The Peppermint Mocha Murder

by Colette London

  She had mentioned trying “another approach” but hadn’t specified what it might be—only that it might be “a big boost.”

  Setting aside my sham career as a purveyor of holiday candy for the moment, I considered Zach’s suggestion regarding Roger.

  “Oh, I definitely don’t want to bother Roger right now!”

  “I don’t think he’d mind.” Zach paused long enough to give me another unreadable glance. “He’s all about business.”

  “But now, with all that’s happened—” I fumbled for more.

  “Stop,” Zach interrupted. “You don’t have to keep this up, Hayden. I know what’s going on here. I can tell what’s wrong.”

  A weird undercurrent rose between us, fraught with meaning.

  The trouble was, I couldn’t decipher that meaning.

  I gulped. “Wrong?” My voice stuttered. I couldn’t help it.

  Zach smiled. Peculiarly. “Hayden, you can be real with me.” He pointed his sharp scissors at me. “I’ve been there!”

  Now I was thoroughly mystified. Also, a little nervous about Zach’s lackadaisical handling of scissors. “You have?”

  Was he another part-time amateur sleuth? I wondered crazily. Maybe there were more of us than I realized—more than I could imagine. I’d never expected to find myself in this role, after all. Yet here I was. Warily, I asked, “You’ve been there?”

  “Yes, I have!” Zach assured me warmly. “Trying to build a business, feeling too shy to make the right contacts, desperate to succeed, anyway. I know! That was me, the first few years after I inherited this place.” Zach shook his longish hair from his eyes, then smiled again. “The B&B used to belong to my grandma.”

  He crossed himself and glanced up, presumably paying tribute to Grandma Johnson. But I was still getting my mind around the fact that he thought I, Hayden Mundy Moore, was shy.

  Danny, who knew me best, would have laughed his face off at the very idea. Travis might have enjoyed a good chuckle, too.

  For the sake of expediency, I played along. I swallowed hard, then did my best to appear timid. “I’m sorry, Zach,” I mumbled. “I feel so embarrassed. I’ll leave now. Sorry again.”

  I pushed back my chair, planning a magnificently hesitant exit. Zach’s laughter stopped me much too soon. “No, stay!”

  I guessed Tansy wouldn’t be getting any competition from me in the acting department. Not today. “Seriously? You mean it?”

  “Of course!” Zach offered me an indulgent smile. It was clear that he thought he was encouraging me. He pushed over a sheet of white paper and a pair of scissors. “If it helps, just keep your hands busy while we talk. That takes the edge off.”

  If I’d been truly timorous, I might have found that useful.

  “Thanks.” I picked up both, then mimicked the steps I remembered my host carrying out earlier. One fold. Two. Then a few snips. I sneaked a glance at him. “So you think I should . . . ?”

  “Let me talk to a few people. I think I can hook you up.”

  “With Mr. Sullivan?” I let my eyes widen with gratefulness.

  Zach chuckled. “Around here, most of us call him Joe.”

  “I couldn’t possibly do that!” Was I taking my faux timidity too far? I couldn’t be sure. “But if you could help—”

  “I’d be glad to!” Magnanimously, Zach winked at me. “There are ways to ‘hack’ your shyness—to cope with it better.” He seemed to enjoy his self-appointed mentor role. “For me, going online has been a tremendous help. For you, maybe having a personal introduction would be good. I’ll put out some feelers.”

  Eww. “You can’t just call Mr. Sullivan? I mean, Joe?”

  I’d been hoping Zach could expedite the process.

  “I could, but the trouble isn’t reaching Joe. It’s convincing him to take a break long enough to take a meeting.” Zach gave a resigned “That’s Joe for you!” headshake. His gaze dipped to my festively wrapped fudge. “I’m not even sure he’d stop working long enough to taste test that fudge of yours.”

  “Wow. He’s really that much of a workaholic?”

  A nod. “Joe likes to call it ‘dedication,’ though.”

  Well, as a publicly recognized workaholic, he’d be likely to phrase it that way, wouldn’t he? Clearly, the Sproutesians were enabling his bad behavior. If Albany had developed a grudge against her hometown homies, then she had a good reason for it. My own parents worked a lot, but they always had time for me.

