The Chocolate Bridal Bash (12 page)

I
guess my surprise showed, because Mac McKay looked a little embarrassed.

“I���m just repeating the gossip of the time,” he said. “Talk along the lakeshore was that Ben the third didn’t approve of his son. But he seemed like a nice kid to me, thirty-four years ago.”

“You knew him?” I’m sure I sounded surprised.

“He did an internship for me the summer before he was kidnapped.” Then Mac smiled. “But we’ve gotten away from Carl Van Hoosier. Why do Carl’s problems of twenty-five years ago have any interest for you two?”

Joe and I exchanged a glance. He shrugged slightly, tossing the ball to me. Telling Mac McKay the whole story was my option. Did I want to?

Mac seemed very trustworthy. I leaned forward and spoke. “I don’t suppose you remember the suicide of a young man named Bill Dykstra?” I said. I told him the date.

Mac leaned back and scratched his head. “Was that the runaway-bride case?”

“Yes,” I said. “I just recently found out that my mom
was
the run-away bride. She’s never talked to me about it.”

“And you’d like to know just what happened.”

“Of course.”

Mac sighed. “So would I. I always thought that whole situation was screwy, but I had no evidence, so I didn’t feel that I could get involved. Bill Dykstra’s parents were furious, of course, and I understood their attitude, since Bill Dykstra had no known history of drug abuse.”

Drug abuse? I sat there rigid. I must have looked like a piece of Lake Michigan driftwood half-buried in sand. How did drug abuse figure in Bill Dykstra’s death? Finally I gasped. Then I spoke. Or rather yelled.

“Drug abuse!”

Joe echoed my words, but he didn’t yell. “Drug abuse? Mac, are you saying that Bill Dykstra had taken drugs?”

Mac nodded. “That’s what the sheriff’s report said. ‘Drug paraphernalia’ was found in the car with him.”

“What kind of drugs?” Joe said.

“Oh, pot, as I recall. A roach and a small baggie, maybe. I’d have to look it up.”

“That’s a surprise,” Joe said. “But I guess it shouldn’t be.”

Mac nodded. “Yes, thirty-odd years ago smoking pot was pretty common. But his parents hadn’t known anything about it, and their older son had been picked up for possession, so I’d have expected them to recognize the symptoms. I think their reaction is the reason I remember the case—they were really shocked.”

I got my voice back. “But Bill committed suicide by running a hose from his exhaust into his car. There was nothing in the newspaper report about drugs.”

“He hadn’t overdosed or anything, Lee. He’d simply smoked some pot. It makes some people depressed, you know. So he drove out to a lonely place, and—like you said—used a garden hose and some duct tape—both of them identified as coming from his parents’ garage—to kill himself.”

Joe frowned. “But where did Lee’s mom fit in? Why did she run away?”

“Since nobody ever got to ask her, I have no idea. Maybe she realized he was taking drugs, decided she didn’t want to be married to a druggie, and got on a bus.” Mac turned to me. “Since Bill was dead by his own hand, and the drugs didn’t appear to be directly connected to his death, maybe they weren’t mentioned to the newspaper. Or the editor chose not to print it.”

We left it at that. Joe and Mac caught up on a few people who had worked in the courthouse back when Joe had been an intern, then Joe and I excused ourselves and left. Mac assured us that he’d see us at our wedding reception. I was sure the feisty little guy would be the life of the party.

Neither Joe nor I had much to say as we drove back to Warner Pier. I was assimilating the things Mac had told us, especially the part about Bill Dykstra smoking pot. It just didn’t seem possible. My mom had always been firmly against drugs of any sort. She had to be really sick before she took an aspirin. Maybe seeing her fiancé getting into the drug scene had made her run away. But, no, that wouldn’t work because it didn’t explain why she was terrified of Sheriff Carl Van Hoosier. The late Sheriff Carl Van Hoosier. Who, according to Mac McKay, had been run out of office because he did too many favors for Mac’s “rich relatives.”

The whole thing made my head spin.

Joe didn’t ask me to come home with him; I guess he could tell I wasn’t in a romantic mood. But after he pulled into Aunt Nettie’s drive, he put both arms around me.

