by Leslie Meier
The civilian receptionist was gone for the day, so I walked right in. I found Jamie at one of the two desks all the officers shared. His partner, Officer Pete Howland, sat at the other.
“Julia?” Jamie looked up, his brow furrowed. “What are you doing here?” It wasn’t a greeting appropriate to our status as each other’s oldest friend. If he’d seen me on the street or at Gus’s, he would have smiled and given me a hug. But, as far as he was concerned, my presence in the police station could only mean there was a problem. A problem in general, and, in particular, a problem for him.
“Hi,” I said. “Don’t look so happy to see me.”
“Is this a social visit?” His voice was cautious.
“No,” I admitted. “Well, sort of.”
“Spill it,” he ordered.
So I started the story. I didn’t get far.
“Wait. You’re learning to bake some kind of cake at old lady St. Onge’s house?”
“A Bûche de Noël, yes. And I don’t think you’re supposed to call her that, now that you’re a grown man sworn to protect her.” From across the aisle Howland snorted.
Jamie was the lucky kind of blond who had dark brows and dark eyelashes framing his sky-blue eyes. In the summer he tanned, as did my auburn-haired sister, much to my pale-skinned annoyance. But he wasn’t tan now and a slight blush rose in his cheeks. “Go on” was all he said.
So I explained about Gwyneth and Bradley and how they were both gone, neither one reachable, having told conflicting stories about their whereabouts. I kept the stories about the cakes and the dead relatives to myself. I didn’t want him to think I was a total loon.
“I don’t get it,” Jamie said when I finished. “What do you want me to do?”
“You don’t think it’s odd?”
He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe. Maybe it’s a little odd. But police don’t investigate odd. In this town we’d never have time to do anything else.”
“I guess,” I admitted. “But that’s not all. Did you know Mrs. St. Onge’s husband disappeared suddenly?”
“I thought she was a widow.”
“I heard that,” Pete Howland said. He didn’t apologize for listening to a private conversation. But then, he was sitting five feet away, so how could he not have? “My parents used to talk about him. Al St. Onge. A real SOB, apparently.”
“Did your parents say what they thought happened to him?” I asked.
“Gambling debts, my dad thought. Owed someone lots of money.”
“Do these two missing people know one another?” Jamie asked.
“They might.” As far as I remembered, Gwyneth Hillyer had come to Mrs. St. Onge in the mornings, while Bradley Woodward had visited in the evenings, perhaps on his way home from the office. But they might have met. Either at Mrs. St. Onge’s or around. Busman’s Harbor was a small town.
“Julie, we’re talking about adults,” Jamie said. “Neither has been reported missing. They’re most likely exactly where their parents told you they are. She’s in Portland, visiting a friend, and he’s on a business trip.”
“Then why did the receptionist at Jenkins and Anton tell me Bradley was on vacation in Costa Rica? And why did the woman at elder services tell me Gwyneth’s mother had phoned to say she quit her job?”
“I don’t know. Information gets mixed up in offices all the time. It certainly does around here. And by the way, lying to your parents isn’t a crime, either.”
Jamie looked tired and more than ready to be finished with his workday. I stood up, pulled on my gloves, and said good-bye and thank you. It was almost dark. Chris would be wondering where I was.
* * *
Gus’s Too was crowded that evening. As the calendar clanked closer to Christmas and the nights grew longer, more people, too busy from holiday preparations to cook, or simply in search of company to ward off the darkness, came for a night out.
Chris and I had no time to speak beyond the placing of orders and the curt acknowledgment they’d been received. But later, after the diners were gone and the place was cleaned up, we gathered at one of the little tables in the bar for a well-deserved beer, our little ritual.
“You’re awfully quiet, Slim,” Chris observed.
I’d drunk half my beer without saying a word. “Sorry. I was thinking about Mrs. St. Onge.”
“What about her?”
The story came tumbling out, and not in a particularly coherent fashion. It was only because he knew me so well that Chris was able to follow along.
