The Chocolate Moose Motive: A Chocoholic Mystery (16 page)

“Can I help you?”

I jumped all over and whirled around when I heard the voice behind me, but it was only one of the yellow-shirted counselors. He looked to be about twenty, a big ugly guy with a crew cut and muscles. I toyed with the idea of telling him the whole story. Then I toyed with making up a lie—“I had a fight with my boyfriend, and he’s driven off and left me.”

I finally went with an abbreviated version of the truth. I told him I believed someone had been stalking me through the preserve. I had hoped to get a look at him, I said. Now I thought he had cut through the woods, gotten into his car, and driven off before I could see who it was.

“You probably think I’m one of those women who belittles—I mean, believes! I sound like one of those women who has the idea men are after her all the time,” I said. “I don’t
think
I am.”

He smiled. “Is your car here?”

“No. I was visiting friends whose property adjoins the preserve, and I entered from the south side. My car’s over there.”

“Would a ride back help?”

I sighed with relief. “It would be a lifesaver. Of course, your only alternative is allowing a strange and possibly deranged woman to join the campers on their nature walk. I do not want to go back the whole way alone.”

“Let me tell the other counselors where I’m going.”

My new pal’s name was Dick. I held on to my club as he gave me a lift back to the Reagans’ drive in the camp’s van. I told him to come by TenHuis Chocolade for a free box of chocolates. We parted happily.

I said good-bye to the Reagans, and I almost left without telling them about the disaster that had happened to the tracks. I decided I had to, however. If someone was still prowling around their property, they had a right to know.

Rosy replied by showing me a little plaque outside their front door. THESE PREMISES GUARDED BY SMITH&WESSON.

“I’ll remember that,” I said. “If I have to come back, I’ll call first.” He chortled happily. He certainly didn’t seem nervous about the prowler. That was interesting. After all, there had been a murder practically next door.

I went back to Rosy’s workshop to make sure I’d replaced his tools properly. As I was putting the rake in the corner, I felt something in my pocket. It was my notebook.

Aha! At least I had a sketch of the mysterious footprints. It showed the pattern on the sole of the prowler’s shoe, and it was marked with the dimensions of the tracks.

“At least it’s something,” I said aloud.

I drove back to Warner Pier and went straight to the police department. At this point it was nearly five o’clock, but obviously Hogan, with a suspicious death to investigate, wouldn’t be taking off early—or maybe at all. I planned to wait until he could see me so I could tell him about the big chase in the nature preserve.

But Hogan, his one-woman office staff said, was out and hadn’t indicated when he’d be back.

“I hope he’s eating dinner,” she said. “He never stopped for lunch. Of course, you’re welcome to wait. But I don’t see any point in it. I’ll page him and tell him you came by.”

Finding Hogan and telling him about the chase was obviously a dim hope. I went to my office and wrote an account of the chase and the damage to the footprints and the casts I’d made, as well as the damage to my rib cage and the twigs in my hair. I printed it out and gave it to Aunt Nettie. I told her to pin it to Hogan’s pillow or put it in his breakfast cereal so he could look at it at his convenience.

Then I went home, made a gin and tonic for me, and opened a beer for Joe—just one each. He didn’t know it yet, but he was taking me out for dinner even if it was just pizza at the Dock Street.

He didn’t object to my plan, and he listened while I described my afternoon. He didn’t even tell me I’d been stupid to chase the guy into the forest preserve. I’d figured that out for myself. He did make a couple of remarks about Hogan’s encouraging me to go out there.

“That was police business,” he said. “If Hogan thought it should be done, he should have gone out there himself.”

“He couldn’t, Joe. He and the sheriff are already at odds, and the Reagans’ house is way outside Hogan’s jurisdiction.”

Joe gave a derisive laugh. “Hogan knows enough people in the state police to get things done. He shouldn’t have put you in danger.”

“Maybe the whole thing was my imagination.”

“Breaking up the casts and destroying the original footprints? And knocking you into a bush? It’s hard to say that was your imagination.”

“I have a feeling Sheriff Ramsey could say it was. Or he’d say I lied.” I finished my drink and stood up. “Let’s go eat.”

We were just opening the door when the phone rang. It was Hogan.

“Okay,” he said. “Who did you tell before you went out there to cast those footprints?”

I stood there feeling like an idiot.

Of course. Someone had to know I was interested in the footprints, or that person wouldn’t have gone out to the Reagans’ place to destroy them. I should have realized that.

“Duh! I can’t believe I didn’t think about that.”

“Think about it now. Did you tell Nettie? Sissy? Joe?”

“No. I didn’t tell any of them. I didn’t tell a soul.”

“Nettie already said you didn’t tell her, but you must have told someone.”

“No. After you gave me the casting material, I ran by the office and got an old mixing bowl, a plastic spoon, and some bottled water. I didn’t tell anybody why I needed it. I just told Aunt Nettie I was going to take the rest of the afternoon off. I made sure Sissy had work to do, but I didn’t tell her where I was going. I just went.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“No.”

“Text anyone?”

“No. I just drove out there.” I gasped. “Wait a minute! How about the Reagans? They knew what I was doing.”

“We’ll have to ask them if they told anyone.”

“They mainly seemed to be concerned with watching
Jeopardy!
If either of them went anywhere, they didn’t take the pickup that was sitting there. Wait another minute! Ace Smith! He had just walked off when you came out to talk to me. Could he have overheard us?”

“Colonel Ace Smith did not go out there.” Hogan chuckled. “He was tied up at my office all afternoon, and he has the high blood pressure to prove it.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “I guess people around here are just not as respectful of the colonel as he might wish.”

“We’re as respectful as he deserves. I’m a little tired of being ordered around as if I’m a PFC.”

