Candy Canes & Corpses

by Abby L. Vandiver

  I strolled down to the next corner. I pulled my hat down over my head and shoved my hands inside my pockets to ward against the cold.

  “Afternoon, Lynley.”

  I smiled at the postmaster, Mr. Gaines, always pleasant he knew practically everyone’s name and address by heart.

  He was old and portly, his rosy cheeks showing behind his wire-framed glasses and thick gray mustache.

  He was standing behind his wooden counter, Pete Sanders, Walnut Ridge’s lone deputy, stood on the other side of it. They’d been talking when I walked in.

  “Afternoon, gentlemen,” I spoke to both.

  “Lynley,” Deputy Sanders touched the brim of his hat and pretended to tip it.

  “I just stopped by to pick up my mail,” I said.

  “I have it for you,” Mr. Gaines said. “Be right back.” He disappeared through a doorway that went to the back where he did all his sorting and kept the mail for those residents that didn’t have a box out front.

  Not many people moved away from Walnut Ridge and those that had post office boxes had had them for years. It made it difficult to get mail sometimes—I could only get it when Mr. Gaines was in—but I was used to that. Sometimes spending six months on a ship, sporadic mail delivery was commonplace to me.

  Pete looked at me and smiled as I waited at the counter. “How are those soil experiments of yours coming?” he asked.

  “Haven’t even produced a sapling.” I smiled at him. I always tried to be polite when talking to people who asked about my farm and how it was doing. It wasn’t doing well, and that made me want to scream. I couldn’t do that though, people would think I’d lost my mind.

  It was driving me crazy.

  My latest attempt in trying to balance out the pH in my acres of alkaline soil was by mixing it with sphagnum peat and organic mulch. That hadn’t been too successful.

  “You’re probably going to have to just wait it out,” he said.

  “Wait it out?” I wanted to laugh, but the entire situation was sad. “That could take eons,” I said. “I’d hoped to grow some trees before then.”

  “I got your mail,” Mr. Gaines said popping back behind the counter. “Your Doggie Magazine came in. I see you renewed your subscription.”

  “Yeah, I did,” I said. “Need something to do.” I glanced over at Pete. “It’s not like I’m growing any trees.”

  “It’s a shame about that soil,” Mr. Gaines said. It was the same thing he said each time we were in a conversation about most anything.

  “I agree, Mr. Gaines, it is a shame.”

  I left the post office and went across the street to get a cup of coffee from the Sunrise Diner.

  “Morning,” Ashlee called out to me, looking up as the bell jingled over the door. “You want some coffee?”

  “Yes,” I said and sat down at a stool.

  I could feel the warmth of the diner surrounding me. The smell of fresh brewed coffee, burgers sizzling on the grill and the hum of conversation around the small, but tidy eatery.

  Ashlee always had a serious look on her face, like it was a surgical procedure she was handling instead of slinging plates and filling up cups. She had her dyed black hair in pigtails, her fingers and hand tatted up with the same dark-colored ink. She had a pudgy stomach and skinny legs which she always kept covered with over-the-knee sweater socks under her pink uniform.

  “Looks like the snow is finally starting up,” she said grabbing the pot off the warmer. “Used to be a time you could count on snow starting in October and pushing right through ’til March.” She poured me a full cup of the steamy, dark liquid.

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “But not anymore, huh?”

  “Nope.” She clucked her tongue. “Seems like we’re lucky to get snow by December.” She pushed the cream and sugar closer to me.

  “I was worried about the roads when I came down from the ridge this morning,” I said, grabbing the sugar jar and pouring some in my cup. “Didn’t know if it would be easy going or not.”

  “That big truck of yours can plow through anything,” Ashlee said and smiled. “You don’t have to worry. But I did hear about a car getting stuck up there today. Matter-of-fact, Pete had to go and help out two or three people stranded up there this morning.”

  “Deputy Pete? Really?” I said.

  “Guess it was earlier,” she said. “Before the snow even started. That’s how he saw Joe and Old Man Greely up at the paper mill.”

