Chapter 12

I didn’t give Dolly’s concerns a lot of thought. Frankly, if I worried about anybody, it was Bunny. We’d heard nothing more from Hogan, but as far as I could see Bunny was still in danger of arrest.

Again I asked Chayslee to stay at our house that night. She declined. Like Dolly, she said she was staying in her apartment. But in her case a friend was spending the night with her. “We’ll set a trap of some sort,” she said. “Maybe pots and pans that will fall. And we’ll call the cops before we answer the door, no matter who’s outside.”

Bunny stuck to her plan to stay in the room she rented, so we didn’t hear anything more from her either.

It started as an uneventful evening. Joe and I went out for dinner, and I realized that I had memorized the entire menu of the Sidewalk Café. Somehow that made the food seem less appealing. Lindy came over to our table to tell us she’d talked to Hogan, telling him about Abigail Birdsong meeting someone outside the restaurant and about her writing the will as she drank after-dinner coffee. Hogan hadn’t commented. We didn’t either. The dinner hour was not exciting.

But as the meal went on, I mentioned to Joe that no one—not Dolly, not Bunny, not Chayslee—was interested in either of our guest rooms. I detailed their excuses.

“Personally, I’m just as happy not having a slumber party,” Joe said. “But Dolly’s excuses are a little worrying.”

“That she’s quarreled with a friend? Why does that worry you?”

“Dolly never struck me as having a whole lot of social life, so I hate to see her quarrel with any of her friends. But despite her being such a homebody, everybody seems to like her. It’s kind of odd, having few friends and also being well liked.”

“I think you’re mistaken, Joe. Dolly has lots of friends. I don’t think she ever lacks for someone to go out to dinner or see a movie with.”

“I’m sure that’s right. I guess I’m being a male chauvinist. I just don’t see Dolly as—well, part of a couple. If a guy from the office wanted me to fix him up with a date, I wouldn’t suggest Dolly.”

I dropped my eyes to my vegetable plate, and I pictured Dolly: more than six feet tall, probably weighing more than two hundred pounds, crazy red hair, and—yes, let’s admit it—plain of face.

But she was a wonderful person. I felt sad. Did Dolly miss having a man in her life? Was Dolly lonely? She didn’t deserve to be.

Then I looked up at Joe. He was giving a rueful smile.

“Men are shallow,” he said.

His remark exactly echoed what I’d been thinking. We both smiled. “So are women,” I said.

I felt a pang of guilt, but I felt happy that I had Joe. As far as looks go, I admitted to myself that I first noticed him because of those fabulous shoulders and secondly because of his handsome puss.

Yes, I had been shallow, too. But I was only sixteen the first time I met Joe. He’d been lifeguard at Warner Pier Beach in those days, and I’d been a summer counter girl for my aunt and uncle’s shop. On my days off I hung around the lifeguard’s station, feeling skinny and unattractive. Joe never seemed to notice me, and I certainly didn’t waste time pining over him. It was more than ten years later when things sparked between us. And the sparks led me to discover he had other qualities, such as kindness and intelligence. Stuff that is a lot more important than shoulders or good looks.

This exchange gave me a nice reminiscence that included gratitude to my mother. She’d been the one who insisted that I join the “charm school” class that had ended several years later with me in a Miss Texas competition. Even an awkward, six-foot-tall blonde with invisible eyelashes can learn to look good and can develop confidence with the right kind of encouragement.

But it made me worry about Dolly again. I decided I should talk to her. Extend the conversation we’d had earlier.

Joe and I had two cars that night, so when we left the restaurant I told him that if he’d go on, I’d drop by Dolly’s place before I drove myself home.

“Don’t be too long,” he said. And he waggled his eyebrows and gave me a kiss. Yes, I’m glad I’ve got him.

The Sidewalk Café is just half a block from TenHuis Chocolade, and Dolly lives over TenHuis. So I walked to her apartment.

It was another cold, crisp night. I was dressed in full woolies: long johns, lined boots, blue jeans, flannel shirt, ski jacket, knitted cap. Since I was heavily laden with clothes, walking was sort of fun. I hummed a bit as I rounded the corner and headed toward Dolly’s front door.

And ahead, on the sidewalk outside her apartment, I saw a kneeling figure.

I was so startled that I stopped dead, staring, instead of running forward as I should have. Surely my eyes were deceiving me. There couldn’t be anything wrong.

Then something moved. An angular something like an arm went up. Another arm flopped out onto the sidewalk.

And I realized the first arm ended in a hand, and the hand was holding a stick of some sort.

The huddled shape was made up of two people. One was lying on the sidewalk, and the other was about to hit him.

I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Instantly one of the figures on the sidewalk jumped to its feet. I screamed again. The figure turned and began running toward me.

Then I let out a real shriek, the kind that wakes the dead. I whirled and began running back the way I’d come.

