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

  On my way back to the Merc, I spotted another hook about to pull out of our disintegrating soffit. Nick had texted late yesterday that he was busy investigating a possible new wolf den up north and wouldn’t be able to work on the building until next weekend, at the earliest. So I’d called a construction guy my brother-in-law knew, but got no reply.

  Inside, I called the builder again and left another message. “Who else can I call?” I asked the empty shop. Hearing no answer, I pondered a temporary fix.

  I hauled out the ladder and set it on the slightly slippery sidewalk. Climbed up, wrapped a wire around the gutter, and reached for the sagging garland. Looped the wire around the garland and gave it a few twists. A stupendously bad idea, I knew—if the garland fell again, it would take the gutter with it, along with more of the soffit and a row or two of shingles.

  I hate when the best I can do isn’t enough.

  I rested the shovel beside our front door and went into Le Panier for a warm-up. Sally Grimes, coatless, bent over the pastry case.

  “Go ahead, Sally,” I said. “You know there are no calories in December.”

  She stood abruptly, startled. “Oh, Erin. Don’t be ridiculous.” She snatched up her coffee and dashed out the door.

  Wendy and I exchanged raised-eyebrow glances, stifling a shared laugh.

  I’d promised my mother I wouldn’t quiz Sally about Merrily Thornton. I never said I wouldn’t tease her about croissants. But I did sympathize—it must be awful to have the wound left by her husband’s betrayal ripped open after all this time.

  “Bello’s breathing down Greg’s neck, watching every move,” Wendy said over the burr and buzz of the espresso machine.

  “I’m not sure your brother wants my help.” I perused the pastry case, wishing my crack about calories in December were true. Remember your dress …

  Wendy’s back was to me as she foamed the milk, but her white-coated shoulders stiffened ever-so-briefly. “Of course he does,” she said, pouring my double shot and adding the milk, her tone less convincing than her words.

  “Surprised me that Merrily was renting Granny G’s house,” I said.

  The front door opened. Wendy’s face froze, and her eyes told me not to say another word. “He-hello, Mrs. Thornton,” she said. “Nice to see you back in the village.”

  “You.” Taya pointed a finger at me, and I felt six years old again. I’d forgotten that sweet Mrs. Thornton had not suffered transgressors, whether the sin had been running with scissors or talking during naptime. “You think you’re such a loyal friend, rushing to everyone’s side. Has it occurred to you, when you stick your nose into other people’s business, that there might be consequences?”

  The heat in her words could have run Le Panier’s ovens for a month.

  I stiffened my spine. “I hope so,” I said. “Otherwise, what would be the point?”

  Taya’s blue eyes flared. Then she made a half-pirouette and left as quickly as she’d come.

  Leaving me feeling like a burnt-out Christmas bulb.

  Thank God for double espresso.

  Fifteen

  Back in the Merc, my hands still shaking from Taya’s outburst, I got ready to open. When Tracy and Lou Mary arrived, I retreated to the office to start the procedures manual I’d told Adam I was working on last night.

  Why hadn’t I thought of creating one before? Because we hadn’t needed one, because I never took a break. I worked six days a week, seven in the height of summer. Wherever Adam was taking me for our honeymoon, I could hardly wait.

  I finished the first draft and my latte at the same time, and printed out a copy.

  “Tell me what you think,” I told my staff a few minutes later, as I set the draft on the counter. “What else would you need to know when I’m not here?”

  “I don’t even want to think about that,” Tracy said. Today the Queen of Cheap Chic wore all black, from knee-high boots to skirt to a cashmere turtleneck, a wide red leather belt wrapped around her waist. She noticed me notice and hooked a thumb in the belt. “Five dollars.”

  My eyes widened. “I should hire you to organize my closet. You’ve got three times the clothes I do in a house half the size.”

  “It’s all in the accessories.”

  “Don’t you worry one bit,” Lou Mary broke in. “January is slow. We’ve already made a plan. In between customers, I’ll wash every shelf and dust every jar in the place, while Tracy makes truffles for Valentine’s Day.”

