The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle (10 page)

“Ice cream cakes! They were our specialty!” She flourished the cone of dark icing and another graceful curve appeared on top of another milk chocolate–covered truffle. “I can write ‘Happy Birthday’ in any kind of script!”

I laughed and turned to go, but Dolly cleared her throat, a noise something like a bull elephant’s trumpet. Then she did something really odd. Odd for Dolly, that it. She whispered.

“That Maia Michaelson—what do you think of her?”

“She’s not my best friend,” I said cautiously. “What do you think of her?”

“She was only interested in that movie guy. I’d like to talk to her, but it wasn’t a good time.” She was still whispering. “I was interested in how she writes.”

“Oh, yes! You’re an author, too.”

Dolly got redder than usual and forgot to whisper. “Just nonfiction! All about food! I could never write fiction!”

I leaned a little closer. “Your manuscript was a lot more fun to read than Maia’s novel!”

Dolly spoke again, and this time she remembered to drop her voice. “I thought the book was a dud, too. But the family background . . .” She frowned. “The Snows . . . are they . . . well, respectable?”

“You’ll have to ask Aunt Nettie. There aren’t many of them. As far as I know, Maia’s the only quirky one. And I think the book has just gone to her head. She’ll probably come down to earth sometime soon. Of course, Silas was a bit crotchety.”

I told Hazel I was leaving, then I left. I didn’t understand Dolly’s interest in Maia’s novel, but I wasn’t worried about it. I was more concerned about why I was so reluctant to meet Joe for lunch in his new apartment.

Joe was lucky to have that apartment. Warner Pier’s quaintness has made the town so darn popular that it’s almost impossible for anybody but a millionaire to buy or rent a place to live. That was one reason Joe had spent the past three years living in a room at his boat shop. I think he’d been perfectly comfortable there with his hot plate, microwave, TV set, and rollaway bed until I’d come on the scene. I didn’t object to his Spartan living arrangements, but he was so self-conscious about them that he refused to invite me over for more than a pizza. Since I lived with Aunt Nettie in an old house that offered little privacy, Joe and I had been hard put to find someplace to be alone together. And we liked to be alone together sometimes, now that we were engaged. Or on the verge of being engaged. Or going steady. Or whatever our relationship was.

I was almost thirty, and Joe was past it. We’d both been through unhappy marriages and had come out the other end, and Joe was eager for us to set a wedding date. So far I’d been dragging my feet, though I wasn’t sure just why. I suspected that Joe thought getting a decent place to live would be an inducement for me to make that final decision and commit marriage.

But he hadn’t been able to find anything in his price range until Warner Pier’s summer rush was over. He couldn’t afford to buy a house, and between Memorial Day and Labor Day every apartment in town is occupied either by tourists, by summer people, or by temporary help—the teachers, college students, and others who staff Warner Pier’s restaurants, bed and breakfast inns, motels, and marinas during the tourist season. It had been September fifteenth before Joe signed a lease on a second-floor apartment overlooking Warner Pier’s quaint Victorian main drag, Peach Street.

The apartment had two bedrooms, a nice kitchen, and a large living room. The drawback was that it had been thoroughly trashed by four college students who had rented it all summer. Joe got a month’s rent free by offering to clean and repaint himself. So for the past three weeks he had spent all his free evenings working over there, and I’d helped him on a lot of them.

But lately he’d been pressing me harder and harder about setting a wedding date. But since I’d found Silas Snow’s body, he hadn’t mentioned Aunt Nettie or getting married at all. As I crossed the street toward the new apartment, I hoped he’d continue that policy.

The apartment’s entrance was a door between a gift shop and an art gallery. It was unlocked. I went inside, then called out as I went upstairs. “It’s me!”

“Come on up!”

Joe was in the newly painted kitchen. He had set the secondhand maple table he’d acquired with his two plastic place mats. I happened to know he’d scrounged them from his mother; they were patterned with blue checks. A sack from the Sidewalk Café sat in the middle, and he was pouring a Diet Coke.

“Roast beef with horseradish sauce,” he said. “On thin rye.”

“Yum, yum. All that and a dill pickle.”

Joe shared out the sandwiches (his was ham and swiss) and piled chips in the middle of the table.

“I guess I’m starving,” I said. “I don’t remember much about breakfast.”

