Christmas Card Murder

by Leslie Meier

  Pamela tucked the photo into one of her canvas bags and then began to return all the papers she had piled on the asphalt to the box. She lifted a loose sheaf of handouts headed Karma Karling—Mixed Media—Fall 2012 and out floated a newspaper clipping. Pamela recognized it as coming from the “What to Do This Weekend” feature in the Register. The heading was LIVE MUSIC IN NORTH JERSEY and one item was circled. It announced that a band called the Mackinations would be playing Saturday and Sunday night in the lounge at the Skycrest Motel on Route 46.

  Pamela slipped the newspaper clipping into the tote with the framed photo and returned the rest of the papers to the cardboard box. Bettina would be very interested in the photo and the clipping, Pamela was sure. But there was grocery shopping to do, and something else while she was uptown too, something that had been nagging at her mind since the previous night’s Knit and Nibble meeting. So she continued on her way, turning left onto Arborville Avenue and heading north, and when she reached the Co-Op Grocery, she walked right past it.

  * * *

  Arborville’s commercial district was charming, with its narrow storefronts, awnings, and attractive signage. And this time of year the charm was enhanced by the holiday decorations on the shops and on the lampposts—garlands of greenery and twinkling lights, illuminated even during the day.

  She passed the bank and the hair salon and Hyler’s Luncheonette, and another bank, and soon she reached the block where the St. Willibrod’s church and hall were located. But St. Willibrod’s wasn’t her destination today. She veered instead toward the Christmas tree lot. The crime-scene tape was gone now. As the Aardvark Alliance had promised, extra hours had been added to the lot’s schedule, so the gate in the chicken wire fence was open.

  The tree lot attendants were busy—one was encasing a tree in the netted sheath that would streamline it for transport home, and the other was processing a credit card payment. But Pamela didn’t want to talk to them anyway. She just wanted to see for herself the spot where Karma’s body had been found. So she made her way through the rows of bristly trees, enjoying the sharp piney fragrance and the sensation of wandering alone in a small forest.

  At the back of the lot, she stepped into a cleared place. A saw and a pile of short logs indicated that this was the spot that the Register had described as the murder scene. Through the chicken wire fence Pamela could see the St. Willibrod’s parking lot and, beyond it, a few houses. The chicken wire showed no signs of having been tampered with, but—she looked closely—a few fibers of something were caught on a nail that fastened the chicken wire to one of the fence posts.

  Presumably, the fibers were left from the twist of yarn the police had reported as a clue. Had they imagined Karma hurling Sorrel’s hand-knit ornaments against the fence in disgust? The fibers were black though—and none of Sorrel’s creations had featured black yarn. Black was definitely not a Christmas color.

  * * *

  At the Co-Op, Pamela pushed her cart up and down the narrow aisles, collecting tomatoes and cucumbers for salad, cat food, butter and eggs for more poppy-seed cakes, and heavy cream and chocolate in various forms for the special Christmas cake. Tonight’s dinner would be Wilfred’s five-alarm chili, but she paused at the fish counter.

  Pamela and Penny would be spending Christmas Eve alone because the Frasers were spending the evening with Wilfred’s cousin John and his family. Fish was the traditional Christmas Eve dish, so maybe she’d make bouillabaisse just for the two of them. She’d consult a cookbook at home and buy the fish fresh the next day.

  The cheese counter was next, where she pondered the offerings—the buttery wheels of Gouda, the oozing wedges of Brie, the blue-veined Stilton, the Swiss cratered with holes—and finally requested a pound of the Co-Op’s special Vermont Cheddar. Her tour of the Co-Op finished up at the bakery counter. She waited while a loaf of her favorite whole-grain bread was sliced and bagged and then pushed her cart toward the checkout.

  * * *

  Woofus, who had recovered from his pique at being left behind when Wilfred fetched the Christmas goose, greeted Pamela enthusiastically as soon as she stepped across the threshold—or perhaps it was the tempting aroma of cheese emanating from one of the canvas totes she carried.

  In the kitchen Pamela set her grocery-filled totes on the pine table, well out of Woofus’s reach. From the third tote she pulled, first, the framed photo of the dashing drummer.

