The Chocolate Mouse Trap (3 page)

I am, after all, close to six feet tall—nearly a foot taller than Julie. It also occurred to me that I was older than Julie. I was about to turn thirty, and Julie looked as if she were barely old enough to sign the tab for enough champagne for a wedding reception. And I was also dowdier than Julie, even in my good navy blazer. Before she could make me feel inferior, I straightened my shoulders and reminded myself that I’m a natural blond. That’s not unusual in western Michigan, but it counts for something.

Her business, Julie told us, was just getting started. “My grandmother gave me an
advance
on my inheritance. She’s a
sweetheart
! I’d just feel
awful
if I wasted her money!”

Then she waved her hand casually. “I ran into some more
Warner Pier
people over at the show. So I invited them to
join
us. I hope you don’t
mind
. My grandmother has a
cottage
down there, and I always spent the summer there when I was a kid. I simply
adore
Warner Pier, so I hope I can
capture
all the business down that way.”

“Who is your grandmother?” Lindy asked the question faster than I could. Somehow I wasn’t surprised when Julie blushed slightly and said her grandmother was Rachel Schrader. The name made it plain that Julie’s grandmother could afford to give her granddaughter an advance on her inheritance.

Mrs. Schrader was well known as a west Michigan philanthropist, and her Warner Pier “cottage” was no little weekend cabin. It was a mansion sitting on more than a hundred acres of lakeshore property. Lindy, Jason, and I were careful not to meet each other’s eyes.

Julie went on talking, verbally italicizing at least one word in every sentence. And in a few minutes, Warner Pier people wandered in and began to join us. Of course, Lindy and I already knew all of them. Warner Pier merchants can hardly avoid getting acquainted with each other. There aren’t that many of us.

Ronnie and Diane Denham came next. They own the Hideaway Inn. Ronnie’s a retired engineer, so he handles the maintenance for their bed-and-breakfast. Diane had been a teacher, but her avocation is cooking. She specializes in fancy breakfasts. They told us they’d decided to advertise the Hideaway as a honeymoon destination.

Both Ronnie and Diane have wavy white hair, the kind with great body. Both have bright blue eyes, and both are on the plump side. They’ve always reminded me of Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.

As Julie greeted them, I remember wondering if Joe and I would look that much alike after thirty years of marriage. Joe and I are both tall, bony people, and if his dark hair turned gray and my blond hair did, too . . . It was a frightening idea. But I thought his eyes would stay blue and mine hazel.

Carolyn Rose came clomping in. Her high-heeled boots were audible clear across the restaurant, and almost immediately I heard her low, throaty voice. “I hope this place has decent coffee.” She didn’t greet anybody; just yanked out a chair and threw herself into it, tossing her fake fur jacket over the back and running her fingers through her unnaturally bright red hair. “I had to get the flowers to the Huizenga funeral before I could leave Warner Pier. Somehow my usual dose of caffeine got lost in transit.”

Like many Warner Pier retailers, Carolyn kept her shop open only a few hours a week in the winter—our off-season. She had no winter employees; so I knew she’d had to make up the sprays and wreaths, then take them to the funeral home herself, unload them, and help the funeral home people arrange them for the service.

Jason stood up to look for a waitress. His appearance seemed to draw the attention of a woman who had been hesitating at the door. She waved at our table enthusiastically, then walked over to us, smiling broadly. “Hello, Julie! Greetings all! I’m Margaret Van Meter.”

She plunked herself down in the last chair at our table as if her name were so famous we’d all know who she was. When I glanced at Lindy, however, she looked as blank as I felt.

Julie gestured. “Margaret’s a
baker,
” she said. “She makes the most
fabulous
wedding cakes.”

Margaret produced a handful of photographs of cakes and began handing them around. Or maybe “photographs” was too fancy a name for what Margaret had. “Snapshots” would have been more accurate. They were out of focus, with busy backgrounds. Some of the wedding cakes seemed to be tilting as if the bride and groom were planning to honeymoon in Italy and had been trying to get in the mood for a weekend in Pisa.

Margaret herself matched the photos: her mousy hair was straggly; her makeup was nonexistent; she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She looked as if she’d gotten ready in the dark.

But the cakes in the photos—once you allowed for the amateur photography—were gorgeous.

