The Chocolate Mouse Trap (8 page)

Joe and I said good night, and I climbed into my bed, stared at the ceiling, and thought about Carolyn Rose. It was more fun than thinking about the issues Joe had raised about my personality.

Carolyn had an interesting personality, too. Outwardly, she was a tough businesswoman. Maybe her name should be “Thorne,” rather than “Rose.” I wondered if she had really cared about Martin Schrader, or if she was attracted by his financial attributes.

Martin would be considered quite a catch, of course, if you were looking for a successful man from a prominent family. And he was certainly attractive. But he had to be at least in his fifties and apparently he’d never married; he was definitely in the confirmed bachelor category. And the way his mother sat on him would give any girlfriend pause for thought.

One thing was for certain, I concluded before I picked up my bedtime book. I would never mention Martin Schrader to Carolyn Rose.

I was barely out of bed the next morning when the phone rang again. It was Joe. He’d forgotten he had to make a quick trip to Lansing on city business that day. Could I order the flowers for his mother’s birthday?

“Tell Carolyn to send me the bill,” he said.

“Sure,” I said. And as I said it, I’ll swear, the thing that popped into my mind was, “That’ll be a good excuse to talk to Carolyn Rose about Martin Schrader.” When I realized what I’d been thinking, I shuddered. I definitely did not want to talk to Carolyn Rose about Martin Schrader. Or that’s what I told myself.

I went by House of Roses on my way to work. Of course, I could have taken care of the whole thing on the phone, but somehow—despite my resolution of the night before—I decided it would be friendlier if I went by personally. I took the precaution of rehearsing what I wanted to say beforehand. I didn’t want my tangled tongue tripping me up, producing “Martin,” as in Schrader, when I’d meant to say “marguerite,” as in daisy.

House of Roses is located in a late-Victorian cottage on the state highway that skirts Warner Pier. Carolyn had battled the planning commission until she got permission to give it a trendy, “painted lady” look, with the siding a brilliant yellow and the trim orange, green, and pink. I knew that Carolyn kept very few flowers in stock during the winter months; she wasn’t going to get much drop-in business in a town of just 2,500.

I was almost surprised to see an SUV that wasn’t Carolyn’s parked in her graveled—and snowcovered—parking area. Carolyn’s only vehicle was the panel truck with “House of Roses” on the side. I parked beside the SUV and waded to the porch, where I stamped the snow off my boots.

Inside, the shop was chopped up into a lot of small rooms. It smelled like flowers, even though most of the arrangements in sight were artificial. There was a Valentine’s Day display, of course, which featured some fresh red and white carnations and a few silk roses. The specialty foods area, with fancy nuts and crackers, looked tired. Winter is definitely an off time for retailers in a beach resort town.

I didn’t see either Carolyn or the driver of the SUV when I came in. I called out, and Carolyn’s head of fake red hair poked out of a back room. “Hi, Lee,” she said. “Come to rehash the funeral?”

“Actually, I’m detailed to order flowers for Joe’s mom’s birthday.”

“Good. You’re my first customer. And my computer’s on the fritz. Jack Ingersoll is here working on it.” That explained the SUV. Jack ran a computer service from his home in Warner Pier, though most of his clients were from elsewhere.

Carolyn was coming out from the back. “Let me give you a cup of coffee while we talk about Mercy’s flowers. I need to think about something besides this damn computer.”

“What’s it doing?”

“Nothing! It’s eaten all my files. No correspondence, no bookkeeping, no e-mail. All gone. But I’m sure Jack can find everything. How do you take your coffee?”

“Black. Did you and the Denhams have any problem getting home yesterday?”

“No. We probably beat you, since you had to swing through Holland with Margaret Van Meter. Did you know she went to high school with Julie?”

“I learned it yesterday. I was surprised that Julie wasn’t sent away to some fancy boarding school.”

“That’s what I would have expected, too. But Margaret told me they both went to Holland Christian. Conservatives.”

Actually, I don’t know if Holland Christian High is conservative or not, but it has that reputation. Certainly Holland is a conservative community, and Holland Christian high school is associated with the Reformed Church, in the minds of the community, if not legally. Carolyn and I both nodded.

