As I milled about, I noted the mood was quite somber compared to the past Christmas Eve events I’d attended when I was a child. The general chatter I heard as I passed groups of people said, while Edmund wouldn’t want the children to miss out on the festivities of Christmas Eve, his absence was duly noted and wouldn’t go without some kind of mention.
I made my way to the buffet table, listening to the hush of conversation, hearing the squeals of the children dressed in their Sunday best as they chased each other around the meeting room.
Mrs. Vanderhelm caught my gaze from the end of the buffet, her eyes avoiding mine as she turned her nose up at me then turned her back.
Good gravy. You’d think I purposely set out to ruin her day by deliberately leaving a dead chef in my nativity scene.
“Bah! That woman is sour raisins. It is no wonder she has no one to keep her warm on cold night. You ignore her, my pretty pound cake.”
I fought a giggle and whispered as the room continued to fill up with familiar faces from town. “Anything yet?”
“Not yet, but we never give up boat!” he encouraged.
The weight of our situation kept threatening to drag me under, but knowing Win and Arkady were supporting me helped, so I kept strolling and listening.
Frank Morrison and Hank Winkowsky were busy stabbing their plates of sweet-and-sour meatballs with toothpicks, thinking no one saw them ogling Ralph Acres’s wife and her curvaceous backside as she bent over his wheelchair and hand-fed him a cracker with cheese.
She really was gorgeous, so sleek and chic in her fitted white sleeveless dress with ice-white sparkling heels. Her blonde hair was up in a neat twist at the back of her head and her makeup was perfection.
Yep. I’d definitely call jealous on behalf of the Downward Facing Dog ladies. Not only was Patty Acres at least five years younger than they were, she was a hundred times more gorgeous.
I’d meant to drop by the hospital yesterday to see if Ralph was feeling better, but ended up sending flowers in lieu of visiting, to concentrate all my efforts on Bel’s disappearance.
Now I realized I at least needed to offer him another apology for essentially breaking his leg—even if I did end up saving his life. I mean, he could have eaten a contaminated pastry meant for me.
But I guess I couldn’t tell him that. I wasn’t even sure if the news Pascal had died of asphyxiation was out yet.
On a deep breath, I threaded my way through several parishioners and gave Ralph a sheepish wave just as Patty went back toward the buffet table to gather another plate. He didn’t look half bad, and that pleased me no end. His cheeks were rosy and his eyes bright.
“Hi, Ralph. How are you feeling?” I asked with a smile.
He gave me a wary look, the red undertone of his skin going redder. “I only have two legs, Stevie Cartwright, and I can’t afford to have another one of ’em broken at my age. You stay back there.” He pointed a knobby finger to the far end of the room and shooed me.
If there’s ever another Christmas Lights Display Contest, I think I’m going to lose by default as the leg breaker.
I held up two hands as white flags. “Again, I’m so sorry, Ralph. It was a total accident, but I’ve notified the billing department at Eb Falls General to send me the entire bill. I’ll take care of everything. Promise.”
But his face didn’t lighten up in quite the way I’d hoped, and I suppose that was fair enough. I mean, “hey, I broke your leg but I’ll pay for everything” hardly seems like much compensation when you end up in a wheelchair.
Ralph waved his finger at me again, his face screwing up as he shifted in his wheelchair, the leg with cast propped up by a green and red pillow. “That’s mighty fine of ya. Thank you kindly. Now go away.”
“Oh, Ralph! Don’t be rude and so grudgy! Stevie explained it was an accident,” Patty pointed out as she came up behind me and gave my shoulders a light squeeze.
My nose twitched, jogging something in my brain I couldn’t put together, but I patted her hand and nodded in earnest. “It really was, Ralph. Honest. I still don’t even know what happened to my decorations, but I never meant to hurt you. I would never do something like that on purpose. Surely you know that.”
“Of course she wouldn’t, Ralph, and you know that’s so,” Patty said with a tap to my shoulder before she moved from behind me to stand next to Ralph’s wheelchair.
As she placed a protective hand on her husband’s shoulder and the twinkling lights strung around the room hit her throat, the room tilted before righting itself again, giving me a very clear picture.
