Holly and Homicide

by Leslie Caine

  I started to laugh, but my attention was suddenly drawn to my manila folder, which had been lying on top of the neat stack we’d made of our work before we’d left for lunch. The folder now had a stain that looked like a drop of blood.

  Every time I vacation in a new place, regardless of the season, I purchase a Christmas tree ornament. They never fail to conjure up wonderful memories as I trim the tree.

  —Audrey Munroe

  Late morning the next day, Audrey was hard at work in the kitchen when I cheerfully approached, expecting to find her creating an ornament related to our theme. Instead she was fastening ribbons to meticulously halved, scooped-out orange rinds that formed perfect little round bowls. “Are you in the middle of a crafts project involving orange rinds, Audrey?”

  “Yes,” she said with a smile. “I wanted fresh-squeezed orange juice this morning, and there was no sense in wasting the rinds. So I saved them for the birds.”

  “Birds like to eat orange peel?”

  “I’m going to fill them with birdseed and little pieces of suet.” She dangled one off her index finger to show me. She had knotted loops of plaid ribbon underneath the halved rind. “See? I’m making a half dozen of them.”

  “Nice.”

  “I’m also decorating the pine tree in the front yard, just to add a special touch to the lights that you hung.”

  Henry and Ben had actually hung the lights on the tree, but I smiled and said, “So the seventy-eight decorations I asked you to make for the indoor tree wasn’t enough work for you?”

  “Oh, that’s been keeping my hot-glue gun and me plenty busy, thanks. I’m multitasking. Although it was my cookie cutters that got me started on decorating the pine out front, as well.”

  “Cookie cutters?”

  “Yes. Fortunately, I was planning on baking for the holidays, so I brought up my full set of cookie cutters. I made a lot of the decorations for the indoor tree out of a basic Play-Doh recipe.” She slid a shirt box across the granite counter toward me. “I painted them on both sides so they wouldn’t be strictly two-dimensional.”

  “Three French hens,” I cried, delighted. She’d cut miniature berets from green felt and glued dainty pieces of lace to the hardened hen-shaped dough. “These are so cute!” I looked closer at a dove-shaped cookie. “Is that a green turtle on the two doves’ bodies?”

  “For the two turtledoves, yes. And fortunately, I had a swan-shaped cookie cutter, so those were a breeze, and a cow-shaped one for the maids to milk. I’m making the people out of clothespins. With felt jackets and pipe cleaners, and drinking straws for the pipers, small spools of thread for the drummers. I painted their faces and the details. I did take the easy route and ordered tiny ballet dancers for the ladies dancing and the lords a-leaping. And I’ve got five linking rings from gold pipe cleaners to make into one larger wreath. Plus this little guy here.” She showed me a plump bird sitting on a yellow pear, which she’d sculpted from artist’s clay and baked.

  “Ohh! That’s adorable, Audrey!”

  “It’s sitting on a pear, if not a pear tree. Still, it gets the general idea across. I’m going to need another couple of days to complete the decorations for inside, but I want to finish with the pine tree outside tonight.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Thanks, but actually Mikara already volunteered. She cut stars and circles out of the heels from three or four loaves of bread. She’s out there hanging them now, along with the old standby pinecones.” My blank expression spurred her on. “You mix equal amounts of Crisco with peanut butter so that the birds can swallow it, spread it onto a pinecone, then roll the pinecone in birdseed. They’re messy as all get-out to make, but the birds love them. Provided the squirrels don’t immediately run off with them.”

  She frowned a little as she tied a ribbon around the last orange-rind seed bowl. “I wish I could have found biodegradable ribbon. I was actually considering licorice strings, but I’m worried about the animals’ teeth. The last thing I want to do is give them cavities.”

  “Birds don’t have teeth.”

  “But we have so many squirrels around here. It’s not like they can go to the dentist.”

  “I’ve never thought about squirrel dental hygiene before.”

  “Neither have I, but then, I never considered using candy on an outdoor tree before. At any rate, lastly, I’m shaping suet into ornaments and just kind of squeezing them onto thread. Like little meatballs.”

  “That sounds a bit gross, frankly.”

