The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up (13 page)

“How to knock down the old Root Beer Barrel.”

“What!” Meg gave me a sharp look, then turned more map racks, banging them back against the wall.

“Everybody keeps talking about how Hershel claimed it was knocked down on purpose,” I said. “I just began to wonder how hard it would be to do that. I thought Trey would know.”

“I’m sure he would.” Meg turned the final map rack. “Trey’s gone to Holland. I told him you called, and he said he’d return your call on his cell phone.”

“He did. I missed the call. Then I was out on an errand and saw that his SUV was here, so I pulled in.”

“He drove my car.”

“I’m sorry I bothered you.”

I turned toward the door, but Meg spoke. “Wait, Lee.” When I looked at her, she had changed her mouth from huffy to happy, but her pupils were still tiny and hard. “You and I need to talk for a minute,” she said.

“Sure.” I decided I could match Meg hypocrisy for hypocrisy. I put on my beauty pageant smile and took the chair she waved toward.

Meg sat in an identical chair. She was wearing another summer visitor outfit—jeans with tennies and a pale blue cotton sweater over a white polo shirt. As she had the day before, she looked almost too well bred. Hard to believe she had been a child so neglected the neighbors called the welfare department.

“I’m sorry I snapped,” she said. “We’re all upset about poor Hershel.”

Her comment confirmed my opinion of her as a real witch with a capital “B.” Meg hadn’t cared a whit about Hershel. I made my smile even toothier. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, Trey told me he’d called you this morning, and he was afraid you’d misunderstood.”

“Oh?”

“He said he made some reference to Joe Woodyard.”

“I hadn’t been up long when he called. I’m afraid I wasn’t making a lot of sense.” I made my smile wide enough for Miss America competition, and I decided to spike her guns. “I didn’t understand—was he trying to tell me that you and Joe dated each other in high school?”

“Oh? Had Joe told you about that?” Was it my imagination, or did she look rather disappointed?

“I know about it.” I didn’t learn it from Joe, but I knew. “I hadn’t put a lot of importance on it.”

Meg’s smile grew as big as mine, and her pupils grew even smaller. “That’s a
good
attitude, Lee. Of course,
you
know all the little tricks to keeping a man interested.”

“Tricks?”

“Those things we learn at our mother’s knee. Keep’em guessing, never let them feel overly confident about you, things like that.”

So Meg thought romantic relationships were based on little tricks. I wasn’t surprised, but I found her attitude annoying. I kept smiling. “I’ve even been known to fall back on sincerity,” I said. “When you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

A frown briefly clouded Meg’s perfect eyebrows. She didn’t seem to know what to make of my comment. “Well, as long as you understand that there’s been
nothing
between Joe and me since high school.”

“I don’t really worry about ancient history.”

Meg simpered. “Well, it
is
ancient history. I didn’t want you to think anything else.”

“I didn’t.”

“Though it’s gratifying to know Joe
mentioned
me.”

“Joe’s been around the block a couple of times since high school, Meg. You shouldn’t feel too bad if he seems to have gotten over your teenage romance.”

Her jaw tightened. “He was really mad when we broke up. But by the time I was a senior, I could see that Joe wasn’t really my type. I’ve told him repeatedly, over the years, that I have no interest in him. And, of course, events have proven me right.”

“What events?”

“Well, you know. His . . . lack of purpose.”

Was she was referring to Joe’s decision to quit practicing law and open a boat shop?

Meg spoke again. “You know, there’s no substitute for family background.”

That comment confused me further—I didn’t know anything particularly disreputable about Joe’s family. His parents had been divorced, and his mother ran a successful insurance agency. His father—now deceased—had been a carpenter. His family wasn’t rich or famous, but it was respectable. Unlike Meg’s had been, apparently. I contented myself with raising my eyebrows at Meg.

Meg’s laugh tinkled out again. “Anyway, I met Trey—and, well, I fell for him in a major way. He had all the qualities I was looking for—you know.”

I began to think I did know. I was getting the picture of what Meg had been looking for in a husband. I did the eyebrow wriggling bit again. “Family background?”

Meg—well, the only word is “preened.” “Trey is intelligent and trained to a profession, of course. But the Corbetts give their sons a top-notch education. There’s a family trust dedicated to that purpose.”

