The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery (5 page)

Gina loved the “innocent” romances. I thought they were all alike and all nauseating. “Each
to his own taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.” That was another of my grandmother’s sayings.

“Oh, thanks, hon.” Gina jumped to her feet. “I’ll get the books that are ready to go back.”

“I’ll just check the mail,” I said. “Then I’m leaving. Tracy and Brenda, you’re putting up the leftovers and doing dishes, right? And Joe’s responsible for dinner.”

The girls nodded, mouths
full. I went out the front door and down the sandy drive to the mailbox. I gathered up a handful of junk mail and was looking it over as I came back. When I reached the front walk, I realized that Pete was in the screened-in section of the porch, the section where his sleeping bag and his canvas carryall were stowed, kneeling beside his belongings.

I stepped onto the porch, still looking at
the mail in my hand. The Democratic National Committee? How did I get on that mailing list? I studied the envelope. Then I looked up.

I found myself staring into the screened-in porch, my eyes focused on whatever Pete was doing with his carryall.

It took me a second to realize he was tucking a pistol inside.

A
t that moment I was so astonished that I could easily have gasped and fallen into a swoon with the back of my hand to my head, like the heroine of one of Gina’s romantic novels. But apparently I didn’t. I think I
quickly dropped my eyes back to my mail and pretended I hadn’t noticed the pistol. I almost acted as if I’d accidentally caught Pete with his pants down and was trying not to embarrass either of us.

I went on into the house, put the mail on the mantelpiece where Joe would see it, took the stack of books from Gina, thanked Brenda and Tracy for cleaning up, and went back out the front door. Joe
and I had borrowed extra parking space from the Baileys—they were visiting a new grandchild in California—so my van was in their carport, and I had to walk down a little sandy road that led through a patch of woods to get to my transportation.

Pete was standing on the screened-in porch, holding his binoculars. He looked at me challengingly as I went past. I had decided that I didn’t expect Pete
to shoot the place up, and I didn’t feel that I could question Joe’s friend. So I went by him with nothing more to say than, “See you later.”

I might not want to talk to Pete, but I sure was piling up things to talk to Joe about—if I ever found him.

As I came out at the Baileys’ house, I heard the yip of a dog. Our newish neighbor, Harold Glick, and Alice, his blond mutt, were walking toward
me along the Baileys’ drive. Harold was leasing Inez Deacon’s house, about a quarter of a mile south on Lake Shore Drive. Inez, an old friend of Aunt Nettie’s and of mine, was now living in a retirement center, but she wasn’t quite ready to sell her house, so her daughter had found her a renter. Harold had moved there in February.

Harold seemed to be a pleasant enough guy. He wasn’t old enough
for retiree activities, though he didn’t work, and he didn’t have enough friends and family to keep him occupied. He seemed lonesome, and I tried to be neighborly to him, but he was the most boring man I’d ever met. I guessed his age at around fifty. He was a short scrawny guy with thin gray hair.

He spent a lot of time with Alice. When I got a minute to walk on the beach, it was likely that
I’d meet the two of them there, but this was the first time I’d seen him on our road. His presence raised my eyebrows. Our road isn’t really public.

The Baileys’ drive exits onto Eighty-eighth Street, a side road that turns east off of Lake Shore Drive. The lane we share with the Baileys—as I say, we’re in a semirural part of Warner Pier—is actually our drive plus the Baileys’ drive linked by
an extra bit of sandy roadway Uncle Phil and Charlie Bailey put in. It sometimes makes a convenient way to come and go, in case a truck is blocking one of the driveways, for example. But it’s private property, not a Warner Pier street.

Alice barked again, and Harold shushed her. Then he spoke. “Hi, Lee. Is it hot enough for you?”

“Much too hot for me, Harold.”

“But you’re a Texan. I guess
you’re used to heat.”

“Texas is air-conditioned! We don’t put up with this kind of heat without a fight. And we certainly don’t try to live with this kind of humidity without doing something about it.”

