Peppermint Pandemonium: A Cozy Mystery (Sweet Home Mystery Series Book 5)

by Constance Barker

  I was working the original Coffee Cabana today, and Essie and Hildie were at the markets. I would go there later to give Essie a chance to shop.

  “Good morning, Lily! Just five more days till Christmas. Is your shopping done? Mmm…it smells so good in here.” Jules was wearing a red Santa hat with a bell for a tassel today. I didn’t hear her come in the back because Harvey and Toe were arguing over who was the second-best James Bond, after Sean Connery. Toe liked Roger Moore, and Harvey preferred Pierce Brosnan. Of course, it’s Daniel Craig…but I’m not getting involved.

  “My shopping is done for everyone but you, Jules. I want to buy you everything I see, so I end up getting nothing all the time.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You give me tea and cookies all year long.”

  “Right. Well, I think those two professional blenders you bought me last summer more than make up for that.” I set down a mug of hot wassail in front of her. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Ooh, spiced hot wassail punch, just like my grandma used to make. That’s what smells so good!”

  “Grandma Maggie?”

  “No! My real grandmother. This is really good, Lily!”

  “Thanks. I got the recipe from one of the merchants at the markets last night when I was shopping.”

  “So what did you get Eli?”

  Ummm? “A coffee mug.” What did you and Eli get me?

  Jules stopped in the middle of lifting the mug to her lips. “Nice. He’ll love that.”

  She was a bad liar, and not good with sarcasm.

  “What did you get your dad?” she asked.

  “Well, I probably won’t see Dad until April. He comes in every year for the big pharmaceutical convention in Orlando, so I’ll just pick up something for him before that.”

  “Mmmmm…but it’s really not a Christmas gift unless you buy it before Christmas, Lily. Otherwise it’s just a gift. It’s different when you buy something while you’re feeling that holiday spirit…you know. You better get something for him.”

  “Uhhh…okay.” I wasn’t sure I followed her logic, but I did see a few things at the Markets that Dad would like.

  I figured I would save the conversation about where she and Eli went for another time. Right now, I wanted to talk about the attack on Mildred.

  “You know, Jules, I was thinking hard about the vandalism and the assault on Mildred when I was walking through that area of the markets last night.”

  Jules jumped in. “I’ve narrowed it down to Cruella, Daniel Glendenning, Aldo Glendenning, Encoh, Sandy Dawson and Cora working as a team, or maybe Gladys Gulch.”

  “I guess you’ve been doing some thinking about it too, Jules.”

  “Yeah. Eli and I were talking about it last night too.”

  “Oh – did he have any results on the fingerprints yet from that walking stick?”

  Jules got a little deflated. “ Well, yes, although Eli wasn’t able to tell me much. The same thumbprint with the scar was found on the stick, but so were Daniel’s fingerprints.”

  “Well, he runs the shop, Jules. He’s probably had to touch everything in that place.”

  “True, and his prints didn’t match anything found in the actual crime scenes. But…” She paused and kind of winced before she c0ontinued. “…his prints were on the can of spray paint they found. So, since his prints are on the can and the probable weapon used in the attempted murder, they brought him in last night, and they’re holding him in custody.”

  “Oh, no.” That’s why I didn’t see him in the Bee’s Knees last night. “The family must feel awful.”

  “There’s another brother of his dad’s who’s an attorney in Atlanta, and he’s on his way down. But they will have to either charge him or release him pretty soon. And I’m not really sure that the vandalism is tied to Mildred’s attack – but maybe the sick cats are.”

  “What do you mean, Jules?”

  “I mean, you’ve got The Feline Mystique, Happy Cat, and Dr. Dawson’s booth that all sell cat food and paraphernalia or would benefit from sick cats or putting each other out of business. Whoever tried to kill Mildred might have been protecting their turf in the cat food – or cat health business.”

