The Chocolate Bridal Bash (23 page)

“And it turned out to be the most exciting summer of his life,” I said.

“I liked Quinn,” Mac said, “and his kidnapping bothered me. Of course, it was way out of my jurisdiction.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Quinn was kidnapped in Chicago. He’d been staying in the family apartment there. And he resurfaced on a country road near Mount Vernon, in downstate Illinois. Nobody ever figured out where he’d been held. He claimed he escaped while being transported in a car.

“The screwiest part is, nobody had noticed he’d been kidnapped until the first ransom note came in the mail.”

“How awful! Hadn’t the office where Quinn was working noticed he was gone?”

“It happened on the weekend. Of course, none of this was known at the time. It wasn’t all over the television like the Patty Hearst case. The FBI jumped in and kept it quiet. It didn’t become public until Quinn turned up around Labor Day.”

“How long had he been gone?”

Ed shrugged. “A couple of months by that time.”

The calendar in my head began to click over. “Wait,” I said. “If Quinn was found the first week in September, and he had been gone for around two months . . .” Mac nodded.

My heart began to pound, and I whispered. “That would put Quinn’s kidnapping back to July.”

“Right,” Mac said. “It was the Fourth of July weekend, as I recall. I’d have to check that, of course.”

Now my heart was really pounding. “But my mom’s wedding—what would have been her wedding—was the last weekend in August.”

Ed and Joe looked at me blankly.

“Don’t you see? Mom says she saw Quinn McKay standing on the porch at the Warner Pier house on the day before what would have been her wedding day.”

Joe frowned. “So?”

“So if Quinn was kidnapped in July, what was he doing walking around on the porch at the Pier Cove house in August?”

I
thought I’d really come up with something, but Joe and Mac McKay didn’t react. They both just stared at me.

“How could Quinn have been there?” I said. “A free man. At least Mom didn’t mention anything about his being bound and gagged.”

Mac leaned forward, frowning. “That would imply that Quinn was a party to his own kidnapping,” he said. “If he didn’t seem to be a prisoner.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Joe said. “Sally could have been mistaken. She said she didn’t know him very well. It might have been someone else.”

I pulled out my cell phone. “There’s no point in arguing about it. I’ll call and ask her.” I hit the speed dial code for Aunt Nettie’s house.

But the phone just rang. Nobody picked it up, and Aunt Nettie and I don’t have an answering machine.

“That’s funny,” I said. “Mom and Aunt Nettie weren’t planning to go anywhere. Maybe Hogan took them out to lunch.”

I punched the code for Hogan’s cell phone. He answered immediately, using his abrupt police chief voice. “Hogan Jones.”

“Hogan, it’s Lee.”

Before I could go on, he broke in. “Lee. Great. I need you here at the station.”

“I’m at Herrera’s. We haven’t ordered lunch yet.”

“Order it to go and come right over.”

“Sure. Hogan, this isn’t about Mom and Aunt Nettie, is it?”

“No. Why did you think that?”

“I called the house, and they didn’t answer. I thought maybe they’d gone somewhere with you.”

“No. I’ve been investigating your alarm in the night. I haven’t talked to them.”

“Then where are they? Why didn’t they answer?”

“I can’t guess the answer to that one. One is in the shower and the other is sweeping the porch? They drove down to take a look at the lake?”

I didn’t say anything, but my unease must have gone floating through the telephones, because after a second or two Hogan spoke again. “I’ll send Jerry Cherry out to check on the house. But I do need to see you here. Now.”

“Okay.” I clicked the cell phone off and looked at Joe and Mac hopelessly. “I guess you guys are on your own for lunch. Hogan wants me to come down to the station. Something about the prowler we had last night. I’ll try to get back.”

I kissed Mac on the cheek again, put on my jacket, and left for the Warner Pier PD. Nothing in Warner Pier is very far away, so I didn’t bother to move the van, and I walked to City Hall.

