The Chocolate Mouse Trap (19 page)

Lindy didn’t panic. When she spoke, her voice was calm. “Where’s that place where the bank’s eaten away?”

“About a quarter of a mile farther on.”

“I guess I could hit the brakes and try to make a U-turn.”

“Then he could hit us broadside.”

No, going on seemed to be our only choice. Lindy goosed the car, and it responded with more speed.

The car that was following us came closer. It came right up on the back bumper. Then it suddenly cut left, as if it were going to pass us. But instead it drove along beside us. But it wasn’t moving parallel to us. It was edging closer to us, ready to sideswipe the car.

Then I saw orange in the headlights. “There’s the barricade! He’s going to try to push us over!”

Lindy’s response probably saved our lives. She threw on her brakes.

Instantly the car beside us shot ahead.

Our tires hit a patch of ice, and the compact went into a spin, but we didn’t hit the guy who had been chasing us. We had almost come to a stop when the car slid slowly into the wooden barricade. Moving almost in slow motion, we went over the bank backward, sliding down toward Lake Michigan.

I
thought we were going to die. I knew how steep that drop was: straight down. And I knew how far it was: at least forty feet. And I knew what was at the bottom: the shallows of Lake Michigan, frozen solid. I expected us to plummet, hit hard, and be crushed to death as the car folded up like an accordion.

But it didn’t happen that way. We didn’t plummet; we slid gently. We didn’t fall straight down; my feet were as high as my shoulders, true, but it was more like gradually tipping over backward in a kitchen chair than like a beach stone splashing into the water.

We hit the ice at the edge of Lake Michigan with a crash, but the car didn’t fold up like an accordion. It bounced. It seemed to be all in one piece, and was even sitting fairly level. The motor was still purring, the lights were still on, and the heater fan was still blowing hot air.

And we had stopped moving.

“Lindy! Are you okay?”

“I think so! Are
you
okay?”

“I’m conscious, and nothing seems to be broken. Can you get out of the car?”

“Is that a good idea?”

“It might catch fire.”

Lindy punched dashboard buttons. The headlights went out, and the heater fan fell silent. “That will make it harder for that guy to find us, if he comes back,” she said.

“I wish we could get out of the car without turning on the interior lights, but we can’t. So we’d better hurry.”

Hurrying did not turn out to be an option. Lindy’s door was jammed shut. Snow and ice were piled up outside my door as well, and it took me several hard shoves to get it open. Then Lindy couldn’t find her hat. Refusing to leave the car without a hat didn’t seem dumb right at that moment. The temperature was in the teens. I was sure grateful that we were both warmly dressed.

Once she found her hat, Lindy had to climb over the center console. She did a belly whopper onto the ice to get out my door. We were panting by the time we both were standing on the passenger’s side of the car, hanging onto the door as if it were our last connection with solid ground. The footing was terrible, since the car was surrounded by clumps and clods and splinters of ice. The lake occasionally freezes smoothly, but crashing a car into it had thrown up all sorts of icy debris, regardless of how smooth the ice had been when we hit.

At least there was no open water. We didn’t have to leap from floe to floe. Instead, we went toward the high bank we’d just slid down, stepping carefully and hanging onto each other as if we had Velcro on our gloves. We couldn’t tell when we got onto the shore, actually. The chunks of ice seemed to go right up the bank, and I
knew
there had to be some beach someplace under the snow.

“Can we get up the bank?” Lindy asked.

“What if that guy is up there waiting?” I gestured to the right and toward the top of the bank. “There’s a house up there with the lights still on. Maybe we can climb up.”

We started walking. It’s a miracle neither of us broke a leg. Of course, it wasn’t too dark. Even when the moon is behind clouds, a layer of snow gives the terrain a sort of glow, so we could see a bit. Lindy began to mutter because she hadn’t thought to grab her flashlight from the glove box. That reminded me that I had picked up my purse, and there was a penlight on my key chain. We used it occasionally, but mostly we walked over the chunky ice that covered the beach using the moonlight filtered through clouds and reflected from snow.

Then we heard a man’s voice shouting, “Hello! Who’s there?”

I put the penlight out, and Lindy and I stood still, clutching each other.

Lindy whispered. “Do you think it’s the guy who ran us off the road?”