“So you’re saying, what, that Odile St. Onge is a serial poisoner?”
Am I? No, that’s ridiculous. “You have to admit it’s suspicious. Three of her relatives die after eating her cake. Her husband disappears. Mr. and Mrs. Woodward get deathly ill. And now Gwyn Hillyer and Bradley Woodward have disappeared too. Every single one around the holidays.”
“She’s old. Her relatives from the same generation are old too. Old people die, with some regularity.”
“Gwyn and Bradley aren’t old.”
“Julia, Mrs. St. Onge probably weighs eighty pounds soaking wet. Even if she poisoned them, what did she do with the bodies?”
“That’s where Mr. Eames comes in!” The thought struck me at that moment. “He’s the trashman. He gets rid of the bodies.”
Chris was quiet. Finally he said, “Then don’t go back.”
“Just don’t show up?”
“No. Call and make an excuse. You’re too busy. It’s Christmas.”
I thought for a moment. “But I really want to learn to make a Bûche de Noël.”
Chris held out his arms, bent at the elbow, palms up. He swayed back and forth, miming a scale. “Learning how to make a cake no one expects or has asked for,” he said when one hand was higher, “spending time alone with a serial killer,” he said when the other was.
The thought of the old lady sitting at her kitchen table, so small and alone, surrounded by cake ingredients, waiting. . . it was too sad. What if I’m wrong? “I want to go back.”
“Then you don’t think she’s poisoned anyone.”
I took a long pause. “No, I guess I don’t.”
“Good, but just in case I want you to phone me before you go in and right after you leave, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Good. Finish your beer and let’s get to bed. Tomorrow promises to be even crazier than today.”
Chapter Seven
I felt small and scared when I walked up Mrs. St. Onge’s flagstone walk the next morning, the way I’d felt when I approached the house as a child. We’d had a hard frost overnight and the brown grass on her lawn was tinged with white, which gave the yard an otherworldly feeling. Grow up, I told myself. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.
It didn’t help that when Mrs. St. Onge answered my knock, she was holding a large kitchen knife. “You’re late.” She turned on her heel and clumped toward the kitchen on her cane. Despite my qualms I scurried after her. I’d come too far on this Bûche de Noël journey.
In the kitchen the old woman had arranged on a cutting board the remaining chocolate I’d bought three days before: five ounces of bittersweet chocolate—“not unsweetened!!!” she’d specified on her list (exclamation points hers), and four ounces of quality milk chocolate. Mrs. St. Onge made quick work of them with the big knife, chopping the thick slabs into nickel-sized pieces. I had pulled my notebook from my Snowden Family Clambake tote and wrote furiously.
The old woman turned to the stove, measuring out three quarters of a cup of whipping cream and three tablespoons of butter and putting them in a small saucepan. She turned on the heat and handed me a wooden spoon. “Stir until the butter melts,” she directed.
I moved the spoon carefully as the butter began to send yellow rivulets into the white cream. “Did Gwyn know Bradley?” I asked, keeping my tone conversational.
“Did who know who?” she replied, though I had a feeling she knew exactly what I was asking.
“Of course not!” she snapped. “Why would they know each other?”
“I thought maybe because they both came here—”
She shook her head. “One’s a servant. The other’s family. Why would I introduce them?”
Calling Gwyneth a servant was inappropriate, given her role, but I kept quiet. “Butter’s melted,” I said.
“Turn off the heat and bring it over here.”
Feeling a little like a servant myself, I brought the saucepan to the kitchen table and placed it on a pot holder. “Stir,” Mrs. St. Onge commanded, and so I did while she fed the chunks of chocolate into the mixture. When the last one was melted, she poured the mixture into a bowl and covered it with a dish towel. “That will need to sit for an hour or so, to cool,” she said. “Then we’ll fill the cake and ice it.”
My heart gave a little leap that we were finally, finally to this place. Today I was going to see our Bûche de Noël. I washed the saucepan and spoon. “Anything else I can do while we wait?” I asked.
