Free The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up by JoAnna Carl Page A

ripped open the package of chocolate she’d just shattered on the floor. She began putting the chunks into the vat.
    “First, you can break up three or four more bars of dark chocolate,” she said.
    I whammed the ten-pound bars into the floor, then set the packages—now filled with chunks of chocolate—aside. Next I worked on the white chocolate—the smallest kettle—chipping the now-solid chocolate from the bowl on the worktable into pieces and feeding them into the vat. While I was waiting for the white chocolate to melt, I worked on the pan of milk chocolate. Aunt Nettie was concentrating on the dark chocolate.
    Through all this I was frantically checking my watch, and at twenty-five to twelve I gave Aunt Nettie a fiveminute warning. By twenty minutes to twelve we had all three chocolate vats going. There were a lot of dirty pots and pans in the sink, but I got Aunt Nettie into her sweater and out the back door.
    She shook her head as she climbed into my van. “I don’t understand why Hershel wants to see me,” she said.
    “He’s highly suspicious of everybody—including his sister and her husband. You’ve always been nice to him.”
    Aunt Nettie sniffed. “I never thought a chocolate now and then would mean a trip to the old Riverside Chapel in the middle of the night.”
    “Just tell me how to get there.”
    “Head up Dock Street to Fifteenth.”
    “It’s before Joe’s shop, then?”
    “It’s farther, but you don’t pass Joe’s shop to get there. Turn off Dock Street on Fifteenth, then turn right at a corner with a big white house. I think the street is Elm.”
    “It would be a tree.”
    Aunt Nettie laughed. “I don’t understand why you dislike trees so much, Lee.”
    “Some of my best friends are trees. I don’t dislike them individually. It’s only trees in mobs.”
    “You’ll see whole crowds of trees before we get to the Riverside Chapel. It’s way back in the woods. Lots of people think the woods up that way are beautiful.”
    “I’m sure they are beautiful. I can admire the patterns sunlight makes on the forest floor. Stuff like that. It’s just that when you’re surrounded by trees you can’t see the horizon. They get you all mixed up about which way is north. And you never know what’s hiding behind them.”
    “On the other hand,” Aunt Nettie said, “if you need to hide, it’s handy having a tree you could jump behind.”
    “Well, you know the joke about the West Texas boy who went to visit the big woods of Minnesota,” I said.
    “I guess not.”
    “When he got back, someone asked if there wasn’t some mighty pretty country up there. And the Texan answered, ‘I don’t know. There were so many trees I didn’t see a thing.’ ”
    Aunt Nettie and I were joking about our differing feelings about trees because we were nervous. Heading out into the deep woods to meet the town crank at a ruined chapel at midnight is not my favorite activity. In fact, stated like that, it was absolutely stupid. I thought wistfully of having Joe along—a big, strong guy who knew the terrain and who was smart and who could wrestle and who had a cell phone. Right at that moment I was wishing I’d invited him to the party.
    But if Joe had been there, I reminded myself, Hershel probably wouldn’t show up.
    “See the big white house?” Aunt Nettie said. “Turn right.”
    We had already been driving down a heavily wooded blacktop road, and our right turn—once we were past the big white house—took us into the real woods. The blacktop became gravel, the road narrowed, and the trees closed in. They met overhead and choked the ditches, crowding in on the road. I had to struggle to keep my teeth from chattering Aunt Nettie’s voice was soothing. “It’s not more than a half mile,” she said. “I haven’t been up here in years.”
    “What is this place? This Riverside Chapel?”
    “Originally, it was a boys’ camp, I think. There are some cabins and some sort of pavilion that