Hogan asked me a few more questions designed to figure out who might have known I was going to the Reagans’ to look at footprints. Had I stopped for gasoline? Had I asked directions? Had I seen anyone I knew as I drove out there? The answer to each of the questions was no.

But his comments, particularly about Colonel Smith, had aroused my curiosity. After Joe and I got back from dinner, I went to the computer in the corner of the bedroom, went online, and prepared to search for Colonel Ace Smith. And while I was at it, I decided I might as well take a look at the history of Nosy and Rosy Reagan. In fact, I decided to start with them. After all, it wasn’t going to be hard to track down a man named Roosevelt Reagan who had lived in Detroit.

Sure enough, the Web page of a Detroit suburban weekly popped up immediately, with a story saluting Rosy’s retirement.

Rosy, I learned, had worked for General Motors in various Michigan manufacturing plants for forty years. He had held a minor volunteer position in his UAW local. Hmmm. He had been outdoor chairman of a Scout troop. Double hmmm. Could Rosy have followed me through the woods?

Rosy’s wife, the article concluded, had worked for forty-five years as a 9-1-1 operator in suburban Detroit. Triple hmmm.

Rosy had retired five years earlier, and he had told the
newspaper reporter he planned to move. He was quoted: “My wife and I want to get away from the city and live closer to nature.” They’d certainly accomplished that. I read a few more articles about Nosy and Rosy, but that first one had the most information. Apparently their local rag hadn’t done an article on Nosy when she retired.

The union activities and the police department connection were the only interesting things about Nosy and Rosy. I turned to Colonel Ace Smith.

At first I couldn’t remember Ace’s real first name. I finally took the simple expedient of looking in the Warner Pier phone book, and there was Rupert C. Smith III. It was that “III” that jogged my memory of Buzz being Somebody Smith IV.

I guess the Smith family might have skipped a generation of Ruperts. But apparently they hadn’t. When I Googled him, Colonel Rupert C. Smith III showed up with a couple of thousand entries.

I looked at the pages of listings and marveled. Two thousand and eighteen listings? Wow! Maybe the guy didn’t just think he was important. Maybe he really was.

Then I looked at the entry at the top of the list, thankful that Google ranks items in the order of popularity, and I gasped.

“Oh my gosh!” I yelled out. “Joe! Ace Smith was the Dobermann-Smith executive who was grilled by Congress two years ago!”

Joe called from the living room. “I knew that. I thought you did, too.”

“No. I remember that the guy on the hot seat in the big scandal was a retired Colonel Smith, but I hadn’t connected it with the Warner Pier Colonel Smith.”

“Common last name.”

Obviously Joe wasn’t interested. But I was. I read on, reviewing what I knew about Colonel Smith and his problems with Congress.

Ace had been involved in one of those messy situations that may never be resolved. They hinge on differing views of governmental responsibilities and just what’s a suitable—or legal—activity, in this case for a defense contractor.

Colonel Ace Smith had made it pretty clear where he stood on the question. He didn’t give a darn what Congress said. He was going to do what was best for the country—not what he
thought
was best for the country. He was doing what
was
best for the country. Because what Colonel Ace Smith thought was right.

“He should have been court-martialed,” I told myself.

“If he had still been in the army, he would have been,” Joe said. I jumped. I hadn’t heard him come into the room.

“Since he was retired from the army by then and was a partner in a company under contract to the army, it was harder to charge him,” he said.

“Seems as if they could have gotten him for something.”

“Not without taking down a couple of congressmen at the same time. I guess the congressmen had enough clout to keep that from happening.”

“It was still a crime.”

“It’s a constitutional question,” Joe said. “I agree with you. But I wouldn’t want to be the one who had to argue it before the Supremes.”

I read on, going over the testimony. It sounded as if Dobermann-Smith had set up a government of its own in a foreign country where the United States had a strong political and military presence. They’d been accused of doing everything from torture to theft to killing innocent people. The
country itself was so disorganized that its citizens couldn’t bring the Dobermann-Smith employees to justice. And because of the protection of a few powerful congressmen, the U.S. government hadn’t been able to bring them to heel either.

This whole thing was tickling my memory—something about Buzz.

I quickly went to the
Warner Pier Gazette
Web page and looked up the stories about Buzz’s death. There was a sidebar, a formal obituary. It hit the highlights of Buzz’s life. It wasn’t too long, of course. Buzz had been only twenty-four; he hadn’t done much.

But what he had done was rather interesting. He had graduated from Midwest Military College. Then he had worked for the Dobermann-Smith Corporation for two years in a troubled eastern European country—the same one his dad had been quizzed about.

Very interesting.

After he had resigned from Dobermann-Smith Corporation, Buzz had come to Warner Pier and married Forsythia Hill. The next year she gave birth to John Smith. If Buzz had held another job, it wasn’t mentioned.

Suddenly I wanted to know more about Buzz Smith. I wondered if Sissy would be willing to talk about him.

Chapter 16

Yes, Sissy would be the best source for information about Buzz.

But was I brassy enough to quiz a widow about the character and activities of her murdered husband?

I considered that question. Actually, I probably was brassy enough for the job, I decided. But would it be wise?

I considered that question, too. No, it wouldn’t, I also decided. Sissy might want to talk about Buzz of her own free will, but we weren’t close enough that she would select me as a confidante.

I could talk to Wildflower. She had lived in the same household with Buzz. But somehow that smacked of going behind Sissy’s back. I didn’t like that idea either.

I chewed the idea over most of the night and clear through breakfast. Finally, shortly after nine the next morning, I walked into Sissy’s office, closed the door behind me, sat down, and put four extra chocolate animals—two moose and two squirrels—on her desk.

“What’s that?” Sissy said.