The Chocolate Bridal Bash Read online

  “I met her when she came for Phil’s funeral, Lee. But she had left home before I moved to Lake Shore Drive.”

  “Oh.”

  I must have sounded dispirited, because Inez frowned. “You’re not fighting with her again, are you?”

  It was Joe who spoke. “Lee had never known that her mother ran off on her wedding day, Inez. She just found out, and she’d like to understand why.”

  “Have you asked her?”

  “It’s hard on the telephone,” I said. “Especially since she never mentioned the episode to me. But she’s coming for the wedding, so maybe we can talk then. She did ask one question that puzzled me. She wanted to know about the former sheriff, Carl Van Hoosier.”

  Inez frowned. “His apartment is in this wing, but I don’t talk with him much.”

  “He’s not in the nursing wing?”

  “No. He had a stroke and uses a wheelchair, but he still has his apartment. And it’s nice—one of the doubles. And don’t let that dumb act he does sometimes fool you!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I’ve seen him pull it. If he doesn’t want to talk about something—who made the mess in the puzzle room, maybe—he acts as if he’s out of it. But when the staff aide is gone, he gets this sly look.” Inez nodded vigorously. “You know, my grandmother always said that cranky old people were cranky young people. And I’d guess that crafty old people were crafty young people. Van Hoosier always had that reputation, and from what I’ve seen of him, he’s as sneaky as he ever was.”

  After a few more minutes Joe and I said good-bye. Inez didn’t offer to walk us out. She had grown noticeably more short of breath as we talked.

  Joe took my hand as we walked down the hall. “It’s sad to see Inez growing feeble,” he said. “She’s such a stout character it’s hard to realize she won’t last forever.”

  I nodded and blinked back a few tears. “She’s still interested in everything around her, though. Did you notice that she claimed she didn’t talk with Carl Van Hoosier, but she knew just how he treated the staff?”

  “She hasn’t lost her powers of observation. And how about your powers of observation? Do you want to take a peek at Van Hoosier?”

  “Well, since we’re here . . .”

  Joe stopped at the reception desk and asked for Van Hoosier’s apartment number. Then we went back down Inez’s wing. Van Hoosier’s apartment was at the end.

  “Twenty-two east,” Joe said. “This is it.”

  “Should we go in?”

  “Sure,” Joe murmured quietly. “Like I said, we can always ask him if he remembers the Bill Dykstra suicide.”

  Joe tapped on the door. Like most of the doors in the retirement center, it was standing open. But there was no response to Joe’s knock.

  Joe raised his eyebrows and tapped again. “Sheriff Van Hoosier? May we come in?”

  He took two steps into the apartment, steps that took him into the little hallway with the galley kitchen along one side and the bathroom door on the other. I followed him closely. Somehow I didn’t want to get too far away from him in the alien environment of Carl Van Hoosier’s apartment.

  Joe gasped. He took three giant steps into the apartment itself, then dropped to his knees.

  The first thing I saw was an overturned wheelchair behind Joe. It took me a moment to realize Joe was kneeling beside a large man who was stretched out on the floor beside that wheelchair.

  “Call the nurse!” Joe said.

  I scanned the room and found a white cord attached to an emergency switch. I yanked it. “Should I try CPR?”

  Joe looked up at me. His hand was on the man’s neck, apparently feeling for a pulse. “I think he’s already dead.”

  CHOCOLATE CHAT

  CHILDHOOD CHOCOLATE—PART I

  As a child during World War II, I was aware of only a few of the sacrifices that civilians were making for the effort to win the war.

  The main one, as far as I was concerned, was chocolate.

  All the chocolate, we were told, was going to soldiers and sailors overseas. Chocolate bars were in short supply for children.

  Across the street from Franklin Elementary School in Ardmore, Oklahoma, was a small mom-and-pop grocery where all the kids would blow our spending money. On the rare occasion when the store got a few boxes of Hershey’s bars, they would all be sold before the first bell rang for the school day.

  I was a last-minute scholar, dashing into class just as the bell rang. Even if I had a nickel, I was never early enough to get a Hershey’s bar.

