Christmas Cookie Murder #6

by Meier, Leslie

  Lucy wondered if she’d heard right. “AMC hikes?”

  “Yeah. You know, Appalachian Mountain Club. Tucker was a member.”

  So that was what the notation in Tucker’s agenda meant, thought Lucy. She hadn’t met Lee that Sunday before she’d died, she’d gone for a hike.

  “Does anybody else around here belong? Anybody I could talk to?”

  “Sure. Witt’s actually the president, I think.”

  “Witt?”

  “He teaches kick boxing.” Krissy glanced at her watch. “That reminds me. It’s time for me to kick butt.”

  “Kick butt?” asked Lucy, standing up to go.

  “That’s what I call it. It’s a class for women who want to tighten and firm their bottoms. We have it at noon so the working gals can come.”

  “Oh.” She walked down the hall with Krissy. “I hope you and Earl have a merry Christmas.”

  “We’re gonna do our best,” said Krissy, as she pulled open the gym door. Lucy peeked through the door, wondering if she knew anybody in the class, and recognized Steffie Scott. She tried to catch her eye, but Steffie was too absorbed in her thoughts to notice her.

  Lucy paused in the entryway, studying the bulletin board as she zipped her parka, looking for the class schedule among the clutter of posters and announcements. There, under a notice advertising an amateur performance of The Nutcracker she saw a bright yellow sheet of paper announcing AMC hikes every Sunday at one o’clock. Next to it was the schedule: Witt’s kick-boxing class was at three-thirty on weekday afternoons.

  Swinging her gym bag over her shoulder, Lucy headed for the car. She’d get some lunch and do some last-minute shopping, she decided, and then she’d try to catch Witt before his class.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The backseat of Lucy’s car was filled with bags of goodies and stocking stuffers when she returned to the Body Works at twenty past three. She hesitated for a moment in the vestibule, wondering how to approach Witt, when she saw a young man in exercise clothes coming out of the office with a sheet of paper in his hand. He stopped at the reception desk and started to poke around in a drawer, obviously looking for something.

  Lucy walked over to the desk and he looked up. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m looking for Witt.”

  “That’s me,” he said, with a lopsided smile.

  Lucy smiled back. Witt had the easy manner of someone who was comfortable with himself and knew he could handle pretty much any problem that came up. He wasn’t very tall and at first glance seemed rather stocky, but he was all muscle.

  “I’m interested in these AMC hikes,” she began. “Can you tell me anything about them?”

  “Sure,” he said, opening an Altoids tin and plucking a thumbtack out of the assortment of paper clips and other small, useful items it contained. He held up the paper for her to see and walked over to the bulletin board, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he went.

  “See, this is the schedule. We have a different hike every Sunday.” He rearranged the papers on the bulletin board and made a space for his new notice, then turned to Lucy. “There’s no charge or anything, but we kind of encourage people to become AMC members if they become regulars.”

  “That’s fair enough,” said Lucy, noticing that his eyes were very blue indeed. “I think a friend of mine was a member—Tucker Whitney?”

  “Yeah.” He looked down, studying his hands. He swallowed and Lucy saw his Adam’s apple bob, a little bulge in the middle of his size 18 neck. “That was too bad.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  “Just from the hikes. She almost always came.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “It’s not going to be the same without her.”

  “I know.” Lucy’s voice was gentle. “I wish I’d had time to get to know her better.”

  He sighed. “I know what you mean.”

  Something in his tone made Lucy wonder if he’d had hopes of a serious relationship with Tucker.

  “So, what do you do on these hikes?”

  “Hike, you know. Follow a trail. Some people take photographs or look for birds.” He looked over her shoulder and smiled at one of his students. “Go on in—I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Lucy felt she was running out of time. “How many people go?”

  “Sometimes just two or three, if the weather’s really nice we might get eight or nine.”

  “And that Sunday before she died?”

  “Five or six, I think.” He nodded at a pair of students who were signing in at the desk. “Tucker was late that day. We waited a good forty-five minutes for her. Usually we wouldn’t do that, but nobody wanted to start without her.”

