The Chocolate Bridal Bash (16 page)

Heck, since the advent of the Internet, it’s easy to find anybody anywhere. Even if Van Hoosier wasn’t computer literate, he could have asked the Dorinda librarian to look Mom up for him. But Van Hoosier hadn’t done that. He had apparently only gotten interested in Mom at the end of his life, after his thought processes had become unclear.

And what was this about a kidnapping? I’d read all the newspapers for the year my mom ran away, and the most serious crime committed in Warner County was drug dealing. In fact, that had been a real problem when Van Hoosier was sheriff.

The only kidnappings in the news had been Patty Hearst—she’d been kidnapped a year earlier in California—and Quinn McKay. I toyed with the idea that the McKay kidnapping had some link to Warner County. But Quinn McKay had been kidnapped in Chicago and released in southern Illinois. And Aunt Nettie thought that nobody but his stepmother used the Warner Pier cottage. Quinn never came up himself.

The whole thing was nuts. I resolved to forget it until Mom arrived Saturday.

That was easy to resolve, but hard to accomplish. Warner Pier is such a small town. Even as I was resolving to forget the whole thing until Mom arrived, I glanced up and saw the Hilton Garden Shop truck go by. I could barely make the logo out in the dim light, but it reminded me that Tom Hilton had also been a bearer at Bill Dykstra’s funeral. Everywhere I looked something reminded me of the questions I had about the whole situation.

I was also reminded that I had snapped at Tom Hilton the last time I talked to him. I’d been in a rush to catch the UPS man, and I hadn’t wanted to discuss my mom. I hadn’t taken time to be polite.

I decided to stop by the garden shop on my way home and apologize. Maybe I could ask Tom about Bill Dykstra at the same time. And I could buy Aunt Nettie a fifty-pound bag of sunflower seeds. I looked at the clock. Nearly closing time for us and for the Garden Shop. I headed out.

When I got to the shop, I found Tom standing on a ladder, arranging an elaborate display of bird feeders. He was using fishing line to hang each feeder from a frame suspended from the ceiling. The bird feeders were beautifully crafted. There was a miniature lighthouse, a Victorian mansion, a sailing boat, a fairy-tale castle. The feeders were obviously designed as yard art, rather than mere bird attractors. I wondered if Aunt Nettie’s flat wooden tray wouldn’t draw more birds.

Tom greeted me with a friendly grin and brushed off my apology. He smiled at me from the top of his ladder. “I understand trying to catch the UPS man,” he said. “Besides, you’ve got a lot to do, planning a wedding.”

“We’re trying to keep it small, but the thing keeps growing. I had one question for you, Tom. I just found out that you knew Bill Dykstra, the guy Mom almost married.”

Tom gave me a sharp look. “What about it?”

“How did you meet him?”

“My mom took me to kindergarten, and there he was. Bill and I went through thirteen years of school together. We were in Cub Scouts together. Played basketball in high school. Worked together picking apples. I knew him my whole life, Lee.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Why?” Tom asked curtly.

I told the truth. “I’m just curious, Tom. My mom never told me anything about him or about the wedding that didn’t come off. And neither did anybody here in Warner Pier.”

“I guess we all thought you knew.”

“I suppose that’s why. Anyway, I know now, and it’s such a stunning part of my mom’s life that I’m trying to understand how such a thing could happen.”

“That’s easy. Sally and Bill were young. Too young. They realized it and called the whole thing off. Sally was embarrassed and left town. End of story.”

“You’re leaving out Bill Dykstra’s suicide.”

Tom’s stepped down one step on his ladder. I saw where he was looking and handed him a bird feeder that was still on the floor, this one shaped like a red barn. He hung it in place before he spoke.

“I wish I could leave Bill’s suicide out,” he said. “I’ve spent more than thirty years trying to understand it.”

“Which brings me back to my original question, Tom. What kind of guy was Bill?”

Tom looked down, and this time I handed him a bird feeder shaped like an old-fashioned schoolhouse. He hung it carefully. Then he turned to me and spoke directly and firmly. “A peacemaker,” he said. “Bill was a peacemaker. Even when we were little kids, he was always the one who was trying to stop fights. He would never take sides, never gang up on other kids the way boys do. He was the one who suggested taking turns. The one who was willing to share first place rather than hurt someone else’s feelings.”

