The Chocolate Bear Burglary (6 page)

The Dockster, a beer joint that rocks until dawn in the summer, was shuttered for the winter. The Warner Pier Inn had closed its dining room at nine. Dock Street Pizza, where the locals hang out, had closed at ten. The Holiday Haven, one of the two motels that stay open all winter, was dark, though a dim light in the office hinted that an on-site manager would have appeared if I had banged on its doors. I saw no reason to do such a thing. There was no Lexus SUV in its parking lot.

Even the Warner Pier Police Department, which occupies a corner of City Hall, had only one light inside and a security light outside. The Warner Pier Volunteer Fire Department was locked up tight as well. The police and fire station share a dispatcher with the county, and in case of emergency, I guess the dispatcher knows who has the keys.

The only human being I saw was the guy spraying water to form a new layer of ice on the tennis courts. Warner Pier’s tennis courts are flooded and turned into a skating rink every winter, and some poor schnook has to maintain them after the skaters have packed it in.

By the time I reached the intersection of West Street and North Lake Shore Drive—where the state highway enters Warner Pier—I had just about decided that Jeff had headed back to Texas on an empty gas tank. I glanced at Warner Pier’s other open motel, the Lake Michigan Inn. It looked busier than the Holiday Haven had looked; one guest room had a light in the window and there were a few cars parked outside, though none of them had Texas tags.

I drove around the corner and pulled into the Stop and Shop to turn around, and there, under the lights next to the building, was Jeff’s gold Lexus.

Luckily for my surveillance project, there was no sign of Jeff himself. I flipped a U-turn through the parking lot and wheeled my old van across the street. I pulled into the circular drive of Katie’s Kraft Shoppe and parked close behind the shop’s van. I cut my lights and watched the Stop and Shop.

So Jeff had stopped for gas. Did he have more money than he’d told me he had? Or did he have a credit card he hadn’t mentioned? Or had he bought gas? He wasn’t parked at a pump.

I didn’t see Jeff. It crossed my mind that he might be robbing the joint. My heart jumped to my throat. His car was in plain sight, however, nosed in near the entrance door. If he’d planned to commit a crime, surely he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to park that noticeable car in so obvious a spot. Maybe he had just dropped by the Stop and Shop to buy a bag of potato chips. I tried to calm down.

The inside of the store was visible through big plateglass windows, and I scanned the shelves and aisles. It wasn’t a big place, just a half dozen aisles. There was no sign of Jeff. I turned the van’s motor off. I would sit there until I got cold, I decided. If he didn’t show by then, I’d go home to bed.

But I had waited only about five minutes when Jeff appeared. He came into the store from the back room, waved at the clerk, and walked out the front door.

What the heck had he been doing in the back room of the Stop and Shop?

Oh, God! Were they dealing drugs there? My heart leaped back into my throat, then dropped to my toes, and began to pound like crazy. But I had no reason to think Jeff was into the drug scene, I told myself. He hadn’t acted high, and his eyes looked normal, even if his earlobes didn’t. Maybe he wanted to use the Stop and Shop’s restroom.

Jeff started his car, backed out, and drove toward the Warner Pier business district. I waited until he was several blocks down the street, then cautiously followed him.

He didn’t seem to have any idea I was there, and he seemed to know where he was going—if he was heading back to Aunt Nettie’s. At least, he turned where I would have. If I were going home myself, I’d cut over to Dock Street by way of Fifth, a route that would take me past TenHuis Chocolade, near the corner of Fifth and Peach. I was once again made aware that Jeff was more familiar with the layout of Warner Pier than he should have been.

I hung back a couple of blocks as we drove. I was beginning to wonder what I was going to tell Jeff after we both parked in Aunt Nettie’s driveway.

So he caught me completely by surprise when he suddenly turned off his headlights, pulled over, and parked beside the curb, right in front of TenHuis Chocolade. I stopped a block away, as far away from a streetlamp as I could, and turned off my headlights.

But Jeff wasn’t paying any attention to me. He remained motionless inside his SUV for about a minute; then he jumped out and ran across the sidewalk. I could see him silhouetted against the dim security light we leave on behind the counter.

Now what?

