We Wish You a Merry Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

“We won’t think about that,” she insisted. “We’re here to have fun. How about some eggnog?”

  “It’s a little early in the day for me—” Kathleen began.

  “It’s never too early for eggnog. Heavens, it’s practically breakfast,” Kelly said, clearly disagreeing. “Milk, sugar, eggs … All that’s missing is some bacon or toast.”

  “Well …”

  “It’s not alcoholic,” Susan whispered in Kathleen’s ear. “Kelly doesn’t drink.”

  “Oh.”

  “Why don’t we all go into the kitchen and get some lunch?” Kelly suggested. “After all, we should have something nourishing before we get to the goodies, shouldn’t we?”

  So, almost immediately after sitting down, they were all getting up and walking to the kitchen. Kathleen, amazed, followed the crowd.

  The kitchen matched the rest of the house. The color scheme was, of course, blue and white. Baskets and a king’s ransom of copper pans hung from exposed rafters. Candles glowed, flowers blossomed, and, in the middle of the room, sat a gigantic antique trestle table, originally designed to seat a dozen hungry farmers, loaded with loaves of homemade bread and two varieties of muffins, three pots of steaming soup, and fruit salads with creamy dressing. With cries that signaled the abandoning of their diets for the holiday season, the ladies dug in.

  “I didn’t know Kelly had any children,” Kathleen whispered to Susan as they made their way, plates brimming with food, back to the living room.

  “She doesn’t. Are you thinking about that gigantic table?”

  “That, and the size of the house. There must be at least four bedrooms upstairs,” Kathleen guessed, glancing toward the wide stairway, treads stenciled with different animal silhouettes, that led up to the second floor.

  “Only three. Although two of them have sitting rooms attached. And there are three full baths. Kelly and Evan had this house built to very specific requirements. They did an incredible amount of entertaining. Not just this type of thing, but having people out from the city for weekends. I assume his business required it.”

  “And she loved it.”

  “That she does,” Susan replied, finding a seat with a small table nearby. She balanced her food in one hand while moving a pot of flowers and a Lalique ashtray to make a place to set it down. “Or did,” she said, correcting her last statement. “This is the first party she’s given since the divorce. But it’s the same as it always was.”

  “And that’s just the way it should be. Why should she give up anything that she loved just because Evan decided to run off and marry another woman?” asked a woman whose striking clothing set off her elegant, prematurely gray chignon.

  “Well, maybe.” Susan didn’t agree, but didn’t think this was the time to talk about it. “Elizabeth, do you know Kathleen Gordon?”

  “Of course. We met at one or two Christmas parties last year, and at the Labor Day extravaganza at the club. Although I was suffering from such bad jet lag the first week of September that I don’t even remember the picnic. But Derek said it was important that we go,” answered Elizabeth Stevenson, looking around vaguely. “Don’t you think Kelly is doing well?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Yes.”

  “You know, a lot of people said she should sell the house after Evan left, but Kelly wouldn’t consider it. And she was right. There’s no reason to change your life-style just because your husband leaves you.”

  “But to have your ex-husband and his new wife living in a house right behind yours …” started a voice from across the room.

  “Evan can choose where he wants to live; that shouldn’t change where Kelly wants to live,” Elizabeth replied.

  “Evan lives … ? I didn’t realize …” Kathleen began, looking at Susan. But Elizabeth wasn’t finished.

  “There is no reason for Kelly to move. This house is as much Kelly’s as it was Evan’s—more even because she’s the one who stayed home and took care of it. I told her—” Elizabeth stopped suddenly as Kelly entered the room. “Great party,” she declared. “Better than ever.”

  There was an echo of appreciation from around the room.

  “You always have the best food …”

  “I love the bean soup …”

  “… the recipe, if it isn’t too hard to make.”

  “These nutmeg muffins have always been my favorite.”

  “Evan used to say—”

  There was a sudden silence.