I couldn’t resist a dig. “I understand perfectly, Meg. Trey probably went to prep school . . .”

“Capperfield.”

“And to a ‘good’ college . . .”

“Hyde.”

He’d been to such a good college I’d never even heard of it. I had trouble not making my smile a smirk. “. . . and he has the family fortu . . . I mean,
connections
! The connections to help him become successful.” I leaned forward. “Which has always made me curious. What is Trey doing in a little place like Warner Pier?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, why isn’t Trey practicing architecture in New York, in Chicago, even in Grand Rapids?”

Meg’s expression hardened. “His interest is Victorian architecture—and here he’s able to indulge it.”

“That
is
lucky.”

Meg stood up. “Trey says Warner Pier is the perfect place for him to learn Victorian building practices and design from the ground up. He’s written papers on the buildings he’s restored here.”

“Wonderful.”

“Trey’s going to knock Michigan on its ear,” she said. “He has big plans.”

I excused myself. We both waved and smiled our hypocritical smiles as I backed out of the parking lot. I didn’t understand why Meg had wanted to talk to me. Was she trying to make me jealous, with her comments about how she’d told Joe to shove off “over the years”?

When I got back to the shop, Trey had called again. This time he had left his cell phone number. I called him, and Trey answered.

“It’s Lee,” I said. “I’m calling to apologize if I was rude this morning.”

“I’m the one who needs to apologize. I shouldn’t have called so early.”

Apparently Trey wasn’t going to make any reference to Meg and Joe. I wasn’t going to mention them either. “I needed to be up and doing. But now I have one question for you—if you have time.”

“I’m driving down from Holland, Lee. I can talk. Just don’t ask me a question so startling that I run off the road.”

“I don’t think it would startle you. How would you knock down the old Root Beer Barrel?”

There was a moment of silence. Then I heard a horn blare. Yikes! Maybe he had run off the road. “Trey? Are you all right?”

“Yes. But that
was
a startling question. I hope you’re using the word ‘you’ as a general term for humanity, not asking how I actually did it.”

I laughed. “I guess I meant it as a general term for people who know a lot about how buildings are constructed, Trey.”

“But I don’t know a lot about commercial properties of the 1940s. I specialize in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. And I try to keep the structures up, not knock them down.”

“I know, Trey. But you were the only person I could think of that I knew well enough to ask.”

“Sorry. I never looked closely at the old Root Beer Barrel. I don’t know how it was constructed. It might be that a good ram with a bulldozer would have brought it down. Or it might have had to be taken apart plank by plank. Why do you want to know?”

Suddenly I didn’t want to go into it. “Just nosiness, I guess. Patsy said Hershel claimed it was knocked down deliberately, and I began to wonder how hard it would be to do that.”

“Don’t worry, Lee. Nobody but an idiot would think that Joe would take it down.”

“Thanks, Trey.” This time we both said good-bye politely before we hung up.

That hadn’t helped. The whole morning had been confusing. I was at a complete loss about how the rock that had killed Hershel had gotten from Joe’s workshop to the old chapel. I didn’t understand why Joe thought Frank Waterloo had steered a buyer for the Root Beer Barrel property in his direction and Frank denied it. I didn’t understand what Meg and I had been talking about, or why Trey wouldn’t at least take a guess about pulling the Root Beer Barrel down. There were a lot of unanswered questions, and I wasn’t making any progress at answering them.

I fought down a mad desire for a coffee truffle (“All-milk chocolate truffle, flavored with Caribbean coffee”), went to my desk, took out a yellow legal pad, and wrote down two of the questions.

First, why did Joe think Frank had steered a property buyer his way?

Second, what was the relationship between Meg Corbett and Joe?

These were two questions I could simply call Joe and ask. I might not like the answer I got to one of them, but I could ask them. I picked up the phone.

J
oe answered almost immediately. I didn’t hit him with Meg’s implications right away. Instead I told him that Frank denied telling anybody about the Root Beer Barrel property.

“He says he didn’t even know the old Barrel had blown down for a couple of months,” I said.

