The Chocolate Falcon Fraud (4 page)

“Where are you, Tess?”

“I don't know! There's nothing out here but trees.”

“What can you see? A gas station? A road sign?”

“Lee, I'm out in the woods on some dirt road! I've been using my GPS, but I guess I got it all confused.”

I pressed the speaker button of our phone so that Joe could hear Tess, too. He had grown up in Warner County and seemed to know every back road in southwest Michigan. “What does the GPS say?” I asked.

“It says I'm on Big Pine Road. Does that make sense?”

“There is a Big Pine Road,” Joe said. “But it's nowhere near our house. Does the GPS say where you are on Big Pine Road?”

“I can't figure it out. I'm sitting here at a dead end.”

Joe's eyes got big. “Good night, Tess! You're halfway across the county. How'd you get there?”

“I tried to follow directions. I don't know what I did wrong.”

“Can you turn the car around and head back the way you came?”

“I can if I'm careful not to get in the ditch.”

“So be careful! I remember how narrow that road is. Move only a few feet at a time. Then head back, and stay on that road. Lee and I are on the way to meet you. Hang up now, and we'll call you back as soon as we get cell phone service.”

We climbed into Joe's truck and headed east. Within five minutes I had bars on my cell phone and was able to call Tess. This was typical of the cell service near Lake Michigan. And I didn't want one more person to tell me it was caused by the lake. In my opinion, the companies simply wouldn't spend enough money putting up towers. I mean, why should our first floor have had no service, and our second floor a little bit, and the guy who cleaned our chimney be able to call Timbuktu? If we had a tower closer— Oh well.

As we drove, Joe muttered, “I don't see how she managed to get out there.”

I covered my phone. “Isn't that near the dump?”

“It's about five miles past the dump. Tess would have no reason to go out there.”

Joe had spoken in a low voice, but apparently Tess heard him. Her voice came over the phone.

“I did have a reason,” she said defensively. “I'll tell you when we meet up. I'm turned around now.”

“Just go straight back the way you came,” Joe said. “Toward the lake.”

“No,” Tess said. “I'm driving toward the sun, Joe. I'm from Texas. There are a lot of trees out here, but I can still tell where the sun is going down.”

At least Tess hadn't lost her sense of humor. When we had met her previously, we had had a discussion about the different concepts of directions. In Texas people were much more likely to
say they live “west of town” or “north of Buffalo Hill.” Warner Pier folks seemed to orient themselves by Lake Michigan. “Toward the lake” or “inland.”

Luckily Tess hadn't gotten herself lost after dark. She'd ended up in a part of the county that was so heavily wooded that she might never have found her way out in the dark.

But she did find her way out. With Tess headed west—toward the setting sun or the lake—and Joe and me headed east—inland and with the sun behind us—it took us less than fifteen minutes to meet one another. When we finally met up, I switched from Joe's truck to Tess' car, a small red Ford. Joe did the trick of turning around on a narrow dirt road, and Tess and I followed Joe's truck home. Tess didn't volunteer any explanations on the way, and she sure seemed delighted to reach our house.

“We saved a pork chop for you,” I said. “I'll heat it up.”

“I believe I'm too upset to eat,” she said.

“I hope you're not too upset to tell us how you wound up at the end of Big Pine Road,” Joe said.

“It's a long story,” Tess said. And she ducked her head, almost as if she was ashamed.

What was going on? I decided we'd better go easy on Tess. “Joe will help get your stuff in the house. You can explain after you eat.”

But even after Tess had settled into our guest room, and I'd reheated her dinner, she didn't volunteer any information. Finally Joe turned his cross-examination skills loose on her.

“Okay, Tess. How on earth did you wind up way out beyond the township dump?

“I was trying to find Jeff.”

“What made you think he was out there?”

“I'm not very good with technology. I guess I messed up the GPS.”

“What kind of coordinates did you put into it? Something like ‘end of the earth'?”

I thought she might flare up, but Tess just looked shame-faced. “I must have misread the route Jeff took.”

“The route Jeff took?” Joe's voice was incredulous. “You thought you were following Jeff?”

Tess nodded miserably.

Joe sighed. “Tess, let's go back a little further. Exactly why did you and Jeff come to Warner Pier? And why didn't you come together? After all, you used to be friends.”

Tess smiled. “We still are. But we're also rivals.”

She told Joe the story about the contest sponsored by the museum where she and Jeff had been interns.

“Jeff was getting ahead of me,” she said. “He found a lead to some new piece of memorabilia to do with
The Maltese Falcon.
”

“A lock of Humphrey Bogart's hair?” I asked. “That movie is so well-known it's hard to think there would be anything new connected with it.”

“I don't know what it was. All I know is that Jeff was terribly excited about it. He said that if it was real, it would definitely win the competition.”

Joe frowned. “You have no idea what it was?”

“No! I couldn't get a word out of him. Not a hint.”

“And he didn't tell you who had it or where it was?”

Tess slowly shook her head. “No. I begged and pleaded. I did Internet searches of my own. I thought I was going to have to give up.”

Then she looked up and gave the grin that reminded me she was a cute girl. “Finally,” she said, “I stooped to subterfuge.”

Joe's eyes narrowed, and I'm sure mine did, too. What had she been up to?

Tess' eyes sparkled. “I went to one of those spy shops. You know, where they sell hidden cameras and phone taps and such. And the day before Jeff left Dallas, I bugged his car.”

I looked at Joe, and he looked at me. We both began to laugh. The idea of wide-eyed, innocent Tess in a spy shop was ridiculous.

