We Wish You a Murderous Christmas

by Vicki Delany

  “That’s what I’m thinking. You’ve been poking around, haven’t you, asking questions, trying to get to the bottom of what happened?”

  “I have. But so’s Detective Simmonds, and I bet no one has placed a noose on her front door.”

  “And that,” Alan said, “tells me you’re getting closer to the truth than she is.”

  Chapter 13

  “Mornin’ y’all. Looks like it’s going to be another miserable day.”

  I let out a screech, and Alan whirled around.

  “Gee, sorry if I interrupted something,” Russ Durham said.

  “Come in and shut the door,” I said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing!”

  “Yeah, looks like nothing to me. Alan?”

  Alan glanced at me. I shook my head. Russ was a friend, and I trusted him. But he was above all a newspaper reporter. About the last thing I needed was to have this story spread across the front page of the Gazette.

  “Okay,” Russ said, “keep your secrets. I was going to call you later, Alan, then I saw your truck outside. Making deliveries?”

  “What?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Alan dropped off a box of . . . of . . . toys. For the weekend.”

  Russ glanced around the room, empty of delivery boxes. “If you say so. You said yesterday you wouldn’t accompany Santa as his toymaker if the town didn’t reinstate Noel. Is that still the case?”

  “Unless something’s changed,” Alan said. “Has it?”

  “Not as far as I know. Care to make an official statement about that?”

  “No.” Alan was a man of few words when it suited him.

  “Aline Wilkinson has withdrawn her children’s vocal classes from their scheduled performances. She gave me a statement. Although I’ll have to do a comprehensive editing job to make it suitable to print in a community newspaper.”

  “Speaking to the press is her right.” Alan turned to me. “Merry, I think you should do as we discussed, and I’ll stay with you if you’d like me to. I have deliveries to make this morning, but the way things are looking, it might not matter if the stores restock their toys.”

  “At least the rain’s holding off,” Russ said.

  “What’s the forecast for the weekend?” I asked.

  “Temperatures still rising, and the chance of freezing rain,” Russ said.

  I groaned. “Might as well shut the whole town down. Rename it Grinchville. Are people canceling?”

  “I made a few calls last night to the hotels and restaurants. You know how optimistic people can be about the weather, so they’re not canceling yet. But if they wake up Saturday morning and it’s raining, they won’t come out. Those few brave folks who don’t mind the weather and want their kids to meet Santa might not come to Rudolph anyway. Muddle Harbor has placed ads in the Rochester and Syracuse papers. Santa has, apparently, set up his castle in the Muddle Harbor rec center, where families can be warm and dry, not to mention safe, meeting Santa and his helpers.”

  “Castle?” I said. “Since when does Santa have a castle?”

  “It must be left over from that summer when they tried to put on a Renaissance fair,” Alan said.

  “Oh yeah, that.”

  Alan and I paused for a moment, remembering the string of bad ideas that had come out of the town of Muddle Harbor.

  “So,” Russ said, “you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “No,” I said. “Alan, you go and make your deliveries. Russ, will you do something for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is there any way you can find out the whereabouts of Randy Baumgartner and John”—I struggled to remember the last name of Janice’s brother—“John someone-or-other, the night Gord was killed?”

  Russ lifted one eyebrow. “You want me to track down the whereabouts of a man named John?”

  “He’s a real estate agent. Can’t be many of those in Muddle Harbor. He’s bound to have ads all over the place, particularly in the Chronicle.”

  “That’ll help. I can at least try to eliminate the mayor and this John fellow.”

  “Thanks. Simmonds might have asked them for alibis. I mentioned them to her the other day.”

  “Merry,” Alan said, “are you forgetting the warning?”

  Russ’s reporter’s eyebrows twitched at the word. He studied my face. I tried to look strong and resolute. It wasn’t easy. “Not at all, but I’m not going to be cowed into walking away from this. The longer this drags on, the worse it’s going to be for Dad and everyone else under suspicion.” Now that I’d had time to get over my fright, my blood was rising. The only possible reason anyone would have to threaten me had to do with the Olsen murder and me poking around asking questions. If I was, as Alan had suggested, closer to the truth than the police, I couldn’t stop now.

  “You might want to wait a while before talking to Simmonds, Russ,” I said. “I’m going to take Alan’s advice, call her now, and ask her to come over.”

  “I’ll wait with you,” Alan said.

  “No. I’m good. You guys have things to do.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s almost opening time, and I’m safe here in my shop.”

  “Safe?” Russ said. “Safe from what? Will someone tell me what’s going on here?”

  “When I know,” I said, “I’ll let you know.”

  * * *

  Russ and Alan were reluctant to leave, but I eventually managed to convince both of them that I didn’t want them around. That wasn’t entirely true. I did want them around. I wanted to feel safe with them. But Alan had his business to see to, and I didn’t want Russ writing about what had happened in the paper. He’d tell me he wouldn’t, but I thought it better not to tempt him.

  The minute they left, I called Simmonds. She told me she was picking up a coffee at Cranberries and arrived at my door less than five minutes later. This time she was the one bringing the coffee and muffins.

