Gooseberry Christmas

by Kathi Daley

  “That’s really nice.”

  After our food arrived, we chatted about the upcoming Winter Ball. Josie had arranged for a limo to take us to and from the event. Personally, I couldn’t wait for the magical night to get here, although I did hope that we’d have Bradford’s murder solved by then so Jackson could relax and enjoy the rest of the holiday season without feeling like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The number of friends taking the limo was up to ten, so Josie reserved a limo for twelve just in case anyone else decided to attend.

  After we ate, we decided to start our search for the van by simply walking up one side of the street and then back down the other. We planned to do double duty by searching for the gifts we still needed to buy while asking the merchants in the area if they knew of anyone who drove a white delivery van.

  “You say you saw this van parked at the Christmas tree lot just before it opened for the season?” a man selling toy whistles he’d carved himself asked after we’d made our way down the crowded boardwalk to his booth. We’d decided not to mention that we were looking for a killer. Instead, we decided to lie and simply say that we’d witnessed a minor accident and had information relating to the party at fault that the driver of the van might appreciate having.

  “Yes,” Josie said. “It was a white delivery van.”

  “Have you checked with Greta?” He pulled off his Santa hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Can’t remember her last name offhand, but I know she sells wreaths here on the boardwalk, and she provided wreaths for the Christmas tree lot. She might have been there delivering her inventory when you noticed the red car sideswipe the van.”

  “I know Greta,” I said. “She came by to check on her sales when I was volunteering. I wasn’t aware that she drove a van.”

  “She’s part of the crafter’s circuit. She sells Christmas wreaths here on the boardwalk during the holiday season, but she has other craft items she peddles around the state the rest of the year. I think the lettering on her van is Greta’s Creations. She’s set up across from the leather shop this year.”

  “Thank you,” Josie said. “We’re heading in that direction, so we’ll be sure to stop by and ask her if her van has been damaged in a hit and run.”

  “So, what do you think?” Jemma asked after we started walking down the boardwalk. “Do you think Greta is our killer?”

  I frowned. “I kind of doubt it, but I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have a conversation with the woman. She’s fairly petite, and from what I understand, the thrust of the knife into Bradford’s chest was delivered with force, so it seems unlikely that Greta is the one who delivered it.”

  “What if more than one person arrived in the van the man delivering the Christmas trees noticed?” Josie asked.

  “I suppose that’s possible,” I admitted. “Still, Greta seemed really nice when I met her. Not at all the sort who would murder someone in cold blood.”

  A conversation with Greta netted us the information that she’d been at a craft fair in Bellingham during the week in question and hadn’t returned to Gooseberry Bay until the weekend following the Wednesday we’d asked about. She suggested we might want to find out who set up the temporary sales booth since it made sense that the wood panels that made up the booth would have needed to be delivered in a van or truck. I realized that was a good suggestion.

  “Let’s head over to the lot and talk to whoever is in charge today,” I suggested. “A list of both the individuals delivering the infrastructure and the crafts for sale is actually a good place to start.”

  When we arrived at the Christmas tree lot, we found a long line snaking through the trees for sale, past the craft section, toward the booth selling hot beverages and baked goods.

  “It looks like it’s photos with Santa weekend,” Jemma announced.

  “Yeah, now that you say that, I remember someone saying something about Santa being here,” I said, scanning the crowd looking for someone I knew from my previous experience as a volunteer at the lot. “It looks like a different volunteer group than those who have been here during the week. The volunteers all wear red vests, but I don’t recognize anyone.”

  “Michael Needleman,” Josie pointed. “He’s actually the president of the chamber of commerce. I know him well enough to ask what we need to ask. Wait here; I’ll go see what he knows.”

  Jemma and I agreed to wait while Josie pushed her way through the crowd. There were more people at the Christmas tree lot today to see Santa and to look at the craft tables, which appeared to have a lot of new inventory since the last time I’d volunteered. I supposed it made sense that they’d have more crafters show up on the weekends when the crowds were the largest. So far, I’d only volunteered at the lot on weekdays.

  After about fifteen minutes, Josie pushed her way back through the crowd. “Michael said that the sales booth is owned by the chamber of commerce. It comes apart for transport and storage and is used for various chamber functions, not just the Christmas tree lot in December but also for the carnival in the park in July and the harvest festival in October.”

  “Did he know who transported it to the Christmas tree lot this year?” I asked.

  “He said he did. He has a big Ford truck that he used to transport it. He said he delivered it to Bradford on the Tuesday before the Wednesday he was found dead.”

  I supposed that made sense. Now that I thought about it, I remembered that when I’d arrived Wednesday morning, the overhead lights had been strung, and the sales booth had already been set up. I should have realized that before. It seemed I was off my game.

  “So if the van the guy who delivered the Christmas trees noticed wasn’t here to deliver the sales booth, why was it here?” Jemma asked.

  “It seems like it would have been premature for the crafters to be dropping anything off since the Christmas tree lot wasn’t even open yet, and the sales booth had already been delivered, so maybe the van wasn’t here to drop anything off,” I said. “Maybe the individual driving the van was simply here to see Bradford.”

