We Wish You a Merry Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

  Kathleen was silent for a moment. “Does she always give a cookie-exchange party at Christmastime?” she asked finally.

  “Every year we’ve lived in Hancock—except for last year.”

  “And it’s always the same?”

  “Almost identical. Oh, the guest list changes a little …”

  “Like Rebecca not coming this year,” Kathleen said, thinking of the comment that had been made.

  “Yes.” Susan laughed. “And things get a little more elaborate each year. At first, we just had tea and coffee and cookies. Then she added lunch. And, of course, like the rest of us, she’s added more and more decorations each year. Although Kelly’s additions are typical of her and not like the rest of ours—at least not like mine.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, we’ve collected ornaments made by the kids in school each year, and decorations like the centerpiece that my mother-in-law crocheted out of gold thread. Things that have become a tradition.” And some things that we hate, but can’t get rid of, she added to herself.

  “And there’s nothing like that at Kelly’s house, is what you’re saying,” Kathleen suggested.

  “Exactly what I’m saying. Everything was picked to go perfectly with everything else. Even the objects with sentimental value. Their Christmas tree is decorated with wonderful copper ornaments that they bought on a trip to Mexico. They could have been made for that house, they blend in so well. We brought back ornaments from a trip, too. Plastic Mickey Mouses from Disney World. You don’t need to see both trees to tell the difference.”

  “I’m sure yours is very homey,” Kathleen assured her.

  “That’s one word for it,” Susan agreed, getting an urge to go up to the attic and peek into the large box of ornaments stored there. Her favorite was a pair of tiny mittens that someone had made for Chad when he was two or three, and that pretty pink angel. There was also a large orange dinosaur …

  “Oh, no. Jerry just pulled into the driveway and I haven’t even thought about dinner,” Kathleen said. “Well, I guess it’s the inn again. Thank goodness their food is so good.”

  Susan once again marveled at how sane Kathleen’s approach to housekeeping was; when Jed got home before she was ready for him, she was inclined to panic.

  “Mom, Dad’s home, and he’s carrying a huge box!” her daughter called into the kitchen.

  “Jed’s here, too. They must have traveled from the station together. I have to hang up, Kath. Call me tomorrow. I’m dying to know what Kelly wants. Unless it’s against your professional ethics to say anything.”

  “Professional ethics? You must think I have a real job or something. But I’ll call tomorrow. ’Bye.”

  “ ’Bye.” Susan turned to greet her husband.

  “Hi, hon.” He leaned across the counter and just missed kissing her cheek.

  “Hi. I thought Chrissy said something about a package.”

  “Chrissy should learn to keep her mouth shut at Christmastime,” her husband said, throwing his coat over hers and looking around the room. “Is this going to be one of your gourmet dinners? I missed lunch and I’m starved.”

  “This mess is from the cookie party over at Kelly’s,” Susan said apologetically. “How do you feel about taking the whole family to the Hancock Inn? Or I could pull something from the freezer and microwave it?”

  “We always go out to dinner before we pick out the Christmas tree,” Chrissy said, entering the room with her brother close on her heels. “We always go down to Tony’s, and Chad and I always get a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese, and you and Dad always have linguini with white clam sauce.”

  “Always?”

  “That’s right,” her brother agreed.

  “I don’t even like white clam sauce,” their father said, a grin on his face.

  “Okay. You can have the red clam sauce,” Chrissy agreed, without a bit of humor. “We’d better go get dressed, Chad. It’s going to be cold in the tree lot. I think I’ll wear leg warmers. It would be nice if I had some that were tie-dyed,” she added, with a look to see if her parents were getting the message.

  “Tie-dyed leg warmers?” Susan repeated, aware that there was a pair made up of the unlikely combination of pink, green, and purple in her daughter’s size—locked in the trunk of her car waiting to be wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree.

  “Bloomingdale’s has them,” Chrissy assured her, and hustled her brother out of the room.

