Holly and Homicide

by Leslie Caine

  I wrung out the sponge and headed toward the coffee spill, keeping a grip on my pitcher, all the while.

  “No, I didn’t want to hook up with him! I wanted him to name a dessert after me!”

  “The Lemon Chiffon Walters Pie?” I couldn’t help but interject.

  She shrugged, at least having the humility to blush a little. “I know it’s shallow of me, okay? But I didn’t choose my name. My parents did that. And so, yes, I wanted a world-famous pastry chef to name a dessert after me, at the inn that I own. And I can’t bake for beans, so it’s not like I can manage a recipe on my own.”

  “That’s pathetic,” Mikara said. She lifted her chin in greeting as Audrey and Steve both appeared in the doorway.

  “So?” Chiffon whined. “Plenty of much smaller celebrities than me have hamburgers and sandwiches named after them. And it’s not like any of their first names is ‘Cheese.’ Or ‘Turkey.’”

  Audrey looked puzzled and said, “I missed the first half of this conversation. But is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Henry broke up with Chiffon,” Mikara said gruffly, “and it turns out she wanted Chef Alfonso, who has already decided not to relocate to Snowcap, by the way, to name a lemon chiffon pie after her.”

  “It’s been my dream as long as I can remember.” Chiffon sniffled.

  “Good heavens, Chiffon,” Audrey said with a smile. “That’s something I actually can help you with. I make a wonderful chiffon pie. I’ll teach the recipe to our new cook, whoever Mikara hires, and we’ll put it on the menu.”

  Steve and I grabbed a bagel downtown for breakfast, but we ate on the run. The inspector was scheduled to arrive between the hours of nine and noon to examine the handicapped-access ramp, and I was determined not to leave Ben alone with him this time. Both Chiffon’s and Henry’s vehicles were gone by the time we got back, and Steve had to meet with a metalworker for his eleven pipers design.

  It was chilly outside. Making a Thermos of cocoa for myself, I put on my ski clothes, with mukluks replacing the ski boots, and took a seat on the wrought-iron bench by the back door.

  Ben gave me a bemused smile as he walked past me. “You know what they say about a watched pot never boiling, don’t you?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You’re waiting on the inspector. Probably, he won’t come till you give up and go back inside.”

  “True. But it’s nice and brisk outside, at least. I enjoy the feeling of a slight chill on my face, as long as I’m wearing warm clothing.”

  He gave me a half smile. “I’m kind of that way, too.” His breath formed little cloud puffs of condensation.

  “I brought along a second mug, in case you’d like to share my hot chocolate.” I lifted the large Thermos to show him that I had plenty.

  He hesitated. “Well, okay. Guess that won’t harm my schedule too much.”

  I poured him a cup, which he accepted with a quick “Thanks.”

  “What’s on the agenda for today? The ramp looks to me like it’ll sail through.” (Plus, Sullivan told me that he’d gotten a separate copy of the guidelines straight from the inspection office yesterday and had determined that the inn’s ramp was within specifications.) I patted the seat beside me, and he grudgingly obliged me.

  Ben glanced at the access ramp. “It does look nice. I like the wood a lot better than the concrete.”

  “So do I. It shows your excellent craftsmanship, as always.”

  He gave me a small smile, then stared straight ahead. “Tasty hot chocolate,” he muttered after the tiniest of sips.

  Snippets of my previous conversation concerning Ben returned to me; if what the gallery owners had said about him was true, he was probably lonely. “Do you ever think about leaving Snowcap Village? Of getting a fresh start someplace new?”

  “It crosses my mind from time to time.” He shrugged. “But I want to keep the Orlin Builders business going. I owe my dad’s memory that much.”

  “Are you hoping to pass the business down to another family member when you retire, then? Do you have any siblings?”

  “I see you’ve already ruled out that I’ll ever have a kid of my own.” He snorted and gave his head a rueful shake. “You’ve obviously heard the rumors about me.”

  “You’re right, and I apologize.” He gave me no reply, and I added gently, “Some gay couples adopt.”

  “Yeah. But I’m not half of a couple, now am I?” he snapped.

  “That doesn’t mean you won’t ever be.”

