The Chocolate Falcon Fraud Read online

  Tess came over, and we exchanged big Texas hugs. I had to lean way over, since I was close to a foot taller than Tess, but I managed to handle my crutch. At least I didn’t fall over, and I gave a brief explanation of my injury, assuring her it was minor.

  For a few minutes, we went on gushing the way Texas girls do. Tess told me she had finished at SMU a month earlier, earning a degree in sociology. Like Jeff, she was to enter graduate school at the University of Texas in August.

  Then I got another hug. “Oh, Lee! I’m so glad to see you!” Tess stood back and looked all around the lobby. And she dropped a little bombshell.

  “Where’s Jeff?” she asked.

  My heart sank to my knees. “Oh no! Tess, I was sure you’d know where he is. I’m looking for him, and Alicia—I’m sure you know Alicia—is looking for him frantically.”

  Tess rolled her eyes. “Jeff might not answer her calls.”

  “He hasn’t been answering mine either.”

  “He usually picks up for me.”

  We sat down in the breakfast area, and she pulled out a cell phone in a cute zebra-striped case. She smiled complacently as she called up her contacts list, and she winked at me as she punched the phone.

  “I’ll find out where that bad boy is,” she said.

  Her smile slowly faded as she waited. And waited. I could hear the rings. Five of them. Then I heard Jeff’s voice. “Please leave a message after the beep.”

  “He’s not answering,” she said. “I’ll get him!”

  I looked at my watch. I needed to leave for Warner Pier within fifteen minutes. I had to try to find out what was going on in that time.

  “Tess,” I asked, “what are you and Jeff up to?”

  “Up to?” Tess’ eyes and voice were as innocent as the proverbial newborn babe.

  I steeled my resolve. “Yes, Tess. Why have the two of you come to Michigan? You’re not in some weird kind of trouble again?”

  “Oh no, Lee!” Tess giggled. “It’s nothing serious! Jeff doesn’t even know I’m here. Anyway, it’s just a game.”

  “What kind of a game?”

  “Well . . .”

  I made my voice stern. “I have to be back in Warner Pier in forty-five minutes. I don’t have time to beg. You’ve got to tell me. And Alicia Richardson better not have been bugging me all morning over a game.”

  “Oh, Lee. It’s going to seem silly to you, but it’s real important to Jeff. And to me. See, we’ve both been interns at the Texas Museum of Popular Culture, the Dallas branch. And they’re having a competition. Film collectibles. Noir nostalgia.”

  “Noir nostalgia? As in noir films?”

  “Right! I knew you’d understand.”

  “I understand what a noir film is. The Warner Pier Film Festival is saluting noir movies this summer. But what’s the museum competition about?”

  “Memorabilia. The person who brings in the most significant piece of noir memorabilia wins a prize. Five thousand dollars.”

  “Five thousand dollars! Where is a museum getting that kind of money?”

  “It’s a grant. From the Grossman Foundation.”

  “And what is the Grossman Foundation?” I asked the question, then realized I was getting off the subject. “Never mind that,” I said. “Did you and Jeff both come up here on the trail of some movie souvenir?”

  “Sort of. I admit I followed Jeff. But I also came because of the Warner Pier Film Festival. Lots of collectors and traders are going to be here. Jeff came because he heard about something that he thought might really take the prize.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something to do with The Maltese Falcon.” Her gaze wavered again.

  I decided to let her off the hook. “Never mind. It wouldn’t mean anything to me.” I checked the time again. “Tess, Joe and I are living in the old cottage where you stayed with Aunt Nettie and me. We’ve even put in a second bathroom! Upstairs! Why don’t you come and stay with us?”

  “I don’t want to impose. Is Jeff staying there?”

  “No, he’s registered here. At this motel. But, Tess, grad students are traditionally hard up. I’d hate for you to pay for a motel when you can have a room and private bath with us for free.”

  She laughed her birdlike laugh. “Okay, Lee. Thanks. I accept.”

