Christmas Shop Murder

by Linnea West

  "I found that necklace you were asking about," I said. I opened my purse and pulled out the little bag I had put it in. "I'm sorry, but it seems to be broken."

  I handed Jill the bag which she took and stared at for a moment. She blinked a few times before she spoke.

  "Thank you very much," she said. "I'm so glad you were able to get this back to me. It is very important to me."

  "Really? Couldn't you just make another?"

  "I can never make the same necklace twice," Jill said. When she looked at me her eyes were almost flashing, but I couldn't tell why. "Each necklace is infused with my thoughts and feelings at the time, especially necklaces like that one that are made for a specific person. It isn't just a bunch of wire I throw together."

  I nodded and smiled at her. My parents had always taught me to never judge someone for their beliefs. I had done some reading about how ideas and feelings can hold some power, so as odd as it sounded I knew she wasn't actually too far off.

  "Oh that's a lovely idea," I said brightly as I smiled at her. "Could I possibly bother you for a glass of water?"

  "There's some water in the kitchen," Jill said, gesturing towards the small kitchen I had entered through. After waiting a minute for more instruction that didn't come, I stood up and made my way over.

  As I opened and shut the cabinets to find a glass, I stole a glance through the opening between the rooms at Jill. She was sitting in the arm chair with her hands folded in her lap staring out the window. There were now snowflakes falling and the scene outside was beautiful. But I did wonder if she was okay.

  I finally found a glass and filled two of them at the sink before slowly walking back to the living room. As I passed her dining table, I noticed an open box of cigars.

  "Do you smoke cigars?" I asked as I sat back down on the sofa and leaned over to push a glass of water towards her.

  Jill's head snapped towards me. She was obviously confused and I had to admit I had asked out of the blue, so I tried to clarify.

  "I just saw the box of cigars on the table," I said, pointing back towards the table.

  "Oh, umm, I bought those for my father," Jill said. "Rich helped me by recommending which type to buy. That was before he was arrested, of course."

  I nodded and sipped the water. Rich loved a good cigar and that had been his downfall apparently. Thinking of him made me feel a little down again. I tried to cheer myself up by looking out the window at the falling snow, but there was still some sort of weird vibe in the room that I couldn't get past. Besides, I needed to get back home and get back on the party prepping train.

  "Are you alright Jill?" I asked quietly. I moved to the other end of the sofa so that I was closer to her. I couldn't just leave without making sure she was going to be okay. "I know the murder really threw you for a loop and I understand how scary it must have been to find out that happened just below where you live."

  Jill looked away out the window and brushed a tear out of her eye. I wasn't sure what else I should do. I didn't know her that well and I wasn't sure how I could help her. The only thing I knew was that she was not okay.

  "I think maybe you should find someone to talk to," I said. "You know, just to get your feelings out."

  "No!" she said. "No, I don't need that. But thank you Tessa."

  She stood up in a hurry, almost knocking her glass of water over.

  "I heard you are having a large party this weekend," she said. "I bet you need to go get ready."

  She had a point. I stood up and grabbed the glass I had been using. I set it in the kitchen sink and put my jacket back on. When I turned back around, Jill was holding the door open for me. I walked into the hallway, but I turned and stopped her from pushing the door shut behind me.

  "Hold on," I said. Jill's face looked terrified and I felt terrible. She must be always worried about someone attacking her and I've just made a sudden movement that may have been misconstrued.

  "Sorry, I just wanted to ask you if you'd like to come to the party," I said. "It is a huge party and we invite half of the town. I'm sure you'll know someone there and I think it may help you cheer up a bit.

  "I'll think about it," she said, her face relaxing a bit.

  "Friday evening," I said. "See you there!"

  I gave her a wink and a wave before turning and rushing down the stairs. Poor Jill. I wish I knew what to do to help her. I was hoping that inviting her to the party would help a little bit. I'd send her a message later in the week to invite her again. Hopefully she would agree to come. I think it would be good for her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The next two days passed by quickly as I cleaned and decorated my hind end off. I almost forgot about the murder as I busied myself with the party, but it was always there nagging at the back of my mind. I was at a stalemate. I had nothing else to look into or investigate, so I tried to push it out of my mind by listening to more true crime podcasts. I immersed myself in a different crime instead of obsessing over the one I just couldn't solve.

  I invited Max over to set up for the party, but also because I needed an update on the case and how it was going. I made sure to set up something for him to do. I needed him to help me make a few cookies. Well, the cookies I was making this time were actually pretzels with almond bark poured over it and a candy coated chocolate on top. It was called "Bacon and Eggs." We always made these when I was a child and they were delicious and fun.

  The best part of making these is that the first step is to pick through all of the candy coated chocolates to find the yellow ones to make the 'yolks' on the 'eggs.' We always picked out the yellow first and then the green for some silly ones. All of the rest of the candies were fair game for eating.

  Max and I were sat at the table in the kitchen with a giant bowl of candies and a cup of coffee each. We chatted a bit about town gossip as we sorted through and snacked. I hoped he would tell me about how the investigation was going, but he seemed to be steering around it.

