The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle (19 page)

“This is just unbelievable!” she said. “Who? Who could try to do any harm to Lee?”

She was crying. I felt like such a louse. I nearly got up and went downstairs. But I’d promised the chief that my “disappearance” would last at least two days. I reached for a Kleenex.

Aunt Nettie was sniffling, too. “Lindy, we’re not going to lose hope yet. I’m sure this will have a happy ending.”

That made Lindy cry harder, of course. I sat there, listening to her grieve and feeling lower than a snake’s belly. How did Chief Jones talk me into this? Why did he want me to hide out, anyway? I didn’t really have a clear idea.

Lindy only stayed about ten minutes. When she left, Aunt Nettie, still making soothing noises, walked out with her.

I didn’t dare peek out the window, but I heard Lindy’s car leave, and I heard Aunt Nettie come back in.

She was talking as she came in. I stayed put, afraid that some new visitor had showed up to grieve. But Aunt Nettie wasn’t comforting the new visitor. In fact, she was talking rather oddly.

“We’ll just put your things in the corner of the dining room,” she said. “I’ll get you some dinner. Then we’ll settle down for a quiet evening.”

I heard some shuffling around, but nobody replied. Then Aunt Nettie spoke again. “Oh, all right. If you want me to, I’ll scratch your tummy.”

I
t was Monte. Lindy had brought the chocolate Labrador puppy back.

Was she insane? How could Aunt Nettie and I take care of a dog? Had Lindy left? Was it safe for me to go down and ask just what was going on?

Aunt Nettie called up the stairs, answering my question. “Lee, you can come down now.”

I thudded down to the living room, and Monte greeted me joyfully, running in circles, snuffling at my feet, and barking a welcome. “Monte! I thought you were safe at the vet’s!”

“Lindy’s vet doesn’t board dogs,” Aunt Nettie said. “He called her today and said someone would have to pick up Monte. So she did. She was going to keep him at her house, but after the poisoning episode she was afraid to do that. Besides, she and Tony are at work and the kids are at school all day, so there was nobody to look after Monte. She was going to put him in a boarding kennel, but I thought it would be better to have him here.”

“Why?”

Aunt Nettie’s face screwed up. “Oh, he’s such a nice little dog! He needs more attention. Being in a kennel—Lee, you were complaining about being in solitary confinement. Why would we wish that on Monte? After all, we’re both here.”

“But I can’t go outside to walk him.”

“It won’t hurt me to walk him. Or we’ll get the patrolman to help us.”

The patrolman’s warning horn beeped. Another car was coming. “That must be Dolly with dinner,” Aunt Nettie said.

I ran for the stairs. Monte barked and followed me, scrambling up the stairs. I settled myself in my little room with Monte in my lap. If I made a noise, at least Aunt Nettie would have the dog to blame.

A few moments later Dolly’s voice boomed beneath me. “No word yet?”

“Not yet, Dolly. I’m considering that good news. How did the day go at the shop?”

“Fine! Fine! We got the Whole Foods order off! Have the police given you any hint of what could have happened to Lee?”

“Not really, Dolly. They say there was no blood in her car. That’s a good sign.”

I heard a loud creak, and I recognized it as the noise an old wicker rocking chair makes when someone heavy sits in it. I gathered Dolly had sat down. When she spoke again her voice barely boomed. She sounded extremely depressed.

“Nettie, I’m so afraid I could be partly responsible for—for whatever has happened to Lee.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“If I could just be
sure
!”

“Sure of what? Dolly, if you know anything about this attack on Lee, you’ve got to tell Chief Jones or the state policeman.”

“I don’t know anything, really! I just suspect!” Listening to Dolly’s voice, I could picture the misery on her broad, freckled face. “It seems like the act of a madman. And there’s a person around here I feel sure is crazy!”

Aunt Nettie gave an impatient snort. “I could name more than one, Dolly. But whoever lured Lee out to Gray Gables was smart, you know. It wasn’t just a random act of violence. He went to a lot of trouble to get her out there—faking a phone call. Putting nails in the road so she’d have a flat. It doesn’t seem crazy.”

“Crazy like a fox!”

“Maybe so. If you have any specific suspicions we’ll call that patrolman who’s outside in the driveway. He’ll get Chief Jones on the radio and call him back here so you can tell him.”

