Christmas, Criminals, and Campers

by Tonya Kappes

  “I know it seems so childish, but Paul was so much older than me when we briefly dated.” I put the makeup items in Nadine’s bag. “I wasn’t truly enjoying just living. Paul threw me into the social scene and all the fine things that money could buy.”

  As I talked about my life with Paul and how I’d finally realized money wasn’t what was important to me anymore, the more I saw she was truly listening. Not interrupting or even giving her advice. She was actually not butting in but listening to what I was saying.

  “I guess I better stop rambling and get back to the office.” I closed the suitcase and looked at Mary Elizabeth. Her silence was deafening. There were some tears rolling down her face. “Are you okay?”

  “This.” She held her hands open towards me. “You. You have turned out to be a joy. I know it was hard for you to come live with me. You had your own mama, but I felt so sorry for you. I wanted to try to give you a different life than you knew before so the pain you were feeling from your old life was not as bad.”

  It was my turn to truly listen to her. I’d never let her do that. I sat on the edge of the bed in front of her and let her talk.

  “I love your curls.” She reached out and touched my hair. “I wanted you to be so happy and I knew those little rich girls could be so mean. I only wanted you to fit in and have a life where no one felt sorry for you because you were orphaned. I wanted them to see the true beautiful you and for you not hide behind your curls. That’s why I got your hair straightened. That’s why I made you take so many classes.” She wiped the tears from her face. “I see now that you found your way. Without me, you found your way.”

  She sat down next to me. There we were sitting on a camper bed next to each other in silence. An act so simple, though we found it so hard to do years ago without fighting one another, when we truly wanted best for each other.

  “Mary Elizabeth, I’m so grateful you gave me a home. It wasn’t your job to fix me. I was and will always be so sad about my family. But I wasn’t mature enough to see the life that you were trying to give me. I was a teenager that thought you were trying to take my mom’s place. Trying to undo everything my family’d ever taught me.” I pointed to my chest. “But I know that she gave me the best of her and you gave me the best of you, making me who I am in here.”

  “I do love you, Mae,” she said the words I had longed to hear for the ten years I’d been gone.

  “I love you too,” I gulped back my pride, “Mom.”

  Her tears turned to sobs as she grabbed me in one of her big southern mama hugs that she tried to give me when I was younger. it felt right giving her the title she had tried so hard to get. For the first time, I truly felt like my own mom would want me to give Mary Elizabeth that title from her as her gift from heaven.

  There were no other words said between us as we sat on that bed for what seemed like hours but was only a few minutes.

  “Now, we got that out of the way.” She stood up and brushed off her sweater like she was just sweeping it all away. It was her way of brushing it under the rug and moving on. This conversation would never be spoken of again, we both knew that. “We need to head to the office with this stuff and work on our investigation.”

  “About that. . .” I showed her out of the camper and sent a quick text to Henry that he could clean the camper and get it ready for the next renter.

  On our trek through the snow on our way back to the office, I told her about Reed being in jail for violating the restraining order and how Valerie had skipped town, making the FBI’s list of most wanted for the murder of Nadine White. I also told her about Laura’s manuscript and how I’d been trying to find it in the camper.

  Mary Elizabeth poured herself a cup of coffee and refilled my cup once we were back in the office, out of the cold.

  “I bet Valerie has it and is going to publish it herself.” Mary Elizabeth made a light bulb go off in my head.

  “What did you say?” I asked. A text chirped from my pocket.

  “I said that Valerie probably took it and will publish it for herself.”

  “You!” I jumped for joy.

  “What? That screamin’ of yours would scare the beard off Jesus!” She looked shocked.

  “I think you just solved the last piece of the puzzle.” I couldn’t be any happier in this moment.

  “Me?” She drew back.

  “What if Valerie Young was Nadine White’s ghost writer?” When the words came out of my mouth, I knew I was right. I grabbed Nadine’s renter file and my purse. “I need you to watch the office while I go somewhere.”

  Eighteen

  I tried calling Hank on my way to the Bluegrass Airport in Lexington since I knew I couldn’t text him while I was driving. I had to tell him that I remembered Valerie mentioning something about a meeting with the publisher in a couple of days. That meant it was today. It also reminded me how much Valerie was trying to change Nadine’s mind about the cookbook concept and was trying to get her to do another romance with the ghost writer. She was so determined that I just knew that Valerie was the ghost writer. And that was why Nadine had to get rid of her.

  Not the fact she was the agent, she was the writer and Nadine was not going to have her name on those books anymore. She wanted a clean break and the only way out was doing what was in her heart. A cookbook.

  It all made sense in my head and when I started to fumble my words on Hank’s answering machine, I just gave up.

  “Forget it. Call me. I’m driving to Lexington to see if I’m right and the meeting is happening.” I threw the phone down in the seat and drove the curvy roads.

  I was happy to see the county road was cleared and that I even passed a few salt trucks with plows. County roads were the first ones maintained during snow emergencies. Sometimes it took forever to get somewhere when one of the salt trucks got in front of you, but today I was grateful for the clear path that was leading me exactly where I needed to be.

