by Krista Davis
“So she wasn’t stabbed.” I was very relieved about that. “She probably died of a heart attack, or she bashed in the door and couldn’t call for help. She might have died of exposure.”
The ambulance doors closed and it drove away.
Dave took a deep breath. “Now for the hard part. I hate having to inform relatives that their loved one is deceased. It’s the worst feeling in the world.”
We were somber as we walked back to the inn. Even Trixie didn’t run with joy anymore.
The entire Thackleberry family sat in the Dogwood Room by the fire.
Tiffany held the white kitten on her lap. Twinkletoes sat at Tiffany’s feet, mesmerized by the newcomer.
Tim stood up when he saw Dave. In a fearful voice, he stated, “You found her.”
Momentarily forgetting Holmes’s connection to the family, I tugged at his sleeve. I thought it best for us to retreat and leave the family to their grief.
But Holmes obviously felt a tie to the family. He walked to EmmyLou and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
I, on the other hand, did not belong. I hustled to the kitchen, thinking about all the ugly things Vivi’s family had said about her. I guessed they were true. Would any of them remember her warmly? Maybe her son, Tim.
Oma, Rose, and Mr. Huckle sat by the fire in the dining area, drinking hot chocolate.
Oma perked up when she saw me. “What happened? Where have you been?”
I told them about Trixie finding Vivi.
“You think someone killed her?” Oma asked.
“I don’t know. She lost a shoe near the big Christkindl chalets. I don’t know if that means she was running from someone or was drunk. It’s a little odd that she wouldn’t have retrieved it and put it on when it was so cold out. She didn’t show any signs of injury, though. No blood or gashes or anything.”
“I bet the same person murdered both Mr. and Mrs. Thackleberry,” said Mr. Huckle.
“A family member most likely,” added Rose.
“For money,” said Oma.
She poured a mug of hot chocolate for me and plunked mini-marshmallows on top. “This certainly narrows down the field of suspects.”
I sat on the fireplace hearth with Trixie at my feet. “How so, Oma? They all hated her. What an awful Christmas for their family. To lose two family members in a matter of days? I don’t know how they can hold it together.” I sipped the hot chocolate and slurped out a mini-marshmallow.
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Where is Holmes?”
“With the Thackleberrys in the Dogwood Room.”
“Nooooo,” she hissed. “That girl will entangle him again. You just watch. He will forgive Norma Jeanne.”
She was right. He probably would do exactly that.
Dave pushed open the door and poked his head in. “I presume Holly has filled you in, Liesel. Do you mind if I use your office? I’d like to speak to the family members individually.”
“Of course,” said Oma. “Hot chocolate?”
Dave looked at it longingly. “Sure. It doesn’t have booze in it, does it?”
Oma smiled. “Just milk.”
Dave rubbed his hands together in front of the fire. “Thanks, Liesel. It was cold outside.” He accepted the mug and left.
The crackling fire and soft strains of “The Christmas Song” only made me more melancholy. It was cozy and warm, and I was surrounded by friends and family. I couldn’t imagine how traumatized the Thackleberry family members must feel.
“There should be a rule,” I said. “No dying over the holidays. It’s twice as depressing.”
“There are laws against murder,” Mr. Huckle pointed out. “Yet someone did them in. Neither one of them would be dead if someone hadn’t killed them.”
“Vivienne could have died of natural causes,” I pointed out.
“Fat chance! Can you even imagine being a Thackleberry right now? They must all be looking at one another with suspicion,” said Rose. “What a nightmare to imagine that one of your family members is a murderer.”
Oma scowled. “Perhaps the three of us should watch over Doris so she is not alone.”
“That might be a very good idea,” I said.
“If Vivienne was murdered, then it changes the picture, no?” said Oma. “Someone wished to rid himself of both of them.”
Rose, who was seldom catty, snarled, “For money. I bet anything they were murdered for money.”
