Holiday Buzz

by Cleo Coyle

  I expected Delores to be dressed to the nines, maybe in floor-length silk pajamas. But she greeted us wearing stressed denims and a gray True Housewives sweatshirt. Far from dowdy, her top was short enough to display a flash of navel (and a belly button ring). Her blond hair and expensive makeup were perfectly done.

  Delores air-kissed Tuck. Then she saw me and her scowl returned, along with a wary tension, as if my presence made her nervous and infuriated at the same time.

  I attempted to break the Little D ice by handing over the bubbly bait (appropriated by Matt from Breanne’s bar fridge). I’d even nestled the bottle of champagne in ice packs so we could drink it right away.

  “Dom Pérignon! If I’d known we were having champagne I would have dressed for the occasion!” Delores fingered her sweatshirt. “As you can see, I’ve been decorating for the holidays.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing that work by yourself,” Tuck said. “Is that skinflint of an almost ex-husband nickel-and-diming you again?”

  “The kids are with their father, so I cut the maid’s hours,” she replied.

  “Without your children around, it must get lonely in this big house,” I said.

  Delores shrugged and took Tuck’s hand. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

  But Delores didn’t show us around. She ushered Tuck and me through a carpeted hallway, then down a flight of stairs to a basement family room beside the four-car garage.

  The large space boasted a big-screen TV with game consoles, a pool table, and shelves packed with expensive toys, and cheaply gilded athletic trophies. In the corner, a Christmas tree glittered like those little statues, in monotone gold. It was big and showy, tall enough to reach the high ceiling.

  “I’ll be right back and we’ll nosh!” Delores exclaimed and took off with the champagne, shutting the door behind her.

  I examined a wall of framed mementos. “Check this out. A picture of Ross Puckett, skating with a little boy. Is that a real hockey puck mounted in the frame?”

  “It’s real. And FYI, that boy is Dino, Dolores’s oldest child.”

  I read the message scrawled in Puckett’s sloppy hand: “Here’s a Raider’s puck for good luck!”

  “Wow,” said Tuck. “Who knew Ross was a poet?”

  “Do you know what this means?!” I cried.

  “His major influence was Dr. Seuss?”

  I grabbed his shirt. “Delores must have known about Danni’s affair! This photo is proof that both Ds, and their children, spent time with Puckett!”

  “Getting Little D to spill might be easier than we thought,” Tuck whispered.

  “I’m back,” Delores called as she pushed through the door.

  While Tuck took the heavy tray from her, Delores grabbed a champagne flute already brimming with bubbly.

  “I couldn’t wait. Bottoms up!” she said, taking a long, happy sip. Then we sat down around the coffee table while Delores poured for Tuck and me.

  I took a small sip, determined to remain sober. (In champagne veritas, and I wanted all of today’s veritas to come from Delores.)

  Tuck didn’t get the memo, and nervously downed his bubbly. Delores refilled his glass.

  “You’re not drinking, Clare.”

  Her gaze was so intense that I felt it would be rude not to take a second sip. Clearly, she didn’t want to drink alone: after I drank more deeply, Delores relaxed.

  “This Gruyère’s from a cheese monger in East Hampton. Do try!”

  I passed on the cheese, while Tuck launched into his prerehearsed spiel.

  “I came to talk to you about the production,” he began. “I’m composing a first draft, and I realized we need to take this show into unknown territory.”

  Delores arched a plucked eyebrow. “Unknown territory?”

  “I want to get to the heart of your story, and Danni’s. That means frankness. Truth. Bold truths, without compromises.”

  Delores frowned. “I don’t follow—”

  “Whew,” Tuck said. “It’s warm in here.”

  Delores put the flute to her lips and wet them. “You were saying, Tuck?”

  “I sense there’s a truth behind the reality on the reality show,” he replied. “Untold stories. There are clues that Danni’s fairy-tale life with Eddie may not be so storybook, after all. Rumors of an affair.”

  “Do you mean that Eddie is having an affair?”

  “No, that Danni is,” I replied. “With Ross Puckett.”

