As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles (A Food Lovers' Village Mystery) Read online

  “No worries. Thanks for the heads-up,” she said, perpetually chirpy. “Your call gave me a few minutes to book those additional rooms you asked for, and make a new seating chart for the dinner. We usually split up out-of-town families if they aren’t in the wedding party, so they can get to know the other guests.”

  Criminy. The seating chart. She showed me a screen on her iPad with the plan we’d worked out, then switched to a new layout. She’d put Mrs. Zimmerman—Diane—with my mother and Bill. One twin-plus-wife had bumped cousins from the Murphy uncles’ table, while the other had been foisted on the Contis, my mother’s brothers and their wives.

  “That should work,” I said. My aunts and uncles could handle a jokester or two.

  Sisters-in-law. I’d never had any and was about to get a pair.

  We walked down to the Carriage House, where the ceremony would be held. The sky was crystal-clear and the snow sparkled in the sun—a true bluebird day.

  A horse-drawn sleigh would deliver my mother, sister, and me to the Carriage House, then after the ceremony, take Adam and me up to the main lodge for dinner. Guests would be shuttled in the red Jammer, a retired Glacier Park bus that one of the elder Caldwells had managed to snare ages ago. Then Santa would come with gifts for the little ones, and the grownups would return to the Carriage House for drinks and dancing. Adam and I would spend the night here, and we’d all gather at the River House—Mom and Bill’s place—for Christmas morning.

  All the years I’d been hanging out with Kim, I’d never actually slept in one of the cabins, with their peeled pine beds and comfy quilts, Pendleton wool blankets slung over the log-and-leather chairs.

  Trinka pointed as we walked. “I’ve put Adam’s mother in the cabin closest to the main lodge, and given his brothers and their wives a two-bedroom close to the lake.”

  She had it all worked out. I rubbed a thumb across my lucky stars.

  In the Carriage House, Trinka showed me what would go where, from the table with the guest book to our chairs and Anne’s podium, and later, the bar and band.

  “You’re a pretty low-key bride,” she said. “At this point, most women are on the verge of panic.”

  Was I as calm as I looked? Either I hadn’t gotten to the freak-out stage, or I was in denial.

  Or, everything was so right that panic wasn’t necessary. I was marrying the love of my life in a place I adored, with everyone I cherished around me.

  Okay, so meeting Adam’s family had me anxious. But what could go wrong?

  “You’re making it all easy,” I said, and meant it.

  “Thanks. The florist will deliver the poinsettias and floral arrangements in time for the rehearsal—you’ve chosen a festive but tasteful scheme. Now let’s get you back to the Lodge to go over the menu with Chef Kyle. Wendy Fontaine is making your cake—that will be scrumptious.”

  We picked our way back to the main lodge over the curving, snow-packed road, not saying anything. I’d forgotten how quiet the ranch is during the winter, with a skeleton staff and few guests. Not like summer, when families from all around the world congregate for an active vacation—hiking, sailing, riding, singing around the campfire.

  In the lodge, Trinka ushered me to the small private dining area off the kitchen, then excused herself.

  With my holiday hours, and the extra time we’d spent on remodeling, moving, and planning a wedding, Adam and I had been skipping the Friday night pool games at Red’s that were a staple of fall and winter. The death of Nick’s fiancée had wrought another change in the gathering. All that meant I hadn’t seen much of Kyle lately.

  People often assume he and Kim are brother and sister, not cousins. Tall, slender, and blond like all the Caldwells, Kyle had been a Navy chef, and came home to follow his dream of running the Lodge kitchen. Unlike most chefs, he wears black and a baseball cap, but the way he cooks, who cares?

  Kyle entered carrying a big silver tray. “I’m thinking three appetizers for each evening,” he said. The rehearsal dinner and the wedding dinner. “Your choice, but I wouldn’t repeat more than one. This is butternut squash with mint on crostini.”

  I bit in. “Oh, my gosh. That is fabulous.” I took another nibble. “And pistachios?”

  He beamed. “You’re the first person to identify the pistachios in one try.”

  I couldn’t come up with a joke about nuts that he wouldn’t twist, so I reached for the next offering, a mini lamb skewer.

