The Chocolate Snowman Murders (6 page)

So, when the phone rang as soon as I got in the house, I let the answering machine catch it. I snatched the receiver up as soon as I heard Joe's voice.

“Pal, you are in trouble,” I said. “I'm not doing any more airport pickups for you.”

“What happened?”

I gave him the full story, with embellishments. Joe's only comments were along the line of “You're kidding” and “I can't believe this,” with one angry “I'll kill the guy.”

However, when I got to the description of Mendenhall running along the motel sidewalk, shaking his fist as I drove off, Joe blew it. He laughed.

“This is not funny!”

“I know, Lee. I'm just so darn proud of you.”

“You'd better be!”

“I am. That was quick thinking. Mendenhall deserved to be dumped in the snow out on the interstate. He deserved to be run over by a semi and flattened as flat as—as one of his acrylics. You handled it great.”

I felt somewhat mollified. “What do we do now?”

“I guess I'd better check on him. I'm still in Grand Rapids, so I'll stop on my way out of town.”

I told Joe the exit, the motel, and the room number. “I think you ought to leave him there tonight,” I said. “I left a message telling Sarajane he wouldn't be at her B and B tonight. I can't imagine that Mendenhall could have sobered up enough that she'd be willing to have him as a guest. She's in the place alone this time of the year. George may have to find him another place to stay.”

Joe promised to call after he'd stopped to check on Mendenhall. I began to think about dinner, although the snow might make him late getting home.

About twenty minutes later, Joe called again. He started by repeating the exit number, motel name, and room number.

“Room one twenty-two,” I said. “I'm sure that's right. Isn't he there?”

“I think he may have passed out. I banged on the door, but he didn't answer. So I called his cell phone, and I can hear it ring—or peal; he's got the ‘Hallelujah Chorus' on it. But he's not answering.”

“Could he have gone out for dinner? There's a restaurant next door.”

“He doesn't sound as if he would be thinking about food, but I'll check everything within walking distance. I guess I'd better quiz the desk clerk, too. I'll make sure Mendenhall didn't call a cab.”

But when Joe got home an hour and a half later, he said Mendenhall hadn't been at any nearby restaurant, and the desk clerk claimed that he knew nothing about him. Apparently no cab had come to the motel.

“Let's forget him,” he said. “He probably passed out. I'll go back first thing tomorrow morning.”

I called Ramona and George all evening, as late as ten o'clock, but neither of them ever answered at their homes, and Ramona's cell phone was turned off. I didn't have George's cell number.

I was surprised by this lack of interest in where our juror was and why he hadn't been delivered to Warner Pier. But I didn't worry about it. Mendenhall was safely stowed away—unless he decided to leave his motel—and my responsibility was over. Joe could take it from here.

And he did. At eight fifteen the next morning, I heard him asking the motel clerk to connect him with room 122. But he didn't say anything else.

When I brought the coffee to the breakfast table, I said, “Is Mendenhall too hungover to answer the phone?”

“I guess so. I've tried his cell phone and the motel phone, but he's not answering either.”

“I hope he didn't take a cab back to the airport and go home, or that he's not sick. Dead would be okay.”

Joe laughed. “I'll go up there as soon as I finish breakfast. You get hold of George. I'm sure he expected Mendenhall to judge the show today.”

“If he's as hungover as he deserves to be, I pity the artists.”

We left it at that. And that morning I was able to catch George Jenkins, who was properly shocked and apologetic about my experience. He was also relieved to hear that Joe had gone back to Grand Rapids to bring Mendenhall down.

He apologized for not being available by phone the evening before. “I had to run into Holland,” he said.

I went on to the office. An hour later I was immersed in an order for fifty large Valentine hearts filled with tiny cupids, a special design for a Detroit gift shop, when the phone rang. I saw Joe's number on the caller ID.

“Howdy,” I said. “Is Mendenhall on his feet?”

Joe didn't answer for a long moment. “Not really.”

“Don't tell me he's still drunk!”

“No. He's not drunk. But you'd better clear your calendar for today. You probably should come up here to make a statement.”

“A statement! That jerk had better not be filing some sort of complaint!”

“No, Mendenhall doesn't have any complaint.”

“Then what's going on?”

“He didn't answer when I banged on his door, so I got the desk clerk to open up. Mendenhall's lying on the floor. He's dead.”

“Oh, no! If he wasn't drunk yesterday—if he was sick and I abandoned him, I'll never forgive myself.”

“Sick or drunk, it doesn't really matter. His prior condition doesn't seem to have anything to do with his death.”

“What happened to him?”

“Somebody bashed his head in with the desk lamp, Lee. It looks like murder.”

I
was clear out onto Peach Street, headed for the interstate, before I thought of George Jenkins. I might not have thought of him then if I hadn't driven past his business, Peach Street Gallery of Art.

“Oh, my gosh!” I was so startled I spoke out loud. “George has lost another juror.”

I wheeled the van into the curb and ran for the door. The gallery wasn't open yet, but I could see movement, so I pounded on the glass until George came to let me in, looking astonished. “Lee?”

“Did Joe call you? Just now?”

“No, Joe hasn't called today.”

“Then you haven't heard about Mendenhall.”

George rolled his eyes. “What now?”

I refused to come inside, so George and I stood on the sidewalk, and I told him that Joe had found the art show juror beaten to death. “I thought you needed to know right away,” I said.

