A Killer Carol

by Laura Bradford

  Annie drew back in surprise. “You stopped at my house?”

  “I did. I wanted to show you something.”

  “I’m sorry I was not there to greet you.”

  “It’s okay, kiddo. Honestly, knowing you the way that I do, I should’ve realized you’d be here . . .”

  “Yah. It is a busy time at the shop. I did not want you to work alone anymore.”

  A quick inspection of the tree’s lowest branches had her removing a few doubled-up ornaments and spreading them around more evenly. “Bill was a godsend offering to man the shop so I could go to the funeral service today.”

  “He was dusting the counter when I came in,” Annie said. “And he was whistling.”

  She had to laugh at the note of surprise in the teen’s voice. “That’s Bill for you. Nothing ever seems to rattle him.”

  “So he is gone now?”

  “Yup, he’s gone,” Claire said. “Just walked him out myself.”

  Nodding, Annie took one last look at the tree and then turned and headed toward the register. “I will get to work on the clipboard. Perhaps if it stays quiet like it is right now, I can get everything on the day’s list done.”

  “There is no list,” she said, following in the girl’s footsteps. “Not today.”

  “What about yesterday’s list? When I wasn’t here, either?” Annie reached across the top of the counter and plucked the clipboard from its nail. “I can do some of those things.”

  “I kept it light while you were gone. I figured any quiet windows of time would go toward festival prep. Or at least, that was the plan . . .”

  Annie’s brow furrowed as she scanned the various displays and sections around the shop. “You did not have to restock?”

  “Oh, I restocked, alright. During those so-called quiet windows I thought I’d have more of.”

  Shame dove Annie’s gaze to the floor. “I am sorry, Claire. I know it is a busy time for you with the shop, and the festival, and all of your decorating.”

  “Hey . . . hey . . .” Claire hooked a finger underneath the girl’s chin and nudged it upward. “Life happens, kiddo. No one could have predicted Mary’s and Daniel’s deaths.”

  “One could.”

  Claire looked over her shoulder, took in the light foot traffic along the sidewalk, and then guided Annie over to the stools. “We need to talk . . . It’s important.”

  “Have—have I done something wrong?” Annie asked, aborting her plans to sit. “Because I can stay later or come in earlier to make up for what I have missed these past few days.”

  Pressing her finger to Annie’s lips, she shook her head. “Shhh . . . You’re fine. Great, even.” She dropped her hand to her side and, when Annie was situated on a stool, rocked back on her heels and used the counter for support. “I need to ask you about the night you went Christmas caroling and found Mary and Daniel.”

  “I did not like that night,” Annie whispered.

  “I know. But for now I want to ask specifically about something I think you might have said when you called me from the Esch farm.”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No. I’m just not sure if what I’m remembering came from you that night, or if I’ve been reading too many of those cozy mysteries my aunt has all over the house.”

  At Annie’s blatant confusion, she moved on. “You were telling me about that moment when you and Henry first noticed the window was open and how you thought that was odd because of how cold it was outside.”

  “It was very cold that night,” Annie said, shivering at the memory.

  “You said you looked inside . . .”

  “Henry got the lantern from his buggy.”

  “Yes. And do you remember what you saw when he shined it up to the window?”

  Annie’s shoulders sagged just before her whole body shuddered at the memory. “We saw Mary and Daniel lying on the floor.”

  Claire stepped in beside Annie and draped an arm across her shoulders. “But you saw other things first, right? Before you actually saw them?”

  “Yah. I saw a chair—it was on its side. And there was a dish next to it. Chicken and potatoes were on the floor.”

  It was her turn to sag. “And that was it? You didn’t see anything else?”

  “That is all.”

  So it was back to Abe again. Only now, thanks to her conversation with Tommy, all the stray pieces of the puzzle suddenly slid right into place . . .