  “ ‘To my beloved Karma . . .’ ” Bettina’s eyes grew wide as she whispered the words, staring at the photo. She shifted her gaze to Pamela. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Where did you find this?”

  Pamela described her fortuitous meeting with Mr. Gilly and the cardboard box.

  “Then she put him on the Christmas card,” Bettina said. “This year’s Christmas card, so he’s recent. I wonder if Clayborn knows about him.”

  “Why would he care?” Pamela’s lips formed a skeptical twist. “He thinks he’s got his killer.”

  “But now we know about him.” Bettina’s excitement set her earrings, miniature Christmas tree balls, to swaying. “Karma threw his photo away, so that suggests a love affair gone wrong. And what’s a better motive for murder than . . . anger at being rejected?”

  But then Bettina’s excitement faded.

  “How can we find him?” she asked plaintively. “All we know is his first name, Mack.”

  “We could google Mack the drummer.” Pamela paused and allowed her smile to tease. “Or we could”—she slowly pulled the clipping from the tote that had held the framed photo—“pay a visit to the Skycrest Motel on Route 46.” She laid the clipping on the table. “Even if the Mackinations aren’t playing there now, whoever books the entertainment would probably know how to find him.”

  Excited again, Bettina darted from the room, startling Woofus, who had been lounging in his favorite corner. She was back in a minute with her smartphone, her fingers already busy on its small screen.

  “Here we go, here we go,” she murmured as she lowered herself into her chair. “Skycrest Motel . . . appearing in the Skycrest Lounge this Saturday and Sunday, eight p.m. to midnight, the Mackinations.”

  “That’s good news,” Pamela said, “and bad. There’s no way to follow up till Saturday. Today’s only Wednesday.”

  Bettina nodded. “Don’t make any plans for Saturday night though. I’m in the mood for some live music.”

  “Agreed!” Pamela stood up and gathered her tote bags. “I found something else too,” she said as she paused at Bettina’s front door. In the excitement of identifying a recent love interest for Karma, and then tracking him to an upcoming gig, she had forgotten all about the fibers she’d noticed on the chicken wire fence.

  Now she described that discovery. “The thing is,” she concluded, “they were black. That’s not a Christmasy color, so I’m sure the twist of yarn the police found at the crime scene didn’t have anything to do with Sorrel’s yarn ornaments.”

  As she crossed the street to her own house, it occurred to Pamela that Phoebe Ruskin, with her avant-garde look and artistic leanings, probably had a lot of black garments in her wardrobe. But how could they arrange another meeting with her after the disaster with Woofus?

  * * *

  Penny was sitting on the living room floor playing with Ginger when Pamela stepped through her front door. A recent addition to the cats’ collection of toys had been a feather at the end of a long, flexible wand, and Ginger was getting a very good workout as she leapt and twisted her lithe body in pursuit of this tantalizing prey.

  Pamela took her groceries to the kitchen and put the perishable things in the refrigerator, then she returned to the living room and perched on the edge of the sofa.

  “Did Karma ever mention knowing a drummer?” she asked as Ginger pounced on the feather, then watched in dismay as it once more took flight.

  “Not really,” Penny said. “Why?”

  Pamela knew that Penny didn’t approve of her and Bettina’s forays into crime-so
lving. Pamela’s heart had melted when Penny once pointed out that such activities could be dangerous, and having lost her father, she didn’t wish to lose her mother too.

  “No special reason . . .” Pamela hesitated, already feeling guilty for the lie. She quickly added, “But the details on the cards are so realistic, and then there’s that extra little face besides.”

  “She was friends with the teacher who led the jazz-rock group, Mr. Wetzel,” Penny said as the feather arced dramatically and Ginger sprang into the air with her front paws splayed. “But I don’t think he was a drummer.”

  Later, when Penny had gone next door to meet Laine and Sibyl for an expedition to the Haversack thrift store in quest of vintage clothing, Pamela searched for Mr. Wetzel on her smartphone. The high school’s website provided his first name, Archie, but he wouldn’t be there today with the school on Christmas break. An Archie Wetzel lived in Meadowside though, and the listing included a phone number.

