The Chocolate Bridal Bash Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Also by JoAnna Carl

  Praise for the Chocoholic Mysteries

  The Chocolate Mouse Trap

  “A fine tale.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “I’ve been a huge fan of the Chocoholic Mystery series from the start. I adore the mix of romance, mystery, and trivia.... Satisfying.”

  —Roundtable Reviews

  “Engaging and interesting writing style. Lee is . . . appealing.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKclub

  The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle

  “The pacing is perfect for the small town setting, and the various secondary characters add variety and interest. Readers may find themselves craving chocolate, yearning to make their own.... An interesting mystery, fun characters, and, of course, chocolate make this a fun read for fans of mysteries and chocolates alike.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up

  “A Joanna Carl mystery will be a winner. The trivia and vivid descriptions of the luscious confections are enough to make you hunger for more!”

  —Roundtable Reviews

  “A fast-paced, light read, full of chocolate facts and delectable treats. Lee is an endearing heroine.... Readers will enjoy the time they spend with Lee and Joe in Warner Pier, and will look forward to returning for more murder dipped in chocolate.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “The descriptions of the chocolates are enough to make your mouth water, so be prepared.... Once again, I enjoyed each page of the book and am already looking forward to my next visit to Warner Pier, Michigan.”

  —Review Index

  The Chocolate Bear Burglary

  “Do not read The Chocolate Bear Burglary on an empty stomach, because the luscious . . . descriptions of exotic chocolate will have you running out to buy gourmet sweets.... A delectable treat.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “[Carl] teases with descriptions of mouthwatering bonbons and truffles while she drops clues.... [Lee is] vulnerable and real, endearingly defective.... Fast-paced and sprinkled with humor. Strongly recommended.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  “Kept me entertained to the very last word! . . . A great new sleuth . . . interesting facts about chocolate . . . a delicious new series.”

  —Romantic Times

  The Chocolate Cat Caper

  “A mouthwatering debut and a delicious new series! Feisty young heroine Lee McKinney is a delight in this chocolate treat. A real page-turner, and I got chocolate on every one! I can’t wait for the next.”

  —Tamar Myers

  “As delectable as a rich chocolate truffle, and the mystery filling satisfies to the last prized morsel. Lee McKinney sells chocolates and solves crimes with panache and good humor. More, please. And I’ll take one of those dark chocolate oval bonbons. . . .”

  —Carolyn Hart

  “One will gain weight just from reading [this].... Delicious . . . the beginning of what looks like a terrific new cozy series.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “Enjoyable . . . entertaining . . . a fast-paced whodunit with lots of suspects and plenty of surprises . . . satisfies a passion for anything chocolate. In the fine tradition of Diane Mott Davidson.”

  —The Commercial Record (MI)

  Also by JoAnna Carl

  The Chocolate Cat Caper

  The Chocolate Bear Burglary

  The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up

  The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle

  The Chocolate Mouse Trap

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, August 2006

  Copyright © Eve K. Sandstrom, 2006

  ISBN : 978-1-101-56375-5

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Mary Jo Dilks.

  Best friends forever.

  Acknowledgments

  With thanks to my Michigan friends, always ready to help with background and fact-checking; to Colleen McGee and Ed McGee, who remember the 1970s, even if they were there; and to Dr. Doug Lyle, expert on violent death.

  Chapter 1

  After I overcame all my misgivings and invited my mother to my wedding, it was a little disappointing to learn that she didn’t want to come.

  I admit it was the place, rather than the occasion, that drew her objections.

  “Warner Pier?” Her voice was so angry it could have melted every line between her phone, in Texas, and mine in Michigan. “You’re getting married in Warner Pier? Why?”


  “It’s where Joe and I live,” I said. “It’s where we plan to continue loving—I mean, living!”

  I’d pulled one of my usual stunts, tangling my tongue. I misspeak so often—they’re called “malapropisms”—that most of my family and friends simply ignore my slips. Hoping my mother would do that, I went on quickly. “Warner Pier is where important parts of our families live. It’s where all our friends live. Why wouldn’t we want to get married here?”

