The Chocolate Moose Motive: A Chocoholic Mystery (24 page)

“State cops!”

“Yes. State cops. So put the pistol down and go quietly.”

“But, Ace, I did all this to protect you!”

“Did I need your help?”

“Oh, I admit it was my fault. I sent a copy of that stupid report to Buzz. It never occurred to me that he’d use it in his novel!”

“You should never have sent it in the first place.”

“Ace, it was horrible over there. Buzz couldn’t take it and came home. I was the one who toughed it out. But I needed someone to talk to; it was the only thing that helped.”

“Talk is one thing. Stealing that report is another.”

“I just wanted Buzz to see what we were up against. And I was trying to get it back!”

“You didn’t have to kill my son to get it.”

“He was a traitor to you, Ace!”

“Maybe I was a traitor to him. Put the gun down.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing! What you wanted me to do!”

“Put the gun down.”

“No! I’ll use it!” Chip raised his pistol and pointed it at Ace. “Should I use it on you?”

He swung the gun around toward himself. “Or on me?”

“Put it down!” Ace roared the command.

Chip hesitated, still pointing the gun toward himself.

Behind him, Wildflower gave a disgusted grunt. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she said. “Cut the cackle!”

Chip kept looking at Ace. He couldn’t see her as, in one smooth motion, she grabbed the fireplace poker, swung it, and hit him in the back of the head.

Chip fell, but only to his knees; then he dropped his pistol.

Joe and I ran forward, but Ace didn’t move.

He simply stood and watched as I scooped up Chip’s pistol, and Joe clamped a hammerlock on the stunned man.

Ace lowered his gun to his side, then continued to stand there stoically as I pulled out my cell phone and called Hogan.

“Well, Gran,” Sissy said, “you sure picked the right time to forget about nonviolence.”

The next hour was wild, of course. All kinds of law officers poured in. Even Burt Ramsey was there. He ate crow over Chip’s confession—with four witnesses—to killing Buzz, then Helen Ferguson. He wasn’t very gracious about it.

After Chip had been taken away, Hogan spoke firmly to Sissy and Ace. “We could have avoided all this excitement if you two had told me Chip was guilty this afternoon, when you realized where Buzz’s gun came from.”

“But I wasn’t sure,” Sissy said. “I knew Buzz had taken his pistol back to Ace’s house, because Gran didn’t want firearms at Moose Lodge. But after Buzz was killed, nobody ever asked us about it. The investigators just asked if there were any guns on the premises. The fact that Buzz used to have a gun didn’t cross my mind, much less that it had been used to kill him. Then this afternoon, it fell out of my glove compartment. Of course, I remembered it had been at Ace’s house, which meant that Chip was the logical person to have access to it.”

“I had access to it, too,” Ace said.

“I never suspected you, Ace,” Sissy said. “I was awfully angry with you—in some ways I still am—but I never doubted that you loved Buzz. In your own way. No, the other person I suspected was Helen Ferguson.”

Ace gave a wry smile. “The boys tried to tell me she snooped, but it was so handy having her as a cleaning woman that I ignored it.”

He turned to Hogan. “I’m willing to bet that she told Chip she knew the gun was there.”

“Colonel Smith,” I said, “did you once own a blue Volkswagen, an older one?”

“I still own it,” he said. “It’s in the big storage shed.”

“Oh,” I said. “I think Helen told Chip she knew he’d used that car to drive over here the day he killed Buzz. I think she had been blackmailing him.”

Nobody denied that.

Ace looked sadder than I’d ever seen anyone look. “Whatever happened with Helen,” he said, “Chip could have broken her neck on the spot. He was an expert in hand-to-hand combat.”

“It may not have been premeditated,” Sissy said.

But Ace shook his head. “Killing her might not have been premeditated. But he used Helen’s phone to text you. He made a deliberate attempt to frame you. That was unforgivable.”

Sissy shuddered. “I’ll never forgive him for standing out on the beach, in the dark, and watching me as I found her body. I saw him against the reflection on the water. He nearly scared me to death.”

