The Chocolate Castle Clue (14 page)

Greg Glossop had listened to Margo's call?

That was a new low, even for Greg.

I must have looked horrified, because Greg immediately began to justify himself.

“I didn't listen on purpose, Lee.”

Oh, sure, I thought.

“But she was standing just outside the fence, and I was inside it, minding my own business. I couldn't help hearing. I mean, she must not have minded, or she would have walked away.”

I was disgusted. But was Greg any better than I was? Wasn't I there to spy on the Pier-O-Ettes?

Of course, I did have a reason. Aunt Nettie's request.

I wondered what Margo Street had had to say. What had amused and interested Greg Glossop?

I knew Greg was going to tell me unless I took some drastic action to stop him. Like telling him to shut up.

Oh heck, I thought. Maybe I need to know this.

So I didn't say shut up. I didn't say anything. I sinned by omission and let Greg tell me what he'd heard.

He leaned closer to me and lowered his voice. “I hope Nettie isn't going to give that woman any money. I think she's having trouble paying her bills.”

“Margo Street?” My voice must have illustrated complete incredulity.

“This woman.” He pointed to her picture again.

“She's a wealthy woman, Greg.”

“That may be what everyone thinks, Lee. But I heard what she said. And she said her utilities were being cut off.”

Greg was speaking smugly. He obviously believed in the truth of what he was saying.

But it was completely ridiculous. Margo Street was one of the sharpest investors in the United States. People paid big fees for her advice. The idea that she couldn't even pay her household expenses, or that she'd handed the details of her life over to someone so incompetent that her water and electric bills hadn't been paid—it was simply silly.

Of course, anything can happen in life. It was possible that Margo Street had gone from being one of the most influential businesswomen in the United States to being completely broke. The luxury sedan, the beautiful clothes, the original watercolor ordered for each of her fellow Pier-O-Ettes—they could just be leftovers from a previous life of financial success.

But I didn't believe it. No, the Margo I'd met had been too authoritative to be poor.

I had to know more. “Greg, exactly what did she say?” He closed his eyes and made a big show of remembering. “She said she was calling to check on her utilities.”

“Oh!” The light began to dawn.

“Then she said, ‘I won't cough up any more.' She seemed to listen for a minute. Then she said, “What about the'—I didn't catch that word—‘water?' I'm sure she said ‘water.' She listened; then she said, ‘Cut 'em off. I can't authorize another penny.' So it sounded to me like she was having her utilities cut off.”

I beat back a desire to laugh. “Greg, utilities is a classification of stocks. Margo Street owns an investment firm. Utilities would be stocks she's investing in. She probably meant she didn't want to buy any more utilities stocks.”

Greg looked crushed. “I guess I misunderstood.”

I said. “It was an easy mistake to make, since you didn't know who she was.” And I thought, Maybe this will be a lesson to you, bozo.

I gathered up my pictures, but Greg wasn't through talking. “That doesn't explain the second call she made.”

I mentally rolled my eyes, and I was careful not to look at Greg.

“That call was of a more personal nature,” he said. “It was to someone she was planning to meet.”

“Oh?” I didn't need to encourage Greg. He kept talking.

“In fact, I think she slipped away and met him right then. At least, I heard her say, ‘Ten minutes.' ”

Was it time for a little disbelief? I frowned at Greg. “Surely she didn't leave the football game.”

“Well, I wouldn't want to say. But she sure didn't come back in that gate. And when I looked outside, she was gone.”

“She and her sister?”

“The other blond woman? Small? The other one you have a picture of? No, she didn't leave.”

“Where was she?”

“She was sitting on a bench. You know. One of those wooden benches right inside the gate.”

“How long was she there?”

“I really can't say, Lee. I had to go back into the game.” Greg looked smug. “After all, I had my own business to take care of.”

I could have brained him. At the same time, I was ashamed of myself for pumping him. And I was angry with Aunt Nettie for talking me into doing her dirty work. She should have simply laid the law down to her fellow Pier-O-Ettes, told them they had to tell Jackson where they'd been during the game.

How did I get into these messes?

I repacked my file folder, thanked Greg for his information, and left.

What had I learned?

First, Julie Hensley left the stadium during the game.

Second, so did Margo Street.

Third, Margo stashed Kathy on a bench near the gate and apparently left her there. Margo kept such a close eye on Kathy's activities that I was surprised to hear that she went off and left her. Of course, it might have been for only a few minutes. Greg hadn't known how long Margo was gone.

It was strange to find myself wondering why Kathy, a sixty-three-year-old woman apparently of normal intelligence, would have been left alone at a football game.

I wondered if Hazel knew more about Kathy's actions during the game. Hazel had said that after the Pier-O-Ettes found seats in the bleachers, she left to go to the ladies' room. In fact, Greg Glossop had mentioned seeing her headed that way.

The ladies' room at the Warner Pier stadium is not too far from the concessions stand. As Hazel came out, she would have passed close to the bench where Kathy was reportedly sitting. I'd have to ask if she saw Kathy.

But Hazel was rehearsing with the other Pier-O-Ettes that afternoon. There was no way I could talk to her. Or was there? Aunt Nettie had recently decided to join the modern world and had acquired a cell phone. I hastily called her number, thinking that she might talk to Hazel. As I expected, Aunt Nettie's phone was turned off, but I left a message, asking her to call me.

Of course, I had no idea when Aunt Nettie would get around to checking her messages, but maybe she'd let me know when the rehearsal was over.

Meanwhile, I wandered back to my office. After the activities of the morning and early afternoon, I felt at a loss. What could I do that might help figure out what was going on?

The answer came from a newspaper I noticed lying on the corner of my desk. It was a copy of the latest issue of the
Warner Pier Gazette
, our local weekly. Suddenly I realized I had not yet looked at contemporary accounts of the death of Dan Rice.

