Secret Santa Murder Read online

CHAPTER 4

  “Don’t be mad, Kate. I was already in your pocket. I couldn’t fly out in front of mean Irene.”

  I draped my coat across a kitchen chair and wandered to the refrigerator, my mind on two things: Birdie’s final words to me and what I could stir up for a quick and early dinner. “She’s not mean, I’m not mad, and that was a tricky maneuver on your part.”

  “What’s a maneuver?”

  I opened my refrigerator, peered inside, and waited for inspiration. “You can quote Shakespeare but simple words like maneuver escape you?”

  “Escape me?”

  I shot a look over my shoulder at the hutch. Minette knew very well what I meant. “A maneuver is a tactic. Like when you get into my coat pocket before I put my coat on so you can pretend you didn’t break your promise to me about not flying into my coat as I’m going out the door.”

  “I understand.”

  “Weren’t you hot in there?”

  “Stupendously hot!”

  A sandwich didn’t interest me, but a baggie of sliced ham, a wedge of Gruyere, a jar of mustard, and a loaf of bread were on the top shelf of my fridge, staring back at me. I gathered them up, shut the door with my elbow, and set them on the counter. “Honestly, Irene isn’t mean. She just lacks the filter most people have, so she says harsh things.”

  I heard the flutter of wings, and half a second later, Minette was sitting crossed-legged atop my mustard jar. “That’s what mean is.”

  “Once again you have a point,” I said, opening the baggie. “How did you become so wise?”

  “I was created fifty-seven years ago.”

  “Yes, I know. I suppose that’s enough time to garner some wisdom.”

  “Kate.”

  “What?” I stopped fiddling with the plastic wrap around my cheese. Minette was watching me, piercing me with her bright emerald eyes, her pink and ivory wings beating a soft, slow rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. I’d never seen her like that. “What’s up with you? What is it?”

  “Would you like to see where I lived before?”

  “In the woods?”

  “My name is Minette Plummery of the Smithwell Forest.”

  “You’ve told me that. The woods across the street?”

  “Yes, it was my home.”

  “I know. That’s where Michael and I used to forage for blueberries.”

  “Yes, I watched you.”

  “Why?”

  “You were with Ray, and I was with Ray.”

  “That’s right. He taught us to forage. Did you watch Michael too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Should we go right now? It’s almost dark, and it’s snowing.”

  “Yes, right now. Can I get in your pocket?”

  For a moment I was speechless. Since first meeting Minette, I’d wondered about her home in the woods. Which tree had she called home? Did other fairies make their home across Birch Street? Had she been banished from those woods? Ray had once told Irene that fairies—clearly plural—lived in the woods of Smithwell. Was I about to meet them?

  “Yes, in my pocket.” I found my knit hat in the foyer closet, slipped on my coat, pocketed my car keys, and strode out the door. I carefully made my way down my long, steep driveway, willing myself not to fall. Falling at fifty wasn’t like falling at thirty. The chances of not bouncing back from a tumble increased geometrically the older one got.

  Luckily, though my lawn was dusted with snow, both my driveway and the street were still wet, not icy. I crossed Birch and stepped into the forest. Minette’s Smithwell Forest. My forest, where I hadn’t set foot since Michael’s death—almost one year ago to the day. I had walked in the woods behind my house and Emily’s, but those woods were different. They weren’t Michael’s and mine.

  “Where do I go?” I asked.

  She poked her head above my pocket. “Keep walking.”

  I moved in as straight a line as the trees allowed, leaves and balsam needles crunching under my feet. “It’s dark here. I feel funny.”

  “Don’t feel funny, Kate. It’s the beautiful forest.”

  “But I haven’t been here in so long.”

  “I know. But you should have. The moon will shine light on the snow.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I stopped and lifted my face to the sky, watching snowflakes swirl lazily downward, their dance broken by tree branches, then more branches and then, for some, the earth.

