Twelve Slays of Christmas

by Jacqueline Frost

  “Oh.” She paused. “We’re running a little behind, but don’t wait on us if you’re hungry. The roast should be ready now. Help yourself.”

  “Okay.” I ran the sleeve of my coat under my nose and pressed a mitten to each eye.

  “Why don’t we talk after dinner? Just us girls. Just like old times. It’s been too long since we’ve done that. I miss it.”

  I nodded despite the fact she couldn’t see me. A fat tear slid over my cheek. “Me too. That sounds really good.” I said good-bye before I told her the whole sordid story of my near-death experience. The coward in me hoped the sheriff would break the news to my parents while I concentrated on looking unscathed for their benefit. I couldn’t possibly deliver any more bad news this week. I was becoming a nuisance.

  I moved to the next window and peeked outside when the sound of an engine reached my ears. A big black truck barreled into view, throwing snow in its wake and carving a path from the entrance gate at Reindeer Games all the way to my house. The beast stopped out front and settled a massive metal plow blade near my steps moments before the truck went still.

  Sheriff Gray exited the cab with a lethal look in his eyes. He climbed the porch steps like a panther, so wholly focused I could practically feel his intensity through the glass. He approached the door with one hand at his back, presumably on a concealed handgun. A black duffel bag hung over his shoulder.

  No cruiser. No uniform. No badge. For a moment, I worried that he was the killer, and I was the idiot who kept calling him to report his crimes.

  I hurried back down the hall to the front door and opened it slowly, hands raised.

  His eyes widened a split second before pinching into slits. “What are you doing? Put your hands down.” His dark jeans and leather jacket looked anything but official. His hair was dark, probably still damp from a shower, and his cheeks were clear of stubble. Where had he been when I’d called?

  I waved him inside and pointed to the fireplace. “That arrived after I fell asleep, and I don’t think it’s from Santa. Watch your step. Some of the snow’s beginning to melt.”

  He cast his gaze around the room, then back on me. “Start from the beginning.”

  I took a deep breath and retold the story while he bagged the threatening note and matches. He took a million pictures of my house, inside and out, before building a hearty fire to warm us when the fireplace was clear. “This week just keeps getting worse for you.” He tucked the collected evidence into his black duffel and contacted a deputy to bring the official crime scene equipment.

  He returned to the couch with a big green thermos. “I’ll need a written statement on this.”

  “Okay.” I made room for him beside me, shooing cats and straightening pillows. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” he asked, making himself comfortable at my side. He poured a lid full of something sweet scented and steamy, then passed it my way.

  “Coming to my rescue. Again.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. You may recall that I’m the sheriff. Rescues are in the job description.”

  I accepted the offering and gave it a closer inspection. “What is this?”

  “Hard cider. It’s a big deal where I’m from. I thought you could use a little after the way you sounded on the phone.”

  He’d had me at “hard cider.” I tipped the cup to my lips and drank. “It’s delicious.”

  His sharp eyes moved slowly, gliding their attention over me and then every detail of the room before us. “I had no idea what I’d find here. You sounded terrified.”

  I held out my empty thermos lid. The fire and thermostat were warming my skin. The liquor was working on my insides. I liked it.

  He gave me a refill. “You’re tougher than you look. Most people would be packing for Portland right now.”

  “I’m not brave. I’m hardheaded. Besides, this is my home.” The truth of the words rang in my heart and head like a gong, reverberating until I wanted nothing more than to make sure that fact never changed. “I should’ve never gone to Portland. There was nothing there for me.”

  He watched the flames dance in my fireplace. Reflections of orange and blue swam in his serious green eyes. “You’re different because you were there. Experiences like that change us.” His gaze met mine. “Even the ugly stuff like this.”

  “I know.”

  The downturn of his mouth worried me. He had more to say on the topic, maybe even something personal, but he wouldn’t, and I had no right to ask. I barely knew him, and I’d already ruined his night.

  I took another long sip from my cup. “What were you doing when I called?”