  He mustered a smile. “I guess that’s true. Now that my parents have passed away, I don’t have anybody else’s reputation to worry about but my own. Have you met any gay men up here you can fix me up with, by any chance?”

  “No. But I know several in Crestview, if you ever change your mind and decide to leave.”

  He glanced behind him at the back door. “I just don’t think I could ever stand to leave this place.”

  “Meaning Snowcap, or the Goodwin estate itself?”

  “Goodwin,” he said sadly.

  Meaning Goodwin himself? I put some things together—Ben’s behavior when Henry was reminiscing about their old times, the father’s determination to separate his son from Henry, and Ben’s odd slip of the tongue a few days ago, saying: “Tell that to Henry,” about his being indispensible, when he’d meant to say Cameron.

  “Forgive me for bringing up such a personal subject, but I’ve gotten the impression that you care truly deeply for Henry.”

  He winced, and our gazes met for just a moment. There was anguish in his eyes, and I knew at once that I’d hit upon a truth that he’d kept hidden for years. Ben was in love with a straight man. Talk about the hopeless situation.

  “Henry’s leaving town himself next year,” I said.

  “Maybe he’ll change his mind,” Ben said sadly. He snorted. “And his sexual orientation.” He took a gulp of chocolate that had to still be uncomfortably hot, then set his mug down. “Thanks for the cocoa, but the handrails still need sanding.”

  For some reason, it dawned on me then that Wendell’s accusations about Ben tipping off the inspectors were true, even though the contents of Cameron’s briefcase had already revealed that Cam’s fury toward Ben had been an act; both men had wanted to delay the inn from opening. “I guess Henry is more likely to stay in town if the inn never manages to open under its new ownership.”

  Ben pivoted and stared at me in surprise. “I put my heart and soul into this place, Erin! I always have. I never would have let so much as a loose nail get by me.”

  “No, but you’ve made certain that the inspectors were fully up on their codes …and aware of minute violations.”

  He held my gaze for a moment, then averted his eyes in a taciturn admission of guilt. “Have you told Henry about this?”

  “No. Did you kill Cameron? Or Angie?”

  “No. I’d swear to that on a stack of Bibles.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  He said, “No,” but his hesitation spoke volumes.

  “But you’re afraid that Henry’s guilty.”

  “I’m scared he is, yeah.”

  I waited out his silence.

  “Angie was taking bribes from Cameron. Henry had a big grudge against her. He has a bad temper. I figured maybe Cameron saw Angie’s murder, or claimed he did, and Henry got desperate and killed again. But I could be way off base.”

  “Okay, so …why were you staring up at my window the other night?”

  He spread his arms. “I wasn’t paying attention to whose window it was. I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk. I live just a mile and a half from here.”

  “Why didn’t you wave, then, when you saw me at the window? Why run off, like you had something to hide?”

  “I don’t know, Erin. I guess I didn’t want to be seen, staring at the house. All right?!” The muscles in his jaw were working, and he was once again glaring at me. “But the way you keep poking into things, you’d better watch yourself, or you c
ould be the next victim.”

  Chapter 29

  I watched through the kitchen window as Ben shook the inspector’s hand. The wheelchair access ramp had passed. Barring an explosion of the septic system, which was about the only thing yet to fail on us, the town could no longer block us from opening on Christmas Eve.

  A floorboard creaked behind me, and I turned around. It was Steve, who asked, “How’s the inspection going?”

  “Finished. The ramp passed with flying colors.”

  “Why do you look so down, then?”

  I clicked my tongue, now wishing I’d feigned a bit of cheerfulness. “Ben said some things to me that bothered me. It turns out, he’s been carrying a torch for Henry for thirty years or so, and he told me I should watch myself or I could wind up the next victim.”

  “Ben threatened you?”

  “It was either a threat or a warning. I couldn’t tell. I don’t trust anyone in this town anymore.”

  “Neither do I.” He paused. “Let’s go home to Crestview,” Steve said gently as he walked up to me. “We can come up for the day a couple of times later on in the week. We’re just twenty or so man-hours from being finished.”

  “Which means ten to twelve woman-hours, tops.”

