The Chocolate Pirate Plot (29 page)

And I wasn't happy about it. It was too pretty a day to be cleaning out a garage. It was one of those glorious fall days—with mellow light everywhere, a pale blue sky, soft air I wanted to wallow around in, and Michigan's trees all wearing muted shades of yellow, orange, brown, red, rust, burgundy, and green.

I would definitely have preferred to be taking a boat ride on Lake Michigan, or hiking through the local nature reserve, or eating an ice-cream cone in the Dock Street Park, or even sitting at my desk in the office of TenHuis Chocolade. But no, I'd put the garage storeroom off as long as I could. The time was here. I had to sort through it that afternoon.

Luckily, I had help. Dolly Jolly, chief assistant to the chief chocolatier for TenHuis Chocolade, was up to her vivid red hair in dirt and debris as the two of us investigated boxes and filing cabinets full of, well,
stuff
, and tried to fill up the bed of my husband's pickup truck. Filling the bed of that truck was one of our goals, and it was already looking as if we'd fill it twice.

We'd begun the day by piling up the larger pieces of old equipment, some to go the dump and others to the secondhand restaurant-supply dealer. Aunt Nettie had declared all of it useless, “unless it goes to some museum.”

Next we'd packed up plastic buckets, plastic bins, and plastic lids from containers that had originally held fondant and other chocolate-making supplies. This was typical of Uncle Phil's pack-rat tendencies. The bins, buckets, and plastic lids had been saved for twenty years, just in case anyone ever wanted them. No one ever had needed any of them, and no one ever would. These we put into giant garbage sacks for the recycler. I had rented a heavy-duty shredder, and after the plastic was gone, Dolly and I started on papers.

Aunt Nettie was taking the day off, but she came by for a few minutes. “You two make me feel guilty,” she said, patting her gray-and-blond hair. “You're working so hard, and I'm spending the week visiting with old friends.”

“You'll work hard all week since you're the main hostess,” I said. “And you've worked hard to get ready for this reunion.”

“I just hope all the girls have fun.”

Aunt Nettie referred to her high school pals as “the girls” even though they were all in their sixties. It was the first time the group of six friends had all been together in more than forty years.

Their reunion was part of a larger one. Five years of Warner Pier High School's graduating classes were to gather a week later. A banquet, a picnic, tours, a boat excursion on Lake Michigan—all sorts of activities were planned.

And Aunt Nettie and her five friends were the stars. They had all worked together as waitresses at the Castle Ballroom, a Warner Pier landmark forty-plus years earlier, and had also been a prizewinning vocal group at their high school. They were to perform again at the reunion banquet. Their private weeklong reunion was partly for fun, but mainly to give them an opportunity to rehearse. They had to learn to sing together again.

Aunt Nettie gestured around the storage room. “This place is awful!”

“Is that your fault?”

“Actually, I think I'm pretty good about throwing things away. Apparently I even threw all my high school souvenirs away.”

“Oh, Aunt Nettie! I'm sorry.”

“It can't be helped now. I have no idea when they disappeared.” She shrugged. “But Phil—Well, he wanted to hang on to everything. Even those useless old buckets.”

We both smiled. One reason everything in the storage area was so dusty was that almost everything in it had been there since before Uncle Phil died.

“Uncle Phil was a wonderful person,” I said. “I'm sorry we have to get rid of his treasures.”

“Phil's treasures are now officially declared trash!” Aunt Nettie's vehemence made Dolly and me laugh. “If I get a break from the girls, I'll come back and help you.”

Dolly's voice boomed out. She can't speak at a normal decibel level; every sentence is a shout. “We don't want to be here until your reunion is over! We want to get through! So don't worry about coming back!”

We shooed Aunt Nettie on her way and kept digging. I looked at things and tried to be ruthless, and Dolly operated the shredder.