  Both my parents liked chocolate. I remember the glee with which my father, after the war, introduced me to the Valomilk Cup, still my favorite form of marshmallow cream, and the Cherry Mash. Then we knew the war was really over.

  Chapter 9

  “I’ll find some help!”

  I ran out of the apartment and down the hall toward the reception desk, the nearest place where I knew I could find a staff member. As I got there a completely bald man in a white uniform was walking rapidly toward me, coming through the lounge behind the desk; I knew the nursing-home wing was back that way.

  I guessed that the bald man was answering the emergency line in Van Hoosier’s room. I ran to meet him.

  “It’s Carl Van Hoosier!” I said. “He’s not breathing!”

  The man’s rapid walk became a run, and he barreled past me without a word. I followed him at a fast walk. When I got back to Van Hoosier’s apartment, he and Joe were both kneeling beside the old sheriff, and the bald man had his stethoscope in place.

  “I didn’t try CPR,” Joe said.

  The bald man took the stethoscope out of his ears. “He has a do-not-resuscitate order in place,” he said.

  I stood by the door, feeling shaky. After all my curiosity about Van Hoosier, I certainly hadn’t expected to find him dead. Of course, I wasn’t grieved by his death; I’d never met the man, and what I’d heard about him didn’t make me sorry that we weren’t acquainted. But it seemed extremely odd.

  That’s when I began to look around the apartment. And the situation began to seem even odder.

  I’d already seen that Van Hoosier’s wheelchair was on its side. A small table was turned over, too. A floor lamp had been smashed. A throw rug was crumpled up. A metal candy dish was in the middle of the floor, and Hershey’s Kisses were all over the place. A lightweight side chair had also been knocked over, and that chair was clear across the room from the wheelchair.

  “Listen, y’all,” I said. “This room doesn’t look like some old guy died peacefully. It looks like a fight went on first!”

  Joe stood up and looked around. “I suppose it’s possible that he thrashed around in his final moments. But I don’t see how he could have done this much damage.”

  The bald guy stood up. Now I could see his name tag: Priddy, RN. He looked around the room. “It does look odd,” he said.

  He knelt again. This time he pulled Van Hoosier’s lower eyelid down and looked at it closely. Joe dropped to his knees, too, and watched closely. The nurse felt Van Hoosier’s throat, then looked at his head, feeling around it.

  He looked at Joe, and Joe looked at him. They both seemed to be assimilating the situation.

  Then Joe spoke. “I used to be a defense attorney. I represented a guy in a strangling case.”

  The nurse nodded and stood up.

  “This is too weird,” he said. His voice was quiet; I had the sense he was speaking to himself. “He’s got a contusion on his temple, too. Who would want to bash the old bastard, then smother him?”

  Priddy, RN, seemed to come to himself. “Sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t a very professional comment. I’ll call his doctor.”

  “Lee and I had better wait down the hall, in case this turns out to be a crime scene,” Joe said. “We won’t leave until we find out if anybody wants our names.”

  The bald man raised a hand. “Please,” he said, “don’t say anything!”

  Joe nodded.
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  When we got back to the reception area, a middle-aged guy in a suit came rushing out of an office marked “Administrator” and nearly knocked us both flat, so I gathered that Nurse Priddy had called his boss to say they’d had a death. A suspicious death.

  The receptionist, who was not concealing her interest in the proceedings very well, told us that we could get coffee in the main lounge, in an area behind her. We said we’d wait there. Joe used his cell phone to call Mac McKay and tell him we might be late for dinner. Then we found seats where we could see the comings and goings.

  And there were lots of comings and goings. A man Joe recognized as a Dorinda doctor came rushing in the main door within ten minutes. Not long after that Priddy and the administrator put their heads together near the receptionist’s desk and talked in low voices. We couldn’t hear them, but there was a lot of vigorous gesturing and scowling. The administrator ended it by shaking his head and going to stare out the entrance, arms folded, anger in his shoulders and neck. Apparently the doctor had agreed with Priddy about the suspicious nature of Van Hoosier’s death, because a sheriff’s car pulled up out front, and almost immediately after that a Michigan State Police car drove up. The administrator met them, glaring and talking vigorously. He didn’t seem to approve of murder in one of his nice apartments.

