'Tis the Season Murder

by Leslie Meier

  She was almost home, approaching the corner of Bumps River Road, when she heard a siren. She checked her rearview mirror and saw the town ambulance with lights flashing, coming fast, so she pulled over to let it pass. When it made the turn onto Bumps River Road her heart took a dive. She feared little Angie Cunningham had taken a turn for the worse. She decided to follow and see if she could do anything to help, perhaps give Zach or Lexie a ride, or stay with the younger children.

  Her car bounced down the badly paved road, which led to the town dump and was lined with a mix of modest homes and the sort of unsightly businesses that town planners preferred to hide away, out of sight of tourists. There was a rather untidy masonry yard, filled with pallets of bricks and piles of rocks, a transmission service and auto body shop where a number of damaged cars awaited repairs, and a fenced in area boasting a shiny new cell phone tower.

  Like the other houses on the road, the Cunninghams’ house was a modest affair, a one-story ranch with an old-fashioned picture window on one side of the center doorway and a couple of smaller windows on the other. It was decorated for Christmas, however, with homemade wreaths on all the windows and a plywood Santa with sleigh and reindeer on the roof. A lighted Christmas tree was in the picture window.

  Lucy pulled into the yard and parked next to a stack of lobster pots, taking care not to block the ambulance. She was just getting out of the car when the door to the house opened and the EMTs came out, carrying a stretcher containing a small, blanketed figure. Lexie followed, clutching her unfastened coat around herself and climbing into the ambulance with her daughter. Her face was white with tension, her hair uncombed. She’d probably spent the day anxiously nursing her sick daughter, finally giving in and calling for help.

  Lucy blinked back tears, watching this little drama. She was so lucky, she thought, that her children were all healthy and so was her grandson, little Patrick. Oh, they’d had the usual ear infections and colds—Bill broke a leg falling off a ladder, and they’d had a bit of a struggle getting Elizabeth’s asthma under control—but for the most part they’d all been remarkably healthy. On the rare occasions when they had been sick or injured, they’d made speedy recoveries. They’d never had to deal with a life-threatening disease such as Angie’s kidney disease, and the very idea made Lucy’s heart skip a beat. She could only imagine how awful it would be to face the possibility every day that you might lose your child.

  The ambulance was leaving and Lucy saw Zach was standing in the doorway, with the two younger children on either side of him. She gave him a yell and hurried across the yard. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked, reaching the front steps. “Do you need anything?”

  The ambulance had been silent as it climbed Bumps River Road, but the siren wailed as it made the turn onto the main road and they could hear it as it sped to town and the cottage hospital.

  “Oh, hi, Lucy,” he said slowly, blinking as if coming out of a coma. Lucy realized he hadn’t noticed her until now. “Thanks for stopping.”

  She repeated her offer of help. “Do you need anything?”

  He hadn’t shaved this morning, and his plaid flannel shirt and jeans looked as if they could use a wash. “No,” he said. “We did a big shopping yesterday.”

  She could hear loud music punctuated with booms and whizzes coming from the TV inside. “Do you want me to stay with the little ones so you can go to the hospital?”

  He shook his head, slowly and carefully, as if he was holding the weight of the world on his shoulders and was afraid of dislodging it. “No, thanks. I’m better here.”

  “It’s no trouble for me to stay,” Lucy said.

  “Go on.” He gave the kids a little shove. “Your show’s on TV.” They scampered off and he lowered his head. “Truth is, Lucy, I can’t take the hospital. Lexie’ll call, keep me posted.”

  “I understand,” Lucy said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

  “Thanks, I will,” he said, closing the door.

  Lucy made her way through the yard, past the faded plastic toys and the stacks of lobster pots, past an overturned skiff, and got in her car. As she put the key in the ignition and started the engine it occurred to her that of all the people who lived in Tinker’s Cove, the Cunninghams had probably suffered most at the hands of Jake Marlowe and Ben Scribner.

