Kim and Betts exchanged glances. “He wasn’t?”
Aaron shook his head. “He was suffocated with a different type of plastic tied over his head. Instead of a bag, it was one big sheet of plastic with the words Department of Public Works printed on it. Does that ring any bells?”
Kim gasped out loud. “Department of Public Works? The costumes for the Christmas program came from the Department of Public Works.”
“My costume had a big plastic cover on it,” Betts added. “It could have been the same thing.”
Aaron nodded. “Exactly. I checked with the Department of Public Works. All the costumes get covered with a big plastic bag, kind of like the ones they use at dry cleaning companies, to keep them clean and protected. The costumes all had their covers on when Tanya got them from the Department. And Simon’s costume did not have its cover on it when the Crime Lab got it out of his locker at the mall.”
Kim looked around the hall, but Tanya was nowhere to be seen. How did she disappear so fast? “Then whoever killed him must have suffocated him with the costume cover. They must have put the costume into the locker after they killed him.”
“The question is,” Aaron added, “who had access to the costumes?”
“Tanya did,” Kim replied. “She could have met Simon in the locker room on her way to drop off his costume,” Kim suggested. “She must have killed him and then put the costume in the locker where it belonged.”
“Or,” Betts offered, “Steve Delacourt could have taken the bag off the costume, suffocated Simon, and then put the costume in the locker.”
“When you think about it,” Aaron replied, “anybody could have done the same thing.”
“But who had access to the locker room?” Kim asked. “Who had the timing right to disappear without being seen?”
“We still have the little problem of proof,” Aaron told her. “We can speculate about our favorite suspects until the cows come home. It doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to arresting somebody.”
“At least we know what to look for,” Kim replied. “If we can connect one of these people to the costume cover, we’ll know who killed Simon.” She started for the door.
“Running away again?” Aaron asked.
“I have to get back to the bakery,” she replied. “I still have a lot of work to do before tomorrow night.”
“All right,” he murmured. “I guess I’ll see you then.”
“When?” she asked. “At the dinner?”
He nodded. “I’m a client of Bornian, Mitchell, and Pike, so I’m a guest here tomorrow. If I don’t see you before, I’ll see you then.”
Kim nodded and started to leave, but at the last minute, she turned back. “Thanks for your help.”
“You know I’d do anything to help you,” he replied. “I would have arrested someone other than Betts for this murder a long time ago if I could.”
Kim peered up into his eyes. “I know that. I’m sorry I got carried away with the whole thing.”
“You had to protect your friend,” he replied. “I understand that.”
She found her hand instinctively reaching out to him, but she managed to stop herself in time and nodded instead. “Thanks. I’ll see you later.”
Chapter 9
Kim hoisted herself off the couch in her living room and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Betts snored in an armchair across the room. Kim rubbed her eyes and forced herself to focus on the clock on the side table. Seven o’clock. She hadn’t collapsed from exhaustion until two o’clock that morning. Betts lasted until ten before she staggered back to Kim’s place with a mumbled apology about not being able to help anymore.
Kim ran through her list of desserts for the Chamber of Commerce dinner. She still had to frost the cherry chocolate cake, and she still had a couple dozen more cookies to make. She had to set up the hot water urn for the tea and the percolators for the coffee. And she had to set up her service tables with all the paper doilies for the cake stands and cookie trays. She had to set out the decorative vases with their sprays of sparkles and deck the tables with tinsel.
She propelled herself to her feet and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She would catch up on sleep tonight, after the dinner was over and done with. After Betts was stuffed to the gills with cake and leftover cookies and all the guests went home to pass out, she would catch up on sleep.
Then again, she had to get up at five tomorrow morning to open her shop, so she probably wouldn’t catch up on sleep then, either. And after that, she had to make twenty dozen cookies for the Day Care Center Christmas party. She should be grateful for all the extra business the Christmas season brought her instead of complaining about it. But she could do with at least one night of uninterrupted sleep.
