Yule Log Murder

by Leslie Meier

  She remembered her mother, and even her grandmother, baking these same cookies. They’d always been part of Christmas. Her father, she recalled, awaited their appearance impatiently, saying it wasn’t Christmas until he’d had spritz cookies and eggnog. Bill was a big fan, too, and after eating her mother’s cookies, he had begged her to make them. Her first attempt hadn’t been successful as she’d burned most of them, and undercooked the rest.

  “These are perfect,” she told the girls, taking another.

  “Don’t eat them all,” admonished Sara, in a teasing voice.

  “They’re for Christmas,” added Zoe, repeating Lucy’s own words right back at her.

  “Remember the year I hid all the Christmas cookies, saving them for Christmas Eve, and when I finally put them out, the dog ate them all?” asked Lucy.

  “We’re not going to let that happen this year,” said Zoe, giving Libby a stern look. “No cookies for dogs.”

  Apparently abashed by Zoe’s stare, Libby skulked over to her doggy bed and plopped down. She gave a mournful sigh and settled her chin on her paws.

  “So what are you guys doing tomorrow?” asked Lucy.

  “There’s a holiday concert at the church, and afterward, we’re going caroling to shut-ins,” said Zoe.

  “It’s lots of fun, and we end up at Reverend Marge’s house for mulled cider and fruitcake.”

  “Somebody usually spikes the cider and nobody eats the fruitcake,” said Zoe, packing the cookies into plastic containers.

  “That does sound like fun,” said Lucy, realizing she’d better get the meat loaf and potatoes the girls had prepared for dinner in the oven. “I wish I didn’t have to work.”

  * * *

  Next morning, Lucy felt very sorry for herself as she drove to Pine Point. Even Bill, she’d learned at breakfast, was making merry, joining his friends in an old-timers’ hockey game that would be followed, no doubt, by several rounds of beer at the roadhouse on Route 1. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Sue had called to say she was sorry, but the toy distribution had been exhausting and she was too tired to work at Pine Point.

  How was it, she wondered, that the whole world got Christmas Eve off except for her and the other poor unfortunates who were making Ross’s movie? Didn’t moviemakers take days off or was filming a 24/7 endeavor? That’s the question she asked Juliette when she popped into the kitchen to say hi.

  “It’s just the way it is, Lucy,” she began, climbing onto a stool at the makeshift island Sue had cobbled out of some high-top outdoor furniture. “Filming is so expensive that it’s best to go full speed ahead, at least that’s what Ross says. He is giving everybody Christmas off, but he’s not happy about it. I’m ashamed to say I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to thank you for all your help. That duck dinner was fabulous, I don’t know how you pulled it off on such short notice. Everybody loved it.”

  “That was Sue,” said Lucy, who was elbow deep in a huge bowl of potato salad she was preparing for the crew’s lunch. “I just followed orders.”

  “You’re being too modest,” insisted Juliette, helping herself to a pickle spear, which she pulled out of an open jar.

  How does she do it? Lucy wondered. She looks fabulous whether she’s sitting on a throne, playing Queen Guinevere, or perching on a stool, eating a pickle.

  “I know it’s Christmas,” continued Juliette, “and you’d probably much rather be home with your family instead of feeding this bunch of ham actors.”

  “I was feeling rather sorry for myself,” admitted Lucy, “but then I thought of Elfrida. I can’t imagine what she’s going through.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Juliette, pulling out another pickle spear. “I’m very worried about her and her family. I made sure Willis sent her a severance check, even though Ross said not to.” She took a bite of pickle and chewed thoughtfully. “I can’t believe she stabbed Bobbi, it doesn’t seem like her at all,” she finally said, waving the pickle for emphasis. “I think Ross was too hasty and shouldn’t have fired her, but I did get him to agree to have her back if she’s acquitted, which I’m sure she will be.”

  “Bobbi’s family want to see her hang, and I guess I can’t blame them,” said Lucy.

  “They’re grieving,” said Juliette. “It’s not going to be a very happy holiday for them.”

  “Probably not ever,” said Lucy. “Every year when Christmas rolls around, they’ll be reminded of Bobbi’s death.”

