As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles

by Leslie Budewitz

  “Who else? Names, Nick.”

  “Greg Taylor.”

  I felt a chill, afraid I knew the answer to my next question before it left my lips. “Where did you hang out?”

  “The schoolhouse at the Thorntons’ place.”

  My heart sank. “Thanks, brother,” I said. “And tell Kim I said hi.”

  Twenty-Three

  With December so busy, I’d been tempted to cancel the usual Friday-morning meeting of the Village Merchants’ Association. I was so not in the mood for a gripe-and-groan session about parking, snow removal, and absent merchants who didn’t do enough to promote the community. Since I’d taken over, I’d worked hard to keep us on target and on time, and a certain amount of air-clearing is inevitable, but some people grind the same ax over and over.

  I grabbed a cup of coffee and an apple turnover from the mini buffet inside Ray’s back dining room and sat at the end of the long table, my sister on one side and April on the other.

  “How you doin’?” I said around a mouth full of fruit and pastry.

  “I am so fat,” Chiara said. “I have been pregnant for fourteen months.”

  “At least you’re not an elephant,” I said. “They’re preggers for two years.”

  She shot me a look as dark as the deepest jungle.

  “Any luck with my bag?” I asked April.

  “Not yet. I might need to send it to a professional cleaner.”

  Uggh. “My car got totaled and my phone’s a goner, so fingers crossed that we can salvage something.”

  “Welcome to the Bayside Grille.” Ray stood, his white T-shirt blindingly bright. “First, I can’t thank you enough for the Yelp campaign. The Grille’s ratings are better than ever. Yesterday, we sold more Reubens than anything else on the menu, and I’m baking extra bread and cooking up more kraut for the weekend.”

  “Great,” someone said. “The whole town will smell like rotten cabbage.” But it was said with a laugh, and we all joined in.

  My turn. Small group today, about fifteen. “Thanks, Ray. That illustrates how we can help each other, honestly, with immediate results. Not much to discuss this morning. Decorating Day went smoothly, and the town is sparkling like a true gem.”

  “When is Undecorating Day?” Ray asked.

  I spread my hands. “Can’t tell you—my calendar’s on my phone, and it died in my accident.”

  “Better it than you,” he replied, and others murmured agreement.

  “January twentieth,” Heidi said, glancing up from her iPad. “You’ll be on your honeymoon, you lucky girl.”

  “Now that’s pushing things a bit far, ain’t it?” Ned asked. “Planning a wedding so you don’t have to take down your lights and bows yourself.”

  I felt myself blush. One more thing to add to the procedures manual.

  “Our ad ran in the regional newspapers last Sunday,” I said, my face still hot, “and the follow-up is scheduled for the next two weekends. At the Merc, we offered a free jar of jam with a fifty-dollar purchase, and traffic is definitely up.”

  We talked for a few minutes about the ad and the responses to the trip starters and other promotions merchants were running. Sally tried twice to complain about the size and placement of her ad, but Kathy shushed her and we stayed on track.

  One more item on my agenda. “A curious thing happened after the Art Walk,” I said, and told them about the cash and note left at our back door. “Any theories?”

  All down the table, frowns and shaking heads.

  “You expect a certain amount of shoplifting,” Heidi said. “And I’ve had people try to return things I’d swear they stole to get the cash. But nothing like you described.”

  “A scam of some kind?” another merchant asked, but no one could figure out what it might be. “Could it have been Merrily? Although I agree, the note sounds like a kid.”

  “Speaking of theft,” the manager of the rental cottages by the bay said, “and Merrily Thornton, can you believe what happened at the Building Supply?”

  “He never should have hired her,” one of the real estate agents said. “I saw him at the grade school basketball tournament last Saturday, after we finished up downtown. Nice guy. I can imagine him angry, but not enough to kill.”

  He was clearly Greg Taylor.

  “If not him, then who?” the cottage manager said. “There’s a killer among us, and I’m telling guests to lock their doors until he’s caught. I’m not shopping at the Building Supply until then, either.”

  Ouch. Though, I had to admit, it was a natural reaction.

