Diva Wraps It Up, The (27 page)

Dear Sophie,

I love sugar cookies, but my icing always looks like my kids did it. What am I doing wrong?

Desperately Inept in St. Nickolas, Pennsylvania

Dear Desperately Inept,

Add a little extra powdered sugar to a portion of your royal icing. Use that to pipe on a border. Apply the runnier icing to the center with a squeeze bottle. Add a drop of water if it’s too thick. Allow to dry. Now pipe on the thicker royal icing in a different color as decoration.

Sophie

I hurried next door to the Babineauxs’, my thoughts racing. Why would Luis have pajama bottoms that matched Gwen’s top? Had she been truthful about having an affair with a yummy neighbor? Too many things were falling into place. They couldn’t all be coincidences. I had dismissed Luis’s reaction to soy. But maybe it did place him at Gwen’s house after the cookie swap. Maybe he had been there and eaten one of Natasha’s dreadful cookies. If I was right, then Luis had pretended to be a woman to buy the silver sleigh and candleholders incognito. I would know as soon as I ripped open Liza’s Christmas present.

With any luck, Wolf would still be there. To my surprise, Claudine answered the door.

“Sophie! Guess what I’m doing.”

“Babysitting?”

“Almost, but even better. Come on in out of the cold. I’m on nana duty!”

“The test results came back? You’re officially Kat’s grandmother?”

“It’s the best Christmas ever. What a gift. Jonah and Sugar are at the courthouse now getting everything squared away. Meanwhile, Kat has a Christmas pageant tonight and no one has any idea whether Gwen made or bought a costume for her. I’m afraid Baxter is no help at all. He’s in a deep funk. What can I do for you?”

“Is Wolf here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” How could I say this without sounding nosy?
I’m going upstairs to open Liza’s Christmas present from Luis because I think he’s the killer and he hid the murder weapon in her gift.
“Uh, there’s something I, uh, left upstairs.” That sounded incredibly stupid.

But she bought it. I chalked it up to being giddy about her new role as grandmother. I hurried up the stairs before she could change her mind.

I slipped into the room where Baxter had placed Luis’s gift. I could hear Kat playing with Harry and talking to him.

I slid the bow and ribbon off the present and ripped the paper in haste. It was certainly heavy enough to contain silver. Fumbling, I lifted the lid. Nestled under white tissue paper were the sleigh with the reindeer and the two stag-head candleholders. Luis must have been the woman who’d bought them for cash. The sad thing was that I didn’t think they were just a very generous gift for Liza. He wouldn’t have disguised himself to buy them if they were. Wrapping them as a gift was an ingenious way to hide the murder weapon—the candleholder—from the police.

A sad sound drifted to me.

Guttural, almost like a moan, or a weak protest. As silently as I could, I tiptoed toward it. The door to the room was closed. I debated for only a few seconds before slowly turning the knob and peeking in.

Baxter lay in his bed, propped up on a pillow. Luis perched on the edge of the bed offering pills and water which Baxter feebly pushed away.

“Now Baxter,” said Luis in a calm singsong voice. “You have to take these. It’s just alprazolam, a sedative. You know they’ll make you feel better. They’ll help you relax and sleep. All your troubles and pain will go away.”

Baxter swallowed the pills.

“Just a few more,” said Luis. “They’ll just make you very drowsy, so you can go into a deep sleep.”

A few more? That didn’t sound right!

Baxter cooperated, chasing them down with the water. But when he swallowed, he gasped, like people do when they drink alcohol straight. Something definitely wasn’t right.

I slid my cell phone out of my pocket and hurried back to the bedroom where the package had been stashed. I dialed 911 first and told them we needed police and an ambulance. Next I called Wolf. With any luck, he wouldn’t be too far away.

But luck wasn’t with me. Luis swung open the door. He grinned at me, dimples showing near the corners of his mouth. “Sophie! Hi. What are you doing here?”

“How’s Baxter?” My gaze drifted down to Luis’s hand. He quickly tucked a pill bottle into his pocket.

“As well as can be expected. He’s taking a nap. What are you up to? Opening my gift to my wife? That will land you on Santa’s naughty list!”

