by Leslie Caine
I shut the bedroom door behind me, feeling more panicked than ever. The same insecurities that had brought out the worst in me back then still weighed me down, and Sullivan had his own burdens, as well. We’d risen above them for the last several months. Why were we fooling ourselves into thinking Wendell Barton’s arrest meant we were free to move forward? Maybe the only lesson to be learned here was that we weren’t in control of our own lives, not even our love for each other.
How arrogant to think we could keep our love alive when our very presence seemed to draw forth such murderous hatred in the people who surrounded us. Ours was a relationship that had been doomed from the start! The way our luck had gone so far, when we were saying our vows at the altar, an earthquake would strike the church, and the falling shards of stained glass would take out the priest and half of the wedding party!
Then again, if I were ever to relay these fears to Steve, he would smile and say: Then let’s elope. The simple truth was that I was hopelessly in love with the guy. If I had to be on a rudderless boat, he was the man I wanted to be sitting beside.
We’d intentionally made our own bedroom wildly romantic. We might as well take full advantage of that ourselves during our final night up here. I set down the champagne flutes on the oak highboy and changed into my nicest negligee (also my only negligee, but then, I had to pay a fortune for the wardrobe I wore when making pitches to clients. Nightgowns received the short shrift).
I got a fire going, still somewhat regretting our decision to stick with the existing wood-burning fireplace. However, the gas lines would have cost a fortune to run and would have driven up the heating bill. Still, a romantic fire at the flip of a switch would have been sumptuous. I turned on the CD player, not remembering what CD we’d left in there, and grimaced when I realized it was The Nutcracker Suite. Surely I could find something more romantic than that in the small rack we’d incorporated into our built-ins alongside the bed.
Someone knocked on the door. Sullivan was back already? He must have grabbed a bottle at a dead run. I hadn’t even had time to refresh my makeup.
“Come in,” I said, battling yet another attack of nerves. The door opened, and Mikara stood there, looking as startled to see me as I was to see her. “Mikara. You’re back.”
“I thought you and Steve had left. His van’s gone.”
“He’s out getting champagne, actually. To celebrate the near completion of our assignment here.”
“You must have thought I was him.”
“Yeah, and it’s one of my more embarrassing moments, actually.” Imagining my having arranged myself in a highly suggestive pose, I added, “It could have been a lot worse, though, I suppose.”
I’d said that jokingly, but she seemed highly distracted and didn’t react. Her hands were gripping a set of folded linens so tightly that her knuckles were white. She was studying the room as if committing it to memory.
“What happened to your dinner with friends tonight?” I asked.
“Cancelled. I barely got out of the driveway before my friend Carol called me. My other friend, Mildred, has that awful flu virus that’s going around.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We had an interesting little conversation on the phone, though.”
“Oh? What about?”
No reply.
“You must be relieved that an arrest was made.” I scooted back against the headboard, dearly wishing I hadn’t changed into such a risqué nightgown.
Mikara said nothing, now staring at the unlit candles above the bed.
Growing more uncomfortable by the moment, I offered, “Those are the eleven miniature pipers piping.”
“That my true love gave to me,” she said, harshly.
“Uh, thanks for bringing up the linens.” I hoped she’d take the hint and leave.
She shifted her gaze to the fireplace and dropped the linens on the bench at the foot of the bed. She clicked her tongue. “That’s not much of a fire you built.”
“Fires are not my forte.”
“I’ll get it going for you.”
“No, Mikara. But thanks. Steve can do it.”
“It’s no bother.” She started jabbing at the logs with the poker. She was mostly just holding the sharp point of the poker in the flame, though her every movement seemed to be filled with venom.
My heart rate started to increase. Could Audrey have been right all along about Wendell’s innocence? Surely Mikara would never have killed her own sister; her grief after Angie’s death had struck me as sincere. And what possible motive would she have had to kill Cameron?