  There were no sirens, but the residents of Pleasant Creek knew something was up. A crowd was gathering in the lounge—two old ladies leaning on walkers, a man bent almost in two by osteoporosis, a couple who sat down at a card table and pretended to play gin rummy, assorted women who gathered in clusters and eyed the activities. A few of the people obviously lived in Van Hoosier’s wing, and they made periodic forays down the hall to see what was going on, then came back to report.

  I guess we were gawking as much as the Pleasant Creek residents, because I nearly jumped out of my skin when someone behind me called my name.

  “Lee? Joe? What are you two doing here?”

  I turned to see Rollie Taylor, grinning from ear to ear as usual.

  “Rollie?” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “It’s bingo day,” Rollie said. “And, Lee, did you know that if Bea Arthur married Sting, she’d be Bea Sting?”

  I rolled my eyes and groaned. “I thought you said you called bingo on Sundays.”

  “And on alternate Wednesdays.” Rollie gestured at the assembled crowd of residents. “These folks usually go straight from bingo to dinner. What’s going on?”

  I let Joe tell him. I didn’t want to think about the scene in Van Hoosier’s apartment. I walked over to the window and looked out at the wintry scene. I was beginning to dread the next act in this little drama. Anytime now a representative of either the Warner County Sheriff’s Office or the Michigan State Police was going to find out who had discovered Carl Van Hoosier’s body. And they were going to want to know why two complete strangers had dropped by to see the old guy.

  And I didn’t have the slightest idea how to answer that question. It wasn’t that I wanted to lie. It was just that the reason we’d come was going to sound so stupid.

  I stood there, staring at the snow and stewing until my nerves had turned into needles and were poking holes in my skin. I barely acknowledged Rollie’s good-bye, and when Joe joined me by the window, I clutched at his sleeve as if I were grabbing a lifeline.

  “Joe, is there any kind of a sensible lie we can come up with?”

  “What do we need to lie about?”

  “About why we went into Carl Van Hoosier’s apartment. Neither of us ever met the guy before.”

  Joe grinned. “I’ll play the city attorney card. Maybe it will work.”

  “You can’t claim you were on any kind of official business!”

  “I know. But they’ll be polite.” He gave me a onearmed hug. “Relax.”

  A few more minutes went by, and the bald nurse came through the lounge. When he saw us, he came over. Joe stuck out his hand in shaking position.

  “I’m Joe Woodyard,” he said. “This is my fiancé, Lee McKinney. We didn’t exactly get a chance to introduce ourselves in there.”

  The tall nurse shook hands with both of us. “Elmer Priddy,” he said. “Thanks for waiting around.”

  Priddy looked troubled, as well he might, I guess. He was around an inch taller than Joe, but thin, and had a square jaw. I guessed his age at midfifties. His head had been shaved, rather than being naturally bald, and I could see the five o’clock shadow that marked the boundaries of where his hairline would have been. Most guys who shave their heads are almost bald anyway, I’ve noticed. They apparently just decide to give up the fight. But Priddy’s hair grew down low onto his forehead and when he ducked his head I saw that the five o’clock shadow looked even all over his skull.

  “I’m a lawyer,” Joe said. “I’ve been involved with a couple of murder trials. I’m far from expert, but I didn’t like the way that apartment looked.”

  Priddy shook his head. “If it weren’t for the eyelids, I might have said natural causes. And then I found that bump.”

  Joe went on. “I guess the doctor agreed with you.”

  “The administrator doesn’t like it, but there’s going to be an autopsy.”

  “That’s smart,” Joe said. “Even if it shows natural causes . . .” We all nodded wisely.

  “Any idea when he died?” Joe sounded idly curious.

  “According to the body temp . . . I’d be guessing. But CPR wouldn’t have helped him.” Priddy looked at us closely. “You weren’t relatives of Van Hoosier’s?”