  My mom ignored my question. “Why not get married here in Dallas? We could plan a lovely wedding in Dallas.”

  “Dallas? But Dallas was never—I mean, I don’t have good associations with Dallas. I know I lived there twelve years, but if people ask me where I’m from, I always say Prairie Creek.”

  “Podunk Creek! You and your dad, the hick! I’ll never understand this compulsion you two have to live at the back of nowhere!”

  I sighed. “If that’s the way you feel, you’d better know the worst. Daddy has already said he’s coming. And Annie is coming with him.”

  “I knew she wouldn’t miss it!”

  I ignored that. “And I’ve already told them I expect nice beheading—I mean, behavior! I expect nice behavior from all three of you.”

  “I would never ruin your wedding by quarreling with your father and that woman he married.”

  I sighed. “Just don’t run out on me, Mom.”

  I’m not sure what I meant by that comment, and maybe my mom didn’t know what it meant either. There was a long silence before she spoke again. eHer voice was calmer than it had been.

  “Lee, I wouldn’t run out on your wedding. Believe me, I wouldn’t. I want your wedding to be perfect for you. It’s just that—you know how I feel about Warner Pier.”

  “I know how, Mom. But I’ll never understand why. Why do you dislike this town so much?”

  “You’ve bought into the tourist view.” Her voice became sarcastic. “It’s a darling little Victorian resort town. A regular trip down memory lane to the good old days.”

  “You’re forgetting the crime rate around here. I’m aware that the people of Warner Pier are like people anywhere. There’s a dark side to everyone’s personality. People are always—you know—doing things they shouldn’t have done and leaving undone things they should have done. Seems to me that happens in Dallas, too.”

  “It sure happened in Warner Pier when I lived there. And in Prairie Creek, too.”

  Another silence grew up between us. Then my mother spoke. “Is Nettie there?”

  I was calling from my office, so I put the phone down and went back into the workroom of TenHuis Chocolade (“Handmade Chocolates in the Dutch Tradition”). Most of the ladies who actually make the chocolate had left for the day, but Aunt Nettie, chocolatier deluxe and my boss, was sprinkling light brown granules of Turbinado sugar over a tray of strawberry truffles (“white chocolate and strawberry interior coated in dark chocolate”).

  “Aunt Nettie, your long-lost sister-in-law wants to talk to you.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Aunt Nettie had reason to be surprised. My mom and I usually communicated by e-mail. If Aunt Nettie got involved, it was with a casual, “Say hi to Sally.”

  Aunt Nettie washed her hands, turning off the water with her elbow in health department–approved style. She headed toward the phone in the break room.

  She and my mom were talking by the time I got back to the office phone, and I listened in. My mom hadn’t messed around with a lot of preliminary politeness; she was asking a direct question. It was one that surprised me.

  “Who’s sheriff of Warner County now?” she said.

  “Sheriff?” Aunt Nettie sounded puzzled. “Let me think. It’s some man named Smith. I don’t remember his first name.”

  “Then Carl Van Hoosier is out?”

  “Van Hoosier? He left office years ago.”

  “I suppose that there’s no hope that he’s dead.”

  Aunt Nettie laughed. “I don’t have the slightest idea. If he’s alive, he’d be a hundred years old. I could find out.”

  “No! No, it’s okay. I just want to make sure he’s not still throwing his weight around. Lee? Are you on the line?”

  “Sure am. Do you want me to hang up?”

  “Oh, no. What’s the date for the wedding?”

  I told her, adding, “It’s on a Saturday.”

  “Three weeks after Easter,” Aunt Nettie said. “I told Lee people in the chocolate business can’t take honeymoons until the last bunny’s been sold.”

  I could almost hear my mom forcing her voice to sound cheerful. “I’ll clear my schedule and plan to be there. And I’ll be polite. Maybe I can come a few days early and help fill the rice bags or something.”

  “That would be wonderful, Mom.”

  She sighed again, and when she spoke her voice sounded faintly worried. “It’ll be okay. I’m sure it will.”

