He sat down in his desk chair. The weathered leather gave, soft and cushy under his weight. He drank from his mug like he was thirsty and smiled at me. “Always settles my stomach. There’s nothing like hot chocolate to cure whatever ails you.” He held a pink box out to me. “Peanut brittle?”
“No, thanks. Do you have a queasy tummy?” I asked. “The party is going very well. You needn’t worry.”
“You did a lovely job, Sophie. I’m just getting older, I guess. Can’t eat everything I used to.”
Luis Simon, a distinguished psychiatrist who had bought a home on my street through Scroggins Realty in August, popped his head in the doorway. With prominent cheekbones and sultry bedroom eyes, Luis was worthy of posing for the cover of a romance novel. He carried a cup of English Bishop, a flaming holiday punch loaded with rum and oranges studded with cloves. “Horace! Where’s the Scottish dirk you were telling me about?”
“Dirk?” I asked.
Horace jumped up. He steadied himself briefly, his fingertips on his desk. “A traditional Scottish dagger, my dear.” He turned to the bookcase behind him, took a tiny key from a book, and unlocked a desk drawer. He removed the knife gingerly and proudly presented it in his open palms as though it were a prized possession.
“An antique. The sheath bears sterling silver thistles.”
Probably hand carved, the sheath appeared to be ebony. I didn’t have to be an antiques expert to see that it bore the hallmarks of age.
He grasped the handle. A silver crown on the top held a large amber stone. Horace withdrew the handle to reveal a gleaming knife. “I like to imagine that it was really used, and not just worn for ceremonies.”
Luis whistled his admiration and took the knife from Horace. “It’s sharp! And heavier than I expected. You could do some damage with this thing.” He danced backward and extended his arm as though it were a sword.
“They made things to last in the old days, didn’t they?” Horace beamed. “Let’s find Babineaux. He wanted to see it, too.” He locked the drawer again and tucked the key back into the book.
They scuttled out of Horace’s office with the enthusiasm of little boys who had found a shiny object. I moseyed toward the buffet to check on the food. Guests couldn’t seem to get enough of the oysters on the half shell and rolls of salmon on pumpernickel with pink peppercorns and crème fraîche. The baked Brie with toasted pecans and fig glaze was always a hit. I couldn’t resist a taste of the melting cheese with a hint of salt and a smidge of sweet fig. Heavenly! And I had to try the seared foie gras with caramelized pears. The caterer had outdone himself.
I spotted my ex-husband, Mars Winston, gabbing with my best friend, Nina Reid Norwood. Everyone appeared to be having fun. I checked my watch, grabbed my pashmina, and slipped out the front door in search of the carolers I’d hired, shivering at the chill. Mother Nature had cooperated beautifully, sending us sparkling snowflakes. Not enough to have to shovel, but the right amount for perfect ambiance. In the spirit of the season I’d worn a red velvet dress, but it lacked sleeves. No matter. The pashmina would cover my bare arms. Besides, I didn’t plan to be outdoors long.
The carolers hurried along the street toward me. Dressed in traditional Victorian garb, with white faux fur trim on their clothes, they fit in perfectly on Old Town’s colonial streets.
They gathered in front of the door, and at the signal, I opened it and stepped aside on the sidewalk to watch them.
They began with “Deck the Halls.” The doors to the upstairs balcony opened, and Horace led a small group out to watch. I didn’t care for the blanched color of his normally rosy face. He still smiled, though, and listened to the voices blend.
But then he grasped the railing with both hands and appeared to sway. None of the people behind him seemed to realize that he wasn’t well.
Only when he leaned forward did they finally cluster around him in concern. With an enormous snap, the railing split, and Horace plunged headlong onto the sidewalk, landing directly in front of the carolers.
CHAPTER TWO
Dear Sophie,
My sister was stationed in Germany and brought me a nutcracker as a gift. I’m not quite sure what to do with it. It looks sort of awkward and lonely standing there by itself.
