The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle (14 page)

“We thought we had a deal. But Ken called yesterday. He says they might leave at the end of the year.”

“Leave! Did he say why?”

“No. In fact, he was extremely evasive. But we need to find another buyer.”

“I hope you don’t lose the Vandermeer house.”

“So do I. But we can’t sign on that until we sell this one.”

I went to work then, but the conversation had left me feeling low. Ken and Maggie were thinking of leaving Warner Pier? I guess we’d all known that a drama teacher as talented as Maggie would eventually get the call to a bigger school, but they’d seemed happy in Warner Pier. Could Aubrey Andrews Armstrong be the problem? Was Maggie so sure he’d tell about her scandalous past that she was already assuming she wouldn’t get another contract?

I spoke aloud. “If Aubrey comes back alive, I’ll kill him.”

Yes, it was imperative that we find Aubrey. I was glad to discover that Aunt Nettie was already doing something about this when I got to TenHuis Chocolade. She and Chief Hogan Jones were conferring in the break room.

“I’ve got the sheriff talking to every gas station in the county, and the state police checking up and down the interstate,” Hogan said. “If Armstrong used a credit card, we should be able to figure which way he went.”

“But he could have gotten beyond Chicago on less than a tank of gas,” I said. “Checking the stations looks like a long shot. Besides, what’s to stop him from going anywhere he wants to go? He’s not wanted for anything, is he?”

Hogan didn’t answer. Instead, Aunt Nettie spoke. “I simply can’t believe Aubrey took it on the lam. I mean, he might run away, but he wouldn’t leave Monte.”

Hogan nodded. “That would look like a definite break in the pattern.”

I was mystified. “What pattern?”

Hogan hung his head and kicked a chair, but before he could answer the phone rang. I answered on the break room extension. “TenHuis Chocolade.”

“Hello, Lee.” The voice was unmistakable.

“Hi, Maia. What can I do for you?”

“I was looking for Aubrey. I don’t suppose you or Nettie knows where he is.”

“No. In fact, we’re trying to find him.” I quickly sketched our discovery of Monte on the front porch and told her we were completely mystified about where he had gone and why he’d left the dog with us. “Lindy Herrera is dog-sitting today,” I said.

“Oh, Lindy has a big yard. That’s a good place for Monte.”

“Yes, we appreciated Lindy’s offer. But if you hear from Aubrey, or if you track him down, we’d sure like to know what’s going on.”

Chief Jones was nearly out the back door when I hung up. “Wait!” I said. “Have you found out anything about that shot?”

“The one that nearly hit Armstrong? Nope.”

“Did you figure out where it came from?”

“Not exactly. The sheriff and I took Aubrey’s SUV out there and parked it at what Joe said was the same spot. We tried to figure the angle. All we could tell was that it came from someplace off to the north and up high.”

“Up high? Like a tree?”

“Or the second story of a house. Or a telephone pole.”

“Is there a two-story house or a telephone pole in the right spot?”

“Hard to say.” That was the chief’s final word, and I realized it could mean either “I don’t know” or “I don’t want to tell you.” Either way, I didn’t find out anything.

Warner Pier was up to its small-town tricks that day. The phone nearly rang off the wall with people wanting to know about Aubrey and Monte. At first I was amazed at how fast word had gotten around, but I soon traced the path the information had followed. Sarajane had apparently told the laundry service deliveryman, because we heard from several more B&Bs. Lindy had told her mother, who told her dad, who’s an electrician, and he happened to be working at the Superette that morning. And once the news that Aubrey had left Monte on our porch and gone on some mysterious trip hit the druggist at the Superette’s pharmacy, Greg Gossip—I mean, Glossop—we might as well have sent a truck with a loudspeaker blaring the news up and down the streets.

I was kept busy answering the phone and telling people we had no reason to believe that Aubrey wouldn’t come back to get Monte. I also assured them that I hadn’t heard that the state detectives were unusually interested in Aubrey as a suspect in the killing of Silas Snow. A few of the more curious even came into the shop to ask about it. I gave those a hard sell and managed to get some of them to buy a few chocolates.

The morning had been quite hectic, and I wasn’t pleased when, about twelve thirty, the phone rang yet again. It was an effort to make my voice cheerful when I answered. “TenHuis Chocolade.”

“Lee! It’s Lindy! You’d better get out here. This pup’s sick! The dog got hold of some chocolate!”

I
squealed to a stop in Lindy’s drive, ran around the house, and went in the back gate. Lindy was sitting on the back step, petting Monte. He hadn’t rolled over to ask for a tummy rub.

As I watched, he got up and sprinkled the grass. Then he gagged once or twice.

“I called the vet,” Lindy said. “He said it doesn’t sound as if he got enough to be fatal, but he said maybe we’d better take him in. After all, Monte’s a valuable dog.”

“What about Pinto? She’s awfully valuable to your kids.”

“She ate chocolate, too, but she’s a bigger dog. It would take more to hurt her.”

“How do you know the dogs ate chocolate?” Lindy held up a plastic sack. In it were several of the silvery paper squares from baking chocolate, the same stuff I buy at the Superette to make brownies. All of them were torn and chewed. There were also a couple of the squares themselves, still wrapped.

“Baking chocolate?” I was amazed. “I’d been thinking some kid walked by and tossed the dogs a bite of his candy bar. That looks as if somebody threw a whole package into the yard.”

“That’s what I think, too. This was no accident. Someone did it deliberately.”

“Did you see anybody?”

“No, the dogs seemed to be getting along all right, so I was in the house, trying to get the washing done. I think whoever tossed the chocolate in came up the back alley, anyway. The hedge would have kept me from seeing anybody.”

