The Chocolate Mouse Trap (6 page)

“And I needed a job.”

“Well, if you’d been chief accountant for IBM, I wouldn’t have had the courage to offer you this little job.” She looked at me seriously. “Lee, I know you are capable of much more important things than shipping TenHuis chocolates around the country. When that big opportunity comes, I want you to take it.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“No! No! But I know things can’t go on forever. Your life will change. My life will, too.”

After that unsettling remark, she left the office.

Getting married was all the change I could contemplate right at that moment. But Aunt Nettie had confused me. Somehow, I felt that conversation wasn’t only about her nephew Bobby and the possibility that he might want a job.

I picked up the phone and punched the speed dial for Joe’s boat shop again. Now I desperately wanted to talk to him. More than my day was messed up; my whole life seemed to be.

But Joe was still not at home, not at work, not answering his cell phone. I angrily went through the mail and the phone messages. I was concentrating so hard on my disappointment over not reaching him that I jumped about a foot when the phone rang.

“Hi,” Joe said.

“Where are you?”

“City hall.”

“City hall? You never go to city hall on Mondays.”

“I had a little emergency and needed to use the city phone. When did you get back?”

“About an hour ago. Are we still having dinner?”

“I was counting on it.”

“Good. I need to talk to somebody.”

“Now?”

I checked the time. Five o’clock. “I guess I can wait until I see you. I just need a sympathetic ear.”

“So do I. This afternoon has been nutso.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Just a little e-mail problem.”

“E-mail!”

“I’ll tell you about it when I see you. If six isn’t too early?”

I said six was fine, and Joe hung up.

E-mail? Joe was having a problem with e-mail?

I thought e-mail was supposed to enhance communications. But it had indirectly linked me with some very unusual people. And now it was a problem for Joe.

Huh.

A
unt Nettie was still dressing when I heard Chief Hogan Jones pull into the drive. I guess she heard the car, too, because she stuck her head out her bedroom door. “Lee! Can you talk to Hogan a minute?”

“Sure. Keep on primping.”

Aunt Nettie giggled. Since she had started dating after three years of widowhood, she really had become like a girl again. And she was dating Hogan Jones—the catch of the Warner Pier older crowd.

Aunt Nettie hires a man with a snowplow to keep her drive cleared. Since everybody uses our back porch as an entry, especially during the winter, the man also keeps the short flagstone walk cleared. Luckily, he’d come that afternoon. I met Hogan at the kitchen door. It had occurred to me that he might know something I wanted to know, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to ask him.

When I opened the door Hogan was stamping his boots on the sidewalk.

“Come on in,” I said. “Aunt Nettie’s almost ready, but you and I get to talk for a minute.”

“I need some calm conversation to settle my nerves after the drive out here. That new drop-off on Lake Shore Drive is a doozy.”

Lake Shore Drive, of course, gets its name because it runs right along the shore of Lake Michigan. This is nice, in general, but if we have a winter with lots of west wind, there’s a drawback. Big chunks of ice—six or eight feet thick—form along the shore. They break off and float out into the water. Then a west wind comes and drives them right back to the lake’s edge, where they grind away at the beach and bank like bulldozers. That winter the ice had eaten the bank away at one spot until it was right up to the pavement. Get an inch too close to the edge, and the car would go tumbling down. The street department had put up a barricade, of course, but it didn’t look very substantial.

“You’re chief of police,” I said. “Call the street department and tell ’em it’s a safety hazard.”

“I already told them, and they already knew. But they’re trying to get some more concrete barriers. Until they can get hold of some, they’re stuck with that orange tape and a few wooden barriers with big spaces between.”

“Well, since you made it safely, I wanted to ask you a question.”

“I hope it’s not about Julie Singletree.” Hogan stepped inside the kitchen and wiped his boots on the throw rug. Hogan is in his midsixties, and he’s not handsome, but he has an appeal I can appreciate. It’s something about his close resemblance to Abraham Lincoln in both height and rugged features. He looks reliable, intelligent, humorous, and macho.

