The chocolate frog frame-up: a chocoholic mystery

by JoAnna Carl

  Chapter 1

  If you’re going to have a fistfight in a small town—and avoid a lot of talk about it—the post office is not a good place for the battle.

  And shortly before five o’clock in the afternoon—when it seems every merchant in town is dropping off the mail and lots of the tourists are buying stamps—is not a good time for it.

  The fight between Joe Woodyard and Hershel Perkins erupted in the Warner Pier Post Office at 4:32 on a Monday afternoon in late June. Later I decided that it had been planned that way. And I didn’t think Joe was in on the plan.

  I was one of the local merchants who witnessed the fight, since I walked into the post office with a handful of outgoing statements for TenHuis Chocolade just in time to hear Joe speak.

  He sounded calm. “What are you talking about, Hershel?”

  Hershel Perkins did not sound calm. He was almost shouting. ”It’s about the old Root Beer Barrel. Don’t try to act innocent!”

  “The old drive-in? I’m trying to sell it.”

  “Yes, you money-grubbing piece of…”

  Those were fighting words to Joe, I knew, because Joe—who happens to be my boyfriend—was in a financial hole right at the moment. It’s a long story, but he needed money, even if he had to grub for it, and the sale of the dilapidated and abandoned drive-in restaurant might be the raft that kept his business afloat.

  Joe raised his voice just a little when he answered. “What is your interest in this, Hershel?”

  “I hear you might tear it down!”

  “Tear it down? It’s already fallen down.”

  “It’s a piece of history!”

  “History?” Joe sounded puzzled, as well as annoyed. “It’s a bunch of boards lying in a parking lot. It’s junk.”

  I was all the way inside the post office now, and I could see Hershel. He seemed to be puffing himself up. Not that Hershel was all that small. He was at least five nine, just a few inches shorter than I am. He was around forty, with a broad face and a wide narrow lipped mouth that made him look like a frog. It was a resemblance he seemed to relish—he combed his thin hair flat and always wore green shirts, flannel in winter and cotton in summer. Even his voice was a froglike croak, and he went places in a green canoe named the Toadfrog.

  He gave an angry grunt. “Junk! You call it junk? It’s vernacular architecture!”

  Joe laughed.

  Hershel went nuts. He rasped out incoherent phrases. Words like “typical commercial,” “innovation,” “rehabilitation,”‘ “Social geography,” and “culturally significant. None of it made sense to me—and I was willing to bet it didn’t make sense to Hershel, either. Hershel is not one of the brightest bulbs shining on Warner Pier, Michigan.

  Joe tried to talk over the ranting, which meant he had to raise his voice. “Hershel, I already talked to the Planning Department. The Historic District commission has no interest in that property since the building was destroyed by an act of God”.

  Hershel kept up the angry bullfrog act, although hollering out “architectural ethnicity!” is not an effective way to argue.

  Finally Joe did absolutely the worst thing he could have done—even worse than laughing. He turned his back on Hershel and reached for his post office box.

  Hershel gave a loud roar and began to pummel Joe’s shoulders with both fists.

  Joe whirled around, throwing up his elbows to protect his face. Then he caught hold of Hershel’s arms—first the left and then the right—and he whirled again. He pinned Hershel against the wall of post office boxes, almost the way he had pinned his opponents to the mat in the days when he was a high school wrestling champ.

  Hershel finally shut up.

  “Hershel,” Joe said very quietly, “You can’t go around hitting people. Get in your canoe and paddle home.”

  A couple of Warner Pier locals—one of them Hershel’s brother-in-law, Frank Waterloo—appeared beside Joe. From the back of the room I heard another deep voice, this one smooth and slightly accented with Spanish. It was our mayor, Mike Herrera. “Yes, Hershel,” he said, “pleeze go home. We have a forum for discussion of theese design matters. You can bring it up at the Preservation Commission. There ees no need to battle it out here. Not weeth all our summer visitors as weetnesses.”

  The altercation had upset Mike. I could tell by his long “E’s.” Mike was born in Texas, and his accent usually tends more toward a Southwestern drawl than Spanglish.

  Frank Waterloo, who’s a bald, hulking guy, made his voice soft and gentle as he spoke to his brother- in-law. “Let’s go, Hershel,” he said.

  Joe let go of Hershel. Hershel eyed the ring of guys around him I swear he flicked his tongue in and out like a frog after flies. Then he walked slowly toward the street door, ignoring Frank. After Hershel pulled the door open, he paused and looked back. “That’s what you say!” he said hoarsely.

  He went outside, followed by Frank, then poked his head back in for a final croak. “I’ll file charges!”

  And he was gone. Nervous laughter swept the post office, and a couple of guys went over to Joe and assured him they’d back him up if Hershel filed any kind of complaint.

