The Chocolate Falcon Fraud (16 page)

After the big chase down Big Pine Road, naturally, Tess had made a statement, telling Hogan and the sheriff she had visited Valk Souvenirs before being chased by the SUV. The sheriff had obtained a search warrant and gone to the remote business. Hogan said he had gone along.

Now he looked rather discouraged. “Nothing there,” he said. “No cars in the drive. No food in the kitchen. No clothes in the closet. A few boxes in the big barn, all empty.”

Joe and I drooped at this report, and Tess was even droopier when she heard. We had all hoped that Hogan could give that dumb girl at Valk's a shot of truth serum—or something a little more practical and realistic—to get her to talk, and the whole mystery would be solved. We would know why Jeff had been attacked, why he had hidden in our attic, why Tess had been pursued, why the captain of
La Paloma
came to our house, who killed him, and why. We would learn the answers to all the little problems that had been pestering us.

No such luck. The suspects, such as the girl at Valk's, had
flown the coop. The sheriff had checked on ownership of the site, but the landowners were being hard to find.

The four of us powwowed, but no ready solutions came to mind.

Jeff was sleeping, and Hogan still had an off-duty cop to keep him safe. I refrained from asking who was paying the fee for this. I knew the budget of the Warner Pier Police Department wouldn't cover it.

There was, of course, one more question for Tess—one that at Hogan's request, Joe and I had not asked. We were both longing to know the answer. Now Hogan did the honors.

“Young lady,” he said, “last night when Captain Jacobs appeared at the door, Lee says he held out a package. Then he collapsed. Then the three of you—quite rightly—became more interested in his condition than in the package. But we need to know what happened to that package.”

Tess sat very still. She didn't say anything.

Hogan's face was stern. “Apparently you took it. Where is it now?”

And Tess—sweet little Tess—balked. “I'm not saying anything,” she said.

She sat back in her chair, set her jaw, and glared at Hogan as sternly as he was glaring at her.

The problem with this refusal to answer, of course, was that it was an answer. If Tess wasn't going to tell, there was some reason she wouldn't, and the reason was plain. She obviously had known all about the package.

Tess was such an innocent. It was impossible to get angry with her. The three of us stared at her. Her denial was a guilty plea.

Hogan began to laugh. Joe and I joined him.

“Don't laugh at me!” Tess sounded fierce. “I'm trying to help Jeff. I love him.”

Hogan looked completely confused. Since he had missed the true-confessions session with Tess and Jeff pledging their undying love, I filled him in. I finished with a recap of the reasons Jeff had given, or partly given, for coming to Warner Pier.

“Jeff came up here looking for a replica of a falcon once owned by Mary Astor, or one that may have been—or maybe was not—used as a prop in the movie
The Maltese Falcon.
”

Tess looked as if she were going to cry. “He doesn't think it's a real falcon from the movie. He's not stupid!”

“We understand,” Joe said. “It appears that Jeff is a good researcher, and he has been sensible about the whole thing. But the question now is, did Captain Jacobs have a package with him when he came to our house?”

Tess caved. “Well, yes,” she said. “When you tried to give him CPR, and Lee ran for the telephone, you told me to stay in the house. But I saw the package lying there on the porch. I went out and asked if I could help. And, Joe, you said no. So I picked the package up and took it back in the house.”

Hogan took over his own questioning. “Did you open it?”

“No.”

I couldn't believe it. “Good night, Tess! How did you resist? I would have opened it in a New York minute!”

“I was afraid to! It might have been a bomb or something.”

Hogan's voice was incredulous. “So you kept it in your room overnight and took it to the hospital first thing in the morning? That makes a huge amount of sense.”

“I wanted to ask Jeff what to do with it.”

Hogan raised his eyebrows. “Then you and Jeff opened it.”

“Well. Yes, we did.”

“What was in it?”

“I'd rather Jeff told you. But it wasn't anything important! He just laughed when he saw it. Then he told me to put it in a safe place.”

“After someone had been killed?”

“Well . . .” Tess tried the eyelash flickering again. “I didn't tell him about that.”

“So, where did you put it?” Hogan asked.

Tess' lips became a thin line. She sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and didn't say a word.

We all gave her the glare treatment, but she didn't say anything. And she didn't cry. In a way, I was proud of her for holding her ground, but I sure did want to know what was in that package. Besides, withholding that information was dangerous.

“In the book and the movie,” I said, “Sam Spade puts the bird in a locker at a bus station and mails himself the key.”

That didn't tempt Tess into saying anything either.

We all stared for a minute longer. Then I turned to Hogan. “Are you going to arrest her?” I asked.

“Not yet. I'll let her examine her conscience a little longer. But I sure have grounds. Obstruction of justice, for one thing.”

I turned to Joe. “Can you take me home? If I'm not doing any good here, I'd better go to the office.”

Joe nodded and stood up. We walked toward the elevator, leaving Hogan to deal with Tess. He had the authority to do something about her lack of cooperation, and we didn't. Her car
was being examined by the forensics folks, so Hogan would have to be responsible for getting her back to our house. We stopped for a quick hamburger and hit the road for home.

Only one strange thing happened. As we got out of the elevator on the ground floor of the hospital, I saw someone. It wasn't anyone I knew. In fact, I wasn't sure I saw the guy at all; he popped up and then disappeared like a Texas prairie dog jumping into his hole.

But I stopped in my tracks. Joe walked on. I whispered his name, but he didn't hear me.

So I went into a rapid trot until I could catch up with him. “Joe, did you see that guy in the hat?”

He stopped and turned toward me. “Hat? What kind of hat?”

“It looked like a fedora, only made of straw, with a wide band.”

