The Chocolate Cat Caper (11 page)

“Please wait a few minutes, Ms. McKinney,” VanDam said. “Then we’ll go over the events of yesterday afternoon with you. Right now we’re simply trying to understand what happened and the order it happened in, and we’d like to talk to Mrs. TenHuis first.”

Aunt Nettie took them back to the break room, and I worked with Tracy and Stacy. They’d had to cut their dinner breaks short, but they were so excited that neither of them complained. I stood behind the counter with them while I waited for the detectives.

I was nervous about the interview, of course. I reminded myself to stand quietly and pretend to be poised—a lesson I was taught during my semisuccessful career on the beauty pageant circuit. Don’t twitch your hands, I’d been told. Don’t fool with your hair or jewelry. Don’t bounce your foot or pick at your nails.

Don’t twist your tongue—that wasn’t on the list, but it was the one I had the most trouble with. As I loaded boxes with chocolates and made change I tried to prepare answers for every question the detectives might ask, all the time knowing that was probably the worst thing I could do. But I was willing to look dumb—I had to be ready to fight for Aunt Nettie, even with my malapropish tongue.

I stayed in the shop, but I saw Aunt Nettie lead the detectives out of the break room. She showed them the workroom and the storage area, where racks on wheels held stacks of twenty-five trays of chocolates at a time. No doubt she described the routine of the middle-aged ladies who made the candy, the ones who had gone home at four p.m. She wheeled out a rack that held storage trays, then pulled out the tray on which the Amaretto truffles were stored. She pointed out the white chocolate that covered them and the accent stripes of milk chocolate that identified the Amaretto truffles. Then she took an Amaretto truffle from the tray, gave the detectives a rather defiant look, and ate it in two bites.

Of course, I was way ahead of the detectives in one way. They were still checking how the chocolate had been handled here at TenHuis Chocolade. I was sure those truffles had been pure, unadulterated yummy when Aunt Nettie gave them to me. If one of them had been used to poison Clementine Ripley, it had been given the cyanide treatment after I left it at the big, cold house on the point.

When my turn came, I went over the same material. I described how I had watched Aunt Nettie arrange the chocolates and dipped fruits on the silver trays that Clementine Ripley had sent us and how I had tasted an Amaretto truffle. How they’d gone into the van. How I’d left the van locked while I walked around to the house to pick up a check. How Clementine Ripley had taken a chocolate cat, gulped it down in two bites, then instructed Marion McCoy to take the box up to her room.

I was careful to include the exchange we’d overheard between Joe Woodyard and his ex—“I want my money.” Frankly, VanDam and Underwood didn’t seem too interested. I guess they’d already heard about that, maybe from Joe.

Then I explained why I happened to go back that night as a waitress.

“You can ask Lindy Herrera,” I said. “She suggested it.”

“We’ll talk to her,” VanDam said. “Did you see the little box of chocolates after you went back?”

“No.”

“And you stayed in the kitchen, the dining room, and the reception room?”

“Except when I went down to the office.”

“You went down to the office? That room back by the garage?”

“I didn’t see a garage, but there was a utility room across the hall. It’s at the east end of the house.”

“And why did you go back there?”

“The cat, Junker. I mean, Yonkers! Champion Yonkers. Ms. McCoy was trying to find him. She said they planned to lock him in the office. After she’d gone, he showed up out in the main party room—jumped onto the bartender from the balcony, then tried to eat a bowl of olives. I grabbed him and took him back to the office.”

“How did you know where it was?”

“I figured it was the same one she’d taken me to that afternoon, so I kept going east until I found a familiar landlord. I mean, landmark! When I saw the utility room, I turned left.”

“You didn’t see the chocolates in the office?”

“Not then. They should have been upstairs with Clementine Ripley by then.”

He didn’t ask me what I did see in the office, and I wasn’t about to volunteer any information. We went over the rest of the events—my walk back down the peristyle and past the kitchen and dining room, and my arrival in the main reception room just in time to see Clementine Ripley tumble over the balcony and land on the polished wooden floor.

At that point VanDam and Underwood seemed to be about to close their notebooks and leave. So I felt called upon to make a statement.

“Lieutenant VanDam,” I said, “I’m sure of one thing.”

“Yes, Ms. McKinney?”

“Those truffles—well, they weren’t poisoned here!”

A slight smile flashed over VanDam’s serious Dutch face.

I went on. “I wouldn’t even have any idea of how to get hold of cyanide, and I’m sure my aunt doesn’t either.”

“Actually,” VanDam said, “getting hold of cyanide is not a big problem in this part of Michigan. Not in the summertime.”

“What do you mean?”

“Peach pits contain it.”

“Peach pits!”

He nodded. “Also cherry pits. I understand the process of brewing a little isn’t too hard.”

“That may be true. But after meeting my aunt Nettie, you can see that she’d never—well, it’s not possible for her to have any connection with any action that would harm anyone. She’s—she’s just good clear through.”

VanDam smiled at that. “Right now we’re just trying to understand how the chocolates were handled,” he said. He flipped his notebook closed and stood up. Detective Underwood imitated his actions almost exactly.

“We need to find out who had an opportunity to tamper with them,” VanDam said. He grinned. “Like you, Ms. McKinney.”

“Me!”

“You were alone with them for quite a while,” he said. Then he headed for the front of the shop, and my stomach went into a knot no Boy Scout could have tied.

I followed the detectives. I didn’t know what to say or do. VanDam’s comment wasn’t exactly news, of course. Both Aunt Nettie and I had had access to the chocolates. In theory I could have spiked them with cyanide.

So should I maintain my innocence? Point out that I had no reason for killing Clementine Ripley? Deny that I had ready access to cyanide? Yell? Scream? Beat my breast?

