Christmas Sweets

by Joanne Fluke

  “Leave?” Elizabeth asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we will hold your job for you until the investigation is complete. If you are exonerated, and I most certainly hope you will be, you will be welcome to return to the Cavendish family.”

  Elizabeth did a rapid calculation and figured she had eighty-two dollars in her checking account, and only a couple of thousand in her emergency savings account. “Is this a paid leave?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” he said, “but you will be paid for the days you worked in this pay period.”

  That was the first good news she’d had since the theft was announced, she thought, slightly relieved.

  “If I were you,” Mr. Dimitri said, “I’d hire a good lawyer.”

  Elizabeth nodded and left the office. At the door she was met by one of the hotel’s security guards, who escorted her to the locker room. He stood by, watching as she opened her locker and hung up her green Cavendish jacket, feeling a bit like a disgraced officer being stripped of her military insignia. She turned her back and slipped off the green skirt, then pulled on the shorts she’d worn to work that morning. When she picked up her purse he took it and looked through it carefully; she blushed when he opened the plastic tampon container. “Okay,” he said, handing the bag back to her.

  She took it and left the building, stepping into the dark night and following the dimly lit path to the employees’ parking lot. There, she discovered, the one halogen lamp that lit the lot was out. She unlocked the Corolla and sat behind the driver’s wheel, looking back at the golden, glittering hotel and wondering if she would ever be able to return.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. Tabak was right. She was in trouble, the worst trouble of her young life, and there was only one thing to do. Call home.

  Chapter Six

  After talking to her mother, Elizabeth followed her advice and took a long bath and went to bed. “Everything will look better in the morning,” Lucy Stone told her daughter, but Elizabeth found that hard to believe. Every time she closed her eyes she saw another disturbing vision: Tabak warning her not to leave town or Mr. Dimitri’s curt dismissal or Wrayburn’s bulldog expression. And then there was Toni, smirking and speculating that Chris wasn’t genuine. Was Toni right? Had she been a complete idiot? Or, worst of all, had she actually aided and abetted the thieves without realizing it?

  Exhausted at four a.m., she gave up and took the one remaining Ambien in the vial Doc Ryder had prescribed when she’d had a bout of insomnia last summer, anxious about leaving home and beginning her new job. She then fell sound asleep and didn’t wake until noon.

  Her first impulse upon waking was to call Chris Kennedy, but she couldn’t quite make up her mind to do it. Finally, spitting a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink, she gave in, only to get a recording informing her he wasn’t available but she could leave a message.

  She was about to do so, then remembered the police were most certainly monitoring his calls and snapped the phone shut. Too late, she realized. Her call would be retained by the system as a missed call. In fact, she realized, it was quite probable that she was under surveillance herself. She went to the front window and looked out, wondering if she was being watched.

  There was no black sedan parked out front, no unmarked white van on the other side of the street, but she was too paranoid to feel relieved. What was it they said? It wasn’t paranoia if they were out to get you. And Elizabeth had the uncomfortable knowledge that she was under suspicion, the police were out to get her and wanted to implicate her in the jewel robbery.

  She was making herself a cup of tea—she couldn’t face coffee this morning, actually this afternoon—when Toni’s face popped into her consciousness. That bitch! There was no other word, she thought, stirring a scant teaspoon of sugar into the mug. It must have been Toni who fingered her, who had told investigators about her and Chris dating. Impulsively, she grabbed the phone, determined to have it out with her.

  “Why did you do it? Why did you even mention me to the cops?” she demanded, when Toni answered. “Thanks to you I’m in big trouble.”

  “I was only trying to help,” Toni replied. “I told them you were under the influence of this Chris Kennedy guy, that it wasn’t your fault. I told them how he had won you over, using a fake identity.”

  “How could you know that?” Elizabeth demanded.

  “It was obvious. He’s a big phony but you were too infatuated with him to realize it. I was only trying to help you, honest.”

  “Well, you’ve gotten me in real trouble. They think I conspired with Chris,” Elizabeth wailed.

  “I didn’t realize . . . I was only trying to be a good friend.”