  I quickly wrote out a note giving her directions to our house and to TenHuis Chocolade, since she had made only a brief visit there four years earlier. Then I used my crutch to pull myself to my feet. “Besides, there are some funny things going on, and I’ll feel better if you aren’t alone up here.”

  Tess’ eyes grew big. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure.” While we were walking toward the parking lot, I listed the odd things that had happened. Jeff’s appearance and disappearance. Alicia’s report of strange phone calls. Jeff’s checking in to the motel, then never coming back to occupy his room.

  “It’s not a law enforcement matter yet,” I said, “but it’s odd. I don’t want to misplace you, too.”

  “I certainly don’t want to get misplaced! But can I stop for lunch before I come out?”

  “Of course. We’re not going to start by starving you. I wish I had time to take you someplace nice. But I’ve got to get back to TenHuis Chocolade. If you’ll come by the shop, I’ll give you a key to the house.”

  Tess and I exchanged cell phone numbers, and I also gave her the numbers for the house and the shop. Then we waved and went our separate ways. I picked up my own lunch at a fast-food drive-through and ate a hamburger on the way out of Holland.

  What was I getting into? I’d started out to find Jeff, and I still didn’t know where he was. Instead I’d acquired a second stray Texan. I had only a vague idea of why the two of them had turned up in Michigan. Their arrivals apparently had something to do with the Tough Guys and Private Eyes Film Festival and the ultimate noir movie, The Maltese Falcon. But I didn’t understand what. Between bites of hamburger and slurps of Diet Coke, I began to make mental notes of questions I wanted answered.

  Then I told myself I had to postpone that. Instead I had to think about TenHuis Chocolade and our big expansion project. It wasn’t off to a very good start.

  TenHuis Chocolade had bought the building next door to us five months earlier. A shop specializing in clown paraphernalia and souvenirs had been there for several years. The owner had died—okay, he had been murdered, leaving the building in something of a mess, and his business affairs in an even greater mess. But his heirs had finally cleared everything up, and TenHuis Chocolade had bought the property, a two-story redbrick building from around 1900.

  It was typical of buildings in Warner Pier’s business district. Quaint but suffering from an awkward update about thirty years earlier. Like most downtown buildings in Warner Pier, it had an apartment upstairs. Joe and I had done a lightning renovation to get that ready to rent.

  I believe the word for the building was “ratty.” Not that it had rats, of course; we paid an exterminator to make sure it didn’t. But the downstairs of the building still looked as if it ought to.

  We’d hired an architect to combine our current building and the new one into one beautiful, practical, and unified structure. Of course, the resulting building had to meet the architectural standards of Warner Pier. In other words, it had to look quaint. Everything in our town was supposed to look as if it had been there for at least a century. That was decreed by a city ordinance.

  Our architect, Howard Moore, was from Holland and he had already worked on several Warner Pier buildings. So he should understand the city planning and zoning rules. I’d first met him through Joe, who had restored a 1947 Chris Craft for him several years earlier.

  I grabbed up a small box of chocolates, and Aunt Nettie and I met Howard outside our “new” old building. Before our discussion began we each had a caramel truff
le (“milk chocolate filling covered with milk or dark chocolate and embellished with a contrasting chocolate color swirl”). Business meetings always go better if they start with chocolate.

  Howard was in his midforties, with thin hair and a trim build. His most striking feature was a pair of expressive brown eyes. Joe said he suspected that Howard used those eyes to mesmerize clients into accepting his designs.

  I’d become a bit surprised at the way Aunt Nettie was handling this project. Usually she was a sweet little lady who never raised her voice, but I’d discovered that when she wanted something, by golly, she wanted it, and she wouldn’t back down. And after nearly forty years as a chocolatier, Aunt Nettie knew what she wanted in a chocolate workroom and shop.

  So that afternoon Howard, Aunt Nettie, and I spent an hour and a half measuring and discussing space requirements in the building next door. It seemed to me that we kept going over the same things. Aunt Nettie wasn’t going to give an inch, and Howard said her ambitions required far too many inches to fit into the available space.

