Dying in a Winter Wonderland Read online

  “That would be so marvelous.” Luanne clapped her gloved hands. “I’d come to see that.”

  “If you do,” he said, “I can make sure you get tickets. For you and your new husband.”

  “Pooh, him.” She pouted. “He’s an old stick-in-the-mud. Hey, I’ve just had the best idea ever! Why don’t we meet later today for a drink, Chris? Just you and me. We can talk about the old times and toast our future. Our futures, I mean.”

  “I . . . I don’t think that’ll work. Sorry. I’m only here for a couple of days, and I want to spend that time with my family.”

  She slapped his shoulder again. “Now who’s being an old stick-in-the-mud? You need to toast my wedding. Maybe you can try to talk me out of it.” She giggled. Chris threw me a frantic look. “A Touch of Holly at two,” Luanne said. “See you then. Oh, and Merry, I haven’t forgotten that you’re coming to my parents’ place at quarter past six. Don’t be late. Better you don’t bring Chris with you. I don’t want him meeting Jeff.” She wiggled her fingers at us and ran lightly down the well-shoveled street.

  Chris took a deep breath. “What just happened?”

  “You have a date and I have to make a stop on my way to Alan’s. Life with Luanne.”

  Chapter 2

  A man stepped out of the doorway of the shop next door and watched Luanne skip down the street. “Scott, hi!” Chris called.

  The man turned and waved. “Chris, nice to see you.”

  “You remember Scott, don’t you, Merry?” Chris asked me as the man joined us. “Scott Abramsky, from school?”

  Scott grabbed my hand and pumped it with enthusiasm. I hadn’t recognized him at first, but now I remembered an awkward, too-tall, gangly boy, who’d hung around the outskirts of my baby brother’s crowd. “Of course I do. Scott, how are you?” He’d grown into his height and had filled out, so he was no longer gangly but lean and slightly muscled. Intelligent eyes shone from above high cheekbones and a thick layer of dark stubble covered his jaw. But he was no less awkward, as he continued to pump my hand with far more enthusiasm than the occasion required. I gave my hand a sharp tug and he released it with an embarrassed grin. “Great, just great. I’m still living in good old Rudolph most of the time, and I telecommute to a computer company in Albany. It’s nice to see so many of the old gang back in town.”

  “No place like home for Christmas,” Chris said. “Say hi to your folks for me.”

  “Sure. My mom sent me to Vicky’s to get the dinner rolls. Was that Luanne Ireland you were talking to? I didn’t know she was in town. She looks great.”

  “Another one home for the holidays,” Chris said.

  “Merry Christmas.” I slipped my arm through my brother’s, and Chris walked me to Mrs. Claus’s Treasures. It took us a while as plenty of people stopped him to say hi and welcome him back to town. Chris had been on the football team in high school and had done sets for the drama club, and he’d been a popular guy.

  “Mom said you’re going to Alan’s place tonight,” he said. “Things getting serious, are they?”

  The glow that rose in my belly was warm enough to melt the snowflakes on my coat, but I wasn’t ready to tell my brother that. “Maybe,” I said.

  “I always liked Alan. He’s one of the good guys. He never had much to say, but when he did say something, you knew he meant it. I remember one time in junior high when Brad Jones and his lot had me in their sights for a bout of what they called fun, but everyone else called bullying. Alan ran them off. Not many seniors would have bothered.”

  I smiled at my brother. “Alan is a good guy.”

  “Is he still Dad’s toymaker? Dad was getting dressed when I left the house. He’ll be at the bandstand greeting kids until noon.”

  “Alan’ll be with him.”

  Our father was the town’s Santa Claus, and Alan usually accompanied him, dressed in woolen britches, black shoes with big shiny buckles on the front, and frameless, clear-glass spectacles. He wrote the children’s wishes on a paper scroll with a pen with a big feather attached to it. The fact that Alan made a lot of the things on the kids’ wish lists added to the charm for those of us in the know.