  Elizabeth doubted that Toni was telling the truth, but didn’t want to think badly of her colleague. “I guess it won’t matter in the end,” she said. “The truth will out and I have nothing to fear because I’m innocent.”

  “I’m sure that’s right,” Toni said. “By the way, they gave me your concierge job. Temporarily.”

  Something in the way Toni said “temporarily” gave Elizabeth pause. She remembered Toni’s threat, after Elizabeth had forgotten to let her deliver the bubble bath to Merton Paul, that she would get back at her. Now, it seemed, Toni had succeeded. Maybe she wasn’t really a friend after all.

  Suddenly, Elizabeth didn’t want to have anything to do with Toni. “I’ve got to go,” she said, tossing the phone on the table as if a spider had crawled out of it.

  She picked up her mug of tea and wrapped both hands around it, as if its warmth could somehow console her. Reassure her.

  She was a good person, she told herself. It was ridiculous that she should find herself suspected of a crime. She worked hard, she tried to please, and this is what it got her. How could Toni be so mean? She simply didn’t understand it. And Chris? Was it possible that Toni was right? Had she been played for a fool?

  She sat down on her futon, crossing her legs Indian style, and tasted the tea. It was sweet and spicy, and it seemed to help her clarify her thoughts. She sipped and tried to remember every conversation she’d had with Chris. Had she unwittingly given him valuable information? It was true that he’d mentioned the Cavendish data system, she realized with a start, but she hadn’t given him any information. Or had she?

  Was it really possible that he wasn’t who he’d claimed to be? He looked like a Kennedy, but so did a lot of people. Toni had been suspicious of him right from the start. Was Chris Kennedy as fake as that big Rolex he always wore? And why hadn’t he answered her call?

  Setting the tea aside, she decided to get dressed and work off her nervous energy in the apartment complex’s gym. She threw herself into her workout, starting on the treadmill, then advancing to the Stairmaster and elliptical trainer, then finishing off with a half hour’s worth of lazy laps in the pool. When she headed back to her apartment her joints were loose and a bit rubbery, and she was very hungry. She was wondering what she had in the fridge when she saw a strange apparition climbing out of a taxi.

  It was a very old woman with a head of curly white hair, carrying a bright red winter coat looped over her arm. There was nothing unusual about seeing an elderly woman in Florida but Elizabeth thought this particular old lady bore an uncanny resemblance to her mother’s friend in Tinker’s Cove, Miss Tilley. Christened Julia Ward Howe Tilley many years ago, she was known as Julia to only a few very dear contemporaries, and was Miss Tilley to everyone else.

  Elizabeth blinked a few times, staring at this incongruous figure standing on the sidewalk, apparently examining a leathery anthurium blossom. They said everyone had a double—was this Miss Tilley’s double?

  The apparition turned and smiled at Elizabeth, giving her a wave. Then another figure climbed out of the taxi and began collecting luggage and there was no question at all about her identity. It was her mother, Lucy Stone. There was no mistaking that cap of shining hair or that hideous orange plaid jacket her mother was so fond of.

  “Wh
at are you doing here?” Elizabeth asked, running up and greeting them both with hugs and smiles. For the first time since she was accused, she was beginning to feel that things might work out for her, that it was going to be all right.

  “You’re all wet,” Miss Tilley observed.

  “I was swimming,” said Elizabeth, who was still in her swimsuit with a towel draped over her shoulders.

  “I was afraid we’d find you in jail,” Miss Tilley said. “We took the first flight.”

  “She insisted,” said Lucy, handing Elizabeth one suitcase and taking the other herself.

  “I didn’t think we’d find you lolling about the pool,” Miss Tilley said in a disapproving tone. She patted the snap purse she was carrying. “I brought cash to bail you out.”

  “If it makes you feel better, prison is still a very real possibility,” said Elizabeth. She was pulling a rolling suitcase behind her, leading the way through the apartment complex’s landscaped grounds to her building. It was slow going, however, as Miss Tilley and Lucy kept stopping to examine the tropical plants.