“Why don’t you want me to ask about Julie’s death?” I said. “After all, Julie was a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of mine.”

I gestured toward the living room, and Hogan followed me, frowning. “I don’t have any excuse for getting interested in a crime that happened in another city,” he said.

“I did appreciate your getting some details for me the day after she was killed. But I’m not asking you to do that again. This time I just wanted an opinion.”

“I got lots of those. And they’re worth every cent you pay for ’em.”

“I went to Julie’s funeral today—the whole Food Group did—and Julie’s uncle told me her computer was stolen from her apartment.”

“So?”

“So, he said he found this very strange. But why? Isn’t a computer a common thing to steal? Like TV sets or CD players? Anything easy to hock?”

Hogan frowned. “I don’t know that there’s a general rule about burglars, but yeah, they’ve been known to take computers.”

“Then why was Martin Schrader surprised?”

“Maybe he’s just dumb about how burglars operate.” The chief’s eyes shifted as he spoke, and I looked at him closely.

“Do you know what else was taken?”

“Not everything. Like I said, I don’t really have any excuse to ask about it.”

“Aw, c’mon, Hogan. Don’t try to tell me cops don’t gossip just like the rest of us.”

He grinned. “You know better than that, Lee.” Then he sighed. “I guess it won’t hurt to tell you what I heard on the grapevine. The word is that the burglar or killer or whoever it was didn’t take much. Just a few things. And he messed the apartment up some.”

“Like he’d been searching for something?”

“No, like he didn’t care if he left a mess behind him. Some drawers were pulled out. A couple of things were turned over.” Hogan cleared his throat. “The Holland detectives think he probably came on foot.”

“Did they find tracks?”

“Sure. Thousands. Julie lived in an apartment complex, remember? Nobody left the track of a size fifteen extra wide Nike on her carpet, if that’s what you mean.”

“In other words, the tracks aren’t any help. I suppose there aren’t any fingerprints either.”

“Fingerprints are never any help unless you find somebody to match them with. And then you have to prove that somebody was never in the apartment at any other time, for any other reason.”

By now Hogan and I were sitting in chairs in front of the brick fireplace in the living room. He pointed to the wood stacked inside. “Do you want me to start you a fire?”

“No, thanks. Joe’s coming over. He likes to do it. All you guys are fire builders.”

Hogan smiled. “I hope he can cheer you up, Lee. I know that having a friend killed is a real jolt. All I can tell you is that it does look as if somebody broke in, probably some kind of burglar. My guess is that Julie surprised him, he panicked and hit her.”

“She was a little thing, Hogan. A foot shorter than I am. It wouldn’t have been hard to kill her.”

He nodded. “Yeah. My Holland buddy told me that. Anyway, the burglar must have decided to get out of there in a hurry.”

“Where did the tale about the dark guy walking down the alley come from?” Hogan looked surprised, and I repeated the gossip Lindy and I had gotten from Margaret Van Meter.

Hogan shrugged. “I hadn’t heard that one. But I doubt a witness would have seen if a guy walking down the alley was dark or fair or in between. The temperature was close to zero that night. If the guy wasn’t wearing a heavy jacket and hat, his hair and skin would have been the color of ice. Anyway, the Holland detectives think the killer just took the few things he could carry in one trip, which makes them think he was on foot.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted to look like Santa with his pack.”

“Right. He couldn’t have carried anything too bulky. Which might be why he took the computer, but not the monitor or the keyboard—”

“Monitor or keyboard? But Julie had a laptop! She had it along the day she came down to see the mouse samples she ordered for the Schrader banquet.”

“There were two computers. She had that flashy new Gateway she carried around to plan parties with. It’s still there. And she had an old Macintosh that she used for correspondence and e-mail.”

“That’s a weird way to manage your computer life.”

“Maybe not. She kept the Macintosh connected to the phone line. The laptop was in a brief case.”

“And it wasn’t stolen?”

“The laptop was inside the case and stashed in a closet. The burglar probably didn’t realize what it was.”

“You say the killer didn’t take the Macintosh keyboard? What else did he take?”

