The Chocolate Snowman Murders

I could feel my jaw drop clear to my breastbone, and everyone else at the table was gaping just as widely. To Mozelle we must have looked like a stringer of Lake Michigan whitefish flopping in the bottom of a boat.

It wasn’t the news that her page had been cut out of the catalog that was making me gape. After all, I knew that. The surprise was Mozelle herself. I had had no idea that she could lose her cool in public like that, and I don’t think the rest of the committee did either.

Mozelle hadn’t found her cool either. She kept talking, and her voice was strident. “I find it hard to believe that anyone would stoop so low! I know everyone on this committee hates me, but I never thought anyone would actually do me deliberate harm.”

Mozelle brandished an art show catalog as if it were a revolutionary pamphlet. “I’m talking about this! Your precious husband is in it! Johnny is in it! Every other entry in the show is in it. But my page has been sliced out!”

She tossed the booklet down on the table, where it knocked over a small container of mayonnaise. Then she folded her arms and glared at us all in an attitude that combined defiance and fury.

Ramona picked up the catalog and examined it. “You’re right, Mozelle. The page has been deliberately sliced out of this one. But surely they’re not all like that.”

“They are! I’ve checked. All the ones on the table as you go into the show are like that. And all the ones in the storage room. Every single one!”

“It would be expensive.” I looked through my papers, searching for the invoice from the printer. “I know the original cost was several thousand dollars. Mozelle, do you think we could print an insert? If we put an extra sheet in each copy, it might not be as good as having the page in its proper place. But that would be better than having you and Marie Fung not in at all.”

Mozelle looked at me accusingly. “And just how did you know Marie Fung was on the back of the page?”

“Because Joe and I went through the show last night, and we picked up a catalog, and we noticed then that the page with you on one side and Ms. Fung on the other had been cut out of the dozen or so booklets there by the door. I was going to ask George about it today. I thought—well, it had been done so neatly I thought there might have been some reason for cutting the page out.”

“I’m sure he could. TenHuis Chocolade deals with this same printer—we think they do the best color work in our area, and they’re competitive on price. They keep our sales material in their computer, and when we need a thousand more brochures, we call, and they print them out. I’d have to check, of course, but I imagine they’d still have the whole art show catalog available. It shouldn’t be any trick to print out those two pages.”

I turned to Mozelle. “We might have to pay a premium to get it done by the weekend, but I think we can find the money.”

Mozelle didn’t look mollified. “If—if the printer still has the pages in his computer files.”

I tried to sound confident. “I still have one of the catalogs George and Mary handed out as samples. That page is still in it. If the printer doesn’t have the original files, the type could be reset from that. And I’m sure George still has the original slides used to scan the artwork.”

Mozelle deflated into a chair, but she was sitting up straight. She seemed calmer, more like her authoritative self. “It would be quite an expense.”

“It must be done!” George’s voice was firm. “Mozelle, we want this to be a respected art show, one artists try hard to get in. We can’t expect top artists to enter if they’re not treated properly. If a mistake is made, we have to fix it.”

A murmur of agreement went around the table. Jason, ever the restaurateur, jumped to his feet and offered to get Mozelle some lunch. Amos Hart patted her shoulder, though that didn’t seem to comfort Mozelle. Johnny Owens examined the catalog she’d tossed onto the table and muttered a few opinions about the ancestry of anybody who would do such a thing to an artist. Joe got up from the table and asked Jason if he could use the telephone. He received permission and left the room.

Mozelle seemed genuinely appreciative of everyone’s concern. “Thank you. All of you. I apologize for losing my temper.”

We all assured her that we understood her feelings, and the board quickly voted to fund the extra printing as a nonbudget item.

Joe was back. “I called them after George made it clear he knew of no reason for the page to be cut out of the catalog.”

I spoke before Joe could. “Of course! Ramona, this was vandalism. Or malicious mischief. It’s going to cost the committee quite a lot money to rectify the situation. It was a crime!”

“I’m sorry about that. But we can’t simply ignore it.” I’m sure I sounded miffed. I was the one who was going to have to find the money.

Joe did his lawyer thing at that point, clearing his throat in a way that made all eyes turn toward him. “We need to figure out who the heck cut that page out of the catalog, and why the heck they did it. And it’s not only because we can’t ignore vandalism. It’s a lot more important than that.”

He had everybody’s attention. “Several strange things have happened in the past few days, and they all seem to center on this committee.”

A mutter of objections broke out, but Joe spoke again and quelled the opposition. “Let’s face facts. First, Mendenhall, the juror for our art show, is killed. Of course, we all hoped it was nothing to do with us. We hoped he was killed because he was an obnoxious drunk who took up with the wrong drinking buddy. Or something.”

“Mary was the only member of the committee who admitted talking to Mendenhall. We can’t ignore that link.”

It was my turn to object. “But Mary said Mendenhall didn’t say anything intelligent. She thought he was just a crank caller. She hung up on him.”

“There’s got to be a connection, Lee. It’s too coincidental. First Mendenhall, then Mary. Then, after Mary was killed, someone lured you out here to Warner Point before daybreak and tried to brain you with a snow shovel.” He patted my hand. “God knows why. I sure don’t, and you don’t seem to know either.”

