Clementine and Goldie were considerably taller and bigger boned than the petite Olivia. The gown would need to be cut down quite a bit. I bit my lip and wondered whether Bev Mitchell, owner of the Silver Bells Bridal shop and a skilled seamstress, would have time to take on the job. It was already mid-December, and Bev had her own wedding to plan for this summer. It would be a lovely gown if we could find someone to alter it in time. The dress was a creamy satin that had mellowed and aged into a deep ivory color over the decades. It featured a scalloped neckline with lace trim at the bottom. Olivia would look lovely if Bev could take in the waist, shorten the bodice, raise the hem, and augment the voluminous dress to perfectly fit the bride’s tiny frame.
“I can’t wait to wear it and to marry right here.” Olivia’s eyes shone in anticipation, and for once, her family seemed at peace and unified in the goal of giving her a lovely day.
My friend seemed to steel herself and took a deep breath. “And I’ll be spending more time in Port Quincy soon, too. Not just for the holiday.” Olivia’s voice wavered as she took in her father’s frown. I wondered not for the first time where the fierce litigator I knew my friend to be had gone. But the approval of family was a powerful thing, and Olivia seemed keen to have it.
“What do you mean, sweetheart?” Alan tented his thin fingers under his nose and peered at his daughter expectantly through his wire rims.
Olivia carried on, seeming even more cautious than before. “I’m going to join Garrett Davies’s practice here in town. I’m so excited to relocate and be with my husband.” She turned to me with a fond gaze. “And old friends. And family.” She seemed at peace with her announcement, no longer seeking her parents’ permission, but laying out her intentions.
“No, no, no.” Alan paced in an agitated manner before his daughter. “You need to keep your eye on the prize, Olivia. Your partnership is almost within reach. It would be ludicrous to quit right before the finish line.”
Olivia’s winning smile quavered, but to her credit, she didn’t falter.
“No, Dad.” Her voice was firm with conviction. “I’ve thought this through. This is what I want.”
A pin could drop in the formerly bustling home office.
Alan nodded, but his eyes narrowed. “I just don’t want you to get distracted, Olivia. Your mother and I are happy for your marriage.” He stopped to grab Goldie’s hand in a physically united front. “We just want to make sure you really want to speed up your wedding. You need to protect yourself and your career.” He took a deep breath and seemed to weigh his next statement. “What if it doesn’t work out with Toby?”
Say what?! Does he know something we don’t?
Olivia appeared as if she’d been physically slapped by her father’s words. Her response was testy. “Love is more important than some kind of business arrangement.”
Alan dropped his wife’s hand and dug his fists in his pockets.
“I thought you’d be excited.” Olivia shook her head in a bitter manner. “I imagined I could take on the legal work for March Homes in Port Quincy.”
Alan and Goldie exchanged a pregnant glance. I detected an odd range of emotions on Alan’s face, one of them fear. But I may have imagined it, as his expression turned tender and kind. “I would love for you to be part of the family business, Olivia. But you’ve just worked so hard for this partnership. I wouldn’t want you to walk away from it yet. You can marry Toby at the end of the month, make partner in January, and then reassess.”
I was growing annoyed at Alan’s attempts to control his grown daughter’s life. And something else was itching in the recesses of my brain.
Why doesn’t he want Olivia to do work for March Homes?
It seemed odd. Alan should be thrilled his daughter wanted to maintain her practice and also get a foothold in the family business. I would have guessed he’d have thought it was a clever solution.
“Besides,” Alan sneered, “do you even want to practice law in a small town?”
I bristled silently next to my friend, trying to send her invisible psychic support.
But Alan wasn’t finished. “What kind of cases does this man even do?”
I did something I tried never to do and waded into the fray of a disagreement between a bride and her parent. Not to mention defending the professional honor of my beau.
“Garrett is my boyfriend. He tries matters both big and small. He defends men and women in criminal court, wins contract disputes between businesses, and irons out knotty divorces and custody issues that change the course of families. What he does isn’t just small potatoes. It affects people’s lives. Olivia would be lucky to join such a thriving, varied practice, and Garrett would be lucky to have her as his partner in his expanding business.”
