The Chocolate Cat Caper (18 page)

“Marion, Marion!” Hugh yelled, but he couldn’t stop her tongue. I didn’t even try.

“She turned her back on all her friends, on the people who loved her best, the ones who did everything for her, because of Joe Woodyard! We wanted her success. But Joe—as soon as he got into her life, he started trying to change her. Take that case, Clem. Don’t defend that man, Clem—he’s actually guilty!” She slapped the top of the desk. “You’d think a lawyer would know that even the guilty deserve a defense.

“Then he had the nerve to walk out on her! Thought she’d come running after him, I guess.” She smiled wickedly. “But that didn’t work. And now he tells the state police he didn’t know he inherited. That’s a lie! He and Clementine talked for half an hour Friday. I’m sure—I’m positive!—she told him she hadn’t signed her new will. I feel certain of it. He had to act fast or he wouldn’t inherit. He’s a murderer!”

She pounded on the desk again. “God! I’m going to go insane if I can’t get out of this house! If I can just last til tomorrow when I can fly away forever!”

Hugh had been trying to get a word in, trying to soothe her, and now she turned on him. “And you! You’re as big an idiot as this girl is. Get out! Get out of my sight!”

I looked at Hugh, and he looked at me. He came around the desk and motioned. The two of us went into the hall. He closed the door behind us. Marion was still screaming and sobbing.

“I hate to leave her alone,” I said.

Hugh nodded. “I guess I’d better ask Joe to call a doctor. Or the state police. Or somebody.”

We stood there. Obviously, Hugh was as reluctant to make a decision as I was. Then a door opened behind us, and I looked around. Duncan Ainsley had come in through the utility room.

“What’s going on?” he said. “Who’s yelling?”

Hugh, still looking worried, explained.

Duncan gave an exasperated sigh. “Marion’s been a half bubble off plumb all day,” he said. “I’m hoping the state police will let her go back to Chicago tomorrow.”

She seems to be counting on it,” I said. “I’m so sorry I pushed her into this, this—crisis.”

“Don’t you feel responsible. You were just walking by when the accident happened. I think it’s time she went to bed with a hypo as big as Dallas. Is there a doctor in this town?”

“There used to be. Lindy will know.”

“If she doesn’t, Joe will. He was upstairs in Clementine’s office.” He gestured. “Would you see if you can find one of them?”

I turned and ran down the peristyle, feeling panicky. Seeing a person as strong as Marion McCoy melt down was shattering. I was still running when I reached the dining room and pivoted toward the kitchen.

And I careened right into Joe Woodyard.

I
n a life full of humiliating experiences, nothing I ever do will match that moment. Except maybe stepping on my hem and ripping the skirt off my costume during the opening number of the Miss North Dallas pageant.

I will say a head-on collision with a six-foot-tall woman seemed to startle Joe as much as colliding with him did me. At least he jumped as high as I did, and he came down yelling, “What the hell!” Behind him, Lindy gave a little yelp.

I came down dithering. “I didn’t mean to cause a commotion! I’ll apologize later! Is there a doctor in Warner Pier?”

Joe grabbed me by the arms. “A doctor? What’s happened?”

“It’s Marian McCoy! She’s hysterical.”

“Thank God.” Joe looked relieved. “I was afraid somebody else was dead!”

“She’s screaming. Hugh couldn’t calm her down. Mr. Ainsley thinks we should call a doctor.”

“If Duncan or Hugh can’t calm her, yeah, we’d better call somebody.”

“I’ll go see if I can help,” Lindy said. She headed back the way I’d come.

“I’ll see if I can get hold of Dr. Schiller,” Joe said.

“I’m an interloper here,” I said. “I’ll get out.”

“No!” Joe’s voice was as brusque as usual. “Stick around. I want to talk to you.” He headed toward the reception room, and in a minute I could hear his tennis shoes thumping as he ran up the stairway to the balcony.

I didn’t know what to do. I was supposed to be out at Aunt Nettie’s house, letting the state police’s technical team in to search the place. But after I’d been rude enough to invade a house that now apparently belonged to Joe Woodyard, it would be even ruder to run off without giving him an explanation—feeble as my explanation might be. I did not want to face him, but I’d feel like a coward if I didn’t.