Then he turned back to the rest of the committee. “And now we have a case of vandalism. That’s not as serious as murder, true. But we can’t just assume that this committee is the target of a weird crime spree for no reason. There’s something that links all these things.”

Everyone at the table was staring at him as he went on. “The police will not be able to find the link unless each one of us gives them all the help we can. I think—and I believe Chief Jones agrees with me—that the whole series of events must key on Mendenhall. But Mendenhall appears”—he repeated the word—“appears to have been a complete stranger to Warner Pier and to everyone on the committee.”

He paused while that sank in. “If that’s not true, the detectives need to know it. If any of you knew Mendenhall before he came here, the police need to know. No matter how innocent your contact with him was.”

Ramona frowned. “Bob and I had run into him at art shows. He and Bob had a blowup once. We already told the police about that.”

“And I had a couple of classes with him at Waterford,” Johnny Owens said. “I told the cops about that, too.”

“That’s the kind of thing I mean,” Joe said. “If any of you ever had any connection with Mendenhall—or if any of you knows of someone who did—tell Hogan. No matter how minor it was.”

Joe spoke one more time, raising his voice over the noise. “I’d advise you to hang around until we see if Hogan wants to talk to each of us individually.”

George and Joe met Hogan at the front door and took him into the inner recesses of Warner Point to show him the defaced catalogs. The rest of us concluded the meeting. Nobody had much to say. After Joe’s speech, our actions were anticlimactic.

As soon as the meeting adjourned I got on Jason’s phone and called the printer. After I told him what had happened, he agreed to do a hurry-up job on an insert for the catalog.

I turned to Mozelle. “The printer still has the original pages in his computer. He says he’ll run off inserts tonight. We can pick them up tomorrow morning.”

“Forget it.” I was feeling uncomfortable. Her rant, including the accusation that “everyone on this committee hates me,” was a bit too close to the truth, at least the truth of how I felt about her. I wanted to change the subject. So I asked a question. “Mozelle, your bio said you went to Gerhard College?”

“It’s in Maryland. They had a top-notch art department, small but good. It was a girls’ school.” She shrugged. “They still had girls’ schools in my day.”

“It seems as if I’ve run into a mention of Gerhard College recently. But I can’t remember where.”

Amos Hart jumped into the conversation then with an abrupt question. “Lee, you were the only person to have any contact with Mendenhall. Did he say anything about knowing anybody in west Michigan?”

“He told me this was his first visit to Michigan. And he didn’t indicate he knew anybody. Of course, he had met Ramona and Bob, and he might have remembered Johnny, since he was a former student. But he didn’t mention having friends or acquaintances in the area.”

Amos put a proprietary hand on Mozelle’s shoulder. “I just hate for this sweet little lady to be bothered—and, yes, persecuted—over this mess when I know she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Sweet little lady? That wasn’t exactly the description I would have used to describe Mozelle. I bit my tongue.

But Mozelle didn’t bite hers. She shook Amos’ hand off, and she popped to her feet like a jack-in-the-box whose lid had just been lifted. “Amos,” she said, “let’s talk for a minute.”

I guess she thought they were out of earshot. She was wrong. I could hear their conversation plainly, even though I ducked my head and studied my financial report for all it was worth.

“I’m sorry, Amos. I’m afraid I value my independence. I enjoy your companionship, of course. But that’s all I’m interested in. If you want a more permanent relationship, I’m afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere. And in the future please do not refer to me as a ‘sweet little lady.’ ”

Frantically, I began to scribble on my report, trying to seem busy. I was afraid to get up; if my chair made a sound, Mozelle and Amos might figure out I’d overheard them. I didn’t look up when Mozelle came back inside the restaurant. She sat down beside me, her lips in a tight line. Amos did not follow her in.

I was still trying to look occupied, and now I remembered I’d meant to take another look at Mendenhall’s résumé. I dug through my folders until I found the copy that George Jenkins had passed around at the meeting when he told us about acquiring a new juror.

I looked the résumé over, trying to give the impression that it required all my concentration. I was curious about it, true, but my main intent was to distract Mozelle so that she wouldn’t know I’d overheard her as she gave Amos the push.

Still trying to look as if my mind were fully occupied with subjects that had nothing to do with Mozelle, I ran my finger down the résumé. It was the old-fashioned, detailed kind. It listed every show Mendenhall had jurored, every class he had taught, every award he had won. And I admit he had won a few. When I reached the final page—“Professional History”—one item caught my eye. My heart had just begun to pound when I heard Hogan’s voice.

He was apparently addressing the entire room. “Thanks for staying. I think that for now we can just ask general questions. Does anyone have any idea how the catalogs came to be damaged?”

We all began to gather up our belongings. I stuffed Mendenhall’s résumé back into my folder. “Hogan,” I said, “I need to talk to you a minute.”

Enlightened by Mozelle’s faux pas—talking to Amos without realizing I could hear every word she said—I led him clear across the room, to a spot next to the French doors that led to the terrace. Then I pulled out Mendenhall’s résumé.

“Look at this.” I pointed to the “Professional History” section. “Look where Mendenhall was teaching thirty years ago.”

“That’s where Mozelle studied art, Hogan! And he taught there as adjunct faculty for ten years. She must have known him.”