I suppose I was going as fast as I could. Or at least as fast as I could go on an icy sidewalk. Which was only one problem with any kind of a chase scene in downtown Warner Pier on a February evening.

It was not only slippery, it was also dark, and it was lonely.

The stores were closed. The streetlights were dim. And in a summer resort like Warner Pier—in wintertime—I could yell for help like a train whistle, and the likelihood of being heard was fifty-fifty. There just might not be anybody around to listen.

I could feel the person chasing me, and he was closing in.

I kept running, slipping, and sliding, and finally—right across the steet from the Downtown Drug Store—I hit a patch of ice that did me in. I went flying across the sidewalk like an Olympic figure skater in slow motion. I hit a light pole, grabbed it with one hand, and swung around. Then I slowly sank to the sidewalk, landing on my keister. That’s when the miracle happened.

I finally remembered my key chain. I pulled it from the side pocket of my purse and hit the little alarm that’s attached to it.

Woo-ah, woo-ah, woo-ah!

The person chasing me did a pirouette and took off in the opposite direction.

I lifted myself to my feet, with both me and the alarm still shrieking. Then I walked—not ran—back toward Dolly’s apartment. When I reached the figure lying on the sidewalk, I dropped to my knees and looked at the victim. There was enough light to see the color of the person’s hair.

Bright red. It was Dolly.

She was breathing, but her breathing was shallow.

What followed was a jumble. I called 9-1-1. I called Joe. I pulled off my jacket and tried to use it to shield Dolly’s head from the ice-cold sidewalk. Joe came back. Two patrol cars came. The local ambulance came. They gave my jacket back. Chayslee looked out her window, then she and her friend Mary came down the stairs. Andrew Hartley came down from his apartment. Hogan and Aunt Nettie showed up. There was a huge commotion.

I told Hogan I didn’t see the attacker well enough to know if it was a man, a woman, or an older teenager. The weapon he/she held might have been a pipe or a stick or a board.

“All I can remember is some big black and white checks,” I said. “It could have been the trim on a jacket. I don’t think it was a cap.”

I was no help at all.

Dolly was stirring a little by the time the local ambulance crew got there. Within five minutes, they had her on the way to the hospital in Holland. Pretty good for a volunteer team.

Aunt Nettie and I were standing on the sidewalk in front of TenHuis, clinging to each other, with Joe hugging both of us.

And Hogan came over. “Lee, Nettie, maybe you two had better look your shop over. Can you ladies do that?”

I realized I was crying. I sniffed, blew my nose, and tried to buck up.

“Sure we can do it,” I said.

“Yes, Hogan,” Aunt Nettie said. “We’ll check things right now.”

“Good. Then could you check Dolly’s apartment? I’ve sent a detective up there, but maybe you two could see if there’s anything odd, out of place.”

I tried to sound calm. “Of course, Hogan.”

Aunt Nettie brought out her keys and unlocked the front door to the shop. She, Joe, and I went in.

“What on earth could have happened?” she asked.

Neither Joe nor I answered, and she spoke again. “This place looks normal.”

“I don’t understand any of this!” I said.

Aunt Nettie’s first observation seemed to be correct. The shop looked to be untouched. Everything was locked, including the door into the Clown Building, my desk, and other things that would normally be closed up. The break room looked no messier than usual. Despite the mopping that went on at closing time every day, there were muddy footprints near the back door. As usual the three of us used the street door to Dolly’s apartment to troop upstairs for a check there. The detective who met us said the front door to the apartment had been standing open, as if Dolly had fled outside. He warned us that we shouldn’t touch anything if we could avoid it.

As we reached the top of the steep stairs, I realized it had been at least a year since I had been up them. That seemed awful, somehow. Dolly relaxed, cooked, watched television, and slept right over my head.

I considered her a friend. Yet I rarely saw her except at work. We didn’t even go to lunch often.

When I expressed my feelings to Joe, he smiled. “Maybe eight hours a day is enough,” he said. “There’s no reason to live in the pocket of someone you work with.”

Dolly’s apartment was as neat as the gorgeous truffles and bonbons she made. She is efficient to the core, and TenHuis takes full advantage of that trait.

The apartment was very ordinary. If you come up the front stairs, you pass through a glass door. This enters onto a small foyer, located in the center of the building. The foyer opens into the living-dining room.

The apartment has one unusual feature. As Dolly had pointed out earlier, the living room is at the back, overlooking the alley, and the bedroom in the front.

The living room is separated from the kitchen only by what HGTV calls a “peninsula,” an island attached to the wall or to a counter at one end. Dolly’s had stools and could be used for a breakfast bar.

Actually I thought that Dolly used it for extra cooking space. Her canisters were stored at one end of it, for example, and so was a large electric mixer.

