“Next to me, next to me!” She waved at the bed and the sleeping man.
I couldn’t draw breath at all now. I’d run into such things in my line of work; you couldn’t help but meet all sorts of people, but in my own home? On Christmas Eve where I’d had no preparation for dealing with such aberrations in behavior? I was taken completely aback, and I didn’t know how to continue the conversation.
“We should leave him here for now, don’t you think?”
I found my voice, but it came out a whisper. “I want him out of here.”
“Yes, of course, but, well, how would you suggest we do it?”
I couldn’t bring my feet to move toward the bed and the stranger in it, so I sort of fumbled and waved at the mess she’d made. “Get him out of here. Just get rid of him.”
Annie narrowed her eyes like she didn’t understand. I couldn’t possibly have been any clearer.
“Do you think we should get Copra?”
“Copra?” My mind was blank. “What does Copra have to do with this? Why would we get Copra?”
“Well, he brought him here.”
“He what?”
“At my request. I mean to say, Copra had him first.”
“Had who first?” I wasn’t following a word. Perhaps I’d reached my limit.
“This man. I caught them in the pantry. I was a bit surprised, to be honest, but I told him to bring him here.”
Too many “hims.” There were far too many “hims,” and I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I wouldn’t understand what she was saying. “I want him out of here.”
“I’ll fetch Copra.”
I grabbed her. First of all, I wasn’t dealing with the male half of this affair…or…third of this affair…and secondly, she was under my protection, though I felt compelled to toss her in the ocean for the sharks to feast upon. “What do you mean you caught them in the pantry?”
“Well, I went to get some bread and cold meat, and I found Copra and this fellow in the pantry. Copra looked shocked, as you can imagine. What a compromising position to be caught in! I was glad it was me who stumbled in there and not one of you Westins, or even worse, one of the guests! Copra was holding his—”
“No, no, no. I don’t want details.”
“But I thought you like to know everything.”
“No! Yes. No.” I shook my head, no longer sure of what I was saying. “Not in every situation, dear.” I held a hand over my fast-beating heart. Why did I have the stomach for this at work but not on my own time? It was the preparation, that’s what it was. I could steel myself for anything when on the job. But at home, as much as I always thought I was on guard, I wasn’t. I simply was not. Copra…in the pantry…with this man? Why?
“Oh, all right.” Annie puckered her lips. “Well, anyway, when I realized what was going on, I told Copra to bring him to my room.”
My jaw fell again. “You, oh…” I coughed a couple times in an attempt to organize my thoughts and marshal my resources. Jasper—and Joe—didn’t have to know about this. I would find the strength to deal with this situation myself, fling this man out on his ear, find Copra another job, and then clear St. James of any wrongdoing so he could get out of prison and take Annie somewhere far, far away. “Why would you tell Copra to bring him here?” I tried to squeeze my ears shut, not actually wanting to hear the answer. It didn’t work. I still heard Annie’s voice, but concentrating on the impossible task allowed me the luxury of her words passing me by as though she’d never spoken. I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Mrs. Westin? Are you all right? Suddenly, you don’t look so well. You’re very pale.”
“Of course I don’t look well! This isn’t the sort of thing I’m used to dealing with. At least, not…not in my own house, with my own friends.”
“Oh.” Annie finally looked chagrined. “I understand. That’s why you don’t want to get too close to Jasper, isn’t it? You don’t want to get too attached when he’s always pulling you into his shenanigans.”
“Indeed. What?” I was having great difficulty concentrating.
“Perhaps we should call on…” Annie glanced into the air, chomping on her lower lip. “Oh, Mrs. Westin. There’s no one else in the whole world I would entrust this to but you. You have to help us.”
“Annie, I’m not as open-minded as you seem to think I am.” I didn’t know if I should be flattered or revolted. “I’m not well-versed in…in these…types of situations.”
“But you’re an expert.”
“I’m not.”
“I’ve seen you work.”
I gasped, sucking in heaving breaths. “You have not!”
She looked at me again; the same look from a few moments ago, like she was confused by my stance. How could she be? I ran through my memories of our time together and came up with nothing. I even tried to guess how others would have talked about me, but again, I came up with nothing to explain how this girl would think I was an amoral woman who condoned cheating on future husbands and…and whatever Copra was doing in the pantry.
“Mrs. Westin, I’m surprised at you.”
“You are?” All of a sudden I felt so weary I could hardly stand on my feet. This night, I was wearing a pair of useless, pointy, uncomfortable-though-stylish shoes, and my arches were giving up.
She crossed her arms and had the nerve to harrumph at me. “I thought you were brave, Mrs. Westin.”
“What’s courage got to do with this? This is cowardly behavior, young woman, and if this wasn’t Christmas Eve—and you weren’t in mortal danger—I’d toss you out on your ear.”
She squinted at me, challenging. “You wouldn’t dare. Not in Jasper’s house. You don’t have the authority.”
How dare she! “This is my house, remember? My house and over my dead body will I allow such…such shenanigans in my own house!”
She beamed at me. “There’s the Mrs. Westin that disappeared for a moment. I understand. It’s the party and the guests and the cold and the damp and getting used to your new living arrangements and being a wife and having an instant family.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why don’t you do your thing?”
