by Ami Diane
“Don’t apologize to me. Tell Wink.”
“Yes, well….” The man’s eyes darted towards the door as he buttoned up his coat. “I’m afraid you’ll have to pass along my sentiments. I’ve got six more stops to make, and it’s getting worse out there. As it is, I’m afraid I won’t make it home. Have to stay over at the Burts’s place.”
Rose’s red lips formed a tight line. “I suppose you could stay here if you need to.” The air filled with a tense silence that said neither found that arrangement appealing.
After the man said a curt goodbye, he nodded a farewell in Ella’s direction and slipped out the door.
“Unbelievable,” the innkeeper muttered the moment the door sighed shut.
“Who was that?”
“Mr. Stone. He’s one of the council members. The potluck’s canceled, can you believe it? Sal says the storm’s only going to get worse, and they don’t want people stranded at the church. Too dangerous. Since the phone lines are down, volunteers are going door-to-door, spreading the word.” She wiped her hands on her apron and sighed. “All those pies….” She shook her head.
“Oh, Rose, I’m sorry. How many were you and Wink able to make?”
“Only a half-dozen.”
Ella let out a frustrated sigh. “Maybe there won’t be an auction, but at least all of the pies can still be donated to the food bank.”
“Indeed. Although, if people can’t make it out in this weather, then what’s the point?”
Tugging at the strings of her apron, she asked Ella to break the news to Wink. “Mr. Stone assigned me to inform Jenny, Stewart, and, of course, Edwin, Flo, and Jimmy.”
“Do you want me to do that? It’s coming down pretty good out there. I’m already soaked.” Ella looked down at her dirty, wet pants. “And in no way is that an excuse nor does it have to do with the fact that I’m scared to tell Wink.”
Rose cracked a weak smile. “No, I could use the break. Sorry, dear.” She patted Ella on the back, wished her luck, and began bundling up.
Rolling her shoulders and cracking her knuckles, Ella marched down the hallway, muttering, “This should be fun.”
Wink took the news better than Ella expected, with only a minimal amount of “dang nabbits” and calling every council member a “blowhard.”
After much discussion, Ella convinced Wink to return home while she still could. There seemed to be a small break in the storm, the veil of white thinning enough to make out the tree in the backyard. The diner owner only assented after Ella promised to drop off the pies at the food bank.
From her warm station at the parlor window, Ella watched Wink drive off in the professor’s snowmobile and let the curtain fall back into place.
Before leaving, Wink had informed her that Grandma’s Kitchen would remain closed for the next foreseeable future. She didn’t think many would dig out of their homes and brave the weather, just to sit down in a half snowed-in diner. Ella wanted to argue, tell her that most people would shed blood for some of the woman’s baking and Horatio’s cooking, but she was also relieved. Wink holed up in her house on the hill meant she was safe.
Back in the kitchen, Ella warmed up a tomato bisque soup she found in the fridge and carefully carried it to the conservatory. She left it for a moment to fetch the leather-bound clipping book from her room.
Before settling in for a long read at the wrought iron café table, she fed another wooden round into the small stove in the center of the room. She slurped her soup and took a moment to appreciate her surroundings.
The light was dimmer due to the layers of snow covering the partial glass ceiling. But if she turned aside, facing the interior of the house, all she saw were vegetable plants and fruit trees, flowers and ferns. Breathing in, she could taste the earth and smell the dying blooms of gardenia and jasmine. Winter hadn’t touched the room yet.
Her mind drifted to the break-in at the diner. The intruder had a thirteen size shoe, most likely male. Only one male had a key for the diner.
Ella shook the thought away. There had to be another explanation. Maybe she and Wink hadn’t locked up properly the night before. Her gut twisted, knowing that they had, but until she found a better explanation, she was going with that rather than suspect Horatio. She’d been down that road before, suspecting friends of ugly things, and it wasn’t one she was eager to walk again.
