The Chocolate Mouse Trap (16 page)

I sketched my conversation with Hogan Jones, explaining that he was a close friend of my aunt’s. “I’m afraid he and I thought it was funny. We kept picturing the Holland crime scene crew searching, afraid to lift an afghan or open a drawer for fear the mouse would pop out at them.”

Martin smiled. “That could happen, but if it did they didn’t tell me. I set a live trap, but as far as I know Blondie has never turned up.”

“Blondie? The mouse’s name is Blondie?”

“Right. As in ash blond. Julie was always partial to white mice. Now Brad, he likes the brown ones.”

“Somehow brown ones don’t seem as petlike. Too much like what we set traps for in my aunt’s Michigan basement.”

I guess it had become obvious that we weren’t having a serious conversation, because Mike appeared, bearing a tray of dessert selections. “Pick one,” he said. “On the house.”

“Looks great,” Martin said. “But I shouldn’t eat too much. I’ve got to drive to Grand Rapids this afternoon. I don’t want to fall asleep.”

“I’ll put it in a box, if you’d rather,” Mike said. “Of course, I’m going to ask for some information in exchange.”

Martin looked a little wary, but he nodded, and Mike pulled up a chair. “I’m putting on my Mayor of Warner Pier hat,” he said. “I’m curious about the Schrader family property down here. Since it adjoins Warner Pier on the south and it’s a big chunk of undeveloped land . . .”

Martin shook his head. “Mike, I can’t tell you a thing.”

“I noticed that, when your niece died, the family picked the Lake Michigan Conservation Society for memorial gifts.”

“That was Brad’s idea. My mother went along with it.” Then Martin gave a deep sigh. “Look, there’s a family trust, and Brad and I are both beneficiaries. But the Warner Pier property is not part of the trust. It belongs to my mother outright. She can do anything she wants to with it—and I assure you she will! If you want to see it go to the Conservation Society—”

“No! No! The city doesn’t have a policy that covers it. We’re simply curious. We have to think about what might happen.” Mike leaned closer to Martin and lowered his voice. “To tell the truth, I’d like to see all these big family properties remain with the families. But very few families can keep them these days.”

Martin nodded. “Taxes.”

“Taxes.” Mike grinned. “And, of course, with the property outside our city limits, Warner Pier isn’t getting a cut.”

“Mike,” Martin said, “if I get a hint of my mother’s plans, I’ll tip you off.”

“That’s all I’m asking. A tip would definitely be worth a piece of cheesecake.”

We all laughed. Martin selected a piece of turtle cheesecake as his freebie, and I asked for bread pudding. Mike promised to send us coffee, then left.

“You were very gracious to Mike,” I said. “He was being extremely nosy.”

Martin shrugged. “My grandfather bought that property in 1935 for practically nothing. It wasn’t good for orchards, so nobody wanted it. Now it’s going to be one of the biggest items in my mother’s estate.”

“How is your mother? I mean, the word around west Michigan is that her health isn’t good.”

“She has good days and bad days. She’s nearly ninety. She has arthritis and a pacemaker.”

“Julie looked a lot like her.”

Martin’s eyes widened. “Yes, she did. Or she looked a lot like Mother looked when she was Julie’s age. But how did you know?”

“The eyes. Black and snapping. They both could look right through you.”

Martin blinked. Had I made him cry?

“Sorry,” I said. “It just struck me when I met Mrs. Schrader. Now, gobble up your cheesecake, and we’ll go look at the e-mail.”

We made light conversation while we drank our coffee. Martin paid the bill and said good-bye to Mike. We both put on our hats and zipped up our jackets, then walked the half-block to TenHuis Chocolade. I led the way into the office and plopped into my chair.

“Hang your jacket on the coat tree, if you like,” I said. “This will take only a minute.” I didn’t bother to go online, but went straight to “deleted items.”

When the folder opened, it took me a few minutes to realize that it held only a couple of dozen items.

The only Seventh Food Group message in it was the one I’d received from Jason that morning. Everything I’d received before Wednesday, a day earlier, had disappeared.

