Nutty As a Fruitcake Read online

  MARY DAHEIM

  NUTTY AS A FRUITCAKE

  A BED-AND-BREAKFAST MYSTERY

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  JUDITH GROVER MCMONIGLE Flynn grabbed at the pine branch, felt…

  TWO

  JOE’S CIGAR DIDN’T quite quench the aroma of coffee cake,…

  THREE

  JOE ARRIVED HOME just as Renie was about to leave.

  FOUR

  PHYLISS RACKLEY WAS singing a hymn at the top of…

  FIVE

  JOANNE GOODRICH GAVE the impression of never having been young.

  SIX

  AT LAST, JUDITH put a hand on Art’s shoulder. She…

  SEVEN

  RENIE WAS EXUBERANT. She stood in the cool night air…

  EIGHT

  BY FRIDAY MORNING, Judith wasn’t feeling so sanguine. Since it…

  NINE

  GERTRUDE WAS UNMOVED by the question. She adjusted her dentures,…

  TEN

  THERE WAS NO such thing as the perfect Douglas fir,…

  ELEVEN

  “SCREW FORENSICS,” JOE growled as he came in the back…

  TWELVE

  “I WISH,” JUDITH said fervently as she and Renie once…

  THIRTEEN

  JUDITH BRACED HERSELF for the confrontation over her mother’s Christmas…

  FOURTEEN

  GABE PORTER USUALLY got home from work before five-thirty. As…

  FIFTEEN

  JUDITH WAS TRYING to reach Patches Morgan when he showed…

  SIXTEEN

  THE AFTERNOON DIDN’T go as smoothly as Judith had hoped.

  SEVENTEEN

  “SO WHAT DID he do with this so-called poison book?”…

  EIGHTEEN

  JUDITH HATED TO admit it, but Gertrude gave her the…

  NINETEEN

  ONE OF JUDITH’S favorite Christmas traditions was lunching with Renie…

  AUNT DEB’S DARK FRUITCAKE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARY DAHEIM

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  ONE

  JUDITH GROVER MCMONIGLE Flynn grabbed at the pine branch, felt the ladder fall from under her, and held on with all her might. Her booted feet kicked at the damp air while her gloved hands tightened on the tree limb. Judith hoped that the branch was as sturdy as she was.

  A glance at the frosty ground told her it was a good eight-foot drop. In her youth, Judith might have risked it. But at fifty-plus, she wasn’t as agile as she used to be. The Christmas season was upon her; she had a bed-and-breakfast to run. There was no point in taking unnecessary chances. Instead, she screamed. Someone would hear her—the Rankerses next door or the Dooleys in back or the Ericsons on the other side. On this first Sunday of Advent, they should all be home.

  Judith screamed again. Her husband had gone to Earnest Hardware to buy a new tree stand; her mother was deaf. Or so she pretended. Maybe the Rankerses were having one of their famous family feuds to kick off the yuletide season. The Dooleys might be Christmas shopping. The Ericsons could be jogging. Judith’s arms were beginning to ache. The cold air hurt in her lungs as she cried for help a third time.

  “Hey, coz,” called a voice from below, “how come you’re hanging in the tree like that? You make kind of a big ornament. Ha-ha.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Judith saw Cousin Renie at the edge of the driveway. She was muffled to her short chin, gazing upward. “Move that ladder, you idiot!” shouted Judith. “Hurry!”

  Renie shuffled a bit. “I wish I had my camera. This is good.”

  Judith’s hands were turning numb. “Get me down! If I fall and break my neck, you’ll inherit my mother!”

  The threat worked. Renie righted the ladder, then angled it under Judith’s feet. “It’s too soon to make a swag. This is still November. The boughs will dry out by Christmas.”

  Somewhat shakily, Judith descended the ladder. “I know that, but when you run a B&B, your guests expect you to be decorated right after Thanksgiving. If I have to put up a new swag the week before Christmas, so be it. But I’ll buy one. I’m too old to swing from tree branches.”

  Renie helped Judith collect the clipped boughs as they headed for the house. “Is that one of your guests?” Renie nodded toward the cul-de-sac.

  “Where?” Judith asked. “I don’t see any strange cars except that pickup parked across the way on the through street.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Renie replied. “It’s got Oregon plates. I figured it was one of your visitors.”

