As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles Page 15

  Her jaw quivered and I felt like a total rat. “You mean that baby.”

  “You knew? You knew about Ashley?”

  “Not at first. Years later. After Cliff died, the prison sent me his things. We were divorced, but I was listed as his outside contact, since our daughter was a minor. What possessed me, I don’t know, but I read the legal papers he’d saved.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in her black-and-white tunic. “The pre-sentence report was—illuminating.”

  “In what way?”

  “The investigator recommended the stiffest sentence possible, because of the position of trust he’d occupied as my husband, the amount of money taken, and his refusal to admit his guilt, despite all the evidence. And there was something else.” She swallowed hard. “The same investigator had been involved in Merrily Thornton’s case and it was his opinion that Cliff had taken advantage of her. In the worst way. At least, that’s how I read it. That’s why she got such a light sentence.”

  “Oh, Sally. I’m so sorry.” What a crappy way to learn a crappy thing—that her husband had fathered a teenager’s baby. No wonder Sally was bitter.

  “I threw the papers in the fireplace.”

  I couldn’t blame her. “I don’t know if it’s any consolation, but Merrily adored Ashley. So does her husband.”

  Her eyes softened and she gave me a weak smile, then turned and disappeared into her shop.

  I felt like we’d made some peace, Sally and I. And that was a good thing.

  Nineteen

  Thanks, Lou Mary.” I wrapped my fingers around the keys she handed me, as eager to get going as any sixteen-year-old borrowing Mom’s car on a Saturday night.

  “You kids,” she said. “You’re lost without your phones.”

  After a consult with Jason, who thought we might be able to salvage the thing, I’d put off running to Pondera for a new one. But Lou Mary had bought the excuse. I owed her.

  As I adjusted the seat and mirrors in the small SUV, I felt a twinge of regret over bringing up the subject of Ashley Larson with Sally. My mother would be furious.

  Of course, she’d be even more irritated that I’d fibbed to Lou Mary to borrow her car. Fingers crossed that we could keep that a secret.

  To solve the mystery of Merrily Thornton’s death, I needed more details about her life. I drove up the Stage Road to Granny G’s house, hoping to catch Brad Larson. Hers was the third in a row of older cottages that had always looked so sweet, so charming. But as I approached, my heart sped up. What if his dark pickup was the one that had run me off the road? What if I’d dismissed him as a suspect too soon, not yet aware of some secret resentment? What if he’d been so outraged by her leaving him, at her leaving home and family and business to come back to Jewel Bay for—what? Did he think she’d used him to raise Ashley, and now sought revenge?

  But if he’d been that angry, wouldn’t he have acted sooner? Unless her return to her childhood home had been the last straw.

  My mouth went dry. So if it’s his truck, don’t stop, I told myself, gripping the steering wheel so tight my hands hurt. But how would I know?

  I would know.

  I slowed the car. Like the other houses in this stretch, Granny G’s had no garage.

  And no pickup parked in the narrow drive.

  My hands loosened their grip. My mouth went dry. I stopped the car and forced myself to breathe slowly. The living room curtains were open, the basket I’d left on the porch gone. Someone had shoveled the steps and walkway, though not the drive. In last night’s new snow, tire tracks backed out, but once the rig had reached the Stage Road, I couldn’t see which way it had gone.

  I felt a little foolish as I continued driving up the curvy, snow-packed road. I’d jacked myself up for nothing, letting questions about Brad Larson rattle around in my head until they’d knocked my common sense loose.

  And I still needed information.

  Tracy had said Holly Muir was taking a few days off to “deal with” her sister’s death. What did that mean, exactly? Write an obituary and a eulegy? Call out-of-town relatives?

  Sit home and warm herself with memories?

  I’d been to the Muirs’ house once, fetching Landon from a birthday party last spring. No phone meant no map and Lou Mary’s car had no GPS, but I thought I could find the place.

  A few miles up the highway, my heart sped up. This time, though, I knew why. Completely natural to feel anxious at the scene of one’s own near-tragedy.