Since it was Sunday, the city offices were closed, so I went around to the back and went directly into the police department. Of course, it’s usually closed on Sunday, too, but our prowler had apparently forced Hogan to open for business. I went in and closed the door behind me.

The first thing I saw was Lovie. She was sitting on a bench against the wall, wearing her old jacket and the white hat with the red pom-pom, the one I’d seen under the interior light of Mom’s car. Her arms were crossed over her chest in a highly defensive posture, but her chin looked a bit quivery.

At least it looked quivery until she saw me. The sound of the door closing seemed to bring her out of a reverie, and her head popped toward me. But my appearance seemed to disappoint her.

She glared at me before she spoke. “I don’t know what you’re up to, little missy, but I wasn’t anywhere near your place last night.”

Getting into an argument with her didn’t seem to be wise, so I just nodded and started toward Hogan’s office, at the back of the room.

“Did you hear me?” Her voice was harsh. “I didn’t mess with anything out at your house last night! I wasn’t there!”

I still didn’t answer, and she slumped down in her seat, pulling her head into her puffy jacket. She looked like one of the birds at Aunt Nettie’s feeder, fluffing its feathers up to conserve warmth on a cold morning.

As I walked by she spoke once more, this time so low that only I could hear it. “I never wished Sally any trouble,” she said. “I never wanted her to get mixed up in this.”

I stopped. “In what? What didn’t you want Mom mixed up in?”

Lovie only shook her head.

Hogan was standing in the door to his office, and he motioned me inside.

“I asked Lovie about last night, but she’s not saying anything,” he said.

“That hat is unmistakable,” I said. “I’m sure that’s what the person by the car wore.”

“She’s called someone—a lawyer, I guess. She says she won’t say any more until he comes.”

“We’re not going to press charges,” I said. “She didn’t take anything and apparently the rental car isn’t damaged. It’s just that so many funny things have happened lately that I’d like to get at least one of them explained. Did Jerry find anything at Aunt Nettie’s house?”

“He hasn’t called in yet. But back to the business at hand—you’re sure that you saw Lovie last night?”

“The light wasn’t very good, but I saw her hat.” He frowned, so I spoke again. “I’m sure about that. And Mom saw it, too.”

A loud crash made us both jump; then we whirled toward the outside door. It had flown open and had banged against the wall. A hulking figure stood in the opening.

My jaw gaped. I didn’t look at Hogan, but I’m sure his jaw was gaping, too. Lovie jumped to her feet. “There you are!” she said.

The hulking figure rushed across the room, leaving the door open, and grabbed her. It shouted, “Mom! Are you all right?”

My brain went into paralysis. Mom? This hulking creature was calling Lovie “Mom”? If its dramatic entrance had surprised me, that development left me in a catatonic state. I couldn’t move, talk, or—so it seemed—even breathe.

Hogan reacted more quickly. He strode across the office and closed the outside door.

At that point the hulk let go of Lovie and snatched off its stocking cap. He was completely bald.

Hogan spoke. “Ed Dykstra Jr., I presume.”

He sounded calm, but I yelled. “He’s not Ed Dykstra Jr.! He’s Nurse Priddy!”

That seemed to surprise Hogan more than the hulk’s dramatic entrance had. “Who’s Nurse Priddy?” he said.

“He declared Sheriff Van Hoosier dead,” I said.

“Van Hoosier?” Hogan sounded as confused as I felt.

The big man, whoever he was, unzipped his jacket and sighed. “Ms. McKinney is right,” he said to Hogan. “I’ve been working at the Pleasant Creek Senior Center under the name Elmer Priddy. But you’re right, too. My name originally was Edward Dykstra Jr.”

Hogan looked serious. “You’re the Dykstra boy who went to Canada?”

“Right. The draft dodger.”

Hogan scratched his head, giving his Abe Lincoln impression. “Seems to me that the draft evaders were pardoned, given permission to come home, along in the Carter administration.”

“Right. 1977.”

“So where’ve you been?”

