We Wish You a Merry Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

“I’ll admit that hasn’t happened since college,” Elizabeth said. “In fact, that’s what I thought when I saw them.”

  “What?” Kathleen asked the question.

  “I thought that either Thomas or Travis had gotten into some sort of trouble again.”

  “Again?” Kathleen asked.

  But, before Elizabeth could reply, they were interrupted by a saleswoman offering assistance.

  “Would you show me some fountain pens?” Susan responded to her question.

  “Of course. If you’ll just follow me?” They went toward the back of the store, leaving Kathleen and Elizabeth to talk without interruption.

  “Have the boys had trouble with the police?” Kathleen asked.

  “Oh, you don’t know?”

  Kathleen would have thought she was being put off if Elizabeth hadn’t leaned toward her. “Well, they tried to keep it quiet, of course. Who can blame them? But I understand that both boys have been brought home by the police. And you know what that means.”

  “No, I don’t.” In Kathleen’s years as a police officer, being brought home by the police could indicate something as innocuous as a minor spill off a bicycle or something more serious.

  “It means that they’ve been in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Kathleen persisted, wondering if Elizabeth actually had any facts.

  “Oh, who knows? I heard something about a big drinking party over in Darien. And, of course, there are always drugs around. I’ve never understood it myself. These children have been brought up with all the advantages; they have everything any child could want. Nice homes. A good social life at the club. The right schools. I can’t understand how they get in trouble. I had to fight for every single thing I have, and these kids are just given everything. It makes me furious sometimes.”

  “But Rebecca’s kids …” Kathleen tried to return to the subject that interested her.

  “Maybe it’s different with them. They weren’t brought up in Hancock, you know. I don’t even know where Rebecca and her first husband lived before she came here. Maybe they didn’t have all the advantages after all.” The idea seemed to restore order to her world and she cheered up. “I shouldn’t be standing here gossiping. I have tons of shopping to do. I still haven’t found the right thing to give the Duchess.”

  “The Duchess?”

  “Derek’s mother. That’s what the family calls her. She’s very particular. Her gift is always a problem.”

  “I always have trouble shopping for my mother,” Kathleen said sympathetically.

  “Oh, that’s no problem. I can buy my mother almost anything. But the Duchess is another story.” She looked around the store. “I better get going; I don’t even remember what I came in here for.”

  “Good talking to you. I’d better go along, too. I can see Susan waving to me.”

  They hurried off in opposite directions.

  “Which do you like? The black or the maroon?” Susan greeted Kathleen, holding two pens out for comparison.

  “When in doubt, choose black is the rule, isn’t it? Besides, I like the black better.” Kathleen looked at the price tags. “Wow. Isn’t that a lot of money for something so easy to lose?”

  “Jed can’t give cheap gifts to the men who work for him, can he?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m still new at all this, remember.”

  “Jerry must have given presents last year.”

  “I think he bought a case of champagne and passed it out December twenty-fourth.”

  “Expensive champagne?”

  “Very.”

  “And a label that everyone knows is expensive?”

  Kathleen laughed. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “So you’ll take a pen, ma’am?” the saleswoman asked.

  “Two of them. And can you gift wrap them nicely?” Susan requested, handing over her American Express card.

  “Of course!”

  “As soon as this is done, how about that coffee? I need to sit down—and the caffeine won’t be unwelcome, either.”

  “There’s a coffee shop just around the corner,” the saleswoman announced while Susan was signing her charge slip.

  “Sounds great. I wonder if we could go there and then stop back here for the pens?”

  “Excellent idea. Our gift wrapping department is very busy at this time of year. I’ll have the packages wrapped and waiting for you at the customer service desk, shall I?”

  “Fine,” Susan agreed. “Let’s hurry. I’m starving.”

  They rushed around the corner to the place that had been suggested and found it surprisingly crowded for the middle of the afternoon.