  Not only had Lexie lost much-needed income when her hours were cut at town hall, but the Cunninghams also lost their employer-subsidized health insurance because she no longer worked the required number of hours. There were state programs for low-income people, but Lucy knew that these plans had strict eligibility requirements and she also knew that Zach’s income from lobstering put them a hair above the income limit. Lucy’s own family’s health insurance premiums were almost two thousand dollars a month, and they didn’t have any preexisting conditions like the Cunninghams. Lucy wasn’t quite sure when the new federal law concerning preexisting conditions went into effect, and that, she thought, was part of the problem. The whole health care system was a mess, a confusing jumble of copays and coinsurance and eligibility requirements that kept changing, and now the Cunninghams were at its mercy. Perhaps that was the worst part, she thought, the sense of confusion and uncertainty the system generated. You never knew what amount you were responsible for until you got the form that explained the benefits from the insurance company, and in her experience it was always more than she expected.

  If only Lexie had been able to keep her full-time position . . . The family would have the town’s gold-plated plan, and they wouldn’t have to worry about Angie’s medical expenses. When you considered that Downeast was also threatening to foreclose on their little ranch house, the house they’d decorated so gaily for Christmas, it was more than enough to make a person very angry—possibly angry enough to pack a bomb into a holiday mailer and send it off to the person who’d taken away the family’s medical plan.

  Reaching the end of Bumps River Road, Lucy turned onto the town road and looked back at the Cunninghams’ house one last time. Zach was a handy guy; she had no doubt he’d made the plywood Santa on the roof. He’d done a good job, too. Santa was freshly painted, every inch a jolly old soul, and the sleigh and reindeer were finely detailed. She had no doubt that Zach could put a bomb together, but she couldn’t quite believe he would. She thought of his resigned expression as he watched the ambulance leave, and his admission that he couldn’t cope with the hospital. If anything, she thought, he seemed a beaten man. Events had overtaken him and he could barely keep up with the demands of day-to-day life; he didn’t have the time or energy for sinister plots.

  * * *

  When Lucy got to the rehearsal that evening, the church basement was a hive of activity. The cavernous basement room with a stage at one end, which was only occasionally used, had a dusty smell, a scent that Lucy always associated with amateur theatricals. Al Roberts was at the rear of the stage, banging away with a hammer, constructing scenery, and she was pleased to see that two of the three planned panels were already in place. Marjorie Little-john and Tamika Shaw were at the piano, working out music for the show. Sue and Pam had set up ironing boards in a rear corner and were pressing costumes and hanging them on rolling garment racks. Lucy greeted them, and asked if they’d found her costume yet, and Pam held up an extremely large blue dress with a lace collar and little black buttons.

  “I think it will need to be taken in,” Lucy said.

  “Not too much,” Sue said, casting a critical eye over Lucy’s figure. “A dart or two will do it.”

  “She’s terrible,” Pam said with a laugh. “This was made for Holly Wigmore, and she’s enormous.”

  “Maybe you can find something else,” Lucy suggested. There seemed to be no shortage of costumes; she noticed a number of boxes and trunks piled up in the corner.

  “We’ll try,” Pam said. “Or maybe you’ve got something that will do.”

  “All she ever wears is jeans,” Sue scoffed.

  “They’re comfor
table,” Lucy said, noticing Rachel joining a little group of actors who were clustered on stage. “I better go. I think they’re getting started.”

  “Break a leg,” Sue said.

  When Lucy joined the group, she discovered they were talking about Angie Cunningham. News traveled fast in Tinker’s Cove, where everybody knew somebody on the rescue squad.

  “Poor little mite,” Marge Culpepper was saying. “What a shame she has to go through all this. She’s spent more time in the hospital than at home.”

  “I can’t imagine what her parents are going through,” Bob said.

  “And now she’s been transferred to Portland. It’s going to be very difficult for them,” Rachel said. “They’ve got the twins at home, and there’s the price of gas, not to mention meals.”