  “And Miss Pickles isn’t the only sick cat in town, you know,” Harvey said from his table on the other side of the room. “A lot of the outdoor cats in my neighborhood have been getting sick for a few months now. A couple of cats were even found dead out in some of the yards close to me. Good thing Cora is just a block in front of us, because she’s been tending to a lot of the other cats too, I found out.”

  “You know, Jules…” Harvey and Toe moved over to the table next to us as I started talking. “…there were dead animals in Cora’s yard when we were there earlier in the week – and Dr. Dawson got the oddest look on her face when I mentioned the oleander plants at her house. She didn’t seem to know that Cora was treating Harvey’s cat outside of the clinic either.”

  “Oh!” Harvey pulled a little vial out of his pocket. “And I figured out where I had smelled that smell of those plants at Cora’s house. Maybe she has a plant at the clinic too, like she said, but it’s this medicine she gave me to put into Miss Pickles water dish.”

  He took the cap off the murky liquid and offered us a sniff.

  “Maybe there’s some medicinal powers in those oleander plants, because this is the same smell that was in her dining room. But this doesn’t seem to do Miss Pickles much good. She always slows down quite a bit on the days I give her this, so I try giving her a few extra drops sometimes. It’s like it’s not helping at all, but she responds pretty well to the kibble with the other medicine in it.”

  Jules looked like she was deep in thought.

  “I’ve got to check something out next door. I’ll be back in a few.” She got up and walked out the back door.

  Toe looked at Harvey. “Maybe it’s got something to do with you, Harvey, because that little Cora sure has the hots for you. Why, I don’t know.”

  “Oh, she does not, Toe. She’s just an animal lover and wants Miss Pickles to get well. Maybe it’s because of you – Mildred and Gladys both can’t keep their hands off you. Maybe it’s because they’ve both lost their sense of smell by now,” Harvey chuckled.

  “Come on now, guys…”

  Before I could finish my argument-stopping wisdom, Jules came almost crashing through the back door, taking long steps more fit for a lumberjack.

  “Lily, let’s go to the Markets and get the culprit arrested. Harvey, don’t give Miss Pickles any more of that water that smells like oleander.” She marched right to the front door and opened it. “Let’s go!”

  “But, I’m running the shop…”

  “Carmen will be here in one minute. Just leave the door open for her.”

  “What? I can’t…”

  Okay, Carmen was already running across the street to handle the coffee shop for me. Toe and Harvey jumped in the back seat of my car, and we were off.

  “Okay, Jules, tell us what’s going on.”

  I made a U-turn in front of the Coffee Cabana and headed for the Markets.

  “It’s not the poinsettias or the mistletoe, Lily. Those are mildly toxic, but nothing really to worry about. But oleander is a deadly poison. Every part of it – the flowers, the leaves, the stems, the roots. Even the water that the plant might sit can kill animals. That’s why you saw the dead animals in her yard, and that’s why cats in that neighborhood are getting sick and dying.”

  “Wait…” Harvey said. “You mean you think she gave me poison water to give to Miss Pickles? I don’t think Cora would do that.”

  “Think about it, Harvey.” Jules turned toward the backseat. “Miss Pickles got worse every time you gave her the water, the medicine in the kibble kept her from dying, and then Cora swooped in like superwoman to get close to you and make your cat well again.”

  “I knew it was something like that,” Toe added. “And then, maybe just before Christmas she would try to make Miss Pickles pas
s away so she could step in and take her place.”

  Harvey was stunned. “She did tell me to give her all of that poison water on Christmas Eve.”

  “And that she would stop by in the afternoon, Harvey,” I reminded him. “You would certainly be vulnerable to her comforting arms if something happened to Miss Pickles.”

  A tear streamed down his face as we pulled into the Markets, but anger was quickly replacing his sadness.

  We marched through the Cabana East like storm troopers.

  “Essie, I’ll be back in an hour so you can go shopping.”

  I think she said something, but I was too involved in my mission to hear what she said. As we hit the cobblestone path I saw Eli’s squad car with the lights flashing, but no siren, heading through the park behind the row of shops. I could see a boy with red hair in the back seat. He arrived at the area near the crime scene and the Glendenning mobile house just before we did.

