2 Yule Be the Death of Me

by J. D. Shaw

  Yule Be the Death of Me:

  Book Two of the Vivienne Finch Magical Mysteries

  J.D. SHAW

  Copyright © 2013 by J.D. Shaw

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  author@jdshawbooks.com

  Manuscript Editing by George G. Weiss.

  Cover illustrations by Allison Marie for Alli’s Studio. Copyright © 2013 All Rights Reserved. No part of these designs may be reproduced without written consent from the artist.

  allisstudio@allisstudio.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  VIVIENNE’S FAMOUS TREAVIS CAKE

  Coming Soon!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DEDICATION

  This one is for my entire family. You have all made Christmas Eve one of the most special gifts I have ever received. I will treasure the memories of each and every one for as long as I live.

  THE VIVIENNE FINCH MAGICAL MYSTERIES

  Book One: Easy Bake Coven

  Book Two: Yule Be the Death of Me

  CHAPTER 1

  Monday, December 16th

  It was supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, according to the song lyrics. Yet, as she stood in the line with the others, Vivienne Finch certainly wasn’t feeling any holiday cheer. In fact, she was pretty sure that her feelings were matching those of Ebenezer Scrooge before his visit by the three ghosts.

  Here it was, nine days before Christmas and she still wasn’t even close to finishing her list of tasks. It had been such a flurry of activity ever since Halloween had come and gone. She found herself wishing that the calendar could roll back just a few weeks to allow her a chance to catch up. But she knew better than to do such a thing. The elder council of witches had made it quite clear to her that they frowned upon any tampering with the normal flow of time. She had been given a free pass for the last mess, but that was it. She was on her own to fix any future mistakes.

  “Ladies, stay in single file please.” A stern, yet matronly voice ordered. The line moved forward but she really wasn’t all that eager to proceed. She just wanted to leave this nonsense and go back home. No one really wanted to be standing here anyway.

  The line led directly into the next room where bright lights forced her to squint. She put her hand up to her face to shield her eyes from the blinding glare.

  The line came to a stop as the stern voice returned. “Face forward.”

  She did as they were told and stared at the bright lights. Nothing ruined the holiday like standing in a police lineup as a suspect in a murder. Yet, that was exactly where she found herself and she had very little time to find the real killer.

  “Number three, step forward.” The voice ordered as a blonde woman that was about Vivienne’s height took a tentative step toward the light.

  The others in the lineup remained quiet, except for the occasional gurgle of a nervous stomach or someone breathing a bit too heavy through their nostrils.

  “Step back please.” The voice ordered.

  “Number seven, step forward.” The stern voice continued.

  No one moved. Vivienne began to tap her foot in annoyance that this was taking so long. An elbow poked into her ribs. “What are you waiting for honey, a red carpet?” A brunette with a very short haircut, multiple piercings, and a rather masculine looking body mocked her.

  “They called me forward?” Vivienne asked.

  “Number seven, please step forward.” The voice echoed from the room speakers in a rather unpleasant tone.

  She put one foot in front of the other and stepped toward the light. She couldn’t see who was behind the glass, but she had a feeling they weren’t going to help her out. It was the worst feeling in the world. She fought to keep herself composed as she faced scrutiny from behind the tinted glass.

  “Step back please.” The voice ordered.

  Vivienne let out a little sigh and was happy to rejoin the line.

  “Everyone may return to holding.” The voice ordered.

  They were led out of the room and marched back toward the holding cells. Vivienne had just cleared the doorway when a firm grip took her by the arm. “Miss Finch, I need you to follow me.” The officer in charge, a harsh-looking woman who had lips so thin they were almost non-existent, ordered.

  She swallowed hard and left the others in the line. “It can’t be me.”

  Please come with me, ma’am.” The officer replied in her husky voice that revealed years of a heavy smoking habit. Vivienne had seen her around the station many times but always forgot her name.

  This is ridiculous.” Vivienne countered. “I’m not the killer.” She paused awkwardly as the name rolled off her tongue. “Alma.” Vivienne gave a little smile, hoping she got the name right to establish a little bit of empathy.

  It’s best not to speak unless your lawyer is present.” She clearly was not moved by Vivienne’s attempt to guess her name. She marched her into Sheriff Rigsbee’s office and tapped the chair facing his desk. “Please have a seat, the Sheriff will be right in.”

  Vivienne sat down and thought it best to keep her mouth closed from this point on.

  The officer stood guard at the door, seeming quite bored with her current task. As the heavy footfalls of Sheriff Zeke Rigsbee approached the office, she smiled for the first time which gave Vivienne a glimmer of hope that everything was going to work out. An early Christmas miracle, perhaps? “Since we know each other so well and all, I thought you should know that I like my Christmas cards made out to Selma. That being my real name and all. Happy holidays.”

  Vivienne felt her sudden hope harden into a lump of coal. It was going to be a holiday to remember, that much was for sure.