  “When Albany and I were dating,” Zach went on informally, “I thought her parents must have gotten divorced, her dad was at home so infrequently.” He gave me a wistful look. “I’m luckier, though. My own parents have been married thirty-four years now.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet. Congratulations to them!” My thoughts were elsewhere. I followed them. “You and Albany, uh, dated?” I asked in as laid-back a tone as I could muster. “Really?”

  I wanted to ask more. Much more. Precisely when? For how long? Why didn’t anyone say so before? all sprang to mind.

  So did, Exactly who are you in Albany’s memoir? There had been a boyfriend or two mentioned, but none had been a B&B host.

  Had Zach held other jobs? Could he be “the bartender”?

  “There’s no need to sound so surprised! Sheesh.” He shook his head while slicing a few more precise cuts into his paper snowflake. Beyond us, Christmas carols played in the parlor. “It almost sounds as though you think Albany was out of my league.”

  He glowered. Whoops. I hadn’t meant to insult him.

  But I couldn’t help wondering, Had Albany considered herself out of Zach’s league? Had she dumped him before moving to the big city of New York? Did Zach harbor resentment over their breakup? If he did, was it the murderous kind of resentment?

  It was possible, I had to concede, that jilted Zach had been in Sproutes all this time, feeling hurt and abandoned by Albany, only to seize his opportunity for revenge (he’d thought) when his former girlfriend returned home for the holidays.

  Albany had been at the Christmas in Crazytown tree-trimming party, of course. So had Zach. Had he approached the woman he’d thought was his heartbreaker ex that night, after the party had finished, and shoved her head into the wassail punch bowl?

  I still hadn’t asked Zach about that nagging detail: the leftover full punch bowl. But I imagined that when (or if) you were planning on enacting an “accidental” death, cleaning up beforehand didn’t rank high on the priority list. He’d certainly done a whiz-bang job of cleaning up the dining room afterward.

  Or maybe it had been an impulsive murder, with no foresight beforehand and little remorse afterward. I still didn’t know.

  Back to Zach—and his hurt feelings that I’d suggested he was dating above his level when it came to Albany Sullivan.

  “No! Oh, no, I’m sorry!” I gasped, hand over my mouth in pretend mortification. “Zach, I never meant to imply that.” I put down my nascent paper snowflake and pushed to my feet. “I’m sorry. I really will leave you alone now. I understand if you don’t want to help me meet Mr. Sullivan anymore. It’s okay.”

  It felt unnatural to be so apologetic, but this routine had already earned Zach’s sympathy and cooperation once. Maybe it would do so again? Being too direct tended to backfire on me.

  Nobly, Zach put his hand on mine. “No need for that. I understand. Albany and I might seem like an unexpected couple now that she’s so famous. But it wasn’t always that way.”

  “Oh no?” Timorously, I sat. “What was she like, anyway?”

  For the next several minutes, my B&B host waxed rhapsodic about his relationship with the girl who’d become a best-selling tell-all memoirist. It almost sounded too idyllic to be true.

  “You’re a really good listener, Hayden.” Zach sighed. His face glowed with nostalgia. “Thanks. This has been fun.”

  Yeah, fun. Finding out that someone I’d liked might be a secret Christmastime murderer was awesome. No, wait. It wasn’t.

  I
had to tell Danny and Travis about this.

  “So, are you and Albany back together now?” I inquired. A heartbeat later, I realized that if Zach were carrying a torch for his ex, then he might turn his homicidal attentions on his maybe-rival, my financial advisor, next. Uh-oh. “Or . . . ?”

  “Oh, no!” Zach chuckled. “That’s all water under the bridge now.” He caught my skeptical look and added, “No, I’m not still carrying a torch for her. And I don’t appear in her book.”

  “Are you sure?” More importantly, Are you angry about that?

  If Zach considered himself Albany’s first true love—and he still wasn’t included in her memoir—that could definitely sting.

  “Believe me, if anyone’s read Christmas in Crazytown cover to cover, looking for signs of themselves, it’s me,” my host acknowledged. Then, “Also, everyone else in town, honestly.”

