Murder With All The Trimmings Part 10

Welcome to tween h.e.l.l, Josie thought. It's going to be a rough ride from now on.

It took all Josie's strength to keep from saying something hurtful. She knew what it was like to want something all the other kids had. Josie would have sold her young soul for a white fake fur coat, but Jane couldn't afford it and Josie had blown her spare cash on magazines. Now, with some years' distance, Josie knew she would have looked like a polar bear in that furry monstrosity. She was too short for that style. But when she was ten, Josie had yearned for the coat as much as Amelia wanted the pink hoodie.

Josie was grateful when she heard a knock on her front door. She peeked out the miniblinds, in case Nate had come back. Jane, in her pale lavender church coat, was on the doorstep, impatiently tapping one black heel.

Uh-oh, Josie thought. Trouble.

Josie opened the door and her mother barged in. "What's going on here?" Jane demanded. "I could hear you shouting halfway down the street. Do you have to let the whole neighborhood know our family business?"

"I'm disciplining my daughter," Josie said.

"Then do it a little more quietly," Jane said. "I'd like to take a nap."

"You'll have lots of peace and quiet when Nate steals your granddaughter and takes her to Canada," Josie said. "He was here while you were at church."

"I can't be everywhere at once," Jane said. "I'll go see Mrs. Mueller right now. We'll work out a schedule to protect Amelia." Though they had been friends for years, Jane always called the woman Mrs. Mueller.

Jane's back was rigid with anger as she tip-tapped her way to Mrs. M's house. If anyone would watch Josie's home, it would be Mrs. Mueller.

Josie shut the door and sighed. Could her life get any worse?

There was a pinging sound on the windows. The promised winter storm was growing worse. The sky was the color of old sheet metal and the temperature felt like it was dropping. The cars were still making it up the steep hill on Josie's street without fishtailing. That was a good sign. But she'd better get moving, or the roads would be impa.s.sable.

Josie shivered and turned up the heat, then went to her room to write the mystery-shopping report for Harry the Horrible. Her heart felt like lead. She knew this report would probably destroy her romance with Mike.

She gave Elsie's Elf House a nearly perfect score for the quality of its service, merchandise presentation, and friendly staff.

Naughty or Nice got the lowest marks possible. Josie also noted that the store was not selling franchise-approved merchandise. She gingerly examined the South Pole elf she'd bought that morning, as if it were diseased. It was an ordinary china elf ornament, the kind sold at craft stores. The tumescent South Pole had been glued on and the elf had been hand-painted. It was a crude job, in more ways than one. Josie wondered if Doreen made the thing in her home. So much for Christmas crafts.

Josie finished her report and faxed it off to Harry, wishing she could warn Mike. The fun would hit the fan tomorrow.

Outside, the ice was pinging harder on the porch and sidewalk, as if someone were firing a BB gun. Josie saw snowflakes in the mix, but they hadn't started to stick yet. Judging by the trail of footsteps on the sidewalk, Jane was back home again. Josie called her.

"Mom, I have to run an errand. Can I pick you up anything at the store?"

"Soup would be nice," her mother said. "This weather calls for chicken noodle soup."

Josie thought it called for a roaring fire, mulled wine, and a hot man.

"Do you want me to watch Amelia?" Jane said. "I can sleep on your couch as well as mine."

"I'll leave the phone by the couch if you need to call 911."

"Never mind. I have my pepper spray," Jane said. "That man comes near my granddaughter, and he'll regret it. I don't know why you didn't get Nate to sign away his rights ten years ago."

"He was in jail, Mom."

"Exactly the time a man wouldn't want to worry about supporting a new baby. You had a golden opportunity and you lost it." Josie heard the rest of her mother's unspoken sentence: "the way you lost so many others."

Jane knocked at her front door, wearing a red sweater with leaping brown reindeer. Josie waited until her mother was comfortably settled in with magazines, hot tea, and the TV clicker before she left.

"I have my cell on if there's a problem," Josie said.

"There will be no problems I can't handle," Jane said.

The sleet was quickly turning into snow. Josie picked her way gingerly to the car and drove slowly down the slippery streets. The supermarket was in the usual pre-storm panic, with frantic shoppers crashing carts into one another and pushing their way into checkout lines. Fights broke out as irritated shoppers discovered fourteen or fifteen items lurking in baskets in the "twelve items or less" line.

Josie would never understand why St. Louisans rushed to the store at the first hint of a snowstorm and stripped the shelves of milk, bread, and toilet paper. Okay, milk and bread made sense. But toilet paper? What were they expecting, a citywide attack of diarrhea?

