The Chocolate Mouse Trap (11 page)

“I don’t think our interest in Julie’s marriage is merely nosiness,” I said. “Not in the gossipy sense, anyway. I think it’s guilt. Julie was the focal point of our little e-mail group, the one who kept it going. She did all of us some favors on the business front, and she made an effort to be friendly to all of us. She dropped in on Margaret, who’s pretty housebound with those six kids. She came down to Warner Pier and took Lindy and Carolyn and me to lunch. She sent the Denhams some business, I know.

“But when she died, I realized that none of us knew anything about her. We hadn’t even known she’d been married! I know Julie and I weren’t close friends, but it makes me feel bad because I took her for granted while she was alive.”

Aunt Nettie’s smile was good-humored. “As long as you don’t think you have to get involved in the investigation of her death, Lee.”

“Oh, no! I’ve been down that road before, and I had to buy a new van to prove it! Any more murders, and they’re gonna cancel my insurance.”

We both laughed and settled back to enjoy our dinner. But way in the back of my mind, a few thoughts did bubble up. The Holland police thought Julie had been killed by a burglar. That burglar had stolen—among other things—her computer. Jack Ingersoll thought House of Roses had had a burglar. A burglar who did nothing but destroy Carolyn’s computer records. Jason and the Hideaway Inn had been hit by a vicious computer virus. Could these things be connected?

If anything happened to my computer, I might get pulled into the investigation of Julie’s death whether I wanted to be or not.

When Aunt Nettie and I had finished dinner, Lindy came over to say she had talked to Jason, and he hadn’t known anything about Julie’s marriage. But he was going to call someone who might know, then call her back. Aunt Nettie went on home, but Lindy brought a pot of coffee, and I lingered while the Herrera’s crew cleaned up. She finally got around to telling me that her e-mail had been attacked by the same virus that hit mine, but our local computer server, WarCo, had been able to stop it before she connected. Another narrow escape.

Ten o’clock came, the last customer had gone, the kitchen was cleaned, and Lindy had packed up her laptop. Still no word from Jason.

“I don’t think he’ll call this late,” Lindy said. “I’ve let everybody out the back.”

“I’m parked out front,” I said. “If you’ll let me out that way, I’ll be gone.”

“It’s been nice to have company.”

The stars were bright as I crossed the sidewalk. I could see the lights of the town glinting off the ice in the river. I paused to look at the view, then realized Lindy was standing at the door, waiting for me to get into my van safely. I did so, checking behind the seats and in the rear deck. Okay, I admit it; Julie’s death had made me jumpy.

Well, I thought, if Lindy can watch and make sure I’m safe, I’d better do the same for her. I knew she was parked in the alley, so I warmed the van up for a minute, backed it out, then drove down the street and turned the corner. Halfway down the block I swung into the alley. My lights hit Lindy’s compact car.

It took me a moment to register the two figures beside the car.

One figure was on the ground, lying terribly still, and the second held something that looked like a club.

I
hit the horn and held it down. I guess I was yelling, too. And I slipped the van into neutral and gunned it. Don’t ask me why. I guess I just wanted to make a lot of noise.

All this commotion got results. The guy dropped the club and clutched something to his chest, then jumped up and ran.

I stopped with my fist still on the horn. Now I could see that the figure on the ground was Lindy. Or at least it had a red cap like Lindy’s and was wearing Lindy’s blue down coat. This did not surprise me, since I’d been expecting to see Lindy in that alley.

I had finally acquired a cell phone, and luckily, it was in my purse. I punched in 9-1-1 as I hopped out of the van, then knelt beside Lindy in the headlights. She was breathing, thank God.

It seemed like hours before the Warner Pier patrol car got there. I stood over Lindy, clutching the cell phone and talking to the dispatcher, terrified that her attacker would come back. I was afraid to move her, but I pulled off my wool scarf and slid it under her cheek, which had been resting on the icy ground.

The Warner Pier EMTs, who are volunteers, were only a minute behind the cops. By the time they pulled into the alley, Lindy was groaning and stirring.

The next hour was confusing. Hogan Jones and Joe showed up just after the EMTs, both of them on foot. They’d still been at the city council meeting, and both had run the four blocks from City Hall since it was faster than getting into their cars.

Joe showed a satisfying relief that I wasn’t hurt—the dispatcher had paged the chief and told him only that I’d called in a 9-1-1 report on an attack behind Herrera’s. The chief had nudged Joe and told him I was in danger, and they had arrived with no more information than that. I guess it was lucky neither of them had a heart attack. Mike Herrera was close behind them, so I gathered that the city council meeting had adjourned abruptly.

Joe and Mike left almost immediately to tell Tony what had happened. Joe stayed at Tony and Lindy’s to baby-sit the three Herrera kids so Tony could follow Lindy to the nearest hospital, thirty miles away in Holland. Mike came back to the alley to let the police into the restaurant and be available with other information they might need.

The chief asked me a lot of questions, but I didn’t have many answers. I hadn’t seen much.

The guy—or gal—who’d been standing over Lindy had worn standard west Michigan winter gear: a dark parka or ski jacket with a hood. The hood had been over the attacker’s head. I hadn’t been able to tell if the person was dark, light, fat, thin, or in between. He—or she—had run off at a crouch, so I couldn’t even tell if the attacker was tall or short. The face had been a dark blob, which might have meant it was covered by a stocking mask or a ski mask. Or it might have simply meant the attacker kept his face out of my headlights. His jacket had had no distinctive features—no stripes, checks, or readable brand names.

A short piece of scrap wood was lying beside Lindy, and apparently this was the club I had seen the attacker raising. It was the kind of thing that might be found in any Dumpster in the alley. The chief and the patrolman looked for footprints, but the alley had been plowed, so the snow wasn’t deep, and in the middle of a January night it was mostly ice anyway.