  “Made my own mint sauce,” he said.

  “Perfect. Not too sweet.”

  “You’re really getting married. I can’t talk you out of it.”

  “You are so full of it,” I said. “At least I know you’ll be in the kitchen during the ceremony, so I don’t have to worry about you raising your hand and saying you object.”

  “I have a sous chef.” He waggled his eyebrows. But it was all in fun.

  Kyle’s risotto cake with chives and Parmesan was as yummy as the others. I tried two mini tarts, one filled with my mother’s sun-dried tomato and pine nut pesto, the other with a fresh snap pea pesto. Red and green, for the season, served with a cheese platter.

  “One more,” he said, and slid the final plate in front of me.

  I sniffed. Fishy. Took a bite. Wrinkled my nose and put the rest back on my plate. “Trout?”

  “A lake trout canapé with roasted red pepper and caper garnish.” He made an X next to it on his list. “Only one reject. That’s not bad.”

  He boxed up the leftovers for me and I thanked him for the taste test. I slowed as I drove by the horse barn and arena out of habit. My favorite mare, Ribbons, was away at the winter pasture with the rest of the Caldwell herd.

  I squinted. Was that who I thought it was? It couldn’t be.

  It was. Walt Thornton. I parked and trudged to the barn, the snow crunching beneath my feet as I cut between the trees. He’d disappeared. I hoped Taya wasn’t with him—I wanted to talk.

  Though the horses had been moved months ago, the air inside carried the fragrant aroma of horse sweat mixed with fresh grass, baled hay, and sweet oats, and a hint of horse manure. I’d spent half my childhood at the Lodge, learning to ride and care for the horses.

  The sneeze snuck up on me and I doubled over with the force of it. Chiara says my sneezes should be measured on the Richter scale. This one could have blown the roof off the old building.

  “Who’s there?” a male voice called.

  I straightened and squinted into the dark. “It’s me, Erin Murphy. Is that you, Walt?”

  No reply.

  “Walt?” I couldn’t imagine what he was doing here, let alone hiding in the shadows. For a man whose daughter had just been killed, he was acting awfully wierd.

  But then, no etiquette book covers a situation like that.

  A bare bulb flicked on in one of the horse stalls and I squeezed my eyes shut, flashes of light stabbing the backs of my eyelids. I opened my eyes slowly and took one step forward.

  There, in the stall, stood Walt Thornton next to the biggest, ugliest Nutcracker I had ever seen. Ten feet tall, maybe twelve. His mock bearskin hat nearly scraped the rafters, and his huge clenched teeth would scare even the biggest bah-humbug. Next to the statue, Walt was a scrawny midget, though his grin was nearly as big as the Nutcracker’s.

  The ballet may be a classic, but I have never understood the appeal of fake wooden soldiers. Can you actually crack a nut with them?

  “Wow. That’s um … big,” I said.

  “Remember that show they filmed up north, by the ski hill? Christmas in the Woods. I bought all the props. We had a big auction a few weeks ago. These are the pieces that didn’t sell.”

  I vaguely recalled hearing about the sale. A decorator from Alberta had come in the Merc and mentioned it. I had a much better memory of her purchases—I’d made three trips to her car, toting her bags and boxes. We heart Canadian tourists.

  “We called it Santa’s Workshop in the Barn.” He led me from stall to stall, showing
off the props. Santa’s golden throne. A fake igloo big enough to sleep in. Snowflakes six feet across, trees already decorated, wrapped boxes large enough to hold a person with lids that lifted off. A five-car train for transporting children or elves.

  “We’d probably have sold it all in July,” Walt said, “when the shopping malls are planning their holiday displays. But I didn’t want to store the stuff until then. Not sure what I’ll do with these pieces. Donated tons of lights to the Elves.”

  Walt’s daughter had been killed and a string of light bulbs wrapped around her neck.

  I bit my tongue. Literally—the salty taste of blood stung.

  Poor, clueless Walt. Or maybe his love of Christmas gave him comfort when he most needed it.

  “I always thought Christmas was Taya’s thing,” I said. “In kindergarten, we started cutting out snowflakes and candy canes the day after Halloween.”