  The shift in the conversation signaled an end to the meeting, and we all drained our coffee and pushed back our chairs.

  “Come over and update the registry soon,” Heidi said. “I’m getting calls for gifts and I have nothing left to suggest.”

  “I wanted to wait for Adam.”

  She rolled her eyes, and I promised to come over after we opened.

  I hobbled out behind Chiara and April and tossed a five in the stainless-steel bowl to cover the coffee and pastry. I might have let Ray buy my lunch the other day, but he didn’t have to buy my breakfast, too.

  ∞

  Nothing like butter and sugar to soothe one’s aches and pains. Upstairs in my office, I counted out the till, then scanned the inventory and vendor list.

  “Criminy. Why didn’t I think of him sooner?” I asked the walls. They didn’t answer, thank goodness.

  Like a lot of people in the valley, Jimmy Vang makes a living with a little of this and a little of that. In season, he forages, like others in the Hmong community—he has a nose for tender nettles and a knack for finding morels. But in the off season, he often picks up work as a handyman. I called and left a message about my sad soffit.

  As soon as Tracy and Lou Mary arrived and we’d flipped the sign to OPEN, I crossed the street to Kitchenalia. Our gift list didn’t say who’d bought what—gifts are meant to be surprises, after all—but it did show me that our family and friends were generous, and that I’d be roping my honey into writing his share of the thank-you notes.

  While Heidi helped a customer, I found a heavy pan perfect for Adam’s lasagna. With Le Panier right next door, I don’t bake much bread, but every kitchen needs loaf pans and muffin tins, and they matched the lasagna pan. Plus a springform pan might entice me to make cheesecake more than once a year.

  “Here you go.” Heidi placed an exquisitely wrapped box on the counter, then reached for a shopping bag emblazoned with a big K shaped from a spoon and two forks.

  “Oh, no bag,” the customer, a man in his fifties, protested. “Your bags are too nice.” She ignored him and slipped the box inside. When he tried to refuse his credit card receipt, too, she tucked it in the bag and handed him the package with her trademark brilliant smile.

  The door closed behind him and our eyes met. “Men,” she said. “Skip the receipt and bag and he might not remember where this fabulous gift came from!”

  “Speaking of men, what’s your take on Walt Thornton? He’s so protective. Is Taya really such a fragile flower?”

  She poured herself a fresh cup of coffee from the urn she keeps full for customers and gestured toward me. I held up a hand. Caffeine had been adding to my post-accident jitters, an unfortunate side effect I hoped would fade with my bruises.

  “Opposites can make a great match. Taya is as protective of Walt as he is of her.” She told me about Walt’s battle with diabetes and the neuropathy that had left him barely able to walk. To get him off insulin, Taya had trained a hawk’s eye on every bite he ate, walking him around the village twice a day, even getting him in to see Bill for acupuncture and other treatment. And it had worked. I’d seen Walt bounce around the barn at the Lodge like a kid, petting his oversized Christmas treasures.

  “And I thought she was just a hypochondriac, always acting like you’re sneezing on purpose to infect her,” I said.

  “Oh, she is a paranoid hypochondriac,” Heidi said. “But she’s put
ting it to good use.” She printed out the additions we’d made to the registry, and I thanked her for both the gift guidance and the town talk.

  Outside, I squeezed between a Cadillac SUV and a Prius, and crossed the street to the Merc.

  Tracy and Lou Mary stood by the meat cooler, talking intently in low tones.

  “What’s up?” I asked, and they flew apart like I’d thrown a firecracker between them.

  “Just chatting about cheese.” Lou Mary’s cheeks flushed a lovely peach. They matched the silk scarf tucked into the upturned collar of her loose-cut chocolate-brown blouse.

  “Right.” My two professional and trustworthy clerks looked like kids who’d been caught snooping in Santa’s workshop. But it was the time of year for secrets, so I let it go.

  Ten days to Christmas. I rubbed my lucky stars. This should be our busiest weekend. We had quite a few last-minute orders, so I headed downstairs. Now more than ever, I wished we had a better location for the shipping station, but I gritted my teeth and gripped the stair rail.

