The Chocolate Castle Clue (3 page)

Dolly and I were finally through with our chore.

Dolly went up to her apartment, and I closed the door for the final time and went into the shop. It was nearly five o'clock, so the twenty-five women who were making chocolate were about to quit working. I checked to see that there were no immediate problems, then headed for the restroom. Its mirror confirmed that I looked as if I'd spent the day cleaning a dirty storeroom.

I wanted to drop the high school souvenirs by Aunt Nettie's, and I was sure she'd introduce me to her old friends. It was going to take a little work to make myself presentable.

Luckily, I had some emergency makeup in my purse. After ten minutes spent cleaning up, I looked a bit more human. I took off my dirty sweatshirt and substituted a plaid wool shirt of Joe's I found in the office closet. Heaven knows why it was there, but it almost made my jeans and tee look like a deliberately casual outfit.

I decided my grooming update would give me enough confidence to spend ten minutes with Aunt Nettie's old school pals, and ten minutes was all I intended to spend. I was eager to get home and take a shower. That evening, I decided, Joe and I were going out for dinner.

Aunt Nettie and her husband, Hogan—she had remarried a year and a half earlier—lived in a pleasant white house built in the 1940s. They had remodeled it extensively the previous year. It was in Warner Pier proper, in contrast to the house where Joe and I live. We're out on Lake Shore Drive, the road that skirts Lake Michigan. Every town on the Great Lakes has either a Lake Shore Drive or a Lakeshore Drive.

When I pulled up at Aunt Nettie's, I saw two cars parked in her drive. Neither of them belonged to Aunt Nettie's husband, Hogan Jones. Hogan, who is Warner Pier's police chief, had conveniently arranged to be away teaching a two-week workshop when the high school reunion came up. I had told him I found the timing highly suspicious, but he just grinned.

“I sure wouldn't want Nettie talking to my high school friends,” he'd said. “I wasn't in law enforcement when I was sixteen. More like law breaking.”

I got the box of souvenirs and the trophy out of the van and went to the front door. Before I could touch the bell, the door swung open, and all the confidence I'd tried to paint on with makeup and to add along with Joe's wool shirt disappeared at the sight of the petite woman who faced me.

She was no more than five feet tall, and she probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. Her silvery hair was cut crisply, and her clothes were perfect. No jeans and plaid shirt for her. She wore perfectly tailored wool slacks and a sweater, both in winter white. Toes of brown boots peeked out from under her slacks, and her only jewelry was an intricately carved green jade necklace.

“I hope they're gift wrapped,” she said.

It was Margo Street.
The
Margo Street. I'd been eager to meet her, but I hadn't expected to be struck speechless when I did.

The Margo Street Aunt Nettie had gone to high school with was the same Margo Street who had been written up in
Fortune
magazine. The one who founded Sweetwater Investments. The one I had done a research paper on in college. The one I had admired as one of the nation's top women in business.

The one who was glaring at me and making me feel that I must look like the ragged end of a misspent life.

My stomach flipped over, and I nearly dropped the box.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Nettie's noose.”

Ms. Street lifted one eyebrow.

“Niece!” I yelped the word. “Nettie Jones is my aunt.”

“Then you're not from the frame shop?”

“No. I work for Aunt Nettie at TenHuis Chocolade.”

“I see. You'd better come in.”

I slunk in, still embarrassed over my slip of the tongue and surprised by her ungracious welcome. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“I requested a delivery. Perhaps I'd better call about it.” Ms. Street gestured toward the back of the house. “The others are out on the porch.”

Ms. Street—I certainly wasn't bold enough even to think of her as Margo—disappeared into the bedroom hall, and I went through the dining room and toward the porch, wondering how this woman managed to look so young. There had been a fine network of wrinkles on her cheeks, so I didn't think she'd “had work done,” as they say. But I would have guessed her age at late forties, if I hadn't known that she'd graduated from high school the same year Aunt Nettie had. And Aunt Nettie was sixty-three.

Did having money make you look young?

As I entered the dining room, the kitchen door popped open, and Hazel TerHoot came through with a handful of silverware.

“Hi, Lee. I didn't know Nettie invited
you
.” Her tone implied that I was not only uninvited, but also unwanted.

I didn't take offense. That was Hazel. She completely lacked tact, but after working with her for a couple of years, I knew she didn't really mean to be rude. Things just came out that way.

“I'm not here for the reunion dinner. I just brought something by for Aunt Nettie. Is she out on the porch?”

“Oh, yes. With the rest of the gang.”

Somehow Hazel made the word “gang” sound as if she thought her former classmates were planning to write graffiti all over Warner Pier or start a fight with a rival sextet. I didn't understand, so I asked about it.

“Are things not going well?”

“Well enough. It's just that—we've all grown in different directions. You know. It always happens that way. Life.”

“Aunt Nettie seemed to be looking forward to seeing everyone, Hazel. I thought you were, too.”

“Maybe I'm just not in the mood.”

I motioned with my box. “Hazel, if I had a hand free, I'd give you a big ol' Texas hug!”

Hazel smiled and waved her handful of silverware. “I'll collect one later, Lee. If you get close now, I might puncture you with a fork.”

“It's nice of you to help Aunt Nettie out.”

Hazel shrugged. “Nettie was my boss for a lot of years. I'm used to helping her out.”

I gave what I hoped was an encouraging smile and headed on toward the porch. Hazel's comment had surprised me. She had always appeared to be a happy housewife with few ambitions for a career, content with a job that paid her a reasonable wage and kept her in close contact with an old friend. But Aunt Nettie owned a successful business, and Hazel had merely worked for hourly wages. I wondered whether it rankled.