I could see that Tom was blinking back tears, but he kept talking. “The only time I ever saw Bill mad was when some guys were making fun of another kid—bullying him. Bill waded into them. And he did the same thing when Rollie Taylor came to town.”

“Rollie? But Rollie came here as a teacher.”

“Right. But he was a squirrelly kind of guy in those days. Hair too long, belly too big, soft-looking. Inexperienced. He wanted to be a pal to the students, didn’t keep a firm hand on discipline. So the guys in his classes gave him hell.”

“Bill stood up for him?”

“Yeah. Rollie was a friend of Bill’s mother. She asked Bill to look after him. Bill did. It was that simple. And Bill was popular enough that when he said to lay off Mr. Taylor, the guys laid off. Then Mrs. Dykstra took Rollie in hand, taught him the tricks of keeping an orderly classroom. Between the two of them they turned him into a pretty good teacher.”

“Bill sounds like a nice guy. I bet he let Mom lead him around by the nose.”

Tom laughed. “She thought she did! But when it came down to it, ol’ Bill held his own. He just never raised his voice while he was doing it.”

“How’d he get along with his family?”

“Ed Jr. broke his heart.”

“His brother? How?”

“All that demonstrating stuff. It was all right with Lovie—Mrs. Dykstra. But Mr. Dykstra—man, he didn’t like it. It split the family.”

“And Bill blamed his brother?”

“Yeah. He found out Ed had feet of clay. See, Bill had always idolized Ed. Ed protected Bill—he protected me, too. He was an Eagle Scout. He could tramp through the woods, dive from the high board at the beach, build a set of stilts, fix a bicycle, play marbles. Ed taught Bill and me all that stuff. Then Ed went off the tracks.”

“I heard that Ed was even into drugs.”

“I’m afraid that’s right. Bill was—well, crushed—crushed by Ed’s . . . rebellion. If that’s the right word. Bill’s idol had fallen. With a crash. Landed in Canada. Bill didn’t understand how Ed could do such a thing.”

“Bill didn’t have sympathy for the antiwar movement?”

“Bill was a by-the-books, obey-the-rules kind of guy. If his country had called, he would have gone. And Ed had been that way, too. When we were growing up.”

“Apparently both Bill and Ed changed in the way they looked at the world.”

“The changes were too abrupt. At least Bill’s last action was abrupt. I guess that’s why I had such a hard time accepting Bill’s suicide. It wasn’t a by-the-rules way to act.”

Tom got down from his ladder and stared up at the hanging bird feeders. He seemed to consider them seriously. Then he turned to me, and I saw that he was still blinking back tears.

“I hated the idea of Bill’s suicide so much that for years I tried to convince myself he had been murdered,” he said.

M
urder. In all the talking I’d done about Bill Dykstra’s death, this was the first time anyone had suggested it could have been anything but suicide.

But I didn’t comment as I paid Tom Hilton for the birdseed or as he loaded it into the van for me. I left the garden shop. I let the idea roll around in my little brain while I started the van and moved to the exit of Tom’s parking lot. I allowed it to seep in while I stopped to let a small SUV go by; I even noted that the face I saw through the side window was that of Elmer Priddy. His bald head was unmistakable with his hood pushed back for driving. And I kept Tom’s idea on simmer while a ramshackle truck followed him: Lovie Dykstra with her usual load of cans. Tourists and locals: business as usual in Warner Pier. I didn’t let the two vehicles interrupt my contemplation of what Tom Hilton had said.

I didn’t find the idea of murder as shocking as it might have been. I’d read enough mystery novels to know that fictional murderers often tried to fake suicides. But could they do it successfully in real life?

I knew how to find out.

I headed home. Aunt Nettie had mentioned that she had invited Hogan Jones over for dinner that evening. I was going out with Joe, but I could put off our departure until after Hogan arrived. And Hogan was not only Aunt Nettie’s boyfriend—if a “boy” can be in his sixties—he was also Warner Pier Police Chief. And before he’d been Warner Pier chief, he’d been a detective in the Cincinnati Police Department. He’d know if it were possible to fake a suicide and get away with it. Get away with it for thirty-three years.

