The chocolate frog frame-up: a chocoholic mystery

by JoAnna Carl

  “You okay?” I said. ”Aunt Nettie said you had a run-in with the same jerk Joe and I did.”

  “The chief says it sounds like the same truck,” Trey said. ”Black Dodge Cargo Van. At least I think it was black. I’m guessing by the color of the paint down the side of my Explorer.”

  “It actually hit you? I didn’t realize that. What happened?”

  “I’d been over to Gray Gables – you know I’m the local caretaker for the family?”

  I nodded. ”It’s a beautiful place. Do they ever have tours?”

  “No, but I can show you and Joe over it. My cousins don’t come down much. Anyway, last night I left there a little after ten, and I decided to head back to town on Inland road, rather than getting on the Interstate.”

  “I didn’t realize Gray Gables is that far from town. I’ve only seen it from the water.”

  “It’s not far, but the roads over there are so twisty it’s quicker to go down Haven Road, get on the Interstate, and come back that way.”

  “Haven Road! That’s where the black panel truck got off the Interstate.”

  “Apparently so. I had just turned onto inland when this black vehicle came up behind me, traveling like the proverbial bat out of hell. He went around to pass and scraped along the left-hand side of my Explorer. I’m just darn lucky I didn’t have my arm out the window. I nearly ran off in the ditch. Then I blasted the horn – I’m sure everybody in the neighborhood heard me. Of course, he didn’t stop.”

  “Did you see where he went?”

  “He turned off to the left, but I couldn’t see just where. Michigan Road. Lakeview. Maybe even Benson Drive.”

  “Are there other houses around there?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s a built-up neighborhood. But the lots are big.”

  “I wonder if anybody else saw him.”

  “Chief Jones was going to ask. He was also going to try to find out if anybody in that neighborhood owns a Black Dodge Cargo Van with tinted windows.”

  “Did you get a look at the license plate?”

  “I thought you and Joe got the number.”

  “We thought we did, too, but when they ran a check, the number we had was not the number of a Dodge panel truck.”

  Trey frowned. ”I thought it had a couple of eights. I guess they could have been sixes. I didn’t get the letters.”

  I gave Trey a sample chocolate – he picked a milk chocolate fish on a stick. Then I walked outside with him to see the damage to his silver SUV. An awful scrape ran down the driver side, and the black paint showed up clearly.

  “This guy must be crazy,” I said.

  “The chief’s convinced he had it in for Joe. He thinks I just got in the way. Does Joe have any idea what he did to annoy him?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know Joe all that well. It seems to me he usually tries to mind his own business. I never heard of him making anybody mad. Of course, there was that Chicago man who wanted to make an offer on the Ripley place. Joe wouldn’t even talk to him. I guess that guy was kind of upset.”

  “Someone wanted to buy the Ripley place?”

  Trey got a look of little boy guilt on his face. ”Joe didn’t tell you? Maybe I was wrong.” He shuffled his feet uneasily. ”Guess I better go. I’m supposed to meet a painter. I’m still working on the Miller cottage.”

  He left, repeating his offer of a tour of Gray Gables. I went into the office with something new to think about.

  Somebody had offered to buy the Ripley place? That sounded completely screwy.

  The Ripley property, also known as Warner Point, was the showplace home of Joe’s ex-wife, the famous defense attorney Clementine Ripley. It included a fabulous house on a 10 acre plot which was bounded by Lake Michigan on the West and the Warner River on the south. The property was part of the estate which had become such a booger for Joe to settle. The Ripley property was worth millions, and it was costing her estate thousands and upkeep.

  Clementine Ripley might have been a brilliant defense attorney – the one movie stars and politicians called when they were in trouble – but she hadn’t been a good financial manager. She’d also owned a co-op apartment in Chicago, and she and Joe had owned an apartment house jointly. All of her real estate, Joe said, was heavily mortgaged. Plus, she’d trusted the wrong person with her finances, and nearly every cash asset and almost all her investments had been stolen or transferred to offshore accounts that were not in her name. She hadn’t even gotten around to signing a new will after she and Joe were divorced, which was the reason he was stuck with settling up. Getting any of the stolen assets back was proving to be a legal nightmare.

  And thanks to the current drop in the real estate market, Joe had told me, he didn’t want to sell the Chicago real estate. The co-op apartment was rented. The apartment house made a profit, but it also kept Joe’s personal savings tied up. Between them, the two pieces of property provided barely enough income to pay the taxes, insurance, mortgage payments, and maintenance on the Warner Pier estate. No one wanted to rent the Warner Point property – which might have something to do with the two murders that had occurred there, I guess. It was simply a money pit and a pain in Joe’s neck financially.

  If I was reading the situation right, Joe ought to be glad to sell the Ripley property. So, if he had a chance, why wouldn’t he have sold it?

