The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle (16 page)

“I won’t mention it if you don’t want me to.”

“I just wanted your opinion.”

Dolly was still keeping her voice very low, an action that forced her to concentrate. She was naturally a loud person, and speaking in a low voice was hard for her. So I knew this was very serious to her. I tried to give her an intelligent assessment of the Snow clan.

“As for Silas,” I said, “Judging by the one time I saw him and by what Vernon said about him, I think he was old-fashioned and cantankerous. But that’s a long way from being mentally ill. When it comes to Maia—or Mae—I don’t understand what’s going on at all. But I think that having that book published went to her head. It certainly changed her personality.”

“You think she was okay before this book deal came up?”

“She certainly became a different person. Mae was always colorless. She struck me as really dull. Now . . . it’s as if she’s working to be a caricature of a novelist.”

I had an inspiration. “Listen, Dolly, tomorrow morning I’m going to the
Gazette
office to look up some information. Maybe they have some files on Silas. I’m sure they’ll have some on Maia. I’ll see what I can find out there.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

Dolly stood up and moved toward the door. I allowed myself to think that our interview was over.

Then she turned around again. “It’s just hard to figure how Maia could get so excited over a vanity book.”

After dropping that bombshell, she opened the door and left the office.

I had to take a minute to absorb what she’d said. Then I was out the door after her. “Wait a minute, Dolly! Come back in here.”

She came. This time I was the one who closed the door and dropped my voice.

“A ‘vanity book’? Are you saying Maia
paid
to get her book published?”

“She must have, Lee.”

“How do you know?”

“I wrote a regional cookbook, remember? I talked to every publisher in Michigan—and you’d be surprised at how many there are. That particular publisher told me they do only ‘author participation’ books. I would have had to come up with around five thousand dollars, then do all my own promotion and distribution. I certainly wasn’t interested in that. Not when I got a reputable regional press interested in my book. They didn’t pay a lot, but it didn’t
cost
me money to get it published. And they do the publicity and distribution. I don’t have to create my own press kit and ship my own books.”

“Then I could write something—
The ABCs of Office Management,
maybe—and they’d publish it?”

“For a price. They’d print any number you wanted. Then they’d send all the books to you, and you’d sell them. Or store them in your garage.”

“Which would be a likely fate for any book I’d write.”

“When I heard they were publishing Maia’s book, I didn’t want to say too much about it,” Dolly said. “Maia seemed so proud of her book. I figured she didn’t know the difference between vanity publishing and regular publishing. I have no reason to embarrass her.”

Dolly left, and I sat at my desk mulling over what Dolly had told me. It made Maia’s behavior look really peculiar. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with paying to publish a book, I told myself. If you wanted to see your family history or all your grandmother’s recipes in print, fine. If Maia’s life wasn’t going to be complete until
Love Leads the Way
was in print, paying to publish it was worth the money. But why was she acting as if the book’s publication were the literary event of the year?

I was aroused from my mulling when the telephone rang. It was Joe. “How about dinner?”

I looked at the work piled up on my desk and sighed. “I’d have to eat in a hurry. I was gone most of the afternoon.”

“Taking care of Monte?”

“Among other things. I’m going to have to work at least a couple of hours. I guess I’d better grab a sandwich and stick to my desk.”

“Maybe both of us could do that, then I’ll come by your office about nine. If you’re still hungry we’ll get a bite. If not—well, I’d like to see you.”

We left it at that. I hoped Joe wasn’t planning some sort of serious discussion of our future. I hadn’t had time to figure out where I stood on that.

So I planned to snag a snack from the break room and work on through. But again, someone else changed my plans. This time it was Aunt Nettie.

She came up to my office with a large box in her hands. “Here are the crème de menthe bonbons.”

I realized she was holding the five-pound box of crème de menthe bonbons Gray Gables had ordered. “Oh,” I said, “I forgot those. I was planning to work late.”

