Nutty As a Fruitcake

by Mary Daheim

  Renie could be heard thumping up her basement stairs. “That’s closer than the police will ever come,” she said dubiously. “What are you basing that on—those fir needles that were tracked into the Goodrich house?”

  “Exactly,” said Judith, searching for a tag to match the small gold package. “If George was already unconscious, he couldn’t have gone outside after Ted brought his tree home. It couldn’t have been Enid, because she wouldn’t have dirtied her precious carpet. Thus, it had to be the killer, who obviously doped George’s antacid the previous night.”

  Renie sighed. “So we’re back to Art, Glenda, Greg, and Dave, because we know they were all at the house.” Cutlery rattled in the background. “Of course, there’s always the possibility that someone else who wasn’t spotted came by.”

  “I know,” Judith agreed, fitting Uncle Al’s driving gloves into a box. “O.P. missed a couple of hours while he was eating and visiting with Dooley. Even Arlene can’t see everything that goes on in the cul-de-sac. When the Rankerses eat in the dinette, all they can see is us.”

  “Whoever it was, they got into the bedroom,” Renie pointed out over the grating noise of her potato peeler. “They had to, in order to put the Dalmane in George’s glass.”

  “True,” Judith agreed, cutting a sheet of blue wrapping paper off a long roll. “I’m still fretting over the hatchet. If Arlene’s right, that thing changed hands the afternoon before the murder. The question is, did George give it back to Mrs. Swanson, or did he borrow it again?”

  “Why would he borrow it a second time?” Renie asked, now to the sound of running tap water. “Didn’t you gather that he’d gotten that load of wood a while ago?”

  Judith had already considered that question. “Chopping wood is like doing yard work. It got him outside, away from Enid. What other excuse did George have this time of year?”

  “Good point. Hey, coz, got to go. Bill’s bus was late, and he just came home.” Renie hung up.

  Adding Uncle Al’s gift to the colorful stack of presents, Judith considered taking some of them downstairs to put under the tree. But it was too soon. She didn’t want guests accidentally trampling the packages or, worse yet, Sweetums shredding the wrappings.

  But it was the hatchet that preyed on Judith’s mind as she prepared the guests’ hors d’oeuvres, delivered her mother’s dinner, and took the call from Joe saying he’d be at least an hour late. Just before six-thirty, Judith put on her jacket and headed out into the rain.

  Fleetingly, she noticed that the three Wise Men were now in full view. The Porters had added cutouts of busy elves, fittingly positioned above their double garage. On the other side of the street, Judith could see the tip of the Ericsons’ noble fir through the front window. From what she could tell, Ted and Jeanne had used only small white lights.

  Just before Judith reached the shared driveway, Jeanne Ericson pulled up in her Volvo. Judith waited for her to get out of the car.

  “Hi, Judith!” Jeanne called, coming down the drive. Her trim figure was burdened with shopping bags, briefcase, and purse. “Traffic downtown is getting awful! It took me half an hour to get from my office to the bottom of the Hill.”

  “Your tree looks pretty,” Judith remarked, brushing raindrops from her cheeks. “At least what I can see of it. Ted must have turned it on.”

  But Jeanne gave a shake of her damp blond hair. “Ted’s not home. He has a meeting. The lights are on a timer.” Jeanne juggled her various items, then opened the gate that led to the walk. “Come in. I’ll show you the tree.”

  Judith hesitated, then agreed. But when Jeanne got to the wide front porch, she turned in a jerky motion. “Oh!” Jeanne uttered a nervous laugh. “I forgot! I have to make a couple of phone calls right away! Come by tomorrow night, okay?”

  Puzzled, Judith retraced her steps back to the sidewalk. “Sure, that’s fine.” She had gotten as far as the first stair to the porch, which was far enough to notice a large cardboard box sitting by the front door.

  Judith didn’t believe Jeanne’s excuse for a minute. She couldn’t help but wonder why one was needed.

  Two doors down, Mrs. Swanson seemed pleased to see Judith. “You must take something—tea, sake, gin, scotch?”

  “Scotch sounds great,” Judith said. “Just a tiny bit.”