  The only signs of any trouble were the bent reflector pole, and the muddy ruts in the ditch where I’d gone in, and where the tow truck had pulled out my once-trusty Subaru. I was going to miss that car.

  A mile later, I turned onto a road leading to Shining Waters, an older development of two- and three-acre parcels, hilly and heavily wooded, clustered around pot-hole ponds left by giant boulders an ice age or two ago. This time of year, you could actually see the houses, unlike in summer, when thick brush and foliage obscured them.

  At the first fork, I made a right, staying right past two more narrow roads, then left. The gravel roads were almost nicer in winter thanks to snow filling the ruts and plows scraping them smooth.

  A red roof glinted through the lodgepole pine. One more house.

  I slowed at the next drive and was about to turn in when a dark pickup emerged from behind a giant snow bank. I gasped before spotting Brad Larson at the wheel. I let out my breath, rolled down the window, and stuck out my hand.

  But either he didn’t recognize me, or he wasn’t in a chatty mood. The truck turned and roared down the hill. I continued on.

  Holly Thornton Muir stood in front of her open garage, staring through the trees to the tiny pond and the mountains beyond. I parked in the drive behind a small white SUV, its hatch open. Bags of groceries filled the back end.

  She whipped her head around, her black-gloved hands rising as if to ward off another visitor. Another intruder.

  I got out, careful of my ankle. Not too bad—the remedies were working. “So cold, and so pretty.”

  “I heard you went off the road. You okay?”

  “Stiff and sore, but alive. Thanks. I wanted to check on you. Losing a sister …” Heat flooded my chest at the thought, and my breath stopped for a moment. “If something happened to Chiara, I’d be a wreck.”

  “I am a wreck,” Holly said, wrapping her arms around herself. “Not working doesn’t help. I’ll be back in the clinic tomorrow.”

  “At least you did your part, trying to get Merrily and your parents back together.”

  She let her arms drop, making a raspy sound. “Merrily was never the problem. She tried for years, but my parents couldn’t forgive her.”

  “For letting herself be used?”

  Holly snapped her head toward me. “How did you know? Who told you?”

  “Not hard to figure out. Merrily was good with numbers and details, but how could she have gotten access to all the accounts the stolen money came from? And she wouldn’t have had any reason to lie for Cliff Grimes. So she had to have had another motive.” To protect her unborn daughter.

  Holly crossed her arms again, her mouth a line, eyes straight ahead. “You know how big sisters are.”

  “Was that Brad Larson I saw leaving?”

  “He was waiting for me when I got home. He’s upset that the sheriff won’t tell him when they’ll release the body, so he can schedule a service.”

  “He seems like a nice guy.” I gestured toward her groceries. “Sorry. I’d help if I could, but my ankle’s kinda messed up.”

  “It’s okay, thanks. Brad is nice,” she said, though from her tone, I couldn’t tell whether she appreciated that trait or found it annoying. “That’s why my family baffles him. Why won’t my parents see him, why couldn’t I get them to forgive her while she was still alive, blah blah blah. As if it was all my fault.”

  Ah, so there was a hint of her mother’s bitterness in Holly after all. Not surprising, after growing up with Taya.
I leaned against my borrowed car.

  “Did you know back then that Merrily went to prison pregnant?”

  “No. Not until after she was out and married. I took an internship in Billings, not knowing she’d stayed there. She and Ashley came into the clinic with a kitten they’d found. We couldn’t save it—it had feline leukemia—and Ashley cried and cried.”

  “How old was she? That had to have been a shock. To you, I mean.”

  “Not quite six. Yeah, but I understood why Merrily kept the baby a secret,” Holly said, her tone pensive.

  “I’ve been wondering. What about Ashley? Was she born in prison?”

  “The prison system’s quite enlightened about that. They let the women go to the hospital for births, and newborns can stay with their mothers up to six months. Merrily was about to be released when she had the baby—she served less than a year on a two-year sentence—so Ashley never had to go into foster care.”

