As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles (A Food Lovers' Village Mystery)

by Leslie Budewitz

  A sheriff’s deputy and Detective Bello, no doubt, though they’d left no barricades or yellow tape to signal a crime scene.

  I guessed that the ex—Larson, I presumed—would stay here, with Ashley. Holly and her husband lived a few miles north, in an area where even locals need a map. Walt and Taya’s spacious home sat close to town, but I suspected they would not welcome their granddaughter or her father.

  A shovel leaned against the wall by the side door, and I got to work clearing a path to the small covered front porch.

  The ex did have me curious, though, and I hoped Merrily’s parents would show him some courtesy. Unless he was a creep. But she hadn’t made it sound that way.

  I stopped to catch my breath, glad for my knee-high snow boots. It must have been about thirty degrees, and I’d worked up a light sweat. The rest break only fueled more questions. Who would handle funeral arrangements? Her parents? Her ex, on their daughter’s behalf? Poor girl.

  Reverend Anne would know. She might even tell me. We aren’t Methodists, but Anne is an old friend—she hung out with Chiara and Wendy growing up, and I remembered her in the kitchen and garden of this very house. Adam and I had asked her to officiate at our wedding, giving me a good excuse to swing by her church for a chat.

  The snow was light and I finished quickly, then fetched the basket I’d brought. A bag of Cowboy Roast, a jar of plum preserves, cheese, and crackers—a few things that might soothe a grief-stricken visitor. I set it on the porch and peeked in the kitchen window.

  A cherry red KitchenAid mixer stood on the counter, bits of dried dough clinging to the beaters. Cookies covered two cooling racks. A bag of powdered sugar lay nearby, and I pegged the cookies as Russian tea cakes.

  The realization punched me in the gut. Merrily hadn’t changed her mind. She had meant to come to my place Sunday. She’d have needed to leave here by twelve thirty. Red-striped cellophane bags and a spool of red ribbon sat on the kitchen table, but she hadn’t started packing. Sugaring the cookies, then counting them into bags, tying them up, and tucking them into a box or tote would have taken a good half hour. That meant she’d left the house before noon on Sunday.

  Why? Not of her own accord. Not with all those cookies as witnesses. Bello’s theory about the call that lured her made some sense. I knew from Kim that law enforcement could request phone records, but getting them sometimes took days.

  As far as I knew, Greg had no motive to kill her until Monday morning, when he discovered that the deposit had gone missing and found the cash in her desk.

  Who had wanted Merrily Thornton dead before that?

  And where was the killer now?

  So many questions, so few answers.

  But I’d learned, in business and in crime, answers don’t come knocking on your door. Like Jack London said about inspiration, you have to go after answers with a club.

  Eleven

  I was about to drive away when a sheriff’s rig pulled up behind me. And who should approach but Detective Oliver Bello himself, slipping and sliding on the slick surface of the freshly plowed road.

  “Since you can’t be making a social call on a dead woman,” he said, “you must be investigating. I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “I heard that Merrily’s ex was on his way, and I thought it might be nice—neighborly—to shovel the snow and leave him a few things he might need.”

  His brow furrowed. “How did you hear that?”

  “It’s a small town, Detective. We talk to each other. And I hear you wanted to talk to me.”

  “You need to come in and make a formal statement, ASAP.”

  “Sure. But while you’re here, let me show you something.” I climbed out and led the way to the front porch, the detective struggling behind me in the snowy driveway. “Better get yourself some good winter boots.”

  He grunted. I waited for him to join me on the porch, then pointed in the kitchen window and explained my theory.

  “Let me get this straight.” He rubbed his hands together in their thin black leather driving gloves. “You think she was—what? Kidnapped? Because she left a plate of cookies behind?”

  “You’re the one who said she was lured away,” I said. “You’ve got to get those cookies in the sugar while they’re cool enough that the sugar won’t melt but warm enough that it sticks.”

  “We made a thorough inspection. No signs of anything amiss.”