  We reached Mrs. Claus’s Treasures and I peeked in. The windows were decorated with holiday linens and tableware piled on sheets of glassine intended to look like ice. Wooden figures of ice-skaters glided across the “ice,” watched over by red-cheeked nutcracker soldiers. The figures had been hand carved and painted by Alan Anderson, the very person my brother and I had been talking about. The shop was satisfyingly full as people browsed. Jackie stood behind the cash register, chatting to customers and ringing up purchases, while Crystal showed a woman the jewelry display. Many of the pieces had been made by Crystal, a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

  “What’s the deal with Luanne, anyway?” Chris asked. “I got the impression you’re as pleased about going to her parents’ tonight as I am about meeting her for a drink. Maybe less pleased, as at least I’ll get a mug of good beer out of it.”

  I’m busy enough running the store without taking on outside projects, but when Luanne Ireland began planning her wedding, she asked me to help with the design elements. I refused at first—that isn’t the business I’m in. She kept offering to increase my fee, as well as my purchasing budget, and eventually I gave in. Or, as I recall, Jackie gave in on my behalf.

  As the wedding would be in July and the guest list would be strictly kept to seventy-five people, I figured I could manage. I might even enjoy it. I planned to devote part of February and March, after the Boxing Day sales were over and the winter tourists had departed, to helping Luanne achieve the wedding of her dreams.

  That plan died this morning. She called me at home before the sun was up in a bubble of excitement saying she had some absolutely fabulous news to share and had to tell me all about it right now! This very morning. I’d agreed to meet her at the bakery after dropping my dog, Mattie, at the shop and leaving a note for Jackie.

  I was not looking forward to this evening, when Luanne told her fiancé, his parents, and her parents the change in plans.

  “It would take far too long to explain,” I said. “Besides, Mom will want to know all the juicy details, so I’ll tell her and you tomorrow. I have to run.” I smiled at him. “It is nice to see you, Chris. I’m glad you made it home for Christmas.”

  “I’m glad, too. What time do you get lunch?”

  “Thanks for the invitation, but I won’t take a break. We’ll be working flat out today. Jackie and Crystal go home at three, which is our supposed closing time, but I’ll hang around until four thirty or five for those men who suddenly remember they don’t have a gift for their wives.”

  “Or their mothers or sisters,” Chris said. “I wasn’t asking you to have lunch with me, Merry. I was asking when you won’t be in, so I can find something for you.”

  “Try Vicky’s place,” I said. “I can always use food someone else has made. I love the hot red-pepper jelly her aunt Marjorie makes. Mom’s been hinting that she needs new red leather gloves. They stock those at Jayne’s Ladies Wear.”

  He gave me a grin and walked away.

  I went to work and scarcely had time to come up for air the rest of the day. My mom and her choir arrived and serenaded us with a rendition of “Silent Night, Holy Night” that put tears in more than a few eyes. Overstimulated children, fresh from sitting on Santa’s, aka my dad’s, knee, ran in circles around the glassware and fine china. Products flew off the shelves, almost by themselves, and if we’d had the sort of old-fashioned cash register that went cha-ching, that sound would have provided enough background music for the day.

  “What did Luanne want with you this morning, Merry?” Jackie said when we had a momentary pause and I was rearranging the jewelry display to cover up the empty spots. Only now was my heart rate settling back to normal after the excited children
had left, their flustered father laden with a complete handmade wooden train set.

  “Nothing important,” I said. “She only wanted to tell me that the date, the location, the guest list, and the menu for her wedding have changed. The only thing that remains from the original plan is the groom.” And, judging by the way she’d been looking at my brother, I wondered if she was thinking of changing that, too.

  “Why’d she do that?” Crystal asked. “Isn’t it a bit late to be making those sorts of changes?”

  “Why do brides do anything?” Jackie said. “They all turn into bridezilla. I told you not to have anything to do with Luanne and her wedding, Merry.”

  “You told me nothing of the sort. As I recall, you pushed me into it.”

  “What’s Merry have to do with it, anyway?” Crystal asked. “My mom’s friends with Luanne’s mom, and Mrs. Ireland’s telling everyone it’s going to be a small, simple-yet-elegant wedding. She told Mom that when Mom not so subtly asked when the invitations are going out.”

  “The invitations are going out sooner than she thinks,” I said. “Which reminds me, I have to make a quick call. Be right back.”

  I ducked through the curtain that separates the store from the private areas of the building and went into my office, which also serves as the broom closet and overflow storage area.