  Steve chuckled and caressed my cheek. I kissed the palm of his hand. He gazed into my eyes. “Erin, all I know is—”

  The door to the mudroom opened, and Ben interrupted our romantic moment. “Great news. We passed the inspection.”

  “I’m glad,” I said.

  “As far as the town’s concerned,” Ben continued, “we’ll be ready to open next week as scheduled.”

  “Excellent for all of us,” Steve said, glowering at Ben. “Tempers are getting short from stress.”

  Before Ben could reply, there was a noise in the mudroom, and we all stared at the door. A moment later, Henry staggered through the door, gasping for air. His face was red and damp with perspiration. He kicked the door shut with his heel, then bent down and grasped his knees, physically exhausted to the point of collapse.

  “Henry,” Ben cried. “What’s wrong?”

  Henry was still struggling to get his breath too much to speak. He held up a hand and, a few seconds later, managed to say, “I’m fine. Just not used to running.”

  “Why were you running?” Steve asked.

  “I hid my pickup truck in a buddy’s garage,” he said in staccato bursts through his gasps for air. “Nearly bumped into Chiffon downtown. Ran all the way back here.”

  “Why?” Ben asked.

  Henry made a “duh” face at Ben, but I’d been about to ask why myself. “So that Chiffon can’t take a sledgehammer to my truck. Obviously.” He caught his breath enough to make his way to the kitchen table. He slumped into one of the slat-back chairs and shook his head. “I’m getting too old for this kind of stuff.”

  On that point, we were in agreement. Ben, meanwhile, got Henry a glass of water and set it on the table in front of him. Henry took a couple of gulps without acknowledging Ben’s kindness. “Sounds paranoid, I know, but trust me,” Henry declared. “Underneath that blond-bimbo bubbly exterior, Chiffon is vindictive as hell.”

  “Seriously?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah. Turns out, last year, she filled her ex-boyfriend’s convertible with manure.”

  “I’ll bet she didn’t shovel the manure herself,” Ben remarked. “She probably hired a day laborer for the job. Yet I can’t even hire a drywall installer willing to work on the Goodwin property.”

  Henry popped a couple of Tic Tacs into his mouth. He looked at me. “Do you know where Audrey and Wendell are?”

  “Audrey’s at the TV station. I haven’t seen Wendell since she and I ran into him in the village yesterday afternoon.”

  He crunched his breath mints as if they were peanuts. “We’re going to have to round them up. Considering the potential for disaster with Chiffon, I need to call an emergency board meeting. We need to discuss how we’re going to proceed.”

  Steve rubbed his forehead. “This really doesn’t concern Erin and me.”

  In spite of myself, I was getting deeply annoyed with Henry. “Chiffon’s a board member, too,” I pointed out. “Maybe if you treat her like an adult, she’ll act like one. Maybe this story of the manure in the convertible isn’t accurate. Or maybe her ex-boyfriend damaged her car first, and she was retaliating.”

  “Or, maybe I sold thirty percent of my family’s house to a crazy young chick,” Henry fired back. “And a two-time murderer.”

  “Yeah, that’s possible,” Ben said, and I detected a bit of a hopeful lilt to his voice that struck me as inappropriate. Henry glared at him, and he added quickly, “I got some good news for you, though. The access ramp passed. We’re good to go—no future inspections.”

  Henry sat up. His natural rate of breathing had returned and he seemed to have recuperated from his overexertion. “That’s great, Ben. Thank God you, at least, have been on my side all along. I don’t know what I’d’ve done without you.”

  “No problem.” Ben averted his eyes. “I just have some last little things to take care of in the garage. For one thing, I wanted to fix that busted lock on the door.”

  “Great,” Henry said, rising. “’Preciate it.” Shifting his attention to me, he said, “So, anyway, Erin, could you call Audrey for me and mention that I need to talk to her privately? I don’t want to spring this trouble with me and Chiffon on Wendell till I know where Audrey’s coming from.”

  “Audrey already knows you dumped Chiffon,” I said. “She came into the kitchen just after you’d left, when Chiffon was still in tears. The way gossip spreads in this town, everyone will know by nightfall.”