  “I really need to stop reading before bed. I think my brain takes stuff from these stories and merges it in with my day’s reality sometimes.” She gave Annie a quick squeeze and then wandered back to the counter. “I thought you’d said something about a glove and—”

  “Yah. There was a glove—a worker’s glove. It was on the ground outside the window.”

  She spun back to Annie. “Just one?”

  “Yah.”

  “And you say it was a worker’s glove?”

  “Yah.”

  “What do you mean by a worker’s glove?”

  “Because it is one an Englisher would wear—like your Jakob or Mr. Glick.” Annie smoothed her basic dress across her lap, her head cocked in thought. “He must have dropped one when he was picking up a cabinet or something.”

  “Did you show the glove to Jakob when he came to the scene?”

  “No, I was not worried about a glove when Jakob came.”

  “Did Henry?”

  Annie pulled a face. “I know only that when Henry went inside, I held the glove for him. Later, when Jakob and the other police were on the way and we were waiting in his buggy, I set it on his seat. I do not remember him showing it to Jakob, but it was not important.”

  Au contraire . . .

  “Do you think you’d remember the glove if you saw it?” she asked.

  “I think so.” Annie’s face grew pinched. “Did Jakob lose a glove? Is that why you are asking such things?”

  “No, I came across one that I think might be its match. It is in the pocket of my . . .”

  The rest of her sentence faded from her lips as the front door jingled and Jakob stepped inside, breathing against his fisted hands. He swept his gaze across the room, its trademark sparkle igniting when he spotted Claire. “I thought it was cold earlier, out at Chupp’s, but it’s even colder now.”

  “I will leave you two alone for a few minutes,” Annie said, slipping down off the stool. “I will see if it is as I remember.”

  And then the teen was gone, her simple black lace-up boots making nary a sound as she made her way toward the back hallway, her quick glance and single nod in Jakob’s direction an improvement.

  “I didn’t mean for Annie to leave.”

  “She . . .” Claire swallowed. “She needed to check something in back for me.”

  He dropped his fingers to the top edge of his jacket and unzipped it to the bottom. “According to the guy from Channel Five, we’re looking at close to a foot of snow tonight.”

  “Oh . . . wow . . . that’s a lot.”

  She could feel him watching her as she returned the clipboard to its nail, waiting, no doubt, for a bigger, more Claire-like reaction to his weather report, but she had nothing.

  “Claire? Is everything okay? You seem upset. Troubled. Is something going on I don’t know about?”

  She paused her hands on the edge of Annie’s stool, closed her eyes to a silent count of ten, and then opened them to find Jakob studying her closely from the other side of the counter. “I’m pretty sure I’m the one that should be asking you that last question.”

  “I’m not upset,” he said, closing the gap between them. “A little preoccupied with this case right now, but I’m not—”

  “That’s not the question I was referring to.” In a different time, and a different place, she might have marveled a
t how calm she sounded, but in the moment, it was more about wanting to keep her voice down for Annie’s benefit than anything else.

  He pulled up about a foot from the counter, the quick side-to-side of his eyes a clear indication he was thinking. “Then what question are you . . . wait. There’s not anything going on with me that—”

  “Claire?”

  Forcing a smile to her face and a lightness to her voice, she held Jakob’s gaze for another moment and then turned toward Annie. “Yes, kiddo? What’s up?”

  “It is the same.”

  “What is?”

  Annie pulled her hand from behind her back and opened it to reveal a neatly folded piece of black leather. “Your glove. I think it is just like the one we found outside Mary and Daniel’s the night we went caroling.”

  The thudding in her chest was back.

  So, too, was Jakob’s voice, his words thundering across the room. “You saw a glove at the scene?” In a flash he was by Annie’s side, his gaze ricocheting between Annie, Claire, and the glove. “Why didn’t I know this?”

  “It—it was just dropped.”

  “Where?” he barked.

  “On the way to the window,” Annie said, her voice trembling.

  Jakob’s jaw tightened. “The window the killer may have used to get inside the house?”