In fact, Mikara as the murderer didn’t make any sense. My imagination was running away with me again, making me afraid of her for no good reason. I’d been through too many incidents in which I was forced to confront a killer on my own; I’d become paranoid. “You’re getting that poker overheated,” I said.
She removed the sharp point from the flames. “I can see why Barton killed Cam, but I don’t know why he’d also kill my sister,” Mikara said, staring at the poker in her hand.
“Your sister was a smart woman. It must have been because Angie was turning the tables on Cameron or Wendell … blackmailing the man who had bribed her.”
“As if money matters to anybody when you’re faced with your life coming to nothing.” A tear was running down her cheek. “With your hopes and dreams turning to ashes.”
Okay. This conversation was heading straight to hell. Paranoid or not, I lifted the bronze eleven-pipers candelabra off the shelf. Mikara was acting and sounding wacky, and, worse, she wasn’t putting down the poker. I rose, keeping my defensive weapon behind my back as I covertly yanked the candles from the holders and stashed them on the bed.
Where was my cell phone? I glanced around the room. Damn it! I’d left it downstairs in my purse. “Mikara, I don’t mean to be rude, but I forgot that I needed to make—”
“Everything was all finally going to turn out fine for me. For once it was going to be about me, not my damned little sister, who everyone always doted on, who always had everything so much easier than me. Sure, she had her loser husband, but I was going to be married to the prince—to Henry Goodwin. Cinderella rising from the ashes.”
Oh, God. Not again! I’m going to have to fight for my life with a killer!
“You had to rub that all in my face, didn’t you, Erin? You had to set the photograph of Henry and Angie on Henry’s nightstand!”
“It wasn’t me! I found that photo already there, facedown. Where would I even find an old photo like that?”
“My damned classmates made him the prom king, and her the queen, even though she was just a sophomore! She wasn’t even eligible, except as his date! That’s why she plotted to have him ask her, you know. My own sister, my own classmates did that! Humiliated me! And yet, years later, I almost won him anyway. Except she stabbed me in the back and slept with him before our wedding.”
“But …didn’t all of that take place a decade ago?”
“Our parents left her the house in their will! I’m sure they did that because they’d thought I’d be Mrs. Henry Goodwin, way back when they had the papers drawn up. And then my whole town got wrecked, by people like you. Angie was going to take it all away from me. She sent that chair full of poisonous spiders herself! She was trying to kill me! I had no choice. It was her or me. She didn’t realize I had that kind of strength in me. That she couldn’t tromp all over me anymore. And you underestimated me, too.”
“How?”
“By snooping around Mildred and Carol, and thinking I wouldn’t find out till you had me arrested! And, on top of that, you just had to taunt me with the photograph, didn’t you?”
“I did not! I found it on the nightstand, and I left it there! Maybe Henry put it there. In any case, I’ve been on your side all along!”
Mikara’s crazy! I should have realized that clear back when we first met. She must have planted the bones by the front steps, just to stir up mise
ry. And she probably splattered hamburger blood on my folder. And poisoned my eggnog.
She shook her head. “Henry would never have hurt me that way. Did you put the picture there as some kind of a sick joke? Did you get a good laugh at my expense?”
“No! If it wasn’t Henry, it was Chiffon. She went upstairs when we were all in the kitchen. She must have brought the picture into the house this morning. When she came here to get her things from Henry’s room.”
I saw a flicker of surprise dawn on her features. She realized she’d accused me for no reason. Still, she took a step toward me with the hot poker.
I backed up against the wall and gripped the candelabra as though it were a baseball bat. “Mikara. You can’t get away with this. Steve will be back any moment. Run away. Leave town. Start a new life.”
“I can’t! This town was my only home. You and your kind stole it all away from me!” She shook her head, her eyes wild. “You had it in for me at the start. That’s why I tried to poison you. And I wanted Chiffon to break her neck skiing so she’d keep her claws off Henry. How was I supposed to know you two had identical skis? It’s all gone to pieces. Carol and Mildred knew how much I hated Angie. How I’d vowed I’d die before I’d see anyone plow this house down, after what those bastards did to mine.”