  “Yeah, that seems likely,” Jemma agreed.

  “So, what now?” Josie asked. “We talked to a lot of people, and no one seems to know who the van might belong to.”

  I paused to look around. “When the guy with the Christmas trees came by with his delivery, he said the back gate was blocked by a white delivery van, which was why the man parked his truck and went to eat breakfast. When I arrived, I came in through the front gate, and the man with the trees came up from behind me, which means he must have come in through the front gate as well.”

  “If he’d parked on the street that’s parallel to the back of the Christmas tree lot and ate at the diner, wouldn’t he have come in through the back gate?” Jemma asked.

  “Maybe the back gate was locked since it was early in the morning, and the man had been forced to use the front gate,” Josie suggested.

  “If that were true, how did the individual driving the van get inside the Christmas tree lot?” I pointed out. “Bradford would have had to have unlocked the gate and let the person who arrived in the van in, or the person in the van would have had to have parked in the back of the Christmas tree lot and then walked around the fence and accessed the property through the front, which really doesn’t make sense.” I paused to think about it. “I need to call Jackson and ask him how he accessed the property when he showed up that day. He said he came up to the Christmas tree lot from the marina, which would mean he most likely accessed the lot from the front, but it seemed that he was running toward the back of the lot when I noticed him running away.”

  Both Jemma and Josie agreed that finding out that piece of information might be a worthwhile thing to do, so they went to look at the crafts while I made my call.

  “Hey, Ainsley. What’s up?” Jackson asked after answering the phone.

  “I wanted to ask about the day you came to see Bradford and found him dead. You said you noticed his truck in the Christmas tree lot from the mari
na’s office. Do you remember how you accessed the tree lot?”

  “Through the front gate. The gate closest to the parking area. It was wide open.”

  “And when you left? Did you leave through that gate as well?”

  “No.” He paused. “When I came out of the office, my instinct was to avoid being seen, so I headed toward the back of the Christmas tree lot and exited through the back gate onto the street behind the lot.”

  “So, it was unlocked?”

  “Yeah. In fact, it was open.”

  I thought back to my experience with the gate. I’d come in through the front gate closest to the parking area. The man from the truck had come in behind me, so he must have come in through the front gate, as well. If the back gate hadn’t been locked, why would the man, who told me that he’d been eating at the diner on the street behind the Christmas tree lot, come around to the front after he ate when it would have been closer to go through the back gate?

  “Is the gate I came in through and left through important?” Jackson asked me.

  “It might be. I’m just trying to figure out a timeline. You told me that you didn’t see the white van when you left, and the man with the Christmas trees told me that the white van was blocking the gate when he arrived, so the van had to have left the area between the time the man with the Christmas trees drove by, and you arrived. I arrived at the Christmas tree lot between eight-forty and eight forty-five. You said you noticed Bradford’s truck in the parking area around eight-thirty. That fits if you headed directly toward the office and then left just as I got there. The man delivering the Christmas trees arrived back at the tree lot just after I saw you running away. If the gate was opened when you left and assuming the person in the van didn’t have a key to the gate, Bradford must have opened it for the person who simply parked in front of the gate rather than driving inside the tree lot. The two of them must have then gone into the office. If the van was already parked in front of the gate when the man with the Christmas trees arrived, he or she must have still been inside the office at eight o’clock.”

  “That sounds right. I didn’t notice Bradford’s truck until around eight-thirty, but I arrived at the marina from the north, so I wouldn’t have noticed his truck unless I went into the office. It could have been there for hours by that point, and I wouldn’t have known.”

  “So if all of that is true, then I have to wonder again why the man with the Christmas trees didn’t simply enter the lot from the back.”

  “Maybe he didn’t go straight back to the tree lot from the diner,” Jackson suggested.

  “Okay, if that’s true, where did he go after eating but before returning to the Christmas tree lot?”

  “Maybe he met someone in the parking area.”

  “Did you see the truck with the Christmas trees parked on the street behind the Christmas tree lot when you ran out that way?”

  “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “And was there anyone in or around the truck?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “And how did you return to the marina?”

  “I didn’t go back right away. I continued through the woods to the boat ramp and returned to the marina that way.”

  “So, you didn’t go through the parking area?”

  “No.”

  Okay, so Jackson wouldn’t have seen the man with the Christmas trees in the parking area if he had been meeting someone there, but I would have when I arrived, and I didn’t notice any other vehicles in the lot’s parking area. If the man with the Christmas tree delivery had come from the front of the tree lot and he wasn’t in the parking area, he must have come from the marina, but what would he be doing there?

  “You know,” I said aloud, “when Parker and I spoke to the staff at the diner where the man with the Christmas trees ate, we asked about the white van, but we didn’t bring up the subject of the man with the Christmas trees. I wonder if anyone remembers him.”

  “I can meet up with you, and we can go and ask. They’ll be busy, but I eat there a lot since it’s so close to the marina. I know the staff, so I’m sure they’ll take a minute to talk to me.”

