14 The Chocolate Clown Corpse (19 page)

“If Moe figured it out, he would have raised hell,” I said. “In fact, I can’t see any reason he wouldn’t have immediately gone to the cops.”

Joe whistled. “You can ask Emma.”

“She said she was shocked when she learned how much he had given. But she didn’t say anything about his thinking he’d been scammed.” I thought a moment. “Did you say Clancy is over there?”

“He was a few minutes ago.”

“If you can find him, tell him about it.”

Joe spoke in a very low voice. “He’s on the phone trying to get Holland to put out an arrest warrant for Montague.”

“Great! I wasn’t sure he took me seriously.”

“He did, Lee. And you be careful!”

“As far as Montague goes, Joe, he has no reason to know that I figured out he tried to kill Emma.”

“Maybe not. But you try to stay around people until they arrest him.”

I promised that I’d be cautious, then hung up. Stay around people? I hoped that wouldn’t be a problem. The tourism committee had spent months trying to encourage people to gather and have fun at Clown Week. And to eat fun foods . . .

“Yikes!” I jumped to my feet. “I’ve got to get those chocolates up to the high school!”

It was three thirty. Time to move along. I ran to the workroom. As I had expected, the trays of chocolates were ready. “I’m sorry,” I said to Dolly. “I’m just no help at all today. First a little emergency came up, and now I’ve got to get ready for that Clown Week kickoff. Are you still planning to work the shop this evening?”

“I’ll be here!” Dolly boomed.

“Dolly, I really appreciate your filling in like this. I’ll come back as soon as I can get away from the reception up at the high school.”

“Glad to do it, Lee! Now scoot! You’ve got to get into that funny costume!”

I loaded the boxes of chocolates into the back of my van and headed for the high school. It wasn’t easy to get there. Traffic was thick, almost like summer, when Warner Pier streets are bumper-to-bumper. Of course, I knew the back ways, but I didn’t want to get stuck. The main streets had been carefully cleared, except for the street that had added artificial snow for the sled run. But the alleys might be iffy.

I made it, however, going around to the street at the back of the school. It took two trips to carry the chocolates inside. My pal Lindy was setting up the refreshment room.

“Hi, Lee,” she said. “Have you seen the sled run?”

“No, I came in the back. Are your kids out there?”

“Tony thinks he’s the boss.” She laughed. “I mean T.J. I keep forgetting his new name.” Lindy looked proud. “He’s keeping
everyone in line. He’s quite officious about it. You ought to take a look.”

“That’s all I’ll take! I’m not getting on a sled!”

“Do kids in Texas ever get a chance to sled?”

“In our part of Texas—northwest of Dallas—we usually have snow every couple of years, but we’re more likely to have ice. You can kill yourself getting the paper from the front porch. But kids in my hometown used to slide down the back of the football bleachers.”

“The bleachers!”

“Sure. The bleachers were built against an embankment. You’d call it a dune.”

Lindy and I are always kidding each other about our hometowns. Prairie Creek and Warner Pier are about the same size, but with major regional differences. Prairie Creek raises cattle; Warner Pier grows fruit.

“The back of the embankment forms a very nice slope,” I said, “and kids slide down it on anything they can find. Some families do own sleds, but sledders also use garbage can lids, plastic bags, sheets of cardboard. Whatever works!”

“Go take a look at
real
sledding before you leave.”

Lindy walked out the front of the high school with me so we could see the sled run. She nudged me as T.J. positioned a sled at the starting line and ordered a slightly younger kid to sit on it. He checked the clasp on the kid’s helmet, then counted importantly—“Three! Two! One! Go!”—and shoved the sled down the trail.

The kid gave a loud whoop as the sled took off down the icy chute. The sled went really fast.

“Oh golly!” I yelped the words out. “I’m sure glad I don’t have to go on that thing.”

“Oh, it’s fun,” Lindy said. “You’re talking like a Texan!”

“No, Texans are brave. I’m talking like a coward, and I don’t care who knows it. I learned my lesson at your sledding party two years ago.”

We watched the sleds and the tubes for a few more minutes. There was a little lull, and T.J. took the opportunity to demonstrate snowboarding for us.