My chest heaved after my impassioned speech. Alan blinked as if seeing me for the first time. He studied Olivia’s face for a moment.
“If this is true, that you’re really considering leaving Russell Carey, your mother and I have to rethink the restructuring of your inheritance.”
Olivia blanched. I wondered how she’d address the callous volley. Her response surprised me. She arched a perfectly shaped black brow and crossed her arms. “I know Grandma and Grandpa play that game, but it won’t work with me. I don’t need my inheritance.”
Check and mate.
Alan swallowed and took a step back. Olivia peered into the faces of her mother and grandparents, looking for what I didn’t know.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t wear the March dress,” Goldie suggested with a wounded expression. Her allegiance was with Alan, and she wanted that fact to be known.
Olivia finally did look hurt. “I won’t, then.”
Clementine screeched from her silent perch on a loveseat. “What do you mean, Olivia? Your mother is just being emotional. Three generations of March women have worn this gown. Of course you’ll wear the dress.”
“No thank you, Grandma.” Olivia drew on some inner reserve of strength. “I’ll make my own path.”
The bride turned on her heel and walked out the door, leaving me as bewildered as the family she left behind in her wake.
* * *
“Let’s get the heck out of here.” Olivia was waiting for me on the front porch of the cabin, her chest rising and falling with each intake of breath. We climbed into the Butterscotch Monster, and I enlisted the high beams against the cloying darkness. I forged through the dark forest of the Marches’ secluded property with my heart still pounding. The dark swath of trees surrounding my station wagon and the claustrophobic feeling of being in an evergreen tunnel didn’t help my racing heart. I couldn’t wait to get home, take a hot bath, and then spend the evening with my sometimes crazy but not vindictive family.
“The police returned my Acura, and they scrubbed the paint off the windshield.” Olivia stared out at the pitch-black window. “But I can’t bring myself to drive it. I’ve been using a rental car.” I’d nearly forgotten the vindictive message sprayed in gold paint on her windshield a mere three days ago. So much had happened since then. I walked with Olivia into Toby’s loft downtown. I settled her on the comfy suede couch with a mug of steaming peppermint tea, and her laptop open to some discovery requests.
“Thanks, Mallory. And please excuse my family. They’re not normally like this.”
Yeah right.
“I’m not privy to everything that goes on with their business, but I don’t think this project in Port Quincy is going as seamlessly as that of their former developments.”
I pondered what Olivia could have meant as I made my way back to Thistle Park—and was greeted by the sight of Truman’s police cruiser in the drive.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
The chief was already sitting at the kitchen table addressing my sister. Rachel wore a worried expression atop her green-and-white striped minidress and red tights.
“I was just telling your sister about Lacey’s toxicology results.” Truman beckoned me to take a seat.
The local radio was blasting Chipmunks Christmas music. I snapped off the dial for this macabre conversation. The cheery, ultra-falsetto voices seemed discordant with what might be depressing news.
“As I was telling your sister, it was no accident. Lacey Adams was poisoned.”
My heart skipped a beat in morbid anticipation.
“How?” I asked Truman.
He shook his head, already baffled by what he was about to say. “By drinking antifreeze mixed with Hawaiian blue punch and blueberry vodka.”
My heart beat in my rib cage like an agitated bird. I recalled my mother’s shaking fingers unscrewing the top of a bottle of electric blue juice, Lacey glowering above her atop the bar. Luckily, Truman hadn’t yet noticed my panicked expression. He’d stood to help himself to a mug.
“I’m so sorry. I’m being a terrible hostess.” I shooed him away from the kitchen counter after I plucked the mug from his hands. I filled it with steaming French roast. Rachel must have made a fresh pot in the retro percolator that matched the kitchen’s aesthetics. I was happy to busy myself with the coffee. I took as long as possible positioning the mug on a jaunty holly berry print napkin, the better to compose myself before I turned around.