“I’ve got a package of Oreos, if you want dessert.”

We ate in silence for ten minutes, and it was comforting. As Joe swallowed his last bite of ham and cheese, he poured more Diet Coke. Then he finally spoke.

“Still upset about Silas?”

“Not for the past hour or so. I haven’t had time to think about it.”

“Something new?”

“Well, yeah.” I chewed, swallowed, and decided I still wasn’t sure what to tell him about Aubrey. “But you said you needed advice.”

“I need your opinion on some tile for the bathroom.”

“Tile? You’re putting new tile in the bathroom? I thought the landlord said he wouldn’t replace the tile in there, since it’s not cracked or anything.”

“I’ll buy it myself. You said you didn’t like green.”

“My opinion doesn’t count.”

“Sure it does. I don’t want to get something that will drive you crazy.” He got up and brought a small box over to the table, then pulled out several pieces of ceramic tile. “I tried to get light colors. Do you like the pink? The white? The light blue? Or do you want to go for the fifties look with the oatmeal fleck?”

“I don’t want to pick out tile for somebody else’s apartment.”

Joe’s jaw tightened, and his eyebrows got that thundery look that means he’s mad. He dropped the tile back into the box and stood up. “That remark makes your intentions pretty plain.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I want to get married, and you don’t. At least not to me.”

“The bathroom tile tells you that?”

“Well, calling this ‘somebody else’s apartment’ makes it pretty plain you don’t think you’ll ever live here.”

“I don’t know that! I just—oh, we’ve been over this before. I botched things so badly the first time. You know how I feel.”

“I’m beginning to think I do.”

“Joe, I didn’t come over here to make a plan for the rest of my life!”

“Why did you come?”

“You invited me to lunch. Plus I’m just a weakling. I’m upset about Aunt Nettie and I wanted a shoulder to cry on.”

“What’s wrong with Nettie?”

“Oh, she’s gone out to lunch with this nutty guy who claims he’s a movie producer.”

“So? I thought the chief told you not to worry about that.”

“How can I help it? Joe, I know he’s a crook.”

“How do you know?”

I left out any reference to Maggie, of course, as I sketched for Joe my Internet search and its lack of results. It was better than talking about bathroom tile and all its implications.

“And now he’s talking to her about investing in this supposed movie he claims to be making.”

Joe grinned. “Lee, you’re perfectly right to be concerned, but you really don’t have to worry about Nettie.”

“I know she’s no dummy! I’m not worried about her losing her money! I’m worried about her losing her—her pride. Her self-respect. I’m worried about her friends laughing at her. I’m worried that if a really nice guy comes along, she’ll be afraid he’s just trying to exploit her like Aubrey the creep.”

Joe was grinning more broadly. He took my hand. “Lee, you’re a sweetheart. But you really don’t need to worry about—”

A loud rapping sounded, and Joe quit talking in the middle of his sentence.

“Is that someone downstairs? At the door?” I asked.

I followed as Joe walked through the living room and threw up one of the windows that overlooked the street. The screens were off, so he stuck his head out. “Hi, Nettie.”

I put my head out, too. Aunt Nettie, Aubrey, and Monte were on the sidewalk below, looking up at us.

“Come on up,” Joe said.

“You come down,” Aunt Nettie said. “Aubrey’s offered to take me out to see the site of the big romance, the cottage where Dennis Grundy courted Julia Snow. I knew you wanted to see it, too, Lee. Why don’t the two of you come with us?

“
V
ernon said it would be all right,” Aunt Nettie said. “I haven’t been out there in years.”

Aunt Nettie was sounding a bit urgent. I concluded that she wanted someone to go with her. I agreed; I didn’t want her wandering off to remote spots alone with Aubrey. Not after what I’d been told by Maggie.

To cinch the deal, Joe spoke. “I’d like to go. I’ve never been out there when I wasn’t trespassing.”

Ten minutes later Joe and I had cleared away our lunch debris and were waiting on the sidewalk when Aubrey pulled his SUV up in front of Joe’s apartment. As we got in, Monte gave us a welcoming bark from his heavy plastic traveling crate in the rear deck.

“Chuck O’Riley wanted to shoot some pictures out there,” Aubrey said. “He interviewed Vernon at the police station for his news story on Silas’s murder, and at the same time he asked if he could take some pictures at the cottage. Newsmen are nervy! I almost thought he was going to ask Maia to come along. I wouldn’t have had the courage. Chuck’s going to meet us there.”

