Silent Night, Deadly Night

by Vicki Delany

“Are you still inviting us for dinner tonight?” Mom asked as she turned into my street.

  “Yes. It’ll do us good to get our mind off everything that’s been happening. Mom, what do you think about Dad being fired as Santa?”

  “‘Fired’ is a strong word, considering he wasn’t being paid a red cent.” She let out a long breath. “Being Santa isn’t all that important to him, Merry, although he enjoys it. It’s the town and people of Rudolph and everything Christmas in Rudolph represents that’s important to him. If Wayne Fitzroy makes a good Santa, then so be it.”

  “Alan doesn’t trust Fitzroy, and he won’t be toymaker to him. Will you be in the parade?”

  “I have no choice, dear. Even if I wanted to drop out, I can’t. My classes expect it. Some of my parents send their children to me specifically with the aim of them marching in the parade and singing at the post-parade reception. The younger ones in particular cannot sing without me leading them. You, my dear, will be in the parade also.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. The town is what matters. Christmas is what matters. Not Wayne Fitzroy or Sue-Anne Morrow and her fool of a husband.”

  “Do you know anything about what Jim Morrow is supposedly doing?”

  “Nothing I haven’t heard from the usual town grapevine. Don’t change the subject. You’ll have a float in the parade no matter what your personal opinion is. You should try to talk Alan into being Santa’s toymaker again. For the good of the town.”

  “He’s going to be on my float. We’re doing Saint Bernard rescue dogs in the Swiss Alps.”

  Mom pulled up in front of my house. She turned to me with a smile. “Excellent. Alan and you will be supporting the town but subtly expressing your disapproval at how the issue of Santa Claus was handled. Would you like to borrow some children?”

  Meaning kids from her vocal classes.

  “Sure. Children add so much to a float. Wayne Fitzroy is going with pretty young women.”

  Mom groaned.

  Chapter 25

  “Your father and I are thinking of going on a cruise in January,” Mom had said as we drove back from the hospital.

  “Where?”

  “The Caribbean. I can’t be away for too long, I have my classes, but I can take a week.”

  “That would be nice,” I said. I wasn’t thinking quite so far ahead. All I was thinking about was the rest of the day. I intended to relax and try to enjoy what remained of my day off. My guests were coming at six, and all I had to do before that was tidy up and lay out glasses, dishes, cutlery, and napkins. As I don’t have a dining room, or a dining room table, we’d be serving ourselves buffet style and eating on our laps. Not quite my mom’s standards for the holiday meal, but she’d have to put up with it.

  At least I was having a holiday meal.

  I was determined not to spare another thought to Karla or Ruth or the rest of the quarrelsome quartet. Let the police do their job and let me enjoy my Thanksgiving. Tomorrow it was full speed ahead into the holiday season.

  Dad had clearly stated that he was not going to fight for the Santa Claus position, so that was settled. Let the candy canes fall where they may.

  My determination not to so much as think about all that had happened didn’t last long.

  Mom let me off at the curb, and I bolted up the driveway. A call of “Merry Wilkinson!” had not followed me, and my landlady did not appear on the front porch in a puff of smoke like a mule-shod wizard clutching an iPhone.

  I hesitated. Should I check on her? I’d have expected her to be on the lookout for me. No doubt Mrs. D’Angelo had contacts at the hospital who’d have told her Mom and I had visited Ruth.

  Maybe this was some new ploy of hers, a way of getting me off-footed and thus vulnerable to being dragged into the house and interrogated.

  Maybe she wasn’t home. Surely even Mrs. D’Angelo had to go out sometimes? Come to think of it, I’d never seen her outside the boundaries of her own property. She must have shopping to do, doctor and dentist appointments to go to, friends to visit. Didn’t she?

