Dying in a Winter Wonderland Read online

  I studied myself in the mirror. “Aren’t we the festive couple,” I said to the dog.

  He barked in what I took to be agreement and we set out. As I’d be going straight to Alan’s place outside of town after stopping at Luanne’s parents’, I took the car. I threw a heavy coat, thick socks, and a pair of snow boots into the back for an evening walk in the woods.

  The Irelands were longtime Rudolphites, and Harvey Ireland, Luanne’s father, had served on the town council for a while when my dad was the mayor. I didn’t know what the Irelands did for a living, but it must be lucrative. Their lakeside house was all glass and concrete and square edges. The property was large, the lawns running down to the water, the gardens well cared for. At this time of year the dock was pulled up, a foot of snow covered the grass, and the bushes were neatly wrapped in burlap. The roof of the house was decorated for the season with tiny white lights that sparkled like diamonds against the darkening sky.

  I parked on the street because the driveway was full and I didn’t plan to stay long. I recognized Luanne’s practical little Mazda, but not the freshly washed Lexus SUV or the dark blue Porsche Cayman two-seater.

  I knew the Ireland family, but I’d never met Luanne’s fiancé, Jeff Vanderhaven, or his parents. They were, Luanne had told me, from Rochester. Luanne herself now lived in Rochester, where she worked as a bank teller, but the wedding would be in her hometown of Rudolph.

  Ah yes, the wedding. Why I was reluctantly here.

  Luanne wanted to have her wedding in Rudolph, which I agreed with. She wanted to have it at the Yuletide Inn, the nicest place in town, and she wanted to have it in June, when the famous gardens would be at their best. But to her disappointment, the inn was fully booked for June weddings for years ahead. They could offer her a date in July but in a smaller facility, not in the main banquet room. Luanne’s mother, Fran, had suggested Luanne put her wedding off a year or find another location, but Luanne adamantly refused. Once Luanne had her mind set on something, I’d come to realize, she wouldn’t budge.

  I’d gone with Fran and Luanne to check out the suggested venue. The smaller room, I thought, was much more appealing than the main banquet hall. It was in a building of its own, separate from the main hotel, and had been the original inn, built in the middle of the nineteenth century. It was absolutely bursting with historic charm, and I could do a lot with decorations to match its history and character. Mrs. Ireland wasn’t entirely happy at the size; she had a substantial number of people she wanted to invite, but Luanne told her she wasn’t going to wait a whole year to get married. She’d had her heart set ever since she was a little girl on a wedding at the Yuletide. So there!

  She’d even stamped her foot.

  Fran Ireland paid the hefty deposit. I took a lot of pictures, and I’d immediately begun mentally decorating the beautiful space.

  Luanne and her mother told everyone they wanted a small, simple wedding, surrounded by their closest friends and family, but it soon became apparent to me that the two women were arguing. The venue simply wasn’t large enough to accommodate Mr. and Mrs. Ireland’s social obligations, and Luanne seemed to not realize what a small number seventy-five is when it comes to a wedding.

  And now everything had changed.

  “You have to wait,” I said to Mattie. “Sorry. I won’t be long, so you’ll be fine here.” He settled down for a nap on the backseat.

  I walked up the freshly shoveled path. Although there was no wind, the shrubbery lining the walkway rustled softly, and a handful of snow drifted down from a branch above me, but I thought nothing of it. In the house the curtains were drawn, and a warm yellow light glowed behind them, and I could hear music and a low murmur of conversation. The faintest trace of woodsmoke drifted on the still night air. I rang the bell. The door flew open before the chimes died away, and Luanne’s arm shot out and grabbed mine. She almost dragged me into the house. She looked lovely in a knee-length gold lamé dress, with sparking heels and plenty of gold jewelry in her ears and around her neck. “You’re late!”

  “It’s twenty past six.”

  “That’s late. I told you to be here at six fifteen. Anyway, you’re here now. Do you want a drink?”