  “Oh, Kelly,” the woman who had mentioned the name of her ex-husband moaned. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “You haven’t done anything,” Kelly protested, looking around the room at her guests. “I hate the fact that no one talks to me about Evan. Everyone acts as though he’s dead. But he’s not. He’s just left for a while. And I—” she paused and looked around again, this time over the heads of the people, at the walls and furnishings“—and I am waiting for him to get over his silliness and come back where he belongs.”

  “Good for you!” Elizabeth cheered.

  But Susan felt the tension and was relieved when a voice called out from the hallway.

  “Merry Christmas! I’m sorry I’m so late. I couldn’t find a box big enough to put ten dozen cookies in, and then I couldn’t find my car keys!”

  “But you’re here now.” Kelly moved toward the late arrival with a broad smile on her face, and Susan wondered if their hostess was relieved that the conversation had to end.

  After thinking it over a moment, Susan figured she just had to be. Evan Knowlson had left his wife a year ago, remarrying as soon as the divorce was final. Certainly his decision to build a new home right behind his old one—and then move in with his new family—was odd, but Kelly’s apparent belief that the divorce was merely a temporary aberration made little sense.

  New Year’s resolution number one, Susan thought: help Kelly build a new future for herself.

  THREE

  Susan strode through the mudroom that separated her house from the garage, stepping over ski boots and wet running shoes, cheerfully humming a Christmas carol. Then she arrived in the kitchen, a room that displayed all the mess of a large-scale baking binge. She sighed and flung her coat over one of the chairs surrounding the table where her family would eat that night—if she ever cleaned it of its coating of wire cooling racks and crumbs. “Chad, turn that record down!” she yelled toward the study, where, experience told her, she would find her twelve-year-old son sitting in close proximity to her husband’s expensive sound system.

  “It’s a tape, not a record, Mom.”

  Susan spun around to find the boy behind her; he was yanking off a parka, lift tickets dangling from the zipper pull.

  “Chad, if you were outside, who’s in the den?”

  “No one. I just left the tape playing. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt it any.”

  “That wasn’t what was worrying me. It’s too loud, Chad, and I like to know if there’s anyone in the house when I come home—”

  “Hi, Mom.” Her fifteen-year-old daughter entered the room. “Where have you been? I was looking for you. Can I sleep over at Cindy’s house tonight? Her mom and dad are going to be home.… You can check.”

  “I trust you, Chrissy. I don’t have to check up on you. Chad, go out to the study and turn off that damn music. Please,” she added a little tardily. She turned to her daughter. “But, Chrissy, your father wanted to pick out the Christmas tree tonight. You know we usually do it earlier than this. He doesn’t want to put it off for another day.”

  “You can go without me,” Chrissy suggested, putting her finger in the cookie crumbs on the table, then licking off those that had adhered. “Is there anything to eat? Lunch at school today was disgusting; I haven’t had anything since breakfast but two Mars bars.”

  “Chrissy! You shouldn’t eat like that. Let me make you a snack. A salad or a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  “I thought,” Chad said, having disregarded his mother’s instructions about the music, “t
hat you were going to a party to exchange Christmas cookies.”

  “There’s a big white box in the trunk of the car and it’s full of cookies,” his mother said, answering the implied, but unspoken question. “You may get it, but please don’t open it. Just bring it inside.”

  “Okay. You don’t have to yell.”

  “If I don’t yell, you won’t hear me over that music,” she said to her son’s back, the promise of cookies being a strong enough motivation to get him moving.

  “I’ll go turn it off, Mom. And I’ll call Cindy and tell her that you said it was okay for me to come over at the same time.” Chrissy disappeared in the opposite direction from her brother.

  “I didn’t say that, Chrissy,” her mother disagreed. “Don’t call her and tell her anything. We have to talk first. And please come back here; I don’t want to spend the rest of the day yelling all over the house.”

  “This thing is really heavy. Is it all cookies?” Chad had returned, a large smile on his face.

  “Yes. Put it down carefully.”

  “Where?”

