A Merry Little Murder

by Patti Benning

  “I – I don't know,” Aidan said, looking suddenly nervous. “Don't forget, he's my boss too.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I would feel better about calling the police if I actually had some proof. Maybe we could get him to admit something tonight. He always drinks a lot at these parties. Then we would have something to take to the police, and he wouldn’t be able to wreck our lives because he would be headed straight to prison.”

  “We could try it,” Aidan said, still sounding doubtful. “We would have to record him somehow. Do you have a plan for that? “

  “No.” Lacey sighed, feeling defeated. “I don't know what to do. I just know that I want Charlie's killer to be found and face justice for what he did.”

  Aidan still looked uncomfortable with the whole idea, and soon made his excuses and found someone else to talk to. Lacey drifted over to Chris once he finally stopped speaking to Freddie and decided to take some time to actually enjoy the party. She laughed and danced with her fiancé, sampled each of the food dishes, and played a rather clumsy game of pin the red nose on the reindeer. As she partied, she was beginning to form a plan. She had her phone with her and her clutch, and there was an application that could create voice recordings. All she had to do was get Freddie to admit to killing Charlie, or failing that, she might be able to get him to trip up in his own story.

  Chapter Fifteen

  After she saw Freddie down his sixth champagne, she decided to put her plan into motion. She made a beeline for him, waiting until he had reached a natural lull between conversations before approaching him.

  “Hey, Freddie,” she said. “This party’s great. They get better every year.”

  “Thanks, little Lacey,” he said, grinning and reaching out to ruffle her hair like he had when she was five. “It's all thanks to Aidan. He's my right-hand man. Don't know where I'd be without him. I can tell him to do anything, and he gets it done.”

  “Well, he did a great job,” she said. “So, what have you been up to lately?”

  He waved a hand around. “Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Lots of work, only a little play.”

  “Have you been working every night this week?”

  He laughed. “Oh, no,” he said. “The office has been closed all week.” Lacey mentally kicked herself. She had forgotten that. She had been trying to trap him in a lie, and if he said that he was in the office, she could easily check that because the key cards recorded data whenever they were used. If he lied about where he had been the night of Charlie’s murder, then she would know more certainly whether or not he had actually had something to do with it.

  “In fact, I flew out to Chicago a few days ago. I spent a couple of days with my sister and her family. They can’t make it out for the holiday this year, and I wanted to do something special for them.”

  Lacey blinked. “Which nights were you gone?” she asked. She winced, realizing that was a rather obvious question, but thankfully he had been drinking enough champagne that he didn’t notice anything.

  “I was there from Wednesday to Friday. I got back late Friday night and had to be at the office first thing Saturday morning to talk to your father and your fiancé. It was quite a nice trip, in fact. We saw…”

  Lacey blinked, tuning out his description of the trip as she focused on the relevant parts. Charlie had already been missing for a day when Freddie got back late on Friday, assuming he was telling the truth. That meant that he couldn’t have killed him.

  “Oh, there's Roscoe Finnigan. I bought my car from him last year. I'd better go say hello.”

  With that, he excused himself and pushed his way through the crowd, greeting his guests with bubbly enthusiasm and a flushed face. Lacey stared after him for a moment, feeling disappointed. Everything had seemed to match up so well, and she had been convinced that she was right. By the sound of it, she had been way off base. If he was telling the truth, Freddie had an airtight alibi. He hadn’t even been in the state the day Charlie went missing.

  Feeling disappointed, she looked around for Chris and spotted him with her father by the cookies, laughing about something or the other. She smiled despite her thoughts on Charlie’s death. At least some things were going well this evening. She was glad that Chris was getting the chance to bond with her father. Chris had always been worried about her father’s opinion of him. She had tried to tell him many times that as long as she thought he was a good man, nothing else really mattered, but he had been adamant that both of her parents needed to love him. She had been half worried that he was going to ask her father for her hand in marriage, and that would have been just a little bit too Victorian for her. At least by the looks of it he had her father’s approval now, and she was glad for his sake since it was so important to him.

  She blinked, suddenly struck by the similarities of Aidan’s situation with Charlie. However, Charlie, according to Aidan, had actually hated the boy who was dating his daughter. Not only that, but Aidan had been afraid that it was driving Michelle away. According to Aidan himself, he had been the one to drive out to Charlie’s house to check on him the day after he didn’t show up to the breakfast with his daughter. Now, that was a coincidence that she just couldn’t ignore.

  She made a beeline for Chris, grabbing onto his elbow and dragging him away from her father with a grimaced apology.

  “Sorry, Dad, but I really need to talk to him.”

  Baffled, Chris followed her into a secluded corner.

  “What's all this about?”

  “Aidan,” she said.

  “And who is that?”

  “Michelle's boyfriend,” she said. “I think he killed her dad.” Chris listened while she explained her theory. He looked doubtful, but she was encouraged when he started asking questions.

  “Just how much did Charlie hate him?”