  CHAPTER 2

  Friday, November 29th

  “Tommy, don’t bite on those.” Vivienne snatched the string of miniature Christmas lights away from her grey and white cat that had chosen to adopt her back in late September. He swiped at the string with his paws and gave her a defiant meow for taking away his newest toy. She crammed the lights up into the higher branches of her seven foot artificial blue spruce to keep them out of his reach. “Why don’t you play with those catnip mice I bought the other day?”

  Opening a blue plastic tote that was labeled ‘Tree Stuff’ with a piece of masking tape, Vivienne hoped to find all of her ornaments collected over the years carefully packed into cardboard boxes and organized by color and shape. On the contrary, as she had done every New Year’s Day since she had moved into her rented Cape Cod on Sunset Terrance, they were haphazardly wrapped in paper towels and crammed whichever way they would fit. A testament to the end of the season when she was sick to death of holly and jolly and rushed to pack everything away with a vow to do it better the next time.

  The tree began to sway side to side as Tommy Cat, all sixteen pounds of him, shimmied up the wire branches in a mad race to the top. “Get out of there you crazy beast.” Vivienne shouted.


  He meowed from somewhere inside the dark green branches and then stuck his head out from the middle section. He blinked a few times and let out a sound somewhere between a meow and a purr.

  Vivienne reached over and pulled him free, before he could bring the entire tree crashing down. His front claws sank deep into her shoulder as he held on for dear life. “Ouch, ouch, claws. Watch the claws.” She yelped and released him onto the sofa where he proceeded to dance across her new tan slipcover she had purchased to hide the shredding job he had done to the original fabric.

  Nora, always ready with her motherly advice, had told her repeatedly to have her cat declawed. “They’re like disobedient children.” She had said many times. “You can say no a thousand times but they’ll keep doing it just to spite you.”

  What her mother didn’t know was that just before Halloween she had wrestled Tommy into the large plastic cat carrier after discovering his first shredding crime committed on the right arm of the sofa. But by the time she pulled into the parking lot of Lakeside Veterinary, she had calmed down and decided she just couldn’t go through with it. Even though her veterinarian had assured her the laser procedure was less painful than the old surgery, she couldn’t help but feel it was just plain wrong to take his claws away.

  So she vowed to deal with the problem by investing in slip covers. About three or four a year would be about right she guessed. Besides, it would give her tired furniture one of those inexpensive but stylish makeovers she had seen on those home improvement television shows and countless magazine covers.

  Tommy Cat curled into a ball shape on the sofa and pulled his tail close to his face as he took what was most likely his tenth nap of the day. After his neutering and vaccinations, he didn’t seem to miss going outside much anymore. Fabric mice stuffed with catnip and trailing ribbon tails seemed good enough to stalk as prey. Like many cats, he was content to watch the world on a cozy padded perch from the living room window and only occasionally play a game of ‘catch me if you can’ with Joshua every now and then when he sometimes escaped. Thankfully, the shaking of a cat treat bag proved irresistible to ignore and he could always be coaxed back inside before straying too far into the wilds of suburbia.

  Free to decorate in peace, Vivienne continued pulling out the ornaments one by one and set them on the oak coffee table where several packages of green hooks were waiting. Not that she would need to use many hooks, as most of the baubles still had them attached from last year.

  Actually, as she stared at the package she had thrown into her cart during her last trip to the Monarch Grocery, they weren’t even hooks or made of metal. These days, they were manufactured of thin green plastic and had little loops you squeezed apart to put the ornament on. She imagined that switching over to those would save the inevitable holiday chore of having to dig one out of her bare feet whenever she walked past the tree to get the morning paper. Yet, it would take forever to make the switch. No, she would do that when she took the ornaments down at the end of the season. She wanted the tree up and finished before Joshua arrived at her home for the evening.

  She pulled out a set of vintage Jewel Brite brand plastic ornaments that had cutout dioramas of little scenes inside them and smiled. They had graced every tree in the Finch household since she was a little girl. One ornament in particular was always hers to hang. It was the yellow plastic diorama scene of an angel petting a deer.

  She would hang it last, front and center on her mother’s Scotch pine tree, much to Nora’s displeasure at having a cheap plastic ornament in such a visible place on her glorious tree. Her father would then find a way to have one of the large glass light bulbs placed nearby so it would be illuminated. She spent hours lying down upon the tree skirt, gazing at the twinkling lights and inhaling the scent of fresh pine that wafted from the sturdy branches. It seemed Christmas Eve would never come fast enough, but it always arrived on time and usually with her parents protesting it came a bit too fast.

  The first Christmas after her father had passed away, Nora had given Vivienne most of the ornaments from the family tree. She had said she was downsizing to a table top tree and only needed a few silver and gold glass balls, but Vivienne knew better. The memories of those ornaments proved too painful to look upon for the weeks leading up to the holidays. Where Nora saw only sadness at what once had been, Vivienne treasured as sweet nostalgia that warmed her heart with precious memories.

