Feliz Navidead

by Ann Myers

  Manny said, “I guess our letter writer didn’t get the memo about your holiday vacation.” A crime scene van pulled up and white-suited guys jumped out. Manny directed them to look for footprints and fingerprints. He then cursed the fluffy snow, which was picking up and coating everything—including footprints and evidence—in cottony clumps.

  Celia opened the door a crack. She was dressed in flannel pajamas and fluffy slippers, both with smiling skull images on them. “It’s no big deal!” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “Mom, Dad, I told Gran that I didn’t want to bug you.”

  “Your grandmother did the right thing, honey,” Manny said. “I don’t want you to worry. Go back inside and keep warm.”

  “I’m not worried,” Celia grumbled. “I’m not scared either. The jerk can’t even draw.”

  At her feet, Hugo poked his head and a tentative paw outside. The paw touched snow, jerked back, and Hugo retreated. I brushed snow from my shoulders and stomped my caked shoes. “Let’s get inside and talk, all of us. I’ll make tea or hot cider.”

  I expected Manny to say he was too busy for teatime. “Good idea,” he said, following me inside. “Celia, your mother and I have to talk while you get a bag together. I’d like you to stay at my place tonight.”

  Celia scooped up Hugo, who nuzzled into her choppy black hair. I’m grateful that Manny and Celia have a good relationship. She likes to hang out at his house, especially when she wants more leeway with her curfew. They go to movies together too, action and vampire films that I’d never want to see. Now, however, her face registered her confliction.

  “Gran’s here . . .” she said. A few feet away, my mother sat in an armchair, “staying out of the way.” She flipped pages of an upscale real estate magazine. I knew she had no interest in multimillion-dollar adobe mansions.

  I filled in where Celia left off. “Yes, Manny, we talked about this. Celia should be here while her grandmother’s in town. It’s a special visit.”

  Manny drew me aside, “What about the special visit you got from some psycho tonight? The letter’s not all. Since you weren’t here, you don’t know. The creep tapped on Celia’s window and plastered the note up there. That’s how she found it.”

  I gasped. “Did she see him?” I asked.

  Manny shook his head. “She thought she saw a red hat with white trim.” Manny’s voice fell an octave lower. “Like Santa.”

  My stay-calm voice failed me. “Celia, you should go stay at your father’s tonight, honey.”

  She started to protest, but Mom chimed in. “We’ll all sleep better knowing that you’re safe and sound in a policeman’s house, honey. We’ll meet up tomorrow, like we planned, and go to the Native American arts museum with Sky. Maybe we can take our nice friend Gary the bodyguard too. I’m sure Gary would love a trip to the museum.”

  I imagined Gary in his dark glasses fidgeting through a museum tour. An inappropriate stress giggle bubbled. I covered it with a cough.

  “We’ll have to pack Gary a lot of snacks,” Celia said dryly. “You guys, I don’t need a guard. It was just some weirdo.” Still, she stomped down the hall to pack a bag and her favorite pillow.

  Mom thanked Manny for coming and plied him with thumbprint cookies and half a loaf of pumpkin bread. “For breakfast tomorrow,” she said, handing him the bag of goodies.

  Manny politely thanked her and turned on his charm. He smiled, told her how he’d missed her cooking, and reminisced about her holiday feasts.

  Mom soaked up the praise. “You should come for Christmas dinner, then!” she said, either ignoring or somehow missing my obvious cringe.

  “We have a small place . . .” I said.

  “Didn’t you say your landlord’s big house will be empty?” Mom persisted. “Or we can set up a long table in this living room. Manny, I know you have family here and will want to be with them, but if you have time, we’d love for you to stop by. A true family meal for Celia. We’ll be dining promptly at—”

  “At noon, if I remember right?” Manny said with a beaming smile to Mom. By the time the smile reached me, it had faded to a one-sided smirk. “I’ll try to make it,” he said. “If I’m not busy catching the criminals you stir up. I’m warning you Rita, you need to—”

  “I know!” I said. “I’m off the case. No investigating.”