  “From the sound of it, a lot. Aidan was talking to me about it earlier, and he seemed pretty upset. I think he was worried that Michelle would listen to her father’s advice and leave him. I can’t even say that he was completely wrong; Michelle has a close relationship with her father and values his opinion highly. If he really hated Aidan as much as Aidan seems to think he did, then Aidan might have felt like he needed to get Charlie out of the way in order to be with Michelle. He mentioned just a few minutes ago that she was the only person he really loved. He seems a little bit obsessive, to be perfectly honest.”

  “I’d like to say you’re grasping at straws, but it almost makes a crazy sort of sense. If he was a little bit unbalanced and thought that Michelle’s father was going to kick him out of her life, maybe he just snapped. Though I still think Freddie might have had something to do with it. I know I work for the guy now, but he just rubs me the wrong way.”

  “Hold on…” She frowned, trying to remember something else that Freddie had said. “Freddie made a point of saying that Aidan was his right-hand man, and seemed to be bragging about him being able to complete any task. Don’t you think it’s a little bit too convenient that he happened to be out of town the day that Charlie was killed? Now he has an airtight alibi, so he can’t possibly be blamed for Charlie’s death.”

  “Are you saying that you think they were both involved?” Chris seemed to find this doubtful. “Maybe we should talk about this later, when we aren’t surrounded by the man’s loyal employees.”

  “What if he actually did it?” she asked. “Are you okay with working for someone who might have been involved in a murder, even if he didn’t stab Charlie to death with his own bare hands?”

  Chris frowned. “Of course not, but what can we do right now?”

  “We've got to find Aidan,” she said.

  “Where did you last him?”

  “He went off to talk to someone else. Let’s split up and look for him.”

  “I don't know if that's a good idea,” Chris said.

  “I already talked to him once alone, and I was fine. I just want to ask him a couple of probing questions about Charlie and see if he acts uncomforta
ble. I don’t want to go to the police with nothing, because if I’m wrong, then you might lose the job that you just got. But I also can’t sit back and do nothing. I’ve got to figure out what happened.”

  “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I hate the thought of you going off to talk to a killer on your own. Let me know if you find him. We’ll confront him together.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They split up, combing through the crowd. Lacey was looking around so intently that she felt as though her neck was a periscope. After a couple of tense minutes, she spotted Aidan chatting with someone else near the giant Santa Claus cut out.

  “Pardon me, but can I borrow you?” she said, sidling up to them. She knew that she had promised Chris that she would find him once she spotted Aidan, but she didn’t want to risk losing sight of the younger man in the meantime. She was keeping an eye out for Chris as she spoke to him.

  “What’s going on?” Aidan asked as she led him away. “Where are we going?”

  “Somewhere quiet,” she said. “It’s about my conversation with Freddie. I know you’re his right-hand man, so I’m sure you have some answers for me.”

  He nodded, and a moment later, she somehow found herself following him toward the door. She wasn’t quite sure how he had managed to get himself in the lead. Mentally cursing herself for not going off to find Chris first, she risked a quick look around the room, but didn’t spot him anywhere. Annoyed, she pulled out her cell phone and sent off a text message to him, asking him where he was. There was no answer; his phone is probably on silent.

  Realizing that she had to choose either to abandon Aidan and give up on her quest to figure out whether or not he or Freddie had killed Charlie, or go with him through a secluded doorway. She quickly pulled up the voice recording application on her phone and hit the red circle. She shoved her phone back into her pocket just in time, as Aidan pulled her through the door and shut it behind them.

  “So, what's going on?” he asked as the noise of the party faded away. “What did Freddie say?”

  Lacey took a deep breath, trying not to look like she was playing it by ear. It would be untrue to say that she didn’t have a plan, but her plan was horribly vague. Get Aidan somewhere private. Check. Get him talking about Freddie and Charlie. Check. Get him to either admit to the murder or say something that would give her enough proof to go to the police with her suspicions. No check. She really needed more steps between the second and third portions of her plan.

  “I think he did it,” Lacey said, deciding to lie through her teeth. “He was acting so suspiciously when I started talking about Charlie. He looked nervous, and then when I asked him what he had been doing for the past few days of the holiday, he just muttered something about sitting at home alone. And…”

  “That’s impossible,” Aidan said suddenly. “You must have heard him wrong.”

  “But I’m so sure he did it,” Lacey said. “We should go to the police right now. They’ll be able to search his phone records and email records. They’ll probably turn something up, or maybe he’ll just confess under the pressure.”

  She thought she saw a spark of worry in Aidan’s eyes. She didn’t blame him. Freddie wasn’t exactly the sort of person that struck confidence in others. If he did know something about Charlie’s death, then she was sure that Freddie would spill the beans as soon as he thought it would save his own skin. Aidan may not have known Freddie for as long as she did, but it looked like he knew him long enough.

  “Listen, Lacey, there’s no way that Freddie killed Charlie. He was in Chicago for a few days last week, and didn’t get back until after Charlie was killed. It couldn’t have been him.”

  Lacey was surprised that her lie had worked so well. Aidan must have been so desperate to keep Freddie out of the interest of the police that he was being less cautious than he should’ve been. Lacey felt as though her mind was working at triple speed as she worked through what Aidan had told her. She had to fight to keep the triumphant grin off her face when she realized that he had said something that just might be the proof that she needed.