  “We should wait for Eli, as long as he’s here, before we confront anyone,” I said.

  “Yeah, I agree,” Jules said. “But let’s see if Cora is at the veterinary booth.”

  She was. We smiled and waved from a distance. We were pretty much in front of Mildred’s shop when we stopped to wait, and Gladys was inside.

  “She seems to be herself again,” I said to Jules. Harvey and Toe wandered off to window shop at other booths nearby. “I was afraid she was going to lose it the day we found Mildred.”

  Jules and I walked up to the counter. “Hi, Gladys!”

  She had a big smile for us. “Well, hello, Lily! Hi, Jules.”

  “How’s Mildred doing?”

  Her smile seemed to diminish, and her bright eyes dimmed. “Oh, she’s doing fine. Just fine. She’s back in her own unit now.”

  I thought she would have been more excited about her friend’s recovery. Maybe she still had some healing to do.

  I could see Eli returning Daniel to his father and shaking his hand. Ezzy left her fortune-telling booth long enough to run 100 feet or so to give her brother a big hug, then her father sent her back to work, which was just a short distance from us across the walkway.

  Jules tried to pick up Glady’s spirits. “So is Mildred coming in for the last day of the Markets tomorrow, Gladys?”

  A lithe spirit skipped up to us. “Hi, Lily!” it was Ezzy, and she had a huge smile.

  “I see Daniel is back home, That’s a great sign, I think.”

  “Yeah, I think so,” she said. “But Dad’s still afraid we will miss the big festival in Daytona if they still have more questions for Daniel.”

  Eli was just leaving Enoch Glendenning and starting to walk towards us slowly. He would have to be climbing into that Santa suit in a couple more hours.

  “Ezzy,” Jules said. “See if you can read Gladys’s palm. She’s had kind of a bad stretch, so see if you can find some good news for her.”

  “Sure!”

  “Oh…I don’t think there’s anything good coming up for me,” Gladys said.

  “There’s always something good,” Ezzy said in her irresistibly joyful tone. “Let me see your hand.”

  “Well…” Gladys slowly extended her hand to Ezzy, who took it and turned the palm up.

  “I think I can read your palm,” she said. “It looks really interesting.”

  Jules looked at Gladys’s hand and then looked at me. She leaned in and whispered to me, “I think I can read it too.”

  She nodded her head toward Gladys one time and led my eyes to her palm with her own eyes.

  “I see what you mean,” I whispered back.

  “Hello, ladies,” Eli said as he finally reached us.

  Toe and Harvey wandered over too, expecting that we would bring him over to Cora’s booth. Instead, I grabbed his arm and led him across the way, stopping in front of the closed Bee’s Knees shop where we had a little privacy. Daniel was walking towards us too, so I wanted to talk to Eli fast.

  “Eli, we solved the attack on Mildred,” Jules said.

  “And we uncovered a plot to kill Miss Pickles and other cats in town,” I added.

  “Really,” he said, quite skeptically. “So, tell me.”

  Jules pointed with a nod of her head toward Gladys and Ezzy.

  “No,” he said, “the Gypsy girl did not try to kill Mildred.”

  “No, not Ezzy,” I said.

  Jules picked it up from there. “It was Gladys. Ezzy turned her hand over to read her palm, and she’s got a long scar from the tip of her thumb all the way to her palm.”

  He was interested now. “That fits.”

  Daniel stopped several paces away, not wanting to interrupt our conversation, and his father was coming closer as well.

  “Fits what, Eli?”

  “Well, her hand is smaller than a man’s, so it wouldn’t have to be a teenaged boy. And Daniel’s prints had his four fingers along one side of the stick towards the top and the thumb on the other side, perpendicular to the stick, the way you might pick up a piece of merchandise or pick up a stick off the ground. But you couldn’t really wield it like a weapon with just your fingertips like that. The other prints were at the base of the walking stick, wrapped tightly around it, the way you might hold a baseball bat or golf club, but the scarred thumb was straight up so a small hand could add more force to a swinging blow.”

