The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery (9 page)

Garnet interceded then, like a good hostess, asking me about our wedding and making other attempts at small talk. Her uncle sat with us, ignoring the boat discussion between Joe and Dick Garrett. In a few minutes, however, Garnet called Joe and Dick over and the conversation became general. Alex
didn’t grab my hand again, and his open admiration of my diamond—I also thought it was lovely—had made him seem less creepy.

After an hour of chitchat, Dick braved the heat to go outside and charcoal steaks. Garnet brought baked potatoes and salad from the kitchen, and we moved to the dining table. The sun had gone down by the time we finished off with locally grown strawberries topped with sugar
and cream, and Garnet passed the TenHuis chocolates as she served coffee. I had a Dutch Caramel Bonbon (“creamy, European-style soft caramel wrapped in dark chocolate”). By the time we’d all accepted a final cup of coffee it was dark. The evening had turned out to be very pleasant.

Like many of the summer cottages along Lake Michigan, Double Diamond had no shades or curtains on its windows. The
dining room’s wall was made up entirely of windows—double-hung windows, with wainscoting below. A set of French doors was at one end. Beyond the windows was a section of the cottage’s broad porch and, beyond that, trees and the lake. After dark, the porch, trees, and lake disappeared, as if the lights on a stage had been turned off, and the wall of windows became a wall of mirrors. I happened to
be seated facing the windows.

So I was the one who saw the face.

At first the face was just a blob, sort of like a balloon tied to a chair outside the window. It moved, and I thought I was seeing a reflection of one of the people inside the house.

I counted heads. There was Dick Garrett at the end of the table. I wasn’t seeing his reflection. He’d be in profile, not facing the window. Besides,
Dick was telling some story and was gesturing wildly, and I could see him in the window clearly. No, it wasn’t Dick.

It wasn’t Joe. Joe was facing me, so his back was to the windows. It wasn’t Garnet. The face outside was topped by what appeared to be dark hair, not strawberry blond.

That meant it had to be Alex. But no, Alex had white hair. He was sipping his coffee and giving his full attention
to his niece’s husband. I located his reflection in the wall of windows. It wasn’t the one I could see.

The face belonged to a stranger.

I turned to Garnet and spoke in a low voice, trying not to interrupt Dick’s yarn. “Excuse me, but there seems to be someone on the porch.”

Garnet turned her head toward the windows.

Joe didn’t bother to be polite. He spoke up loudly. “What’s wrong?”

Garnet’s
eyebrows raised. “Lee says there’s someone on the porch.”

Joe was halfway out of his chair when the door to the deck swung open, and the man came into the room. At that moment I couldn’t have told you what he looked like.

All I could see was the shiny silver pistol in his hand.

“
E
verybody stay still,” the man said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

I think we were all too astonished to give him any, especially after a second man with a second pistol came through the front door and ran
across the living room to join our little tableau. With frightening calm, the two ordered us to keep our seats. When Joe remained hunched over, half standing and apparently undecided about whether or not he was going to drop his fanny onto his chair, the first man pointed his pistol at me. I’m happy to report that Joe quickly sat down.

Neither he nor Dick Garrett looked happy, but they didn’t
start a fight.

“Nobody’s going to get hurt,” the first man said. “We’ll have to make sure you don’t follow us, but you’ll get loose without much trouble.”

The second man produced a roll of duct tape. As I mentally reviewed the numerous cases in which people were bound and gagged, then murdered, he looped it around each of us, securing us to our chair backs, but he didn’t wrap our feet—or even
our hands. Just our upper arms. And he didn’t gag us.

By then my brain was beginning to function, and I tried to notice what the two guys looked like. One was tall and slim and the other short and not so slim. The difference in their heights was striking. And that was all I could tell.

Their mothers couldn’t have recognized them, except that they seemed to be sports fanatics. They wore wet suits
over their bodies and ski masks over their heads. Both wore latex gloves. Their getups were effective—I couldn’t tell a thing about either of them.

I even looked at their feet. They wore rubber clogs of a type available in every drugstore, discount store, and department store in the United States. I couldn’t even see whether either of them had a bunion or an ingrown toenail.

Dick Garrett muttered
his opinion of their family heritage as the duct tape went around his shoulders, but Garnet spoke to him sharply. “Keep quiet!” she said. “Please!”

Dick obeyed, and both armed men seemed to ignore his comments.

The only one of us who acted brave—or maybe nonchalant—was Alex Gold. “I always expected to be held up at the store,” he said. “Not here, where there’s nothing to steal.” He folded his
hands as if praying, holding them over his plate as the tape went around his shoulders.

After all five of us were well taped, the two invaders simply stood there. I found myself wondering if they didn’t know what to do next. Shouldn’t they be demanding that we empty our pockets and take off our jewelry? I wiggled my hand, twisting my wedding ring around to hide its stone.

But still the two men
did nothing but stand there watching us. Finally the tall one spoke. “Go yell at him,” he said.

The shorter, rounder masked man left the dining room, and seconds later I heard him yell, “Hurry!”

And a strange voice echoed into the room, apparently from upstairs. “What’s happened?”

“Blondie spotted us. Everything’s under control. But hurry! Don’t worry about being quiet!”

The
short guy came back into the dining room. He and the taller man stood at either end of the dining table, staring at us—their captives—but again neither said a word. They were obviously waiting for the guy upstairs.

Then I heard light steps on the stairs. The guy up there was obviously not wearing heavy rubber clogs.

“Got it!” The third man came into the dining room. He was tall and thin, and
he wore the same wet suit–ski mask outfit the others had on, but he had different shoes. They looked like black oxfords, but they weren’t. This guy did have a bunion, and I could see where it warped the shape of his right shoe. I wouldn’t have been able to see that if he’d been wearing leather oxfords.

