The Chocolate Snowman Murders Page 5

  But I had a feeling that being related to the chief of police in a town of 2,500 was not going to cut a lot of ice with the police in another, larger city.

  Joe had been a defense attorney. He would know how to handle the situation.

  So the first goal I had as I drove toward Grand Rapids was to talk to Joe. This didn’t turn out to be a simple thing to do.

  When I got to the motel, it was surrounded by police cars, all with lights flashing, and an ambulance was around at the side of the motel, near room 122. My first surprise was that the emergency vehicles had “Lake Knapp” painted on their doors. The motel where I’d dumped Mendenhall was in a city that I’d never even noticed on the map.

  A uniformed patrolman was keeping cars from entering the drive. I finally parked in the lot of the shopping center across the street and walked to the motel through the slush, trying not to fall down in the gutter.

  After I got to the motel, of course, no one had told the patrolmen guarding the drive to expect me. They wouldn’t let me in, even when I said I was there to make a statement.

  I called Joe’s cell phone. It was turned off, but I left a message telling him I was freezing my tootsies outside the motel. I added that I’d go to the chain restaurant next door, drink something hot, and wait.

  I’d barely been served a cup of coffee when a handsome blond guy wearing a bulky overcoat came in. He looked around the restaurant, brushed the hostess aside, and came to my booth. He had an air of complete confidence, an air some women find attractive. I am not one of those women. Not anymore. My ex-husband had that air.

  The man displayed a giant mouthful of teeth and offered me a badge instead of a handshake. “I’m Detective Van Robertson,” he said. “Are you Mrs. Woodyard?”

  I nodded and prepared to get up, assuming he’d want me to go back to the motel. Instead Robertson sat down. Beside me. On my side of the booth. Boxing me in.

  He was still smiling. Either he or his parents had spent a fortune on his teeth. “Your husband said you might have something to tell us about what went on over here at the motel.”

  I reminded myself that my first goal was to talk to Joe.

  “Where is Joe?”

  “He’s cooperating with the investigation.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “It will be a while before he’s free.”

  “I can wait.”

  “He said he’d told you to be ready to make a statement. So why not tell me what went down?” Detective Robertson’s smile became even more friendly, and I was getting lots of eye contact. Was he trying to flirt with me? Surely not.

  I tried to speak in a friendly manner. “I’d like to understand the simulation—I mean, the situation! I’d like to understand what’s going on before I do make a statistic. I mean, a statement!”

  Yikes! I’d gotten my tongue in a double twist. No matter what I told the detective now, he wasn’t going to think I was smart enough to know what I was talking about.

  My malapropisms made Detective Robertson give a bigger grin. “I thought you and I could talk informally.”

  I tried to recover my dignity. “I assume y’all have the witnesses over at the motel.”

  “Y’all?” Robertson smiled even more widely. My Texas accent had been the final flourish to convince him that I was some backward Southern belle who couldn’t think straight. “Y’all jes tell Uncle Van all about it.” He leaned closer to me, displaying his eyeteeth.

  He shouldn’t have done that. Those teeth reminded me strongly of Dr. Fletcher Mendenhall, and I gave an involuntary shudder. “No!”

  “Honey chile! I can be a very friendly guy.”

  “We’re not friends, Detective Robertson. We’re doing business—your business. I want to talk to my husband before I say anything else.”

  “Honey, your husband could be in big trouble. If you’re so concerned about him, you’d better tell me what happened.”

  “I’ll be glad to make a statement, but my husband is the attorney in the family, and I don’t feel I can do that until I consult him.”

  “All we want ‘y’all’ to do is tell us the truth.”

  “Then let me talk to my husband.”

  “You could save him a lot of trouble by talking to me now, honey.” He was still grinning, and I could swear he had edged closer to me.

  I reached into my purse and took out a notebook. “Let me be sure I’m spelling your name correctly,” I said. “Was your first name Van? V-A-N?”

  Robertson backed off slightly. “Yes.”

