The Worst Noel

by Amy M. Reade

  This year the shop’s holiday theme was “The First Noel” and she had set up a manger, groupings of small, rustic papier mâiché barn animals, and bright gold stars hanging from the ceiling. The lights inside, like those lining Main Street outside, twinkled a soft white. She gazed at the decorations for several moments, feeling soothed by the warmth and calm they emanated. Then she got to work cleaning up the debris the police officers had left in their wake. Finally she opened the vault and set out jewelry displays in the windows, then at the appointed hour she unlocked the front door and waited for her first customers.

  She didn’t have to wait long. It seemed the rumor mill had been busy over the past couple days and people were eager to visit the store to see where Eden Barclay had died. People were so morbid, Lilly said to herself more than once that day. But morbid or not, there were quite a few paying customers and Lilly began to think as the day grew long that having hosted a murder on the premises had actually been good for business.

  She ushered the last customer of the day out the door just as the clock on the town square chimed six o’clock. She could hardly believe the day had passed without a special visit from the police. She hoped they were following other, more promising, leads.

  She trudged through the motions of putting the jewelry back into the vault for the night, locking the cases in the front of the store, and shutting off the lights. She noticed as she closed the door leading to her office that a man was standing on the sidewalk peering into the darkened windows of the shop. Since it was already dark outside and the streetlamps only lent enough light to make Main Street pretty, she couldn’t see his face. She stiffened, then recovered herself and hurried to lock the back door, double-check it, and get into her car. Normally the sight of someone peering into her shop windows after dark was a promising one, meaning she might have a customer early the next morning, but after the events of the past few days such a sight was unsettling, at best.

  She was thankful that the kids had made dinner for her and taken a plate of it to her mother’s house by the time she got home. The three of them ate together in the snug, warm kitchen and Lilly’s exhaustion started to get the better of her.

  “You kids are so good to me, making dinner and taking it over to Gran’s house like this,” she said, sniffling. “I just don’t know what I did to deserve you two.” The tears started to fall.

  “Mom, what’s wrong? You asked us to make dinner, remember?” Laurel asked.

  “I remember,” Lilly answered with a quavery smile. “I just appreciate all you do, that’s all. I don’t tell you often enough.”

  “It’s no problem, Mom,” Tighe answered. “I think you should go to bed early tonight.” Laurel nodded her agreement.

  “You look exhausted,” she added. “We’ll do the dishes. Why don’t you go right up to bed when you’re done eating?”

  “I will,” Lilly promised. For a fleeting moment she wondered if she would be able to sleep with Eden’s murder, and the knowledge that an intruder had been in her house, hanging over her head. The thought of another night of tossing and turning filled her with dread.

  Chapter 10

  But she needn’t have worried. Despite all the things on her mind, Lilly fell into a deep, exhausted sleep soon after dinner ended. She didn’t wake up until the alarm startled her the next morning. She felt much better having slept so well, and she greeted the kids cheerfully when they came downstairs for breakfast. She had just enough time to serve them hot chocolate and the last of Noley’s biscuits before they ran out the door for school.

  “Mom,” Laurel said as she pulled the back door closed behind her, “I’m going to hang out with Nick after school, okay?” The door closed with a click.

  Lilly wrenched the door open. “Laurel, wait!” she called. Laurel was running down the driveway, probably in an attempt to avoid answering questions about Nick, but she turned around and waited for her mother to speak, her hands on her hips.

  “What?”

  “Where are you going to be after school?”

  “Nick’s house.”

  “No, you’re not. Pick a public place and I’ll say it’s okay.”

  Laurel sighed loudly for dramatic effect. “All right, then. The bakery on Main.”

  “That’s better. Have a good day.” Lilly blew her daughter a kiss and went back indoors.

  She drove to work that morning lost in thought about the man she had seen looking into the shop window after she closed the previous night. Would he be back? What did he want? She hoped he was a prospective customer, not some creep who just wanted to see the place where Eden Barclay had been strangled.

  It wasn’t long after she opened the back door of the store when a knock startled her out of a paperwork-induced trance. She got up and went to the door, feeling apprehensive.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Police, ma’am. We’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.” Lilly didn’t know whether to believe the man or not. After all, there had been that man peering in the front window last night…

  “Come around to the front where I can see you and I’ll let you in,” Lilly said through the door.

  Moments later there was a knock at the front door. Lilly opened the door to her showroom just a crack so she could see who was at the front door. She let out a little squeak as she realized how nervous she had been, wondering if it was really a police officer who had spoken through the back door. She strode to the front door and opened it, stepping aside to let two officers in. She locked the door again behind them and led them to the back office. She sat at her desk; one of the men sat across from her while the other, presumably the junior officer, stood behind him.

  “How can I help you?” she asked.

  “We’d like to double-check the information you gave us about your whereabouts on Wednesday and Thursday,” the officer in the chair said.