  “She was just telling me what a horrible thing it is to have to go pick out the tree with her parents, and here she is defending tradition with her last breath,” Susan said.

  “Adolescence,” was Jed’s reply. “Do we always go to Tony’s for dinner?”

  “We did last year.”

  “Actually red clam sauce sounds good. And maybe some garlic bread and a big green salad. I think I’ll go put on warmer clothes, too. I thought I saw a flake of snow on the way home from the station.”

  Susan smiled. She loved snow. “It’s wonderful that we’re having a white Christmas,” she called up the stairs to her family, and went to find a cord for tying the tree on top of her husband’s Mercedes.

  FOUR

  There were four or five places that sold Christmas trees in Hancock. Susan and her family were at the largest of them.

  “Where are Chad and Chrissy?” Susan asked, walking beside her husband down the long row of evergreens.

  “I think these are just a bit too tall,” was Jed’s garlicky reply as he raised his arm in the air next to an unnaturally symmetrical balsam. “Maybe something around the corner …” He drifted away from his wife into the forest of rootless evergreens.

  Susan, who knew that one of her husband’s favorite moments in the year was stretching up to measure a tree to fit the high ceiling in their living room, followed slowly.

  “These damn treetops are dripping water down my neck. Would you please hurry up and pick out a tree so we can go home and have a drink?”

  Susan heard a voice she thought she recognized.

  “If you didn’t want to come with me …”

  That voice she was sure she recognized.

  “You know I didn’t. I am completely unnecessary for this job. You don’t like any of the trees I pick out. You don’t ask me if I like the one that you pick out. You don’t even trust the way I tie the tree to the top of the station wagon. I don’t know why we go through this every year. My family used to hike into the woods—and the woods in the winter in Wisconsin can be pretty raw—and my father would cut down the tree with us boys helping. My mother and my sister would bring hot chocolate and pfeffernusse that they had made that afternoon and we would eat and drink as we pulled the tree through the snow on a homemade sled. And that was less goddamn work than this is! And a hell of a lot more fun!” the voice continued angrily.

  “And the tree was probably a scrawny thing only a few feet tall. I cannot live with a tree like that. What would our neighbors think? Christmas is important to me,” his wife insisted, turning the corner of the line of trees—and running into Susan. “Oh, my goodness, look who’s here, hon,” she said, her voice turning to milk and honey. “I didn’t see you before. Picking out a Christmas tree?”

  “What else would she be doing here?” But his voice had changed, too, and Jeffrey St. John greeted Susan with a kiss on the cheek.

  “We’re having our traditional picking-out-the-tree argument,” Barbara admitted to Susan, with a laugh.

  “There are so many trees here … It’s hard to agree on just one,” was Susan’s tactful reply.

  Barbara seemed to give up any pretense of marital harmony and changed the subject. “What did you think about Kelly today? Wasn’t that just amazing? I couldn’t believe it. I was talking to Rebecca before dinner and she thinks that Kelly has finally gone off the deep end.”

  “I was a little surprised,” Susan admitted, not really wanting to hear what Evan’s second wife thought about her predecessor. “But I’ve lost my f
amily and I’d better find them.”

  “We really have to do something about Kelly.” Barbara was unwilling to drop the subject. “I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

  “Fine,” Susan said, starting to move away. “Good to see you, Jeffrey.” She picked up her pace and hurried after her family, trying to ignore the argument that she was leaving behind.

  “We found the perfect tree!”

  “It is, Mom. It is absolutely, totally, completely, the most perfect tree we’ve ever had. Really.”

  “Also the most expensive,” Jed said.

  Her family was at the back of the lot; the children were displaying joyful faces, her husband smiling a bit ruefully. They stood in front of a large blue spruce, around which Chrissy had placed one proprietary arm.

  “I found it,” her son announced.

  “The moment I saw it, I knew we had to have it,” his sister said quickly.