“They never told me anything of the sort, Mikara,” I argued automatically, even though I knew I was wasting my breath.
“You just had to poke your nose into things. Talk to my friends. To my old boss. You had no right!”
In a flash, Mikara swung the hot poker at me. I anticipated the move and blocked the poker as if parrying with a sword. She seemed surprised by the solidness of the bronze piece in my hands.
I swung at her face. She dodged the blow, but tripped and fell to her knees, losing her grip on the poker. I tried to race to the door, but my feet were suddenly yanked out from under me. I fell flat on the floor, realizing too late that I’d tried to run across the red-and-green throw rug. Mikara had pulled it right out from under me.
My breath was knocked out. Mikara had me by the hair before I could even suck in a single breath. I automatically pressed both of her hands down to ease the pressure on my scalp.
“You’re about to have an accident down three flights of stairs,” she snarled at me. She dragged me from the room by my hair.
“No! Stop! I didn’t do anything to you!”
“Cameron would never have come here in the first place if it weren’t for you! I didn’t want to kill him. But he needed to die. He was going to plow under Henry’s house, my house, just like Wendell did to my childhood home! I was going to be left with nothing!”
“Stop! Please!” The pain was excruciating.
“You easterners come to Colorado and you think you can just take it over! You and all your superior airs.”
This all felt so surreal. I was crying from the pain, hooking the banisters with my feet. I dug my nails into her wrist and hand. She loosened her grip on my hair.
“You ruined my life!” she screamed at me. “You ruined my hometown!”
“I did not! I barely even know you!”
Mikara stopped, unable to drag me closer to the stairs without tumbling down them herself.
She let go and tried to move behind me. Before she could, I broke off a fistful of sharp holly leaves from the garland and slashed at her eyes.
Mikara yelped in pain, but recovered. She started to strangle me. She was just too strong. Everything was going gray.
I was dimly aware of a noise below us. Was that the back door opening? “Help!” I cried with my last remains of air in my lungs.
“Erin?” It was Audrey’s voice.
Mikara hesitated, startled. I thrust the heel of my hand into her chin with all my might. She was staggered by the blow. I grabbed onto the banister, then thrust-kicked her square in the chest.
Mikara gasped, lost her balance, and tumbled head over heels down the stairs.
I sat up, gripping the railing, feeling severely battered. Although she was lying still on the second-floor landing, I heard Mikara groan. She was alive, though knocked unconscious.
“Erin! Good Lord! What the hell just happened!” Audrey yelled. “Is Mikara the killer?”
“Yeah. She tried to kill me, too.”
Steve bolted into the central hall and raced toward Audrey. He dropped the bottle of champagne onto the leather club chair. He looked up at me. “Good God! Erin? What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” My neck and scalp were throbbing and my limbs hurt, but that was nothing compared to Mikara’s injuries.
“Mikara tried to kill Erin,” Audrey cried. “I’ll call nine-one-one.”
Steve charged past Mikara without a second glance and raced up the stairs two at a time. He sat down beside me and gently took me in his arms.
I pulled Steve closer as, below us, Mikara appeared to regain consciousness and moaned, “Henry? Henry?” She moved, shifting her position on the hardwood floor at the base of the stairs. “Ow! My head! My leg!”
“Don’t move!” Audrey shouted at her, grabbing the champagne bottle by its neck and lowering the cell phone in her other hand. “You stay put, or I’ll club you!”
Mikara began to whimper. “I need to go to sleep now. Don’t tell Henry. Please. He mustn’t ever know that I still love him.”
When hosting large Christmas parties, focus on making your guests relax and take the night off from their seasonal to-do list. A festive, convivial mood is automatically in the air, so you’re already halfway to a great party!