  Lucy lowered her voice. “Did she seem the same as usual? I mean, could she have been stoned or something?”

  “Tucker?” His voice was sharp, and those blue eyes seemed to bore right through her.

  Lucy felt she had to defend her question. “I heard some things.”

  “About Tucker?” His tone implied she couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Lucy shrugged.

  “That’s ridiculous. Who told you that?” He looked as if he’d like to smash a fist into whoever had suggested Tucker might have used drugs.

  “Maybe I got it wrong,” said Lucy.

  “You sure did. Look, I’ve got to go. The hike’s at one, if you want to come.”

  “Thanks.” Lucy started to go, then turned around and called after him. “Did she say why she was late?”

  Witt whirled to face her; the movement was quick, and he was perfectly balanced. “She said she took a wrong turn.” Then he vanished into the gym.

  Lucy checked the bulletin board for the old schedule, and found it under a notice advertising a slightly used set of barbells. According to the schedule, that Sunday the group had hiked in the conservation area near Smith Heights Road.

  That was funny, thought Lucy, as she headed back to her car. Tucker had summered on Smith Heights Road for her entire life—how could she make a wrong turn that would delay her for forty-five minutes?

  As she started the car, she considered taking a quick spin out along Smith Heights Road to the conservation area, to see where Tucker might have made her wrong turn. A look at the dashboard clock told her she didn’t have time, today. She had a family waiting and a Christmas tree to trim.

  The Stones always set up their tree on the last day of school before Christmas vacation, usually the day before Christmas Eve. Nobody quite knew how or why the custom began, but through the years it had taken on the weight of tradition. Now, it was absolutely unthinkable to put up the tree on any other day.

  When Lucy arrived home, Bill and Toby had already brought the tree in and set it in its stand and Toby was perched on a stepladder, arranging the strings of lights. Bill was carrying in the boxes of ornaments, Sara was busy digging out the Christmas CDs, and Zoe was a small ball of excitement.

  “Hurry, Mom. It’s time to trim the tree.”

  “So I see. But we can’t start hanging the ornaments until Toby finishes putting on the lights.”

  “He’s almost done,” insisted Zoe, ignoring the coils of wire and bulbs covering the family-room floor.

  “Why don’t you help Sara find the music?”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  Having distracted Zoe for a moment, Lucy hurried upstairs to hide the bags of stocking stuffers she had bought earlier. That done, she stood outside the room Elizabeth shared with Sara and knocked on the door. The frantic drumbeats of alternative rock told her Elizabeth was inside.

  “What?” Elizabeth called out in answer to Lucy’s knock.

  “We’re trimming the tree. Don’t you want to help?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  There was a long silence. “Not really.”

  Lucy poked the door open and peeked in.

  “Is everything OK?” asked Lucy. “Are they giving you a hard time at school?”

&nb
sp; “Nah. School’s cool.” Elizabeth was standing in front of her mirror, considering her appearance.

  From the pile of clothes on the bed, Lucy guessed she was trying on outfits. Personally, she didn’t think the black fishnet stockings really went with the silky, pink sheath, and the chartreuse sweater was really a mistake.

  “Whaddya think?” Elizabeth turned, cocking her hip.

  “What’s the occasion?” asked Lucy.

  “Nothing, really.” Elizabeth ran her hands through her hair, making it stand up in short spikes.

  “You look fine,” said Lucy, starting down the stairs. Under her breath she added, “Just don’t think you’re leaving the house looking like that.”

  Elizabeth called after her. “Did you say something, Mom?”

  “Nothing.”

  In the kitchen, Lucy found Sara filling a plate with cookies from the cookie jar.

  “Good idea. I think I’ll make some cocoa, while we wait to get started.” Lucy got out a pot. “Is something bothering Elizabeth?”

  “Woomph,” said Sara, her mouth full of cookie.

  “Would you mind repeating that?” Lucy measured cocoa and sugar and dumped them into the pot, then added a quart of milk.

  “Lance.”