Josie grabbed the last loaf of sandwich bread in the bakery section, picked up a gallon of milk, then stood in line at the deli department for a pound of sliced ham and chicken soup for her mother. She got through the checkout line in less than ten minutes and wheeled her cart to her car.

The snow was falling faster, nearly doubling in intensity in the half hour she'd been in the store. Josie sc.r.a.ped her windshield, cracking the sleet glaze and getting ice crystals inside her gloves. By the time the car was loaded and started, Josie was afraid she'd have to sc.r.a.pe the windshield again.

It was only three o'clock, but the sky was so dark, Josie turned on her headlights. Her small car skidded in the snow. Impatient drivers pa.s.sed her, going too fast for the road conditions. Josie needed twice as much time to crawl home around the multiple fender benders.

By the time she pulled in front of her flat, the snow was serious. Her lawn was completely covered in a thick white coat. Mrs. Mueller was shoveling off her sidewalk and spreading rock salt on the concrete.

Stan the Man Next Door was shoveling Josie's sidewalk. Stan was hidden inside a hideous down parka that made him look like the Unabomber. Stan put down his shovel and helped Josie carry in her sacks of groceries. He even wiped his feet before stepping inside. His nose was red from the cold.

"Want to come in for some hot cocoa?" Josie asked.

"Thanks," Stan said, "but I'm having dinner at Mom's and I don't want to be late." He went back outside to finish her sidewalk.

Stan was kind, loyal, and hopelessly dull. He'd rather have dinner with his mother than cocoa with the woman he worshiped from afar. Josie wished she could love Stan back, but she seemed fatally attracted to men with serious flaws. Stan didn't make her heart beat faster the way Mike did.

She had a date with Mike tonight. Josie looked forward to spending the night at Mike's place and possibly getting snowed in with him. Jane had promised to sleep over and watch Amelia if that happened.

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow," Josie sang, as she unpacked the groceries.

Jane was huddled under a knit throw on the couch, watching television.

"You're going to get your wish," Jane said. "The TV says they've closed the airport already. It's early in the winter for a storm this bad. We're supposed to have more than a foot of snow by nightfall."

Josie added another sweater for warmth. She didn't want to turn up the thermostat on the ancient furnace. The heating bills were already outrageous.

The snow kept piling up as night approached. Josie figured there was nearly twelve inches on the ground already. She checked the clock. Another hour before she left for Mike's. She showered, shaved her legs, put on her best underwear and her new black wool pants.

She was deciding between the pink or the beige sweater when her phone rang.

"Josie?" Mike said. "I'm really sorry, but I can't see you tonight. There's trouble at Doreen's store, and Heather is involved."

"What's wrong?" Josie said, trying to sound concerned and hide her disappointment at the same time.

"Everything," Mike said. "Doreen left Heather alone at the store all day, and those nuts were still picketing outside. Plus, the place has c.o.c.kroaches, and one of them wound up in the gingerbread."

Josie had to stop herself from saying I know.

"Maybe she needs to keep the kitchen cleaner," Josie said.

"It's not Doreen's fault," Mike said. "Elsie gave her the roaches."

"Elsie?"

"The Elf House lady. Heather says she saw Elsie turn a box of the bugs loose near the back door. Doreen thinks Elsie is trying to ruin her business."

Doreen's doing a terrific job of that all by herself, Josie wanted to say.

"Doreen also found mice in the storage room. Mice come inside when the weather turns cold, but Doreen doesn't believe that. She says her rival Elsie introduced the critters to her store."

"How?"

"There's a gap between the door and the threshold. Mice can squeeze through a s.p.a.ce that small. But Doreen swears Elsie let the mice and roaches in that way. Doreen's business has been dropping off."

Dropping off? Josie thought. She never had any.

"Doreen is worried she may lose her franchise. The picketers won't go away, and the more TV time they get, the longer they stay and the louder they chant."

"I'm sorry, Mike." Josie tried to sound sincere.

"But that isn't the worst," Mike said. "When the storm intensified, some snow and ice slid off the roof and seriously injured a picketer. A church lady was nearly killed. She's in intensive care."

"OmiG.o.d," Josie said. "The snow is that heavy?"

"Well, it had some help.The police are talking attempted murder. The place is crawling with cops and they want to interview Heather, and I have to stay here for her."

"Of course you do," Josie said. "She's not a suspect, is she?"

"No," Mike said. "But the police did find the snow on the roof had been deliberately loosened, probably by a shovel. There are footprints in the vicinity. They're interviewing all the neighbors and they have a witness who saw something."

"They do?" Josie said.

"Yep. An old woman says she saw Santa Claus up on the roof loosening the snow. The cops are laughing their a.s.ses off."

