The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle (21 page)

Then I came to the second paragraph. “Before attending college,” the article said, “McNutt served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps.”

The marine corps? I was stunned. Ken looked as if a twenty-mile hike would do him in. How had he managed the marine corps?

The article concluded with a list of Ken’s marine corps experiences. He’d served in the artillery section of the marines, and he’d been stationed in the Mideast, as well as several places in the United States. He’d even earned medals.

And one of them was for marksmanship.

Wow. Not only was Ken a much tougher guy than he looked, he was certified as a rifle shot.

Of the people I’d been looking over, two took part in activities involving rifles. Vernon was an avid deer hunter—even writing letters to the editor about the sport—and Ken a former marine who had earned medals for marksmanship.

And Ken had been near the Grundy cottage the afternoon when someone shot at Aubrey.

But my stomach went into two knots. I liked Ken. I didn’t want him to be involved in all this mess—Silas’s death, Aubrey’s disappearance, the attack on me.

I got so excited that I jumped to my feet and paced up and down. This convinced Monte that I was ready to play again. Maybe I was. A little exercise with a rolled-up sock got me calmed down, but it made Monte whimper and head for the back door. Aunt Nettie took him for a walk around the yard, and I went back to my reading. Having learned the scoop on Ken, I was eager to find out about Maggie.

But I didn’t learn much more than I already knew. She and I were pretty good friends. In fact, I would have sworn that Maggie’s life was an open book. She was ready to talk about anything—her family, her college years, her time in California. I would have thought I knew all there was to know about her.

Then she’d told me about that threat from Aubrey, his warning that he could blackmail her if she told anybody about him. I still hadn’t figured that one out.

But the story in the
Gazette
simply recapped things I already knew. Maggie had studied drama at Northwestern. She had worked in California for seven years. She had returned to the University of Michigan to earn her master’s degree. Her hobbies were birding, decorating, and baking bread.

While in California, Maggie had worked at the Pasadena Playhouse and had roles in several films. A list of the films followed.

And one of them was a western. I’d seen it. It was about a wagon train of women, left alone by the men of their party, who withstood an Indian attack. It had been a real shoot-’em-up.

Did that mean Maggie had learned to shoot a rifle?

Well, so what? I had fired a twenty-two myself. My Texas cousin, thrilled with the rifle he’d gotten for his sixteenth birthday, had taken me out to show me his prowess at knocking cans off fence posts. He condescendingly gave me a turn. He wasn’t a bit pleased when I could destroy tin cans as well as he could.

I paced the bedroom floor again. I liked Ken. I liked Maggie. I considered them close friends. I did not want close friends involved. I wanted the villain to be Aubrey or some unknown cohort he had brought to Warner Pier. I wanted this crime wave to be the fault of outsiders, not hometown folks.

But just after I had found Silas Snow’s body, I had almost run into the red Volkswagen with a WPHS sticker in the back window. There was a ninety percent chance that that car had been driven by either Ken or Maggie.

I just had to ask Maggie if she had been out there or not.

I walked into the next room, checked my purse for Maggie’s cell phone number, then punched it in. I was so intent on reaching Maggie that someone answered the phone before I remembered I was supposed to be dead.

T
o make things worse, the person who answered the phone was Tracy Roderick.

I made some sound—half snort and half gasp—and hung up.

Whew. That was a narrow escape. Tracy would have recognized my voice after one syllable.

But I did want to talk to Maggie. Did I have to run it through Chief Jones? Or could I simply get Aunt Nettie to summon Maggie and Ken to the house and question them for me? Besides, wasn’t it time I was found, safe? Being a missing person was beginning to give me a severe case of cabin fever.

I was still standing there with my hand on the telephone when it rang again. I jumped a mile. After climbing down from the ceiling, I realized I had picked up the receiver, since I had it my hand when I jumped and it was still there when I came down. Luckily, I hadn’t made a noise, and I had the presence of mind to keep quiet while Aunt Nettie answered the kitchen phone.

Her voice was cautious. “Hello.”

“Oh, Mrs. TenHuis! Have they found Lee?” The voice was Tracy’s.

“I don’t know anything new, Tracy. I’m sorry.”

