Secret Santa Murder

by Karin Kaufman

  “So it happened about seventy years ago?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Of course, Birdie’s father was accused of destroying the farm’s soil. I guess he wanted to move to Presque Isle.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “He didn’t see another way out. I don’t blame him for not wanting to be a potato farmer, but destroying the land so no one else could use it? It broke everyone’s heart.”

  “But Birdie still doesn’t believe he—”

  “She knows. She clings to the knowledge that her father was never formally charged—but that was her grandfather’s doing. He didn’t want to lose his son along with his farm, and neither did the law. But all that happened forever ago. Why would one of them bring it up now?”

  “Actually, I’m trying to that find out.”

  Elizabeth arched her thick gray brows.

  “I’m trying to help,” I explained. “Irene Carrick asked me to find out who’s responsible for the ornaments and Norma’s accident.” Now I leaned in and lowered my voice. “You know the Merry Knitters. Do you have any idea?”

  “Have you considered Irene herself? She’s very caustic.”

  It was astonishing how people mistook a brusque personality for a murderous one. Plenty of killers wore smiley faces and spoke in sugary voices. It was how they put their victims at ease before they struck. “Irene speaks her mind, but she and Norma are good friends.”

  “Well, maybe, maybe. But Irene didn’t like Phyllis.”

  “Neither did Hazel O’Brien and Carla Moretti. It was the eggnog incident.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “That was years ago.”

  “All these incidents happened years ago. Phyllis and her eggnog, Hazel’s firefighting husband not saving a dog in a house fire.”

  “One of them brought that up too?”

  “Hazel found a chicken ornament.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “And Joan Simms found a schoolhouse. We think it has to do with her calling the police on Marvin Moretti when he was a boy. I guess it caused trouble for him further down the line.”

  “The school vandalism from decades past?”

  “And Norma received a pig, which we think is a reference to Joan calling her a pig for buying that green yarn she wanted.”

  “Oh, good night.” Elizabeth had heard enough. “She called her a pig?”

  “Later, during one of their meetings.”

  “They argued in the shop. I told Joan I was ordering more yarn, but she went on and on, and the more she went on and on, the more Norma didn’t want to share a few skeins. As for Marvin Moretti, what trouble has he had? He’s very successful, selling real estate all over Maine. By the looks of his office on Essex, he’s doing very well for himself. Anyway, I’ve never heard Carla or Joan bring the matter up. Was someone pointing a finger at Joan?”

  “We think so, but . . .” These supposedly traumatic incidents now seemed more trivial than ever—almost invented. I wondered then if pettiness was the whole point of the Secret Santa ornaments. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be taken to heart. But Birdie had taken her ornament to heart. She’d truly been wounded by it. “We don’t know for sure. Most of this is guesswork.”

  “What ornament did Carla get?”

  “Wax red lips.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Carla still flirts, if you can believe it. At her age. But then she had that affair with Irene’s husband, which is even worse. I don’t understand why they knit together. Have you considered that this ornament thing is Irene’s doing? That’s my hunch. That woman would never pass up a chance at revenge. Not with Carla in the group.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Elizabeth gave me the address of Marvin Moretti’s real estate office on Essex, just three blocks away, so after leaving Thistle and Wool, I hurried there, jostling poor Minette in my pocket as I jogged up the sidewalk. Marvin was on the phone when I entered, and by the looks of things, he was swamped with work. But then Saturday was probably prime time for someone who sold homes and office buildings.

  The office itself wasn’t luxurious, but there were newish computers and printers on the desks, and he had at least four employees under him, all of whom were in the same office, hard at work. Those facts alone told me that Elizabeth had been right about him being successful.

  I shoved the gossip about Carla and Irene’s husband to the back of my mind and focused on how I was going to broach the subject of his childhood brush with the law. I didn’t have much time to think. Within moments, he was shaking my hand and asking how he could help me. Not wanting to waste his time, I introduced myself and dove right in. First I mentioned Elizabeth—she was my calling card of sorts—and then I told him I was trying to find out who had injured Norma Howard. For the time being, I thought, it was best to leave Irene’s name out of it.

  “I’m not sure I can be of any help with that,” he said, trying to fold his arms across his beefy chest. He gave up and laced his fingers together. “I know Norma, and my mom is part of the same knitting group she’s in, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. I did hear about her accident, though.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I said. “Someone dropped ball bearings on her kitchen floor. They wanted her to trip.”

  He puffed out his broad cheeks and shook his head. “Wow. I mean, what did they do? Dump a box of them when she wasn’t looking? Have you ever heard of anything like that?”

  I confessed I hadn’t.

  “Are the police investigating?” Marvin asked.

  “Yes, now they are, what with Phyllis Bigelow’s death. That was no accident. She was murdered.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “She was poisoned.” There hadn’t been confirmation of that yet, but I was convinced.

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his khakis. “This knitting club is getting dangerous. Do the police think . . . ? I mean, is my mom in danger, do you think?”

  “She might be. Personally, I don’t think those ladies should meet for a while. I think they should take a break. Did you hear about the Secret Santa ornaments?”

  “Yeah, yeah. My mom told me everything.”

