The Chocolate Snowman Murders Read online

  Mozelle had done interviews with all the Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo television stations, and she’d even been quoted in the Chicago Tribune and the Detroit Free Press. She had pretended to resent the inconvenience, but it had obviously fed her ego. And now she was quitting?

  Joe looked as amazed as I felt, and Ramona gave a little gasp. “Oh, Mozelle!” she said. “You’ve done such a good job. And you’re nearly through. Don’t stop now.”

  “I’m afraid I must,” Mozelle said.

  Ramona looked distressed. “Have we offended you in some way?”

  “No! No! Not at all. The WinterFest is a wonderful project. I’m not withdrawing my support from it.”

  “But you are, Mozelle. Unless you’re in the hospital— and I mean for something serious—it’s going to look awfully funny if you stop working on the project now. Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m sorry, Ramona. I truly am. But it’s a personal matter. I’m going to have to go on a trip, a business trip.”

  “A business trip?”

  I felt as incredulous as Ramona sounded. Mozelle didn’t work. When a group of Warner Pier women formed an investment club, she had declined to join on the grounds that all her capital was in bonds, which she left in the hands of a Holland investment firm. What business did she have that would take her out of town?

  “It’s family business,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ll have to be gone this weekend.” Nodding regally, she went out the door with the aplomb of Queen Elizabeth II entering Westminster Abbey.

  Ramona shook her head as she headed for the door. “Just when you think you’ve heard everything, you find out you haven’t. I’ll see you two later.”

  Joe and I were close behind her. “Before I go home, I’d better go by the office to check my e-mail,” I said.

  “I can handle dinner.”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  I knew Joe’s menu would be frozen lasagna, but that was okay with me as long as I didn’t have to cook it.

  Joe and I didn’t have much to say before he dropped me at TenHuis Chocolade, where my minivan was parked. We had both said too much over breakfast that morning. I was hoping that his offer to cook dinner was a sign that he felt bad about the remarks that had flown around over the oatmeal. I knew I felt bad about my share of them.

  Mozelle’s sudden resignation from the WinterFest committee—a committee no one had wanted her to serve on in the first place—mystified me only slightly as I drove home forty-five minutes later. I was more concerned with Joe and our relationship. We’d each had one bad marriage. We both wanted a good one this time around.

  Our current problem was financial. Oh, we had enough money to get by on. We just weren’t agreed on how to spend it. And our first Christmas together was coming, and with it the challenge of buying presents.

  I’ve never denied that I’m warped about money. My parents were always in debt, and as a child I lay in bed night after night and listened to arguments echoing down the hall. And nearly all those arguments were over how to pay the bills. When my parents divorced the year I was sixteen, I blamed financial problems for their split. Recently I’d discovered there was a lot more to the story, but it was too late. I’ll always be warped about money.

  I can’t stand to owe anybody a cent. I can’t bear it, endure it, tolerate it, or put up with it. I’m not quite sane on the matter.

  Joe’s attitude about debt is more matter-of-fact, maybe more normal. He sees debt as something to manage, not completely avoid.

  When my aunt, Nettie TenHuis, married Warner Pier’s police chief, Hogan Jones, the previous June, she gave Joe and me the TenHuis family home, a hundred-year-old frame house on the inland side of Lake Shore Drive. The prospect of owning a house with no mortgage attached thrilled me.

  Joe, however, immediately decided we should build on a second bathroom and expand the kitchen to hold a dishwasher. I’d gone along with it—he was the guy with the power tools—but I’d specified that we were to get a bank loan, not use credit cards. So before the first Visa payment came due, I had arranged the home-improvement loan, and we were able to pay for our home expansion on what I considered a businesslike schedule.

  Now, six months later, I had discovered that Joe had put tile, lumber, and other items on the Visa card he used for business expenses. That card was loaded, and it was not all stuff for Joe’s boat shop.

  Never open your mail before breakfast. I’d opened his Visa bill—I’d mistaken it for the household bill—at seven thirty. When I began to howl about it, the whole discussion morphed into an argument about why Joe had hidden that bill from me and how much to spend on Christmas and a lot of other points, all of them sore.

