JoAnna Carl Read online

  To complicate matters further, Clementine Ripley left an extremely involved estate. Joe was having to spend several days a week with accountants, attorneys, court appearances, even finding a new home for her champion Birman cat, who now lived in Chicago with a former housekeeper. Joe swore he wasn't going to keep any of the money—and he said there wasn't going to be much left, anyway—but it was forcing him to spend a lot of time concentrating on his ex-wife's affairs.

  Not on his own affairs. Not on my affairs. On Clem­entine Ripley's affairs. The woman was haunting him.

  The tabloid press was haunting him, too. They seemed to have some conduit into Warner Pier. Any little thing Joe did popped up in the tabloids. The previous week he had talked to the mayor, to see if the city was interested in owning the fifteen-acre War­ner Pier estate Clementine Ripley had left behind. Two days later the headlines read, toyboy heir of FAMED ATTORNEY SEEKS BUYER FOR MANSION.

  Our mayor, Mike Herrera, swore he hadn't told anybody but the park commissioners. How had the tabloid found out?

  Neither Joe nor I wanted to see ourselves splashed across the National Enquirer—toyboy heir of famed LAWYER ROMANCES TEXAS EX-BEAUTY QUEEN WHO WAS WITNESS TO EX-WIFE'S DEATH.

  So I Understood why Joe and I were having a telephone romance. But I was getting tired of it.

  Jeff went up to bed, and I said good night to Aunt Nettie and went up, too. I didn't get undressed, but I wrapped up in a comforter and read by my bedside lamp, which is rather dim. I got interested in my book, forgot Joe, and barely heard Aunt Nettie moving around as she got ready for bed.

  Then, across the hall, I heard Jeffs bed creak. His door opened, he came out, and he stopped outside my door.

  Instantly, I remembered what Joe had said about putting a chair under my doorknob.

  My heart jumped up to my throat. I told myself I was being crazy, but that didn't do any good. Joe's warning had created suspicions, and it was no good denying they existed. I was scared.

  I lay still, not breathing, just listening. It was ludi­crous. Jeff was on one side of the door, listening to me, and I was on the other, listening to him.

  I didn't breathe again until I heard Jeff move on and start down the stairs.

  Stupid, I told myself. Even kids have to get up to go to the bathroom now and then.

  I wondered if Jeff was going to the bathroom. Or if he was going to Aunt Nettie's room. That gave me another stab of fear.

  So I listened carefully to his progress through the house. I'd spent a lot of time in that house. I could tell who was walking where without moving anything but my ear.

  Jeff crept down the steps to the living room, then turned toward the dining room. He went into the kitchen.

  Good. He was going to the bathroom.

  But when he got to the kitchen, he stopped. He fumbled with something that thumped. Was it the hall tree where all the winter jackets had been hung?

  I heard a click. I was sure the sound was the lock of the back door.

  The door opened, then shut. I heard Jeffs footsteps cross the back porch, then scrunch through the snow in the side yard, moving toward the driveway and off into the night.

  CHOCOLATE CHAT

  GOLDEN AGE CHOCOLATE

  One of the most famous books of the Golden Age of Mysteries is The Poisoned Chocolates Case, by Anthony Berkeley, published in 1929. It's based on a short story Berkeley wrote, 'The Avenging Chance," published a year earlier.

  In both the short story and the novel a box of choco­lates is mailed to a member of a London men's club, and the man is asked to sample it as part of a market­ing survey. Since the recipient dislikes chocolates, he gives them to an acquaintance, who takes them home to his wife. The wife eats one and dies—poisoned. The detectives, of course, try to figure out who had it in for the man who received the chocolates and passed them on to his fellow club member. The solution, however, is that the second man knew his fellow club member did not like chocolate and arranged to be beside him when the box arrived. The wife was the intended victim all along.

  All very logical—except that part about the first man disliking chocolate. That's completely unbelievable.

  Chapter 4

  What the heck was Jeff up to? I quickly turned off my bedside lamp, slid out of my cocoon of comforter, and went to the window. I pulled the curtain aside and peeked out.