  “That’s true.” Juliette shuddered. “Easter is a lot easier to avoid than Christmas. Ever since my dad was killed, I make sure to get away somewhere for Easter, someplace that doesn’t remind me of what happened. Last year it was Tokyo.”

  Lucy sprinkled some paprika on top of the potato salad and covered the bowl with a sheet of plastic wrap. “That’s done,” she said, putting it into the fridge.

  “What next?” asked Juliette. “Can I help?”

  “Sandwiches, and you sure can,” said Lucy, assembling several loaves of bread and packages of cold cuts on the island. Juliette turned out to be a fast worker, and between them they soon filled a couple of platters with ham and Swiss, turkey, and roast beef sandwiches.

  “I’ve only got bakery cookies,” said Lucy, producing a couple of plastic bins from the supermarket.

  “Good choice,” said Juliette. “It was baking cookies that started the whole mess, wasn’t it?”

  “Actually, I think it was the Yule log.”

  “Right.” Juliette was busy arranging the cookies on a tray. “I had no idea there was so much tension between Elfrida and Bobbi. I really thought Bobbi was helping her.”

  “Bobbi’s cousin told me that Bobbi was stagestruck from an early age. She was trying to get noticed so she’d be discovered, that’s why she was making such a nuisance of herself. It all backfired, those pranks just annoyed people and made her lots of enemies.”

  “So that explains it,” murmured Juliette, wrestling with the roll of ClingWrap.

  “Explains what?” asked Lucy.

  “I found her in my trailer with one of my wigs, I thought she was fooling around, probably going to try it on or something. She didn’t act guilty or like she was doing anything wrong, she said she was checking on something for Ray, the costume girl. She put the wig back on the stand and said she’d tell Ray it was okay.”

  “Did you believe her?” asked Lucy.

  “Not entirely,” admitted Juliette. “But no harm was done, so I didn’t want to make a fuss.”

  “Maybe you should have,” said Lucy, loading the dumbwaiter with the platters of food.

  Juliette was quiet, looking up at one of the windows set high in the subterranean kitchen wall. “Maybe,” she finally said, shrugging. “At the time it seemed wiser to let it go.” Then she was gone, slipping gracefully out of the kitchen like some sort of magical good fairy.

  Lucy pushed the button sending the loaded dumbwaiter up, then climbed the stairs that led directly to the dining room and began transferring the platters of food to the tables in the great room. As she carried the platters one at a time from the dining room and down the passage to the set, she thought about Juliette’s ability to float about the house. She wondered if she’d managed somehow to slip away from the revels scene, perhaps through some secret stairway that only she knew about to make her way to the basement, where she’d stabbed Bobbi.

  Ridiculous as it seemed, thought Lucy, she wasn’t quite ready to eliminate Juliette from her list of suspects. Her comment about letting things go indicated to Lucy that Juliette wasn’t happy about her situation, but didn’t indicate what was bothering her. Was it her marriage to Ross? Or had making a movie turned out to be less fun than she thought it would be? Or was she really furious with Bobbi for intruding on her private space and messing with her things? Bobbi’s murder didn’t seem to have been planned, it seemed as if the killer had simply encountered her with a knife in her hand and decided to seize the opportunity to get rid of her. When she looked at it that wa
y, Lucy thought, almost anyone involved with the movie might have done it, including the actors, the crew, and, of course, Ross.

  Ross was the most likely, she decided, setting down the last platter of food. He was the only one who was seen in the hallway with Bobbi, the only one who had the opportunity to grab the knife and stab her. As for motive, at the very least killing Bobbi would get rid of a troublesome personality and restore some sense of calm to the movie set. There might well have been more, however, if Bobbi had seen Ross engaged in some unseemly behavior that she threatened to reveal.

  It was all supposition, thought Lucy, stepping aside as the actors and crew began arriving and gathering around the table. “Sorry to bother you, but is there any mustard?” asked one of the knights, and Lucy hurried off to get the forgotten condiments, which were still in the basement kitchen. That chore done, her attention was caught when a cheer went up from a group of actors gathered around a screen, reviewing their performances. The buffet was going well, so she wandered over, curious to see the rushes for herself. Maybe she’d even see herself.