“I guess I can take them.” Aunt Nettie looked really tired. She had taken the news about Aubrey without flinching, but she’d had a long day. I knew she was dying to get home and get her shoes off.

“Oh, no. I can take them,” I said. “No problem.”

I told her I was planning to grab a sandwich sometime, so I’d drop off the bonbons when I went out. Then I’d go back to work until Joe picked me up around nine o’clock. She approved and left for home. I closed out the computer, put on my lightweight khaki jacket, and picked up the box of bonbons.

Gray Gables is a historic estate. The High Victorian home on the property was built in the 1890s by a former ambassador and is still owned by his descendants. And like many modern-day people who inherited these snazzy estates, the current owners were having trouble financing the place. Between the taxes for waterfront property in Warner Pier and the staff required to keep up the house and the grounds, the current owners had found themselves in a tight place financially.

So that summer they’d turned the property into a conference center. They took groups of at least twelve and charged a stiff rate. The food, or so I’d heard, was superb. And every night the beds were turned down and a TenHuis crème de menthe bonbon was placed on each pillow.

Usually the owner-operator picked the bonbons up, but today she’d requested that we bring them to her. Five pounds of bonbons was an order well worth driving two miles to deliver. I might even have told myself that a short drive would clear my head, except that I’d already driven all over western Michigan that afternoon, and I had grown more confused than ever.

But the weather had changed a little during the hour and a half I’d been indoors. The wind had switched to the west and had grown stronger. The fall leaves were flying down the street as the wind whipped them off the trees. It wasn’t much colder yet, but the change in wind direction meant the temperature was likely to drop into the thirties that night.

Anyway, I put the bonbons on the floor of the van’s front seat—I didn’t want to take a chance of them sliding off the seat if I should come to a sudden stop—then I drove across the Orchard Street Bridge. The river approaches the lake from the southeast, then makes a sharp right just as it comes to Warner Pier. From there it flows due west into Lake Michigan. Once the road crosses the Orchard Street Bridge, a right hand turn puts you on Lake Shore Drive, curving around along the lake and leading to houses, including the one Aunt Nettie and I shared. To reach Gray Gables I turned left onto Inland Road, which roughly follows the river. I mention all this because it turned out to be important.

The late afternoon sunlight was slanting through the trees, turning the woods to red, gold, orange, rust, purple, and all the glorious colors of fall. October is beautiful everywhere in the northern hemisphere, I guess, but sometimes it seemed as if western Michigan got more than its share of the goodies. I was quite annoyed to see the wind whipping the leaves around, tearing them off prematurely. I want the leaves to stay colorful as long as possible.

For the most part, however, the woods were still thick. That gave me a few qualms, but I reminded myself to look at the beautiful color, not think about how the trees blocked the view of the horizon.

My feelings about trees are typical of people born and raised on the plains, I guess. On the one hand we value trees highly. In my hometown, for example, a building lot with trees costs more than one without, and in plains cities architects design buildings with an eye to saving mature trees. But for us true plains natives, thick woods are scary, just as open plains are scary to people raised in the woods. Aunt Nettie says she felt “exposed” when she visited my North Texas hometown. There was nothing to hide behind. But I feel spooked when I’m in thick woods; something could be hiding behind those trees.

I felt safe in the van, however, and I poked along, enjoying the lovely colors.

There are lots of houses along Inland Road, but they are farther apart as you get near to Gray Gables. In fact, there were no houses for about a half mile before the road came to the estate, and Inland Road dead-ends at its gate. I felt sure the gate would be open, since the conference center was expecting guests, as well as me.

So I was surprised when I saw the wrought iron gate was closed. I stopped, ready to honk for admittance.

As I did, two things happened, suddenly and almost simultaneously.

First, the van grew hard to steer and pulled to the right.

Before I could say, “Rats! I’ve got a flat,” the second thing happened.

The entire windshield became checked, turning magically into opaque glass.