I decided that a dignified silence would be best. I pretended I was Miss America taking her final trip down the runway as I escorted the two state detectives to the front door. I even offered them a sample chocolate from the front counter. They declined.

I opened the door for them. “Good-bye, Lieutenant VanDam,” I said. “Good-bye, Sergeant Underling.”

I had closed the door before I heard VanDam laugh and realized what I’d said. I went back to the break room ready to cut my tongue out. It seemed determined to betray me.

Aunt Nettie had taken her interrogation calmly. The detectives had been polite, she said. They’d wanted to know how things were handled in the workroom at TenHuis Chocolade and specifically how the chocolates she’d sent to Clementine Ripley were selected.

“I just told them the truth,” she said. “I knew her favorites, because she always buys Amaretto truffles—I mean she always bought them. Sometimes she’d buy a whole pound of nothing but Amaretto truffles. I knew she had quite a sweet tooth, and I didn’t want her to mess up the display trays before they were served. But those specific truffles were taken right from our regular stock. And I do not believe that one of my ladies had poisoned some Amaretto truffles at random, and that Clementine Ripley just happened to get them.”

“I agree,” I said. “That would be too hard to swallow.”

She looked at me narrowly, then laughed. “Oh, Lee, you’re so funny!”

Then we had a big discussion on whether she should go home. I was still nervous about the burglar.

“Handy Hans called to say the window is fixed,” Aunt Nettie said firmly. “The house is as safe as it’s been for the past hundred years, and I’ve been living there for forty of those years. I’m not leaving my home.”

“That house may be inside the city limits, but it’s still awfully remote.”

“I have wonderful neighbors.”

“I know! But you also have an acre of ground. The neighbors aren’t close enough to hear you holler, and they can’t see the house for all those trees.”

Aunt Nettie sighed. “I guess you have a point. And if you’re nervous about staying out there . . .”

“You’re not staying alone!”

We never made any progress beyond that. She wasn’t leaving her home, and I wasn’t leaving her. I did call the nonemergency number for the Warner Pier Police Department and request a few extra patrols of our area. The dispatcher—or whomever I talked to—assured me that Chief Jones had already laid that on.

“So if you see a police car in your drive,” the dispatcher said, “don’t worry.”

We left it at that. We were spending the night in our own beds.

Aunt Nettie left the shop around eight-thirty p.m. At eight-forty, p.m. I started cleaning the big front window. At eight-forty-five, p.m. a car stopped in front of the shop and a man wearing a funny mesh vest with lots of pockets got out. He leaned back inside his car and pulled out a camera.

I yanked the shade down on the window and turned to Tracy and Stacy.

“Let’s close up early,” I said.

I pulled the shade on the other big display window, then locked the front door. I stood by it while Tracy and Stacy finished up with the last two customers. The man with the camera came to the door and rapped, but I ignored him.

I opened the door just a slit for the customers. They had barely squeezed through when a second man draped with photographic equipment came running down the sidewalk.

“Hey!” he said. “Did the fatal chocolates come from here?”

S
tacy and Tracy were staring at me.

“Let’s clean up fast and skedaddle,” I said. “And you girls may get tomorrow off. I’ll call you if it looks as if we’ll be open.”

They were still staring, so I went on. “And you’ll get tomorrow off with pay if you don’t talk to those reporters outside.”

That seemed to suit them, and the three of us did the final cleanup—sweeping out, scrubbing down the counter, and restocking the showcase—in record time. We ignored repeated knocks on the front door; the crowd seemed to be growing. I scooped the cash from the register and left it unbalanced, although that almost crushed my accountant’s soul. I stuck the money in a bank sack and put the bank sack in my purse. Tracy and Stacy waited at the door to the alley while I turned out all the lights but the security light behind the counter. Then I made my way to the back of the shop.

Tracy’s eyes were big, and her hair looked stringier than ever. “Do you think they’ll be waiting in the alley?”

“I hope not,” I said. “I’ll go out first, and I’ll take you girls home.”

They both assured me this wasn’t necessary, but I insisted. I didn’t want them waylaid; they were just high school kids, no match for the tabloid press. I was afraid the reporters were lurking in the alley, lying in wait like lionesses at a waterhole.

Which turned out to be almost the case.

The business district of Warner Pier is quaint enough to make the back entrances hard for strangers to figure out, but the first reporters found the alley just as we reached the van. I guess it was lucky Tracy and Stacy were teenagers; the hairnet ladies would never have been agile enough to jump into the van fast enough for us to make our escape.

As it was I had to drive through a half dozen reporters and photographers. Strobe lights were flashing, and people were yelling, but I kept edging the van down the alley toward Peach Street.

“Hey! Let us tell your side!” That was one of the yells.

“Is it true your aunt’s been arrested?” That was another.

“Is it true you’re having an affair with Clementine Ripley’s husband? Is it true you were Miss Texas?”

I tried not to even look at them, just kept moving slowly forward. When I got to the street, I whipped the van left and pressed down on the accelerator. “Look back,” I said. “See if they follow us.”

“There are a couple of cars,” Stacy said. “But it’s hard to tell just who’s who.”

I cut through the alley on the next block.

“One car followed us,” Stacy said. “Why don’t you head down Lake Shore Drive?”

“I don’t want to lead them to Aunt Nettie’s. Her house is hard to find, so maybe they won’t find it tonight. If I go somewhere else—”

“I mean the north shore end,” Stacy said, “and I can tell you how to lose them!” Tracy (stringy hair) was being real quiet, but Stacy (plump) was enjoying the whole thing. “Head for the old Root Beer Barrel,” she said. “Circle around it, and there’s a drive at the back, kinda hidden by bushes. The guys do it all the time.”