  “Oh, yes,” the waitress said after seating them. “A lot of ladies get hungry after a few hours of shopping. We always do a good business this time of year. Now what can I get you?”

  “A cup of coffee and a slice of that lemon meringue pie we passed on the way in,” Susan replied.

  “I’d like coffee, too. And a hot fudge sundae.”

  “I’ll be back in a second, ladies.” She hurried off, almost bumping into Chrissy and her grandmother, who were on their way to a booth on the other side of the-room.

  “Chrissy!” Susan waved to her daughter. “Imagine running into you here. You must have just gotten out of school a few minutes ago.”

  “Half an hour,” her daughter corrected her, after first greeting Kathleen. “Grandmother and I were just going to have a small snack before we start shopping.”

  “Do you want to join us?”

  “That’s a nice offer, Susan. But we’re going to discuss some presents that you don’t need to hear about,” her mother-in-law replied, with a smile. “Oh, look, Chrissy. They’re going to give away our table. We’d better get going.”

  “Right. ’Bye, Mom. Mrs. Gordon.”

  “What a nice combination,” Kathleen said, watching them leave. “I like to see the different generations getting along so well.”

  “I think your mother would be happy to get along with any future generations you care to produce. At least, that was the impression I got last night.”

  “My brother and his wife have six children. If my mother wants to be with grandchildren all she has to do is drive to Bryn Mawr and see them.”

  Susan was too good a friend to pursue the subject, nor did she get a chance to. Chrissy, having ordered, rushed back to their table.

  “Mom, I forgot to tell you. I was with Seth at lunch today and he had just had gym with Thomas and Travis. They have that really awful teacher that I had last year. Remember? Well, anyway, they were together and Thomas—or Travis—told Seth that Mr. Knowlson didn’t come home last night. And that their mom hadn’t heard from him when they left for school, either. They said that she’s frantic. I thought you might want to know.” Chrissy rushed off.

  “That’s interesting,” Susan commented.

  “Why?” Kathleen asked. “You didn’t expect a dead body to walk in Rebecca’s front door, did you?”

  “No. But I would love to know if Rebecca is upset because her husband has vanished or because he’s dead.”

  “Or because he’s both,” Kathleen suggested.

  FOURTEEN

  “I suppose you’d just tie a bow to one of the top branches and leave it at that,” Chad commented, wandering into the room sucking a candy cane.

  “What are you talking about, Chad?” Susan looked up from where she was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by rolls of colored paper, ribbons, gift tags, and all the paraphernalia of wrapping presents.

  “That’s the only way you could wrap a partridge in a pear tree. It’s the song on the radio,” he explained. “Of course, you could tie a bow around the bird’s neck. But it might get caught on something and then the bird would hang himself.”

  “Chad!” his mother protested. “What an awful thought.” She looked around and lifted up some papers near her feet. “Have you seen my scissors anywhere?”

  “Didn’t you have them in y
our hand just now?”

  “Probably. But it doesn’t mean much. I can lose scissors faster than anything. I’ll look for them. I’d better stand up; my back is killing me. Would you take that pile of presents off the bed and arrange them under the Christmas tree?”

  “You mean these are to stay here?” he asked, leaping up.

  “Yes. Don’t drop them, Chad!”

  He was too busy reading the tags to answer. Susan smiled at him and, stretching, walked over to the window. Snow had been falling lightly an hour ago when Jed’s mother had left on her date, but it seemed to have stopped. Susan was relieved. Jed had a long drive home from the city, and she always worried about him in bad weather, especially this time of year when there were so many Christmas parties, so much drinking. She leaned farther to the right to see the beam of the streetlight on the corner. Maybe there were still a few flakes coming down … Was that what she thought it was?

