Juniper Grove Cozy Mystery Box Set 2

by Karin Kaufman

  “Yes, ma’am.” He smiled, dimples forming under both cheeks. There was something naturally friendly about dimples. He was younger than Underhill. In his mid-twenties, I thought. Probably fresh out of the police academy.

  “You’re the new officer,” I said. “Welcome to Juniper Grove.”

  “Thank you. Are you Rachel, by any chance?”

  “How did you know?”

  “The chief described you,” Travis said matter-of-factly, working his long legs around a stack of file boxes that sat between him and Gilroy’s door.

  “Did he?” I longed to ask him the precise words Gilroy had used in his description, but I knew better. It would have been silly of me to ask, and it wouldn’t have been professional of Turner to tell me.

  Not wanting Turner to think I had the run of the police station, I followed him and waited for him to knock on and open Gilroy’s door before I stepped inside.

  “Thanks, Turner,” Gilroy said, motioning for me to take a seat.

  Before Turner could even shut the door, I asked Gilroy if he’d heard anything about Sonya.

  “Nothing,” he replied. “No one’s heard from her, and no one knows where she might be. Her phone’s been turned off, and she hasn’t contacted her co-workers at the charity where she works. A couple more hours and I’m going to treat this as an abduction.”

  I leaned back in my chair, replaying the last few minutes at Ellen Lambert’s house in my mind, mystified by it. “If she was abducted, why didn’t we hear a struggle?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “Even if she’d been overpowered, we would have heard something—a lamp being overturned, the door slamming. Of course, with all the snowy boot and shoe prints on the porch, it was impossible to tell if an intruder was there. And that Santa Claus hat—what’s that about?’

  “All good questions.”

  Gilroy’s now-short answers meant he had switched over to detective mode. “If she walked away,” I continued, “where did she go without a car? I looked up and down the street and didn’t see her walking.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I wonder if that Santa hat belonged to one of the Four Santas. One of them could have dropped it.”

  Gilroy mutely nodded.

  “But you don’t think so,” I said.

  “It seems to me they take care of their costumes. Their uniforms. I don’t see one of them dropping a hat and leaving it. I think it was left there deliberately, and it probably belonged to Micah Schultz.”

  “Of course. That must be. Unless Sonya carries a disposable Santa hat in her purse.”

  Gilroy’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’m joking.” I remembered Sonya standing in the kitchen. And a little later, calling to me from the living room. “I heard Sonya ask me to hurry up, and it was like—what?—sixty seconds later I was in the living room? She didn’t have time to go anywhere. If she went outside, we would have seen her walking down the sidewalk, and if someone had forced their way into the house, we would have heard a commotion. This is crazy.”

  Gilroy rose, wandered to his office window, and gazed through the open blinds. The pale winter light highlighted the slivers of gray in his otherwise dark hair. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “Why didn’t she want to report the threats against her?” he said after a moment.

  “Some people are hesitant to report personal crimes like that.”

  He turned back to me. “Why?”

  “They think it’s not worth it because nothing can be done until a real crime has been committed.” I shrugged. “Or maybe they think it reflects badly on them.”

  He folded his arms over his chest. “If Sonya thinks these threats reflect badly on her, then she’s not as clueless as she pretends. She knows what they’re about, and—”

  “She might even know who’s threatening her,” I finished.

  In two strides Gilroy was at his desk. He pulled his service weapon from his desk drawer, stuck it in his holster, and told me he had to run.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Just a thought. Pick you up at seven tonight.” He gave me a peck on the cheek and dashed out the office door. Before he reached the front door, he did an about-face, strode back inside his office, and closed the door behind him.

  “Did you forget something?”

  “Yes, I did.” He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me.

  When he left his office for a second time, I was grinning—probably rather idiotically, if Turner’s puzzled expression was anything to go by. Resisting the urge to pump my fists in the air and do a happy dance, I instead nodded at Turner, said it was nice to meet him, and darted out the door to my car.

  “The chief was in a rush,” Julia said, plumping her gray, curly hair with her fingertips. “And what took so long in there?”

