense attorney’s toy boy husband flees toy box.”

“Stop!” I’d had enough. “Hush up!”

Joe shut up and glared.

I glared back. “Why am I getting this lecture? No reporters will be interested in me.”

“Oh, yes, they will. You were a witness. You’re involved.”

“No, I’m not! And TenHuis Chocolade isn’t, either.”

“That’s the spirit. Just remember that. No matter who calls you—
Time
magazine or the
National Enquirer
—just tell ’em they’ll have to talk to the police.”

I did my thinking-about-it act for thirty seconds. “Why do you think you need to tell me this? Do I seem that stupid?”

“No. I’m telling you because you’re going to be getting a lot of pressure.” He stopped and seemed to consider his next words. “And now I’d better get out of here before the correspondents arrive from Chicago, or you and your aunt are likely to get the full treatment.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, the tabloids would love our getting together like this, in a quiet back room. Cinderella widower of famed lawyer has tête-à-tête with high school sweetheart.”

“That’s not true! You and I weren’t sweethearts. We barely knew each other.”

“The tabloids don’t care. They take one little lie and hang a whole string of phony implications on it. Didn’t my mom tell me you were in some beauty contest? They’ll dig that up. Famed attorney killed by beauty queen’s chocolates.”

As Joe said the final, bitter word, I heard a loud gasp behind me. For a mad moment I thought the tabloid press had already arrived, and I swung around.

I was relieved for a second. The gasp had come from Aunt Nettie. Then I saw the look on her face.

“Chocolate? The chocolate killed Clementine Ripley? That’s just not possible!”

I tried to soothe her. I explained that Gregory Glossop had picked up on the smell of almonds from the chocolates, but that the Amaretto flavoring was a more logical explanation for the aroma.

Joe lost some of his glare when he talked to Aunt Nettie. “Lee jumped right in and told the chief about the flavoring,” he said. “Greg Glossop may be an idiot, but his opinion won’t count. The medical examiner will be running scientific tests to ascertain the cause of death. And I hope to God it’s natural causes.”

He gestured. “Is that the alley door? Can I get out that way?”

“Wait,” Aunt Nettie said. For the first time I realized that she was holding a TenHuis Chocolade box. “I’ve got something for you.”

Joe took the box, looking perplexed. “Chocolates? Nettie, I don’t think this is a good time . . .”

“It’s just a sandwich,” she said. “A chocolate box was all I had to put it in. A meat loaf sandwich and some carrot sticks. I’m sure you haven’t eaten anything. I wish I had something worth giving you.”

For a moment Joe stared at her blankly. Then he gave a mocking laugh. “Nettie, you just don’t get it,” he said. “We can’t be friends right now! It will cause too much trouble. Lee, you explain it to her!”

That made me madder than anything else he’d said.

“I won’t tell her a thing!” I said. “Aunt Nettie is Aunt Nettie, and if she wants to feed the whole world, it’s all right with me.”

“I give up,” Joe said. “Is that the alley door?”

I opened it without a word, and he went out into the dark. “You two are going to be eaten alive,” he said.

I resisted the temptation to slam the door after him. He hadn’t even thanked Aunt Nettie for his meat loaf sandwich. But he took it with him.

A
unt Nettie made me eat a meat loaf sandwich, too. I sat at a stainless-steel worktable in the back of the shop, and she talked to me while I ate.

As she talked she plucked bits of rum-flavored dark chocolate nougat—nougat is what the chocolate maker calls the filling of a truffle—from a plastic dish. This had been mixed earlier and set aside to get firm. Talking a mile a minute, she rolled each piece of nougat into a ball. She made five dozen while I ate my sandwich, her hands working as fast as her mouth. Now and then she stopped to weigh one, to make sure they were all uniform in size, but she didn’t once have to start over. Then she took a mixing bowl and drew several cups of dark chocolate from the spigot on the big electric kettle, where a supply is always kept warm and melted. She rolled each nougat ball in the dark chocolate, creating a rum-flavored truffle to die for. And she did it all without looking at her hands. It was a darn impressive performance.

By the time I’d eaten, the counter girls had finished cleaning up the shop. I balanced the cash register, and Aunt Nettie and I went out to the house she and Uncle Phil had shared for thirty-nine of their forty years of marriage. During one year they’d lived in the Netherlands, learning the chocolate business.

I find the house both homey and spooky. It’s on the south edge of Warner Pier on Lake Shore Drive. I guess that every town that borders Lake Michigan has a Lake Shore Drive.

We’re on the inland side—in other words, we don’t have a view of the lake. A lot of well-to-do people have built either summer cottages or year-round homes in the neighborhood, but Aunt Nettie’s house is older than most. It was built by my greatgrandfather—Uncle Phil’s grandfather—in 1904. He was a carpenter in Grand Rapids who put it up as a summer cottage for his wife and kids. One of his sons, my grandfather, opened a gas station in Warner Pier in 1945, and he winterized the family cottage so that he and his family could live there year-round.

So my mother and Uncle Phil grew up in the house. It’s a white two-story frame house, with odd bits sticking out here and there for a bathroom and a dining room and a screened porch, which were added on over the years. It’s not luxurious; the bathroom has a claw-footed tub that was probably bought secondhand in 1910 and the kitchen sink was new in 1918. It has a “Michigan basement”—cement walls, but a sand floor—which I think must have been ideal for farm families needing a place to store apples and potatoes, but seems kind of odd in the twenty-first century. The decor is authentic country, not decorator “country,” and features an accumulation of furniture old enough to be antique, but not valuable enough to be worth selling. As I said, it’s homey.