The Chocolate Snowman Murders (22 page)

“Then what is it?”

“I want to see that motel where Mendenhall was killed.”

“
Y
ou minx!” I said. “You're as nosy as I am.”

“Now, Lee, I just want to get an idea of the layout.”

“There's nothing special about that motel. It's just like every other cheap chain motel. I didn't think Mendenhall needed to stay at the Ritz. It's the kind of motel that's not likely to be particular about its customers.”

“I'm sure it is just that. But I'd like to see it.”

I didn't argue anymore. I drove over there—a trip that required an extra thirty minutes of late-afternoon city traffic. I pulled in and stopped in the parking lot. “See. It's very ordinary.”

“Where was Mendenhall's room?”

I drove around the building and pointed it out. “Room one twenty-two. Ground floor.”

Aunt Nettie looked the surroundings over. “It's just before five o'clock, isn't it? Isn't that the time of day you dropped Mendenhall off?”

“I guess so.”

“Maybe we should see if that same clerk is on duty.”

“That creep!”

“You can wait in the van.”

“Oh, no! I'm not too wimpy to face down a sleazy desk clerk.”

We drove around the motel and parked near the motel's entrance. Through the window I saw that same desk clerk—the one who had offered to do me a favor if I did him one—at the desk. His hair looked slicker than ever. I groaned to myself, but I got out of the van and followed Aunt Nettie inside.

However, I didn't have to “face down” the clerk. Aunt Nettie simply approached him, smiled her sweetest smile, and picked up the name plate on the desk. It read GARY.

“Hello, Gary,” Aunt Nettie said. “I'm Nettie Jones from Warner Pier. You probably remember my niece. Last week she accidentally got involved in that terrible situation when poor Professor Mendenhall was killed here.”

Gary looked wary. “Yes. I remember her.”

“She and I are trying to help with the investigation—you may know that my husband is police chief down at Warner Pier—and I'd appreciate your answering a few questions.” She smiled sweetly again.

By now the clerk was ready to help this sweet old lady any way she wanted. He nodded.

That was when Aunt Nettie zinged him. “After Lee dumped that man off, leaving him disappointed, did he try to find other companionship? Professional companionship?”

Gary Smith blinked. Then he recoiled. “Well, Mrs. . . . I wouldn't . . .”

“Come now. I'm sure you're not personally involved in the vice scene. But motel patrons have been known to seek such services. That's no secret. And who else could Mendenhall ask for a local contact?”

“I told the police he didn't do that. Mendenhall did come by the desk. He was really steamed! Now I see . . . I guess he was mad because your niece dumped him. But all he asked was where he could get another bottle. That's the only time I saw him after he checked in. I didn't have any numbers for him to call, he didn't ask me for one, and I didn't give him any.”

“So he didn't ask you where he could find a date?” Gary's gaze shifted sideways. “I just work on the desk. I don't have anything going on the side.”

Aunt Nettie's face fell. “I didn't mean to insult you. We're just so eager to trace everything Mendenhall did after Lee left him here.”

“I told the cops the truth.” The clerk sighed. “Listen, around here I'm just a peon. If you want to know what's really happening, you talk to Raymond.”

“Raymond? Is he the manager?”

“He might as well be. I don't dare cross him because he could get me fired. But Raymond's job is night custodian.” Gary leaned across the desk and lowered his voice. “Raymond Kirby is the only custodian I ever heard of who drives a Mercedes.”

Aunt Nettie said, “Oh,” but she meant, “Aha!”

Gary's face grew serious. “Don't let Raymond know I sent the cops after him. I can't afford to get crosswise with him.”

That was all he was going to tell us. But it was something. Aunt Nettie's sweet face and little-old-lady act had pried some actual information out of him. It was information that Hogan, Sergeant McCullough, and Alex VanDam apparently had not learned: The night custodian handled the vice situation at Motel Sleaze. The desk clerk had been instructed to pass any inquiries from guests on to Raymond.

Aunt Nettie smiled proudly. “And where can we find Raymond?”

That was when I jumped in. “Oh, no, Aunt Nettie! Now we call Hogan!”

I was not prepared to beard Raymond in his toolshed, and I wasn't going to let Aunt Nettie do it either. A night custodian who could intimidate young male desk clerks and who was prepared to provide prostitutes for patrons of a sleazy motel was not someone I wanted to talk to without large, tough, burly police people to back me up.

I was relieved when Gary said Raymond was on his dinner break and wouldn't be back for half an hour, “if then.” This gave me a chance to convince Aunt Nettie it would be better to leave questioning Raymond to professionals.

I got her outside; then Aunt Nettie stopped to argue. “Lee, this Raymond might admit something to us that he wouldn't tell the detectives.”

“But if we tip him off, the police won't be able to question him effectively. He might even run. Let's ask Hogan what to do.”

Aunt Nettie finally agreed, but she insisted that we continue her plan to retrace Mendenhall's steps. Literally. We walked around the motel, sticking to the cleared sidewalks, the way Mendenhall would have. Then we slogged through the slush to cross that extremely busy street I remembered from my first stop there. We took the shortest route to reach the cleared sidewalks of a strip shopping center, a center that held an appliance store, a pet supply place, a beauty shop, a chain store selling discount shoes, and a Chinese takeout restaurant. Then we had to walk through another parking lot, filled with more slush, to reach the supermarket. Inside, we went to the liquor, wine, and beer section. We looked at the bourbon display. We walked back outside, retraced our steps past the shops in the adjoining mall—the giant-screen television sets in the appliance store window featured Gordon Hitchcock pontificating—and dared death by heavy traffic to get back to the motel.