  “And I’m going to pay for it,” Jed contributed.

  “We’ve never had a blue spruce before,” Susan said, “but it certainly is beautiful. And I think it will match the Wedgwood blue stripe in the curtains. It’s wonderful! Shall I go get one of the men who works here to carry it to the car?”

  “I can do that,” Chad boasted. And, with his father helping, he did.

  “It certainly is nice to have such resourceful children,” Susan said, regretting the comment almost immediately. Chrissy objected to almost all personal comments these days, even good ones. But, for once, her daughter didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she smiled at her mother. Susan wondered for a moment if Christmas was a cure for puberty. But only for a moment.

  “I saw Mr. and Mrs. St. John. They didn’t make Seth come along with them, just like I said,” Chrissy informed her in the voice she had adopted since turning fifteen.

  Susan just sighed and followed her family back to the car.

  An ice storm was beginning by the time the Henshaws drove into their garage.

  “Whew! Looks like we just made it,” Jed commented as the automatic garage door closed behind them. “It’s going to be a nasty night.”

  “Is that the phone?” Susan asked, opening the car door. “I’ll go get it.” She hurried off, leaving the rest of her family to remove the tree from the car and put it in a pail of water. She was off the phone by the time they finished. As they entered the kitchen, Susan was just hanging up.

  “That,” she announced, “was your mother. She’s not coming next Friday. She’s coming tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Her plane gets in at Kennedy at nine a.m. She says she has a lot to bring through customs, so we don’t have to be there until nine-thirty or so.”

  “We?”

  “When you talked with her Thanksgiving Day, you seem to have given her the impression that the entire family would meet her in New York.”

  “Dad! How could you?” his daughter cried. “No one around here has any respect for my time.”

  “Adam and I have plans to go to a movie tomorrow afternoon. I have to be back for that,” his son practically wailed.

  Susan looked at her husband. “I think I’d better go clean the guest room. I thought I had all week to do this …” She left the room before finishing her thought.

  Jed turned to his children. “Your grandmother hasn’t seen you for almost a year. She has been overseas for the last month, and she is going to be tired from traveling and jet lag. I think the least we can do is all go to the airport together and greet her.”

  “You three will have to go without me.” His wife had come back into the room, her arms draped full of sheets. “I have more to do up there than I remembered.” She headed for the laundry room, muttering to herself.

  “Did she say something about fruitcake?” Chad asked, watching her go.

  “Who knows? Anyway, you kids are to be up and ready to go to the airport with me at seven a.m. Dressed and ready—and no shirts with skulls on them, Chad. Now go up to bed. And don’t forget to set your alarm clocks. I have to help your mother.”

  Chrissy rolled her eyes up toward the ceiling, and Chad mumbled something under his breath, but they left the room together.

  Jed hurried to the basement. He found Susan standing in front of the washing machine, apparently listening to it hum. “Susan? Are you all right? I know this is a shock to you, but we’ll be ready in time. Mom doesn’t expect—”

  “Do we have any Dry Sack in the house?” she asked, still staring at the machine. “Isn’t that what your mother drinks?”

  “Yes, and if we don’t have any, I can shop tomorrow afternoon. I have to order the liquor for the party next Friday, and I’ll pick up some sherry at the same time. Why don’t you come to bed, Sue? It will take hours for us to get out to Kennedy and back—especially if this storm continues; you’ll have plenty of time to do everything while we’re gone.”

  “I … what the … ?” The lights suddenly went out. A less enterprising woman would have flung herself into her husband’s arms at finding herself alone with him in the dark; Susan turned the other way and headed for the circuit breaker box underneath the cellar stairs.

  “I don’t think that’s going to do any good,” Jed said, following her.

  Susan picked up the flashlight that lived under the metal box and, turning it on, peered at the switches. “Everything seems to be okay.”

