The Chocolate Mouse Trap (14 page)

“Nobody around Grand Rapids and Holland knew,” Martin said. “Julie didn’t want an official announcement made, so it never got in the paper. Their wedding was very small. They didn’t even tell Mother until it was over. Then Julie said she didn’t want a bunch of presents. Said it would make her new husband uncomfortable.”

I’d learned a few things from watching Joe-thelawyer ask questions. I kept quiet. Just looked expectant.

It worked, I guess. After a few seconds Martin went on. “Julie had gone back east to college. She got a degree in French, then started on her masters in art history. This fellow was a graduate assistant in the English Department.” He gave an exasperated snort. “Like I say, he was a real whiner. Julie said he wouldn’t come out to Michigan to meet the family, so Mother went to Boston to meet him. She wasn’t impressed. She said he was an ‘I’m gonna go eat worms’ type. He seemed to be embarrassed because Julie’s family had money. But it didn’t keep him from marrying her!”

I nodded encouragingly, and Martin kept talking. “I had to take a trip to New York, so I went up to meet him. Julie’s parents were dead. It seemed as if somebody should show an interest. I got the same impression Mother did. Julie had dropped out of graduate school, told her grandmother she couldn’t accept an allowance any longer. She was working for a big country club, planning their special events. That didn’t please her husband. It wasn’t intellectual enough for him. But he didn’t mind her paying the rent so he could play the part of misunderstood genius!”

“I can see how Julie might have gotten mixed up with a guy like that,” I said. “She was always sympathetic to everyone.”

“Yes! And when the whiner finally had some success,” Martin said, “he walked out on her! If uncles were still allowed to go after young whippersnappers who did their nieces wrong—believe me, I’d have been there with my horsewhip!”

He turned back to the door. “So Julie never mentioned him to anyone, huh? I’m glad she had that much pride.”

“I guess the police looked at him, made sure he wasn’t around the night she was killed?”

“Oh, the creep had no motive for killing her. Besides, he was at a big dinner in New York that night. Now that he’s famous.”

“He’s famous?”

“In some circles.” Martin opened the door. Then he used his final comment as an exit line.

“Julie’s ex-husband is Seth Blackman. He won some big literary prize last year. He was speaking to the assembled intelligentsia of New York City the night Julie was killed.”

T
he minute the door was locked behind Martin I headed for my office. Joe was already there, leaning over to hit the button that turned the computer on.

He moved to let me sit in my chair. “Let’s Google him,” he said.

“It’s nice to know you’re as nosy as I am,” I said.

Joe laughed, and Aunt Nettie, who never touches the computer, said plaintively, “What are you two up to?”

Joe explained how to use the search engine Google while I called up the screen and typed in “Seth Blackman.”

“I hope I’m spelling it right,” I said.

“If nothing likely comes up, we’ll try Blackman with an ‘o,’ ” Joe said. “Or ‘ond.’ ”

But Blackman with an “a” seemed to be correct. We got a whole screenful of results. In the next twenty minutes we learned that Seth Blackman had been a graduate student at an elite New England college. His first novel had been published eighteen months ago, and the previous spring that novel had been named winner of the Bookman Prize. Whatever that was.

I might not know anything about the Bookman Prize, but winning it was earning Seth Blackman’s novel a lot of attention. We found references to articles on him in the
New York Review of Books
, the
Atlantic Monthly
, and a number of other magazines a mere Michigan accountant had never heard of. Joe said he hadn’t heard of most of them, either. “Literary,” he said. “Which means circulation limited to English majors.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Here’s a review with a description of the plot.”

Joe leaned over my shoulder, and we read it together. “In this dark comedy, Adam Greening, a brilliant young writer, finds himself stifled artistically,” the article said. “Pitied by his beautiful and wealthy, but immature, wife—whose maudlin and oversentimental mind cannot grasp his artistic ambitions—he struggles to achieve the worldly success she would be able to understand. His scholarly achievements fail to impress her or her family of Philistines, who condescendingly offer financial help. Finally, her shallow outlook on life leads him to take his own life.”

I read it out loud, and Aunt Nettie looked puzzled. “How can the review call it a ‘comedy,’ if it ends in the main character’s suicide?”