  The whole thing had gotten my day off to a really bad start. I hoped the day’s ending would be better.

  I smelled smoke as I got out of the van in our drive, and through the living room window I could see Joe kneeling in front of the fireplace. I smiled. We didn’t usually take time for a fire on a weeknight, but Joe knew I loved having one anytime. So building a fire was a calming gesture.

  When Joe greeted me at the door with a glass of wine, I knew he was in major peacemaking mode. I accepted the wine, and the kiss that went with it.

  Then I looked at the glass. “Hmmm. White? You usually open a bottle of red to go with lasagna.”

  “We’re not having lasagna. I went by the Dock Street Pizza Place and picked up two orders of chicken marsala.”

  I must have blinked. Our budget limits our dinners out. But before I could swallow my comment, Joe kissed me again. “And I didn’t put it on a credit card,” he said.

  So the evening turned out pretty well. We were able to discuss our misunderstanding over the credit cards and we both admitted we’d been wrong—Joe for putting stuff for the house on his business card and me for shouting about it. We discussed Christmas fairly rationally, though Joe refused to commit to my proposal to limit our gifts for each other to the living room couch we’d already ordered. We agreed that we’d renegotiate the home-improvement loan with my pal Barbara to pay off the house items that had shown up on the business card, though Joe asked me to wait until after Christmas. After we’d eaten, we enjoyed using the new dishwasher. It was the next morning before the WinterFest interrupted our lives again.

  Joe looked at his pocket calendar at the breakfast table. “I’m afraid I volunteered to pick up that art show juror on Tuesday,” he said.

  “I’m afraid you did.”

  “Can I borrow your van?”

  I laughed. “Yes, though a vehicle I use for hauling chocolate isn’t much of an improvement on one you use for hauling boats.”

  Joe’s transportation is a pickup truck with the name of his boat restoration business, Vintage Boats, painted on the side. His old truck had died two months earlier, and the new one burned diesel fuel and had a manual transmission, because that was the truck he got the best deal on.

  “I hate to leave you ‘in the clutch,’ ” he said. “I know you’re not used to the manual transmission.”

  “My daddy the mechanic taught me to drive a stick shift, and I haven’t forgotten how. I won’t be driving very far or in heavy traffic.”

  Several days went by. People dropped invoices for WinterFest expenses by the office, but I had nothing to do with the final preparations for the event, and at the shop we were busy shipping out last-minute Christmas orders and getting ready for the next big chocolate holiday, Valentine’s Day, two months away.

  The biggest event was the arrival of the molds for the snowman logo for WinterFest. Aunt Nettie ran some samples, and they looked good. There were dark, milk, and white pastilles—those are rectangles of flat molded chocolate—with tiny snowmen in relief. They were shown playing musical instruments and painting pictures and singing. There were also three-dimensional snowmen in four-inch and eight-inch sizes. Again, these carried artistic props such as paintbrushes, palettes, musical instruments, and masks representing comedy and dram
a. They wore multicolored scarves, which had to be hand-painted of tinted white chocolate. Everyone at the shop thought they were delightful. We were careful to keep them hidden from the public, since Aunt Nettie planned to unveil them at the art show opening on Wednesday. We did give Johnny Owens a peek, since the logo he’d designed had inspired them.

  Aunt Nettie was also making a giant snowman that would be used as a centerpiece for the refreshment table at the art show opening, the first WinterFest event.

  Tuesday morning arrived before I was ready, and when Joe came out wearing his pin-striped lawyer suit, instead of the work clothes he wears to the boat shop, I had trouble remembering why. Then I handed him the keys to the van, accepted the keys to the truck, and kissed him good-bye as he left for Grand Rapids.

  At a few minutes after three that afternoon I was concentrating on accounts receivable when the phone rang, and I saw Joe’s cell phone number on the caller ID.

  He sounded urgent. “Lee, I’ve got an emergency here.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The attorney general’s coming to our meeting. He wants to talk to us about the proposed city finance bill. But he’s not here yet. I can’t leave before he comes, and I’m supposed to be at the airport to pick up that Dr. Mendenhall in an hour.”