  She succeeded in reaching only his voicemail, and she left a message asking if he’d be willing to talk about Karma for an article in the Advocate. Archie Wetzel might not be a drummer, but as a friend of Karma’s, he might have been privy to information about her personal life.

  Chapter Eight

  “There isn’t going to be snow.” Penny was reading the Register as Pamela stood at the counter separating the whites from the yolks of the eggs that would go into her poppy-seed cakes. “Maybe it’s going to rain for Christmas, but it won’t be cold enough to snow.”

  “It is pretty when it snows,” Pamela said. At present, nothing outdoors looked pretty at all. The grass was patchy and the trees were bare and the shrubs that didn’t lose their leaves looked sad nonetheless. “Maybe we’ll get some snow before you go back to school.”

  “There’s probably snow in Boston now,” Penny said. And with that, she folded the paper, got up, and left the room.

  Pamela worked on. In her favorite bowl, the caramel-colored one with three white stripes circling the rim, she creamed the butter and sugar, then added the egg yolks and vanilla. The poppy seeds had been heated in a cup of milk earlier that morning and allowed to sit for an hour. Now they were added, and the sifted flour, baking powder, and salt too. Finally the egg whites, beaten to a drift of white, were folded in, and the batter was divided between two greased and floured loaf pans.

  As she was sliding the loaf pans into the oven, Penny reappeared. She had dressed, but in a slouchy leggings-and-sweatshirt outfit that suggested she wasn’t planning to go out anytime soon. She was carrying a large shopping bag from the fanciest store at the mall.

  “I have things to wrap,” she said.

  “Use all the paper you want.” Pamela closed the oven door and nodded toward the doorway that led into the dining room. The dining room table had been functioning as a wrapping station for the past few weeks, and Pamela’s wrapping supplies were all close at hand.

  “Don’t come in though,” Penny said. That comment and her secret smile gave away the fact that some of the gifts to be wrapped were destined for Pamela herself.

  The phone rang a few minutes later. Once the caller identified himself, Pamela was glad Penny had been eager to get on with her task and was now sitting at the dining room table rummaging among rolls of paper and spools of ribbon.

  “Archie Wetzel,” the voice had said. “I’ll talk to the Advocate. Just tell me when and where.”

  Pamela carried the phone’s handset into the entry just to make sure Penny wouldn’t overhear, and she quickly arranged for him to meet her and Bettina at Hyler’s for lunch. As soon as that call ended, she called Bettina.

  “I hope you’re free for lunch at Hyler’s today,” she said, and explained that Karma’s colleague, Archie Wetzel, had agreed to be interviewed by the Advocate on the subject of Karma’s legacy. “The Christmas cards, you know,” she added. “Twelve years’ worth of Christmas cards and their inspiration.”

  Bettina laughed. “Like who is the handsome drummer that Karma immortalized in this year’s design?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “How on earth did you . . . ?” Bettina sounded puzzled, but delighted.

  “I’ll tell you later, while we’re walking uptown together.”

  Bettina sighed. “I’ll wear comfortable shoes.”

  Penny had finished her wrapping and retreated to her room by the time Pamela took the poppy-seed cakes out of the oven. But she had added several carefully wrapped boxes to the small collection that had already accumulated under the tree. Pamela recognized the vintage wrapping paper that she’d brought home from a particularly good tag sale the previous summer: a busy print of holly leaves accented with berries.

  Pamela stepped out onto the porch to gauge which jacket she would need. Bettina, just leaving her own house, saw her and hurried across the street.

  “It’s not very cold,” she observed, “but it feels damp.” She’d traded her pumpkin-colored down coat for a red fleece parka with a drawstring waist, and instead of her fur-trimmed boots, she wore her red sneakers.

  “Rain is predicted for Christmas,” Pamela said. She went back inside to fetch her medium-weight jacket and call good-bye to Penny, and soon they were on their way. As they walked along, Pamela explained how she’d gotten Penny to volunteer the name of Archie Wetzel without actually revealing that she and Bettina were sleuthing.

  * * *

  As was often the case, the community bulletin board, which was a longtime feature of the Co-Op—dating from before the era when anyone looking to give away a puppy or recruit a babysitter could simply post a note on the town’s LISTSERV—had attracted a small crowd. It wasn’t that the flyers and notices pinned to the bulletin board were all that compelling. It was just that once one person lingered to see what was new, someone else might linger also, and a chat might ensue, thereby attracting more lingerers.