“Are you worried about Aunt Birdie?” Mr. Huckle gazed at me.
“No!” I tried to maintain a level voice. “Not a bit. Aunt Birdie can be very cranky, cantankerous even, but I suspect she thinks murder would violate the rules of social etiquette, if nothing else.”
Rose snorted when she laughed. “But it didn’t bother her to sleep with a married man? She must have very different etiquette rules than the rest of society.”
“Surely you do not believe that Birdie murdered them,” said Oma. “Birdie is, how do they say, nutty as the fruitcake, but even I don’t think she would kill anyone.”
“Why are we talking about my relative when it’s so much more likely that one of the Thackleberry clan did them in?”
Mr. Huckle stretched. “My money would have been on the bitterly indignant Vivienne. Had I been her husband, I believe I would have feared closing my eyes at night to sleep.”
Rose cocked her head. “Well! What can a husband expect if he’s sleeping around with other women? I would be furious. No wonder she was angry with him.”
“But you would have divorced him,” Oma argued. “There was no need to murder him. Who else had a motive?”
“The whole family wanted to clobber Vivienne!” Rose lowered her voice to a whisper. “Didn’t you hear them carrying on this morning when they looked in their stockings? I thought Blake was going to blow his top.”
“What happened?” asked Oma. “I was busy with the brunch. I must have missed that.”
Rose continued in a hushed tone. “Apparently they get an expensive gift every year from Dale and Vivienne. Not this year. They got something worse than a lump of coal—a letter telling them they were officially cut off. No more money! They have to live on their own.”
Mr. Huckle chuckled. “It’s a bit difficult to be empathetic about that. Most of us have to earn our own way in life. It was probably long overdue for some of them.”
“But you can see why they were so angry with Vivienne,” whispered Rose.
I debated whether to tell them what I knew and decided there was no harm in it. After all, Dale and Vivienne were dead. “Vivienne probably never came back to the inn last night, so she couldn’t have put the envelopes in the stockings.”
“That’s right!” Oma’s eyes widened. “But then who—”
“Me,” I said. “Before he died, Dale asked me to stuff the stockings with the envelopes. I had no idea what was in them, of course.”
Mr. Huckle frowned. “This is most intriguing. It all fits in with Doris’s concerns about the younger Thackleberrys being too spoiled. One has to wonder who else knew about this. Could it be that he told one of them and that led to his death?”
“Blake.” Rose clearly disliked the Thackleberrys, and at the moment her nostrils flared like she had smelled a skunk. It was a good thing the engagement had been called off.
“Dressing peculiarly is hardly a hallmark of murderers,” Mr. Huckle said.
“I don’t care what he wears, although I do think he has a strange wardrobe, and I still think it’s wrong for a man to wear a dress of rags, much less to a holiday party. But that’s not what worries me. It’s his attitude. He acts like we’re all beneath him. Seriously, he snapped his fingers at me like I was his servant. I’ve never seen anything so rude in my life. I’m telling you, something isn’t right with that young man.”
“Speaking of which, I
had better go check on them. By now they probably would like something to nosh on.” Oma stretched and stood up.
“You stay here, Oma. I’ll go.” I rinsed my mug and headed for the Dogwood Room.
Tim was slumped in an armchair. “Mom’s biggest fear was to be broke again.”
The others gazed at him. I saw a few making faces.
“You don’t know what it was like. My dad ran off before I was born. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her or her baby because she wasn’t married. It was just the two of us. It wasn’t like this family where someone would have stepped in and been kind. She had to drop out of high school. To support me, she worked nights cleaning offices so she could take me with her. When I went to school, she took an assortment of day jobs, the kind that don’t offer benefits or possibility for advancement. I never had a bicycle, let alone a car like you kids did. She actually darned my socks because new ones weren’t in our budget.” He looked around the room. “How many of you ever had to fix holes in your socks? You throw them out like they’re worthless. I worked from the time I was old enough to deliver newspapers. But then one day, she was driving a limousine for a Mr. Dale Thackleberry and everything changed. For both of us.”