  “No. I’m not staying, and I’m driving to Alan’s when we’re done here.”

  “Come on in. We’re having drinks in the living room before dinner.” She gestured to me to go inside and I did. The room was beautifully decorated in shades of cream and blue, but there was something impersonal about it, I thought. As though they’d hired an interior decorator who hadn’t bothered to ask the homeowners about their own taste. The best feature of the room was a huge fireplace, in which a stack of birch logs burned cheerfully. Above it, a Christmas village twinkled on the mantelpiece. Rows of lit candles filled the side tables, and a boys’ choir was singing Christmas carols from the hidden sound system. The tree in the corner was silver and beautifully decorated, but it was not to my taste. When it comes to Christmas, I’m tradition all the way. I like a real fir or pine tree covered with family heirlooms, end-of-year-sale decorations, tourist trinkets, and children’s school art. This one was all shades of pink and silver, and it looked as though everything came out of a box from a MegaMart.

  Which it probably had.

  Three men got to their feet when I came in, and we all wished each other a merry Christmas. The young one, short-haired, thin, handsome in a New England preppy way, must be Jeff Vanderhaven, the fiancé. I knew Luanne’s father, Harvey, so the other man of his age would be Jeff’s father.

  Luanne introduced me. Jeff held my hand for a fraction longer than was polite and gave me a once-over I didn’t care for.

  The woman sitting in a blue damask chair on the other side of the fireplace from Fran Ireland was Jeff’s mother. She gave me a vacant nod and glanced at Luanne, confused. Clearly, I was not expected.

  Luanne was an only child and she’d told me that her mother was as well, but her father had a brother and a sister who’d have to be invited to the wedding, along with their entire families. She hadn’t been pleased when she realized she’d have to cut some of her high school rivals off the list to accommodate her relatives. Luanne had graduated from high school ten years ago, and she didn’t even live in Rudolph anymore, so I considered her obsession with what her old high school crowd might think of her to be a mite excessive. She’d been pretty and popular and her parents had more money than most Rudolph families. Maybe for Luanne, high school had been, in Bruce Springsteen’s words, her “Glory Days.”

  “Can I get you a drink, Merry?” Harvey Ireland asked.

  “No, thank you. I’m on my way to dinner, but I popped in to say merry Christmas to Luanne and to meet Jeff.”

  Fran Ireland let out a sigh of relief.

  Jeff held up his glass of scotch in a salute. “Nice to meet you,” he said with a wink and a grin.

  “Merry’s name is Merry. Not M-a-r-y,” Luanne said. “In honor of the season. Isn’t that absolutely adorable? Her dad’s name is Noel. You might have seen him around town this morning. He was playing Santa Claus at the bandstand.”

  “I commented on how nice his costume was, didn’t I say that, Louis?” Margaret Vanderhaven said.

  “You did indeed, dear,” her husband replied.

  “And that man with him, playing the head elf. So charming.” She smiled at me.

  I smiled back. I turned to Luanne and smiled at her. She smiled at me.

  Everyone watched us, smiling.

  Christmas would be over before we finished all this smiling. “Don’t you have something to tell everyone, Luanne?” I said.

  “Oh. That. Go ahead, Merry. Merry’s designing the decorations, the place settings, and the favors, Margaret. She was a style editor at Jennifer’s Lifestyle magazine for years and years, and now she owns the cutest little store in town.”

  “I love that magazine,” Margar
et Vanderhaven said. “I was upset when Jennifer retired, but her granddaughter seems to be making a go of it after a bad start. Did you know her?”

  “No,” I lied, as I hadn’t come here to get into a discussion of all the gossip that had once swirled around Erica Johnstone.

  “I’m sure I heard something over the summer,” Fran said, “about her coming into your store. It was the talk of the town for a while. Mable D’Angelo said—”

  Time to nip this conversation in the bud. Mrs. D’Angelo, my landlady, was the fastest gossip in the East. “The change in plans wasn’t my idea, Luanne. It was yours. You need to be the one to let everyone know what you’ve decided.”