I expected Carolyn to ask about Mercy’s flowers next, and I started to trot out the request I’d thought out, the one that I was sure I could say without getting my tongue tangled. But she fooled me. She handed me my coffee, leaned casually on the counter, and said, “Actually, knowing Martin Schrader as intimately as I once did, I find it hard to believe Julie was sent to a religious high school.”

As I say, she caught me completely off guard. My tongue took off of its own volition. At least, I’m sure my brain didn’t tell it to say what came out.

“Martini Schizo seemed to be garnishing his mother,” I said.

Carolyn and I stared at each other—she looked amazed, and I probably looked completely gaga. Then she laughed.

So I laughed, too. “I’m sorry, Carolyn,” I said. “I washed my tongue, and I can’t do a thing with it. I meant, after the funeral, Martin Schrader seemed to be intent on guarding his mother.”

Carolyn was still laughing. “Lee, forgive me,” she said. “I got all set to be totally cool about Martin Schrader, and you . . .” She quit talking and began laughing again.

I couldn’t be offended. “As you can guess from my twisted tongue, I had a minor run-in with Martin Schrader and with his nephew. It’s on my mind. And, yes, I had heard that you formerly dated Martin, and I was determined not to mention him to you.”

Carolyn took a tissue from her pocket and blotted her eyes. “Actually, I think that’s the first time I ever laughed about Martin. I feel much better for it. What happened to you?”

I quickly outlined Martin’s request and the warning from Brad that followed it.

Carolyn went right to the heart of the problem. “You can hardly refuse to talk to a grieving uncle—if that’s what Martin is—about his murdered niece,” she said.

“I know. Of course, I’m not worried about meeting Martin, since I wouldn’t meet anyone I don’t know very well anyplace except my office. Or maybe a restaurant. I was more interested in Brad’s comment. Is it true? Is Martin a ‘dirty old man’? Or is that Brad’s idea?”

“I think Brad’s a callow youth,” Carolyn said. “He’s still young enough to be shocked by the thought of anyone over forty having sex. Martin is a chaser—as I found out the hard way—but ‘dirty old man’ is going too far. I don’t think you need to take too many precautions if he wants to talk.”

Still giggling now and then, Carolyn and I agreed on some flowers for Mercy Woodyard’s birthday, and she called her supplier to make sure our selection—bronze roses—would be available. While she was on the phone there at the sales desk, I could hear a voice muttering swear words in her office, where Jack Ingersoll was still working. Carolyn had just confirmed my order and offered me a bill to deliver to Joe when Jack opened the office door and looked out.

“Carolyn! Have you checked all your windows?”

“That’s what I’ve got you here to do, Jack. My Windows could be completely missing and I wouldn’t know it.”

Jack shook his head vigorously. “No, not Windows! Windows! Lowercase ‘w,’ not capital. The windows to your shop!”

“What do you mean?”

“As near as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with your computer or any of its programs.”

“Then where did all my records go?”

“All I can figure is that someone got in, opened your computer, and erased everything in it.”

J
ack came out of the office, all hair and snow boots, looking more like a mountain man than a computer nerd. “I’ll swear there’s not a thing wrong with your computer, Carolyn. I think somebody erased everything. Who’s been fooling with it?”

“Nobody! Nobody’s touched it but me.”

“That’s hard to believe. Could anybody have accessed your files without your knowing?”

“I don’t see how.”

“Was anybody suspicious in the shop late yesterday?”

“In January? In Warner Pier? I didn’t even open up yesterday. And Lee’s my first real, live customer today. Nobody could have gone into the office without my noticing.”

Jack scratched his head. “Back to my first idea. You could have had a burglar.”

Carolyn and I both laughed. “Why?” she said. “What would a burglar want here? I don’t keep money here overnight, and I haven’t begun to restock for the summer season. There’s nothing here a burglar would want. Unless it was that computer. And it’s still here.”

“You better check your windows. Somebody’s been messing with that computer, and if they didn’t get at it while you were here, they must have done it while you weren’t.”

Carolyn was still scoffing, but she began to go from room to room, checking inside, and Jack took a look outside. In less than a minute, he put his head in through the back door and called out. “Look at the corner window!”