  Judith peered the sixty yards to the far side of the street. The pickup was old, shabby, and a mottled orange, with what looked like tools in the back. “I don’t have anybody due in from Oregon tonight,” she said, setting her collection of boughs down on the porch.

  Renie did the same, rubbing pitch from her hands. “Maybe it’s some leftover Thanksgiving company for the people who live on the other side of the cul-de-sac.”

  “Could be.” Judith opened the back door. The kitchen, with its old-fashioned high ceiling and modern appliances, smelled of ginger and nutmeg and cinnamon. Renie made a dive for the sheep-shaped cookie jar.

  “Yum!” she exclaimed. “Ginger cookies! A great favorite of mine!”

  “What isn’t?” Judith poured water into a coffee can, then inserted the freshly cut branches she’d brought inside along with several sprigs of holly. “Speaking of neighbors, I’m proceeding with my plan. The meeting is here, tonight at seven. That’s why I made cookies.”

  Renie had seated herself at the kitchen table and was now devouring her second cookie. She knew that Judith intended to ask the neighbors to join forces in decorating their homes’ exteriors for Christmas. Hillside Manor was nestled among six other houses in a cul-de-sac on the side of Heraldsgate Hill. Judith readily acknowledged that the holiday concept was self-serving.

  “Sure,” she admitted, expanding on the thought as she poured milk for herself and Renie, “I know a festive atmosphere enhances the B&B. But it’s a chance for us to do something neighborly. We lead such busy lives that sometimes it feels like we’re strangers. The only people I see much of are the Rankerses and the Dooleys, and part of that is because we’re all SOTS.”

  Renie nodded faintly. Although she lived on the other side of the Hill, she was also a SOT, as the parishioners of Our Lady, Star of the Sea Catholic Church were familiarly known. “I know. I’ve never actually met some of our newer neighbors. I hole up with my graphic design business in the basement den and all I can see out the window are the local cats and an occasional squirrel.”

  “It’s a shame,” Judith said, her strong features softening in a commiserating expression. “We live in the city, cheek by jowl, and we hardly recognize each other. We’re just too isolated and self-absorbed. To tell the truth, I always feel guilty about expecting our neighbors to put up with the comings and goings of my guests.”

  Renie snatched another cookie. “It helped some when Bill organized our block watch a few years ago. But not everybody comes to the meetings. Even when they do, some of them move away a few months later. We’ve got three rentals along our street.”

  “Carl Rankers is our block watch captain,” Judith said, as her cat, Sweetums, meandered into the kitchen. “We haven’t met in over a year. I think it’s because I married a cop. Everybody has a false sense of security.”

  Renie was glaring at Sweetums, who was glaring right back. “Joe should give Carl a nudge. Bill and I try to schedule a meeting every eight or nine months.” Sweetums took a swipe at Renie’s Nubuck loafers; Renie pretended to claw Sweetums; Sweetums, in fact, clawed Renie—on the ankle. “Damn!” Renie cried. “Your cat is awful! Have you thought about h
aving him put to sleep?”

  “Put to sleep?” Joe Flynn poked his head into the kitchen. “Are you talking about my mother-in-law?” His voice was hopeful.

  Judith scowled at her husband. “We’re talking about Sweetums. Or, rather, Renie was.” Judith reached down to stroke the animal’s long orange-and-gray fur. “She’s just jealous because her kids are allergic to cats, so she’s deprived. Did you get a tree stand?”

  Joe grimaced. “I sure did. Industrial strength, fifty bucks. We could put a telephone pole in it. In fact,” he continued, shrugging out of his khaki field coat, “why don’t we do just that? A ten-foot Douglas fir is going to cost us another eighty bucks. On the way home, I priced the ones they’re unloading at Nottingham Florists.”

  Judith made a face at her husband. His first wife hadn’t cared much about holiday decor, except when it came to lining the garbage cans with empty Jack Daniels’ bottles. Judith’s first husband had preferred lining his stomach with almost everything, including the year he’d eaten a cluster of blue plastic grapes off the tree.