Laying open the binder on the café table, she flipped through the pages, picking up where she’d left off.
She paused when a particularly distressing headline caught her eye: Tool Belt Bandits Escape Again. Below, in a smaller font, the subheading read, Serial Bank Robbers Elude Capture. Armed.
The article went on in sensational detail about a string of bank robberies from Nevada to Colorado carried out by a masked duo. They were last spotted at a gas station in western Colorado, heading east. The reporter went on to write that the local sheriff at the time feared they might pass through Keystone. Officials estimated that the pair carried in excess of $50,000.
Ella was mostly struck by the odd title given the robbers. Tool Belt Bandits. There was only a passing explanation that might describe the name and was as expected. The two wore tool belts for every robbery.
She wondered if there was significance for the odd accessory or if they preferred it to carry their weapons and rounds. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them—there was no mention in proceeding articles—and if they had ever passed through the village.
CHAPTER 13
WHEN ROSE RETURNED from informing their neighbors about the canceled potluck, Ella helped her stack the mix of pumpkin and apple pies into two boxes. After bundling up in the entrance hall in several layers, they each lugged a box and weathered the snowstorm to deliver them to the food bank.
The biting wind made conversation difficult, so they struggled up the walk in silence, the snow swallowing their legs up to their knees and sometimes thighs with each step. Ella had no idea where they were going, so she deferred to Rose, letting her lead the way, stepping into her footprints as best she could.
The innkeeper stopped just short of the library, nodding her head at a nondescript door Ella had passed at least a dozen times since her arrival in the village.
“This is the food bank?” she half shouted over the wind.
Rose nodded, balancing the box while attempting to open the weathered door. As her fingers stretched for the knob, it turned and a bundled figure stepped out.
“Evelyn?”
Evelyn Hank’s eyes darted up from the ground and met Ella’s.
“Ella was it?”
“Yes. How are you?”
“Fine thanks.” Evelyn shifted several large packages in her arms. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m in a hurry.” Her expression was strained, and her brown hair frizzed out in clumps from a half-attempt at a braid.
“Everything alright?” Rose asked.
“Fine, thanks. Have a good Christmas.” With that, she leaned into the wind and was swallowed by the flurry a moment later.
“She’s an odd one, isn’t she?” Ella asked as they stepped into the relative warmth of the food bank. “I mean, not that I’m one to talk.”
“She prefers to keep to herself.”
Ella blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dim room that was barely larger than a closet. Shelves full of food lined the walls, drawing attention away from the worn carpet and peeling wallpaper reminiscent of an old, haunted hotel.
The light fixture above buzzed and flickered, probably due to the storm, but that didn’t stop her imagination from running rampant, imagining ghosts of Christmas’s past.
“Eesh. This place could use a makeover.”
Rose assessed the room as if seeing it for the first time. “I suppose it is pretty drab.”
“Drab? Looks like it could use a good exorcism.”
One of the innkeeper’s manicured eyebrows rose.
A lone desk stood at the back in front of a door with
flaking paint and a rusted knob. Ella’s arms ached as she unceremoniously dropped the box on top with a thunk.
“That it?” She wiped invisible dust off her hands. “Welp, my good deed’s done for the day. How about some hot ch—”
“We can’t leave yet.” Rose set her box alongside Ella’s, much more gracefully, and wiped the snow off her glasses as she sang out, “Hello?”
“Coming,” came a muffled but familiar reply from the other side of the creepy door.
Ella slid back a step and tensed, trying to place the voice. The knob turned with a creak, and the coroner’s large, squat frame strolled into the room. The majority of her girth was accounted for by her coat’s bulging pockets.
“Pauline?”
The woman’s eyes peered up below her mousy brown hair. “Boy, we’ve been more popular than a body in a room full of flies.”
Ella grimaced.
“It’s everyone trying to cash in their good will, I imagine. One last good deed before the holiday.”
“What are you doing here?” Ella asked.