  “The guy’s crazy,” Trey Corbett said. “The Historic District Commission has no interest in seeing the Root Beer Barrel rebuilt.” Trey is a member of the commission.

  “You haven’t voted yet,” Joe said.

  Trey ran a hand over his thin, wispy hair and adjusted his thick glasses. To me Trey looks like a middle-aged boy. He’s only in his mid-thirties, but his worried expression and nerdy appearance make him look as if he ought to be older. He doesn’t sport a pocket protector, but he looks as if he should.

  Trey shook his head. “Besides, Hershel hit you first. You only punched him in self-defense.”

  “Joe didn’t punch him at all,” I said. “He just griped—I mean ‘grabbed’! He grabbed him. ” No harm in getting that idea foremost in the public mind right away.

  Mike Herrera said, “Joe, you, handled it as well as you could. But we sure doan want any gossip right at this point, do we?”

  I wondered what that meant, but I decided this wasn’t a good time to ask. So I spoke to Joe. “Are you hurt?”

  Joe shook his head. I’m fine, Lee.” He turned to Mike and Trey. “Let’s forget it. Hershel’s just a harmless crank.”

  “He’s a crank,” Trey said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s harmless. Some cranks wind up walking up and down the streets with an Uzi.”

  “I’m no mental health expert;” Joe said. “See you later.” He turned to me. “You going back to the shop?”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m there till closing.”

  “I’ll walk down with you.”

  I dumped my invoices into the proper slot while. Joe closed his post office box and stuck his mail in his shirt pocket. We walked down Pear Avenue toward TenHuis Chocolade. TenHuisit— rhymes with “ice”— is where my aunt, Nettie TenHuis, makes the finest European-style luxury bonbons, truffles, and molded chocolate in the world and where I’d be on duty until after nine o’clock.

  The Fourth of July, when the biggest invasion of tourists hits the beaches of Lake Michigan, was still more than a week away, but the sidewalks of Warner Pier were crowded, and cars, vans, and SUVs were parked bumper to bumper. The three classes of Warner Pier society were out in force.

  The first class is the tourists—people who visit Warner Pier for a day or a week and who rent rooms in the local motels or bed-and-breakfast inns. They were dressed in shorts or jeans with T-shirts—lots of them touting either colleges (“M Go Blue”) or vacation spots (“Mackinac Island Bridge”). The tourists wan
der idly, admiring the Victorian ambiance of Dock Street, giggling at the sayings on the bumper stickers in the window of the novelty shop, licking ice-cream cones and nibbling at fudge, pointing at the antiques (“Gramma had one just like that, and you threw it away!”), and discussing the prices at the Warner Winery’s shop. They buy postcards or sunscreen or T shirts, and sometimes antiques or artwork or expensive kitchen gadgets.

  The second class is the “summer people,” the ones who own second homes in Warner Pier or along the shore of Lake Michigan and who stay in those cottages or condos for much of the summer. Summer people tend to wear khakis and polo shirts, or other forms of “resort wear.” They walk along more briskly, headed for the furniture store, the hardware store, or the insurance office. Lots of the summer people are from families who have been coming to Warner Pier for generations. Lots of them are wealthy, some are famous. They’re important to the Warner Pier economy, too, since they pay high property taxes for the privilege of living there part-time.

  Joe and I represented the “Ideals,” people who live in Warner Pier year-round. There are only twenty-five hundred of us. The other twenty thousand (I’m overestimating, but not by much) thronging the streets were tourists and summer people.

  Locals wear every darn thing. Joe had on navy blue work pants and a matching shirt, an outfit suitable for working in the shop where he repairs and restores antique boats. I was wearing khaki shorts and a chocolate brown polo shirt with “TenHuis Chocolade” embroidered above the left boob. A few Warner Pier locals actually wear suits and ties. A very few. Most dress more like the summer people, except for the artsy crowd. That group goes in for flowing draperies and ripped jeans.

  The throng on the street kept Joe and me from exchanging more than a few words as we walked along. When we got within a few doors of TenHuis Chocolade, Joe spoke. Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I said. I opened the door and savored the aroma that met me. Warm, sweet, comforting—pure chocolate. Also chocolate laced with cherry, with rum, with coconut, with strawberries, with raspberries, with other delicious flavors. I never get tired of it.

  The two teenagers—Tracy and Stacy—working behind the retail sales counter seemed to be handling the half-dozen tourists who were salivating over the display cases, so I just waved to them and led Joe into my office. The office is a small, glass-enclosed room which overlooks both the retail shop and the workroom where the chocolates are made. The skilled women who produce the chocolates were cleaning up for the day—checking the temperatures on the electric kettles of dark, milk, and white chocolate, washing up the stainless steel bowls and spoons, putting racks of half-made bonbons in the storage room, running final trays of chocolate frogs and turtles through the cooling tunnel.