I almost gasped out loud. No. No. That couldn’t be.
But it was. I knew it in my gut. I just didn’t know how it all fit.
I fought for composure, fought to string words together that made sense before I opened my big mouth and said anything more. As the party went on around me, I formulated my thoughts.
“You all right there, Stevie?” Patty asked, her crystalline-green eyes mild with suspicion.
“Me?” I asked in fake surprise, stalling as my mind raced. “Oh, I’m fine. I was just wondering, what’s the name of the scent you’re wearing? I love it.”
She winked and grinned, flashing her perfect white teeth. “My Ralph buys it for me. It comes directly from France. He spoils me so, don’t you, honey?”
“It’s lovely,” I complimented, moving closer to peer at her neck. “Did you know you’re missing a stone from your necklace, Patty?”
Her long fingers flew to her throat, where a strand of heart-shaped sapphires hung on a thick gold chain against her beautiful clear skin, and she gasped.
I popped open my purse and reached into the zippered compartment, pulling out the small gem. “You know, my friend Enzo found one just like it at my house yesterday, when he cleaned up the mess from the Christmas tree I knocked Ralph into. You’ve never been to my house, Patty. How do you suppose it got there?”
The look of shock on her face was matched only by the look on Ralph’s.
“And that perfume from France? It’s pretty distinct. I bet if I let Cassie Haverstock take a whiff of you, she’d tell the police it smells exactly like the perfume Chef Le June came to her house reeking of, now wouldn’t she?”
“Cassie?” a male voice said, bewildered.
My eyes flew to the section of chairs behind Patty and Ralph—where Cassie’s handsome husband Jack sat, a plate of baked ziti in his lap, his fork suspended midair.
“Cat’s out of the bag, Stevie!” Win crowed. “Proceed with caution.”
Shoot. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. But it created a roar in the crowd of people gathering as everyone began to chatter at once.
And as I began to put everything together, I moved in on Patty. “It was you, wasn’t it, Patty?” I accused, pushing my way past the people standing between us. “You were having an affair with Chef Le June, too!”
What happened next is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget as long as I live.
Patty grabbed the handles of Ralph’s wheelchair and made a run for the foyer toward the church doors, plowing through the crowd and screaming, “We’re making a break for it, Ralph honey!”
Boy, I gotta hand it to her; she was really quick in those heels, crashing through the double doors with me in hot pursuit.
But the part I’ll never forget? That Patty actually thought she could escape when the only way to do that was to push a wheelchair with a fully grown, very large man down a flight of thirty or so steps.
I saw the very top of Ralph’s head just before both he and the wheelchair toppled down the steps with Patty clinging to the handles. The bounce and crunch of steel and the screech of Ralph hollering the whole way rang out in the parking lot.
The couple ended up in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk, Ralph flat on his back with Patty sprawled out partially underneath the spinning wheels of the chair.
“I see Stevie Cartwright’s arrived,” Dana Nelson whispered with a laugh as we both
looked down the steps. “Never let it be said you don’t know how to bring the fun, little lady.”
Chapter 13
“So explain this to me again,” Dana ordered, notepad in hand as Sandwich hovered over Ralph and Patty while they waited for a police car to arrive, and another one of the off-duty police officers kept the crowd from the church at bay.
“It wasn’t her!” Ralph blustered, his red face growing redder by the minute as the pastor’s wife covered him in a blanket, now that he’d been righted in his wheelchair. “Leave the wife alone! It was me! I take full responsibility for all of it.”
“You?” I squeaked. I was still trying to figure out how someone like Patty had managed to drag the chef out into my nativity set—but I guess stranger things have been known to happen—when Ralph blurted out his confession.
Ralph sighed, moaning when he shifted in his wheelchair. “Yes, me. I found out Patty was foolin’ around on me. So I was gonna confront him—you know, man to man. I got in my car and followed that dirtball to your house the day I found out about his affair with Patty. I don’t know what he was goin’ there for, I just know I was seein’ all kinds of red and I wanted to smash his fancy face in!”
“But why were you at my house?” I asked Patty. I still just couldn’t make the connection.
