The Chocolate Moose Motive: A Chocoholic Mystery (12 page)

Wildflower might have been a terrible liar, and she might have lived an unconventional “hippie” life. But she was also an older woman. I guess both Chip and I had been raised to respect our elders. Neither of us called her on her lie. We chitchatted as if we hadn’t noticed her blush.

In a few minutes Chip said he had to leave, which suited me because I didn’t want to talk about the break-in in front of him. I stayed in the workroom with the keen-eyed raccoon while Wildflower walked Chip out to his rental car.

Now, I thought as I waited, how do I approach this?

I never decided on an answer to that. When Wildflower came back, I simply burst into speech. “That sheriff is even worse than you said. He’s not going to do a thing about your break-in!”

Wildflower shrugged. “I’ve been at odds with the law so long that it doesn’t surprise me.”

“But you’re…” I quit talking before I added the word “ordinary.” I didn’t find Wildflower as unconventional as her reputation indicated, but this wasn’t the time to go into it. “The first time I came out here, you suggested I might look into Buzz’s death.”

“The law hasn’t done us any good.”

“I’m not skilled enough to investigate a murder. But maybe I could collect a little evidence about a burglary.”

“Doing something is better than doing nothing.”

“Have you got time to talk now?”

“Five more staples, and we’ll head for the coffeepot.”

She finished stapling the raccoon—apparently this was part of gluing the hide to the Styrofoam form inside—then led the way over to the house. Once again I found myself on the rustic couch that was covered with knitted afghans. She brought coffee, remembering that I take it black, and I took out a notebook.

“Okay,” I said. “How long were you gone yesterday afternoon?”

“An hour, maybe an hour and a half. I went over to Dorinda to the grocery store. The store there is closer than the Warner Pier Superette. Cheaper, too.”

“What time was that?”

“I left about two o’clock.”

“So you were back before four?”

“Right.”

“Did you lock the house?”

“I doubt it. I don’t lock the door very often.” She smiled wryly. “Someone might want in.”

“Did you notice as soon as you got back that things had been rearranged?”

“No. I put the groceries away; then I went out to the shop and skinned your owl. The museum curator wants it mounted. Flying. It’s going to be a nice specimen.”

“We’ll have to go over and see it. When did you notice things had been moved around?”

“When I came over here from the shop about five o’clock, I looked for the electric bill. I was sure it had been on top of
the stack. I finally found it farther down in the pile, under the propane bill.”

“Did you see anything else out of place?”

“No. But we’re not exactly neat around here. My mother would have said we’re not neat at all.”

“I’d use the word comfortable. I love your house. How about outside? Was anything moved around out there?”

She shook her head.

“How about in the shop?”

“No, nothing had been disturbed in the shop.”

“Do you keep money around?”

“I don’t keep cash in either the house or the shop, and I took my purse with me. Most of my customers pay by check. I don’t encourage cash. I’m not a good enough bookkeeper to keep good records of cash, and I don’t do enough business to justify taking credit cards. Having checks helps me keep track, and that helps when the IRS casts its beady eye on me.”

“I expect that Sissy could set you up a simple bookkeeping system.”

“Yes, she’s offered. But she wants to do it on the computer. I’ve deliberately avoided any contact with computers. I’ve even talked Sissy out of having e-mail out here.”

“She has Internet access. At least, I found her résumé online.”

“She goes to the library if she wants to use the Internet. I don’t want Moose Lodge to get that modern. Besides, the only Internet access available out here is the type that uses a regular phone line.”

“Dial-up? Yes, there are still big sections of rural Michigan where that’s the main thing available.”

“Sissy’s annoyed with me because I don’t even want one of those phones that tells you who’s calling.”

“Caller ID? That can be pretty convenient.”

The contemptuous glance I got from Wildflower scotched that opinion. She spoke again. “Buzz checked his e-mail at the library, too. But I don’t think he e-mailed a lot. Chip used to gripe because he had to write him letters. ‘Snail mail,’ he called it.”

“Did the prowler fool with the computer yesterday?”

“You’ll have to ask Sissy. But she didn’t mention it.”