  “Yeah, probably,” Henry acknowledged. “The thing is, though, Chiffon’s turning out to be such a nut job really put a monkey wrench in my plans. Wendell’s now got the controlling vote. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to let him get sole control of my property. He and I both know the land this house is occupying is worth much more than the house itself.”

  “Actually,” Steve interjected, “it looks like it was Cameron Baker, not Wendell, who had plans to raze this house in favor of a batch of condos.”

  Henry paled. “What are you talking about?”

  Steve hesitated and looked at me. I said, “Steve and I found a set of plans and papers, partially in Cameron’s handwriting, that outlined his personal plan to build a second ski resort in competition with Wendell’s. In the blueprints, he’d built condos right where the inn is located.”

  “Cripes! I knew that guy was a sleazebag from the minute I saw him,” Henry grumbled. He glanced at me. “No offense, Erin.”

  “The man’s dead. It hardly matters now what people’s first impressions of him were.” Unless that’s what led to his being murdered, I added silently, wondering if Henry was only acting—pretending to be hearing all of this for the first time.

  Henry jumped at a noise in the mudroom. Without looking back, he sprang to his feet. “Damn it!” he said in a half whisper. “That’s bound to be Chiffon! She’s hunting me down!” He snatched up his coat from the counter where he’d tossed it.

  “Are you sure it isn’t just Audrey?” I asked. “She should be finishing up at the studio right about now.”

  “I’m not taking the risk to wait and find out. Don’t tell her I was here.” He started to head toward the front door.

  “No! I haven’t been asked to lie like this since I was in high school! You’re mayor of this town, and you can’t stand up to a twenty-two-year-old you broke up with after all of two weeks?”

  He stopped in the double doors to the main hall, his coat unfastened. He turned toward me. “When you put it that way, I sound ridiculous.”

  “How else would you have me phrase this?” I retorted.

  “That I’m trying to avoid a chick who’s completely off her rocker.”

  He winced as someone approached the window in the back door, then he sagged with relief. “Mikara,” h
e said as she entered the kitchen. “I was afraid you were Chiffon.”

  Mikara winced at Henry’s words, and an instant later, Chiffon walked up behind her.

  “Trying to avoid me, Henry?” she asked, her arms akimbo.

  “We arrived at the same time,” Mikara explained, setting down two bags of groceries.

  “Are there more groceries I can bring in?” Steve asked.

  “No, that’s everything,” Mikara replied. “Thanks, though.”

  “I asked you a question,” Chiffon said to Henry. “You’ve got your coat on. Where’s your truck?”

  “I left it at a friend’s house. I had visions of you filling its bed with manure.”

  “Because you’re such a chickenshit, you mean?” Chiffon asked matter-of-factly.

  Henry scanned our faces, as if hoping one of us would jump in and take his side. Apparently he didn’t know about the sisterhood that forms instinctively when a woman’s been unfairly dumped; Mikara and I weren’t about to defend him. Steve, meanwhile, had managed to affect a glassy-eyed, lost-in-thought-and-not-really-listening facial expression.

  Henry shrugged. “I just heard a rumor, is all.”

  “Straight from a gossip magazine, no doubt. Get a grip! You’re really not important enough to me to go through that kind of effort. Hard as I’m sure that is for you and your enormous ego to believe.” She snorted. “I’d be happier if we never saw each other again.”

  “So why are you here?” he asked.

  “I left some of my stuff in your bedroom.” She pulled an empty plastic grocery bag out of her coat pocket to show him that she’d planned ahead. “Is that all right? Do you want to send Erin along to play watchdog to make sure I don’t rip those awesome flannel shirts of yours to shreds?”

  “No, Chiffon,” he said sheepishly. “That’s fine. We’ll wait here.”

  She sneered at him. “Thank you. That’s really courageous of you.”

  She brushed past him and pushed through the saloonlike double doors. Nobody spoke. I rose and wordlessly helped Mikara put away the groceries. After the sound of Chiffon’s high heels had faded, Mikara said, “Honestly, Henry. That was an embarrassment just to witness. She’s half your age, and yet you’re the one who’s acting completely immature.”