“I’d say that’s rather interesting timing.” Aunt Peg walked over to the window in the back wall. She stared at the forest thoughtfully. Though it was only mid-afternoon, we were close to the shortest day of the year. The sun was already dropping in the sky. “What did she have to say about Pete’s high school peccadilloes?”
“She told me that Pete’s only problem back then was his rivalry with his brother. That if there were unresolved issues in his life, they’d have had to do with his family.”
Aunt Peg glanced at me over her shoulder. “And you believed her?”
“At the time I had no reason not to. But now . . .”
“You’re wondering,” Aunt Peg said. “As am I.”
At that moment, the happy family of four returned to pay for their tree and to browse through our selection of Christmas ornaments. Twenty minutes passed before I was able to get back to Aunt Peg. In the meantime, she’d wandered outside and helped another family wrangle their tree from sled to vehicle. As I stepped out onto the porch to check on their progress, I realized how dark it had grown and turned on all the outdoor lights.
The area surrounding the office and its outbuilding was well-lit but the dense woods were not. Frank had asked me to stay open until five o’clock, but I doubted we’d see any additional shoppers that afternoon.
Aunt Peg and I made short work of checking out the last tree buyers. As their vehicles’ taillights disappeared down the driveway, all appeared quiet. I closed the office door firmly to keep the warmth inside.
“It looks as though we’re done for the day,” Aunt Peg said with satisfaction. “Let’s get back to what really matters. What else do you have to tell me?”
“One last thing. John Smith said that Pete had been contacting people he’d wronged in the past.”
“I know that. I was there.” She flicked a hand impatiently, waving me on.
“Several people I spoke with in Stonebridge told me that they’d heard from him. But not Sharon. She was adamant about the fact that they hadn’t been in touch in years.”
“Maybe he hadn’t worked his way around to her yet,” Aunt Peg said dubiously.
I didn’t believe that. I was pretty sure Aunt Peg didn’t either.
“Or maybe she was one of the first people he contacted,” I said. “And she was lying to cover up the fact that she knew exactly what Pete was doing and where to find him.”
Aunt Peg was nodding as I spoke. Now she said, “That information needs to go to the police. Those new details added to the autopsy result ought to be enough to convince them that their initial conclusion about Pete’s death was incorrect.”
If not, her tone implied, she would browbeat the officers in charge until they changed their minds.
“You and I can go together tomorrow morning,” I said.
“Excellent.” Aunt Peg picked up her scarf and wrapped it around her neck. “Now that we have that settled, Snowball and I are going to take a walk. I’ve discovered that caretakers of small dogs must adapt to the needs of their tiny bladders. Are the lights on out back?”
“Yes, I turned everything on a few minutes ago. While you do that, I’ll close the cash register. Then we can all leave together.”
Faith elected to stay inside the warm office with me. She watched as I counted the day’s receipts, and then I tucked them into a bank pouch that went in a small safe beneath the counter. I was leaning down and fiddling with the combination when a blast of cold air signaled that the door had opened once again. Aunt Peg and Snowball were back sooner than I’d expected.
Then I heard the rumble of a low growl from Faith and quickly readjusted my thinking. The big Poodle had been greeting incoming strangers with warmth and equanimity all afternoon. But whoever had entered the office now clearly did not meet with her approval.
Slowly I rose to my feet. Sharon LaRue was standing in the doorway.
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”
Sharon nudged the door shut with her foot. “We need to talk. What’s the matter with your dog?”
I glanced at Faith. “Nothing. She’s fine.”
“She’s not fine. She’s growling.” Sharon still hadn’t advanced into the small room. “I can hear it. Does she bite?”
“Only people she doesn’t like.”
Faith probably rolled her eyes at that, but I didn’t look over to check. The Poodle’s instincts were always spot-on. If there was something about our unexpected visitor she didn’t like, I was willing to trust her response. I remained behind the counter and I kept my gaze firmly fixed on Sharon.
