Writing One for Each Night was a great pleasure for me, not only because it allowed me to bring my grandmother back to life, but also because it offered me the chance to work with two dear friends and wonderful authors, Maggie Shayne and Anne Stuart. May the time you spend in our little town of Crescent Cove, Vermont, be joyful, and may your holidays be filled with love.
Judith Arnold
Chapter One
Alana had potatoes. She had onions, dreidels, a brisket of beef, blue-and-white paper plates and matching napkins, gold-foil-wrapped chocolate coins, marshmallows, dried apricots and toothpicks. All she needed was candles.
And she needed them desperately. Without candles, what was the point?
She’d been thrilled to find Hanukkah candles for sale at the stationery store across from the post office. Just a few boxes, but she supposed Hanukkah candles weren’t in huge demand in Crescent Cove, Vermont. The town lacked a synagogue. That didn’t bother her—she wasn’t particularly religious—but Hanukkah without candles burning in a menorah was beyond pointless. It was unthinkable.
The problem was, the candles she’d bought at the stationery store didn’t fit her menorah. It was an antique, carried across the ocean from the tiny Polish village where Alana’s great-grandparents had grown up. They’d given it to Alana’s grandmother, and when she’d died last spring, Alana had inherited it. Clearly, it had not been constructed with standard-size twenty-first-century Hanukkah candles in mind.
She should have had her mother buy candles down in Philadelphia and mail them to her. Or she should have ordered some candles on the Internet. Of course, candles purchased long-distance might not fit, either. Only by trying them in the menorah would Alana know she’d gotten the right size. If necessary, she would schlep up to Burlington—surely that city was big enough to have stores that sold candles in a variety of sizes. Before she made that trek, though, she would try Burning Bright.
She must have passed the strange little candle shop on the corner of Hope and Evergreen a dozen times since joining the staff of the Crescent Cove Chronicle and moving to Crescent Cove last summer, but she’d never gone inside. She wasn’t the sort to soak in a tub surrounded by hundreds of flickering scented candles, or to dine formally with tapers in elegant silver candelabra illuminating the table. She’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday last October as quietly as possible—no cake covered with a multitude of candles, thank you very much. Until now, she’d had no reason to shop at Burning Bright.
It didn’t look like the kind of store that would sell Hanukkah candles. The door was narrow, the windows cluttered with fashion candles, molded candles, candles encrusted with sand and wrapped in ribbons. But she had nothing to lose by taking a peek inside.
Pushing open the door, she was assailed by a perfume of cinnamon, flowery potpourri and wax. Candles of every size, shape and color crowded the teeming shelves. Decorative candles, utility candles, candles carved and dyed to resemble cats, cows and clowns, fat ceramic bowls filled with wax and multiple wicks—everywhere Alana looked, she saw candles.
“Bubbela. You seem a bissell confused.”
Flinching, Alana clutched her tote and peered around one of the shelves to see who had addressed her. The voice had sounded uncannily like her grandmother’s. Its owner, approaching from the cashier’s counter, resembled her grandmother, too, short and plump, her unkempt hair curly and white. The woman had a round face and oversize glasses shaped like TV screens, and her smile…it was so reminiscent of Grandma’s, Alana felt dizzy.
“Nu? I startled you?”
“A little,” Alana managed to whisper. People didn’t talk like that here in small-town Vermont. People said “well” and “little” and “sweetheart,” not nu and bissell and bubbela in voices that still carried a trace of their Old World roots. This woman, in her no-nonsense brown dress and white cardigan, simply didn’t belong.
“So.” The woman clapped her hands. The joints of her fingers bulged with arthritic swelling, reminding Alana again of her grandmother. “What can I get for you?”
“I need candles,” Alana said.
The woman laughed. “So you came to a candle store. You’re a very smart girl. Tell me, what kind of candles?”
Alana hesitated, then smiled. If anyone would know what she was searching for, this woman would. “They’re for my grandmother’s menorah. It’s an antique, and I can’t find anything that fits.”