“I’m sorry, Tim,” EmmyLou murmured. “I knew she had a difficult life, but Dad never told me the details.”
“She didn’t want people to know. She thought it made her look weak.”
Linda stared at her husband. “Oh, Tim!” There was no mistaking the pain in her tone. “You should have told us. We might have been kinder to her instead of treating her like a thorn in our shoes.”
Tim sniffled. “I never thought I would lose her.” He rose and walked outside.
Linda followed him.
“Could I bring you anything?” I asked.
EmmyLou rose and took Doris’s arm. “Not for us, thanks. I think Doris could use a nap.”
No one else responded.
I hustled to the housekeeping closet to retrieve a large garbage bag. Trying not to be too intrusive, I quickly gathered the discarded papers, bags, ribbons, and bows. Twinkletoes amused everyone by chasing each item as I picked it up. She finally nabbed a piece of paper before I reached for it. Holding her head high, she proudly marched off with it in her mouth.
I tossed the bag into the garbage bin and returned to the kitchen, with Holmes right behind me.
A look flashed between Oma, Rose, and Mr. Huckle. Suddenly, with assorted excuses, each of them had to be somewhere else. They vacated the kitchen in short order.
They couldn’t have been more obvious. A flush rose up my face. I tried to act nonchalant. “Hot chocolate?”
Holmes looked at his watch. “Sure. If you’ll go to the sledding contest with me afterward.”
“Deal. That sounds like fun.”
I poured the hot chocolate into two red mugs and added marshmallows and whipped cream. A total indulgence, but what day was better for that than Christmas?
We settled in the cushy armchairs before the fire.
I had kicked off my shoes and propped my feet on the warm hearth when Holmes asked, “Who do you think murdered Dale and Vivienne?”
I hadn’t expected the conversation to turn in that direction, but it had to be uppermost on all our minds. “You think the same person murdered both of them?”
“Most likely. Unless you have reason to think otherwise. It’s unlikely that Vivienne was so loaded that she stumbled into that Christkindl chalet and perished.”
“A lot of them seem to have financial motives.” I couldn’t suggest that Norma Jeanne might have killed Dale in the hope that her mother would inherit the money to fund her glamorous wedding.
“You mean like Blake?”
“Exactly. And Vivienne. She claims she would have gotten more money if he were alive, but I’m not certain of that.”
“No kidding. She told plenty of lies, even to her family,” said Holmes. “I can’t imagine having a relative like that.”
“Do you know anything about Tim and Linda?”
He shrugged. “Not much. They’ve been nice to me.”
“I suppose it’s vaguely possible that someone unrelated to the family murdered Dale. But the little felt wool Jack Russell that Trixie found was probably brought back to the inn by Dale’s killer. It could have been dropped by a visitor who isn’t staying here, but the odds of that seem much slimmer to me.”
Holmes studied his hot chocolate. “They say to follow the money. That leads straight to EmmyLou but she’s the least likely to have killed him. I can’t see her murdering her own dad.”
“If Vivienne was killed, it surely wasn’t for money,” I said.
“So something else must be going on.”
Suddenly, harsh voices rose in the lobby. Holmes and I leaped to our feet and rushed out to see what had happened.
Twenty-nine
“Why are you blaming me?” Tiffany asked. “Why are you always so hateful to me? You’re the perfect one. The boy that everyone doted on. I didn’t make you drop out of med school. You did that all by yourself. Apparently, you’re not the genius our parents always thought. How does it feel to be the one who screwed up?”
“Whoa!” Blake put his hands up in the air. “Don’t take out your anger on me. I’m not the one whose lover slept with our cousin.”
Austin looked like he wished he had never come to Wagtail.
Norma Jeanne shook her head and backed away. “Do not bring me into this. How was I supposed to know that Tiffany would invite the man I love to our family Christmas?”
