The Chocolate Castle Clue (22 page)

“But to use that technique on poor Kathy—that was despicable.”

“You don't have to convince me.”

“Did all the Pier-O-Ettes know about this?”

Aunt Nettie nodded. “Margo got us together about midnight that night and told us what had happened.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because she was serious about getting even with Phin and Dan Rice, and she needed our help.”

“Oh gee! What did Margo come up with?”

A rather sly smile crept over Aunt Nettie's face. “We all helped her. All but Kathy. Even Julie came along.”

“What happened?”

“Margo snitched a pistol from her grandfather.”

“A pistol! She shot Rice?”

“No, Lee. She did not. She just got hold of a pistol. And I got one from my father.”

“Aunt Nettie!”

“Lots of people who live in the country or in small towns have a pistol. You know that. Ruby got one that was her dad's. Hazel had her brother's twenty-two. Julie was in charge of the camera.”

“Camera! You took pictures?”

“We certainly did. Dan Rice took pictures. We went to Mr. Rice's office when he and Phin were there, about two o'clock, after the place closed. We held them at gunpoint. And we made them strip off their clothes.”

“But, Aunt Nettie—frankly, I'd think Dan Rice might have enjoyed that.”

“He didn't enjoy the part where Margo fired a bullet to show she wasn't kidding.”

“Fired a bullet!”

“Yes, she fired a bullet. After that Phin and Dan Rice both believed we meant business. Which was a lucky thing.” Aunt Nettie laughed. “Because it was the only bullet we brought along.”

“All those guns were unloaded?”

“Certainly. We weren't going to take the chance of actually hurting anybody.”

“So you threatened them with unloaded guns, made the two of them take off their clothes, then took pictures of them.” I considered it all. “Frankly, Aunt Nettie, that sounds pretty tame by today's standards, with stupid teenagers sending sexy pictures of themselves to one another's phones.”

“This was forty-five years ago, Lee. In those days girls at slumber parties still had big discussions about whether you should take your nightgown off on your wedding night. Doctors were just beginning to be willing to talk to brides about birth control
before
the honeymoon. Besides, Warner Pier was no larger then than it is now.”

“You mean you threatened to show the pictures around town?”

“Worse than that! We threatened to show them to Mrs. Rice. And to tell her why we took them.”

“Ouch! So were you all responsible for dumping the clothes over the side of the deck?”

“We certainly were.” Aunt Nettie's chin was firm. “We were all so furious at what Phin and Mr. Rice had done to Kathy—well, they were lucky that we didn't have live ammunition in those pistols we lifted from home.”

“Have I got this straight? Kathy fell for Phin, and the two of them were doing some heavy petting in the office . . .”

“The green room.”

“The green room of the Castle. Mr. Rice caught them, and he deliberately humiliated Kathy by taking pictures of her and by not allowing her to put her clothes on. Phin also laughed at her.”

Aunt Nettie nodded, and I went on.

“Margo vowed revenge on both men, particularly Mr. Rice. So all of you armed yourselves—”

“With unloaded guns.”

“Then you forced the two of them to disrobe, and you took pictures, threatening to show them to Mrs. Rice. Their clothes were bundled into a garbage bag, weighed down with a steam iron, and thrown off the deck into the Warner River.”

“Yes. That's what happened.” Aunt Nettie giggled. “We could have gotten into a whole lot of trouble, but we thought Mr. Rice wouldn't dare report the whole thing.”

“But he committed suicide that same night. Or somebody shot him.”

“Lee, I've never been able to see any connection between what we did and his death.”

I sighed. “I certainly understand why you did it.”

“What else could we do? We simply couldn't let him bully and humiliate Kathy like that—and get away with it! If we'd waited as long as morning, one of those awful guys would have told the story. It would have been all over Warner Pier in a minute. Kathy would have been ruined forever.”

“I guess you could have reported Dan Rice to the police.”

“Not in a town the size of Warner Pier! The whole point was to conceal Kathy's humiliation. If we'd reported—well, Phin would have been embarrassed, but he would have made everybody think he was a victim. Mr. Rice might have gotten in some trouble, but Kathy's mom wouldn't have pressed charges against him. Probably the police of those days would have thought it was funny.”

I considered that as I turned the corner into Aunt Nettie's street. It had been an odd situation. And she was right; Kathy and Margo's mom would probably have been most interested in avoiding gossip, not sending Dan Rice to court.

“I guess vigilante action was your only recourse,” I said.

“I've never regretted doing it.”

“I understand. My only problem is that for all these years you've added to the mystery of what really happened to Mr. Rice. Mrs. Rice had all those lawsuits and everything. Knowing this background might have helped the authorities figure out how he was killed.”

“What we did had nothing to do with his death. To tell the truth, I've always thought Mrs. Rice shot him herself.”

I was so surprised that I ran my right front tire up onto Aunt Nettie's curb.

“Rats!” I said. “If I ruin one of my new tires, Joe and I really will go to fist city.”

“Oh dear, Lee! Are you and Joe having problems?”

“No! I'm joking. He wasn't very happy about me chasing that guy last night. But we'll work it out without coming to blows. I'm more concerned about the news you just announced. Let's go over that again. You think that Verna Rice killed her husband?”

“I don't know what happened to him, but I've always thought it was likely. She was mean enough.”