“I just had the weirdest experience, Mrs. TenHuis. I’m at play rehearsal—”

“At the high school?”

“Yes. I’m at play rehearsal, and I was sitting beside Mrs. McNutt’s cell phone, and it just rang. And whoever it was didn’t say anything. They just hung up. But it was so weird!”

“Why? It must have been a wrong number.”

“I know it’s crazy, but . . . you know that little noise Lee makes sometimes? Like when her computer acts up? A kind of a disgusted sniffle?”

“I think I know what you mean, Tracy.”

“Whoever called made exactly that noise! Mrs. TenHuis, I just know it
meant
something! You know! I just feel sure it meant Lee’s all right!”

I stood there holding the telephone, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I felt awful because I was fooling Tracy, making her worry because she thought I was missing in very suspicious circumstances. At the same time, her gushing conclusions about the “message” my snort had given were hilarious. I covered the receiver and shook all over, trying to stifle my laughter.

Tracy was talking again. “Mrs. TenHuis, I said a prayer for Lee. I just know the Lord will help you find her.”

Aunt Nettie’s voice was kind. “Tracy, I really appreciate that. You’re a lovely young woman, and your prayers are really important.”

“Well, Lee really makes working at TenHuis Chocolade fun. And I appreciated her helping me with my hair. But it’s just so weird. First Mr. Armstrong disappears. Then Lee. It’s as if there’s some mal . . . mal . . . mal-violent force at work.”

Tracy’s spin on “malevolent” made me feel better about my own twisted tongue.

After a few more soothing words from Aunt Nettie, Tracy hung up. I was still standing there with the receiver in my hand when Aunt Nettie also hung up. But I had stopped laughing. I was crying. I just had to be found alive—quick. From the chief’s standpoint, my disappearance might be helping solve the case. But it was making all my friends dreadfully unhappy.

And I was just beginning to realize how many friends I had.

I sat down on my unmade bed, found a tissue in the box on the bedside table, wiped my eyes, and blew my nose. I heard Aunt Nettie coming up the stairs, and I didn’t even jump up and make the bed. I just left it unmade, the tumbled sheets and blankets clearly showing it had been occupied by two people.

Aunt Nettie poked her head into the room. “Did you hear Tracy?”

“Yes. I feel terrible. We’ve got to tell Hogan that this disappearance isn’t working. It’s just too hard on people.”

“He’s supposed to come by later. We can carry on until then, I guess. Did you call Maggie?”

“Yes. Like an idiot.”

“It’s lucky you didn’t say something, instead of just sniffing.”

“I know! Poor Tracy would have known my voice in a minute. She would have thought I was a voice from the beyond and planned a seance.”

“Why did you call?”

“I thought of something I wanted to ask Maggie, and I just automatically picked up the phone. I completely forgot I was on the missing list.”

“Why did you want to talk to Maggie?”

“About her alibi, I guess.”

“Alibi? For what?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll figure another way to approach it. I guess I’d better get back to my
Gazette
s.”

“And I’ll get back to Monte. I think he wants to go out and play. Again.”

Aunt Nettie went back downstairs. For a moment I envied her. It was a beautiful day, though the wind seemed to be turning to the north. At least she got to go outside. I was cooped up in a room with heavy blankets on the windows. And I was itching to talk to Maggie.

I began to make the bed, and I found dark hair on one of the pillows. Which naturally brought me a few fond memories of Joe.

“Joe!” I said aloud. “Joe could call Maggie for me.”

There was one catch in that. I couldn’t ask Joe to question Maggie without telling him why I thought it would be important to find out if Maggie had been near Silas’s fruit stand at the time the old man was killed. I couldn’t ask him to question her without revealing that Maggie had a link with Aubrey. And I’d promised Maggie I wouldn’t tell anybody—
anybody
—that he was threatening to blackmail her.

The whole thing was a mess, and I’d walked right into it on my own two feet by trying to protect Maggie and Ken.