She put the kettle on the stove as quietly as she could so as not to wake Betts, but nothing disturbed her. Betts could sleep through a tornado and wake up refreshed and happy as a baby. Betts never worried about anything. She might have experienced a twinge of anxiety when Aaron first questioned her about Simon Cox’s murder. But once she found out Kim was on the case, her cares evaporated. Someone else always solved Betts’s problems for her.
Betts didn’t make her appearance at the bakery until eleven o’clock that morning, and as Kim expected, she burst in with a big smile on her face and a coffee cup in her hands. She extended her arms and boomed out in a hearty voice, “Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho!”
Kim laughed. “You’re supposed to be an elf, not Santa Claus.”
Betts settled into her chair at Kim’s desk. “Don’t you remember? Santa’s dead. So there’s an opening for me, and I’m much better suited to the role of Santa than I ever was for an elf. I’m too big to be an elf.” She patted her belly. “I’ve definitely got the bowlful of jelly part down.”
Kim bent over the last cherry chocolate cake and shook her head. “You heard what Tanya said. You’re fired.”
Betts leaned back in the chair. “Oh, well. No big loss. She can find some other shmuck to make an idiot out of themselves in that costume.”
Kim took a stack of cookie boxes out of her walk-in and set them on the work table. “You’re just in time to help me take the last cookies down to the Chamber of Commerce.”
Betts gathered up the cookies. “Don’t you want me to help you carry the cakes?”
“Are you nuts?” Kim shot back. “You’re not coming within a hundred miles of these cakes. I told you Charlotte Longdell hired me to do this job, and she requested these cakes specially. They’re her favorite, and if she doesn’t get them, she’ll never hire me for another catering gig again. I have to think about my future.”
“I won’t eat them all,” Betts told her. “I’ll just have a little lick of the frosting that spilled on the parchment.” She pointed to a black spot on the baking sheet. “Right there.”
Kim smacked her hand away. “Don’t you dare!”
Betts retreated and stuck her stinging finger in her mouth. “Okay. I won’t.”
Kim picked up the cake tray. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Won’t we be early?” Betts asked.
“We’ll be very early,” Kim replied. “But after we get set up, we can take a walk around the square while we wait for the dinner to start.”
“Take a walk around the square, huh?” Betts chuckled. “You could visit Aaron at the police station.”
Kim blushed. “I wouldn’t visit Aaron with you around.”
Betts gasped. “Kim! Please.”
Kim pushed the door open with her foot. “I don’t have to visit him at the police station. I’ll see him at the dinner. Now come on.”
Off they went with a rev of Kim’s engine, but when they got to the center of town, they could hardly get near the Chamber of Commerce.
“What’s going on?” Betts asked.
“It’s a good thing we got here early,” Kim remarked. “All the caterers and organizers had the same idea. We’ll have to park down the block and carry everything in. I
wouldn’t be surprised if the convention hall is packed already.”
She was right, too. She stopped in the doorway with a cherry chocolate cake in her hands. “We aren’t getting in there.”
Betts peeked out from behind her stack of cookie boxes. “What are we going to do?”
Kim walked over to the reception desk in the front hall of the Chamber of Commerce. “Put them down here. I’ll go in and see if there’s any room in the walk-in, but I don’t like my chances. Maybe later, after the caterers put their food out on the serving tables, we’ll be able to bring in my food from the car.”
“Won’t it go bad out there in the car?” Betts asked. “The cakes at least should be in the refrigerator.”
Kim snorted. “It’s Christmas in Maine. The cakes will be colder in the car than they would be in the refrigerator.”
She shouldered her way into the hall, but as she expected, the walk-in was full to bursting with salads and antipasto trays and aspic of every imaginable color and shape and platters of club sandwiches cut into stars. Catering people rushed everywhere and shouted instructions to each other. Their voices echoed up to the ceiling and mingled with the evergreen boughs to give the convention hall an especially festive atmosphere.
Kim’s spirits lifted, but then they crashed onto the rocks again when she spied her mother making a bee line for her. “Oh, hello, Mom. What are you doing here?”
