Free The Chocolate Jewel Case: A Chocoholic Mystery by JoAnna Carl Page B

there was obviously not wearing heavy rubber clogs.
    “Got it!” The third man came into the dining room. He was tall and thin, andhe wore the same wet suit–ski mask outfit the others had on, but he had different shoes. They looked like black oxfords, but they weren’t. This guy did have a bunion, and I could see where it warped the shape of his right shoe. I wouldn’t have been able to see that if he’d been wearing leather oxfords.
    This third man stopped and surveyed the room, and I saw that he was carrying a blue denim bag.“Let’s go,” he said.
    That was when Uncle Alex lost it. “No! No!” he screamed like a teakettle. He jumped in his chair. His face was contorted. With fury? With fear? What?
    We all stared at him. He gave a final shriek, twitched madly, and went over backward. His feet caught the edge of the table, and it leaped in the air, rattling the dishes. Garnet yelled, “Uncle Alex! Uncle Alex!” and Dick beganto swear again.
    The back legs of Alex’s chair slid on the rug, and he fell, landing flat on his back on the hardwood floor, chair and all. He lay there gasping.
    I don’t know what I did or said, but when I looked at Joe, he was standing up—as well as he could stand up with a chair taped to his back. To my amazement, I saw a knife in his hand.
    “Turn around!” He yelled the words at Dick.
    Dickobeyed him, scooting his chair sideways. I saw that Joe had a steak knife like the ones we’d used at dinner. It must have been left on the table when Garnet cleared the dishes. Joe had apparently palmed it while he was hovering over his chair earlier. Joe slit the tape along Dick’s back, parallel to the back of his chair.
    And I realized that the three men in wet suits were gone. They must haverun out while Alex was having his fit. The door to the deck was standing open, and I could hear the rubber clogs thumping. The sound was getting fainter.
    Garnet wasn’t yelling now, but she kept talking. “Uncle Alex? Uncle Alex, are you all right?”
    Dick came out of his chair then, twisting to get the tape off, and he took the knife and sawed at the duct tape that held Joe. He then freed Garnetand after her, me.
    By the time Dick got to me, Joe had stripped off the tape and was running toward the front door, on the opposite side of the house from where the men had run out.
    “Joe! Joe! Stop!” He didn’t seem to hear me, but he did pause long enough to turn the porch light off before he opened the door. Then he disappeared into the dark.
    I peeled the duct tape off my shirt and jumpedout of my chair. Garnet and Dick were kneeling beside Alex, freeing him from his duct tape. He was breathing regularly. They didn’t need me.
    So I ran out the front door after Joe.
    Out on the porch, of course, I had to stop immediately. Coming from light to dark, even the dim light of the living and dining rooms, I couldn’t see a thing. I plastered my back to the wall beside the door and listened.I could hear someone moving to my right. He stumbled as he went off the porch. I assumed it was Joe.
    The front door of the house faced south, and as I’d seen when we walked over, the trees on that side had been cleared out a bit. But it was pitch-dark as I edged my way along the porch. I thought of going back inside, but I was too worried about Joe.
    I’d figured out that he’d run out the front,instead of following the robbers through the door that faced the lake, because he didn’t want to be silhouetted against the dining room windows. But the three crooks might be lying in ambush for any pursuers....
    I kept edging along the porch, keeping my back to the wall, working toward the side of the house that faced the lake. As I got near the corner, the kitchen and dining room windows werelighting up the back of the house, and I began to be able to see more. I stopped at the steps that led to the flagstone path, the one we had followed out to the deck overlooking the lake. I stood there, trying to look beyond