“It’s too humiliating!”

“Humiliating!” I could hear the anger in Aunt Nettie’s voice. She rarely gets angry, but when she does, look out. She might be half Dolly’s size and her voice might be a third the decibel level, but when she’s stirred up I’ll put my money on Aunt Nettie against a horde of cannibals brandishing spears.

And at that moment Aunt Nettie was definitely stirred up. “Dolly, if you’re keeping some knowledge away from the police because you’re afraid it will
embarrass
you—well, you’re not the woman I thought you were! I won’t stand by and let you get away with that! You won’t have to wait on the police to get the third degree! I’ll give it to you myself!”

“Oh, Nettie, I don’t know a thing about Lee!

“Then what do you know?”

“All I know is what became of Dennis Grundy!”

Dennis Grundy? I couldn’t believe I’d heard right. What on earth could Dennis Grundy have to do with some guy shooting at me with a rifle?

I guess Aunt Nettie felt the same way, because she yelled out words that echoed what I was thinking.

“Dennis Grundy! Dennis Grundy? Who cares about Dennis Grundy?”

“Dennis Grundy was murdered!”

“I don’t care! He has nothing to do with Lee.”

“That’s what I’m afraid the police will say!”

Aunt Nettie was silent a moment. She wasn’t yelling when she went on. “Dolly, just what do you know about Dennis Grundy? And why do you think it matters?”

There was more sniffling from Dolly. Then she spoke loudly.

“The Snows killed him!”

“What? I thought he ran off with the daughter—Julia.”

“No! That’s what they let everybody think. But they really killed him.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it was like a shotgun wedding that didn’t come off, I guess. Julia was pregnant. He wasn’t ready to marry her. Somehow he wound up dead.”

“What became of Julia?”

“She went to a home for unwed mothers. She was angry with her family! She hated her father! She never went home!”

Finally Aunt Nettie got around to the question I’d been dying to ask. “How do you know all this?”

“Julia Snow was my grandmother!”

Dolly Jolly must have been completely deaf if she didn’t hear the gasp I gave. It must have reverberated right through the floor of my bedroom and on through the ceiling of the living room. Dolly was the granddaughter of the heroine of Maia’s cornball novel? Dolly was a relative of Silas Snow and of Maia Michaelson? It was hard to believe.

“That’s the real reason I came to Warner Pier. I wanted to know more about the Snow family.” Dolly gave a gasp louder than mine. “Oh, Nettie! You won’t tell Maia!”

“I won’t tell anybody, Dolly. But why do you think it has any connection to our current problems?”

“Because there must be a streak of insanity in the Snow family! Maia must be the one who killed Silas. Her own uncle! And now she’s attacked Lee. She must be crazy! Maybe I’m crazy, too!”

Aunt Nettie immediately began to concentrate on calming Dolly, assuring the red-haired giantess that she seemed to be perfectly sane.

Dolly gave a brief outline of what had become of Julia Snow. Julia had gone to a home for unwed mothers and had given Dennis Grundy’s baby up for adoption. She had moved to Detroit, where she found a job in a bakery. She married a fellow baker and they had a successful business. She had only one other child, Dolly’s mother.

Julia had kept quiet about her youthful indiscretions until her last illness five years earlier, during which Dolly had helped nurse her. Then she had rambled on to her granddaughter, giving Dolly a confused account of her early life.

“Gramma was really confused at the end, but she always claimed her family killed Dennis Grundy,” Dolly said. “She wasn’t always clear about which one had done it. Her father seemed most likely. I always thought she didn’t really know. But after she died—well, I thought I’d come over here and find out what kind of people the Snows were. And I think they’re all crazy!”

Aunt Nettie continued to assure Dolly that the Snows might be crazy, but Dolly didn’t seem to have taken after them. She left after about fifteen minutes, promising that she’d contact Chief Jones.

That fifteen minutes gave me time to think over Dolly’s story, and after that brief reflection I didn’t think much of it. It was startling to learn that Dolly was a descendant of Julia Snow, who had been a central character in a Warner Pier legend. And even more startling to learn that Julia had claimed that her family killed her lover, Dennis Grundy.