  Why did they need to know that? “I closed the shop early on Wednesday and finished decorating for Black Friday. Then I left. I had to go shopping for the groceries I needed for Thanksgiving,” she said, trying to remember every step she had taken.

  “When did you close the shop?”

  “Two o’clock in the afternoon. That’s when most of the shops on Main Street closed.”

  “And you don’t remember why you might have left the back door and the door to the vault unlocked?”

  “Wait a minute. I remember. My mother called me just as I was closing up the shop. She had fallen and needed help.” Lilly’s head snapped up. “I must have forgotten to lock the vault and the back door because I was so worried about her. She had refused to call an ambulance.”

  “So you left without locking the store at all.” The accusation in his tone was clear.

  “I must have. It’s the only explanation.”

  The officer took up his previous line of questioning. “So you left around two o’clock. Is that when the general store closed?” The officer glanced at his cell phone.

  “I assume so, but I don’t know.”

  “So you left here and went to the grocery store. Then what?”

  “Then I went home and started cooking.”

  “Who was at your house with you?” The officer standing up tilted his head. Lilly wondered what his role was in this inquisition.

  “My kids were there with me on Wednesday afternoon.”

  “Were they there when you got home from the grocery store?”

  “Yes.” The officer standing up was scribbling in a small notebook.

  “How many kids do you have?”

  “Two. A son and a daughter.”

  “And how old are they?”

  “My son is seventeen and my daughter is sixteen.”

  “Did you go anywhere else that afternoon or evening?”

  “Yes. I went to my mother’s house to take dinner to her.”

  “And what is your mother’s name?”

  “Beverly Fisk.”

  “Where does she live?” Lilly gave them her mot
her’s address and hoped they wouldn’t have to talk to her. She shared her concerns with the officers.

  “My mother has early-stage dementia and doesn’t know the extent of what took place here. I don’t want to upset her. If you can avoid asking her questions, that would be good.” Privately, Lilly wondered if her mother would even remember what happened the previous Wednesday. It would be just like her to say she had no idea who Lilly was or whether she had dinner at all that night, Lilly thought wryly.

  “We’ll see,” the sitting officer said. “We may not need to check with her. Did anyone go with you to drop off her dinner?”

  “Yes, my daughter went with me.”

  “We can talk to her, then.”

  “Did you go anywhere else when you took dinner to your mother?”

  “No. My daughter and I went home and we watched a movie and went to bed.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No. Divorced.”

  “Where’s your ex-husband?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. If you find out, please don’t tell me.”

  The standing officer coughed and looked up. Lilly ignored him. The last person she wanted to talk about was Beau.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Beau Carlsen.”

  “So you went to bed Wednesday night. Then what?”

  “I woke up early Thursday, went for a walk, and started cooking again when I got home.” Rats, Lilly thought. I shouldn’t even have mentioned going out for a walk.

  The seated officer seized on her comment. “You went for a walk. Did you go alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there’s no one who can corroborate your whereabouts?”

  “No. Well, wait. My neighbor, Mrs. Laforge, somehow always knows what everyone in the neighborhood is doing. She might have seen me.” Lilly provided the officers with Edna’s address.

  “Did you go out again on Thursday?”

  “No. My son picked up my mother and brought her over to my house for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “So you, your mother, and your kids were at Thanksgiving dinner. Anyone else?”

  “Yes. My brother Bill, whom you probably know.”

  “Bill Fisk?”

  “Yes.”

  The scribbling officer stopped his hen scratching and stared at me. “I didn’t know Bill was your brother,” he blurted out. The sitting officer turned and glared at his partner.

  “Sorry,” the scribbler mumbled.

  “What time did you all eat dinner on Thanksgiving?”

  “About five.”

  “Did you take your mother home?”

  “No, my son drove her back to her house. I told you, I didn’t leave the house again until Friday morning. I went in really early because it’s such a huge shopping day and I had a lot to do, but I tripped over Eden’s body in my shop while I was turning on the lights. The rest you already know.”

  The officers thanked Lilly for her time, told her they might have more questions for her, and left. She went back to her office and sat at her desk, lost in thought for several minutes. She was worried that the police were moving closer to declaring her a suspect, not just a person of interest, in Eden’s murder. She picked up her phone and dialed Bill’s cell.

  “Bill, two officers were just here asking a lot of questions about where I was and everything I did last Wednesday and Thursday. Just how much of a person of interest am I?”

  She could sense his hesitation on the other end of the line. “I’m not really supposed to be talking to you about this because of your status as a person of interest,” he said softly. “I’m at work right now. I’ll stop by your house tonight.” He hung up without another word.

  Now Lilly was panicked. It would be nearly impossible to wait until evening. What she needed was work and lots of it.