“I didn’t hear the whole list. Her jewelry box was gone. The descriptions are circulating. Her grandmother and uncle say she just had a few family pieces.”

“Their idea of a ‘few family pieces’ might include the Kohinoor. So nothing else is missing?”

Hogan laughed. “No, there’s more. But I haven’t seen a list. All I know about specifically is her mouse.”

“You mean the killer took her computer and mouse, but not the keyboard?”

“Not a computer mouse. A real mouse.”

“Julie had a mouse?”

“Apparently it’s a Schrader family tradition. My buddy was laughing about it. The Schrader lab originally did a lot of testing involving mice, and the family members all think they’re wonderful pets. So Julie had a pet mouse, a white one. She kept it in a fish tank in the living room. The tank got knocked over, and the mouse escaped. It hasn’t been found.”

“Oh, my gosh! That’ll come as a surprise to the next tenants.”

“Her uncle set a trap—you know, one of these live traps—and left it there. I assure you that the Holland PD doesn’t want the mouse as evidence. As soon as it turns up, they’ll call the uncle.”

“One of the Holland cops will probably open a drawer, and it’ll pop out and scare him to death.”

Hogan and I chuckled over the fate of the Holland detectives who had to search Julie’s apartment, knowing that a mouse might scurry out at any moment. Even a small, tame, white mouse could be pretty surprising if you looked under the couch and found it looking back at you.

We were still chuckling when Aunt Nettie came out. Hogan complimented her appearance—she did look rosy and pretty—and they left. I put a card table up in the living room and set it for dinner in front of the fireplace. I was sure Joe would want to have a fire, and we might as well enjoy it.

I couldn’t help thinking about Julie. Poor little Julie, so small and easy to kill. A tear welled up, and I had to get a tissue. I moved to the sink, scrubbed the baking potatoes seriously, then stabbed them vigorously with a paring knife. Pretending I was giving Julie’s killer a few whacks made me feel a little better. The tears had stopped by the time I had the potatoes and meatloaf in the 400-degree oven.

Meatloaf and baked potatoes—not exciting, but one of Joe’s favorite meals. He tells me anybody can tell he and I were both raised in moderate circumstances. We both like meatloaf, hot dogs and sauerkraut, porcupine meatballs, and even tuna casserole. As a Texan, I’ve introduced him to taco salad and chicken-fried steak with cream gravy, and he seems to like those, too. He’d better.

The house smelled pretty good by the time Joe slammed the door of his pickup and came up the back walk, stamping his feet the way Hogan had. He was clutching what was obviously a bottle in a paper sack in his left hand. We greeted each other affectionately, though Joe used only one arm.

“You didn’t have a great day, I guess,” Joe said after I’d been kissed thoroughly.

“Not until now. But it doesn’t sound as if you did either. How come you had to spend time at city hall? You usually limit your city attorney business to Tuesdays.”

“Actually, I usually work on it some every day, but I work at home. A little reading and some e-mail. But today a minor flap blew up, and I had to do some telephoning. It involved a conference call, and that’s easier to do with the city hall phones.”

“What happened?”

Joe plucked a bottle of Michigan red out of his paper sack. “How about a glass of wine before I tell you?”

“Sure. I set the table up in the living room, in case you want to have a fire.”

“You open the wine; I’ll light the fire.”

Joe’s work life might be described as bipolar. He finished Warner Pier High as “most likely to succeed”—class president, plus state honors in debate and wrestling. He kept up his scholastic and leadership record at the University of Michigan, and sailed into law school. His mother—who owns a Warner Pier insurance agency—thought he was headed for a career in corporate law. But after he graduated, Joe amazed and annoyed her by going to work for a legal aid nonprofit. Then he married a woman who was one of the nation’s most famous—or maybe infamous—defense attorneys, a confidante to the rich and famous. Joe doesn’t talk about her unless I ask, but she must have nearly wrecked his life. At least she wrecked his love for the practice of law. After two years of marriage he quit law, got a divorce, and opened a boat shop, specializing in the restoration of antique wooden speedboats.