“If the only things disturbed were your desk and Sissy’s desk, it looks as if the intruder was looking for some sort of papers. Do you have any idea what those might have been?”

“No. But I have a suspicion of who it was.”

“Who?”

“Ace, of course.”

“But he’s—” I nearly blurted out the first thing that came to mind. Ace Smith had been a high-ranking army officer. It just didn’t seem possible that a person who had held a prominent and honored position in society would turn to burglary. However, I had witnessed the threats Ace had made to Sissy, so I paused, then finished my sentence with a new attitude.

“Ace is a complete jerk, isn’t he?” I said. “I guess I was thinking of a burglar as a person who sneaks around with a dirty face, wearing raggedy clothes. But I’ve heard the way Ace Smith can talk. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

“I don’t know about the way he talks. Usually he’s Mr. Cool. I do know that he’s wild to get some evidence that will prove Sissy is an unfit mother. I have no doubt that if he found our doors unlocked, he’d just walk in and look around to see what he might find. If he found that Sissy had a Tylenol Three prescription from the dentist—which she doesn’t—he’d paint her as a drug addict.” She shrugged. “He already thinks I’m a drug addict because I smoked a little pot in my youth. And in
Ace’s view, I’m un-American because I marched in a few protests.”

“I see. I imagine that’s a problem with the sheriff, too.”

“Right. Burt Ramsey has a very strange idea of what goes on at Moose Lodge. I assure you nothing happens here that’s as interesting as the things he imagines.”

For the second time I caught a whiff of Wildflower’s attitude on the gossip that apparently had swirled around her for years. The first time I met her, she had denied that Moose Lodge had ever harbored nudists. Now she was resentful of how the sheriff regarded her place. She wasn’t as indifferent to public opinion as she might pretend to be.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll put Ace Smith on my mental list of likely suspects. Your neighbors said you had prowlers around the time Buzz was killed.”

“They had prowlers. We never noticed anything over here. Buzz was at home most of the time, you know. It would have been hard to sneak around when he was here.”

“That’s true. But Nosy and Rosy said they found footprints on their property. Did you find any around here?”

“No. But my drive and parking area are graveled. And it’s been dry; there were no traces of mud in the house.”

“You say hikers in the nature preserve wander onto your property. I gather you didn’t see any yesterday.”

“No.”

“Nosy and Rosy suspected you’d had a prowler before you did. Why?”

“Because if the prowler approached from the hiking trail, he’d be likely to cross my property to get to theirs.”

“Would you mind if I wandered around for a while? I’d better look at the layout of Moose Lodge.”

“That’s a good idea.”

I put my coffee cup in the kitchen and followed Wildflower out to the back porch. She stood there and pointed out the landmarks visible from the house. The barbed wire fence that divided her property from the Fox Creek Nature Preserve was hidden by trees, but she showed me the path that led to the fence. It was joined by a similar path from the Reagans’ property. Inside the preserve, Wildflower said, a footpath ran close to the fence.

“I don’t see how people could wander onto your property without guessing that they had left the preserve,” I said. “They’d have to climb a barbed wire fence.”

Wildflower laughed. “I don’t understand it either, but that’s what they tell me when I ask them what they’re doing here.”

I scribbled in my notebook a moment, pretending to make a note. Actually, I was trying to get up the nerve to ask Wildflower a significant question I’d been postponing. I took a deep breath and spoke. “Now, what about Helen Ferguson?”

Wildflower’s earlier reaction had convinced me that she had run into Helen and that their contact had been important in some way. Was my direct question going to shock her into an answer?

For a moment I thought I’d overstepped. Wildflower didn’t blush; she looked angry and spoke in a hard voice. “What makes you think I would know anything about Helen Ferguson?”

“Mainly your reaction when Chip said he didn’t know her even as well as you did. You turned bright red.”

Another long silence followed. Then Wildflower gave a deep sigh. “Helen and I had a run-in. I don’t think Sissy knows about it.”

“What happened?”

“Helen came out here snooping. Chip was right when he said she ‘nosed around.’ She wanted to see Johnny’s room, for example. I caught her looking at the electric plugs—as if we wouldn’t have baby-proofed them. When I offered her coffee, she followed me into the kitchen and actually opened the cupboards.”