“You know what you’ve got to do, don’t you?” he said.

I leaned against him and sighed. “Yeah. I’ve got to ask my mom what happened.”

“Or drop the whole thing.”

I laughed. “And leave my curiosity unsatisfied?”

“Life’s always full of unanswered questions.”

“Unless . . .” I hesitated, then spoke again. “I don’t suppose that Carl Van Hoosier’s death had anything to do with my asking questions.”

Joe didn’t answer for a moment. “I don’t see how asking questions about something that happened more than thirty years ago could be a motive for killing the old guy today. From the sound of him, Van Hoosier would have gone on making enemies after he was out of office.”

I kissed Joe good night and went inside. Aunt Nettie was in bed, but awake, so I went in to report on our evening. She was properly horrified by our discovery of Carl Van Hoosier’s body, and listened sympathetically to my tale. But what she really wanted to know was how Inez was doing, and I was glad I could tell her Inez seemed to be fine. She smiled as I described Mac McKay, with his lively interest in the happenings of “his” county—past and present.

“He more or less claimed to have forced Carl Van Hoosier out of office—all on his own,” I said. “Said Van Hoosier did ‘too many favors for my rich relatives.’ McKay is a second cousin once removed to the heir to the McKay fortune, Quinn McKay.”

“The one who was kidnapped?”

“Yep. Mac said he knew him, though he apparently doesn’t associate with the family.”

I told her what Mac had said about his relatives, and she nodded wisely. “I think the father—that would be Benson McKay III—was married several times,” she said. “But the same Mrs. Benson McKay the Third has come into the shop ever since we opened, so I guess she’s the widow. I think she inherited the summer cottage—or got a life interest in it or something.”

“That may be the reason Quinn McKay doesn’t come around here much. I was at city council last night, and the McKay Foundation had made a grant to the city. Apparently they’ve made a bunch of grants. If Quinn McKay doesn’t even come up here, I wonder why they’re interested in Warner Pier projects.”

“Maybe the stepmother is a foundation trustee.”

“Maybe so. Is the McKay place that big modern thing on the river?”

“No, that’s a different McKay family. They’re from Detroit. The McKay cottage is about two miles south of this house and on the inland side of Lake Shore Drive. A big old farmhouse.”

“The inland side? What? The McKays have all that money, and they haven’t bought a view of the lake?”

Aunt Nettie smiled gently. “My understanding is that the house was inherited from the original McKay pioneers. It was the family farmhouse.”

“Seems as if they would have traded up.”

“Mrs. McKay could have inherited the cottage but not enough money to make major changes to it. She and her guests must swim at Badger Creek Beach. It’s just across Lake Shore Drive.”

Aunt Nettie yawned then, so I said good night. I went up to my room, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at the telephone. I checked my watch. Eleven o’clock. That meant it was ten o’clock at my mother’s townhouse in Dallas.

My Texas grandmother always told me not to call anyone before nine a.m. or after nine p.m. It was an absolute of Texas etiquette. I felt relieved. I could postpone calling my mom until the next day. Feeling smug, I collected my pajamas and went back downstairs to the bathroom for a shower. I wasn’t a chicken. I was simply being polite, or so I told myself.

The next morning the
Grand Rapids Press
was full of the strange death of a retired sheriff in a Warner County retirement center. The current sheriff, Miles DeBoer Smith, said he was conferring with the Michigan State Police, which I knew was routine in rural counties. Neither Smith nor the state police spokesman had said much to the newspaper. They barely confirmed that Van Hoosier was dead, but the reporter had found out about the signs of a struggle in Van Hoosier’s room.

“Controversial” was the adjective the
Press
used to describe Van Hoosier’s career in office. The rest of the story was pretty factual.

Van Hoosier had been born in Warner County and had attended public schools in Dorinda. “Boasts that his humble beginnings gave him an affinity for the working man were always part of his campaign rhetoric,” the
Press
article said.

But Van Hoosier was apparently the last of his humble family. “Van Hoosier never married,” the article said, “Acquaintances said they knew of no close relatives.”