  “Why?”

  “You aren’t dressed for work.”

  “It’s my night off. I was going to see someone.”

  I crossed my arms, painfully aware of my appearance. Even beneath Dad’s giant hunting coat and snow pants, my ratty sweats and old high school hoodie had seen better days. I had thick ski socks over my softie pink ones, and my hair was a wild mess. I tugged off the knitted cap I’d donned to stay warm and felt my wild waves lifting under the influence of static electricity. I’d intentionally skipped blow-drying last night because it was late and my parents wake up early. The results were horrifying, but no one was supposed to see me today. The pitiful amount of makeup I’d applied before dawn was surely long gone after all I’d been through. What time hadn’t erased, a deluge of stubborn tears surely had. In other words, Sheriff Gray was dressed for a date, and I looked like a homeless woman.

  He twisted on the cushion to face me. Concern lined his forehead. “Do you want to talk about this? Do you have questions or is there anything else you want me to know?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Shoot.”

  I finished the cider and set the empty cup on my lap. “Why aren’t you yelling at me like last time?”

  His brows dove together. “I’ve never yelled at you.”

  “Wrong.” A blister of sweat sprouted on my brow. I stripped off Dad’s giant coat and folded it over the arm of the couch. “You yell at me all the time. It’s practically our song.”

  His cheek twitched. “We’ve got a song now?”

  “Sure.” I eased upright and shoved Dad’s pants down to my ankles, revealing ten-year-old Mistletoe High School sweat pants. I stepped out of the giant bottoms and sat back on the couch, pulling my double-socked feet up with me. “Our song goes like this: You tell me to stop everything. Stop talking to people. Stop asking questions. Stop nosing around. Stop messing up your investigation.” I tried to copy his Boston accent and failed miserably. When I dropped my Rs, I sounded like a baby. When he did it, he sounded like Matt Damon.

  He leaned toward me with a smile. “It’s good advice, but I wasn’t yelling. I wouldn’t yell at you.”

  “Well, then you were scolding me.”

  He made an unreadable face. “I was encouraging you to make better use of your time before something like this happened. Or worse.”

  My jaw dropped. “You’re doing it again. You just turned this into an I-told-you-so situation. Plus, it sounds like you’re saying this is my fault for not listening to you.”

  He rolled his eyes dramatically and took a swig from his thermos.

  I flopped back on the couch and faced him. “Do you really think whoever did this would burn down our trees?” It would ruin us. Trees took years to mature enough for anyone to take home.

  “That’s the thing about killers—they don’t care who gets hurt. They sure don’t care about your trees.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. Burning the farm would ruin my parents, and they haven’t done anything to anyone.”

  “Yes, but you care about your folks,” he said. “Whoever left that note either knows it or assumes you’d want to protect the trees because you’ll inherit them one day. Either way, this is about you, not your parents or their trees.”

  I covered my face with my hands and groaned. I didn’t want to think about inheriting the farm. That
’d mean my parents were no longer able to care for the property or, worse, that they were gone. I leaned against Sheriff Gray’s shoulder, not caring if it made me seem weak or needy. At the moment, I was both, and I didn’t have the energy to pretend otherwise. “How am I supposed to leave this alone now? Someone tried to kill me. They threatened the farm. I have to find who did this before I wind up like Mrs. Fenwick.”

  I braced myself for the rebuff that didn’t come. Instead, he wound one strong arm over my shoulders and tucked me more tightly against his side. “I’m not going to let that happen.” He patted my shoulder. “Believe it or not, I’m a good detective. I’m an asset that you keep treating like a roadblock.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Maybe we can work together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I don’t for a minute think you’re really going to leave this alone. As soon as the shock wears off, you’ll be right back out there poking bears, and I can’t have that. What if you start thinking about us as if we’re a team instead? A relay team,” he explained. “You went first, and all your legwork is done. Now we can weed through what you’ve learned together and see what we can make of it. If anyone else needs to be interviewed, I’ll do it. I’ve got the baton now, and it’s your turn to rest.”