Margaret began talking as emphatically as Julie had been. “No, I never use mixes,” she told Diane Denham. “And I offer twenty flavors of fillings. Ooops!” She reached over and retrieved one of the photos. “How did that one get in there?”

“It looks interesting,” Lindy said. “Is that your family?”

“The whole crew.”

Margaret let Lindy have the photo, and I looked over her shoulder to see it. Margaret wasn’t in it, but everybody else seemed to be. There were kids of every age up to eight or so—I counted six of them, including a small baby. They were grouped around a husky blond guy.

“You see why I can’t get out to take a job,” Margaret said. “I’m hoping I can earn some money at home.”

Lindy produced a snapshot of the three Herrera kids, and we all seemed to forget we didn’t know each other very well. It turned out to be a highly successful lunch, if you judge by the amount of laughing and funny stories. Jason’s tale about the political candidate who was falling down drunk at a campaign banquet—well, I’d better not name names, but it was hilarious.

Of course, the Warner Pier crowd brought up my engagement.

“Oh!” Julie gave a squeal. “I
hope
you need a wedding planner.”

“I’m sorry, Julie. I don’t think we could justify a wedding planner. We’re still discussing, but right now we’re not planning for anything major. Lindy and her husband are going to be the only attendants.”

“No
reception?
”

“We don’t know yet.”

“No cake?” Margaret sounded plaintive.

“Maybe. We haven’t decided.” Actually, I had been thinking one of Margaret’s cakes might be just right, even if it had to be the smallest size.

“But you’ll definitely need a romantic place to spend the wedding night.” Ronnie Denham waggled his white eyebrows and grinned.

“This is the sexy go-round for both of us,” I said. “So maybe we do need to emphasize romaine.”

That
stopped the conversation. I’d gotten my tongue completely twisted—a situation I’m sorry to say isn’t all that uncommon.

I would have corrected my idiotic remark—“This is the second go-round for both of us. So maybe we do need to emphasize romance.” But Lindy began to laugh.

Everyone joined in, even me. I’ve had to learn to laugh at my malapropisms. Or else I’d cry.

Lindy spoke again. “Sometimes Lee hides the fact that she’s one of the smartest people in Warner Pier. And now maybe I’d better get back to the show.”

“No,
no
!” Julie wasn’t having it. “Not until we exchange cards!”

So we all brought out business cards—Margaret didn’t have cards, so Lindy lent her some and she wrote her name, address, phone, and e-mail on the backs. The next day we all had an e-mail from Julie, telling us how
fantastically superwonderful
the luncheon had been and urging us all to stay in touch. That was when she declared us the “Seventh Major Food Group.”

“Party food needs to be recognized,” she wrote. “Maybe we’ll start a movement. Grains, veggies, fruit, meats, dairy, fats/sugars are joined by PARTY!”

Her idea had seemed harmless enough, even though Julie had later turned out to be an annoying correspondent. I’d only seen her a few other times. She’d show up in Warner Pier without warning and ask if Lindy and I could go to lunch. The table talk was always about Lindy, me, or some of the other Seventh Food Group members. Julie never talked about herself, but she was always urging others to bare their souls. I didn’t know her well enough to bare mine, so she and I hadn’t become close friends.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for the news that Julie had been murdered. It made me feel bad about sending her that e-mail asking her to drop the cornball sentiment. But I didn’t feel guilty.

After all, there wasn’t any connection between Julie’s death and her e-mail.

T
he e-mails flew furiously over the next few days, as the Seventh Major Food Group exchanged information, shocked reactions, and gossip about Julie’s death.

From the television and newspaper reports we learned that the circumstances were mysterious, or at least that the police weren’t revealing much. Julie’s body had been discovered by an uncle, Martin Schrader, who had gone by her apartment to take her to lunch. The lunch date had been planned the day before, but when Uncle Martin knocked, Julie didn’t answer her door. Her SUV was in the parking lot. Uncle Martin got nervous and contacted the apartment manager. Reading between the lines of the news reports, I deduced that Uncle Martin had had to do some arm twisting before the manager would let him in. When the door was finally opened, Julie’s body had been in plain sight, lying in the living room. The police said she had apparently died sometime the previous evening.