  And we hadn’t even begun to talk about what I’d call the “decorative” aspects of the new shop. The old one looked as if it had been decorated in 1950. I wanted something that looked more like 2025. Aunt Nettie didn’t seem to care; she was far more interested in the workspace.

  I was sure Howard was as frustrated as I was. But Aunt Nettie sailed serenely on, determined to have a model chocolate kitchen.

  So I couldn’t say I worried about Jeff and Tess that afternoon. I was far too worried about our remodeling project to give them a thought. Besides, I still had confidence that Jeff would turn up perfectly all right, and I had talked Tess into taking shelter under my wing—or at least in one of our upstairs bedrooms.

  Of course, Alicia had called three times. Since I had nothing new to tell her, I turned my phone off until I was through wrangling with Howard. If Tess couldn’t get through on my cell, she had the shop number.

  As Aunt Nettie and I went back to TenHuis Chocolade I pictured Tess safe at our house. So I was astonished and upset when I learned Tess had not been by the shop to pick up the house key. I immediately checked my messages. She hadn’t called me. Next I called Tess’ cell phone, but it immediately went to voice mail.

  “Drat the girl!”

  Could she have changed her mind and gone back to the Holiday Inn Express? Another phone call eliminated that possibility.

  I toyed with checking in with the state troopers to make sure she hadn’t had an accident, but I decided that would be overreacting.

  I sighed and called Alicia, again telling her that I hadn’t heard from Jeff.

  “Rich and Dina are on this big Peruvian trip with a bunch of friends,” Alicia said. “I can’t reach them. And I’m really getting worried. Of course, they’re supposed to be home this weekend.”

  “Let’s not panic yet,” I said. I tried to make my voice confident. “Surely Jeff will get in touch with one of us tonight.”

  I hung up, and finally I admitted to myself that I was scared to death. Where could these kids be? I could only hope they were together.

  As soon as I got home, I told Joe the whole story.

  He just shook his head and assured me Tess and Jeff were all right.

  “Tess has found Jeff, and they’re playing some game,” he said. “Just like she said.”

  I couldn’t say he was wrong, and I hoped he was right.

  We had finished dinner, and Joe was promising that he’d check the attic for wildlife when our phone finally rang.

  I yanked it up. “Hello.”

  A weak, frightened little voice spoke my name. “Lee?”

  “Tess! Where are you?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to your house. Things have been really crazy. And now I’m lost.”

  Chapter 4

  “Where are you, Tess?”

  “I don’t know! There’s nothing out here but trees.”

  “What can you see? A gas station? A road sign?”

  “Lee, I’m out in the woods on some dirt road! I’ve been using my GPS, but I guess I got it all confused.”

  I pressed the speaker button of our phone so that Joe could hear Tess, too. He had grown up in Warner County and seemed to know every back road in southwest Michigan. “What does the GPS say?” I asked.

  “It says I’m on Big Pine Road. Does that make sense?”

  “There is a Big Pine Road,” Joe said. “But it’s nowhere near our house. Does the GPS say where you are on Big Pine Road?”

  “I can’t figure it out. I’m sitting here at a dead end.”

  Joe’s eyes got big. “Good night, Tess! You’re halfway across the county. How’d you get there?”

  “I tried to follow directions. I don’t know what I did wrong.”

  “Can you turn the car around and head back the way you came?”

  “I can if I’m careful not to get in the ditch.”

  “So be careful! I remember how narrow that road is. Move only a few feet at a time. Then head back, and stay on that road. Lee and I are on the way to meet you. Hang up now, and we’ll call you back as soon as we get cell phone service.”

  We climbed into Joe’s truck and headed east. Within five minutes I had bars on my cell phone and was able to call Tess. This was typical of the cell service near Lake Michigan. And I didn’t want one more person to tell me it was caused by the lake. In my opinion, the companies simply wouldn’t spend enough money putting up towers. I mean, why should our first floor have had no service, and our second floor a little bit, and the guy who cleaned our chimney be able to call Timbuktu? If we had a tower closer— Oh well.

