The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery (8 page)

“Yeah. Mom had to identify him. Grandpa Matt went with her. She’s never talked about it much.
She did tell me she dreaded seeing him, but he didn’t look bad.” Joe sat down on the couch again. “That’s one thing about Lake Superior. It’s cold.”

Yes, a drowning victim in Lake Superior is almost refrigerated. Superior is the farthest north of the Great Lakes, so it’s largely fed by snowmelt. It also has the reputation of being the most dangerous lake, the most storm-tossed. They say that’s
because it’s longest from east to west, so the prevailing winds have plenty of space to whip up high waves as a storm moves across it. Lake Superior’s victims are often not found.

I shuddered and moved to the couch, sitting close to Joe.

“You never talk about your dad, Joe. I always assumed that you didn’t remember him, since you were so small when he was killed.”

“I was five. But he worked
the Great Lakes freighters, so he was gone a lot even before he died. I don’t think I understood what had happened—I remember that for a long time I’d ask Mom when he was coming home. Then she’d cry. I didn’t understand why.” He smiled ruefully. “She used to be happy when he came home.”

I took his hand. “It must have been awfully hard for a little guy.”

“Like I said, my grandfather fooled with
me a lot. He explained that my dad wasn’t coming home and why, but he had to do it several times before I caught on.” Joe squeezed my hand. “But I assure you, Lee, that my father was actually, definitely dead. I remember the funeral a little.”

“Gina says it was open-casket.”

“I guess so. Mom must have whisked me out before the rest of the family. Anyway, I remember standing around outside afterward,
waiting for my grandmother and Aunt Gina and a lot of other people to come out.” He stared into space a moment, then gestured with the hand that held mine. “Okay. We know who didn’t come to the door this morning. Now we’ve got to figure out who did. Was he driving?”

“Yes. A blue pickup. A Ford.”

“Then it definitely wasn’t my dad. The Atkins-Woodyard relatives are strictly GM.”

We both chuckled.
The American penchant to give the brand of the family cars and trucks the same weight as the family religion has always amused both Joe and me. True to his heritage, Joe drove a Chevy pickup.

“I don’t suppose you got the license tag?” Joe said.

“I was so bumfuzzled I nearly didn’t ask him for the phone number he refused to leave. But I’m sure it was a Michigan tag.”

“A Michigan tag.” Joe stared
at the ceiling and slid his arm around me. I snuggled close to him, and we sat silently for at least sixty seconds.

“You know,” I said, “you might have a good idea with that plan to have our first quarrel so we could make up.”

“Hmm.”

“This is the first time we’ve been alone in a week.”

“Hmm.”

“And Aunt Nettie did provide her break room with an awfully comfortable couch.”

I snuggled even
closer and gently nibbled Joe’s ear.

“Scar!” He spoke so suddenly that I jumped. Then he whirled toward me. “Did you say the guy had a scar?”

“Yes, Joe. It ran down the side of his face. An old scar. It made him look kind of rakish.”

“Ha!” Joe jumped to his feet. “Let me out the front door, okay?”

“Sure, but—”

“I thought of something I’ve got to check out.”

So much for romance.

I didn’t
argue. Joe had been oblivious to my charms—not the usual state of affairs. He obviously had been struck by an idea. And when Joe gets an idea, I get out of his way.

So I let him out the front, then let myself out the back, feeling slightly miffed because he’d walked Brenda and Tracy to their car, but forgot to be chivalrous when it was my turn to leave. I didn’t want him to turn into a male chauvinist
pig like Pete, but still.

As I drove out onto Peach Street, I felt hungry, and that reminded me that I was going out to dinner the next day, but my houseguests would have to be fed. Luckily, the Superette had begun summer hours that week, so it would be open until eleven. That was enough time to get stew meat, carrots, and tomato soup for a simple Crock-Pot meal. Surely Gina could manage instant
potatoes to go under it and ice cream for dessert. I got those items, plus two cartons of coleslaw from the deli. If ice cream wasn’t enough for dessert, I’d snagged a few more chocolates from the discard tray. They’d gotten too hot and developed bloom, but the double fudge insides (“layers of milk and dark chocolate fudge in a dark chocolate coating”) ought to satisfy anybody’s sweet tooth.

