by Lyndsey Cole
“What happened here tonight? Why is that guy dressed as Santa lying frozen to death in the snow? No one knew he was out there?” Christy fired questions at Annie without a pause for any answers.
Annie’s head spun. Why, indeed, did no one keep an eye on Nelson? He, obviously, was completely inebriated but it was his idea to get some fresh air. It certainly wasn’t Annie’s responsibility to keep an eye on Nelson Abbott and she wasn’t going to let Detective Crank pin any guilt on her shoulders.
“What happened,” Annie began, “is that Nelson Abbott, dressed as Santa for our tenth year Christmas party, drank too much and went outside for some fresh air.” Christy didn’t ask, so Annie didn’t mention the fact that Nelson needed considerable help to get outside. She had learned the hard way to answer only what was asked and not offer a smidge more information.
“No one saw him stagger outside in this zero degree weather?”
Charlene stood just behind Annie, wringing her hands and watching as Nelson was carried away on a stretcher.
“Charlene,” Annie said and tapped her shoulder, “Detective Crank has some questions about your husband.”
“You’re the wife?” Detective Crank asked in her don’t try to hide anything from me voice, accompanied by her stare that usually made people say more than they should.
Charlene nodded. “I don’t know where he got the liquor from. He hasn’t been drinking for months.”
“Fill me in on where he was before he ended up in that pile of snow.” Christy shifted back and forth surveying the room. “I guess we’ll have to work backwards.”
“Nelson was sitting right there,” Charlene pointed to the chair near Christy. “Once he arrived, he plunked himself down in that spot and made himself comfortable.
Detective Crank picked up a plate of Leona’s cookies that rested on a small table next to the chair where Nelson had been sitting. “Anything in these cookies he could have been allergic to?”
Leona appeared at the mention of her cookies. “I made those cookies and all the ingredients are the best around.” She waved her arm around the room. “No one else had a problem after eating my cookies.”
Charlene pointed to some red decorations on top of one of the Santa cookies. “What’s that? I don’t remember seeing that particular decoration on the cookie that I ate.”
Leona bent closer to the half-eaten cookie. With wide eyes and a muffled voice, she said, “That looks like bits of berries sprinkled on top.” She moved her finger to touch whatever it was.
Detective Crank yanked the plate away. “Don’t touch anything.”
“Well, I can tell you it’s not something I used. Someone tampered with that cookie.”
Detective Crank slid the plate with the remaining cookies into a plastic bag. “Okay people. You’ll be here for longer than I thought. I want a statement from everyone.”
As the guests shuffled and glanced at each other suspiciously, a knot formed in Annie’s stomach that would rival Santa’s sack of presents. Her eyes darted around the room to find Cookie Snow standing with Mrs. Delaney. Cookie actually had a grin as wide as a happy elf on the day after Christmas but with a hint of evil. Mrs. Delaney’s mouth turned down as Cookie whispered in her ear.
Detective Crank dragged a chair into the hall for conducting the interviews. She placed it next to a table covered with uneaten appetizers and holiday decorations, like she planned to snack while she worked. To prove Annie’s suspicion, Detective Crank absentmindedly shoved a cheese tart in her mouth.
Leona dragged Annie to the farthest corner in the Black Cat Café. “We’ve got to figure out what happened before my whole business goes down the drain. Look at all these people, Annie. Every one of them is expecting to drop dead any minute.”
Annie had to admit to herself that many guests were looking a little green above their ugly Christmas sweaters but she decided it was the reflection from the lights bouncing off all the holly and evergreen boughs decorating the café. She had to calm her aunt down before she was the one needing an ambulance for a heart attack.
Mia, Annie’s mom, patted her sister’s arm. “Don’t worry so much, Leona, it can’t be as bad as you’re making it out to be. If you don’t get hired to cater Mrs. Delaney’s party, it’s not the end of the world.”
“Unfortunately, it might be,” Martha, the oldest woman in Annie’s circle of friends said, as she peered over the top of her glasses with gossip she couldn’t wait to share. “I heard whispers that someone poisoned Leona’s cookies and gave them to Nelson. Any suspects you can think of?”