  “Joan Simms, who used to be a teacher at Smithwell Elementary School, received a plastic schoolhouse as an ornament. When she taught school, she went by the name Mrs. Fulton.”

  Marvin’s eyes narrowed. “I remember Mrs. Fulton.”

  I sighed. Investigating a murder was no way to make friends in Smithwell. “There’s no other way to ask you about this. Some people think she got that ornament because decades ago she called the police on you and two of your friends.”

  “No, seriously?” he said with a chuckle. “That was almost forty years ago.” He put a hand to his chest. “You think it was me? Are you kidding?”

  “No, I think it was one of the ladies in the knitting club, but I thought you might know who.”

  He stopped chuckling and dropped his hand. “You think it was my mom? Look, what’s your name again?”

  “Kate Brewer.”

  “Kate, I was ten years old at the time, and my mom was angry with me, not Mrs. Fulton. You’re telling me this schoolhouse ornament was a symbol of . . . what, revenge? Hung there on the shrubbery for all to see?”

  “It seems the other ornaments were meant as revenge, so yes. And the note that came with the ornaments supports that idea.”

  “Yeah, my mom showed me that. ‘Secret Santa says it’s time for you to pay.’ Kind of dramatic.”

  “For someone, it’s deadly serious. That break-in, Hazel’s husband not saving a dog, the pesticide poisoning on the potato farm—those events are still fresh in someone’s mind.”

  “But I don’t care about the break-in anymore. Who would? It’s ancient history, and I didn’t even get a juvie record out of it. The school agreed to let me off if I acted as a weekend junior janitor for the rest of the school year. And I don’t blame Mrs. Fulton. I did when I was young, but you know how kids think. She didn’t know it was me and my friends w
hen she called the police. She was alone and she was scared.”

  “Do your two friends still live in Smithwell?”

  “No. One of them is still in Maine—Bangor, I think—and the other moved out of state a long time ago.”

  He was hitting all the right notes, sounding detached from the long-ago incident and yet appropriately contrite about it. “And your mom doesn’t hold a grudge about it?”

  “I was ten. Let me ask you something. Why would this event from the past come up now?”

  “That’s a very good question. Except for Norma’s Secret Santa ornament, all the ornaments were references to events anywhere from four to seventy years ago.”

  “If I were you, I’d be trying to find out why. What was Phyllis Bigelow’s ornament?”

  “An egg, standing for the eggnog that gave the other knitters food poisoning four years ago.”

  “Shoot, I remember that deal. Birdie Thompson almost ended up in the hospital. So Phyllis was murdered for bad eggnog? Does that sound right to you?”

  “Not really. And even if she was, why kill her now, four years later?”

  He tilted his head. “Yep. Just what I’m thinking.”

  “Thanks, Marvin.” The man was more insightful and candid than I’d expected him to be, so I decided to take a shot at one last question. “Before I go, do you know why your mom and Irene Carrick seem to have it in for each other?”

  “Irene Carrick has it in for a lot of people.”

  “This friction is beyond Irene’s usual prickliness. There are rumors. Some people have said . . .”

  “Some people?”

  Some meaning one, and one meaning Elizabeth at the yarn shop. “Some have said that your mom and Irene’s husband had an affair.”

  “You’re not serious.” Marvin let go with a sonic boom of a laugh. “My mom and Jack Carrick? No way. She wasn’t interested.”

  “Then why do people—”

  “You know what it is? High school, that’s what. You do something stupid in high school and you’re saddled for life with it. Like me and the break-in—only that goes back further than high school. But here you are, sure I’m involved in this somehow because when I was ten I did a stupid thing.” He suddenly lowered his voice. “My mom liked getting attention from guys at school. Her dad died when she was eight. She needed to fill a void, if you ask me. And she’s been paying for it ever since.”

  “Paying for it how?”

  “My mom is seventy-one years old, but even her friends still make jokes about her high school years and how she was . . . easy. That’s what they called it. A mistake from that long ago shouldn’t haunt you for the rest of your life—or haunt your kids. I mean, people change, but in Smithwell they’re not allowed to.”

  “But Marvin, Irene herself told me that your mom kissed her husband at a Christmas party and then talked about it afterward. That wasn’t fifty-five years ago.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper. “My mom drinks too much at parties. I think it makes her feel young again, all right? Look, she’s not perfect. Did she kiss Jack Carrick? I wasn’t there, but probably. Did she laugh about it later to get under Irene’s skin? I’d bet on it. But no way—I mean, no way—she had an affair with Jack. With all her faults, my dad adored her, and the feeling was mutual. My mom did what an ordinary woman might do at a party and it was blown out of proportion because it’s my mom. Because it’s her history and she’s not allowed to leave it behind or forget it. And neither am I, for that matter.”

  Boy, had I stepped in it. I nodded and mumbled a thanks, feeling that I’d intruded into matters deeply personal, and knowing that Marvin had had to get personal in return in order to defend his mother.

  “If Irene told you they had an affair, she’s lying,” he added.

  “Irene wasn’t the one. She didn’t say anything about an affair.”

  He grunted. “Well, that’s something, I guess. I’m glad my dad isn’t around to hear this.”