“I’m a client of Bornian, Mitchell, and Pike,” Candace replied. “I’m a guest at this dinner.”
“You’re pretty early, aren’t you?” Kim asked. “The dinner doesn’t start for another hour.”
“I wanted to make sure everything was going well,” Candace replied. “You know how these Christmas dinners go sometimes. The organizers don’t know what they’re doing, and the whole thing turns into a disaster.”
Kim glanced around. “It looks pretty organized to me.”
“You call this organized?” Candace snapped. “I never saw such a morass of organization in my life. Look at that. The hot roast plates are making so much steam you can’t see your hand in front of your face.”
“That’s what they’re supposed to do,” Kim replied. “The roasts should be perfect in time for the dinner.”
Candace smacked her lips. “I don’t know why I bother to come to these holiday events. They’re always such a disappointment. I should just stay home.”
“But what about the spirit of togetherness and cheer?” Kim asked. “You might be disappointed in the food, but at least you can spend time with people you like. Look at the chandelier shining up there, and the greenery and the banners. It gives new meaning to notion of light in the darkness of winter.”
Candace glared at her. “What are you doing here, anyway? Don’t you have some money-making project to work on instead of getting underfoot here?”
Kim blushed. “Actually, this is a money-making project for me. I’m catering the desserts for this dinner.”
“Then where’s your table?” Candace asked. “Why aren’t you set up?”
“There isn’t room,” Kim pointed out. “I can’t get into the kitchen, and there’s no room in the fridge. I’ll have to wait until the crowd thins out after the main part of the dinner.”
Candace waved her hands. “How do you plan to stay in business with an attitude like that? The dinner will be over in a matter of minutes, and you’re completely unprepared. I swear, Kim, you’re the worst businesswoman I ever met.”
Kim’s shoulders slumped, but at that moment, a familiar voice floated out of the sea of conversation. “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock. Jingle bell ring and jingle bell hop.” Ethel Harris stepped out of the crowd. “Have you seen where they put the cucumber dip? I saw the girl put it out on that table, but now it’s gone.”
Kim couldn’t hold back a smile. At least everything was right in Ethel’s world. “Don’t tell me you’re a client of Bornian, Mitchell, and Pike, too, Grandma.”
Ethel frowned. “Who? I never heard of ‘em.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Kim asked. “This dinner is supposed to be for their clients.”
“I was just looking for my Swiss Army knife,” Ethel replied. “I lost it at the mall when I went there to ask Santa Claus for a new food processor. Maybe I should have asked for a new Swiss Army knife instead.”
Kim stared at her. “You were at the mall with Santa Claus?”
Ethel burst into an innocent smile and pressed Kim’s arm with her fingers. “You know I always visit Santa at Christmas time. It’s the only way to be sure he’ll give me what I want. It’s no good teaching kids to write him letters. You actually have to show up and ask him to his face. He won’t remember otherwise. Your letter might get lost in a stack of millions of other letters. But he always remembers when you ask him in person.”
Kim stepped closer to her grandmother. “Can you tell me where you were the morning of the Santa Claus program, Grandma? You weren’t inside the mall with the choir and everything, were you? I would remember seeing you there. Where were you?”
“I don’t waste my time with the choir,” Ethel replied. “It’s nothing but a bunch of fluff, anyway. No, I went straight to him and asked him for a new food processor.”
Kim frowned. “Where did you see him?”
“In the locker room, of course,” Ethel told her.
Kim smiled at the thought of the old lady sitting on Santa Claus’s lap. “You’re supposed to wait until he gets out on the platform, you know, Grandma.”
Ethel shook her head. “If I waited until he was on the platform, he couldn’t hear a word I said. It’s quiet enough in the locker room so he could hear me, and he would remember me and give me what I asked for.”
“So what happened when you went into the locker room?” A light came on in Kim’s mind. “Did you see the janitor there.”
