The Chocolate Falcon Fraud Read online

  We’d been inching along at five miles an hour, trying to keep out of the bushes that lined the narrow road, and now I saw a straight line ahead, about twenty feet in the air and perpendicular to the road. A roof.

  “There’s a building up ahead,” I said.

  In a moment the trees and bushes thinned out a bit, and we saw a metal barn. Beside it was a tiny log cabin. Not the designer kind of log cabin, the ones you see in magazines. No, this was a real, true log cabin. Dan’l Boone would have felt right at home in it, except his cabin might have been nicer.

  “There’s no sign identifying it as a business,” I said. “Dare we go to the door?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Aunt Nettie said. “We can tell them we’re trying to trace a misplaced relative.”

  The road had simply petered out, and there was no car or truck in sight, so I parked in front of the cabin.

  “Look on the porch,” Aunt Nettie said.

  And sure enough, two rustic wooden chairs sat there. They were similar to Adirondack chairs in shape, but they were made of wood with the bark still on. They looked uncomfortable, though they did have ragged pads in the seats.

  As I said, I know rural etiquette. I tapped the horn. Aunt Nettie got out of the van and I followed her, limping toward the door of the cabin.

  “May I help you?”

  The voice came from behind us, and if it startled Aunt Nettie the way it startled me, she might have had a heart attack. I turned so abruptly that I stumbled over my crutch.

  The person who had spoken was a young woman. She didn’t look welcoming.

  Her most eye-catching quality was her hair—long black ringlets all over her head. Her eyes, big, expressive, and of a brilliant sapphire blue, were almost as striking. She was slender and of medium height.

  She wore the kind of jeans advertised as “skinny,” and on her they deserved the name. Her black T-shirt showed a strip of midriff, and it could have been borrowed from a twelve-year-old.

  Aunt Nettie regained her composure quickly. “We hope you can help us,” she said. “We’re trying to follow the track of a wandering relative.”

  “There’s nobody here but me.” The girl suddenly seemed embarrassed by her skimpy T-shirt. She abruptly folded her arms, up high, so that they covered her breasts.

  Aunt Nettie kept trying. “He would have been in this neighborhood the day before yesterday.”

  “Nobody was by then.”

  “A young man, sandy hair. Driving a white car.”

  “Nope. This is a lonely spot.”

  “I can tell it is,” Aunt Nettie said. “Is the furniture shop gone?”

  “Mr. Davies died five years ago. My boyfriend owns the shop now.”

  “And he doesn’t make furniture?”

  “No. We have an online business.”

  “Oh! Then you don’t have to worry about the lack of foot traffic.”

  The girl laughed sarcastically. “No. We’re retail, but it’s all done by computer.”

  “What do you handle?” It was the first time I had spoken, and my question seemed to surprise the girl. “I’m sorry if I sound nosy,” I said, “but I’m active in the Warner Pier Chamber of Commerce, so I’m always looking out for a possible member.”

  “We’re in the Blackburn area, closer to Dorinda than to Warner Pier.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you off the hook. The Dorinda chamber can look after its own membership. But what sort of items do you handle?”

  “Souvenirs. Souvenirs of all kinds. I’d show you our warehouse, but there’s not much to see. It’s just a bunch of boxes.”

  “How do you ship? I’m being nosy again, but my aunt and I operate TenHuis Chocolade. We’re remodeling, and that will include a new shipping room. But we haven’t even introduced ourselves.”

  I quickly said our names, and this forced the girl to reply with hers. She identified herself as Oshawna Bridges.

  “Oshawna?” I couldn’t help commenting on the unusual name. “Very pretty, and unusual.”

  “My parents made it up.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t see anybody the day before yesterday. And I was here all day.”

  I could feel my brow furrow. “It was my stepson. We’re trying to find him.”

  Oshawna folded her arms again. “Sorry.” She didn’t offer to show us her shipping area, despite our broad hint that we’d like to see it.

  But we kept trying. Aunt Nettie put on her sweetest smile. “Do you have a catalogue?”