  “We were talking.” Two months ago—even one month ago—I could hardly get a word out of the man, and if I did, it was never about a case. Only the most cursory law-enforcement comments left his lips. Now he bounced ideas off me. He valued my opinion. He still didn’t like me “meddling”—that was his favorite word when it came to me and crime—but he knew it was pointless to stop me from investigating, especially when I thought I could help someone.

  “You have that look on your face again,” Julia said. “I like it.”

  I laughed. “So do I. How about we go to Holly’s first, then get our trees?”

  “Fine by me.”

  I shut off the engine and we walked to Holly’s Sweets, our heads lowered against the frigid wind and Julia complaining for the umpteenth time about her old, thin winter scarf. “It’s leaky and lets the cold in,” she’d said more than once. When I opened the door, the bakery’s warm air hit me, and cinnamon, sugar, and chocolate, carried on the air, filled my senses. Christmas cookies—there had to have been more than a dozen different kinds—had taken over the top of the display cases. Holly, the best baker in Colorado, had outdone herself. I wriggled my way to the front of the small crowd for a better look.

  “I was hoping you two would show up,” Holly said, wiping her hands on her apron. “I just brought out four dozen snickerdoodles.”

  “Be still, my heart,” I said, gazing at the trays and platters piled high with the most delicious cookies I’d ever seen or smelled.

  “Rachel, Julia,” Peter Kavanagh said with an upward nod of his chin. He flew past us, empty cookie trays in his arms.

  “How are you managing with just you and Peter?” Julia said. “It’s a madhouse in here.”

  “Caleb’s on Christmas break from school. He’s in the back, earning money for a telescope.”

  Peter came flying past again, this time carrying two full trays.

  “Now listen,” Holly said, “we’ve got gingersnaps, cranberry shortbread, raspberry thumbprints, chocolate rumballs, French tea cakes—”

  “You’re killing me,” I groaned.

  Holly grinned. “I thought you’d say that. A dozen assorted?” She leaned forward and in a low voice said, “They’re on the house.”

  “You can’t give away your cookies,” I said.

  “I can if I want to. Think of it as a small Christmas present. You too, Julia.”

  Julia inched closer to the cookies. “Well, I wouldn’t say no.”

  “Miss?” a woman called out. “What spices are in a Christmas spice cookie?”

  Holly twisted toward the woman, her dark ponytail swaying. “Cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and ginger.”

  “I’ll take a dozen,” the woman said, digging into her purse.

  “I’ve got it,” Peter said, touching a hand to the small of his wife’s back.

  If someone had asked me to define a good marriage, I would have pointed to the Kavanaghs. Not that they didn’t have their troubles, but after fourteen years of marriage—Holly had married at what I considered the startlingly young age of twenty-three—they worked together like two perfectly meshed cogwheels. Not a romantic image, but with their hectic lives, it wa
s a fitting one.

  Holly grabbed two small pink boxes from the counter behind her and began to fill them with cookies. “Rachel, are you going to the caroling festival tonight?”

  “You bet.”

  Julia cleared her throat. “James—excuse me, the chief—is taking her.”

  “You’d make a great spy,” I said.

  “You’re very welcome.”

  “Considering where I work, I wouldn’t make a bad one myself,” Holly said. “Did you hear what happened to one of the Four Santas?”

  “Hear about it?” I said. “I was there.”

  Holly paused. “Naturally,” she said before dropping the last of the cookies in my box and handing it to me. “Why would I think otherwise. Gilroy’s working the case, of course.”

  “Naturally. Do you know Sonya Quinn?”

  “Not personally, but I see her downtown now and then. Why?”

  “She’s missing.”

  Holly’s dark eyebrows arched. “How can that be? She was here half an hour ago.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Oh, that woman!” I said, marching up the sidewalk toward the police station, my bakery box in one hand. “What a horrible, thoughtless thing to do to all of us!”