Then Joe spoke. “A cop would have to get a warrant to do that.”

“I'm not a cop. I'm just competitive. I bought one of those little transmitter thingies. It didn't cost much, because I got a refurbished one. Not new. And I installed it in Jeff's car.”

“You installed it in his car?” I was sure I sounded incredulous. “How did you know how to do that?”

“It came with instructions. You plug it in the ‘onboard diagnostic port.'” She made air quotes around the phrase. “It doesn't even need batteries.”

“Come on, Lee,” Joe said. “People install those things all the time so they can tell where their teenagers go. Or keep track of a fleet of delivery trucks. I'm sure the directions are clear.”

Tess nodded. “Yep. I'm not at all mechanical, and I handled it. I tracked Jeff all the way to Michigan with my smartphone. But I finally lost him.”

“When did that happen?” Joe asked.

“Yesterday afternoon. He went to see Lee.” She turned to me. “Didn't he? I saw his car parked in the same block as the chocolate shop.”

I nodded. “Jeff didn't stay long. He invited us to dinner, but then he didn't show up. Do you know where he went?”

“I lost him during the afternoon. He began to wander around in all those woods east of Warner Pier. I didn't dare follow too closely, and I got all confused.”

Joe grinned. “Did the trees scare you?”

Tess looked puzzled, and I smiled back at Joe as I answered. “The part of Texas where Tess grew up has lots of trees. It's only a plains person like me who's scared of them. Go on, Tess.”

She still looked puzzled, but she continued her story. “I finally gave up and came back to Warner Pier. I was watching the tracker on my phone, and it came back to town, too. Then Jeff went down Lake Shore Drive. I thought he was coming here, to your house.”

“No sign of him here,” I said.

“His car was parked someplace around here for at least an hour. Then it moved back to the area east of Warner Pier, according to the tracking device. And it didn't move again. I looked all around over there, and I didn't find anything likely. I finally decided he'd found the bug and tossed it in the bushes. I had to get a motel in Holland and try again this morning.”

“But the bug is still working?” I asked.

Tess nodded. “The location of the bug hasn't changed, and this afternoon I decided I'd try again, make one more effort to track him down. And all that happened was that y'all had to rescue me. I went to the area indicated, but I couldn't find him.”

Joe leaned forward. “Was that the end of Big Pine Road?”

“That's how I interpreted the information. But it's just woods out there. There are no roads, no houses. Nothing.”

“You ran into the border of a state forest,” Joe said absently. “Let me look at your tracker.”

Tess dug her smartphone out of her purse, and she showed Joe how the app operated. Joe looked it over. “It seems to be working,” he said.

“I probably did something wrong,” Tess said.

“Show me.”

She demonstrated how she had operated the tracker app. Joe frowned. “That looks right to me,” he said. “I'm going to ask Hogan about this.”

Joe went into the bedroom to call Hogan. He apparently was told to bring the gadget over. At least he came out of the bedroom and walked swiftly out the back door, headed for his truck. He yelled over his shoulder, “I want to get over to Hogan's before dark!”

I hobbled right after him. “Joe! Joe! What's going on?”

He jumped into the truck and rolled down the window. “Hogan wants to take a look at the tracker right now, Lee.”

“Why the hurry? We know Jeff's not out there.”

“Hogan's afraid he is.”

“How could that be?”

“If I'm reading it right, then the tracker
is
out at the end of Big Pine Road. It could mean Jeff ran off the road. Or something. Or maybe nothing, Lee. It may be perfectly all right.”

I stood back, almost stunned, and Joe spoke again. “You keep an eye on Tess,” he said. Then the truck dug out of our drive, throwing gravel behind it.

He left me scared to death.

Joe had stimulated my imagination with thoughts I didn't like. If the bug was working correctly Jeff was—well, lost in the woods.

Of course, Jeff really might have found the bug and tossed it into the bushes at the end of Big Pine Road. But if he hadn't done that—well, the logical conclusion was terrifying.

It would mean something had happened to Jeff.

Jeff's car might be in one of the most remote and heavily wooded parts of Warner County. And it could be in a situation where it wasn't easily seen from the road. If it were, Tess would have spotted it.

I imagined Jeff's car in a ravine, hidden by trees and bushes. I pictured it upside down in a creek. I pictured Jeff injured, unconscious, bleeding. I stopped before I got to an even more frightening possibility.

I didn't say anything, but I realized Tess had come out of the house and was standing behind me. Her eyes were wide and frightened. I realized that she had caught the implications of Joe's rapid exit after he checked the tracking device.

When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. “Where is Joe going?”

I tried to make myself sound brisk and unafraid. “He's going to ask our pal Hogan—you know, the police chief married to my aunt—if that bug-finder app is working,” I said. “You know how guys are about gadgets. They want to play with it. You'll be lucky to get either it or your cell phone back.”

Tess declined dessert, even a hazelnut truffle that had somehow been misdecorated to look like a lemon chiffon goodie. TenHuis employees were allowed to bring the mistakes home free, and I frequently took advantage of that rule.

She cleared the table while I loaded the dishwasher. Then we turned on the television and stared blindly at the screen. I thought about calling Alicia, but I simply couldn't face it.

When the phone rang an hour later, we both leaped to our feet.

As I'd hoped, it was Joe.

“Ask Tess what kind of car Jeff was driving,” he said.

It was a new-model Lexus, which didn't surprise me; that was the type of car Jeff's dad would think suitable for his son.

“White,” I said to Joe. “She says it's white.”

A beat went by.

“Joe!” My yell might have burst his eardrum. “Did you find Jeff's car?”

“I guess so.”