The Chocolate Puppy Puzzle by JoAnna Carl Read Free Book Online Page B

typed in “Michigan” and “film production.” And the Michigan Film Office Web site came up.
    “Yeah!” I said it aloud. “I can check with them. They ought to know about film activity all over Michigan.”
    Yes, there was an e-mail address. I fired off a query. Maybe that would get results.
    What else could I do?
    Getting some dinner seemed the best plan. I hid the notes I’d written on my fruitless search for Aubrey Andrews Armstrong, turned off the computer, got my jacket, and double-checked the lock on the street door. As I did, I peeked out and eyeballed the windows of the second-floor apartments across the street. Joe had recently signed a lease for one of them, and he’d spent nearly every evening over there painting. My conscience smote me; he was doing all this work because he wanted me to marry him and move in. And old dumb Lee couldn’t make up her mind.
    But that night, his windows were dark. I turned on the shop’s security light, then went out the back door. I zipped the jacket up; nights were already in the low forties in southwest Michigan. Pretty soon, I thought as I climbed into my old minivan, I’d get my annual yen for pumpkin bread.
    Pumpkins. The thought of the orange veggie reminded me of Maia’s uncle, Silas Snow, who had a fruit stand full of pumpkins. During the argument I had witnessed, Silas had referred to a business card, apparently left at his fruit stand by Aubrey. He’d said something about “sticking a business card under an apple.”
    That business card should have specific information about Aubrey. If I could get hold of it . . .
    I turned the thought over idly, then checked my watch. Seven thirty. Aubrey had planned to pick up Aunt Nettie at seven, so the two of them, plus Vernon and Maia, should be at the Warner River Lodge by now. If I went out to Silas’s, which I assumed was near the Ensminger place, there should be no danger of running into them. I turned the minivan toward Orchard Street.
    Orchard Street was the quickest way to access the interstate highway and the Haven exit, where Silas’s farm and his fruit stand were located. As I recalled the layout of the Snow property, the fruit stand was near the road, and a traditional white Midwestern farmhouse sat a hundred yards behind it. That simply had to be where Silas lived. Silas would still be up. And if I could convince him I wasn’t a treasure hunter who was going to dig up his orchard, maybe he’d show me that card.
    When I pulled into the fruit stand’s parking area, my headlights swept over a sea of pumpkins. Who buys all those pumpkins? During each of the two autumns I’d spent in Warner Pier, these mass invasions of pumpkins had occurred. There were tiny little pumpkins in baskets on the counters, wheelbarrows full of medium-sized pumpkins, and hay wagons loaded with giant pumpkins that needed a forklift to move them into the trucks and vans of buyers. There were rows of pumpkins marked “pie pumpkins.” There were washtubs full of pumpkins marked “ornamental pumpkins.” There were pumpkins with faces painted on them, pumpkins in arrangements with fancy gourds, pumpkins centering decorations featuring weird squash.
    I can understand cooking pumpkins for a few pies and maybe some pumpkin bread. I can see making Halloween and Thanksgiving table decorations out of them. I can grasp using the larger ones to make the front porch look seasonal, with country-flavored arrangements of pumpkins and cornstalks and cutesy scarecrows. I can visualize gigantic jack-o’-lanterns made out of the largest pumpkins. But if every citizen of western Michigan did all those things, there would still be pumpkins left over in the fruit stands.
    My headlights showed that Silas Snow’s fruit stand was typical. It had a simple shed, open at the front and sides, with three long tables where produce could be displayed. There were baskets of apples along the back wall, and a table loaded with winter squash in the middle. But a