As he trudged back up the slope, I drank it all in. The lights, the music, the colors—it was going to be great. We could see the ice rink at the bottom of the hill, strung with colored lights. Tony Senior was swooping around the ice. A few clowns had already shown up, and a couple of them were also skating.

The weather was even cooperating: it was cold enough to keep the snow and ice frozen, but the air was still.

“This is great,” I said. “But I’m not getting on one of those sleds! I’ll be back in half an hour with a big bow on my head.”

I left to get into my clown costume. I couldn’t help wishing that I could add a bulletproof vest to the getup. I hoped that Philip Montague would be arrested quickly. Joe’s warnings about staying around people I knew had scared me more than I wanted to admit.

I went home and made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, in case the tourists ate all the refreshments at the Clown Week opening. Eating it gave me a few minutes to further think about Moe’s death and the attacks on Emma.

Point number one: Emma said she had angrily shoved Moe, knocking him down, and he had hit his head on the step. He was bleeding, but not unconscious. Royal Hollis, she said, had not hit Moe but had simply run away. Chuck had then urged her to leave, saying he would look after his dad, and she had driven off. It was hours later that she learned that Moe was dead.

Several things in that scenario were worth thinking about. First, Emma was plump but short. She didn’t seem strong. It was hard to believe that she could have killed a fairly vigorous grown man such as Moe by shoving him. But stranger things had happened.

Second, Emma said Chuck had assured her she shouldn’t confess; she hadn’t intended to kill Moe, and there was no need for her to be punished. But after she found out that Hollis was accused of the killing, according to the story Emma had told us, she planned to confess and clear Hollis. Once she learned Joe
had been appointed to represent Hollis, she began to try to reach him.

Third, Harry Vandercool had said Royal Hollis ran off and came to his house after Moe attacked him. But Hollis had lost his shoes in the fracas. And even though Harry gave him another pair, Hollis had apparently gone back to get the first pair. This was understandable. To a homeless man, a pair of shoes was a prized possession.

Question: Did Hollis ever get the shoes? And if so, when? Did it matter?

Fourth, by the time Harry went over to Moe and Emma’s house, Moe was dead. Chuck told Harry and the investigators that he had gone out for gas and had just come back. He saw Hollis running off. There was no sign of Emma, and Chuck never mentioned her earlier presence to Vandercool.

Fifth, the medical examiner’s report had indicated that Moe’s injuries were much more serious than a cut on the head. He had had several blows to the head, and the investigating officers had found a rock that they believed was the weapon. This did not jibe with Emma’s story.

So? Which person was the sheriff going to arrest? Who had had the opportunity to kill Moe?

Three people: Hollis, Chuck, and Emma. Joe believed Hollis’ story: Hollis said he had never struck Moe. I believed Emma’s: She said Moe cut his head on the step, and that she had not hit him with a rock or other weapon.

If they were both telling the truth, then Chuck had to be the killer. He was simply the only other person there. And according to Emma, he had lied about several parts of his story.

I’m sure I rolled my eyes as I rinsed the crumbs from my sandwich off the plate. It was hard to picture Chuck—friendly
Chuck—killing his own father. Besides, I was positive that Chuck hadn’t been the clown who had tried to smother Emma. He’d been working in the Clowning Around shop that day, along with Lorraine. Dolly Jolly and I had seen both of them there.

I went into the bedroom to get dressed. It was going to be a cold evening, and I’d be outdoors for most of it. I took off my office clothes and started with a set of lightweight long johns. Wool slacks and sweater. Heavy socks. Forget the clown shoes; I’d wear my warm winter boots. Ski jacket. Scarf. Knit cap. Finally, the baggy red-and-white clown suit. The hat, complete with floppy red bow, perched on top of the whole shebang, and red mittens suitable for a clown went over leather driving gloves. The final detail was bright red lipstick.

I looked in the mirror and saw a gigantic red-and-white tub. With a big red bow on top. Oh well. Maybe I’d make somebody laugh, and that was the whole purpose.