  I stood in front of the door at the bottom of the back stairs, indecisive. Peace and quiet versus checking on a lonely woman. At that moment the door opened, and Steve and Wendy came out. Steve carried Tina in his arms, and upstairs Mattie barked.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Merry.” Steve put Tina down. She wore a pretty red velvet dress adorned with ribbons and bows under a matching red sweater.

  “Same to you,” I said. “Going to your folks’?”

  “Yup,” Wendy said. “Mom’s expecting forty-two of us this year.”

  “How on earth do your parents manage?”

  “We eat in shifts,” Steve said.

  Tina spotted one of Mattie’s balls and toddled for it.

  “Don’t get your dress dirty!” Wendy scooped her daughter up, and then she turned back to me. “Sorry about what happened with Noel. I hear Sue-Anne asked him to step down as Santa.”

  I shrugged. “He’s good with it.”

  “I don’t trust that Wayne Fitzroy,” Wendy said. “There’s something nasty under all that fake charm.”

  “Sue-Anne,” Steve said, “needs to get a backbone. But first of all, she needs to read the riot act to her husband.”

  Wendy smiled at him. Tina struggled to get down. “Like I do to you,” Wendy said.

  “All the time.” Steve winked at me.

  “Does everyone in town know Jim Morrow’s business?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Wendy said. “Although, far as I know, it’s nothing but rumors.”

  “And this house is rumor central,” I said. “Speaking of which, Mrs. D’Angelo didn’t leap out at me just now to ask what’s going on. Not only with the Santa Claus stuff but with the death of my mother’s friend.”

  “She’s gone away,” Steve said.

  “Away? Where?”

  “To her niece’s,” Wendy said. “She’ll be back tomorrow. She called to let us know. Didn’t she call you?”

  “My phone’s off.” I’d switched it off when we went into the hospital and hadn’t turned it back on as part of my intention to enjoy a quiet day.

  We wished each other a happy Thanksgiving, and I gave Tina a big sloppy kiss on her plump cheek. She laughed in delight, waved her pudgy hands in the air, and they went on their way.

  I ran up the stairs, cheered on by an eager Mattie, and turned on my phone. One voice message: Mrs. D’Angelo telling me she was going out of town for the day.

  I imagined all the phones in Rudolph falling silent.

  Unfortunately, my phone wasn’t one of them. It rang. Diane Simmonds. I opened my apartment door with one hand and answered the phone with the other.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Merry,” she said.

  “Is it?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply. “I’m calling about what happened last night at your parents’ home. Have you thought of anything you didn’t tell me at the time?”

  “Nothing, sorry. All I can say is, I saw a shape in the yard, and I chased it down the street and lost it.”

  “You’re sure this person you saw is the one who attacked Ruth?”

  I thought. “Pretty sure. I mean, I heard a grunt and then a heavy sound, like someone falling. When I came into the backyard, I saw someone standing over someone else. Oh, they, the standing person, was holding something in their hand. They threw it down when Mattie and I arrived and ran off. I saw you bagging a rock. Was that what they used to hit Ruth?”

  “Very likely,” she said. “I’ve sent it to the lab. I can’t keep your mother’s guests in Rudolph any longer. I tried to argue that once they’ve dispersed it will be too hard to question them if I learn anything new, but Mrs. Westerton and Ms. Shaughnessy have some powerful legal friends. I have to tell them they can leave today.”

  “I understa
nd,” I said.

  “The hospital tells me Ruth Nixon will likely be released once the doctor has given her one more check. Her family has arrived, I understand, so they’ll be taking her home.”

  She hung up without saying good-bye.

  Now that I was, once again, thinking about all that had happened, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I made a pot of coffee and pulled a chair up to the kitchen table.

  I dragged a piece of paper and a pen toward me and wrote five names:

  Ruth

  Genevieve

  Constance

  Barbara

  Eric

  I put a dotted line though Ruth’s name. I decided not to even consider that Ruth had killed Karla and a different person had attacked Ruth. That might be what happened, but right now it would only complicate things.