“So what?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about the Barrel, Joe. If Hershel was right, and it was deliberately wrecked, the chief has been thinking in terms of its destruction helping you sell it. But it also made it possible for this guy in Grand Rapids to buy it.”

Joe was silent.

“In a property sale,” I said, “both parties should benefit.”

“You’re right. Let’s go ask him.”

“Go ask him?”

“Sure. I need to pick up a boat in Grand Rapids anyway. We can stop by and see this guy.”

“The buyer? Who is he?”

“His name is Tom Johnson. Sounds like an alias. But I’ve seen his letterhead. Johnson-Phinney Development. Can you come with me?”

“Well, I need to get some work done around here . . .”

“We could leave about three, get to Johnson’s office before he closes, then pick up the boat. I’ll even buy you some Mexican food.”

“No way!” That was an ongoing joke between the two of us. As a Texan I refused to eat Mexican food as far north as Michigan. Which is silly, because west Michigan is full of Hispanic-Americans, but I was always sure the restaurants wouldn’t serve real Tex-Mex, and I wouldn’t touch it.

“German?”

I looked at the work piled up on my desk and thought about my scheduled shift, which was supposed to end at nine-thirty or ten p.m.

Joe spoke again. “Indian? Hungarian? French? Tibetan? Serbo-Croatian?”

I made up my mind. “Three o’clock? I’ll be ready. And I vote for Chinese.”

At noon Tracy brought me a sandwich to eat at my desk, and I worked straight through until three. Which didn’t make up for the time I was taking off, but I did get a few things done. Aunt Nettie doesn’t mind if I leave early, but I hate to ask for special treatment.

Joe looked neat—khakis and polo shirt—when he came to get me. I was glad I’d dressed fairly decently that day, since I hadn’t had time to go home and change. I got my extra sweater from the van and we started the hour-long drive to Grand Rapids. I was grinning as we drove out of town and got on the interstate.

“You look like the proverbial cat with a mouthful of feathers,” Joe said.

“It’s skipping out in the middle of the day. I feel as if I’m getting away with something. But tell me what you know about this Tom Johnson.”

“All I know about him is that the cashier’s check he gave me as earnest money was good.”

“A cashier’s check is always good, Joe. When are you supposed to finalize the deal?”

“He asked for ninety days. So he’s still got a month.”

“He didn’t tell you what he wanted to do with the property.”

“Nope.”

“And you didn’t ask.”

“Nope. I figured it wasn’t any of my business. The city has rules about what can go in various zonings. The state has rules about what can go on the lakeshore. It’s not my business to enforce their rules. Once that property is off my hands I have no interest in it.”

“How did you meet Tom Johnson?”

“He called one day, said Frank Waterloo had mentioned the property to him, and arranged to come down to see it. He’d seen it earlier, of course.”

“He told you that?”

“No, but he knew how to find it, and finding it is not that easy. Besides, if I wanted to buy a piece of property, I wouldn’t approach a seller until I’d at least driven by it. Though Johnson didn’t seem to know where the property lines were, so he hadn’t poked around too much.”

“Had anybody seen him over there?”

“I didn’t ask around. But you know that neighborhood. It’s practically deserted until you get to the houses two blocks away. He could have done anything over there.”

“Including pulling down the old Root Beer Barrel.”

“True. Nobody would have noticed anything. But I am sure he told me he’d heard about the property from Frank Waterloo.” Joe reached over and patted my hand. “So, we’ll ask him how he knows Frank.”

The Root Beer Barrel property wasn’t a spot you would simply stumble over while driving through Warner Pier. It was on North Lake Shore Drive—across the river and a couple of miles up the lake from Aunt Nettie’s house. It was located on a section of Lake Shore Drive where Lake Michigan had eaten away part of the road, leaving the structures on the inland side—well, stranded. You had to know how to get there if you wanted to find the area.

Fifty years earlier, I’d been told, that part of Lake Shore Drive had been a state highway. It was lined with motels, service stations, and restaurants. Then the lake had eroded the property on the west side of the road. Several buildings had fallen into the lake. The state highway route was moved several blocks away from the lake, and the businesses on the inland side closed because of the lack of traffic. Yet the spot was still lakefront property. It would be expensive to stabilize the bank, of course, but condos, restaurants—lots of businesses would find the property valuable.