I played along. “I was actually trying to move it. Claudine is bringing a sewing machine in here to work on a costume for Kat.”

“Why don’t I believe that? Come, come.” He backed up and motioned to me. I didn’t much like being trapped in the bedroom. Out of the corners of my eyes, I sought a weapon of some kind.

In a second we were on the upstairs landing. No weapons there!

“I knew that Christmas letter would get me in trouble. Gwen never should have mentioned our affair. And so publicly. Baxter will be dead shortly. A tragic overdose brought on by his inability to cope with having killed his wife. So very sad. It’s an old story, though, the husband killing the wife over money.”

“You’re trying to frame him by killing him?”

“I prefer to see it as Baxter accepting the blame for Gwen’s death. I might have known it would be you who would come along at an inopportune time. Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one in the neighborhood who will be glad when the nosiest neighbor is gone.”

I backed up a step. “There are three of us. You’ll have witnesses.”

“Right. A little old lady and a distraught child.” Luis tittered. “Ohhh, I’m scared.”

“I think you’ve counted wrong. Wolf is with us.” It was a big fat lie, but I needed to buy time.

“I’m not that stupid. I didn’t see him come in with you.”

“He’s parking the car.”

Luis’s eyes narrowed. “Then he’ll be the first to find you dead at the bottom of the stairs. Good-bye, Sophie.”

Claudine appeared behind him. She held a marble rolling pin up high in her right hand. Instead of whacking him, though, she moved in close behind him. “One ought never mess with little old ladies, Luis. You never know when one of us might be packin’.”

As though we were in a movie, he raised his hands into the air.

“Sophie,” said Claudine, “close the door to Kat’s room and tell her to stay inside. I don’t want her to see this.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I have no reason to harm Kat.”

I didn’t believe his lie. The sparkle in his dark eyes told me he was thinking fast.

“I bet you didn’t mean to kill Gwen, either.”

“That’s absolutely right. I never intended to hurt her.”

“Like I believe that.”

“It’s true. I was taking out trash when I saw Gwen coming through the Scrogginses’ back gate. I asked her if we could talk, and she got sassy. I followed her into her house, pleading with her to listen to me.” Luis’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “You know Gwen. She offered me cookies like a hostess, then she turned into a sultry vixen and asked me again to leave Liza and marry her. When I said no, Gwen told me it was my fault that she had to move to plan B. She was so proud about using Horace’s own warfarin meds in peanut brittle to kill him. You should have heard her talking about what a pity it was that the railing broke and the doctors discovered the overdose.”

Luis’s shoulders sagged. “I knew I should rely on my training. She suffered from a disorder, but she rambled on about tricking Mrs. Scroggins so people would think she’d become senile, which would put Baxter in charge of Scroggins Realty, and they would finally see some real money with the Scrogginses out of the way. It was the babbling of a sick mind.”

I had a feeling I was hearing the babbling of a sick mind.

Luis rubbed his forehead. “I should have called Baxter, or her doctor. But she turned on me and said she’d have her revenge. She would reveal our affair. She would make sure that Liza knew, and she would tell people I had been treating her privately, which would ruin my career, leaving me destitute. Don’t you see? I would have been in Baxter’s shoes. My life would have been over.”

He snorted air like an angry bull. “I lost it.” He moaned. “I just lost it. She grabbed the candlestick and came at me. I overpowered her, flipped her around, and slammed it on the back of her head.”

His dark eyes glared straight at me. “I regretted it immediately. But it was too late. She fell to the floor, and I could see blood in her hair. I wanted to help her, to save her.” His lips trembled, and he mashed them together. “But I did the worst thing I have ever done. I ran.” He hung his head.

I didn’t need to see his face to know he was crying. I could hear the tears in his voice.

“I ran away. I didn’t call for help. I didn’t own up to what had happened. I just ran away. I thought she was dead. But then she disappeared. Do you know the agony of those twenty-four hours? I couldn’t ask anyone. I didn’t know if she was playing some kind of trick on me. Why didn’t they find her in the living room, where I left her?”

In a sudden rage, he lunged at me, roaring like a madman. I stepped aside just in time to watch him tumble headfirst down the stairs.