Clara in Nut Plains, Connecticut
Dear Clara,
The height of most nutcrackers makes them wonderful anchors for vignettes. Use him to give your mantel arrangement height. Or cluster him with some candles for a charming centerpiece on your dining table. I love them set next to poinsettias, too.
Sophie
For a few eternally long seconds, everyone watched in shocked silence. A horrific red stain seeped onto the brick sidewalk.
Screams sounded all around me.
“Nooooo! Horace!” his secretary, Phyllis Tate, shrieked from the balcony.
I rushed to Horace, not knowing what to do. If he had broken his spine, then moving him would be the worst possible thing.
“Horace?” I whispered into his ear. “Can you hear me?”
He lay facedown. A couple of people wanted to turn him over, but I didn’t let them.
Phyllis arrived at the scene and moaned his name over and over again, tears etching trails through her makeup.
Placing my face close to the sidewalk, I tried to see his eyes. He didn’t appear to be bleeding from his nose or mouth. Where was the blood coming from?
Sirens sounded in the distance, and I thanked my lucky stars that Old Town wasn’t very big. They would arrive momentarily. “I think we should leave him this way,” I said to no one in particular.
There wasn’t much I could do except cover his hand with mine and murmur encouragement. “You’ll be fine, Horace. The ambulance is on the way.”
Horace’s hand twitched. He whispered something in a voice too faint to hear.
“They’re coming, Horace. Hang in there!”
He pressed my hand feebly and tried to speak. I lowered my head as close to his as possible.
He murmured, “In the desk drawer. Edith must never know. Tell her I always loved her.”
“Fool!”
I looked up to see Horace’s wife, Edith, looming over us. Tall and slender, a permanent scowl creased her face. She regarded her husband with frigid eyes.
Officer Wong arrived at the same time as the ambulance. She shooed everyone back to make way for the emergency medical technicians to work.
They immobilized him with some difficulty. When they finally turned him over, I saw the problem. Horace’s prized dirk jutted from his chest. He had fallen on his own sword, so to speak.
Screams and gasps echoed again as onlookers saw the knife handle. In minutes, Horace was loaded into the ambulance and it rolled away, picking up speed.
Edith returned to the building. I hurried inside, dodged her, and made a beeline for Horace’s office. I took the time to close the door, quickly wiped my hands on tissues, and located the key in a book of poems, on the page with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
Moving in haste, I fumbled with the key, finally opened the drawer, and found only one item inside—an aging envelope.
I wrapped the pashmina around it and slid the drawer closed just as the door swung open.
Edith stared at me, cold as ice. “What are you doing in here?”
I sniffled, pulled another tissue from the box on Horace’s desk, and turned my back to her. “I needed a moment alone.” Wiping my eyes, I turned to face her. “He said to tell you he always loved you.”
“Get out.” She couldn’t have said it in a more demeaning and hostile manner if she had tried.
I hurried past her into the hallway, clutching the pashmina carefully so I wouldn’t accidentally drop Horace’s precious letter.
Wong pulled me aside. “Sophie,” she said calmly, “you do
know that you have blood on your dress?”
I glanced down and shuddered. Gross. “From kneeling on the sidewalk, I guess. How is Horace? Did the EMTs tell you anything? Can a person survive that kind of wound?”
“Wish I knew. What happened exactly?”
“He was carrying the dagger around to show everyone. When the carolers came, a group of people crowded onto the balcony to listen. Horace looked ill, then the railing broke and he fell.”
“How come no one else fell?”
“Come to think of it, that was a little bit odd. Maybe they held on to the side railings?”
“Did you see anyone plunge the knife into him?”
“No. It wasn’t like that. He was in the front of the crowd on the balcony. He must have fallen on the dagger.”