  Boxes packed, I stuck out my lower lip. How was I going to get them to the post office? I dragged myself upstairs, then snuck out the back and into Red’s Bar through the courtyard.

  Five minutes later, I had the keys to Ned’s truck, and his promise to never breathe a word to my mother. “Lie to my landlord?” he’d said, but his eyes had sparkled like the tiny white lights in my shop window.

  Twenty-Four

  While I had wheels, and enough sugar on board for courage, I decided to sneak in another stop.

  One look at the object hanging from the chain around Holly Thornton Muir’s neck, and I knew I’d figured right.

  She slipped it back inside the vee neck of her tunic. “Erin, thank you for comforting my mother at the schoolhouse the other day. This has been a rough time for her.”

  “For you, too, imagine.”

  Her lips quivered and she touched a finger to the corner of one blue eye.

  “Brave of you to stay in touch,” I continued, “after your parents cut Merrily off. And to give her a temporary job.”

  The muscles in her jaw moved and she breathed out heavily through her nose before changing the subject with a lightness that didn’t reach her eyes. “So Miss Pumpkin is still aptly named?”

  “Sorry to say, yes, though the low-carb food you suggested has made a difference.” I wasn’t worried about the cat’s weight, now that she had another cat to chase her, and a human who didn’t let her eat all the oil-packed tuna she wanted. Although I did occasionally let her lick my yogurt bowl. But I’d bluffed my way past the receptionist by saying I was passing by and had a quick question about Pumpkin’s weight, so I kept up the charade.

  “You might try another brand.” She slid behind her desk and dug a small pad out of a pile of paper. Tried two pens, tossed them aside, then found one that worked. Scribbled a note and handed it to me. “Try her on this—the pet shop in Pondera carries it. If she’s still tipping the scales in a month, we’ll check her A-1C, and look at other options.”

  For a fat cat? “What other options? And what’s an A-1—what did you call it? The only A.1. I know is steak sauce.”

  “A-1C. It’s the primary test for diabetes. We do put cats on insulin, although I’m out right now.” She gestured toward a cabinet along one wall, bottles and vials of drugs visible behind the thick glass. “But diet and exercise is the best method, like with humans.”

  She stood, but I wasn’t done. “Your pendant,” I said. “It’s your talisman, the way an ex-drinker keeps a token from AA in his pocket. Or a woman uses a Weight Watchers’ key ring to remind her that being watchful is key to keeping the pounds off.”

  In another room, a patient barked. Holly studied me, wordless.

  “Your sister kept one of those tokens from the old movie theater in a cigar box in her desk,” I went on. “Your crowd in high school used them to send messages to each other, to meet at the usual place.” A secret code had sounded so cool—I’d filched my brother’s token eons ago.

  She just blinked. “Lots of people kept those tokens. The Bijou handed them out for decades.”

  “But you carry yours around your neck. To remind you what your sister did for you.”

  Holly’s gaze drifted away, the tip of her tongue slipping out between her lips, like a cat’s. “She gave me back the life I nearly threw away. I owe all this to her.”

  “Juvenile convictions wouldn’t have kept you out of vet school, but if you’d stayed on that path …”

  “Then I’d have been the one in prison. Sometimes I think I should have been.” She perched on the edge of her desk, her small fingers pulling out the chain and working the token. “It wasn’t just drugs. I was the youngest in the group, the sweet-faced kid who could pocket packages of Sudafed without being noticed. The boys cooked meth in an old shed on the back of my parents’ property, past the schoolhouse. Mom and Dad never went down there. They had no idea.”

  Meth? “And Merrily? Was she involved, too?” Nick had said she wasn’t, but I wanted Holly’s confirmation.

  “No. Funny thing is, it was her crowd to start with. She and Greg Taylor, your brother, Anne Christopherson, a few others. All good kids who might spike a bottle of Hawaiian punch with vodka or pour rum in their Coke cans. They played guitars and sang along with CDs, passing the same joint around all night, pairing off to make out in the teacher’s apartment in back.”

