The Chocolate Cupid Killings (22 page)

Maybe that was what made me wild to see them. How could I get a look at those photos?

I called the Warner Pier Public Library and asked if they had the
Detroit Free Press
on microfilm. Microfilm, I learned, was now a thing of the past.

“If you want to look at a
Detroit Free Press
published since the year 2000,” the reference librarian said, “you can use a database.”

“Is there a fee?”

“Not if you have a library card. The Michigan Department of Libraries pays for all state libraries to use that database.”

“I'll be right over.”

“Come ahead. Unless you want to access it from your own computer.”

“I can do that?”

“Certainly.” The librarian explained how, and she didn't even sound condescending. Librarians are wonderful people.

In less than five minutes, I was looking at the article about Christina Meachum. There were the pictures I'd wanted to see. Christina's high school graduation picture. Of course, it looked nothing like Pamela. All of us change in twenty years. Next was a photo from a mob wedding—a different picture from the one I'd seen earlier, but apparently the same event. And then there was Christina's own wedding picture.

And no matter how I tried, I could not turn the bride in that picture into Pamela Thompson. It was more than the nearly twenty-year age difference. It simply didn't look like the same person.

This was confusing. After all, when I'd seen the IDTYPE picture Derrick Valentine had displayed, I had immediately thought it was Pamela. I tried to analyze why I couldn't picture Pamela as the young girl in the lacy wedding gown.

The first thing was the eye makeup. As a young bride, Christina had worn hardly any eye makeup. Maybe some mascara. By the time the ID photo was taken she was circling her eyes with dark liner, sculpting the brow line with eye shadow, and loading the mascara on with a trowel. As Pamela, she still wore that eye makeup.

Pamela's face was now a different shape, as well. Today her jaw was misshapen—what my Texas grandmother would have called “whopperjawed.” It was lumpy on one side. I had assumed Harold “the Butcher” Belcher had arranged that change.

Pamela's hair was different from her days as Christina as well. It was more than the color—which had changed from Christina's lustrously dark hair to Pamela's cheap-looking blond. The style was also completely different. Pamela had used heavy bangs and a long bob to cover up as much of her face as possible. Christina had pulled her hair back, showing her deep widow's peak and dainty ears.

I pictured one of the last times I had talked to Pamela face-to-face, on the afternoon Derrick Valentine had been looking for her. She had been sitting at the table in the break room, making bows in Easter colors. I had told her the picture Valentine had shown me was definitely her, and her reaction had been odd.

Pamela had smirked.

When she saw my reaction—the smirk had astonished me, and I'm sure I showed it—Pamela had dropped her face into her hands, pushing her bangs back from her forehead.

I gasped as I remembered. Pamela had a broad, high forehead.

Next Pamela had pulled her hairnet off, then put it back on, tucking the long side hair into it, and keeping the brashly blond stuff pulled down to cover her ears.

But I'd gotten a glimpse of them. They weren't pretty ears. They were large, with pendulant lobes. I remembered thinking that Pamela needed always to wear her hair in a style that covered them.

Now I looked at Christina's wedding picture again. Her ears were small, and the dainty lobes were adorned with tiny pearl drops.

And her forehead wasn't broad and square. She had that deep widow's peak.

I didn't gasp again. But I was sure. Whoever the underground railroad had been helping to escape, whoever the woman was that we'd known as Pamela, she had not been Christina Meachum Belcher.

I stared at the photo, taking in my new idea. Pamela was not Christina? But Myrl and her underground railroad cohorts had said she was. Sarajane believed it. How could it not be true?

It was simply too fantastic to believe.

I had figured it out, true, and I probably should have called Hogan immediately. But I had to take it in emotionally before I could start spreading the word.

At the time all I felt was a deep longing to talk to Joe. Joe thought logically. Maybe if I explained it to him, he would see the flaw in my reasoning. Maybe once again Pamela would morph into Christina, and I wouldn't feel as if the world had turned upside down.

I tried his shop, his cell phone, the Warner Pier City Hall, and our house. I even called his mom. But she said she hadn't heard from him.

“Have you been leaving messages for Joe?” I asked.

“I left one at your house. And, yes, I left one at the shop. And one on his cell phone.”

