“Don’t touch it!” I shouted, causing him to leap back like it might explode. “Look.” I pointed to the mug lying next to Lewis.
The room fell silent. No one commented on what I was seeing, so I explained, just in case they weren’t seeing it.
“Eight gifts. All named for us, so we knew which was ours. But look, Bob’s gift is crooked, like someone moved it. And his mug.” I pointed at the mug on the floor. “It’s not the same as the others.”
“What are you trying to say?” Troy asked, stepping forward. He carried Rita’s reindeer blanket in his arms.
“I don’t think this is the right mug.”
“I know Lewis,” Rita said. “He’s a perfectionist. He wouldn’t have left one mug different than the rest. If one of them broke, he’d buy an entirely new set.”
Yuri nodded in agreement.
“Unless it was a clue,” Bob said. “Like, maybe that mug has something hidden in it.”
“I don’t think so.” I crouched down, keeping well back from the spilled hot cocoa. “I doubt Lewis drank from the mug, so we don’t have to worry about its contents.” Or, at least, I hoped we didn’t.
“Then what’s the big deal?” Yuri asked. “If he wasn’t poisoned, he might have died of a heart attack like he said.” He jerked a thumb at Troy. “Or maybe it was an aneurysm. High-strung people like Lewis die like that all the time.”
“Maybe.” But it didn’t sit right with me. Why was Lewis in the room, to begin with? Why had he picked up the mug? Nothing lay next to him, like a half-full carafe, so he wasn’t filling them at the time.
“We need to find a way out of here,” June said. “I can’t stay in here with him.”
“It’s all right.” Troy handed the blanket to Rita so he could hug June. “We’ll be okay. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
Isn’t there? I wondered, eyeing Lewis. The hot cocoa spread around him like a brown bloodstain.
“The mug is different,” I said again, running it through my mind. “There has to be a reason for it.” I leaned in closer, and then I saw it.
The mug was ceramic, and appeared as if it was made by a local craftsman, rather than mass-produced. It had that handmade look to it, with tiny imperfections that gave it character. It would be the sort of mug you’d buy at a craft bazaar, or at a local potter’s shop.
But there was one more difference to this mug than what you’d find on any other mug, no matter how it was made.
“Does he have a prick on his finger?” I asked.
“Excuse me?” Bob asked.
“A pinprick or a dot of blood?”
When no one made a move to check, I huffed and moved to where Lewis lay. I checked his right hand, but there was nothing there.
His left hand was a different story, however. There was the tiniest hole on the pad of his index finger. It was small enough that I’d missed it in my first brief examination of him.
I closed my eyes and mentally forced myself to keep from trembling. Or from screaming—because that was what I really wanted to do.
“What is it?” Bob asked. His voice was loud in the closed space. “What did you find?”
“The mug,” I said, standing. I moved so I could see the faces of everyone in the room in the hopes I could read something on them. “It’s been booby-trapped.”
“Booby-trapped?” Jerry asked. “How?”
“There’s a small pin built into the mug, on the inside of the handle.”
Both Bob and Yuri leaned forward, squinting at the mug, but neither got close enough to make anything out.
“I don’t see it,” Yuri said.
“It’s there. There’s also a small hole on Lewis’s finger. This wasn’t his mug. He must have seen it and picked it up to investigate.” And then he collapsed, which meant . . .
“He was poisoned?” Rita asked, eyes going wide. She hugged the blanket close to her chest as she turned her attention fully to Lewis.
“I can’t say for sure.” Though the evidence was pretty compelling. “But it tracks. The mug might be a coincidence, so he still might have died from a heart attack or a stroke. We don’t need to panic.”
“A little late for that, don’t you think?” Jerry asked. He stared long and hard at Lewis before he rushed to the door and punched in a series of numbers. He yanked on the door, which remained closed, but that didn’t stop him. He kept tugging, yanking so hard his head whipped back with every pull. Muffled, panicked sounds came from him as he did.