  The crime techs tromped around from the side of the house, shaking their heads and reporting that there was nothing to find. Celia gave me a quick hug good night. “Hey, you can use my bed,” she said. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  Not really, I thought later, lying under her heavy quilt with an even heavier cat kneading my stomach. I’d sleep on the sofa bed any day if it meant my daughter was safe and sound down the hall.

  “What should I do, Hugo?” I asked. He purred unhelpfully in response. The letter, though threatening Celia, was aimed at me. Had the writer struck out because I’d gotten too close to the truth? But I hadn’t come close. I hadn’t accomplished anything that I could tell. Wyatt had alibis, and Lorena had “fired” me from the investigation. Did one of them know something I didn’t? Then there was Trey. Had he seen me outside the archives room last night? He could have thought I was spying when really I was innocently delivering a message. Angel and his witchy granny were also still unaccounted for. She’d likely cast a spell instead of writing up a note, and Angel didn’t seem like a flowery font type of guy. I sighed and flipped over. Hugo curled up at my side, purring and lulling me to sleep. I knew one thing. I couldn’t let the investigation rest.

  Flori greeted me at Tres Amigas the next morning with a cleaver in her hands. A pork roast lay on the counter, awaiting dismemberment. It wasn’t the roast that had the most to worry about, though.

  “If I get my hands on that horrible person,” Flori said, waving the knife. “Well, I don’t care if it is Christmas. Anyone who would threaten Celia has it coming.”

  “So you heard?” I asked, rubbing my eyes and yawning. I should have slept better in Celia’s bed, with the cozy feather topper and cuddly cat. Instead, I’d tossed and turned the length of a marathon.

  Flori said she’d heard from her gossip network last night. Bill Hoffman, monitoring his police scanner, had sounded the alarm, hearing Manny bark orders over the police channel. “I’ve called another Knit and Snitch for the afternoon,” Flori said. “I’m combining it with a bizcochitos-making lesson for Addie’s British friends if you’d like to join us.”

  Addie came in, her face a scowling contrast to her bright British tea-towel apron. “I’m with Miss Flori. What balderdash and poppycock and hogwashery and—” She stopped, running out of British and/or Harry Potter words.

  I told them I appreciated their concern. “Someone sneaking around at night picking on a teenager can’t be that brave,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “And any poison pen writer’s a bully and a coward. It won’t work. If anyone asks, though, I’m not investigating. I’m a busy cook, showing my mother around town with no time for anything else.”

  Addie nodded seriously. “Got it.”

  Flori held up her cleaver, “If anyone asks if you’re investigating, we’ll put them on our suspect list.”

  After calling to check on Celia, I threw myself into work and kept to my plan. Whenever anyone asked me about my holiday plans, I elaborated on my busy schedule in a loud voice and in great detail. I told customers I barely knew about our Christmas tree and my mother visiting and all the things we had planned.

  I kept up my act with Flori’s knitting group, who came in at the tail end of lunch and took over three tables.

  “Of course. You’re very, very busy,” Flori’s graffiti knitting co-conspirator, Miriam, said knowingly when I mentioned a choral concert. “You have a lot going on.” She looked up over a silver mitten the size of a football helmet and winked.

  “Yes,” said Hazel, the flask wielder I’d met at Flori’s last Knit and Snitch. “Way too busy for investigating a murder and threats and whatnot.”

/>   Twittering ensued and a lady with blue-tipped curls said, “Too busy to know that my great-niece, who works at the pharmacy, confirmed filling a migraine prescription for a handsome blond man the night of the devil murder. She was worried he couldn’t get home, he was in such pain and nauseous and dizzy to boot. She got her assistant to take over and she drove him the few blocks to his apartment. She said he was so polite, even in his agony. Quite a looker too.”

  The ladies tittered about Barton Hunter’s masculine beauty and polite charms and complimented the great-niece, who was finishing her pharmacy internship with honors.

  Hazel broke in with more information. “Bet you’re too busy for a rumor about witchy Josephina Ortiz too. Hear tell, she’s staying out at her former sister-in-law’s condo by the Japanese hot spring. Talk about the last place anyone would look for her! Those two hate each other, and Josephina’s not the type to abide by condo regulations.”