  “Decided?” Fran said. “What have you decided, dear? I hope you’re not changing your mind about your dress. I told you not to buy the first one—”

  “What are you talking about?” Harvey Ireland asked.

  “Don’t much care,” Louis Vanderhaven said. “Not if it’s about the wedding. Women’s business. I’m sure any dress Luanne wears will look great. I’ll have another scotch if dinner’s going to be much longer.” He headed for the bar cart, not waiting for his host to do the honors.

  I smiled at Luanne.

  She threw me a glare, took a deep breath, and pasted on an enormous smile of her own. “The greatest thing ever has happened! We have the main banquet room at the Yuletide Inn!”

  “Oh, that is good news,” her mother said. “I’ve been thinking we made a mistake in choosing the smaller facility. Not that it’s not lovely, of course, but—”

  “You mean we can invite more guests? Thank heavens for that,” Margaret Vanderhaven said.

  “Glad you could swing it, honey,” Jeff said. “Mom’s been complaining that she couldn’t invite half the country club to my wedding.”

  “I have not been complaining,” Margaret said. “I might have simply mentioned in passing that the restrictions would insult some of my dearest and closest friends.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Louis said. And he did so. I wasn’t sure if he was drinking to the new wedding plans or to insulting his wife’s friends.

  “How did this happen?” Fran asked her daughter.

  “The events manager at the inn called me last night. They had a cancellation for the ballroom and my name was at the top of the waiting list.”

  “How much extra is this going to cost?” Harvey Ireland asked.

  “That’s the best part, Dad,” Luanne said. “Because the other people canceled at such short notice, they’re forfeiting their entire deposit, so the hotel will cut that amount off our rate. We can secure the banquet hall with the deposit Mom’s already made.”

  “Even if they’re reducing their regular rate,” Harvey said, “it’s still going to cost us more. How much more?”

  “What’s the capacity now?” Fran asked.

  “Two hundred and fifty people,” a beaming Luanne said.

  “I’ll let Cathy Cartwright know right away,” Margaret said. “With her husband and their daughter and her family, that comes to . . .” She began counting on her fingers.

  “Two hundred and fifty!” Harvey said. “I assume this is still going to be a sit-down dinner. With a live band. And an open bar.”

  “Gotta have an open bar at a wedding,” Louis said.

  “Short notice?” Fran said. “July is seven months away. Still, I suppose that’s short notice for a big wedding.”

  Luanne tittered. “Okay, so there’s one tiny little hitch.” She turned to Jeff. “I know you’re going to be absolutely thrilled, babe.”

  Jeff did not look absolutely thrilled.

  “We can get married even sooner! I’ve wanted a winter wedding my whole life. Merry’s an expert on winter layouts and design . . .”

  That came as news to me.

  “. . . so she’ll do an even better job than she would have in the summer. And the gardens at the inn are even more beautiful in the winter. They do it up to be a winter wonderland, isn’t that right, Merry?”

  I said nothing. I watched the people. No one looked absolutely thrilled. More like stunned. Even Margaret Vanderhaven had stopped mentally expanding the guest list.

  “A winter wedding,” Fran said slowly. “What winter would that be, dear?”

  “I’m going to have a few alterations made to my dress. Longer sleeves, some white fur around the neck and the hem. Maybe a hood. Don’t worry,” Luanne said to her father, who’d begun to sputter, “that won’t cost too much more. And diamonds will be better than pearls in winter, don’t you think, Merry?”

  “I thought you were going to wear my mother’s pearl necklace,” her mother said.

  “And,” Luanne said, “here’s the very best part. It’s going to be on Valentine’s Day!”

  The older people stared at her.

  “Whatever,” Jeff said. “Just tell me where to be and when. That’s my part of this taken care of, right?”

  “February fourteenth,” Fran said. “You’re telling us your wedding is going to be seven weeks from now.”