  “Cha—” She started to yell her son’s name and then, deciding that what she was about to do could be dangerous, decided to do it alone. “Chad! I’m going out for a walk. Tell Chrissy. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she called as she ran down the hall and grabbed her coat from the chair where she’d left it earlier in the evening. Flinging open the front door, she dashed toward the scene under the streetlight, slipping on the fresh snow, but managing to stay upright. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she got to them. She didn’t have a gun; no one would listen if she yelled something like, murderer, murderer. She felt a sharp pain in her ankle, but was determined to continue onward toward her prey when, to her surprise, they turned, not away from her, but toward her, calling her name.

  “Mrs. Henshaw, are you okay?”

  “Has something happened?”

  They had dropped him—it—and were running toward her! Susan was astounded.

  “I saw you two under the light. I saw you carrying something,” she began, and then didn’t know how to go on. If they were coming to help her, then it couldn’t be the body of their stepfather that they had been carrying, now could it?

  Travis and Thomas looked at each other. It was Travis who spoke. “We were just moving—”

  “You know, Travis, maybe Mrs. Henshaw can help us,” his brother interrupted him.

  “How?”

  “Would you keep something in your garage for us until Christmas Eve?”

  “Till Christmas Eve? You want me to help you hide a Christmas gift?” Susan asked. She’d been wrong. Why would they want to hide Evan’s body until Christmas?

  “Yes. Do you mind?” Thomas asked. “It’s pretty big, though.”

  “Well, as long as the two of you can get whatever it is into the garage,” Susan agreed.

  “Fine. It’s right back there. We’ll bring it over now, if that’s okay with you?”

  “Sure. I’ll just go open the garage door. The button is kind of hard to find.” She walked back to her house feeling slightly foolish. It was Christmastime. Everyone was hiding presents.

  Within a few minutes, she was in the garage, Travis and Thomas following behind closely, the giant thing slung between them.

  “What is it?” Susan asked, motioning for them to put it down. “It looks like …” She didn’t want to say what she thought it looked like. “It looks heavy,” she ended.

  “It should be. It’s a punching bag; we had it made specially. Weighs over a hundred pounds. It’s for Evan. He’s building a gym in the back of the garage, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Susan said.

  “Yeah, and we were having a lot of trouble figuring out a place to hide this. It was in the shed. No one but us ever went there in the winter.” Susan noticed that Travis had the grace to look embarrassed at this admission. “But with the police running around and all, it’s no longer a safe place. And we really want to surprise Evan.”

  “Has he— Has Evan gotten back yet?” Susan asked, knowing, of course, the answer. Did this mean that the twins didn’t know about the murder?

  “Not yet. Mom’s expecting him tonight,” Thomas answered. “At least that’s what she told us at breakfast this morning.”

  “Do you think we can just leave it leaning against the wall, or should we put some sort of cover over it?” Travis asked, standing back and gazing at the three large black garbage bags that had been taped together to hold the punching bag.

  “Just leave it like that,” Susan answered. “It’s not as though Evan is going to walk into the garage and ask what that big thing in the corner is.” Actually, she reminded herself, there was no way that Evan was ever going to find out about this … period. She looked at the gigantic rectangle, now stored neatly against the wall, and shivered.

  “You must be cold, Mrs. Henshaw,” Thomas said.

  “Yes. And we’d better get going or we’ll be late for dinner,” his brother said. “We open our presents on Christmas Eve, so we’ll pick this up sometime earlier that day, if it’s all right with you.”

  “Fine.” Susan walked them out of the garage and then returned to her house. How strange it was that they had been wandering about the neighborhood looking for a place to hide a Christmas gift. The phone was ringing as she entered the hall.

  “I’ve got it,” Chrissy yelled from upstairs. “It’s for me.”

  Well, it usually was. Susan went into the living room. She was shivering; the last few minutes had upset her more than she realized. But there was a large pile of presents under the tree. Chad was sitting on the couch staring at a big flat one with a smile on his face. “That’s a new drum pad for my synthesizer, isn’t it?”

  “No answers, Chad.”

  “Just one hint!”

  “No hints.”

  He sighed. “Where are you going?”