In desperation, I did what I’ve done before. I turned to Aunt Nettie. I picked up the kitchen phone and called the chocolate shop.

The phone rang four times, and then I got a recording. “Darn!” I said. I waited until the beep, then yelled, “Aunt Nettie! It’s me! Lee! Please pick up the phone!”

It took a few seconds, but she did. “Lee? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong is that I’m stuck out at the Ripley house and I’m missing my date with the technical team. Is there any way you can get out there to let them in?”

“Oh, dear. I guess I shouldn’t have started these Crème de Menthe bonbons. I’m spouting.”

Aunt Nettie didn’t mean she was blowing her top. She meant she was using a funnel to fill square, dark chocolate shells with the Crème de Menthe flavored filling she’d made earlier. She manipulates the little stick as a plug and exactly the right amount of filling comes out the end of the funnel, filling one by one the dozens of little chocolate shells—the
bojkie
—set up on a tray. The filling has to be exactly the right temperature for this to work.

“I’ll just have to leave here,” I said.

“No,” Aunt Nettie said. “I’ll call Inez Deacon. She has a key to the house.”

“Mrs. Deacon! Is she still patrolling the beach?” Mrs. Deacon and I had shared some dangerous times a dozen years earlier, when I was sixteen. She was one of Aunt Nettie’s closest neighbors.

Aunt Nettie laughed. “Inez doesn’t miss a day at the beach. She’ll be glad to get in on the excitement. What’s the number there? If she’s not home, I’ll call back.”

I waited five minutes—timing it by the kitchen clock—then called the shop again. This time Aunt Nettie picked up on the first ring. She assured me that Mrs. Deacon had readily agreed to let the search team in and to tell them that one of us would be there as soon as possible.

With that taken care of, I got a glass of water, leaned against the kitchen cabinet, and assessed my position.

My try at active detection had certainly been a fiasco. My goal had been to find out why Greg Glossop had it in for Clementine Ripley. And I’d found the answer. He’d refused to fill a prescription, and she’d been planning to report him to the State Board of Pharmacy.

Did that matter? I couldn’t believe that the picky Greg Glossop wouldn’t have some legalistic defense. He was so insufferably egotistical that I felt sure he’d believe he could beat a complaint, no matter who it came from.

But that issue had paled beside the importance of the other two things I’d learned. First, Marion McCoy was telling the state police—and anyone else who would listen—that Joe Woodyard killed Clementine Ripley. Second, Marion was close to the breaking point. If she hadn’t already broken. I was sorry about that, but I decided it wasn’t my problem.

My problem was giving some explanation to Joe Woodyard. How should I handle this? Sitting in the kitchen like a kid waiting outside the principal’s office did not appeal to me. I decided I’d better take the initiative and go to him,” upstairs in Clementine’s office.

I marched resolutely through the dining room and reception room and mounted the stairs. When I was halfway up, Joe came out onto the balcony.

“Were you able to reach the doctor?” I said.

“It took threats, pleading, and bribery, but he agreed to make a house call. He said he’d be here in half an hour.”

“I apologize—”

Joe cut me off and pointed to the door he’d come out of. “I want to talk to you. Wait in here while I go tell Duncan and Hugh the doctor’s on the way.”

“Joe!” He ignored me, going down the stairs past me and turning toward the peristyle.

I stood looking after him, tempted simply to leave the premises. But that would seem cowardly. Finally I went on through the door Joe had pointed to. At least I’d get to see a little more of the house.

The room I entered was obviously the office, and it looked like someone actually worked there. The desk was enormous and held nothing but a computer, giving the maximum work space. The desk chair was the kind that can be adjusted to do anything but somersaults, and the lighting was topnotch. Bookshelves lined one wall, and they were stuffed with books, not doodads or gimcracks or even art objects. A second wall held built-in filing cabinets, flanked by decorative paneling.

The walls were painted white, just like the walls in the reception area, but they weren’t blank, as the walls downstairs were. At least fifteen pictures—oils, watercolors, and woodblock prints—were hung in an arrangement behind the desk. The pictures weren’t ones I’d have selected, but they were distinctive and obviously reflected the taste of a real person.