  “No. Not a hard-copy one. Everything is on our Web site.”

  “Do you carry Michigan items?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Great Lakes souvenirs?”

  “No. It’s mostly collectibles.”

  Collectibles? That was no answer at all. But she wasn’t going to tell us anything—except that Jeff hadn’t been there—so we had to give up. But as I opened the door of the van, I had one more question.

  “I didn’t even ask the name of your business,” I said.

  Oshawna remained stoic, but she replied, “Valk Souvenirs.”

  “Do you have a card?”

  “No. Like I said, it’s all online.”

  As the van moved away, Aunt Nettie spoke suddenly. “Stop, Lee! Right there, by the girl.”

  As I obeyed, she lowered her window and leaned out to speak to the dark-haired girl.

  “Would you like a ride somewhere?” she asked.

  “A ride?” The girl’s voice was incredulous.

  “Yes. We could take you someplace, any place you’d like to go. To a safe place.”

  I gasped. Aunt Nettie must have felt that this girl was in danger, maybe threatened by domestic abuse.

  “Safe?” We heard the incredulous voice again, and the girl smiled. “Oh, I’m safe enough here.”

  “That’s fine, then. But if you’re ever stranded out here or should need help . . .” Aunt Nettie produced a business card from her purse and held it out the window. “We’re at TenHuis Chocolade. Call on us anytime you need anything. We could come and get you. We know of places you could stay.”

  Aunt Nettie smiled and waved, and I turned the van around and slowly drove back down the drive. I watched, in case the girl ran after us. But she didn’t.

  Oshawna Bridges. I said her name three times so I would remember it. As we lost sight of the cabin, she was still standing beside the big building, arms folded.

  “What made you think she’s being abused?” I asked Aunt Nettie.

  “She just made me uneasy, as if she was trying to hide something. I could be wrong.”

  “She surely has a telephone.”

  Aunt Nettie nodded.

  “She certainly wasn’t welcoming,” I said. “Now I know what they mean by that old expression ‘the bum’s rush.’ I feel as if we’ve been pushed off a freight train by a railroad bull.”

  “I guess she might just be ashamed because they’re not doing much business,” Aunt Nettie said.

  “It’s more fun to imagine she had a second boyfriend hidden in that big barn and was trying to take care of business with him before the first one came home.”

  “There was no car there.”

  “Unless the car was parked behind the barn.”

  “Not likely,” Aunt Nettie said. “I noticed that the trees grew right up to the building.”

  “Something she said tickled my memory,” I said, “but I’m not sure what it was.”

  “Then you have a better memory than I do.”

  By then we were back at the road, and Aunt Nettie got out to open the gate. We were outside the property and had turned back toward Warner Pier before the penny dropped on my memory. I gave a little gasp.

  “What is it?” Aunt Nettie said.

  “The thing I was trying to remember. It was the name V
alk.”

  “The name of their online company? What about it?”

  “Night before last, when Jeff stood us all up for dinner, I told you he had been looking for someone named Falcone or Falconi. We agreed that it would be an unusual name around here. Then—just as the waitress came up—you said, ‘Maybe Valk.’ What the heck did you mean by that?”

  Aunt Nettie stared at me. “I don’t even remember saying that, Lee.”

  “I’m pretty sure it happened. But what would link Valk with Falcone?”

  “The bird! ‘Falcone’ means ‘falcon’ in Italian. ‘Valk’ means ‘falcon’ in Dutch.”

  Chocolate Chat

  My friend Wade Jensen likes to tell about his aunt Ruby and her famous fudge. Aunt Ruby was known as a character, full of jokes and funny remarks that sometimes shocked the more staid family members. But her fudge was a favorite with everyone.

  Aunt Ruby was generous about giving friends and relatives the recipe for her fudge. But later the recipient would always tell her, “My fudge just doesn’t come out like yours, Ruby.”