  “Portland? When did that happen?” Lucy asked.

  “Around dinnertime,” said Pete Winslow, a nurse at the cottage hospital who was playing Scrooge’s nephew Fred. “She needs a kidney transplant and she needs it soon. We can’t do it here in Tinker’s Cove, so she’s got to wait it out at the medical center. The problem is finding a good match.”

  “What about her parents?” Lucy asked.

  “Of course they tried to donate, but neither one is a good match,” Pete said.

  “Maybe we could have one of those drives,” Rachel suggested. “Ask people to volunteer to be screened. I’d be happy to help organize it.”

  “You’ve got quite a lot on your plate already with this show,” Bob said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

  “Donating a kidney seems like an awful lot to ask of a person,” Florence said, with a toss of her head. “I mean, it’s not like dropping a buck or two in the Salvation Army bucket. How many people would actually volunteer to go through an operation and give up one of their kidneys?”

  “You might be surprised,” Pete said. “A lot of people want to donate for a loved one, but they’re not a good match, so they’re setting up these exchanges where the organs are swapped out.”

  “What do you mean?” Marge asked.

  “It’s like this,” Pete said. “Say your husband needs a kidney, but you’re not a good match. Somebody else, say in California, could use your kidney, so you donate your kidney and they fly it out to California. Meanwhile, somebody in Dubuque’s brother needs a kidney, and that family member is a match for your husband. So your husband gets the Dubuque kidney, and maybe the California kidney goes to Iowa. I’ve heard of chains that involved more than twenty kidneys.”

  “That’s amazing,” Lucy said.

  Florence put her hand on Bob’s arm. “There must be quite a lot of complicated legal issues involved in something like that, aren’t there?” She licked her lips and leaned toward him, as if hanging on his every word.

  Bob cleared his throat. “I don’t think so. The whole organ donation thing has become pretty standardized from a legal point of view.”

  “I’ve heard of people selling their organs,” Florence said, widening her eyes. “Can you imagine?”

  Rachel threw a glance in Lucy’s direction, then clapped her hands. “Let’s get started,” she said in a sharp tone. “This is a rehearsal, not a gabfest.”

  Marge looked at her watch. “Oh, my goodness, is this the time?”

  “Seven-thirty,” Lucy said.

  “The caroling starts at eight, you know,” Marge reminded.

  Rachel’s jaw dropped. “Is it tonight?” The annual carol sing at Country Cousins was a long-standing town tradition and she knew that nobody wanted to miss it.

  Marge nodded. “Barney’s on special patrol, making sure people can cross the street safely.”

  “I’ve been so busy I forgot all about it,” Rachel confessed. “No point continuing here. We’ll have to reschedule the rehearsal.” This announcement was met with approval from the cast, and people started gathering up their coats and hats.

  “You’re just canceling the rehearsal?” Florence asked, clearly displeased.

  “It’s the carol sing,” Al said. “Everybody goes.” He tilted his head toward the door, where most of the cast members were making their departures.

  “But there’s so much to do for the show,” Florence protested, placing her hand on Bob’s arm. “Couldn’t we at least go through our lines?”

  “You’ve only got one line,” Rachel snapped, losing patience. “Uncle, Fred will be so pleased you’ve come.”

  Bob stepped away, going over to the coatrack and busying himself getting Rachel’s coat. Lucy thought he’d made a wise decision.

  “Are you sure?” Florence asked. “I thought there was more. I thought Fred’s wife was a leading part.”

  “No, just that one line,” Rachel said. “Trust me. Everything will get done. We’ve got plenty of time.”

  Almost everyone had left by now. Lucy had joined Bob, who was holding Rachel’s coat. Al was standing by the door, where the panel of light switches was located, waiting to turn them off.

  Florence wasn’t convinced. She was looking at the unpainted flats that Al had erected on the stage. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay and work out a plan for painting the scenery.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” Rachel said.