“For a special menorah you need a special candle.” The old woman scuttled past shelves of candles wreathed in plastic vines, candles nestled within puffs of gingham, candles standing in colonial-style pewter holders. Before Alana could collect herself enough to follow her, the woman was back, brandishing a plain white candle. “Here, bubbela, this is the candle you need.”
Alana suppressed a laugh. Despite the woman’s use of Yiddish words, she was no more knowledgeable about menorahs than the clerk at BK’s Grocery, who’d urged Alana to buy a box of special birthday-cake candles, instead. “These are hilarious,” he’d told her. “If you blow them out, they re-ignite! Drives folks crazy.”
“I need more than one candle,” she explained to the candle-shop proprietor. “I have to light candles every night for eight days. One candle the first night, then two candles the next night, plus the shamas candle, which is used to light the other candles every night—”
“No, listen, bubby. This is all you need.” She pressed the white candle into Alana’s hand. “This one will light every night.”
“But the candles have to burn all the way down. They have to burn themselves out each night, and the next night you use new candles.”
The woman shook her head. “Trust me. This is the one you need. It’ll burn down, it’ll burn out, and then the next day everything will be fine.”
Alana considered explaining once more the way a menorah worked, then thought better of it. She couldn’t bear to tell this sweet, helpful woman who reminded her so keenly of her grandmother that one candle would never be sufficient, and that this particular candle probably wouldn’t fit in the menorah anyway. She’d buy the white candle to make the woman happy and then drive up to Burlington to get the proper candles to fill her menorah.
“All right,” she said, closing her fingers around the candle the woman had given her. “Thank you. How much do I owe you?”
“Owe, schmowe. Take it.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Of course you could. Use it in good health.” With that, the shopkeeper nudged Alana toward the door. For someone fairly elderly, she was surprisingly strong. Alana felt the pressure of her palm against her shoulder even after she was outside.
One thing she’d learned since moving to Crescent Cove was that eccentric Yankees were not mythical. They really existed. They usually didn’t talk as if they’d been conceived in a shtetl, born in steerage, raised in Brooklyn and driven to the Borscht Belt for vacations, but the proprietor of Burning Bright was obviously one of the odder ones.
A soft snow swirled in the air as Alana hurried down the sidewalk to her car. Once inside, she started the engine, cranked up the windshield defroster and paused.
Tucked inside her tote bag was the menorah, wrapped in a flannel cloth. Alana had brought it with her to size candles. Although she knew damn well that a single white candle would be totally useless, she couldn’t drive back to work without first checking to see if the candle fit.
She eased the menorah out of her tote and unfolded the fabric. Viewing it brought tears to her eyes. She missed her grandmother terribly, and she would miss her grandmother’s annual Hanukkah open house. She must have been crazy to think that carrying on her grandmother’s special tradition and hosting her own open house in Crescent Cove would somehow make her feel better.
The menorah was bright yellow brass—Alana had polished it the way her grandmother always did, readying it for the holiday—with a solid elliptical base and eight gracefully arching arms, each tipped with a round cup to hold a candle. The shamas holder ex
tended straight up the center, its stem adorned with a Star of David. The menorah was a classic design, simple and beautiful.
Alana attempted to stick the white candle into the first cup on the right. It didn’t fit. “Figures,” she snorted. That old lady knew bupkis—and if Alana had said that to her, she’d probably have understood what Alana meant.
Sighing, she rewrapped the menorah in its protective flannel and slid it back into her tote, along with the candle. At least her visit to Burning Bright hadn’t cost her anything, she thought as she clicked on her wipers, shifted into gear and wiggled her car out of its tight parking space.
She reached the Chronicle’s employee lot in just a few minutes. The only empty spot was the one next to a huge mound of snow left by the snowplow after the last storm. Crescent Cove got an awful lot of snow, she’d learned. After a few autumn weeks of flurries and squalls, the first blizzard had hit in early November and the ground had never been totally clear of the white stuff since then. Down in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she’d lived before moving to Vermont, white Christmases were a rarity. Here, she assumed nonwhite Christmases were unheard-of.