I whispered back. “He probably wouldn’t yell. So it’s likely to be whoever lives in that house. We’d better chance it.”

I turned the penlight back on and waved it. Then I yelled,. “Hello! We had a wreck! The car went over the edge!”

“Anybody hurt?”

“Not bad! How can we get up the bank?”

“My stairs are a little further along. I’ll go get a ladder!”

Our rescuer turned out to be a retired gentleman named Oscar Patterson. I had never met him, but I’d noticed his mailbox, and I sure was glad to make his acquaintance. Like most of the houses on the Lake Michigan side of Lake Shore Drive, his home had a wooden stairway that led down to the beach. The bottom section had been taken down for the winter, so the ice wouldn’t grind it into splinters, but he brought a ladder, and we were able to climb it to reach the first landing. After that, it was merely a matter of inching our way up, stair by snowy and icy stair, hanging onto the wooden handrail.

“I’ve been telling ’em someone was going to go over back there,” our rescuer said. “I called the street department. They said nothing could be done until they could get hold of some more of those barricades. Now maybe they’ll put up something stouter. Too late. As usual.”

The next hour was full of events. Mr. Patterson and his wife clucked over us. We called people—Aunt Nettie and Hogan, Joe, and Tony. They all came rushing over, and our rescuers’ driveway became packed with cars.

My biggest question was how we had avoided being killed. I was sure we’d gone over a real cliff, and by rights we should have been crushed to death.

But Hogan said we’d missed the steepest spot. “You went off about fifteen feet before the place where the road has been eaten away,” he said. “It was a steep slope, but you slid down at a forty-fivedegree angle, not a ninety. You were damn lucky.”

“Thank God Lindy hit the brakes when she did,” I said.

We had to tell Hogan the whole story. His biggest concern was that neither of us could describe the car that had pushed us off the road. Our vague description of its headlights was not a lot of help, though Lindy swore the car’s grill had looked like monstrous teeth.

Other than scrapes and bruises, neither Lindy nor I seemed to be hurt, and the men in our respective lives took us home just as the wrecker arrived. I was sure glad to see my own bed, though I can’t claim that I slept very well. One moment I was so grateful to be alive that I couldn’t close an eye, and the next I was so puzzled as to who would have tried to push Lindy and me over that steep bank that I just lay in bed with my brain whizzing around.

Maybe the biggest puzzle was simply which of us he’d been out to get. I couldn’t see any reason for either of us to attract the attention of a killer. Anyway, I mulled it over most of the night; I guess it was more comforting to do that than to remember what a close escape we’d had.

I finally fell asleep around five o’clock. Aunt Nettie must have tiptoed out, because I didn’t wake up until ten a.m. Then I panicked. Even though it was Saturday, TenHuis Chocolade was keeping regular business hours, getting ready for the big holiday. I was late.

By the time I’d showered, dressed, and gone by the police station to sign a statement, it was noon. So I came in the door of TenHuis Chocolade in something of a tizzy. I couldn’t afford to take a half day off, not even because I’d had a narrow escape followed by a sleepless night.

Dolly Jolly was working the front counter. “Hi, Lee!” she shouted. “Heard you had an exciting night! I’m assigned up here for the day! Nettie called Hazel in, asked her to fill the gap this week!”

I gave a sigh of relief. Hazel had formerly been Aunt Nettie’s second-in-command. She’d retired two months earlier after her husband, Harry, suffered a stroke.

“If Harry can spare her, we can really use her help,” I told Dolly. Then I went back to tell Hazel I was glad to see her.

Harry, she said, was doing better. Their son would be visiting for the next week. “It won’t hurt him to take his dad to physical therapy,” she said, “and it won’t hurt Harry if he has to depend on somebody besides me for a few days.” I thought her mouth looked a little grim, but I didn’t ask for details.

I went to my desk, vowing to concentrate on the chocolate business all afternoon. At first I found this difficult, since the phone kept ringing. I knew it would mostly be friends calling to commiserate over the wreck, but it could be a customer, so I didn’t dare not answer. The calls from friends made it hard to get anything done; they kept Julie’s and Carolyn’s deaths, the attack on Lindy, and the harrowing slide into Lake Michigan bouncing around in my brain. But about four o’clock something happened that focused my attention on TenHuis Chocolade in a big way.

The phone rang. Again. I tried not to sigh as I answered. “TenHuis Chocolade.”

