Deadly Traditions, page 11
As they filed out of the designated stage area, Patty’s fingers pinched at Gwen’s arm, tugging her sweater.
“I didn’t see her. She’s not here,” Patty hissed in Gwen’s ear. The scent of mentholated cherry cough drops accompanied her harsh whisper.
Gwen ran a hand over her arm, smoothing down the sleeve of her sweater. “Who’s not here?”
“Carla!”
Several people looked up at Patty’s exclamation. When they saw that it was just Patty, most turned back to their conversations.
Gwen wanted to turn away too, wanted to bask in the admiration of the audience. She wanted to go back to her warm cozy living room, drink the single glass of wine she allowed herself in the evenings, and read a chapter of her Hercule Poirot book before bed.
But a glance at Patty’s insistent face told her that she would have no peace until Patty was satisfied. Patty would pluck at her sleeve, call her phone, knock on her door. It was easier to just deal with her now.
“She’s probably asleep in bed, forgot what day it is.” Gwen knew her half-hearted protest would go nowhere.
“We have to check on her. What if she fell?” Patty invoked the horror that drove single seniors to live in places like Piney Grove. To fall, alone, and lie there unheard and unhelped. To end that way. Gwen shuddered.
“Fine. We can go knock on her door again.” Gwen let herself be led to the coats and out the door.
The snow had dwindled to a few sparse flakes here and there, but the temperature had dropped. Biting cold seared every inch of unprotected skin. The night wasn’t fit for man or beast, and Gwen wished once again that she was still in San Diego.
The snow on the ground had crusted over in the chill. Every footstep crunched and crackled. It was slippery, and Gwen hoped those years of martial arts courses Phillip had insisted she take would help her fall well if she had to fall.
She remembered the concern on Phillip’s smooth, handsome face after a series of break-ins in the parking lot of the opera’s rehearsal space had turned into muggings. She could still taste the piquancy of the bite of pecorino romano cheese she’d popped in her mouth a moment before he announced that she would be taking martial arts. She hadn’t needed the martial arts to protect herself from any muggers, and it had done nothing to protect her from Phillip’s own son stealing her expected future. There wasn’t a martial art for that.
Patty held Gwen’s arm as they picked their way back down the path to the far secluded corner of Piney Grove. For once the little woman was quiet, when Gwen wouldn’t have minded a little distracting chatter.
When they reached the door, Patty stepped forward and rapped on it, her rhythm an unconscious imitation of Marcia. She waited a few seconds before knocking again.
An icy wind rushed through the branches of the spruce in the yard, scattering snow and pelting Gwen’s face with stinging ice crystals. The temperature had dropped so low that she couldn’t smell pine any more, just cold.
She stomped her feet, trying to regain sensation. The smooth sole of her boot slid on the slick pavement, sending a shock of fear up her spine. A long-buried instinct made her bend her knees, which saved her from falling.
Patty turned to her with a defeated expression on her round face. “She’s not answering.”
The fear in Gwen’s gut heated into anger, and she pushed forward, brushing past Patty. Gwen banged on the door with the flats of both fists, pounding out a demanding crescendo.
A clanging noise inside made her stop. She leaned in and listened.
“Carla? Are you ok?” she called in her ringing voice.
No reply.
“Carla? Did you fall?”
Still no reply.
“Hang on, we’ll go get help. The manager has a key.”
A muffled voice from inside yelled, “No! I’m fine. Go away.”
A gust of wind howled down the commons and shushed through the spruce trees, forcing clumps of snow out of the branches. Nature’s snowballs hit the ground in a drumbeat accompaniment to the singing wind.
Patty hunched her shoulders and gave Gwen a helpless look. “I guess she didn’t want to hear the choir. We should go.”
She turned to leave but Gwen put a hand on her shoulder. “Something is wrong. I can hear it.”
Snow pelted her face as Patty turned watery blue eyes up to her. “How can you hear anything over this storm?”
