by Vicki Delany
“I’m just wondering, that’s all.”
“I can’t say where they were all the time, but I did notice them. Two women and a photographer. They spent quite a bit of time photographing our concert. You know how adorable my grade-one class is. Perfect for a magazine feature.”
“What time did you start?” I didn’t know what time Max had died, and Simmonds was unlikely to share that detail with me, but it had to be between when I’d left the shop for the boat launch at noon and arrived back to collect the forgotten candy canes around one forty-five.
“The youngest children began at twelve thirty. We broke at one so everyone could watch Santa arrive. Once he docked, the preteens came on, and then Crystal’s solo and her age group. The magazine people spent some time watching your father and taking photos of that.”
“You should tell the police this.”
“Why would I do that?”
“They’ll want to know the movements of the people who’d come to town with Max around the time he died.”
“Excuse me. I hate to interrupt but . . . ?” a woman asked.
“Can I help you?” I said.
She ignored me. “Are you by any chance Aline Steiner?”
My mom broke into a huge smile. “Why, yes, that is my name.”
“Ms. Steiner, I had the great honor of being in the audience at the Met when you sang Annina in La traviata, and I have to say it was one of the most memorable performances I have ever seen.” Mom beamed, and I knew any talk of the whereabouts of the Jennifer’s Lifestyle crew at the time in question was finished.
“How kind of you to say so,” Mom said modestly.
“At the time, I wondered why you weren’t singing Violetta. You have a much stronger stage presence than the woman they gave the main role to.”
I walked away as Mom said, “Everyone wondered about that. Now, far be it from me, dear, to cast aspersions on any of my fellow singers, but rumors did say . . .”
Mom was still in the shop, still explaining that she would never say a word against anyone in the opera world, while implying all sorts of petty jealousies and downright skulduggery, when Willow, Amber, and Jason came in.
“Hi,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you guys here today.”
“Why not?” Willow said. “We didn’t get our shoot done yesterday.”
“Uh, because a man died?”
She waved her hand in the air. No one was paying the newcomers any particular attention.
“The police told us we can’t leave town,” Amber said.
“Erica’s holed up at that fancy inn with her lawyer and the Unfriendly Ghost,” Willow said. “And we’re stuck twiddling our thumbs in that crummy motel.”
“We might as well get on with it,” Jason said.
“Get on with what?”
“The story about Rudolph, of course,” Willow said.
The words “police” and “Erica” had caught people’s attention. Whispers began to spread. The woman who’d spoken to Mom left, after buying a Santa’s workshop music box, and Mom wandered over to listen.
“Perhaps we should talk in my office,” I said. “’Bye, Mom.”
She lifted one groomed eyebrow. “Are you going to introduce me to your friends, dear?”
“This is my mother,” I said. “Mom, these people are from Jennifer’s Lifestyle.” One of the onlookers squeaked.
Jason held out his hand, and Mom took it. Willow and Amber nodded absentmindedly. “’Bye, Mom,” I repeated.
“If you or your friends need anything, dear,” Mom said before sailing out the door.
“Okay,” Jason said. “Lead the way.”
I told Crystal I’d be right back, and we all filed through the curtain. The moment I opened the office door, Mattie leapt up to greet the newcomers. I maintain you can tell a lot about people by how they react to dogs. Jason exclaimed over his size and gave him a hearty rub on the head. Amber knelt down to give and receive sloppy kisses. Willow cringed.
My office was barely large enough for the four of us, not to mention the dog. I shoved boxes into the hallway and ordered Mattie to crawl under my desk. I took a seat behind the desk, more to keep Mattie under control than to be comfortable. Willow took the single visitor’s chair.
“You’re going to say we’re heartless,” Willow said. “Carrying on with the story when Max is dead. In the place where, apparently, he died. But we don’t see it that way.”
“It’s kinda like a memorial to Max,” Amber said. “We might even dedicate the issue to him.”
“Does Erica know about this?”
“I’ve just come from seeing her,” Jason said. “She thinks it’s a great idea.”
