The Chocolate Bear Burglary Read Online Free PDF Page B

saying Aunt Nettie had asked him to drive home with me. She would stop at the store and get something for dinner. I told Jeff to pick out his second chocolate for the day, and he picked a Bailey’s Irish Cream (“Classic cream liqueur interior”), but he said he’d take it along to eat afterward, so I gave him a small box to put it in. I sorted my paperwork into piles, and Jeff and I drove back to the house on Lake Shore Drive. It was dark when we got there, but we could still see that the yard was covered by snowmobile tracks. The crazy people who drive those things are always riding around on the lawn and cutting through all the little paths that link us with our neighbors. It annoys Aunt Nettie.
    Aunt Nettie came in a half hour later with chicken breasts and tomato sauce. Jeff was subdued—or maybe just sullen—during dinner, but he asked Aunt Nettie lots of questions about making and shipping chocolates. I was glad that he gave some impression of being interested in his job. I still couldn’t take my eyes off the quarter-inch holes in his earlobes. They were more eye-catching than the lip stud.
    I expected Jeff would want to check his e-mail after dinner, and I steeled myself for an argument when he was told he’d have to pay for any long-distance calls, including those made to his e-mail server. But Jeff didn’t suggest that. He put stuff away in his room, then I showed him how to operate the washing machine, and he washed some underwear and a sweatshirt. As I said, he hadn’t brought much, though he did have a few warm clothes, including the ski jacket he’d had on that afternoon.
    While his clothes were in the dryer, I sat him down at the dining room table and tried again to quiz him about why he’d left college. He muttered something about his grades.
    “I can’t believe you can’t do college work, Jeff,” I said. “You were always a good student.”
    “There’s a lot more to life than college.”
    “True. Like packing chocolate.”
    He scowled. “Look, my dad wants me to learn to handle money, stuff like that, but he wants to make all the decisions—my major, where I live, the kind of car I drive, how I dress. I just need to try it on my own.”
    I might have believed him if he hadn’t cut his eyes at me. I knew he was checking out how I was taking his story. Jeff had cut his eyes the same way when he was thirteen and was trying to convince me his mother rented X-rated movies for him to watch.
    At ten thirty the dryer buzzed, and Jeff folded his underwear, then said he’d take a shower. He was still pouty, but he didn’t make any comments about our strange bathroom.
    Aunt Nettie’s house was built by my great-grandfather and originally was the TenHuis family’s summer cottage. My grandparents decided to live there full-time, so they winterized the house in the late 1940s, but the bathroom hasn’t changed much since the family got indoor plumbing in 1915. For one thing, there’s only one bathroom in the three-bedroom house. For another, we still have an old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub. Uncle Phil had changed the plumbing to allow for a shower. He hung a circular rod over the tub, and Aunt Nettie put up a shower curtain on each side. That was the shower. It wasn’t exactly like the facility I knew Jeff had in his mother’s house—his own bathroom with a tiled, walk-in shower. So I was surprised that Jeff didn’t complain. He’d grown up in a house full of antiques; he wasn’t likely to think the claw-foot tub was quaint.
    As soon as I heard the shower, I knew the noise would keep Jeff from hearing anything else. I looked at the phone and again wished I could talk to Rich or Dina, but I still had no home numbers for either of them. So I called Joe Woodyard.
    Several nights a week Joe called me. But Aunt Nettie’s house not only has only one bathroom, it also has only one phone. And that phone is in the kitchen. So when I talk to Joe I sit on a stool by the kitchen sink. Aunt Nettie