  “What is going on?” Julia said, her short legs racing to keep up with me. I halted and whirled back. “Sonya tricked us,” I said, shaking the Holly’s Sweets box as though it were my fist. “We were worried she’d been abducted, and she wasn’t anything of the kind! Gilroy has been racking his brains, and I’ve been feeling guilty for not keeping an eye on her.” I let out a small roar of frustration.

  “All right, all right,” Julia said. “Let’s go tell the chief.”

  “He’s not there, remember?” I said, wheeling back and hurrying once more for the station. “But the new guy is,” I shouted over my shoulder.

  Travis Turner’s eyes went wide as I yanked open the station door. I must have looked like a lunatic, ready to pounce. Stopping in front of the desk, I set down my box and took a deep, calming breath. “Do you know where Chief Gilroy is right now?”

  “Yeah,” he said, standing and pointing with a pen toward Gilroy’s office door. “He just got back He’s in his office, but he’s with some people. Do you want me to give him a message?”

  “It’s about Sonya Quinn,” I said.

  “That means it’s important,” Julia said, stepping alongside me.

  Turner dropped to his seat. “Yeah, Miss Quinn. She’s one of them.”

  “What do you mean one of them?” Julia said.

  “One of the people in the office. Sonya Quinn and Ellen Lambert. They came in with the chief a minute ago.”

  I took a backward step from the desk and another deep breath. “So that’s where he went to in such a hurry. He figured it out.”

  Julia shook her head. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Sonya never left the Lamberts’ house, Julia. That’s why we didn’t see her on the street or hear a struggle in the living room.” I recalled the door slam I’d heard just before Sonya made an appearance in the kitchen and wondered if that had been Ellen—or maybe her husband—angrily debating the wisdom of the deceptive game they were about to play. Or had that slam been about something else entirely?

  “Mr. Lambert came to the station too,” Turner said, “but he asked if he could go to work.”

  Julia edged closer to Turner. “Was the chief very upset?”

  Turner’s shoulders rose. “Not so much. I don’t think I’ve seen him upset or angry or anything since I joined the force. He’s kind of”—Turner sliced the air with his hand—“even-keeled.”

  I heard Gilroy’s door open and watched as Sonya and Ellen, their faces grim, walked into the station’s small lobby. Ellen saw me and stopped dead in her tracks. I looked away, swallowing my angry words. I wanted to ask her if she had used Micah Schultz’s Santa hat to make Sonya’s disappearance more convincing, but neither she nor Sonya needed me to scold them. Besides, I wasn’t in the mood. I had talked to Micah for a couple minutes, that’s all, but I’d liked him instantly. His concern for his niece had touched me. I didn’t need to think about, or say, anything else.

  “Let’s go, Julia,” I said, taking her by the arm and nudging her through the station door ahead of me.

  “That’s it?” she said.

  Out on the sidewalk, I refused to look back. “Let’s go get our Christmas trees. I’m in the mood.”

  A few minutes later Julia and I were shopping for trees in a lot on Main Street, just east of downtown. Sonya recommended this place, I thought sourly. I still couldn’t believe she had tricked me. Probably without remorse. And on top of that, I’d probably broken half of Holly’s Christmas cookies shaking my box.

  “Don’t be grumpy,” Julia said. “It’s Christmas.”

  “My mom used to say that,” I replied, rubbing the branch tip of a Fraser fir between my fingers, savoring the pungent fragrance it released. “‘Don’t be angry, it’s Christmas’ or ‘Don’t say that, it’s Christmas.’”

  “I’m sorry she’s not here.”

  “Me too.”

  It was funny how a joyous holiday like Christmas could bring out the gloom in me, reminding me of all I’d lost. Like both my parents before I’d reached the age of forty. And a marriage that might have been. I wondered where Brent was and what he was doing. Brent, the man who had asked me to marry him twelve years ago and then left me without a word. Had he married? Was he still living in Denver? Did he have children? A life he loved? I hoped so. I honestly hoped so. I had never wished him ill, but until that moment, neither had I wished him well. Now I did.