Claudine and I peered at him.

“Do you think he’s alive?” she whispered.

“I’m not taking any chances. Where’s your gun?”

She held out a battery-operated candle. “I took out the lightbulb. It was the only thing I could think of that was about the right size.”

“Okay, give me the rolling pin. It’s better than nothing. I’ll watch him. You take Kat down the back stairs and out of the house. She hurried Kat and Harry down the stairs, and I heard the back door close.

At long last I heard sirens approaching. I snuck down the back way, but when I reached the foyer, Luis was gone.

I opened the front door, intending to slip out and let the cops find him, but a hand clamped over my mouth and an arm encircled my waist. He dragged me backward, into the living room.

He was simply stronger than me. My efforts to injure him were useless. I had only one choice left. I opened my mouth and chomped down on his hand as hard as I could.

He loosened his grip. I tore away and grabbed a fireplace poker. Where were the police? Why weren’t they here yet?

When he laughed and barreled toward me, I whipped the poker out straight, and Luis ran right into it. He fell to the floor with the tip of the poker lodged in his abdomen, eerily reminiscent of the dagger in Horace’s belly.

I had never been so happy to hear footsteps. “In here!”

Wolf didn’t often show much emotion, but this time, he winced. “Eww.”

The emergency medical technicians rushed in. I pointed upstairs. “He said Baxter would die of an overdose. Alprazolam and maybe vodka?”

They split up to tend to both victims.

I looked at Wolf. “What took you so long?”

He wrapped an arm around me. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Dear Sophie,

This will be our first Christmas without my dear father-in-law. Everyone is coming to our home for the holidays. I don’t want the focus to be on him, but I don’t want to forget him, either. How do I handle this?

Missing Dad in North Star, Michigan

Dear Missing Dad,

Buy a dozen or so small silver or gold picture frames. Attach a red ribbon loop to the back with a glue gun. Fill them with pictures of family members having fun times, including your father-in-law. Hang them on your tree. I guarantee it will be the hit of your celebration. But be sure you don’t leave anyone out!

Sophie

Two days later, the neighborhood had returned to normal. Natasha recovered her status as domestic diva by organizing the decorating block party.

My widowed neighbor, Francie, hadn’t come home yet, but while Natasha was busy elsewhere, we replaced her purple Christmas wreath, not to mention the raccoons, with an elegant traditional wreath and lovely battery-operated lights on a timer around her front door and downstairs window so she wouldn’t have to go outside to turn them on or off.

Around four o’clock in the afternoon, Claudine and I retreated to my kitchen to make vats of hot chocolate and mulled cider.

When Claudine asked for vanilla for the hot chocolate, I nearly choked. She couldn’t be Brown-Eyed Girl. That was wishful thinking on my part. Plenty of people added vanilla to their hot chocolate.

Liza had contributed all her cookies from the cookie swap. Now that Luis was in jail, Pandora wouldn’t be visiting. In fact, Liza planned to fly to Miami to spend the holidays with her mom and sister, and shop for her dream condo.

Chili simmered in three Crock-Pots in my kitchen. Patty and Sugar had promised to bring trays of corn bread.

Nina barged in through my kitchen door, dragging along a reluctant Liza. “Look who I found!”

“Good timing, Liza.” I smiled at her. “You’re arriving for the best part. Food and lights.”

“I don’t think anyone will be happy to see
me
.”

“Nonsense!” Nina pinched a cookie from the tray on the table. “Okay, tell me if I have this right. Luis and Gwen had an affair.”

“Apparently very short-lived. Only a couple of, um, you know”—Liza’s ears turned red—“encounters.”

“I thought it was a big deal, and Gwen wanted Luis to leave you.” Claudine stirred the hot chocolate.

Liza sighed. “I never figured him for such a rat. He tells me that he realized she had some issues. She’d figured out that her ride on Baxter’s money train was coming to a very abrupt end, and she was actively looking for someone to be her next source of the good life. She pressured Luis to leave me. When he broke everything off with her, it forced her to move to what she called Plan B. If she killed Horace and made people think Edith had lost her mind, then Baxter would be in charge at Scroggins Realty, and they would be back on top financially.”