I decided I’d better intervene. I drove on down the street. By this time Jeff was running back and forth in front of the store, looking up and down the street. As I pulled in beside his car, he shaded his eyes from my headlights. His glasses glittered. He seemed to be peering at me, trying to see who I was.

I opened the van’s window and leaned out. “Jeff! What are you up to?”

“Lee?” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Oh, God, you’re here!”

“Yes. And so are you. Why?”

He waved frantically and whispered again. “Be quiet! Call the cops! Somebody’s broken into the store!”

I got out of the van. “That’s silly. This is Warner Pier.”

“I don’t care if it’s the moon! The glass is broken out of the front door! And I saw somebody moving around. Now they’re in the back room. They’ve got a flashlight!”

The whole thing was ridiculous. Burglaries don’t happen in Warner Pier, at least not in winter. I moved toward Jeff, into my headlights.

“Warner Pier has practically no crime in the wintertime,” I said. “The tourists take it home with them.”

I could see myself reflected in the shop window as I crossed the sidewalk. But when I moved in front of the entrance door, my reflection disappeared.

For a moment I was reminded of a funhouse mirror—now you see it, now you don’t. But when I stretched out my hand toward the door, my glove went right through the glass part of the door.

“The glass is gone,” I said stupidly.

Jeff whispered again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The glass in the door is smashed, and there was somebody moving around inside.”

Right then we heard a motor start, followed by squealing tires.

“They’re getting away!” Jeff ran toward the corner.

I had an awful vision of Jeff tackling burglars, ruthless and desperate burglars armed with guns and knives.

“Jeff! Stop!” I ran after him.

It was half a block to Fourth Street, and we pounded along until we got there. But when Jeff reached the streetlight at the corner he stopped abruptly. I careened into him, and we both slipped on a patch of ice. I grabbed Jeff, he grabbed me, we both grabbed the base of the streetlight. We wound up sitting on the sidewalk, but neither of us hit the ground very hard.

Jeff was still facing up Fourth Street. “There they go! And I didn’t get a good look at the car.”

I twisted around in time to see taillights disappearing around a corner. “He turned on Blueberry,” I said. “Or I think he did. And his taillights look funny.”

“The left one is out,” Jeff said, “but that’s not going to be a lot of help. I think it was some kind of sports car. Maybe.”

We walked back to the store. “You don’t have a cell phone, do you?” Jeff asked. He made it sound like a major personality flaw.

“Sorry,” I said. “But I have a key to the shop.”

“We shouldn’t go in the front. We might destroy evidence.”

“Well, I’m not going around to the alley,” I said. “It’s too dark and snaky back there. Besides, the burglar must have gone out the back door, it’s easy to open from inside.”

“How far is the police station?”

“Just a couple of blocks, but there’s nobody there. We have to call the county dispatcher.”

There was little glass on the sidewalk, of course, because the burglar had knocked the glass inside. We gingerly walked in.

“If the burglars came in this way,” Jeff said, “they’re gonna have glass in the soles of their shoes.”

I turned on the lights and looked at the display shelves.

“Thank God!” I said.

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “The molds are still there.”

Since the moment the word “burglar” had sprung into my mind, I’d been dreading finding the Hart collection of chocolate molds gone. They were the only thing in the shop that was valuable.

I called the dispatcher, and in about ten minutes a patrol car pulled up. I was relieved to see a tall, lanky figure get out—Abraham Lincoln in a stocking cap.

“It’s Chief Jones,” I said.

The chief waved at me. “Just what have you been up to now, Lee?”

“I’m a victim, Chief. Or at least TenHuis Chocolade is.”

The chief stepped in through the broken glass, and I introduced him to Jeff. “You two better go in the office and close the door,” the chief said. “We’ll hurry up out here.”

“Yeah. Chocolate gets funny-looking if it freezes. I’ll call Handy Hans and see if he can do something about that door.”

“Have you called Nettie?”

“No. I’ll do that, too.”

Telling Aunt Nettie that someone had broken into her beloved shop wasn’t easy, but she took it calmly.

“Nobody’s hurt?”

“Not Jeff or me. I hope whoever broke in slashed their wrists on broken glass.”

“Any sign of that?”

“Nope. Apparently they—he—parked around behind, but he must not have been able to open the back door from the outside. So he came around to the front, smashed the window in the door, and got in that way. But Jeff must have disturbed him right away, and the guy ran back to the break room, opened the door to the alley and got out the back.”