  Lance and Elizabeth had been close friends, but this fall Lance had gone away to a private boarding school.

  “What about Lance?”

  “Susie Maclntyre told Elizabeth that he’s home for Christmas, but he hasn’t called her yet.”

  “Oh.”

  Lucy set the pot on the stove and turned the burner on. She got a spoon out of a drawer and began stirring the mixture, so it wouldn’t stick to the bottom. When it was ready she poured the hot chocolate into mugs, set them on a tray and carried it into the family room.

  Zoe, she saw as she entered, hadn’t been able to resist opening the boxes of ornaments. She’d already unwrapped some of her favorites and had lined them up on the coffee table.

  Lucy set the tray down beside them and picked one up. It was a little baby, sleeping in a crescent moon.

  “That’s Elizabeth’s,” she told Zoe. “From her first Christmas.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, it is.” Lucy sat down on the couch and took a bite of cookie. She wanted Elizabeth to hang the ornament on the tree, just as she had every year until now. “Why don’t you see if she’ll come down and hang her ornament?” she suggested.

  Happy to have an important errand, Zoe ran off.

  “Cookies and cocoa,” announced Lucy, noticing that Sara was making quite a dent in the cookies. “Better come and get some before it’s all gone.”

  “I think I’ll get a beer,” said Bill, heading for the kitchen.

  “In a minute,” said Toby, reaching for the last string of lights.

  Sara had already polished off her mug of cocoa when Zoe returned.

  “She said to save it for her. She’ll be down in a while.”

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” asked Bill, sitting beside her and tilting back his bottle of beer.

  “Sulking in her room.”

  Lucy watched as Zoe carefully lifted the mug of hot liquid to her lips and took a swallow. “Mmmm,” she said, and licked her upper lip with her tongue.

  Just then a blast of organ music came from the stereo and a famous choir began singing “Venite Adoramus.” Tears sprang to Lucy’s eyes as she was overwhelmed with a flood of jumbled emotions from all the Christmases past and for a brief moment she wanted to be a little girl once again, standing in the candlelit, pine-scented church, holding tight to her father’s hand.

  “Well, let’s get started,” she said, opening one of the boxes of ornaments and lifting out a bright red ball. She carried it over to the tree and placed it on a branch.

  Soon the floor was covered with tissue and newspaper wrappings, and the tree was filling up with decorations. Ordinary glass balls, special ornaments collected on family vacations, pinecones and seashells the children had gathered and coated with glitter when they were little, and a small but precious collection of antique German glass ornaments that had somehow survived scores of clumsy fingers and hundreds of Christmases.

  Lucy was watching as Zoe hung one of the very oldest, a glass fish so old that the paint had become translucent, when the phone rang. Zoe immediately lost interest in the ornament and turned toward the phone, ready to race Sara and Toby to answer it. Lucy quickly snatched the ornament from her, letting out a sigh of relief as she twisted the bit of wire that served as a hook securely onto a high branch.

  This time, Sara won the dash for the phone. “Elizabeth!” she shrieked. “It’s Lance!”

  Disappointed the call wasn’t for them, the other children turned back to trimming the tree. In a few minutes, Elizabeth joined them. Ignoring everyone’s curious glances, she picked her ornament off the coffee table and hung it on a branch.

  “Is it OK if I go out for a while?” she asked, casually.

  “Lance asked her out!” Zoe was fascinated by the whole idea of romance and dating.

  “Is that true?” asked Lucy. “What are your plans?”

  “Just to hang out,” Elizabeth murmured, nervously twisting a strand of hair.

  “That’s unacceptable,” said Bill, decisively placing a candy cane on the end of a branch.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Elizabeth.

  “Well, this is a family night,” began Lucy.

  “You mean I can’t go?”

  Lucy looked to Bill for support.

  “I don’t mind if you go out,” he said. “You haven’t exactly added a lot to the occasion so far. But I don’t want you hanging out in some car at the end of a dark lane. And you certainly can’t go looking like that. Put some slacks on.”