“It says it’s a ‘dark comedy,’ ” I said. “It goes on to say the wife is ‘a hilarious picture of middle-class anti-intellectualism.’ ”

“Reading between the lines,” Joe said, “I’d guess that Martin Schrader was exactly right about Seth Blackman. The guy is a whiner.”

“It doesn’t sound like a very good book,” Aunt Nettie said. “But how does it reflect on Julie’s ex-husband’s character?”

Joe pointed to the screen. “I never met Julie, but the description of the book sounds as if he skewered her. He wrote a semiautobiographical novel—he gave us a broad hint about that, because his name is Seth Blackman and his hero’s name is Adam Greening. Then he used the situation in which he found himself—a poor graduate student married to a girl who came from a wealthy family—as a plot device. This would appear to be deliberately designed to make the reader assume that Blackman used Julie as the model of the main character’s wife, a ‘maudlin and oversentimental’ woman. Which, by the way, is a repetitious and redundant description by this highfalutin reviewer.”

“He made fun of his own wife? But that’s mean!” Aunt Nettie said.

“I agree,” I said. “Martin Schrader was definitely right. The guy should be horsewhipped. On the other hand, I’m embarrassed. Apparently the things Julie’s ex made fun of her about are exactly the things I found annoying. The overly sentimental poems and silly jokes. The gushing way of speaking.”

“But, Lee,” Joe said, “if you complained, you just did it to friends.”

“I don’t think I ever mentioned it to anybody but Aunt Nettie and Lindy. When I asked Julie to cut it out, I tried to be tactful.”

“Right. You didn’t publish a novel making fun of her. Besides, judging by what Martin said, Seth Blackman wrote the novel while she was supporting him, earning a good proportion of the living for the two of them. And she gave up her own graduate work to do it. Seth Blackman’s assessment of Julie may have had some justice. She may well have been overly sentimental. But that’s not the point. You don’t hold people you care about—or once cared about—up for public ridicule.”

Yeah, the way Joe had never made any public statement about the breakup of his marriage to Clementine Ripley, no matter how many tabloid reporters asked him about it. For a minute I remembered how much I appreciated him.

But I didn’t say anything about that when I spoke again. “It sure explains why Julie never mentioned that she’d been married. This must have been a humiliating experience.”

“It also explains why Martin didn’t want anybody to know Julie had been mixed up with Seth Blackman. Judging from this plot synopsis, I’d guess that Blackman let the whole Schrader family have it. Embarrassed all of them.”

Aunt Nettie shook her head. “It doesn’t sound as if Julie and her ex-husband were very well-suited.”

“To say the least,” I said. “But this Internet stuff does make one thing certain. Unless he hired a hit man, Seth Blackman is not a suspect in Julie’s death. As Martin said, he was giving a speech at a literary dinner in New York that night. The
New York Times
even had quotes. And a photo.”

We all took a look at Julie’s ex-husband. He was one of these soulful types—hair a little too long, eyes a little too sensitive.

“Too bad he was at that dinner,” Aunt Nettie said. “It sounds as if he deserves to go to prison, just for general meanness, and now he won’t. But I guess I’ll go home. Do you two need to stay here until you talk to Hogan?”

“Probably not,” I said. “He’ll know where to find us.”

Joe offered to bring a pizza out to the house, and Aunt Nettie said she had ingredients for a salad in the refrigerator. I followed her home, and Joe came a half hour later, bearing a large pepperoni with mushrooms. I hadn’t expected to be hungry, but I discovered that I was.

Joe and I had just split the last slice of pizza when the phone rang. I jumped up. “Maybe that’s Hogan.”

But it wasn’t Hogan’s basso on the phone. It was a timid little voice. “Lee? It’s Margaret. You weren’t in bed, were you?”

I looked at my watch. “It’s only eight thirty, Margaret. I don’t usually go to bed this early. What are you up to?”

“I finally got all the kids settled, and I wanted to know more about Carolyn. I didn’t like to ask when you called. I’m trying not to talk about all this in front of them.”

“If you want details, Margaret—”

“Oh, no!”

“Good, because I don’t have any.”

“But do the police think that Carolyn’s death had something to do with Julie’s?”