  Julia laid a hand on my shoulder and walked off in search of her special tree. How much I had gained since moving to Juniper Grove. Good friends, a good house, a good life in a town I loved, and a good man. A man I was falling in love with. I stepped back from the tree, sizing it up. It was six feet high and a little too wide for my smallish living room, but its branches were sturdy and its needles fresh.

  “You like that one?” a young man in a brown slouch beanie said. He sidled closer, anticipating a sale.

  “Can you cut an inch off the bottom?”

  “No prob.” With one hand he grabbed the tree in the middle of the trunk and hauled it off, telling me to follow him.

  I found Julia on the way, inspecting a Douglas fir by sniffing its branches. “I’ve got mine. I’ll be right back,” I told her. And just like that, I was in the proper Christmas spirit. My tree would have to go up fast—as would the ornaments and a wreath on my front door. Maybe a garland on my picket fence. My Christmas party was tomorrow. I’d already put an order in with Holly’s Sweets for three dozen cookies, a pumpkin pie and pecan pie, and a fruit tort, and Julia was bringing eggnog, so the food was under control. But it was my first party since moving to Juniper Grove—I was embarrassed to admit that to myself—and I was nervous.

  I caught up with the young man in the beanie just as he finished cutting an inch from the trunk with a chainsaw. At his feet were dozens inch-high wood circles and sawed-off branches. A homemade wreath, I thought.

  “Would you mind if I collected those discarded branches?” I asked.

  “No prob. Go ahead. Have you got a rack on your car?” he asked, again lifting the tree with ease. “I can tie it down for you.” I wanted to hire him then and there to carry it into my house and put it up for me.

  “I do, but my friend is buying a tree too. Can you tie them both?”

  “No prob.”

  Moments later, another young and beanied young man approached carrying a Douglas fir, Julia right behind him, looking pleased by her taste in trees. We waited while my young man cut an inch from her tree, too, and then walked to my Forester, me cradling a slew of branches and our men and trees bringing up the rear.

  The two made short work of tying the trees to my car rack while I leaned inside my car and rifled through my glove compartment for a few dollars to give them as a tip.

&nb
sp; “Did you hear one of the Four Santas died this morning?” one of them asked the other. I stopped what I was doing, listening.

  “I always knew someone would kill to get into that group,” the other said.

  He wasn’t laughing. And when I stood up, I saw he wasn’t smiling. “Do you know the Four Santas?” I asked.

  “I’ve lived in Juniper Grove my whole life, so yeah,” the brown beanie said. “They’re everywhere you go at Christmas. And I mean everywhere. You can’t escape.”

  “You sounded serious a second ago. About someone killing to get in the group, I mean.”

  He pulled the last of the twine tight around the rack and cut off the end with a penknife. “I guess I am. The only way someone new gets into the group is if one of the old Santas dies or quits.”

  He was serious. “Why would someone kill to be a caroler?”

  “They get all kinds of perks, for one.”

  “Like Christmas cookies and alcoholic eggnog,” the other beanie said with a smirk.

  Julia harrumphed. “As good as cookies and eggnogs are, I don’t think someone would kill for them. You’re talking about a man’s death.”

  “I was there when Micah Schultz died,” I said.

  The smirk vanished from the young man’s face. “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t know him. But if you know something that might help the investigation, you should tell the police. Right now they’re leaning toward his death being a heart attack.”

  “There you go, then,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. I don’t really know those guys, you know. I was just talking.”

  He was shifting back and forth on his feet now, itching to leave, so I thanked them both and handed them each three dollars for their trouble.

  Julia and I drove west down Main Street, and as Julia hunted for Christmas songs on the radio, I tried to talk myself out of the anxiety now clawing at me. I trusted my instincts, and my instincts were telling me something was very wrong in Four Santas Land. But what evidence did I have? The medical examiner hadn’t issued a cause of death yet, and he probably wouldn’t until tomorrow.

  “If Micah was murdered,” I said, “it had to have been poison. He told me just before he died that he’d been feeling fine just a couple minutes earlier.”