  “I’ll go get him.”

  “Surely there’s someone else on the committee. George . . .”

  “George is busy hanging that show. I’ll go.”

  “You don’t like to drive that truck. . . .”

  “I’ll borrow Aunt Nettie’s car. Hogan won’t mind picking her up.”

  We left it at that. But the minute I hung up, I remembered that Aunt Nettie was in Holland for a doctor’s appointment. I couldn’t borrow her car.

  Mendenhall’s plane was due at four, and I was an hour from the airport. I needed to leave ten minutes ago.

  I opened Joe’s e-mail, found the message George had sent telling him Mendenhall’s time of arrival and cell phone number, and printed it out. I called to Dolly Jolly, Aunt Nettie’s chief assistant, to explain why I was leaving. I grabbed up a box of the WinterFest snowmen to present to Dr. Mendenhall as I welcomed him. I put on my ski jacket over my jeans and turtleneck and was out the door at three twenty.

  Luckily, I didn’t run into unusual traffic, and the roads were clear of snow. But I knew I was not going to be at the airport in time to park the truck and go inside to greet Mendenhall graciously as he came down the corridor from the gate. I’d have to call him.

  As soon as I felt sure Mendenhall’s plane was on the ground, I grabbed out my cell phone, hoping I wasn’t in one of the numerous dead spots that dot the shore of Lake Michigan—such as the Warner Point Conference Center, where cell phones won’t work at all.

  I punched in Mendenhall’s cell number, eager to assure him that he hadn’t been abandoned.

  When Mendenhall answered, his hello didn’t sound too upset.

  “Dr. Mendenhall? This is Lee Woodyard, from the Warner Pier WinterFest committee. I’m on my way to pick you up, but I’m running a bit late.”

  “That’s quite all right, young lady. Did you say your name is Lee?”

  “Yes. I’m about twenty minutes from the airport.”

  “Twenty minutes is exactly the time I need to recover from the flight, Lee.”

  “That’s wonderful! Shall I just pull up outside?”

  “I’ll get my luggage and meet you at the pickup area closest to American Airlines. How will I know you?”

  “I’ll be in a blue GMC truck. My husband was to pick you up, but he had an emersion—I mean, an emergency! He got stuck elsewhere, so I’m the filter. I mean, fill-in!”

  Mendenhall laughed, which is the usual way people react to my twisted tongue. “I’ll be waiting,” he said.

  He wasn’t mad. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I didn’t slow down. As I entered Gerald Ford International Airport, I almost skidded to a stop at the security booth, and I whipped out my cell phone to call Mendenhall again while the guard was looking at my driver’s license.

  “Hello!” Dr. Mendenhall’s voice sounded even more cheerful than it had twenty minutes earlier.

  “This is Lee Woodyard again. I’ll be at the American pickup area in about thirty seconds.”

  “Land ho, Lee! I won’t be there when you pull up, but I’ll be there almost immediately.”

  “They won’t let me wait too long, Dr. Mendenhall.”

  “I know, I know. Airport security men are not rule breakers. What did you say you look like?”

  “I’ll be in a blue GMC pickup.”

  “You, my dear. Not your vehicle.”

  “I’m wearing a red ski jacket and jeans, Dr. Mendenhall. I don’t have a hat on. I’m tall, and I have blond hair.”

  He chuckled. “You sound enticing. I’ll hurry.”

  The phone went dead, the security man handed my driver’s license back, and I slowly drove forward toward the pickup area at the curb. I parked in the correct spot, realizing that I’d failed to ask Mendenhall what he looked like. I remembered that Johnny Owens had described him as “shrimpy,” so I scanned the area for a small guy.

  But the man who came through the automatic doors nearest me wasn’t exactly small. He was short, true, but he was round. He had on a padded khaki jacket that made him look even shorter and rounder than he really was. A blue-and-brown wool scarf was draped around his neck, and a light blue stocking cap covered his head. He was dragging a small wheeled suitcase.

