The Chocolate Snowman Murders (2 page)

“That's easy to explain. First, they ask you way ahead. . . .”

“Yeah, last July.”

“Second, someone you really like and want to get along with is sent to make the request.”

“Barbara, my banker. She told me she was devastated because she had to step down as treasurer and was desperate to find a replacement who could write a financial report.”

“Gotcha! You didn't have a chance.” Maggie laughed and downshifted her red VW Beetle as she turned into the long drive that led to the Warner Point Conference Center. “Come on, Lee! Serving on committees is one of the prices we pay for being Americans. I try to think of it selfishly.”

“Selfishly? What do you get out of serving on the WinterFest committee? I'm in business in this town. A community promotion is supposed to help TenHuis Chocolade make money. But what does a teacher get out of it?”

“WinterFest is an extra opportunity for my students to strut their stuff. Besides, I can use the work I do now to blackmail other people into helping with my speech and drama festival in April. I use this committee to get what I want. And I want a lot.”

Maggie pulled the Beetle into a parking place in front of the conference center's main entrance. I picked up my briefcase and the box of chocolates I'd brought, then popped the buckle of my seat belt. “Ah, Maggie,” I said, “you do want a lot, but you mainly want it for your kids.”

“That's part of it, Lee. We have talented kids at Warner Pier High School, and also kids who can use these activities to improve their personalities and their lives, or just to have fun. But if the kids do well, I do well. My professional reputation is enhanced.”

We both got out of the VW, and we looked at each other over the top of the car. “Now come on, Lee,” Maggie said. “TenHuis Chocolade isn't going to go down the tube if the WinterFest flops. So what's your real, true motivation, Ms. Cynical?”

“I guess it's more fun to live in a community where things are happening, so I have to help make 'em happen. Plus, I'm a big girl. I could have told Barbara no. I just like to gripe about it.”

“And now that we've established our self-centered credentials . . .”

“Ta-da! It's time for the planning committee for the Warner Pier Winter Arts Festival! Changing the world! One meeting at a time!”

Maggie began to whistle the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, and I joined in. We did a high five as we fell into step at the front of the Volkswagen, and we kept whistling as we marched through the slushy parking lot and up the steps of the conference center.

The center had begun life as the lavish summer home of famed defense attorney Clementine Ripley. After she died it wound up as the property of Warner Pier, the prettiest resort town on Lake Michigan. Remodeled to contain a restaurant, banquet and party facilities, meeting rooms, and offices, the collection of limestone buildings was now used year-round. And one of its uses was housing an office and meeting room for the Warner Pier Winter Arts Festival.

Maggie is speech and drama teacher at Warner Pier High School, and I'm business manager for TenHuis Chocolade, which according to the sign in our window produces and sells “Handmade Chocolates in the Dutch Tradition.” Maggie and I make an ill-matched pair physically, since I'm a shade under six feet tall, and I inherited light blond hair from the TenHuis side of my family, and Maggie is a shade over five feet and has dark hair and eyes. But we are both emotionally committed to Warner Pier, which we regard as the best of the string of quaint resort towns along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

Warner Pier's business community for several years had sponsored a winter trade and tourist promotion. A couple of years earlier, it had been the “Teddy Bear Getaway” in February. This year we were trying a new time frame—Christmas vacation—and our logo featured a snowman.

As we reached the door of the conference center, we each gave a salute to one of the festival mascots, a giant snowman. The WinterFest had financed two seven-foot snowmen, similar to athletic team mascots. Each of them could be worn as a costume so that king-sized snowmen could add atmosphere at each of the cultural events of the festival. When they weren't being worn, one snowman was propped up on Warner Pier's main drag, Peach Street, and the other guarded the entrance of the conference center.

Maggie and I kept up the “Mickey Mouse” racket as we came in the building and waved to Jason Foster, who was doing his manager act in the restaurant to the left of the entrance. Then we marched down a long hall to the office of the Winter Arts Festival—WinterFest for short.