“Training. I didn’t spend an entire career training my ear for nothing. We need the manager.”
“Why?”
“That wasn’t Carla.”
All the color drained out of Patty’s face, making her look like an under-baked sugar cookie. “It wasn’t?” she whispered.
Gwen shook her head. “Someone else is in there, and they don’t want us to know. We have to help her.”
“Should we go for the manager?”
“You go, and try to hurry. I’ll keep watch here.”
Patty gave a doubtful look to the snowy common, then nodded her head twice. “Wish me luck.”
As soon as Patty had gone, Gwen crouched down by the front door and felt around on the ground. The pavement was gritty with salt, but she soon found what she was looking for.
The welcome mat was frozen to the cement. Gwen pushed and pulled at it. It didn’t move. She took off a glove so she could use her nails to try to pry up a corner. She managed to tear a fingernail to the quick, but the rug didn’t budge. She stood up and kicked at the rug in frustration.
Her finger throbbed where the nailbed was exposed. She put it in her mouth for a second. The taste of blood only fueled her determination. She put her glove back on.
The wind howled some more, and she thought she heard voices inside Carla’s place. One voice sounded angry. One scared.
Gwen closed her eyes, filled her lungs, and focused on her breath. There had to be something she could do. After a moment she opened her eyes again. Of course. Carla wouldn’t put a spare key under the mat, not when the mat would freeze to the ground all winter. She probably had one of those fake rocks to hide her key inside.
Gwen crouched down again and started feeling around in the dormant flower bed next to the door. She prodded each mound of snow. The first two were a dead plant and a garden gnome, but the third surprised her.
A pile of slick paper rectangles with pictures of pizza and a hole on one end had been dropped in the garden. The blizzard had covered it like it covered everything else in its cold implacable embrace.
She pulled the doorhanger she’d found on her own door out of her pocket. It was the same.
She prodded at another pile of snow and found the fake rock she’d hoped for. A house key, the same brand and style as her own, lay cradled in the little plastic contraption.
Clutching in the key in her hand, Gwen stood. She took a long look over her shoulder, checking the commons for help. No one was there yet.
She drew herself up to her full height and repeated the breathing exercise that had steeled her for her stage entrance on many an opening night. In, hold, count, out. It was now or never.
Gwen slid the key into the lock and slowly turned it. The bolt slid back. She waited for a reaction from inside. Nothing.
It was time for her entrance. She pressed the handle down, swung the door open, and slipped inside. A flurry of snow gusted in behind her like confetti.
The layout of the room was the same as Gwen’s, with the living room in front, flowing into a dining area and kitchen. Gwen would have expected tie-dye and psychedelic décor, but the couch was an ordinary green and brown plaid and the coffee table dark brown with built-in shelves underneath. A faint sweetness in the air, reminiscent of fresh baked brownies, wrestled with the stink of sweat and fear.
Two shocked faces whipped around and stared at her from the dining area. Carla was tied to a chair. A pile of salt and pepper hair was puddled on the floor by her feet. The younger man sitting across from her held a pair of kitchen shears in one hand and a skein of Carla’s hair in the other.
The man looked to be about 50, too old for the acne that nested on his cheeks and forehead. He had dark circles under his eyes, and the lines around his mouth suggested a habitual bitter frown. He wore heavy boots, dark pants with fraying cuffs, and a faded sweatshirt.
Carla had a bright red streak of blood on her ear. The hair on one side of her head had been shorn off in choppy patches. In one spot there was a two-inch tuft of hair while in another the shears had been so close to the scalp they’d nicked the skin. She wore her usual tunic and broom skirt. Her feet were bare, and she clenched and unclenched the toes in a continuous rhythm.
For one long moment, everyone stared at each other. A fresh blast of arctic wind on her back shook Gwen out of her silence.
“Let her go!”
“Chris, it’s over,” Carla said, her low voice the whiskey rumble Gwen remembered.
