The Chocolate Snowman Murders (26 page)

“I don't know Mozelle very well. I knew her mother better. She died ten years ago.”

“So Mozelle is a native of Warner Pier?”

“Oh, yes. Her father's father had a dry goods store on Peach Street back when it was a dirt road. You can see it in historic pictures. Smith's Mercantile.”

“Smith. Was that Mozelle's maiden name?”

“Yes. Her mother was not from Warner Pier. She was from someplace in eastern Michigan.” Aunt Nettie smiled. “Anna Smith wanted to be the grande dame of Warner Pier.”

“The way Mozelle is today?”

“Something like that. But women's clubs and activities had more significance in those days. You girls today—you get your satisfaction out of your jobs. Or I hope you do, because you all seem to work so hard. But Anna Smith—in a town like Warner Pier, the only outlet her generation had was clubs, organizations, and tea parties. Being a club and social leader counted.”

“Has Mozelle ever had a job?”

“Not that I know of. She was young when she married, and she plunged right into community organizations.”

“She went to college.”

“Yes, but that had more to do with social status than with learning a profession, at least as far as Mozelle's mother intended. Anna was old-fashioned in her outlook, didn't think women needed to worry about education. But she did recognize that if she wanted to see her daughter marry an educated man, she'd better have an educated daughter.”

“Mozelle has a good mind and a tremendous amount of organizational ability. She could have had a successful career in business.”

“Anna Smith wouldn't have approved. She never let Mozelle off the leash when she was young.”

“It's hard to picture Mozelle on a leash.” I laughed. “That's the kind of girl who goes wild when she gets away from home.”

“Maybe that's why her mother only let her go away a couple of years.”

Aunt Nettie clamped her lips together tightly. I began to feel that she knew more than she was telling.

“Come on, Aunt Nettie. Let me know the gossip about Mozelle. It might be important.”

“Lee, anything I've ever heard was speculation. I'm not going to repeat it.”

“What caused the speculation?”

“Warner Pier doesn't require a reason for speculation.”

“I know that. And I appreciate you because you don't usually speculate. But something must have happened to Mozelle sometime in her life that caused some talk.”

“It was so minor. An example of how the gossip mill works.”

“I won't pass it around casually. What happened?”

“It was stupid. I mean, as a cause of gossip.” Aunt Nettie sighed and gave in. “Mozelle left college in the middle of a semester.”

I waited for the rest of the story. Then I realized that was all of it.

“That was it? Warner Pier gossiped about that?”

“Yes. Isn't it silly? Anna Smith said Mozelle had almost had pneumonia, and that she had come home to recover her health. But she didn't seem sick when she got home, and she never went back to college. The next year Mozelle married John French, and she's been here ever since, following in her mother's footsteps.”

Aunt Nettie patted my hand. “So I can't tell you a single scandalous thing about Mozelle. She's just a bossy woman who likes to be a big frog in a small pond.”

Our interview was over. My attempt to question Aunt Nettie had been a fiasco.

Time to try something else. I went to my computer and Googled Mozelle. All I found out was that she was in the newspapers a lot as a spokesman for the Warner Pier WinterFest and as president of this or that west Michigan activity.

I was still convinced that Mozelle must have at least known Dr. Fletcher Mendenhall when she attended Gerhard College. If their association was innocent—or even nonexistent—why hadn't she mentioned it? When Mendenhall's name first came up, wouldn't the natural thing have been for her to say, “Is that the one who taught at Gerhard College? He left the semester before I enrolled.” Something.

Maybe, I decided, I could approach the question from a different angle. Johnny Owens had known Mendenhall in later years, at Waterford College, but he'd hinted that he'd heard some scandalous story about Mendenhall's earlier days. I could ask Johnny if he knew any more.

I referred to my list of WinterFest phone numbers and called Johnny. He answered on the second ring.

“Sorry to bother you, Johnny. Can you talk?”