Pauline squinted at her. “What? I can’t volunteer? What are you doing here?”
“Cashing in my good will.” Ella nudged the pies forward. “Donating, see?”
Pauline’s thick fingers grabbed at the first box then stopped. “You didn’t make these, did you?”
“God, no. Rose and Wink did.”
The hard lines in the doctor’s face fell away.
“Very good.” She pulled off both lids, the cardboard compromised by the weather. “What’ve we got here? Ah, apple pie. Some pumpkin. Shame about them other ones.”
“Tell me about it,” Ella said at the same time Rose said, “Indeed.”
“I hope Wink’s doing better. She took quite a knock to the head.”
Rose shuffled toward the front door, but Ella lingered. “Been busy?”
“Yes. Lot’s of families coming in for some last minute supplies in case they can’t make it outta the house after this storm’s finished. Sal thinks it’ll get worse.”
Ella nodded. “I heard.”
When Ella made no signs of leaving, Pauline stared at her expectantly. Ella shifted on her feet, and her fingers danced over a crack in the desk.
“Have you had a chance to look over Erik’s body? Like, do you know approximately what time he was killed?”
“And I would tell you because…?”
“Because we’re friends?” Ella tried. Pauline blinked. “Because I discovered the body, and you know it’ll help bring me closure?”
The doctor seemed to consider this but pressed her lips into a firm line.
Ella snapped her fingers. “Because I have some music on my phone you’d be interested in. I can let you borrow it some time. Let you hear the tunes of your day, some Backstreet Boys, perhaps, and throw in some stuff you missed after you left.”
Pauline leaned forward, several bulging pockets falling onto the desk. “Really?”
“Really. Spill it, Doc.”
Pauline glanced over at Rose who began to hum softly to herself, and Ella got the distinct impression this was intended to give them some privacy.
The coroner’s voice dropped. “Hard to say with this weather, but I pegged his time of death at about four in the morning.”
“No surprise there.”
“No,” Pauline agreed. “But this will surprise you. The ax isn’t what killed him.”
Ella’s mouth turned down, and she matched the doctor’s stance, leaning across the desk until their faces were only two feet apart. “What did?”
She expected some sort of doctor-speak for blunt trauma or blood loss, some sort of trickery of words that the Viking’s death wasn’t from the blow itself but of the result of it.
“See,” Pauline said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “when I pulled out the ax, I found a bullet. He’d been shot.”
Ella’s jaw dropped, and it took her brain a full three breaths to process this new information. After that, all she could manage was a breathy, “What?”
Pauline nodded, her eyes gleaming as she pulled back.
“Wh—how? I mean…” Ella searched for words, picturing the crime scene again. Leif’s vacant stare. The blood spatter. Chapman had noticed something off about the blood spatter. He’d seen without knowing what he was seeing. “Had he been killed somewhere else? I’ve never seen someone shot in the head, but I’ve played enough video games to know there’s usually more…”
“Brain matter? Back spatter?”
“Oh, God,” Ella breathed, her stomach turning. “Yes, that.”
“You’re right. He had what we call a penetrating wound. If there’d been an exit wound, would’ve been called a perforating wound.
“My assessment,” Pauline continued, “is that he was killed where we found him. The lack of biological matter is due to the fact that there was no exit wound.”
Ella realized she was clutching her stomach. Her hand fell away, registering the doctor’s words. “No exit wound? For a gunshot to the head? Isn’t that unusual?”
“It’s rare, yes. But it happens when the weapon is shot over a great distance or it’s a small caliber round or other variables: angle, trajectory, etc. In this case, it was probably a combination of that, especially the size of the bullet.”
“Which was?”
Pauline’s eyes narrowed. “You got some NSYNC on that phone of yours, too?”
“Of course I do. Who do you take me for?”
A satisfied smile spread over the doctor’s face. “It was a 7.9mm bullet.”
“Did you find a casing at the scene?”
