The Chocolate Bridal Bash by JoAnna Carl Page B

little town filled with Victorian houses. We went through a nice little business district which clustered around the courthouse. There was a bank, a small supermarket, a hardware store, a mom-and-pop restaurant, a drugstore, an everythinga-dollar store. Signs indicated that Warner County’s lawyers had offices above the bank and in one renovated professional building. Then we crossed the railroad tracks and passed a fruit warehouse, a cannery—shut down for the winter—and a farmer’s co-op building. There was almost no traffic at six thirty on a Wednesday evening.
    Superficially Dorinda had some resemblance to Warner Pier. Most of its buildings dated from the same era, for example. But the cultural divide was wide. Dorinda was definitely a farming community. In comparison, Warner Pier was Sophisticated City. While Warner Pier was not any more lively than Dorinda in the winter, our business district was larger and was lined with art galleries, bookshops, gift stores, snazzy clothing boutiques, winery outlets, and a shop that made and sold fancy chocolates, businesses of a type Dorinda lacked completely. True, Warner Pier had a hardware store, but it featured more barbecue grills than plywood, just as our marine salesrooms offered more cabin cruisers than fiberglass fishing boats.
    Joe and I had driven only thirty miles, but we’d crossed a tribal boundary.
    Mac McKay lived in a pleasant house that sat on a little knoll in a nice neighborhood. The house was painted light gray, with neat black shutters, and Mac McKay himself was waiting at the door.
    I loved him on sight. He was a small man—he came about to my shoulder—with a few wisps of white hair. His eyes twinkled and his smile beamed, and he greeted Joe with obvious pleasure. He took my hand with real warmth.
    “Welcome, Lee! You look as if you’re as wonderful as Joe claims you are.”
    “You look wonderful, too, Mr. McKay. Could I give you a hug?”
    “Only if you’ll call me ’Mac’ afterward.”
    “Of course! Anybody I’m on hugging terms with gets called by their first name.”
    The hug turned out to be a joint effort, and Mac stood on tiptoe to give me a kiss on the cheek. He called out to someone in the kitchen, then hung up our coats and led us into a living room where a cheery fire burned. I seemed to raise myself further in his esteem by oohing and ahing over the handmade tiles that surrounded the fireplace. Each showed a different Michigan wildflower.
    “My late wife made those,” Mac said. “She was quite an artist.”
    A Hispanic housekeeper brought in a tray of canapés and a bottle of wine. Mac fussed about, pouring wine for me and scotch for Joe. Joe hates scotch, but he took it with a small grin. To a lawyer of Mac McKay’s age, scotch was the only suitable drink to offer a fellow attorney.
    Mac made sure I was seated close to the fire; then he sat in a wing chair facing us, raising his own glass of scotch in a wordless toast. He leaned forward.
    “What’s this about you two finding that old reprobate Carl Van Hoosier dead?”
    I gasped, but Joe only laughed. “So you’ve got a mole at Pleasant Creek.”
    “My former secretary lives there now. Ellen Thoms.”
    “I didn’t see her. Why didn’t she speak to me?”
    “Vanity, my boy. Vanity. She’s rather gnarled by arthritis these days, and she doesn’t like to be caught using her walker. But what happened to Carl? Ellen said our current sheriff was there. In person.”
    Joe quickly sketched the scene we’d found when we dropped in on Van Hoosier. When he described how Nurse Priddy had examined the dead man, Mac raised his eyebrows.
    “I’m surprised he didn’t simply declare it a natural death,” he said.
    “I was surprised, too,” Joe said. “I think the administrator recommended that finding, but Priddy stuck to his guns.”
    “Priddy said something about his throat,” I said. “And he looked at his eyelids.”
    Mac nodded like the former prosecutor he was.