  “I . . . I . . .” Annie backed into the wall. “I do not understand.”

  “This is it? The one you found?”

  “I . . . I think so. Perhaps Henry will know for certain.”

  “Henry knew about this, too?”

  Claire rushed forward, putting herself between the detective and the frightened teen. “She and Henry clearly didn’t realize what they had, Jakob. It was an honest mistake.”

  He turned angry eyes her way. “And you? You’ve had this in your possession this whole time and you didn’t say anything?”

  “No!” She plucked the glove from Annie’s shaking hand and held it inside her own. “Today, after the meal at Lloyd and Greta Chupp’s, I was speaking with someone behind the barn. He saw that I was cold and he offered me his gloves. Only, when he reached into his pocket, there was only one. Something about his surprise and the way he patted his coat looking for the other one tickled a memory of something Annie said when she called me from the scene. It was so out of left field I actually began to think I was crazy, that she hadn’t mentioned a glove at all. So I asked her just now—right before you came in.”

  “Who gave it to you, Claire?”

  “Tommy Warren.”

  The name pushed him back a step. “Tommy Warren?”

  “Yes.”

  Palming his mouth, he stared at the glove in Claire’s hand. “Where is the other one?” he rasped, looking up. “The one that was dropped?”

  Claire led his troubled gaze back to the girl cowering against the wall. “Annie, sweetie? Do you know what happened to the glove you found that night?”

  “I set it on Henry’s buggy seat, but I do not know where it is now. Perhaps Henry will know . . .”

  Chapter 21

  The click of the chief’s door at the end of the hall drifted into the room and brought Claire to her feet. She’d tried to talk to Jakob on the ride out to the Stutzman farm, but between his calls to dispatch and the questions he kept firing at Annie in the back seat, there hadn’t been an opportunity.

  The talk with Henry had been extensive, the bewildered teenager’s initial shrug in reaction to Jakob’s inquiry about the glove quickly bowing to the answers he couldn’t seem to give fast enough.

  Yes, he’d picked up a glove on the way over to Daniel and Mary’s window . . .

  Yes, he’d handed it to Annie when he saw the tipped-over chair and the spilled food . . .

  No, he hadn’t thought to show it to Jakob that night—why would he? It was just a glove someone had dropped. Daniel and Mary were dead . . .

  He didn’t even remember finding it until they’d gotten back into the buggy after they’d been released and he saw it on the seat . . .

  And finally, yes, he was pretty sure it was still in his buggy somewhere—perhaps underneath the horse blanket he’d used to keep Annie warm on the ride to and from Sleep Heavenly later that same night . . .

  Claire and Annie had followed Jakob and Henry out to the barn and waited while Henry searched the immaculate interior of his late father’s buggy. When he got to the checkered horse blanket he kept folded on the floor in front of the back seat, he pulled it out and, with Annie’s help, opened it, fold by fold, until, on the last fold, a blur of black leather and stitching fell onto the hay-strewn ground at his feet.

  Even from her spot some six or seven feet away she’d known, in an instant, it was a perfect match to the one clutched in Jakob’s hand. The size, the stitching, the wear pattern, all of it . . .

  And as she’d stood there, staring, yet another snippet from yet another seemingly inconsequential conversation came flooding back, rooting her feet to the barn floor.

  “The day Abe left that farm for good was the last time I stepped foot on that farm or his sister’s. Maw says I should forgive, that a job is a job. But I’d sooner riffle through a garbage can for food than make so much as a penny driving the likes of any of them around.”

  It was a comment she knew Jakob would want to hear, but there simply hadn’t been time. Yet.

  Now, using the precious seconds she had before her first sighting of him in more than twenty minutes, she wiped her hands against her dress slacks and took in a steadying breath.

  “Hey,” he said, breezing into the room with a folder in one hand and her phone in the other. “Sorry to leave you alone in here for so long, but the chief wanted to see the gloves, and then I had to talk him off the notion of filing charges against Henry and Annie.”