George grabbed his head with both hands. “I know I should be shocked and horrified, but all I can think about is how I'll find another juror.”

“That,” I said, “is your problem. Sorry to dump it on you and run, George, but Joe says I need to come up there and make a statement.”

“Yes, I see that.” George shook his head. “I hope they figure out what happened. He did sound peculiar when he called last night.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“No. He left a message on my cell.”

I drove to Grand Rapids as quickly as possible, and I used the forty-five minutes it took to get there to worry.

Mendenhall was dead? Beaten to death with a desk lamp? I found it hard to believe.

If Joe had told me the death looked like a heart attack, or like an overdose, or like a stroke, I wouldn't have been surprised. I might have felt a bit guilty for leaving him alone in a motel in a strange city. But I definitely wasn't responsible if he'd been beaten to death with a desk lamp.

But however Mendenhall died, there was no reason I should feel responsible at all, I told myself. After all, Mendenhall was a grown man. If he had become ill, he had been alert enough to call an ambulance, or he had been when I left him. And if he chose to drink himself into a stupor, that wasn't my fault.

But he'd been beaten to death? How could it have happened? Who could have done such a thing?

I was in such a state of nerves that I asked myself that question for twenty minutes before I saw the answer that the police were going to jump on right away.

The cops were going to think I'd done it. Or else they were going to think Joe had done it.

Yikes!

I could well be the person to admit last seeing Mendenhall alive, and my husband had been at the motel looking for him later that evening.

Joe and I were very likely in big trouble. We were certain to be at the head of the suspect list.

I had dumped Mendenhall at the motel, then called my husband to complain that the man had offered me unwanted attentions, attentions obnoxious enough that I had refused to drive another forty-five minutes with him. I could easily be suspected of using physical force to repel those attentions.

Hard on the heels of learning that Mendenhall hadn't exactly treated me with respect, Joe had gone to Mendenhall's room looking for him. Someone who didn't know Joe could easily picture him in the classic role of angry husband.

There was no hiding either situation. The desk clerk had seen me in the truck as Mendenhall went in to rent a room. Later Joe had gone to the desk clerk to try to find Mendenhall. The clerk was almost certain to remember one or both of us. Joe had also checked out restaurants in the area, looking for Mendenhall. Somebody was going to remember that, too.

To add to the confusion, the crime had happened in a suburb of Grand Rapids, not in our friendly hometown of Warner Pier, where Joe and I were well-known residents. Heck, in Warner Pier the chief of police was my uncle by marriage. Hogan Jones looked on me almost as a daughter, and he and Joe were good friends. He knew us both well enough to feel sure we wouldn't beat anybody to death—no matter how obnoxious the guy had been.

But I had a feeling that being related to the chief of police in a town of 2,500 was not going to cut a lot of ice with the police in another, larger city.

Joe had been a defense attorney. He would know how to handle the situation.

So the first goal I had as I drove toward Grand Rapids was to talk to Joe. This didn't turn out to be a simple thing to do.

When I got to the motel, it was surrounded by police cars, all with lights flashing, and an ambulance was around at the side of the motel, near room 122. My first surprise was that the emergency vehicles had “Lake Knapp” painted on their doors. The motel where I'd dumped Mendenhall was in a city that I'd never even noticed on the map.

A uniformed patrolman was keeping cars from entering the drive. I finally parked in the lot of the shopping center across the street and walked to the motel through the slush, trying not to fall down in the gutter.

After I got to the motel, of course, no one had told the patrolmen guarding the drive to expect me. They wouldn't let me in, even when I said I was there to make a statement.

I called Joe's cell phone. It was turned off, but I left a message telling him I was freezing my tootsies outside the motel. I added that I'd go to the chain restaurant next door, drink something hot, and wait.

I'd barely been served a cup of coffee when a handsome blond guy wearing a bulky overcoat came in. He looked around the restaurant, brushed the hostess aside, and came to my booth. He had an air of complete confidence, an air some women find attractive. I am not one of those women. Not anymore. My ex-husband had that air.

The man displayed a giant mouthful of teeth and offered me a badge instead of a handshake. “I'm Detective Van Robertson,” he said. “Are you Mrs. Woodyard?”

I nodded and prepared to get up, assuming he'd want me to go back to the motel. Instead Robertson sat down. Beside me. On my side of the booth. Boxing me in.

He was still smiling. Either he or his parents had spent a fortune on his teeth. “Your husband said you might have something to tell us about what went on over here at the motel.”

I reminded myself that my first goal was to talk to Joe.

“Where is Joe?”

“He's cooperating with the investigation.”

“I'd like to see him.”

“It will be a while before he's free.”

“I can wait.”

“He said he'd told you to be ready to make a statement. So why not tell me what went down?” Detective Robertson's smile became even more friendly, and I was getting lots of eye contact. Was he trying to flirt with me? Surely not.

I tried to speak in a friendly manner. “I'd like to understand the simulation—I mean, the situation! I'd like to understand what's going on before I do make a statistic. I mean, a statement!”

Yikes! I'd gotten my tongue in a double twist. No matter what I told the detective now, he wasn't going to think I was smart enough to know what I was talking about.

My malapropisms made Detective Robertson give a bigger grin. “I thought you and I could talk informally.”

I tried to recover my dignity. “I assume y'all have the witnesses over at the motel.”