The Chocolate Cat Caper (26 page)

“Look out!” I screamed the words at the same time that I shoved Duncan sideways. He lost his grip on my arm and fell into the little white railing in front of Mike’s Sidewalk Café.

Joe was still standing in the door of the pickup, gaping at me. I ran to him and grabbed his hand. I screamed, “Run! He’s got a gun!” Then I turned and ran toward TenHuis Chocolade, dragging Joe with me.

Joe yelled, “What’s going on?”

I heard a shot, but I kept running. The TenHuis sign was less than half a block away. I dropped Joe’s hand, ready to pound on the door to the shop because I knew that it was still closed.

And I heard more feet pounding behind me. I knew it was Duncan. I was shrieking, but I’m not sure words were coming out.

Now I was nearly to the door, and another miracle happened. It swung open.

Aunt Nettie was standing there, her white-blond hair forming a halo. If I ever get to heaven, I’m sure the first angel at the gate is going to look just like she did then.

I ran in the shop, with Joe right behind me, and Aunt Nettie and I slammed the door. But we weren’t fast enough. Duncan hit the plate glass and knocked the door open. Aunt Nettie fell back, and he was inside.

“Give me the keys, you little idiot!” He came for me.

I ran past the showcase and through the door into the workroom. I was still screaming, and Duncan was yelling, “The keys! The keys!”

I circled the first stainless worktable, and I saw that Joe was right behind Duncan.

One of the hairnet ladies loomed up right in front of me. I dodged and went back the other way, trying to get to the break room and the back door. I couldn’t get past Duncan.

But Duncan couldn’t get past Joe. Since he was concentrating on me, he didn’t see Joe coming up fast. Joe grabbed Duncan in a hold that reminded me Joe had been a high school wrestler.

They grappled, and I looked for something I could use to hit Duncan. The first thing I saw was a ladle in a big bowl of dark chocolate on the table. I snatched the ladle up and whacked at the struggling pair.

I hit Duncan squarely in the temple. Unfortunately, the chocolate in the ladle hit Joe squarely in the eyes. He automatically threw up a hand, and Duncan wriggled away.

But now he was running away from me. I chased him with the ladle. He turned, and again he yelled, “The keys! Give me the keys!”

I flailed the ladle again. “What keys?”

Duncan ducked. “The van!”

If I’d known where they were, I think I would have given them to him. But someplace between the van and the bank and the chase down Peach Street, I’d lost my purse. So I screamed, “They’re in the van!” And I swung the ladle.

Duncan turned and ran to the break room door. He yanked it open. Then the third miracle occurred.

Champion Myanmar Chocolate Yonkers jumped.

He had somehow gotten out of his carrying case, and according to his usual habit, he’d climbed, this time to the top of the oak china cabinet. When Duncan ran in the door, he saw one of his jumping partners, and he pounced.

Duncan screamed. Yonkers jumped from his shoulders to the back of the couch. Duncan ran toward the back door again, and this time I thought he was going to make it.

It was time for the fourth miracle. A river of chocolate.

About five gallons of chocolate—warm, melted, medium brown milk chocolate—flowed past like a flash flood down a Texas creek. It caught Duncan and left him ankle-deep in a lake of chocolate.

He tried to run again. His feet went up, and his body seemed to hang in the air, parallel to the floor. Then he fell flat. His head, his feet, his butt, his shoulders—he landed like a two-by-four dropped out of a truck. Chocolate splashed everywhere.

Duncan’s eyes rolled around. He made terrible gasping sounds, but he didn’t move. I realized that the breath had been knocked out of him completely.

Joe appeared at my right shoulder, and Aunt Nettie appeared at my left. She was holding an empty steel mixing bowl that had shortly before been full of chocolate.

The three of us stood there, looking down at Duncan.

And Champion Myanmar Yonkers delicately walked over and licked Duncan Ainsley’s face.

C
hief Jones ran in almost immediately, and as soon as he and Jerry Cherry had hauled Duncan Ainsley away, Aunt Nettie began to explain. The chief had called her earlier, as he’d promised, to tell her that Duncan Ainsley’s fingerprint had been found in the food-service glove. When she’d seen Duncan and me getting out of the van, she’d been sure that all was not as it should be.

So she called the cops. Then she sent Tracy down to the corner to see where Duncan and I were going. But Duncan had transacted his business and started back to the van—which he probably would have forced me to drive away—before the chief had time to get there.

Joe had happened on the scene almost coincidentally. When he met the lawyer from Clementine Ripley’s office, the first thing the lawyer had told him was that he’d heard rumors that Duncan Ainsley’s financial empire was about to go under. Joe had rushed back to look for Duncan, but he ran into the police in charge—looking for Ainsley. So he headed for town, apparently to warn Aunt Nettie and me.

We figured that Duncan had sneaked into Aunt Nettie’s house while she, Chief Jones, and I had gone to look at the van. He probably intended to search for the gloves some more, but when we came back he heard us talking. There are no secrets in that house—you can hear anything said anywhere—and he realized the authorities had the gloves. He decided to skip going back to his B-and-B and hide out in the basement. If Yonkers hadn’t found him, maybe he would have come out and stolen my van. Who knows?

“Anyway,” I told Aunt Nettie and Joe, “it explains why he paid a peon like me so much attention.”

Joe frowned. “Lee, a guy doesn’t need an excuse to pay attention to you.”

“Thanks, but let’s be realistic. The first time he called me—at the shop the night Clementine died—he managed to quiz me about my hours. He was figuring out when the house would be empty, so he could search for the gloves.

“Of course, he didn’t find them, because I’d neglected to check my pants pockets before I headed to the cleaners.”

“Marion must have decided to give the search a try that night,” Aunt Nettie said, “but we caught her.”

