NOT a CREATURE WAS STIRRING

by Christina Freeburn

  I cringed at the venom in her posts. Cassie was stating it plain and clear: she blamed me for her father’s murder. It was my fault. She was careful not to say I murdered him, but I was responsible for it. If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be alive. My vision blurred. Tipping up my glasses, I wiped away the tears. Why did Cassie believe that?

  More hurtful were the people in my community agreeing with the accusation. Some were my friends, others were teenagers I looked after and fed—people I helped in their times of need. Even a co-worker at the tax preparation place I worked. So many willing to believe the worst about me without a shred of proof. A flashflood of emotions rushed through me. Hurt. Devastation. Anger. Determination.

  The machine was quiet. I turned my phone screen off. After I was done with my sample shirt and adding the design to my Etsy shop, I’d aggravate myself and read more of Cassie’s posts and see what Samuel had been up to the last couple of days. Maybe there was a hint on his Facebook page of what he had wanted to tell me.

  I took off the vinyl still attached to the backing sheet and placed it on a tray I used for weeding. Bracing my back against the chair, I removed the white spaces of the design from the backing sheet, leaving only the portion that I wanted to iron onto the shirt. It was a tedious process. This design wasn’t so bad except for the tiny slivers of vinyl that needed removed from the links in the handcuffs. If I didn’t, it looked like two round circles were attached with a curved line and the whole design would fall flat.

  The muscles in my back ached. I’d regret this decision in the morning. I pulled away the last unneeded part of the vinyl and the design was finished. The weeding process was kind of like trying to find out who and why someone wanted to blame me for Samuel’s murder. I was having to start with a big old blob of information and pull out what didn’t matter to leave me with only the details that showed me the way to the truth. The issue for me was I didn’t have a diagram to know which pieces needed weeding out.

  There was one way to start sorting things out. Look into Samuel’s last few days. My finger paused over the button that would let me back into Samuel’s social media life. How much of a risk was I taking? Would I be proving my innocence or establishing my guilt? Was the risk worth it? Was there another way?

  No. I was the only one who’d be able to know what was a piece that belonged in this situation and what was a distraction. Samuel’s body being in the RV fit into Samuel’s death, but not in his murder. Grayson was looking at the wrong building, so to speak. If he wanted to know who killed Samuel, he had to look beyond the RV.

  And so did I.

  Closing one eye, I unblocked Samuel. My heart pounded. There was no reason to be afraid. Samuel couldn’t hurt me. At least not personally.

  No more drama queen antics or blaming the dead. It’s not keeping Christmas well, I scolded myself. I was allowing bitterness to invade my spirit, and if I wasn’t careful it would change me, and not for the better. Scrooge allowed bitterness to make him selfish, keeping everything that belonged to him, including his heart, and begrudging even the tiniest kindness a person needed.

  Samuel’s smiling face greeted me. It was a punch in the gut. The cover photo was Samuel and Cassie standing in front of the RV. Cassie’s head rested on her dad’s shoulder. He was smiling broadly. He was gone. Forever. Sadness enveloped me. The anger I held against him slipped from my soul. It was no longer important. A man I had loved was gone from the world.

  Rest in peace messages filled his page.

  “I wish the same for you Samuel. We had some good memories. I’ll try to keep those in my head.” Thinking ill of the dead never helped a soul. There was nothing that could change the past, only cloud up the future. “Samuel, who wanted you gone?”

  I scrolled through the messages for Samuel and found the last two posts he wrote. The first was the morning of November fourteenth: Things are looking up for Samuel Waters. Watch out Season’s Greetings. Life is about to get exciting for one local boy.

  Samuel was one for dramatics. I wasn’t surprised about the vaguebooking. Samuel liked to lead people on and have them beg him for information. Unfortunately, I discovered this after the I dos.

  You can’t play a man who knows all the games. Samuel wrote. Followed a few hours later by, If you’re trying to steal home, make sure no one is looking.

  The last post he ever wrote was late afternoon on the fourteenth: Can’t wait till they find out the jokes on them.