Chris’s lip curled into a sneer. “Over? Just because some old lady arrived? It’s not over until I say it’s over.”
“Chris, be reasonable.”
Gwen scanned the room, looking for anything she might use to take Chris by surprise, get the shears away from him.
“Reasonable? You stole my inheritance, and I want it back!”
“I didn’t steal anything. Keith was my husband.”
“He was my father! And he left me nothing. All those years, working for him, waiting for him to get out of the way so I could turn the business into something real. And for what?”
“We thought you liked working with your father. And I know he enjoyed working with you. Didn’t you enjoy it?”
“Don’t pretend you know anything about my feelings. You’re not my mother,” Chris snapped.
The only thing in reach was a light green throw pillow with a purple peace sign embroidered on it. Gwen put a hand on it, taking a slow step forward. Chris didn’t seem to notice her movement. She would have to choose her moment. She took another step forward.
Carla tried again to talk sense to her stepson. Instead of calming down, his face reddened and he yanked on her hair and cut another hank off with the shears.
Carla was running out of hair. Gwen worried about what Chris would do when that happened.
He raised the shears again, a furious glint in his eye.
Gwen sprang forward and swatted at the shears with her pillow. The shears clattered to the floor. Chris moved to retrieve them.
Carla kicked out and grabbed the shears with her toes. She yanked them under the chair. Gwen hit him in the face with the pillow.
The distraction worked and he forgot about the shears, turning on Gwen instead. He rushed at her, arms out. She ducked to one side, put a leg out, and used his own momentum to flip him onto the floor.
Momentarily stunned, Chris gaped up at her. Then he growled and rolled over to get up to his feet.
Gwen couldn’t let him have another shot at her. She sat on his back, hard, and yanked one of his arms backward.
He cussed at her and squirmed around trying to throw her off. If she could only remember the exact hold that would keep him down.
Chris bucked, pulling his arm out of her grasp. He was going to get up. Cold panic clawed at her.
She surged forward, trying to get any kind of hold on him at all, but he was too strong. She was in trouble. The self-defense classes hadn’t been enough.
There was nothing for it. Only one other thing she knew how to do.
Gwen sang.
She let out a high C, mere inches from his head. Chris scrambled to cover his ears. Gwen filled her lungs again and sang like it was opening night, a shattering high note that reverberated around the room.
On the floor under her, Chris covered his ears and tried to pull into himself like a turtle into its shell.
When she let off her high note, applause sounded from the open front door. Patty was back. She clapped while the manager and a uniformed police officer rushed into the room to take charge.
Patty, Gwen, and Carla sat around Carla’s kitchen table. Carla had made a pot of watery Minnesota style coffee and insisted they stay and eat a brownie with her. The heater was working overtime to dispel the cold that Gwen had brought in when she left the front door open.
Carla had swept up her shorn hair and dumped it unceremoniously into the kitchen trash can. Gwen wasn’t sure she could have done the same thing, at least not so calmly, if it had been her own long red tresses that were lost.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Carla said again.
“Please, it was nothing.” Gwen took a sip of coffee to hide her face.
“And when you hit that high note? I thought you’d break every glass in the place.” Carla chuckled.
Patty leaned forward, face inquisitive. “Is that really possible? Breaking glass just by singing a high note?”
Gwen shrugged one shoulder. “That’s more of a sideshow trick, not really the kind of thing they encourage at the opera.”
She took another sip of coffee. She hadn’t understood why everyone up north made their coffee so weak. But maybe it was so they could drink it in the evening without worrying about getting to sleep. It was barely more than lightly flavored hot water.
“Do you think he would have killed you?” Patty asked.
Gwen rolled her eyes internally at Patty’s nosy question.
“Honestly, I don’t know. If you would’ve asked me last week, I’d say of course not. But I’ve never seen him so desperate before.”
“So that’s a maybe.”
