Christmas Card Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “The last one?” Bettina raised her carefully shaped brows. “Is she leaving Arborville?”

  Penny had reached Pamela and Bettina’s table and she displayed the box, which had a clear lid through which the card could be seen.

  “ ‘Twelve drummers drumming,’ ” Penny said. “She’s been at Arborville High for twelve years and she’s used up all the days of Christmas.”

  “Such a cute idea,” Pamela murmured. “I remember the first one—‘a partridge in a pear tree.’ You were only in fourth grade. But she’ll think of another theme, I’m sure. Karma is such a creative person.”

  Penny opened the box and handed a card each to Pamela and Bettina. “I already sent my Christmas cards,” she said, “but I’ll use some of these for my Christmas thank-you notes. The twelve days of Christmas only start on Christmas Day.”

  The card design was charming. The twelve drummers were old-fashioned drummers in red, white, and blue uniforms that made them resemble toy soldiers, and they were marching in a tight formation, four abreast. Their drums were snare drums, trimmed with silvery chrome, and suspended from straps that crossed smartly from each drummer’s right shoulder to his left hip.

  As Pamela was studying the card, Penny had been fingering one of the tiny sweater ornaments. “How could anyone do this?” she asked. “So tiny, and these mittens are even tinier. I have to buy some.” Penny reached for the small purse dangling from her shoulder.

  Besides the sweaters, Sorrel Wollcott had knit mittens and little stockings, all in bright colors and all furnished with yarn loops for hanging.

  “We certainly don’t need ornaments.” Pamela laughed, picturing the boxes of ornaments she’d brought down from her attic only the previous day. She and Penny would be decorating their tree that evening. “But I can’t resist them either—and it’s for such a good cause.”

  “My treat.” Penny dipped a hand into her purse and came up with her wallet. “I loved my art classes at Arborville High, and Karma was just the best!” She set aside a tiny blue and yellow striped sweater, a red mitten, and a yellow stocking.

  “The sweaters are five each and the mitten and stocking are three each,” Pamela said as Penny counted out eleven dollars. Meanwhile, Bettina was dispensing change into the outstretched hand of a woman who had just bought a set of hand-knit pot holders.

  Shoppers crisscrossed the gleaming floor, some carrying bags containing the treasures they’d selected, others carrying boxes holding baked goods, as a lively version of “Jingle Bells” provided a soundtrack. Some shoppers carried nothing yet, but greeted friends and formed conversational clusters. Near the Christmas tree, two little boys were engaged in a teasing game that involved circling in opposite directions and then shrieking in mock alarm when they came face-to-face.

  But the cheerful din suddenly muted, in a wave that seemed to emanate from the double doors that faced Arborville Avenue. And most motion ceased, except for the circling of the little boys—until a worried-looking young woman grabbed each by an arm.

  At the knitting table near the back of the room, Pamela had at first heard nothing out of the ordinary. But as the atmosphere became more muted still, she could make out the droning rise and fall of a siren.

  Bettina finished tucking a matching hat and scarf set into a recycled Co-Op bag and extended it toward a woman who started to reach for it, but then turned away.

  “Something’s happened,” she said as she turned back. “Look—over by the entrance.”

  A police officer was visible through the milling crowd, just pulling back one of the heavy glass doors. The siren had drawn much closer. Then at its high-pitched peak, it cut off abruptly, trailing away in a resentful moan.

  As the officer entered, a few men exited. Pamela recognized one of them as Gus Warburton, who worked for the rec department and could be counted on whenever a community event needed extra hands.

  Penny, meanwhile, had circled the table and was standing between her mother and Bettina. Pamela lost sight of the officer as part of the crowd coalesced into a tight knot around him. Other people began to retreat from the entrance in pairs or larger groupings, bending toward one another and engaged in conversations whose seriousness was marked by the somber expressions on their faces.

  Pamela caught a few words here and there. Something had happened in the Christmas tree lot and the police had been called—thus the sirens. The Christmas tree lot was set up every year not far from St. Willibrod’s by the Aardvark Alliance (named for the Arborville High School football team). Proceeds benefited the school’s sports programs.