  I pulled out the plastic bag with the doll and told her where I’d found it. “Please, you can’t make a public display of investigating this. I can’t afford to frighten my customers.”

  She smiled at me as she took the bag. “Don’t worry, Merry. We can be discreet. You say there was no sign of a break-in?”

  “I checked thoroughly. Nothing has been disturbed. I’m almost positive they didn’t come inside.”

  “I’ll take the doll as well as the nail and the rope and check them for fingerprints. There’s probably no point in fingerprinting the door, you must have hundreds of people pushing your door open. I’ll run this against our databases and see if anything similar has been reported previously.”

  “Thanks.” Simply handing the doll over to Detective Simmonds made me feel a lot better. “This has to have something to do with the Olsen murder,” I said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s a warning. Someone thinks I’m getting close to finding out what happened and is telling me to back off.”

  “That’s possible. But there could be other reasons.”

  “There aren’t,” I said firmly. “This proves one thing beyond a doubt.”

  “And that is?”

  “That my dad didn’t do it. My father would never do anything to frighten me.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” she said.

  “You are?”

  “I’ll let you know what we find out,” she said. “In the meanwhile, stay out of this, Merry. And look out for yourself.”

  The moment Simmonds was out the door, Betty Thatcher was in. “What did she want?”

  “To wish me the compliments of the season,” I said.

  “Don’t give me that, Merry Wilkinson. Something’s up here. I know it. Simmonds left with a plastic bag. You don’t wrap your goods in plastic bags. Although why you waste money on those fancy paper
bags with your store logo on it, I never can figure out.”

  “People like customized bags,” I said, wondering why I was defending my business practices. “It’s worth the extra cost.”

  She sniffed. “Must be nice to have a hobby business. Not like folks like me who have to make my living from my shop. But I don’t complain,” she complained, “when fancy-dancy stores like this one muscle in on my business. Clark and me manage fine.”

  “How nice for you,” I said. “Sorry to chase you off, but I have a lot of work to get to.”

  Betty jerked her head toward the street. “Did she have anything to say about the Gord Olsen business?”

  “No.”

  She shifted her feet and studied the details of my carpet. “I want you to know, Merry, that I don’t believe what they’re all saying.”

  “What who’s all saying?”

  “That your dad killed Gord.”

  “No one’s saying that!”

  “Then why is Noel not going to be Santa this year? That young Kyle Lambert was in my shop buying himself a costume. He told Clark he’d been hired as the official Santa Claus for the children’s weekend. Anyway, I read it in the Chronicle.”

  I ground my teeth. I tried to remember that Betty had started this conversation by saying she didn’t think Dad was guilty. “I’m surprised you read the Chronicle, Betty. It never has anything positive to say about Rudolph.”

  “A customer brought it into my shop. She asked me if it was true.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “I said it was a pack of lies.”

  “Oh. Thank you for that.”

  “If you hear anything from that lady detective,” Betty said, “you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Betty crept back to her lair. I didn’t like her one tiny bit, but I did grudgingly appreciate her support for Dad. She might hate me and my shop but she was a lifetime Rudolphite, after all. And we Rudolphites stuck together.

  Or did we?

  Something about a photograph had been niggling at the back of my mind. A photograph and the Muddle Harbor Chronicle.

  Jackie told me Kyle had earned two hundred and fifty bucks from the sale of a picture he took with his phone. I’d been preoccupied with everything that was going on around here and had dismissed her comment without a thought. Now that I was thinking about it, I realized that only one photo taken in Rudolph lately would be worth selling.

  Kyle had been the one who snapped Dad and Mom leaving the police station the night of Gord’s death. He’d sold the photo to the Chronicle for two hundred and fifty dollars. And now he was putting some of his ill-gotten proceeds toward the cost of a Santa Claus suit. The traitorous rat.

  I filed that tidbit of information in the back of my mind to pull out when I needed it, and flipped the sign on the door to “Open.”

  The rain held off, but it was a dismal day, punctuated by the steady drip of water falling from the roof as the snow melted. A few people came into the shop in the morning, their expressions a match to the day and to my mood. What shoppers there were, were listless and their hearts weren’t in it.

  “We’ve come from Toronto for the children’s weekend,” a woman told me as she idly pawed through the table linens. Her silver hair was expensively cut and colored, her makeup discreet. A diamond tennis bracelet sparkled in the lights from the tree. “I’ve been wanting to bring my grandchildren here for a long time, and this year I convinced my daughter that her kids are old enough to enjoy all the children’s activities. Her husband didn’t want to come in the first place, and now he’s trying to talk her into leaving and heading up to Quebec for some skiing. They’ve had snow at Mont-Tremblant, he says.” She looked at me hopefully. “The weather won’t spoil everything, will it?”

  “We’ll move the events indoors, if we have to.”

  She grimaced. “Hard to have the snowman-making competition indoors, isn’t it? That’s all my grandson and my husband have been talking about for months. They’ve drawn up a series of sketches on how to approach the build and everything.” The edges of her mouth turned up in a fond smile. “My husband’s a retired architect. He misses it sometimes. What about this Santa Claus business?”