Our levity didn't seem to please the festival's immediate past chair, Mozelle French. As we entered she looked at us sharply over the top of her reading glasses. My private nickname for Mozelle is “Civic Virtue.” She takes life a bit too seriously, a trait I find annoying. So, just to annoy her further, I quit whistling and started singing, still to the tune of the theme song of the children's TV show.

“W-I-N! T-E-R! F-E-S! Ti! Val!”

Maggie started singing, too. “WinterFest! WinterFest! Together let us hold i-cic-les high! High! High! High!” Then we whistled the chorus again, ending by banging down our paperwork. The office was furnished with castoffs, so my briefcase and Maggie's file folder were not going to scar the rickety table. I put the box of chocolates down more gently.

“I'm glad to see that you two are enjoying this project,” Mozelle said. She didn't mean that. I could tell by her too-virtuous smile.

Mozelle didn't annoy me because she was too good. She annoyed me because she acted too good. According to the local grapevine, Mozelle had grown up in Warner Pier and in her youth had studied art. She still produced anemic watercolors. But twenty-five or thirty years earlier, she had married a dentist and turned into a professional volunteer. Today she was a childless widow and a veteran worker for the Winter Arts Festival, the Autumn Harvest Carnival, the Summer River Gala, and the Spring Home Tour, not to mention the Historical Society, the Study Club, and the Warner Pier Non-Denominational Fellowship Church. I don't know if she was really good at these things, or she just looked as if she ought to be. Her dark hair was always disciplined into a smooth chignon, her weight was right where the doctor recommended, and her makeup never failed to be perfect.

“If we can't enjoy the project, what's the point?” Maggie said. “And I'm happy to report that the play is shaping up very well. Rehearsals are at seven p.m. every evening this week.”

Mozelle gestured toward a meek-looking man already seated at the table. “I'm glad someone has some good news. George has lost the juror for the art show.” She made it sound as if George had laid the juror down in the wrong place and couldn't remember where he put him.

“That was careless of you, George,” I said, “especially since we'd already paid him. Now we'll have to try to get our money back.”

“The juror had already selected the show entries from the slides,” Mozelle said. “It will be almost impossible to find another qualified person who's willing to work from entries someone else selected.”

“What happened to the original juror?” I said.

“He's in the hospital with a broken leg,” George said. “It's a bad injury. He'll have to go to rehab. A trip from Washington, D.C., to Michigan is out of the question.” Then he spoke directly to Mozelle. “But I didn't finish my story. Dr. Jones has recommended a replacement, and I've already checked the fellow's résumé and talked to him. The new man says he can work from Dr. Jones' preliminary selections, and they'll split the fee. So the problem is already solved.”

“Thank goodness!” This news seemed to soothe Mozelle slightly. She sat down near the head of the table, looking a bit less prim, and officiously began to sort through her own papers.

George Jenkins runs a successful art gallery on Peach Street. Like Mozelle, he's active in a lot of community organizations; I know he served on the board of the Holland women's shelter, and he has chaired numerous art shows. George is close to seventy, I'd guess. He always wears classic sweaters and tweed jackets, and his thick white hair is modishly cut. I towered over him, but I towered over nearly everybody on the committee.

Maggie and I shed our winter jackets and sat down at the meeting table. George winked at us, and we both smiled back. All three of us knew what Mozelle's real problem was.

Her problem was that she was immediate past chair, not chair. Mozelle likes to run things. She'd been chair of the WinterFest the year before, and she'd expected to be chair again. But the Warner Pier Foundation—parent organization for the WinterFest—had picked a different person to head the committee. Mozelle hadn't yet recovered from the shock. Even a tactful request from the new chair, asking Mozelle to be the official WinterFest spokesman, hadn't changed her attitude. She acted as if being interviewed on television was an imposition, and she declared herself annoyed by calls from the
Chicago Tribune
and
Detroit Free Press
.

Mozelle could have declined gracefully and left the committee—as past chair she was ex officio anyway—but she seemed to think we'd go astray without her moral guidance.