If you turned right from the foyer, a short hallway led to the bathroom and bedroom. The door to the back stairway, the one where Abigail had apparently been killed, opened off that foyer, too. Except that it rarely opened. That door was always locked, as nearly as I could tell.

Nothing was obviously out of place in Dolly’s apartment; every sofa cushion, throw rug, crystal vase, and book seemed to nestle into its proper spot. The bathroom had fresh hand towels, the rows of flowers printed on the bedspread marched exactly down the edge of the bed, and the closet door was closed. The only unusual thing I noticed was a copy of Sports Illustrated. I’d never heard Dolly talk about sports, but it was neatly lined up on the coffee table.

I almost cried when I saw the place. Dolly was such a big woman—tall and hefty and with a loud voice. Yet her apartment looked as if the daintiest woman in the world lived there. There were flowers on the couch upholstery, the color scheme was all in pastels, and her dishes were a beautiful shade of rose. Hand-painted china cups were displayed on a whatnot shelf. She had a nice display of crystal pieces.

It was as if a little girl ballerina lived there. Maybe one did—the ultrafeminine little girl inside the big girl who was Dolly.

“I don’t see anything out of order,” I said. Joe nodded in agreement, but Aunt Nettie spoke. “Do you smell something?”

Joe and I answered in unison. “Coffee!”

We all three turned to the kitchen. It was as neat and clean as the rest of the place. But an expensive electric Chemex coffeemaker sat on the counter. Its carafe was almost full of coffee.

“Sure smells better than what we have in the break room,” I said.

“It’s an eight-cup pot,” Aunt Nettie said. She opened the cupboard. “No coffee here.”

“You know Dolly and her saving ways,” I said. “She probably didn’t make a big pot of coffee every day. Maybe she kept her coffee in the freezer.”

Sure enough, we found both decaf and regular coffee beans in the freezer compartment of Dolly’s refrigerator. In a cupboard we found a coffee grinder.

“Wow!” Joe said. “You should have her in charge of the break room.”

“She’s too valuable making chocolate,” Aunt Nettie said.

“Clean hand towels and a big pot of coffee,” I said. “So we know she was expecting a guest.”

Joe and Aunt Nettie nodded in agreement. “I’d say he or she had arrived,” Joe said. “The lab techs will check for any evidence, but it looks as if she let her attacker in.”

“Who could it have been?” Aunt Nettie asked. She unplugged the Chemex pot.

“Could it have been a male friend?” I asked. I walked to the coffee table and picked up the Sports Illustrated. “Or am I being sexist?” Neither Joe nor Aunt Nettie replied.

Who could have been coming by Dolly’s apartment? Tears welled in my eyes. How could I have worked with Dolly every day, how could I have regarded her so highly, and not known who her friends were? The three of us seemed to sink into sadness.

The detective cleared his throat, and it roused us.

“Come on,” Joe said. “Let’s head for the hospital.”

I made one stop before we left, checking TenHuis records for the name and address of Dolly’s next of kin. Instead of her mom, it was a sister in Clinton, Michigan.

When I read the name, I spoke. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What?” Aunt Nettie asked.

“Dolly’s sister’s name is Molly,” I said. “She must be married. Her last name is Jefferson. But until she took her vows, it was the Jolly sisters, Molly and Dolly.”

“No doubt there’s a brother named Wally and an auntie named Polly,” Joe said. “Let’s head for Holland.”

The three of us climbed into Joe’s truck, and he aimed it toward Holland and the hospital’s emergency room.

Hogan and a state police detective were in the waiting area. They said they knew nothing about Dolly yet. She had still been unconscious when she arrived at the hospital.

Hogan said the police had found a short piece of pipe lying in the gutter. This seemed likely as a weapon. But it was the type of item found in a Dumpster. Dolly’s attacker could have picked it up anyplace. Not much of a clue as to where it came from.

I settled down for a wait, telling Aunt Nettie she should go home.

“You, too, Joe,” I said. “I’ll stay tonight. Should I call Dolly’s sister?”

“I’ll handle that,” Hogan said. “Make it official.” I gave him the number.

Nobody else moved. I’d given my orders, and they got the usual reaction. Everybody ignored them. So we all sat there. Nobody had much to say. We were all sitting an hour later when I felt the cold blast of air that means someone has entered the emergency room’s waiting area. When I looked up I saw Lindy.

“Hey!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re not the only ones worried about Dolly,” she said. “How’s she doing?”

Hogan had the latest report, so we all looked at him. “Still unconscious,” he said. “No worse. What have you got there?”

I noticed then that Lindy was holding a paper sack. She shook it triumphantly.

“Yahoo!” she said. “I spent two hours going through the Dumpster at the Sidewalk Café, and I think I found the sheet of paper that Abigail Birdsong threw out after she wrote her will.”