Before I could point out that Harold was on private property, he spoke again. “Did you hear the latest on our crime wave?”

“Another burglary?”

Harold nodded. He’d been hit by burglars the week
he moved in, and he took any crime along the lakeshore personally.

“You started quite a fad, Harold. Who’s been hit this time?”

“That big white house down by the little cemetery. Terrill? Is that the name?”

“Do you mean Tarleton? There’s a gazebo on the lawn? And a sign that says, ‘The Lake House’?”

“That’s the one. The family came up yesterday for the first time this season and discovered
a bunch of stuff missing.”

“More antiques?”

Harold shrugged. “I guess so. Were the Tarleton antiques well-known?”

“Not to me. We don’t own antiques. Just secondhand furniture.” I decided that this was a good moment to point out tactfully that he and Alice were on private property. “Were you coming to see us?”

“No, I’m just trying to get oriented. All these little roads are confusing.”

“This
drive goes only to our house and the Baileys’. It’s not a city street.”

Harold smiled an angelic smile. “I didn’t mean to trespass, but it’s an awfully pleasant walk. Do you mind if Alice and I come through here?”

“I wouldn’t do it at night. We might think you were a prowler.”

“I wouldn’t want Joe to run out with a pistol.”

I ignored that. “And watch out for cars. The drives are only one lane
wide, as you see, and we have a bunch of people going in and out this year.”

Harold nodded. “I walked by yesterday evening and saw that your drive was full. You must have company. Friends or relatives?”

“Some of each.” I looked at my watch. “Sorry, Harold, but I’m late to work.”

Harold smiled, Alice gave a friendly yip, and the two of them walked on toward our house. I got in my van and drove
off.

Harold was okay, but he was nosy as well as boring. I decided that his case of single guy syndrome was getting worse. Maybe Joe could get him to volunteer for some city committee. He might like to clean up the dog-walking area in the Dock Street Park. I snorted at the idea. Harold was none too conscientious about cleaning up after Alice.

And he’d heard of another burglary. There had been
a regular string of them along the lakeshore that spring and summer. I’d been too busy getting used to married life to worry about it, but at least a dozen summer cottages had been hit. Like the Tarletons, the owners often hadn’t discovered that they had been victims until the cottages were opened for the summer. The main loot had been antiques.

For more than a hundred years, Warner Pier has
been populated by three classes of people—locals, tourists, and summer people. Locals, of course, are like Joe and me; we live and work there all the time. Tourists come by car or bus and stay in motels or B and Bs for a weekend, a week, or two weeks. Summer people own cottages or condominiums and stay for a month, two months, or the whole summer.

Lots of the cottages in Warner Pier and along
the lakeshore are seventy-five to a hundred years old. Lots of the families have been coming to Warner Pier for seventy-five to a hundred years. Others have built cottages—I’d call some of them mansions—more recently. Some of those cottages have valuable furnishings; some don’t. None of us understood how the burglars had managed to hit the ones with valuable antiques every time.

I drove on to
the main part of Warner Pier, dashed by the library, tossed Gina’s romances into the return slot, and grabbed six more off the romance shelf. She likes the old ones, the ones with innocent heroines and no sex, not the newer ones with independent women and racy scenes.

I went in the back door of TenHuis Chocolade only five minutes late. Ahh, air-conditioning. And ahh, chocolate. I took three deep
breaths as I came in the back door. Just sniffing it made me feel better. The ultimate comfort food. And I needed comfort that summer.

But the comfort didn’t last long. As I walked into the big, clean kitchen where the fabulous TenHuis chocolates are made, I was confronted with a red-haired giantess looming near the ceiling.

“Oh, no!” Now I realized that the humidity was high, despite the cooler
air inside. “Is the air-conditioning out again?”