  Minette flew out of my pocket and huddled between my neck and coat collar. “It’s not far. Keep walking.”

  I walked for what seemed like two full minutes before she called for me to stop and head slowly to my left.

  “Here, Kate, here.”

  “This one?” I reached out and touched an old maple.

  “Yes, this one.”

  It was sixty or seventy feet high—maybe more, but it was hard to tell in the dark. “But where in the tree?”

  “Watch me.”

  Minette flew out from behind my collar and rose slowly up the tree, calling down, “Watch me, watch me.” I saw her at twenty feet and thirty feet, her pink wings and pale skin contrasting with the bark, but I lost her soon after.

  “I can’t see you anymore. It’s too dark.”

  Feet first, Minette descended, at first quickly and then slowly, until she touched down on my right shoulder. “My home is high up, safe in the tree.”

  “Is it a hole in the tree?”

  “Small but deep, with pine needles and bird feathers inside. It stays warm, except when the wind blows into it.”

  “Do other fairies live in these woods?”

  “Yes.”

  Again she snuggled between my coat collar and neck. “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you decide to show me your home now?”

  “You needed to see it.”

  I heaved a sigh and looked around me, turning slowly in place. We must have been smack in the middle of the woods. I saw nothing but trees ahead and behind me. It was an excellent spot for a fairy to hide.

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” I whispered.

  “I know that one, Kate.”

  “Robert Frost.”

  “Ray of the Forest read me that poem.”

  “I still miss Ray.” Ray Landry, my neighbor and the man who had sheltered Minette, had been killed in October. I’d met Minette then, and together we had solved his murder.

  “I do too. What do the words mean?”

  “I haven’t a clue. I’m not sure anyone does. But these woods are lovely and dark and deep. I should have come back sooner. I shouldn’t have stayed away so long.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you for showing me your tree.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “It was the only way to get me to come back here. You’re one sneaky, maneuvering fairy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where are the other fairies, Minette?”

  “No. Never mind. We’ll go home.”

  There was no use in pressing her. She’d shown me more than enough for one day. Far more than she usually did. I started toward my house, depending on Minette to correct my direction if I veered off course. What little light there had been when I’d left my house was now gone, though moonlight, dispersed and faint through the snow clouds, offered some light. Both of us were silent all the way home.

  Back in my kitchen, I poured maple syrup into a spoon for Minette, finished making my ham and cheese sandwich, and took it to the table. “What do you think about Norma’s accident and Phyllis’s death?” I asked, digging into my early dinner.

  “Ball bearings are metal balls,” she replied. “They wouldn’t be on Norma’s floor because that would be stupid.” She crouched before the teaspoon, leaned in, sipped at the syrup, then sat back on her heels. “I think someone killed Phyllis.”

  “I agree. And Norma’s accident, Phyllis’s death, and those ornaments are all connected somehow.”

  “We don�
�t believe in coincidences. Will you take me to the charity fair tomorrow?”

  “If you promise to stay out of sight.”

  She smiled and tossed back her light brown hair. “And bring Emily?”

  “I need to talk to her about the case first, but right now she’s fixing dinner for Laurence, and you know how often he’s out of town on business. I don’t want to interrupt them, so I’ll call her later.”

  “Laurence is mysterious. Like a fairy in a human house.”

  “Not quite like a fairy. But I’ve always thought he was a spy.”

  I polished off my sandwich and filled the kettle with water to make herbal tea, Birdie’s words playing over and over again in my mind. My father had nothing to do with the pesticides. He loved that farm as much as my grandfather and I did. It was clear, then, that someone at some point had accused Birdie’s father of dumping the pesticides on the farm and ruining the soil. Maybe he’d hated the idea of potato farming and made certain there was no farm for him to inherit. But destroying the land was a desperate and drastic act.

  “Which one of the knitters handed out those ornaments, and why? Birdie’s almost eighty years old, Minette. Why taunt her with that sad memory? What purpose does it serve?”