Ho, ho, ho, Josie thought.

Chapter 12.

"There's a suspect in the attempted murder at the Naughty or Nice Christmas shop," the TV anchor said, staring earnestly into the camera. The show cut to a commercial for tile cleaner, leaving the audience waiting.

Jane was dozing. Josie rushed over to the TV and turned up the volume, waking her mother.

"What are you doing?" Jane was huddled under Josie's knitted throw on the couch.

"That's the shop run by Mike's ex," Josie said. "I need to see this story."

Sixty seconds later, the anchor was back. He could barely keep from laughing. "Naughty or Nice is the store that is being picketed for selling allegedly obscene ornaments," he said.

The television showed picketers chanting and circling the shop, then flashed on the p.o.r.naments.

Josie groaned. Poor Mike. He was going to lose his investment, thanks to murder and malice at Christmas.

"Mildred Sprike, a fifty-eight-year-old church picketer, was seriously injured when snow and ice slid from the roof of the Naughty or Nice shop," the anchor said. His lips twitched. "Mrs. Sprike, mother of four, was picketing the store when a shelf of ice came loose and hit her on the head. Mrs. Sprike was taken by ambulance to Barnes-Jewish Hospital and remains in critical condition.

"A police spokesperson said Mrs. Sprike's injuries were no accident. The ice was deliberately loosened from the roof. In an exclusive interview with Channel Seven, a neighbor says she saw the culprit. Mrs. Edna Pickerel, age ninety-eight, said she witnessed the incident from her kitchen window."

An elderly woman in a fluffy blue sweater and flyaway white hair was interviewed in her kitchen. Josie estimated the Magic Chef stove was at least half a century old. The woman's head trembled and her rheumy eyes peered through thick gla.s.ses.

"It was Sanny Claus," the woman said. "Sanny Claus got up on that nasty shop's roof with a snow shovel and pushed the snow down on that church lady's head. Nearly killed her. I saw him do it."

"You really saw Santa?" the reporter asked. Josie could hear the smirk in his voice.

"I saw what I saw and Sanny Claus was on that roof," the woman insisted. "He wore a red suit, a long white beard, and black boots."

A graphic of Santa in a WANTED poster flashed on the screen.

The news anchor was giggling so hard he could barely talk. "Police have declined to make an arrest in the case," he said. "If they check the malls, they'll find Santa has an alibi for this afternoon." He ended with a snorting giggle.

"A woman is in intensive care at Christmas and that idiot thinks it's funny?" Jane asked. "Why is Channel Seven interviewing that poor old soul? You know she's senile, and so do they. No respect for her age. I swear, that station gets worse and worse."

But she didn't change the channel.

Josie settled into her big chair with hot cocoa to watch the weather report. She drifted off as a cold front was crossing Nebraska.

Josie woke up around eleven p.m., feeling more tired than she had before her nap. Her cocoa cup was in the sink, and her mother was gone, along with the chicken soup. The knit throw was folded neatly on the couch. Josie checked on Amelia. Her daughter was sleeping in her flannel pajamas. Thank you, Mom, Josie thought, as she tucked her daughter in for the night. She showered and headed for her own bed.

Monday morning dawned crisp and cold. The snow on the lawn was like a down comforter. The neighborhood streets were slushy, but open. Cars moved fearlessly down the road, most going a little too fast for the icy conditions.

At breakfast Amelia listened intently to the radio's list of school closings. She was disappointed when Barrington School wasn't called.

"Parkway District is closed," Amelia said. "We should be, too."

"It's seven thirty," Josie said. "If the school was closed, we'd know by now."

"Can't you call, just to make sure?" Amelia begged.

"No one answers the office phone until eight," Josie said. But she made the call and got a taped message: "The Barrington School for Boys and Girls will be open Monday. This is not a snow day. Unexcused absences will not be accepted."

"Sorry," Josie said. "It's school for you."

On the way, Amelia flipped the radio from station to station, still hoping her school was closing. Josie didn't remind her that she'd been barred from the radio controls. As the Honda pulled into the Barrington driveway, Amelia's last hope died. She spotted her friend Emma and waved, barely waiting for Josie to stop the car before Amelia hopped out, dragging her backpack. Josie was relieved to see her daughter go. She didn't want to face her today and get into another argument about Nate.

Josie hurried home on the traffic-clogged streets. She dodged an SUV that was going too fast. The big vehicle spun out on a patch of ice, narrowly missed Josie's Honda, and bashed into a tree. Josie checked to make sure the driver was unhurt. He waved her on as he called 911 on his cell phone.