The police were cagey about the cause of death, saying they’d wait for the results of the autopsy. But I quizzed the Warner Pier police chief, Hogan Jones—who just happens to be a special friend of Aunt Nettie’s. Hogan in turn quizzed some buddy he had on the Holland police force, and I learned that Julie’s neck had been broken. There was no sign that she’d been sexually assaulted, or so Hogan’s pal said.

Julie had lived in what we Texans call a “garden apartment,” with a set of sliding doors that led to a private patio and deck. The deck door, Hogan found out, had been jimmied, and the police believed the killer got in that way.

Julie’s apartment was in a complex just off U.S. Highway 31, one of Holland’s major arteries. She had run her party and wedding planning business out of her apartment. The complex was fairly large, so there was lots of coming and going in its parking lot. That, added to the noise from the heavy traffic on the highway, meant that no one had noticed any strange activity around Julie’s apartment. There was snow on the ground, but if any helpful footprints or tire tracks had been found, the police weren’t saying anything about them, and Hogan’s informant didn’t volunteer any information Hogan wanted to share with me.

The Food Group members were all aghast, but each was aghast in a different way. “Oh, these girls today!” Diane Denham wrote. “They are so trusting. They meet people and invite them home when they know nothing about them, or about their families. They’re so foolish.” She was ignoring the evidence of the break-in, apparently. Ronnie usually left all the e-mail to her, so we didn’t know what he thought.

Carolyn Rose represented the florists of the world. “I see the family is planning to designate memorial contributions to the Lake Michigan Conservation Society,” she wrote. “Well, whatever floats their boat. Julie may have been Little Miss Knows-All, but she loved flowers. I’m planting a bed in the Dock Street Park in her memory. When I get time.”

Having delivered the florist’s credo, she had a few words to say about Julie. “Poor kid. It seems like a girl could have a little fun without getting murdered.”

Jason singled out the killer for his remarks. “It must have been a madman,” he wrote. “Julie could be thoughtless, but only a crazy person would have wanted to hurt her.”

Margaret really seemed the most saddened. “I just loved Julie,” she said. “She actually used to come by my house and bring lunch for me and the kids. She loved playing with them. She brought them wonderful presents. She was lonely. Now she’ll never find the one person God meant for her.”

Lindy’s comments also reflected her own concerns. “Did Julie have an alarm system? Did she have Mace on her key chain? It can be scary, coming home late at night. I call Tony from my cell phone, and he looks out the back door, makes sure I get from the car to the house without any problem. Poor Julie.”

I found myself annoyed by the general attitude that Julie could have done something—anything—to prevent being murdered. “Life is an uncertain business,” I wrote. “I’m devastated by what has happened to Julie. But thinking that it wouldn’t have happened if she’d had different friends, or if she’d had a burglar alarm, or if she hadn’t crossed paths with a maniac—well, that’s all just speculation. We’ll have to wait and see what the police find out. We don’t have enough facts to know why Julie was killed.”

Despite the prevalence of murder in books and television, it’s pretty unusual in real life. Most people are never touched by violent death, so the Food Group was upset. Each of us was hitting REPLY ALL two or three times a day.

The final round of e-mails set up plans for the group to attend Julie’s funeral. It was to be “private,” according to the
Grand Rapids Press,
but Jason called the funeral home and checked. We’d be welcome, he reported. It was to be at the home of Julie’s grandmother in Grand Rapids. That caused a flurry of comment, but Jason told us the fabled Rachel Schrader was in poor health. “I guess it’s hard for her to get out, especially in the winter,” he wrote.

Lindy and I offered to pick up Margaret Van Meter as we drove through Holland, and the Denhams asked Carolyn Rose to go up with them. Jason said he had some errands to do before the service, so he went on his own.

As Lindy and I left for the funeral, the weather was as glum as our mood. January isn’t the best month western Michigan has to offer, unless you’re a crosscountry skier, and that day seemed particularly dismal. It wasn’t snowing, but the clouds looked cold enough to let loose a couple of inches any minute, and the temperature was around twenty degrees. Aunt Nettie had insisted we take her light blue Buick; I suppose it did look more suitable for a funeral than Lindy’s bright green compact or my red minivan, the vehicle my dad had found to replace one that had been—well, shot to pieces—the previous fall.