  “And is your last name Robertson? Not Robinson?” Now he was frowning. “Robertson.”

  “And what is your badge number?”

  “You don’t need that.”

  “Probably not. But it might help, in case I decide to file a complaint.”

  “You don’t have any grounds for a complaint.”

  “Don’t I? You have made fun of my state of origin—and believe me, Detective Robertson, that’s not something Texans take lightly.” I allowed myself a small smile. “You have called me ‘Honey chile’ and ‘Honey’ on three occasions, and I consider that harassment.”

  “Lady . . .”

  “And you have refused to take me to the area where witnesses are being questioned. I consider that you have behaved in a most unprofessional manner. Of course, before making a final judgment I will consult my uncle, who is a police chief with thirty years’ experience on the Cincinnati police force.”

  He frowned, and I fired one final shot. “And please get out of my side of this booth. I don’t like feeling that you’re trapping me inside it.”

  He slid out, his face like a Texas thundercloud, and gestured. “You want to join the other witnesses? Come along.”

  As I stood up, I was delighted to realize that I was two inches taller than he was. Actually, I was probably his height, but by some bit of luck I’d picked the boots with three-inch heels to wear that day. I threw my shoulders back and looked down at him, then walked toward the front of the restaurant.

  Part of me realized that ticking off a detective wasn’t smart. It might even get me arrested. But after the condescending way he’d acted, I enjoyed myself all the way to the cashier. And I refused to allow him to pay for my coffee.

  I stayed on my high horse as I walked to the motel, stepping through the snow as if I were grinding my heels into Robertson’s face with every step. But even after we got to the motel, I didn’t see Joe. As star witness, I realized, he was probably being kept in solitary confinement someplace. I was marched into the motel lobby and told to be seated in the tiny area with chairs, tables, and a television set. Two giant hot pots and a selection of plastic-wrapped pastries were on a shelf along one side, so I deduced that the motel offered a continental breakfast.

  “Don’t talk to anyone,” Robertson said. He left through a back door, but a uniformed patrolman was sitting with us. I didn’t know if he was there to enforce the no-talking edict or to listen in if any of us felt compelled to confess.

  There were only two other people present, two women. Both of them wore smocks with their names over the pockets. Both looked Hispanic. Having been told not to talk, I immediately felt the urge to trot out my high school Spanish, but I resisted. I also resisted the temptation to have a cup of the motel’s coffee, which had probably been stewing since six a.m. I took off my coat, and I simply sat. One of the women had been crying, and I didn’t like to stare at her, so I stared at the floor.

  I was still staring at the floor—the carpet was patterned with blue amoebas and was none too clean—when a figure sat down next to me. I looked up, hoping it was Joe, but no such luck.

  It was a young kid, wearing a white shirt and black tie. He wore his hair slicked back, and he’d used too much hair gel. He leaned toward me and spoke in a low voice. “Hey. I could help you out.”

  I didn’t answer. After all, I’d been told not to talk. Instead I looked for the uniformed cop who’d been sitting with us. He was gone.r />
  “I could help you,” the young man said again. “And you could return the favor.”

  “I don’t think I need help, thank you,” I said. “And we were told not to talk.”

  “The cops are going to ask me to identify the woman who dropped the dead guy off yesterday. But I could forget what she looked like.”

  I stood up and moved to a chair across the room.

  The young guy shrugged, then got to his feet. He walked through a door at the other end of the lobby and immediately reappeared behind the reception desk. He picked up a telephone and spoke into it. His voice was loud.

  “Yeah, she’s the one,” he said.

  I was getting madder by the minute. Somebody was using cheap tricks to put me on the defensive. I didn’t know if it was the cheesy desk clerk or the cheesy detective, but I wasn’t feeling defensive. I was, as a matter of fact, ready to go on the offensive.

  So as soon as the uniformed cop came back, I confronted him. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “Sergeant McCullough. He’ll be out soon.”