Finally I was ready for the three big filing cabinets. I knew Aunt Nettie and Uncle Phil had started TenHuis Chocolade with secondhand office equipment, so these cabinets had been old when they bought them. They were heavy, even without the pounds and pounds of paper that filled them. And they were sturdy. Today's filing cabinets simply don't compare with these suckers. If their drawers had been locked—and luckily it seemed none of them were—it would have taken brute force to open them.

I pulled out the top drawer of the first filing cabinet and resolutely started going through files. “More trash,” I muttered as I found a file folder full of brochures on food service equipment that had been for sale thirty years earlier.

“Hand it over!” Dolly boomed. She stuffed the brochures in the shredder, and I emptied the rest of the drawer.

I kept at it. One whole filing cabinet was full of correspondence. Three big drawers. I sighed. Honestly, Uncle Phil, I thought, who cares about a letter asking you to join the West Michigan Business Association in 1984? Bless your heart. You were a great guy, but what a pack rat! All the old letters went into the shredder.

There were drawers of bills. And drawers of tax records—not just the completed forms. Oh, no! Uncle Phil had kept the supporting documentation as well. I began to worry the shredder would break down.

I slogged on. And on. And on. And finally—finally—I came to the bottom drawer of the third filing cabinet.

“Yahoo!” I stood up to stretch. I waved my arms in the air. “Dolly! I'm down to the last drawer!”

“Whoopee!” Dolly did a little dance. This was quite a sight, since she's even taller than I am—I'm five eleven and a half, but Dolly's six foot one—and built more like an oak tree than a willow.

After I'd stretched until my back felt a bit more like a back is supposed to feel, I pulled my folding chair in front of the final filing cabinet. I leaned over and pulled on the bottom drawer.

The darn thing wouldn't open.

“Don't tell me,” I said. “I finally came to a locked drawer.”

I jiggled. I tugged. I put my foot on the drawer above it and pulled the handle. So did Dolly.

“Careful!” I said. “We don't want to yank the handle off.”

“Why not? You said these cabinets were going to the dump!”

“I guess you're right. We might as well pry it open. If we had something to pry with.”

“I'll get my tool kit!”

“Tool kit?”

Dolly nodded. “When I left home, my father gathered up some old tools for me! I think there's a pry bar in the collection!”

She went across the alley to her apartment and came back with a wooden toolbox—the open homemade kind with a handle on top, like the ones carpenters are likely to carry—and in the bottom of it was a strong-looking black crowbar that was about two feet long. Dolly waved it triumphantly.

“That ought to open anything in this garage,” I said.

Dolly inserted the narrow end behind the top of the locked drawer and pressed down. The lock broke, and the drawer popped open about an inch.

“Aha!” I said. “You've done it. Now I wonder what in the world Uncle Phil thought was worth locking up.”

I pulled the drawer out. The first thing on top was a trophy. It was lying on its side.

I picked it up. It had a heavy black base and was at least two feet tall. On its top was a model of a castle.

“What in the world?!” Dolly's voice boomed. “I can understand displaying a trophy, or I can see throwing it away! But locking it up seems kind of odd!”

I read the plaque. The top line was in small letters: FIRST PLACE, followed by the year. The next lines were in larger letters: TALENT SHOW. The final lines were very large: CASTLE BALLROOM.

“Oh, ye gods!” I said. “This is the trophy Aunt Nettie and her friends won the last night the Castle Ballroom was in business.”

I looked at Dolly. “But why did Uncle Phil lock it up?”

Dolly spoke in her usual shout. “Is this the group that's having a reunion this weekend?!”

“Yes. They're having a sort of slumber party at Aunt Nettie's tonight. Several of them are staying with her all week.”

I pulled out the first item under the trophy. It was a scrapbook. On the first page was a picture of six pretty young girls, dressed in the styles of forty-plus years ago. They were standing in that traditional angled pose—right shoulders toward the camera—that photographers use to get heads close together in a group shot. The caption under the photo read, “The Pier-O-Ettes.”

A younger Aunt Nettie, with hair as fair as the gray-blond mixture she had today, was in the middle. I was surprised to realize that I couldn't recognize any of the others. I knew one of the old Pier-O-Ettes, Hazel, very well, but I couldn't pick her out in the photo.

