The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery (22 page)

So I laid down the law. “I’m sorry, Darrell, but you’ll have to go along with the program. It’s the best we can do. You’ll probably have to sleep on the floor, so don’t feel like you’re getting any favors.”

Pete still hadn’t appeared. Joe wrote him a note and left it taped to our back door.

“I’m getting worried about Pete,” I said. “Why hasn’t he shown up?”

Joe laughed. “Pete is the last person to worry about. He can take care of himself.”

We were allowed into the house long enough to pick up everybody’s toothbrushes, and I got a pair of my own sandals. We arrived at Mercy Woodyard’s house to find she’d lived up to her reputation for efficiency. She’d made up the double bed in
her guest room for Joe and me, pulled out the folding couch in the den for the girls, and arranged for Darrell and Pete to stay with Mike Herrera.

Mike plays the dual role of the mayor of Warner Pier and Mercy’s boyfriend. He has an apartment in a building he owns in downtown Warner Pier—the Sidewalk Café, which he owns, is on the first floor, Mike’s business office and his catering operations
are on the second, and his living quarters are on the third.

Mike had a guest room with twin beds, Mercy told us. She assured Darrell that, as a restaurant owner, Mike often took in employees who needed emergency housing. I’m not sure this was true, but it seemed to make Darrell feel better.

Joe drove Darrell over to Mike’s apartment. When he came back he said Mike seemed pleased to help out,
and Darrell seemed pleased that Mike also had central air-conditioning.

Joe tried to call Pete. His cell was out of service, but Joe left a message telling him he couldn’t stay at our house and to go to Mike’s.

He again told me there was no reason to worry about Pete. I decided he was right, or maybe I was simply too tired to worry about anything. We took showers and went to bed. I don’t know
that I slept terribly well, but I did sleep. I’d eaten breakfast the next morning before Mike called and said that Pete had never shown up to occupy the second twin bed.

Joe brushed off my concerns with a casual, “Oh, Pete can take care of himself.” In fact, he was so casual I began to suspect he knew where Pete was. It wouldn’t have been the first time Joe had kept some secret that Pete wanted
kept.

I called TenHuis Chocolade to assure Dolly we were all right and tell her I’d be coming to work that afternoon, but that I’d have to wait until the crime scene folks let us back into the house, since I needed clean clothes. Especially shoes. The sandals I’d put on wouldn’t do for work.

Then I helped Mercy clear the breakfast dishes. “I don’t want to make you late to work,” I said.

“It’s
hardly worth going in right now anyway.”

“Is business slow?”

“I have lots of policies that are sold by the year, of course, so it’s not as if I’m broke yet. But new business . . . it’s been almost nonexistent this summer. Thanks to the Warner Pier grapevine.”

“The burglary scare?”

Mercy nodded. “I guess it really infuriates me because it’s so silly. First, there have been maybe twenty burglaries,
and only half of them were my clients. Why am I getting the blame?”

“I know, Mercy. It’s stupid.”

“Besides, it’s not like I have a list of the contents of people’s houses. That’s not the way it works.”

“I think our policy just says ‘house and contents.’ Something like that.”

“That’s what almost everyone’s policy says! People don’t list their furniture piece by piece. If they list something
separately, it’s usually special jewelry. Maybe a sterling tea service. But who has things like that at Warner Pier?”

I handed Mercy a skillet and thought about that one. “There are lots of rich people around here. Don’t they own valuable things?”

“Sure they do. But they don’t usually bring them to their summer cottages. The antiques—now, that’s the problem. Because people do bring old furniture
to cottages. And if they leave it there long enough, it becomes antique. But even most of those items aren’t particularly valuable. People don’t usually list them for their insurance policies. I don’t have the slightest idea what ninety percent of my clients own.”

“What do you do if they make a claim?”

Mercy shrugged. “Take their word for it. It’s nice if they have photos or sales slips or some
other kind of record, but most people don’t. It works most of the time. But I couldn’t tip a gang of burglars off to the contents of my clients’ houses. I don’t
know
what they have in their houses.”

Mercy left for work, and Joe went out, saying he was going to check in at the police station—one of the benefits of being a city attorney—and he’d be back to pick me up between eleven o’clock and
noon. “Keep the doors locked,” he said as he went out. “Don’t open up unless you know who’s there.”

The girls were still sleeping, so I looked in the drawer where I knew Mercy kept playing cards, found a double deck, and dealt out a hand of Spider.

Of course, I couldn’t concentrate on the cards. All I could think about was that crazy chase the night before. In my own house. Those guys had not
been plain old burglars. They had been lying in wait for me. They had wanted to do me harm.

I was convinced that they had wanted to kill me. Me. Lee McKinney Woodyard.

Apparently that was what Joe thought, too. Why else would he have given me all the “keep the doors locked” instructions?

But why would the baddies want to get rid of me? Because I’d seen the two men in the boat? I hadn’t thought
anything about them. I’d been looking for Pete, not them. If they hadn’t shown up in my front yard, I would never haven given them another thought.

Did they think I might recognize them as the Double Diamond robbers? I hadn’t. Until they came to the door.

And why did they come to the door? Our house had sat there all day with its windows wide open. If the tall guy and the short guy wanted to
ambush me, why didn’t they wait inside? Were they afraid that some other person—Joe or Pete or someone else they saw as more threatening—might walk in on them instead? Even the girls—if they’d beaten me home . . .

Waves of shudders went over me. I went to the den door and peeked at the girls, just to make sure both of them were breathing. The thought of the girls walking in on those two guys
was going to give me the jimjams for a long time.