  One of the lingerers called out to them as they passed, and Pamela and Bettina turned to see Marlene Pepper waving. “Merry Christmas!” Marlene added to her greeting. “Are Warren and his wife coming down from Boston?”

  Warren and his wife—or as Bettina called them, “the Boston children”—were professors and the parents of Morgan, the granddaughter for whom girly gifts had been proscribed.

  Soon Bettina and Marlene were deep in conversation, but in a moment the conversation expanded to include a new arrival, a pleasant-looking woman about the same age as Marlene and Bettina.

  “I know what you mean,” the woman said. “Children have their own ideas, and once they’re grown up, you can’t say much if you want to ever see them again.” She laughed and shook her head. “I love Phoebe to death—but blue hair! Honestly! In the city maybe, but she doesn’t live in the city.”

  Pamela tapped Bettina on the arm, and when Bettina turned toward her, she mouthed the word Phoebe?

  Bettina turned back toward the group. “Phoebe the dog-walker?” she inquired.

  “Oh, my goodness! I am forgetting my manners!” Marlene clutched Bettina’s arm with one hand and the new arrival’s with the other. “Bettina and Pamela,” she said, “meet Georgia Ruskin.”

  “ ‘Dog-walker’? Yes.” Georgia Ruskin uttered the phrase as if it designated some sort of illicit activity. “After five years of college, paid for by her parents, she wants to be a sculptor, mind you.”

  “If she has that artistic impulse . . .” Pamela hesitated. Penny had an artistic impulse, so Pamela empathized. But she wasn’t sure how she’d feel if Penny ended up walking dogs for a living.

  “ ‘Artistic impulse’!” Georgia snorted. “Oh, she has that all right. Everything has to be just right. Artistic. She’s going to do my tree for me, so we end up going to three different lots last Friday night until Phoebe finds one she approves of.”

  * * *

  “Phoebe’s alibi?” Pamela inquired of Bettina when they’d gotten out of earshot of the others. It was getting on toward noon, the time she’d set to meet Archie Wetzel. She’d had to remin
d Bettina of that fact, interrupting her lament that she’d crocheted a pink baby blanket for little Morgan, only to have her gift refused.

  “Unsolicited too.” Bettina nodded. “And we’re not the police, so why would Georgia Ruskin say Phoebe spent Friday night searching for the perfect Christmas tree unless it was really true?”

  * * *

  Archie Wetzel was standing on the sidewalk outside of Hyler’s. Pamela had suggested that would make him easier to find than if he went inside, especially given the crush of people who descended on Hyler’s from Arborville’s offices and shops at lunchtime.

  He was decidedly not the dashing bad-boy type, like Mack, but rather a gentle-looking soul, slender and not too tall, with thinning blond hair and pale, freckly skin. The long black scarf wrapped twice around his neck seemed more a fashion statement than a necessity, however—given the unseasonable weather.

  “And which one of you is . . . ?” he asked pleasantly after he’d affirmed that he was indeed Archie Wetzel.

  “I’m Bettina Fraser, from the Advocate”—Bettina offered her hand and a flirtatious smile—“and this is Pamela Paterson.”

  “I called you,” Pamela said. “My daughter, Penny, graduated from Arborville High a few years ago. She loved her classes with Karma, and she thought maybe you could help Bettina with her article.”

  Luckily, one of Hyler’s spacious booths had gone unclaimed by the lunchtime crowd. Seated on a bench upholstered in burgundy Naugahyde and facing Archie across the worn wooden table, Bettina got right to the point.

  “Let’s start with the twelfth day and work backward,” she suggested. She’d slipped off the red fleece parka to reveal a mistletoe-green turtleneck, which was complemented by her dangling candy cane earrings and her bright red lipstick and nail polish.

  The server arrived then, bearing the oversized menus that were a Hyler’s institution. The interruption demanded attention to food rather than conversation. Archie’s focus on the menu, which hid his face, suggested that he was happy for a chance to ponder not only his lunch possibilities, but also his response to Bettina’s suggestion.