  “And Greg?” I had to ask.

  “Start of sophomore year, a couple of older guys started hanging out with the group. They were pretty hard-core. I never knew what drew them to us, except maybe to take advantage of us. And I gave them access to the shed. My sister tried to stop me, but I wasn’t having any of it. She and I fought a lot that year, always about the drugs and my ‘bad crowd.’” She wrapped her arms around herself, remembering. “And about Greg.”

  “He was Merrily’s boyfriend, right? How did she feel about his drug use?”

  “She hated it. He was torn. He liked the excitement, the feeling that we were daring to do what other people never would. We were brave. We were bad. And that was good.”

  “You said he was torn,” I prompted.

  “Greg is not bad. He isn’t even all that brave,” she said wryly. “And he was crazy about my sister, even after she broke up with him.”

  A mental slide show began flashing through my mind. PowerPoint brain. Greg’s insistence that Merrily would not harm anyone. His visible pain at the thought of her betrayal, and the terror in his voice when he called to say he’d found her in the schoolhouse. The place they’d both loved. The place forever associated with her.

  What had he said? Something about no one trusting him anymore. So teenage drug use was what he hadn’t wanted the police, or anyone else, to know. Or had he been involved in the dirty work?

  “She didn’t come back here to pick up with him, did she?”

  “No, he’s happily married. But he was afraid of what she would say. That’s why he killed her.”

  “What? Because he used drugs twenty years ago? Had a kid he didn’t know about? That’s not so bad.” Unless you accepted Walt and Taya’s worldview. “Oh. Are you saying he doesn’t know he’s Ashley’s father?”

  Holly bit her lip. “I don’t think he does. But either way, it all comes back to Cliff Grimes. He figured out that I was ‘the blond bandit,’ as the newspaper called me. I never looked like a meth-head—no one would have suspected, if he hadn’t seen me.”

  “Seen you where?”

  “In Pondera, doing a drug deal in a sleazy bar. It was right when news of the embezzlement broke. Cliff tried to leave the country, but he got caught.”

  “So he blackmailed Merrily to take the fall for his schemes. By threatening to expose you.” The creep, the absolute creep. How could anyone do that to a teenage girl, especially a man with a daughter of his own? My throat ached with sympathy for Merrily and Sally.

  “I couldn’t let my parents find out,” Holly sai
d. “They’d have never forgiven me.”

  That, I believed. Their self-righteousness had been a heavy burden on both their daughters.

  “They don’t know what Grimes did, do they? You kept your position in the family and let her take the blame.”

  “No. No, it wasn’t like that, Erin, I swear.” Holly pushed herself off the desk, her hands in fists, ready to plead or fight. “I thought what everyone thought—that my sister stole from our mother’s best friend. I didn’t find out the truth until we reconnected in Billings. I forced it out of her. I begged my parents then to change their minds …”

  “But they wouldn’t relent,” I said.

  “My father’s always been a softie when it came to his girls. But he wouldn’t stand up to my mother. He wouldn’t push her to take Merrily back into the family.”

  “Not even when you told her about Ashley?”

  Holly shook her head. “Ashley would always have reminded her of Merrily’s sins. Remember, she thought Cliff Grimes was the father. We all did.”

  “And they blamed the teenager, not the man old enough to have been her own father?”

  She shrugged. Of course. If your view of the world was black-and-white, it was all too easy to see a pretty young girl as a seductress, instead of a fully grown man as a manipulative slime-ball.

  Careful, Erin. Your own self-righteousness is showing.

  “Do you know anything about the embezzlement at the Building Supply? That may be what got your sister killed,” I said.

  “No, I don’t,” Holly replied, her eyes wet, her whole body shaking. “What are you going to do?”

  Well, I wasn’t going to slap her for her foolishness, though I wanted to. At least she’d tried to persuade her parents, though the task rivaled that of Sisyphus, the mythic Greek doomed to keep pushing a rock uphill no matter how often it rolled back down. “I’ll keep asking questions. Make sure Brad and Greg know the truth, and urge them to tell Ashley everything. But that’s their decision, not mine.”