  “Okay.” Much as I wanted to keep going, I had an obligation to protect the farm that had provided for my family over four generations. “I can do that.”

  “I also think you should stop coming here for a while. Stay with your parents exclusively. You’re too easy to get at here.”

  I lifted my head off his shoulder and worked to put some space between us. “I agree, but what if whoever did this goes after me at their house?”

  “Do you mean before or after your dad shoots him?”

  “That’s not funny,” I said. “I mean it. What if I bring this nightmare to their doorstep? Someone walked all around this living room while I slept on the couch. Who’s to say the same person won’t help themselves to my parents’ house just as easily?”

  “You’re safer with them than you are on your own. Plus, it’ll make me feel better to know you aren’t alone.” He scooped my fallen paperback off the floor. “What’s this?”

  “A book.” My face heated. He probably thought I was reading it because I knew he was.

  He fanned through the pages. “I read this every winter.”

  “You do?”

  He gripped the paperback in both hands and gave me a wistful look. “My dad died when I was fourteen. He was a cop. He was shot.” A slow smile changed his features into something proud and strong. “Man, he loved to read. He begged me to go to college and be a professor. He wanted me to teach English and get kids from the city to love books like we did. We read this one every Christmas break.”

  I slid my hand over his and curled my fingers around the edge of his palm. “I’m sorry you lost him.”

  “Me too,” he whispered. “I followed his dream for me. I got an MFA from Boston College and a fat stack of student loans to prove it, but my blood runs blue, you know?”

  I smiled at his hopeful expression. “We can’t change who we are, I suppose. Still, I’m sorry I came home and messed up your plans to settle down somewhere quiet. I even ruined your date tonight.”

  His lips quirked into a smile. “Why do you think I had a date?”

  “You said you were going to see someone.”

  His cheeks darkened, and his head bobbed. “I was coming to check on you. I knew the snow had closed the farm. Figured you’d be home and bored. The roads were clearing up, so I thought you might want to go for a ride.”

  “Oh.” My heart sprang ridiculously into double time. “I would’ve liked that. I was alone all afternoon.” I shivered. “I thought I was alone, anyway.”

  “Why don’t we get out of here? If you want to get your stuff together, I’ll see how far out the deputy is. I’ll drive you over to your parents’ house when you’re ready.”

  I checked my watch. “They should be home now.”

  “Have you told them about this?”

  “No.” I gathered a bag of books and a couple spare sets of coats and boots, plus all my jewelry-making supplies.

  Sheriff Gray followed me room to room asking questions about the people I’d spoken with regarding Mrs. Fenwick. I filled him in on the HPS and my concerns that Mrs. Fenwick’s death had something to do with her campaign for renovations to the covered bridge, but nothing I said seemed to surprise him.

  Half an hour later, I climbed into the cab of his running truck and balanced a quilted tote of cats on my lap. My legs and feet were smothered in bags of stuff I wasn’t willing to leave at the guesthouse for an indefinite amount of time. The green dashboard clock said precisely seven.

  Sheriff Gray shut my front door and placed a line of crime scene tape across the jamb. He made a call from my porch before climbing behind the steering wheel. “Ready?”

  Nope. “Sure.”

  He shifted the truck into gear and headed for my parents’ farmhouse. “The deputy stopped to help a car out of a snowdrift. He’ll be here after that.”

  A thick plume of smoke rose from the chimney of my parents’ home, and footprints led the way up their sidewalk to a newly shoveled set of porch steps.

  Breaking the news to my parents was guaranteed to be the worst part of my horrible day. I could imagine the fear and hurt in their eyes when they learned I’d been in danger again. They worried too much about me already.

  “Hey.” Sheriff Gray’s low tenor pulled my attention back to him.

  He parked beside Dad’s four-wheel drive and snuffed the engine. “It’s going to be okay. Your parents are good people. They’ll be scared for you, but they won’t be mad, and I won’t let anything like that happen to you again. Understand?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t see how he could make such a promise. Hadn’t I already been threatened twice? And possibly chased once?