“So it was your idea, not hers?”
“It was my idea, if you must know,” Willow said. “Look at it our way, Merry. We’re stuck here in your two-bit town, staying at the Flea-Bite Motel, so we might as well make the best of it.”
“The Carolers Motel isn’t . . .”
“I am exaggerating for emphasis. It’s perfectly clean. But it is a motel.” Willow almost visibly cringed.
“When I traveled with the magazine we all stayed in reasonably nice hotels.”
“That was then,” Willow said. “This is now. Erica and Max implemented some cost-cutting measures. Cost cutting for us, never for them, of course. I notice they weren’t put up in any motel.”
“That’s not fair,” Jason said. “She is the boss. She can spend her money where and how she wants.”
“Her grandmother’s money, you mean,” Amber said.
“What do you want from me?” I said, trying to stop the bickering.
“A photo shoot,” Willow said. “Like we planned. We’ll do it tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Might as well get it over with,” Jason said. “The minute we’re free to go, I’m outa here.”
“I suppose that would be all right.” Mattie tried to push his way out from under my desk. “Stay!” I used my legs to block him.
Jason stepped away from the wall. “I’ll leave you two to sort out the details. I want to check out that bakery again. Get a few shots of the place when it’s busy. Amber, you can come with me. What time do you close today?”
“Six on Sunday,” I said.
“Back at six.”
Jason and Amber left. Willow settled into her chair and crossed her legs.
“Jason’s new since I worked for the magazine. Is he good?” I asked.
“He’s not a regular employee, just a freelancer. He snaps the pics and moves on. He’s an okay photographer, but there are a lot better ones out there. Max only hired him because he comes cheap. Can I smoke in here?”
“No. Sounds like things aren’t going so well at the magazine.” I rubbed the top of Mattie’s head.
“It’s a mess. Max was promoted way over his head. He could do a fabulous layout. Put him in charge of staff and money. Disaster.”
“Did anyone say that to Erica?”
“Are you kidding me? Ted McNamara had some issues with the way Erica was running things. Remember Ted?”
“Yeah. Great guy. Been there forever.”
“He came out of her office, packed his things, and walked out.”
“He quit?”
“She fired him.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. He’d been there long enough that he phoned Jennifer the minute he stepped out of the elevator. She agreed to pay him full salary until his pension kicks in. No one else is going to get that, so no one dares to contradict anything Erica wants. And what Max wanted, Erica wanted.”
“How’s Max’s death going to change things?”
Willow gave me a very long look. Then she said, “Between you and me, Merry, the next boy toy will be in the corner office before Erica dries her
fake tears.”
“You don’t think she loved Max?”
“I’m sure she did. In her way. And her way is love ’em and dump ’em. Max just happened to be the one she was dating when Jennifer decided it was time for a wedding.”
“Do you know that, or are you guessing?”
“I’m guessing, Merry, because I know Erica. What, you think it was true love? Those two were the same. Too much head over heels in love with themselves to care for anyone else.” She let out a bark of laughter that had Mattie leaping to his feet. I wiggled my legs aside to let him out from under my desk. “Hey, I forgot. You were engaged to him, weren’t you? I’d say you had a lucky escape.”
Mattie walked over to Willow. He looked into her face, expecting a pat. She pushed him roughly aside.
I didn’t know what to believe. I kept in touch with some friends who were still working at the magazine, so I knew much of what Willow was saying was true, but as she talked her spite began to take over. If things were so bad, why didn’t she leave? She should be able to get a job at another magazine. Then again, I had no idea what her reputation was in the business. Maybe she didn’t fancy trying her chances.
I’d been wondering who would kill Max. Now, I remembered the old mystery novel adage. Cui bono. Who benefits? If things were as bad at the magazine as Willow was saying, the employees would be more than happy to see the end of Max’s involvement.