  “Charges?” she echoed with a gasp. “For what?”

  He elbowed his chair away from the desk enough to sit, his gaze pinning hers with a look she couldn’t quite identify. “He wanted tampering with evidence.”

  “Henry and Annie didn’t tamper with evidence! They didn’t know that glove was evidence.”

  “It was found at the scene—steps away from the point of entry. It was evidence.” He dropped the folder and pen onto the desk and himself into the chair. “They should have said something.”

  “Annie did.”

  “To me,” he added. “Not you.”

  Recovering the answering gape of her mouth, she teed her hands in the air. “Those two kids didn’t realize that glove was evidence, Jakob. You heard them! They just thought someone lost a glove under the tree when they were picking up a delivery for Daniel.”

  “You could have some charges, too, Claire. For obstructing a case. Twice.”

  She dropped her hands to her side. “Look, I know I should have shown you Mary’s letter to Ruth as soon as I read it yesterday, but I . . . I froze. I was afraid it was evidence against Ruth, and I didn’t want it to be. But I was going to tell you—I did tell you.”

  “Yeah, thirty minutes ago, on the car ride back from Henry’s . . .” He handed her back her phone.

  “I’m sorry. I really am.” She took a fortifying breath and pressed on, her head reeling. “In terms of this thing with Tommy, I didn’t even remember Annie mentioning the glove until this afternoon, and when I did, I thought there was a chance I was confusing it with something I’d read in a book.”

  “Again, you didn’t come to me . . .”

  “And if I had, and it really was something I’d read? That wouldn’t have been a waste of your time?” She leaned forward, braced her hands on the edge of the desk so her eyes were level with his. “I literally found out, not more than two minutes before you walked into my shop this afternoon, that Annie had, in fact, mentioned finding a lost glove the night they found the bodies. And you were there when she came out and told me she
thought the one I had was a match to the one she’d found!”

  He looked down at the closed folder as a weighted silence fell between them, the only discernible sound in the room coming from the rhythmic tick tick of his wall clock. Finally, he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I get it. I really do. I get that you wanted to process the letter, maybe even figure out who’d seen it all on your own. But you can’t do that, Claire. It’s my job to follow the evidence.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Dropping his forearms onto his desk, he met and held her gaze. “You would have called me about the glove if I hadn’t shown up when I did, right?”

  Would she have? She wasn’t sure.

  She might have gone out to Henry’s on her own . . .

  She might have—

  No.

  “Yes. I would have called,” she said, reclaiming the chair opposite his. “It would have been with a heavy heart, but I’d have called you.”

  Relief chased the question from his eyes and he dropped back against his chair, his fingers finding and kneading his temples on a long, labored sigh. “Heavy, why?”

  “Because Abe just lost his parents . . . and Tommy is his family, too . . .”

  “I know.”

  She, too, leaned back in her chair. “He told me he hasn’t stepped foot on the Esch farm since the day Abe left.”

  Jakob’s laugh held no humor. “His missing glove says otherwise.”

  “Abe is like a brother to him,” she sighed. “He loves Abe. Why would he kill the guy’s parents?”

  “Because he loves him, that’s why.”

  “I don’t get it.” But even as she said the words, she knew they weren’t true. She didn’t want to get it, but she did.

  Tommy loved Abe so much, the thought that Daniel and Mary could intentionally set out to hurt him again via a bid no one saw coming had likely stirred his anger to such a boiling point he’d exacted revenge.

  “By killing them, Tommy just hurt Abe more. How could he not see that?” she asked.

  “He was blinded by his anger to the point where he wasn’t able to see the irony of what he was about to do.” Sliding his hands between his head and the back of the chair, he looked up at the ceiling, his voice cloaked with sadness. “That’s the way it is with most crimes of passion. They make little to no sense to anyone but the one perpetrating the crime. It’s sad on so many levels.”