“My thing? What thing?”
She took me by the elbow and steered me toward the bed.
“I’m not too sure, and I’m not too sure I want to know in great detail, either, but don’t you want to go over to him?”
“Why on earth would I want to do that?”
“I don’t think there’s much to see after Copra’s treatment of him and then getting him in here past the guard and, well, he’s been in my bed for a little while, but you can talk to Copra and see where this all started.”
“I thought it all started in the pantry.”
“Oh, no, it started with Copra’s mother.”
I stared at Annie.
“He was in her bed first.”
“Copra’s mother!?”
Annie nodded.
I felt lightheaded, and my thigh sunk into the mattress before I realized how close to the man I was. I no longer believed he was snoozing through this exchange—he was pretending. Either embarrassed by his actions or delighted in my reactions. Annie leaned toward my ear. “Copra’s mother had him in her bed before Copra found out. He didn’t know what to do.”
“So he took him into Jasper’s pantry?!”
“Yes. He said he regrets it because he wasn’t thinking about the party. That’s when I took him myself.”
Raising a shaky hand to my forehead, I tipped forward. “I can’t go through this again.”
“Well, he’s yours now.”
“Mine?”
“Of course. We don’t want him anymore.”
I never wanted Joe more than at this moment. “I’m going back to the party.” I tried to stand up, but Annie held me down.
“Mrs. Westin, it’s one thing to have him in my bed when I was doing a good deed, it’s quite another to hav
e him lie there while you’re off dancing with old St. Nicholas.”
“Good deed? Did you just describe your actions as a good deed?”
“Of course. But now it’s…it’s kind of icky, Mrs. Westin. Please, please don’t leave me here with him alone.”
“It’s your bed, dearie. You lie in it.”
“Please, Mrs. Westin! After I thought about Al, I thought about what you would do. Now, I know you would fix it all, but I’m not so experienced, and I don’t want to be.”
“A little late for that, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But after Al and I are married, I don’t intend to do this anymore.”
“I…well…good.”
“Won’t you please look at him?”
“Why would I want to?” I whispered.
“Maybe you can figure out who he is.”
Perhaps my dress was a little too low cut because my chin felt flesh yet again. “You don’t know who he is?”
Annie shook her head, brown locks bouncing off her shoulders.
“You don’t even know who he is?”
She shrugged. “It didn’t seem important at the time.”
My lightheadedness intensified. I couldn’t help but glance at him, morbid curiosity overtaking my sensibilities. He was turned away from me, and all I saw from this angle were greasy black curls. I braced myself, with my hands and my resolve, and propped myself up to see his face. I shrank back in horror.
“What is it, Mrs. Westin?” Annie stumbled with me, until both our backs were up against the window, entangled in the red curtains.
“It’s Oscar Cryer,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Who’s Oscar Cryer?” Annie asked innocently—the nerve.
“You don’t even know who’s in your bed, Annie Grainger?”
“No, it’s not really important, given the circumstances.”
“I can’t—”
“It’s important now, I suppose.” She took a breath, as though steadying herself. “So, who is Oscar Cryer? And why was he found dead in Mrs. Copra’s bed?”
I stopped breathing altogether and replayed our entire conversation before I uttered a single, solitary word.
There are times in life when you are shocked by news. There are times in life when you misunderstand someone. There are times in life when you are humiliated. So far this Christmas Eve evening, I was two for three, and I gathered together my remaining energy to avoid going for a perfect score.
“Annie.”
“Yes, Mrs. Westin.”
“I would like you to start from the beginning and tell me everything.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, everything.”
“But you said you didn’t want every detail.”
“I did say that, yes, because I—because it’s Christmas Eve, and I wanted a day off from investigating murders.”
“Oh, Mrs. Westin, I don’t mean to ruin your party.”
“It’s all right, girl. I understand the situation, and I know you’re doing the best you can do. And you were right to ask me for help. As you pointed out, I am an expert. And I do know what to do.” Was she buying this? Because as far as I was concerned, I’d just entered the room to discover a dead man in Annie’s bed and the events I thought had happened beforehand had never taken place.
She flung her arms around me. “I knew you wouldn’t be upset with me!”
“I’m not, dear. It just took me a few moments to…to gather my investigative skills around me and figure out how to delicately proceed during Jasper’s party. He’s enthralled by his own skills as a host, you know.” I patted her arm until she released me.
“I know! I know, now I regret talking him into keeping it as scheduled.”
“Plus, I’ve been drinking,” I interrupted, hoping to quell any doubts in her mind as to my initial thoughts upon this matter.
“If only he’d let Mr. Stoker host the party after all and then none of this would have happened.” Annie’s eyes threatened to fill with tears.
“Oh, I think this gentleman still would have ended up deceased,” I said to cheer her. “Even so, he could have wound up falling dead into the Christmas tree, and Jasper would still be happy as long as it was his Christmas tree and not Stoker’s.”
Annie opened her mouth to speak but no sound emerged.
“Are you unwell?”