“I came back to this country in 1980. I went to Western Michigan and got my RN. I’ve been working various places since then.” He still had his arm around Lovie, and he gave her a squeeze. “Mom knew where I was. We saw each other.”

“But you didn’t tell anybody else where you were? Or who you were? Why was that?”

Ed hesitated, inhaled deeply, then exhaled with a huffing noise. “I think I don’t have to explain that right now. Right now I have to convince you that my mother didn’t do anything to threaten Sally TenHuis and that she wasn’t prowling around the TenHuis house last night.”

“But I saw her,” I said. “I saw the white hot—I mean, the white hat! I saw the white hat with the red pom-pom.”

“You may have seen a hat like hers,” Ed said, “but she wasn’t wearing it.”

We were still at an impasse. But of course Ed was right. I hadn’t seen Lovie’s face. I’d seen a figure, bent over and wearing a bulky, shape-disguising jacket, silhouetted against my mom’s rental car. I hadn’t been able to tell much about the figure’s height, weight, age, or hair color. I’d identified Lovie strictly from her distinctive hat.

“I agree that it would have been easy to come up with a hat that would look like Lovie’s,” I said. “But why would anybody do that?”

“People harass my mom a lot,” Ed—if that’s who he was—said. “Maybe someone simply wanted to get her in trouble.”

“But I never thought she was mixed up in that kidnapping attempt,” I said.

Ed stared at me angrily. “She was definitely not involved in any so-called kidnapping attempt.”

Hogan reassumed control of his police station then, cutting me off without actually using the words “shut” and “up,” ordering Ed into his office, and telling Lovie and me to sit down and wait. “Keep quiet” was an unsaid part of his instructions. So I sat down, folded my hands, and stared into space. Lovie didn’t say anything, so I thought a series of confused thoughts.

The appearance of Ed—who had apparently been in contact with his mother all along—was an unexpected twist. As I’d blurted out, I could never suspect Lovie of being mixed up in what I still believed was the attempted kidnapping of my mother. She simply wouldn’t have been able to get hold of a large and impressive car to use in the plot. And she didn’t have an available driver.

Unless Ed—I pictured the driver who had tried to snatch my mom. He’d worn a furry hat and a dressy overcoat. But no, he wasn’t Ed. He’d seemed familiar, true, and I was still trying to place him. But he wasn’t Ed.

And how did all this link up to the death of Sheriff Van Hoosier? Of course, Ed—in his persona of Elmer Priddy, RN—had been present when Van Hoosier died. But Ed had been the one who insisted Van Hoosier’s death had not been natural. Even though his boss, the nursing home director, hadn’t liked it—even though Van Hoosier’s doctor might have let Ed declare the ex-sheriff dead without a personal check of the body—Ed had insisted that Van Hoosier had been bashed and then smothered. Which pretty much let Ed out as a suspect.

Lovie had been at the nursing home the day Van Hoosier died, too. Joe and I had seen her leaving. That thought gave me a chill right between my shoulder blades, and I sneaked a peek at her. She was sneaking a peek at me.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture Lovie as a killer. At first the thought seemed really silly. Lovie was an old woman. But she was an old woman who got lots of outside exercise, walking along Warner Pier’s streets and the rural roads of western Michigan, picking up cans. And I’d seen her toss huge sacks of those aluminum cans into the back of her truck. Yes, she might have had the strength to smother a man who had been weakened by a stroke.

Lovie spoke suddenly. “Ed blames himself, but it was my fault!”

Her voice startled me, and I opened my eyes so quickly that I nearly yanked a crick in my eyelids. I didn’t say anything.

“My fault!” She repeated the words, and they almost became a wail. “My fault! I was the one who lured him into that world. I was the one who thought we might accomplish something. It was all my fault.”

She needed soothing, but I didn’t know what would calm her down. We stared at each other for at least thirty seconds before I spoke. “I’m sure Chief Jones will sort it all out,” I said.