  “The deputy saw them arguing? Not the sheriff?”

  She shrugged. “That’s the way I heard it. Pete was answering a call about a hitchhiker up on the ridge before the snow rolled in. I guess both Joe and Old Man Greely were out walking their dogs when Pete overheard them.”

  So, the sheriff lied to me. I wonder why . . .

  “What were they arguing about?” I asked.

  She hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know. But evidently it was serious.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Because Joe shot him after that.”

  I sucked my teeth. “That makes no sense,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there was no reason for Joe to have a rifle with him to walk his dog.” I shook my head. “And I don’t see how he could have shot him. He would have had to have gone all the way back home to get the gun. Mr. Greely would have left by then.”

  The paper mill was on the eastside of Mr. Greely’s property. Joe would have had to have the argument, get angry enough to want to shoot Mr. Greely, then stay that upset as he walked back to his house—passed Mr. Greely’s property, my property, to his house and back. And what? Did Mr. Greely just stand there and wait for Joe to get back with the shotgun?

  The whole logic behind Joe’s arrest, if it were based on what Ashlee had just told me, was weak. Surely, I thought, not enough to justify taking away a man’s liberty.

  “I’m just saying what Pete said.”

  “Did he say it to you?” I asked.

  “Not directly,” she said.

  The dictionary probably listed as a synonym for “rumor mill” the township of Walnut Ridge. Around town, everybody’s conversations were always filled with “he said, she said.” I wonder if this time it was going to get a man convicted of murder.

  “Pete had to shoo away a hitchhiker,” Ashlee was still talking, probably trying to convince me of the veracity of her accusations, “and then he ended up giving one driver a lift down the ridge. He was up twice—back and forth, surely plenty of time to witness the argument and give Joe all the time he needed to go and get the murder weapon and get back to Old Man Greely at the paper mill.”

  “I didn’t see any stranded cars when I came down,” I said.

  “Oh,” she waved a hand, “I’m sure it had been moved by then.”

  “Did anyone get this guy’s name?” I asked. I was beginning to think that the only way to get to the truth of the matter was to go directly to the source. Even the sheriff had lied—or exaggerated—the truth telling me he had firsthand knowledge of the argument.

  “I’m sure he did. Pete is pretty thorough,” she said. “He said the guy said it was too cold for him to wait in the car for roadside service so he probably was a witness to the whole thing, too.” She nodded her head like she’d just linked all the clues together and had made a solid case against Joe.

  It sure didn’t take much to prejudice people’s minds.

  “Why didn’t this guy just wait in the car out of the snow?” I asked, thinking maybe he had done more than witness the shooting. Just maybe he’d been involved. That made more sense to me. “He could have left the car running and stayed warm.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t the snow that stopped him,” she said. “I don’t think it had even started snowing yet. I think he was having mechanical problems. Pete told me the guy’s car wouldn’t start.”

  “Oh,” I said and nodded. I took a sip of my coffee. “Well, it won’t be long now before those roads will take a hold of a l
ot more than two or three unsuspecting drivers in one day, and it won’t be because of car problems.”

  “Finger’s crossed,” she said and then pointed up to a speaker that was hanging on the wall in a corner. “I look forward to the white stuff, especially during the holidays.”

  I glanced up at the speaker and only then realized that it had music coming out of it. It was playing Bing Crosby’s rendition of I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.

  I chuckled. Would be nice, I thought, as I stirred the cream into my coffee. Make it feel more festive especially around my place seeing that there weren’t any Christmas trees growing there.

  Sometimes I found it quite ironic that for twenty years, water had been my livelihood, after all, I had been forged by the sea, and now it was water that was taking it away.

  My cell phone interrupted my thoughts. It was Doc Nance. He seemed frantic.

  “Lynley, you’ve got to come over here.”

  “Is something wrong with Bean?” I said. The second time today a knot rose in my throat in anticipation of bad news.