  “Officer…” Daniel looked at his father and then looked back at Eli.

  “Go ahead, son. Tell Officer Davis what you just told me.” Enoch Glendenning encouraged his son with a firm nod.

  Eli looked at the father and then at the son as he stepped forward. “What is it, Daniel?”

  •

  •

  •

  •

  •

  •

  •

  Chapter Ten

  The sun was getting higher and warmer as we all gathered around the red-haired boy.

  “That morning…” He turned and looked at his father for a moment. “It was early, and most of the shops were still closed, but I had the door open on the Bee’s Knees and was restocking and folding and things like that, you know, to make the shop look good when the people started coming.”

  “I see. And what happened?”

  His father took a step closer to the conversation, and Ezzy joined him, curious about what was happening.

  Well, that lady over there…” He nodded toward Gladys. “…well, she came storming out of the cat store there and was pacing back and forth. And then she saw my door was open and came in. She was breathing very hard…not like she was out of breath, but like she was angry or something. I think her feet hurt, because she kept saying something about her toe. Like, ‘It’s my toe, not her toe,’ and something about her toes taking her under the bleachers at homecoming. I didn’t understand what she was talking about.”

  Harvey, Eli, Jules, and I all looked at Toe Thompson. He was red-faced, and trying to form words that just wouldn’t come out. The men grinned a little, but Jules and I were flabbergasted. Always the reporter, she was recording the whole thing on her phone. Daniel continued:

  “She walked around for a while, like she didn’t even know I was here. Her eyes were focused on a world inside her head and not on the real world, it seemed – like she was hypnotized or something. Then she saw the walking sticks. She grabbed one and walked back inside the cat store like she was on a mission. She said something about her toe again, and then I heard some things falling, like she was knocking shelves over or something. She came back out a minute later with the walking stick and pulled a box cutter out of her pocket. She slit a hole in the canvas tent of the umbrella store and then went inside and started knocking everything over. I went over to stop her, but it only took her a little while, and everything was ruined.”

  Jules and I looked at each other in shock, but Eli was cool…the consummate cop, just collecting information. “Is there anything else, Daniel?”

  “Yes, sir. When she was done in there, I was out in front. She ran
across the walkway and cut a long hole in the shop next door. I hollered, ‘Ma’am!’ and she stopped and turned and came out of her trance. She smiled and said it looked like it might be a hot day. Then she walked right past me into our shop. She put the box cutter in her pocket and wiped the stick off a little bit with her hand.”

  “I wonder why she had the box cutter,” Jules said, just thinking out loud.

  “Well, the night before they were trying to cut poster board with a small scissor for signs on their merchandise, and it was kind of hard, so she mentioned that she would bring a bigger scissor or cutter the next morning,” Daniel said.

  Jules nodded.

  “Then I went inside and she handed me the walking stick. I didn’t look at it real close and just put it back in the barrel. She just started looking around casually, like she was shopping. She was calm and smiling. Then she said, ‘Well, I have to meet Mildred for lunch, so I’ll finish my shopping then. Mildred doesn’t like it when I’m late.’”

  I looked at Eli, and we both knew that was the truth. We had heard Gladys say almost the same thing the morning we found Mildred.

  “Then she smiled and walked out slowly like nothing happened.” Daniel seemed just as incredulous as the rest of us. “I didn’t know there was another lady in the cat store, or I would have gone in there to help her.”

  “Of course, you would have. What about the graffiti?” Eli asked.

  Daniel looked down and was silent for a moment. “I did it, sir.”

  Eli looked confused. “Why? When?”

  “Well, when the lady left I could tell that she really didn’t know what she was doing, and I didn’t want her to get in trouble. So, I took the can of spray paint we use for signs, and I sprayed some lines on a couple of the wood stores that could be painted and on glass windows that could be cleaned or scraped with a razor blade, and a little bit on the tents that were already ruined. I thought maybe they could be scrubbed and bleached too, if they were able to fix the canvas.”