  “Dad!” Elizabeth was indignant.

  “Well, I don’t think you should go out at all,” insisted Lucy. “Why not invite Lance to join us here, decorating the tree?”

  “Oh, Mom,” groaned Elizabeth, then ran out of the room. They could all hear her thumping up the stairs in her platform shoes.

  “That went well,” said Bill, facetiously, as he reached up and set the star on the top of the tree.

  “She’ll sulk in her room all night,” said Lucy.

  “Not a problem for me,” said Bill, pleased to have thwarted one of his daughter’s suitors. “How about I call for some pizza?”

  “Great idea.” Lucy wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him.

  Elizabeth declined to join the rest of the family for their pizza supper, but that didn’t stop the other kids from enjoying their treat. When every scrap of pizza was gone, and the room had been cleared of papers and ornament boxes, Bill switched on the tree and turned off the lamps. They all stood for a moment, admiring the lighted, decorated tree.

  “It’s magic,” sighed Zoe.

  “It’s the best one ever,” said Sara.

  “Neat,” said Toby.

  Later, while everyone was watching Christmas videos on TV, Lucy slipped upstairs to talk to Elizabeth. She found her sprawled on her bed amidst most of her clothes, talking on the phone. On the bookcase, her little pink TV was playing.

  Lucy stood, not knowing where to start. Why couldn’t she take better care of her clothes, instead of leaving them draped all over? Why was she always, always on the phone? And why was the TV on, when she obviously wasn’t watching it?

  Lucy reached out, to switch it off, but was caught momentarily by the drama. It was an old black-and-white gangster movie, with actors she didn’t recognize.

  “He’s gettin’ to be a problem,” growled one gangster, talking around a huge cigar.

  “What do you want?” Elizabeth was glaring at her from the bed.

  Lucy wanted to sit beside her, to hug her, but there was no place to sit. “I just wanted you to know that Daddy and I only want what’s best for you.”

  “Yeah? Well, why won’t you trust me? All I wanted to do was spend some time with my friends,” demande
d Elizabeth.

  “He’s not goin’ along with the program,” commented another gangster, a small fellow with a wizened face.

  “That’s why,” said Lucy, pointing to the TV. “I trust you to do what’s right, but I don’t trust all your friends.”

  “I can take care of myself,” insisted Elizabeth.

  “He knows too much. We gotta rub him out.” It was the gangster with the cigar.

  Stunned, Lucy sat down on the bed, staring at the TV.

  Elizabeth reached out and turned it off, and the picture shrank to a little, bright dot.

  Suddenly, Lucy knew why Tucker had been killed. She had been a good girl, a girl her parents trusted not to get into trouble. And she hadn’t done anything wrong herself, but she had seen something she shouldn’t have, probably during that forty-five minutes she was supposedly lost before the hike. She had known too much. And that made her dangerous to somebody. Her innocence hadn’t protected her; it had made her vulnerable.

  “Mom, are you OK?”

  Lucy nodded, and pulled Elizabeth close to her.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I day ’til Xmas

  Lucy had just slipped the chocolate cheesecake into the oven and was starting to make lunch for herself and the girls, Toby having been recruited to act as Bill’s gofer, when she realized she was ready for Christmas. The long month’s preparations were done. The cards and packages had been sent, the presents had been bought and wrapped, the house decorated and the tree trimmed, the refrigerator and pantry were stocked with holiday treats.

  “Do you girls have any plans for this afternoon?” she asked, as they gathered around the kitchen table to eat tuna fish sandwiches and tomato soup. “Zoe, you’ve been invited to go to Sadie’s house to make gingerbread men.”

  “Cool,” said Zoe, prompting Lucy to raise an eyebrow. They sure grew up fast these days.

  “I’m supposed to go ice-skating with Jenn,” said Sara. “Mrs. Baker said she’d pick me up at one.”

  “That sounds like fun. What about you, Elizabeth?”

  “Lance wants me to go over to his house to go swimming.”

  “Isn’t it kind of cold for swimming?” Lucy took a bite of sandwich.