The Chocolate Bear Burglary (7 page)

Getting out and walking around in the snow is another part of my campaign not to act like a Texan who’d never seen cold weather before. Actually, it can get darn cold in Texas, but it doesn’t last months and months, the way it does in Michigan.

I’d just taken the newspaper out and turned to go back across the road when headlights came around the curve. I stopped to let them go by. But the headlights didn’t go by. A pickup screeched to a halt, and Joe Woodyard got out.

“Are you okay?” He sounded all excited.

“Yes. Are you?”

“No, I’m pretty upset.” He came around the front of the pickup.

“What are you upset about?”

“You,” he said. And then he threw his arms around me.

I tipped my head back and looked at him, astonished.

So he kissed me. Thoroughly.

I enjoyed it thoroughly, too. In fact, it felt so good I had to fight an impulse to throw him in the back of the pickup and tear his clothes off, beginning with his puffy nylon jacket and working down to the long underwear I could see peeking out at his cuff. But a little voice kept nagging in the back of my head.
What brought this on?
it asked. And,
Is this a good idea?

It was about five minutes before I could ask my questions out loud. “Wow!” I said. “I’ll have to upset you more often. What’s the occasion?”

“Chasing burglars! What would have happened if you caught ’em? Don’t you know I couldn’t make it if anything happened to you?” Then he kissed me again. For just four and a half minutes this time.

When he worked around to nibbling my neck, I was able to talk. “Nothing did happen to me,” I said. “I’m enjoying this, but I don’t quite understand it.”

Joe moved his head back, but he didn’t let me go. We were standing sternum-to-sternum and talking nose-to-nose. “You and that kid! What were you two doing waltzing around with burglars?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, when you get down to it. How’d you find out about our adventure?”

“I had coffee with Tony out at the truck stop.” Tony Herrera was married to one of my friends, Lindy. Tony, who happened to be the son of Warner Pier’s mayor, drove into Holland every day for his job as a machinist. He and Joe had been friends since elementary school.

Joe went on. “We ran into Jerry Cherry.”

“I see that the Warner Pier grapevine is in good shape. How come Jerry realized you’d want to know about our excitement?”

“He didn’t. There was a whole table of us. I tried not to seem too interested.”

He had tried not to seem too interested? Suddenly I was hopping mad. I pushed myself away from Joe.

How could he act as if I mattered to him when we were alone or when we were talking on the telephone, but pretend he hardly knew me in public?

“Oh, I think you could justify some interest in a local burglary,” I said. “After all, you’re a Warner Pier property owner. All the Warner Pier citizens are shocked and appalled by local crime, right?”

“Sure. Everybody was interested. But—” He cocked his head. “Are you mad?”

“No. I’m furious.”

“About the burglary?”

“Not exactly.” I stopped talking then. It was awfully hard to tell a guy that your relationship stunk when you didn’t have a relationship. I decided I’d better not try. “I suppose I’m just tired.”

“Well, yeah. You’ve been up all night.”

“That’s not what I meant, but I guess it’s close enough.”

“Hop in, and I’ll drive you up to the house.”

“Better not! Chief Jones is up there. He might see you.”

I guess my sarcasm finally sank in. Joe’s lips tightened, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’ll talk to you later,” I said. Then I pushed on past him, but he caught my arm.

“If you think I like this situation, you’re wrong.”

“If you think I like it, you’re wrong, too.”

We stood there, glaring at each other. Then I pulled my arm away. “I’m completely out of patience with adolescent piccalillis—I mean peccadilloes.”

“Thanks! I’m really thrilled at being lumped in with that kid.”

“Actually, you and Jeff are acting quite differently. He won’t talk at all, and you won’t do anything else.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know! But it’s not real complimentary if you don’t even want people to know—” I broke off. “Oh, forget it! It’s a dead end anyway.”

I stalked across the road. Joe followed me. “I didn’t come to quarrel,” he said.

“Then why did you come?”

“To see you. To make sure you were all right.”

“You’ve seen me. I’m all right.”

“And I wanted to find out just what that kid—”

“That kid’s name is Jeff.”

“Okay! To find out just what kind of a story Jeff told about the burglary.”