When Ken had driven by in the red Volkswagen, I could have immediately said, “Gee, I think that’s the car I nearly ran into near Silas’s fruit stand right after I found his body.” If I had, then Hogan Jones could have called Maggie and Ken as a matter of routine and asked if they’d been out near the fruit stand. But if I brought it up now, the chief was going to want to know why I hadn’t mentioned it earlier. I didn’t want to tell him I hadn’t wanted to link Maggie to Aubrey in even a remote way.

“Why?” he’d ask. “Why didn’t you tell me you saw that Volkswagen near Silas’s fruit stand?”

I’d answer, “Until I saw Ken out at the Grundy cottage in the red VW, I didn’t realize that’s who I’d seen.”

“Why didn’t you tell me after you saw Ken in the red Volkswagen?”

“Because right after I saw him, before I had a chance to tell anybody anything, someone took a shot at Aubrey.”

“So?”

“Well.” I pictured myself fumbling around for an answer. “Because I didn’t want you to know there was any link between Maggie and Aubrey.”

“And why shouldn’t I know that?”

And the only good answer I could have would be, “Because Aubrey was blackmailing her, and that makes it look as if she had a motive for doing him harm.”

Maggie did have a motive to wishing Aubrey harm, and therefore Ken did, too. Maybe it was time I let Maggie answer for herself. And let Ken answer for himself. I couldn’t imagine what either of them could have had to do with Silas Snow.

In fact, I couldn’t picture Maggie doing anything to hurt anyone. But I wasn’t so sure about Ken, at least since I discovered he had been a marine. Ken had enough training to know how to kill someone. And I was beginning to suspect Ken might have a lot of hidden depths.

I had boxed myself in. I couldn’t avoid telling the chief about Maggie’s link to Aubrey, though I didn’t have the faintest idea of how that could link to Silas, and a link to Silas seemed to be part of the mix.

I gave up. This was too confusing for me. I was simply going to have to turn it over to Chief Jones. I went downstairs and asked Aunt Nettie to call him.

Her eyes got wide. “What’s wrong?”

“I just thought of something I need to tell him.” I went back upstairs to my
Gazette
s, feeling glum. I ground my teeth as I heard Aunt Nettie on the telephone, and my heart sank a few minutes later, when I heard a car door slam outside. I heard a low male voice downstairs and I listened for footsteps on the stairs, dreading to see the chief walk through the door of Aunt Nettie’s extra bedroom.

But the chief didn’t come to the door. Joe did.

I jumped up. “I am really glad to see you!”

He gave me a long kiss before he spoke. “I’m glad to see you, too.” He nuzzled my ear. “I sure hated to leave this morning.”

“I was sorry you did. I don’t think Aunt Nettie would have minded if you’d stayed for breakfast. But that’s not why I’m glad to see you. I mean, it’s not the only reason.”

“That’s not very complimentary.”

“Sorry. But I’ve got to talk to Chief Jones, and I guess I need moral support.”

“He couldn’t come right away, so I told him I’d fill in. What’s up.”

I sighed and outlined the whole situation. I tried holding back Maggie’s admission that Aubrey had some hold over her, but Joe went into his attorney mode and began to cross-examine me.

I tried not to answer. “I don’t want to break Maggie’s configuration!”

That stopped Joe for a couple of beats, but he figured it out. “Confidence? You don’t want to break Maggie’s confidence?”

I nodded miserably.

We were sitting face-to-face in the only two chairs in the room. He took me by the upper arms and pretended to shake me. “Don’t you realize somebody tried to kill you?”

“Believe me, I realize it! I’ve got the scratches and bruises to remind me.”

“And you’re still trying to protect people?”

“Joe, I feel sure Maggie didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“She probably didn’t. But the chief still has to talk to her. If she was out there by Silas Snow’s fruit stand—”

“
If
that was her car I nearly ran into.”

“What if she saw somebody else’s car out there, Lee? We’ve got to ask her. She might not know a thing. But any little crumb of information could help matters.”

“Maybe I could just tell her the whole thing’s going to come out, give her a chance to come forward and tell the chief on her own.”

Joe thought. I could tell that’s what he was doing, because he took the opportunity to gnaw on his thumbnail. He has hands like a boat repairman—all banged up—and he bites his nails. Other than that, he’s perfect. Or he would be if he didn’t want to get married.