Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(51)

“Do you mind if I talk to your husband? Maybe he saw something.”

She hesitated a beat, trying to decide whether I was a burglar posing as an insurance investigator.

I guess I passed inspection.

“Come in, won’t you, Ms.—what did you say your name was? I didn’t get a very good look at your card.”

“Austen. Jaine Austen.”

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“Such an interesting name!” she said, her eyes lighting up.

“Are you any relation to the real Jane Austen?”

“Afraid not.” I smiled weakly, having answered that question about 8,976 times in my life.

“Willard’s out back,” she said, waving me inside. “Come with me.”

I followed her past a living room that clearly hadn’t been decorated since Nixon was president, and into her homey kitchen.

“I was just fixing lunch,” she said as my eyes zeroed in on a bowl of egg salad on her kitchen counter, thick with mayo and studded with chunks of hard boiled eggs.

Yikes, it looked good. I hadn’t had lunch, and I was starving.

“He’s in the yard.”

“Who?” I asked, lost in thoughts of egg salad.

“Willard. My husband.”

“Oh, right.”

“He’s putting CDs in the orange trees.”

“CDs in the orange trees?”

“It’s supposed to scare away the squirrels. Personally, I think it’s a lot of nonsense, but Willard insists it works.

“Willard, dear,” she called out the back door, “there’s an insurance investigator who wants to talk to you.”

I walked out into the yard, lush with bougainvillea and orange trees. Yes, I know it’s not fair that we Californians get to pick oranges off our trees in December, but on the downside, we get to crawl along on the freeways at ten miles an hour for most of our commuting lives.

Willard Cox was standing on a ladder at one of the orange trees, stringing CDs from the branches, an athletic man in his seventies. The guy was obviously capable of climbing onto the Jankens’s roof, I thought, as I watched him move with agile grace.

“Hello, Mr. Cox,” I called up to him. “Mind if I have a word with you?”

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Laura Levine

“Just a minute,” he barked, with clipped military diction.

“I’ll be right down.”

Seconds later, he clambered down from the ladder, the CDs on his orange tree twinkling in the reflected light of the sun.

“Keeps the squirrels away,” he said, pinging one of the CDs. “They don’t like the glare. Bet my wife told you they don’t work, but they do.”

He snapped his ladder shut and propped it against the garage.

“So you’re an insurance investigator.” He looked me over with piercing gray eyes.

Uh-oh. It wasn’t going to be easy to fool this guy.

“Yes. I’m representing Seymour Fiedler, the roofer who was working on Mr. Janken’s house.”

“Is that so? What company you with?”

“Century National,” I said, praying he wouldn’t ask me for identification. He’d never fall for my phony laminated card.

I breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t.

“So how can I help you?” he asked.

“We at Century National don’t believe Mr. Janken’s death was an accident. We believe someone tampered with the shingles on the roof.”

“What are you saying? You think it was murder?”

“Yes, we do.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. I hate to speak ill of the dead,”

he said, not hating it a bit, “but that man was a no good cheat and a liar.”

“I heard he beat you a few times in the Christmas decorating contest,” I prompted.

Blood rushed to his weathered face.

“He didn’t win fair and square. He bribed the judge, that’s why he won all the time. Not only that, he cheated. Last year he beheaded my Santa Claus! He claimed it fell off in the wind, but it didn’t just fall off. It was sawed off!

“Let me show you something.”

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He grabbed the ladder and I followed him as he brought it into his garage, a spotless haven complete with workbench and fancy built-in storage cabinets. A handyman’s dream.

Propped up along one of the walls, in stark contrast to the white cabinets, were a chorus line of large red-and-white striped neon candy canes.

“Garth saw these being delivered to my house. And before I had a chance to put them up, he had candy canes up on his roof. He stole my idea!”

“Oh, Willard, honey. He didn’t steal your idea. It was a coincidence.”

We turned and saw Ethel standing in the doorway.

“Please, Ethel. He saw those candy canes being delivered, and beat me to the punch.”

“Whatever you say, dear,” she sighed. “I just came to tell you lunch is ready. You’re welcome to join us if you like, Ms.

Austen. I’ve made an extra sandwich.”

“Oh, no,” I said, thinking of all the mayo in the egg salad.

Not after those chimichangas I had last night. I really had to exercise some self-restraint if I expected to cram myself into a bathing suit in Florida. “Thanks, but no.”