  “I hope so. I’m getting sick of being harassed.”

  The cop I was talking to merely scowled, but a sympathetic voice came from behind me. “Harassed? We can’t have that.”

  I turned, and all I saw was Joe. Without a word, I threw my arms around him.

  Joe chuckled. “Hey! It’s okay.”

  “Why wouldn’t they let me see you?”

  “They don’t want us to give each other hints about what to say, Lee.”

  “Now, Mr. Woodyard . . .” The words came from a fatherly-looking man with beautiful white hair and a matching white mustache. He smiled beneficently. “Your husband has been very cooperative, Mrs. Woodyard. Now if you’ll just give us your statement, I’m sure this matter can be cleared up.”

  He was completely reassuring, the personification of kindness and understanding. I could feel myself begin to relax.

  Joe spoke then. “This is Sergeant McCullough, Lee. Just tell him the absolute truth. Strictly factual.”

  Joe sounded as reassuring as McCullough looked. The only hitch was that he squeezed my hand really hard at the same time he was talking. Then he turned his head so that the detective couldn’t see his face, and he gave me a direct, hard look. And that squeeze and that look both said, “Watch out!”

  I squeezed his hand back. “I’ll be glad to make a statement, Joe, though I have no idea what happened to Mendenhall. But I’d appreciate your staying with me.”

  “It’s probably best if I don’t,” Joe said. “If you’re uneasy, I can call Webb Bartlett.”

  McCullough chuckled. “Oh, it doesn’t sound as if Mrs. Woodyard will need an attorney.”

  “Webb and I were in law school together,” Joe said. He was being chummy with McCullough. “Lee knows him as a friend.”

  Webb had represented my ex-husband’s son a couple of years earlier, when the teenager was suspected—falsely—in a Warner Pier crime. Joe and I occasionally went out to dinner with Webb and his wife, and they’d come to our wedding. Yes, I considered Webb a friend.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” Joe said. He smiled as if that was his idea, but I felt sure that McCullough wouldn’t allow him to leave until he made sure our statements matched. I just hoped he’d let both of us leave after we’d told all.

  McCullough, talking about the weather, escorted me to a room just down the hall. It was a regular motel room, but it did have a table and chairs crammed into one end. I didn’t have to sit on the bed. Detective Robertson did.

  McCullough smiled, looking like a benevolent granddaddy. “Now, Mrs. Woodyard, how did you happen to pick Dr. Mendenhall up at the airport?”

  I told the whole story, trying to keep it brief. McCullough didn’t interrupt me. I made it through with only a few slips of the tongue, ending with Mendenhall running after me as I drove off.

  McCullough was still smiling. “So, you led Mendenhall to believe that you would go to this motel room with him.”

  “I tried not to say or do anything that would imply that.”

  “But he thought you would be coming in.”

  “Not from anything I said. I said, ‘If you feel this way, you need to get a room.’ I did not say, ‘We need to get a room.’ I was careful to say ‘you.’ I never—never—told him I would be joining him in it.”

  “But you let him think you would be coming in.”

  “What he thought was not my responsibility, Sergeant McCullough. Anyway, the prospect scared him spitless.”

  “It scared him?”

  “Yes. You know, these types who come on so hard don’t really want to succeed.” I couldn’t resist taking a look at Detective Robertson. “He simply wanted to embarrass me.”

  “And did he?”

  “Of course. Ask your wife. An episode like that is extremely embarrassing to any woman. But it also made me mad.”

  “Mad enough to hit him?”

  “Mad enough to shove him back onto his own side of the seat when he started breathing down my neck. But my main object was simply to get rid of him. I didn’t want to drive forty-five more minutes—in heavy traffic on winter roads—trying to fend him off. For one thing, I probably would have had a wreck.”

  “You came up with an ingenious way to get rid of him, Mrs. Woodyard.” He chuckled and turned to Robertson. “Ask Mr. Woodyard to step in.”

