by Emmie Lyn
Rose drove out first in her Cadillac and Maggie settled into the passenger seat of my little dark green MG. Pip was happy to be on her lap which made her higher and better able to see out the window as we zipped along the curvy road to town.
“I’m not sure what’s going on between AJ and Jane,” Maggie said, catching me by surprise after five minutes of a peaceful silence.
“What do you mean? They work together. They’re on a team, Mags.”
“They aren’t on a team now. AJ is a suspect and Jane wants to ruin him. Why would she do that unless she has evidence?” Maggie turned sideways on the cramped seat to look at me. “I’m worried to death, Dani.”
I hated to say what I was about to say, but I had to. “You think AJ might be guilty?”
“He thinks that’s what I’m thinking. After he came over with Leo and told me he needed to be prepared, I asked him if he killed Nick. You know, maybe in self-defense or something like that.”
“I take it, the question didn’t go over very well?”
“Like a shark in your bathtub. He looked at me and his face got tight and all tensed up—pursed lips, clenched jaw, squinty eyes.” Maggie made the face she was describing, and I had to admit, it wasn’t pretty. “Then he stormed out of my apartment, slamming the door in case I didn’t already get it that he was furious.”
“You two do have that competitive thing going.” I wasn’t really sure how that applied in this situation, but I didn’t always understand their special brand of interaction in good times or bad.
“This wasn’t like that. All I did was ask a reasonable question and he took it like I’d stuck a knife in his chest.”
I pulled into Alice’s driveway, causing Pip to slide off Maggie’s lap and land on mine. With Pip in the way, I couldn’t downshift, causing the car to stall. Pip wiggled her way backwards to her spot and looked at me as if she was trying to say I should be more careful with the corners in the future.
“Sorry, Pip.” I turned toward Maggie. “Did AJ ever answer your question?”
Maggie shook her head. “That’s what bothers me the most. He just walked out. Did he leave so he wouldn’t have to tell me a big lie? I just don’t know how to read any of this. You have to help get to the bottom, Dani. Promise?”
I patted her knee. “I promise. But I can’t promise what we’ll find at the bottom. It could be Marion or her father or it could be AJ or Kelly. Can you handle that possibility?”
“I have to. I have to know the truth, or this relationship is doomed.”
It might be doomed either way I thought to myself. Luckily that thought stayed right where it belonged—in my head.
“Let’s go inside then and find out if Alice has any good town gossip to share. She’s never let me down in the past.”
23
I decided this was my lucky day when Alice opened the door for Pip, Maggie, and me.
It wasn’t the blast of heat that enveloped me like a warm cashmere sweater, and it wasn’t the jazzy Christmas music playing in the background.
Nope.
When I looked over Alice’s shoulder into her cozy living room, I saw Sadie Hicks sitting with a cup of tea while Misty lay between her chair and the one I knew Alice preferred.
“Danielle, what a lovely surprise. And Pip. This day just keeps getting better and better. Come in, come in. And a hearty hello to you, too, Margaret.”
I felt a jab in my back. Maggie hated the name Margaret, but Alice was a stickler for using everyone’s full name. No nicknames. I couldn’t remember when she’d ever called me Dani.
“My good friend Sadie Hicks is visiting so we’ll have a jolly old time.” She chuckled. “It is the time for jolly and all, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t remember ever seeing Alice in such giggly spirits. Maybe these two old friends had added something extra in their tea. Good for them.
“I brought you something, Alice.”
“Of course, you would. You never come empty handed.” She took the bag from me and peeked inside. “What did you make?”
“Actually, Luke made it—blueberry crumble.” Alice turned around, surprise all over her face. “But, don’t worry,” I quickly added. “We already sampled it and I can promise you from my first-hand, unbiased opinion, that it’s a blueberry burst of sweetness. You’ll love it.”
“Oh my. Did you hear that, Sadie? Danielle’s sweetheart can actually bake something edible.”
