'Tis the Season to Be Murdered Read online

  “What?”

  “Really. I had to go over to a client’s home where we’d left some large trays that we need for a dinner this evening. And I ran into their Christmas display: a life-size Santa, sleigh, and reindeer—all cast in bronze. I was impressed with it in the daytime—it’s almost a work of art. But last night, I ran into it while my hands were full of trays, and all I saw were stars.”

  “I don’t think I know that particular display,” Susan said.

  “Well, it’s something to avoid in the dark.”

  Neither woman said anything for a few awkward minutes. Then both spoke at once.

  “I suppose the—”

  “Actually, Z and I had this argument—”

  “He hit y—”

  “No! No, of course not. I got upset, and I was running away.” Gwen Ivy touched her eyelid gently, and Susan waited for her to continue. “I ran into that damn Christmas decoration. I should have been looking where I was going. It was my own fault.”

  Susan wondered why Gwen was so anxious to assume responsibility for her injury, but she didn’t think this was necessarily the time or place to ask a bunch of questions. Her feet were getting cold, and Clue was making breakfast of another ribbon from the Kents’ decorations. She looked up at the windows, wondering if JoAnn was watching.

  Gwen noticed her concern. “They’re not home. I rang the bell, and no one answered.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “To collect the money that the Kents owe me—and to present them with this. I was just making it out.”

  Susan stared at the pink sheet of paper in the other woman’s hand. “What is it?”

  “A bill for all the equipment we lost in the fire. We are not going to eat this one, believe me. The Holly and Ms. Ivy have moved way beyond that type of thing. We’ll take them to court over this.…” To Susan’s surprise, she chuckled. “Or else we’ll threaten to send your dog over to deal with them.”

  Susan looked down. Clue had finished with the ribbon, and the plant it had been tied to, and was gnawing on the bottom of the pristine marble urn. “Clue! No! Stop that!” The dog didn’t pause. Susan pulled on the leash, dragging the eighty-seven-pound dog away from what it seemed to consider to be a justly deserved breakfast.

  “Didn’t you tell me you were starting obedience classes a few weeks ago?”

  “We’re working on ‘heel’ and ‘stay,’ not ‘don’t eat the planter,’ ” Susan answered.

  “I once dated a man who had a golden. They’ll eat anything. I was taking a lot of cooking classes then. The poor animal got all my disasters—lived to a ripe old age, too, I’m told.”

  “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?” Susan asked, impulsively.

  “Not unless you come over to my place and have it with me while I work.”

  “Fine with me, but I have to take Clue home first and give her some breakfast.”

  “I’ll just put this in the mailbox and head on over. The coffee will be ready by the time you get there.”

  “Great!” Susan agreed, ordered her dog to come, and headed home.

  THREE

  “Does this mean you and Jed didn’t get much sleep last night?” Kathleen was standing at the bottom of the stairway, Susan’s silk underwear dangling from a finger.

  Susan grabbed the bra before Clue could steal it again. “The teeth marks are the dog’s. I wasn’t wearing it at the time. And Jed left for a meeting before I was up this morning. Want some coffee?”

  “Definitely.” The two women had been friends for almost ten years. Kathleen wasn’t a bit hesitant about leading the way. They’d solved eight crimes together. Confirmed caffeine fiends, they were on their third automatic coffeemaker. “I gather you forgot that we were planning to do a little postholiday shopping this morning.”

  “I did not. I just had some other things to do first.” Susan didn’t really enjoy shopping after the holidays, but she had to make three returns today. Jed and Chad had both been given sweaters that didn’t fit, and Chrissy wanted a black turtleneck rather than the color Susan had spent hours choosing just three days ago. And there was that coat waiting for her at Saks. “Didn’t I see you drive by here earlier?”

  Kathleen nodded, spooning sugar into her coffee. “I had to drop Bananas off at the Rogers’. He’s spending the morning with Ruthie. He was thrilled. She’s his first crush. He keeps repeating her name and giggling.” She peered into a tin decorated with a leaping reindeer. “Oh good, shortbread. I love your shortbread,” she enthused, taking a few of the small rounds, biting one in half, and then frowning.