“Okay. That's a given. And if she found him nude, with his clothes over the side of the deck, she was probably mad enough. It doesn't sound as if that situation would have appealed to her sense of humor. But do you have any actual evidence against her?”

“No.”

“Do you know whose gun shot Dan Rice?”

“No. But it wasn't one of our guns. We took them all away with us.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Margo made us show them before we left.”

“Margo should have been a general. But she left a bullet from her own gun.”

Aunt Nettie laughed. “Lee, she fired it into a pail of sand.”

“A pail of sand. Where did she get a pail of sand?”

“It was for the smokers. Everybody smoked back then. There were ashtrays on every table in every restaurant, for example. Businesses with outdoor areas, like the Castle's deck, had big pails of sand sitting around for people to put their cigarettes out in. Margo brought one of the pails into the office so she'd have it handy for target practice. When she wanted to make a believer out of Mr. Rice, she fired her pistol into it. Then she put the pail outside again.”

“Did she sift the sand to get the bullet out?”

Aunt Nettie laughed. “Not to my knowledge. Who was going to look for it?”

“After Dan Rice was shot . . .”

“Lee, they had the bullet—and the gun—that killed him. No officer was going to sift a bucket of sand full of cigarette butts on the off chance that he'd find a stray bullet. They thought Dan Rice shot himself, after all. They didn't search too hard.”

“True. But this whole thing adds up to the craziest story I ever heard in my life.”

“Maybe so. However, it's the truth.” Aunt Nettie got out of the van. “But you see why we didn't want to tell the police about all this.”

“Yes, I certainly see that!”

“Anyway, thanks for the ride. I'd better get the house open and some crackers and cheese out before everyone gets here.”

“Aunt Nettie! We can't just leave things like this.”

“Like what, Lee?”

“You've told me all this. I feel—well, shouldn't we do something about it?”

“What?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Lee, you kept probing around until Kathy told you the beginning of the story, so I felt that I had to tell the rest, the part she doesn't know. Kathy is too innocent to think about you passing the story on. But I would never have told you my part if I hadn't felt I could trust you not to repeat this. Even to Joe.”

“But—”

“I've never told Hogan.” Aunt Nettie's voice was firm. That statement put an end to the whole thing as far as she was concerned.

She slammed the van's door and leaned toward the open window. “I'll see you later, Lee. Bye for now. And you be real nice to Joe. Make things up with him.”

“Wait just a dadgum minute, Aunt Nettie. What did you do with the film?”

“The pictures we took? Margo destroyed that film years ago.”

“What about the film of Kathy?”

“Oh. Margo destroyed that, too.”

I must have looked worried, because Aunt Nettie used her most reassuring voice. “Now, Lee, it's been forty-five years since all that happened. So I think we can forget about it. Now, you run on home.”

She walked away, leaving me sitting in my van feeling as blank as I've ever felt in my life. That was the craziest story I'd ever heard. I banged my head against the steering wheel.

But Aunt Nettie was calling back to me. “Now, Lee, you go home, and be really nice to Joe.”

I should be nice to him? He was the one who'd used the word “stupid.” I thought that, but I didn't say anything. I needed to absorb what Aunt Nettie had said. I couldn't worry about Joe right that moment.

Aunt Nettie went away, leaving me feeling as if the world had turned upside down.

Aunt Nettie forcing two men to strip off their clothes? Holding them at gunpoint? Aunt Nettie did that? My dear, kind aunt Nettie?

It was as if the sky had fallen. As if the whole natural order of things had gone kerflop.

But what could I do about it? Aunt Nettie was right about one thing. It had all happened forty-five years earlier. There was very little chance it had even a remote connection with the present-day problem, the killing of Mrs. Rice. So I couldn't feel that I was concealing evidence in any current crime investigation.

I started the van's motor, carefully backed off the curb, and drove to the office. Maybe if I did routine things—like my job—I could move the earth back into its normal orbit.

But no. That wasn't going to happen. When I parked in front of the shop, I saw Charlie McCoy's flashy white Corvette sitting at the curb.

What did Good-Time Charlie want? Somehow I doubted that he'd simply come by for a pound of crème de menthe bonbons, especially since we weren't open that afternoon.

I parked beside the Vette, and he got out of the low-slung car quite gracefully considering what a tubby guy he was. His only concession to cool was sunglasses.

I greeted him warily, waiting for a bad joke, but for once his mood seemed to be serious.

“Lee! I just heard about your awful experience last night.”

“I seem to be recovering.”

“I'm glad to hear it. You're a brave young woman. But that must have been terribly frightening.”

“I'm only sorry I didn't get a good look at the guy.”

“From what I hear, you tried.”

“Not very effectively.” It was time to change the subject.

“What are you up to today?”

“Shep called and told me about your adventure. I was coming down to Warner Pier this afternoon anyway, so I thought I'd drop by.”

“You've been around Warner Pier a lot lately. Is this a regular thing for you?”

“No. When the Castle closed—back in the dim days of my youth—I moved to Holland, and a few months later I opened my first car lot. I've never been here again, even though it was so close. Horning in on the Pier-O-Ette reunion enticed me back. Saturday was the first time I'd been in town in forty-five years.”

“I guess the town has changed a lot.”

“Wooee, hasn't it! But the whole country has changed a lot. Forty-five years ago there was a drug dealer on every corner.”

“In Warner Pier?”