  It was like he was taunting someone. Or he was fed up with people trolling him. There were tons of Go Fund Me links posted on his page. I scrolled and counted, giving up after I reached fifty. The messages started right after Bonnie posted on Samuel’s timeline that the day was their one-week wedding anniversary and including a link to a ten-day Caribbean cruise out of Baltimore. Perfect way to mark the occasion, Sammy! Book it.

  One week and it’s time to celebrate with a trip? I snorted. Cassie must’ve loved knowing her dad and new stepmom planned on celebrating every passing week of their nuptials.

  At least I knew the reason for all the donations requests—they were veiled jabs at Bonnie asking her husband publicly to purchase a trip for them. Most people in Season’s Greetings squeaked by every month and mentioning your income, especially in such a brazen way, was uncouth. I wondered how Bonnie felt when she peeked into their family checking account and realized Samuel didn’t make quite as much as he’d been bragging about. Of course, at the time he started bragging, Samuel thought I had quite the stash of cash from having been married to Brett. He found right after our wedding that the fantasy he created was just that.

  A message from Bright blipped onto my screen. I switched over to Messenger.

  The detective didn’t come out and say why he suspected you. He was interested in when you told me about the RV. There’s your clue. I bet Cassie told him a different date.

  That’s easy to prove, I typed back. I have the bill of sale and the title. Yesterday’s text from Cassie took up residence in my head. Was that what she wanted from the RV? The bill of sale.

  Give a copy to Brett and he can shove it under the detective’s nose.

  I wanted to shove it under the detective’s nose and then laugh in his face when his evidence against me vanished. I reveled in the image for a moment before I returned to the present. The only bad thing about that scenario was it turned Cassie into the most likely suspect.

  Thanks. Need to finish up an order for tomorrow.

  Put the documents in your tote. This way if the detective shows up, you can just show them to him.

  I’ll ask Grace if I can use a copier. Don’t want to give the detective the original.

  Good plan.

  I went to the glove compartment and moved my CDs out of the way to get the title and bill of sale. Evidence of my innocence. I grinned. It slipped from my face. The date. It was wrong.

  Cassie had dated the bill of sale November 14, the day before I bought the RV from her. With that error, she placed the RV in my possession around Samuel’s time of death. Was this the item Cassie wanted from the trailer? Either to prove I was guilty or to hide the fact that she wrote the wrong date—either deliberately or accidentally.

  For the first time, I studied the signature. It was a mush of letters. I rummaged around in my equipment box and pulled out a portable OttLite and turned it on, hoping the natural light bulb helped me read the signature. Something I should’ve done when I bought the RV. Even before knowing what it said, I was kicking myself. I was so intent on helping Cassie and fulfilling a dream, I rushed into buying the RV and ignored common sense. My stomach plummeted to my toes then jumped up and lodged in my throat. The signature, under my untrained eye, was a mix of Samuel and Cassie’s signature.

  Under a trained eye, like Detective Grayson’s, what would it look like? And more importantly, what would that mean for me—and Cassie?

  Ten


  The next morning, I sat in my vendor’s space, my leg twitching as I roved my gaze from my phone screen to the empty aisles of the Armory. It seemed liked I spent so much of the weekend staring at my phone, and I wasn’t even getting any orders or updating my Etsy shop. I’d have plenty of products to add to it tomorrow. Shoppers were non-existent as a fluffy, accumulating snow had started right around the time the doors opened. I needed shoppers to take my mind off what I discovered.

  A few attendees had been in line and quickly made their way through the venue, wheeling and dealing with the vendors. The bargain shoppers usually arrived Sunday afternoon as they believed a vendor would rather sell low than cart items back home. With the weather, I wasn’t sure they’d arrive.

  Early this morning, I had texted Brett a picture of the registration and my interpretation of the signature. Still no response. Where was the man? Wait. It was Sunday. Family day. A day devoted to his mother. I wouldn’t hear from him for a while. I pocketed my phone.

