The Worst Noel

by Amy M. Reade

  A different officer drove her home. She watched listlessly out the back window of the cruiser, lost in a fog of worry and frustration. How could she have forgotten to lock that vault? Leaving the back door unlocked was bad enough—she was lucky her entire inventory hadn’t been stolen. Why was Eden in there and who had followed her? There were so many questions to be answered.

  Chapter 47

  When she got to the house she found Noley and the kids talking around the kitchen table. She plopped down in a chair and leaned her head back.

  “How was it, Mom?” Laurel asked.

  “Grueling. The guy asked me all the same questions they’ve asked before. I think they’re trying to trip me up, catch me in a lie.”

  “Are they going to arrest you?” Tighe asked.

  “Not yet, they say. I think they just don’t have enough evidence to arrest me.”

  “Can’t Bill say something?” Noley asked.

  Lilly shook her head at Noley. “I suspect he already has or they would have come knocking sooner.”

  “How are we going to figure out who did this? That’s the only way they’re going to believe you had nothing to do with Mrs. Barclay’s death.”

  “I wish I knew, Tighe,” Lilly answered with a sigh.

  “I’m going to get home,” Noley said. “Are we still decorating your tree tomorrow night?”

  “You bet,” Lilly answered. “Be here at seven.”

  Noley bid everyone goodnight and Lilly and the kids sat at the kitchen table for a little while longer, each lost in thought.

  Finally Laurel pushed her chair back and rubbed her eyes. “I’m going to bed. Do you need anything, Mom?” Lilly looked at her daughter. Laurel’s tired eyes made her look younger; Lilly thought back fondly to the days when she would tuck her kids into bed. She longed for the return of those days, when everything was easier despite being a single mom. Laurel could be a handful, but she was a typical teenager and Lilly knew that despite everything, her heart was in the right place.

  “No thanks, honey. I’ll be up soon. Sleep tight.” Laurel leaned down to kiss her mother’s cheek and Lilly was reminded that she hadn’t talked to her own mother all day.

  After Tighe went upstairs Lilly called to Barney, who was asleep on the living room floor, for his last romp outside before bedtime. She stood in the kitchen doorway watching him play in the snow until he was ready to do his business. Snow was falling and Barney couldn’t have been happier.

  The town of Juniper Junction awoke the next day to eighteen inches of fresh snow on the ground. The plows were out early, so Lilly was up as soon as she heard one head down her block.

  She trudged outside and brushed the snow off her car so she wouldn’t be late for work, then she brushed off Tighe’s truck. When she went inside he was already dressed and donning a coat and gloves.

  “Are you going to shovel the walk?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted. He looked tired—Lilly hoped her predicament hadn’t been preventing him from getting enough sleep.

  “Thanks. I’ll have scrambled eggs ready when you come in.”

  “Okay.”

  She called up to Laurel to take a shower so she and Tighe could leave for school early then set about making breakfast. The phone rang while she was stirring the eggs.

  “I figured you’d be up early,” said Noley.

  “You sound way too cheerful for such an unearthly hour,” Lilly replied.

  “I know. I’ve been up working. Listen, I’ve been listening to the weather and it sounds like that storm will be here before evening. I’m thinking I should stay home tonight instead of coming over to help you decorate the tree.”

  “You’re probably right. Why don’t we wait to do it? We can postpone it until after the storm.”

  “I think you and the kids could use some time by yourselves, don’t you? This has been such a stressful holiday season for all of you. You three decorate your tree just like the old days and take pictures so I can see them. I’ll decorate my tree tonight, too. We’ll see who does a better job.” Lilly could hear the smile in Noley’s voice.

  “You don’t want to do that alone!” Lilly exclaimed.

  “Puff’s here,” Noley said, referring to her gigantic Angora cat. “I won’t be alone.”

  “All right, as long as you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure—you enjoy the kids’ company tonight.”