“How did you find me here?” I asked. I wasn’t aware that she and I had ever discussed my connection to the Christmas tree farm.
“I had dinner last night with my Aunt Stella. She had several interesting things to tell me.”
Aunt Stella. My breath jammed in my throat.
What an idiot I was. I’d overlooked one of the chief characteristics of small, insular towns. One way or another, almost everybody had a connection to everyone else.
“She told me you went to see Betty Dempsey yesterday.”
“That’s right. Betty asked to see me. She wanted to talk to me about Pete’s death.”
“I heard that’s not all you and she discussed.”
Hand held low, I gave my fingers a soft snap. Faith padded quietly around the counter to my side. Once there, she pressed her body against my leg. Clearly, she was still uneasy. And because of that, so was I.
Sharon could no longer see Faith, but she still didn’t step away from the door. That was just as well. The office was a small space. Even standing on the other side of the room, the other woman still felt uncomfortably close.
Sharon wasn’t looking at me, however. Instead her gaze was sliding dismissively over the colorful jumble of holiday decorations that Claire had hung on the walls. “Geez, what were you thinking when you put up all this crap? It looked like the North Pole exploded in here.”
Affronted on Claire’s behalf, I said, “Did you come here to discuss the décor?”
“No, I came to tell to you to stop sticking your nose into everybody’s business.” Her eyes returned to me. “Betty’s an old lady. She’s sick. Sometimes she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
“Betty seemed perfectly lucid to me.” That might have been a stretch, but I went with it anyway.
“That’s not for you to judge. You don’t even know the Dempseys.”
“You’re right,” I agreed mildly. “I couldn’t possibly know them as well as someone like you who’s been friends with them for years.” I paused a beat, then added, “Or possibly more than friends.”
Sharon still hadn’t unbuttoned her coat. Or taken off her hat. She wasn’t wearing gloves and now she shoved her hands deep into her pockets. She glared at me angrily.
“You want to talk about Pete?” she snapped. “Fine, let’s do that. Pete Dempsey was a spoiled, selfish, rotten excuse for a human being and I’m glad he’s dead.”
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
“Not me. The booze did that.”
“Pete hadn’t been drinking when he died,” I told her. “He didn’t freeze to death because he collapsed in a drunken stupor. He died because someone hit him over the head with a tree branch and left him lying in the snow.”
Sharon scowled. “Don’t look at me like you think I ought to be sorry about that. Nobody in Stonebridge is sorry. Pete’s death wasn’t a loss to any of us. When he left town, we were all happy to see him go.”
“But that was the problem, wasn’t it?” I prodded gently. “Pete was coming back. He’d gotten sober and he’d been contacting people from his past. You told me you hadn’t heard from him in years, but I think you lied about that. I’m guessing you were one of the first people he called.”
“No, that’s not true.” Sharon’s deep chuckle had an ugly edge. “I should have been the first person Pete apologized to. But I wasn’t. He took his own sweet time getting around
to me.”
She shook her head as if she could hardly believe it. “And even then—when he was trying to make me believe he wanted to be a better man—Pete still couldn’t admit that what he’d done to me was wrong. He had the nerve to say that my life turned out fine in the end, so what right did I have to be upset with him?”
“Wow.” I winced. “That would have pissed me off too.”
“I know. Right?”
For a brief moment Sharon and I were in perfect agreement. Then I spoiled our accord by saying, “You were pregnant at the end of your senior year of high school, weren’t you? Is Pete Amy’s father?”
Sharon didn’t reply to my question directly. Instead she said, “I was only eighteen years old. I had no idea which way to turn. When I told Pete, he said, ‘That’s your problem. You find a way to deal with it.’ Then he left for college.”
I didn’t want to feel sympathy for her, but hearing her story I almost couldn’t help it. “In your place, I’d have been furious,” I said.
“Fury was a luxury I didn’t have time for,” Sharon snapped. “Steve and I were married six weeks later.”