And what if I had parked in my regular parking place at the Baileys’ house? I’d have had to walk down the path between the two houses. They could have ambushed me there. I’d never have had a chance to escape—through the Michigan basement or by any other route.

I thought about that possibility for a while. Then I called Joe’s cell phone. He answered
on the first ring. “Everything okay?”

“Yes. Everything’s fine. I just got to thinking about those guys last night. They were waiting for me, Joe. They’d set an ambush.”

“It sounds that way.”

“But they could have broken into the house easily, and they hadn’t. They weren’t waiting inside. I wondered if they’d been waiting at the Baileys’ house.”

“Why would they do that?”

I went on without answering
his question directly. “I simply forgot to park over there, the way I’ve been doing. If they’d laid a trap for me at the Baileys’ . . . well, they would have gotten me.”

“Lee, don’t dwell on that sort of thing. Everything’s all right. You’re safe. Try not to think about it.”

“I’m not sitting here being morbid. I just wanted to make sure that the crime scene people are checking around the Baileys’.”

He didn’t answer, and I went on. “Because those guys came up on the porch just about three minutes after I turned on the lights in the house. That’s just about the length of time it would have taken them to come from the Baileys’ house to our house. And waiting for me over at the Baileys’—that would have given them a better chance to catch me, if I had parked where I usually do.”

“But how would
they know you usually parked there?”

“From watching us, Joe. They would have been spying on our house.”

I took a deep breath. “If the crime scene people found as much as a footprint over there—even a cigarette butt or a hair—it would prove those guys had been watching our house.”

Joe took two deep breaths before he answered. “You’re right,” he said. “It would prove
someone
had been watching
us. I’ll check with Underwood and the crime scene team.”

M
ercy’s house seemed cold and lonely after I hung up. I nearly turned the air-conditioning thermostat higher. Instead I pulled an afghan off the foot of Mercy’s bed and wrapped up in it.

It wasn’t that I’d forgotten
how to enjoy air-conditioning. No, the thought of someone spying on our house had chilled me right to the bone.

If someone had been spying on us, who was it?

And why? Why would anyone do such a thing? Was it because Joe and I had witnessed the holdup at the Garretts’ house? But Alex Gold had been a witness, and he seemed to be living a peaceful life. When I’d burst in on him the night before,
he apparently had been sitting around enjoying his living room window unit. Why were we more threatening to the bad guys than he was?

Who? And why? I hadn’t answered either of these questions when I heard someone stirring in the den. I peeked in the door and saw Tracy sitting on the edge of the bed. “Hi,” I said. “Come on in the kitchen, and I’ll trade breakfast for speculation.”

That didn’t
exactly speed Tracy up, but in about twenty minutes I had her sitting at the table with a Diet Coke. She’s not a coffee drinker.

Tracy’s eyes were still bleary, and she gave a broad yawn before she spoke. “What sort of speculation are you interested in?”

“Have you seen any strangers hanging around our house during the last . . . well, since you’ve been staying there?”

“Nope.”

“Has anybody
pumped you or Brenda about our little household?”

“Pumped me? You mean asked questions about who was staying there and why?”

“Yes. That sort of thing. Or maybe about who does the cooking or what do we do about laundry or just who all those cars belonged to and how we jammed all of them in the drive.”

“I don’t think so, Lee. Of course, Mr. Glick is always full of questions. But he’s not a stranger.”

“No, and he’s lived there six months. I think this would be somebody new. I mainly wondered if you’d seen anybody you didn’t know walking down our drive. Or on the Baileys’ drive.”

Tracy shook her head. “Sure haven’t. Too bad Gina isn’t here to ask.”

“Gina?”

“Yes. She was always peeking out the upstairs windows, watching, if anybody went by.”

“I hadn’t realized that.” I got up and raided Mercy’s
refrigerator for strawberry preserves, handing them to Tracy for her toast, but I was thinking about Gina.

Where had Gina gone? Why had she called the Holland motels trying to locate her ex-husband? And why had that ex-husband been using her dead brother’s name? Why had that man—if it had been him—come to our house and asked for Joe, not for Gina? Was the dead man really her ex-husband? Was
he one of the guys who had invaded Double Diamond and stolen the famous jewels?

Could the spy have been Gina? Was the spying connected to her disappearance? And where was Gina?

Was Gina dead?

My stomach got all fluttery. I’d worried about telling my stepmother that something had happened to Brenda. Now I began to worry about having to tell Grandma Ida that something had happened to Gina. Where
could she be?

Tracy was speaking again. “Your house is sort of secluded, Lee. People don’t wander by. As for strangers . . .” She snorted out a laugh. “It seems as if the people staying there are stranger than the people who walk by.”

I smiled at her joke. Then I thought about it seriously. If there was a spy—and that was still an if, I reminded myself—could it be one of our group?

My emotions
rejected the idea strenuously. I might get annoyed at being forced into the role of hostess for five people I didn’t know well—even Brenda and I were practically strangers—but I had formed at least a slight emotional link to each of them. The thought of one of them spying on the rest of us was horrible, even worse than the thought of a stranger doing it. But I couldn’t say it might not be possible.

Darrell? I felt sorry for Darrell. But pity didn’t equate to trust. Darrell was hiding his thoughts and feelings. I didn’t understand what was going on in his head.

And how about Pete? There was a mystery man if one had ever existed. He was definitely more than a bird-watcher. Could he have been telling the bad guys more than he shared with Joe?

Brenda and Tracy? They were simply too naive to
be deliberately revealing the details of how we lived. Of course, either might have let something slip to a person she trusted.