Maybe they weren’t expecting Erica to find someone to replace Max right away. After all, whether she loved him or not, she had the image of the noble, grieving fiancée to protect. Jennifer’s Lifestyle was still a major concern. Get a set of steady hands back on the tiller and everything could turn out okay.
“It’s an ill wind,” Willow said, “as they say. Frankly, it will be nice to have Erica out of the picture for a while. She has not a whit of taste and must be getting her design tips from old issues of TigerBeat. You would have thought she’d be busy planning the wedding of the century, wouldn’t you, but she hopped down here fast enough to check on what Max was up to. And as for him, sure, he was great at design and layout, but someone had to give him the ideas first. If she got her inspiration from ’90s teen magazines, he got his from Forbes and BusinessWeek.” She grinned at me. “You and me, Merry, we’ll create a feature on Rudolph that’ll have the New York magazine world talking for months.”
“All I’m doing is giving you the space.”
“Exactly, you’ve created a space I can work with. It’s about time I got some recognition around that dump.”
Judging by the sounds drifting through the curtain into my office, the store was busy. Crystal could use some help. I was torn between getting back to my job and staying here and finding out what else Willow had to say. “Amber seems nice. When I first met her I thought she was a bit of a ditz.”
“She seems brain-dead, and she can be a total flake sometimes, but she’s incredibly talented. She’s massively insecure, that’s all. When she gets nervous she can’t stop talking. Give her some time and maturity and she’ll be fine. She’s learning fast. My guess is six more months, twelve tops, and then she’ll be out the door.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Erica won’t pay enough. More of her and Max’s cost-cutting measures. They hire kids straight out of college or design school, pay them peanuts, and when they’ve learned the job and ask for more money, they’re told no. So they leave. Amber needs maturing and nurturing, and she’s not getting that at Jennifer’s Lifestyle. I’ve tried to help her when I can, but we don’t often work together. Erica was quite dreadful to her, you know.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes I wondered if Erica was trying to get her to quit. Always criticizing, always nit-picking. Amber has a lot of talent. Erica has none. She was furiously jealous. She was jealous of anyone who was better than her.”
“Has Detective Simmonds spoken to you?”
“I wouldn’t want to be under the bright lights with her, I can tell you. She seems as sharp as a tack. She wanted to know where we were around the time Max died. I don’t know what Jason and Amber told her; we weren’t together until we got down to the park around the time Santa arrived on his boat. I told the detective that. I came into town for a late breakfast at that nice bakery and enjoyed sitting over my coffee for a long time. It was nice to have a break. Then I walked down to the park and met up with the others. I’m sure you’re wondering, so let me put your mind at rest. I didn’t see Max that day, and I didn’t kill him.”
“I wasn’t . . .” I said.
“I told the detective all that. I also told her that I didn’t like Max. I didn’t like what he was doing to the magazine. But at least he had some knowledge of how a magazine works. Heaven help us all if Erica drops her next boy toy into the job.”
Crystal tapped lightly on the open office door. “Sorry to bother you, Merry, but are we getting any more of those cranberry strings? I’ve a customer who wants twenty—she and her group have volunteered to decorate their town’s official tree this year. I checked the storage room but can’t find any more. We’ve only got nine left.”
Willow got to her feet. “I’ll let you get back to it. See you at six.”
Mattie curled up on his bed, and I followed Willow out. I spoke to the customer, told her I would order as many of the cranberry strings as she needed, and she left happy, promising to return with her tree-decorating committee. I hoped, for the sake of Alan’s business as well as mine, that news of the murder weapon didn’t get into the press.
As Mattie and I walked to work this morning, I’d deliberately avoided so much as glancing at the newspaper boxes to see the Gazette headlines. I didn’t want to read anything about the death of Max, and I assumed that if anyone had news of Jackie, I’d hear about it.
Unfortunately, you can’t avoid the media forever. Once the regular lunchtime lull descended, Crystal began rearranging some of her beautiful creations. “I don’t think I can put in full-time hours over the rest of the summer, Merry. I’ve got to get ready for school, and I have my jewelry to make.”