The two older women roared with laughter. Apparently, men who could manage anything in the kitchen had been a rarity in their lives.
“And how about you, Margaret? What’s your specialty in the kitchen?”
“Staying out of it,” she replied with a straight face.
Alice turned around and looked at Maggie, probably to see if she was joking.
She wasn’t.
Sadie slapped her thighs with glee. “Is the world turning upside down? Well, I for one welcome those changes. Men who bake and women who don’t. Bravo!”
“And admit to it,” Alice added. “I’ve known plenty of woman who could barely boil water and insisted on sharing their pot roasts as if we can’t tell when a piece of meat is dried up, tough as leather, and burned to a crisp. We’d all politely choke it down or find a way to spit it into our napkins.”
Sadie nodded, obviously remembering this as clearly as Alice did.
I glanced at Maggie and tried not to laugh at this interesting commentary on the expected and not so accepted roles of men and women.
“Make yourselves comfortable ladies.” Alice waved her hand around her room. “Sit wherever you’d like while I give Pip her treat. She’d never forgive me if I forgot about her. See? She sits right at my side waiting like the polite girl she is. And you too, Misty. You’re both good girls, aren’t you?”
I loved how Alice talked to the dogs and how the two dogs focused on her so intently. The best audience anyone could have.
“Okay,” she patted both dogs, “lie down now so I can visit with my guests.”
“Want me to get a plate for the blueberry crumble?” Maggie asked.
“The plates are in the cupboard to the left of the sink, dear. I suppose that’s something you can handle in the kitchen since it doesn’t involve cooking anything.” Alice put her hand over her mouth like she was a naughty girl. “You don’t mind a little teasing, do you Margaret?”
How would Maggie respond to that? “You don’t have to worry,” she said from the kitchen. “I left my gun at home.”
Alice let out a loud snort, but Sadie looked a little green around the gills. “Oh, Sadie, she’s only kidding. Margaret is a private investigator, you know. Of course, she has a gun.”
“I hope it was a joke, but you never know these days.” She scooched forward in her chair like someone who was about to share a secret. “I saw one of Penny’s guests get something out of her car yesterday morning. She glanced all around like she didn’t want anyone to see what she was doing before she opened the glove compartment.”
“Why were you spying on your neighbor’s guests, Sadie?” Alice asked with her teacher voice.
“Well,” Sadie sputtered. “Someone has to keep an eye on what’s going on. And I’m glad I did. When that guest turned around, I saw a flash of something shiny and it sure looked like the shape of a small handgun. It kind of scared me to tell you the truth.”
She had to be talking about Marion.
“Are you sure it was a gun?” Maggie asked as she held the plate of blueberry crumble toward Sadie who chose the biggest piece.
“Almost sure,” she said around her mouthful of dessert. “And I’ve been saying for years that with all the people Penny has going in and out of that inn of hers, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if someone sometime got up to no good.” She sipped her tea, looking quite satisfied with her story. “And that’s why I’d never live without a couple or five dogs.”
Alice’s hand drifted down and rested on Misty’s head. I think she was happy with her companion
, too.
“Danielle, I have some news to tell you,” Alice said with a gleam in her eyes. “The library is going to hang my beautiful quilt of Misty Harbor at the library for a special craft week. It was all Sadie’s idea.”
“That’s right,” Sadie said. “I’ve organized all the quilters and knitters in town to share their work. Even though Alice didn’t make her quilt, it was made locally and it will be an honor to have it in the show anyway.”
“Penny is a talented knitter,” I said. “Will she be participating?” Having Penny and Sadie involved in anything together sounded like a recipe for disaster.
“Well,” Alice said. “Sadie taught Penny everything she knows about knitting and do you think Penny ever gives any credit to her? Never.”
“I didn’t invite her to participate,” Sadie said matter-of-factly. “She’d probably snub me anyway, so I decided to avoid letting her have the last word. Penny is what I call a knitting snob. She thinks she’s better than the rest of us since she’s the head of the Maine League of Craftsmen. La-di-da.”
