“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lydia said, her voice rising in pitch almost to a shriek.
Lilah looked between them, at a loss for what to do. She had expected nothing like this. She knew that Lydia was emotional due to her husband’s death, but Chris had no excuse as far as she was concerned.
“He was a drunk, and had no respect for anyone,” the man said.
“You’re just mad that he didn’t follow your stupid home owner’s association rules.” Lydia was crying again. “I don’t blame him. They were just Christmas lights. He shouldn’t need to put them up if he didn’t want to.”
“Is this really what all of this is about?” Lilah cut in. “You won’t give your condolences over her husband’s death because of a stupid argument about Christmas lights?”
They both fell silent and turned to look at her.
“I moved to that neighborhood because I appreciated the home owner’s agreement and expected everyone to abide by the rules,” Chris said. “Having one dark house on the street every single year? That’s not what I signed up for. It just looks bad. Worse, it’s right across the street from me. I love the holidays. When I look out my window before bed, I don’t want to see dark and gloom. I want to see decorations.”
“A man’s life is more important than some stupid lights,” Lydia said. “Get over yourself, Chris. You’d think that with you being the one who found him, you might show more sympathy than the average person.”
Lilah’s gasp went unnoticed by both of them. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t made the connection before. The news article that she had read the very night of John’s death had said his body had been found by a neighbor. Then, a few days later, a neighbor’s report had caused Reid’s arrest. Could those neighbors have been the same person? Was Chris the one behind Reid’s arrest?
“Why would stumbling onto a body in a pool while I was chasing my cat make me more sympathetic? If anything, it just gives me another reason to be mad at him. He wrecked yet another of my days.”
“What do you mean, you were chasing your cat?” Lydia asked, her voice quiet now. “I thought you went back there because you saw someone suspicious coming out of the yard.”
“Well, yeah, I mean, I saw someone suspicious, but my cat was also back there — that’s when I saw them —”
“You told the police you happened to glance out your window and you saw a man slinking around the corner of the house.” The other woman’s eyes blazed. “Why are you lying now, Chris?”
“I’m not lying. You’re the confused one, woman.”
“Wait. Stop it, both of you,” Lilah snapped. They both turned their angry gazes towards her.
“You’ve been nothing but nice to me, Lilah, but please stay out of this,” Lydia said. “Chris has a lot to answer for.”
“I’m sure he does,” Lilah said. “Maybe even more than you think.”
“What are you talking about?” Chris asked.
“You’re the one that made that fake report to the police, aren’t you?” she said. “The one about a guy who looked like Reid sneaking around right before John’s death.”
“Who says that report was fake?” he growled.
“Why would he make a fake report?” Lydia asked, ignoring him. “He wouldn’t have anything to gain by it. If he wanted to punish me for not putting a fake reindeer in my yard or something, he could have made the report about me. I know the police already suspected me. They probably would have jumped at the chance to bring me in.”
“What if he was just trying to throw them off the trail of the real killer?” Lilah said. “Himself.”
The silence that fell was palpable. Lilah, who had been caught up in the moment, suddenly realized that she had just made a terrible mistake. How had she been stupid enough to say her suspicion out loud?
Lydia, who had gone as white as a ghost, turned slowly towards Chris.
“You?” she said in a low voice. “Are you the one who did it?”
Chris glanced between her and Lilah, uncertainty flashing across his face. A moment later, his features hardened as he appeared to come to a decision.
“Yeah,” he said. “I did it. I didn’t mean to, but I sure don’t regret it.”
Lydia lunged at him. Lilah didn’t know what she was planning on doing, and never found out because Chris simply backhanded her and sent her sprawling across the floor. Holding her hand to her cheek, the woman glared up at him through her tears.
“How could you? So what if he didn’t put up our Christmas lights? He was a human being, and he deserved to live.”
“He’s the one that came at me,” Chris said. “It was self-defense. Your lout of a husband was drunk, as usual. My darn cat had gotten out again and made a beeline for your yard. Usually no one’s home during the day, so when he came stumbling out of the house towards me, I was caught off guard. He started yelling about me trespassing, and threw a punch. I threw one back. He fell into the pool, smacked his skull against the edge, and went down and didn’t come up.”
“And you didn’t try to save him?” Lydia sobbed. “You could have saved him.”
Lilah watched the scene in front of her in horror. The counter was between her and Chris, but she knew it wouldn’t be very good protection if he decided to come after her next. Who knew what he would end up doing to her and Lydia. She was certain that he wasn’t about to let them go. He would have to know that they would run straight to the police if he did.
“I didn’t want to save him. The man was trying to drown himself anyway. I helped him do it, just with pool water instead of whiskey.”