Not that she was complaining. She’d been happy to trade her ugly situation at the Bridgeport Journal for the rugged winters of northern New England.
She entered the Chronicle building, a squat granite structure two stories high. The actual production of the Crescent Cove Chronicle took place in a larger facility on the outskirts of town, but this building housed the editorial, sales and advertising departments.
Welcoming the warmth inside the building, Alana peeled off her gloves and unzipped her parka. The spiffy leather jacket that had gotten her through her winters down in Connecticut offered little defense against a Vermont December. She’d learned to dress like a native—in a waterproof insulated parka, fleece hat and scarf, lined gloves and utilitarian boots with skidproof soles. Fortunately, her boss, Chet Holroyd, didn’t care much about professional apparel. In this weather, wearing a skirt would probably have given Alana frostbitten knees.
Once she’d thawed out a bit, she abandoned the vestibule for the newsroom. Several desks occupied the center of the room, and glass-enclosed offices and a conference room ran along the perimeter. Chet was in the largest office, and he wasn’t alone.
“Who’s that with Chet?” Alana asked Patsy, whose desk faced hers. Patsy covered the Chronicle’s arts beat. Alana had been pleasantly surprised to discover that Crescent Cove had enough arts activity to warrant a full-time reporter.
Patsy glanced up from her computer, eyed Chet’s office and shrugged. “He got here ten minutes ago. They’ve been going at it ever since.”
Alana lowered her tote to her desk, draped her jacket and scarf over the back of her chair and fluffed out her hair, which had gotten flattened by her hat—all the while observing the encounter taking place in Chet’s office. Chet was seated at his desk, his feet propped up on it and his hands folded over his middle-age paunch. Alana had learned that his tousled hair and benign smile disguised a sharp, stubborn mind. He was firm, he was demanding, and his temper was known to spike when his agenda was tampered with. Whoever his visitor was, Alana doubted the poor guy had a chance.
He didn’t look like a poor guy, though. He had his back to Alana, so she could see only thick dark hair, broad shoulders and an obviously expensive gray coat. Cashmere, she guessed from this distance. Whoever he was, he probably wasn’t from “these parts,” as the locals would put it.
Because the glass wall was soundproof, she couldn’t hear what the men were saying. But she could read Chet’s face pretty well. He seemed calm enough, but his eyes were as hard as the bedrock beneath the building, and his mouth was set in a stern line. Alana wouldn’t want to be a part of that conversation, for sure.
Abruptly, the visitor turned toward the glass, and Alana’s breath caught in her throat. He was gorgeous. His hair was straight and just spiky enough to add a whiff of danger to his elegant grooming, and his eyes were the color of the sky outside. He had a long nose and a strong chin, and…God, those eyes were riveting. She wanted to grab Patsy’s shoulder and beg her to reveal the man’s identity—except that Patsy obviously didn’t know who he was, and just as obviously didn’t care.
She must be blind, Alana thought. How could she not find the stranger utterly mesmerizing?
He stared at Alana through the glass. Did he know who she was? Why would he? She’d never seen him before. If they’d ever met, she wouldn’t have forgotten him.
Trying to ignore his gaze, she turned back to her desk, lowered herself into her chair and hit a key of her computer to kill the screen saver. The monitor filled with her notes from a recent interview with a disgruntled member of the zoning board. The board member didn’t favor any more vacation homes along the lake, and she was counting on Alana and the Chronicle to make sure everyone in town was apprised of her position.
The phone at her elbow rang. She lifted the receiver. “Alana Ross speaking.”
“Please come into my office,” Chet said without preamble.
So Alana was going to be a part of Chet’s conversation with the stranger after all. She was going to meet Mr. Gorgeous in his pricey threads. Not a problem, she assured herself. Back in Bridgeport, she’d interviewed the governor plenty of times, as well as business titans, labor leaders, senators and the occasional presidential candidate passing through the city. Surely she could handle a handsome outsider in Crescent Cove.