“The decorations you brought up from the basement yesterday. Do you think you could put them up?”
“Of course!” I went to the box in the living room and sorted through the tangle of plugs and wires. In addition to three strings of old lights, there were a half-dozen sets of three attached candles, complete with orange bulbs, enough for each of the front windows. I plugged them into a living-room outlet one at a time and was astonished to find they all worked.
Mrs. St. Onge hadn’t left the kitchen.
“I’ll put these candles in the windows,” I called to her.
“Fine.”
The living room had two big windows facing Main Street. I set up the candles there, but the pines around the front porch were so overgrown, I wasn’t sure anyone would be able to see the decorations from the road. The second story would be more successful. I gathered the remaining four sets and went up the stairs.
There were two bedrooms at the front of the house, each with a double set of windows, side by side. I looked into the first room. It had a neatly made bed, and was clearly unoccupied, a guest room, I assumed. There was an outlet under each window. I plugged both sets of candles in, made sure they worked and then turned them off. It was the middle of the morning, too early for the lights. I wondered if Mrs. St. Onge would come up the stairs to turn them on in the evening. I set the candles on the windowsills and went into the next room.
The second front bedroom was also unoccupied, another guest room. I entered, noticing the twin bed with its ancient chenille bedspread. When had someone last slept there? Setting up the candles was quick work. Then, as I turned from the windows, I noticed the closet door on the other side of the room was ajar. Scolding myself for being nosy, I peeked inside. There were several articles of men’s clothing, neatly ironed khaki pants and blue work shirts. Surely, Mrs. St. Onge hadn’t kept them since her husband had left, before I was born?
On the pole, apart from the other clothes, was something that made me inhale noisily with surprise. A neat, sea-foam-green winter overcoat, the size a small woman would wear. Gwyneth Hillyer was a small woman, and, if her car was any indication, she had a predilection for sea foam green. It seemed like too big a coincidence. The coat had to be hers. Wound around the top of the hanger was a beautiful knitted scarf, like the ones her mother sold, and hanging out of the pocket was a pair of knitted gloves. I was tempted to put a hand in the pockets, to check to see if there was any indication of the owner, or a receipt that might tell me when the coat had last been worn, but I hesitated.
“Time to fill the cake!” Mrs. St. Onge called up the stairs.
“Coming!” I closed the door to the closet, wishing I could close the door to my careening thoughts as easily.
In the kitchen, the old woman had everything we would need laid out on the table, the original cake in the plastic container, the bowl of filling, the icing, and the platter. She unwound the cake from around its tea towel. To my astonishment, it was supple and didn’t fall apart.
“Go to the pantry and get the jar of my homemade raspberry jam,” she directed.
Dutifully, I trooped to the pantry and located a single jar of unopened raspberry jam next to the jars of my mother’s strawberry-rhubarb, which stood like silent soldiers, guarding it.
“Ah, the secret ingredient,” Mrs. St. Onge cried when I returned to the kitchen.
Is this where the poison is?
“Spread a thin layer on the cake,” she said. “And then cover it with the filling.”
I did as I was told. My mouth watered as I worked. I was dying to taste the filling, but my mind flashed to the dead relatives and I resisted. What if she wanted me to taste the cake when we were done? I imagined us each sitting down with a cup of coffee and a slice of the cake. I wouldn’t touch mine until she’d eaten hers.
“Gwyn Hillyer is a small woman, right?” I said.
“Who?”
“The woman from elder services.” Really, this game is getting frustrating. She knows who Gwyn is.
Mrs. St. Onge glared, clearly unhappy with the question. “I suppose she was. Never really noticed her.”
“And you’re sure you haven’t seen her since Thanksgiving?”
“Nope. Why do we keep talking about this?”