  "So, how is Rich doing?" I finally asked. "Did anything come of the new evidence I found?"

  "You just like to rub that in my face, don't you?" Max said as he grinned at me.

  "Yes, I kind of do," I laughed. "But I'm also just curious because I haven't heard any updates recently."

  "We've been playing this one pretty close to the vest, but I will tell you because first of all, I do owe you and second of all, we are going to have this coming out in the newspaper soon enough anyway."

  I nodded and waited. I was trying to work on holding my tongue a little bit because I was always amazed what people would say if I would just sit back and wait. I popped a few more candies in my mouth before I said the wrong thing.

  "Well we waited to tell Rich about the new evidence," Max said. "We do that sometimes to see if they will confess or give us even more to go on. But he didn't, so we told him about the note and the charm. He didn't seem to care about the note at all, but when we told him we found a charm, he got really pale and immediately confessed."

  "What?" I said. I had just grabbed another handful of candies, but my hand froze just above the bowl. "Rich confessed? He must have just confessed because the charm implicated Sue."

  "That was our thought too," Max said with a shrug. "But there isn't much we can do. If he says he did it, we have to go with it."

  I could feel the candies melting in my warm hand. It wasn't until I had popped the entire handful into my mouth that I realized I hadn't even looked through them for any yellows or greens. I stood up and went to wash the chocolate off of my hands.

  "Have you talked to Sue?" I asked. "Maybe she could clarify things for you?"

  "We did, but all we got out of her was that yes she had a charm bracelet. She was very emotional and she tried to say that she and Rich had been together that night, but Rich denies it."

  I sighed. What in the world was going on? I was so confused by everything. I thought finding new clues would make things more clear, but so far it just made it more confusing.
Each time we found something, it seemed to point to multiple people. I assumed the police were just as confused as I was.

  After one more stir through the bowl of candies, it looked like we had gotten all of the yellow and green ones out. The next step was to line up the pretzels on a piece of wax paper. We need to line up pairs of the small, stick pretzels. That would be the 'bacon' in the Bacon and Egg cookies. We needed to get as many as we could on the wax paper but they couldn't be too close together or the almond bark would all run into each other and they would stick together.

  I put the almond bark in the microwave to melt while Max poured us each more coffee. When I had pulled mugs out of the cabinet for us, I had picked some matching snowman mugs. One snowman was wearing a red hat, mittens, and scarf while the other was wearing blue. They had made Max roll his eyes a bit, but he was well aware of my love of all things holiday and put up with it well.

  Once the almond bark was melted, I poured a small spoonful over the middle of each pretzel pair and then Max pushed a candy into it before it hardened. We made a good team and before long, all of the cookies were sitting to harden. I plucked up the first two we had made and gave one to Max so we could appreciate all of our hard work.

  We sat back down at the table to finish our coffee. Max had to be back at work in about an hour, so he wouldn't be able to help me much more, but I did have one more question for him that I'd thought of while we were working.

  "So who do you actually think did it?" I asked. "Did Sue do it and Rich is covering for her? Or did Rich do it and Sue is trying to help him?"

  "Your guess is as good as mine at this point," Max said with a shrug. He drained the rest of his coffee mug. "Honestly, sometimes it feels like neither of them did it and sometimes it feels like both of them did it. I have no idea what to make of it and I just keep hoping we will stumble on something else that will clear things up."

  I nodded. So the police were on the same page that I was. And now Rich would be tried for murder because he confessed for something he may not have even done. What an awful situation this was turning out to be.

  I walked Max to the front door and after waving him off down the driveway, I glanced over the decorations. Everything in the entry seemed to be in place and cheery. I tried to push the murder out of my head again as I admired the evergreen garland draped around the front door and the mistletoe I had hung in the doorway to the living room.

  The party was tomorrow and even though we were having most of it catered this year, I still had plenty of things to make. We always had trays of homemade cookies that needed to be baked. I rolled up my sleeves and went back to the kitchen to move on to the next batch.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  After making four more types of cookies, with a little help from Trina and Tank when he got home from school, the cookies were done and ready to be set out for the party. The next order of business was to check on Mandy and her progress on the donuts we had ordered for the party.

  Trina went back to desk duty and Tank headed in to the Christmas Shop for his shift while I drove to the Donut Hut. Technically, it was closed for the day now because it was only open through lunch. But I parked in the alley and went in through the kitchen door to see how Mandy was doing.

  On one of the large, rolling racks that she had there were trays and trays of donuts that I walked over to inspect after hanging up my jacket. Each tray was decorated with a different sort of holiday style. I saw a rack of red frosted donuts with green sprinkles and a rack of green frosted donuts with red sprinkles. There were also donuts decorated like wreaths and long john donuts with white frosting and little seasonal sprinkles on top. I started to reach for one of the donuts to taste it when Mandy spoke up.

  "No, no, no," she said without even looking up from her frosting. "Don't you dare take one of those donuts. I know you ordered them, but I don't have any to spare."