Her expression went from anguish to guilt in the matter of a moment. Pushing her mussed hair from her face, she rasped a sigh. “I was following Pascal because I was convinced he was cheating on me with someone else. I must’ve gotten to your house just after Ralph and Pascal arrived. When I saw Ralph’s car in your driveway…I knew I had to get in there before they tore each other apart,” she sobbed softly.
So this had all been a series of crazy coincidences culminating in the death of Pascal? Holy cats. Still, why was the chef at our house to begin with and why did he eat the darn pastry? Had he read the note?
“What a bloody mess,” Win mumbled.
“But I’m tellin’ you, he was half dead when I got there, Stevie! You gotta listen to me!” Ralph shouted in a sudden burst of energy, grabbing at my hand. “He was on the floor, his face all ugly red with the crumbs from that pastry all over his face. It was the pastry that made him sick! You can’t blame us for that! We had nothing to do with it. Patty can’t even boil water!”
Patty nodded her head with a shiver, tightening her hold on the top of her torn dress. “It’s true! I don’t know how to cook, let alone bake something like that! It wasn’t us, it was the pastry!”
Rubbing my arms to ward off the chill, I had to ask, “But how did he get outside, Ralph? Why would you leave him there like that?”
“Aw, heck. I tried to haul him up and get him to my car to take him to the hospital. I didn’t even have my cell phone with me or I woulda called 9-1-1. But we never made it. He kept sputterin’ and coughin’ and then…he just…”
Patty bobbed her head, her hair falling in her eyes as tears streamed down her face, streaking her mascara. “It’s true! He’s telling the truth. Pascal was on the floor when I got there. We were just trying to help him, but he died. He died without any help from anyone! Ralph checked his pulse and he was gone.”
“My heavens. Was there anyone in this town Jerry wasn’t making hay with?” Win cracked.
But I waved my hand in the air to quiet him. “So you just left him in my nativity scene when you realized he was dead and didn’t call the police for help?”
Ralph scrubbed a hand over his face and nodded in guilt, his misery plain. “We knew how it would look to everybody. It looked bad. Real, real bad. So we got scared and took off. There was nothin’ we could do for the dirtball anyway. He was dead!”
“He’s telling the truth!” Patty shouted in desperation as sirens blared in the distance. “We didn’t kill him. I swear!”
“Then why didn’t you at least say something when Mrs. Vanderhelm found him, Ralph? You behaved as though you knew nothing! I was right there,” I accused with a shiver. Boy, he’d played that well. I never once suspected he knew anything about what happened to Pascal.
Ralph groaned low in misery, pulling the blanket up around his chest. “I know it was stupid, but I spent too long in my head, Stevie, thinkin’ about all the ways we could get blamed. We decided as a couple we were better off keepin’ our mouths shut.”
I used my finger to jab the air, waving it at Ralph. “Then why the heck would you try to eat one of the pastries? If you thought that’s what killed Pascal, why would you even consider it?”
His shoulders sagged in defeat under his plaid sports coat. “Because when Patty went and looked at the pastry, the stone from her necklace must’ve fallen off and right into that cake. I noticed it while we were waitin’ for the police to question us. Recognized it right away. I was just tryin’ to get it out of sight so the police wouldn’t call it evidence and connect it to Patty, but you knocked me over before I could get to it.”
Aha. Now that part of the story did make sense. “And it fell off the pastry and onto the floor, where Enzo found it,” I finished, not even paying attention to Ralph and Patty anymore.
Even though it still didn’t explain how the pastry had gotten there in the first place, or the poison—yes, I was still convinced the pastry had been poisoned. But I’d lay bets the police were going to find a way to cover up the tune Ralph and Patty were singing.
“We had nothing to do with that pastry. I don’t know what was in it, but I bet that’s what killed him! So you can’t blame us for anything but not calling the police!” Ralph yelled.
Sighing, I shook my head at the irony of all this. “But Pascal didn’t die because he ate the pastry, Ralph. He died because his airflow was cut off. I’m betting you wrapped your arm around his neck when you dragged him outside. That’s what killed him.”