  Could Jeff be creeping outside to smoke? Aunt Net­tie didn't have ashtrays out, true, but he hadn't asked about it. The kid would have to be a confirmed nico­tine addict to go outside for a cigarette in fifteen-degree weather.

  Did he want to get something from his SUV? Un­less he'd hidden something under the seat, I didn't think there was anything left in it to get. I'd even given him a plastic grocery bag for his trash, and he had filled it with soft-drink cups and fast-food debris that afternoon. The SUV had looked empty.

  Was he going someplace? That didn't seem likely. For one thing, I'd noticed that his gas tank was close to empty. I'd planned to buy him a tank of gas the next day, but I hadn't told him that yet. Besides, if he wanted to leave, Aunt Nettie and I had made it clear we weren't going to try to stop him. There was no reason for him to sneak off in the middle of the night.

  And it was the middle of the night. My watch read 1:00 a.m.

  But middle of the night or no, the interior lights flashed inside Jeffs SUV; then I heard the motor start. But only his running lights came on when the Lexus began to move. He backed down the driveway slowly. This was definitely as surreptitious a trip as he could manage.

  Where was he going? I had to know. Or at least try to find out. Maybe if I followed him, I'd get a clue as to why he had left Texas.

  I was still dressed, so I grabbed my purse and rushed down the stairs in my stocking feet, hoping that I wasn't waking Aunt Nettie. At the back door I stepped into my boots and pulled on my jacket and cap. By the time I got outside, Jeff's taillights had turned onto Lake Shore Drive, and his headlights popped on. I ran to my van, thudding along the cleared walk and then scrambling through the snow along the drive. I pulled the no-lights stunt until I was past the house. I was still trying not to wake up Aunt Nettie, but I half expected to see her standing at her bedroom window as I went by; Aunt Nettie doesn't miss much.

  Even without lights, it was easy to see where I was going. Our part of Michigan is heavily wooded, but there are only a few evergreens; nearly all the trees are bare in winter. The snow on the ground reflected what light there was, giving the night a luminous qual­ity. I drove about a quarter of a mile before I turned on my headlights.

  By then I was asking myself if I was wasting my time. Jeff had about a three-minute head start, and even one minute would give him enough time to get away from me completely. But a few factors were working in my favor. If Jeff had gone anyplace but Warner Pier, I might as well forget the chase and go home. But if he had gone into Warner Pier, it was just a small place; I could drive up and down every street in the town in fifteen minutes. Plus, his gold Lexus RX300 was really noticeable. There probably wasn't another car like it in Warner Pier in the winter. So if I spotted one, I'd know it was likely to be him even before I saw the Texas tag.

  Besides, if Jeff had sneaked out because he wanted to buy something, there was only one place in Warner Pier that was open all night, the Stop and Shop out on the state highway, at West Street and North Lake Shore Drive. I didn't consider that a strong possibility. Jeff had claimed he had less than five dollars in his pocket.

  So I crossed the Warner River on the Orchard Street bridge and drove up and down the streets of Warner Pier. I was all by myself; the town shuts down completely on a winter night. Streetlights made the snow glitter at every corner, and the Victorian houses looked like wedding cakes.

  The Dockster, a beer joint that rocks until dawn in the summer, was shuttered for the winter. The Warner Pier Inn had closed its dining room at nine. Dock Street Pizza, where the locals hang out, had closed at ten. The Holiday Haven, one of the two motels that stay
open all winter, was dark, though a dim light in the office hinted that an on-site manager would have appeared if I had banged on its doors. I saw no reason to do such a thing. There was no Lexus SUV in its parking lot.

  Even the Warner Pier Police Department, which oc­cupies a corner of City Hall, had only one light inside and a security light outside. The Warner Pier Volun­teer Fire Department was locked up tight as well. The police and fire station share a dispatcher with the county, and in case of emergency, I guess the dis­patcher knows who has the keys.

  The only human being I saw was the guy spraying water to form a new layer of ice on the tennis courts. Warner Pier's tennis courts are flooded and turned into a skating rink every winter, and some poor schnook has to maintain them after the skaters have packed it in.