  Meaning no spilled flour or scattered pecans. No spoons on the floor. “The cookies are amiss. She was obviously planning to come to the cookie exchange at my house. What made her change her mind?”

  “Someone lured her to the schoolhouse and killed her. Your friend Mr. Taylor, perhaps. Her boss. Why else would a woman rush out of her house without her coat or purse?”

  I craned my neck to see what he was pointing at. Merrily’s black leather cross-body bag lay on the seat of an oak Windsor chair next to the back door. She’d grabbed her keys and nothing else.

  Now that was amiss.

  “You’ve got a point,” I said, though he was missing the point about the cookies. “But if someone lured her away, it was before Sunday afternoon, before she could pack up those cookies and bring them to my house.”

  He fixed me with a steady glare. “Miss Murphy, I understand that both my predecessor and Undersheriff Hoover tolerated your attempts to interject yourself into official investigations out of friendship, and perhaps a touch of pity. Let me be perfectly clear: I have no intention of letting you do the same on my watch.”

  And with that he turned and slip-slided away.

  ∞

  The detective had made my Jell-O rise, but I am not anti-law enforcement. Some of them are my best friends. And my mother always says to do the things we don’t want to do first, so we don’t have to keep thinking about them.

  So I drove past the church to the sheriff’s satellite office, tucked in a pair of extra rooms in the back of the firehall, a stone’s throw from downtown.

  I parked beside Bello’s rig and went inside. The office had never been high on atmosphere or aesthetics, but now it felt positively grim. The weather, maybe. Or the new guy.

  Deputy Oakland sat at the battered gray metal desk in the outer office. Before I could say a word, he handed me a clipboard with a few sheets of paper attached. “Hey, Erin. Good to see you. We’ve typed up what you told us yesterday. Read it over, add anything we’ve missed. Sign and date. You know the drill.”

  See, I told myself. It’s not that hard to be friendly, to let the citizens feel like they have a stake in the investigation, even a role to play. The new guy could learn a few things from the deputy about attitude.

  “Thanks.” I took the clipboard and sat in a chair near the door to the inner office, open a few inches. Though I couldn’t see Bello inside, or see him stand and walk to the door, someone got up and shut it firmly.

  I glanced at Oakland, a heavy-set man who’d been on the job for years. The mustache he’d shaved last summer had grown back.

  “He takes some getting used to,” the deputy said. “But he’s not a bad guy.”

  Coming from him, that meant a lot. I focused on the statement. Debated how to phrase my observation. Finally, I wrote I believe, based on the baked but unfinished, unwrapped cookies in the victim’s kitchen, that she intended to come to my house Sunday afternoon, but was prevented from doing so by … By what? All I could think of was TV cop lingo … a person or persons unknown.

  I read it over, signed it, and handed it back to Oakland.

  “Deputy, any preliminary word on the time of death? Or the cause?”

  His eyes flicked toward the closed door.

  “She wasn’t strangled with the lights, was she?” I made a clawing motion near my neck. “It’s instinct. Someone tries to strangle you, you fight. You kick. You struggle to get free. If it’s even possible to strangle someone with an electric cord.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised what people can do with an electric cord,” the deputy said, and
a shock rippled through me. “But no, she wasn’t strangled. More than that it’s too soon to say. When we get the preliminary report …” He flicked his eyes toward the inner door.

  “Tell your boss he needs new boots,” I said and left to the sound of laughter.

  ∞

  Half Irish, half Italian, I’d been raised Catholic, but when my father was killed in a hit-and-run and God defied all my prayers by holding no one responsible, I’d left the church. In my years away, in Seattle, I’d found spiritual solace in long walks along Puget Sound and on drives through the Olympic Rain Forest and hikes through the Cascades. In truth, any place with trees, as befits a girl raised in an orchard.

  With the mystery of my father’s death solved last winter, I now understood that the guilty party had not gone unpunished but been tortured in mind and heart by what had happened. But I had lived too long without the institution to forgive it for failing me back then.