  Bettina stepped out from behind the table and into the path of a middle-aged woman who was among those retreating from the entrance. Before Bettina could open her mouth, the woman spoke.

  “There’s a dead body,” she said in a tone that implied she scarcely believed her own words. She paused and looked back in the direction she’d come from. “The police. . .” Her voice faltered and she swung around to face Bettina again.

  Pamela was about to join Bettina, but Penny seized her arm. And anyway, Bettina had begun to edge toward the table, drawing the middle-aged woman along with her. There was no need to ask the woman for further information, because now all around them voices were rising and echoing as “Jingle Bells” played in the background. Certain words stood out from the indistinct rumble, like “shocking” and “murder,” and people who knew more about what had happened supplemented versions of the story purveyed by people who knew less.

  Eventually a clear picture emerged. Police had been called shortly after the Christmas tree lot opened at ten a.m. because a member of the Aardvark Alliance had discovered a body.

  Voices were by turns urgent, curious, angry, and sad. Behind the tables ranged around the room, people who had been cheerfully promoting their wares stood with their hands hanging aimlessly at their sides, their eyes scanning the crowd.

  Penny continued to cling to Pamela’s arm, though neither spoke. Pamela was fighting to banish from her mind the sense of unreality that had invaded the moment she’d heard the words “There’s a dead body.” She felt remote from the hubbub around her and barely even connected to her daughter, though Penny was holding on as if for dear life.

  Meanwhile, Bettina, along with the middle-aged woman, had joined a group of other women who were alternately craning their necks in this direction and that as if seeking guidance and bending their heads inward to confer.

  More police officers had entered the church hall. Now two were stationed at the entrance and another, the woman that Pamela recognized as Officer Sanchez, was making her way across the floor as the milling crowd parted respectfully and then groups regrouped in her wake. She seemed to be heading for a corner near the edge of the stage, where a door led into an inner sanctum.

  “Jingle Bells” had just segued into “Good King Wenceslas” when a rasp of static interrupted the music. A voice that Pamela recognized as that of the fair’s organizer, Loretta Litton, came on to announce that the craft fair was being suspended for the day. Police had asked that people not linger outside but go on about their business.

  * * *

  Nonetheless, after Pamela and Bettina had packed up the hats and scarves and the pot holders and tea cozies and little knitted ornaments and the rest, and had stowed them away under the Knit and Nibble table, they stepped outside to discover that the milling, murmuring crowd had merely transferred itself from one venue to another.

  When they reached the sidewalk, Penny stopped and looked up at her mother, and Pamela felt a twinge in her throat, as if a busy needle had just taken a stitch. She pulled her daughter into a hug and rested her chin on Penny’s curly head. Penny hadn’t inherited Pamela’s height, and though Penny was already a junior in college, Pamela had to constantly remind herself that lack of stature didn’t equal lack of maturity.

  The Christmas tree lot had already been encircled by yellow crime-scene tape, looped from post to post along the chicken wire fence that the members o
f the Aardvark Alliance erected every year. A police officer was stationed at the gate, which had been closed. Behind the fence, the trees—deep green and bristly—stood in rows as if denizens of a very orderly forest. The spicy pine scent carried all the way to the sidewalk, and its evocation of a season that should be happy seemed an incongruous contradiction to the crime-scene tape and the uniformed officer.

  The people who had vacated the church hall now occupied the sidewalk and spilled over onto the grass that ringed the tree lot’s fence—despite the admonitions of the police officer at the gate to stay back. But Pamela continued on her way with Penny in tow, heading toward where she and Bettina had parked when they arrived that morning with their boxes of knitted wares.

  Bettina lagged behind, gazing toward the tree lot, and Pamela suspected her friend was loath to depart without a more complete picture of what had happened. Bettina would eventually be covering the story for Arborville’s weekly, the Advocate, and she took her reportorial duties seriously.

  When Pamela was well clear of the crowd, she paused and Penny paused with her. Bettina dodged through the last knot of people and was within a few yards of where Pamela and Penny stood when a second woman broke through the crowd in hot pursuit.