“Who’d you hear that from?” Leona hissed. “Don’t go spreading stories that will only hurt my business.”
“Sorry, hon.” The glee from her juicy gossip disappeared but she wasn’t about to back down completely. “I thought you’d want to know so you could get in front of the problem. If we all put our heads together, we should be able to remember who said what to Nelson and who poisoned the cookies. The murderer has to be a guest here tonight.”
“If he was murdered,” Annie said before adding, “a big if. We don’t know that Nelson was poisoned. He was drunk and maybe he just passed out when he was on the deck and, well, with the freezing temps tonight, it was an unfortunate accident.”
“Okay, if. But we still should try to remember every single detail, in case this death turns into a murder scene.” Martha raised her eyebrow.
Camilla swooshed over to the whispering group with her red Mrs. Claus skirt twirling around her legs. She draped one arm over Annie’s shoulders and the other over Leona’s. “You won’t believe what I found.”
All eyes focused on Camilla which was what she loved.
With her back to everyone else in the room except the ones she was talking to, she reached one hand into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a plastic baggie.
Leona gasped. Her eyebrows disappeared under the bangs of her new haircut and her jaw fell open. “Where did you find that?”
The baggie contained a half dozen of Leona’s beautifully decorated cookies. “In Cookie Snow’s ginormous tote. She’s probably planning to pass them off as her own.” Camilla crossed her arms with a very self-satisfied grin on her face.
“Or add a sprinkle of poison,” Martha added, continuing the gossip she just shared.
“It doesn’t prove anything,” Annie said, “but I think we should call her over and ask her a few questions.”
Leona didn’t even hang around long enough for Annie to finish her comment. She was already halfway across the room with Cookie as her target. Leona grabbed Cookie’s ginormous tote and wrenched it off her shoulder.
“Hey. What do you think you’re doing?” Cookie protested.
Leona said in a controlled voice, “You need to come with me unless you want me to dump this thing over right in front of everyone.”
Cookie’s mouth opened but not a sound came out.
“That’s exactly what I thought.” Leona turned and marched back to her friends.
Cookie raced behind, trying to retrieve her tote, but Leona kept it just out of reach and Cookie only managed to grab handfuls of air.
“Why were my cookies stuffed in your bag?” Leona demanded to know.
Cookie’s eyes moved from Leona to Camilla to Mia, and finally to Annie. “I planned to copy them,” she sheepishly admitted, the color of her face matched Camilla’s crimson Mrs. Claus outfit.
Leona rooted around some more in the tote and pulled out some holly branches with red berries. “And this? Did you poison Nelson?”
Cookie’s mouth gaped open and closed like a fish out of water. “Of course not.”
“We’ll let Detective Crank be the judge of that, Cookie Snow.”
“Please, Leona, I won’t take the Christmas Eve job for Mrs. Delaney. Don’t tell the detective. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Cookie pleaded.
Leona leaned right into Cookie’s ear. “Tell Mrs. Delaney, right now, that you have a conflict or else everyone here will know y
ou had to stoop in the gutter to steal my cookies.” Leona added a shove to get Cookie moving in the right direction.
Cookie grabbed her bag and tottered across the café on her four-inch heels right to Mrs. Delaney. As the others watched, Cookie pointed and gestured to Leona. Mrs. Delaney’s mouth turned down into a scowl.
“Good,” Leona said. “Serves her right. Now I should get that job even with this little glitch tonight.”
But before any more speculation could happen about Mrs. Delaney’s Christmas Eve gala or Nelson Abbott’s demise, Detective Crank approached Leona. Right behind the detective, Annie could see Cookie Snow with a satisfied grin on her face.
Something was terribly wrong.
“What’s this I hear? You put a holly branch covered with berries in Cookie’s tote?” Detective Crank shot fire from her eyes at Leona.
Leona was only speechless for a split second. “That’s not what happened,” she protested. “I found the holly in her tote. Along with a bagful of my cookies.”