  “Is it okay?” Susan asked.

  “Wonderful as always,” Kathleen assured her. “I was just wondering about whether or not I should have left Ban this morning.”

  “You’re not jealous, are you?”

  “Heavens no. I’m thrilled that he has a good female friend. Most of his companions are tough little boys. This will be good for him. I was thinking about Ginnie Rogers. She may not need company right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s supposed to be giving some sort of dinner party tonight for people from Andy’s company, and the entrée hasn’t shown up yet.”

  “Shown up?”

  “Ginnie hates cooking. She’s been ordering at least parts of meals from some catering company for the last few years. She was telling me about them …”

  “Not The Holly and Ms. Ivy?” Susan asked, taking a cookie and popping it in her mouth.

  “I don’t know.”

  Susan sighed. Everything had seemed to be going so well. “Even if it’s not, I have to go over to their offices and talk with Gwen. Do you want to go with me? It won’t take long, then we can hit the stores together.”

  “Gwen?”

  “Gwen Ivy. She’s the Ms. Ivy of the group. If you have the time, just let me feed Clue and grab my coat. I’ll explain on the way.”

  Kathleen smiled. “Fine with me as long as you don’t mind if I eat a few more of these. They’re my favorite.”

  “Eat away. I sure don’t need the calories.” She looked enviously at her friend’s figure. No matter how much Kathleen ate, she didn’t gain an ounce. The fact that she still had female friends showed what a good person she was.

  “Why are you going to talk with Gwen Ivy? I thought you’d finished planning for Saturday night weeks ago.”

  Susan was busy looking at her reflection in the gloss finish on her refrigerator. She was dressed to walk the dog. Was she too casual to go downtown? Oh, well, it was the day after Christmas; no one would expect her to be a fashion plate. If Kathleen was driving, she could put on lipstick and blush in the car. “What? I thought so, yes, but evidently The Holly and Ms. Ivy are having some problems. What’s that?” She looked down at the dark green envelope Kathleen had in her hand.

  “I don’t know. Looks like an unopened Christmas card or invitation. It was sitting here on the table.”

  “Oh, someone tossed that in the mail drop last night. Go ahead and open it. I have to go to the garage to get Clue’s breakfast. I don’t know why Jed keeps buying dog food in such huge bags.” She wandered off to the attached garage.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Kathleen was still sitting at the table, a card in her hand.

  “Greetings or good news?” Susan asked, pouring a large portion of kibble into a bright red, ceramic dish.

  “Neither.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably someone’s idea of a joke. I’d forget all about it.”

  Susan was surprised by the seriousness of Kathleen’s voice. “What does it say?”

  “See for yourself.” Kathleen handed the missive over.

  Susan took the envelope and the heavy, cream, bond notepaper inside, and read the spiky writing while Kathleen peered into the half-dozen glass cookie jars that lined a shelf of Susan’s built-in pantry.

  “What do you call these little thumbprint cookies?”

 
“Little thumbprint cookies. What else? You don’t think this is serious, do you?” Susan waved the small sheet of paper in front of her friend’s face.

  Kathleen shrugged. “No. I’d ignore it, if I were you. It’s probably just a bad joke.”

  Susan replaced the paper in the envelope, tucking it behind the wall phone out of Clue’s range, and frowned. “It looks like a woman’s writing, and it’s on The Holly and Ms. Ivy’s stationery,” she said slowly.

  “It looks like the writing of an art major to me,” Kathleen said. “And if you think Gwen Ivy wrote it, why don’t you just ask her about it? Maybe it’s just a bit of bad taste.”

  Susan idly patted her dog on the head. She didn’t relate bad taste to Gwen Ivy. “Maybe I will,” she agreed, doubting it.

  “Then we’d better get going, hadn’t we?”

  Susan tossed a cookie to her pet, grabbed her purse, and followed Kathleen out of the house, stopping only to readjust some dried white roses on the large, blue-spruce wreath hanging on her front door.