  “Maybe they worked out their differences in the hot spring,” Miriam said generously. “It’s quite a lovely place. Oh, and Rita, you won’t want to know that Angel Ortiz was washing pots and pans at that fancy steak place that all those businessmen in snappy suits go to. I sometimes sit at the bench outside their patio and knit and watch the view. Of nice tushes!” She snickered and started incorporating a new color into her knit.

  I thanked them and confirmed that I wasn’t interested in the least. Then I went to the kitchen. “I see that you told them again,” I said to Flori.

  Flori was putting the fixing touches on a towering platter of nachos. “Well, I had to clue them in,” she said. “They’re the Knit and Snitchers. They’d never believe that we weren’t investigating, and they’d find out anyway. They’ll be discreet. Anyway, I bet we’ve already learned more than that stubborn ex of yours.”

  In the dining room, Hazel was dousing the teapot with clear liquid from her flask. Discretion was exactly what I worried about.

  “Hazel gets a bit rowdy around the holidays,” Flori said, when I pointed out the teapot tampering. “She’s a pastor’s wife, though. They know how to keep their lips zipped.”

  Addie, emerging from the pantry with an armload of cookie supplies, giggled. “That lot? Discreet? The darling with the flask told me the rowdiest stories about her grandson, who she says is a right looker. If he’s anything like her, he sounds like a handful.” She giggled and released her cookie ingredients onto the table. Flour puffed, causing her to sneeze and laugh some more.

  “Sorry, Rita,” she said, recovering her composure. “I shouldn’t be laughing, not with what’s going on.”

  “Of course you should,” I told her. “It’s the holidays and everything’s okay. Celia’s safe. The police are investigating. That note was all bluster.”

  My everything-is-okay theory was soon broken by Hazel. I heard knitting needles clanging on a flask first, followed by a sharp voice. “Incoming!” Hazel yelled above the chatting. “Message from Bill.”

  The room went silent. Addie, Flori, and I went out in the main dining room and watched as Hazel poked at her cell phone until Bill’s creaky voice came on the speaker.

  “Just in,” he said. “Police en route to Judith Crundall’s place. Got a call about more devil letters. This is Hoffman, over and out.”

  All eyes turned to me.

  Miriam spoke first. “You need a cover, Rita, if you’re planning to pop by the Crundall mansion. Say you’re bringing them some baked goods. Or some knitwear. I’m making a mitten you could take. Does Judith have a big one-handed statue that could use something warm and festive?”

  “Take the nachos,” boozy Hazel ordered.

  I couldn’t very well take a half-eaten plate of nachos or a mitten fit for a giant.

  “You can have my fourth trial run of bizcochitos,” Addie said, clapping her hands in excitement. “They’re fresh from the oven.”

  Addie’s culinary endeavors are usual best uneaten. Even squirrels and other woodland creatures shun them. If she doesn’t burn her recipes to a crusty char, she manages a questionable substitution. I’ve choked down pies in which she mistook salt for sugar, and cinnamon rolls she decided would be more “surprising” with chipotle chile. Before I could find the words for a polite refusal, she ran back to the kitchen and returned with a plate of bizcochitos. They actually looked pretty good. No obvious burning. No saline residue that I could tell.

  “They’re lush,” Addie said, clasping her hands. “Truly luscious.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” I whispered to Flori as I got in my coat. “Salt? No sugar? Cumin in the sugar coating?”

  Flori furtively glanced over her shoulder. Leaning in, she whispered, “She followed my recipe quite well this time except . . .” Flori paused then said, “She didn’t use lard!”

  “Butter?” I asked.

  Flori’s expression was grim. “Shortening! She left out the egg too. They’re vegan!”

  Chapter 19

  I arrived at Judith Crundall’s bearing the plate of vegan bizcochitos at the same time Manny was stomping out the front door.

  He stopped at the threshold, leaving the door open. Behind him, I caught a glimpse of Judith Crundall in her wheelchair.

  “You’re letting a draft in,” I pointed out.

  “You’re meddling,” my ex retorted. “Wasn’t it just last night that a psycho threatened our daughter to stop you from messing around in a murder case? What does it take to get you to stop, Rita?”

  I held up the platter of cookies. “I’m not meddling. I’m delivering a plate of Christmas cookies to Ms. Crundall. She just got out of the hospital, you know, where they frown on drafts.” I was glad that Flori had decorated the cookie plate with a big red bow. I patted the bow for emphasis.