  I got up from my stool and put two dollars under my cup. I nodded at Ashlee and headed out the door.

  “I don’t know,” Doc Nance said. “I’m just not sure.”

  “How can you not be sure if something is wrong with her?”

  By that time, I had crossed the street and gone into the office. With the phone still to my ear, I was standing at the examination room door. Bean was sitting on the table. Doc Nance looked at me and pulled the phone from his ear.

  “What?” I said, and heard the phone echoing from it being too close to the receiver’s end. I clicked off my phone and walked over to the table.

  “Are you sure this is Greely’s dog?”

  I cocked my head to the side and looked from Doc to the dog back to the doctor. “I am,” I said. “And so were you when I dropped her off. Now what’s wrong?”

  “I checked her blood.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t know why,” he said, he glanced over at his microscope.

  “And?”

  “She’s cancer free.”

  “What?”

  “Bean doesn’t have cancer anymore,” he spoke slowly, shock woven into his words. He was shaking his head and his eyes showed his disbelief. “I don’t see any sign of it. It’s gone. It’s like she’s never been sick. She’s perfectly healthy.”

  Chapter Six

  All the way back up the ridge, I wanted to believe that it was a Christmas miracle.

  But when did miracles start off with a murder?

  Doc Nance didn’t have any answers for me, and several times in the conversation I had to assure him that it was the same dog that had belonged to Macklin Greely.

  Truly, it was unbelievable.

  We talked about what he’d found on her—blood, lime and a lot of dirt—and he promised he’d bag it and make sure it got to the crime lab. I didn’t know if he was going to send it by way of the sheriff’s office, and I didn’t want to ask, but I hoped he wouldn’t.

  I didn’t know what it was, but I felt the sheriff was up to something. Doc Nance did assure me that he’d let me know if the report came back with anything unusual.

  I didn’t say it, but I hoped that maybe that blood on Bean’s coat would yield more than just Mr. Greely’s blood. Maybe it also had the killer’s blood on it. That would be all the help that Joe Lanese needed. I was sure, if it were some found, it wouldn’t be his.

  I stopped back by the diner, picked up something to eat for Andy and was headed back up the ridge to drop off Aja and take Mopsy and my new miracle dog home. They all seemed to get along fine, keeping each other company on the drive up the ridge. The snow hadn’t started back up—yet, but I could tell by the dark clouds it wouldn’t be long.

  That would make Ashlee happy. Not surprisingly, probably not as happy as getting a clean bill of health for Bean had made me.

  I hadn’t known Bean to be sick, but then again I didn’t have a whole lot of conversations with Mr. Greely. And what did it matter now, I thought, she wasn’t sick anymore.

  I smiled to myself, glanced in the rearview mirror at the three dogs then put my eyes back on the road. I turned up the radio, drummed my fingers on the steering wheel and crooned along with The Temptations as they sang, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.

  That was until Bean started barking. I nearly slammed on the brakes, which wouldn’t have been good for the seatbelt-less rear passengers.

  “What is it, girl?” I said. I turned, reaching out my hand. I wanted to calm her, but she was in an uproar.

  Woof, woof!

  I looked out of the window, and in the distance the paper mill was in sight. It sat still and quiet, giving no hint of the tragedy that had taken place there earlier.

  “Oh Bean,” I said. “That’s where it happened, huh? You remember, girl?” She let out a whimper. I let out a groan. “You do, don’t you?”

  I sat for a moment and watched as she put her nose up to the cold glass and quietly stared out of the window. I knew how she felt. That old paper mill was the root of all my problems, too. I had walked the grounds after I found out about the lime deposits and the contamination of my irrigation water. I had seen the greenish build up on the exposed pipes, the dead algae along the edge of the creek bed. It had killed me, too.

  I figured, knowing how sad she must’ve felt, I could give her a little time. But when that allotted time was up and I started to pull away, she started barking again.

  “What?” I said, and put on the brakes. As soon as I did she got quiet. “What is going on with you?”