I didn’t want to carry a purse, so I put my cell phone and some money in pockets inside the clown suit, but still accessible from the Velcro opening down the front.

I got in the van and headed for downtown. By then it was growing dark, and I was happy to see that traffic was still heavy. In fact, the traffic forced me to drive slowly. I parked in my reserved spot, in the alley behind TenHuis Chocolade, and went through the shop to fill a bag with giveaway chocolates. They were wrapped in foil, and I could hand them out as I climbed the hill, heading for the high school to get my assignment from our clown chairman. Dolly, who was behind the cash register, laughed at my appearance. She already had customers, I was happy to see. I wouldn’t want to look like a complete fool and not make money by doing it.

All the way up the hill to the high school, I was handing out tiny chocolates wrapped in foil and waving at sledders and tubers coming past me down the slope. And they were coming steadily, too. The sledding and tubing slope was already a terrific hit. It was still too early for a line to have formed, but kids were flopping onto sleds and tubes, then heading down the snowy slope. Fast.

“Look out, Lee!” Although I was safely off the path of the sleds, I jumped when I heard my name. T.J. shot past me, waving. He was riding one of the larger sleds, accompanying several small children. They were all squealing with delight, and T.J. was one big grin. I waved back. Luckily, one of the horse-drawn sleighs came by just then, and I hitched a ride the rest of the way up. That hill was definitely easier for going down than for going up, at least for people who had the nerve to ride on a sled.

But through all the fun—the snowmobiles, the sleds and tubes and snowboards, the clowns, the sleighs, and even the chocolate—in the back of my mind I was considering the possibility that Chuck was a killer.

And by the time I was at the top of the hill, I decided I could accept him in that role. Although Chuck was highly personable, he was a salesman: His profession had trained him to seem friendly and easygoing, no matter what he was thinking. I’d been married to a salesman, and his friends had been salesmen, and I had learned that the typical friendliness to customers didn’t always come home with the salesman. In fact, the salesmen I’d known tended to come home so tired of people that— Well, that’s enough about my past problems.

In other words, I could believe that Chuck had a temper and could lose it.

But I still doubted Chuck had killed his dad, because I was sure Chuck wasn’t the person who tried to kill his stepmother.
No, that had been Philip Montague, the so-called developer. I didn’t know
why
he had done it, but he certainly was the right size and had the right eyebrows to be the clown who tried to smother Emma. And I had witnessed his attempt in the hospital to give her a pill I thought was a fake.

Of course, if Chuck and Philip Montague were working
together
, that would explain everything. Chuck might have killed his dad, and then Philip Montague could have tried to kill Emma. But I had no reason to think that they even
knew
each other. They hadn’t gone to the same high school or the same college. They hadn’t ever worked for the same business or even in the same field. Their résumés showed no overlap at all.

No, I couldn’t bring that possibility up—not even to the most sympathetic law officer. I had no evidence at all.

The sleigh let its load off at the front door of the high school, and I went inside. The tourism committee members were supposed to meet at the trophy case, the big one by the main door of the high school, to get our assignments.

But when I got there, instead of the committee members I met Clancy Pike. When I greeted him, he replied absently, “Oh! Lee Woodyard.”

“Yes. It’s me. Silly hat and all.”

“I’d never recognize you if you’d painted your face like some of these clowns.”

“I drew the line at that. But I thought you were in Dorinda for a big confab.”

“The sheriff sent me back.” He leaned close and lowered his voice. “There’s an arrest warrant out for that guy you think tried to kill Emma Davidson.”

“Oh! I sure hope you catch him. But what connection does he have with the Davidsons?”

“It seems he’s linked up with some organization that Moe gave a lot of money to.”

“Klowns for Kids of Michigan?”

“Keep your voice down. Sheriff Ramsey found out the organization doesn’t exist. Moe had been making a lot of phone calls about it. He must have found out it was a fake.”

“What about Royal Hollis?”

“Joe and the prosecutor are arguing that out with Ramsey.” He smiled. “It looks like Hollis finally got the representation he should have had all along.”

I didn’t say anything, but I felt a little thrill of victory. It’s nice to see the good guys—such as Joe—win one.