  “Excellent,” Mrs. Swanson replied, going to a lacquered liquor cabinet. The Swanson living room was a harmonious blend of East and West. Sitting on a blue sofa with tasteful ivory-and-brown stripes, Judith felt a sense of peace overcome her. Ironically, she also felt as if she were on a fool’s errand.

  “I mix myself a small martini,” Mrs. Swanson said with a self-effacing air. “I never drink alone. After my husband died, I wished to. Often. But I would not permit it.”

  Judith felt like saying that she had wanted to drink—often—while her first husband was still alive. But instead, she merely smiled and commended her hostess on her self-control.

  Mrs. Swanson graciously accepted the compliment. Sipping her martini, the black eyes turned shrewd. “You are troubled, Mrs. Flynn. Why else do you come?”

  Judith winced. She wished she could say it was merely a neighborly visit to a lonely widow. “It’s about the hatchet,” she blurted. “Did Mr. Goodrich ever return it?”

  Plucking the olive out of her glass, Mrs. Swanson gazed across the room at a Japanese hanging scroll depicting a waterfall. “Why, yes.” She popped the olive in her mouth, chewing slowly. “How odd that I’d forgotten!”

  “But…” Judith frowned into her scotch. “You told me that the weapon was yours. I assumed Mr. Goodrich still had it.”

  Mrs. Swanson looked chagrined. “I thought he had. Then I remembered he’d returned it.” She shook her head in apparent dismay. “We old people tend to forget.”

  “Oh,” Judith said innocently. “You still have it, then?”

  “No, I don’t.” Mrs. Swanson took another sip from her drink. “The Salvation Army came by the other day. Before Christmas, I always contribute whatever I don’t need. Along with clothing and a small cash donation, I gave them some tools. Including the hatchet.” She looked straight at Judith. “What good is a hoe to an old woman my age? Or a heavy shovel or metal cutters—or a hatchet?”

  “I see.” Judith lowered her eyes. The residents of the cul-de-sac seemed to be avoiding the truth. It was impossible not to wonder why.

  Somehow, Judith and her mother managed to make their candy without killing each other. There were injuries, however, including Gertrude smashing a plate along with the walnuts, an unnerved Judith spilling melted chocolate bits on the floor and slipping onto her backside, and Sweetums scorching his whiskers when he jumped into the sink to lick the still-hot divinity pan.

  But by noon, the candies were finished. Judith fixed her mother’s lunch, hurriedly ate a tuna sandwich, and checked with Phyliss Rackley to see if she was ready to head to the Goodrich house. Phyliss was—almost. The cleaning woman needed another ten minutes to retrieve the laundry from the dryer. Judith spent the time going over her bookings to make sure she hadn’t made any more mistakes.

  “Your cat’s in the dryer again,” Phyliss said as she came into the kitchen. “I’m spinning his satanic ways out of him. Cats have always been a witch’s familiar, you know. Terrible animals, cats. Ever see a picture of Our Lord offering a ball of yarn to a cat?”

  Judith didn’t respond. Assuming that Phyliss was kidding about Sweetums being on spin, Judith led the way to the Goodrich house.

  “Well now!” Phyliss exclaimed in self-righteous triumph as she surveyed the stripped-down twin beds. “Like always, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The only thing that got Enid out of her bed was the Grim Reaper. As for George, he never let me touch his bed. Now I’m going to do just that—but will he ever lie in it again? That’s in the Lord’s hands, too.”

  “Actually,” said Judith, who had fetched clean linens from the hall closet, “it’s up to the police and a court of law. If George is innoce
nt, he may want to come home.”

  “But I thought those worthless kids of his were going to sell the place,” Phyliss said, taking a plain white set of sheets from Judith.

  “They intend to,” Judith answered, starting in on Enid’s bed, “but the final say is up to George. He owns the house. Once he pulls himself together, he might want to live here again. I think Glenda and Art are jumping the gun. Especially Glenda. I don’t think JoAnne wants George staying at their house forever.”

  Sausage curls bobbing, Phyliss tried to get the fitted bottom sheet on George’s mattress. “Art and JoAnne probably hope George will go to jail,” the cleaning woman said, still wrestling with the bedding. “It’d be easier and cheaper. In fact, it’s as good as bumping off both the old folks. The rest of the family will get what money there is, plus the house. From what I hear, they can all use—Bless me! What’s that?”