  “Bettina! Wait!” the woman called.

  It was Marlene Pepper, one of Bettina’s friends, a plump middle-aged woman who was normally the soul of good cheer. At the moment, however, her expression reflected not only distress that Arborville’s Christmas rituals had been disrupted by this alarming discovery but something deeper. Her mouth was agape, as if frozen in a silent moan and her brows were drawn together with a deep furrow between them.

  She caught up with Bettina, seized her hand, and reached out to seize Pamela’s hand as well.

  “Did you hear who it is?” she asked breathlessly. “So shocking . . . I can’t believe . . .” She stopped to pant.

  Bettina’s mobile features now mirrored Marlene Pepper’s, and with her own free hand she grasped the hand that was grasping hers.

  “Karma Karling!” Marlene wailed. “Can you believe it? Someone has killed Karma Karling!”

  From behind Pamela came another wail, but wordless. Pamela turned to see Penny gazing at her, looking stunned, her eyes glistening with the beginnings of tears. Once again Pamela herself felt a jolt that seemed to disconnect her from the scene playing out before her.

  Tucked in a canvas tote for safekeeping was the box of Christmas cards Penny had just bought, Karma Karling’s latest Christmas design.

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” Bettina freed her hand from Marlene’s and leaned toward Penny. In a moment Pamela, Penny, and Bettina were entwined in a three-way hug.

  Chapter Two

  As soon as Bettina’s faithful Toyota had come to a stop in the Frasers’ driveway, the front door of her house opened. Onto the porch stepped a pleasant-looking man, somewhat portly, with thick white hair and dressed in a flannel shirt and bib overalls.

  “Dear, dear wife!” he cried. “What has happened?”

  Bettina was the wife in question. She swung her feet out onto the asphalt as a few long strides carried Wilfred Fraser along the walk that connected porch and driveway.

  “I didn’t expect you until nearly dinnertime,” he said, his genial face puckering with concern. He reached for her hand to draw her out of the car.

  “Oh, Wilfred!” Bettina moaned, and she nestled her head against his chest. Her vivid hair, which she herself described as a color not found in nature, was bright against the denim of his overalls, the uniform he’d adopted in retirement.

  Pamela and Penny circled the car to join them. When Bettina’s gulps and sniffles threatened to cut short her narrative of what had brought them home so early, Pamela took over as Penny sniffled quietly at her side, enveloped in a half hug.

  “We must all come inside before we freeze,” Wilfred announced—though only he was unprovided with a coat, and the day was not as cold as a day so near Christmas might be.

  Woofus the shelter dog raised his head from his nap on Bettina’s comfy sofa to watch as people shed their coats and then proceeded on toward the kitchen. Once they were gone, he went back to sleep.

  “I’m thinking grilled cheese sandwiches,” Wilfred said. And he reached for his apron as the others arranged themselves around the well-scrubbed pine table in the eating area of Bettina’s spacious kitchen.

  * * *

  Grilled cheese sandwiches and the comforting presence of Wilfred had eased the shock of the morning’s events, but Pamela and Penny were still far from cheerful as they crossed the street to their own house. Yet Pamela turned her key in the lock and stepped into her entry as if into a welcoming haven.

  Her house was large, too large for one person, but when Penny was away at college Pamela lived there alone, with only two cats for company. Long ago, before Penny was born, Pamela and her husband had fallen in love with the house, a hundred-year-old house on a tree-lined street in a town that reminded them of the college town where they had met. Michael Paterson’s skills as an architect had helped them restore it to its former glory.

  Then, when Penny was still in grammar school, he had been killed in a tragic accident on a construction site. Pamela had stayed on in the house, feeling her husband’s presence all around her and wanting to keep Penny’s life as unchanged as possible—though so much had changed. Now, with Penny almost grown up, perhaps it was Pamela’s own life she wanted to keep as unchanged as possible.