“Did he know?”
“Not right away. But later on, yes. He and I have a great relationship. We had our issues in the beginning, but we worked through them.”
Issues indeed, I thought. How great could a relationship be when it was founded upon a lie?
Sharon thrust out her chin. “Steve loves Amy. In every way that matters, he is her father.”
Something—a spark of apprehension—flashed in her eyes. Right then I knew: Steve wasn’t the one who was the problem.
“Amy doesn’t know who her real father is, does she?”
“No, of course not. Why would I have told her something like that? My daughter doesn’t need to know that her father is a lying, cheating, bastard who abandoned me as soon as he found out she existed.”
“Pete wanted to tell her the truth, didn’t he?” I was guessing, but the anguished expression on Sharon’s face confirmed that I was right.
“There was no way I could let him do that,” she said. “I wasn’t about to let Pete ruin Amy’s life the way he ruined mine. He refused to claim her back then. It was too late for him to want to be her father now.”
“I agree,” I said.
Casually I stepped out from behind the counter, like we were just two women having a perfectly normal conversation. Earlier I’d left my phone near the woodstove. As Sharon continued to speak, I slid my gaze that way.
“I had no choice but to protect Amy.” Her voice rose with the conviction that she’d been right. “Amy was mine. Not his. But Pete refused to accept that he’d lost any right to his daughter twenty-three years ago when he walked out on me. I wasn’t about to let that scumbag come back and dismantle the life I’d built for myself.”
“What did you do?” I asked, inching toward the back of the room.
“I told Pete he could take his stupid atonement ritual and shove it. His reappearance would have destroyed Amy and for what? To make himself feel better? That was never going to happen. Not while there was a single breath left in my body.”
It was a chilling statement of intent. I heard Faith whimper softly under her breath. It was almost as if she knew what was coming.
“So now you know why I’ve come.” Sharon’s lips flattened into a hard line. “I have to protect my family. The story I told you ends here, today, with you and me.”
She withdrew her hand from her pocket. It was holding a gun. Sharon lifted it and pointed it at me. “Stop right there, Melanie. Don’t move.”
Chapter Sixteen
I froze in place and held up a hand. As if that would help. “Wait. Let’s talk about this.”
“I have nothing more to say. Except maybe that I’m sorry it’s come to this.” Sharon looked at me across the short expanse. “Although it’s your own fault.”
“It hasn’t come to anything yet,” I said quickly.
There was no way I could get to my phone. I cast my gaze around the room, searching for a weapon. The only thing I saw was a thick piece of firewood. That would be ironic.
“How did you do it?” I asked, stalling for time. With the barrel of a gun pointed at my midsection, what choice did I have?
“It wasn’t hard,” Sharon said dismissively. “After I got over the shock of hearing from Pete, I told him that I wanted to meet with him in person. But not in Stonebridge. I insisted on coming to him.”
“And he was all right with that?” I asked, surprised. I wouldn’t have thought Pete would want his old friends to see how he was living.
“It wasn’t as if I gave him a choice. Pete knew the only way he could get to Amy was by going through me. I told him if I was satisfied with our conversation, I would let him talk to her.”
“But you never had any intention of doing so,” I said.
“Of course not.” Sharon looked at me like I was daft. “We met outside this building. This place was deserted then. Pete was all alone out here in the middle of nowhere.”
She must have initially gotten together with Pete after Mr. Haney died and before Frank purchased the property. The Christmas tree farm would have been closed then. And empty.
“I asked Pete to show me where he lived and he did.” Sharon shuddered. “It was disgusting. I couldn’t believe he’d sunk that low. After I saw that, all I had to do was go home and come up with a plan.”
“It was a good plan,” I told her. “Pete’s death appeared to be an accident.”