I could tell there was a lot of either anger or jealousy in Sadie’s comment, but I was more interested in who and what she saw the morning that Nick North was murdered.
“Sadie? You mentioned seeing one of Penny’s guests go to her car and get something from the glove compartment. Did she go back inside after that?”
“Well, a man came out and they argued for a few minutes. At least with the way they flailed their arms and pointed their fingers, I assumed they were arguing. Anyway, he stalked off in a hurry.
“Toward Creative Designs?” I asked.
“Actually, yes. How did you know?”
“Just a lucky guess. And where did the woman go?”
Sadie had to think about that for a bit. “She was still standing next to the car when I heard my teakettle whistling. I rushed to the kitchen to save it from burning dry and ruining my kettle.”
“Do you remember when all that happened?”
“Oh, let me think about that. I was in the kitchen around eight puttering around like I do every morning fixing my breakfast but when the dogs started barking, I hurried to the window to see what was going on so early.”
Sadie made a face. “It must have been close to eight-thirty when I saw them because my grandfather clock did its half-hour chime while I was at the window.”
I tried to picture what Sadie had seen. “Did you see anyone else?”
“Not outside, but I saw that new detective drive by. She has a dent in the back bumper of her car. That’s how I recognized her. She didn’t stop.”
Wow, this was all fitting right into the timeline that Kelly had given Detective Winter.
What did Marion do while Sadie went into her kitchen?
24
“Thank you for stopping by, Danielle. And tell your sweetheart that his blueberry crumble is a winner,” Alice said as Maggie and I made our way to her front door.
Alice wrapped me in her arms in a giant mother-of-all hug. “Congratulations, dear one. If I don’t see you before your wedding, have a wonderful honeymoon and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
I saw Maggie’s eyebrows shoot almost right off her forehead after that comment. Both Alice and Sadie, now with their arms around each other’s waists, doubled over into a giggling fit that I thought wouldn’t stop.
“Oh, Alice,” Sadie said with her laughing barely under control, “you just crack me up every time we get together. I never feel so young and full of life with anyone else.”
“That’s what friends are for, Sadie, my dear,” I heard Alice say from her open door as she waited for us to get in the MG and wave a final good-bye.
“Boy, oh boy,” Maggie said after I’d backed out of the driveway. “Those two are something else. I can’t imagine our next stop will even come close to topping that entertainment.”
“Unfortunately, I expect things to be slightly more serious from here on in. I’ll drive by the Blue Moon Inn and see if Rose’s car is still there. Otherwise, my guess is that she’s at the diner.”
“What do you make of what Sadie told us?” Maggie asked in an unusually thoughtful tone.
“I think Marion went out to her car early yesterday morning like she said but we don’t know for sure if she went back into the inn or if she took herself for a walk around town. I think she’s up to something, or knows something, or did something. What do you think?”
“I want to know if that was a gun she took out of her glove compartment and if it was, why she felt the need to get it yesterday morning. Maybe she used it to threaten Nick. You found him, Dani. He was killed by that reindeer stabbing him not a gunshot, right?”
“What I saw was half of that glass reindeer sticking out of Nick’s chest.” I shuddered at the memory. “AJ was holding the other half. If there was a bullet hole somewhere, I didn’t see it. That’s something AJ would have heard, don’t you think?”
“If Nick was shot when AJ was in the front of Creative Designs, he would have heard it,” Maggie said leaving no room for a different explanation.
“I’m going with your first scenario then. Marion threatened Nick with her gun and then something went terribly wrong. But there was no gun shot.”
“But what about Harry? He’s really the one with the strongest motive,” Maggie said. “How does he fit in to all this?”
“I suppose it’s possible that Harry took the gun away from Maggie, and he’s the one who threatened Nick. Or, after Harry and Maggie argued, she threatened Nick hoping to avoid a confrontation between her father and love interest.”