  Lifelike frogs, turtles, and fish molded from chocolate were Aunt Nettie’s special item for that season. The small ones—about two inches—were plain molded chocolate, but the larger ones—six or eight inches—were more elaborate. Most of the larger ones were of milk chocolate, with fins and other detailing in either dark or white chocolate. The milk chocolate turtles, with their shells decorated with white chocolate, were especially nice, and the frogs—white chocolate, decorated with dark chocolate eyes, mouths, and spots—looked as if they might actually hop.

  In the office Joe and I both sat down. “Any chance you could get off early tomorrow?” he asked.

  “I could talk to Aunt Nettie. She’s planning her big pre-tourist season cleanup project–taking the chocolate vats apart—so she may be here late. I guess Stacy could balance out the cash register.”

  Joe opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the bell on the street door rang, and I caught a flash of bright green from the corner of my eye. Hershel Perkins was walking in.

  Joe had his back to the door, so he couldn’t see him. I leaned over and spoke quietly. “Hershel just came in to scrounge his daily chocolate. Let’s go back to the break room.”

  Joe and I both avoided looking into the shop again. We walked through the workroom and into the very pleasant break room. It’s filled with homey furniture— an antique dining table and some easy chairs—and on the walls are several framed watercolors by local artists.

  But right at the moment the break room was crowded. The ladies who had finished up were leaving, and that room is the passage to the back alley. They were walking through, one at a time and in groups, making a great show of not paying any attention to the business manager and her boyfriend.

  Joe frowned, then spoke quietly. “I need to talk to you privately. Could you walk down to the park? I’ll buy you an ice-cream cone.”

  “Let me tell Aunt Nettie.”

  Aunt Nettie was up in the shop, talking to Hershel. It was a little ritual—she was practically the only person in Warner Pier who acted glad to see him. “Hershel, you mustn’t save that too long,” she was saying as I came in. “They’re for eating, not looking at.”

  “Aunt Nettie,” I said. “I’m going out for a few minutes.”

  Aunt Nettie turned her back to the counter. “Certainly, Lee. And I’m just getting a eight-inch frog for Hershel. It’s the first one we’ve sold. He wants it as a mascot for his canoe.”

  I was astonished. Hershel Perkins came in the, shop every afternoon and asked for a sample piece of chocolate. I’d never known him to buy anything, particularly not an expensive molded frog. Stacy—Stacy was the plump one; Tracy had stringy hair—turned around and waggled her eyebrows at me. She was obviously astonished, too.

  I smiled at Aunt Nettie. “That’s great, Mr. Perkins.”

  Hershel just scowled.

  I went back to the break room. “The roof may fall in,” I said “Hershel is actually buying something. He comes in nearly every day to cadge a sample.”

  “Why does Nettie let him get away with that?” Joe said.

  “She says everyone who comes in the shop gets a sample, and Hershel’s no different. I think, she feels sorry for him.”

  “I feel sorry for him, too, and I don’t want to argue with him again. But I’ve got to talk to you. Now. Come on.”

  I was extremely curious. We went out through the alley door and down to the Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor, stood in line behind a half-dozen tourists, then took our cones over a block to the Dock Street Park.

  The Dock Street Park is the pride of Warner Pier. It’s narrow, but it stretches along the Warner River for a mile. The riverside is lined with marinas and public mooring spots for hundreds of small craft. As usual, the river itself was crowded with boats, which an either follow the Warner River upstream or travel down the river and out into Lake Michigan.

  None of the park’s benches was empty, so we walked along the dock near the public mooring.area. Down the way I saw a knot of people gathered around a spiffy wooden motorboat, and I recognized Joe’s 1949 Chris-Craft Runabout. Its mahogany deck and sides shone as beautifully as they had the year the boat was built.

  I was surprised to see it. Joe usually drives his pickup to town. If he uses a boat, he uses his 1948 Shepherd Sedan. “How come you brought the runabout in?” I said.

  “A guy up at Saugatuck wants to see it,” Joe said. “I’m going to take it up the lakeshore. Besides, I’m dying to show it off around the marinas. Since the sale fell through.”

  The boat’s price tag was $20,500. Twice Joe and his banker had celebrated because they thought it had sold. Twice the sale had fallen through.

  But Joe obviously didn’t want to talk about boats. He stopped out of earshot of the gawkers.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  Joe stared at his ice-cream cone—one scoop of French silk and one of pecan praline. “I’ve got a proposition for you,” he said.

  Then, to my astonishment, he blushed. And he began to stammer. “That was the wrong word. I mean, I’ve got an invitation. I mean, if you’d like to … Maybe we could..”