The Chocolate Mouse Trap by JoAnna Carl Read Free Book Online

really have anything specific in mind, Lee. Corinne has always acted like I was completely helpless without Phil. When I wrote her at Christmas—well, I guess I was trying to brag a little. After all, we were finally able to begin paying ourselves full salaries! I must have overdone it.”
    “We’re entitled to brag a little,” I said. “Last year was the best TenHuis Chocolade ever had.”
    “What do you think we should do?”
    “ You should do? About Bobby? Talk to him, I guess. The problem with family members is that they’re easy to hire, but hard to fire. I marvel that you had the nerve to hire me.”
    “That was an easy decision. You’d worked here earlier. I knew you were a hard worker and had a head for figures.”
    “And I needed a job.”
    “Well, if you’d been chief accountant for IBM, I wouldn’t have had the courage to offer you this little job.” She looked at me seriously. “Lee, I know you are capable of much more important things than shipping TenHuis chocolates around the country. When that big opportunity comes, I want you to take it.”
    “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
    “No! No! But I know things can’t go on forever. Your life will change. My life will, too.”
    After that unsettling remark, she left the office.
    Getting married was all the change I could contemplate right at that moment. But Aunt Nettie had confused me. Somehow, I felt that conversation wasn’t only about her nephew Bobby and the possibility that he might want a job.
    I picked up the phone and punched the speed dial for Joe’s boat shop again. Now I desperately wanted to talk to him. More than my day was messed up; my whole life seemed to be.
    But Joe was still not at home, not at work, not answering his cell phone. I angrily went through the mail and the phone messages. I was concentrating so hard on my disappointment over not reaching him that I jumped about a foot when the phone rang.
    “Hi,” Joe said.
    “Where are you?”
    “City hall.”
    “City hall? You never go to city hall on Mondays.”
    “I had a little emergency and needed to use the city phone. When did you get back?”
    “About an hour ago. Are we still having dinner?”
    “I was counting on it.”
    “Good. I need to talk to somebody.”
    “Now?”
    I checked the time. Five o’clock. “I guess I can wait until I see you. I just need a sympathetic ear.”
    “So do I. This afternoon has been nutso.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Just a little e-mail problem.”
    “E-mail!”
    “I’ll tell you about it when I see you. If six isn’t too early?”
    I said six was fine, and Joe hung up.
    E-mail? Joe was having a problem with e-mail?
    I thought e-mail was supposed to enhance communications. But it had indirectly linked me with some very unusual people. And now it was a problem for Joe.
    Huh.
    CHOCOLATE CHAT
    LITERARY CHOCOLATE
    “Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”
    —Truman Capote
     
    “My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
    — Forrest Gump
     
    “What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.”
    —George Bernard Shaw
     
    “Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power. It is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits.”
    —Baron Justus von Liebig

Chapter 5
    A unt Nettie was still dressing when I heard Chief Hogan Jones pull into the drive. I guess she heard the car, too, because she stuck her head out her bedroom door. “Lee! Can you talk to Hogan a minute?”
    “Sure. Keep on primping.”
    Aunt Nettie giggled. Since she had started dating after three years of widowhood, she really had become like a girl again. And she was dating Hogan Jones—the catch of the Warner Pier older crowd.
    Aunt Nettie hires a man with a snowplow to keep her drive cleared. Since everybody uses our back porch as an entry, especially during the winter, the man