I could barely wait for Hogan to get into the house so I could ask him. Luckily Aunt Nettie wasn’t quite ready when his car pulled into the drive, so I was able to meet him at the door. But before I could ask him a question, he asked me one.

“You gonna be available in the morning?”

“Available? What for?”

“To make a statement about finding Van Hoosier.”

“Oh. Sure. Do I have to go to Dorinda?”

“Nope. The sheriff called me at five. He tried all day to get a deputy over to take your statement. Never could manage it. So I said I’d fill in.”

Hogan and I set a time for me to come by the Warner Pier PD, and I settled him into a comfortable chair in front of the fire. Then I began my interrogation.

“Hogan, can a suicide be faked? Or is that just in mystery novels?”

“Sure it can, Lee. Every experienced detective can list a dozen cases of suicide he’s heard of or personally witnessed when there were a lot of unanswered questions. Why do you want to know?”

I quickly sketched the information about Bill Dykstra ordering my mom to leave Warner Pier and about the general astonishment people who had known Bill had expressed at his suicide.

Hogan shook his head in surprise at the story. But he drew the line at saying Bill Dykstra’s suicide was improbable. “After a suicide, friends and relations always say they’re completely amazed, Lee. None of us want to think we could have done something—listened harder, recommended counseling, been more sympathetic—and prevented a suicide.”

“But it would be possible to fake a suicide by carbon monoxide?”

“Of a young, healthy guy like you describe? It wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world. You’d have to immobilize him some way, so he didn’t just get out of the car. Hit him in the head, tie him up, drug him, get him drunk.”

“Wouldn’t an autopsy reveal those things? I mean, blood tests would show drugs or alcohol, for example. Knocking him out would leave a lump on the back of his head.”

“Yes, an autopsy could reveal the contributing cause of death. But an autopsy probably wouldn’t be performed.”

“No autopsy!”

Hogan shook his head. “An autopsy is done only in cases where the cause of death is unknown. If the cause of death was as obvious as a hose from the exhaust pipe to the driver’s side window, it’s unlikely the authorities would call for one. Of course, the family could ask for one. But that’s not likely to happen.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t they want to know?”

“But they probably thought they did know. And autopsies cost money. A lot of money. And it would be paid by the family.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “The Dykstras didn’t have a lot of money, I guess.”

“They were already faced with having to pay for a funeral, Lee. Unless they thought there was really something to be gained by an autopsy, they probably wouldn’t have asked for one.”

I thought about that until Hogan cleared his throat. “Unless,” he said, “
unless
the family didn’t have any confidence in the investigating officer.”

That suggestion took my breath away.

Of course the Dykstras wouldn’t have had any confidence in the investigating officer! The investigating officer had been that well-known crook Carl Van Hoosier!

I inhaled so abruptly that the fire in the fireplace nearly went out. “Oh! Maybe they did ask for an autopsy then!”

Hogan frowned. “The investigating officer was Sheriff Van Hoosier, I gather.”

“Right! Everybody has some story about how awful he was.”

“Funny how the guy got elected sheriff term after term.” Hogan sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.

My jaw dropped. “I hadn’t thought about that. All I hear is that he was a rotunda—I mean, rotten! Everybody says he was a rotten guy.”

“Today they do. Nowadays they know he had to leave office or face malfeasance charges. At the time . . .” Hogan shrugged.

“I see what you mean. The Dykstras might have trusted him, I guess. But what about the coroner?”

“You mean the medical examiner? All he does is establish the cause of death. How it happened is up to the investigating agency. And there would have been no question about what killed Bill Dykstra. Death by carbon monoxide isn’t hard to diagnose. If Bill had been dead before the carbon monoxide entered the car, the ME would definitely have noticed. So I feel pretty certain Bill died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“So there wouldn’t have been a complete autopsy.”

“Probably not.”

I sighed deeply.

“Of course,” Hogan said, “I could try to find out.”

“Oh! Would you?”

“The current sheriff and I are fairly good pals. I could ask to see the records. They may be buried in a warehouse someplace, but I could ask.”

I expressed my deepest gratitude, and we left it there. Aunt Nettie appeared, and in a few minutes Joe did, too. He didn’t stay long enough to take off his coat. I got my jacket, and we left.