“I just feel lucky you arrived when you did,” Carla said. “But I have to ask. How did you know to come?”
“Last week you said you wouldn’t miss the caroling for the world,” Patty said. “We were in the cafeteria waiting for them to refill the salad bar. I remembered thinking it was kind of funny, because I never think of hippie types as being religious, but caroling is definitely religious. Or at least it is to me. So many songs about the Savior’s birth.”
“I’m glad you remembered. Most people hardly listen, but you do.”
Gwen blinked. Carla was right. Patty was gossipy because she listened and cared. Maybe she had misjudged the round little woman.
Carla put her hand over Gwen’s, clasping it warmly. “I’m so lucky to have friends like you. I really can’t thank you enough.”
Gwen looked in her eyes. Carla had lost half her hair and been threatened by her own stepson, but was overflowing with gratitude. Maybe the old hippie was on to something.
Gwen smiled at her and clasped her hand, then took Patty’s hand as well. “I feel like the real lucky one tonight.”
“Me too,” Patty said. “Now who wants to sing some carols?”
About Estelle Richards
Estelle Richards writes the Lisa Chance Cozy Mysteries and the March Street Cozy Mysteries. Find her online at www.EstelleRichards.com.
Silent Snickerdoodle
ELLIE BALLARD
When restaurateur and reluctant sleuth Marnie Tipton enters the Clear Springs Holiday Cookie Exchange, she expects more fierce competition than friendly exchange. But when the contest judge suddenly collapses, Marnie suspects a Grinch has come to town. Can she find the saboteur before it’s too late?
Chapter 1
The pitiful slice-and-bake discs stared up at me from their aluminum resting place while my boots printed tracks in the fresh blanket of snow. Thanks to an on-the-fritz coffee maker during breakfast service, I was, as usual, running late. The treats from Price Barn’s refrigerated section emerged from my oven only twenty minutes earlier, crisp around the edges with still-gooey centers which didn’t set in time for my departure. Despite my best attempts to ease into the turns, the inked-on designs shifted on the slippery ride over. Still, if I squinted, I could kinda sorta make out the shape of a Christmas tree or snowman.
It’s for the less fortunate, Marnie Tipton.
The reminder looped on repeat in my brain, willing me to take each step forward. In Clear Springs, sitting out the annual cookie competition — and forgoing the entry fee to be donated to the local food bank — was the pinnacle of poor manners. Every local business and wannabe Great British Bake Off champ was expected to submit something or risk being the subject of a Santa-sized scandal.
Even if that something was nothing more than a pile of goopy dough.
The food bank was Old Reliable for us Tiptons during the leaner moments of my childhood. Mom was either between jobs or making an emergency exit from an ill-fated relationship when I’d spied her flipping over couch cushions, hunting for loose change. Having a guaranteed next meal made the scary times seem a little less frightening.
So, entering was the least I could do. Plus, I’d already skipped last year’s competition to grieve Stu’s death. My one time exemption was all used up.
Strands of garland decorated Coyne Pavilion’s Doric columns with a cheery red ribbon tied around each. A banner hailing the CommUNITY Holiday Cookie Exchange! provided a threshold between your run-of-the-mill small town holiday charm into an all-out seasonal spectacle.
You would never know that the Pavilion was the same place I spent my fifteenth summer shoveling horse dung from the stalls to make some extra cash. Today it was a full-blown winter wonderland, complete with fake snow and a live nativity manned by Bill Jenkins and his two boys. But an air of competition filtered through the atmosphere that even Blake Shelton’s honky-tonk rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” couldn’t drown out.
I glided past the Rotary Club’s Giving Tree. Cutout paper tags in the shape of presents hung from the branches. Each tag contained the name and wishlist of a patient at the regional Children’s Hospital who wouldn’t be spending the holidays at home this year. I paused and plucked a few at random for The Pumphouse to sponsor and shoved them in my pocket.