  Still, a wedding needs a celebrant. The Reverend Anne Christopherson, once a wild child and now a Methodist minister, had been the obvious choice. Besides, she didn’t care if Adam and I rarely darkened her doors. She only wanted—and she actually said this—a chance to shine God’s light on us.

  I parked outside the Methodist church, a block away from the high school. The pastor’s study lay off the vestibule, and her door was open. I didn’t have much time, but it wouldn’t take long to find out if Anne would talk to me about Merrily and her parents.

  One foot over the threshold of the book-lined room, I realized she was not alone.

  “Erin,” the pleasantly plump blond minister said in her reassuring, caramel-smooth voice. “I’d like you to meet Brad Larson.”

  The man stood and I stuck out my hand. “Erin Murphy.”

  “Brad is Merrily Thornton’s husband,” Anne continued as if I hadn’t spoken, and realization struck. So caught up in my own doings, I’d barely noticed the road-worn dark blue truck out front, the one with Yellowstone County plates. Billings plates. “He’s here to make arrangements.”

  She made the euphemism sound as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Erin Murphy,” Brad said, the lines across his high, pale forehead creasing. He wore jeans and a light blue denim shirt. Work clothes. I doubted he knew the fashion gurus were dictating that denim-with-

  denim was trendy. A “statement.” “You helped Merrily when her mother got so upset.”

  “How did you—did she tell you?” Had she called him before she was killed? Did he know what had led her to change her plans so abruptly that she left dozens of cookies on the kitchen counter? Did he know who might have killed her? “And I’m sorry, I had the impression Merrily was divorced.”

  “Holly told me.” He ran a hand through what was left of his fine blond hair. “We filed, but the divorce wasn’t final yet. I was hoping …”

  “I—I’m so sorry for your loss. For you, and your daughter.”

  His exhale was ragged, his eyes downcast.

  “Erin, was there something you needed?” Anne prompted. Her royal purple tunic, caftan-esque, was ministerial, but the bold shade overwhelmed her fair coloring.

  “Uh, no—not really. I just—the wedding.” My hands rose and fell in the air like birds drunk on the fermented cherries left behind on the trees. I turned to Brad. “Two and a half weeks. Lots of last-minute details.”

  He curved his mouth in acknowledgment, though it was not a smile.

  “Brad, if you don’t mind me saying this,” I said, “Merrily said Ashley didn’t know about her past. Her time in prison.” I raised a hand to stave off interruption. “And it isn’t any of my business. But half the town knows. If Merrily were still alive and Ashley visited for Christmas, no one would say a word. But with her … gone, and questions about money missing at the Building Supply … Well, she’ll hear the talk. Might be better if you tell her everything first.”

  The room was silent, as if the walls needed time to absorb my words. My stomach turned sour and jittery. You should have kept your mouth shut.

  “Why don’t we all sit down?” Anne said.

  “Ashley is the light of my life,” Brad said simply. “Top of her class. All-state soccer, recruited for the college team. Heart as big as the sky. She’s wanted to be a vet since she was five. If she keeps getting scholarships, she’ll make it.”

  “You probably haven’t been to the Building Supply yet,” I said, sinking into the soft leather chair in front of Anne’s desk. Brad resumed his seat, his heavy work boots flat on the floor. He must have been exhausted by the long drive.

  “The police think the owner killed her,” he said.

  I glanced at Anne. She’d known the Taylors and Thorntons as long as I had. Nothing but sympathy showed on her round face.

  “They do,” I said to Brad, “though it’s hard to believe. Everyone she worked with liked her. She kept your daughter’s picture on her desk.” In her desk, in the bottom drawer, but he didn’t need to know that. Though it was odd. “We all know why she left Jewel Bay years ago, but I’m curious why she came back.”

  “Merrily felt she had unfinished business here. With Ashley in college—” He raised one shoulder, the gesture of a man who didn’t quite understand what had become of the life he thought he had. “I couldn’t leave Billings. I run the family business. She worked there, too. She’d never lived entirely on her own, and I guess she thought it was time.”

