The Chocolate Falcon Fraud Read Online Free Page B

her birdlike laugh. “Okay, Lee. Thanks. I accept.”
    I quickly wrote out a note giving her directions to our house and to TenHuis Chocolade, since she had made only a brief visit there four years earlier. Then I used my crutch to pull myself to my feet. “Besides, there are some funny things going on, and I’ll feel better if you aren’t alone up here.”
    Tess’ eyes grew big. “What do you mean?”
    â€œI’m not sure.” While we were walking toward the parkinglot, I listed the odd things that had happened. Jeff’s appearance and disappearance. Alicia’s report of strange phone calls. Jeff’s checking in to the motel, then never coming back to occupy his room.
    â€œIt’s not a law enforcement matter yet,” I said, “but it’s odd. I don’t want to misplace you, too.”
    â€œI certainly don’t want to get misplaced! But can I stop for lunch before I come out?”
    â€œOf course. We’re not going to start by starving you. I wish I had time to take you someplace nice. But I’ve got to get back to TenHuis Chocolade. If you’ll come by the shop, I’ll give you a key to the house.”
    Tess and I exchanged cell phone numbers, and I also gave her the numbers for the house and the shop. Then we waved and went our separate ways. I picked up my own lunch at a fast-food drive-through and ate a hamburger on the way out of Holland.
    What was I getting into? I’d started out to find Jeff, and I still didn’t know where he was. Instead I’d acquired a second stray Texan. I had only a vague idea of why the two of them had turned up in Michigan. Their arrivals apparently had something to do with the Tough Guys and Private Eyes Film Festival and the ultimate noir movie,
The Maltese Falcon.
But I didn’t understand what. Between bites of hamburger and slurps of Diet Coke, I began to make mental notes of questions I wanted answered.
    Then I told myself I had to postpone that. Instead I had to think about TenHuis Chocolade and our big expansion project. It wasn’t off to a very good start.
    TenHuis Chocolade had bought the building next door to us five months earlier. A shop specializing in clown paraphernalia and souvenirs had been there for several years. The ownerhad died—okay, he had been murdered, leaving the building in something of a mess, and his business affairs in an even greater mess. But his heirs had finally cleared everything up, and TenHuis Chocolade had bought the property, a two-story redbrick building from around 1900.
    It was typical of buildings in Warner Pier’s business district. Quaint but suffering from an awkward update about thirty years earlier. Like most downtown buildings in Warner Pier, it had an apartment upstairs. Joe and I had done a lightning renovation to get that ready to rent.
    I believe the word for the building was “ratty.” Not that it had rats, of course; we paid an exterminator to make sure it didn’t. But the downstairs of the building still looked as if it ought to.
    We’d hired an architect to combine our current building and the new one into one beautiful, practical, and unified structure. Of course, the resulting building had to meet the architectural standards of Warner Pier. In other words, it had to look quaint. Everything in our town was supposed to look as if it had been there for at least a century. That was decreed by a city ordinance.
    Our architect, Howard Moore, was from Holland and he had already worked on several Warner Pier buildings. So he should understand the city planning and zoning rules. I’d first met him through Joe, who had restored a 1947 Chris Craft for him several years earlier.
    I grabbed up a small box of chocolates, and Aunt Nettie and I met Howard outside our “new” old building. Before our discussion began we each had a caramel truffle (“milk chocolate filling covered with milk or dark chocolate and