Hogan nodded. “We’ll never know exactly what happened unless Chip decides to tell us. But why didn’t you and Sissy share this knowledge about Chip this afternoon?”

Sissy sighed. “Mainly I couldn’t believe it. Chip and Buzz were such close friends. And I was still thinking that Chip had been abroad when Buzz died. And when I began to doubt that—well, I trusted Ace to check it out.”

“Yes,” Ace said. “And I called you, Hogan, as soon as I talked to Chip’s boss. But the fact that Chip was on leave when Buzz died didn’t prove he’d flown halfway around the world to kill his best friend.”

Hogan left then, and after a few more minutes, Joe and I
got up to leave. “Sissy,” I said, “take tomorrow off. TenHuis won’t go under if you and I sleep all day.”

“You can tell you don’t have a fourteen-month-old,” Sissy said. “Sleeping all day is not an option for me.”

After we’d all laughed, Wildflower spoke. “Actually, I’m hoping you and Joe will come back for dinner tomorrow. And Ace, I’d like you to come, too.”

We must have looked puzzled, because she went on. “There are a few things all of you should know.”

How could we resist an invitation like that?

Chapter 24

The next day we all showed up at Moose Lodge around six o’clock. Johnny was in his high chair, wearing footie pajamas and a large bib. Sissy was poking his dinner into his mouth. He’d eat a bite of beets, then pick up a few Cheerios from his tray.

Ace came in just after us. He went over to speak to his grandson, talking to him quite as if the baby were an adult. When Johnny sprayed a combination of beets and spit on him, Ace just laughed.

“Sissy, I hope you’ll let me see Johnny now and then,” he said. No one mentioned the custody suit.

“I’m sure we can work something out.” Sissy shook a finger at him. “But don’t plan on military school. I still hold to my grandmother’s nonviolent principles.”

Ace looked at Wildflower and made a swinging motion, a lot like the one she’d used to fell Chip. “Your grandmother knows how to ignore theory when she needs to get practical results,” he said. “A mighty tough lady. And I mean that as a compliment.”

Wildflower looked a bit flustered. She handed Ace a wet washcloth, which he used to get the beets off his face. Then she
served all of us a glass of Michigan wine. We sat in her comfortable living room on her rustic furniture. The evening was cool enough for a small fire in the fireplace.

As soon as his dinner was over, Johnny was placed in the middle of the floor and given a set of blocks to play with. Of course, he found all these new people much more interesting than blocks, so he cruised around, looking each of us over, holding on to our knees, and giving each of us a big friendly smile.

I didn’t know if I should make polite conversation or leave it to our hostess. I didn’t have to wait long.

Ace turned to Sissy. “I know Buzz didn’t leave you anything, Sissy. He hadn’t even worked enough quarters to leave Social Security benefits. I wish I could say I’ll make up the deficit, but I’m going to have to admit something that embarrasses me. As you probably all know, I inherited quite a bit of money from my mother. But my legal bills over the Dobermann-Smith scandal have wiped me out. That’s why I sold the Chicago house and moved to Warner Pier. I’ll try to help with Johnny’s upbringing and education, but my main income is my military retirement. And I’m in debt, including a big mortgage on the lakeshore house. I can help you a little, month to month, but there won’t be much when I’m gone.”

“Oh, Ace,” Sissy said. “I don’t expect help! Gran raised me to stand on my own.” She grinned. “And now she tells me I’m going to Michigan State, whether I want to or not.”

“Oh, Sissy!” Wildflower shook her head.

Then she spoke to all of us. “It wasn’t until we were in the middle of all this mess that I understood I’d misled the whole community, and even my own family, by the way I live. When I discovered that Sissy had consulted a poverty law firm—well, I was so embarrassed, I didn’t know what to do.”

She turned to Joe. “Your agency does wonderful work. I’ve supported it for years.”

Joe gaped slightly. “You have?”

“Right. Through the Fox Foundation.”

“You’re part of the Fox Foundation?”

“I’m afraid so. Before I married Andrew Hill and changed my name to Wildflower Hill, I was Celestia Fox.”