  “At home, those are houseplants,” said Lucy, pointing to a clump of spiky snake plants that were flourishing against a wall.

  “Mother-in-law’s tongues, that’s what my mother used to call them. And look at those poinsettias,” said Miss Tilley. “They’re as big as my lilac bushes.”

  “It’s amazing,” said Lucy, finally shrugging out of her jacket. “It was snowing at home when we left.”

  “Well, come on in and get settled,” Elizabeth invited, unlocking her door and wondering how she was going to accommodate the two women in her tiny apartment, located off the island in the more affordable town of West Palm Beach.

  “This is lovely,” said Miss Tilley, glancing around at Elizabeth’s mix of IKEA and thrift shop furniture. Peeking into the bedroom, she nodded in approval at the queen-size bed. “We’ll take the bedroom and you can have the couch. You don’t mind sharing, do you, Lucy?”

  “Not at all, as long as you don’t get fresh,” said Lucy, busy hanging up their winter coats in the hall closet. “Now, what’s for dinner?”

  Lucy opened the refrigerator and examined the contents, Elizabeth went into the bedroom to get dressed, and Miss Tilley settled herself in a sunny spot on the little screened deck off the living room.

  “There’s nothing to eat,” called Lucy. “All you’ve got is yogurt.”

  “There are microwave dinners in the freezer,” Elizabeth replied.

  Opening the compartment, Lucy discovered she was right. “Elizabeth, this is no way to live,” she scolded, choosing three of the packaged meals.

  Ten minutes later, Lucy had set the table on the deck, thrown some salad in a bowl, and zapped three dinners.

  “Warm weather is so nice when you’re older,” Miss Tilley observed, when Lucy and Elizabeth joined her on the deck and seated themselves on the mismatched chairs at Elizabeth’s rickety plastic table. Miss Tilley raised her wrinkled face to the sun, reminding Elizabeth of a tough old lizard.

  “With this heat it doesn’t seem at all like Christmas,” Lucy said, glancing about at the collection of flowering plants that Elizabeth had set on the deck railing. “And you haven’t put up any decorations, not even a Christmas tree.”

  “I haven’t had time,” Elizabeth said defensively. Her mother’s offhand comment had stung. “Most days I’ve been working from eight in the morning to nine or ten at night.”

  “Maybe we can find a little tree for you,” said Lucy.

  “Maybe we should tackle the problem at hand,” Miss Tilley snapped. “Now tell me all about it, starting with the young man.”

  Elizabeth’s chin dropped. “How did you know there’s a young man?”

  Miss Tilley looked at her. “When a young woman finds herself in a predicament, it’s always because of a young man. Always.”

  “I disagree,” said Lucy, who had two other daughters besides Elizabeth and often found herself refereeing squabbles and consoling them when mean girls got up to their tricks. “Girls can cause a lot of grief, too.”

  Elizabeth chewed a bite of chicken parmigiana and swallowed. “In this case,” she said, “I think my troubles are due to a woman. Several women, in fact.”

  “I’m sure there’s a man in there somewhere,” said Miss Tilley.

  “Okay,” Elizabeth agreed. “I’ll start at the beginning. I’d just been promoted to assistant concierge, it was my first day, and this guy came in with a flat bike tire. I sent him to the hotel’s sports center and they fixed it and then he asked me out. We had a great time, and he asked me out a couple more times, but when we were supposed to go out last Sunday—the last day I had off—he canceled at the last minute.”

  “Does he have a name?” Miss Tilley inquired.

  “Chris Kennedy.”

  “One of those Kennedys?” Lucy asked.

  “I don’t know. Toni, who I work with at the hotel, said she thinks he’s an imposter, pretending to be a member of the Kennedy clan, but he never claimed any connection. He told me he was a lawyer and worked for some environmental organization. I thought he was a pretty nice guy. However, the investigators think he stole the jewels and that I was an accomplice.”

  “I suppose Toni had something to do with that,” Lucy remarked.

  “How did you guess? She told the investigators about her suspicions and she told them about me. She told them he was taking advantage of me. She said she did it to help me but I don’t believe her. She’s got my concierge job now.”