I walked over beside the desk to take a closer look at them. That was when I saw that the computer was on. Joe had been working on it, or maybe playing solitaire, when Marion’s crisis arose.

I couldn’t resist, of course. I looked at the computer screen to see what he’d been doing.

He’d been checking Clementine Ripley’s Visa bill.

That was definitely none of my business. So naturally, I couldn’t stand not taking a peek. Feeling curious—and guilty about my curiosity—I sat down in the desk chair to look at the computer screen. Then something rubbed against my leg, and I jumped up again.

Champion Yonkers walked out from under the desk.

“You again? What are you up to now?”

He yowled at me, in his usual haughty manner, then went around the desk and climbed into one of the two armchairs. He leaped from there to a shelf over the filing cabinets. He settled down there and surveyed the world with such aplomb that I deduced that it was his regular spot.

“I guess you won’t rat on me,” I said to him, turning back to the Visa bill.

And one item caught my eye immediately.

“Cheuy’s! That’s in Dallas.”

I leaned close to the screen. Cheuy’s is not a usual name for a restaurant, and I was sure there wasn’t more than one. Sure enough—the charge was marked with DALLAS. I read on idown. Neiman’s. Well, nobody goes to Dallas without checking out Neiman’s. And Clementine Ripley had succumbed to their goods, too. In fact, she’d spent a couple of thousand there.

I was looking on down the list of items when something clicked behind me. I jumped up guiltily, sure Joe had caught me checking out his—or his ex-wife’s—private business.

But there was no one there. Then a section of the wall near the filing cabinets moved, and I jumped again. I moved from behind the desk and discovered the culprit.

“Yonkers!” I said. “You scared me.”

The cat was using one white paw to open a door. The paneling on each end of the bank of filing cabinets camouflaged a closet.

“You know, Yonk, I expect they don’t want you in there,” I said.

I hauled him out, despite his angry yowls. I closed the door and made sure that it was latched.

Just then I heard tennis shoes thumping on the stairs. I moved away from the closet and the desk and tried to look innocent when Joe came in the door.

“I apologize for coming out here without an invitation and for stirring up Ms. McCoy,” I said.

“Forget it,” Joe said. “She loved having a new audience for her tale of how unworthy I was to touch the hem of Clem’s gown.”

“She doesn’t seem to be a Joe Woodyard fan, true.”

“Clem relied on her for everything—and I mean everything. Marion paid the bills, balanced the checkbook, ordered the meals, took the phone calls, told Clem when to go to the doctor and when to get her hair done. My presence interfered with all that. It’s natural that she didn’t like me. So she thinks I killed Clem.”

So Joe knew Marion thought he’d killed his ex-wife. “Did she live with you?”

“She has a private suite here, but she has her own apartment in Chicago. And she always thought I was the intruder! But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” He gestured at the computer screen. “You’ve lived in Dallas, haven’t you? I don’t understand these.”

“Oh?”

“Clem’s Visa bills. Marion is refusing to turn any financial records over until she has a court order, but I accessed the account on the Web.”

He motioned, and I went around the desk and sat down in the fancy chair. I looked the list over. “This looks like a standard Visa bill to me.”

“I don’t understand why the balance is so high. Marion always claimed that she paid it off every month.”

I studied the listing of charged items. “All of these charges were made in Dallas.”

“Yes. These cover a period when Clem was trying the Romero case. She was in Dallas for two weeks. That’s the reason I thought you might see something in them I don’t.”

“Neiman’s. Stanley Korshak. Pretty upscale stuff.”

“Clem liked to live well.”

And Joe liked the simple life—fooling around with boats and wearing work clothes. I told myself to mind my own business. Then my fingernail tapped on an interesting item.

“Dr. Rockwell Stone!”

“I guess Clem had a cold or something.”

“Maybe so, but I doubt she would have gone to Dr. Rockwell Stone for the sniffles. He’s one of Dallas’s leading plastic surgeons.”

“Plastic surgeon?” Joe’s voice was incredulous. I didn’t reply, just looked at the computer screen and let him take it in.

“I can’t believe Clem had plastic surgery,” he said.

“This could have been simply a consultation. Except . . . well, it’s quite a lot of money.” Yes, the figure listed would have sent my Visa to a heart surgeon.