  It wasn’t until after Aunt Ruby’s death that they discovered why. At a family gathering they compared fudge recipes. Every single recipe—each of them in Aunt Ruby’s handwriting—was different from every other recipe.

  “Apparently,” Wade says, “it was a sort of final joke from Aunt Ruby.”

  As a child, Wade says, he often watched Aunt Ruby make the fudge. “All I can remember is that she started by melting big Hershey’s bars. But not one of those fudge recipes she handed out had Hershey’s bars in it.”

  I checked online recipe pages, and there are lots of fudge recipes that call for Hershey’s bars. Which is Aunt Ruby’s? No one can guess.

  Chapter 9

  I was so surprised I hit the brakes and almost went into a skid.

  “Watch out!” Aunt Nettie said.

  “Sorry.” I took my foot off the brake and let the van slow down on its own. “You just handed me a shock.”

  “Why?”

  “Jeff told me he had come to Warner Pier for the noir film festival. Then he asked if I knew anyone named ‘Falcone.’ Now I find that the ‘Valk’ company—which is located in the general area where his car was found—also has a linguistic link to falcon. As in The Maltese Falcon, the most famous noir movie of all time.”

  “But the girl at Valk’s didn’t seem to know anything about Jeff.”

  “She didn’t seem to know anything about anything. Which could be highly suspicious in itself. I’d be more likely to believe her if she said Jeff had been there, but he left, and she didn’t know where he went.”

  “Do you think we should tell Hogan about this?”

  “Yes. Though he may just scoff. It does sound far-fetched.”

  “I’ll call him. You drive.”

  Hogan wasn’t available, and Aunt Nettie left a request for a callback on his voice mail. Suddenly I was frantically eager to talk to him. The link between Falcone and Valk seemed terribly important, though I didn’t see exactly why.

  “Call the station and see if you can find out where Hogan is,” I said. “Maybe we can track him down.”

  Aunt Nettie picked up her cell phone, and to my relief, it rang as soon as she had it in her hand. I hoped it was Hogan calling her back. But the caller wasn’t Hogan. It was Dolly Jolly, Aunt Nettie’s chief assistant. I could hear her voice booming even before Aunt Nettie turned on the speakerphone.

  “A friend of Jeff’s is here!” Dolly hollered. “Mr. Kayro! He’d like to talk to you.” Dolly was wonderful at making chocolate and at handling the ladies who made it, but she couldn’t talk in a normal tone of voice. She shouted.

  “We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Aunt Nettie said. “Give him a truffle.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “A friend of Jeff’s. Who can it be? I should have asked for a description.”

  “If he was standing there, I doubt Dolly would have given you one anyway.”

  Aunt Nettie was right. I pictured Dolly screaming out, “He’s around thirty, five foot eight, and has red hair!” and I began to giggle.

  I headed toward Warner Pier as quickly as I could go. Aunt Nettie made another attempt to reach Hogan, this time trying to get the police department receptionist to tell her where he was. Aunt Nettie was sweet, and the receptionist was friendly, but she said she had no idea where he had gone. I felt even more frustrated, but I kept driving.

  I made the best time I could manage getting to the shop, but the tourist traffic was heavy. Just the way we Warner Pier merchants liked it to be, I reminded myself. The curbside parking was bumper to bumper. I had to inch between two tour buses to drive into our alley, where I had a reserved parking place.

  Almost panting, Aunt Nettie and I went through the back door, across the workroom, and into the TenHuis shop. And when I saw the man waiting at the front, I was terribly glad I hadn’t asked Dolly to describe him.

  I could just imagine her shouting, “He looks like that old-time movie star, the short one with the buggy eyes!”

  Because Mr. Kayro, who had come to ask about Jeff, looked exactly like Peter Lorre.

  Every fan of The Maltese Falcon, and of a dozen or twenty other classic movies of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, would recognize Peter Lorre. He was a short man with thin, dark hair and enormous dark eyes. He often played villains, and frequently starred with Humphrey Bogart. Arsenic and Old Lace and Casablanca were two of his most famous films. He had, naturally, a major role in The Maltese Falcon, portraying a member of the gang that was trying to get hold of the fabled jeweled falcon.