  The explanation was a relief. “Brad says she wants to be a vet. Inspired by you?”

  “Brad’s a dweeb, but he’s been a good father.”

  Thank God for dweebs. “What does Ashley know about the feud between her mom and her grandparents?”

  “I don’t know. I never thought it my place to tell her.” Holly gazed off into the distance. “For a tiny woman, my mother is one big contradiction. Adored every five-year-old she ever taught, and refused to acknowledge her own flesh and blood.”

  Part of becoming an adult is realizing that the adults you knew when you were a kid were as flawed and human as you are now. And like Taya Thornton, some are contradictory in ways they don’t see.

  “I get that Merrily stealing from Sally mortified your folks. But surely, once they knew the real reason she kept quiet, they would have understood. She wasn’t the first girl to keep a pregnancy to herself as long as she could.”

  “There was more to it than that.” Holly’s voice rose, thin, strained.

  Meaning, who the father was. But they had known, eventually. Or figured it out.

  Holly’s eyes had gone wide and wild, and I feared she was on the verge of panic. I switched gears. “Well, thank goodness you two reconnected. And that Ashley got to know you.”

  Her breath grew rapid. “I only wish they’d have been willing to talk. For us all to talk. To explain. It was such a confusing time. I never should have …”

  But instead of telling me what she never should have done, Holly marched to the back of her car. Grabbed her bags and rushed inside without saying goodbye.

  What had I said? What regret had I triggered?

  ∞

  On the way back to town, I must have seen half a dozen dark pickups. Plus three more in the Building Supply parking lot. They popped up everywhere, like mushrooms after rain.

  I found Jason in the office with the forensic accountant.

  “You learn something new on every investigation,” the man was saying. “The days when an embezzler could rely on the judicious use of Wite-Out are gone. I’ll admit, I don’t get why an employer hires someone with a financial felony in their background, no matter how good or sympathetic their excuse. Repeat offenses are just too common.”

  “Greg knew her,” I said from the doorway. “He believed it was a one-time thing.” If it had been a thing at all, but I wasn’t going to share my doubts. This guy wouldn’t believe me.

  “That’s what they want you to think. ‘Bad luck, my ex ran off with the rent, I needed the cash to tide me over, I’d have paid it back when I got back on my feet.’ BS like that.” He slipped a note pad and calculator into his briefcase and snapped it shut.

  That pattern everyone kept talking about. But Merrily had never made excuses for herself. When she came job hunting at the Merc, she’d been straightforward, telling me she’d been convicted of embezzlement twenty years earlier but that I wouldn’t regret hiring her.

  “I suppose you’ll have to look at her daughter’s finances, to see if that’s where she put the money,” I said.

  He shook his head. “That’s up to the cops. But I’ve worked on a lot of embezzlement cases, and I can tell you, we never find all the money. They drive it, they eat and drink it, they piddle it away.”

  As I’d read. But not being able to find the money might also mean Merrily hadn’t taken it.

  “So, I’m off to the bank. Good to work with you—you know your stuff.” He shook Jason’s hand, nodded at me, and left.

  “The bank?” I perched on the corner of the desk, easing my weight off my sore ankle.

  Jason leaned back in Cary’s chair, hands clasped behind his head. “Looks like she was making payments to suppliers who didn’t exist, creating false commercial customer accounts to explain orders for products that were never actually ordered or sold.”

  My heart sank.

  “Next step is to track down where those payments actually went,” he continued. “Maybe they can get some of it back.”

  “What about the missing cash? Was that a pattern, too?”

  “A little bit here, a little bit there.”

  In retail, shortages happen. You give a customer ten bucks more in change than you should have, and they don’t notice. (They always notice if you short them.) You miscount the till. You ring up a sale as credit instead of cash, and things don’t balance.

  And from time to time, someone has sticky fingers.

  Oh, Merrily. Was I that wrong about you?