“There seems to be one common element in all of these theories,” Maggie said.
“Marion. Like I said, she’s got information that’s key to solving this murder. How will we get it out of her?” I asked.
I drove past the Blue Moon Inn and saw Detective Winter walking up the front path. I wondered if she was following the same theory that Maggie and I had come up with. Or maybe just following up on what I’d told her about Marion and Harry both going out early the morning of the murder.
“Rose’s Cadillac isn’t here, but did you see Detective Winter?”
Maggie whipped her head around. “Huh. Maybe that’s a good sign as far as AJ is concerned.”
I didn’t hear much enthusiasm in her comment but I wanted to think it was good news for AJ. We’d find out eventually.
I pulled the MG into the narrow driveway next to the Little Dog Diner. “Looks like the gang is here—Lily, Sue Ellen, and Rose.”
“You know, Dani,” Maggie said before she opened her door. “Do you really want to be doing all this running around when you should be getting ready for your wedding?”
“Of course, I don’t want to be doing it, but I have to. I already told Luke I don’t want a cloud over our day. I want to enjoy Christmas Eve with all of my friends in jolly spirits. How can that happen if we’re all worried about AJ and Kelly? And me too, since I found the body. We just don’t know what direction Detective Winter will follow. I refuse to be ready to say, I do, and have her swoop into Sea Breeze to arrest someone.”
Maggie took my hand and squeezed. “I’m so sorry this all happened now. You’re always helping everyone else, and you deserve to have the best day for your wedding. I ordered mild temps with a dusting of snow and no wind for you.”
“Thanks, Mags. That sounds perfect, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens. With the way my luck’s been going, a nor’easter will hit, and we’ll all be stranded at Sea Breeze with no power.”
“You know, Lily would turn that into the most romantic evening ever with candles, a roaring fire, and delicious food. She’s amazing at setting the scene and getting it perfect.”
“She is but I’m not sure she’s enjoying this catering business she started. She always seems kind of distracted to me. Has she said anything to you?”
“Nope. But she’ll talk when she’s ready. To you, I imagine. She’s never been one to like the center of atten
tion.”
Pip had jumped from Maggie’s lap to mine and was scratching at the window.
“Okay, okay, Pipsqueak.” I opened the door for her, and she dashed off to explore all the footprints in the snow. With a leap, she burrowed into the snowbank.
“What’s that all about?” Maggie asked.
I laughed as Pip dug deeper leaving only her little tail wagging with determination for me to see while the rest of her body was buried in the snow. “Who knows?”
Pip, after her furious digging, backed out, shook the snow off her back, and pranced toward me with something dangling from her mouth.
“What have you got there, Pippy?” I bent over, hoping she’d let me have a look at her prize. She dropped a dark red mitten with a reindeer pattern into my hand. I slipped my hand inside. “Warm, beautiful yarn, maybe alpaca,” I guessed. “And exceptional knitting technique,” I added, not that I, or Maggie for that matter, was an expert.
I looked up and down the street but didn’t see anyone.
“I bet Sadie Hicks might have an idea who this belonged to if it was made by someone here in town.”
I stuffed the mitten in my pocket, picked up Pip, and let her snuggle into the warmth of my cushy parka. “Good girl, Pipster. Someone will want to have this mitten back.”
25
Sue Ellen, the first to turn around when I walked into the diner with Maggie and Pip, screeched in her over the top style, “Here’s the woman of the day—Danielle Mackenzie who is about to have the most exquisite wedding in all of Blueberry Bay.”
My cheeks heated up. Maybe from the sudden heat hitting my cold cheeks, but more likely from Sue Ellen’s extravagant announcement. I hoped she was right with her prediction.
Sue Ellen’s candy cane-themed green apron partly covered her red Christmas sweater and green pants. Her blinking Christmas light necklace and dangling snowflake earrings dazzled brighter than anyone else’s in Misty Harbor. And ribbon candy-like frills fluttered from her apron as she rushed to embrace me.