  Luanne beamed. “Right.”

  Chapter 4

  And then the best part,” I said, “was when her parents ordered her to go back to the original plan, and she had to confess that the deposit was unchangeable and nonrefundable. The hotel event manager said other people were waiting for a spot to come free, so if Luanne didn’t guarantee to take it right now, over the phone, she had other calls to make. Pass the stuffing, please.”

  My father did so.

  My mother said, “I can’t begin to imagine what she’d been thinking.”

  “And now she wants you to give her the wedding of her dreams with seven weeks’ notice?” Alan helped himself to more mashed potatoes.

  “That’s about it.”

  “Knowing Luanne,” Chris said, “she wasn’t thinking. Or rather she wasn’t thinking about anyone other than herself.”

  I dug into my second helping of butternut squash baked with substantial quantities of brown sugar and maple syrup.

  Seventeen people sat around the table for my parents’ Christmas dinner. Dad’s the cook in our house, as well as being the town Santa, and he believes in putting on the full Christmas feast of roast beast à la Charles Dickens. As well as a turkey, with all the trimmings—stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash, green peas, gravy, cranberries—he’d made a crown roast of pork and a fish pie. Mom had provided the first course—mushroom soup and dinner rolls from Vicky’s bakery—and the desserts—also from Vicky’s bakery.

  Christmas is important to the Wilkinson family, and not only because we live in America’s Christmas Town. Dad’s birthday’s today, and his name’s Noel. I’m Merry, and my siblings are Chris, Eve, and Carole.

  The latter two weren’t with us this year, as Eve was in Los Angeles working on a movie, about which she was over the moon, and Carole was singing in Europe.

  The numbers were made up, as they usually were, by a collection of Mom and Dad’s friends and people who didn’t have loved ones near them. Including Alan. His parents had moved to Florida a few years ago, and his brothers and sisters often went south to spend the holiday with them. Alan preferred to visit his parents in February or March, when he wasn’t as busy with his woodworking business.

  Everyone around the table was dressed to suit the importance of the day and the meal. Mom wore a designer dress of peach satin with an enormous floor-sweeping skirt that would have looked suitable at a Met gala. Other than my dad, the older men were in suits with ties, and the younger ones had slacks and buttoned shirts in discreet colors. I wore a black blouse and slim black trousers under a red leather jacket, with matching red shoes and red glass jewelry. Dad was, as could be expected, dressed in one of his beloved ugly Christmas sweaters. This one featured the grinning head of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, his nose represented by a red lightbulb powered by a bat
tery hidden in the stitching of the sweater.

  “Then what happened?” Vicky asked. Vicky had joined us because her boyfriend, Mark Grosse, was a chef and he was working today, and various complications in her vast extended family meant they’d be having the big celebration tomorrow. The bakery would be closed for an extra day to allow her to gather with her relations.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I fled when the shouting started.”

  “We have to be rigid about our refund policy,” Grace said. Grace Olsen and her husband, Jack, were the owners of the Yuletide Inn. “You wouldn’t believe how many last-minute cancellations we get for banquet rooms that have been held for up to three years, meaning many people have been turned away in the interval.”

  “Grooms getting cold feet?” Alan asked.

  “Grooms. And brides. Do you remember last year, dear, when the bride simply didn’t show up and two hundred and fifty people were left waiting in the garden for the ceremony to begin?”

  “Oh yes,” Jack said. “Neither her nor her mother made it to the wedding. Her father finally tracked them down and found out that they’d caught a plane to Paris the night before. He’d paid for a party, so they went ahead and had a party. One of the groundskeepers found the erstwhile groom asleep in the bushes the next morning. Minus his wedding suit—all of his wedding suit—and in the company of the maid of honor, as I recall.”

  We all laughed and helped ourselves to more food. Alan sat across the table from me, and he caught my eye and gave me a wink. I winked back. I realized my mother was watching and felt flames rush into my cheeks.