  Phyliss stopped trying to tug the sheet’s fourth corner into place. She had dislodged the mattress, and with it, a large rectangular item.

  Judith came around from Enid’s bed. “It’s a book,” she said, as Phyliss raised the mattress a scant inch. “I’ll get it.”

  In full view, Judith was able to identify George’s ledger at once. She flipped through the pages as Phyliss lowered the mattress and finally secured the sheet.

  “Dirty ditties?” Phyliss inquired, stuffing a pillow into a case. “Lewd pictures, maybe?” She tried to lean over Judith’s shoulder.

  “It’s the account book for Pacific Meats,” Judith said, her initial excitement dwindling. “George must have kept it under his mattress. I wonder why?”

  Seeing the long columns of figures, Phyliss lost interest. “Why not? What else did he have to call his own except the bed? Even there, he wasn’t safe from Mrs. G.’s nagging.”

  Judith started to sit down on Enid’s bed, thought better of it, and perched on the cedar chest instead. For once, Phyliss was making sense. George—and his work—had been confined to the bedroom. As Judith paged through the ledger, she noted that the last entries were dated December first.

  “He must have worked on this during the night,” she said in a curious voice. “O.P. said the house was dark at nine-thirty Tuesday, the thirtieth. But sometime after midnight, George got up and made his entries. The question is, when did he drink his antacid?”

  “When he needed it,” Phyliss asserted, finishing George’s bed.

  “True,” Judith replied in a thoughtful tone. “He told me that he liked to nibble when he worked late. Maybe he ate something that set him off.” She began working her way backward, trying to make sense of the numbers. After scanning a few pages, Judith realized it was fruitless. She had no point of reference. But she did notice a half-dozen question marks in the margin. “I wonder,” she murmured to herself rather than to Phyliss.

  “Don’t we all,” Phyliss said as she finished Enid’s bed for Judith. “Take you Catholics—heathen ideas, if you ask me. What’s this business about carpet cleaners? In my church, we don’t have such a thing. Where do you find carpet cleaners in the Bible?”

  The question wrenched Judith from her speculation about the account book. “You’ve been talking to Arlene Rankers?”

  “You bet.” Phyliss tried to pull her housedress down over the uneven lace of her slip. “I know Wise Men and camels but not those carpet cleaners. Do you Catholics worship them or what?”

  “Certainly not,” Judith replied firmly, though she was forced to smile. “Arlene sometimes…gets carried away. Like saying that George has a nest egg, when, in fact, there’s no sign of…” Inspiration struck, if not precisely in the form of carpet cleaners, at least in the concept of carpets. Judith spun out of the bedroom.

  “Give me a hand with this living room rug,” she called to Phyliss who had gone into the bathroom, presumably to start cleaning. “I think there’s something under it.”

  Wearing a dubious expression, Phyliss entered the living room. “What would Enid think? We roam all over her precious house, then we start tearing up the carpeting?”

  “That’s right,” Judith said, on her hands and knees. “Let’s see if we can lift the part of the rug that’s under the plastic runner.”

  Lifting the two-foot-wide segment proved easier than Judith had expected. Slipping her hand between the carpet and the pad, she felt an envelope, then another, and just beyond her reach, a third. Sitting up, Judith opened the first, which was a standard manila type with a metal clasp. She gave the envelope a little shake.

  At least twenty one-hundred-dollar bills fluttered to the floor. Phyliss gasped with amazement; Judith clapped in triumph.

  “The nest egg!” Judith cried. “It was here all along, under the carpet! No wonder Enid wouldn’t let anybody walk on it!”

  “How much?” asked Phyliss, counting the fallen bills.

  “Who knows? There are at least two more envelopes under the rug. There could be forty of them between here and the front door. I guess George didn’t trust banks. Or maybe it was Enid’s idea.”

  Phyliss waved the bills under Judith’s nose. “Twenty-two hundred dollars, right here! Did they tithe? That’s two thousand for them, two hundred for God.”