  The person who attacked Ruth must have thought she knew something about the death of Karla. Something she, Ruth, claimed not to know.

  Claimed not to know. Did she, in fact, know exactly what had happened and why? Was she keeping that information to herself for blackmail or other purposes?

  I thought of the soft smile on her face when she talked about her family. Ruth knew money didn’t buy happiness.

  I believed her.

  Therefore, for the time being, I’d remove Ruth from the list of suspects, leaving four. Plus, of course, person or persons unknown.

  I studied the list, and then I drew a stroke though Eric’s name. He might have attacked Ruth—he was in town and in walking distance of the house—but he wasn’t here for the death of Karla. He was nothing more than a small-town guy who owned a family business and was going through a nasty divorce. If he had the wherewithal and the contacts to get on a plane, cross the country and back again incognito, or the knowledge of the underworld to arrange a hit on a troublesome wife, Simmonds would find it.

  I did not believe Eric murdered Karla.

  She was not killed by any random passerby or in mistake for someone else. A guest at that potluck dinner had made a curried egg salad specifically to disguise the taste of ground peanuts. That same person had hidden the EpiPen. It had been a deliberate, and successful, attempt to murder Karla.

  It had to have been someone who’d been at the potluck dinner.

  I hadn’t done it. My mom hadn’t done it. Vicky had absolutely no reason to have done it. Therefore, it could only have been one of the quarrelsome quartet.

  What had Ruth said about her mystery novels?

  Secrets. Secrets.

  I drew squiggles on the paper, but no pattern emerged.

  I supposed it might be possible that the killer was Mom, but aside from the fact that she’s my mother, she wouldn’t have invited the group for the weekend if she was keeping a secret, something so terrible and important she’d concealed it all these years.

  Then again, why would the killer come for the reunion weekend if she didn’t want to see Karla and risk her secret being exposed?

  Had something happened to force her hand?

  Had something lingered large in her mind for almost forty years, something that was now in danger of being exposed?

  I sucked in a breath.

  That had to be it.

  But what that something might be was the question. A question I was unlikely to be able to answer. I didn’t know these women well—no more than what had been revealed in a few overheard snatches of conversation.

  I wrote Karla’s name on the right side of the paper in thick block letters.

  Those snatches of overheard conversation might be important. What had I learned about the four women—and Karla—in the time I’d spent with them?

  Genevieve was a failed actress and a petty thief.

  Barbara was on her second marriage; she liked dogs and the outdoors and was an environmental lawyer.

  Constance’s family was wealthy. Her husband had died five years ago, leaving her with one son, who ran the family business.

  Ruth had given up a promising acting career to care for her mother, but she had a husband, children, and grandchildren who loved her.

  Karla had been a bitter woman. Angry at life, angry at her husband for leaving her, apparently angry with her adult children for not being closer to her, trying to pretend in front of her “friends” that everything was perfect.

  Karla was also, I’d been told, the one who kept the group together. Without Karla, they would have drifted apart long ago.

  Karla cared about her old friends so much, she carried a photo of Constance with her when she traveled. She might have had pictures of the others among her things that I hadn’t seen when I searched her room.

  Poor Karla. Had life been such a disappointment to her that one year at college, so long ago, had been the highlight?

  She hadn’t even graduated, but quit in her junior year and went home to Minnesota, where she’d remained. Had she regretted not graduating that much? I remembered being told neither Karla nor Constance had finished.

  Mattie slurped at his water bowl and then lifted his head to give me a wet, dripping grin. I smiled back at him. Dear Mattie. Born on the wrong side of the blanket, as Vicky put it. Hard to imagine life without him these days. I turned my attention back to the paper in front of me and drew lines between the names, trying to find something they had in common other than college. Something that would have lingered, even grown, since their heady youth in New York City.

  And then I had it. I drew a solid line between two of the names on the paper in front of me.

  I called Diane Simmonds. It went to voice mail.