  Pulling herself away from the memories of the past, Vivienne spent the next hour and a half wrapping the tree with colored lights and suspending ornaments on the wire branches. This year, she had to keep the fragile glass ornaments near the top of the tree and used the plastic along the lower branches should wayward paws choose to play. If the worst-case scenario did occur, she hoped the fluffy red tree skirt she wrapped around the base would help cushion the blow and prevent a shattered mess.

  With her work complete, she stepped back to admire the effort and then remembered how she hadn’t tested the light strands to make sure they worked. She took a deep breath and then plugged the extension cord into the outlet. The lights on the tree burned bright and flooded the surrounding walls and corner windows with a festive kaleidoscope of color. She exhaled and looked over at Tommy Cat who was stretching from his nap. “Isn’t it beautiful?” She asked him. He opened one eye, unimpressed, and returned to snoozing.

  The front door opened as Joshua returned from his day shift at the Cayuga Cove Sheriff’s office. Dapper in his brown deputy uniform and hat, he announced his presence with an impressed whistle.

  Vivienne gestured to the tree like a model on a television game show. “What do you think?”

  “I think it looks amazing.” Joshua took off his hat and coat and hung them on the wall hooks. “Isn’t a little strange though?”

  “What’s strange?” Vivienne asked. “Using colored and clear lights together?” She put her hands on her hips and stared at the tree again. “I couldn’t decide which I liked better so I used both.”

  “I meant being a witch and celebrating Christmas.” Joshua clarified as he pulled off his boots and padded across the hardwood floor in his thick black socks with the bright yellow tips. He wrapped his arms around her waist and gave her a kiss.

  “Not really.” Vivienne smiled at him. I’ve always loved Christmas. Just because I’m a witch doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the season of giving.”

  “I understand that.” Joshua agreed. “Part of me expected you to ignore the whole Christmas holiday thing. I figured Halloween was your big celebration for the year.”

  “Most of the traditions that people associate with Christmas are actually older than Christianity and often have Pagan roots.” Vivienne walked over the sofa and sat down.

  Joshua followed and plopped next to her. “Such as what?”

  “Mistletoe.” Vivienne continued. “It was actually a symbol for virility that was sacred to the Druids. I read something once about how early tribes used the plant to try and cure fertility problems.”

  Joshua leaned closer to her and nibbled on her ear. “Is that why people kiss under it?”

  Vivienne shrugged. “I don’t know, but it sounds reasonable enough.” She enjoyed the way the tree lights reflected off his dark hair. Even more so, she thought that his decision to allow his goatee to grow out into a beard gave him a level of distinction and trust that complimented his deputy title quite nicely.

  “Smart people, those fertile Druids.” Joshua grinned at her.

  “I’m not concerned about you needing the mistletoe. It would please my mother to know that you can provide a pack of grandchildren.”

  “Let’s not tell your mother everything.” He stifled a little yawn.

  She gently swatted his shoulder with her left hand. “For right now, my mother will have to suffice with a fluffy grand-cat. Isn’t that right, Tommy?”

  Tommy opened one eye and appeared underwhelmed and uninterested.

  “What’s for dinner?” Joshua asked.

&n
bsp; “I have some chicken noodle soup in the slow-cooker.” Vivienne ran her hands through his thick brown hair. “Stephanie and I closed the bakery up early because everyone was out at the outlets for the Black Friday sales.”

  “I thought you and Nora always go Black Friday shopping?”

  “We used to.” Vivienne sighed. “But now that I have my own business to run, I just can’t stay up all night hunting bargains. She ended up going out with Clara since the diner is closed for the holiday weekend.”

  “Don’t forget to make out your list for Santa to look at.” Joshua stretched his arms upward with a little yawn. “He likes to have plenty of notice since his shopping skills aren’t as fine-tuned as yours.”

  Vivienne rolled her eyes. “That’s a sexist thing to say.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She shook her head and got up from the sofa. “You’re lucky it’s the season for peace and goodwill toward men.”

  He reached over to the end table and grabbed the television remote. “Sheriff Rigsbee approved my personal day for tomorrow so we can go to the holiday parade together.”

  “I don’t believe it. Was he visited by three ghosts the other night by any chance?”

  “You’re the witch in the family, you tell me.” He said with a laugh. “But if they visit again, will you ask them to mention something to him about giving me a pay raise?”

  “Absolutely.” Vivienne snickered. “Maybe we can get Tommy Cat to play the part of Tiny Tim?”

  “Tiny?” Joshua scoffed. “I’ve never seen such a fat cat.”

  “He’s not fat, he’s fluffy.” Vivienne protested.

  “I’ve never heard of a cat with sixteen pounds of fluff on it.” Joshua turned the television on and started flipping through the channels with furious speed. “So what’s the plan with the bakery?”