“Not the janitor,” Ethel replied. “When I told Santa what I wanted, he got a big smile on his face and he told me he would make sure I got exactly what I asked for. Isn’t that nice of him?”
Kim smiled, too. That was nice of Simon to see her crazy grandmother for what she was and let her believe she really had asked Santa Claus for her special Christmas gift. “Yes, it was nice of him. Did you see anything else?”
“I saw Mrs. Claus,” Ethel replied. “She brought Santa’s red suit to him to change into.”
Kim frowned. “Mrs. Claus?”
Ethel nodded. “She had his outfit all pressed and laundered and ready to go in one of those plastic laundromat bags.”
Kim’s mind raced and her heart thundered in her chest. “By Mrs. Claus, you don’t mean Mrs. Wright, the kindergarten teacher, do you? She’s the one with the wire-rimmed glasses who walks with a limp.”
“No, no, no,” Ethel countered. “Not her. This was a youngish sort of woman with black hair. And she had a clipboard under her arm.”
Kim stared at her. “You don’t mean Tanya?”
“It was Mrs. Claus, I tell you,” Ethel insisted. “Who else would bring Santa his red suit before meeting all the children on the platform? She’s the one who takes care of him and makes sure he's ready to get his picture taken with the children.”
Kim spun away. “I’ll see you two later. Have a good dinner, Mom. I’ll be back in a little while with the desserts.”
Candace grabbed Kim by the wrist. “Where do you think you’re going? You can’t leave now. You have a job to do here.”
Kim waved over her shoulder and forced her way through the crowd. “Gotta go! Bye!”
She burst out of the convention hall and grabbed Betts. “Come on! We don’t have a moment to lose!”
Betts staggered after her. “What’s going on?”
“We have to find Aaron,” Kim replied. “I found a witness who spotted Tanya in the men’s locker room with Simon right before he died. The person had the costume in her hands, and it still had the cover on it. She must have seen them together a couple of seconds before she killed him.”
“What are you talking about?” Betts asked.
Kim shook her head. “I don’t have time to explain now. Tanya will be here in a few minutes. We have to find Aaron and warn him. He can arrest Tanya when he comes to the dinner.”
She blasted through the front doors and out into the frosty street. She hurried down the block and up the steps to the police station. She leaned both her hands on the front desk and panted into the reception officer’s face. The young officer put down her romance novel. “Can I help you?”
“I need.....to see....Detective Walker.....right away,” Kim gasped. “It’s....an emergency.”
“He isn’t here,” the officer told her. “He took the afternoon off to attend the Christmas dinner at the Chamber of Commerce.”
Kim slapped her leg with her hand. “Dang! We missed him. Come on, Betts. We’ll have to head him off before he gets to the hall.”
Chapter 10
Back they went with Betts protesting all the way. The cold air stabbed at Kim’s lungs, but she couldn’t slow down now, not with the end of this case hovering before her eyes. When they got back to the convention hall, the caterers stood behind their serving tables, and guests crowded the halls. They mingled between the tables in clusters of conversation.
Kim scanned the hall, but she didn’t see Aaron or Tanya anywhere. Her mother stood eye to eye with the City Planner and regaled him with blasts of excited exclamations. Old Ethel cruised from one table to the other, sampling all the food, ignored by everyone. She could go anywhere and see everything. People didn’t notice her, and they never considered what she might be noticing and recording in that addled brain of hers.
Kim smiled at the sight of her grandmother. As strange and twisted as she was, she was the kindest, most supportive member of Kim’s family. She never had to worry about her grandmother judging her or being disappointed with her.
All of a sudden, a square-cut figure in a brushed old suit crossed Kim’s line of sight, and her blood ran cold when she recognized Steve Delacourt. Could he be a client of Bornian, Mitchell and Pike, too? Kim would have to look into that firm for representation. Everybody who was anybody was here as their guest.
Murder in the Elfth Degree: A Camellia Cove Cozy Mystery Book 2 (A Camellia Cove Mystery) Page 7