  She’d told me she’d have to allow the quarrelsome quartet to go home today. She might not have informed them they were free to go yet. She hadn’t at ten o’clock when Mom and I went to the hospital: Mom had said Dad was calling around, trying to get them hotel rooms.

  My next call was to Dad. “Are Mom’s friends still there?”

  “No, they’ve left. Thank heavens. I had to contact almost every hotel and B&B in a fifty-mile radius, but I finally got three rooms in the Muddle Harbor Best Budget. Constance wasn’t at all happy about that. A Best Budget is not quite up to her standards, apparently, but at this point, I do not care about her standards. Why are you asking?”

  “I want to talk to them.”

  “They left about an hour ago. Barbara drove them over. Your mother didn’t even come down to wave them off.”

  I glanced at the clock on the stove. To my surprise I realized I’d been sitting there for almost two hours. I studied the paper in front of me.

  “Can I talk to Mom?”

  “Here she is.”

  “Hi, Mom. I have an idea as to what might be going on. I have a quick question about your friends and what happened when you were all in college.”

  “I’ll answer if I can,” she said. “Although my memory of those years seems to be not quite what I thought it was. I can’t imagine why I thought this weekend was a good idea. Perhaps I’d forgotten that the only one who was actually friends—as in friendly—with them all was me. Even then, the rivalry and petty jealously was strong.”

  “Which brings me to my question.” I asked it. I waited.

  Silence stretched between us. “Yes,” she said at last. “That is entirely possible. But after all these years, why does it matter?”

  “Secrets, Mom. Secrets. They fester in the dark. Put Dad back on.”

  My father took the phone. “What’s going on? Have you learned something?”

  “No, but I’m about to. I’m going to Muddle Harbor. Do you want to come?”

  “If you know something important, you have to call Diane.”

  “I did. I got voice mail. She’s going to tell them they can go home today. Once that happens, I’ll have no chance to confront them. I need Mom to call them and tell them we’re on our way. Have her
suggest they meet us in Barbara’s room.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” my father said. “Five minutes.”

  “Bring Mom,” I said.

  Chapter 26

  “Sorry, Mattie, but you can’t come.”

  His face collapsed into a picture of disappointment. His ears drooped, his tail hung limp, and he let out a long, low whine.

  “If all goes according to plan,” I said, “we’ll have a houseful of guests tonight for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  He didn’t look as though that promise made up for being abandoned.

  “Sorry,” I said again. I slipped out of the house and waited at the curb for my parents. It felt strange to know that piercing eyes weren’t focused on my back, itchy fingers ready to call everyone in town and tell them what time I was leaving for work or taking my dog for a walk.

  Dad pulled up, and I hopped into the backseat. “I called Diane,” he said. “I also got her voice mail, and I left a message for her to call me back immediately.”

  Mom twisted in her seat to look at me. “Are you sure of this, dear? Don’t you think it would be better if we wait until the police can join us?”

  “All we’re going to do is talk,” I said. “I have a theory, but that’s all it is. If I’m right, we’ll leave, and I can tell Diane what we learned and let her take it from there.”

  “I agree with your mother,” Dad said, “but if we tell you to wait for the police, you’ll go by yourself.”

  “Probably,” I said, meaning definitely.

  We drove down the highway to Muddle Harbor. Like Rudolph, Muddle Harbor lies on the southern shore of Lake Ontario and had once been a highly prosperous shipping port. As they had in Rudolph, the ports had closed or shrunk into insignificance when lake shipping declined. Unlike Rudolph, Muddle Harbor hadn’t been able to reinvent itself. Many of the grand Victorian houses had been converted into apartments or boarded up and allowed to fall into ruin. The handful of shops on Main Street struggled to stay open. We drove through town and out the other side to the Best Budget Motel. The motel was fairly new, part of a franchise operation, and nicely maintained. Much of their business came from Rudolph overflow.