  I thanked him again, made a rapid exit, and set out for my Jeep, which was still parked on Water Street.

  As I headed home, big, wet snowflakes began to fall. I switched on my wipers and told Minette it was safe for her to leave my pocket. She climbed out and then fluttered over to the passenger seat, where she crossed her legs and sat.

  “What do you think about Marvin?” I asked. “You’re good at judging human voices.”

  “He wants to protect his mom.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “He hated you asking him questions.”

  “He’s sick of the whole subject. And he’s right about people not letting you leave the worst parts of your past behind. There’s always someone to bring the past up. Like me.”

  “Like Carla’s friends, Kate. They like to remind her what she was like.”

  “And they don’t forgive.”

  “They want everybody to be what they once were. That makes them feel safe and rested.”

  I glanced down at her and smiled. “I don’t know how you became so wise. Do fairies forgive each other?”

  “Sometimes. But sometimes they’re like people. Look at the snow coming down! It’s Christmas in the forest!”

  By the time I turned onto my driveway and churned my way up, my wipers were clogged with snow.

  “A tree, a tree!” Minette cried.

  “Off the dashboard, please. Someone will see you.”

  There in my dooryard was a small Christmas tree, maybe five feet high, straight and beautiful in its own green stand. “Emily, you really did it,” I said. “And you even bought a tree stand.”

  Minette flew excitedly into my pocket as I parked in my detached garage. The tree was close to the house, so that most of the snow had melted on its branches, but when I brought it inside, I left it in the kitchen to dry.

  “I’ll put it in the living room when I get back from Emily’s house,” I told Minette.

  She’d already bolted from my pocket and into the tree. She stood in her bare feet on the topmost horizontal branch and grasped the central top of the tree, where I planned to set my Christmas star.

  “Don’t the needles hurt your feet?” I asked.

  “Not fairies, Kate.”

  “Of course. What was I thinking?”

  “And it’s a fir tree. It’s not hard.”

  I reached out and brushed the tree’s soft, blunt needles. What snow had been on it had melted, and now sweet, tiny drops, like rain, clung to its feathery branches.

  “Will you put something in it so I can sleep and not fall?”

  “As soon as I get back from dinner with Emily and Laurence. I’ll have to think of something.”

  With one hand still holding the center top of the tree, Minette bounced like a child on the branches and then pushed her face—and momentarily tangled her short, wavy hair—in the needles, breathing in the forest scent.

  “I didn’t know fairies have Christmas,” I said. “Did you have Christmas with your family or friends?”

  “No more.”

  I walked up to her and bent a little at the waist until my eyes were inches from her body. “Why not? Tell me.”

  “My family is gone. My friends are gone in a different way.” Though Minette’s expression bordered on grief, her green eyes still shone with glee as she wriggled her toes in the pine needles.

  “As usual, what you’ve said tells me very little.”

  She stopped her wriggling.

  “Does this have to do with scary things in the forest?” I asked.

  “I’m not scared. I’m in your house.”

  “Yes, you are, and you’re safe here. But this conversation isn’t over by a long shot.” I checked for my house keys in my pocket.

  “Can I come?”

  “Absolutely not,” I replied as I strode for my front door. I grabbed a knit cap from the closer in the foyer. “Laurence would freak out.”

  “Laurence is a spy.”

  I pivoted back to Minette. “Are you mimicking what I said or do
you know something?”

  “I’ve never met him, Kate. But I think he knows things. Things you and Emily don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 10

  With Minette’s mysterious assessment of Laurence ringing in my ears, I headed down the flagstone path for the MacKenzies’ house. Michael had laid the path more than ten years ago as a substitute for our lack of a sidewalk and because houses on our street were half an acre apart. He had kept it shoveled too, before he became sick, but tonight Laurence had cleared the snow and even sprinkled it with salt.

  The MacKenzies’ two-story house was done up in blue and green lights, and a Christmas tree—more blue and green lights—was on display in the front window. I rang the doorbell.

  I had thought I would dread this moment. That I would hate being the next-door widow butting in on the couple’s Christmas. But in those few seconds on the doorstep, before Emily opened her wreathed front door and pulled me inside, I realized I was happy to be there and looking forward to dinner and then Emily’s homemade dessert by the fire.

  “You’re two minutes late,” she said with a grin.

  “I had this tree to deal with,” I said. “Oddest thing. Someone left a tree and a tree stand in my dooryard.”

  “Merry Christmas, Kate!” Laurence strode to the door, all six feet four of him, and wrapped me in a bear hug.

  “How long has it been, world traveler?” I asked. “I never see you anymore.”

  “I know, I know. That’s what Emily says. Give me your coat and hat. Tonight you relax—and eat much more than a human being should.”

  I patted my belly, told him I had every intention of obeying orders, and followed the two of them into their living room.

  “Oh, my. It’s beautiful.” Suddenly I wished Minette could see it: the Christmas tree glittering with silver and gold ornaments, logs blazing in the fireplace, and a garland, accented with berries and pomegranates, hanging on the mantel. Thank goodness for the tree Emily had given me. It wasn’t too late to spread a little Christmas cheer.