  Pamela and Penny were greeted by those cats, and by the spicy fragrance of the Christmas tree they’d anchored in its stand the previous night. Catrina, the black cat who Pamela had adopted as a forlorn stray, was now plump and sleek. Once she’d satisfied herself that her mistress was indeed home, she made her way, with an elegant strut, back to the sofa from which she’d come. Ginger, Catrina’s daughter, named for her ginger coat, showed her welcome by weaving about Penny’s ankles. Penny stooped to pick her up and the cat rested her paws on Penny’s shoulder and nuzzled her neck.

  “What shall we do?” Pamela asked after they’d hung their jackets in the closet. She tipped her head to study her daughter’s face. Penny’s eyes were dry, but previous tears had left their trails on Penny’s perfect skin. Penny shrugged. It was barely one p.m. The plan—Pamela’s plan anyway—had been to spend the day working at the Knit and Nibble table, then come home to make a pot roast. After she and Penny ate, she had envisioned putting one of her old vinyl Christmas LPs on the stereo and engaging in some mother-daughter bonding as she and Penny decorated the tree together.

  “I think I’ll just go upstairs,” Penny said after a bit.

  Pamela pulled her daughter into a hug. “Karla was a wonderful teacher,” she said. “You were so lucky to have had her.”

  “She’s gone, Mom.” Penny pulled back from the hug. “And I hadn’t even gotten to see her yet.” She sighed. “Now all I have is the box of cards.”

  * * *

  Catrina and Ginger were justifiably annoyed the next morning. Pamela’s habit most mornings—even before she set water boiling for her own coffee—was to spoon generous servings of cat food into a fresh dish and set it in the corner of the kitchen where meals were accustomed to appear. Only then would she fill her kettle and put it on the stove, after which she would hurry out in her fleecy robe and slippers to retrieve the Register.

  But on this Sunday morning, she’d brought the paper in first. And now, as Catrina and Ginger prowled around her feet mewing, she stood at the kitchen table scanning the front-page article on what the Register was calling “the Arborville Christmas tree lot murder.”

  “They think she was killed right there,” said a small voice behind her.

  Pamela turned to see Penny standing in the kitchen doorway, her curls untamed and her face soft with sleep—though faint purplish shadows beneath her eyes suggested that her sleep hadn’t been completely restorative.

  “It’s all online,” Penny added. “Lorie Hopkins texted me besides. A
nd Lorie heard there’s just going to be a private funeral now, and then a memorial event for her students and everybody in the spring.”

  Pamela acknowledged Penny with a sad nod and lowered the paper to the table. “I’ll get the coffee going,” she said, and stepped toward the counter as the cats veered off in Penny’s direction. “And toast.”

  “They haven’t eaten.” Penny stooped to greet them and then fetched a can of cat food from the cupboard.

  Once the cats’ breakfast had been served, a small can of chicken-fish blend scooped into a fresh bowl and broken up into tempting morsels with a spoon, Penny took up her role in the humans’ breakfast ritual. She arranged Pamela’s cut-glass cream pitcher and sugar bowl on the table, poured a dollop of cream into the pitcher, and set out the butter dish. Then she added two cups and saucers and two small plates from the cupboard where Pamela kept her wedding china. Pamela used her china every day, even when she was the only diner—because what was the point in having nice things if you didn’t use them?

  Meanwhile, Pamela had measured water into her kettle and lit the burner under it, arranged a paper filter in the plastic filter cone over her carafe, and slipped two slices of whole-grain bread from the Co-Op Grocery into the toaster. The next step was to grind the coffee beans. As the clatter of beans in the grinder’s chamber became a whir and then subsided into a wheeze, she heard the newspaper rustle.

  Penny was sitting at the table studying the Register. “The article continues on an inner page,” she said. “This is more than I saw online, and I guess Lorie Hopkins hadn’t seen the Register.”

  Pamela turned away from the counter. Only the top of Penny’s head was visible as she bent over the newspaper.

  “The person who killed her used a piece of Christmas tree trunk.” The wondering quality in Penny’s voice suggested amazement that something associated with such a joyful season could be used as a lethal weapon.