  “No. We didn’t know him at all,” Joe said. “I’m city attorney over at Warner Pier. We were looking for a little information about an old case.”

  Priddy’s head snapped toward Joe, and his eyes grew wide. But it was a moment before he spoke. “He probably wouldn’t have remembered,” he said. “I guess I’d better get back to work.”

  He walked back the way I’d seen him come, down the hall that led to the nursing wing.

  A few more minutes later one of the sheriff’s deputies came out. He checked with the receptionist first, consulting the check-in sheet we’d signed as we arrived. I felt relieved as I realized we had some sort of proof of when we got there.

  Then he came over to talk to us. Joe’s prediction turned out to be fairly accurate. The deputy merely asked for our names and addresses. We each gave him a business card and told him we weren’t relatives of Van Hoosier’s. He seemed to assume that we’d dropped by on a social visit.

  Joe fished for more details. He explained that he’d spent some time as a defense attorney and without saying too much made it clear that he’d recognized the symptoms of violent death in Carl Van Hoosier’s apartment.

  “The furniture turned over,” he said, “and the eyelids.”

  The deputy nodded. “Yeah, the doctor . . .” Then he apparently decided he was saying too much to witnesses, and he broke off. “But we won’t know anything until there’s an autopsy. You guys can go. We know where to find you.”

  I hardly had to say a word, but I still managed to goof it up. “Good lie,” I said. “I mean, good-bye!”

  The deputy blinked, but he let us go.

  By then it was past six p.m., and the Michigan winter night had arrived. It was with great relief that I walked across Pleasant Creek’s brightly lit parking lot and climbed into Joe’s truck.

  “I hope your friend Mac McKay isn’t a teetotaler,” I said. “I could sure use a drink.”

  Joe laughed and put the truck into reverse. He backed up, then suddenly hit the brakes. A horn blasted.

  A ramshackle pickup truck, its bed loaded with plastic garbage bags, was behind us. The driver was shaking her fist at us and her lips were moving. I assumed she was cursing.

  In the bright lights of the lot, the driver was easy to see. She wore a white knit cap with a bright red pom-pom. It was Lovie Dykstra.

  Joe and I watched as she drove away. “I guess Lovie’s got the concession for Ple
asant Creek’s aluminum cans,” Joe said. He turned out of the parking lot and went on toward Dorinda.

  Dorinda is a pleasant little town filled with Victorian houses. We went through a nice little business district which clustered around the courthouse. There was a bank, a small supermarket, a hardware store, a mom-and-pop restaurant, a drugstore, an everythinga-dollar store. Signs indicated that Warner County’s lawyers had offices above the bank and in one renovated professional building. Then we crossed the railroad tracks and passed a fruit warehouse, a cannery—shut down for the winter—and a farmer’s co-op building. There was almost no traffic at six thirty on a Wednesday evening.

  Superficially Dorinda had some resemblance to Warner Pier. Most of its buildings dated from the same era, for example. But the cultural divide was wide. Dorinda was definitely a farming community. In comparison, Warner Pier was Sophisticated City. While Warner Pier was not any more lively than Dorinda in the winter, our business district was larger and was lined with art galleries, bookshops, gift stores, snazzy clothing boutiques, winery outlets, and a shop that made and sold fancy chocolates, businesses of a type Dorinda lacked completely. True, Warner Pier had a hardware store, but it featured more barbecue grills than plywood, just as our marine salesrooms offered more cabin cruisers than fiberglass fishing boats.

  Joe and I had driven only thirty miles, but we’d crossed a tribal boundary.

  Mac McKay lived in a pleasant house that sat on a little knoll in a nice neighborhood. The house was painted light gray, with neat black shutters, and Mac McKay himself was waiting at the door.

  I loved him on sight. He was a small man—he came about to my shoulder—with a few wisps of white hair. His eyes twinkled and his smile beamed, and he greeted Joe with obvious pleasure. He took my hand with real warmth.

  “Welcome, Lee! You look as if you’re as wonderful as Joe claims you are.”