“If Vernon gave Chuck permission then Maia must be Silas’s heir?” I asked.

“If Silas had a will, I’m sure it hasn’t been read,” Joe said. “But Vernon seems to be in charge at the moment. You can’t just ignore a farm until the courts act. Somebody has to make sure the stock is fed and the garden watered. It would be normal for a neighbor, especially one who’s a relative, to step in.”

For once Aubrey didn’t have much to say. In fact, we all grew quiet as we reached the Haven Road exit and turned toward Silas Snow’s fruit stand. The area was still marked off by police tape, and one lone sheriff’s deputy was stationed there. We went west on Haven Road, then turned south when we reached Lake Shore Drive, maybe two-tenths of a mile west of the interstate.

The cottage was at what might be considered the back of Silas Snow’s property, since his house was near the interstate. The one-lane road that led to the cottage was less than a mile south of Aunt Nettie’s house, which is on the inland side of Lake Shore Drive. The Grundy cottage lane also turned inland off Lake Shore Drive, and the house wasn’t far off the road. I’d been by there dozens of times, but the area was so overgrown that I’d never realized any sort of structure was behind the trees and bushes.

“The cottage isn’t much to look at,” Aubrey said, “but the historical context makes it interesting.”

I thought “historical context” was a pretty fancy term for “rented by minor gangster for three months seventy-five years ago,” but I kept my mouth shut.

After Aubrey pulled into the sandy drive, we all sat in the SUV and surveyed the cottage. I’d been expecting Dennis Grundy’s old cottage to be a ruin, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t in the best repair, but it was a sturdy little Michigan cottage of the type built around 1920. An ancient coat of white paint still clung to the siding, and rusted screen wire surrounded what had been a sleeping porch where the frame of an old metal cot stood at one end.

The vegetation apparently hadn’t been cleared in several years. It was thinner around the house than near the road, but saplings were growing next to the foundation and the grass and weeds in the yard were high. Trees hung thickly above the cottage, and its roof was speckled with patches of moss. It looked lonely and uncared-for, but it wasn’t falling down.

“I’d have expected Silas Snow to sell this place,” Joe said. “The house isn’t worth anything, but the lot is. Walking distance to the lake, after all. It should bring a good price.”

“Snow apparently continued to rent the cottage to vacationers up until about ten years ago,” Aubrey said. He got out of the SUV, and the rest of us followed his lead.

“It’s spooky,” I said. “Somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if Dennis Grundy’s Model A came chugchugging down the drive.”

Aunt Nettie gave a nervous laugh, but before she could hit her third “hee-hee,” I heard a strange sound. I clutched Joe’s arm and gasped.

It was the chug-chug of an old motor.

Joe laughed. “I believe you summoned up Dennis Grundy’s ghost, Lee. Or at least the ghost of his car.”

“What is it?”

“I think,” Joe said, “that it’s actually a Volkswagen.”

And sure enough, a red Volkswagen came down the lane from behind the house. It was a real, antique Volkswagen, not one of the new ones. And behind the wheel was Ken McNutt. He stopped when he saw us. The VW was nose to nose with Aubrey’s SUV.

Aunt Nettie, Joe, and I all laughed and waved. “I’ll have to move the SUV so he can get out,” Aubrey said. He got behind the wheel again and backed out onto Lake Shore Drive.

Joe spoke to Ken. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I had an hour’s break, and I wanted to see this place.” Ken nodded toward the cottage. “This is the site of Maia Michaelson’s big romance novel, isn’t it?”

Joe’s voice was curious. “How’d you find it?”

“The high school custodian drew me a map,” Ken said. “And now I’ve got to hurry, or I’ll be late for a parent conference.”

He drove on out the lane and waved to Aubrey. The VW gave a cheerful beep-beep as it turned onto Lake Shore Drive.

“I’d forgotten that Ken McNutt is a VW hobbyist,” Joe said. “I understand he has four of them. At least two are in driving condition.”

I stared after Ken. His Volkswagen was shiny and cared-for. It might have come straight off a production line of the late 1950s. The only modern thing about it was the Warner Pier High School bumper sticker in the back window.