  A soft smile crept across his face. “Our first date was dinner and a movie in a big mall. On our way to the restaurant, we stopped to get our picture taken with Santa. How could we not fall in love with the holiday?”

  Of such simple moments are traditions born.

  “Is that how the girls got their names? I always assumed they were born near Christmas.”

  “Merrily was,” he said. “December twenty-sixth.”

  Not quite three weeks. Dying so close to a birthday seemed doubly sad.

  “Holly’s birthday is in July,” he continued, “but once we started the theme, we stuck with it.”

  Like they’d stuck with the shunning?

  I shivered inside. Walt’s Christmas cheer was gone, washed away by the silent tears streaming down his gray-stubbled cheeks. I touched him on the shoulder, and he crumpled against a wooden post.

  “I never believed—” he said. “I never wanted—” He interrupted himself with huge gasps for air. “And now, she’s—and we’ll never—”

  Never what? Forgive her? Get her forgiveness? No point asking. I stood beside him, my hand on his shoulder. Then he straightened and pulled out a handkerchief.

  “Walt,” I said gently. “Were you in touch with Merrily? Despite Taya’s objections?”

  He drew in a big, noisy sniff, the kind that gets stuck in your throat and chokes you if you aren’t careful. He nodded.

  “And you knew about her daughter? Your granddaughter?”

  Another nod.

  For seventeen years, Brad Larson had said. Merrily had been nearly nineteen when she went to prison, and Ashley was now a freshman in college. People often toss out inaccurate numbers, and kids sometimes start school early.

  If I’d guessed wrong, I’d mortify him. If I were right …

  “Merrily was pregnant when she went to prison, wasn’t she? And you knew.”

  His head wiggled and waggled in all directions. “I was never sure if the judge knew, or just guessed. But Merrily made me swear not to tell Taya.”

  “And the father, Walt? Is that why you didn’t want Taya to know?” It would be too cruel if your daughter not only stole from her boss but also got pregnant by him. At least, if you believed it was all the woman’s—the girl’s—fault.

  “She never said, but we guessed.” Another sniff as noisy as a horse’s.

  “Who told Taya about the baby? Holly?”

  “Years later. She meant well, trying to get us back together. But Taya stuck to her guns.”

  Was that a note of admiration I heard? I couldn’t fathom. In his view of the world, their daughter had betrayed them, and he could choose her or his wife.

  They didn’t seem to have wondered why she stole the money, if she had. Was it for the baby? Not according to Brad Larson, who’d said she’d been desperate for a job.

  I sighed. Humans, and the tangled webs we weave. Had the judge imposed a light sentence so mother and child could start a new life together as soon as possible, in freedom? Or had the judge considered Merrily little more than an unwitting accomplice of Cliff Grimes? Or even his victim?

  “Her father is here—Merrily’s husband, I mean. The father who raised Ashley. He’d like to meet you, and introduce you to her.”

  The tall man in front of me, the man with the sad eyes who had always been so gentle and kind, spun away on the heel of one cowboy boot. I could not think him a killer, but the wife he was so determined to protect?

  Maybe.

  Without a word, Walt disappeared among his prizes. The showpieces intended to evoke the Christmas spirit, to create an impression of joy and happiness.

  It was nothing but a comfortless facade, and as I walked toward the big sliding barn doors, I thought the giant dolls and fake trees a touch shabby, their luster dulled. As I passed the first stall and glanced in, even the Nutcracker seemed to droop.

  Thirteen

  Grief slays each of us differently. And while I understood from Walt Thornton’s reaction that his daughter’s murder cut him deeply, I did not understand much else about him or his wife.

  And I’d spent far too much time away from the Merc today. It’s a close second to the Orchard for my happy place, and I could hardly wait to get back to work.

  I turned off the highway, still thinking. The Thornton girls didn’t look much alike, despite both being fair-skinned blondes. Though Chiara and I are unmistakably sisters, Nick is cut from entirely different cloth.

  In the photo I’d seen, Ashley didn’t resemble mother or aunt. The height could have come from Walt. And she was brunette. But teenagers color their hair these days.

  Yeah, right. They color their hair purple or add lime green stripes. Do blondes of any age go dark, unless it’s an actress for a role?