  Joining the group, she saw they were indeed studying the revels scene. Fascinated, she watched as the Yule log was presented to the king and queen, who were seated on thrones surrounded by various knights and ladies. Then the screen went blurry and Chris Waters was pictured embracing Guinevere in a passionate kiss.

  “Wow, Chris,” commented the actor playing King Arthur. “That kiss didn’t look like acting.”

  “Believe me, it was an Oscar-worthy performance,” said the embarrassed actor, his face reddening. “I’m gay.”

  “Well, maybe you were in character, but Guinevere looked as if she was really into you,” said another, causing a few chuckles.

  “I guess that’s why you didn’t get that head shot in the revels scene,” said a young woman Lucy recognized as the script girl. “You’re supposed to be caught gazing at Guinevere.”

  “Ross doesn’t know what he’s doing,” said Chris. “He cut the scene short, remember. He could’ve reshot it, but he probably forgot, didn’t think it was important.”

  “Oh, right,” said the actor. “Maybe he should have remembered to go to film school, maybe acting in B movies wasn’t great preparation for directing.”

  That comment brought down the house as the group burst into laughter.

  It wasn’t as if the remark was actually that funny, thought Lucy. The laughter was a shared emotional release from a group of people who were under a lot of pressure. It was the sort of thing kids did when a mean teacher left the room for a moment, or when workers learned there wasn’t going to be a holiday bonus this year.

  Lucy checked on the buffet, which still had plenty of food, but looked rather unattractive, as some of the platters only had a few sandwiches. She rearranged the remaining food, consolidating the sandwiches on a couple of platters and stirring up the potato salad, then carried the empty platters into the dining room and put them on the dumbwaiter. Feeling a bit at odds, with time to kill until lunch was over, she decided to remind anyone who’d missed lunch that there was still plenty of food. Wandering through the various rooms of the mansion that were being used as staging areas for the shoot, she finally ended up in the library, which was the costumer’s headquarters.

  “Hi, Ray,” she said, poking her head inside the doorway. It was one of her favorite places on the set, where the temporary racks of costumes, the sewing machines, and the ironing board gave a homey atmosphere. “There are still some sandwiches if you’re hungry.”

  “Thanks, but I already ate. That potato salad is delish. Is it an old family recipe?”

  “I got the recipe from Sue. It’s the pickles that do it.”

  “Well, it’s yummy.” Ray was standing at a table, peering through a pair of eyeglasses with black frames at one of the knight’s tunics. “You’re a mom, right?” she asked.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “You do your family’s laundry?”

  “Yeah.” Lucy couldn’t imagine where this was going.

  “Well, I’ve tried everything I can think of, but I can’t get this stain out. It’s grease, but it’s not responding to my usual spot remover.”

  “I always use dish detergent,” said Lucy, stepping up to the worktable to study the stain. “It’s great on grease.”

  “Good idea! You’re a lifesaver, this is an important costume and I don’t have time to replace it.”

  “King Arthur’s?” asked Lucy.

  “No. Lancelot’s.”

  “How on earth did he get grease on it?” asked Lucy, thinking that was the sort of stain Bill picked up when he was working on the car, or repairing a power tool.

  “Food. You know, they eat in costume. I think this was icing, from a cupcake or something.” She chuckled. “These actors are just like children. I found it stuffed in a crate of swords—you’d think he was a naughty little boy, ashamed of spoiling his new clothes.”

  “Somehow I never thought of him like that,” said Lucy, thoughtfully. “He’s always the leading man, the guy who saves the planet from the asteroid.”

  “Actors! They’re all babies,” said Ray.

  “I’ll get the dish detergent for you,” said Lucy, heading back to the set to collect the remaining dishes from the buffet table. At the door she paused. “Are you sure it was icing?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, no doubt. I had to scrape it off. It was pink, must’ve been peppermint. It smelled like a candy cane.”

  Peppermint, thought Lucy, remembering the stuff that stuck to her hands when she tried to revive Bobbi. The stuff, mixed with Bobbi’s blood, which she’d been so desperate to wash off.