  He probably had a point. “I’d be looking over it with a fine-tooth comb, if it were me,” I told him. “But then, I’ve never experienced a bad breakup,” I added leadingly. “So . . . ?”

  Zach sidestepped my trap. “So how’s your snowflake coming along? Here’s mine. Presto!” With a deft move, he unfurled it.

  “Impressive!” Hoping for a similarly spectacular reveal, I made another final snip, then unfolded my paper the way he had.

  It fell apart. I had no idea where I’d gone wrong.

  But Zach only chuckled again. “Better luck next time. Maybe you’re trying too hard—or maybe you’re just a beginner.” He winked. “I’ll put the word out about Joe and let you know.”

  Eleven

  I didn’t see Danny or Travis at all the following day. While they and the cast and crew of Christmas in Crazytown were at Melissa Balthasar’s memorial service, I stayed busy finishing Albany’s memoir. Sitting beside my B and B’s snow-shrouded upstairs window, with a cup of cocoa at my elbow and a halo of holiday lights to lend ambiance, I snapped shut the book at 4:00 p.m.

  I’m not going to lie; I enjoyed reading it. Albany was a skilled writer, with a knack for evocative details and a genuine gift for economically getting to the heart of her characters.

  In this case, though, the “characters” were her family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. I wasn’t so sure Albany’s gift was a positive one, or that I could trust those depictions.

  “The surfer,” for instance, had seemed easygoing to a fault—not exactly accurate, when it came to impatient Cashel Sullivan. “The student” (a stand-in for Ophelia, I assumed) had flitted on and off the scenes like a sulky child—probably not a depiction that Albany’s little sister would have appreciated.

  I’d already noted that Linda Sullivan didn’t much resemble the controlling matriarch shown in Albany’s book. I suspected that Zach was wrong—or was purposely misleading me—about not being included in Albany’s memoir, too, because it seemed likely that the frequently (but affectionately) mocked character of “the band geek,” who played the tuba in the Sproutes High marching band, was him. Maybe Zach didn’t consider his musical interests a part of his identity today, but it was possible Albany did. Or it was conceivable Zach hadn’t been in the marching band at all.

  Who knew? With so many details having been purposely obscured, fitting together all the pieces made my head hurt.

  Speaking of solving puzzles . . . I picked up the copy of the Sproutes Sentinel that I’d found in the B and B’s dining room, then flipped to the crossword. I couldn’t miss it. The themed contest entry form occupied an entire page of broadsheet.

  Since I had a backstage pass to Christmas in Crazytown, thanks to Travis’s connection with Albany, I didn’t need to win tickets. But I scrutinized the puzzle, anyway. It contained more than one reference to Albany’s memoir, I saw. I noted references to her favorite holiday foods, to the Sullivans’ sometimes kooky traditions, and even to the nonholiday-related background info given in the book about Albany’s friends and schoolteachers.

  One of those teachers, I remembered, had been mentioned in passing during one of Albany’s late-night TV interviews. Goaded by the host—or simply prompted by her own inherent snarkiness—Albany had gone on record as saying that her former English teacher had doubted her “potential in life.” The studio audience had booed loudly, the host had stepped in with a suggested uncharitable hashtag for use on his social-media feeds, and the whole incident had spread like wildfire. Potshots were taken. Memes were created. Albany’s supporters struck hard and mercilessly. Before they were done, their defense of her had gone far beyond saying that her “life potential” was “amazing!”

  I wished I could forget some of the meme images I’d seen. Most of them had used an old yearbook photo of the Albany-doubting teacher, doctored up with cruel words and suggestions.

  What had begun as an impulsive “Take that!” to a less than adoring authority figure had quickly spiraled out of control. To her credit, Albany had tried to diffuse the situation once she’d realized what was going on. She’d taken to her own social-media accounts and pled with her followers to stop harassing her supposed high-school nemesis. But the Internet was permanent.

  The damage had already been done.

  Moving on from that unfortunate incident, I scanned the rest of the newspaper. My eye was drawn to the Letters to the Editor section, which ran for three pages. That seemed unusual.

  Either the readers of the Sproutes Sentinel were uncommonly involved in their local newspaper or there was a controversy.