  I parked in short-term parking and hurried inside. I knew if Valerie and the publisher were meeting, they had to meet outside of the secured part since Valerie didn’t have a plane ticket to get inside the security, unless she’d recently bought one. I let all those things float out of my mind because I trusted that Hank had done his job and put traces on the rental car and flagged Valerie’s name, alerting him or the FBI if she’d tried to get a plane ticket. At least, that’s what the sleuths on TV did. From my experience, they weren’t too terribly different.

  As if divine intervention had crossed my path, in the distance on a couch near the baggage claim sat Valerie Young and a man in a suit.

  “Valerie,” I had walked up behind her. She turned her head and then adjusted her body to turn slightly behind herself.

  “Mae.” Nervously, she looked between me and the man. “Dan, this is Mae West. A friend of mine.” Her words were so convincing, for a second, I thought I was wrong. “Mae, this is Dan. He’s Nadine’s editor. We were just discussing how we are going to approach Nadine’s last book she was working on.”

  The man stood up and shook my hand. His grip was so hard, it nearly took me to my knees. He gave me a good hard stare that frightened me.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I jerked my hand back before he stopped the blood flow and my hand fell off my arm.

  Valerie gave Dan her polite smile and excused herself. The horn above the carousel in the baggage claim sounded and the belt started to move, sending luggage from a flight down and around, making a screeching noise.

  “Why did you kill her? Are you her ghost writer?” I asked, though the sound was so loud I had to be louder.

  “Keep your voice down.” She glared at me. Her jaw tensed. “I had to do what I had to do.”

  “You are a murderer and I’m calling Hank to let him know I found you.” I reached around my pocket for my phone and realized I’d thrown it on the seat in my car after I’d left Hank a message.

  Valerie reached out and grabbed me by my arm, digging her nails into me.
I winced from the pain.

  “You’re not going to call anyone. You are going to go over there with me and get this deal done so I can have one last book published. Then, if you are a good girl, I might just be kind and kill you fast. If you aren’t the good girl like your foster mom wishes you were, then your death will be slow and painful.” Her words sent chills all over me. She didn’t leave any room for negotiation for my life. Either way, she was going to kill me.

  I did what she said and walked back over to Dan with her death grip now on the flappy part of my upper arm. She pinched it so hard, I was in pain. While she made her deal with Dan, it would give me time to figure out what I needed to do to alert the security officer just feet away from me that I was taken hostage by a crazy lady. My heart was beating. My palms were sweating. My mouth was dry. It seemed like we were sitting there forever, and my brain had gone to mush. I couldn’t think past beyond the pain of her stepping on my toe.

  “That settles it.” She had the toe of her shoe on my boot, pressing down, letting me know that she was well aware I was still there and that we had a deal. “I’ll write the next book with the sweet, small town setting and all the family and relationships as Nadine White’s last novel. I’m glad we agreed to a final settlement of a one million dollars advance.” She had the contract they’d just negotiated in her hands.

  “Not before we write up the ending.” Hank Sharp had walked up behind the couch and put a heavy hand on Valerie Young’s shoulder, causing her to wince out in pain. “Thank you, Dan.”

  I jumped to my feet. Dan opened his shirt to show where there was a wire taped to him.

  “I thought you were going to blow my cover,” Dan gasped for air. “I was dying sitting there. Valerie Young can be a mean person.”

  “Are you really the editor?” I was so confused by what was going on.

  “Yes. The FBI contacted the publishing house and we sent over all the contracts. Valerie Young was a ghost writer for her and that’s when they told me to keep this meeting. They didn’t give me a choice not to be wired up.” Dan finished off telling me about Nadine and how she’d come to the publishing house.

  Dan told us that Valerie had once been a great writer, but turned crazy after they broke her publishing contract and became an agent. She saw Nadine as fresh talent and knew she could enhance it. That’s when Nadine talked a Valerie into co-writing and using her as a ghost writer. All these years Nadine had felt stuck in a writing relationship she didn’t find true to her heart.

  “That was close.” I was so happy to have Hank walk me back to my car.

  “When I saw you walk into the airport, my heart sank. I wasn’t about to let anything happen to you now that I found you.” Hank brushed my curls out of my face. His hand rested on my cheek. “It was then that I realized that you stole my heart the first time I saw you with the lake scum all in your hair.”

  “That awful day.” I had just moved to the campground and the lake was nasty. I was standing on the rickety pier with Henry trying to figure out what I needed to do to get the lake looking good so I could sell the darn campground. The pier gave way and both of us fell into the lake just as Hank and his then partner were driving up to question me about Paul’s escape from jail. I had nasty moss and scum stuck in my hair and I was drenched from head to toe.

  “You were so natural in that moment. So vulnerable even though you gave me heck and hated the campground.” He moved his other hand to the other side of my cheek, cradling my face. “Don’t scare me like this again.”

  “I called to tell you where I was going.” I stared into his big green eyes and could feel my heart warm.

  “If you don’t hear from me, don’t do it.” He warned me, sealing it with a kiss.

  “You mean, you’re going to keep using me in your investigations?” I smiled.