  “We’ve always had a big tree,” Judith declared, “even when I was a kid.” One hand gestured in the direction of the long paneled living room. In her mind’s eye, Judith saw a succession of trees—or were they years, with the tree always the same? She smiled, then glanced at Renie, who was fixated on the cookie jar. “Grandma and Grandpa Grover used to decorate it the day before Christmas, and no one else saw it until Christmas Eve. Do you remember how we used to try to peek under the curtain they put up in the middle of the room?”

  Renie also smiled as she reached for another cookie. “I sure do.”

  Judith slapped Renie’s hand. “Stop that, you hog. I have to save those for tonight.”

  Almost fifty years of love and memories prevented Renie from reacting with more than a twitch of her eyebrows. “Everybody would congregate at the far end of the room and we’d wait for Santa,” she said, now looking at Joe, who had settled in at the table with a glass of beer. “There’d be—what?—thirty of us, with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. Then we’d hear the jingle of a bell outside. The part of the room that was curtained off would be dark. We’d all gasp and everybody would stop talking and Santa would come in through the French doors. He’d start to talk to us from behind the curtain and ask each of us kids if we’d been good and what we wanted for Christmas. We’d be absolutely agog. Then he’d say some things to the grown-ups that we didn’t understand—like asking Auntie Vance if she was getting anything and asking Uncle Corky if he was getting any. My mother would ask if Mrs. Santa was putting out cookies and Santa would say that Mrs. Santa wasn’t putting out, period. The grown-ups would laugh some more. And us kids could hardly stand it, waiting for Santa to turn on the tree lights. Finally, he would, and we could see them through the curtain—and then he was gone. Uncle Corky and Uncle Al would take the curtain down because they were so tall, and there would be that great big shining tree with those beautiful presents spread out all over the floor.” Renie’s brown eyes had grown very bright.

  Judith’s lower lip quivered with emotion. Her first Christmas memory was when she was four, in 1945. The uncles—and Aunt Ellen—had come home from the war. They were battle-scarred and forever changed, but she had been too young to realize that. What she remembered most was the adults’ restraint, which gradually changed into unbridled hilarity. The Grover clan had always been noisy, full of laughter, choking back tears. But the year that Judith turned four and began to take in the world around her, she saw her parents, her grandparents, her aunts and uncles, and the usual shirttail hangers-on in a strange, raucous outpouring of what she later realized was relief.

  “Christmas meant war,” Joe was saying, and Judith was caught short, aware that her reminiscences had caused her to lose the conversational thread. “My dad always got drunk. More drunk, I should say. My mother would lock herself in the bedroom and cry for about four days, usually right through Christmas. My brothers and I would unwrap our presents by ourselves, then get into a fight over who got the best stuff. That was pretty pointless—there wasn’t any ‘best stuff.’ My family couldn’t afford nice gifts. We got socks and underwear and maybe a shirt. One year, my holiday highlight was a football, autographed by Sammy Baugh. That was really special, until I found out my dad had won it in a poker game at the local tavern. Then my brother Paul borrowed it and some punk beat the crap out of him and stole the ball. That’s what I remember about Christmas.”

  Renie, who’d never heard the story before, gaped at Joe. Judith, however, hung her head. “I shouldn’t brag about what wonderful times we had. Renie and I were lucky.”

  Joe’s laugh was forced. “Or dumb. You two sound like a pair of Alices, walking in a winter wonderland.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Renie retorted. “Selective memory is a great asset. Why dwell on the bad stuff?”

  Joe’s eyes snapped at Renie. “What if that’s all you’ve got? Do you want to hear about my grown-up holidays, with a wife crooning carols into a bottle of bourbon? How about having your daughter and your stepkids ask why Mom won’t wake up for Christmas dinner? Then, for a really jolly-holly time, you get called out to somebody else’s unhappy home where Mom just sank the carving knife in Dad’s chest. The only sparkle you see is the glint off the handcuffs you’re putting on whichever member of the family is going down for Murder One. Christmas memories!” Joe passed his hands over his face and shook himself. “Sleigh bells? How about sirens and screams and the sound of your spouse falling face first into the cranberry sauce?”

  “Not here,” Judith said, more sharply than she intended. “We’ve spent three Christmases together, and they’ve been fun. Or so it seemed to me.”

  Joe’s expression grew sheepish. “Yeah, right, they’ve been…fine. It’s going to take me a couple of decades to get over the first fifty years, okay?”