  “Truffles. I’m thinking three-packs for wedding favors. Gad, I am never going to get everything done.”

  I’d hired Lou Mary last summer to relieve the pressure on Fresca and me to work the shop floor. And I’d figured that hiring a second clerk would give Tracy more time for truffling, and keep her from opening her own chocolateria elsewhere in the village. The two hadn’t become instant best buddies. But I’d given them time and space to work it out, and they had, thank goodness.

  I left them poring over the list of procedures and returned to my office. Taya’s comment rattled in my brain. What consequences did she fear? Or had she been threatening me? Greg had gone pretty far out on a limb in the name of old friendship. Everyone deserves a second chance, he’d said.

  I opened the Spreadsheet, and zeroed in on TOD—the time of death. Sometime between noon Sunday, as the unfinished cookies showed, and noon Monday, when Greg found her.

  That he’d found her was another reason I couldn’t believe him to be the killer. But Bello had his reasons to suspect Greg. I outlined them: Someone—possibly Merrily, possibly a bank employee—had shorted the cash in the Building Supply’s deposit after Merrily and Cary the bookkeeper had each counted it. A box full of cash was found in her desk drawer, although as far as I knew, she hadn’t been back to work since she left with the deposit.

  Which meant the missing cash wasn’t in her stash—though there was no way to prove that.

  All circumstantial.

  But the kicker was the trust Greg had placed in her.

  I leaned back in my chair. I was about to hand Tracy and Lou Mary the keys to the kingdom, the secret codes, all the details that make this place run. True, my mother would stop in regularly, and most customers pay by credit card, but I did not question their loyalty and honesty.

  Famous last words?

  Or was it better, as my mother said, to die trusting than to live by suspicion?

  I stretched out my legs and crossed one foot over the other, fiddling with my fused glass heart pendant. It had been a gift from Adam last Valentine’s Day, and I wore it often.

  How would I feel if I were Greg Taylor, and an old friend betrayed my trust? A trust no one else thought she deserved?

  I’d be furious. Devastated. Angry enough to kill?

  Maybe, I had to admit, and that thought made me shudder.

  I sat forward. But only if Greg had had reason to suspect her before Monday morning, when the deposit turned up short. And only if she’d still been alive that morning. If he tracked her down and killed her. But he had to have known at that point that he’d be the number-one suspect. He might have a temper, he might be too trusting, but he wasn’t stupid.

  Anyway, Greg hadn’t left the Building Supply until late Monday morning, after the detectives finished their initial investigation. When he went searching and found her in the old schoolhouse. Bello believed he’d known where to find her because that’s where he’d killed her.

  Greg had called it her secret place, her refuge. That made sense.

  What I knew about rigor mortis and lividity came from TV cop shows, and wouldn’t fill the foil cup a truffle comes in. But I felt sure, from the way Merrily lay on the schoolhouse floor, that she’d been dead long before Greg found her.

  I couldn’t help Greg prove his whereabouts to Bello—he’d have to do that himself.

  Was there a chance Walt or Taya had heard or seen something at the schoolhouse? Lights on the road, lights flickering through the trees, a shout. Or a shot—though I
hadn’t seen blood, I couldn’t rule that out. Anything that alerted them to trouble?

  But after Walt’s reaction in the barn and Taya’s angry shouts in the bakery, I wasn’t sure they wanted justice for her.

  Oh, no. No, Erin, don’t even think that.

  Too late. Walt certainly had the size and strength to kill his daughter. What about Taya? Merrily had been a few inches taller and quite a few pounds heavier than her mother. But maybe murder was like those stories of superhuman strength, where a tiny woman lifts up a car so her toddler can crawl out.

  Where had they been during the murder window? I dashed downstairs.

  “Lou Mary, do you know if the Thorntons were open on Sunday?” Most downtown merchants keep longer hours during the holidays. Though I’d been home baking cookies, the Merc had opened Sunday from noon to five.

  She pursed her coral lips, remembering, then drew her leopard print glasses from her nest of pale red hair. She peered at me, one arthritic finger raised. “Now that you mention it, no, I don’t think so. A woman asked about them—she’d seen some German glass ornaments there a few weeks ago and wanted to get a couple. A Christmas shop closing on Sundays in December seems odd, doesn’t it?”