  “Yes, but think of it this way: The tree itself will have dozens of lovely birds perched on its branches. What could possibly be a nicer decoration than that?”

  Chapter 17

  That afternoon, I returned from picking up some supplies that Audrey needed at the nearest hobby shop and found Chiffon and Henry sitting on the bench in the mudroom, removing their outerwear. I watched as Chiffon hung her pink skates by their laces on a wall hook. I quickly shed my own coat and gloves and said, “Chiffon, suspending something with razor-sharp blades directly above a bench isn’t a good idea.” Having a skate fall onto even just the empty seat below would aggravate me no end. That bench was divine—an elaborate nineteenth-century Russian piece, its green paint faded to a lovely copper patina.

  “But my skates are so pretty, Erin. You should really hang them over the fireplace.”

  I’d just as soon hang my ski boots on the mantel. Knowing I’d be wasting my breath by suggesting she use one of the numerous cubbies for boots and skates, I said, “They’d look better hanging in the corner. Where there’s less visual competition.”

  She mulled this over for a moment, but then moved the skates to this safer location.

  “How was the skating?” I asked Henry.

  “It was sort of fun,” he replied, “in a falling-down-a-lot way. Chiffon’s many times better at it than I am.”

  “When I was little, I had to choose between my music and ice skating,” Chiffon interjected. “I very nearly opted to enter the Junior Olympics.”

  “Oh, really?” I said.

  Henry continued, “The ice on the small pond out back is nice and smooth. Which is more than can be said for my skating technique.”

  “At least you got out there and gave it your all,” Chiffon said, squeezing his arm.

  “That wasn’t really ‘my all.’ That was just me staying upright for as long as possible, while balancing on steel blades.”

  Chiffon laughed as though he’d said something hilarious. She glanced back at me, and I forced a smile before heading into the kitchen. Audrey was removing a cookie sheet from the oven.

  “I got everything on your list,” I told her, indicating the shopping bag as I set it down in the corner.

  “Perfect. Thank you, Erin. I’m just finishing the last of my baked-clay tree ornaments for the tree in the central hall,” Audrey said.

  Henry and Chiffon entered the kitchen. “Did you see my candy canes yet?” Chiffon asked us. “Aren’t they darling?”

  “I saw them,” I said. They were rather impossible to miss. Poor Ben had been installing a dozen five-foot-tall illuminated candy canes on either side of the front walk for at least two hours now.

  “They’re certainly in keeping with the rest of the display,” Audrey said tactfully. I decided to let her reply suffice for us both.

  “Ben’s biggest problem has been getting each one anchored down properly,” I said. “With the Chinook winds that we get up here, that’s quite a challenge.”

  “Yeah,” Chiffon said. “You know, I’d thought that those illuminated reindeer we put out in front of the sleigh last week were getting blown about, but let’s face it—the wind couldn’t possibly have blown them into obscene positions four nights in a row.”

  Henry laughed heartily. “It’s the teens in the neighborhood, my dear.”

  “That’s what I finally gathered,” she replied. “How juvenile can you get? In any case, Ben sunk six-inch tent stakes into the ground this morning. N
ow the vandals will have to get the hooks out with a crowbar, before the reindeer can be repositioned.”

  “I wouldn’t want to place bets on the teenagers’ perseverance,” Henry said. “Snowcap Village still doesn’t have a whole lot of nighttime entertainment. Especially for minors.”

  “So is this the sort of entertainment you engaged in when you were a teenager here, Henry?” she asked. “Did you mess with your neighbors’ Christmas displays?” She was grinning at him, her tone of voice more than a little flirtatious.

  Henry chuckled. “I sure did.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter. “As the Goodwins’ only son, I had to be careful not to get recognized. Back in those days, nativity scenes were a whole lot more popular than they are now. My friends and I used to steal all the baby Jesuses out of their crèches, and we’d put one of the animals in the cradle. This one neighbor kept his lawn gnome outside, year round. So we’d line up all the babies and the gnome at a street corner downtown and make up a sign like they were hitching … ‘Bethlehem or Bust,’ for example.”