  Matterhorn, my Saint Bernard, leapt to his feet when I came in. Although, like most of his breed, Mattie rarely leaps to do anything. More like lumbers slowly to his feet.

  He gave me a big sloppy grin, and I rubbed the top of his head. I took his leash down from the hook on the back of the door and we went into the alley. Mattie’s well-enough trained that he can spend the day in the office without barking or begging to be let out, but he does need walks throughout the day and his water bowl filled regularly. We walked through the slush and refrozen snow of the alley. Mattie sniffed at the base of telephone poles and around garbage bins, seeking out the news of the doggy neighborhood. I took out my phone and texted Alan: Be a bit late. Sorry. Hope 7’s not too late?

  The reply came almost immediately. He and Dad must have been finished at the bandstand: Fine. Everything okay?

  Minor issue. Tell you then.

  I reminded myself that Luanne’s wedding was a minor issue in my life. The store had had a good year. It might seem like chaos right now, but in retail, chaos is sometimes good. I’d had a good year, too, not the least because Alan and I had found each other again.

  Before I returned to my hometown a little over a year ago to open Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, I’d been a design editor at Jennifer’s Lifestyle, a hugely popular national magazine specializing in casual American outdoor living. I loved my job there—meeting and working with the country’s top trendsetters, collecting the perfect pieces for photo shoots, digging just the right old decoration out of storage, setting up the colors and the accessories, arranging everything to look absolutely faultless for the photo shoot. I loved my job, and I loved my life in Manhattan, but when Jennifer Johnstone, the magazine’s founder and legendary guru of modern style, retired and handed the magazine empire over to her spoiled, untalented granddaughter, Erica, I quit.

  I came home to Rudolph and bought a small store in the center of Jingle Bell Lane and renamed the store Mrs. Claus’s Treasures. I use everything I’ve learned about modern taste, fashion, and design to set up and stock my shop. I try to source all my goods locally whenever I can. So far the shop has been a great success, and I truly love it. I may not have left Manhattan under the best of circumstances, but I’m so glad I’ve come back.

  * * *

  * * *

  At five minutes to three, I went into my office. I got Jackie’s and Crystal’s Christmas gifts out of the drawer and took them through to the main room of the shop. The stores on Jingle Bell Lane would be officially closing at three, but as I’d told Chris, I planned to stay behind for a while to help any last-minute shoppers. How it was possible for anyone in this day of Christmas-season saturation to forget to buy their gifts until the very last minute, I never would understand. But there were always a few. Always men, and almost always in their late middle age.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said to my two employees as I handed them brightly wrapped packages tied with huge bows. A blue satin one for Jackie and gold tulle for Crystal. Jackie squealed and Crystal said, “Thank you.”

  “Can we open them now?” Jackie asked.

  “No. You know the Wilkinson family rule. No gift opening prior to Christmas Eve.” As well as the gifts, a Crystal-made necklace and matching earrings for Jackie and a handcrafted paper journal for Crystal to jot ideas down in, I’d slipped checks with their cash bonuses into the greeting cards.

  “It is Christmas Eve,” Jackie pointed out.

  “Christmas Eve begins at six,” I said.

  “And Merry should know,” Crystal said. “Because her dad is Santa Claus. Does your father go out on Christmas Eve, Merry? I’ve always wondered if he says he’s going to the bathroom and instead transports himself to the North Pole to get the reindeer and sleigh-loads of presents and doesn’t tiptoe back into your house until dawn.”

  I smiled at her. “Santa has magic powers, remember. He can reproduce himself, so that he’s doing that and enjoying Christmas Eve at home at the same time.”

  She wished me a merry Christmas and went into the back for her coat and bag. Jackie shifted her present in her arms.

  I smiled at her. “Yes, Jackie?”

  She hesitated, and then she practically leapt on me and wrapped me in a hug that had my ribs protesting. The corner of the box dug into my side. “Thank you, Merry. You’re . . . you’re . . . okay to work for, I guess.”

  And she was gone.

  Goodness.

  I didn’t have time to wonder what had come over Jackie, other than the Christmas spirt, as my phone beeped to announce an incoming text from my brother.