  ∞

  Rolling River Farm showed none of its magic today, the road barely distinguishable from the fields, under a sky as bleak as the land. But I thought the place held the secret to Merrily’s death, and to the crimes of the past.

  Near the turnoff to the Thorntons’ house and barn, a black cow poked her nose at the base of a fencepost, in search of something fresh and green. I drove on and parked alongside the schoolhouse.

  Last night’s snow had filled in all the footprints. Three days since the body had been found, and the crime scene tape was down. Nothing hinted at death or danger.

  Nothing, except the cold and the quiet. And the pounding in my chest as I stood beside my borrowed car.

  A single fawn had crossed the yard since the snow stopped, and I marveled at the tiny, heart-shaped hoof prints. Whitetails are said to spend most of their lives within one mile of their birthplace. A few humans do the same—I’d gone to school with the Easter sisters, Bunny and Polly, who’d married local men and stayed put. They seemed content. Others take different paths. My mother had dropped out of college and left the Sonoma Valley to travel, then met my father in Italy and, as she says, followed him home like a love-sick puppy. He’d always believed himself meant to settle in Jewel Bay, and that decided the matter of place for her.

  The fawn’s companions had beaten a path around the side of the schoolhouse and into the woodland. Spruce and fir branches bent under the weight of snow. The birches extended their gnarled white fingers, knuckles black, stark against the flat, gray sky.

  My sister, brother, and I had each created a mix-and-match of our parents’ routes, leaving but returning, though whether Nick would stay was anybody’s guess.

  If Merrily Thornton hadn’t found herself in prison in Billings, if she hadn’t found a father for Ashley there, would she have come back to Jewel Bay to raise her daughter? Like her sister, Holly, who’d brought a husband home from veterinary school.

  I crossed behind the schoolhouse and reached the far side, not sure what I was hoping to see. The snow was extra deep, and the deer had not yet blazed a trail back here. Thankful for my snow boots, I ignored the twinge in my ankle and picked my way through the fluffy stuff, arms out like airplane wings. From here, I caught a glimpse of the Thorntons’ big house and the edge of the barn. The cow had moseyed on. It was past noon, but thick clouds kept the sunlight away, and it felt much later. The Christmas lights in the windows of the house must have been on a sensor, the tiny white fairy lights coming to life as I watched.

  I am not sure whether I heard the c
rying first, or sensed the presence of a person in pain. I peered around the front corner of the schoolhouse. The same sensors must have been at work here, too, because the white lights that trimmed the front windows had switched themselves on while I was prowling around.

  And in one of the white wooden rockers on the wide front porch sat Taya Thornton in her fur-trimmed parka, rocking and sobbing, rocking and sobbing.

  I knocked lightly on the railing as I rounded the corner, not wanting to frighten her. “Taya? Mrs. Thornton?” I called.

  Her head jerked up and snapped toward me. “Erin, you startled me. What are you doing here?”

  She must have walked down from the big house, meaning my car would have been out of sight. I climbed the steps and swept a dusting of snow off the seat of the other rocker, then sat. “Passing by. I thought I’d stop to look around. It’s a special place.”

  “Even as teenagers, the girls preferred the schoolhouse to the rec room in the house. They’d hang out with their friends all hours of the night, blasting music from their boom boxes. We never worried, with them so close to home.” The memory softened her features, reminding me of the teacher I’d loved.

  “So you came here to remember.”

  She nodded. “Merrily was named for Christmas, of course, but the name suited her as a child. She was pure joy. And when Holly came along, Merrily adored her. Tucked her in the stroller and pushed her around the house. She’d have done anything for her little sister. I thought we were the perfect family.”

  As if there were such a thing.

  “God gets you for that kind of thinking,” she said, her tone taking on an edge. “He smacks you down for your pride. Destroys what you thought you had.”

  Had that been how she’d seen it when Merrily was charged? Had she felt betrayed, or had the sense that Merrily’s crimes were crimes against her crept up over time?