  Lilly listened to the weather on her way to work. It had started to snow again just as she left the house. According to the forecast, though the sun would be out for a short time later in the morning, the calm, clear weather wouldn’t last. The storm which had begun the previous night would rear its head again, this time with punishing winds and blinding snow. The meteorologist advised listeners to hunker down in their homes before the end of the afternoon because the weather was going to worsen steadily after sunset.

  Lilly checked her emails as soon as she arrived at the shop. As she had suspected, she found a number of messages from her fellow business owners along Main Street and elsewhere in Juniper Junction: they were asking whether all the shops should close early.

  Taking one last look at the weather app on her phone, she composed a hasty email to all the members of the Chamber of Commerce suggesting that businesses close at two o’clock to allow shoppers, shop owners, and employees to get home in plenty of time to prepare for the coming storm. That’ll give me time to stop at Mom’s house, too, Lilly thought.

  She thought about calling Taffy to tell her she could have the day off, but she decided if there were shoppers out trying to beat the storm, she would need the help. And Taffy came in early, anyway, having left her house early in case the roads were bad.

  “This’ll be my first Colorado blizzard,” Taffy said, her eyes wide. “I’m so excited. Are they really as bad as people say?”

  “I guess they can be scary if you aren’t used to them,” Lilly said, wondering how anyone who didn’t have a snow day to look forward to could be excited about a blizzard. “But if you know enough to stay home and you’ve been to the grocery store for staples, you’ll be fine. It’s not like the towns in Colorado don’t know how to handle snowstorms, so they’re good about getting the roads plowed and making everything safe as soon as the snow stops.”

  As Lilly had hoped, there were more customers than usual that day, people who were out trying to pick up gifts before the blizzard hit.

  Unfortunately, there were almost too many customers. She and Taffy bustled around the shop, waiting on people and ringing up sales. She spoke firmly to Taffy at one point about taking care to double-check the numbers on the cash register—Taffy had undercharged someone by two hundred dollars for a necklace and the customer was kind enough to point out the error to Lilly. The woman paid the extra money and the incident was forgotten.

  By two o’clock the sky was beginning to darken and the wind had picked up.

  Chapter 48

  “You’d better get out of here before the snow starts, Taffy,” Lilly said. “Since you live outside town, I don’t want you getting stuck in blowing snow. Do you have to stop at the grocery store?”

  “Yes, I need a few things.”

  “Then you’ll need extra time, because the stores will be crazy,” Lilly advised. “Everyone will be out getting last-minute stuff.”

  Taffy left as soon as the front door was locked. Lilly stayed a few extra minutes to lock the vault and grab her sketchbook to work on in case the blizzard lasted through the next day, then she locked the back door, double-checked it, and drove to her mother’s house. The snow was starting to fall a little harder and the wind was gusty.

  “Hi, Mom,” she called, opening the front door. “I thought you were going to keep this door locked all the time.”

  “I thought it was locked,” her mother answered.

  “Want to come over to my house?” Lilly asked. “We’re going to decorate the tree later today. We can all keep each other company.”

  “I don’t know,”
her mother said. “I don’t like to leave the house when the weather is supposed to be bad.”

  “The kids would love it if you joined us,” Lilly said, knowing her mother was powerless to resist the wishes of her grandchildren.

  It worked.

  “All right, I’ll come. Should I pack a bag to stay overnight?”

  “I think you should. It’s supposed to get pretty bad out there.”

  Lilly waited while her mother put some clothes and toiletries in a small carrying case. Then while her mother waited by the front door Lilly made sure the heat was turned down and the back door was locked.

  She helped her mother down the front steps and across the snow drifts between the front walk and Lilly’s car in the street.

  “I hope I can get home in the morning,” her mother fretted. “I don’t like to leave my mail sitting in the mailbox.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Mom,” Lilly said. “If this storm gets as bad as they’re predicting, we may not get any mail for a day or two.”