It was no use. My hands shook as I placed the mug before Truman. The pretty napkin soaked up the coffee spill.
“I’m rattled, too,” Truman reassured me.
I nodded, but didn’t tell him what I was thinking. I’d just remembered Olivia pouring out her drink into a plant at Paws and Poinsettias, seemingly unnoticed by anyone but me. Did she know there was poison in her champagne flute, too? Had my friend been tipped off, or was she on high alert?
Or did she poison Lacey herself ?
I shook my head against the deafening crash of nonsense flittering through my head, willed myself to stay calm, and focused in on Truman’s presence.
“She had no other drink or food in her system,” Truman continued. “And we searched the scene meticulously. There was no sign of antifreeze anywhere. Someone probably brought it in a flask or bottle. Perhaps someone close enough to Lacey to hold her drink or converse with her and pour it in.”
Another detail itched in the back of my head, but I couldn’t dredge it up amidst my worry for my mother.
“Lacey was well liked, so it could have been anyone chatting with her.” I heard my voice come out normally enough and breathed a small sigh of relief.
“It’s true,” the chief agreed.
If he knew for a fact my mother had made the last drink Lacey consumed, with at least one of the more innocuous ingredients matching the contents of the poisonous stew in her system, it wouldn’t be a great leap to assume she’d also added the antifreeze, too.
“Maybe it was suicide,” Rachel said. “The March family wasn’t happy with her performance, right?” Rachel sat back, satisfied to offer some information. “Ouch!”
Oops.
I’d kicked her under the table a bit harder than I’d intended. Truman gave me a knowing glare. It wasn’t that I wanted to actively conceal information from Truman. But I was concerned about the possible blowback for our mother. I wanted to get our stories straight before talking to Truman. Then again, over the years I had somewhat informally deputized myself in some of his cases. It had been a dangerous place to be in.
“Just what are you talking about, Rachel?” Truman narrowed his hazel eyes at my sister.
“Um, nothing.” Rachel exchanged an uh-oh glance with me. But it was too late.
“It’s not a big deal,” I rushed in. “It seemed like Goldie liked Lacey’s work and Clementine did not.”
I conveniently left out the teensy-weensy detail of my mother pulling an all-nighter to systematically undo every decoration Lacey and I had lovingly placed for Paws and Poinsettias in exchange for her and Clementine’s own plan. It was getting hard keeping straight all of the information I was withholding from Truman. But it turns out I didn’t need to spill these beans.
“I gathered that,” Truman nodded. “What interests me is that the March family tried to deny it. Even Clementine stated that she was just fine with Lacey, but she needn’t have bothered. Clementine March’s acting performance when she’s not telling the truth is about as subtle as that crazy hairdo of hers.” He smiled ruefully, seeming to recall Clementine’s green-tipped spiky hair.
“That doesn’t make them look innocent,” I eagerly said. I couldn’t believe I was not so subtly throwing my friend’s family under the suspect bus. But it was all in an effort to protect my mother. I decided to advance another theory.
“Lacey was supposed to be spearheading the toy drive in another week. The March family would have wanted to keep her on for that, right?”
Truman arched a bushy gray brow. “And just what is going to happen with the toy drive?”
“Um, I’m taking over the planning of it.” I plucked the folder Alan had handed me and placed it before Truman. He rifled through the stack of papers for a moment. Then he gave me a sharp and thorough once-over.
“I suppose March Homes will be looking for a new stager now. They’ll be lining up at the door to fill that position, even after what happened to Lacey.”
His statement hung in the air for far too long.
Oh crap, he doesn’t know.
Truman observed my sister and me studiously avoiding his eyes.
“Spill it, you two.”
You can’t protect her forever.
“They have a new stager.” I nearly whispered the response.
“And?” Truman let out a hot gust of air, his annoyance no longer hidden.
“It’s our mom.” Rachel dragged her eyes miserably from the table to meet Truman’s.