Under the scrapbook was a framed certificate recognizing the Pier-O-Ettes for winning some high school competition.

“Until all this came up I never knew that Nettie sang!” Dolly yelled.

I lifted out more items. “Look. Here's a box of souvenirs—programs and pins and notes and such.” I picked up a ribbon. It was attached to a cluster of what must have once been flowers. “Even an old corsage.”

I looked at Dolly. “This must be the stuff Aunt Nettie said was lost.”

Dolly nodded solemnly. “She'd like to have this!”

“I'll take it over to her house after we're through.”

I taped a new storage box together and wrote “Nettie's Memorabilia” on the outside. The pictures and other items fit in easily, but the trophy was too large. I went across the alley to the TenHuis kitchen and got a plastic garbage sack and several dish towels. I wrapped the trophy in the towels and put it into the sack. Then I stashed all the items in my van, which was parked in my reserved spot in the alley.

 

When I pulled up at Aunt Nettie's, I saw two cars parked in her drive.

I got the box of souvenirs and the trophy out of the van and went to the front door. Before I could touch the bell, the door swung open, and all my confidence disappeared at the sight of the petite woman who faced me.

She was no more than five feet tall, and she probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. Her silver hair was cut crisply, and her clothes were perfect. No jeans and plaid shirt for her. She wore perfectly tailored wool slacks and a wool sweater, both in winter white. Toes of brown boots peeked out from under her slacks, and her only jewelry was an intricately carved jade necklace.

“I hope they're gift-wrapped,” she said.

It was Margo Street.
The
Margo Street. I'd been eager to meet her, but I hadn't expected to be struck speechless when I did.

The Margo Street Aunt Nettie had gone to high school with was the same Margo Street who had been written up in
Fortune
magazine. The one who had founded Sweetwater Investments. The one I had done a research paper on in college. The one I had admired as one of the nation's top women in business.

The one who was glaring at me and making me feel that I must look like the ragged end of a misspent life.

My stomach flipped over, and I nearly dropped the box.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Nettie's noose.”

Ms. Street lifted one eyebrow.

“Niece!” I yelped the word. “Nettie Jones is my aunt.”

“Then you're not from the art shop?”

“No. I work for Aunt Nettie at TenHuis Chocolade.”

“I see. You'd better come in.”

I slunk in, still embarrassed about my slip of the tongue and surprised by her ungracious welcome. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“I requested a delivery. Perhaps I'd better call about it.” Ms. Street gestured toward the back of the house. “The others are out on the porch.”

Ms. Street—I certainly wasn't bold enough even to think of her as Margo—disappeared into the bedroom hall, and I went through the dining room and toward the porch, wondering how this woman managed to look so young. There had been a fine network of wrinkles on her cheeks, so I didn't think she'd “had work done,” as they say. But I would have guessed her age to be in the late forties if I hadn't known she graduated from high school the same year Aunt Nettie did. And Aunt Nettie was sixty-three.

Did having money make you look young?

As I entered the dining room, the kitchen door popped open, and Hazel TerHoot came through with a handful of silverware.

“Hi, Lee. I didn't know Nettie invited
you
.” Her tone implied that I was not only uninvited, but also unwanted.

I didn't take offense. That was Hazel. She completely lacked tact, but after working with her for a couple of years, I knew she didn't really mean to be rude. Things just came out that way.

“I'm not here for the reunion dinner. I just brought something by for Aunt Nettie. Is she out on the porch?”

“Oh, yes. With the rest of the gang.”

Somehow Hazel made the word “gang” sound as if she thought her former classmates were planning to write graffiti all over Warner Pier or start a fight with a rival sextet.

“Are things not going well?”

“Well enough. It's just that—we've all grown in different directions. You know. It always happens that way. Life.”

“Aunt Nettie seemed to be looking forward to seeing everyone, Hazel. I thought you were, too.”