  “They’re supposed to deliver the mail through rain or sleet or snow or gloom of night,” Lilly’s mother said primly.

  “Well, they can’t deliver the mail if they can’t get the trucks out on the roads.”

  “Humph.”

  Lilly closed her eyes and prayed silently, begging for patience and promising everything but her kids if God could keep her from trying to strangle her mother over the long hours to come.

  The kids were already home and had made hot chocolate. They were thrilled to see their grandmother. The four sat in front of the fireplace, enjoying the warm drink and listening to the wind outside, discussing whether they should use the white lights or the colored lights on the tree that year. Every year there was a lively discussion about which lights should go on the tree, and the kids usually voted Lilly down in favor of colored lights.

  This year, though, they felt sorry for their mother because of the stress she was under and they readily agreed to a tree with white lights. Lilly grinned. “Okay, I’ll find the lights and you two can help me unravel them. It’s not the holiday season if we don’t almost come to blows over the Christmas lights.” Beverly’s eyes widened. “Not really, Mom.”

  The three of them had struggled to get the tree into the garage the weekend before Thanksgiving so it would have time to acclimate to being indoors. Now they went out to the garage again, brought it in through the kitchen, and fought with it until it stood proudly in the living room, a little lopsided but beautiful. Lilly breathed in deeply, savoring the scent of pine needles and bark.

  “The needles make a mess and they hurt my feet,” Laurel complained. “Why can’t we get a fake tree? Nick’s family has one and they can put it up the day after Thanksgiving and leave it up until they feel like taking it down.”

  Another strike against Nick, thought Lilly.

  “Since you mention it, why don’t you get a broom and dustpan and clean up the needles on the floor? While you’re doing that I’ll drag the ornament boxes from the closet.”

  “I wasn’t offering to clean them up,” Laurel whined.

  Tighe laughed. “You ought to know better by now. Why do you think I never say anything?”

  “Tighe, be nice to your sister,” Beverly interjected.

  Laurel heaved a dramatic sigh. ”All right, I’ll clean them up. I hope I get an extra Christmas gift for this.”

  “What are you and Nick giving each other for Christmas?” Tighe asked.

  Dear God, please don’t let it be offensive, Lilly thought.

  Laurel brightened immediately. “We’re getting each other matching ski hats. We’re having them monogrammed.”

  That’s not bad at all.

  “Cool,” said Tighe.

  Lilly found the lights for the tree and the ornaments in the downstairs closet. She dragged out the boxes and piled them in the middle of the living room. She reached for the tangle of lights and gave one of the ends—the only one she could locate—to Tighe.

  “You hold this while I try to unravel the rest of the lights,” she instructed. For the next half hour she unknotted and untangled, twisting and pulling and coaxing and teasing the strings of lights into a relatively straight line. By the time she finished she was furious.

  “It’s like a rat’s nest,” Tighe said. “Why don’t we just get new lights every year and throw them away when Christmas is over?”

  “Because this is part of the fun,” Lilly grunted, bending down to find the outlet under and behind the tree. “And your way is expensive and wasteful.” She plugged in the lights and turned with the unreasonable hope that they would all light up like magic.

  Two strings of lights didn’t light.

  “Nick’s family has a pre-lit tree,” Laurel offered. “They don’t have to deal with this every year.”

  “Good for Nick’s family,” Lilly mumbled, only half under her breath. She stood up. “Tighe, let’s unplug the strands that don’t work and I’ll replace them with new ones I have in the closet.” She retreated to the closet again and came back holding two boxes of lights.

  “I can only find colored lights. I thought I had boxes of white ones.”

  “That’s okay, Mom,” said Tighe. “We can use the white ones and the colored ones. It’ll be sort of a compromise.”

  Lilly thought of the perfect tree Noley was no doubt putting up at her house and grimaced. “Okay. It’s either that or have a tree that looks anemic. Let’s plug them in and see how they look.”