  He reached for his door but paused. “You’ve told me everything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then we’re good, and I’m gonna catch this sonofa—gun.” He gave an apologetic smile.

  I swallowed a wedge of emotion, still terrified the lunatic who tried to freeze me to death would make good on his threat to burn down my parents’ trees—or worse, their home—while we were sleeping.

  My phone buzzed in my lap. Ben’s face scarred the screen. I slid the little red line to reject the call.

  Sheriff Gray clucked his tongue. “Ben is the ex-fiancé, right?”

  I gritted my teeth against a brewing tirade on the topic of Ben. He’d betrayed and humiliated me. His selfish actions had uprooted my life and sent me packing back to Mistletoe. In hindsight, the last part was blessing, but he hadn’t meant it to be. And now he was sorry? Hah! I’d rather go to Hawaii with Cookie’s goat. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Sheriff Gray climbed out of the warm cab. He rounded the hood of his truck and opened my door. He offered a hand, but I gave him a cat instead. Then I climbed out with Cindy pressed to my chest and two bags in my free hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We can talk about it later.”

  I gave him my best no way José look and marched up the steps to face my parents.

  * * *

  The sheriff left soon after breaking the news to my folks. He assured us that everything would be fine, but his attention was divided when he glanced at his buzzing phone. After what seemed like fifty rapid-fire texts arrived, he cut our coddling short and practically ran out the front door. Whatever those texts were about, I wanted to know. Unfortunately, my parents looked like they might never let me leave the house again.

  We ate pot roast in near silence. Dad watched me as if I might disappear, and Mom told me she loved me after each forkful of potatoes. When I pushed them to talk to me, Dad complained that I hadn’t called him, then he took his frustrations out on dinner, using excessive force to skewer each tender bite. Mom dabbed tears from the corners of her eye
s with a napkin, ashamed that she’d sensed something was wrong and hadn’t pushed for an explanation.

  I apologized profusely and pled my case for their safety, but when I offered to get a hotel room outside of town until this was over, they threatened to lock me in my room.

  Eventually, the meal ended, and I dragged myself upstairs, praying for a short-term coma.

  I kicked an old pair of tennis shoes against an unpacked book bag from my last day of high school and groaned. Life used to be so predictable and peaceful in Mistletoe.

  I collapsed on the bed and pulled a pillow to my chest. What if the killer came for me tonight? What if he hurt my parents or burned down the farm? What could I do to stop him?

  Nothing.

  The cats curled on the edge of my bed and batted the soft white curtain billowing under the power of a heat vent.

  “I want to keep my promise to Sheriff Gray,” I told Whiskers and Cindy, “but we need to catch the killer before he hurts anyone else, so I don’t think I can leave this alone. What do you think?”

  Cindy turned on me with a leap. She batted my face and bit my hair.

  “Hey, stop.”

  Whiskers walked over my belly and attempted to climb onto my head.

  “Ah!” I rolled away snickering into a pillow. They had an effective way of changing the subject, I’d give them that. “You guys are terrible at giving advice.”

  My phone buzzed with an incoming call, and I nearly fell off the bed trying to get to it. Maybe the sheriff had found something. Maybe all those texts had led to the killer. I swung my legs over the bed’s edge and snatched the device off my nightstand. A wave of sadness pulled my shoulders down. It was Ben again. Frustration stung my eyes and blurred my vision. Ben was supposed to want to spend the rest of his life with me, but instead he’d walked away the minute something more appealing came along. I didn’t want him back, but the betrayal ached deep in my gut every time I thought of him. I slid my fingertip across the screen to reject his call. “You can have the espresso machine,” I told the now quiet phone. “You can have the honeymoon. You can have whatever you want, just please stop calling.” I tipped forward, socked feet brushing old wooden floorboards. Cindy and Whiskers poked their heads beneath my elbows. Apparently sensing my mood, they curled gently at my sides.