My curiosity was thoroughly aroused, so I followed Carolyn into a workroom. The window Jack wanted checked was over a large stainless steel sink. Anybody coming in or going out that window would have had to step into the sink.

“Don’t touch anything,” I said. “If somebody did get in, there might be fingerprints.”

“I can’t believe anybody burglarized the place,” Carolyn said. “But I will say I don’t usually leave the sink quite that dirty.”

I peeked over her shoulder and looked into the bottom of the sink. There was dirt there, but—heck, this was a florist’s shop. Flowers have roots, and roots are often buried in dirt.

“It doesn’t look like footprints,” I said.

Carolyn picked up a white ballpoint pen from the counter and used it to point to the window’s standard, thumb-operated latch. “It’s unlocked,” she said. “But—hells bells! I’m not careful about keeping things locked. Not in the winter!”

I understood what she meant. It’s a folk belief around Warner Pier. We’re all convinced the summer people and tourists take all the crime home with them on Columbus Day. We seem to feel that Warner Pier is a Michigan version of Brigadoon; after the outsiders leave we lapse into a state of small town innocence until outsiders reappear the next June.

Jack was back inside by then. “Somebody’s been stomping around in the snow under that window,” he said. “I couldn’t see any recognizable tracks, but maybe you’d better call the police.”

Then he looked at his watch. “Your computer is up and running. I’ll have to get into the hard drive to try to find out if anything can be salvaged. And I’ll be glad to talk to the chief—or whoever he sends—about the break-in, but right now I’m going to run out to Hideaway Inn. Diane and Ronnie Denham have some kind of problem, too.”

The Denhams had computer problems, too? That news gave me a severe case of jumping stomach—that queasy, upset feeling when my innards bounce around, up in the throat one minute and down in the toes the next.

What if Jack was wrong? What if Carolyn hadn’t had a break-in? What if she had some sort of computer virus that destroyed all her files?

She and I exchanged e-mail daily. If she had a virus, I could, too.

Carolyn was calling 9-1-1, but I decided the Warner Pier police could investigate a possible burglary without me. I drove back to TenHuis Chocolade as quickly as possible. I almost skidded into the curb when I pulled up in front of the shop, and I did skid on the sidewalk as I ran toward the door. I opened my computer before I took my coat off, and as soon as it loaded I began opening files. I felt a surge of relief when I saw everything was there. Correspondence. Orders. Accounts receivable. E-mail. All the files I ordinarily use. Safe.

“Whew.” My tummy settled into its normal place behind my navel. Then I got out a disk and backed up everything in all my business files right that minute.

While the computer was humming and clicking over that job, the door to the shop opened, and Jason came in.

He came directly into my office, and he didn’t mess around with small talk. “Listen, Lee, you’ve got a dial-up Internet connection with WarCo, don’t you?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Don’t connect, whatever you do. I got a virus that ate my whole system. I talked to WarCo, and they said it seemed to have come in by e-mail. Don’t connect until you check with them, okay?”

I may have gasped. “Oh, no! The Denhams have computer problems, too, Jason, and so has Carolyn Rose.”

“Do they have direct lines?”

“I don’t know about the Denhams, but I don’t think Carolyn does. She said that when she opened her computer this morning everything was gone. But Jack Ingersoll doesn’t think it was a virus. He thinks somebody actually broke into her shop and erased everything in her computer.”

“Weird!”

“It certainly is. I just backed up all my business files, but I haven’t connected to WarCo yet. Thanks for the tip-off.”

I agreed to call Margaret, and Jason said he’d talk to Lindy and Mike Herrera. Then Jason left.

Margaret answered on the first ring, and I was greatly relieved to hear that she hadn’t had any computer troubles.

Margaret said her husband, Jim, was taking computer classes at the vo-tech school. “He knows what a dunce I am,” she said, “so he set me up with a program that lets me keep my e-mail online. I never download anything. If I need a record, I just print it out. So if I have a virus, it’s the server’s problem, not mine. I don’t use this computer for anything but e-mail and a record of orders and payments. And to print up bills. It does help at tax time. But mostly the kids use it to play games.”