  “They never went to church, as far as I know,” Judith answered vaguely. She was still overcome by the discovery. She was also dismayed. The Goodriches had a small fortune under their carpet, but it was doubtful if Enid ever allowed them to spend a penny of it to help anyone, including their own children. “What a waste,” she sighed.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Phyliss asked, obviously reluctant to let go of the bills.

  “Nothing,” Judith responded, gently taking the money from Phyliss and putting it back in the manila envelope. “Except tell the police.”

  “The police?” Phyliss’s gooseberry blue eyes widened. “What about George? And those kids of his?”

  Replacing the envelope under the rug, Judith got to her feet. “George knows. His kids don’t need to—yet.” She glanced at the desk. “There was never any money in there, I’ll bet. So why did Art…” Her voice trailed off as her brain began to whirl. She looked sharply at Phyliss. “What did you say about killing off both old folks when we were in the bedroom?”

  Startled, Phyliss jerked her head back, causing two of the sausage curls to stand straight up, like horns. “What did I say? Oh—if George goes to jail, he might as well be dead, as far as his kids are concerned. Is that what you meant?”

  Judith nodded. She also knew what Phyliss meant. At last, she felt she understood the killer’s intentions.

  EIGHTEEN

  JUDITH HATED TO admit it, but Gertrude gave her the idea for Joe’s special Christmas gift. On Tuesday night, when Judith went out to the toolshed to decorate her mother’s tree, Gertrude was watching an old World War II movie.

  “Look at our boys,” Gertrude urged, poking Sweetums in the rump. “They’re going to shoot the stuffing out of those Nazis! Off they go, into the wild blue yonder! Bang, bang, bang! Ack, ack, ack! Down in flames! Three cheers for the army air corps!”

  Judith was standing by the door, trying not to get in Gertrude’s line of sight with the TV. “Mother, where do you want your tree?”

  “Right up Hitler’s behind!” Gertrude cried, waving a fist at the screen. “On to Berlin! Get the little devil with his stupid bristle mustache! Yahoo!”

  Judith edged into the room. A fir branch blocked the TV set. Gertrude howled. Judith grew impatient.

  “Mother, it’s after eight. I don’t want to be decorating this thing at midnight. Where do you want it? In the corner next to the TV? By your chair?”

  “I don’t want it in front of our gallant fighting men,” Gertrude retorted, leaning so far to the left that she almost squashed Sweetums. “Look, here they come, back to wherever they left from about five minutes ago. See that clean-cut young fella with the big grin? He’s going to get shot down in the next ten minutes. He dies every time I see this moving picture.”

  I
n spite of herself, Judith’s eyes veered to the TV screen. Sure enough, a handsome actor Judith didn’t recognize was striding across an airfield that resembled the Warner Brothers back lot. Judith had to admit that he looked very dashing in his army air corps cap, leather jacket, and long white aviator’s scarf.

  “Yikes!” Judith cried, almost dropping the tree. “That’s it!”

  “No, it isn’t,” Gertrude snapped. “They’ve still got to pound those Nazi planes into the ground, get three more American boys killed, and figure out that they’re a real team and not a bunch of flying cowboys. Oh, and kiss the blond girl who’s waiting in a basement somewhere pushing little stick things around on a big map.”

  Judith wasn’t listening. She had propped the tree up against the sofa and was trying to fit it into a small stand. “Between your chair and the TV,” she said, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice. “We’ll have to move the set a bit, but it’ll work.”

  “I like my TV where it is,” Gertrude grumbled, but she didn’t put up a serious fight.

  Judith began to set up the tree in earnest. Gertrude ignored her efforts, concentrating on the American destruction of the German Luftwaffe. Unfortunately, that was accomplished before Judith finished decorating. It also appeared that the Nazi defeat might have been achieved with less bloodshed than the battle of the toolshed.

  “You’ve got two red lights together,” Gertrude complained. “The bottom’s all dark. Move ’em.”

  Judith did.

  “The angel on top looks like she’s drunk,” Gertrude griped. “Fix her.”

  Judith complied.

  “That big blue ball always goes in the middle,” Gertrude grumbled. “Put it where that green bell is.”