This third man stopped and surveyed the room, and I saw that he was carrying a blue denim bag.
“Let’s go,” he said.

That was when Uncle Alex lost it. “No! No!” he screamed like a teakettle. He jumped in his chair. His face was contorted. With fury? With fear? What?

We all stared at him. He gave a final shriek, twitched madly, and went over backward. His feet caught the edge of the table, and it leaped in the air, rattling the dishes. Garnet yelled, “Uncle Alex! Uncle Alex!” and Dick began
to swear again.

The back legs of Alex’s chair slid on the rug, and he fell, landing flat on his back on the hardwood floor, chair and all. He lay there gasping.

I don’t know what I did or said, but when I looked at Joe, he was standing up—as well as he could stand up with a chair taped to his back. To my amazement, I saw a knife in his hand.

“Turn around!” He yelled the words at Dick.

Dick
obeyed him, scooting his chair sideways. I saw that Joe had a steak knife like the ones we’d used at dinner. It must have been left on the table when Garnet cleared the dishes. Joe had apparently palmed it while he was hovering over his chair earlier. Joe slit the tape along Dick’s back, parallel to the back of his chair.

And I realized that the three men in wet suits were gone. They must have
run out while Alex was having his fit. The door to the deck was standing open, and I could hear the rubber clogs thumping. The sound was getting fainter.

Garnet wasn’t yelling now, but she kept talking. “Uncle Alex? Uncle Alex, are you all right?”

Dick came out of his chair then, twisting to get the tape off, and he took the knife and sawed at the duct tape that held Joe. He then freed Garnet
and after her, me.

By the time Dick got to me, Joe had stripped off the tape and was running toward the front door, on the opposite side of the house from where the men had run out.

“Joe! Joe! Stop!” He didn’t seem to hear me, but he did pause long enough to turn the porch light off before he opened the door. Then he disappeared into the dark.

I peeled the duct tape off my shirt and jumped
out of my chair. Garnet and Dick were kneeling beside Alex, freeing him from his duct tape. He was breathing regularly. They didn’t need me.

So I ran out the front door after Joe.

Out on the porch, of course, I had to stop immediately. Coming from light to dark, even the dim light of the living and dining rooms, I couldn’t see a thing. I plastered my back to the wall beside the door and listened.
I could hear someone moving to my right. He stumbled as he went off the porch. I assumed it was Joe.

The front door of the house faced south, and as I’d seen when we walked over, the trees on that side had been cleared out a bit. But it was pitch-dark as I edged my way along the porch. I thought of going back inside, but I was too worried about Joe.

I’d figured out that he’d run out the front,
instead of following the robbers through the door that faced the lake, because he didn’t want to be silhouetted against the dining room windows. But the three crooks might be lying in ambush for any pursuers....

I kept edging along the porch, keeping my back to the wall, working toward the side of the house that faced the lake. As I got near the corner, the kitchen and dining room windows were
lighting up the back of the house, and I began to be able to see more. I stopped at the steps that led to the flagstone path, the one we had followed out to the deck overlooking the lake. I stood there, trying to look beyond the pool of light from the living and dining rooms and to see what was happening out there in the darkness.

And I heard a motorboat.

It roared suddenly. It was obviously
right offshore, out in Lake Michigan, near the Double Diamond beach.

“They’re escaping by boat.” It still seemed that I ought to be quiet, so I whispered the words.

I began to go down the flagstone walk as quickly as possible. I didn’t run. There was no moon, and once I was away from the house the area was still as dark as the darkest chocolate in Aunt Nettie’s shop. But I managed to make my
way to the deck that overlooked the lake.

A man was standing on that deck, and I recognized the shape of him. It was Joe.

“Did they get away?” I said.

“I guess so. I didn’t follow closely enough to see all the details. I wasn’t eager to get shot.”

I threw my arms around him. “You scared me to death, running out like that!”

Joe patted me on the back. “I’m not dumb enough to get killed over
somebody else’s jewelry.”

“Jewelry? Is that what they took?”

“It’s gotta be. Alex is a jeweler, and he was calm as a millpond until he saw that denim bag. Then he got hysterical.”

The sound of the boat was fading. I heard footsteps behind us, and the beam of a flashlight came bouncing down the walk toward us.

“Joe! Lee!” Dick was coming.

Joe answered him. “We’re here, Dick! They got away.”

Dick came up to us, panting. He barely paused, then started down the steps toward the beach. But Joe caught his arm.

“Dick, I think they went off in that boat. We’d better stay away from the beach until the cops get here. By some fluke they might have left a clue. A footprint or a beach shoe. Something.”

Dick stopped and growled.

I spoke quickly. “How’s Alex?”

“The old bastard’s fine. If he
would have used a courier service like he should have . . .” Dick turned to Joe. “They’ve ripped out the phone line, and my cell phone won’t work out here on the lakeshore.”

Cell phone service is quirky along the lake. Some companies have good service, and some don’t.

“I’ll run to our house and call the cops,” Joe said. “You stay here.”

I remembered that I ought to be a helpful guest, so I
went back into the house with Dick. Alex was free, and his chair had been placed upright. He was sitting in it, holding his head in his hands. And moaning.

“Oh, oh, oh. Oh, Garnet, I’ve wrecked your inheritance. Oh, oh, oh.”

“Oh, Uncle Alex, do be quiet,” Garnet said sharply. “You didn’t do it on purpose. You’re not hurt seriously, and none of the rest of us is hurt at all. That’s what’s important.”