“I wonder where he could be? He doesn't usually get completely out of touch.”

We agreed that his behavior was odd, but neither of us was worried. Then I called Webb Bartlett, to find out if Joe had checked in with him.

Webb said that he hadn't heard from Joe. “I really need to talk to him,” he said. “Has he ever explained this whole idea to you?”

“No, Webb. I didn't even know he'd been talking to you.”

“Well, I'd better let Joe tell it.” Then he seemed to realize how I might interpret that. “It's nothing bad, Lee! Just a little deal he and I have been talking about.”

“Deal?”

“A job I'm trying to get him to take on.”

Oh. As an attorney with a busy practice, Webb always had lots of minor odd jobs he needed help with. He'd asked Joe for help before, but Joe had always declined. I put the whole thing out of my mind. I sent greetings to Webb's wife, and we promised to get together soon. Then I hung up.

I hadn't forgotten Pamela, even if I couldn't talk to Joe about her.

Apparently Pamela—whoever she really was—had convinced the abused women's rescue group that she was Christina Meachum and was badly in need of help escaping her dangerous ex-husband. But if Pamela wasn't Christina, why had Harold Belcher shown up in Warner Pier, demanding that Aunt Nettie and I tell him where she was?

And where was the real Christina?

I stared at the wall. My discoveries were beginning to sink in. I knew I had to find Hogan and tell him that I didn't think our Pamela was Christina Meachum Belcher.

I took my time doing it. I put on my ski jacket, boots, and hat. I went out of the shop and locked the door behind myself. I walked slowly down the street and over a block to City Hall. I sauntered around the building and into the police department, steeling myself to talk to Hogan.

He wasn't there.

The office was empty except for the secretarydispatcher, a woman named Judy VanRynn. “You just missed them,” she said. “Hogan and Lieutenant Underwood left about ten minutes ago. They went over to the Lake Michigan Inn to quiz that O'Sullivan guy.”

For a moment I couldn't remember who in the world O'Sullivan was. I guess I looked as blank as I felt, because Judy explained.

“That other Atlanta private eye.”

“O'Sullivan! Oh! Did he come back to Warner Pier?”

“Yah.” Judy answered with that western Michigan version of “yeah” that sounds almost like the “Ja” of the original Dutch settlers. She picked up a pink message pad. “Can I tell Hogan what you need?”

“Yes. It's a message for either Hogan or Lieutenant Underwood.”

“Okay.”

I knelt beside her desk and lowered my voice, almost to a whisper, even though only the two of us were in the office. “Tell them I don't think Pamela is Christina.”

Now it was Judy's turn to look blank. “You don't think Pamela is Christina? What the heck does that mean?”

She spoke without lowering her voice. The words just bounced around all over the police department, followed by a giant silence as I tried to think how to explain.

But the silence didn't last. It was broken by a huge roar.

“Not Christina? Then where the hell is my wife?”

Harold Belcher was coming out of the hall that led to the men's room, and he seemed to be in attack mode.

He roared again. “What do you mean, Pamela isn't Christina?”

“I don't know!” I blurted out the words, so scared that I nearly left a puddle on the floor. “Everybody said she was Christina, but I looked at her pictures, and I can't see it!”

He glared at me. I fought the impulse to hide under Judy's desk and forced myself to glare back. Then I heard my voice again. “What are
you
doing here, anyway?”

Judy had jumped to her feet and was making some effort at controlling her office. “Just calm down!”

Harold ignored her and answered my question. “I came in to talk to your blankety-blank police chief! Everybody kept telling me to check with the authorities, so I thought I'd do it. Now you say you've lost Christina!”

“I never had Christina!” That was me.

“Calm down! Everybody stop yelling!” That was Judy.

“Where the hell is my wife?”

“Ex-wife!”

“Calm down!”

Either Judy prevailed, or Harold and I ran out of things to yell at each other. Anyway, Harold didn't seem to have a meat cleaver or any other weapon, and his fists were not balled into clubs. I threw myself down in one of the visitor's chairs. “Judy, you'd better get Hogan over here pinto! I mean, pronto! I'll wait for him!”

Harold growled and sat down in a chair that faced mine. We both folded our arms and glared at each other.