“Hello.” It was a male voice, and it sounded young. And it didn’t say anything more.

So I spoke again. “Can I help you?”

“Well . . . This is Bob Vanderheide. Is Aunt—Could I speak to Mrs. TenHuis, please?”

For a moment my mind was a complete blank. Bob Vanderheide? I should know that name. Then I remembered. It was Aunt Nettie’s nephew. The one whose mother had written about his job prospects.

I decided to be friendly. “Bobby!” I said. “Hello! Aunt Nettie’s in the black. I mean the back! In the workroom. I’ll have to go get her. This is Lee McKinney.”

“Oh, hi.” Bobby didn’t sound enthusiastic. “I guess we’re cousins.”

“Shirttail cousins. No blood relation. How are you?”

“Fine.”

The conversation was not going anywhere. I told Bobby—or Bob—I’d find Aunt Nettie, put the phone down, and went back to the workroom. Aunt Nettie wasn’t there. I checked the break room. Not there. The restroom door was open, so I peeked inside. No sign of her there either. Finally, I asked Hazel. Aunt Nettie, she said, had gone to the Superette for four quarts of whipping cream. So I’d have to handle Bobby—I mean, Bob—myself.

I headed back to the office. “Aunt Nettie stepped out for a few minutes. Give me your number, and I’ll have her call you.”

“No!” Bob paused again. “Listen, tell her that I need to be over on that side of Michigan on Monday, and I’ll try to come by. Okay?”

“Sure. She’ll want you to stay over, Bob.”

“I better plan to drive back that night.”

“I’ll tell her. But we have plenty of room, and she’d love to have you stay.”

“I just need to talk to her. I’ll see her Monday afternoon.” He hung up.

Oh, rats! Just what I needed. My rival heir was appearing.

I scolded myself for feeling that way about Bobby—I mean Bob. But I did. He was a blood relative to Aunt Nettie. I wasn’t. He might end up owning TenHuis Chocolade.

Well, I wouldn’t be working for
him.
No matter what happened. I could find another job. I could commute into Holland or Grand Rapids. I could scrub floors, wash dishes, or clean toilets.

My mental tirade was interrupted by Hazel, who put her head in my door and said Aunt Nettie was back. “Did you want something important?”

“Tell her that her nephew Bobby—I mean, Bob—called and said he’ll be by to see her Monday afternoon.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Hazel smiled and went back to the workroom.

Nice. Hazel said Bobby’s visit would be nice. I addressed myself to the computer screen and adjusted my attitude.

Hazel was right, of course. Aunt Nettie would be pleased to see Bob. I was acting like a jealous little girl, afraid my favorite aunt would ignore me for another child, one who was younger and possibly cuter. I’d better straighten up, or Aunt Nettie would be perfectly entitled to disinherit me.

I was able to laugh at the idea that I’d be cleaning toilets if Bobby took over TenHuis Chocolade. After all, I had a degree in accounting and a lot of job experience. I wasn’t down to cleaning toilets yet. There was even the possibility that Bob would turn out to be a really smart guy who would be an asset to TenHuis Chocolade.

I was about to log on and check my e-mail when the next interruption came. My friend Barbara, the banker, came in. She had to hear all about the accident and the miraculous escape Lindy and I had had. I had to repeat the whole story. But it was only ten minutes before Barbara got up, ready to head back to the bank.

“I’m awfully glad you two made it out in one piece,” she said. “Where had you been?”

I reported on our trip to Holland in an absentminded way, because Barbara’s question had triggered a memory. One of my main purposes in going to the Veldkamp sales preview had been to quiz Diane and Ronnie Denham. I hadn’t learned a lot from Diane, but she had said one provocative thing. Diane had told me she felt sure that Julie had looked all of the Seventh Food Group up on the Internet.

I doubted that there was anything about me on the Internet, but her comment had made me wonder if there wasn’t something about the Denhams there. My old curiosity bump began itching madly. I connected to the Internet and looked up their names.

At first I didn’t find a thing. There was only one mention of “Ronnie” or “Ronald” or “Diane” named Denham on the Internet. That mention listed them as proprietors of the Hideaway Inn. Then I checked the Warner Pier Chamber of Commerce membership list. Diane, I learned, had a middle initial. A minute later I struck pay dirt.