  “It serves to make her unhappy,” Minette said.

  I rinsed out the teacup in my sink and sat it upside down on a towel. “There’s more to it than that. All seven of them received a prank ornament. The knitter who sent them all even gave one to herself as cover. Phyllis got an egg, and Irene thinks it was because she poisoned everyone with bad eggnog—and four years ago, for goodness’ sake. Someone’s holding a wagonload of grudges.”

  Leaning against the counter, I watched Minette down the last of her syrup. Where did she put it all? I wondered. It was only half a teaspoon’s worth, but Minette was just four inches high, her wings not included.

  “Carla got a pair of red wax lips,” I said. “And did you hear the tension between her and Irene?”

  “It was in mean Irene’s voice.”

  “Carla’s too.”

  “They don’t like each other.”

  “Norma found a pig ornament. What could that mean? I need to have a talk with her—without Irene present.”

  “Call her and take her food,” Minette said. “She doesn’t feel good, and her arm hurts.”

  “I could bring her my leftover lasagna, put it in the oven for her.” I checked my watch. “It’s not too late for that. Norma Howard, Norma Howard . . .”

  In our small Smithwell phone book—the town’s population was only six thousand—I found a single “N. Howard” and dialed. It was Norma. Fortunately, she remembered me from our meeting in October, and more than that, she was happy to hear from me and readily gave me her address. I told her I’d be over in ten minutes.

  “Can I come?” Minette asked sweetly.

  “Yes, but don’t scare her by showing yourself to her, even though she says she likes fairies.”

  “But if she likes—”

  “That doesn’t mean she believes they exist. People are like that, Minette. She told me her grandmother heard stories from her grandmother about fairies in the woods around Smithwell. Maybe her great-great grandmother believed in them, but she doesn’t.” In the refrigerator, I found my last batch of lasagna and put it in a paper bag. “She also heard stories about pixies when she was growing up. She said they weren’t as nice as fairies.”

  Minette fluttered above my coat, waiting for me to put it on. “There are no pixies, Kate. Fairies stand alone.”

  “Really?” I slipped into my coat. “Honestly?” Suddenly, weirdly, I felt unspeakably sad. In that moment, the magical world beyond my ordinary world became a little smaller, in turn diminishing my ordinary world. And I had so wanted to believe there was more and more and more. Fairies were the only creatures of their kind? Was that what Minette meant?

  “But Minette, I thought—”

  “But Kate, the trees of the field clap their hands and rocks sing.”

  “Ray used to say that.”

  “Yes!” she said, giggling like a child. “There’s so much you don’t know! But let’s go see Norma. Now.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Compared to Irene’s isolated house, Norma’s white ranch was easy to find. It was a mile north of downtown on well-lit Orchard Street, and unlike Irene’s house, it was set close to the road and not surrounded by a grove of trees.

  Norma quickly answered her doorbell—it turned out she’d been waiting on a chair by the door—then led me slowly into her living room before lowering herself into a chair. “Thank goodness my legs still work,” she said. “Barely.”

  “You’re in pain,” I said. “Can I get a pillow for your wrist?”

  “It fell to the side of my chair, yes, thank you.”

  I handed her the plaid pillow, and she gently slid it between her lap and the black plastic cast she wore, which encased her left arm from just below her knuckles to just before her elbow. Her short, sausage-like fingers stuck out from beneath the cast’s white fabric liner, and her thumb was bruised and wrapped in a small bandage. “Irene said you have to wear that cast for ten weeks.”

  “If I were younger, six would do.”

  “Are you hungry? You need to eat.”

  “Normally I can’t stop eating,” she said in her low, throaty voice. “Maybe I should have broken something years ago.”

  “Well, you need to eat now. You need calories to heal. I’ll be right back.”