  In addition to her job as a jeweler, Lilly also designed pieces for sale in her store. She didn’t sell her creations anywhere else, so that added to their value and their caché. She yanked a sketchbook from one of her bookcases and flipped to the first blank page. Her hands trembling, she reached for a pencil from the top desk drawer and accidentally flung it across the room. Before standing up to retrieve it, she placed her hands squarely on the edge of the desk in front of her and took a deep breath, then counted to ten. When she didn’t calm down, she did it again. And again, and again, until her breathing slowed and her mind was able to slow down enough for her to think rationally.

  Innocent until proven guilty. The police are good at their jobs. They’ll find the right person. The kids and Noley can vouch for where I was, and even Mrs. Laforge might be able to help.

  When she was a little calmer, she busied herself sketching designs in her notebook. She had a small jewelry-making area in the office where she made her designs come to life. She wasn’t ready to start working on any particular design yet, but it helped to sketch out her ideas. When she was drawing her mind was able to focus on the pencil strokes and banish most of the ugly thoughts until something broke her concentration.

  When it was time to open the shop, she was in a slightly better frame of mind. She put the sketchbook away and went out to begin the workday. She turned the lock on the rustic wood-and-glass front door and was walking back to one of the display cases when her first customer entered the store.

  She turned to greet the person and stopped short with a barely-audible gasp. She would know those blue eyes anywhere. The hair was longer and grayer, the physique a little more lumpy. But those eyes…

  Chapter 11

  “Beau.” She said his name in a quiet voice. In order to stop herself from running toward him to beat him senseless, she made a heroic effort to remind herself that this was the father of her children and a man she had once loved.

  “How’s everything, Lil?” he asked, a slight smile playing around his lips.

  “It’s Lilly. And everything is fine,” she replied in a flat voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was in town and heard that you own this place. I just wanted to stop and say hello.”

  “Hello. Now, goodbye.”

  He ignored that. “You’ve done well. I’m happy for you.”

  “Thanks. Now, would you please leave?”

  “How are the kids?” Lilly’s heart jumped into her throat. She was tempted to say What kids? but she knew better. She wanted this man to stay the heck away from her kids.

  “I don’t suppose that’s any of your business,” she replied, lifting her chin just a little.

  “They’re my kids, too,” he said, just a touch of annoyance creeping into his voice.

  “Not really. You gave up fatherhood when you left.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Exactly. You gave up fatherhood.”

  “Still living in the same house?” She was silent. It would be easy for him to find the house she had moved to after he left, but why help him out? If he wanted to know so badly, let him figure it out for himself.

  “Okay, I get it. You’re not going to answer me. That’s fine. I know you moved, anyhow. I drove by the old house yesterday and there were strangers there.”

  This was surreal. What made him think he could disappear for fifteen years and then show up out of the thin mountain air at her store?

  “What do you want?” she asked, glancing around him to see if there was anyone outside the store.

  “I don’t want anything. I just wanted to see you again.”

  “Well, you’ve seen me. So now it’s time for you to leave.”

  “I’m thinking I might stick around for a while. The skiing’s supposed to be pretty good here this year.”

  Just what I need, Lilly thought.

  The bell above the door jingled and a middle-aged couple walked in, their eyes shining and their faces ruddy from the cold. Lilly gave Beau a pointed look and nodded toward the door. He must have figured there was time to come back later to harass her, so he left. As she greeted the couple, Lilly watched out of the
corner of her eye as he sauntered down the street, looking back once and winking at her. She winced inwardly.

  She spent the better part of an hour with the couple, answering their questions about the jewelry she designed and showing them various pieces. They left with one of her favorite pendants, one of a mountain range made of stone and edged in silver. They promised to return, too, when she had her open house the following weekend.

  As soon as they left she hurried back to the office and scrabbled for her cell phone on the desk. She had kept her feelings of apprehension and dread at bay while she chatted with her customers, but now that the store was empty again her stomach was tying itself in knots and her heart was starting to pound at an alarming speed.

  Bill answered on the second ring. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Beau’s back.” Those two words had the power of silencing Bill for several long moments.

  “How do you know that?” he asked slowly. He knew only too well the pain Beau had caused Lilly during their brief marriage, as well as the grief he left in his wake as she tried to divorce him without knowing his whereabouts.

  “He came in as soon as I opened the store this morning.”

  “Why didn’t you call me right away?”

  “Because I had customers in here until just now. I couldn’t get away to call you. What should I do?”

  “There’s really nothing you can do, as long as he didn’t touch you or threaten you.”

  “He didn’t. I mean, do you think I should tell the kids? Do you think I should try to find out where he’s staying?”

  “Whatever you do, don’t try to go figuring out where he’s staying or where he’s been all this time or anything else. Stay the heck away from him. As for the kids, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. We can talk about this when I see you tonight.”

  Lilly hung up bewildered and angry. How dare Beau show up after all this time, waltzing into her store like nothing had happened? Like he hadn’t left her with a toddler and a baby with no money and no forwarding address? She hadn’t even known if he was dead or alive. Not that it mattered. It had been years before she could even think about him without her blood boiling and even longer before she was finally able to get a court to grant a divorce.