“J., stop.” When he didn’t, Bob raised his voice. “Get a hold of yourself, man!” He grabbed Jerry roughly by the arm and jerked him away from the door.
“Leave me alone!” Jerry shouted, but when he backed away from Bob, he didn’t go back to the door. He pressed himself against the wall, hand going to his mouth, where he bit down on the meaty bit just under his pinky.
“It’ll be all right,” Rita said. “Krissy Hancock is here. She’ll take care of everything.”
“And what’s she going to do?” Yuri asked. “A man’s dead. We’re trapped.”
“Go ahead, Rita,” I said, indicating the blanket. Like Yuri, I couldn’t stand to look at Lewis’s pale face any longer.
“Shouldn’t we leave everything untouched?” June asked. “You know, for the police?”
“Probably,” I said. “But covering him up shouldn’t cause too much trouble, as long as we don’t disturb the scene too much.” Or so I hoped.
Rita started spreading the blanket, careful not to touch Lewis. Yuri stepped forward and helped her. Instantly, one corner soaked up some of the hot cocoa, but at least now, we could think without a dead man watching our every move.
Once he was covered, Yuri retreated back to his spot near the wall. Rita moved to stand next to me.
“Now what?” Bob said. “He’s right, we’re trapped.”
“We are, aren’t we?” June asked. She scanned our faces, her expression grave. “We’re stuck in here with a dead man.” Tears formed in the corner of her eyes, and in them, I saw genuine fear. “We’re trapped in here, with no way out, and one of us is a murderer.”
Chapter Four
Rita and I stood in a corner of the room, watching the others, who had broken off into their own small groups. Jerry and Bob were together, talking in hushed voices, as were June and Troy. Yuri remained alone in the corner, and Carol had yet to leave her room. They were the only ones who didn’t have someone to confer with.
“No one trusts anyone else,” I said, noting how Yuri kept shooting June and Troy suspicious glances, while they, in turn, did the same to Jerry and Bob.
“It’s no wonder—now, is it, dear?” Rita asked. “A man’s dead and no one has any idea who did it. And you say he was poisoned?” She tsked. “All the books I’ve read say poison is a woman’s weapon, though I find that to be hogwash. It’s the weapon of someone who doesn’t want to get caught.”
I had to agree. Guns could be traced. Knives could leave fingerprints if the killer wasn’t wearing gloves. And both of them require the killer to be present during the murder.
But poison? You could pour it into a drink—or, in this case, put it on a concealed needle—and be long gone before the victim ever stepped into the room. If that was indeed what happened, this wasn’t going to be an easy case to solve. The killer could already be a hundred miles away by now.
“We aren’t sure it was poison,” I said, trying to keep my options open. “The needle on the mug could have been an accident, a defect that looks far more sinister than it really is.”
Rita gave me a flat look. “What? Do you think our potter was sewing before making the mug and accidentally dropped a needle into the clay?”
“Well, no.” A part of me wished that was the case, but it was too far-fetched, even for me. “But maybe it was a joke. Like, they made it like that to trick friends, give them a little prick on the finger in April or something.”
“And Lewis just happened to end up with the mug, picked it up,
and startled so badly from the poke, he up and died?”
“Yeah.” I heaved a weary sigh. “It doesn’t really hold up, does it?”
“Not one bit,” Rita agreed.
Which meant, we were almost definitely dealing with a murder.
Why couldn’t anything be easy around here?
“What do you know about the others?” I asked, eyeing the people in the room with us. Rita was Pine Hills’s foremost gossip. If anyone had dirt on our little gathering, it would be her.
“Not a lot, if you can believe it,” she said. “I knew Lewis, of course. He was a bit of an odd duck, was a smidge OCD, and was a big control freak. You know, he used to tell people how to bag his purchases at the grocery. I saw him do it once. Stood right there and told the bagger how to puzzle-piece it together so nothing got broken or smashed, like it wasn’t the young man’s job in the first place.”