  It did, indeed. But odd seemed to be the watchword of this case.

  And I knew they hadn’t opened Monday, though that was according to schedule. But they hadn’t been home when Greg arrived, or when I got there. So where were they Sunday and Monday?

  If my goal was to ask the questions Bello would overlook, then I’d leave it to him to track down their comings and goings. Besides, I didn’t have the time. Murder is inconsiderate that way.

  “Erin, Adam’s on the line.” Tracy handed me the shop phone. Adam knows I can’t answer my cell when I’m on the shop floor, so if he wants to reach me, the shop line’s the best option.

  “Hey, good-lookin,’” I said. “What you got cookin’?”

  “Sorry, little darlin.’ Hope this isn’t too unromantic, but I’m going to have to meet you in Pondera this afternoon. I forgot—county park and rec board meeting at three.”

  “That’s okay.” Our appointment was at two. “I’ll figure out a way for you to make it up to me.”

  He laughed. “I’ll plan on it.”

  ∞

  I called the Bayside Grille for takeout—Candy’s story about the online trashing had gotten my mouth watering for a Reuben. When I dashed across the street a few minutes later to fetch it, the place was packed and I barely knew a soul. Good. Come January, there’d be no wait and I’d know someone at every table. Also good, but in a different way.

  “If you liked your lunch,” I said to the woman ahead of me at the register, “you might say so online.”

  “Oh, good idea,” she replied.

  “That was you,” Ray said when it was my turn to pay. “Lunch is on the house. I’ve gotten seventeen four- and five-star reviews in less than twenty-four hours.”

  “Not me. Thank Candy Divine,” I said, and Ray’s eyebrows rose. “Miss Pink Sugar takes injustice to heart. Hey, a quick question.” I told him about the remorseful thief, and our theory that she worked in a restaurant and lived with her mom.

  He frowned, thinking. “Not unless it was a boy. We’ve got a weekend dishwasher, sixteen, messy home life. I make a point of sending extra food home with him.”

  A possibility, but the handwriting looked girlish. Was that a false assumption? I supposed the writer could have disguised their handwriting.

  Back in the Merc, I ate at my desk while going over invoices and other bills. Not easy, with a hot, gooey sandwich, but I managed. We’d finish the year well in the black, thank goodness, and even start to build a cushion. It hadn’t been smooth, and it hadn’t always been fun, but running the Merc was in my blood.

  As I clicked off the computer and got ready to meet my love, my cell phone rang—a call from the Building Supply.

  “Erin, hi. Greg Taylor calling.” He hesitated, and when he continued, he sounded less assured. “Need a favor. We’ve brought in a forensic accountant to re-create the last few months of records. But he’s hitting a wall.”

  “A firewall?” I said. “You can’t break through without a series of high-level passwords.”

  “Right. Isn’t that part of Jason’s background? Do you have his cell? I called his office, but the line goes to voice mail.”

  “Yeah. He worked in computer security in San Francisco.” Before he and Chiara moved to Jewel Bay to raise Landon in her hometown. He’d expanded into system setup and web design because in a small town, you can’t afford to specialize. “I’ll text you the number. So, are you saying you don’t know how much money is missing?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. Looks like she falsified some records, created some phony accounts.”

  “Wow. Merrily did all that? And locked the files to hide her tracks?”

  “That’s Detective Bello’s theory. One of them, anyway. He also seems convinced that I tumbled to it and snapped. He grilled every employee about my behavior and my temper. Had half the staff in tears. Even Lenhardt was miffed.”

  Lenhardt? Oh, right—Cary, the bookkeeper. “Does that mean the bank staff is in the clear?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “But I’m the one who hired her. There’s been a hardware store in Jewel Bay since before there was a Jewel Bay, and I put it all at risk.” His voice thinned and shook. “I can’t believe this. How could she? How could she?”

  My thoughts exactly.

  Sixteen

  Adam stood outside the courthouse sporting a big grin.