She pulled out a notebook and scribbled in it, her plump face contorting at the thought. Wong had kept her former husband’s last name, which often surprised people when they met the short African-American policewoman. She wore her hair in curls, longer toward the front and trimmed in the back, with one sassy curl tickling her forehead. It suited her. She was a no-nonsense police officer who often saw through flimsy explanations.
Edith Scroggins approached us. “I thought I told you to get out.” She eyed Wong. “You, too.” Not even a hint of emotion showed on her stony face. She held herself painfully erect. She spat the word, “Now!” and watched us, waiting.
“Ma’am, I need to examine the balcony,” said Wong.
“Not without my permission. Get out of my building.”
“Ma’am, I can get a warrant to look at it.” Wong sounded stern yet factual.
“Out!” Edith screamed like a wild woman.
Wong’s mouth dropped open. Our eyes met. Without another word, we turned and walked through the empty hallway to the foyer. Edith had cleared the building. As far as I could tell, we were the last to leave.
When we reached the front door, I glanced over my shoulder. Edith held a glass of punch in her hand and watched us imperiously.
We’d barely made it outside when we heard the door lock behind us.
“Whoa!” Wong shook her head. “What a witch. She better hope her husband doesn’t die. She’ll be the prime suspect if there’s any indication that someone tampered with that railing.”
A few people still lingered on the sidewalk. “Can you believe how fast she got rid of us?” I asked. “It’s been less than five minutes. Wonder what happened to the caterer?”
Wong huffed. “She’s not through with me yet. If she wants a warrant for me to look at that balcony, then I’ll get one.”
“That was the oddest thing I’ve ever seen. Wouldn’t you have gone to the hospital with your husband?” I shivered in the cold but didn’t dare unfold my pashmina.
Baxter Babineaux, who had bought a home on my block, joined us. “That was quite the act, wasn’t it? I have to agree with you, Sophie. Who doesn’t go to the hospital with an injured husband? Horace might die from that stab wound! I’m not related to him, but you bet I’ll be keeping tabs on his condition.”
Tall and portly, Baxter exuded authority in a grandiose way. He was certainly friendly enough, but he had a pretentious manner about him, which always made me feel like I might not live up to his high standards.
He frowned. “With all those HIPAA regulations, I wonder if they’ll tell us anything. Old Mrs. Scrooge certainly isn’t going to keep us posted on his condition.”
Baxter gazed at the wreath that had hung on the balcony but now lay on the sidewalk. “Horace loved Christmas like a little kid. I never met another human being who was as generous or good as that man.”
“I hope he recovers.” I couldn’t take the cold on my bare arms anymore. I unfolded the pashmina to wrap it around my shoulders, taking care not to drop the letter. “My coat is in there.”
Baxter nodded and took a deep breath. “Mine, too. And my wife’s. She hurried home because she was freezing.”
The caterer, surprisingly slim for such an outstanding chef, strode up to us. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”
I smacked my forehead. “It’s inside.”
He snarled, “Along with all my gear.”
I turned to Wong. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”
She marched up to the front door and knocked firmly. “Mrs. Scroggins! This is the police. Answer the door, ma’am.”
The front door opened just wide enough to see Mrs. Scroggins’s bitter face. We couldn’t hear the conversation, but after a minute, Wong motioned to us.
The chef, Baxter, and I hurried to the front door.
Wong spoke with authority. “You have five minutes. Babineaux and Sophie, collect all the coats. Caterer, get your stuff and hightail it out.”
Baxter and I rushed to retrieve the coats.
Baxter had parked his metallic midnight-plum Cadillac SUV in back of the building. I carefully wrapped the pashmina around Horace’s letter and stashed it under my purse on the front seat.
Unfortunately, my dress was still wet with Horace’s blood. I carried coats in my outstretched arms so I wouldn’t get it on any of them. We piled coats into the back as fast as we could, dodging the caterer and his staff as they ran in and out.
Edith Scroggins observed us with a steely glare. Wong helped us carry the last load. We had barely stepped out the door when we heard Edith turn the lock.