“Jeff had nothing to do with the burglary. I was following him. I saw him pull up in front of the shop. I saw him get out of the SUV. He did not break the window.”

“Maybe not, but Jerry said he doesn’t think the chief is satisfied with his story.”

“I’m not satisfied with his story either. I want to know why he went into town in the first place. But I don’t think he broke the window. I do think he scared the burglar off.”

“Maybe so, but . . . Jerry said that the burglar apparently went off in a car with a broken taillight.”

“We think so.”

“Well, Brad Michaels said—”

“Who is Brad Michaels?”

“He has the gas station south of town, down at Haven Road. Right on the interstate. And he says a kid driving a gold Lexus SUV with a Texas plate stopped there around seven a.m. yesterday. He didn’t buy gas, just candy bars and chips.”

“Sounds like Jeff. So?”

“So Brad says there were two Texas vehicles. The other driver didn’t get out, but Brad thinks they were together.”

Maybe I would have reacted differently if I hadn’t already been mad. But I
was
mad. Plus tired and plain old out of sorts. I didn’t want any more bad news. So I tried to kill the messenger.

“I suppose that your pal Brad says the other Texas car had a taillight out,” I said.

“No, he—”

“I suppose you asked him that.”

“Yes, I—”

“And I suppose you made sure he told Jerry about it.”

“No! He didn’t mention it until Jerry had gone.”

“But I suppose you urged him to tell Jerry. Or Chief Jones.”

“They’re gonna find out. Warner Pier is a small town.”

“Well, let them! But I’m not getting involved in any more efforts to quiz Jeff. He knows I want to find out just what he’s up to. He’ll tell me something when he’s ready. Or he’ll tell Aunt Nettie. Or the chief will question him. But right now I’m cold and I’m tired and I’m going back to the house.”

I walked away without looking back. This time Joe didn’t follow me.

When I got back to the house I took off all my outdoor paraphernalia, then sat in the living room pretending to read the paper. I felt pretty miserable. Joe was suspicious of Jeff even without knowing the most damning part of the situation. Nobody, including Chief Jones, knew that Jeff had been aware that the molds were valuable, but I did. Should I tell Chief Jones? Like Joe said, the chief was bound to find out. I just didn’t want to be the person who caused Jeff more problems, even though he was causing me a lot.

Darn Joe Woodyard anyway! Why had he reminded me of Jeff’s odd behavior? And why did I care what Joe thought? I shook the newspaper angrily. How had I wound up in this dead-end relationship?

For six months I’d been patient about Joe’s hangups over his ex-wife and about his fear of the tabloids, but right at that moment I was sick of the situation.

Oh, maybe I’d brought part of it on myself, making it clear I wouldn’t sneak around to go out with him. He had to take me out in public, or I wasn’t going to go at all. And I certainly wasn’t going to get too cozy with a guy I wasn’t officially dating. So there’d been no weekends when we both just happened to be in Chicago and staying in the same hotel, no surreptitious meetings at the boat shop, no nights in a B&B a hundred miles up the lakeshore.

Joe wasn’t the only one who had survived a bad marriage; I wasn’t interested in having my self-respect further flogged by a clandestine affair, an affair that would have made me feel cheap and used.

Maybe I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of a new man in my life anyway. So I had only myself to blame over the crazy relationship Joe and I had fallen into, I told myself. I half resolved to end it. Or maybe I already had. After the things I’d said, maybe I’d never get another of those eleven o’clock calls from Joe. Maybe we’d never hold each other again, never kiss like that again. Maybe I’d felt that melting sensation behind my navel for the last time.

I didn’t like that idea either.

When Chief Jones left, I still hadn’t decided what to tell him about Jeff. I put any decision off and simply called out a good-bye.

Aunt Nettie said she was going to bed. “We’d all better sleep as long as we can,” she said. “I’ll call the shop and leave a message. Telling them we’ll be late.”

I thought I couldn’t possibly sleep, but I forced myself to undress and lie down, and the next thing I knew, it was eleven a.m. I could hear Aunt Nettie in the shower downstairs, and Jeff was snoring gently across the hall. I groaned and got up. Aunt Nettie had left the house by the time I got out of the shower.

