The Chocolate Snowman Murders (15 page)

Mary Samson might be dead, but the regular routine was going on at TenHuis Chocolade, just the way it probably was all over Warner Pier. Regular routine is soothing to all of us, and the churning in my stomach slowed down.

Until Sergeant McCullough of the Lake Knapp police came in.

I hadn't glanced up when the outside door opened, so I didn't know McCullough was there until he was filling up the door to my office, blocking my exit, and making me feel trapped.

His white hair and mustache were just as beautiful as ever, and his smile was just as broad. “Hell-o, Mrs. Woodyard.”

I fought down panic. “Hello, Sergeant McCullough. Please have a sit. I mean, a seat!” I bit my tongue, but it was too late. I'd twisted my tongue and revealed my nervousness. I spoke again. “I'm waiting for Lieutenant VanDam to call me to make a statement.”

“I am not waiting for you to make a statement. I am going to make one myself. Right now.” McCullough smiled more broadly than ever, but now his smile was not friendly. It was aggressive, mean. He was doing his best to scare me. And he was succeeding.

I sat completely still. Maybe I was too scared to move, but I like to think that my beauty pageant training kicked in. Keep quiet. Don't say anything if you're not sure what to say. Look poised, even if you don't feel that way. So I simply sat there and looked at him.

“Oh, you've got the cops down here buffaloed,” McCullough said. He was still smiling, and his voice was low. “Little Miss Texas beauty, batting your eyelashes and looking innocent. You fall over two bodies in two days. Two of 'em! You admit you were the last person to see one victim and among the last to see the other! But I mustn't haul you in. Oh, no! A few questions might damage your looks!”

He leaned across the desk. “Don't count on it, babe! You can't get by on looks forever. I can throw you to the wolves anytime I want to.”

Then he stood up, still smiling. “And here's the state police detective to ask you a few questions.”

I guess I'd been hypnotized. Alex VanDam had walked right up to my office, and I hadn't seen him coming.

McCullough had kept his voice low. I realized that Alex VanDam hadn't heard what the Lake Knapp detective had said.

My head was spinning, and my heart was pounding. What should I do? Scream? Yell at McCullough? Burst into tears?

My office was so small I had room for only one visitor's chair. McCullough had to get up and go out into the shop to allow VanDam room to get in. While they were changing places, I decided what to do.

I greeted VanDam and motioned him into the chair. Then I stepped to the door, craning my head around McCullough. I waved at the girl behind the counter.

“Please bring a half dozen chocolates in for my guests,” I said. “An assortment.”

I motioned to McCullough. “Sergeant, behind you, there in the shop, is an extra chair. If you want to talk to me, please feel free to bring it in and sit down.”

I went back to my chair, and I sat on my hands so that neither McCullough nor VanDam could see that they were shaking.

I turned to VanDam, deliberately ignoring McCullough. “Nice of you to come by. I thought you'd be summoning me to your headquarters.”

“We will. This is just preliminary. Informal. Hogan says Mary Samson asked you to call her last night. Do you know why?”

“No, Lieutenant, I have no idea, and I've been kicking myself all day because I didn't just take her aside someplace and demand to know what she wanted to talk about.”

“So you have no idea?”

I sighed. “At the WinterFest committee meeting, Joe and I had urged everyone to tell the Lake Knapp police if Dr. Mendenhall called them. Nobody there popped up and said he had, except Mary. She said she'd had a crank call from someone who sounded drunk. She seemed really disturbed when Joe and I said it might have been Mendenhall.”

“Had he said something that frightened her?”

“Anything frightened Mary. But she seemed most afraid that she would have to repeat what he had said. It must have been obscene. Or at least it seemed obscene to Mary.”

VanDam nodded, then asked me about my movements during the previous evening. When I said Joe and I had gone directly from the reception to Herrera's to have dinner with Hogan and Aunt Nettie, McCullough growled deep in his throat, and VanDam gave him a look. I'm not sure how to characterize that look—stern, maybe, or meaningful—but McCullough didn't say anything more. I concluded that he was unhappy because I had an alibi of sorts. Of course, we didn't know for sure when Mary had been killed. It was possible the phone call to Mendenhall's cell phone was made before she died.

“What time did you get home?” VanDam asked.

“It was around ten,” I said.

“And you didn't go out again?”

“Not until I got worried about Mary—because I thought the call to Mendenhall's phone might have come from her house.”

VanDam glanced at McCullough again. “Actually,” he said, “I might as well tell you this. A couple named McNutt—”

“Sure. Maggie and Ken.”

“They invited Ms. Samson to have dinner with them, there at the Warner Point restaurant. So she left for home around nine. We assume she got home about nine fifteen.”

“Oh.” I swallowed hard. At least Mary hadn't been alone on her last evening. I reached into my top drawer and pulled out a Kleenex. “Sorry,” I said.

“But that leaves you and Joe on your own at the time Mary was killed.” VanDam was completely deadpan, but McCullough smirked. I realized that the Lake Knapp detective must be pushing VanDam to use this line of questioning.

The realization made me mad. “Yes, Joe and I were together all evening,” I said. “We could have combined our efforts and killed Mary. Do you want to take casts of our shoes? Examine our clothes for bloodstains?”

VanDam glared. “I'll settle for a look in your car, Lee. It's just routine.”

“I realize that, Lieutenant VanDam.” I reached in my desk drawer, took my keys out of the side pocket of my purse, and shoved them across the desk to him. “Here. The van is sitting in the alley. White. Dallas Cowboys sticker on the back window.”

“Do you want to come?”