I sighed with relief when I got Aunt Nettie buckled into the van. We had crossed an extremely busy street—twice—without being flattened by some suburban mother trying to get the kids home from basketball practice. I thought the whole episode was pointless, but I didn't tell Aunt Nettie that. I simply offered her my cell phone so she could call Hogan and tell him what we'd found out from the desk clerk.

But that probably was pointless, too. Even if the detectives were able to prove Mendenhall entertained a prostitute in his room, it wouldn't explain what I considered the key mystery we had to solve to figure out who killed him. It would not explain how Mendenhall's cell phone wound up in the pocket of my coat. No Grand Rapids prostitute had put it there. It had been planted by someone from Warner Pier.

To McCullough, of course, there was no mystery about that. Either Joe or I had taken the phone from the scene to cover up our guilt in his death. To him the only mystery was why we had kept the phone, instead of tossing it in the river. Actually, he could probably answer that one, too: Rivers were covered with ice right at the moment.

Anyway, Aunt Nettie and I had looked over the situation at the motel, and she had dug a little information out of the desk clerk. We drove home, fighting commuter traffic in the winter dark. Apparently I looked pitiful when I got to the house, because Joe offered me dinner out. I requested Warner Point.

Joe looked surprised that I was willing to return to the place where I'd been chased by the sinister snowman thirty-six hours earlier. From my viewpoint, it was a case of getting back on the horse that threw me. Warner Point is a major center for Warner Pier activities, and I didn't want to get the heebie-jeebies about being chased by a snowman every time I had to enter that building. I determined that I'd go there every chance I got for the rest of the winter.

Aunt Nettie may have felt the same way. At least, we ran into her and Hogan there, and we joined them for dinner.

Aunt Nettie and I seemed to have trained Joe and Hogan right; they didn't laugh at our afternoon of detective work. In fact, Hogan said he'd already passed along our information about Raymond Kirby to Sergeant McCullough and Alex VanDam.

“I hope you didn't tell them that it came from the desk clerk,” I said. “He was scared stiff of that custodian guy.”

Hogan grinned. “I told McCullough I got it from a reliable informant.”

“He'll think one of your Warner Pier pals patronizes the place.”

“Let him.”

“But I don't really see what good all this will do. I'll never believe a call girl killed Mendenhall, not when his cell phone was found in my pocket thirty miles away, and I didn't put it there.”

“You're right,” Hogan said. “But if a call girl was there, she could be a witness.”

The rest of the dinner conversation was more cheerful. We all made a conscious effort not to talk about the deaths of either Mendenhall or Mary Samson.

After we'd paid our bill and were saying good-bye to Jason, I noticed that the lights were on in the art exhibit rooms, across the hall from the restaurant.

I turned to Jason. “Is the art show still open?”

“Anytime the restaurant is open, the show is open.”

“Joe, do you mind if we take another look? It was so crowded at the opening I missed a lot.”

Joe didn't object. We waved Aunt Nettie and Hogan off, then went into the show for a nearly private view. I even picked up a catalog and took time to read it as we wandered through the show. Two other couples who had eaten at Warner Point came in, but we had the place almost to ourselves. It was a weeknight, and the Warner Pier Winter Arts Festival wouldn't draw a big crowd again until the weekend.

I guess the best part of a private showing is that you can make funny remarks about the art. I kept my voice down, because of the other couples, but I was able to tell Joe that I found Mozelle's watercolor so insipid that she must have used a bowl of milk toast for inspiration, that Johnny Owens' large metal statuary wasn't nearly as much fun as the little cartoons he drew at meetings and must have been a lot harder to display, and that another artist's bulbous purple nudes looked like the “before” pictures in diet drug ads. Joe had a few comments about something that looked like a warped cottage. The artist had experimented with perspective, but as a woodworker, Joe thought the building in the painting was going to fall down the first time a wind hit.

We both liked a modern painting that was all blocks of bright color. We were impressed by a tiny exquisite carving of three chickadees. And we both thought Bob VanWinkle-Snow's storm photo, the best-in-show winner, was stunning. Its price was stunning, too. We weren't tempted to buy it, even though thirty percent of the price would go to the WinterFest.

The catalog made an entertaining side note to all this. It started with a two-page synopsis explaining why the Warner Pier Arts Festival included a jurored art show. The rest of the booklet listed each artist, one per page. Each page had a reproduction of the art entered in the show, a short bio of the artist, and an artist's statement.

I learned that Bob VanWinkle-Snow had trained with some photographer I never heard of and that he strove for “realism filtered through creative vision.” Johnny Owens had a degree in art from Waterford College, and he tried to bring out the “inner strength of the metal” he welded. I liked the work both of them did, but I merely thought their art was beautiful to look at.

“I'm just an accountant,” I said to Joe. “I don't get these artist statements.”

“They get pretty highfalutin,” he said. “What does Mozelle have to say about her milk-toast watercolor?”

“I didn't notice.” I thumbed through the book. Then I thumbed through it again. “She's not here.”

“What? Mozelle missed a chance for some public notice?”

“It's out of character for Mozelle, isn't it? Besides Mary Samson helped put this little book together. I'm sure neither she nor George would skip an artist. But the artists are in alphabetical order. French should be here between Ervin and Garrity.”

I looked at the booklet carefully. “Joe, Mozelle's page has been cut out.”

“Surely not.”

“Look!” I showed him where the page that would have held her name should have been. The page had been neatly sliced out. Only a eighth of an inch of the paper was left.