Aunt Nettie's porch is comfortable and attractive, furnished with a collection of wicker pieces that include a couch and two large chairs with striped cushions. The porch was connected to the dining room by French doors. When I drew near them, I was greeted by a gale of laughter. Its fruity, rich tone told me Ruby Westfield was there.

Ruby might be the most interesting person in Warner Pier, or so I thought, and I paused to observe her for thirty seconds before I went out onto the porch.

Ruby probably held the Warner Pier record for marriages and divorces. She'd made it to the altar at least six times, and she had four children, each with a different father. And she'd done all this marrying and divorcing and reproducing in a town of twenty-five hundred people.

Amazing.

What was even more amazing was that each of Ruby's husbands was an upstanding, responsible citizen. Ruby wasn't one of those women who picked guys up in bars and rushed them to the altar after a few drinks. She also wasn't one of the types who had public fights and kept the “domestic incident” statistics high. And she definitely wasn't one of the sirens who went after married men. Each of Ruby's husbands had been single, solvent, and sober when he fell for her. Each was also intelligent and gainfully employed. All the exes still lived in Warner Pier, and I knew several of them. One was an electrician, one owned a hardware store, one was street superintendent for the city, and one was a retired teacher. Two others I didn't know much about.

None of the ones I knew ever had anything bad to say about Ruby. Even after the splits, all the men in her life liked her. Apparently Ruby simply had “it,” whatever “it” is.

The other remarkable thing about Ruby's marital history was that she wasn't particularly attractive.

If an actress were cast for a role like Ruby in a movie, the producers would select some sexy, ultra-good-looking gal. But Ruby was very ordinary looking, at least to me. She was plump and comfortable, with frankly gray hair and a happy smile. Plain. But the latest word around town was that the city's most eligible older guy—a doctor who recently retired here—had been calling on Ruby. None of us thought it unlikely.

Joe agrees that Ruby is plain, but he says she broadcasts pheromones. I guess that's as good an explanation as any.

As for gainful employment, Ruby was an expert seamstress—so expert that she limited her clientele to brides and beauty queens. She created only gorgeous, elaborate, sequin-encrusted gowns for special occasions. She farmed the simpler bridesmaids' dresses out to several other women. And not even the mothers of the brides argued with Ruby, or so I'd heard. If Ruby said a bustle would make the bride look fat, by golly, the bride did not wear a bustle. Her word was law, and brides came from as far away as Lansing or Grand Rapids for a Ruby original.

Ruby and Aunt Nettie were sitting in the big wicker chairs, facing the French doors. The matching couch was in front of the doors, with its back to the dining room.

“Hi, Lee!” Ruby said. She had a voice as comfortable as her figure. “We're telling dirty jokes!”

Aunt Nettie laughed. “Just like high school!”

“Only now we understand them!” Ruby laughed again. “Nettie, remember how rotten we were to your brother?”

Aunt Nettie rolled her eyes. “Over the dirty jokes? We were awful!”

Ruby laughed. “Kids are so mean! Poor Ed. We probably gave him a complex.”

“What did you do to the poor guy?” I said.

Ruby had laughed until she was crying. She dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex. “Well, Ed was three years younger than we were, you know. The summer he was fourteen, he began to ask Nettie and me to tell him some dirty jokes.”

“Of course, we weren't about to,” Aunt Nettie said. “You can tell your girlfriends dirty jokes, but not your younger brother!”

Ruby went on. “But we didn't just tell him no. We told him he was too young—or maybe too dumb—to understand the jokes.”

I couldn't help grinning. “That
was
mean!”

“Oh, we got meaner. Finally we told him a long story. I don't remember all of it, but it ended with the sentence, ‘And the light was red!' Then we laughed uproariously.”

“Of course, the story wasn't dirty,” Aunt Nettie said. “It wasn't anything. It was just nonsense. But after the buildup we'd given Ed—telling him he wouldn't understand a dirty joke if we told him one—he didn't dare admit he didn't get it.”

“I'll bet he puzzled over that story for years!” Ruby was still laughing. “Poor Ed.”

By then I was laughing, too. “You
were
rotten kids.”

“Oh, we were,” Ruby said. “Remember the time we caught the gym teacher and the principal's secretary over by Van-Horn's farm?”

“What!” I pretended to be shocked. “You were court-busting ? I thought only Texas kids did that.”

“Court-busting? Is that what you called it in Texas? We did it, too, though we didn't have a name for it. But actually, that time we were with guys, and they were looking for deer, not necking couples.”

“And the guys swore us to secrecy,” Aunt Nettie said.

“The gym teacher was assistant track coach, and they didn't want to get him in trouble.”

“If y'all are reminiscing,” I said, “I've brought something to add to the mix.”

I walked around the couch and put the box marked NETTIE'S MEMORABILIA down on the coffee table. Then I pulled the trophy from the garbage sack, still wrapped in kitchen towels. Aunt Nettie and Ruby looked at me expectantly. I unwrapped the trophy and held it over my head proudly.

“Ta-da! Look what I found in one of the old filing cabinets.”

Aunt Nettie and Ruby got almost identical expressions. Their mouths formed big Os, and their eyes got wide.

And behind me, someone screamed.

I must have looked like a king-sized lemur. When a long, tall woman throws up her long, tall arms, leaps into the air kicking her long, tall legs, turns around in midleap, and lands facing the opposite direction—well, a lemur would have done it a lot more gracefully.

But that scream might have been the most startling sound I'd ever heard. I had had no idea there was anybody behind me until the shriek from hell cut loose. Aunt Nettie was lucky I didn't swarm up her rubber plant and wind up hanging from the canvas blind.