  He hummed softly while we waited for Joe, and he greeted him with a broad smile. I was beginning to relax. Maybe we’d be able to leave right away.

  Joe dropped a hand on my shoulder as he came in. He stood behind me, and we both looked at McCullough.

  The detective smiled his beneficent smile again. “Now,” he said, “if I could just decide which one of you I ought to charge.”

  Really Ancient Chocolate

  Among the big anthropological news of the early 2000s was a report that scientists had proved use of chocolate by humankind began five hundred years earlier than previously thought.

  An analysis of ancient pottery from Honduras found traces of chocolate at least three thousand years old. This is five hundred years earlier than any earlier evidence of the use of the heavenly substance.

  A professor of anthropology at Cornell University, John Henderson, and his colleagues made chemical analyses of residue on bits of broken pottery dating from 1100 B.C., pottery found in the Ulua Valley of northern Honduras. The scientists discovered theobroma, an alkaloid present only in cacao.

  Scientists speculate that the vessels had been used to drink a fermented “beer” made from the pulp that surrounds the cacao beans used to produce chocolate.

  The pottery was of a type used for important ceremonies, the researchers said.

  Chapter 5

  Joe pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’ve got Webb Bartlett on my cell,” he said. “Should I call?”

  “Aw, I don’t think you need a lawyer yet,” McCullough said. “It’s just that there are so many ways to interpret your stories.”

  “So what’s to interpret?” Joe said. “I told you the truth, and I’m sure Lee did, too.”

  “Your stories match—that’s for sure.” The detective smiled his kindly smile. “Of course, you had all night to match ’em up. But Mrs. Woodyard might have gone into that motel room to put Mendenhall’s bag down, and he could have tried to assault her. She would have been perfectly justified in crowning him with the desk lamp.”

  “But if I was perfectly justified, wouldn’t the smart thing have been to call the cops as soon as he hit the floor?” I said. “Get my story in first?”

  McCullough nodded. “Yep. And you’re obviously a smart lady. But even smart people can panic. Or you might not have realized how bad he was hurt.”

  “Since he was hopping up and down like Rumpelstiltskin when I drove off, that scenery—I mean, scenario! That scenario doesn’t apply.”

  Joe spoke. “On the other hand, when Lee told me Mendenhall had gotten fresh with her, I might have been so mad
I came by here and had some sort of confrontation with him, ending with using the desk lamp as a bludgeon.”

  “No, Joe,” I said. “That won’t work either. You were a wrestler.”

  McCullough looked confused. “A wrestler?”

  “Right,” I said. “Joe was state wrestling champ for one hundred seventy-five pounds the year he was a senior in high school. I was present a couple of years ago when one of the local nutcases down at Warner Pier took a poke at him. Joe did not punch him back. That wrestling training kicked in, and Joe had the guy in a headlock in less than a second. Pure instinct. He wouldn’t have needed a table lamp to handle Mendenhall.”

  Joe snorted. “Thanks, Lee. You’re saying I would never have hit Mendenhall. I would have simply broken his neck.”

  McCullough laughed.

  Joe went on. “Neither of us had any reason to kill Mendenhall deliberately, and neither of us is the kind to get mad enough to do it. And if either of us hit him in self-defense, we’re both smart enough to call the police immediately and tell our side.”

  McCullough grinned. “You’re talking like a defense attorney, Joe.”

  “Yep.”

  “I bet you’re a heck of a cross-examiner,” the detective said. “Now, if you’ll both go down to the station, you can make formal statements. Plus, we’ll have to get your fingerprints.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I know you have to make sure neither of us left any prints in the room.”

  “You weren’t in there at all?”

  “No. I handled Mendenhall’s suitcase, as I said. And his flask. And the box of TenHuis chocolates. I don’t remember if I had my gloves on or not. But I don’t see how my fingerprints could be on any other item in that room.”

  “And I never got inside,” Joe said. “I could hear Mendenhall’s cell phone ring, but he didn’t come to the door.”