I had to park at the Baileys’ house and walk through the woods carrying my big brown bag of groceries and a small plastic bag holding Gina’s paperback books, but I had a hand left for my flashlight. I found the living room empty. In fact, the whole house seemed empty. Joe’s truck and Pete’s SUV were there, but there was no sign of either of them. I could see a light in Darrell’s camper, though, and
when I checked upstairs Gina was lying on her bed, reading. I handed over her library books. Brenda and Tracy hadn’t come home, she said.

I went down to the kitchen, poured myself a Diet Coke, and started assembling the stew. What I really wanted was a long, cool shower and a back rub from my bridegroom. A Diet Coke wasn’t a good substitute.

I had the stew together and was rearranging the refrigerator
so that I could cram the Crock-Pot into it when Joe and Pete came in the back door.

“Where have y’all been?” I said

“We’ve just been over at Darrell’s,” Joe said. “We’re going to have a beer.”

Joe got two bottles from the refrigerator, and he and Pete sat at the dining table. They were looking at Pete’s digital camera, but when I came through the room, Pete laid it on the table with the screen
down. They didn’t invite me to sit with them. It was definitely a stag conference.

I was too tired to try to horn my way into the conversation. I said good night to Pete, then took a shower. It was still so hot and so humid that I felt soggy when I got out. It was almost impossible to dry off.

Then I got into bed. I was so tired that I don’t even remember Joe coming in, which might be considered
a disgraceful way for a bride of three months to behave. He swears he kissed me good night, but I suspect he was as tired as I was and was careful not to disturb me. The next thing I knew it was six thirty a.m. It was still dark in the bedroom, even though we were a week past the summer solstice.

I love Michigan, but it has trees. In the case of Aunt Nettie’s house—our house—there are a lot of
trees, ranging from ten feet to a hundred feet tall, on the east side of the lot. The downstairs bedroom is on the west side of the house. This means we get up in the dark year-round, and in the summer even the dining room—on the east side of the house and with lots of windows—doesn’t see any sun until midmorning. This is hard for a gal from the Texas plains to get used to.

But when the alarm
went off, I got up, put on a pot of coffee, and got out the toast and cereal supplies. I left them on the dining table and got dressed in a chocolate brown TenHuis polo shirt and khaki slacks. Then I wrote a note about the dinner for Gina and headed for the office, leaving the do-it-yourself meal behind me. For once, the day at TenHuis Chocolade was routine. The counter help showed up, no unexpected
emergency orders came in, and the tourists were no more obnoxious than usual. The air-conditioning limped along. With one unit doing the work of two, it wasn’t exactly cool in the kitchens. Dolly watched the temperature in the storerooms carefully, and she had more boxes moved into the front of the shop. But the AC didn’t break down completely.

I talked to Mrs. Vandemann, but all she could do
was assure me that she was calling all over the state looking for a compressor for our system.

At five p.m., I left. When I arrived home—miracle of miracles—Gina had plugged in the Crock-Pot at the right time and seemed to grasp the concept of instant mashed potatoes and deli coleslaw. She called me “hon” only twice.

Darrell and Joe were working outside the bathroom, building forms for the foundation,
but when they saw I was home, Joe declared the workday over. Joe got into the shower. Since I’d had the benefit of air-conditioning—my office was the coolest place at TenHuis Chocolade—I just changed into cream slacks and a shirt printed with green leaves on a cream background. I hoped it looked cool. Joe and I were ready to walk over to the Garretts’ house at six thirty.

As we crossed Lake Shore
Drive, I was glad to see that the Garretts had begun to make efforts at clearing out some of the brush that had made the Double Diamond cottage look spooky. It was a lovely old place. Garnet came to meet us as we walked up the steps.

“What’s happened to the cool Michigan summer?” she said.

“It’ll be back,” Joe said. “But maybe you won’t want to serve drinks on the porch tonight.”

“All we have
in the way of air-conditioning is a window unit,” she said. “Central air is in our plan of action for after our ship comes in. Do you like gin and tonic? It always cools me off.”

I gave her the chocolates, and she introduced me to Dick Garrett. A balding fellow with a broad grin, he was much taller than his tiny wife. He and Garnet gave us an abbreviated tour of the inside of the house—the living
room and dining room overlooked the lake, of course. The tour ended with a walk down a flagstone path leading to a deck perched on the top of the bluff overlooking the beach. These decks are common along our section of Lake Michigan, where banks from eight to twenty feet tall loom above the shore. Wooden steps led down to Double Diamond’s private stretch of sand and pebbles.