  “What kind of business?” I said.

  “Plumbing,” he replied, gripping the arm of the chair with a reddened hand, the nails scrubbed clean. “My grandfather started it, then my dad took over. He still works full-time, though he lets me run the show. Merrily ran the office and did the bookkeeping.”

  I stared at him. Out of the corner of one eye, I noticed Anne’s mouth gape open then close as she composed her features.

  “It was never a problem,” Brad said. “She came to us fresh out of prison. She desperately needed money and bookkeeping was all she knew how to do. It was my mother who wanted to give her a chance. Part of her religious mission, community service.”

  “A good woman,” Anne said.

  “The best,” he replied. “My dad watched Merrily like a hawk. He even hired a CPA to review the books every quarter. Merrily handled the cash for the Girl Scout troop and the PTA—she had a gift for numbers and keeping things organized. No trouble, ever.”

  Until she came back here. Curiouser and curiouser. “Did she talk to you much about her parents?”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t take me long to fall for her, and then we got married. For seventeen years,” he continued, “my family was her family. Her parents returned every letter she sent, unopened. They never showed any interest in Ashley, their own granddaughter. And yes, they knew about her. Holly tried to get them to see reason, but no.”

  “Merrily knew it would take time to heal that breach,” Anne said. “She was willing to wait.”

  “She took responsibility. She reformed.” His tone fired up. “They refused to give their own daughter a second chance. And she may be dead because of it.”

  We sat there, the three of us, Brad breathing heavily, Anne holding the space in her quiet way, me wondering. Wondering why he and Merrily had separated. Wondering if he really did know everything about the embezzlement twenty years ago.

  Wondering where he’d been Sunday.

  And why he thought her death had something to do with her parents’ behavior.

  Then, without hearing my questions, he answered them. Or at least, made my questions about him irrelevant.

  “They rejected my daughter without ever knowing her,” he said, his voice at the soft crack stage. A man who felt that wound so deeply might have lashed out at his still-sort-of in-laws. But he would not have harmed the mother of his child.

  I touched his sleeve. “Tell your daughter everything. It will be painful, I know, but better for her to hear the details from you now than to be angry with you later over the secrecy.�
��

  He yanked a blue bandana out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Why would this Taylor fellow kill Merrily? I don’t believe she stole from him. The woman I knew would never do that.”

  Was he saying he wasn’t sure she’d stolen the money the first time?

  Now that was an intriguing thought.

  Twelve

  I hate running late. Especially when there’s no one to blame but myself. I always think I can squeeze in one more thing. But no matter how many productivity tools and apps you download, the day only has twenty-four hours and you can only move as fast as you move.

  On the other hand, what I’d learned from Brad Larson was better than any tidbits I could have squeezed out of the good reverend. Merrily’s not-quite-ex had confirmed my instinct that she had genuinely longed to reconnect with her parents. To forgive their trespasses and ask their forgiveness in return.

  Walt and Taya’s overblown sense of shame stemmed, I thought, from fear that others would see Merrily’s misdeeds as proof that they were lousy parents, despite all outward appearances. And despite Holly’s upstanding life. Or maybe Holly’s normalness made Merrily’s criminal record seem all the worse.

  Lordy. Adam and I wanted to be parents. But thinking about the Thorntons made me worry what we might be getting ourselves into.

  I swallowed the last bite of my black bean burrito from the taqueria and pulled into the Lodge’s nearly empty front lot. The burrito had been a risk—car food usually is—but skipping lunch was riskier. I wiped my hands, grabbed my bag, and trotted into the main building, a historic log treasure. The Lodge and guest ranch is Jewel Bay’s secret weapon—classic log buildings that evoke another era, with just the right amount of farm implements and taxidermy on the walls. And after nearly a century in business, the Caldwells have a pretty good idea how to please their guests.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I told Trinka, the events coordinator, one of the few Lodge managers not part of the Caldwell family. A log popped in the big stone fireplace.