“Then why did he kill her?” asked Nina. “Sounds like she had moved on.”

“He caught her coming back from Edith’s house after the cookie swap. He wanted to talk with her because he interpreted her little mention in her Christmas letter about having an affair with a yummy neighbor as a direct threat to him.” Liza raised her eyebrows. “And I think it was. Gwen loved to yank someone’s chain like that. So at first, she was all sweet and nice and even offered him cookies, but when he resisted her advances, she became angry again and threatened to ruin him, and he hit her over the head with the stag-head candlestick.”

Rapping on the door stopped our conversation. Wolf opened it. “Is this a ladies-only chat?”

We protested in a chorus.

“Come in! We were just talking about Luis,” I said. “What I don’t understand is why there was no blood in Gwen’s living room. And no one noticed anything amiss in there. Elvin said he didn’t clean it up.”

“That’s actually one of the reasons I’m here. As near as we can tell, the blow to the head didn’t kill Gwen.”

Liza screeched and jumped to her feet. “Luis didn’t murder her after all?”

“Maybe, maybe not. The injury from the candlestick definitely contributed to her death. She was on the floor in the living room when he left. Apparently, she got up, put the candlestick back on the mantel, and went to her kitchen. I guess she was dazed or confused at that point. The blow to the head caused internal bleeding. She died from a hemorrhage, what they call intracranial bleeding. Remember how the kids filled her orange box of peanut brittle with the poisoned peanut brittle? She must have eaten it from the orange box, thinking it was safe to eat. But it thinned her blood, so when she was hit by the candlestick, she bled inside her skull and died.”

A squeal came out of my mouth. “She killed herself!”

They all looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Well, in a way. The children ate the peanut brittle she made for herself and the family, so the kids replaced it with peanut brittle she made to give to Liza and Luis. It was just like the stuff she gave Horace, tainted with warfarin. So she made her own situation worse by unwittingly eating the poison she prepared”—I pointed at Liza—“for you and Luis!”

Liza collapsed into a chair and fanned herself. “Oy. I could have died, too. Gwen was far more vengeful than I ever suspected. Luis said she wanted to poison us because she was angry with him for rejecting her. Imagine.
I
might have died from eating that peanut brittle. And I never did anything but treat her as a friend.”

“Claudine, Natasha kept telling us that she saw you at the apartment when you should have been at the store. What was that about?” asked Nina.

Claudine blushed. “I’ve been working on a special Christmas surprise for Jonah, but that place is so small that they know everything I do. I came home during my breaks to do research, but it didn’t work out.”

“What kind of gift requires research?” asked Nina.

Claudine smiled sadly. “I was trying to find a family member whom Jonah has never met—but no luck.”

“I hope you’ll stick around for chili, Wolf.” I arranged a huge tray of toppings for the chili. Salty olives, avocado slices, corn chips, chopped green onions, minced white onions, shredded cheddar cheese, oyster crackers, sour cream, diced tomatoes, spicy jalapenos, and, for the very selective, shaved chocolate. “Would you mind taking this out to the table Mars and Bernie set up this morning?”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“Liza, would you call Bernie and Mars? We could use some help carrying out the Crock-Pots, too.”

Liza held the door for Wolf and walked out with him.

Nina leaned back in her chair dejectedly. “If only we had found Brown-Eyed Girl.”

Claudine dropped a ladle on the floor.

Nina and I gasped and pointed at her. Suspicion in her tone, Nina said, “Moondoggie.”

“How could you know about that?” asked Claudine.

I felt so stupid. “Of course! Horace took Edith’s last name. It was her father’s realty business, so Horace became a Scroggins!”

“Horace Scroggins, who is in the hospital, is my Moondoggie?” Claudine sank into a chair, her hands shaking. “I had almost given up hope of finding him.”

I raced to the cookbook where I had stashed the letter and brought it to her. “Horace kept this. He asked me to retrieve it when he fell.”

She clasped a hand over her heart and tears rolled down her face. “My dear Moondoggie. Oh, I can’t wait to see him again. First thing tomorrow morning or maybe tonight? What a special Christmas this will be!”