  Susan took a good look around her kitchen and sighed. “Is it too heavy for you to hold just a few more seconds?” she asked, picking up a sponge with one hand and grabbing three heavy black cookie sheets with the other. “I’ll clear enough space right away.”

  “I can wait. Especially if I get an extra cookie or two,” her son said.

  “How many were you planning to have?” his mother asked, dumping the cookie sheets in an already full sink and quickly sweeping the residue off the counter. “Put it there and prepare yourself. I think you’re going to like what you see.” And she opened the box.

  “Wow!” Chad said, filling both his hands with the sweets.

  “Chad, I think—”

  “Oh, come on, Mom. It’s almost Christmas.”

  “But—”

  “I called Cindy and told her I couldn’t come over,” Chrissy announced, reentering the room and slamming the kitchen door behind her. “Her parents don’t make her do dumb things like pick out Christmas trees. They understand that their children grow out of these things.”

  Susan sighed. “Would you like a cookie?”

  Chrissy took a quick glance in the large box. Susan did, too. There were small candy canes made by winding bicolored dough together, diamond-shaped jewels of fruitcake, springerle with designs of flowers and birds pressed into them, little meringue mushrooms, tiny green spritz trees and wreaths, pecan crescents dusted with confectioner’s sugar, gingerbread angels, and more.

  “Wonderful,” Susan said enthusiastically.

  “No chocolate chip? Why doesn’t anyone make anything I like?” Chrissy wailed, turning to the refrigerator and taking out a bottle of diet chocolate soda. “I’ll be in my room,” she announced before leaving.

  Susan was grinding her teeth as the phone rang. She didn’t bother to reach for it, however; with one teenager and one preteen in the house, calls for her rarely got through.

  This time was the exception.

  “Mom! Telephone!” came the wail from the second floor of the house.

  “Hello?” Susan picked up the phone, but continued to clean her kitchen. “Oh, hello,” she said as the caller identified herself. “I’m so glad you called back, but could you hang on for just one moment?” She held the receiver against her shoulder and spoke to her son. “This is private, Chad. Take those cookies and leave me alone for a few minutes, will you?”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning. “Is it a present for me?”

  “It won’t be for anybody, unless you leave the room.”

  He vanished. She hoped he wasn’t heading for an extension. But, if he was, it was his own surprise that he would ruin. She returned to her caller.

  The person on the line was, in fact, a representative of the phone company, calling to schedule a time to come to the Henshaws and install two new lines; both Chrissy and Chad were getting private phones in their rooms for Christmas. Susan couldn’t wait. Not only would it clear up this line for her, but she could ignore incoming calls on their phones when they weren’t home. In the past year or so, she had begun to feel like an unpaid message service. She scheduled an appointment for a time when both kids would be out of the house, then Susan hung up and continued her cleaning.

  Much to her surprise, the next call was for her also. Years of housekeeping had taught her to talk on the phone while doing almost everything; she kept filling her dishwasher.

  “Kathleen. Anything wrong?” she asked, thinking that maybe her friend had left something in her car after being dropped off at home.

  “No, I’m just standing here cleaning—”

  “Your kitchen,” Susan finished for her. “Me, too. It’s another Hancock Christmas tradition: cleaning up the mess from the cookie exchange. One of those irritating things you forget from year to year, like vacuuming up the needles under the Christmas tree. Or paying all the bills in January.”

  “Your kitchen must be something. I just made spritz cookies and I’m sitting in the middle of a disaster area. Those cream horns with two kinds of filling were really impressive; they must have taken hours! I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “I spent last night making the horns from the puff pastry, then I got up at five this morning to stir the almond and the pistachio fillings and then squeeze them into the horns. I barely had time to put on makeup and change for shopping. And now this place is such a mess I can’t believe it!”

  “They were wonderful,” Kathleen said. “I mean, they really stood out—and that selection of cookies was something. I was a little embarrassed that my recipe was so ordinary.”