Lindy called her mother and asked her to be there when the kids got home from school. She said she’d already called Tony to tell him what had happened. Then we loaded both dogs into my van and drove the thirty minutes to Holland, where the nearest veterinarian—the one Lindy took Pinto to—was located. The vet’s assistant took both dogs right into the examining rooms and directed Lindy and me to the waiting area.

Lindy had gone to the ladies’ room when Chief Jones came in.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Tony Herrera called and said his dog had been poisoned. That’s a crime. I thought the Warner Pier Police Department ought to look into it. The state police are a little too high-toned to investigate a dog poisoning.”

“Why would you think the state police might consider being involved?”

“Ever since Silas Snow was killed, it seems as if all sorts of things are happening to animals and people who were hooked up with Aubrey Andrews Armstrong.”

I clutched his arm. “Nothing’s happened to Aunt Nettie?”

“What could happen to her?”

“I don’t know. You just frightened me.”

“No, Nettie’s all right. Which is more than I can say for Silas. And Vernon says Mae Ensminger is sick. Of course, I ought to bawl out both you and Nettie for making a lot of tracks in your driveway before she called to tell me Monte had been dumped off on your porch.”

“We had to go to work. Why shouldn’t we have left tracks in the driveway?”

“If I’d seen the drive before you drove out, it might have helped me figure out how the dog got onto your front porch.”

“Is there any question about that? Aubrey obviously drove up, stopped in the drive, got the kennel out of his SUV, and put it on our porch.”

“Nettie says she didn’t hear a car stop.”

“I didn’t ask her about that. She said she heard somebody on the porch, and I assumed that a car had driven up.”

Hogan shook his head. “When I quizzed her about the details, I realized that wasn’t the way it happened. All she heard was something—the kennel, I guess—sliding across the porch. No, apparently somebody walked up to the house from Lake Shore Drive. The guy had to carry the kennel and the dog and that sack of stuff. It must have taken at least two trips.”

“I guess Aubrey didn’t want to wake us up.”

“Maybe so. But I wonder where Aubrey would have gotten a wheelbarrow.”

“A wheelbarrow? He used a wheelbarrow?”

“Yep. I managed to find bits and pieces of the tracks of a wheelbarrow coming up your lane from Lake Shore Drive. You can see the single track of the wheel, and I even found the places where the back supports rested on the ground not far from the porch.”

“But that’s an awfully complicated way to put a kennel with a dog on a front porch. Driving up would be much easier. Why didn’t he do that?”

“The obvious reason is that he definitely did not want Nettie to wake up and catch him doing it.”

“I know she would have told him we couldn’t keep the dog, but still . . . I don’t understand. Why would Aubrey be
that
anxious not to be seen? And, like you say, where would he get a wheelbarrow?”

Hogan sat back and looked at me, obviously inviting me to think it over. Gradually the light dawned.

“Hogan,” I said. “Are you trying to tell me Aubrey didn’t drop Monte on our porch? Somebody else did?”

“I can’t be sure just what happened, Lee. But it sure seems possible.”

“Have you asked Mae about Aubrey? He came to Warner Pier to see her. It seems as if he wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye.”

“I talked to Vernon. He said he doesn’t know anything about Aubrey. And he says Mae is sick in bed. I didn’t get to talk to her.”

“I admit Mae acted pretty strange when I saw her yesterday. Maybe she
is
sick. But I don’t know what that would have to do with Aubrey taking off.”

“If he took off.”

I finally saw what Hogan was getting at. “You think something’s happened to him.”

“I don’t know, Lee. But you, Joe, and Nettie all swear somebody shot at him yesterday. And nobody’s seen him since late last night. Now it seems somebody has it in for his dog. That’s what I’d call suspicious.”

Lindy came back then, and Chief Jones took the particulars of when she’d found the sick dogs. She handed over the uneaten chocolate and its silver wrappers. Then the chief went away, leaving my head whirling.

Maybe Aubrey hadn’t simply left town. Maybe he was missing. Kidnapped? Killed?

But in my scenario, based on Aubrey’s status as the invisible movie producer and on Maggie’s description of him as a blackmailer, Aubrey was supposed to be the crook. He should be the leading suspect in the killing of Silas Snow, for example. But now it seemed Aubrey might have become a victim.

How was Aunt Nettie going to react to this?

And what was Maia up to? She had called me earlier, trying to find Aubrey, but now Vernon said she couldn’t talk to Chief Jones. I felt sure she was simply hiding behind Vernon. I felt impatient with her; she’d attracted Aubrey to Warner Pier with her silly novel and had drawn all of us into this mess. Now she had gone to bed with a headache. Darn her anyway, I thought. First she dragged Vernon around, treating him like a flunky, then she made him cover for her.

Before I had a chance to tell Lindy what I’d learned about Aubrey, the vet came out and told us we could take Pinto home. I was relieved when he asked to keep Monte overnight. At least the pup was safe there. Maybe Aubrey would even show up to pay the bill.

Lindy loaded Pinto into the van, and we drove back to Warner Pier. I started to tell Lindy what the chief had said, but Pinto headed off any confidences by upchucking on the floor of the backseat, as the vet had said she might, and Lindy became so upset over a mess in someone else’s vehicle that I gave up trying to talk to her.

I had to wait around at Lindy’s while she insisted on cleaning up Pinto’s mess and spraying the van with air freshener. By the time I got away I’d nearly forgotten everything but sick dogs.

I remembered my other concerns, however, when I came to the Peach Street stoplight. I was on the flashing-red side and had to come to a stop and wait for a farm truck to cross on the yellow. That farm truck had ENSMINGER’S ORCHARDS lettered on the door and was driven by Vernon. And it was not headed toward his house. Vernon was not on the way home.

I watched Vernon go on down the street. He parked in front of the hardware store, got out of his truck, and went inside.