“No, thank you. I have work to do.”

I led VanDam and McCullough back through the workroom and the break room, then opened the back door for them. I let the heavy metal door slam behind them, and I went back to my desk.

I had almost stopped seething ten minutes later, when VanDam came back.

“You'd better come out here, Lee,” he said.

“I trust you and the sergeant to look the situation over.”

“Don't be snotty, Lee. We need to ask you something.”

Mystified, I followed him through the workroom and the break room and out the back door. The rear of my van was popped open, and McCullough was standing under the hatch.

“What is it?” I said.

Silently, VanDam pointed. “Do you have an explanation for this?”

I followed his gesture and saw that he was pointing to an old-fashioned iron skillet.

It was lying on floor of the van. And it was surrounded by reddish brown stains.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the iron skillet had probably come from Mary Samson's kitchen and had been used to beat her to death.

I
f I'd felt like chewing a tablecloth when Mendenhall's cell phone was found in my pocket, that feeling was complete calm compared to the way I felt when I saw that skillet. It might as well have had “murder weapon” painted on it in luminous paint.

Aunt Nettie came out into the alley to see what was going on, and later she told me I was as pale as her big white-chocolate snowman. But I didn't get hysterical or break into sobs.

“Lieutenant VanDam, I've never seen that skillet before in my life,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he answered.

VanDam said the skillet would have to be tested. A technician appeared, bagged the skillet, marked it as evidence, then cut the stain out of the carpet that covered the floor of the van. He bagged that, too.

McCullough smiled like a proud grandpa through the whole procedure. I bit my tongue to keep from telling him that if I ever murdered anybody, it wouldn't be a harmless person like Mary Samson. It would be him. And it would be justifiable homicide.

They didn't arrest me.

After watching for a few minutes, I turned and walked back into the break room and sat down on the comfortable couch Aunt Nettie provides for employees. It was Aunt Nettie who went to the phone and called Joe. Unfortunately, he wasn't at his shop, and he wasn't answering his cell phone. She left messages both places.

Then Aunt Nettie sat down beside me. “Listen, Lee,” she said, “you go home or go out to hunt Joe down or do whatever you need to do. Don't worry about the shop today.” She gave me a hug.

I shook my head. “Joe will call when he can. There's no point in chasing around town after him. It seems anticlimactic, but I guess I'll go back to work.”

“If you need a lawyer . . .”

“Last night you said there's no point in having a police chief in the family if you don't use him. The same thing goes for having a lawyer in the family, I guess. I may need legal help, but I don't want to move on that without talking to Joe first.”

Then I stood up and went through the workroom to my office. I wouldn't say I worked very effectively, but I did work. In fact, I had a panicky feeling that I'd better get as much done as I could before they arrested me.

I didn't quite abandon my efforts to call all the WinterFest committee members and check their alibis. I caught Johnny Owens at his studio.

He obviously had people there, apparently WinterFest tourists he hoped might buy something. So I asked him to call me back. In a half hour, he did.

“Hey, hey!” he said. “Made a sale.”

“Congratulations! At your prices, one sale means a successful weekend.”

“Well, I agreed to come down on price a little. Why did you call?”

I had decided simply to be blunt. “Johnny, I'm asking all of the members of the WinterFest committee what they were doing Tuesday night.”

There was a moment of silence. “I don't think I'll tell you. It's too embarrassing.”

“Aw, come on, Johnny. Joe and I really need to find that out.”

“You're getting into my secret vices, Lee.”

I was afraid to ask. So I didn't say anything.

Johnny chuckled. “Oh, well, it'll ruin my tough-guy image, but I'll tell you. I was watching a DVD of
Ratatouille
.”

For a second the word meant nothing to me. Rat-a-tat? Something about a drum? Then I remembered. “The movie? The cartoon about the rat who wants to be a chef?”

“Right. You've caught me in my secret vice. Animated films. I have a huge collection.”

“I wouldn't call that a vice, Johnny.”

“It's kind of a crazy thing for a grown man to do. But I've always loved cartoons. My childhood ambition was to be an animator. That's what got me interested in art.”

I thought of Johnny's giant metal pieces, created with a welding torch and sledgehammer. “You certainly got away from your original interest.” Then I remembered the tiny delicate drawings that Johnny made when he doodled. “Except for those little people you draw when you're bored. And our snowman mascot.”

Johnny laughed. “Maybe I'll turn to cartooning yet. It ought to pay more than weird metal sculptures. But the cops already asked me about this, Lee. Apparently Mendenhall did try to call me. My number was in his phone records, but I didn't talk to him.”

“Had you turned the phone off?”

“No. My Chicago dealer phoned about seven thirty, and we talked for forty-five minutes. Mendenhall must have called while the phone was tied up.”

We said good-bye, promising to wave at each other at the opening of the play that evening. I hung up, frustrated. So far the only person who had a real alibi for Tuesday, when Mendenhall was killed, was Maggie McNutt, who had been at play rehearsal all evening. And Maggie would never kill anybody while a play was in production; she would be so concentrated on her rehearsals that she wouldn't notice anybody needed killing.

I hadn't checked on Mozelle or Amos Hart—I was still surprised that they had been together for the art show opening—and I resolved to do that. I was reaching for the phone when the Reverend Charles Pinkney walked into the shop.

Reverend Pinkney was minister of the Warner Pier Non-Denominational Fellowship Church. I might have refused Amos Hart's invitation to sing in the church's choir, and I'd never attended services there, but I knew Reverend Pinkney by sight. As I say, Warner Pier is a small town.