  “The hockey player? Why Danni hardly knows him—”

  “Danni knows Ross, and you know him, too,” I said, pointing to the picture. “That’s your son Ross with Dino—I mean your son Dino with Ross.”

  Wow, I thought, Tuck was right. It is warm in here!

  “Well, Clare,” Delores said, “you probably know Ross as well as Danni does.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You spent quite a long time alone with him after that spectacular tumble on the ice last night.”

  I stiffened. “Me? Certainly not!”

  “So you didn’t hook up in the first aid room?”

  “You must have me confused with someone else. I was working at my coffeehouse last night. Right, Tuck?”

  When I received no reply, I turned to find my assistant manager slumped on the couch. I touched him, and Tuck fell forward, bouncing off the coffee table before rolling onto the faux stone floor. I tried to catch him, but my own knees sagged and I sank back onto the couch.

  My God, she’s drugged us! She must have put the stuff in the champagne bottle. That’s why she poured hers first and pressured us to drink up!

  Through heavy eyelids I watched Delores gather up the flutes, the champagne bottle, the cheese. When she bent over, her sweatshirt rode up, exposing a tattoo—88 is Great spelled out in Raiders’ blue letters.

  Ross’s words about the woman who stole his car flooded back to me. “She was crazy jealous . . . Loved me so much she put an ‘88 is Great’ tattoo where the sun don’t shine!”

  The evidence was right in front of me. We went for the wrong Double D! Ross hadn’t been talking about Danni. The “crazy jealous bitch” was Delores!

  “Really, Ms. Coffee Queen, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble last night,” Delores purred. “Believe me, I learned the hard way. Ross isn’t that particular. He takes what he can get, although he does prefer them young, like that orange-haired tramp he carried on with for fifteen minutes or so. I should have killed Piper Penny after I bashed that Irish bitch, but not even the morons in the NYPD would buy two attacks in one night.”

  I wanted to strangle the woman, but I couldn’t even get off the couch! The drugs had nearly crippled me.

  “You killed an innocent girl,” I rasped, losing focus. “An angel—”

  “How many angels turn to blackmail, Coffee Queen? That girl tried to shake me down. Are you here to shake me down, too?”

  I shook my head.

  “My sister crunches crime stats for the NYPD and she knows about you, Clare Cosi. You’ve helped the cops with lots of cases. You’re even involved with a high-profile detective. Are you wearing a wire?”

  I thought she was going to frisk me, but Delores wisely kept her distance.

  “No. Of course, there’s no wire. The NYPD would lure me to the city before they tried to entrap me. Since we’re in Nassau County, you’re on a fishing expedition. If the police had any real evidence, I’d already be behind bars.”

  Delores reached into her denims for a medicine bottle, then stuffed several pills into her mouth. She chased them with champagne, draining her untainted flute.

  “First my husband dumps me over a tiny indiscretion. Then the show gets cancelled. All the real money is supposed to come from syndication, but nobody wants to syndicate our show! Now I’m broke and can’t get Ross back on the hook, even after I forgave him for cheating on me with my best friend!

  “I got even with Danni, though. Good for the goose, right? She doesn’t know it, but I
slept with her husband. That settled Evil Eyes right down—and me, too. I had to keep things on track, pretend to make nice so we could reboot our careers.”

  The pill must have kicked in. Delores seemed to be calming down.

  “I didn’t want to kill the little Irish baker, you know? I was going to reason with her. Try to make a deal. The girl wanted fifty thousand to stay quiet. She didn’t deserve even one dollar, if you asked me, but I was willing to work something out to keep her from going to the tabloids.” Delores shook her head. “Then Ross showed up with that teenage rocker. I’d been drinking, and . . . I lost it. When I tripped over a loose sidewalk stone at the carousel, I thought it must be fate that provided the weapon; that I had to kill her.”

  “Over a Letter?” I rasped, still wondering if that’s how M found out.

  But Delores was done confessing. She lifted the heavy tray and crossed to the door, where she paused.

  “You don’t understand, Coffee Queen. The hardest thing about fame and fortune is losing it.”

  Sixty-two

  AS soon as Delores locked the door behind her, I rolled to the floor and tried to rouse Tuck. But he was out cold, and I was slipping fast.