  In the Merc’s back hall, I shucked off my coat. My mother had been making marinara sauce this morning, and the scent of an Italian herb garden clung to the air.

  “Erin, hi!” Candy Divine greeted me in full pinkness, from her fuchsia-streaked hair to her hot pink Uggs. If Minnie Mouse were a candy maker, she’d look like Candy, minus the tail.

  The woman had grown on me since she first floated in to the Merc a year and a half ago on a cloud of pink sugar. Since then, her candy had gone from sticky lumps to the real thing, and she had cooked up a devoted following. Not devoted enough to support her, though, so I’d helped her get a job with Sally, using her design and sewing skills to fill the racks at Puddle Jumpers with princess dresses, dinosaur costumes, and other clothing sure to appeal to every five-year-old’s grandmother.

  That’s what keeps this village thriving. Instead of seeing each other as competitors, we work together and boost the bottom line for us all.

  “Hi back atchya,” I said. “What’s in your basket?”

  “Sugarplums,” she said in a voice so high and sweet it could shatter crystal. “Peppermint taffy, and nougat studded with candied cherries. And my very own handmade candy canes, in the colors of the rainbow!”

  Candy canes made me think of Oliver Bello. Not so sweet a thought.

  We oohed and ahhed over the selection, then Tracy and Lou Mary found space for the canes and created a display while I added them to our inventory. Love my automated inventory tracker. I took a moment to pop a few pics of the new goodies on Instagram with my phone.

  “You been stitching up Christmas dresses?” I asked Candy.

  “Yes. Now I’m designing for Valentine’s Day. It’s such fun.” She popped a piece of taffy into her mouth, her next words a bit garbled. “Did you hear what happened to Ray?”

  “What? No. What’s going on?” The Bayside Grille is my favorite lunch spot, and the owner, Ray Ramirez, is a sweetheart, despite the scorpion tattoo that peeks over the crew neck of the snow-white T-shirts he always wears.

  “Some customer trashed him online. Said she couldn’t believe he put sauerkraut on his Reubens.”

  “That’s what a Reuben is,” I said. Ray cooks the beer-soaked sauerkraut in his kitchen and cans it in our basement. We sell cases of it, gallons of it. I aim to sell a liquid ton of it.

  “I k
now, right? It’s like complaining that your broccoli’s green.”

  Tracy snorted. The doggies in her ears swung madly.

  Candy swallowed the last of her taffy, her hands bouncing through the air. “Then, the little minx got all her friends to chime in, and his ratings went from, like almost five stars to barely two.”

  Minx? Lou Mary mouthed at me, her eyes approving. That’s good.

  “We can Yelp him,” I said. “We’ve all eaten there. We can give him an honest rave, and boost his ratings.”

  “Oooh!” Candy clapped her hands. “Let’s start a campaign!”

  Gad, I love small towns.

  I left them to work out their “Yelp for the Grille” plan and found my mother in the basement, sitting at the desk Nick had built himself last winter. Now that he had moved out of the barely habitable homesteader’s shack at the Orchard and into the house Christine, his fiancée, had left him when she died, he no longer needed to hide away in a corner of the Merc’s basement for warmth and WiFi. But that also meant he was harder to track down when I needed him. I knew he was around. So why was he too busy to help me with my building? With our building?

  “Hello, darling,” my mother said. “How did your fitting go last night?”

  “Great,” I said, holding up one of Candy’s canes. “No calories in these, right?”

  She smiled and the world righted itself. A stack of cookbooks on the small desktop caught my eye.

  She followed my gaze. “I’m working on a few menus for the family visits. The big day will be here before you know it.”

  “Speaking of, I’ve got news.” I hooked a stool with a foot, sat, and rolled closer. “Adam’s brothers are coming after all.” I didn’t tell her how weirded out he was.

  “Oh, good.” Her eyes lit up, then she got serious. “You’ve hinted at some tensions, but it will be lovely to meet them. We’ll give them a big Montana welcome.”

  She hadn’t heard all the stories Adam had told me, stories his boyhood buddy Tanner swore were true. How the twins played every prank in the book, from taking each other’s tests to going on each other’s dates. They’d had a thing for jokes with snakes that didn’t go over so well with the other kids in the neighborhood.