  Mendenhall looked amazingly like the logo for the WinterFest, right down to the merry grin.

  I got out of the pickup and went to meet him. I held out my hand in shaking position, realizing that I towered over the man by at least six inches. “Dr. Mendenhall?”

  “Call me Fletch, young lady. And you must be Lee.”

  “I’m terribly sorry to be late picking you up.”

  Mendenhall gave that fruity chuckle I’d heard on the phone. “No matter. I had business to transact before I could leave the airport. Your timing is perfect.”

  I opened the passenger’s door and took Mendenhall’s suitcase from him. It was small enough to slip behind the passenger’s seat, so I shoved it in there. Mendenhall climbed into the cab of the truck, and I went around to the driver’s side. I buckled up and pulled away as quickly as possible, mindful of airport rules about lingering too long at the curb.

  I was on the exit road before I turned to Mendenhall again. He took his knitted hat off and gave me a goofy grin. Then he put out a hand, holding a flat metal container toward me.

  “Can I offer you a little drink?” he said. His eyes were slightly unfocused.

  The man was as drunk as a skunk.

  Chapter 3

  Dr. Fletcher Mendenhall, I realized, had used the twenty minutes he had to wait for me to visit the airport bar. In fact, as I looked at his bleary eyes, I became convinced that he hadn’t visited only the airport bar. He’d had a good head start before his plane landed.

  He was leaning ever closer to me—barely restrained by his seat belt—and was still offering me the old-fashioned flat metal flask.

  “Just a little drink?” he said.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I don’t drink while I’m driving.”

  “Oh.” He sounded terribly hurt. “A little one won’t hurt you.”

  “I need to concentrate on driving my husband’s truck,” I said.

  Dr. Mendenhall leaned back in his corner and sighed. Maybe he was going to be a docile drunk. Maybe he wouldn’t be a problem while I drove him to Warner Pier, an hour away down a wintry Michigan highway. Maybe.

  How should I handle this? Was silence the best method? Or should I use casual talk to give the drive a semblance of normalcy?

  I never really decided which was the best method. I simply couldn’t sit there without talking. So I began to tell Mendenhall why my husband hadn’t picked him up. I managed the story pretty well, except that I said Joe was in a meeting with the “ato
nal generator” instead of the “attorney general.” And maybe I emphasized the word “husband” more than necessary. I wanted to make sure Mendenhall knew I had one.

  My talk made no difference to Mendenhall. He leaned back in his corner and didn’t seem to be paying attention. I began to relax. After all, as Johnny Owens had said, Mendenhall was just a little shrimp. I was six inches taller than he was, even if he was a lot bigger around. And he was acting quite meek. I tried to convince myself that I could deliver him to Sarajane Foster’s B and B with no trouble to either of us. Then he’d be her problem. Or could I do that to Sarajane?

  That plan might have worked, if it hadn’t been rush hour. Just after we merged onto Interstate 196, which leads south to Warner Pier, traffic came to a complete stop.

  The lack of movement seemed to rouse Mendenhall. He sat up. “Where are we?”

  “South of Grand Rapids. Traffic is heavy this afternoon.”

  He offered me the flask again. “Now that we’re stopped, you can take your hands off the wheel and have a drink.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He unbuckled his seat belt. “At least I can get comfortable.”

  “Please keep your seat belt on, Dr. Mendenhall. Michigan is very strict about that. I don’t want to get pulled over.”

  “A pretty girl like you could talk your way out of a ticket.”

  “I wouldn’t want to try. And if I have to stop in a hurry, I might toss you through the windshield.” I didn’t add that that prospect sounded quite enticing.

  Mendenhall slid toward me. “You’re too pretty to be so standoffish. Have a drink.”

  “No.”

  At that moment traffic began to move again, and I concentrated on the clutch and the gearshift of the unfamiliar truck. I ignored Mendenhall. Maybe he’d get the idea.

  Once traffic began to move, it accelerated fast. For a mile I was fully occupied in driving. Then my lane slowed suddenly, and I had to downshift.