  As we climbed the stairs to the clerk’s office, all thoughts of firewalls and murder and motherless girls slipped away, replaced by anticipation. By joy. Happiness. Nervousness. From the way Adam squeezed my hand, I knew he felt it, too.

  Gratitude. Love. So much emotion swirling inside me, my skin could hardly contain it.

  We’d filled out the application online and now presented our IDs, paid the fee, and signed in all the right places. Got the paperwork our officiant and witnesses would need. Sealed the deal with a kiss, accepted the deputy clerk’s best wishes, and headed out.

  On the front steps, Adam kissed me again, a sweet, slow promise, before dashing off to his meeting.

  As long as I was in Pondera, I decided to follow another line of thought. A wild hare, but those can be the most inspiring. I swung by the newspaper office and asked to see their archives. A twenty-something with a sapphire stud in one nostril set me up in front of a computer that provided access all the way back to 1980. That was decades more than the online archive, and plenty for my snoopful purposes.

  The embezzlement from Beckman Timber and the charges against Merrily Thornton and Cliff Grimes had been big news for weeks. Some of the story I knew. Other details surprised me. Merrily had gotten the summer job as Cliff’s office assistant not through her father’s connections in the timber industry, as I’d assumed, but through Taya’s friendship with Sally. Still, the aftermath must have left them both feeling betrayed.

  Taya was a good ten years older than Sally, and they weren’t neighbors. But unlikely friendships sometimes pop up in small towns.

  Cliff Grimes had been away on a fishing trip when Sally opened the mail, found a tax lien, and called a CPA. Then she’d called the law. Cliff heard the news on the TV when he stopped at a favorite watering hole on his way home. He split for the border, but the bartender called the sheriff, and poor Cliff never saw Canada again.

  Another article detailed the escape plan investigators pieced together. He’d been working on it for a while. It involved fast cars, fast boats, and secret accounts in banks on faraway islands.

  It did not involve Merrily Thornton.

  The whole business deflated my trial balloon theory that Walt and Taya thought she’d seduced Cliff and stolen from his wife. Discovering that their sweet-faced teenager was a manipulative gold-digger might have justified their anger and sense of betrayal.

 
; What if he’d seduced her and planned to split? Talk about slimy.

  It didn’t help me understand her parents’ reaction. But it might explain why Merrily had never spoken out against him.

  I sipped the double latte I’d picked up on the way. It tasted thin, almost burned, unlike the espresso at Le Panier. At the time of Cliff’s trial, about 75 percent of the missing money had been located. He claimed Merrily had taken the rest, but investigators could never find a trail between her and any of the stolen funds.

  If she’d spent it on the usual teenage toys, they’d have been found and sold to pay restitution.

  Oh, now that was a thought. Had restitution been ordered? Had she paid it? Questions for Brad Larson.

  Another thought made me frown. What if she’d spent the money on drugs? Surely not. Especially when she got pregnant.

  I kept reading. Prosecutors had offered Merrily a reduced sentence in exchange for her cooperation. She declined, though the judge had handed down only the minimum sentence anyway.

  My guess was she’d internalized her parents’ lessons about shame too deeply. Testifying against Grimes would be ratting, blaming someone else for your own actions—even though he’d been a forty-year-old man stealing from his wife and she’d been an eighteen-year-old girl. And if she were pregnant, she might have taken the high road, choosing not to criticize her child’s father.

  Alongside the article on Merrily’s guilty plea and sentence ran a sidebar on the phenomenon of female embezzlers. Think you see a pattern? the article asked. You do. Ten of the twelve embezzlement cases we’ve reported on in the last three years involved middle-aged women with no criminal records, in positions of trust, working for small, family-owned businesses. Investigators say these employees work hard, rarely taking time off. They make themselves indispensable, which makes them less suspect—but many use the extra hours to rationalize dipping their hand in the till.

  I shivered. That echoed what Bello had said. Nearly every business in Jewel Bay could be described as small and family-owned. How many of us were vulnerable? A quick mental run down Front Street told me that the Thorntons’ antique shop might be the one operation with no outside employees.