—Audrey Munroe
One week later, on Christmas Eve morning, Steve dropped me off at my house. He was going to pick me up in a couple of hours to drive me up to Snowcap for the big Christmas Eve party to celebrate the inn’s grand opening. (The open house on Friday had, of course, been canceled.) My muscles and neck were still aching; my body sported various bruises. Hildi pranced over to me the moment I’d entered from the foyer. I stroked her soft fur for a few seconds, and was surprised to smell the aroma of fresh-baked cookies and to hear the rustling of paper from the kitchen.
Indeed, to my surprise, Audrey was still here in Crestview. After Mikara’s arrest, and Wendell’s subsequent release, Audrey had accompanied Steve and me back home, but she’d continued to plan for the party at the inn from afar. She’d also decorated her house more since last night, although she’d ultimately deserted her blue, purple, and silver idea and reused the ornaments from Christmases past.
I said hello, and she gave me a perky: “Good morning!” She was individually wrapping homemade sugar cookies in red or green foil and then securing a candy cane with a shiny silver bow.
“The Christmas decorations look great,” I told her honestly. “I’m sorry that I was never able to get going on the purple, blue, and sometimes silver ornaments.”
She gave me an easy smile and a shrug. “Next year.”
“I assumed you’d be staying at Wendell’s house or in one of his condos last night. Shouldn’t you be up in Snowcap by now, staging tonight’s party?”
“There’s plenty of time. I’m leaving in another hour or two. I’m putting the party favors together now.”
“For, like, a hundred guests? Couldn’t you have hired someone to do that?”
“Of course, if I’d wanted to. But this gave me something to do these past couple of days.”
“In addition to decorating the entire house,” I said, still feeling a pang of guilt, although I knew full well that Audrey would have been angry if, under the circumstances, I’d felt obligated to go ahead and make purple and blue wreaths and centerpieces for her. “If it was me who was hosting an enormous party ninety-plus minutes away, I’d be panicking by now.”
“Oh, everything’s pretty much already done, Erin. I checked with Henry. The rental company delivered the extra chairs yesterday. It’s already a picture-perfect setting for a Christmas party.” With a wistful lilt to her voice, she said, “The house it
self nestled in among the evergreens with all that pristine powder snow … you can’t get more evocative than that. The inn’s decorations are absolutely stunning, thanks to you and Steve.” She went back to her busywork; she’d laid out her star-shaped cookies atop pieces of foil in rows of five. “I just need to get there in time to set the mood and light a few scented candles, put some appropriate music on the sound system, set the dimmers for each room, and put the first basket of party favors near the front door.”
“And make sure the caterers and bartenders aren’t going to flake out at the last minute.” With my chin, I pointed at her task at hand. “Can I help you with that?”
“No, thanks. I’m almost finished, and I honestly enjoy doing things like this.” She gestured at the kitchen stool. “Have a seat, Erin.”
I didn’t argue. I felt a sharp pain from my bruised leg while easing myself into the seat.
“Even if neither the caterers nor the bartenders show up, we’ll be fine.” She put a group of five completed cookie-candy-cane bundles into a pretty wicker basket. “When it comes to food and drink for parties, I’ve always got a Plan B. In this case, it’s a gourmet pizza place that delivers, including on Christmas Eve, and they are happy to do a crosscut on their pizzas to produce bite-sized pieces. The inn’s wine cellar is well stocked. We’re in good shape.”
“Except if that were really to happen, you also wouldn’t have a serving staff.”
She paused in her work and looked up at me. “You know, Erin, that has actually happened to me a couple of times over the years, and it’s really not all that terrible. Shortly after the guests arrive, I make a big show of kicking my shoes off and suggest that everyone do the same, and I announce that the party’s officially turned into self-serve. In actuality, there’s always a percentage of guests who feel more comfortable when they’re able to lend a hand anyway. Next thing you know, someone’s running around with platters of pizzas or heated pot stickers, and someone else is mixing drinks or pouring wine. All you have to do as hostess is make it clear that you’re enjoying the company yourself. You simply set the right tone. You focus on making your guests feel comfortable and wanted. And you try to match up the introverts with the extroverts during your introductions. It couldn’t be more simple.”