Detective Crank swept her arm around the room. “With all these decorations in your café, you’d better hope it doesn’t turn out to be crushed up holly berries on the cookies that Nelson ate.”
Leona tried to defend herself, “But—”
Detective Crank was already out the door.
Cookie Snow winked at Leona. “Thanks for making it so easy for me to destroy you. Looks like Detective Crank caught you red-handed with that holly. You’ll never get hired by Mrs. Delaney now.”
By the time the police were done interviewing all the guests at the Christmas party and yellow police tape covered all the entrances into the Cove’s Corner building, there wasn’t much left of the horrific Saturday night.
Annie managed to calm Leona down and help Danny get her into his car to take her home.
She was a basket case. And the basket wasn’t filled with gifts from Santa. Instead, it overflowed with suspicion, accusations, and, worst of all, the worry that this nightmare could be the end of Leona’s Black Cat Café.
Chapter 5
Sunday morning was quiet with all sounds muffled by a fresh overnight snowfall. The beauty, however, couldn’t erase the memory of what happened at the Black Cat Café the night before.
Jason had a pot of coffee brewing and a fire crackling in the fireplace by the time Annie made it downstairs. Roxy was curled up on the couch with Smokey on one side and Snowball on the other. Neither of the cats had any interest in braving the weather, so instead, they managed a truce to enjoy the heat from the fire.
“How could things go so terrible wrong?” Annie wondered out loud as she poured herself a big mug of strong coffee. “Too bad we didn’t stay for one more day in that delightful ocean-side cabana on the beach in Hawaii.”
Maybe that was really her first mistake, coming home a day early from their vacation. She shook her strawberry blond curls to dislodge the peaceful ocean vista from her brain. Instead, she needed to focus on the cold, hard reality of Leona’s dilemma.
A knock on the door made Roxy woof but not bother to jump from her comfy spot to investigate.
Jason opened the door and the cold air that blew in around Detective Christy Crank was nothing compared to the icy stare Annie hit her with.
“You’re the last person I expected to see this morning,” Annie spit out.
“Any coffee left?” Christy had an amazing talent to ignore an obvious insult and continue with her own agenda. She helped herself to a cup of coffee and stood near the fire.
Annie fidgeted. This couldn’t just be a social, how-was-your-vacation visit from the detective. It didn’t take a genius to see that Christy Crank had something on her mind.
“Listen. I want to get to the bottom of this as badly as you do, Annie, and I’ll need your help.” Christy sipped her coffee and moved a couple of steps away from the fire. “What can you tell me about Cookie Snow?”
Annie had to be careful. When Christy said she needed Annie’s help, quite often it was a trap. “Cookie had an agenda to hurt Leona. It seems suspicious to me that she came to the Christmas party with holly in her big canvas tote and she had a bag full of Leona’s cookies. What do you think her plans were with that?”
Christy shrugged as if Annie’s comments couldn’t be less important. “I was under the impression that Leona put the holly in Cookie’s bag. And those cookies in her bag? Not relevant at the moment unless they are poisoned. Maybe she wanted them for a midnight snack,” Christy added sarcastically.
“How can you be so cavalier? It most certainly is relevant. Cookie had a plan to take Leona down one way or another. You can’t believe for one minute that Leona would poison her own cookies.” Annie’s voice was filled with passion and pleading, almost to the point of hysteria. She was desperate to make Christy look at anyone but Leona.
“I have to work with evidence and not what I might want to believe. You know that. Whether Cookie had holly in her bag or not doesn’t change the fact that Leona had holly all over the café for decorations. And, she made the cookies. Those crushed up berries on the cookies are relevant.” Christy raised her eyebrows, emphasizing her last comment. “Who brought the plate of cookies to Nelson?”
“I think it was Charlene. But, to be honest, there was so much going on, I’m not a hundred percent sure. Besides, anyone could have walked by Nelson when he was sitting in his chair and dropped those berries on his cookies.”