Wildflower gave a wicked grin. “Luckily, she didn’t find any mice. It was right after Ace filed his custody suit, and Helen was pretty obvious. She was making a scouting trip of some sort.”

“I’m surprised you let her in.”

“She walked in. I tried to be friendly, but after she used a trip to the potty as an excuse to prowl around in the medicine cabinet, I ordered her out. Told her to skedaddle.”

“I don’t blame you. Did she go peacefully?”

“Oh yeah. She was trespassing, and she knew it.”

After that discussion Wildflower went back to her shop, leaving me to roam around on my own.

As ever, the Moose Lodge terrain scared the heck out of me. I grew up in an area where the main native tree is the mesquite—a short scrubby tree. Oh, there are pecans and oaks and such, but mainly God planned short vegetation for North Texas.

We learned in eighth grade science that if you plant a tree in a forest, it grows tall, trying to reach the light. If you plant the same tree in the open, it grows shorter and broader, because there’s light all around it. With plenty of open space, North Texas trees stay short.

Then I moved to Michigan. First of all, our part of Michigan is as flat as Texas ever thought of being, but it’s covered with scads of trees—tall trees, growing thickly together. There are bushes and smaller trees in between the tall
trees. You can’t see the horizon. Lots of times you can’t even see the sky.

For a Texas girl, thick forests define the words “irrational fear.”

Rationally, I know there’s nothing behind those trees. But some primeval fear makes me think there is. I’ve read that people raised in deep woods find the plains equally frightening because there’s nothing to hide behind.

So when I strolled around the Moose Lodge property, I felt pretty antsy. I kept looking all around. So far as I could see, the place was completely deserted, but I was still nervous.

I first circled the two houses, the shop, and another storage building. The second house—the one where Sissy and Buzz had lived—was securely locked. The storage building, a sort of old barn, was unlocked, but it seemed to hold only items that would be useful on a rural property. There was a lawn mower, a rack holding saws and hammers, an old-fashioned scythe, and other old tools. It was even fairly neat, and the floor had recently been swept.

The path Wildflower had pointed out led off to the north. I followed it. Almost immediately, the Moose Lodge buildings disappeared behind the trees and thick undergrowth. I fought my sense of unease and walked on, examining the ground underfoot like an Indian scout.

Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t recognize a strange track if I fell in it. I felt extremely inadequate.

I didn’t see any footprints, strange or familiar. The path was obviously rarely used. Plants were growing in from the sides, making it narrower and narrower. The path itself was covered with old, sodden leaves. I will say it was quiet. My feet made no noise.

Then I heard voices. I stopped, parted the branches of a bush, and looked ahead.

Hikers. They wore bright T-shirts and carried fanny packs. There were four of them—two adults and two children; a happy family out for a walk. I could even see the fence now. It was between me and the hikers, and it was easy to see because vines were growing over sections of it.

I stopped until the hikers went by. They made no move toward climbing over the fence, and they didn’t seem to notice I was there.

As soon as they disappeared to my right, I went on to the fence. I thought I’d walked about a quarter of a mile away from the Moose Lodge buildings.

The fence was strongly built. It was barbed wire and had four strands. It didn’t look as if it would be easy to get over, but as a Texas girl I’d climbed enough pasture fences—constructed of what Texans pronounce “bob war”—to know how to do it. You hang on to a post and step on the wire near where it’s attached to the post. You go up like a ladder and step over carefully, placing your shoe sole between the barbs. I could have climbed that fence easily, though I might have had to follow up with a tetanus shot.

I looked at the ground near the fence. There were still no tracks in the path, and there were no shreds of tobacco, billfolds containing ID cards, earrings, scraps of fabric caught on a barb, or other clues usually left behind by villains in mystery novels.

I stood still and looked up and down the fence line. I was completely alone. Yes, someone could have climbed over and followed the path to Wildflower’s house. But there was nothing to show that someone had.

I spoke aloud. “Lee, you’re an idiot. Just because you were mad at the sheriff, you said you’d try to help Wildflower. But there’s not a darn thing you can do.”