  As we drove, Joe muttered, “I don’t see how she managed to get out there.”

  I covered my phone. “Isn’t that near the dump?”

  “It’s about five miles past the dump. Tess would have no reason to go out there.”

  Joe had spoken in a low voice, but apparently Tess heard him. Her voice came over the phone.

  “I did have a reason,” she said defensively. “I’ll tell you when we meet up. I’m turned around now.”

  “Just go straight back the way you came,” Joe said. “Toward the lake.”

  “No,” Tess said. “I’m driving toward the sun, Joe. I’m from Texas. There are a lot of trees out here, but I can still tell where the sun is going down.”

  At least Tess hadn’t lost her sense of humor. When we had met her previously, we had had a discussion about the different concepts of directions. In Texas people were much more likely to say they live “west of town” or “north of Buffalo Hill.” Warner Pier folks seemed to orient themselves by Lake Michigan. “Toward the lake” or “inland.”

  Luckily Tess hadn’t gotten herself lost after dark. She’d ended up in a part of the county that was so heavily wooded that she might never have found her way out in the dark.

  But she did find her way out. With Tess headed west—toward the setting sun or the lake—and Joe and me headed east—inland and with the sun behind us—it took us less than fifteen minutes to meet one another. When we finally met up, I switched from Joe’s truck to Tess’ car, a small red Ford. Joe did the trick of turning around on a narrow dirt road, and Tess and I followed Joe’s truck home. Tess didn’t volunteer any explanations on the way, and she sure seemed delighted to reach our house.

  “We saved a pork chop for you,” I said. “I’ll heat it up.”

  “I believe I’m too upset to eat,” she said.

  “I hope you’re not too upset to tell us how you wound up at the end of Big Pine Road,” Joe said.

  “It’s a long story,” Tess said. And she ducked her head, almost as if she was ashamed.

  What was going on? I decided we’d better go easy on Tess. “Joe will help get your stuff in the house. You can explain after you eat.”

  But even after Tes
s had settled into our guest room, and I’d reheated her dinner, she didn’t volunteer any information. Finally Joe turned his cross-examination skills loose on her.

  “Okay, Tess. How on earth did you wind up way out beyond the township dump?

  “I was trying to find Jeff.”

  “What made you think he was out there?”

  “I’m not very good with technology. I guess I messed up the GPS.”

  “What kind of coordinates did you put into it? Something like ‘end of the earth’?”

  I thought she might flare up, but Tess just looked shame-faced. “I must have misread the route Jeff took.”

  “The route Jeff took?” Joe’s voice was incredulous. “You thought you were following Jeff?”

  Tess nodded miserably.

  Joe sighed. “Tess, let’s go back a little further. Exactly why did you and Jeff come to Warner Pier? And why didn’t you come together? After all, you used to be friends.”

  Tess smiled. “We still are. But we’re also rivals.”

  She told Joe the story about the contest sponsored by the museum where she and Jeff had been interns.

  “Jeff was getting ahead of me,” she said. “He found a lead to some new piece of memorabilia to do with The Maltese Falcon.”

  “A lock of Humphrey Bogart’s hair?” I asked. “That movie is so well-known it’s hard to think there would be anything new connected with it.”

  “I don’t know what it was. All I know is that Jeff was terribly excited about it. He said that if it was real, it would definitely win the competition.”

  Joe frowned. “You have no idea what it was?”

  “No! I couldn’t get a word out of him. Not a hint.”

  “And he didn’t tell you who had it or where it was?”

  Tess slowly shook her head. “No. I begged and pleaded. I did Internet searches of my own. I thought I was going to have to give up.”

  Then she looked up and gave the grin that reminded me she was a cute girl. “Finally,” she said, “I stooped to subterfuge.”