I
did everything I could think of. I checked the computer’s main recycle bin, looked in my other e-mail folders, wracked my brain, used shocking language, and pulled out handfuls of hair. But my deleted and sent e-mail folders were empty, and my recycle bin was, too.

Martin Schrader reacted as if it were his fault, apologizing at length.

“Don’t be silly,” I said, when I was able to say anything that wasn’t a swear word. “It has nothing to do with you. You just happened to be on the spot when I found out that the folders were gone. Actually, I can’t believe I’m so lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Yes. Other members of the Seventh Food Group have had computer trouble, and they lost everything.” I explained that Carolyn, Jason, and the Denhams all had their business records wiped out.

“Then Lindy Herrera was physically attacked, and her laptop was stolen,” I said. “I seem to be getting off easy. Besides, I backed up my business records after all the others had trouble, and I’ve updated the disk every day since then.”

“So you have a copy of your e-mail?”

I shook my head. “I’m afraid not.” I reached into my drawer and pulled out my backup disk. “I didn’t see any reason to back up my e-mail. I get a lot of orders in by e-mail, true, but I print them out or move them to different folders as I read them. Ordinarily I don’t put anything in the delete file except things I’m through with, like messages from my mother or Seventh Food Group chitchat. When I backed up my files, I only backed up correspondence, accounting—things like that.”

Martin looked extremely troubled. “Have you talked to the police about these computer problems?”

Martin seemed to think he was the first person who had thought of that. I tried to be polite when I told him I’d already been over it with Chief Jones, and that Hogan had passed that idea on to the Holland detectives.

“Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if you talked to them as well,” I said. I guess I thought an important businessman like Martin Schrader might have more clout with the police than a group of small business owners like the Seventh Food Group.

Martin left, and I called Jack Ingersoll. He wasn’t answering his phone, as usual, but I left a message asking if there was any logical technical explanation for why two folders of my e-mail could be erased and the rest of the computer’s workings left intact. I felt certain that the answer was no, but I thought I ought to ask before I called Hogan Jones to report the situation. It seemed pretty obvious to me that somebody had sat down at my desk, opened up my computer and killed those two files, plus my trash can.

But who? Who would have done that? Who could have done that?

Of course, anybody who worked at TenHuis Chocolade could have wandered into the office when I wasn’t there, opened the e-mail program, and killed anything she wanted to kill. (All our employees are women.) But she couldn’t have done it without being observed. My office was separated from the shop and from the workroom only by large panes of glass. It’s a fishbowl. Nobody could go into the office during business hours without someone noticing.

But if people who worked there would have trouble getting into my computer, it would be even more difficult for an outsider. Nobody besides the staff would have any reason to be in my office—or at least no reason to fool with my computer. If they did, it would be sure to attract attention from Aunt Nettie or one of the other hairnet ladies.

The whole thing was nonsense. The missing folders were not important to me. It’s not as if I checked them every morning to see if anything exciting had turned up. No, I just send stuff, and I don’t look at the sent folder unless I have some question about it. I simply kill stuff from my incoming mail file, and it lingers in deleted until I get around to giving the final commands to kill it forever. I had no idea when I’d last looked in either file. It had been at least a month.

Of course, I could figure when the folders had been emptied. The dates on the handful of remaining items showed when it had happened.

The two folders had been emptied the day before. I looked at my calendar and thought back over the past few days, trying to remember who had been in my office, who had come into the shop.

I immediately realized that practically everybody I knew had been there either Tuesday or Wednesday, including some of the members of the Seventh Food Group. Jason had come by to tell me about his computer problems. Diane Denham had dropped by to ask about Lindy and had stayed to complain about how nosy Julie had been. Of course, Lindy hadn’t been in, because she was home recuperating from being hit in the head by the thief who’d taken her laptop. Besides, Lindy was my best and oldest friend. If I had to suspect Lindy of fooling around with my computer, or worse, of murder—well, I just couldn’t do it. Carolyn Rose hadn’t been into TenHuis Chocolade, but death seemed to take her off the list of possible villains, too.