“Nooo!” Patty cried out as Sandwich used a light grip to keep her near.
As the lights of an Eb Falls police car came into view, my heart began to race. Ralph was the last connection I had to Belfry, and I had to find out if he’d seen anything when he’d found Pascal.
But Dana moved to stand between Ralph and myself. “Stevie, we have to bring him in now.”
Pushing Dana out of the way, I grabbed the arm of Ralph’s wheelchair. I worked hard not to burst into tears when I asked, “Did you see anyone else at my house that day, Ralph? Anyone at all? Did you hear anything?”
“You mean besides that mess outside and that dog of yours barkin’ like he’d lost his mind?”
“Yes! Was anyone else there? Anything strange?” I imagine I must’ve looked pretty intense, maybe even a little desperate, which clearly alarmed Ralph.
Without warning, Ralph appeared to realize whatever he said could incriminate him and he clammed up. “You’ll just have to ask my lawyer. I’m not sayin’ anything else.”
Dana latched on to my arm and pulled me away from Ralph as Melba and Detective Moore rushed up the sidewalk. “Stevie? What’s going on?”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I gazed up at him in his smart suit and tie, looking as dapper as he did in everything he wore. “Well, Officer Nelson, there are still a hundred unanswered questions I’d like some answers for.”
Sucking in his cheeks, he gave me that half-indulgent, half-annoyed expression. “Like?”
Yeah, Stevie, like?
How could I ask him about the poison if the police weren’t going to acknowledge it even existed? How could I ask him about that note, knowing with almost certainty Adam had written it?
Instead, I went for the obvious questions needing answers. “Like, why was the chef at my house to begin with? Like, where’s Edmund? Like, who messed with my decorations? Don’t you want to know the answers to those questions, too?”
Dana cocked a smile at me, his eyes playful. “Sure I do, Miss Cartwright. But I’m off duty, and you’re not a police officer with the authority to ask those questions. We’ll have to leave that to our fine Ebenezer Falls detectives.”
Sighing, I had t
o recognize he was right. The rest of this mystery would have to stay under wraps because if they all thought I was crazy as a bedbug now, I can only imagine how they’d feel when I brought up poisonous witch spells and vengeful warlocks.
“Fine,” I said with a roll of my eyes.
“You got your man—again. Why the fuss?”
The fuss? What’s the fuss? My familiar’s been kidnapped! That’s the fuss. But I couldn’t say that either, could I?
So I just shook my head and tried to keep my shrug nonchalant in order to downplay my desolation. “I guess I just want answers. I know I drive you all insane with my pestering, but you know a good mystery and me. I just can’t resist.”
Dana’s eyebrow rose but he grinned and leaned down, dropping a quick kiss on my cheek. “You did it again, Wannabe Detective. Now, I have to go, Miss Cartwright, but if I don’t see you, have a Merry Christmas.”
Gulping, I patted his arm and managed a smile. “You, too, Officer Rigid.”
His laughter mingled with the commotion going on around me and the astonished chatter of the party attendees, but I took no joy in figuring out this particular mystery.
Belfry was still missing and it was Christmas Eve.
And we were no closer to finding him than we’d been two days ago when he’d disappeared.
* * * *
We made the ride home in silence. There were no high-fives for a mystery-solving well done. There was no joy in finding Pascal’s killer, even if killing hadn’t been what Patty and Ralph had in mind when they’d gone to my house that day.
I briefly wondered if some of the answers we sought, like why Chef had been there that day, would ever be answered, and then I closed my mind off to all of it.
Pulling into our driveway, I put the car in park and leaned back in the seat, clenching my fists tight.
“Dove…”
I shook my head as I battled tears. “Don’t try to make this better, Win. You can’t make this better! What are we going to do? I failed. I failed the best friend I’ve ever had. He’s out there, all alone on Christmas Eve, and we have nothing. Less than nothing. No leads, no clues. He’s just vanished and become a voice only I can hear. Tell me what to do! Because I don’t know where to go from here!” I rasped out the words, the last of my patience stretched to impossible lengths.
How the Witch Stole Christmas (Witchless In Seattle Book 5) Page 14