Pauline gave her a rueful, patronizing smile. Ella had figured it unlikely but had to ask.
“Maybe after the snow melts we’ll find something.” The coroner straightened, patted her pockets until she located the one she wanted, and pulled out a flask. She held it aloft. “Eggnog?”
“Better not. I’m trying to cut back.”
“That’s all I got for you.”
Ella thanked her and joined Rose by the door. Together, they soldiered out into the storm, all the while, Ella’s thoughts swirled with images of weapons and blood.
Someone had shot the Norseman, which explained how they’d gotten the drop on him. He’d no doubt have bested in a close-up, physical altercation. That widened the suspect list a great deal.
She bit her lip as her boot sunk into a drift. Or maybe it didn’t. Whoever had killed him had to be a decent shot. Also, they’d sunk the man’s own ax through his skull directly over the bullet wound, denoting some level of skill as far as aim was concerned.
Then there was the matter of the murder weapon. She knew very little about guns, especially one which could penetrate the skull without leaving an exit wound. But she knew someone who did.
However, it wouldn’t be enough to just ask which guns produced such a result. Ella wanted to be certain, wanted to test such weapon before taking the information to Chapman. And that required a field trip.
CHAPTER 14
ELLA DECIDED TO put off the conversation with Flo regarding the murder weapon until after dinner. She settled in with a pre-evening snack of cranberry scone and decaf coffee in the two-story library, curled up next to a roaring fire, surrounded by four walls of books.
She bit into the sweet pastry, savoring the drizzle of frosting and pop of fruit. After her second bite, she opened a book she’d checked out from the Keystone Library on her way back from the food bank.
With the canceled potluck, now was the perfect opportunity for her to brush up on her Old Norse. Unfortunately, the library’s foreign language section had been lacking, and the closest—and only—texts of use she’d found were an Icelandic dictionary from the 1940s and a collection of Old Norse kings’ sagas collected and bound into a single volume, titled, Heimskringla, written in Old Norse, 1230, by a poet and historian.
She’d just turned a page when several rooms away, Rose let out a shriek, and a loud crash followed. Ella
slammed the binder closed and leaped out of the chair, forgetting the heavy weight in her lap was Fluffy. He fell to the floor, mewing in protest as he glared at her.
She hollered a “Sorry, buddy” over her shoulder as she dashed out of the room. Darting down the hall and through the study, she slid into the entrance hall, her socks unable to find purchase over the cherry wood floor.
“Rose? Where are you?”
“In here!” she called.
Ella darted into a different hallway and sprinted to the end where it dumped out into the parlor. She burst into the room to find the innkeeper towering over a couple boxes of ornaments, one of which was on its side, the contents spewed across the rug.
“I’m okay. I was just trying to carry too many things at once. Fortunately only a couple decorations broke.”
Ella picked up St. Nicholas’s decapitated head in one hand and his pudgy body in the other. “Nothing a little glue couldn’t fix.”
After scooping up the spilled decorations, Ella hefted the boxes to the corner and added them to a stack of similar ones that nearly reached her shoulder. A strong scent of evergreen filled the room from a robust spruce tree sitting between the large windows.
Ella breathed in the scent of the holidays. “When did you put this in?”
“Oh, Jimmy just brought it in this morning. I know we’re late getting it up, but it’s been in the conservatory the past few days till I could be sure it wouldn’t drip snow on my floor and all the spiders had fled.”
“I appreciate that very much.” The bare branches beckoned to be decorated. “Can I help?”
Rose’s manicured eyebrows lifted. “I’d love that.”
Ella had been feeling morose about the holiday, missing her family. She figured making new memories might help—as well as give her the opportunity to think of a last-minute Secret Santa present.
While Ella opened musty boxes, Rose sashayed to the rich voice of Bing Crosby crooning I’ll be Home for Christmas.
A lump formed in Ella’s throat. “We listened to this album every Christmas when I was growing up.”