  “Well, maybe some of us get a little competitive about this type of thing,” Susan admitted.

  Kathleen was glad Susan couldn’t see her smile. “I don’t want to interrupt your cleaning …”

  “You’re not.” Susan pulled open the door to her trash compactor and threw in a couple of empty heavy cream containers and wrappers from pounds of sweet butter. “How did you like Kelly’s house?”

  “Lovely, but I keep thinking that it’s a little big for just one person.”

  “Only if you think about it as merely a place to live. Kelly considers that house her lifework, her creation.”

  “I gather that’s what Elizabeth was saying.”

  “Yes, and she’s right about the house. I think Kelly would rather die than move out.”

  “Can she afford to keep it? After all, she doesn’t work—and Evan can’t be supporting her the way he was when they were married, can he?”

  “I don’t know. Kelly said he was very generous in his divorce settlement. But who knows what that means.”

  “Especially since she never says anything negative about him,” Kathleen agreed. “Which is the reason I’m calling, by the way.”

  “Kelly’s attitude toward Evan?”

  “She asked me to have lunch with her tomorrow.”

  “So?”

  “Well, she said that she had something to talk to me about. Something important.”

  “And, with Kelly, the only thing important is her ex-husband?” Susan suggested.

  “That’s what I was thinking. So I thought it might be helpful if I knew more about her. I wasn’t just calling to gossip.”

  Susan, who knew Kathleen well, had never thought that she would.

  “Susan, do you know if a private investigator got involved in the Knowlsons’ divorce?” Kathleen was asking.

  “I don’t think so. You mean to collect evidence of adultery?”

  “That, or just to check out their financial situation or something. I’m asking because I wondered if she wanted to see me about something professional. Maybe Kelly thinks that my business is more than just home security.”

  “Well, isn’t it?” Susan asked, thinking of the murder investigation Kathleen had been involved with after leaving the police force, marrying a widower, and setting up what was supposed to be a home security business here
in the suburbs.

  “Not officially … not really.” Kathleen dodged the issue. “But that house already has a very elaborate burglar and fire alarm system, so I don’t think she could be interested in talking to me about that.”

  “Well, I can tell you what I know about the divorce, but it isn’t much. I guess it happened before you came to town.”

  “All I know is that Evan left Kelly, they got a divorce, and he married Rebecca early last spring.”

  “Well, it’s a long story. The first thing I knew about it, Barbara St. John called me one morning around Thanksgiving and asked if I had heard anything about Evan moving out of Kelly’s house.”

  “And you hadn’t?”

  “No, and you know Barbara. She acted as if she were terribly, terribly concerned about Kelly, but you got the feeling that she was enjoying it.”

  “You’re saying that she likes gossiping.”

  Susan thought that Barbara could use some interests in life besides her one son, her husband, and her house. “The next thing I knew, Kelly had gone home to her mother out West somewhere, and, when she returned, she filed for a divorce.”

  “Without waiting to see if Evan came back? Without waiting to see if he changed his mind?”

  “It does seem a little strange, doesn’t it? Especially if you consider what she was saying today. Why get a divorce if you’re expecting him to come back?” Susan said.

  “And she made that very clear.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight at the time. She was devastated when he left. When she went to visit her mother we were all relieved. I thought she was going to have a breakdown.”

  “And how long was she gone?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Two months at the most. Through the Christmas holidays and New Year’s. And when she came back, she immediately went to a lawyer and filed for a divorce. It went through in record time. Just a few months.”

  “And Evan married Rebecca right away,” Kathleen said.

  “Well, they had been living together since he’d moved out. It didn’t surprise anyone.”

  “Not even Kelly?”

  “I don’t know. Until today she’s just avoided the whole topic. Now it turns out that she’s keeping the home fires burning until he returns—at least that’s what it looked like to me this afternoon,” Susan said. “But I don’t know if that’s why she’s calling you. Or what she thinks you could do about the whole situation. She has a lawyer, of course.”