  “This isn’t a good day.” I plopped myself into my chair and adjusted the hem of the t-shirt I made last night on the spur of the moment. My long white t-shirt had the phrase I’m on the Naughty List emblazoned on it with black glitter vinyl.

  Ebenezer squealed his agreement. Or at least I was taking it that way. For all I knew he was arguing with me. I leaned over to move his cage further under the register and caught a whiff of him, or rather his cage. Drat. I forgot to give Abraham extra bedding for the cage last night. Good thing I still had the newspaper in my purse. I pulled it out and raised it up, preparing to shred it when a front-page article caught my eye: “Winning Lottery Ticket Sold Here.”

  I read the article. The gas station/convenience store, One Stop, in Season’s Greetings had sold the lottery ticket. It was a place on Samuel and his mom’s list for their weekly errand date. Every Monday, Samuel took his mom to the bank, post office, and One Stop to buy lottery tickets. They both got an Easy Pick and a ticket with their lucky numbers on it, though I always wondered how lucky the numbers were considering they’d been doing it for twenty years and neither of them had won more than two dollars.

  A woman stopped by my table. Quickly, I shoved the paper back into my bag, giving her my full attention. “Welcome to Merry and Bright.”

  She adjusted my price list, squinted at it then poked at a few of the decals before wandering off to another booth. A deal searcher. Maybe I should drop my prices a bit. Or cut my losses and leave early. There was a lot on my mind. The sooner I was back home, the quicker I could clear up some of the confusion in my head about Samuel, Cassie, and why the detective thought I was a murderer. There was nothing here that would help me.

  The organizers hated for vendors to leave early but I had a ninety-minute drive back home—in the snow—in the RV, which I wasn’t quite that proficient at driving yet. I really should’ve checked the forecast for the entire weekend not just Friday. It likely wouldn’t have done me any good as I swore the weather app on my iPhone worked like a Magic Eight Ball. If I didn’t like the forecast, check again in a few minutes and it changed. No other vendor had bailed, and I didn’t want to be the first.

  Slower than molasses, the minutes inched by. Vendors wandered up and down the aisles, half-heartedly looking at products in other booths and hinting they might buy some. A vendor who sold paracord jewelry had wandered into my booth a few times, eyeing some of the wine glasses. Maybe I should offer a trade. I was thinking a paracord bracelet was a nice stocking stuffer for Scotland. He wasn’t much of a jewelry wearer, but he enjoyed geocaching and hiking.

  I rearranged the ornaments on the vinyl sample tree. I had two cutting mats with me and vinyl sections cut into the sizes I needed for the trees. The plan was to cut the trees to order based on the size needed so I wasn’t stuck with any trees. The vinyl trees were hard to ship. Rolling them up might damage the vinyl and laying them flat required a large box, and the postage made it cost prohibited. Customers weren’t too keen on buying a product that the shipping was almost, or more than, the item.

  The wooden trees hadn’t sold. I should’ve made less trees. Last year, it had been a best seller. I had also hoped I’d get some returning customers from that sale to pick up extra ornaments, or a tree topper, for their wooden tree.

  The piped Christmas music was not lifting my mood. I turned on my Bluetooth speaker and played some of my favorite Christmas music. Something had to turn the day around. I lifted up the corner of the fabric covering the register table and peered at Ebenezer.

  His dark, soulful gaze settled on me for a moment, then he made a production of turning his back to me in his waddling way. Great, now I was getting attitude from my guinea pig. “It’s either under here or staying in the RV. I know you don’t want that. Too cold in there.”

  Ebenezer plopped down on the bedding material. I wasn’t sure if that meant he agreed with my assessment or didn’t care. Likely he didn’t care. This day was turning out to be a bust.

  Sighing, I scrolled through the apps on my phone. I clicked on my messages. There was one from Scotland.

  The weather is getting bad. If you leave now, I can help you load.

  I’m thinking of packing up early.

  Don’t think, Mom. Do.

  I don’t want to be the first to bail. If I leave, I’ll text.

  “My goodness, how cold is it outside?” The vendor’s voice next to me was awestruck.