  “Pretty,” Kathleen said absently, pulling her keys from the large embroidered purse her mother-in-law had given her for Christmas.

  “I can’t get the flowers wired in properly. They keep slipping.”

  “I don’t know much about it. We just order our wreaths from H.E.C. They look nice and traditional, and they smell wonderful.”

  Susan stopped worrying about the note and concentrated on her Christmas decorations. Using a variety of natural materials (reindeer moss and bayberry collected at their cottage in Maine last summer, living herbs like rosemary topiaries and miniature trees, and faux mushrooms that looked remarkably real), her house smelled as good as it looked. The wreath set the theme, and she had spent a lot of time making it. It had remained perfect for two days, but had been shedding ever since. She plucked an end of the deep bronze ribbon from the doorway and headed into the car.

  “You’re not having an affair, are you?” Kathleen asked, thinking about the note as her engine roared to life.

  “Of course not.”

  Kathleen decided not to ask any more questions. Affairs were things that friends could talk about whenever they wanted to—and not before. She waited a few discreet minutes, and when Susan didn’t continue, she changed the subject.

  “What’s worrying you about Gwen Ivy?”

  “Well, for one thing, she has a black eye.”

  “How does she explain that?”

  “At first she gave me some silly story about running into a Christmas decoration. Kind of a seasonal walking into an open door. She knew right away that I was skeptical, and she told me the truth—or maybe part of the truth.”

  “What?”

  “She said that she had an argument with her partner, and that she ran away into the arm of some sort of huge Santa decoration.”

  “Why is that more believable than the first story?”

  “The argument.”

  “You think Mr. Holly hit her?”

  “Z.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He calls himself Z. His name is Zeke Holly, but he calls himself Z.”

  “You don’t think he hit her.”

  The car was stopped at a light, so there was no need for Susan to speak quite so loudly. “I don’t think he’s the type of man who would hit anyone, and I am not having an affair with Z.”

  “I didn’t think …”

  “Then why did you look at me like that?”

  “That note is pretty strange. You must admit that. People don’t usually send anonymous notes accusing people of being involved with men other than their husbands for no reason at all,” Kathleen said flatly, peering out the window at a stopped car blocking her way. “Doesn’t that woman see that the light is green?”

  Susan chuckled. “Read her license plate.” The letters and numbers on the rear of the BMW station wagon said momof 9. “The poor woman is probably taking a well-deserved nap.”

  Kathleen honked gently. “I hate to wake her up, but the trucker behind me looks like he’s going to smash the wreath on his grill into my trunk if we sit here any longer.”

  “He’s probably a father of nine who spent yesterday napping.”

  Kathleen chuckled and put her car into gear as their way was cleared.

  Susan looked at her friend and started to speak. “I …” She stopped.

  “I’m your friend, and I’ll talk with you about anything, but I don’t think the fact that I opened that note means we have to speak about it at all,” Kathleen said.

  Susan smiled. “We turn right at the next light.”

  “Haven’t I heard that Z and Gwen are a couple?”

  “Probably. I know a lot of people think that.”

  “But they’re not.”

  “No.” Susan wondered if she had spoken the one word a little too loudly.

  “What sort of menu did you finally pick out for New Year’s Eve?” Kathleen tactfully changed the topic.

  Susan grinned. “I’m not telling. It makes me hungry just to think about it. Have you ever had quail? Oh, wait! Turn left here. It’s in that black building with the green roof and red trim down that drive there.” Susan pointed to a huge old two-story, cedar-shingled building. Yards and yards of white-pine roping were draped from all the old wooden gutters, held in place by large bunches of variegated ivy and red bows.

  “Some place,” Kathleen said, following her directions.

  “It was the carriage house of the largest estate in town—the home burned and the rest of the buildings were torn down decades ago. It’s been used by a lot of different companies over the years. Chrissy took ballet here when she was six years old. And Chad had origami classes up in the hayloft one summer. A squash club owned the building before that. But The Holly and Ms. Ivy remodeled about five years ago, and they’ve been here ever since. Wait until you see the inside.”