“It would explain why he would check the odd mug, I guess,” I said.
“It would. He wouldn’t have stood for it, not Lewis. The moment he saw the oddity, he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He’d have to have done something about it.”
It made me wonder if that was part of the plan. Did the killer know about Lewis’s compulsive behavior and used it against him? He’d almost have to, since you didn’t kill someone with a booby-trapped mug in a fit of rage.
No, if this was indeed murder, it was most definitely of the premeditated sort.
“What about the others?” I asked.
“Other than you and Lewis?” Rita asked. “The only other person I know here is Carol Kline. Everyone else is a stranger, if you can believe it!”
Actually, no, I couldn’t. Rita seemed to know everyone, and not just in Pine Hills, but in all the surrounding towns.
I glanced toward the door Carol had vanished into. No one had tried to talk her out of it since she’d gone in. In fact, I hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of her since she locked herself away. “She’s taking this pretty hard,” I said.
“That, she is.” Rita shook her head sadly. “Carol isn’t a bad woman. From what I hear, she was a pretty good teacher, tough but fair. Although, I have heard she can be impulsive at times.”
Impulsive, like the kind of person who might kill someone over a slight? “Did she know Lewis?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Rita said. “She was a teacher, so I suppose they might have crossed paths at some point. We could ask her if she taught him or one of his relatives.”
With no other plan in place, I thought it sounded like a splendid idea.
Before Rita or I could make a move for Carol’s closed door, a shout erupted from the other side of the room.
“I didn’t do anything!”
Jerry was standing with his back to the wall, both hands raised. Bob stood in front of him, his own hands balled into fists. His face was red, jaw bunched and working.
“It was my mug!” Bob shouted, pointing toward where the mug lay next to Lewis’s covered body. “How do you explain that?”
“I can’t!”
“Uh-oh,” Rita said. “That doesn’t look good.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I turned away from Carol’s door and hurried across the room. We so didn’t need a fight breaking out, not with tensions already running high. It wouldn’t take much for it to escalate.
“What’s going on?” I asked, stepping between the two men.
“He’s lost it,” Jerry said.
Bob’s already-red face turned a deeper, darker scarlet. “J., so help me, I’ll knock you right out if you keep it up.”
“Me?” Jerry said. “You’re the one accusing me of trying to kill you!”
“What?” I asked. Across the room, Yuri was poised, as if he might leap into the fray. Next to him, June clutched at Troy, who looked just about ready to lock both him and his girlfriend in one of the rooms until this whole thing was over.
“It’s the mug,” Bob said. “It was mine.”
“You made it?” I asked.
“No, of course not. But it was the one that sat next to my gift, the one with my name on it.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Jerry said.
“It means someone was trying to kill me!” Bob shouted. “Why else put it there? If our host wouldn’t have come in and investigated, I would have been the one lying dead on the floor. Both you and I know it!”
“You think the poison was meant for you?” I asked, turning it over in my mind. It did make sense. Why else place the mug where Bob would be the most likely person to pick it up? If the killer didn’t know about Lewis’s OCD, then they wouldn’t know he’d feel compelled to come in to check the mugs. He might not have been the target at all.
“Of course it was,” Bob said. “And the only person here who would have done it is him!” He pointed at Jerry with such force, the other man leapt back, smacking his head against the wall in the process.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” I said, taking Bob by the arm so conclusions wouldn’t be the only thing he leapt at. “Why would Jerry want to kill you?”
Bob’s entire body tensed briefly, before he sucked in a breath and took a step back. I let my hand fall away, but remained positioned so that he couldn’t get to Jerry without going through me.
“We work together,” Bob said. He glanced around the room, noted everyone was watching him, and then lowered his voice. “Have for the last five, six years.”
“So you’ve known each other for a while.”
Bob nodded. “We work at the same accounting firm in Levington.”
Levington was the closest city to Pine Hills. It wasn’t large by any stretch of the imagination, but compared to our small town, it was nearly a metropolis.