“They haven’t told me that, but it’s hard not to see a connection.”

“I hardly knew Carolyn. Was she anything like Julie?”

“I talked to Martin Schrader today, and he said she was the complete opposite of Julie in every way. I think that’s right. Carolyn could talk really rough; Julie was sweet and gushy. Julie was always doing people favors; Carolyn was more competitive. Carolyn was cynical; Julie was sentimental.”

Margaret’s voice took on a sarcastic tone. “Oh, yes. Julie was sentimental.”

It was the first comment I’d ever heard from Margaret that sounded critical of anybody. I was surprised it would be Julie.

“I found her a little too sentimental,” I said. “But she had lots of good qualities. I guess you’d known her a lot longer than I had.”

“Since high school. I’m ready to forget high school, if you want to know the truth. And Julie was trying to drag me into plans for our tenth reunion.”

“Oh, gee! I guess somebody has to do it.”

“Maybe so. But it doesn’t have to be me. I’ve
atoned
for what happened in high school. I didn’t want my nose rubbed in it. It’s time to move on.”

Margaret muttered a good-bye and hung up, leaving me with my mouth agape. Margaret had “atoned” for high school? What did that mean?

I thought over my own high school years. I’d done a lot of stupid things, things I regretted, and since graduation I’d learned to deal with the memory of being a dumb teenager. But I didn’t think I’d use the word “atoned” when I talked about the process of growing up. The word had a sad sound. What had happened to make Margaret feel that she had to “atone” for her high school behavior? Most of us laughed at the silly things we’d done.

At least Margaret was all right. Nobody had broken into her house or shot out her windows or anything else dire. She was safe for the moment, as Lindy and the Denhams seemed to be.

But what about Jason? I’d never gotten hold of him. I looked up his home phone and called. It was a relief to hear his voice.

Jason had, of course, already heard about Carolyn. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought I was getting arrested. I was down at the hardware store, and the cops drew up with sirens blaring.”

“Why’d they do that?”

“Chief Jones said all the Seventh Food Group members might be in danger. They called the restaurant, and Ross told them where I’d gone. I wish they hadn’t been so dramatic about it. I was perfectly all right.”

“And how’s your computer?”

“All reloaded and working. All I lost permanently was my e-mail.” Jason gave another exasperated sigh. “I’m awfully sorry about Carolyn, but I didn’t know her well. I’m shocked, but not saddened, if you know what I mean.”

“I guess I feel the same way. She was prickly and hard to get to know. Not like Julie, who was maddening, but more loveable.”

There was a moment of silence before Jason replied. “Right,” he said. “Julie could be maddening, but she was basically a nice person.”

His guarded answer had roused my curiosity. I decided to follow up. “Jason, you introduced the rest of us to Julie. How did you meet her?”

“Working a party last summer. I was tending bar—one of my moonlighting jobs—at a party in Holland. Some bigwig had taken over one of those restaurants right on the yacht harbor for a wedding reception. I guess Julie knew the couple. Anyway, she was running the show—over the objections of the restaurant catering staff. I’d been hired by the restaurant, but I didn’t like the catering manager.” Jason laughed. “I backed Julie, did some rearranging to get things the way she wanted them. The catering manager walked out in a huff, and Julie and I wound up in charge. I haven’t been asked to tend bar there again.”

“I can’t imagine why not.”

“I wouldn’t go if they asked, unless they get a new catering manager. But after that Julie gave me a ring a couple of times, asked me to help with parties. I liked her ideas, and she wasn’t hard to work with. With the new restaurant opening, we could have done some nice events. I can work with anybody—except that one catering manager.”

I laughed. “I did notice a few qualifications in your opinion of Julie, however.”

Jason’s voice became wary. “Oh? What did I say?”

“ ‘Thoughtless’ was one of the words used in some e-mail. And you didn’t have any trouble agreeing to ‘maddening.’ ”

“Nobody’s perfect. You let her have it, too. Over those jokes and poems.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t ‘thoughtless,’ Jason. Julie was almost too sweet and kind around me. What did she pull to change your opinion of her?”

Jason didn’t answer, so I spoke in a moment. “Sorry. That was a nosy question.”