  Kathleen steered her car into the small but empty lot next to the carriage house. “Smells wonderful,” she commented.

  “The entire first floor is kitchen. You won’t believe it,” Susan assured her, leading the way up the brick path to the front door.

  They didn’t have to knock. They were greeted at the door by Gwen Ivy. She was wearing green dark glasses. A dark green apron covered her clothing; flour covered the apron. Kathleen and Susan followed her into the long, brightly lit room.

  “Wow.” Kathleen stopped for a second and stared. The original mahogany woodwork, the hardwood floors, and brass hardware remained. The rest of the building had been extensively remodeled. The room was divided into nearly a dozen different work areas, each one with an identical green Garland stove, a large industrial refrigerator-freezer, generous counter space, racks containing pots, pans, and equipment as exotic as fish steamers and duck presses. Green-shaded lights hung over each space. An elegant curved stairway rose to the second floor at the rear of the room, and it was to this that Gwen Ivy led her guests.

  “This is truly unbelievable,” Kathleen said, as they walked between the pristine workstations.

  “That’s the way it was designed to be. The offices are upstairs, and everyone who comes to do business with The Holly and Ms. Ivy has to pass all this. It’s even more impressive when my chefs are working.” She glanced down at her Swatch. “They’ll be here in just a few minutes. You’ll see.”

  “What were you cooking?” Susan asked, as they passed the workstation closest to the stairway. She counted eight large bowls sitting on the counter, covered with green-and-white linen cloths.

  “Just setting out some birnbrot to rise. It’s a Swiss holiday bread filled with fruit—mainly pears—and kirsch. The dough has been in the refrigerator overnight. Someone else will take care of it now. Come on up. I made coffee.”

  “You do the cooking for The Holly and Ms. Ivy?” Kathleen asked, as Susan peered over the banister at the recipe lying next to the bowls. Birnbrot sure sounded good. She wondered how difficult it would be to make.

  “Not much anymore. When
we began, Z and I did all of it.” She glanced back at the kitchen area as she opened the door to the offices. “Those were much simpler times though.”

  “How many people work for you now?” Kathleen asked.

  “During most of the year, about twenty. But this is our busy time; right now, we have almost forty people. We get chefs in training on their vacations from cooking schools, but most of our temporary positions are for untrained people. Truck drivers and the like. A lot of this business is just lifting and toting. Our office is this way.”

  “You and Z share an office?” Kathleen asked.

  “Z and I started this business in a phone booth at Grand Central Station, and we’ve stayed close ever since.”

  Kathleen glanced over at Susan, who was peering at photographs that lined the walls.

  Gwen noticed, too. “Those are our credentials—photographs taken at parties we’ve given,” she explained.

  “I guess that type of reference means a lot in your business,” Kathleen commented idly.

  “References mean everything in our business. We’re good, but we’re expensive. People who hire us want their parties to be the best, and they want them run as smoothly as possible. If their neighbor gave a perfect party and they saw our trucks out front, they’ll call us when they’re entertaining.”

  “That’s why you have such a distinctive logo.”

  “Exactly. And why everything is color coordinated. Dark green ivy twining around a sprig of holly is printed on everything we do.”

  Kathleen and Susan exchanged looks. It had also been on the note Susan had received.

  “Come on in,” Gwen suggested, guiding them into a small room overflowing with an antique partners desk, four chairs, and file cabinets around the walls. “We have a more impressive space where Z works with clients, but I feel more comfortable here. Have a seat. There’s coffee, if you’d like some.”

  “We’d love it.” Kathleen answered for both of them.

  Gwen poured three mugs of the steaming brew and set a plate on the cluttered desk in front of them. “Have some cookies. We get the rejects up here. Oh, everything is fine,” she added, seeing Susan’s startled look. “No poison or anything. We’re giving a traditional English tea party this afternoon for some people over on Tollhouse Road. You know, cucumber sandwiches, Dundee cake, seed cake …” She peered at the large plate. “These are jam tarts, shortbread, almond bars, Victoria sponge sandwiches, and Prince Albert cakes—all either broken or misshapen.”