  Ben entered the kitchen, looking a bit worse for wear. Beneath his scruffy beard, his cheeks were red with wind-burn. Henry was still engrossed in his memory.

  “Hey, Ben. I was just telling them about the time we’d go do the Hitchhiking Baby Jesus during winter break. Remember?”

  “Yeah. I remember, all right.” Ben scowled. “I wasn’t ever actually a part of your group, though. Even so, I got three weeks of clean-up duty at church because one of your cronies lied and gave the pastor my name.”

  Henry grimaced. “Oh, man, yeah, that’s right. You must’ve hated my guts back then.”

  Ben shrugged. “If I say yes, would you give me a raise now out of guilt?”

  “Probably.”

  “In that case, yeah. I hated you. You ruined my life. In fact, my dad beat the daylights out of me when the pastor called.”

  “He did?” Henry asked in horror. Ben smiled a little. “If it gets me a decent raise, he sure did.”

  Henry chuckled and raised his palm. “That’s that, then. I’m giving you another buck an hour, starting today.”

  Chiffon had begun to grow impatient. “Hey, Henry? We were going to go over those documents you said you had upstairs, weren’t we?” She stepped closer and pushed her chest against him in case he failed to get the point of what she was really talking about.

  “Oh, right. We should see to that right away.” Chiffon and Henry headed upstairs to his bedroom, no doubt. Ben brought his hand out of his jacket pocket. His hand was crimson with blood.

  “Ben!” I exclaimed. “What happened?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just a minor scratch. I need an antiseptic and a Band-Aid.”

  “Let me get the first-aid kit.” Audrey rushed over and pulled open the kitchen drawer right under the phone. “Go stick your hand in running water. How did this happen?”

  “Just poked a couple fingers through a seam in one of those plastic candy canes. I cut my pinky, and it started bleeding like a son of a … gun.”

  He was obviously going to be fine, so I said, “That reminds me. Yesterday there was a drop of blood on my folder. You didn’t cut yourself then, too, did you?”

  “Nope. Had to be somebody else who had a—”

  Mikara burst into the kitchen from the main hall. She was animated and happy for the first time since we’d met. “You are not going to believe—” She cut her announcement short as she caught sight of Ben and Audrey, hunched over the kitchen sink. “What are you doing?” she asked Audrey.

  “Applying some minor first aid. Ben cut his finger.”

  She turned away. “Don’t let me see it. I faint at the sight of blood.” She did look a little wan. “I wanted to announce that I’m interviewing a chef this afternoon. This kitchen needs to be sparkling clean and appealing by then. In other words, no blood and no baking-clay odors.”

  “No problem,” Audrey said. She shut off the water and started drying Ben’s hand. “The sink’s already clean, and I’ll make cinnamon toast. That’s the quickest way to make a kitchen smell inviting.”

  Still not looking at them, Mikara nodded. “Excellent. Thank you. I’d better get out of here. Sorry to be such a wimp.” She strode out through the double doors.

  Several minutes later, Steve and I claimed a cozy reading nook in the living room to finalize our discussion about the Twelve Days. Yesterday we’d only gotten as far as deciding on six geese for the game room, seven swans for one of the bedrooms, and the kitchen for the milkmaids.

  The former would take the masculine form of wooden decoylike sculptures and goose-hunting paintings. (We’d chosen to ignore that the geese were supposed to be a-laying.) And swans had such soft, flowing lines that they were a natural for a bedroom. Sullivan, in fact, had ordered the swan artwork; I couldn’t object all that vehemently about being kept out of the loop, because the geese I’d chosen were already being shipped.

  I had also managed to find seven tasteful images of young women milking cows: an old-fashioned pitcher with blue ink artwork, a toile fabric suitable for framing, a Currier & Ives—style mirror frame, a bowl, a butter dish, and a couple of paintings. I planned to do a decoupage on a tray for the final one. We were debating the idea of using a similar hodgepodge approach to the dancing ladies and the leaping lords—which we agreed would be female and male ballet dancers—in two of the bedrooms when we heard heavy footsteps approaching.

  Cameron leaned in the doorway. I could feel Steve’s tension—and my own blood pressure—rise. I didn’t want to deal with Cameron right now. Even though I knew he was innocent of poor Angie’s murder, it felt like he’d been the harbinger, and he was certainly becoming Sullivan’s and my bad-luck omen.