  By the time I reached the intersection of West Street and North Lake Shore Drive—where the state highway enters Warner Pier—I had just about decided that Jeff had headed back to Texas on an empty gas tank. I glanced at Warner Pier's other open motel, the Lake Michigan Inn. It looked busier than the Holiday Haven had looked; one guest room had a light in the window and there were a few cars parked outside, though none of them had Texas tags.

  I drove around the corner and pulled into the Stop and Shop to turn around, and there, under the lights next to the building, was Jeffs gold Lexus.

  Luckily for my surveillance project, there was no sign of Jeff himself. I flipped a U-turn through the parking lot and wheeled my old van across the street. I pulled into the circular drive of Katie's Kraft Shoppe and parked close behind the shop's van. I cut my lights and watched the Stop and Shop.

  So Jeff had stopped for gas. Did he have more money than he'd told me he had? Or did he have a credit card he hadn't mentioned? Or had he bought gas? He wasn't parked at a pump.

  I didn't see Jeff. It crossed my mind that he might be robbing the joint. My heart jumped to my throat. His car was in plain sight, however, nosed in near the entrance door. If he'd planned to commit a crime, surely he wouldn't have been stupid enough to park that noticeable car in so obvious a spot. Maybe he had just dropped by the Stop and Shop to buy a bag of potato chips. I triea to calm down.

  The inside of the store was visible through big plate-glass windows, and I scanned the shelves and aisles. It wasn't a big place, just a half dozen aisles. There was no sign of Jeff. I turned the van's motor off. I would sit there until I got cold, I decided. If he didn't show by then, I'd go home to bed.

  But I had waited only about five minutes when Jeff appeared. He came into the store from the back room, waved at the cJerk, and waJJced out the front door.

  What the heck had he been doing in the back room of the Stop and Shop?

  Oh, God! Were they dealing drugs there? My heart leaped back into my throat, then dropped to my toes, and began to pound like crazy. But I had no reason to think Jeff was into the drug scene, I told myself. He hadn't acted high, and his eyes looked normal, even if his earlobes didn't. Maybe he wanted to use the Stop and Shop's restroom.

  Jeff started his car, backed out, and drove toward the Warner Pier business district. I waited until he was several blocks down the street, then cautiously followed him.

  He didn't seem to have any idea I was there,! and he seemed to know where he was going—if he was heading back to Aunt Nettie's. At least, he turned where I would have. If I were going home myself, I'd cut over to Dock Street by way of Fifth, a route that would take me past TenHuis Chocolade, near the cor­ner of Fifth and Peach. I was once again made aware that Jeff was more familiar with the layout of Warner Pier than he should have been.

  I hung back a couple of blocks as we drove. I was beginning to wonder what I was going to tell Jeff after we both parked in Aunt Nettie's driveway.

  So he caught me completely by surprise when he suddenly turned off his headlights, pulled over, and parked beside the curb, right in front of TenHuis Cho­colade. I stopped a block away, as far away from a streetlamp as I could, and turned off my headlights.

  But Jeff wasn't paying any attention to me. He re­mained motionless inside his SUV for about a minute; then he jumped out and ran across the sidewalk. I could see him silhouetted against the dim security light we leave on behind the counter.

  Now what?

  I decided I'd better intervene. I drove on down the street. By this time Jeff was running back and forth in front of the store, looking up and down the street.

  As I pulled in beside his car, he shaded his eyes from my headlights. His glasses glittered. He seemed to be peering at me, trying to see who I was.

  I opened the van's window and leaned out. "Jeff! What are you up to?"

  "Lee?" His voice was a harsh whisper. "Oh, God, you're here!"

  "Yes. And so are you. Why?"

  He waved frantically and whispered again. "Be quiet! Call the cops! Somebody's broken into the store!"

  I got out of the van. "That's silly. This is Warner Pier."

  "I don't care if it's the moon! The glass is broken out of the front door! And I saw somebody moving around. Now they're in the back room. They've got a flashlight!"

  The whole thing was ridiculous. Burglaries don't happen in Warner Pier, at least not in winter. I moved toward Jeff, into my headlights.

  "Warner Pier has practically no crime in the winter­time," I said. "The tourists take it home with them."