I nodded. “Then last night I saw Duncan’s car down the street as Aunt Nettie and I left the shop. He just happened to run into us at the Dock Street Pizza Place—well, he must have followed us, trying to figure out if we’d found those gloves. And incidentally, to tell me that Joe left law because he was in danger of being disbarred.”

“What!” Joe looked horrified. “Where’d he get that?”

“I think he wanted me to regard you with suspicion, Joe. He wanted to make sure we didn’t trade too much information. But the gossip backfired, because it made me so curious I went straight out to the house to ask you about it. Though a lot of other things came up before I could work it into the conversation.”

“Well, if there was a disbarment in the wings, I didn’t know anything about it,” Joe said.

It took the hairnet ladies most of the day to clean up the chocolate that had trapped Duncan Ainsley. But no one seemed to mind. I told Aunt Nettie it taught everyone a new use for chocolate. “Chocolate stun guns. You should put them on the order sheet.”

 

It was a few days before we understood just what had been going on with Duncan, Marion, and Clementine, and those days were crazy. The news media—tabloid, television, and every other kind—came back to Warner Pier. Aunt Nettie and I tried another news conference, but Alec VanDam and the state police got most of the attention.

Lindy even called me with one piece of information that surprised everybody. Her uncle ran into Mike Herrera at the movies in Holland. And he was with—tah dah!—Joe Woodyard’s mom. Lindy said Tony was vindicated; his dad was dating an Anglo. But Tony couldn’t say much, since he and Joe were old friends.

Chief Jones came by and told us he believed Duncan had convinced Marion that whatever he was putting in the chocolates would merely make Clementine Ripley sick. “You remember how she screamed, ‘Clementine can’t be
dead.
”’ he said. “It would have been hard to fake. I think she’d left the estate because she didn’t want to be there when her boss took ill. I think she was genuinely surprised when she died.”

Joe and I avoided each other like poison. The reporters were asking enough questions about why we’d both been there when Aunt Nettie felled Duncan Ainsley with a bowl of milk chocolate. I certainly didn’t want to add any fuel to their speculations about our big relationship.

I had a lot of questions about that relationship myself.

Such as, did I want it to be a relationship? Did Joe want to see me? Did I want to see him? Had the circumstances in which we met ruined any chance we would have had at getting together? Can a girl from rural Texas find happiness with a boatbuilder from western Michigan?

I saw him at the Superette a couple of times, but we both shied off from speaking. I think we were afraid even to get together and explore the question.

Finally, after a week, I was balancing the cash register and Tracy and Stacy were finishing the cleanup for the night when the phone rang.

“Hi,” Joe said.

“Hi.”

“Nice moon tonight. You interested in a boat ride?”

“Maybe. When?”

“In about an hour.”

“I guess so.”

“Do you mind meeting me?”

“Meeting ypu? Where?”

“At the public access area down from your aunt’s house. I’ll pull the boat in at the creek.”

“Oh.”

“There’s still a reporter staking out my shop, but he doesn’t seem to have a boat. I think I can dodge him.”

I laughed. “Okay. I’ll meet you at the creek.”

I went home and got a sweatshirt, since the Lake Michigan shore isn’t too balmy on moonlit nights, even in late July. Then I walked down to the beach. I’d been there only a few minutes when I heard a motor and saw the lights of a boat coming from the north. The boat putt-putted along and landed at the mouth of the creek.

I hopped in without getting my feet wet. Joe was sitting at a steering wheel on the right side of a bench seat, rather like a car’s front seat. The seat was upholstered in vinyl. I could see a similar seat behind us, and varnished mahogany decking glowed in the moonlight.

“This is beautiful,” I said.

“It’s a 1949 Chris-Craft Deluxe Runabout,” Joe said. “This may be my last trip in it; I think I’ve got a buyer.”

“I’d love to own it. How much are you asking?”

“He’s offered twenty thousand five.”

I laughed. “Well, don’t wait for me to top that offer.”

“I won’t. I need the money too bad. The bank gave me an extension, but they’re going to get impatient when the word gets out about what a mess Clem’s estate is.”

“Are you going to get anything out of it?”

“Maybe a few thousand. Which I don’t plan to keep. But it’ll be months before everything’s straightened out.”

“Had Duncan taken her for everything she had?”

“Duncan and Marion. The two of them just about cleaned her out. And the money’s abroad. We may never track it down.”

“It’s hard to see how they did that.”

“Duncan was running a classic Ponzi scheme,” Joe said.

“But he was written up in all the magazines and everything,” I said. “Somebody must have looked at his record.”

“I think people did, at first,” he said. “He probably made legitimate investments in the beginning. But after the market went nuts, he got in a hole, and he couldn’t get out. So he began to pay interest to old investors with new investors’ money. Apparently most of his high-profile clients were like Clementine—too busy to worry about the details.”

“But Marion figured it out,” I said.

“She must have. But she was mad at Clem. Apparently I’d put a permanent wedge between Clem and Marion.”

“And Duncan, well, seduced her.”

“I guess so. Marion had devoted her life to Clem. But Clem had married me, which made Marion feel rejected. At the same time, Duncan was worming his way into her favors. So if she figured out there was something wrong with Clem’s investments, at least she was ready to give Duncan the benefit of the doubt. Eventually, she must have thrown in with him.”

“But Ponzi schemes usually collapse.”

“Apparently that’s what was about to happen. So Duncan and Marion were ready to leave the country. They had fake passports.”

“And cash.”

“Yeah. Of course, the cash in the safe-deposit box here wasn’t enough to keep them going a week. There’s got to be more stashed abroad. But the fiasco over ordering the chocolates tipped Clem off to Marion’s thefts.”