“He wouldn’t cancel knowing a dead man might show up, but he’d cancel to protect me?”
“Yes. He holds you in that high a regard.”
She looked about to cry again, so I moved to the bed and examined the mercifully departed Oscar Cryer. His skin was ice cold, which made sense if he’d been carted from Mrs. Copra’s bed to Jasper’s pantry before ending up in Annie’s bed. I found no puncture wounds, stab wounds, gunshot wounds, sword wounds, or any other type of wounds—not even a bruise on the man. His scent had a bite to it. “He smells like ginger.”
Annie remained at the window, wringing her hands together. “He does?”
I cleared my head, removing the picture of Annie knowing intimately that he smelled of ginger. I sniffed the body again. “And cinnamon.”
“He smells like cinnamon?”
I found that strange, but I didn’t know why. Probably because I’ve smelled a lot of bodies in a lot of places and none of them have ever smelled of ginger or cinnamon. “And coffee.”
Annie straightened up but didn’t move toward us. She looked guilty. “I think we should talk to Copra.”
“Why?”
“The coffee might be—”
A harsh knock caused both of us to jump. I recovered first, scrambled from the bed, caught my pointy shoe in the tangled bedclothes, and nearly flew head first into the door. Annie stood stock-still, hand over her mouth, waiting. The girl gave no indication she’d lost even a modicum of faith in my abilities to protect her and find out how and why Cryer had died, despite my bumbling. As if I didn’t feel guilty enough for thinking the worst instead of offering her the benefit of the doubt. But, to be fair, how was I supposed to guess the man in Annie’s bed was dead and not a very much alive adulterer?
I demanded to know who was on the other side of the door, my left hand on the hilt of my favorite dagger.
There was a pause and then, “Copra.”
Annie hunched over and whispered, “Let him in, Mrs. Westin.”
As though I needed to be told. I swung the door open, yanked him in by the scruff of the neck, and shut the door, muffling the din downstairs. “Copra.”
“Hello, Ella.” He wrung his hands much the same as Annie had. How could I suspect either one of these characters of disgracing the house of Westin when neither had a sneaky streak?
“Hello, Copra.”
“I heard it was your turn to guard Annie. I-I came as quickly as I could.” Running a hand through his bushy, black hair, he tried to angle his head to look past me.
“Oh, no you don’t.” I grasped his slight shoulders, breathing in the scent of vanilla, and made him focus on me. “I want to know what’s been going on in this house, and I want to hear your version. Right now.”
“Oh, uh, yes. Quite. Well, it all started when I went to visit Mama.” His mouth pulled down at the corners, and he tried again to glance at the bed.
“At Stoker’s house.”
He nodded. “Mama was…upset.”
“Because there was a dead man in her bed or for some other reason?”
“Oh, no, the dead man. That did it. Mama’s been getting better, stronger, but this fairly put her right back into her sick bed, except she couldn’t get into her sick bed because of the dead fellow.”
I noticed Copra was getting stronger, too, no longer the frail, too-thin, starving man I’d met not so long ago. His cheekbones didn’t jut out as severely and, while he’d always have a narrow waist, his body was beginning to fill in nicely. “Do you know who he is?” I asked, focusing on more urgent matters.
Copra fiddled with his apron, holding his head up a tiny bit. “I do not.”
Annie stepped forward. “It’s Oscar Cryer.”
“Oh. I see.” He looked at Annie. “Who’s Oscar Cryer?”
“I don’t know.”
He squinted at Annie, suspicion lining his thin face. “You told me you’d never seen him before.”
“I hadn’t. But Mrs. Westin recognized him right away.”
“Of course.” He nodded, holding the same faith in me Annie did, which I found most uncomfortable. “She knitted me socks.”
I was thrown. “Socks?”
“For Christmas Eve. Mama always offers one present to me before Christmas Day.” He held his head even higher than before. “She knitted me socks. I gave her cookies.”
“That’s very nice,” I said, feeling as though I were missing something important. Like what this had to do with Oscar Cryer.
“Mama hasn’t been able to hold the knitting needles for years.”
Annie burst forward, embracing Copra warmly. “That’s wonderful news! It’s a miracle—a Christmas miracle!”
Copra grinned. “Well, Mama and I didn’t know who he was.”
“Who who was?” I asked.
He pointed to the bed. “I didn’t know what to do, and Mama was horrified. I knew I had to protect her, so I took him off her hands.”
“And brought him here,” I supplied.
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
“Annie caught us in the pantry. I didn’t know what to do. Annie and I are sure he was murdered. Otherwise he wouldn’t have ended up in Mama’s bed. Someone put him there. I figured you were the expert, Ella. I know you’ve done this before.”
Annie had said the same thing, only I’d misunderstood her statement entirely. They were referring to my unpacking the undertaker. Something I did my best to forget yet seemed to mean—to the world at large—I was an expert at hiding dead bodies that popped up in the least wanted places. “I could help, but maybe you and Annie need the practice.”
“Mrs. Westin, I already told you, I don’t intend to do this after I’m married.”
Copra held his hands up. “I have no desire to continue in this vein, either. I only want to cook.”
Christmas Caper Page 2