I managed to get to work by one p.m., to find Aunt Nettie going crazy. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “I can’t get any work done for answering the phone and gossiping with the neighbors.”

“I guess the news about our burglar got around.”

“Naturally. The Warner Pier grapevine is up and running; we don’t need radio or television or newspapers in this town. But everybody wants a personal account.”

“I’ll try to keep them away from you.”

“I’ve simply got to make the bakjes for the crème de menthe bonbons today. Hazel’s working on them, but she needs to get busy on the Neiman Marcus bunnies.” Aunt Nettie froze and looked out the front window. “Oh, no! It’s Mike Herrera. I can’t be rude to him.”

“Go on back to the shop and get up to your elbows in chocolate. I’ll deal with him.”

I shooed her toward her bakjes. Bakjes, pronounced “bah-keys,” are the shells of bonbons, the part that holds the filling. First you cast the bakjes, then cool them, then fill them, then run the whole thing through an enrober, a special machine that gives the bonbons a shower-bath of chocolate. After that the tops are decorated, and you’ve finally got a goodie ready for the customers to drool over.

Aunt Nettie had washed her hands and moved to a stainless-steel worktable by the time the door opened. I greeted the newcomer. “Mayor Mike! Did you come to check our damage?”

Mike Herrera looked puzzled. “It’s just so strange,” he said. He closed the smashed front door behind him, then examined the plywood that blocked it temporarily. “We just don’t have burglaries in Warner Pier this time of year.”

Mike Herrera is an attractive middle-aged man who owns several successful restaurants and a catering service. He was the first Hispanic to own a business in Warner Pier and the first to be elected to public office. He’s the father of Joe’s friend Tony and the father-in-law of my friend Lindy Herrera; in a town of twenty-five hundred, people tend to be related.

But I’m careful not to bring him up around Tony because Lindy told me her husband isn’t real happy with his father since he changed his name from Miguel to Mike. Tony’s reaction to the name change was to grow a thin Latin mustache and start teaching their children Spanish. The Herreras are typical of the American experience, I guess. One generation tries to assimilate; the next clings to its roots.

Mike kept looking at the damage.

“Handy Hans called the glass installers,” I said, “but they can’t get here until tomorrow.”

We heard a crack like a pistol shot, and Mike craned his head to look into the shop. “What was that?”

“Aunt Nettie’s making bakjes. She whams them on the worktable to get the edges right.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“As long as we don’t stop her work.”

It was hard to refuse Mike. He knew that Aunt Nettie could make chocolates with her eyes closed. Mike followed me into the shop and greeted Aunt Nettie, commiserating with her over the break-in. Aunt Nettie kept pouring melted dark chocolate into a mold about the size of an ice-cube tray—an ice-cube tray with forty little compartments.

“I just wondered if anybody suspicious came in yesterday,” Mike said.

Aunt Nettie had apparently filed Jeff in a nonsuspicious category. “I can’t think of anybody,” she said. “The antique molds were the only thing valuable in the shop.” She turned her filled mold upside down over her work pan, and went tappity tappity tap on its edge with the flat side of her spatula while the excess chocolate drained out. She scraped the top of the mold, wielding her spatula like a conductor wields his baton. Then she flipped the mold over and slammed it onto the sheet of parchment paper that covered the worktable. Wham!

Mike jumped about a foot. Apparently he hadn’t realized that making bonbons is that noisy. The bakje molds are polycarbonate, a tough resin, and they’re hard. Whacking them onto a stainless-steel table makes a sharp crack.

“Who knew that the molds were here?” Mike said.

“Everybody who works here knew.” Aunt Nettie flipped the mold upright again, then placed it behind her, on the conveyor belt that led to the cooling tunnel. “All the Hart and VanHorn family knew. How about the retail customers, Lee?”

“We had only a few retail customers yesterday afternoon,” I said, “and none of them acted very interested in the molds. Except Timothy Hart.”

Aunt Nettie had filled another mold with more dark chocolate. She flipped it and began the same routine.

“Maybe it was just a coincidence,” Mike said. “Maybe the burglar was looking for money. Not for the molds.”