  Don’t jump to conclusions, she told herself. There’s probably a completely innocent explanation for the stain.

  “You won’t believe this,” added Ray, peering at her over her half-glasses, “but that naughty boy also lost his gloves and I had to order new ones. They’re custom-made gauntlets, and, believe me, Ross is going to have a fit when he sees the invoice.”

  Chapter Ten

  Lucy’s feet were dragging as she returned to collect the leftovers from the buffet table. This was not how things were supposed to work out. Until now, all the evidence pointed to Ross: He’d had a motive, he had opportunity, and he had access to the murder weapon. Ross was obnoxious and horrible; he was overbearing and crude; she wanted him to be the killer. But this new evidence, the missing gloves and the stained tunic, was awfully incriminating. Even worse, the rushes were proof that Ross was not the only person who’d left the set after Elfrida screamed.

  Or maybe not, she thought, surveying the messy table covered with mostly empty platters holding a few dried-out sandwiches and the smeared bowl containing a dab of potato salad. It wasn’t difficult to believe that Ross had been jealous and petty enough to cut the scene. Or maybe he was simply such an inexperienced and clumsy director that he’d forgotten all about filming the knight’s longing glance at his queen that was supposed to be the climax of the revels scene.

  She began piling the platters onto a borrowed teacart, then impulsively decided she had to know for sure why Chris had left the set. Abandoning the cart, she marched through the great hall and out the massive door, crossing the lawn, which was still covered with fake snow, to the area where the trailers were located. Chris Waters was standing outside his, talking on his cell phone.

  “Got to go,” he said, seeing Lucy’s determined expression.

  “Tell me what happened,” said Lucy, shivering and pulling her sweater tightly across her chest. The temperature had fallen and she wished she’d thought to grab her parka. “Tell me you didn’t kill Bobbi.”

  “I wish I could,” he said, taking off his jacket. “How did you figure it out?”

  “The stained tunic, the missing gloves . . .”

  He held out the jacket. “Here, put this on. You’re freezing.”

  Lucy allowed him to drape the jacket over her shoulders, struck by his gentlemanly behavior. “I d
on’t want to believe it,” she said, imploring him to say he was innocent.

  “I didn’t mean to, you know, it was an accident. I wasn’t looking for her. I was mad that Ross skipped my big moment—I’d been working on that longing gaze for quite a while and I’d really nailed it.” He struck the pose and Lucy had to admit it was a triumph of expression that combined both love-stricken longing with a touch of guilt. “I couldn’t believe it when Ross called ‘Cut’ and ended the scene. I was really mad, so I walked off set to cool off, then figured I might as well use the break to take a leak. That’s why I went downstairs, I was looking for the toilet. I wasn’t expecting to meet Bobbi or anything, but there she was, holding the cake. I didn’t even notice the knife, she was all excited to see me. Her face lit up and she said something like, ‘What a coincidence, I was going to bring this to you.’

  “ ‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘I never eat cake. I’ve gotta stay thin, you know, and there’s only so much you can do at the gym.’ She laughed then and said, flirtatiously, that eating wasn’t the only pleasure two adults could enjoy together.

  “I’d had enough by then and told her she was only a kid and, besides, I’m gay. That’s when she got kind of mad and started teasing me, saying a real woman could change that. That’s when I noticed the knife, she was waving it around—”

  Lucy interrupted. “Bobbi was waving the knife, pointing it at you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Sort of teasing, but kind of threatening, too. I lunged at her and tried to grab it and down she went, falling right on the knife.” He paused, a sick expression on his face. “I couldn’t believe it. I was horrified. I tried to help her, to turn her over. . . .”

  “Why didn’t you call for help?” asked Lucy.

  “I heard someone coming down the corridor and I panicked. I ran around the corner and into the bathroom, and after I’d calmed down, I slipped out the back door and back to the set. By then, it was pretty crazy. Everyone was upset and nobody seemed to have realized I’d been gone. It wasn’t until I went back to my trailer to get undressed that I noticed that pink icing on my costume, and on my gloves, too. So I hid the tunic and I dropped the gloves in one of those Salvation Army collection boxes—they were warm gloves and I figured somebody could use them.”