  I started to move the car—slowly—she started barking—loudly. I put on the brakes, she didn’t make a sound. I tried it again several more times, always the same result.

  I let my head roll back on my neck. She wasn’t going to let me move. I followed her eyes and tried to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there.

  At least nothing I could see.

  “How about this?” I said putting the car in park and taking off my seatbelt. “You show me what’s out there that you don’t want to leave.”

  I got out of the Bronco and pushed the seat forward for the dogs to get out. All of them piled out, Aja and Mopsy milling around the truck, not too interested in anything they saw, but Bean took off running.

  “Whoa!” I said and ran after her. “Where are you going?”

  She knew exactly where she wanted to go. I saw other sets of footprints and tire tracks that led to the exact spot she ran toward.

  “Oh, she remembers,” I muttered. “How am I ever going to get her to leave here?” I stopped walking and flapped my arms against my thighs. “This can’t be good.”

  But Bean kept going. Past the spot where the tracks ended. Past the place where they must have found Mr. Greely. She ran into the woods on the other side of the paper mill. I stood and waited for her for what seemed like longer than a couple of minutes. I looked down, the other dogs had come and stood by my side. Looking up at me, they had to be wondering the same thing . . . Where did she go?

  “Bean!” I started to call out, but before I could get her name out of my mouth again, she came bounding back. She ran over to the spot where I assumed they’d found the body and dropped something out of her mouth.

  I walked over to her, Aja and Mopsy at my heels. “What is that, Bean?” I asked. “What’dya have?”

  I looked down, and it was a ball.

  Was she playing fetch with Old Man Greely?

  Had that been what they were doing when he got shot?

  Then I looked down at Aja. She didn’t seem too interested in any of it. Wouldn’t she be, though, if she’d been there when Greely was shot? Wouldn’t she have wanted to play, too?

  I picked up the ball, Bean watching me closely, her tail wagging, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. “You wanna fetch, girl?” I said to her. “Let’s see who else wants to play.”

  I put the ball in front of Aja�
�s face, twisting it around, I let her get a good whiff of it. “You like that?” I asked her. “Do you know what we do with this ball?”

  “Woof!” she exclaimed.

  “Woof back to you,” I mumbled and threw the ball.

  All three dogs ran after it.

  Aja got to it first.

  I watched as the three of them ran—together—back to me. Aja dropped the ball, then the three of them sat on their hind legs, eyes on me as I bent over to pick it up, all set to do it again. I pulled my arm back and gave it all I had, not nearly getting it as far into the woods as it was when Bean found it.

  I watched as the three of them went after the ball, Aja got it and then I knew. Aja wasn’t there when Mr. Greely played that game of fetch. Or when he got shot. That meant Joe wasn’t there either. If Aja had of been there, she would have known where the ball was and would have gotten it when we first arrived.

  I took the ball from Aja’s mouth and gave her a pat on the head.

  Only Bean knew where the ball was when we first got here. And both times I threw it Aja got to it first.

  Then I thought about how far the ball was into the trees. I couldn’t picture Mr. Greely throwing that far.

  I had heard a lot of things about what happened that morning, the one thing I believed without a doubt was that Bean didn’t leave Mr. Greely’s side after he’d been shot. Not even to go and chase after that ball.

  Did someone else throw that ball that far to distract Bean? Was that someone the person who killed Mr. Greely?

  And if it was, why would they distract the dog by trying to play fetch with her?

  It seemed to me that maybe that meant the killer didn’t have any qualms about taking Old Man Greely’s life, but he was careful not to take the dog’s.

  Chapter Seven

  With ball in mouth, and a sniff or two at the spot where I guesstimated Mr. Greely’s death took place, Bean was ready to go.

  I was ready, too. But the time up by that paper mill had given me a lot to think about. I drove out of the area slowly. I passed Mr. Greely’s house, then mine, then the Lanese’s house. I noted the distance on the odometer and estimated how long it would have taken for Joe to walk back home, get a shotgun and go back to the paper mill to shoot Mr. Greely.