  I put the lasagna in the oven, set the temperature high enough for a quick cook but low enough to keep it from burning, and returned to the living room. Norma was still awake, probably because she hurt too much to sleep. She was resting her head on the chair back when I sat opposite her on the couch, and her gray hair, wispy and uncombed, fanned out behind her.

  In the corner, close to her chair, was a deliciously fragrant balsam Christmas tree, adorned with red and gold ornaments and strung with hundreds of bright white lights. Good thing she’d put it up before her accident.

  “Irene brought me breakfast and lunch, so this is nice,” she said. “Joan said she’d stop by tonight to help me get ready for bed.”

  “It’s good to have friends who can help out.”

  “One of those friends gave me a pig ornament.”

  I nodded.

  “Which is why you’re here.”

  “You heard about Phyllis?”

  “Irene told me. And she said she enlisted you to solve Phyllis’s murder and find out who put those ball bearings on my kitchen floor. I wanted to thank you.”

  “I believe the killer is the same person who gave everyone a second Secret Santa ornament.”

  “And a pig for me.”

  Taking a breath, I sat back and crossed my legs. This had to be approached delicately. There were only so many things a pig could mean, none of them polite. “Do you have any thoughts on who gave it to you and what she meant by it? We know Irene received a typewriter—that makes sense, given how much she writes—and we know Birdie received a potato ornament, probably because her grandfather was a potato farmer.”

  “Oh yes, I’d forgotten. She’s told us all about him, and more than once. As for a pig, well . . .” She shrugged and pointed at her waistline. “That’s my guess. I’m as overstuffed as a Christmas turkey.”

  “So is Joan,” I said quickly. Clasping my hands around my knee, I leaned in. “It’s healthy to have a little padding as you age. Did you know that? It’s a good thing you aren’t bone thin like Irene. What would’ve happened to her if she’d fallen like you had? A broken hip?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Anyway, we all need extra weight when we get older. You have to have some to spare, because like it or not, we lose weight after an accident or illness, and we lose more when we’re older.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind losing more,” she said with a smile. “But still, it hurts to think . . .” She cast her eyes to the floor.

/>   “Can you think of something else a pig might signify? Birdie got that potato ornament because her grandfather, way back, was a potato farmer, but Hazel got a chicken ornament and no one in her family was in chicken farming. We need to think beyond the obvious. Is there anything that comes to mind? Just off the top of your head?”

  “Well, I did think of something else just after you called. About a month ago, at one of our knitting meetings . . .” Norma’s voice trailed off and she continued to study her floor, avoiding my gaze.

  “Go ahead, Norma. Unless Detective Rancourt absolutely, positively has to know, it won’t leave this room.”

  Her eyes rose to mine. “A month ago, Joan called me a pig.”

  I sucked in my breath. Awful. “The Joan who’s coming over tonight?”

  “Funny, huh? We’re an odd bunch of ladies. We know each other so well—almost too well. We adore each other and at the same time we get on each other’s nerves like you can’t believe.”

  “Why would she say that?”

  “It didn’t have to do with food—no. She said I was hogging the good yarn at Thistle and Wool, our yarn shop. She said I was buying up all the baby alpaca in this particular shade of green we both like, and well, I think she was right. I wanted it for myself, and the shop said it could order more, but it would take two weeks. I didn’t want to wait. I never do.”

  “But what a thing to say.”

  “She knew I’d bought every last skein of it, and she called me a pig.” Norma tucked a feathery strand of hair behind her ear. “I could have waited. I don’t knit as fast as Joan does. But when she said that to me, I dug in my heels and refused to share.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I didn’t buy all of that alpaca for charity, Kate. I bought most of it for myself. And now”—she lifted her injured arm an inch off the pillow—“the joke is on me. I can’t knit a two-inch scarf.”

  “Look, every human being alive has done something like that—and more than once. Don’t your friends forgive and forget?”

  “There’s not much I can do but sit and think, so I’ve been debating that very question. One of us doesn’t forgive and forget.”

  “Do you think Joan gave you that ornament?”