Dolly Jolly, Aunt Nettie’s second in command, was standing on a folding chair and holding her hand in front of the vent. She looked as if she were going to cry. “I’m afraid so,” she shouted. “And they swore they had it fixed yesterday.”

Dolly is a food professional who had come to work for TenHuis Chocolade a year and a half earlier and who had
taken to the chocolate business with the ease of a kid biting the ears off an Easter bunny. Dolly is even taller than I am and is broader, too. She has brilliant red hair and a face to match. With Aunt Nettie abroad, Dolly and I were in charge.

“Have you called Vandemann?” I said.

“No!” Dolly speaks out at a shout. “I’m afraid the young guy can’t handle it!”

“I’ll try to get hold of Mrs. Vandemann.
His mom runs the business side.” I held up my hand, offering Dolly support as she climbed down from her precarious perch.

“We’ll have to move stock around!” she yelled.

The skilled chocolate crew, the wonderful women I call the “hairnet ladies,” were already beginning to move boxes of chocolate and racks of bonbons into the front half of the big kitchen. Having our air-conditioning out wasn’t
just an inconvenience. It could shut us down completely.

TenHuis Chocolade is completely air conditioned, of course. It has to be. Heat and humidity are the enemies of fine chocolate. People say, “I’m melting,” when it gets hot and humid. That’s just a metaphor. But it’s a fact for chocolate. A bonbon—or any other kind of high-quality chocolate—will get soft at eighty degrees and will actually
lose its shape at ninety.

And high-quality chocolate is expensive. The finished product is expensive, and the ingredients used in it—chocolate, sugar, cream, butter, flavorings, and fondant—are expensive. Heat and humidity can ruin all of them except the flavorings. So a heat wave is a potential disaster for a chocolate company, and problems with the air-conditioning are a guaranteed disaster.

TenHuis Chocolade has three separate air-conditioning systems. One cools our retail shop and my office, and two cool the big workroom, the storage rooms, and the break room. If even one of them goes out, it’s a problem. But now, faced with a terrible heat wave, both the work-area AC systems had been acting up.

“Did you turn it off and on?” I said. Sometimes that helps.

Dolly nodded. “I tried!
No use!”

I shook my head and headed for the telephone. I had Vandemann’s air-conditioning on my speed dial, and I put in a panic call to Mrs. Vandemann. I pointed out that her son had worked on our AC only the day before, and hinted that if he couldn’t fix it, we’d appreciate his recommending someone who could.

We try to patronize local businesses, but there is a limit.

Mrs. Vandemann made
soothing noises and assured me her son would be there immediately. Or almost immediately. He was fighting a similar emergency at the Warner Pier twenty-four-hour clinic, she said.

I refused to be intimidated by sick people. They could live with fans; my chocolate couldn’t. I hung up, then reported Mrs. Vandemann’s assurances to Dolly, who was standing in my door.

“But I’m going to call Barbara
down at the bank,” I said. “First, if worse comes to worst, and we have to replace that unit, we’ll need credit. Second, she may recommend some other air-conditioning company.”

Dolly frowned. “I hate for you to have to bother with this, Lee, when you have so many other problems.”

“You mean the houseguests? Don’t worry. I make them wait on themselves.”

“No, I meant Joe’s mom.” Dolly lowered
her voice to that low rumble that she thinks is a whisper. “Is she all right?”

“As far as I know. Why?”

Dolly frowned. “Well, she came by, and she looked . . . worried.”

“Did she say something was wrong?”

“Not exactly. But she said she wasn’t going to replace her assistant.”

“Oh? That is odd. I’ll ask her about it.”

Joe’s mom, Mercy Woodyard, owns Warner Pier’s only independent insurance
agency. She’s probably the most successful businesswoman in Warner Pier—a situation I approve of. Not only do Joe and I not have to worry about her finances, but she keeps so busy at the agency that she rarely bothers us. Mercy could be a formidable force if she decided to mix into our lives. She’s so efficient and energetic that she automatically assumes command of most situations.