  “I’m not much of a singer,” Florence said. “And besides, I won’t have time tomorrow. I have to take Virginia to the airport.”

  “Suit yourself,” Rachel said, slipping into her coat and buttoning it.

  “Don’t forget to turn out the lights,” Al said.

  The four of them left the hall together, walking the short distance to Country Cousins. There a crowd had already gathered in front of the quaint country store that still sold penny candy, calico by the yard, and cheddar cheese cut from a huge wheel. The porch boasted two benches, one marked Democrats and the other Republicans, and in fine weather they were filled by old folks who enjoyed debating the issues of the day. The store itself hadn’t changed with the times, but the business model had. Country Cousins had grown far beyond the original store and had become a huge catalog and online retailer, with shiny new state-of-the-art headquarters located out on the town line, near the interstate.

  Nobody was thinking of that, however, as they greeted Barney and hurried across the road to join friends and neighbors and family gathered around the bonfire that was burning in a steel drum. Lucy spotted Bill and Zoe and squeezed through the crowd to join them. “Where’s Sara?” she asked.

  “At the college,” Bill said.

  “SAC meeting,” Zoe added.

  Then Dick Kershaw blew the first notes of “Deck the Halls” on his cornet and the singing began. It was a fine, clear night, not too cold. Gazing around at the happy faces, Lucy raised her voice in the songs she’d sung every year since she was a child. Some earnest volunteers had printed up booklets with the words to the carols, but nobody needed them, except for the tricky later verses to the “Partridge in a Pear Tree” carol. Then they were all singing the last song, “Silent Night,” and almost everyone was gazing skyward, at the bright stars that dotted the sky.

  “Oh, darn!” Lucy exclaimed, as the last note ended.

  “What is it?” Bill hissed, his voice a mixture of concern and annoyance. “You’re spoiling the moment.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered back. “It’s just that I left my bag at the church.”

  “No problem. I parked the truck over there.”

  “What about you, Zoe?” Lucy asked.

  “I’m meeting my friends for hot chocolate at the coffee shop,” she said, already on the move. “I’ve got a ride home.”

  “Not too late,” Lucy said.

  “Promise,” she called over her shoulder, running to greet her girlfriends. Lucy watched them exchanging hugs and air kisses with all the sophistication of Hollywood starlets.

  Bill slipped his arm around Lucy’s waist as they made their way back to the church, on the other side of the town green where white lights had been strung in the trees. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”
/>   “It’s my favorite Christmas thing,” Lucy said. Then she added, “Well, except for the presents.”

  They were laughing together when they reached the church parking lot, where there were only three vehicles: Lucy’s SUV, Bill’s truck, and Florence’s little Civic. Bill got in his truck and started the engine, but promised not to leave until Lucy had retrieved her purse and started her car.

  Lucy went inside, calling out Florence’s name so she wouldn’t be startled. There was no reply, but all the lights were on, except those on the stage and the kitchen, which were dark. Lucy thought Florence must have left, forgetting to turn off the lights, but then she noticed her coat was still on the rack. Lucy spotted her forgotten purse on the table where she’d left it and picked it up, then decided to see if Florence was in the bathroom. A quick check revealed that the ladies room was empty, so Lucy returned to the hall and called Florence’s name again. This time she got a reply, a faint moan that came from the stage area.

  Lucy immediately ran to the switches and flicked them all on; the kitchen and stage area were now brightly illuminated. The stage was different from before, she realized. The big scenery flats that Al had constructed were no longer standing in place. They’d fallen, and Florence was trapped beneath them.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’m coming!” Lucy cried, rushing up the steps to the stage. But when she tried to lift the flats off Florence she found they were too heavy for her to raise by herself.

  “Hang on! I have to get help!” she cried, getting a moan in response. Then she was dashing through the hall and out to the parking lot, calling Bill. “I need help!” she yelled. “Call nine-one-one.”

  “What’s the matter?” Bill was out of the truck and running across the parking lot.