  Judith averted her eyes. While she knew of Joe’s unhappy childhood and his miserable first marriage, she hadn’t realized that her husband wasn’t as full of holiday enthusiasm as she was. He had seemed to enjoy the previous Christmases. But maybe he’d been pretending.

  Joe saw the melancholy in Judith’s face; he reached across the table to ruffle her silver-streaked hair. “Forget it, Jude-girl. I’m doing my best to be a merry elf. But while you’re still calling me Scrooge in your mind, I’d better give you another piece of negative news—the Goodriches aren’t coming tonight. I saw George when I pulled into the cul-de-sac. His grandsons had just arrived.”

  “Paying homage to Grandma?” Judith sounded caustic. “Those kids hardly ever visit their grandparents.”

  “They aren’t kids exactly,” Joe noted, sipping his beer. “They both look close to thirty. Anyway, you’ll have to count Enid and George out for this evening.”

  Judith frowned. “How come? Is it because they don’t want to decorate, or is Mrs. Goodrich sick again?”

  Longingly, Joe gazed at the cookie jar. Judith rolled her black eyes and held up one finger. Joe removed a cookie. Renie growled at him. Sweetums, who had curled up at Judith’s feet, stretched, scratched, and growled at Renie.

  “I’m gone,” Renie announced, getting out of the chair. She paused to delve into her purse. “Here’s Auntie Vance’s coffee cake recipe you asked for. I’ve got to stop off at my mother’s with her fruitcake mix. She says if she doesn’t make it today it won’t have time to set before Christmas.”

  Joe winced. “I hate fruitcake. It’s always gooey and full of nuts.”

  “Not my mother’s,” Renie countered. “She makes the dark kind and doesn’t put in nuts because I’m allergic. It’s soaked in whiskey and not only does it taste terrific, but you can get a buzz on if you eat enough. See you.” Renie sailed through the kitchen and the back hallway, and out of the house.

  Judith sighed into her empty milk glass. “So what’s going on with the Goodriches? I’d hoped they wouldn’t spoil a unanimous vote.”

  “Enid’s arthritis
is bothering her,” Joe said with a trace of asperity. “She doesn’t want to come out at night. And poor old George doesn’t like leaving her alone.”

  “Enid’s a pain in the butt,” Judith said bluntly. “She’s always been a hypochondriac. Even when I was a kid, Mrs. Goodrich was always ailing. I felt sorry for her children. And for George.”

  Shrugging, Joe got up from the table. “You’ve known them forever. I haven’t. Maybe you can talk them into stringing some lights on their rhododendron bushes. The bottom line is that they’re not coming to the meeting.” He paused, opening the refrigerator door. “I’m doing dinner tonight. How about chicken kiev?”

  Judith brightened. “Sounds good. Make two for Mother.”

  Joe shot his wife an ironic glance. “If I make it, will she eat it?”

  “We won’t tell her. We never do.”

  “Okay.” Joe rummaged in the freezer section.

  Judith put the milk glasses in the dishwasher. She was accustomed to the hostility between her husband and her mother. Gertrude Grover had never forgiven Joe Flynn for dumping her daughter more than a quarter of a century earlier. Judith and Joe had been engaged, but another woman had intervened. Never mind that Joe had been drunk at the time and that the other woman had taken advantage of his state to whisk him off to Las Vegas. Never mind, either, that Joe’s inebriation had been caused by his first encounter with teenaged drug-related deaths: Others might forgive a rookie policeman’s revulsion, but not Gertrude. Nor, for many years, did Judith understand what had happened to her erstwhile fiancé. She had been left almost literally at the altar. Retaliation had come in the four-hundred-pound shape of Dan McMonigle. Never had revenge proved so sour. Judith had lived as Dan’s wife for eighteen years, until he had—as she so unscientifically but aptly put it—blown up at the age of forty-nine. It had only been by chance that Judith and Joe had met again, when a fortune teller had been poisoned at Hillside Manor’s dinner table. Joe Flynn had shown up as the homicide detective of record. Judith had tried to hide her shock, her dismay—and her feelings. Joe was still married to Vivian Flynn. But Vivian—or Herself, as Judith called her archrival—had long since buried the marriage under a pile of bourbon-on-the-rocks.