The sound of the shot didn’t register in my tiny brain until a moment later.

I
n real time it may have been only a split second until I reacted, but at the moment it seemed as if I spent an hour sitting there, staring stupidly at that checkered windshield, not moving, just trying to figure out what had made the appearance of the glass change so magically.

That shattered windshield probably saved my life. I would have been a perfect target if the rifleman could have seen me clearly. The checkered windshield must have made me hard to hit.

Anyway, I heard the second shot as I was diving for the floor. Since the van has captain’s chairs, the quickest way to get to the floor was to drop between the seats. I somehow wound up in an L shape, with my head and torso on the floor of the backseat and my legs and feet between the front seats.

At first, driving off didn’t seem like a viable option. The van’s motor was still running, true, but I couldn’t see out the front window at all, and I had a flat. I wouldn’t be able to drive off very fast.

When the third shot hit, however, driving off began to seem like the smartest way to go.

I pulled my legs into the backseat—not the most graceful trick I’ve ever performed. I wiggled around on the floor until I faced the front of the van. I reached forward to the gearshift. Yes, I could pull it into reverse. Since I have long arms, I might even manage to push the accelerator with my hand and back the van up. There was no way of telling what I’d back into, but I didn’t see how I’d be any worse off.

I did it. I moved the gearshift into reverse, then leaned forward and pushed the accelerator with my hand. The van seemed to shoot backward. I could feel the flat going bump, bump, bump, and another shot clunked into the van. At least I was able to get a fix on this one. It was coming from the left of the van, and it hit the motor or the fender—something in front of me, anyway.

I kept pushing the accelerator, figuring that anyplace else was better than the place I was in. More shots came, some in the roof, some in the hood. And they definitely came from the left and in front. The shooter obviously couldn’t see me. He was just firing at the van. Which still left me in a very sticky spot.

I was beginning to wonder if I could drive clear back to town without looking behind me, when the van jolted to a stop and threw me backward. I looked out the rear window and saw trees. The van had angled into the bushes and trees at the side of the road.

Now what? I didn’t have time to think about it. I reached for the dash and hit the button that pops the rear deck. Then I scrambled over the seats to get to the rear of the van. The deck’s door had opened, but it hadn’t popped up very far, since the trees and bushes had stopped it. I was able to push it up until there was a space at the bottom of a foot or eighteen inches.

All I could see outside was bushes, but that looked better than what was inside. I crawled out headfirst, wriggling through the crack and slithering into the bushes like a snake.

I pulled myself along with my elbows, trying to get deeper into the trees and brush and farther away from the road. Behind me I heard a couple more shots hit metal, and I allowed myself to hope that the rifleman thought I was still inside the van.

I soon felt as if I’d crawled a mile, but when I looked back the van was just about fifteen feet away. I crawled harder.

For the first time in my life, I wished the woods were thicker. I didn’t dare stand up for fear I’d be clearly visible. Since I had only a general idea of where the gunman was, I didn’t know when he might get a glimpse of my khaki jacket and blond hair moving along. He wasn’t likely to mistake me for a woodchuck, though I could hope that my jacket looked like fallen leaves. Or maybe it didn’t. I rolled over on my back and wriggled out of the jacket. My green, long-sleeved polo shirt would offer better camouflage, at least for the top half of me. I couldn’t do anything about my jeans. I pulled a small branch off a bush and stuck it in the clip that held my hair in a clump at the back of my neck, with the leaves over the back of my head. The branch poked my spine, and I must have looked like a fool, but that didn’t seem important.

I left the jacket behind and kept crawling. I wouldn’t allow myself to look back for what I thought was a long time. I began to wonder if I could stand up and run for it without getting shot. The wind was whipping the tops of the trees around, but they weren’t moving so much down on the ground. When I finally peeked over my shoulder, the van was just a white blob through the trees. I’d crawled fifty or sixty feet.