  I could call him up and ask him, of course. But I’d been so careful to stay out of his financial affairs, I didn’t quite have the nerve. If Joe wanted me to know, he would have told me.

  Probably, I told myself, the offer hadn’t been enough to pay off the mortgage.

  For a minute I wondered just what my future with Joe was. We’ve never discussed marriage. We’ve never even explored those important questions like “do you want to have kids?” And “do you want to live in Warner Pier forever?” These things just hasn’t come up. So how could I quiz him about his finances? They weren’t any of my business, as things stood.

  The phone rang, and I sighed and reached for it. I’d better quit brooding on company time.

  That phone call was the first of many. A dozen people called that morning – Joe’s mom, making sure I was all right; our neighbors, the Bailey’s; the chair of the chambers Economic Development Committee; lots of others. It was a replay of my walk to the post office.

  “I might as well have stayed home,” I said as Aunt Nettie walked by the office door. ”I can’t get anything done for the telephone.”

  Aunt Nettie smiled. ”I’m glad you’re here. If you weren’t, I couldn’t get a thing done for the telephone.”

  The morning passed. It was a straight up noon when the twelfth call came. ”Lee! Are you okay?”

  It was Lindy Herrera, who had been a friend since we were teenagers.

  “Hi, Lindy. Yes, I’m all right. Joe’s all right. Even the truck’s all right.”

  “You don’t sound all right.”

  “I’m just tired, I guess. The phone’s been ringing off the desk, and you’re the first caller I actually wanted to talk to.”

  Lindy laughed. ”Sounds as if you need to do lunch.”

  “Not in Warner Pier. It’ll be just like taking the phone with me. Are you working today?” Lindy worked in the restaurants and catering business of her father-in-law, Warner Pier’s mayor, Mike Herrera.

  “Actually, I’m a lady of leisure this summer. I decided to stay home with the kids. But today they’ve gone to the Grand Rapids Zoo with my mom and dad. Why don’t you come out here? I’ll fix something.”

  An idea began to tickle my brain. ”Isn’t there a park up Inland Road, not far from Gray Gables?”

  “Riverside Park. Why? Are you in the mood for a picnic?”

  “Yes, I am. And maybe a drive around that neighborhood with a local guide.”

  “You’re on. I’ll fix the sandwiches.”

  “I’ll bring chocolate.”

  Chapter 14

  Warner Pier is, as I say, a small town. And one sign that
a town is really small is that everybody is related to everybody else in some way. If they’re not blood relations, they go to the same church, went to high school together, get their hair cut at the same shop. It’s a mishmash of interconnected circles.

  For example, back when Lindy Herrera was Lindy Bradford, she and I had worked together behind the counter at TenHuis Chocolade for three Summers. At eighteen she married Tony Herrera, who had been a close friend of Joe’s in high school. Tony’s dad, Mike Herrera, was now Warner Pier mayor. He owns three restaurants and a catering service, and he also dated Joe’s mom, Mercy Woodyard, who ran Warner Pier’s largest insurance agency, with offices right across the street from TenHuis Chocolade. Interconnected circles.

  The circles continue. Tony has a job as a machinist in Holland, but when he was laid off the previous summer, he worked for Joe. Lindy works for her father in law. Since she fills in the gaps where Mike needs help, I never know if I’ll see her dishing out barbecued chicken at the Chamber of Commerce banquet or serving up French dips at Mike’s sidewalk café, a half block from TenHuis. Our circles intersect all the time.

  Tony and Lindy have three kids. Tony works days and Lindy usually works nights. I know they have trouble making ends meet. It was the kind of life my parents had, until debt and the struggle to get by drove of them apart. It was the kind of life I had been trying to avoid when I scrambled my way through college. But Lindy and Tony seem to be coping.

  I picked Lindy up at her little house at Ninth Avenue and Cider Alley. ”I brought Cokes and chips,” I said. ”And I hope you still like strawberry truffles.”

  “Yum, Yum!” Lindy held up a small Styrofoam cooler. ”I’ve got turkey wraps and carrot sticks. This is quite an outing for me. No kids!”

  “Your kids are darling.”

  “Of course they are. What would you expect? But schools barely out, and I’m already frazzled.”

  I tried not to think about the fact that I was twenty-nine years old and had no kids and no prospect of having any. We crossed the river on the Orchard Street bridge, then turned on Inland. The past the Waterloos’ house, which still had a driveway full of cars.

  “I guess I’ve seen Riverside Park from the water,” I said. ”But the main thing I remember about it is a boat ramp.”

  “For years a boat ramp really was the only thing there,” Lindy said. ”In the last few years the city’s fixed it up – playground equipment, a picnic shelter. I think the land was given by the Corbett family. Years ago.”

  “Does it adjoin Gray Gables?”

  “It doesn’t adjoin, but I think the Corbetts owned acres and acres on that side of the river originally. Now there’s a whole housing addition between the park and the big house.”