“Some out-of-towner here for your festival?”

“I don't know.” I looked back the way I had come, but there were about a dozen people standing around the elevator, and the man I'd seen wasn't one of them.

“He was a scrawny kind of guy,” I said. “Thin. Colorless.”

“Why did you notice him?”

“I feel as if I've seen him before. But I don't know where.”

Joe scanned the crowd. “Do you see him now?”

I shook my head.

“There were a lot of fedoras at the yacht club party. Could he have been there, or at the tour of the yacht?”

“Maybe. But most of those hats were felt.”

“We'd better head home, Lee.”

I mulled it over on the way home. As we turned off the interstate I finally spoke. “Joe, this whole situation is stupid! It
seems as if it's an elaborate scheme to fool Jeff into buying some fake falcon. But Jeff's too knowledgeable for that.”

“But the crooks—if they are crooks—may not know that Jeff hasn't been fooled. They apparently think he could still be enticed into buying the falcon, believing it would win Grossman's prize.”

“Which still wouldn't explain why someone's chasing all over the country after Jeff, and after the package Captain Jacobs had.”

Joe shrugged. “They must believe that whatever is in the package is really valuable.”

“Huh! Nothing in this whole deal is as valuable as Jeff.”

I'd blurted the words out, but as I heard myself say them, I saw that they were true. Talk about your lightbulb moments.

Joe spoke, but I didn't even hear him. He had to tap me on the arm before I took in what he had said.

“What do you mean, Lee?”

“Two people have told us that a Maltese Falcon prop sold for more than four million dollars. But, Joe, do you know how much Jeff is worth to his dad?”

I leaned toward Joe and spoke as distinctly as I could. “Much more than four million.”

Joe flipped his head toward me, and the truck swerved. “Four million? Are you saying that Rich is worth four million dollars?”

“Heck, Joe! He's worth a lot more than that. Twenty million? More? I don't know. Rich would never tell me anything about his finances. But I can read a tax return when you leave one out on the coffee table, and I know that Rich Godfrey Enterprises owns—well, a lot. And that Rich himself has a sensible attitude
about debt. He's not highly leveraged. The technical term for Rich's net worth is ‘rolling in it.'”

“And you walked out on him and refused a financial settlement? If I had been your lawyer, I would never have let you do that! You had rights, Lee.”

“I didn't want them. And my lawyer tried. He did make Rich pay all the costs of the divorce. And he paid for six months of counseling sessions for me.” I paused. “The best thing I can say about Rich is that he's a self-made man. Or nearly. He did start with an inheritance, but he's made it grow twenty times.”

“Sometimes I'm amazed by your attitude. I mean, I never before ran into an efficient and effective businesswoman—with a degree in accounting, no less—who doesn't seem to know the value of money.”

“Oh, I know the value! If Rich taught me anything, it was that if you think everything, including love, can be measured in dollars and cents, any money you have is more of a nightmare than a benefit. I found it frightening. I told you, I used to worry all the time when I had to ferry Jeff around Dallas. Especially if he'd wander off in a mall or someplace. Neither Jeff nor Rich had any conception that he might be a target for kidnappers.”

“Maybe there wasn't anything to worry about.”

“I thought there was! If a strange man had stopped Jeff on the street and said, ‘Young man, help me look for my dog,' Jeff would have climbed right into his car. And his dad was very offhand about dangers, too. When I tried to talk to Rich about it, he just shrugged. He'd say, ‘There are lots of guys in Dallas richer than I am. My protection is that we don't throw our money around. Money is to make more money.' He actually thought that!”

“He wanted to reinvest, not live lavishly.”

“Yes. He called that living on an inconspicuous scale. Of course, then he'd get in his Lamborghini and drive off. Like no one would notice his twenty-thousand-dollar watch.”

Joe sat silently for about a mile, then spoke. “I guess I never realized what you gave up for me.”

“Don't let it go to your head. I didn't give it up for you! I gave it up for me! But why would you be impressed? You were married to one of the most famous women in the country.”

“Yeah, but she didn't have that kind of money. And the life we lived got to be miserable.”

“The life I lived with Rich wasn't any fun either.”

Joe didn't say anything else. He just reached across the seat and took my hand. “I'm a lucky guy,” he said.

“We're both lucky,” I said. “If only because we don't have to worry about either of us getting kidnapped. But, Joe, if I were going to try to get money out of Jeff Godfrey, I wouldn't mess around with falcons. I'd hold him for ransom.”

I was becoming furious with the people who were doing threatening things to us, who had apparently attacked Jeff and had killed Captain Jacobs. These unknown bad guys had turned our lives upside down. Joe and I were both running around, looking out for Jeff, looking out for Tess, dealing with corpses on our front porch, calling Alicia, snatching meals in fast-food restaurants, and generally not getting our own lives taken care of.

I was sick and tired of the whole thing.

Well, I wasn't going to let them—whoever “them” was—run my life any longer. I vowed that when I finally got to the office, I was going to do something I wanted to do, or at least something I needed to do.

So when we got to the house, I changed clothes and slapped on some makeup. In ten minutes, I had pulled my hair into a George Washington queue and had limped back out the door, headed for the office.

I yelled good-bye to Joe. “I'll see you sometime!”

It was quite a letdown when I got to TenHuis Chocolade and nobody seemed to need me.

I went to my office, propped my crutch behind the desk, and looked things over. It was after four o'clock. The tourists were buying truffles and bonbons, and the counter girls were selling them. The workroom seemed to be moving efficiently. Aunt Nettie was showing the newest employee how to “spout,” which is chocolatier talk for using a funnel to fill bonbon shells. Dolly was rolling ganache into centers for truffles.