  Controversy, I saw as I read through the letters. Some of them were in support of debuting Christmas in Crazytown, citing its “valuable trickle-down effects on Sproutes’s economy.” Others weren’t so benevolent or so optimistic. One flatly stated that the annual staging of The Nutcracker should never have been shelved, even for a single year; another alluded disapprovingly to the “amoral attitudes” of the “deviant Hollywood types” who’d overrun their small town to work on the holiday musical.

  Hollywood types. I’d heard that someplace before....

  If sentiments like these were common, it was a wonder the cast and crew of Christmas in Crazytown hadn’t already been pelted with rotten cranberries and run out of town. I had to give Linda Sullivan credit, though. As editor, she’d managed to balance her support of Albany (the contest and puzzle clues) with her duties to the paper (the overlong letters pages). Someone less principled might have been tempted to downplay any differences of opinion to protect her daughter’s show or to boost public support of Christmas in Crazytown.

  It was possible, of course, that Linda didn’t want the show to go on. I knew now that some of the funny holiday incidents likely to be included in it might embarrass the people who’d been involved in them. However much Linda insisted that the Sullivans didn’t mind being slightly skewered for their oddball approach to the holidays, I wasn’t sure I could believe her.

  According to Travis, at least, I shouldn’t believe her.

  Reminded of my friend and financial advisor—and our plans for the Santa-themed pub crawl—I folded away the newspaper. Before heading out to Melissa’s memorial service, Travis had let me know that Albany loved the idea of having a get-together. The two of them had agreed to come along. Albany had thought it would be nice to “rekindle the holiday spirit,” because “everyone” would be sad after attending the producer’s funeral.

  Obviously, that take on everyone involved (conspicuously) excluded me, the one pub-crawling person who wouldn’t have attended Melissa’s funeral that day, sadly or otherwise. But I decided to give Albany the benefit of the doubt, anyway.

  She probably hadn’t intended to exclude me. Just as she probably hadn’t intended to break “the band geek’s” heart . . . and then write about their painful breakup for the world to laugh at. For a sensitive person like Zach, that could really wound.

  Had he been nursing a grudge against Albany all this time?

  Alternatively, had Tansy decided that no one was going to ruin her breakout role, including Albany? Had the actr
ess gone out of her way to silence the woman she’d argued with so often on set, only to mistakenly attack look-alike Melissa instead?

  Similarly, had Ophelia impulsively thought to rid herself of her clearest rival, her sister, alone in that dining room? She wouldn’t have realized until too late that she’d actually drowned Melissa Balthasar that night, alone at the B and B.

  I didn’t think that Ophelia herself could have been the intended victim. She seemed far too harmless to have incited a murderous rage in anyone. I doubted, too, that Tansy could have been the target. She seemed universally idolized—except by Linda. Had Linda Sullivan cornered the actress at the B and B, then purposely drowned the woman who’d made her daughter’s life “a living hell”? Or had Tansy’s stalker followed her to Sproutes, only to attack doppelgänger Melissa after hours that dark night?

  There were so many possibilities that I could hardly keep them straight—and that was ignoring the chance that the killer had in fact meant to murder Melissa Balthasar. The producer seemed to have infuriated as many people as she’d helped during her career. I couldn’t overlook the likelihood that Melissa had made some very lethal enemies during her short, splashy life.

  Reportedly, Albany had argued with Melissa about her book’s handling and promotion. Without his wife, Roger stood to gain a larger share of the show’s profits, too. But if Travis was correct (Travis was always correct), he didn’t need them.

  The whole thing felt like a tangled mess. I’d been in New England for days now. I still wasn’t sure whose murder I was supposed to be solving. Melissa’s? Tansy’s? Ophelia’s? Or, as Travis insisted, had the whole thing been a missed attack on Albany? My financial advisor had scarcely left his friend’s side in the time since Melissa’s murder. His dedication moved me. It was no less than I would have expected, but I was proud of him.

  Pacing across my B and B’s room in thought, I caught a glimpse of myself in the old-fashioned cheval mirror. I was lucky I hadn’t arrived any sooner than I had, it occurred to me, or gone downstairs any earlier than night. With my brunette hair and resemblance to the four Albanys, I might have been the victim.