  Lorre often wore a spiffy suit and, true to his role, Kayro was wearing a vintage pin-stripe and holding a wide-brimmed fedora in his hand.

  The resemblance of Kayro and Lorre was remarkable.

  I recognized him at once. He had been at the Holiday Inn Express at four that morning.

  “Hello,” he said. “Are you Mrs. Woodyard?”

  “Yes. And I resemble—I mean, remember!—I remember you.”

  “We haven’t met formally. But our paths crossed at the Holiday Inn Express.”

  “Of course. You were checking in, and my husband and I walked up to the desk.”

  He nodded and smiled.

  I held out my hand for shaking. “Am I correct in thinking you’re here for the film festival?”

  “Exactly! I’m one of the nerds who dress up as noir characters. In the noir world I go by Noel Kayro. That’s K-A-Y-R-O.”

  I recognized his play on the name of the Peter Lorre character in The Maltese Falcon, Joel Cairo. We both chuckled.

  “And you know Jeff Godfrey,” I said.

  “Correct. I was hoping to see Jeff at the convention, but I haven’t found him.”

  I quickly explained that Jeff had had a car accident and was hospitalized. I left out all the stuff about his climbing into the attic and disappearing for more than twenty-four hours. But I tried to end on a hopeful note.

  “The doctors are saying Jeff can’t have visitors now,” I said, “but we’re hoping he’ll be better in a day or so. How can I reach you? I’ll phone with an update.”

  Kayro gave me his cell number and expressed proper concern for Jeff, adding, “We work together as volunteers at the Texas Museum of Popular Culture.”

  Remembering that Kayro was a pseudonym, I had a question. “What should I call you?”

  “Oh, Noel is fine. Will I see you at the party?”

  “Oh, golly!” I said. “I forgot that party.”

  “Well, I imagine that you’re eager to see the star yacht.”

  “Star yacht? What is that?”

  “All of us noir fans are excited to get a look at the snazzy yacht that came in this afternoon.”

  “Oh? Is this the one owned by the main speaker for the festival?”

  �
�Yes, Mr. Grossman.” Kayro gave a rather sneaky grin. “He’s quite a researcher.”

  Noel accepted a falcon, selecting milk chocolate. Then he tipped his fedora to me and left.

  As soon as I waved good-bye, I turned to Aunt Nettie. “I thought he’d never leave. Quick! Call Hogan again.”

  Hogan was still not available, but the PD’s receptionist had found a hint of where he was going.

  “I looked at his calendar,” she said. “He was going to try to make some party at the yacht club.”

  Aunt Nettie hung up, and we stared at each other.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go to the party.”

  “That sounds good. I’d hate to miss taking a look at some fancy-schmancy yacht,” she said.

  We told Dolly we were leaving—considering that neither of us had done any work all day, that didn’t seem to surprise her too much. I called Joe and left a message telling him I was going to the party before I came home. Then we headed for the yacht club.

  The Warner River Yacht Club was mainly a marina, of course, with a small building that housed an office, a minuscule clubroom that was open to the public, and an outdoor pavilion.

  Yacht club members didn’t have to own boats, but people didn’t usually bother to join unless they wanted to keep a boat there. Joe, for instance, had his own dock at his boat shop, and if he wanted to take a boat owner client to lunch, there were plenty of options besides the yacht club. So he wasn’t a member.

  Because of the parking problem I assured Aunt Nettie that I could walk, despite my crutch. It was really just about a block and a half—that is, if we went out our back door, crossed the alley, and cut through an office on the street behind us. The owner was nice about letting us do that. From there we went down half a block and turned one short block toward the river. My arm got a little tired, but I managed the crutch fine.

  And as soon as we rounded that final corner, I could see the “fancy-schmancy” out-of-town yacht.

  It was moored out in the river, and rowboats and dinghies were going back and forth. Apparently the owner was giving tours.