Besides, the committee did need Mozelle as a spokesman. Our public relations chair, Mary Samson, was terrific with news releases and phone calls, but she was shy. She was not good on television or radio, and she knew it. Mary was happy to do the grunt work and let Mozelle handle the public appearances.

Mary was the next person to arrive. Mary was another Warner Pier native who'd been away and come back. Local gossip was that she couldn't find a job in her chosen field of communications, so she was squatting in the house she'd inherited from her parents until something turned up. Mary always looked as if she'd cut her dark brown hair with garden shears, and that day her sweatshirt seemed to have spaghetti sauce down the front. We all spoke to her, but the greeting she gave back was inaudible.

Then she handed out a sheet headed “Festival Talking Points.” It was clear, concise, neat, complete, easy-to-read—everything public relations material should be.

“This is great, Mary,” I said.

Mary ducked her head and mumbled. The contrast between her shy, dithery persona and her polished product was astounding.

Amos Hart, who was in charge of the musical aspects of the Artsfest, was the next arrival. He wore a hat with furry earflaps, a long overcoat, and boots that laced. As he shed the layers, his standard indoor attire came into view; Amos was one of the few men in Warner Pier who wore ties, and he was the only one who wore bow ties. Today he had on a red one, contrasting with a white shirt and black suit.

“Hello, all,” Amos said. “Lee, we could still use another alto.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I couldn't learn even ‘Rockabye, Baby' in two weeks.”

Ever since Amos found out that my alleged talent was singing—back when I was on the Texas beauty pageant circuit—he'd been after me to join one of his choirs. A retired professor of music, he directed two choruses: the Warner Pier WinterFest Chorale and the choir of Warner Pier Non-Denominational Fellowship Church. I didn't have the classical training he needed for the chorale, and I wasn't comfortable with the philosophy of the church, so I had declined. He was good-natured about my refusals, but he kept asking.

Amos was what my college friends and I used to call a “public pray-er.” Although he wasn't ordained, he seemed to be down at that church more often than its minister. He and Mozelle held the church together. Or did they just think they did?

As the group gathered, most of us visited the coffeepot in the corner of the room, and I passed the box of chocolates around. It held a variety of bonbons and truffles I'd collected from the discard tray at the chocolate shop. This didn't mean they weren't good—everything TenHuis Chocolade makes is delicious. No, it meant the Lemon Canache (“Tangy lemon interior with a dark chocolate coating”) had been decorated with a flower, instead of two dark chocolate stripes and one yellow dot. Or that the Baileys Irish Cream bonbon (“Dark chocolate with a classic cream liqueur interior”) was trimmed with milk chocolate, instead of a white chocolate. So we couldn't sell them, but all the creamy interiors and coatings would be delicious.

I had not brought any of the special WinterFest items my aunt Nettie, the owner of TenHuis Chocolade, was planning. She had to special order the molds with the WinterFest snowman logo, and they weren't due in for another twenty-four hours. I assured everyone that the snowmen would debut at the arts show opening Wednesday night.

Johnny Owens, who represented the Warner Pier Artists Association, came into the meeting next. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt, and his hair was in a buzz cut. Johnny was a sculptor who worked with a welding torch and sheet metal, but he also drew. His humorous doodles—cartoons and caricatures—were worthy of being framed. He had designed our snowman logo.

Johnny was followed by my favorite committee member, the mayor's representative, Joe Woodyard. Joe is a part-time city attorney, a part-time craftsman specializing in restoring antique motorboats, and a full-time husband—to me. He sat down beside me, and I was happy to get a pat on the shoulder and some eye contact from him. We hadn't parted on the best of terms that morning, but I wasn't mad any longer, and I hoped he wasn't either. I reached under the table and stroked his knee. Joe's a few inches taller than I am and has dark hair and blue eyes. I think he's the best-looking man in West Michigan, but I'm prejudiced. Around Warner Pier he's still known as the guy who was state high school debate champ and state wrestling champ the same year.