  A woman, or at least I guessed so from the white boots with beige furry trim she wore, headed in our direction. She was decked out from head to toe like a winter mummy. White crocheted hat. White scarf wrapped around her face, only two blue eyes visible. White mittens. White coat. The mittens were pulled off and shoved into the pocket of the coat. She peeled off the coat, revealing a feminine-cut, white sweater with white pearls decorating the neckline.

  The woman loved white. She unwound the scarf from her neck. Around and around, her hand went. How long was it? Her features appeared. Bonnie. Samuel’s wife. I so did not need this today. Shouldn’t she be in black instead of white? Heck, even her pants were white. Who wore white after Labor Day, and after her husband was murdered? I wished I had snapped a picture of Bonnie for the detective. He might have found it interesting. Or if not Detective Scrooge, then Brett could add it to his arsenal in case the truth didn’t set me free as he feared.

  Of course, not too many people in Season’s Greetings could afford different colors of coats. A person bought one to last the whole year through, for at least five to ten years. Coats weren’t one season wear. No one, or at least not many, had the income for that kind of extravagance.

  “I’m glad you’re still here.” Bonnie dropped her garments onto the table holding my products.

  Remaining silent, I removed them, placing them on my chair. I didn’t want melting snow to ruin anything. It was easier to dry my pants without damaging them than our products. Her head tilted, she read my shirt. I had felt a little snarky last night and this morning and was now regretting my choice of holiday wear. I hoped the detective didn’t show up today.

  “I take it you heard about Samuel.” The tone of her voice was a cross between snide and questioning.

  I continued remaining silent, not sure where the snark intended to take her, or how my words might be used against me.

  Other vendors glanced over, curiosity on their faces.

  “What do you want, Bonnie? I know you didn’t drive all this way, in the snow, to see if I heard about Samuel’s death.”

  “Murder. You do mean murder. Correct?” Her left brow arched up as she studied my face.

  Take the bait or not was the question. She wanted something from me. A reaction of some sort to prove—I didn’t know what. Had Detective Scrooge sent her? Cassie hadn’t tripped me up, so he went with Plan B. Bonnie and I were neutral toward each. Switzerland. I knew Samuel’s sexual urges for her hadn’t been the cause of the di
vorce, and matter-of-fact, I had hoped Samuel’s wandering eye toward the well-endowed and sexy Bonnie would have him wanting to divorce me faster. Bonnie made it clear she wanted a ring on her finger before any hanky-panky happened.

  “That is one of the avenues the police are exploring.” I fixed my attention on my table, tapping vinyl decals into neat stacks.

  Bonnie placed her hands on the table, long scarlet nails drumming on top of a stack of decals. I tried to pull them away, afraid the two-inch long pointed tip nails would leave an indent. Bonnie rested her nails on the decals, digging in just a bit. “What is the other avenue as you so quaintly put it? Because I know for certain someone killed Samuel.”

  “Do you now?” I crossed my arms. “How would you know that? Did the police tell you something or…?” I trailed off, saying the last word in an ominous tone. If she wanted to come here and blame me, I could launch the suspicion right back at her. I wouldn’t take it from her. I’d be danged if I’d allow her to ruin my business by starting rumors. If I didn’t show a backbone, the accusations would be spread all over the internet.

  “I didn’t come here to argue with you, Merry.” Bonnie shifted more of her weight onto her hands. The transfer sheet protecting the decal buckled. Darn it. I lost that one.

  “Then why did you?” I asked. “I doubt you came all this way for Christmas shopping.” A list of reasons popped into my head, and none of them fell into the category of goodwill toward me.

  A deep sadness replaced the anger in her gaze. Tears pooled in her eyes, brightening the blue, making them look like crystals. “I need a copy of your divorce papers.”

  I drew back. Not what I was expecting at all. “Why?”

  She heaved out a sigh. Tears trembled down her cheeks. “Because the idiot at the insurance company doesn’t believe my marriage license is authentic. He wants proof that I am the current wife. Apparently, Samuel never changed his policy to add me by name. All it says is wife, and the adjuster only has a copy of your and Samuel’s marriage license.”