“Right. Exactly my thought, too. That’s why I have to consider everyone at the café last night. Everyone that might want Nelson dead.”
“You’re treating this as a homicide?” Annie asked, dreading the answer.
“I have to. He didn’t freeze to death; he was poisoned. It will be in the paper today.”
Annie was surprised but not shocked at the revelation. She had heard too many angry women making comments to Nelson. “From what I heard last night, there wasn’t anyone at the party that had anything nice to say about Nelson Abbott. Especially after he hit his booze and grabbed at every woman that made the mistake of walking within a couple of feet of his chair.”
Christy nodded but remained silent. Her silence hung in the air louder than anything she could have said.
“So, you have plenty of people to consider. Besides Leona,” Annie added, only partly to fill the quiet.
Christy nodded again. “I do. The reason I stopped by this morning was to give you a heads up about the article coming out. I know where your loyalty lies and I don’t want you to think you can tackle this to save your aunt or her business. Someone knew exactly what they were doing last night and I’ll be the one to get to the bottom of it. Understand?”
Annie gave a grudging nod and opened the door for Christy, a not-so-subtle hint that it was time for her to leave.
“Thanks for the coffee.” She held her cup up before she left it on the table. “Glad you came back early from your vacation since I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to miss the excitement.”
Annie slammed the door behind Christy. “The nerve! Did she stop by just to torment me and let me know that Leona is her top suspect?”
“That’s not what she said, Annie.” Jason tried to wrap his arms around her but she twisted away.
“Really?” Annie imitated Christy’s voice. “‘Leona had holly all over the café for decorations. And, she made the cookies’. I know how Christy works. Well, she can’t stop me from helping Leona in any way possible. Leona didn’t poison those cookies. But I wouldn’t put it past Cookie Snow or even Charlene. Did you hear what they said to Nelson last night?”
Jason sighed. “No, I was concentrating on playing the Christmas songs and trying to keep the whole night from falling into chaos.”
Annie didn’t take the time to remind him that despite his best efforts, that was exactly what happened. “Charlene said she didn’t care if Nelson froze to death. And if that’s not bad enough, she was fuming mad that he was drinking again and she told him it would be the last time he’d embarrass her. Do
esn’t that sound like a threat? And I wasn’t the only one to hear it.”
“He’s her husband and people say stuff like that when they’re upset, but does she have a motive? Is there something buried in their background?”
“Leona might know. They’ve been friends forever.”
“She won’t want to betray her friend, will she?”
“I wouldn’t call it betrayal if the woman committed murder.” Annie rinsed the three coffee mugs. At least she hoped that Leona had enough sense to save her own skin. “And Cookie Snow told Nelson to keep his hands off her or he wouldn’t see the light of day. I’ll have to see what’s going on with her, too, especially since she was gloating when the tables got turned on Leona last night. She thinks she’s off the hook but she doesn’t know who she’s messing with.”
“Not to change the subject from all this cloak and dagger stuff, but we do have a breakfast invitation. Did you forget?”
Annie slapped the side of her head. “I did but it won’t take me long to get ready.” She scrunched up her mouth. “Is Paul feeling good enough to have us over? Maybe none of this would have happened if he hadn’t gotten sick, leaving Charlene to find a replacement Santa in the first place.”
Jason slipped his phone into his pocket. “Paul sent a text and said it must have been a fast-moving bug. He’s looking forward to seeing us. So, yes, I guess he’s feeling better. And you might be right that if he was Santa instead of Nelson, none of this might have happened, but that’s all in the past and can’t be redone.”
Annie headed up the stairs. Two at a time. She definitely wanted to go out for breakfast. First of all, she wanted a distraction from Detective Christy Crank’s visit, and secondly, the breakfast invitation was at one of the lakeside cottages not far away, owned by a good friend of Jason’s—Paul Ames—the original Santa. With a bit of luck, maybe he could offer some insight into what happened even though he wasn’t at the party the night before. After all, Charlene had worked with Paul as Santa for most of the past Christmas parties and maybe he could shed some light on who might want Nelson dead.