  “Let’s go upstairs. I’d guess this is the result of the storm; branches or trees on the power lines. The first thing to do is find out if it’s just our house or the whole neighborhood.”

  “All the lights are out!” Chrissy met them at the top of the stairs, a lit candle in her hand.

  “Where’s Chad?” his mother asked.

  “He’s already asleep. I checked in his room on the way down. What are we going to do? Will the furnace go out? One of the girls in my geometry class has a house in Maine and the power was out for three days and all the pipes froze and burst. Is that going to happen to us?” Susan thought she sounded thrilled by the possibility.

  “No, that is not going to happen, Chrissy. Go into my study and get the gas fire going. I’m going to call the power company.” Jed looked out the front door. “Looks like the whole street is out. Susan …”

  “I’ll light candles in the hall and get out blankets and pillows. Chrissy may as well get some sleep on the couch in your study.”

  “Great.” Jed headed toward the kitchen and the phone. But, when he got to the study, he found Chrissy alone. “Where’s your mother?” he asked, peering into the wavering shadows that candles and the fireplace cast about the room.

  “Upstairs.”

  “She’s probably checking on Chad. We may have to bring him down here if his room gets too chilly. The power company said that the whole circuit is out and they don’t know how long it will take to get the lights back on.” He headed over to the bar set up in the corner of and poured himself a large Chivas. Respectful of the storm, he slipped into his favorite chair and sipped his drink neat, not opening the freezer for ice.

  There was a nice feeling in the room. Susan began decorating her house the week after Thanksgiving and a pinecone wreath hung over the mantel and red and green ribbons were tied around the candlesticks. The smell of bayberry mixed with the aroma of the Scotch, and Jed was almost asleep when he heard a high-pitched whirring over his head. Groggily he considered the layout of his home: the noise was coming from the guest room.

  And where was Susan?

  Moments later he found her kneeling on the floor under the antique sleigh bed that adorned their guest room, a battery-run Dustbuster whirring away in her hand.

  FIVE

  “All I know is that she’s been telling me for years that she’s allergic to dust, so I wasn’t going to leave any little fur balls under the bed,” Susan said into the phone. She paused to listen. “To be honest, I’ve spent so much time cleaning that I haven’t even thought about a hostess gift for the Knowlsons tomorrow. A bottle of wine, I suppose. Mayb
e champagne. Although when I’m going to get a chance to pick it up … You will? Are you sure you have the time with your own mother arriving tomorrow? …

  “Well, it would be a big help. I also need to get to the fish market, and there’s a huge order to be picked up at the cheese store and the bakery. I called early this morning for emergency guest supplies. Thank goodness the power’s back on.” Susan reached across the kitchen counter and turned off the radio. “Then all I have to do is finish moving the presents out of the guest room closet, and Jed’s mom can move right in. I was going to spend today and tomorrow morning cooking things to put in the freezer for our party Friday night. I suppose I’ll have to go ahead with that, except that now I have to provide dinner and breakfast suitable for company as well.… No, we have to eat here. Going out to dinner means that we’re ‘making a fuss’ over her visit, and she doesn’t like that. So instead of paying a restaurant to make a fuss, I get to pretend that I can whip together a gourmet meal in a few minutes flat. No, I don’t know why she changed her plans. She said something about wanting us to meet someone, but that doesn’t explain anything to me. All I know is that she’s arriving one week early, and I’m going to go crazy. Great. See you then.” She hung up on Kathleen, running her hand through her hair in a distracted manner and pressing the button on top of the Mr. Coffee machine.

  “Oh, God,” she said as the water bubbled away. “I look terrible.” After glancing around the room, Susan headed upstairs to shower and change. They couldn’t possibly make the long journey back from Kennedy in less than two hours.

  It was almost noon when she heard the telltale whine of the electric garage door opener. And she was on the phone again.

  “Listen, Liz, I have to hang up. The family has arrived. But call me if anything changes. ’Bye …