Margaret Van Meter had not been in my office that week either. Did that remove her from the suspect list? Or make her more likely? That idea seemed silly. With six kids, Margaret was so homebound she had trouble finding time to go to the grocery store. Getting out long enough to get into my computer or to commit murder would have been impossible for her.

Besides, these were all people I knew, people I considered friends. Then I remembered how Hogan Jones had described them. “These are not friends,” he’d said. “These are suspects.” At that thought I shivered harder than Martin Schrader had at the idea of drinking iced tea in January.

But all this had happened a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest times of the year for the chocolate business. Dozens of people had come into TenHuis Chocolade during the past two days. Martin Schrader had been in three times, and his nephew, Brad, had been in once. But I didn’t see how any of these people could have touched my computer unobserved.

Maybe Tracy had seen something. I glanced at the clock on the workroom wall. She would come to work in half an hour. I’d ask her.

I wound up spending most of that half hour standing at the counter in the shop. We had a rush of customers that didn’t let up even after Tracy came in, and both of us had to work the counter until five thirty. Closing time had come before I had a chance to say anything more to Tracy than, “Please go to the back and bring up a tray of lemon canache bonbons.” (“Tangy lemon interior with dark chocolate coating.”)

My request for a short chat left Tracy looking as if she’d been called to the principal’s office. She perched uneasily on my visitor’s chair. “Did I shortchange someone?”

“If you did they haven’t complained. No, something crazy happened to my computer, and I wondered if anybody had been fooling with it.”

“Not me!”

“I’m sure it wasn’t you, Tracy. I was wondering about visitors.”

“Visitors? Like Brad Schrader?”

“Not him specifically. Anybody. Salesmen. Jason Foster was by yesterday, for example.”

“Yes, but he went right in your office. And you were there.”

It was hard going. Tracy’s job was to mind the counter, not keep an eye on my office. She couldn’t remember who had been in it, if I’d been there the whole time the visitors had been, if they’d looked at my computer, or if they’d taken a meat ax to it. Our whole conversation was a waste of time.

After Tracy left I sat and stared at the computer screen. How was I going to figure this out?

The key to the whole mystery was Julie Singletree. It was only after Julie was murdered that the Seventh Food Group began to have trouble with its computers. It was after Julie was murdered that Carolyn was killed, that Lindy was attacked. The whole problem had to hinge on Julie. Who would have wanted to harm her? And why?

I sat looking at that computer screen as if it were a crystal ball, and I were a fortune-teller. I needed to find out more about Julie. How could I do that?

Gradually, an idea formed. I picked up the phone and punched in a number. Joe answered on the second ring.

“Joe, how would you like to have dinner in Holland?”

“If you could wait until around seven, I could get another coat of varnish on this boat. Then you might talk me into it.”

“Sounds fine. Then, afterward—I thought we might go by Margaret Van Meter’s and look at wedding cakes.”

He paused, obviously analyzing what I had said.

So I went on. “Whoever comes to our wedding, they’re going to expect cake.”

Joe chortled. “You’re nosing around, aren’t you?”

“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

“Okay.” Joe sounded resigned. “If I’m going to marry the nosiest woman in west Michigan, I’d better get used to it. I sure don’t want you poking around by yourself.”

“I’ll call Margaret and see if she can talk to us.”

Margaret said she should have the youngest kids in bed by eight thirty. “Jim will be home by eight, and he can supervise baths for the boys. So a half hour later should be a good time.”

Joe and I barely had time to snag a burger at a popular Holland restaurant. Then he followed my vague directions, and we roamed around until we found Margaret’s house.

“What does Jim do?” Joe said as we got out of his truck.

“He works for one of the office furniture suppliers. I think he delivers and assembles.”

“He’s lucky he’s still got a job.”

“Right.” At one time, our part of Michigan was a center for manufacturing and sales of office furniture, but anybody who reads the newspapers knows that a lot of those companies are closing up operations in our area.