When I was done spreading the filling, she rerolled the cake, tighter this time, and put it on a long, white platter. Unlike all my efforts, it looked like a perfect log. She selected a large carving knife from the block and cut off about three inches of each end of the cake at an angle. Then she reversed the pieces, so the log had an angled cut at each end. “There,” she said with satisfaction, “now we ice it.”
That wasn’t a task she was prepared to let me do. I watched in wonder as she smoothed the dark chocolate icing on the cake, working it to the texture of bark, without getting any on the platter.
“This town thing,” she began, “the reason we’re all going crazy this year with lights and decorations, explain that again.”
So I repeated the information about the botanical gardens and the Illuminations and how the lights around town were meant to welcome visitors, and let them know we were open for business.
“That must be something to see,” she said. “I wish I could go.”
My heart sank. She might be a serial poisoner, but she was old and alone at the holidays. “My whole family’s going tonight,” I told her. “Would you come if I can get another ticket?”
I expected her to turn me down. She’d lived next door to us all my life, and I couldn’t remember a single social occasion we’d spent together.
“I would enjoy that very much,” she replied. “Thank you.”
“Do we test the cake now?” Perhaps I would be dead and wouldn’t have to explain my impulsive invitation to the rest of my family.
“No, no,” Mrs. St. Onge answered. “Tomorrow we make the meringue mushrooms and spun-sugar moss. Then we eat it.”
* * *
“His name is Tree?” My sister, Livvie, sounded skeptical.
I hugged my cell phone to my ear. I was in the clambake office on the second floor of Mom’s house. Mom was at work and had turned the heat down, so I was still wearing my winter coat.
“Tree what?” Livvie asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“I don’t know him,” she reported, though I’d gathered that. “Nor his brother, Stump, his sister, Willow, or his uncle, Dutch Elm Disease.”
“I’m hoping maybe you know someone who does. I’m looking for an address, work or home.”
“Hmm. Let me think. How old is he?”
Gwyneth Hillyer was in her late twenties and her mom had said she and Tree grew up together. “Around your age, I think.”
“He didn’t go to our school. I’d remember a Tree.”
“Homeschooled.”
“Hm
m,” she repeated. “Let me get back to you.”
Within fifteen minutes Livvie called back with a last name, Smith, and work address for Tree. She’d called the person she knew who was mostly likely to know a person named Tree, and though that person didn’t know him, she’d called the person she thought was most likely. In a small town there were only ever two degrees of separation.
Tree worked in a garage a ways up the peninsula. That was all Livvie’s informant knew. Her network had been fast, but not expansive.
The sea-foam-green coat in Mrs. St. Onge’s guest room closet had unnerved me, along with her tales of dead relatives. But I’d pretty much run out of places to go to find out what was going on. Bradley Woodward’s parents insisted he was fine and on a business trip. His office insisted he was fine and on vacation. Gwyneth Hillyer’s office said she’d quit. Her parents said she hadn’t; she was in Portland, visiting a friend, while nursing a broken heart. A heart broken by Tree, who was the only person I had to turn to at this point.
Clyde’s Garage was a ramshackle affair. The building, a small office with an adjacent three-bay garage, sided with crumbling asbestos shingles, had a distinct lean to it. Though the weather was freezing, the garage doors were open and I could see an old Volkswagen Beetle up on a lift. In the other bays sat a two-door Thunderbird convertible, and a classic, forest-green MG from the 1950s, my fantasy car.
The man who ambled out of the garage to greet me had sandy-colored hair, long enough to be tucked behind his ears. The name on the chest of his coveralls said, “Clyde.”
“Hello, I’m looking for Tree Smith.”
“I’m Tree.” He lifted a greasy hand, showing me why he didn’t offer to shake mine.
“Did you buy the coveralls used?”
He glanced down at the name on his chest and laughed. “No. I bought the garage used. I put the old owner’s name on my work clothes because it cuts down on a lot of unnecessary explanations.” He noticed I couldn’t tear my eyes off the MG. “Do you have a classic car you need fixed or restored?” He looked pointedly at my Subaru, the most common car in Maine.