“Holy heck.” Truman dropped his professional manner and gave us sorrowful looks. “That wasn’t what I was expecting you to say.” A flash of frustration darkened his face, then dissipated. “I’m annoyed you didn’t tell me outright. I would have found out soon enough anyway. But I understand why you didn’t say anything.”
I relaxed by a millimeter and sent Truman a grateful look.
“Now, where is she?” Truman stood, his chair scraping the black-and-white tile in a harsh grate.
“She’s at her first day of work. She was at the Marches’ home office today, and then she left to finish up at the downtown building. Please, please don’t go find her with your guns blazing.” I heard the pleading tone in my voice and hoped Truman did, too.
He sighed and dropped back in his chair. “Okay. I’ll wait a little bit to question her.” He shook his head as if he’d been tricked. “I’m just doing this for you two, though. And don’t you dare give your mother a heads-up.” He glowered at Rachel as she sheepishly placed her sequin-encrusted phone on the kitchen table. She needn’t have bothered.
Mom sailed in the door, followed by an exuberant Doug. She was high on the heady fumes of a job well done at her new and fancy career. She nearly skipped into the kitchen in her purple suede pumps. She stopped short when she saw Truman. Doug didn’t get the memo and bumped into my mother, nearly catapulting her into the kitchen.
“Truman. What a lovely surprise!” My mother gathered her wits about her and surveyed the scene. She seemed to figure out that this wasn’t a mere social call. That didn’t stop her from trying to turn it into one.
“I had a magnificent day working for March Homes. Maybe an old dog can learn new tricks. Goldie and Clementine are most definitely keeping me on my toes.” She bent to pick up Ramona, who had materialized at her feet with her tiny pug tongue lolling about. Mom’s smile cooled when she realized Truman wasn’t reciprocating her friendly vibe.
“Um, Mom,” Rachel began. She stopped short when Truman sent her a murderous gaze.
“Did you make Lacey Adams a drink at Paws and Poinsettias?” Truman asked his question in an even tone.
Uh-oh.
I felt like kicking myself. Truman always found out everything about everyone. The thought that Rachel and I were successfully keeping the
information secret about our mother making Lacey’s last drink now seemed preposterous. Paws and Poinsettias had been crawling with people in addition to pets. One of the other hundreds of people Truman questioned must have tipped him off.
My mother bristled. “That poor girl was totally inebriated. I guess the bartender must have stepped out.” She paused and held her head high, her purple reading glasses slipping a degree in her carefully coiffed hair. “I did Lacey a favor and poured her a drink when she demanded it.”
Truman said nothing. He was employing a tactic he’d unfortunately used many times on yours truly. He would pose a question, then allow the answering party to prattle on, filling up the space with their deepest, darkest secrets. Which my mom did in spades.
“And it was funny, she just wanted a blue Hawaiian punch. No alcohol.”
“So you gave her alcohol anyway.” Truman stated it like a fact.
“I did no such thing! It wasn’t my business why she wanted a nonalcoholic drink. And besides, the poor thing was already so drunk. I wish I had given her a cab ride home and a cold shower.”
“Your prints will be on the bottle of punch,” Truman warned. “I’d like to confirm it as soon as possible.”
The room grew very still. Ramona let out a contented sigh and snuggled closer to my mother, unaware of the tense situation.
My mother winced. Then her eyes grew very large and afraid. “You don’t need to take my prints. I just admitted that I did indeed make Lacey a drink.”
This is going very badly.
My mother was freely using language of guilt, playing right into Truman’s hands. Doug nearly bounced on the balls of his feet next to my mother, no doubt wanting to end this questioning post haste.
“You can’t possibly believe Carole had anything to do with Lacey Adams’s death.” Doug ended his statement with a little laugh that strangled in his throat.
“I’ll need to question you further, Mrs. Shepard.”
Ohmigod.
My mother had just gone from Carole to Mrs. Shepard. Alarm bells were clanging on DEFCON one in my head. Truman was downright scary in his professional impassivity. This was no longer a social call, indeed.
Marry Christmas Murder Page 8