  His eyes were on the cookies encased in plastic wrap. “Are those Flori’s bizcochitos?” he said, his tone betraying interest.

  I could have been mean and let Manny believe he was about to taste the tender, spicy joy of Flori’s cookies. However, it was Christmas, and I was done being petty with Manny. “Addie made them,” I said, and his hand whipped back. “They’re actually quite good.” I’d tried one in the car. They weren’t quite as tender as Flori’s, but the spices were right and the cookies weren’t burned or overly salted—nearly a first for Addie. “Addie followed Flori’s recipe,” I told Manny, “except she substituted shortening for the lard. They’re vegan.” Even Manny—who’s never baked a cookie that someone else didn’t mix or remove from a pop-open can—raised an eyebrow. “Addie’s sweet on a vegan,” I explained.

  Manny rolled his eyes. “I suppose they can be hot too. Like that redheaded assistant bone sorter, Shasta. You know, the one with the sexy-librarian glasses? I was hoping she’d be here.”

  I shook my head at my ex, marveling that he could maintain such consistent boorishness. “And how do you know she’s vegan?” I said.

  “I asked if she wanted to go grab a burger the other day,” he said with a shrug. “She turned me down saying she’s vegetarian or vegan or something weird like that.”

  And maybe because she sensed Manny’s true character. I held in my sarcastic retort, since I wanted information. “Why are you here, anyway?” I asked in what I hoped was an innocent, totally naïve tone. “Is something wrong?”

  I’m a horrible actor, and Manny knows me too well. “Like you don’t already know,” he said. Still, he reached into his open jacket and pulled a clear evidence bag from the inside pocket. “Another Las Posadas devil also got a note last night. Barton Hunter. He said he arrived here for work this morning and came in the front doors. It wasn’t until he went through the archive entrance later that he found the threat. He almost didn’t call. Said he thought it was a prank. When Judith heard, she called us.”

  I yearned to read the note. I tilted my chin, trying to catch a glimpse. All I could make out was the same flowery font.

  “Want to know what it says?” Manny asked, dangling the evidence bag closer.

  I sensed a tes
t or a trap. “No.” I busied myself by tucking the festive red plastic wrap around the cookie plate. “I have no interest. I’m not involved, remember?” Besides, I could ask Judith or Barton. Heck, probably Bill Hoffman had heard what the note said over his gossip airwaves.

  Manny snorted, tucked the letter back in his jacket, and headed to his car. On the way, his radio buzzed on and I recognized the voice of Deputy Davis. “Checked on the third devil, sir,” she said through static crackles. “No note that he knows of. We couldn’t find anything around his perimeter. He lives in a condo. Upper floor. Coded lock on the front entry. Maybe the perp couldn’t get in. He says he’s worried. Says he wants to quit the play.”

  “Good for him,” Manny grumbled. “He won’t have to quit. I ordered Crundall to shut it down.” He got in his car and slammed the door.

  Judith Crundall looked in no mood for orders from Manny Martin or anyone else. When I peeked in the front door, she was still sitting in the foyer. “Well, come in and shut the door,” she said, her eyes narrowing at me. The “what do you want” was left implied. She shoved one of Dalia’s curative dolls into a tote bag hanging from the side of her wheelchair. The colorful throw blanket on her lap met a similar fate.

  “Cookies!” I said in my chipper voice that comes out under stress. “I just wanted to pop by and see how you were feeling.”

  “Like death,” Judith croaked. Seeing what must have been my horrified expression, she said. “I’m drowning in hydration and back to my usual aches, pains, and shakes. What is it they say? Getting old isn’t for sissies? I was never a wilting violet, but I feel like one these days.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. A waft of patchouli announced Dalia before she rounded the corner. “Thank you!” she gushed, when I again presented my cookie cover. “We needed some fresh baked goods around here, didn’t we, Judith? We were just about to have some tea. Rita, won’t you join us?”

  Judith waved a dismissive hand, sending a feathery dream catcher attached to the back of her chair spinning. She swatted it again and said that she couldn’t think of eating. “No offense,” she said to me. “I can’t stomach cookies. All that butter.”