  We were both going to die, and I knew what I had to do—I leaned over the edge of the couch and jammed my fingers down my throat. After I emptied my stomach, my head cleared and my strength returned. This time I shook Tuck so hard that he actually groaned.

  Thank God! You’re not dead!

  I couldn’t induce vomiting in him. He was still unconscious and could choke to death. I had no cold water to splash in his face, and no smelling salts for his nose, so I slapped him, right in the kisser!

  His eyes opened, but they were still unfocused, so I slapped him again.

  “Clare?” he cried, cheeks blazing.

  I told Tuck what had happened while he was out, and convinced him to lose his lunch, too. Just as he finished, we both heard an engine rumble in the garage beside us.

  “Oh no!” Tuck cried. “I know what Delores is doing. I saw that episode of Criminal Intent—the one she auditioned for! A police stenographer and her detective lover are asphyxiated by the man’s jealous wife in their love nest beside a garage! The killer ran a hose from the car exhaust to the room, through the heating vent. When we’re dead, Delores is going to weight our bodies and dump us in a lake upstate, just like the TV show!”

  I could already smell the exhaust fumes pouring through the vent. Now Delores revved up a second engine. It must have been a truck because the rumble was so powerful it rattled the shelf of cheap gold trophies.

  “That crazy bitch really wants us dead!” Tuck cried.

  “Calm down. We have to think our way out of this.”

  “I need air to think,” Tuck said with a cough. Soon I was coughing, too.

  “Here. I want you to have this,” I said, reaching under my skirt and yanking off my tights.

  Tuck’s eyes widened in shock. “Clare! I know we’re about to die, but I’m not that kind of guy!”

  “Not that! I want you to have my tights for the ‘Whistling Dick’ stunt! You taught Punch how to do it, right?” I pointed. “See those high windows, near the basement ceiling. They’re sealed, for light only. But you can break one of them. Just like Punch broke my French door at the Blend.”

  Tuck grabbed my tights. “I need a rock . . . Something small but heavy.”

  I pulled the framed picture off the wall and smashed it on the coffee table. I passed the hockey puck to Tucker.

  “This thing must weigh five pounds,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t rip through.”

  “Double the thickness. Put one leg inside the other.”

  Coughing, Tuck did as I asked, then stuffed the hard puck into my tights.

  The air was getting heavy as Tuck spun the hosiery. The material stretched, but didn’t snap. Tuck aimed for one of the sealed windows near the ceiling and let it fly!

  The puck shattered the glass on the first try. Frigid air rushed into the playroom, but not enough to dispel the carbon monoxide. Not enough to save us.

  “Break the other window,” I said, gagging.

  “With what? Your tights are outside!”

  “Then we have to get out, too.”

  The edge of the window was at least twelve feet above my head. Even when Tuck hefted me onto his shoulders, I couldn’t grasp the windowsill. So I scrambled off Tuck’s back, tipped the enormous Christmas tree, and braced it against the wall.

  I climbed up the pine branches, stripping them clean of their gaudy tinsel. Gold ornaments shattered in my wake. I reached the broken window and called down to Tuck.

  “Throw me my coat!”

  Tuck tossed it up. I bunched the material around my arm and knocked the glass splinters out of the frame. Then I crawled out onto the cold ground.

  As I moved through a line of shrubbery, I spied our stocking-wrapped hockey puck, hanging on snow-covered branches like a low-rent Christmas ornament.

  I left it there and continued crawling on my knees until I reached the yard. Exhausted and sick, I collapsed, rolling onto my back to catch my breath. Finally feeling relief, I began to sit up when a shadow loomed over me.

  “I guess I’ll have to kill you the messy way,” Delores said as she smacked a hammer into her palm. The woman was taunting me, taking pleasure in what she was about to do.

  Good Lord, she’s a monster!

  I braced myself, ready to fight when the shrubbery behind her moved.

  “Hey, De-lor-es!”

  Tucker Burton broke out of the bushes, stocking swinging like a lasso.