Baxter offered to give me a ride home. I hesitated, looking down at the blood on my dress.
He retrieved a throw from the back of the car and covered the leather passenger seat with it. “Try not to get blood on anything?”
I did my best.
As Baxter drove, he asked, “Would you mind taking care of the coats? My wife gets a little hyper about clutter.”
Truth be told, I would rather be in charge of the coats. Most of them belonged to neighbors and people I knew anyway. Plus, that way, I knew the coats would wind up with their owners. Not that I didn’t trust Baxter, I just knew I would get it done.
My classic Ocicat, Mochie, greeted us at the door. He had the distinctive M on his forehead but instead of spots, the necklaces and bracelets of his American shorthair ancestors decorated his chest and legs. He rubbed against my calves. I dropped the pashmina on the console in the foyer before helping Baxter carry coats into my dining room.
“Whoa! This place is huge. Ever think about selling?”
“Never.” I wouldn’t give up my beloved house with its creaks and quirks for anything, even if the one and a half ancient bathrooms were in desperate need of renovation.
I thanked him for his help, and insisted on washing the throw. “I’ll bring it over when I come to the cookie swap,” I promised.
As soon as he left, I rushed upstairs to take off my dress. “I’m not ignoring you,” I told Mochie. “But I want to get cleaned up first.”
After a hot shower, I soaked the dress in cold water and searched my closet for something warm and comfortable while Mochie sniffed the corners. I pulled on fuzzy dark green pants and a cream-colored sweater and swung Mochie into my arms for a snuggle.
“Brrrr,” I said into his fur. “It’s cold out there. Be glad you were in a nice warm house. What do you think, bake Christmas cookies by the fire or decorate?”
His head raised, his eyes bright.
“Aha. You’d like to do more investigating. Decorating it is.”
He raced up to the third floor ahead of me. As if he knew what we were going to do, he waited by the door to the little attic room that I used for storage.
I had barely opened it when he sprang inside and disappeared. I pulled out boxes of Christmas items, leaving them in a mess on the floor. Opening each box was a treat. They held old friends that brought the joy of cherished memories. I carted a box of nutcrackers, garlands, and snowmen downstairs to the kitchen.
Definitely time for a mug of hot tea to take off that chill. If only I could call someone to find out how Horace was doing. I shook my head. How could he have stayed with a woman like Edith for all those years? What had made her such a bitter shrew? Yet even when Horace was so horribly injured, his thoughts were of her.
Nina Reid Norwood, my across-the-street neighbor and best friend, rapped on the kitchen door.
A gust of cold air blew in when I opened it.
“I thought you must be back by now. That was quite a scene Edith made, throwing everyone out like we were teenagers who’d raided someone’s house while they were away.” Raised in North Carolina, Nina would never lose her Southern accent.
“I have everyone’s coats. Spread the word, okay? And don’t forget to take yours home. They’re in the dining room.” I lifted a snow woman in a red felt hat and a green muffler out of the box and set her on the table. “What’s Edith Scroggins’s problem? Do you know why she’s so cross all the time?”
Nina peered in the box of Christmas items. “Glass-half-empty person is my best guess. The woman is never happy about anything.” She lifted out two nutcrackers. “These are so cute. But I’m still glad I don’t have to decorate.”
“I thought you were staying home for Christmas. Did you change your mind?”
“I wish. We’re having a full house this year. I hired Jill from Fleur de Lis to do it for me.”
“I need to stop by there for pine roping and wreaths. Do you know anyone we can call to find out how Horace is doing?”
“Maybe his secretary, Phyllis? I think they’re good friends.” She looked around my kitchen. “Did you bring home any goodies from the party?”
“Not a thing. I have water boiling for tea. Why don’t you snoop through the freezer while I bring down a couple more boxes?”
“I have to do everything,” she teased.
I was carrying a third box downstairs when Nina met me at the foot of the stairs, holding Horace’s letter in her hand.
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