“I’ll drive you. I have to be there for this reunion.” Nina grinned from ear to ear.

With help from Bernie and Mars, we carried out all the food.

Nina served us mulled cider. Steam rose in the air from our cups. She did a little dance. “Oh, Claudine, you can’t imagine how thrilled I am!”

Kat skipped along the street with other children.

“How’s Kat adjusting to two new mommies and a daddy?” I asked.

Claudine smiled. “She’s doing beautifully. And it might even be easier on her when she finds out she has a new grandpa, too.”

“I don’t understand.” I sipped my cinnamon-laden cider.

“You just solved the Christmas surprise I was working on for Jonah. Horace is Jonah’s father.”

“Not your husband?” asked Nina.

“Shortly after we moved, I found out I was pregnant. My husband was the only father Jonah ever knew. When he was little, I explained that he had another father somewhere, but I didn’t ever think I would find Horace again.”

Nina gasped. “If Horace is Jonah’s father, then Horace is Kat’s grandfather. What could be more perfect? Horace has a whole family he didn’t know about!”

Nina and I toasted.

“Now, you girls! You have to promise to keep that tidbit under your hats. I don’t want Jonah finding out from someone else.”

We promised. But I worried about Edith. How would she take the news? Horace didn’t want her to ever know that he had loved Claudine all these years.

A little line formed at the table as neighbors greeted us and helped themselves to food.

The town had agreed to block off the street for the day, but a golf cart appeared to be off course.

The driver wore an elf hat, and his passenger had dressed in a full Santa suit.

Neighbors and friends rushed toward them, exclaiming and hugging as they recognized elf Baxter driving Santa Horace, who handed out packages to the children.

Edith joined me. “I didn’t contribute any food, so I thought the least I could do was bring the fellows home in style.”

“I’m so glad you did. You made this day special.”

“I want to thank you for everything you did for me.”

“My pleasure. May I ask you one question?”

“Certainly.”

“Why did you make such a fuss about a coupon at Rocking Horse Toys, yet you won’t buy clothes if they’re on sale?”

Edith blinked at me as though I had asked the most stupid question in the world. “Well, no one wants to be foolish with their money. I clip coupons like everyone else, but I’ve never bought last season’s clothes, and I’m not about to start to now.”

Everyone had their own quirks and rules to live by.

“I wanted you to know that Horace and I have agreed to divorce. Don’t look shocked, dear. It’s quite amicable. Poor Horace has endured more than anyone should expect of another human being. He fulfilled his promises to my father long ago. It’s time Horace moved on and experienced true happiness in his life.”

“But what about you?”

“I shall stay where I am, in the house I love. But I intend to move the mirror in the hallway back where it belongs. I have found a space for sale, not far from the Torpedo Factory Art Center.” She smiled. “I think you’ll be happy to know that it will be Baxter’s first sale when he’s able to work again. I may have been a bit hasty when I fired him. Little Kat brought back so many wonderful memories of the days I spent drawing and painting with my son. I am opening a children’s art center staffed with art therapists who can help children through their troubles.”

“Mrs. Scroggins! Mrs. Scroggins!” Kat raced toward us holding a piece of paper that flapped in the air. She held it out to Edith. “I made this for you. Merry Christmas!”

“For me?” Edith’s surprise quickly turned to joy. “It’s beautiful! Is this an angel?”

“That’s my ma . . . Grandma Gwen singing in heaven.”

She had captured Gwen’s long hair perfectly.

“Is this her kitty cat?” asked Edith.

Kat became solemn. “She never ever had one, so I think she needs one in heaven.”

Edith pointed to a black rectangle. “And what is this?”

“That’s her earth TV. She’s watching over me.”

At that moment, the lights on the houses and the trees came on. All around me, my neighbors exclaimed.

While all the houses were beautiful, Mars and Bernie had outdone everyone with a snowflake machine that shone on my house, making it appear that snow flurries were dancing against it.

A cheer went up when a local man announced that Mars and Bernie had won the Clark Griswold award. Natasha would never hear the end of it.

I took a deep breath and looked up. In spite of the blazing lights on my street, in the dark sky one star twinkled even brighter, and I knew Gwen was watching TV.