“I guess the guy is agile,” I said. “I would have fallen down and broken my neck if I’d run off the way he did.”

“We’ll check in the daylight,” Chief Jones said. “But I doubt we’ll find anything.”

Joe came back about then. Tony had alerted Lindy’s mom and dad, and they’d arrived to watch over the sleeping kids. Tony had already called from the hospital with a preliminary report that Lindy was demanding to go home, so we were deducing that she was not seriously hurt.

“It must have been a thief,” I said. “The guy ran off carrying something, and I don’t see her purse anyplace.”

“We’ll have to ask Lindy just what she had on her,” the chief said. “Joe, you follow Lee home.”

He’d alerted Aunt Nettie, of course, so she insisted that Joe come in so she could comfort us with coffee and bonbons—crème de menthe (“The formal afterdinner mint”) and Italian cherry (“Amarena cherry in syrup and white chocolate cream”). We sat around the dining room table, and I had to tell the whole story.

After I finished, Aunt Nettie shook her head in disbelief. “It’s hard to imagine that a thief would attack Lindy,” she said. “It’s not likely she would be carrying the night’s take from Herrera’s.”

“I’ll bet that ninety percent of Herrera’s customers use credit cards,” Joe said. “If you took the night’s take from Herrera’s, it probably would be less than fifty dollars in cash money and a whole lot of receipts. You’re right. It doesn’t sound like a thief.”

“Then who was it?” I said. “A sex maniac? When the temperature is down in the teens? He
would
be a maniac. But it did appear that Lindy’s purse was missing. At least, it wasn’t in the car.”

“Did she even have a purse?” Aunt Nettie said. “I’ve seen Lindy stuff her car keys in her pocket.”

“I saw her pack her belongings up before I left,” I said. I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “I didn’t pay much attention. But you’re right. She did stick her keys in her coat pocket. She had a little, flat envelope purse. And she put it in the zipper pocket on the side of her laptop case.”

I gasped. “Golly! That’s what was taken. Not her purse! Her laptop!”

Joe called the chief and told him to look for the laptop in the car and inside the restaurant.

After he hung up, he nodded at me. “I think you’re right. Lindy never goes anyplace without that laptop.”

“She wouldn’t have left it at Herrera’s,” I said, “because she didn’t work there every day. She would have taken it home.”

I was sure that was right. Lindy’s laptop—the computer she used to plan events for Herrera’s Catering, the machine that handled her schedule, the gadget she used for her e-mail—it had gone down the alley with the formless figure who had attacked her.

And the computers of Jason, Carolyn Rose, and the Denhams had also been involved in weird events that day.

“This is the fourth time.” I whispered the words.

“The fourth time for what?” Joe asked.

“It’s the Seventh Major Food Group,” I said. “Odd things are happening to all our computers.”

He looked incredulous, and I realized I hadn’t seen Joe all day. I hadn’t had an opportunity to tell him about the damage to Jason’s computer, to the Denhams’ computer, to Carolyn Rose’s. So I told him.

“But that’s crazy,” Joe said. “Everybody knows an expert can get that stuff back. All those political and Wall Street scandals have showed that to the public. Even if you try to erase everything on a computer, it’s still on the hard drive someplace.”

But I was convinced. “Maybe we’re being attacked by a computer illiterate,” I said. “I’m going to talk to the chief about it.”

Aunt Nettie gave a big yawn at that point—it was after midnight—and we adjourned our meeting.

Joe kissed me good night, then headed for his truck. He called out one last bit of advice. “Keep your cell phone by your bed!”

“We won’t have any problem,” I said. “I don’t have a computer here. I just hope nobody breaks into the shop.”

I put on a flannel nightgown and piled all my extra blankets on top of my quilt. I was shaking, and it was probably nerves, not cold. I burrowed under all this weight of wool, acrylic, and cotton batting. I’d begun to feel warmer and was drifting off to sleep. A year from now, I thought, I’ll be sleeping with Joe every night, and I’ll stick these icy feet right on his back. After all, what are husbands for?

“Husbands.” The word jolted me awake.

For a minute I didn’t know why. Then I remembered the question that had occupied Lindy and me most of the evening.

Julie’s husband? Who had he been? When and where had they gotten married? The attack on Lindy had completely distracted me from that question.

Chief Hogan Jones was a friend. I could ask him if the Holland police knew Julie had been married. I dropped off to sleep thinking that I had quite a lot to talk to him about.

I called his office first thing in the morning, but he wasn’t there. Instead, he dropped by TenHuis Chocolade about ten a.m. It wasn’t a very satisfactory visit. I might have had plenty to talk to Hogan about, but it turned out that he had even more to talk to me about.

He was mad when he walked in, and we got even further at odds when he seemed to interpret my information about Julie’s marriage as an insult to law enforcement. He blew his stack.

“Of course the Holland police know Julie Singletree had been married!” It was the first time I’d ever heard Hogan yell. “That’s the first question they ask!”

“Who did she marry?”

“I’m not telling you, Lee!”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t need to know.”

“But Julie was a frog—I mean a friend! Julie was a friend of mine.”

“If she was such a friend, why didn’t she tell you about her marriage herself?”

He had me there. Recklessly disregarding the mood he was in, I tried another tack. “Are they looking at everyone’s computers?”

“The Holland police are handling their own investigation. They haven’t asked my advice. And they don’t need yours!”

“But the Seventh Major Food Group—”

“Lee! Stay out of it!”

“Look, Hogan, two friends of mine have been attacked, and one of them was killed. Three others have had weird things happen to commuters. I mean computers! Am I supposed to ignore this?”

“You’re supposed to be reasonable and leave it to the police! I’m not talking to you about this any more!”