  Hearing her name, Delores turned. With a sickening clunk, my loaded tights connected with her forehead. Then the unconscious bimbo dropped face-first in the snow.

  “Thank you, Whistling Dick!”

  Tuck reached for my hand. “Don’t thank me. Thank Mister O. Henry.”

  Sixty-three

  THAT afternoon, I finally heeded Lori Soles’s advice and called the Long Island cops. Sirens wailed as men in uniform took Delores Deluca into custody—and Tuck and I took a trip to the local ER.

  Our recovery was relatively quick. Oh, there were dozens of questions and recorded statements. But after several hours, and then a few nights’ rest, we were back to the calm oasis of our Village Blend . . .

  The shop was closed early for our annual holiday party, and it looked downright magical with the overhead lamps dimmed and strings of tiny white lights twinkling around our French doors. Fresh green boughs gave off the scent of pine, a cozy fire crackled in our exposed brick hearth, and Madame’s silver menorah flickered on the mantel.

  All year long, I looked forward to this night, an evening to relax with my staff while sipping our favorite Fa-la-la-la lattes and munching fresh-baked cookies, provided by Janelle and Boris. As a thank-you to Matt, I’d even baked up my New York Cheesecake Cookies, finishing them with a drizzle of candied strawberry syrup.

  Now jazzy holiday tunes played over the speakers, and my baristas mingled with a few friends and loved ones. But I couldn’t enjoy it; I was still upset over a missing piece of the puzzle.

  Matt and I took a table by the wall of French doors, so I could watch the lightly falling snow while filling him in on Delores Deluca’s crazy Cookie Swap crime spree . . .

  “So let me get this straight,” Matt said when I finished my tale. “You were saved by the Christmas tree?”

  “The tree and Tucker Burton. If Tuck hadn’t learned how to turn a pair of ladies’ tights into an effective slingshot for his production of Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking, you’d be attending my funeral right now, instead of our annual Secret Santa party.”

  Matt stared. “Whistling what?”

  I waved my hand. “Forget it.”

  “Well, what happened after that? Did Delores confess to the Long Island cops?”

  “Partly. She admitted drugging me and Tuck, but that was all. Then Lori and Endicott took a crack at her in the interview room.
They played her my digital recording, and she admitted she tried to asphyxiate us, too. She also confessed to causing the fire that killed Kaitlin, which her lawyers maintained was no more than manslaughter. And though she confessed to beating M to death, her lawyers argued that Delores was the victim—that she was a desperate woman being blackmailed. A crime of passion, in other words, and not premeditated murder.”

  “What about Rita?” Matt said, fingers tightening on his Candy Cane Latte (fortified with a Matt-size splash of peppermint schnapps). “That poor girl had an awful end, too. Didn’t Delores admit to killing her?”

  “No. She wouldn’t admit to that. Her fingerprint appeared to match the bloody print the police picked up at the crime scene, but that print is partially smeared, and it’s not definitive enough to be a slam dunk in court. Everything else is circumstantial because they never recovered the link between Rita and M.”

  “You mean the Letter?”

  I nodded, glancing out the window, into the dark, cold night. “Delores must have destroyed it.”

  “Don’t you think M was smart enough to make a copy?”

  “Yes, but where she put it is a mystery. The police searched her apartment and came up empty.” I sighed. “If only we could find that Letter. I’m sure it would nail Delores for Rita’s murder, too, and that homicide was definitely premeditated.”

  “How can you know that for sure?”

  “Because my ice skate theory panned out, that’s why. The forensics people tested a child-sized ice skate, and it was an exact match for her head wounds.”

  Matt rubbed his chin. “Why does that make it premeditated?”

  “Don’t you remember? You told me yourself during the last Cookie Swap. The most famous toy store in the world has thousand-dollar jumbo stuffed animals and a jewel-encrusted Etch A Sketch, but it doesn’t sell ice skates.”

  “Oh, wow, Clare, you’re right. That means the killer had to bring it into the store, which means Rita’s murder was—”

  “It eats at me, knowing that monster is going to escape being tried for Rita’s coldly premeditated homicide . . . If only the police could recover the Letter—or a copy of it.”