  They looked terrible.

  But the kids had no problem with using both colored and white lights, so Lilly bit her tongue and kept quiet about how bad it looked.

  “Let me get these lights up while you two get out stuff for sandwiches,” Lilly said. Barney was lying on the floor watching everything but suddenly he sat up straight, his ears cocked.

  “Yes, I said ‘sandwiches,’” Lilly said with a laugh. “Don’t give him too much sandwich meat, you two.” Tighe and Laurel went into the kitchen, followed by Barney.

  Lilly had been hunched over the lights for too long, and her back was starting to hurt. She stood up to stretch and walk around the living room for a few moments. She stood at the living room window and pulled aside the curtains to a world of swirling, blowing white flakes. She couldn’t even see the house across the street.

  “How does it look out there?” her mother asked.

  “Pretty bad,” Lilly answered, stretching backward.

  “I hope the power doesn’t go out.”

  “Don’t worry. If it does, we have flashlights and candles. The kids actually like it when the power goes out.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  Lilly shrugged. “I guess it’s because it seems cozier in the dark. More like the dark of winter. They just love it—they always have.”

  “Tighe used to be afraid of the dark when he was very small,” Beverly remarked.

  Now why can she remember that but not remember what a jerk Beau was?

  “I remember,” Lilly said with a chuckle. “Luckily he’s grown out of that.”

  “Time to eat!” Laurel called from the kitchen.

  “Come on, Mom. I hope you’re hungry,” Lilly said.

  The kids had set out everything buffet-style so everyone could help themselves. They all made thick sandwiches and loaded their plates with potato chips, pickles, and three-bean salad that Noley had brought over the last time she visited.

  Bill phoned as they were sitting down in the living room in front of the fireplace.

  “How’s everyone over there?”

  “Good. I brought Mom over to ride out the storm with us. Want to come? We’ve got food.”

  Bill paused. “Actually, I thought I might go over and spend some time at Noley’s house.”

  Lilly let out a little squeal. “Have fun and tell me all about it tomorrow!”

  “I have to come back into work later, so don’t expect much of a story. She said she was going to decorate her tree. I might
be in time to help her with that.”

  “Well, have fun anyway. And be careful.”

  “I always am.”

  After everyone had eaten and the dishes were done, it was time to decorate the tree. The mismatched lights were on and shining brightly. The boxes of ornaments were strewn across the living room floor and it was the annual free-for-all as Lilly, her mother, and the kids each put their favorite ornaments on the tree. It was light-hearted, without so much as a snarky word from anyone, and by the time the ornaments were hanging on the tree Lilly had been able to relax enough to feel the spirit of the season beginning to seep into her soul.

  “Mom, why don’t we watch a movie?” Laurel asked.

  “Good idea. You guys and Gran decide on one while I put these boxes away and let the dog out.” When the weather was especially bad, Lilly attached one end of a long rope to Barney’s collar and the other end to a hook beside the back door. That way Barney didn’t get lost in the whiteout conditions and Lilly could pull on the rope until he made his way back to the kitchen door.

  She put the ornament boxes back in the closet and called Barney. He loved the snow and was even more excited than usual to go out. She attached the blizzard rope, as she called it, to his collar and let him run. She didn’t want to stand in the doorway and let the snow fall into the kitchen, so she closed the door to wait for him.

  “Mom, the DVD player isn’t working,” Tighe called from the living room.

  “I’m coming,” she answered.

  She went into the living room and tinkered with the aging DVD player until the movie came on. The kids had somehow persuaded their grandmother to watch “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

  “Tighe and Laurel, really?” Lilly asked. “Gran isn’t going to like this movie.”

  “I think I’ll be the judge of that,” Beverly said.

  Lilly stood up in the middle of the living room and waited to make sure the DVD was going to play properly. When the opening credits started to roll, she nodded to herself and turned around to fetch Barney from his snowy playground.