Van Hoosier apparently hadn’t gone to college. He served in Korea with the U.S. Army, and after his discharge was a deputy for a previous sheriff until he ran for the office himself. He held the office twenty years. The newspaper report then said something I found really interesting.

“Van Hoosier left office at the age of fifty-two. Since that time he had divided his time between a home in Dorinda and a houseboat he kept on the Florida Intracoastal Waterway. His boat won a national prize for interior design three years ago.”

The old guy had retired at fifty-two? And he’d had a house in Dorinda plus a houseboat on the Intracoastal Waterway? A houseboat that won a prize for interior design?

It sounded to me as if serving as a county official in Warner County, Michigan, had turned out to be pretty profitable for Carl Van Hoosier. Especially coming from those “humble beginnings.”

“Van Hoosier suffered a stroke last summer while staying in Dorinda. He subsequently moved to the Dorinda retirement center,” the article concluded.

I thought about the article as I got ready for work. I made several deductions. First, Carl Van Hoosier hadn’t been a very nice guy. I’d already decided that from what Mercy Woodyard had said, of course, but reading between the lines of the article on his death certainly confirmed it. The newspaper hadn’t interviewed his “friends,” for example. “Acquaintances” had been the best they could come up with.

Second, Van Hoosier had apparently used the sheriff’s office to make a lot of money. When a guy who came from “humble beginnings” and who had no family to will him property winds up living in a prizewinning houseboat on a Florida waterway in the winter and spending the summer near the shore of Lake Michigan, he didn’t do it by saving his loose change in a pickle jar. I was willing to bet the McKays weren’t the only summer people he’d done favors for.

But his story had a pitiful end. Inez had implied that his fellow residents at the retirement center hadn’t liked him, and the
Press
hadn’t even found a friend to talk about him. And he’d had no family. He died alone.

Except for someone who hated him enough to kill him.

I gave a shudder, then looked at my watch. It was eight a.m. in Dallas. Time to call my mother. The no calls before nine a.m. rule didn’t function if the callee would be up getting ready for work.

I got my mom’s answering machine, of course. But when I said, “Hey, Mom, it’s Lee,” she picked up.

“This better be an emergency,” she said. “I’m late getting to the office, as usual.”

She was making me feel intimidated, so I plunged into conversation. “I just wanted to tell you that the shepherd was killed yesterday.” When my comment was greeted with blank silence, I figured out what I’d said.

“Sheriff!” I said. “Joe and I found Carl Van Hoosegow—I mean, Van Hoosier! We found him dead.”

My mother was kind enough to ignore my tongue problems. “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. But you said he was killed. What happened to him?”

I sketched the circumstances. “So they’re not saying until there’s an autopsy, but it sure sounds as if he was hit in the head, then strangled or smothered.”

Mom’s voice was sharp. “Why were you and Joe going to see him?”

“We were being nosy,” I said.

“What made you even get interested in the jerk?”

I didn’t bother to keep the resentment out of my voice. “When you mentioned him, and I found out—not from
you
—that you’d left Warner Pier on what would have been your wedding day, I got sort of curious.”

“Don’t tell me that situation’s still a hot item in Warner Pier.”

“Of course it is. You never told anybody why you left, so they’re still wondering. If you’d told them, they probably would have forgotten the whole thing.”

“It wasn’t any of their business!”

“I’m sure that’s true, but that doesn’t make any diffidence. I mean, difference! They still want to know.”

“And so do you.”

“Yes, you’re right. You’re my mother, and I have a certain interest in what went on in your life before I knew you.”

Mom sighed deeply. “I can’t blame you, I guess. But it was just so humiliating.”

“You were embarrassed?”

“No! Humiliated. This wasn’t a matter of my slip showing or getting caught necking—or even something more. The whole episode was
deeply
humiliating. I didn’t feel that I could ever face anyone from Warner Pier again.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

“Well, after I found out that Bill had committed suicide, I didn’t feel that way anymore. But—remember, I was still a teenager—at the time I just didn’t think I could bear it.”

“Bear what? Why
did
you leave?”

Mom took a deep breath, and her next words came out in a rush.

“I left because my fiancé took me to South Haven and put me on a bus. He told me to get out of town. But he never told me why.”