  “Josie and Jemma are here, and Josie will know the staff. I’ll ask Josie to come with me and then call you back. It will speed things up if Josie can get the information. If she strikes out, you can try.”

  “Okay. Call me back, either way.”

  After I hung up with Jackson, I went to find Jemma and Josie. Josie said she did know Peg as well as most of her staff. As we predicted, it was busy today, but Peg was willing to talk to Josie, and she was willing to allow Josie to speak with her staff. The murder had occurred almost two weeks ago by this point, so it was difficult for anyone to remember a specific customer, but eventually, one of the waitresses remembered a conversation she’d had with a man who’d come in on the day Bradford was found dead. She remembered that he mentioned he had a delivery for the Christmas tree lot but had decided to eat first.

  “That lines up with what the guy told me,” I pointed out.

  After I confirmed what the waitress remembered as being what the Christmas tree delivery guy had told me, I called Jackson back to let him know what was going on. Josie suggested that we invite him to meet us at the cottage when we got back so we could talk to him about what we’d found and develop a strategic plan. He mentioned being with Coop, so Josie invited Coop to the cottage as well.

  Chapter 14

  The strategy meeting with Coop and Jackson really didn’t get us anywhere. I felt like we’d managed to dig up a lot of information, and it appeared we had the timeline of events figured out, but something just wasn’t coming together. Jackson was becoming more and more agitated as time went by, and we didn’t seem to be getting any closer to finding Bradford’s real killer. He was certain that Deputy Todd was simply biding his time until he could come up with a viable reason to put him behind bars, which left him feeling unsettled and insecure.

  I’d been doing what I could to try to help Jackson, but I really wasn’t getting anywhere. Adam had called and asked me if I wanted to come by today to work on my mystery, so I decided to put Jackson’s case on the back burner for the day and hopefully get back to it with some new ideas tomorrow.

  “It seems like this murder case you’ve been working on has gotten pretty complicated,” Adam said after we’d settled in with new boxes of paperwork to look through.

  I nodded as I dug through a box of photos. “It really has, which I guess isn’t all that unusual. Every now and then, when Dad and I would take on a case, everything would come together nice and easy, but most of the time, we had to slam into a whole lot of stone walls before we stumbled across that one perfect break that would lead us to the answer we were looking for.”

  “When you worked with your father, what sort of cases did he take on?” Adam asked.

  I paused and looked in his direction. “All sorts, although Dad wasn’t a fan of tracking down cheating spouses. Given his background, he was hired to solve a murder a few times when the family of the victim didn’t feel that local law enforcement was getting the job done. On occasion, he was hired to find missing persons, runaway children, and bail jumpers. And then there were cases that involved the theft of a precious object, but those were rare.”

  “Did he work exclusively for the public?”

  “Actually, no. There was an attorney who hired Dad to track down information that he felt would help with a case he was working on fairly often. That particular relationship was profitable since the attorney could afford to pay good money to get what he was after. A lot of the missing persons and runaway children cases ended up being pro bono since the people needing help didn’t always have the money required to get the help they needed.”

  I returned my attention to the box I was looking through. We were working in Adam’s suite today, which was nice since it was warm and cozy and festively decorated.

  “Do you think you might go back to that sort of work once you solve your myst
ery?” he asked.

  I looked up again. “I’m not sure. Initially, I only got into it to help my dad, but it seems that I’ve been pulled into quite a few mysteries since I’ve been in Gooseberry Bay, and I really enjoy working with Parker, Jemma, and Josie. My work with them feels different from my work with my dad. For one thing, Dad was the main draw when we had our agency, and I was very clearly the sidekick and nothing more. But my work with Parker and the roommates seems like more of a partnership. I will admit that there have been times I’ve taken a backseat role since I’m the newbie in the area, and Parker has been the one tracking down local stories for years. But I think, as a group, we’re finding our groove, and I feel like the others value what I have to say. If I do decide to get serious about being a private investigator, I’ll need to look into the local licensing requirements, but I will admit that it is something that has crossed my mind.”

  “So, if you get your license here in Washington, would that mean you’d stay here?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I guess it would.”

  He just smiled and returned to the box he was sorting through, and I returned to my box, as well. So far, I hadn’t found any photos of the woman I’d been with or of Avery or me other than the one I’d brought to the area with me. I really couldn’t think of anything else to do other than dig through the photos and old paperwork, hoping I’d stumble on something that led me to a real clue.

  After another thirty minutes, I finally found something that might actually provide a clue. “Look what I found,” I said, holding up a photo of Marilee sitting on a bench on the lawn in front of the mansion that overlooked the distant inlet. A woman I didn’t recognize, but I hoped Adam would, was sitting on a bench across from Marilee. “Do you recognize the woman with Marilee?”

  “Yes. The woman with Marilee was my mother’s friend. Her name is Camilla Arabella.”

  “Is she still alive?” I asked, hoping for an affirmative answer.

  “She is. In fact, she still lives here in Gooseberry Bay.”