Holmes blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Stay out of this, Holmes,” Norma Jeanne barked. She turned back to her step-cousins. “Look what a mess we’re in. We’re all stuck in this forsaken place, our grandparents are dead, and now our source of income is about to bite the dust.”
“Don’t yell at us.” Tiffany’s eyes reduced to slits as she stared her cousin down. “We don’t work in fabrication. You’re the bozo who ordered the cheap material that’s sending us in a downward spiral. It’s your fault!”
“I did no such thing. I don’t know what’s wrong with those stupid dogs and cats.”
“Stupid? They paid for your condo and the pearls around your neck and everything you have.” Tiffany threw her hands wide. “How can you be so callous? These sweet, innocent animals are suffering because of you.”
“Like I care. I hate my job. I spend all day drawing sketches for stupid outfits only to have them come back from my boss with snide comments like Where does the tail go? and You do know that cats have ears? I don’t care. I don’t like dogs, and cats are like having you around all the time. So annoying. As far as I’m concerned, I hope Thackleberry closes for good so I won’t have to be bothered with it anymore.” Norma Jeanne crossed her arms over her chest.
“I can tell you this, Norma Jeanne,” spat Tiffany. “I would never have betrayed my own cousin, or a friend for that matter, the way you did. You and Blake are exactly the same. It’s all about you. You get everything you want and you don’t care who’s in your way. You trample right over them. No wonder Grampy cut you off. You don’t deserve a penny of his hard-earned money.”
“Gramps?” Blake’s eyes widened. “It wasn’t Vivi? How do you know that?”
“He told me. And you know why? Because he trusted me.”
Norma Jeanne laughed unpleasantly. “Don’t flatter yourself, Tiffany. You think he couldn’t see through your fake attentions to him? He knew you were scum who would rat on your own relatives.”
“That’s not true. You’re just jealous. And you’re the one who turned on us. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you. We wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you and your engagement. You’re the one who would sell us for a dime.”
Norma Jeanne gasped and marched to the grand staircase so fast I felt a br
eeze. “Holmes!” she whined.
He looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Were I in his shoes, I would have used some choice words to put her in her place. But Holmes said, “Your family is about to lose the Thackleberry company. Instead of fighting and being petty, I think it’s time for you three to put your heads together and save Thackleberry.”
Norma Jeanne shot him an angry look and ran up to the second floor. A door slammed upstairs.
Blake grabbed a jacket and stalked out the front door, slamming it behind him.
Crying, Tiffany picked up her kitten and hurried to her room in the cat wing. A third door slammed.
Which left Austin, Holmes, and me in the lobby. I forced a smile. “Quarreling is how all the best families spend Christmas.”
Fortunately, both of them smiled.
Holmes looked at his watch. “What do you say we take Trixie and Gingersnap over to the sledding contest?”
Austin bashfully said, “I guess I’ll go call the airline again.”
Holmes’s jaw twitched as he regarded Austin. “You know they’re not going to tell you anything different. Come with Holly and me.”
“Are you sure?” Austin walked toward Holmes and held out his hand.
Holmes shook it. “We’re okay. I owe you one. You gave me a chance to walk away from this mess without smelling like a skunk.”
Holmes had to go to his parents’ house to fetch a sled but promised to catch up to us. We scattered to don coats, gloves, and boots. I traded my skirt for jeans, dressed Trixie in her red sweater, and Gingersnap in a Santa hat and red scarf. Austin and I met in the lobby and set out for the best sledding hill in Wagtail.
Darkness was falling while we walked and Austin spilled his woes. “I want to apologize to you. This weekend hasn’t been at all typical of me. I’m sure that’s hard for you to believe. The sad thing is that I really like Tiffany. We have a great time together. But when I saw Norma Jeanne, all those old feelings reappeared. They had been locked away for a long time. It’s not every day that your first love turns up again.”