Chris pulled his foot back, and Lilah realized what he was about to do an instant before he did it.
“No!” she shouted, and hurled the only thing in arm’s reach at his head — her phone. It bounced off and clattered to the floor, but it had served to distract him. The kick that he had been aiming at Lydia missed.
Chris turned towards Lilah slowly, as if he had forgotten that she was there. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he growled.
He was over the counter in an instant, his hands around her throat. Try as she might, Lilah couldn’t break free. She heard Lydia screaming, but the sound was in the background, muted and dimmed by the sound of her own blood pounding in her ears. She clawed as his face, trying to find his eyes, but he seemed to be made of stone. Nothing she did affected him. Her vision was slowly fading, and she felt her hands grow weaker as they tried to push him away.
Suddenly the vise grip around her throat was gone. Lilah was too relieved to be able to breathe again to do anything but massage her neck and take in deep, ragged gasps of air for a few moments. When she finally woke up, she saw someone standing over her and flinched before realizing that it was Reid.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded mutely and accepted his hand. He pulled her to her feet. She looked over the counter to see Chris lying on the floor. Lydia was huddled in the corner, as far away from him as she could get.
“What happened?” she said, wincing and rubbing her throat once more.
“I knocked him out,” Reid said, glancing at his hand. It was already starting to swell. “I guess it’s good I took boxing throughout college.”
“You got here just in time.”
“I would have been here sooner if I hadn’t run into Val, Margie, and a woman I’m guessing is your mother in the parking lot.” He looked down at Chris. “I guess now isn’t the best time to talk about our second date.”
In the corner, Lydia gave a relieved sob and started to gather herself up. Lilah looked at the unconscious man on the floor. She was still reeling from the horror of the past few minutes. If it hadn’t been for Reid, both she and Lydia might be dead right now. It was a lot to process.
“You sit down,” Reid said. “I’ll call the police and handle everything.”
Lilah couldn’t imagine hearing better words. She took a seat next to Lydia and closed her eyes, trusting Reid to pick up the pieces
while she tried to wrap her mind around everything that had happened.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
* * *
“Merry Christmas!”
Seven glasses clinked in a toast. Margie’s table was barely big enough to fit everyone, let alone the mountains of food that were waiting in the kitchen. Lilah was sitting next to her neighbor, with her parents beside her, and Val and her fiancé across from them. Lydia sat further down the table, still looking a bit unsure as to whether she was actually welcome there or not.
“I’ve got to say, I think this is the first year that Christmas was the least exciting day of the week,” Val said when the toast was done. “It’s kind of nice.”
Life had been hectic since the grand opening of the Casual Cookie on Wednesday, and the subsequent attack. Between running the cookie shop, working at the diner, and giving reports to the police, Lilah had barely had time to breathe. She agreed with Val — it was nice to have a day where she had absolutely nothing she had to do besides help cook, and eat dinner with her friends.
“It certainly was quite the week,” Lilah’s father said. “I’m just glad that everyone’s okay. If only I had gotten her earlier —”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything, dear,” her mother said gently. “Chances are you would have been with me when the attack happened, and would have been just as useless.”
“Still, I would have liked to see that man before they carted him away,” her father grumbled. “He attacked my Lilah. No one gets away with that.”
“He’s not exactly getting away with it,” Lilah pointed out. “He’s going to jail, after all.”
Her close brush with death seemed to have mended her relationship with her father, at least temporarily. She had thoroughly enjoyed showing him around the Casual Cookie, and had been surprised when he seemed to like it. Maybe he wasn’t quite as disappointed in her as she had thought.
A knock sounded at the door and she jumped up. “That’ll be Reid,” she said. “I’ll get it.”
Her heart lifted when she saw him leaning against the doorframe, a pie in one of his hands. He grinned when he saw her.
“How’s dinner going?” he asked.
“We waited for you.”
“Two Christmas dinners in one day,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to move by this evening.”
“How was the meal at your sister’s?”
“Delicious, as always. I’m betting Margie’s will be just as good, though.”
“She’s the best cook I know,” Lilah said. “It will be scrumptious. Come on in, we’re half starved.”
“Hold on,” he said. “There’s one thing I wanted to do first.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her closer. There was a breathless moment before their lips touched, and then they were kissing.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for months,” he said when they pulled apart.
“Well,” Lilah said, trying to corral her thoughts. “I don’t think you’ll have to wait that long to do it again.”
“Come on,” he said with a grin, holding an arm out to her. “Let’s go inside. Our second date awaits.”
Crunchy Christmas Murder: Killer Cookie Cozy Mysteries, Book 4 Page 7