The Chocolate Cat Caper by JoAnna Carl

Author:JoAnna Carl [Carl, JoAnna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Women Sleuths
ISBN: 9780451205568
Google: vD1o36h_2VoC
Amazon: 0451205561
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2002-03-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Aunt Nettie beamed at me. “Lee, that’s a wonderful idea!”

But Duncan Ainsley jumped to his feet, looking horrified. “Lee! Mrs. TenHeist! What are y’all thinking of?”

Ainsley almost squeaked out the words, including the extra “t” he put at the end of Aunt Nettie’s name.

“Ask any lawyer!” he said. “The authorities should get a warrant.”

“What on earth for?” Aunt Nettie said.

“You can’t just allow the police into your home.”

“I’ve begged them to come twice in the last two days, thanks to our burglar,” she said. “A piece of chocolate from my business contained poison. I know it didn’t get poisoned at the shop, but the police don’t. So the authorities are going to have to search the shop sometime. Besides, if somebody’s put something poisonous in my house or my shop or my car, I want to know about it. I want the police to look in every nook and cranny. I want them to test every bottle on the flavoring shelf, check out every bar of chocolate in the storage room, look under every chocolate mold, behind every pot and in every pan.”

I was glad she saw it the same way I did. I knew that Aunt Nettie and I hadn’t poisoned the chocolates. I felt sure none of the hairnet ladies or the teenage counter girls had done it. And the police knew we’d had two break-ins—or one break-in and an attempted break-in. If they found evidence in the garbage can full of bird seed on the back porch at Aunt Nettie’s house or in the plastic bin of cherry filling in the shop’s storeroom or in a shoe box in my closet, good enough. I wanted them to have it.

But Ainsley was still arguing. “Ask your lawyer,” he said. “He’d be ready to cut his suspenders and go straight up!”

Aunt Nettie waved his objections away. “Don’t be silly. If our break-ins are related to a poisoning, we need to search the whole house anyway, just to make sure the burglar didn’t leave any surprises for Lee and me. If the state police are willing to do it for us—and to check out the shop at the same time—well, I hope it’s a complete waste of public funds, but I appreciate their doing it.”

Joe came out of the hall right then, and Ainsley appealed to him. “Joe, you’re a lawyer. Tell this nice lady she shouldn’t encourage a search of her premises.”

“I’m not a lawyer anymore,” Joe said. But he did react in a lawyerly fashion, I guess. At least he asked Aunt Nettie to explain her side before he expressed an opinion.

“Clem would have gone for the search warrant,” he said. “But I don’t think you need to insist on one.” He turned to look back toward the hall, and I saw VanDam standing there looking at us. “After all,” Joe said, “the police are fully aware that you’ve had a break-in at the house. It’s possible that something was planted. You need to know.”

“Exactly.” Aunt Nettie beamed.

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