“Sure. It'll help me put off a decision about the scale of this new piece.”

“I wanted to know more about Mendenhall. You told us about the portrait of the trustee's wife with the birthmark. Was he involved in any other commotion when you knew him?”

“I think he'd learned to watch his step by then.”

“By then?” I decided to make a wild and, as far as proof went, unfounded statement. “Do you mean after his problems at Gerhard College?”

“Yeah. But I don't know anything about that. Not really.”

I almost clicked my heels. My unfounded statement had paid off. There had been a scandal when Mendenhall was at Gerhard.

Johnny was still talking. “Gerhard closed during my freshman year. About fifty of the girls transferred to Waterford. After they found out Mendenhall was there, they told the art students about him and his harem. That had been five or ten years earlier, and I don't think any of them had direct knowledge. So anything I know is a second- or thirdhand report.”

“Just what were those thirdhand reports?”

“Well . . .”

“Johnny, I guessed that Mendenhall had some problems. I'd just like a few details. I promise to believe only half of what you tell me.”

Johnny laughed. “The story was that some undergrad girl had moved in with Mendenhall. Her mother showed up and raised a stink.”

“If the girl was living there willingly . . .”

“She may have been, but her mother threatened to sue the college. Mendenhall didn't have tenure, so he was fired.”

I thought that over. “If he'd pressured the girl . . .”

“I don't really know any more, Lee. In fact, I don't know that much for sure.” He paused. “I guess I can tell you the rest of the gossip. Supposedly another girl was living there, too.”

“A ménage à trois?”

“A funhouse for Mendenhall. And I repeat, this story may be completely unfounded.” Johnny chuckled. “Though the people who told about the situation had a nickname for the students involved. The flower girls. It seemed both of them were named for flowers. Rose and Lily. Something like that.”

My heart sank. Let down again. Johnny's gossip had made me sure Mozelle, at age nineteen or so, had been involved with Mendenhall. That would explain her refusal, thirty or more years later, to admit she had known him. And the description of the mother who raised such a stink that Mendenhall was fired—well, that was exactly how a small-town “grande dame” would work.

But the “flower girl” name let Mozelle out. “Mozelle” was the name of a river and also of a wine. But as far as I'd ever heard, it was not the name of a flower. I thanked Johnny, then got out my dictionary and looked up the word “Mozelle” to make sure I was right. There was no mention of a flower by that name, but I learned that the river and the wine were spelled with an “s,” not a “z.”

As Aunt Nettie walked by I said as much. “Did you know Mozelle's mother couldn't spell? The French river is spelled M-o-s-e-l-l-e, not M-o-z-e-l-l-e, the way Mozelle spells it.”

“It would have been her great-grandmother who couldn't spell. Mozelle was named for her two grandmothers.”

“What's her other name?”

“Marguerite. Marguerite Mozelle Smith.”

“She must have been in the third grade before she could spell all that.”

Let down again. Unless . . . I grabbed the dictionary.

“Marguerite,” it said, “same as a daisy (sense one).” I looked up daisy (sense one). That definition referred to the flower. It seemed Marguerite was either another name for a daisy or was a different type of daisy. Maybe both.

Aha!

Daisy might be a nickname for Marguerite. I could see a small-town girl going away to a “back east” college and wanting to use the more cosmopolitan Marguerite, rather than her Victorian-sounding, and misspelled, middle name. And from Marguerite to Daisy wouldn't be a long step, if they both referred to the same flower.

So it was possible that Mozelle had been one of the “flower girls.”

I got so excited I called Hogan again. He didn't sound happy to hear my voice.

I asked him a question anyway. “Have you checked and double-checked Mozelle's Chicago alibi?”

Hogan groaned.

I told him the results of my research—if you can call two gossip sessions and looking up a couple of words in the dictionary research.

“I'll look into it,” Hogan said. “But even if it's true, Mendenhall still did not have Mozelle's phone number. In fact, he probably didn't know her married name. And she was with Amos Hart when Mary Samson was killed.”