  “Back upstairs. I still have a lot of wrapping to do. And you don’t have to bother to come up and hang around. None of this pile is for you!”

  She hurried back up to her bedroom. On the way through the hall, she noticed the phone’s receiver was lying next to it. She replaced it and called to her daughter. “Chrissy, you left the phone off the hook.”

  There was no response, and she hurried back to the task at hand. She was busily wrapping a large bottle of Jerry Gordon’s favorite aftershave (the scissors having been discovered hiding under a roll of paper printed with penguins sporting red bows around their chubby necks) when Chrissy appeared at the door.

  “Hi. Why are you wrapping presents in your bedroom? You never do them in here.”

  “Because your grandmother is staying in the guest room where I usually work,” Susan replied, trying not to be impatient.

  Chrissy walked in and sat down on the bed. “I like this pink marbleized paper,” she commented, fingering it. “What did Mrs. Gordon want? She sounded upset.”

  “Kathleen? When did you talk to her?” Susan asked. “Here, put your finger in the middle of this ribbon. I can’t seem to get it tied neatly,” she said before her daughter could answer.

  “She was on the phone,” Chrissy explained, putting down her finger as asked. “She said she was in a hurry.”

  “You didn’t tell me she called,” Susan protested.

  “Yes, I did. You must not have heard me. If we had a built-in intercom system like Sandy’s parents, this—”

  “Chrissy, it was your responsibility to let me know that the call was for me. And especially if Kathleen had a problem.” Susan cut short her lecture and reached for the phone extension near her bed.

  Chrissy muttered something about people who were too cheap to buy the proper equipment and flounced off to her room.

  Susan dialed quickly, but was disappointed when Jerry answered, and doubly so when he announced that Kathleen had just left.

  “Did she say anything about why she’d called me?” Susan asked after explaining what Chrissy had done.

  “I didn’t talk to her. I was starting into the driveway, when she almost backed her car into mine. She rolled down the window and said that she had left a
note on the table and drove off. Faster than the speed limit, I might add.”

  “And the note?”

  “Said that she had to leave and that she’d call; it didn’t even say where she was going. In fact, I was going to call you just now. I hoped you’d know.”

  “I would, if Chrissy had told me Kathleen was on the phone. I don’t know what’s happened to that girl. She seems to have her head in the clouds half the time.”

  “She’s just growing up,” Jerry said, laughing. “Don’t worry about her. Let me know if you hear from my wife, will you? I’m a little concerned.”

  “Of course, but I wouldn’t worry. Kathleen knows how to take care of herself. Where is her mother tonight?”

  “Visiting an old friend who lives in Darien. Say, maybe I’ll call there. Maybe she knows what’s going on.”

  “Good idea. And I’ll call you right away if I hear anything.”

  “Great,” Jerry said.

  Susan hung up and, resisting an urge to scream at her daughter, returned to her packages.

  Every year Susan spent a remarkable amount of money on printed paper, assorted bags, ribbons and bows, stickers, and gift tags. It was a Christmas gift to herself; she loved wrapping presents. She pulled a large wooden rack designed to hold fifty cassette tapes from under the bed, sat it down in front of her, and stared at it critically. Thank goodness it didn’t need a box; she’d never find one that fit. Maybe gold and blue, she decided, reaching for a roll of paper.

  So now two people were missing, she thought, applying tape to the seams she had made and then looking around for some wide silver ribbon. Ah, there it was!

  Evan and Kathleen were both missing, she continued her thought while forming an expert bow with the glittering band. Could it be a coincidence? It seemed unlikely. So what could Kathleen be doing? And where was Evan’s body? Or did Kathleen know where Evan’s body was and was that the reason she had vanished?

  She was still worrying about the double problem when Chad reentered the room.

  “Hey, you’re putting my name on that tag,” he cried, bouncing as he sat down on the end of the bed. “You told me you weren’t wrapping anything for me!”