  “Hang on,” she said. “How did you know when Charlie was killed? I doubt the police would spread that information around willy-nilly.”

  “I –” He fell silent, staring at her with wide eyes. Suddenly his face flushed. “You know, don't you?” he said. “Somehow, you found out what I did, and you’ve been playing with me this entire time.”

  “I guessed, but I had no idea I was right,” Lacey said, desperately hoping that her phone really was recording the conversation. “Are you telling me you really did kill him?” She took half a step back, not having to fake the horror in her face. The elation of knowing that she was right had quickly faded, as she had realized that she was stuck in the hallway alone with a killer.

  “Yes, I killed him,” Aidan spat. “He was trying to turn the only person I’ve ever loved against me. It wasn’t fair. Michelle loves me, and I love her, so why was he always trying to convince her I was bad news? I’m not going down for this alone, though. I never would have had the guts to do it if Freddie hadn’t realized how much I hated Charlie. He goaded me into it. He promised me he would make sure no one ever found out, and he would see that I got promoted within the company as quickly as possible. He wanted me to do this one dirty little job for him, and it was one that I was happy to do. Now tell me, who else have you told your suspicions too?”

  Lacey took another step backward, her heart racing. Lie, she thought. Make him think that even if he kills me, the world will still learn the truth.

  “I told everyone,” she said. “Chris, my dad, even my mom. If I vanish, they’ll know what happened to me.”

  Aidan stared at her for a second, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re not telling the truth. If you had really been so certain of your little theory that you would tell so many people, then I think you would have just gone to the police instead of trying to confront me. You weren’t all that certain until I messed up and told you things I wasn’t supposed to. That means no one knows what you suspect, and no one will know where to look or who to blame if I kill you.” He took a menacing step toward her. She felt her heart rate increase. Aidan was a few years younger than her, but he was strong, and she knew that if it came down to a physical struggle, he would overpower her easily. She didn't know if he was carrying any weapons, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t need weapons to hurt her badly or even kill her. Why, oh why had she ever followed him out into this hallway? She had been so desperate to figure out what the truth behind Charlie’s death was that she had acted recklessly and now her own life was in danger.

  “Aidan, you don't want to do this. You don't want to kill me. Two murders in the space of a week in a town this small? No one would ever stop looking for the killer. You would never be able to relax. You would always be looking over your shoulder, wondering when the police would catch up to you.”

  “The way I see it is I can either kill you now and take the chance of it being discovered later, or I can let you walk away and blab all of my secrets to the police, and I’ll end up going to prison anyway,” he said. “At least this way I’ll get a chance to say goodbye to Michelle before the cops show up at my door.” He lunged toward her, but before he could reach her, the door beside them opened up and a solid form stepped into the hallway. Lacey looked up, expecting to see Chris, but seeing her father instead. He was holding his cell phone in one hand and was staring at the two of them in surprise.

  “What's going on here?” he asked, looking between Aidan, who was standing frozen, with a grimacing snarl on his face, and Lacey, who knew that her face was probably a mask of terror.

  “Lacey? What’s going on?”

  “He killed Charlie,” Lacey shouted, pointing at Aidan. She felt ridiculously like a child tattling on someone who had broken a rule. “He admitted to the whole thing, and I have proof.” She pulled out her phone and was relieved to see that it ha
d indeed been recording the whole time. She waved it at her father. “I swear it’s the truth, Dad. Don’t let him get away!”

  Aidan turned to run, but it was too late. Her father, even though he had a few drinks in him, was too fast and caught Aidan by the wrist. Aidan spun around like a snake and threw a punch at her father, but the older man seemed to shake off the hit like it was nothing. After a short scuffle, her father managed to get Aidan in a chokehold. With shaking fingers, Lacey saved the voice recording and dialed 911. Her heart was beating in her throat, but she also felt a sense of elation. She had done it. She had solved a murder. Maybe her life wasn't so boring after all.

  Epilogue

  Christmas morning dawned bright and sunny. It had snowed again overnight, and the world outside looked soft and white. Lacey woke to the scent of cinnamon in the air and felt her stomach rumble. Her mom's cookies might be famous, but her cinnamon rolls were heavenly. She got out of bed and slipped her feet into her slippers, making her way down the hall to knock on Chris’s door. With a thrill, she realized that next year they would be married, and would be waking up on Christmas morning together.

  “Merry Christmas,” her mother called out as they walked into the kitchen. Her dad mumbled something unintelligible around a mouthful cinnamon roll.

  “I made plates for both of you. Eat up, then we can go and do presents.”

  The four of them sat around the table, each with full glasses of orange juice and as many gooey cinnamon rolls as they could eat. For a moment, life was absolutely perfect.

  After they had all eaten is much as they possibly could, they filed into the living room. There they opened the stockings first, then moved on to the gifts that they had bought each other. Lacey and Chris insisted that her parents go first, and Chris got up to place the large box containing the air purifier in front of her father. She saw both of her parents smile as they unwrapped it. “Thanks, both of you,” her father said. “This should help my lungs a lot. Hopefully it will help with that cough I have.”