“That was the idea.” Sharon sounded smug. “I decided to show up with a couple bottles of gin and get Pete so drunk that he passed out. After that, it would be easy enough to turn off the dinky little stove and leave him there in the cold.” She stopped and frowned. “But Pete refused to cooperate. Considering our past history, maybe I should have expected that.”
Yeah maybe, I thought. “Then what did you do?”
“I told Pete I wanted to go for a moonlight walk in the snow with him. And he fell for it. Can you believe it?”
I shook my head. Honestly, I couldn’t. The male ego was a wondrous thing.
“I took one of the liquor bottles with me. I was sure that when he got chilly enough, I could convince him to warm up with a drink. But then I saw that branch just lying on the ground. It was perfect, like fate had placed it there for me. Once I hit him over the head, Mother Nature did the rest.”
“Presumably except for dumping the gin on him and leaving the empty bottles in his cabin,” I said drily.
“Yes, except for that.” My sarcasm had gone right over her head.
“You fooled the police last time,” I said. “But they’ll be suspicious about a second death here. If you shoot me with your gun, you’re not going to be able to explain that away.”
“That won’t be a problem.” Sharon sounded remarkably sure of herself. “The police will think this was a robbery gone bad. Probably kids looking for drug money. A remote location and a woman alone with a cash register? It’s the perfect setup.”
Damn, I thought. She was right. Except for one thing. I wasn’t alone. Apparently Sharon didn’t realize that.
“Plus,” she added, “you don’t strike me as the kind of person who would meekly hand over the cash to stay safe. Probably everybody knows what a pain in the butt you can be.”
Well, okay. She might be right. But that meant I wasn’t about to let her meekly shoot me either. Not if I could figure out a way to stop her.
Faith was still making low noises. Her whimper had turned into an angry whine. She didn’t know a thing about guns but she must have felt the palpable edge of menace in the air. The Poodle came out from behind the counter on her toes with her shoulders arched. The hair on her neck and shoulders was standing straight up.
“Don’t even think of siccing that dog on me.” Sharon cut Faith a glance. “If you do, I’ll shoot her first.”
I cupped my hand around Faith’s muzzle and quickly maneuvered her aroun
d behind me. “Nobody’s going to be shooting anybody.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you.”
From somewhere outside, there came a bloodcurdling scream. At the same moment the door to the office came flying inward.
The solid wooden panel hit Sharon hard from behind, catching her squarely across the shoulders. She stumbled and went staggering forward. Her arms flailed in the air as she tried to regain her balance. It didn’t happen.
I briefly registered the panicked look on Sharon’s face before whirling around to grab Faith. As Sharon fell, her finger tightened on the trigger. With a roar that sounded impossibly loud in the small space, the gun discharged.
Faith and I hit the floor together. I was on top, and the big dog cushioned my frantic dive without complaint. I heard the sound of a loud pop. To my surprise, it was followed by the whoosh of escaping air.
I’d started to raise my head, but immediately ducked down again as something red and white went flying past us. I was still trying to process that when the unidentified missile suddenly shot upward. Several large splinters of wood came raining down from the cabin ceiling. A loud plop followed.
Quickly I disengaged myself from Faith and scrambled to my feet. Right now, there wasn’t time to think about anything but getting to the gun.
Sharon had dropped the weapon when she’d used her hands to break her fall, but she was already looking around for it. From my vantage point I could see that the gun had skidded across the floor and come to rest beside the counter. I went racing after it, but I didn’t get there first.
Aunt Peg beat me to it.
She crossed the room in four quick strides and scooped up the gun, handling the piece with the calm assurance of someone who was accustomed to riding to the rescue. Then she spun around and trained the weapon on Sharon, who’d risen slowly to her knees.
“I don’t think so,” Aunt Peg said.
“Who the hell are you?” Sharon spat out. She dusted off her hands and started to get up.
“You may think of me as the cavalry,” Aunt Peg said with a wolfish smile. “The police are on their way. I’d rather you remain on the floor until they arrive. I’d hate to have to use this, but I will if I need to.”
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