I plunked myself into my chair and fired up the computer.

Modern public libraries are wonderful. Warner Pier's little library is part of a larger system that takes in maybe twenty communities in west Michigan. And the system has access to the files of around a dozen newspapers.

This means that instead of going to the newspaper office or to the library's microfilm, a researcher can read old newspapers online. I can sit at a computer—either in my office or at home—and call up newspaper stories of forty-five years ago. Or a hundred years ago. Or last year. And I can read them in the middle of the night. While wearing my pajamas. For free.

I love libraries.

I called up the
Warner Pier Gazette
files of forty-five years ago and paged through until I found a huge headline: SHOOTING DEATH.

The words were gigantic. Underneath was the real headline : OWNER OF CASTLE SHOT TO DEATH.

Then another, smaller headline stretched clear across the page: BODY OF WARNER PIER BUSINESS LEADER FOUND IN OFFICE.

The mysterious death had happened early on a Sunday morning, not a good time for a weekly newspaper that published on Thursday. So the
Gazette
had put out a special edition on Tuesday.

The story—written in a breathless style that revealed the reporter's excitement—said that during a routine patrol at about three a.m. Sunday, the Warner Pier policeman had seen lights inside the ground-floor offices of the Castle Ballroom. Since the Castle would ordinarily be locked up tight at that time, he had investigated, approaching a door that opened into the office from the deck.

When he knocked on it, the door swung open.

That, I gathered, was the first suspicious circumstance. The door should have been locked, even if Dan Rice were there.

The patrolman called out, then went inside. There he found Dan Rice lying on the floor behind his desk, shot through the heart.

A pistol was near his right hand.

As I read the story, I realized how much emergency services had changed in the past forty-five years. The patrolman, whose name was Oscar VanWick, was apparently the only lawman in the village of Warner Pier in those days, and he seemed to function more as a night watchman than as a cop. The only help he could call on was the county sheriff's office. The volunteer EMTs west Michigan has today apparently didn't exist. An ambulance came from South Haven, but Dan Rice had been dead for some time.

Oscar VanWick called the home of Dan Rice, of course, and Verna Rice drove—in her big red Buick, I speculated—down to the Castle. She became hysterical and had to be restrained from rushing in the door of the office. Friends had taken Mrs. Rice home, and her doctor had given her a sedative, the newspaper reported.

That was the end of the story for the
Gazette
's special edition.

I switched my reading to the Holland newspaper. I was sure that as the closest town with a daily newspaper, it would have thoroughly covered a major event like Dan Rice's death.

I was right. The
Holland Sentinel
headline stretched across the bottom of the front page: OWNER OF FAMED BALLROOM FOUND DEAD.

Their first story had much the same information as the
Gazette
's. But during the next week, a lot of things happened.

Dan Rice was buried in the Warner Pier Cemetery. Investigators said he was killed by a single shot to his heart and that the injury could have been self-inflicted.

But the story changed in the next day's issue.

The Castle's two bouncers, Charlie McCoy and Sheppard “Shep” Stone, had been the last two employees to leave the Castle. Both had gotten off work around one a.m. Both reported that Dan Rice had said he planned to put the night's gate in the safe, then go home.

But the assistant manager of the Castle, Phin Vandercamp, said the night's money was missing.

What? Robbery?

In all the tales I'd heard about the Castle, I'd never heard that robbery was involved in its owner's end.

The Saturday night income might have been significant for the Castle Ballroom. That had been the night the big talent competition was held, the one the Pier-O-Ettes had won. It should have attracted a large number of local people, as well as summer visitors.

I was eager to know more as I went on to the next day's edition. The idea of a robbery added excitement to the whole series of events. And in the next edition I discovered a complete change in the story.

As soon as she heard that the money was reportedly missing, Mrs. Dan Rice called the newspaper, breaking her silence to make her first statement since the shooting.

“The money from Saturday night's events at the Castle Ballroom is quite safe,” she said. “My husband brought it home just after closing. He then went back to the ballroom to do some paperwork. Our assistant manager, Mr. Vandercamp, was mistaken. I consider his statements extremely irresponsible.”

The Warner County sheriff said she hadn't told them earlier that she had the money, and his deputies had been searching for it for several days, not knowing if it had been stolen or not. They hadn't asked Mrs. Rice about it, he said, because she had claimed to be too distraught to talk to the investigating officers.

The sheriff 's statement definitely had an air of annoyance.

He certainly would have had a right to be annoyed. If law enforcement had wasted time investigating the possibility of a robbery when that wasn't a possibility—well, it would have angered a saint.

But I was interested to learn about this assistant manager Phin Vandercamp. None of the Pier-O-Ettes had ever mentioned him. Neither had Shep or Charlie. They'd spent the morning reminiscing about former waitresses and even the janitor. But no mention of an assistant manager had come up.

Phin. It was an odd name. I wondered if his name had been Phineas. I wondered what had become of him.

I was ready for a break from reading old newspapers anyway. I walked around the office and ate a square of chocolate from the throwaway bin. I snatched one up at random, and it turned out to be a tiny replica of the old Warner Pier High School building. The design on top hadn't come out right. Then I checked the time. Yikes! Nearly five thirty. It was getting dark rapidly. I needed to think about dinner. Joe and I had eaten out for dinner the night before and for lunch that day. I ought to cook something. The thought didn't thrill me. I mentally catalogued the contents of the freezer and remembered a plastic dish containing leftover ham jambalaya. If I added a tossed salad and a can of green beans . . .

I also needed to report to Aunt Nettie. As her designated investigator, I ought to tell her the few things I'd found out. I called her home number and got the answering machine. Had the Pier-O-Ettes gone on to dinner? I told the machine I needed to come by and that I'd call back.