But what could that possibly have to do with the things that had happened that week? Silas Snow had been beaten to death with a shovel behind his own fruit stand. Aubrey Andrews Armstrong had been the target of a rifleman, then had disappeared leaving all his belongings including his cherished pet behind, and becoming himself a suspect in the death of Silas Snow. And then the rifleman had apparently tried to kill me.

I couldn’t see any connection between those events and the seduction of a country girl by a small-time gangster seventy-five years earlier.

Dolly’s theory seemed to be that Maia was some kind of homicidal maniac. I didn’t believe it.

Of course, I couldn’t believe Maggie or Ken McNutt or anybody else I knew—including Aubrey Andrews Armstrong—could be guilty, either. The whole situation was unbelievable.

I heard Dolly’s Volkswagen bus drive down the lane, and I slowly came downstairs. I found Aunt Nettie in the kitchen, frowning.

“What did you make of all that stuff Dolly was handing out?” I asked.

“You heard?”

“Yes, but I don’t really understand.”

“I didn’t either. I just hope that Dolly goes straight to Chief Jones and doesn’t go around town dropping hints. She could put herself in danger.”

“True. But I heard her promise to go to the chief. What about Maia—do you think she’s a mad killer?”

Aunt Nettie poured a plastic dish of green beans into a saucepan and put it on the stove. “It seems like a silly idea. Of course, I keep thinking of the old Maia, before she was an author.” She gestured at the saucepan. “Hazel and Dolly sent green beans, mashed potatoes, and a small pork loin. Everything is in the oven but the green beans. There’s certainly plenty for both of us.”

“I’ll set the table. And after dinner I’ll get started on the old
Gazette
s.”

The bound
Gazettes
turned out to be something of a physical challenge. They were hard to read. A bound newspaper, even a tabloid-sized one like the
Gazette,
comes in a big, awkward book filled with smudged type. The best light in Aunt Nettie’s house is in the dining room, and I needed to read upstairs, so that I wouldn’t have to hastily hide the big books and myself if someone came to the door. But we were trying to keep the upstairs dark, so it would look as if no one was up there. We couldn’t set up a bright light there. We finally improvised some window coverings with old army blankets and put up a card table with a good reading lamp in the room across the hall from mine.

Aunt Nettie gave the blankets a final twitch. “There! Good luck.”

“I still feel as if I’ve been given a make-work project to keep me out of trouble.”

“I hope it works. You’ve already been in enough trouble to last a lifetime.”

I’d barely opened the first book, however, when Joe showed up. He brought along a long tube. “A gift from the chief,” he said.

“And what is it?”

He popped the end off the tube and pulled out a cylinder of paper. “It’s a map.”

“More research?”

“To help with the newspapers. He’s interested in all the neighbors around here. Anybody who could have fired that shot at Armstrong, then escaped on foot.”

“But Joe, even if the rifleman escaped on foot, he could have had a car stashed in any driveway along Lake Shore Drive. There’s so much traffic along there no one would have noticed.”

“True. But the neighbors have to be investigated.”

Joe and I spread the map out on the card table and looked at it. “The chief has marked Dennis Grundy’s cottage with an X,” Joe said.

“I see it. Where is that in relation to Aunt Nettie’s house?”

Joe pointed to it. “Yikes!” I said. “I thought the Grundy cottage was at least a mile south of Aunt Nettie’s. But it’s lots closer than that.”

“More like a half mile,” Joe said. “If you go by the back road.”

“That means we’re a lot closer to Maia and Vernon, too. And to Silas Snow’s fruit stand. Since the Grundy cottage is on the Snow place.”

“Of course that’s a big farm.”

“Yes, but it’s near the Haven Road exit, and Aunt Nettie’s way north of that. I thought since it was a mile on the Interstate, it must be a mile on Lake Shore Drive.”

“Actually, the Interstate curves, so it’s all in a sort of horseshoe. The two properties are lots closer by way of Lake Shore Drive. And even closer than that if you cut down this road.” He peered closely at the map. “It’s named Mary Street. I didn’t know it existed.”

“I didn’t, either,” I said. “It’s those trees. They get me all confused. I can’t tell directions.”

Then I remembered how I’d told directions the night before. By ear. Traffic behind me, surf in front. I shuddered. Joe put his arms around me. We stood there awhile, and I had a good cry on Joe’s shoulder. He didn’t say anything.