Back in the house
Dick and Joe moved to a bar set up on a table in the corner of the living room and began to talk boats while Dick measured gin and squeezed limes into tall glasses.

Shade trees and the window unit made the living room temperature bearable. Garnet motioned me to a couch that sat at a right angle to a brick fireplace. The fireplace stood out because of its beauty; the rest of the decor had a shabby
feel. The couch was sprung, and the flowers in its upholstery were faded. The hardwood floor was scuffed and scarred. A graceful Craftsman-style library table stood against the back wall, but the rest of the furniture was like ours—used, not antique. The room had dark walls that seemed to soak up the light from the two or three small lamps. The windows overlooked the lake, true, but trees and
the broad-roofed porch would keep sunlight out for another hour.

I guess the dim atmosphere was what kept me from seeing the other guest. I jumped when a voice suddenly spoke out of the gloom.

“Are you and your husband related to Gina Woodyard?”

A tiny little man was sitting in a wicker rocker at the end of the couch. I can’t call him gnomelike, because that implies baldness. This man was
small and wizened, but he was not bald. Thick, wavy white hair was combed back from his face and crawled down over his collar.

Before I could answer, Garnet spoke. “This is my uncle Alex. Alex Gold.”

I put on my gracious-guest face. “Of course. You mentioned that your uncle would be here.” Alex Gold was too far away to shake hands with, so I nodded, and he lifted a glass filled with clear liquid
in reply. I saw ice cubes and an olive in the bottom and decided it was a martini on the rocks. No G and T for Uncle Alex.

“Gina Woodyard is Joe’s aunt,” I said. I didn’t tell Alex that Gina was within a few hundred feet of him, hiding out. “How do you know her?”

“Everyone in the Midwest antique world knows Gina.”

“I knew she had an antique shop.”

He waved his martini. “Her shop isn’t all
that important. It’s her expertise.”

I must have looked as blank as I felt, because he spoke again. “Surely you know she’s one of the nation’s top experts on costume jewelry.”

“Actually, I didn’t know. But I’ve been in the Woodyard family for only three months.”

“I see that your husband gave you a beautiful stone for your wedding ring.”

I held up my ring: a broad gold band with a single not-too-large
diamond mounted in a Tiffany setting. “The diamond came from Joe’s grandmother’s engagement ring. His grandparents married in the mid-thirties.”

Alex Gold slithered out of his seat, kneeling beside me. He took my hand with a clammy paw. I wanted to pull away, but he shoved my hand under the dim light at the end of the couch.

“The stone is older than the mid-thirties,” he said. “That antique
cut was popular before 1920.”

“Joe!” I wanted to get away from Gold so badly that I almost squawked. “Mr. Gold says your grandmother’s diamond is older than the mid-thirties!”

Joe stopped talking and looked around absentmindedly. “Actually, Grandma inherited the diamond from her m7other,” he said. “My grandfather didn’t have a lot of money in 1935, so they had this diamond she already owned
reset as an engagement ring. My grandmother always wore it when I was a kid. I wanted Lee to have it, so we had it reset again.”

Mr. Gold scooted back into his wicker rocker. He nodded complacently. “I don’t have a loupe, but it looks like a Tolkowsky cut. You should write down its provenance. These stories are so easily lost.”

My gin and tonic arrived then, so I was able to quiz Alex Gold about
his connection with the antique trade.

“I own a jewelry shop in Chicago,” he said. “Gold chains and engagement rings pay the rent. But I have an interest in antique jewelry.”

Garnet spoke. “Uncle Alex is one of the world’s leading experts on Art Deco jewelry.”

Alex looked modest. “I’m to Art Deco jewelry what your aunt is to costume jewelry. I’ve researched it extensively, and I do appraisals.”

“Then you’ve kept up your grandmother’s interest in precious stones.”

“Our grandmother was somewhat interested in their beauty, true, but to her their importance lay mainly in their value.” He smiled. “Her admirers were expected to cough up major stones. I’m more interested in design and workmanship. Your diamond wouldn’t have impressed Grandmother Opal, because it’s not particularly large—half
a carat, I’d say—but I like it better than a larger stone that might not have such a lovely cut.”