  I promised to keep my mother informed on the wedding plans, and we all hung up. Then I met Aunt Nettie in the break room. I was curious. “What’s the deal with this former sheriff? What did he have to do with Mom?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, Lee.”

  “She didn’t leave town one step ahead of the law?”

  Aunt Nettie laughed. “As far as I know the sheriff wasn’t after her, though the minister might have been.”

  “The minister? Why would the minister have been concerned? I never heard of Mom darkening the door of a church.”

  “That was the problem, I guess. She didn’t darken the door when she should have.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Aunt Nettie’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know about how your mother came to leave Warner Pier?”

  “She took the bus, I guess. She always told me she wanted to see the world and could barely wait to get out of town.”

  “She never told you any details?”

  “What details?”

  “Lee, your mother ran away from Warner Pier on what was supposed to be her wedding day!”

  Chapter 2

  Aunt Nettie might as well have tossed a barrel of Lake Michigan’s wintry water on me. I had never been so astonished in my life. I stood there gaping.

  My mother had been engaged when she left Warner Pier? She had left on what would have been her wedding day?

  How could she do that?

  And how could she never have told her only daughter about it?

  It was a family secret I’d never had a hint existed. I hung on to a stainless steel worktable, staring at Aunt Nettie. “Tell me all!” I said.

  Unfortunately, before she could comply, there was a knock at the door. Aunt Nettie’s dinner date, Warner Pier Police Chief Hogan Jones, had arrived. Aunt Nettie went to let him in, and our chance to talk was gone. But before they left, Aunt Nettie took me aside. “Hogan and I won’t be late. I’ll tell you everything I know—and that’s not a lot—when I get home.”

  “Wait! There’s one thing I’ve got to know now. Who was Mom engaged to?”

  A shadow fell across Aunt Nettie’s face. “It’s a long story.”

  I took a deep breath and voiced my greatest fear. “Was it anyone I know?”

  “Oh, no!” The shadow on Aunt Nettie’s face grew deeper. “No, you never knew him.”

  She once again assured me that she’d tell me what she knew when she got home. Then she and Hogan went out, leaving me in a state of shock. My mom had been engaged? She’d run off on her wedding day?

  A picture of Mom climbing onto a bus wearing a wedding gown popped into my mind.

  But that was silly. I did know a few things about my mom’s youth, and one of them was that her father had died during her senior year in high school. His death had left the family in bad financial shape, she’d told me. But Mom had been in airline school in Dallas by the next fall. So the runaway bride episode must have happened during the summer after her senior year. If she’d been planning a wedding that soon after her father’s death and when th
e family was feeling hard up, it would have been something small—probably no elaborate wedding dress would have been involved.

  But in a town the size of Warner Pier—permanent population 2,500—even a small wedding is a major social event, or at least that was what Joe and I were finding out. Everybody from the druggist to the postmaster expected an invitation. The last-minute cancellation of a wedding would have had the town on its ear.

  No wonder so many people aged fifty and older had asked me if my mother was coming to my wedding.

  And no wonder Mom had never wanted to come back to Warner Pier in the thirty-three years since she had left. She would forever be remembered as the bride who didn’t show up at her own wedding.

  But who had the bridegroom been?

  When my own dinner date, my fiancé Joe Woodyard, came to pick me up, I asked him what he knew about the whole thing.

  Joe’s a Warner Pier native and his mother is a Warner Pier native. In addition to having a bushel of brains, plus dark hair, bright blue eyes, and regular features that add up to yummy good looks, Joe is a natural athlete. In high school he made his mark by becoming a state wrestling champ and captain of Michigan’s best high school debate team in the same year. He went on to earn a law degree and fought for the underdog as a public defender. Then a bad marriage forced him to reassess his life goals and drop the practice of law for a career as what he calls an “honest craftsman,” operating a shop that specializes in the restoration of antique wooden boats. But he’s edged back into law; he’s also part-time city attorney for Warner Pier.

  Joe moves in so many circles—city government, boat owners, old high school pals—that he usually knows everything about everybody around Warner Pier. I was sure he’d know something about my mother’s runaway-bride past.