“Amos would say anything for Mozelle, Hogan. I still think her Chicago alibi is worth checking out.”

“Maybe. Lee, don't you have some work you need to get done?”

Hogan was right, of course. I buckled down for an hour, ordering special Amareena cherries to be used in Valentine bonbons and filling out the paperwork for a major order from a Chicago gift shop and for a bunch of individual orders. Then I worked on my accounts receivable until five o'clock, when Joe called and asked where I wanted to eat dinner.

“Why not at home?” I said.

“That would be fine, but the state police technician downloaded all the WinterFest records he could find from Mary Samson's computer—”

“Oh! I forgot!”

“Yeah. I volunteered the two of us to send out last-minute news releases on the choral concerts this weekend.”

“You say the technician downloaded the information. Does that mean we won't be using Mary's computer?”

“No, they didn't want us out there at the crime scene, so the guy put it all on disk. Can we use your laptop?”

“It ought to be compatible. Maybe we should take ourselves over to the Warner Point office. The committee files are there, and we might need some other information.”

It took me until seven o'clock to get caught up—my penalty for wasting time nosing into Mozelle's background. I met Joe at Warner Point. We ordered French dip sandwiches, which Jason assured us was the fastest thing on the menu to prepare, and took half an hour simply to talk before we started work. I reported what I'd discovered about Mozelle—or thought I'd discovered—that afternoon.

Joe wasn't any more impressed than Hogan had been.

“It doesn't matter, Lee. Even if you prove Mozelle knew Mendenhall, even if you prove she had an affair with him and that her mother got him fired—and what you found out is definitely not evidence—it still wouldn't matter. One, she was in Chicago, and two, Mendenhall didn't have her phone number. And if he had her phone number, he didn't call her.”

He patted my hand. “You've got to get over this fixation on Mozelle.”

“I guess you're right. In fact, I've probably got her whole psychology down wrong.” I sketched the description of Mozelle's mother that Aunt Nettie had given me and the gossip I'd gotten from Johnny Owens.

“True, her mother sounds like the type to get a professor fired if he had an affair with her daughter,” I said. “But the Mozelle we know would never have let her mother run her life that way.”

“You're right. Even when Mozelle was young, she was probably as bossy as she is today.” Joe looked at his watch. “It's eight o'clock. Are you ready to tackle Mary's files?”

I drank the last of my coffee. “Lead on.”

Mary's files were incredibly well organized. As we'd expected, all her news releases were in one electronic folder, and they were dated to indicate which ones should be sent out when. And, yes, she'd already written the ones reminding the news media about the next week's activities, including the choral concerts. In her e-mail files, we found the addresses for the dozens of newspapers and television and radio stations she'd been sending the releases to.

Sending the releases wasn't a quick job. We had to read everything over carefully to make sure no last-minute changes needed to be made. By nine thirty we still hadn't actually gotten the e-mails on their way, and they'd have to go in batches.

Plus, Warner Pier didn't yet have high-speed Internet and e-mail access. We were working with slow, outdated dial-up.

“At this point, this is a one-person job,” I said. “You can go on home, Joe.”

“Nope. Warner Point hasn't been a good place for you recently. I don't want you out here alone.”

“I'm not alone. There's a restaurant in operation here. Even if all the customers go home, Jason and his kitchen crew are in the building.”

“Not this building. They're in a connecting building. I don't want you to be that far away from people.”

I assured Joe I wasn't nervous, but he simply shrugged. “It won't take much longer. I'll stick around.”

I didn't want to tell him I was grateful. But I was.

I kept working on sending the news releases by e-mail.

The second batch of news releases went to television stations, and Gordon Hitchcock's name headed the list.

And when I saw it, I knew—simply knew without question, as if I'd been hit by lightning—how Mendenhall had gotten Mozelle's phone number and how he could call it without having it show up on his cell phone records.