  My heart sank. “What Santa Claus business?” As if I didn’t know.

  “They say the man who plays Santa has been charged with murder. Doesn’t sound very wholesome, does it?”

  “He wasn’t charged. He was questioned because he might have been a witness.” I was getting very tired of repeating that.

  “If that’s the case,” the woman said, “there’s a murderer on the loose in this town.” She put down the napkins. “Perhaps we’d be better off going to Quebec. You’ve some nice things here, but not today, thanks.”

  She left.

  I cursed.

  Jackie arrived at one to begin her shift, and I told her I’d be out for most of the day.

  “Not again! Merry, you can’t leave me alone here. Suppose we get busy?”

  “Look, Jackie, if this shop’s going to survive, we have to find out who killed Gord Olsen. I’ve had a customer tell me they’re leaving because there’s a killer in town.”

  “He’s long gone,” Jackie said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Kyle said so. He says it’s a mob thing. We all know the mob’s heavily involved in construction, right? Gord wanted to build a Mega-Mart, right? Someone in the mob probably didn’t want the contract to go to their enemy.”

  For the first time ever, I wanted to believe something Kyle had to say. But no arrest for Gord’s death wasn’t good, either. We didn’t need the shadow of an unsolved homicide hanging over Rudolph. Not if it made people think they were in danger of being murdered in their hotel beds.

  I went home and got my car. I didn’t even go upstairs to check on Mattie; I didn’t want the complications of dealing with the excited puppy when I was trying to do something about solving a murder. Guilt at leaving him followed me down the street.

  I drove through town. As I passed Victoria’s Bake Shoppe I tried to peer inside, but couldn’t see anything. I knew I should pop in to see Vicky and try to get over the way we’d left things last night after her phone call. But what I was about to do wouldn’t earn me any thanks from her, and so I didn’t stop. More guilt piled on.

  The snow on the lawns surrounding the Yuletide Inn was still in fairly good condition, and the long driveway and meandering paths had been scraped of snow and ice and well salted. The temperatures were slightly above freezing, but a sharp, icy wind was blowing in from the lake, so I was pleased to see some families out, the kids well wrapped against the cold. A big red old-fashioned sleigh sat at the far end of the parking lot, and it warmed the cockles of my heart (whatever cockles might be) to see it. A local farmer would be bringing Dancer and Prancer, his two gorgeous Clydesdales, on Saturday to ferry families between the inn and town in the sleigh.

  I could only hope there would be activities in Rudolph for the families to enjoy.

  I drove around the back and parked beside the delivery bay at the rear of the kitchen. It was almost two o’clock, and I hoped I wasn’t too early. I stuck my head in the door. “Hello?”

  The kitchen wasn’t quite a hive of activity, but it was still busy. Giant pots emitted clouds of steam, knives flashed over rows of brilliantly colored produce, and in a far corner dirty dishes were stacked high while a young, long-haired man up to his elbows in soapy water tried to control the onslaught.

  “Merry!” Mark called. “Nice to see you. Come on in.” He waved a razor-sharp knife with a ten-inch blade at me. I swallowed. A chicken lay on the counter in front of him.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your work,” I lied.

  “Not a problem. I took yesterday off, so I came in early to get started on dinner prep.”
>
  “Are you going to be full tonight?” I said.

  He grimaced. “Not as full as I’d like to be.” He lowered his voice. “We’ve had cancellations, at the inn as well as the restaurant. Grace was counting on being fully booked every night until New Year’s, but right now it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. People don’t want to vacation at a hotel where someone was recently murdered.”

  The chicken on the butcher’s block was plump and healthy looking. Other than the being-dead part, that is. I glanced around the big, busy room. The vegetables looked good. The tomatoes ranged from the usual round red to small and yellow or deep purple and misshaped, meaning they weren’t mass-produced; the carrots were purple and yellow as well as the standard orange. A mountain of kale waited to be washed.

  Mark followed my gaze. “Wondering where your food comes from, Merry? It’s not always easy at this time of year to get fresh produce in New York State, but small-scale farmers are doing great things with greenhouses and cold frames these days. The tomatoes are from California, nothing I can do about that, but I managed to find a good heirloom supplier. What brings you here?”

  I cleared my throat. “Do you have a minute to talk, Mark? Privately, I mean.”

  “Sure.” He called to the woman who was standing at a giant sink and washing vegetables under a steady spray of water. “Anna, I’m taking a short break.”

  “Okay, Chef,” she called without looking up.

  Mark put down the knife. I was glad of it, and felt guilty for being glad. He led the way into a small, cramped room that served as his office. As well as the usual computer paraphernalia and piles of invoices and bills, stacks of cooking magazines and catalogues from restaurant suppliers filled the room. Two posters hung on the wall. Both were typical tourist stuff: one of the French Quarter of New Orleans at night, the other Manhattan taken from a plane.

  He caught me looking at the posters. “My two major influences. I cook modern urban American with a Cajun accent.” He grinned. “Although not at Christmas. At Christmas, Grace wants traditional all the way.” He rubbed at his short hair. “What’s up?”