  Help! Get me out of here. L. is drinking too much and I’m trapped. Phone me with an excuse in five.

  I laughed and waited six minutes—just to make him sweat a bit—and then I placed the call.

  “Hi, Mom,” he said.

  I trilled a scale. Although, unlike Mom, no one listening would recognize it as singing.

  “Oh gosh. I’m sorry, Mom. I totally forgot. Be right there.”

  “You said Luanne’s drinking too much?” I asked. “Is she okay to drive?”

  “No problem, my friend and I walked.”

  “Have fun.” I hung up.

  A Touch of Holly is situated directly across the street from Mrs. Claus’s Treasures. I went to stand at the window and peered out. Sure enough, a few minutes later Chris and Luanne came out of the restaurant, pulling on coats and gloves and wrapping scarves around their necks. Chris looked up and down the street, seeking escape. Luanne, I thought, had a happier glow than an engaged woman should in the company of a man who wasn’t her fiancé. As I watched, she lunged at Chris, aiming for a kiss. He neatly stepped aside and gave her a one-armed hug. Then he waved and walked off, as quickly as was possible while maintaining some suggestion of not being too desperate to get away.

  Luanne stood in the restaurant doorway as snow settled on her shoulders, watching him until he turned a corner. Then she pulled the collar of her coat up and headed in the other direction with a decided spring in her step.

  The chimes over my door tinkled and a well-dressed, somewhat flustered middle-aged man came in. “I hope you’re still open,” he said. “I need a gift for my wife.”

  I gave him a big smile. “You’ve come to the right place.”

  Chapter 3

  I flipped the sign on the door to “Closed” and switched off most of the lights, leaving on the ones in the display windows and the small white lights on the live Douglas fir that stands in a corner of the shop year-round. I got Mattie, wished him a merry Christmas, and we went
home. The streets of Rudolph were busy as people hurried home from work, finished shopping for last-minute dinner ingredients, or headed out for dinners and parties.

  The winter sun had set and the western sky was streaked in shades of pink and gray. Streetlamps broke the encroaching gloom and cast long shadows onto the neatly shoveled sidewalk. The houses of one or two Grinches were dark—why anyone would live in America’s Christmas Town and not get into the holiday spirit remained a mystery to me—but almost everyone in Rudolph decorates their homes for the season. Although some, I thought, had a bit too heavy a hand on the lights and decorations.

  The snow had ended, leaving everything fresh and clean. The skeletal branches of the trees in the park were heavy with snow, the bandstand was lined with red-ribboned wreaths, and the town’s tree was a blaze of light.

  I was heading home a bit later than I’d planned. One poor man, wild-eyed and desperate, had burst through the door at four thirty with a gift list almost as long as Santa Claus’s. His entire family, he told me, would shortly be arriving from Alabama to have a traditional Christmas winter holiday in Rudolph. When he found out he’d be in Rochester for business on the days leading up to Christmas, he’d suggested the family vacation to his wife and parents. He’d even volunteered to do the gift shopping so his wife didn’t have to bring extra packages on the plane. And then he’d completely forgotten—until she’d called to remind him that the family would be arriving at seven tonight. Most of the people on his list were women, so I was able to help him choose a collection of holiday linens, silk scarves, and jewelry for them, and Alan Anderson–made wooden toys for his grandchildren. When he mentioned that his son-in-law was a keen cook, I produced a chopping block made of different-colored woods. He’d finally left, burdened by his packages as well as the last of our rolls of wrapping paper, ribbons, and tags.

  I managed to get down the driveway and up the back steps to my apartment without being waylaid by my landlady, Mrs. D’Angelo, who could be counted on to always be on the lookout for the latest gossip. I fed Mattie and then showered and dressed. I’d bought a new dress for my special evening with Alan and was excited to wear it. It was knee-length and sleeveless, black with splashes of color so it resembled an abstract painting. Not too formal but fun and cheerful, perfect for a special, but still casual, dinner. I accompanied the dress with earrings of blue glass and blue suede ballet flats, and gathered a blue cashmere wrap to throw over my shoulders in case of a chill in Alan’s century-old wood-beam home. Last of all, I tied a matching blue satin bow around Mattie’s neck.