“No need to worry about it. I’m sure Jackie will be back soon.” I was trying to stay optimistic.
“If she’s in jail she won’t be much help.”
“Jail? What makes you think she’s going to jail?”
“That’s what the paper said this morning. The police say she killed that man.”
“What!” I knew Simmonds suspected Jackie, because she’d told me so, but I didn’t think she was so convinced that she’d go public with it. I took a handful of quarters out of the cash register and ran for the street. A newspaper box was set up in front of the Gift Nook. The main headline, as I expected, was about the “brutal murder” of Max Folger. I threw quarters into the box and pulled out the paper.
“So sorry to hear about your misfortune,” Margie Thatcher said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “I hope you can keep the business going with that girl on death row.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Besides, we don’t have the death penalty in New York State.”
“Then she might only get life in prison. So sad.” Margie shook her head. Her eyes gleamed.
“You’d better not be spreading that nasty rumor around.”
“If people come into my shop and ask what’s going on, I’m not going to lie to them, am I?”
“You were here on Saturday, weren’t you, Margie? I didn’t see you down at the parade. The streets were quiet, not many shoppers around. You didn’t pop into my store to ask Max to come and visit the Nook, did you? And get into an argument with him?”
“That’s a vile accusation. I’ll have you know that I was happy to tell the police my whereabouts at the time in question. I was in the store. I heard nothing. I am not a snoop. I have no interest in what goes on in your place.”
“Vile accusations can go bot
h ways,” I said. I wasn’t going to stand in the street reading the Gazette in front of Margie, so I stomped back into my shop.
I opened the paper. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Below the fold, there was a nice picture of Jackie, looking young and sweet in her high school graduation photo. The smaller headline read, “Police Concerned for Missing Rudolph Woman.” The article had been written by Russ after the police press conference, and it was light on accusations, concentrating on when Jackie had last been seen and giving a description of her. Sue-Anne Morrow was quoted briefly, saying the town of Rudolph had full confidence in the police.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said to Crystal. “Margie Thatcher made it sound as though a manhunt’s raging through the entire state of New York searching for Jackie.” I pushed aside an image of barking dogs streaming through the dark woods and uniformed handlers wading through fast-moving creeks as flashlights bobbed.
“That’s only the Gazette,” Crystal said. “My mom was in Muddle Harbor this morning visiting a friend, and her friend gave her a copy of today’s Chronicle.”
The Muddle Harbor Chronicle. The nearby town of Muddle Harbor is Rudolph’s chief rival, although the rivalry seems to be strictly confined to their imagination. Their local newspaper liked nothing more than to dish the dirt on Rudolph.
“What did they say?” I asked, although I really did not want to know.
“I brought it to show you.” Crystal disappeared into the rear of the shop and came back with the scurrilous rag. She handed it to me. The main article was about the murder, emphasis leaning heavily on the fact that the killing happened in Rudolph. The picture was of none other than Candy Campbell guarding the “scene of the shocking crime.” Fortunately, the Mrs. Claus’s sign didn’t appear in the photo. The photographer had been more interested in ensuring that Candy’s shoulder patch with the Rudolph police department logo was prominently displayed. They’d also printed a small picture of Jackie, not exactly at her best. The lighting was poor, and it looked as though she was in someone’s basement. Her eyes were vacant, staring into the shadows, her mouth slack, and her hair disheveled. I wondered where they found it. If they’d called Jackie’s family wanting a picture, no one would have sent them this one. I looked closer. The picture might be as much as five or six years old, taken when Jackie was in high school. It was probably buried somewhere on the Internet, and some keen reporter hunted it down. The headline read, “Missing Rudolph Woman Wanted for Questioning in Brutal Murder.” I read the article quickly. It leaned heavily to innuendo, but the point was that the Rudolph police believed Jackie O’Reilly had murdered Max Folger and was now on the run. The byline said Dawn Galloway. I’d run into Ms. Galloway before. “Unscrupulous” and “ambitious” were words that came to mind.