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it began to snow just as we reached the southern edge of Grand Rapids.
    Since I was raised in Texas, I didn’t get a lot of experience driving in snow when I was growing up. Now ice, yes, Texas usually has a couple of dandy ice storms every winter. I’ve seen some horrible sleet and freezing rain around both my hometowns, Dallas and Prairie Creek. But thick, heavy snow is strange to me. It makes me nervous.
    I reminded myself that Michigan highways are well maintained—we saw several snowplows during the trip—that Aunt Nettie’s Buick was a good, heavy car with the proper tires for driving in snow, and that I was smart enough not to hit the brakes suddenly or spin my tires trying to start up. But I was still nervous, maybe because I was afraid I’d do something stupid rather than because I was afraid I’d have a wreck. Though having a wreck in somebody else’s car is not high on the list of the things I want to do.
    But we didn’t have a wreck. The only bad moments were three or four times when semis passed us going a million miles an hour and threw sheets of snow onto our windshield. The road didn’t get too bad, though it snowed harder—naturally—the further south and west we went. It’s called “lake effect snow.” Tradition has it that the closer you get to Lake Michigan, the heavier the snowfall gets, and it’s true. I’ve read a scientific explanation for this, but don’t ask me to repeat it.
    We dropped Margaret off in Holland, then drove on to Warner Pier. I took Lindy to the big old house she and Tony had moved into right before Christmas. Tony Junior and his chocolate lab, Monte, came out on the porch to greet us. Lindy invited me in, but I declined, and she put her hand on the door handle.
    “Gosh!” she said. “I’ll always wonder if the killer was in Julie’s apartment when I went by there that night.”
    “What! You were at Julie’s apartment the night she was killed? Have you told the police?”
    “I told Chief Jones. He said he’d pass it along to the Holland detectives, and they might want to talk to me. He said I shouldn’t mention it, so don’t tell anybody else.”
    “What were you doing there?”
    “I went up to visit Maria Nunez at Holland Hospital. You know, the gray-haired waitress at the Sidewalk Café. She had pneumonia, but she’s better now. Anyway, I was coming back by Food Fare, and I realized I was near Julie’s. So I stopped.”
    “When was this?”
    “About nine o’clock. It was kind of late to drop in on somebody, so I just knocked once. She didn’t come to the door, and I went away.”
    “So you didn’t see anything suspicious?”
    “It was dead silent, Lee. Oh! That’s not a good choice of words, is it? But I couldn’t see into the apartment at all. It’s not as if the window blinds were open or anything. All I saw was the parking lot.”
    “And there was no car in it that bristled with axes and guns, huh?”
    “Nope. I slipped and fell into a really weird, bugeyed car that was parked backward, but it probably belonged to one of the other tenants. And you know me, it could have been a Rolls-Royce, and I wouldn’t have known the difference.”
    I laughed. Lindy’s indifference to cars is legendary among her friends. Her husband swears he puts an Indiana University pennant on her antenna, even though she’s not a Hoosier fan, because Lindy would never find her car in a parking lot if it didn’t have a red-and-white flag on it.
    I promised Lindy I wouldn’t say anything about her visit to Julie’s apartment; then I left, saying I wanted to check on TenHuis Chocolade before it closed up.
    Which was a fib. Actually, I wanted to call Joe Woodyard. I was supposed to see him shortly, but I wanted to talk to him right that minute. I wanted to tell him about the strange funeral for a nice girl who apparently had several peculiar relatives, but no friends. I wanted to tell him Uncle Martin wanted me to go out to dinner with him, and I felt uneasy