  Nineteen

  I flipped on the radio on my way back to Normal. Christmas tunes were playing, and I was singing along to Here Comes Santa Claus just as the snow started to tumble out of the sky. It was going to be a wonderful Christmas now that Nadine White’s killer had been taken into custody.

  I’d checked my phone messages before I’d hit the road. The text that’d come through earlier that I didn’t read was from Christine at the Cookie Crumble Bakery. She said she was ready to start on the candy cane donuts for the Christmas Dinner at the Campground that was in a couple of days.

  Today Dottie had planned to get all the decorations and paperware for the dinner before she had to come to work. With Mary Elizabeth at the office, I gave her a quick call to make sure she was okay and to let her know that I was going to run by the Milkery to get the ingredients Christine needed before I came back to finish my day at the office. I also gave her a brief rundown of what had happened at the airport.

  I knew by the time I ran my errand, news about what had taken place at the airport would be all over Normal and I’d be fielding calls left and right.

  Since salt had been put on the roads, the big falling flakes were melting on impact, making it a perfect time for me to visit the Milkery. There were large silos around the property with the dairy’s name printed on each of them. The cows were all huddled together on one side of the Kentucky post fence up the drive and the other side looked to be enclosed chicken houses where the free-range chickens lived.

  “What on earth are you doing out here?” I heard someone call out to me when I got out of my car.

  “Laura,” I was happy to see her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” She held a metal pail with chicken eggs stacked to the top. “My aunt and uncle own the farm and I work it.”

  “That’s so cool. I’ve never been here.” I looked around and tried to picture just how colorful it was during the warmer months. Currently, the trees that surrounded the farm were bare and the white snow covered everything. “I’m here to get some ingredients for Christine over at the Cookie Crumble Bakery to make her candy cane donuts for my Christmas Dinner at the Campground.” I smiled. “Say, you and your aunt and uncle should come.”

  “I’ll see. They take Christmas around her pretty seriously.” She nodded towards the farm house sitting off into the distance. “Come on, I’ll show you around.” She set the basket of eggs on the picnic table along the way. “Christine called and said someone would be by to get enough ingredients for over one-hundred donuts, but she didn’t say it was you. Those eggs are part of your order.”

  “Wow. It fascinates me how this place works and how our community really supports each other.” It was such a great feeling to have at this time of the year and it really enhanced the season of giving.

  “I’m pretty fortunate that my aunt and uncle really believe in my writing. You know it’s hard to be a writer.” She didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t figured out over the past few days.

  “Speaking of writers.” I had to tell her about Valerie. “They’ve have Valerie in custody for killing Nadine.”

  “Really?” She asked with big eyes right before we took off our boots to head into the farm house. “What happened?”

  I told her all about how Mary Elizabeth had given me the idea that Valerie was the ghost writer and how I vaguely remembered her saying the publisher or someone from the publishing house was going to be meeting them at the airport.

  “He was wired? She confessed?” Laura seemed to be a little stunned. “That’s so wild.”

  We had some chit-chat about the process Valerie would go through with murder charges while she showed me the house and her typewriter where she did her work.

  “I did break down and ask for a laptop for Christmas to write on.” She’d finally given in to technology.

  “Good for you.” I looked around the office. The view from the window was amazing. Off in the distance were the mountains of the Daniel Boone National Park. Somewhere in there was Happy Trails Campground. “This is really an inspiring view to write to,” I said louder than normal after Laura had excused herself to go to the bathroom.
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  I leaned on the desk to see what was below the window and my foot knocked over a trash can full of papers.

  I bent down to pick them up and noticed the red ink all over them.

  “There is way too much dialogue in this. You’ll never get to be a writer if you don’t start adding descriptions,” I read out loud.

  I put that paper down and picked up a fistful. All of them had red writing on them. Each comment was worse than the one before. The last page I picked up had a longer paragraph.

  “You cannot be a writer at this time. I will not be able to mentor you until you get some writing classes under your belt. You are going to waste your time and mine until you figure out the structure of sentences and the proper usage of verbs, pronouns, and emotions. Your characters have the emotions of a white Saltine cracker. And you didn’t bring me along with the plot. Each chapter has to have something to do with the romance. Your lovers go for pages without a kiss. Good luck, you’re going to need it. Nadine,” my voiced trailed. I blinked several times to make sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing.

  “What did you say?” Laura came back into the room. Her eyes focused on my hands where I was holding the manuscript she told me that Nadine had and she hadn’t gotten back. “You weren’t supposed to find that.”

  “I thought you said. . .” Images of the eggs, donuts, and the idea of poison appeared in my head. “You have access to the ingredients.”

  “Oh, now you’re going to figure it out?” She let out a spurt of evil laughs. “I really should’ve tried my hand at crime fiction, because in real life, I’ve definitely pulled it off.”

  “You?” I asked confused as to why.

  “Yeah, me. I don’t know how I lucked out with Valerie showing up and stabbing Nadine in the neck after she was already dead from the poison I had put in her special milk she had asked for to bake with.” She unhooked the belt from around her waistband and snapped the straps together, making me jump. “It was perfect, really. Nadine whatever her name is deserved to die. She was so jealous of my talent that she wrote those terrible words, so I wouldn’t take away her readers.”