“Last month, I got promoted,” Bob went on. “I’ve worked at the place for twice as long as J., and I deserved it.”
Jerry, who’d been listening in, spoke up. “I worked twice as hard as you. No.” He shook his head angrily. “Five times. You used to just sit there and watch the rest of us work, and somehow, you get rewarded?”
“I put my time in!” Bob roared. I tensed, waiting for him to throw himself at the smaller man, but he managed to compose himself before losing his temper completely. “I’m better at seeing the big picture than the small stuff. The head honcho saw that, and he rewarded me for it.”
I looked to Jerry. “You wanted the promotion?”
He bit his lower lip, looked ready to make a run for it, before he finally nodded. “I didn’t just want it. I needed it. I’m drowning in debt. You know how it is. Went to college, needed loans.” He pressed both hands to his temples, face bunching like he might cry. “Degree amounted to nothing, and come to learn I was a victim of some predatory practices by the loan company. I need the extra money so I can stay above water.”
Bob snorted and crossed his arms. He refused to meet Jerry’s eye, even as the man gave him a pleading look. It was like Jerry thought that if he begged hard enough, Bob might give up the job right here and now.
“Okay,” I said. “I understand why Jerry might be upset. And I can see why you might think he would want to get you out of the way.” The last was targeted at Bob. “But do you really think he’d go to all this trouble, just to kill you for a job?”
“People do strange things all the time,” Bob said. “And since it doesn’t look like there’ll be another opening for years without someone dying, killing me would be the only way he could ever hope for a promotion now.”
I focused on Jerry, forced him to meet my eye. “Did you try to poison Bob?”
“No! I swear. I didn’t get out of my room until after the man was dead. There’s no way I could have done it.”
“You could have snuck in before we started,” Bob said.
“When? I was with you the whole time!”
That caused Bob’s brow to furrow. “I suppose you were,” he said grudgingly. “But I still don’t trust you.”
“I didn’t do it.” Jerry looked around the roo
m. “You have to believe me. I’d never hurt anyone, no matter the reason. I don’t have it in me.”
I found I believed him. Nothing in Jerry’s demeanor screamed “killer” to me. He might be upset that Bob got the promotion over him, but to come all the way to Pine Hills just to murder him? It didn’t make much sense. He might have had the motive, but the opportunity? I wasn’t so sure.
Still, just because I didn’t think Jerry was our killer, it didn’t mean Bob wasn’t the intended target.
“Do you know anyone else here?” I asked him, keeping my voice low. “Anyone who might want to hurt you?”
He glanced around the room, then shrugged. “If I met anyone before now, I don’t remember it. I’m not from here. And if they are a client with the firm, I often do business over the phone, not face-to-face. I wouldn’t recognize anyone by sight, and the names aren’t familiar, so I doubt it.”
I glanced at Jerry.
“I don’t know anyone either,” he said.
“You say you were with Bob the entire time you were here,” I asked him.
“I was. Other than when we were sent to our own rooms, that is.”
“When did you escape your room?”
“Well . . .” A flush ran up his neck.
“J.?” Bob asked. The heat returned to his voice.
“I got my door open first,” Jerry said. He seemed to shrink in on himself, as if trying to make himself smaller to avoid Bob’s wrath. “But I didn’t leave my room right away.”
“Why not?” I asked. Carol said she’d found the body, but did that actually mean she was the first to do so? It wouldn’t be the first time someone found a dead body and didn’t report it right away out of fear of being blamed for the crime.
“I’ve never liked to be the first at anything,” Jerry said. “Even back in school, I’d wait until someone else turned their test in before taking mine to the desk. I don’t like all those eyes on me. People get jealous, angry even, when they think you believe you’re better than them.”
“So, you waited until Carol came out before you exited?”
He nodded, looked to the floor as if ashamed.
“Where was your room?” I asked.
Christmas Cocoa Murder Page 23