  I guiltily pulled my hand back and went to check the coffee pot. Mandy knew I would be coming and she had a hot carafe of decaf coffee ready and waiting. I didn't care how caffeinated the coffee was, I would drink it no matter what time of day it was. Mandy was just looking out for my best interests and making sure I'd be able to get the sleep I desperately needed that night. I poured two mugs and walked them over to where the stools were under the island.

  "Are you able to stop and take a break?" I asked.

  "Yeah, I'm good for a little while," she said as she frosted one last donut.

  Mandy sat down with me and over a cup of decaf, I told her about everything Max had told me: the new evidence, Rich's confession, and Sue's insistence that she had an alibi for him. The entire time, Mandy sipped her coffee and listened intently until I was finished.

  "So, what are your thoughts?" Mandy asked when I got to the end.

  "I have no idea," I said with a sigh. "I've gotten to the point where I feel like I can't even think about it anymore because I've exhausted everything. Every time I think I've figured it out, a new clue pops up and proves me wrong. The evidence I keep finding implicates multiple people. We know there was only one killer, but both of them seem guilty."

  "Could it have been someone besides Rich or Sue?" she asked. Mandy was great at playing the nagging voice in my head.

  "I suppose so, but I'm not really sure who," I said. "It's been hard to think of other suspects when Rich and Sue are so out there with their evidence and alibis and confessions."

  I drank some more decaf coffee and let Mandy turn our conversation towards the upcoming holidays. As always, I would be at home with all of the members of my family from my grandma who comes into town all the way down to my newest niece, who was almost a year old. Mandy would be headed to Florida for a week to visit her parents and the Donut Hut would be closed during that time. I had already made her promise she would pre-make me one donut for each day she would be gone, not that I really needed them.

  "Shoot," I said as the talk of the holiday brought something back to my mind. "I was going to ask Jill if she would possibly make some necklaces for my sisters and my mother. She was acting so weird the other day that I totally forgot. I need to message her."

  "Why don't you message her now," Mandy said. "I need to move these trays of donuts into the fridge to keep for the night."

  I grabbed my flip phone out of my purse and sat down to type out a message while Mandy slowly wheeled the big rack of trays away. I hoped that Jill would be able to help me because I knew my family would love to get a necklace from Jill. I was slightly worried because she had been so out of it the other day. I didn't know if it would help or hurt to have something like this to work on.

  Hey Jill, I was going to ask you the other day if I'd be able to commission a few necklaces from you for my sisters and mother. Please let me know soon but bon't feel obligated if there isn't time to get them done before the holidays because then I'll commission a few for their birthdays instead.

  I flipped my phone shut and waited for Mandy to get back into the kitchen. I could hear her banging around in the walk-in freezer. My phone buzzed and I was pleased to see that Jill had gotten right back to me.

  I certainly have time for you after all of your kindness. Let me know what you're thinking for each one ASAP and I'll get working.

  Mandy shut the door to the walk-in and came back to sit on the stool next to her. I told her that Jill had agreed and I asked her what she thought I should ask for. Mandy had a much better fashion sense than I did. Together, we agreed that Trina would love a necklace with interlocking hearts to symbolize her and her fiance. Tilly would probably like something to symbolize her three children. And my mother loved Christmas so much that I thought she might like a larger wire Christmas tree with some red and green ornaments on it. I texted all of that information to Jill and was pleased that Jill said she could have them ready soon.

  I may not be solving a murder, but I was planning an epic holiday party and getting all of the presents sorted. Maybe this time I would have to leave the police work to the p
olice.

  Chapter Thirty

  Friday morning dawned and like it or not, I had a party to throw that night. My father and I helped my mother come down the stairs first thing so that she could station herself in the middle of the party prep. She may not have been much help initially, but she was going to have a hand in all of the last minute preparations. I also knew that my mother felt bad because she had spent the last few days trying to rest up so that she was able to make it through the party.

  "You did a great job of decorating, Tessa," she exclaimed once we got her onto the couch in the living room. "This all looks amazing and I think the party will go swimmingly."

  "Thank you Mom, but I still have a little ways to go," I said. "I have a surprise for you and I was going to wait until tonight, but I need your advice. I've gotten the high school jazz band to come and play Christmas carols for us tonight, but I need a place for them to set up. Maybe you and Dad could figure out exactly where to put them?"

  My mother clapped her hands together and my father cracked a smile. If there was something my mother loved, it was a great, big surprise. I knew she would never see a surprise band coming.

  "That's a wonderful surprise," my mother exclaimed. "I can't believe I hadn't thought of that all of these years that I've been throwing this party. I'm pleased you thought of it though. Maybe soon I'll have to let you plan this party every year."

  My shock must have shown on my face because my mother and father both burst out laughing. I laughed along with them. Party planning was stressful. But planning a party all about Christmas, one of my most favorite things in the world, made it so much more enjoyable.

  As my mother looked around the room from her perch on the couch muttering to herself about where to seat a live band, I went into the kitchen to see how things were going. Mandy had come first thing in the morning with the boxes of donuts and I started to put them out on the individual trays.