  I could see myself reflected in the shop window as I crossed the sidewalk. But when I moved in front of the entrance door, my reflection disappeared.

  For a moment I was reminded of a funhouse mir­ror—now you see it, now you don't. But when I stretched out my hand toward the door, my glove went right through the glass part of the door.

  "The glass is gone," I said stupidly.

  Jeff whispered) again. "That's what I've been trying to tell you! The glass in the door is smashed, and there was somebody moving around inside."

  Right then we heard a motor start, followed by squealing tires.

  "They're getting away!" Jeff ran toward the corner.

  I had an awful vision of Jeff tackling burglars, ruth­less and desperate burglars armed with guns and knives.

  "Jeff! Stop!" I ran after him.

  It was half a block to Fourth Street, and we pounded along until we got there. But when Jeff reached the streetlight at the corner he stopped abruptly. I careened into him, and we both slipped on a patch of ice. I grabbed Jeff, he grabbed me, we both grabbed the base of the streetlight. We wound up sitting on the sidewalk, but neither of us hit the ground very hard.

  Jeff was still facing up Fourth Street. "There they go! And I didn't get a good look at the car."

  I twisted around in time to see taillights disap­pearing around a corner. "He turned on Blueberry," I said. "Or I think he did. And his taillights look funny."

  "The left one is out," Jeff said, "but that's not going to be a lot of help. I think it was some kind of sports car. Maybe."

  We walked back to the store. "You don't have a cell phone, do you?" Jeff asked. He made it sound like a major personality flaw.

  "Sorry," I said. "But I have a key to the shop."

  "We shouldn't go in the front. We might destroy evidence."

  "Well, I'm not going around to the alley," I said. "It's too dark and snaky back there. Besides, the bur­glar must have gone out the back door, it's easy to open from inside."

  "How far is the police station?"

  "Just a couple of blocks, but there's nobody there. We have to call the county dispatcher."

  There was little glass on the sidewalk, of course, because the burglar had knocked the glass inside. We gingerly walked in.

  "If the burglars came in this way," Jeff said, "they're gonna have glass in the soles of their shoes."

  I turned on the lights and looked at the display shelves.

  "Thank God!" I said.

  "Yeah," Jeff said. "The molds are still there."

  Since the moment the word "burglar" had sprung into my mind, I'd been dreading finding the Hart col�
�lection of chocolate molds gone. They were the only thing in the shop that was valuable.

  I called the dispatcher, and in about ten minutes a patrol car pulled up. I was relieved to see a tall, lanky figure get out—Abraham Lincoln in a stocking cap.

  "It's Chief Jones," I said.

  The chief waved at me. "Just what have you been up to now, Lee?"

  "I'm a victim, Chief. Or at least TenHuis Chocolade is."

  The chief stepped in through the broken glass, and I introduced him to Jeff. "You two better go in the office and close the door," the chief said. "We'll hurry up out here."

  "Yeah. Chocolate gets funny-looking if it freezes. I'll call Handy Hans and see if he can do something about that door."

  "Have you called Nettie?"

  "No. I'll do that, too."

  Telling Aunt Nettie that someone had broken into her beloved shop wasn't easy, but she took it calmly.

  "Nobody's hurt?"

  "Not Jeff or me. I hope whoever broke in slashed their wrists on broken glass."

  "Any sign of that?"

  "Nope. Apparently they—he—parked around be­hind, but he must not have been able to open the back door from the outside. So he came around to the front, smashed the window in the door, and got in that way. But Jeff must have disturbed him right away, and the guy ran back to the break room, opened the door to the alley and got out the back."

  "I'll be right down."

  Aunt Nettie's big Buick showed up within fifteen minutes. By then a second patrol car had arrived and Patrolman Jerry Cherry was taking pictures. The chief had allowed Jeff and me to start cleaning up the glass, so Aunt Nettie was able to enter the shop in a more traditional manner.

  Soon afterward Handy Hans—his last name is VanRiin—arrived with a sheet of plywood, which he used as a stopgap measure against the cold, and Aunt Nettie joined Jeff and me in the office.

  She looked puzzled. "What I don't understand is why you two were down here in the middle of the night. And why did you come in separate cars?"