  “And I imagine she was jealous because you had a boyfriend,” said Lucy, spearing a cherry tomato.

  “I don’t know about that. She was always kind of down on Chris. I think the thing that really got her mad at me was that I promised to let her deliver a package to Merton Paul—he was in the hotel—and I forgot. She was furious, and she said she’d get back at me.”

  “And she did,” said Lucy.

  “It certainly sounds that way,” Miss Tilley agreed. “You mentioned several women caused you problems. Who are the others?”

  “Well, Noelle Jones, Jonah Gruber’s wife. I was assigned to help with a photo shoot, pictures of her with the jewels, and she was terribly careless with them. She said they were uncomfortable and threw them on the bed. A ring even rolled under a nightstand and I had to scramble around on my hands and knees to find it.” Elizabeth found her frustration was getting the better of her. “She acted like a spoiled brat.”

  Lucy clucked her tongue. “She certainly doesn’t sound very nice.”

  “She isn’t,” Elizabeth said. She was beginning to enjoy dishing about the hotel guests; she’d been working so hard for so long and hadn’t been able to vent her frustration with anyone. “A lot of the guests are like that. They think the world revolves around them. If you saw the money Jonah Gruber spent on this Blingle Bells Ball, you’d be horrified. He hired this party planner, Layla Fine, and she spent two weeks ordering everybody around, but mostly me. I had to plan special events for Gruber’s guests, ‘extraordinary events for extraordinary people,’ she said. Like they were better somehow than everybody else, and entitled to the best of everything. Orchids and foie gras and diamond gifts for every guest at the ball. . . .”

  “My goodness,” Miss Tilley tutted. “Such ostentation. And so unnecessary. My dear father used to say that there was nothing better than sweet water from our well and my mother’s home-baked anadama bread, and he was right. That and a clear conscience.”

  “I don’t think anyone at that party had a clear conscience,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t see how they could. I mean, I kept thinking about people back home who don’t have jobs and their houses are in foreclosure and they have to depend on the food pantry to feed their kids.”

  “This Gruber’s priorities certainly seem to be a little skewed,” Lucy said, “but I’ve seen big events like weddings get way out of control in Tinker’s Cove, too, especially if there’s a professional planner in the picture. What’s this
Layla person like?”

  “I had nightmares about her,” Elizabeth admitted. “She was so demanding, she had me running all over the place. Everything had to be perfect, but she was the one deciding what perfect was. I mean, white roses, pink roses, who cares? And they couldn’t be just any white roses, they had to be Patience white roses from some outfit in England. Everything was like that. Every day was an impossible quest to find some crazy thing, and if I couldn’t find it she’d rip into me, saying I was stupid and lazy.”

  Lucy gave her daughter’s hand a squeeze. “That’s terrible,” she said. “Nobody should treat you like that.”

  Miss Tilley, however, wasn’t about to be distracted by Elizabeth’s complaints. “This has all been very interesting, and therapeutic, I suppose, if you believe in that Freudian nonsense, but we need to focus on the problem, which is that Elizabeth has been falsely accused of being involved in a jewel robbery.”

  Reminded of the gravity of her situation, Elizabeth’s spirits fell. She was in big trouble and she didn’t see how these two were going to help her. Her mother was a part-time reporter for a small town newspaper, and had had some success in solving crimes, but Elizabeth suspected that was mostly luck. As for Miss Tilley, she was sharp and had been the town librarian, but she was well over ninety years old. When you got right down to it, they were well intentioned, but that was about all they had going for them.

  “So tell me about this young man,” Miss Tilley said. “Chris Kennedy. Do you think he stole the jewels?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Elizabeth said. “I really liked him.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not that much. He was fun to be with, and he was from Boston, so we had a lot in common. He had a motorcycle. . . .”

  Lucy was horrified. “A motorcycle!”

  “But he had a helmet for me and he made sure that I wore it. He took good care of me.”

  “And did you—” Lucy began, but she bit her tongue. Some things were personal and Elizabeth was entitled to her privacy.