“Clancy, what are you doing here? I mean, why here at the high school?”

“Why not? Everybody else in Warner Pier seems to be here.” Clancy grinned. “Let’s be friends, Lee.”

“Sure!” I grinned back and handed him a foil-wrapped chocolate. “Have a big time, Chief!”

He walked off, pulling his hat over his bald head, and I moved over to the trophy case. The chairman of the clowns wasn’t in sight, but the crowd of people getting out of the cold was growing. I moved down to the end of the case, trying to stay out of the main bunch. Since I had nothing to do but feel triumphant, I looked in the case.

One of the first things I saw was a trophy:
STATE CHAMPIONS. WREST
LING
. Sure enough, behind it was a group shot of a wrestling team, ten guys in those silly-looking one-piece suits they wear to compete. Right in the middle of the back row were Joe and Tony Herrera, T.J.’s father. Tony towered over Joe and all the other wrestlers. He’s a big guy, and he’s still all muscle today.

The picture made me smile. Here we were, nearly twenty years later, and Joe and Tony were still friends. Tony Junior—I mean T.J.—was going out for wrestling himself this year. When he wasn’t tormenting his father by pretending to be a professional wrestling fan.

I hoped the wrestling team had better outfits these days. Then I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the glass case and laughed. A nearly six-foot-tall woman dressed in a clown suit has no right to criticize someone else for looking silly.

I moved along the case. Apparently only state champs rated the trophy case by the gym, because all the teams pictured had earned honors. Baseball, basketball, more wrestling, a football team—trophies for all were on display, backed by photos of the teams. I was surprised by the number of Warner Pier people I recognized.

Until I got to the final photo. And that one didn’t surprise me. No—it astonished me, amazed me, dumbfounded me, hit me between the eyes, and nearly knocked me off my feet.

It was a photo of a group of clowns. And, like the other photos, it was matched with a trophy.

Clowning is certainly a skill, but it’s hard to see it as a competitive sport.

The trophy was marked with the year, and was engraved
BEST CLOWN UNIT
—
CHICAGO CHRISTMAS PARADE
. Smaller letters below read
WEST MICHIGAN STUDEN
T CLOWN CORPS
.

I said “Huh” out loud.

The picture did look good. The costumes were beautiful, and the makeup was original and clever. For one thing, each clown’s makeup was different, but each included teardrops, in imitation of Moe’s. Then I read the cutline. The clowns were from a half dozen southwest Michigan high schools. As I had
guessed, the hobo clown in the middle was Moe Davidson, identified as “Sponsor.” He had never varied his makeup. At one end was Chuck Davidson. Not too surprising. But the tall clown in the back—his name was Philip Montague, and his hometown was listed as Grand Haven.

I was knocked into a heap again. I couldn’t yell; I whispered. “Oh! My gosh!”

This was the link. The link between Chuck Davidson and Philip Montague. They had been in a high school clown group sponsored by Moe.

I had to find Clancy. I whirled around and found myself face to face with a clown—a tall hobo clown with teardrops on his left cheek. He had heavy black eyebrows.

I tried to act casual, as if I hadn’t recognized him.

I pushed past him. “Excuse me,” I said.

But the clown grabbed my arm. “Not so fast,” he said.

And even through all the clothes I had on under my costume, I could feel something small and hard against my side.

I looked down. He held a pistol. And he was shoving it into my rib cage.

I didn’t scream. Maybe I should have.

“Don’t move,” the clown said. “Not a muscle.”

I obeyed.

“Now,” he said, “we’re going outside. We’re going down the hill. Not on a sled! We’re going to walk. Everything will be okay as long as you do what I say.”

He shoved the gun into my side harder. The floppy sleeve of his hobo coat hid it. “If I have you with me, the cops will let me alone. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

He still had hold of my arm, and he shoved me ahead of
him, toward the door of the high school. Three clowns were coming in. I recognized them as fellow members of the tourism committee.

They all greeted me. “Lee, you’re going the wrong direction,” one said.

“I’ll be right back.”

I had a vague hope that one of them would notice I was being held at gunpoint, but they merely turned away, talking among themselves.