“I’m on my way,” she said before lowering the phone. She straightened her V-neck sweater over her sturdy brushed-denim slacks, scowled at her clunky boots and scolded herself for caring what she looked like. She didn’t have to impress this man. Whoever he was, he’d apparently been giving Chet a hard time, and Alana was nothing if not loyal to Chet.
She crossed the room, opened the door and stepped inside Chet’s office. Chet kept his seat and the man remained standing, eyeing her with the sort of contempt most people reserved for termites. She leveled her chin at him—not easy to do, given that he stood at least six inches taller than her—and met his gaze unflinchingly. Damn him for being such a hunk.
“Alana, this is Jeffrey Barrett,” Chet introduced them. “Mr. Barrett, this is Alana Ross.”
She remembered her manners enough to extend her right hand. His grip was firm but not crushing, even though he continued to study her as though she were a bug. “How do you do?” she said in a calm, artificially pleasant voice.
A pat question, not demanding an answer, but he supplied one anyway. “I guess that depends on how we resolve this problem.”
She slid her hand from his and flexed the fingers, wishing her circulation would return. Glancing at Chet, she asked, “What problem would that be?”
“Mr. Barrett is an attorney up from Boston,” Chet informed her, his avuncular smile belied by the steel in his voice. “He’s upset about your article on the investigation into the school department’s finances.”
Alana remembered the article well, since it was an ongoing story and she’d been pursuing it for quite some time. Seventy-five thousand dollars had mysteriously vanished from the school budget. In a town the size of Crescent Cove, seventy-five thousand dollars was nothing to sneeze at.
In a town the size of Boston, seventy-five thousand dollars amounted to barely a sniffle. “Why would that story interest you enough to travel all the way here?” she asked Barrett.
“The article implies that Robert Willis is responsible for the money’s disappearance.”
“It more than implies that,” Alana agreed, her gaze still locked with Barrett’s. He was obviously trying to intimidate her with his sheer presence—his height, his solidity, his uncompromising stare. She lacked his height and solidity, but she could compete in the staring contest. And she could arm herself with her confidence. “Robert Willis is the superintendent of schools. When a budget discrepancy as large as this one turns up, who else would be responsible?”
Barrett appeared annoyed.
“You see the problem?” he said, apparently addressing Chet, although he still faced Alana. “You media types besmirch the reputation of a good man, even though you have no evidence.”
Robert Willis was neither a good man nor a bad man, as far as Alana was concerned. He was simply the superintendent of Crescent Cove’s schools. And money had disappeared on his watch. “I didn’t besmirch anyone’s reputation,” Alana said, struggling not to grin at Barrett’s stuffy phrasing. “I wrote an article, and I stand behind every word of it.”
“You wrote an article,” Barrett echoed. He lifted a fax of a clipping from Chet’s desk. Alana recognized it; it had appeared on the front page of the Chronicle on Wednesday. “‘As superintendent of the school system,’” Barrett read, “‘Robert Willis oversees the entire district’s budget. All expenditures, major and minor, pass through his office, and he is accountable to the town for his decisions and actions. Yet he has refused so far to explain where this money has gone or how it has been used. After issuing a written statement claiming there were no anomalies in the budget, Willis declined to answer further questions.’” Barrett lowered the article and directed his gaze back to Alana.
She returned his stare. “As I said, I stand by every word.”
“Even though you have no proof that Robert Willis did anything wrong?”
“I never said he did anything wrong,” she reminded Barrett. “I said he was the superintendent of schools, he was in charge of the budget, he was accountable to the town, money was missing and he refused to speak to me. All of which is true.”
“And you don’t see how that tarnishes his name?”
“If he didn’t want his name tarnished, he could have talked to me. He could have explained the discrepancy in the budget. He could have even said he had no idea where the money went, but he was looking into it. He did none of those things.”
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