  “There you are,” he said with a smile. “Did you two enjoy your lunch yesterday?”

  “Very much,” I replied. “It’s an excellent restaurant.”

  “The meal was first-rate,” Steve replied. “Thanks. Since you’re here, I’ve been meaning to tell you something. Don’t interfere with Ben Orlin. Let us handle him from here on out. All right?”

  I cursed inwardly. Cameron gave Steve a crooked, haughty grin. “Hey, dude. I’ll talk to Ben whenever I need to. Wendell put me in charge of making sure this joint’s up and running and filled with happy clients on Christmas Eve. That’s precisely what I’m going to do. Whether or not we’ve got some conflicts of interest to deal with.”

  “What conflicts of interest?” I asked. “We all want the inn to open on time.”

  “The three of us do,” Cameron replied. “Ben, not so much.”

  “Yeah. Wendell told us about how you think Ben supposedly blew the whistle on the front steps being too steep,” Sullivan said. “You need to let it go.”

  “Let it go?”

  “That’s right. It doesn’t concern you. Sullivan and Gilbert Designs is in charge of the remodel, and that puts us in charge of Ben Orlin. Everything that he does goes through us first.”

  Cameron held Sullivan’s gaze for a long moment. “You know, I’m familiar with the terms of your contract. It doesn’t stipulate that you get a bonus for the inn opening on time.”

  “So what?” Sullivan fired back, rising.

  “So the inn’s time line isn’t as big a deal to you as it is to me!” Cameron balled his fists.

  “Knock it off!” I cried. “Both of you! This is ridiculous! It goes without saying that it’s in our best interest to make our clients happy and get everything done on time, Cameron. A payment bonus isn’t necessary to motivate us.”

  “I’m just trying to ascertain where everyone’s coming from,” Cameron said, spreading his arms.

  “And you’re implying that we had something to do with the inn’s failed inspection,” Steve said.

  “No, he isn’t, Steve.”

  “Jeez, Erin!” he shouted. “He’s accusing us of sabotaging the job!”

  “Untrue,” Cameron countered. “I’m just pointing out that I have a bigger stake in
the inn’s launch than Gilbert and Sullivan Designs does. Maybe that’s why I want to take it more seriously.”

  “The correct name is Sullivan and Gilbert,” Steve declared. “And if by ‘taking it more seriously’ you mean causing conflicts and undermining our work here, maybe so.”

  Someone coughed, and the three of us looked toward the sound. Mikara, her cheeks slightly pink, was standing in the doorway next to a blond, ultratanned man in his fifties. He looked vaguely familiar. I realized I’d seen him on television but couldn’t yet place him.

  “This is Alfonso,” Mikara said. “He is interviewing for a position as pastry chef and head cook.” She gestured at the three of us. “These passionate folks are what we call ‘short-timers’ and won’t be here by the time the doors open for business. Erin and Steve are decorators, and—”

  “Hi, Alfonso. I’m Cameron Baker, chief of operations for Wendell Barton.”

  “The owner of the Snowcap Ski Resort?”

  “That’s right,” Cameron said proudly. “As well as the majority owner of the Snowcap Inn.”

  “Wendell’s real estate company owns and operates the ski resort and properties all across the country,” Mikara added.

  “Ah. Good.”

  “Everyone associated with the inn normally gets along great,” Mikara said to Alfonso, unconvincingly. “We must happen to be in a weird biorhythm today.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said, with a smug attitude that was already grating on me. “Overall, your inn’s quite nice. Your kitchen needs work but is adequate for the short term.”

  “How short-term were you thinking?” I couldn’t help but ask. We’d installed a large, dual Wolf convection oven and range and a huge Sub-Zero refrigerator; every inch of the kitchen was professional caliber from top to bottom.

  Alfonso gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Maybe for a year, provided the inn never expands into a full-operation restaurant. And by that I mean, of course, never opens for dinner. If you ever hope to serve dinners, you would need to double the size of the workspace and build a dining area out back, roughly the size of this room.”