  We pulled into the park and easily found a space to spread the old quilt I keep in the back of the van. Several boat trailers were parked in the proper places for boat trailers, but picnickers were few. Yet the park was very nice – shady, with a well-kept playground.

  “Is this park a secret from tourists?” I said.

  “I think they all go for the beach. I bring the kids over here sometimes. Now, how about this tour you mentioned?”

  “It’s just idle curiosity,” I said. While I ate my turkey wrap – it had special horseradish sauce I remembered paying extra for at Mike’s sidewalk café – I described the adventures Joe and I had had with the black panel truck. Then I added Trey’s experience.

  “So the truck disappeared out in this area,” I said. ”That doesn’t mean it’s still here, of course.”

  “It could have hidden out a while, then gotten back on the interstate or taken off by the back roads.”

  “Sure. So I don’t want to go door to door or anything. That’s Chief Jones’s job. But I realized that I’ve never been over here enough to have any idea of what’s here or how it’s laid out.”

  Lindy laughed. ”I think I can find my way around. Tony and I parked on every road on this side of the river.”

  “It’ll have to be a short tour. I do need to get back to the shop.”

  “Okay. But now I gotta know. Has Joe proposed?”

  I should have expected that, I guess. But, Lindy caught me by surprise, so I stumbled around. ”We haven’t been dainty – I mean, dating! We haven’t been dating but four moons – I mean, months!”

  “Four months! More like a year.”

  “We met each other a year ago, Lindy. We didn’t date for a long time after that.”

  “Well, you ought to…”

  “Lindy!” She stops talking and looked at me expectantly.

  “Neither Joe nor I wants to make another mistake. Don’t rush us!”

  I said that merely to shut Lindy up, but when I heard my own words, they convinced me. For the moment at least, I felt confident about my relationship with Joe. It was unsettled, but so what? I didn’t know where it was going. That was fine. I said as much to Lindy. ”It’s okay.”

  Lindy shrugged. ”Okay.”

  “So, what’s going on with you?”

  The most exciting development in Lindy’s life, to my surprise, was her job.

  “Mike wants me to start working for him full-time in the fall,” she said. ”I’ll be a sort of second in command for the catering business.”

  “That sounds like a promotion.”

  “At least it’s a raise. I’ll be meeting clients, deciding on menus, stuff like that – very little cooking and serving. It won’t mean as much night work, since somebody else will handle the actual events. So maybe Tony and I will get to see each other now and then.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Mike has a sense of family, you know. He couldn’t get Tony interested in the business, so he’s turned to me.”

  She gave me a full report on each of the kids, and I told her about my mom – whose a travel agent in Dallas and is frequently off to Timbuktu or Tanzania. Then we hashed over the romance between her father-in-law and Joe’s mom, a topic I don’t discuss with just anyone – particularly not Joe.

  After we got that settled Lindy began to stuff paper napkins and other debris into a plastic sack. ”Are you ready for the tour?”

  “Sure. I want to see all the romantic spots where you and Tony made out.”

  Driving up on Inland Road brought us into an area that had as many trees as the road up to the old chapel had. It wasn’t scary in the daylight, with the sunlight making patterns on the forest floor here and there, but the trees were thick and crowded the road.

  There were quite a few houses, but the woods made most of them feel secluded. ”This is Riverside Addition,” Lindy said. ”It was a hot development when I was a kid. My mom used to wish she could afford to move over here.”

  “There are some beautiful homes – when you can see them.”

  We wandered around on several side roads, including the ones Trey had mentioned: Michigan, Lakeview, Benson Drive. They were lined with houses, but all the houses were heavily landscaped. Bushes, shrubs, and big trees were everywhere.

  “This is like driving through the deep, dark woods,” I said. ”Only now and then a house peeks out.”

  “It’s a lot like your aunt’s neighborhood.”

  “I know, but her house was built a hundred years ago, when that area was rural. The houses over there ‘just growed.’ This neighborhood actually encouraged all these trees. None of these houses get any sun. Not a woman over here can see more than three feet out her kitchen window.”

  Lindy laughed. ”A little further along here, the road ends at the entrance to Gray Gables. You can turn around there.”

  In a quarter of a mile the road curved, and I found the hood of my van up against an elaborate iron gate, closed and locked, with iron fence stretching out on either side. Beyond it, a gravel drive led into a small grove of trees. I caught a glimpse of a roof – a shingle covered cone – high above the trees.

  “Trey offered to give Joe and me a tour of this place,” I said.

  “You should see it,”
Lindy said. ”The Corbetts have lent it out a few times for special events I served, but it’s hard to get inside. It’s fabulous. Like going back in time. All the original furnishings.”

  “I think I’ll take a closer peek, as long as we’re here.”

  We both got out of the Van and walked up close to the gate. I craned my neck to see around the darn trees. ”I can see one corner,” I said. ”Queen Anne modified. Gee! It matches the side you can see from the river.”