“I’ll be right down.”

Aunt Nettie’s big Buick showed up within fifteen minutes. By then a second patrol car had arrived and Patrolman Jerry Cherry was taking pictures. The chief had allowed Jeff and me to start cleaning up the glass, so Aunt Nettie was able to enter the shop in a more traditional manner.

Soon afterward Handy Hans—his last name is VanRiin—arrived with a sheet of plywood, which he used as a stopgap measure against the cold, and Aunt Nettie joined Jeff and me in the office.

She looked puzzled. “What I don’t understand is why you two were down here in the middle of the night. And why did you come in separate cars?”

Jeff glowered and stared at the floor.

I was going to have to tell them that I had followed Jeff. “I heard Jeff leaving,” I said, “and my curlicue got the best of me. I mean my curiosity! I admit it, Jeff. I wanted to know where you were going, so I followed you.”

Glower and mutter. He shot a glare at me.

I felt embarrassed and angry. “If it’s any consolation, you lost me, and I found you again just a few blocks before you pulled up in front of the shop.” I thought Jeff looked relieved, but he didn’t speak. I went on. “I feel responsible for you, Jeff. You won’t tell us why you showed up here. I can’t get hold of your parents. I need to know what you’re up to!”

“Good question.” The comment came from the door to the office, and I looked up to see Chief Jones come in. He unwrapped a mile of wool scarf from around his neck, pulled off his stocking cap, and took a chair.

“Okay. Jeff, you did good work, scaring the burglar off like that. But what the heck were you doing down here anyway?”

Jeff’s lips pursed, and his brows knitted. He looked as if he were trying to decide whether he should yell or burst into tears.

But before he could do either, Aunt Nettie took over. “Chief, does Warner Pier have a curfew?”

“No, Nettie. You know it doesn’t.”

“Then is there any legal reason that Jeff shouldn’t have been driving around in Warner Pier, even if he did it after midnight?”

“No, there isn’t, Nettie. He wasn’t breaking any law by merely driving around the business district. It’s just a little unusual.”

She turned to me. “Lee, Jeff isn’t a little boy anymore, and you’re not married to his father anymore. So, if he wants to drive around all night every night, he’s welcome to do so.”

Then she addressed the chief. “It’s getting to be time for breakfast. Let’s form a caravan out to the house—you and Jerry are invited. I’ve got a couple of pounds of sausage in the freezer, and I’ve got a dozen eggs. Let’s go eat.”

She zipped her heavy blue jacket and pulled on her own woolly cap and gloves. She shook a bulky finger at us. “And not one of you is going to ask Jeff a single question. He saved the Hart molds, and I’ll be eternally grateful to him.”

She sailed out the door—solid as a tugboat, but regal as an ocean liner.

When I looked at Jeff, he had tears in his eyes.

O
f course, Aunt Nettie was right.

Or I had convinced myself that she was by the time I had driven out to the house. My Texas grandmother would have said Jeff was simply “bowing his neck,” acting like a mule fighting the harness. He wasn’t going to be badgered into telling us anything. The only way we were likely to find out why he’d come to Michigan was by killing him with kindness. It was the same technique Aunt Nettie had used twelve years earlier, when she was saddled with an angry sixteen-year-old niece for the summer.

We had to let Jeff learn that he could trust us. Which made me a little ashamed that I had followed him. But not too ashamed. When I finally got hold of his mom or his dad, they were likely to have a fit because he had left college in the middle of the semester and driven to Michigan. I didn’t want to quarrel with them, and they wouldn’t like it if I had let him wander around western Michigan in the snow and hadn’t even tried to figure out what he was up to.

And I did wonder about those tears in Jeff’s eyes.

Jeff offset the tears, however, by pouting and sulking all through breakfast. By the time Aunt Nettie had fed Chief Jones, Jeff, me, and herself—Jerry Cherry hadn’t joined us—it was close to six a.m. The chief insisted on helping Aunt Nettie with the dishes, and Jeff delighted us all by going to bed. I was exhausted, but too keyed up to sleep. So I put on my jacket and boots, took my flashlight and walked down the drive to get the Grand Rapids paper out of the delivery box across the road.