This brought laughter from Joe and an amazed gasp from me. “Oh my gosh!” I said. “We’ve wondered and wondered who the Fox heiress was. The gossip is that she lives abroad.”

“If you know anything about the history of the Fox family,” Wildflower said, “then you know why I turned my back on money as a life value way back in my youth. I’ve just always preferred to live simply. By filtering my affairs through the foundation, I’ve managed to avoid begging letters and social obligations. I’d appreciate it if you would all help me continue to keep it quiet.”

“Sure,” Joe said. “But I might blackmail you to keep helping the foundation. You’re our biggest private supporter.”

“As long as you keep to your present policies, the foundation will support you,” Wildflower said. She reached over and patted Sissy’s shoulder. “And Sissy’s right. I wanted her to become an independent person, not one who was always worried about money, about who wants a cut, about trying to buy happiness.”

Sissy spoke sardonically. “So she didn’t tell me we were filthy rich.”

“I hope we’re responsibly rich!” Wildflower said. “But I had never realized that the reason Sissy wouldn’t let me send her away to college, for example, was that she thought I couldn’t afford it. I shouldn’t have misled her.”

She shook a finger at her granddaughter. “But now that she
knows, she’d better not go wild financially, or I’ll cut her allowance to the bone.”

Sissy grinned. “No designer jeans for me. Levi’s are good enough.”

Wildflower took a deep breath and turned to Ace. “I guess I’d better finish my speech. Chip was convinced Sissy and I were lying about the hiding places around here. Of course, he was right. When I lived out here with a group of friends, forty-plus years ago, there were things we wanted to hide…well, from strangers.”

For “strangers,” read “the law.” None of us said that out loud. We all stared at Wildflower innocently.

“I left that way of life long ago. We don’t have any reason to use these hidey-holes these days. But Sissy and I had shown some of them to Buzz, and there was one particular place he thought was funny. We’ve never looked in it since he died, but we both think it’s the most likely place he would have hidden something.”

She gestured. “Sissy, you do the honors.”

Sissy stood up from her rustic twig rocking chair and went over to the massive hearth.

Then she walked up the chimney.

That sounds ridiculous, but that’s what she did. The stones of the wide fireplace and its broad chimney were placed at different depths. A person who knew which stone to step on could walk right up it. It was a little like a climbing wall, or maybe like vertical stepping-stones.

So as we all gasped—and Joe jumped to his feet, afraid Sissy was going to fall—she climbed up the face of the fireplace until she could easily reach the huge moose head that hung near the ceiling.

Sissy pulled on its jaw, and the darn thing opened just like
a trapdoor. She took out a metal box, maybe eight inches long and four inches tall.

She handed it down to Joe, then backed down the rocks. Once she was on the floor, she took the box again.

“Okay,” she said. “Who gets to open it? It may be empty.”

“You’re Buzz’s heir,” Joe said. “You could open it. And your grandmother owns the house, so she certainly has the right to look at anything stored in it.”

“Open it, Sissy.” Wildflower’s voice was firm.

I leaned forward eagerly, but I couldn’t help noticing that Ace looked grim.

Sissy sat down in her twiggy rocker and opened the box. She reached into it and pulled out a thumb drive. “I’m willing to bet this is the backup copy of Buzz’s novel,” she said. “I’ll keep it safe.”

None of us argued with her. She put the thumb drive in her pocket, then pulled out a packet of letters held together by a rubber band. She thumbed through the return addresses. “All from Chip,” she said.

“May I see?” Wildflower was at her most dignified. Sissy handed the letters over.

Wildflower looked through them. “Yes,” she said, “all from Chip.”

She stood up and took two steps to the fireplace. She moved the fire screen aside, leaned over, and placed the letters in the flames.

Ace jumped to his feet. “No! No! Wildflower! You can’t destroy those. They may contain evidence.”

“Evidence of what?”

“I’m afraid they contain embarrassing information about me.”

“Pish-tosh,” Wildflower said. “Joe just said I’m responsible for anything found in my house. And I can burn old letters whenever I want to.”