Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(81)

So Prozac and I had the guest room—and my parents—all to ourselves. How lovely to eat all the Christmas cookies I wanted, free from invidious comparisons to Cousin Joanie and her string bikinis.

And the flight to Florida wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Prozac didn’t throw up on a single passenger.

Nope, this trip, she threw up on the captain.

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But Homeland Security finally took her off their Most Wanted List, so we’re free to travel again.

Catch you next time.

PS. If you’re reading this during the holiday season, Prozac and I want to wish you a marvelous Christmas, a heavenly Hanukah and/or the coolest Kwanzaa ever.

Well, I do, anyway. Prozac just wants you to scratch her back.

CANDY CANES OF

CHRISTMAS PAST

Leslie Meier





Prologue


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Afire was crackling in the grate, Christmas carols were playing on the stereo and Lucy Stone was perched on a step ladder in the living room arranging strings of twinkling fairy lights on an eight-foot balsam fir her husband Bill had cut in the woods behind their old farmhouse on Red Top Road in Tinker’s Cove, Maine.

“Watch out, Lucy,” warned Bill, coming into the room with several battered brown cardboard boxes of ornaments.

“You don’t want to lose your balance and fall.”

“I’ve just finished,” said Lucy, slipping the last loop of wire over a branch and stepping down from the ladder.

Bill put the boxes on the coffee table and stood back, arms akimbo, admiring the tree. “It’s the best we’ve ever had, I think. I’ve had my eye on that tree for a couple of years now.”

“A special tree for a special Christmas,” said Lucy, wrapping her arms around his waist. “It’s Patrick’s first.”

“Not that he’ll remember it,” said Bill. “He’s only nine months old.”

“We’ll remember. After all, it’s our first Christmas as grandparents.”

As if on cue, the dog’s barking announced the arrival of Toby and Molly and the baby, who had come from their house on nearby Prudence Path. Feet could be heard clatter-278

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ing down the stairs as Zoe, at eleven the youngest of Lucy and Bill’s children, ran to greet them. Behind her, moving more sedately but unable to resist the allure of their nephew, came her older sisters, Sara, who was a high school sophomore, and Elizabeth, home from Chamberlain College in Boston, where she was a senior.

“Look at how big he’s gotten!” exclaimed Elizabeth, who hadn’t seen the baby since Thanksgiving.

“Can I hold him?” asked Sara.

“No, let me!” demanded Zoe. “Let me hold him!”

“Careful there,” cautioned Lucy, asserting her grandmotherly prerogative and scooping little Patrick up in a hug. Then she sat down on the couch with him in her lap and began unzipping his snowsuit, revealing a blond little tyke in a plaid shirt and blue jeans that matched his father’s, and his grandfather’s. She nuzzled his neck and Patrick crowed and bounced in her lap, delighted to be the center of attention.

“Elizabeth, you can get the cookies and eggnog, and everybody else can start trimming the tree. Patrick and I will watch.

Right, Patrick?” But as soon as the boxes were opened and the first ornaments taken out, Patrick was no longer content to watch. He wanted to pull the paper out of the boxes and touch the ornaments, too. Deftly, Lucy distracted him with a cookie and took him over to the window, to look at the Christmas lights strung on the porch.

“It’s starting to snow,” she said. “It’s going to be a white Christmas.”

“Nothing unusual about that,” said Bill, who was attaching a hook to a round red ball.

“We’re only supposed to get a couple of inches,” said Toby, pulling a plastic trumpet out of the box. “Hey, I remember this,” he said, blowing on it and producing a little toot.

“Look at this one!” said Zoe. “It’s baby Jesus in his manger, and if you shake it the snow falls on him!”

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“Poor baby Jesus,” said Molly, making herself shiver. “He must be cold.”

“It snowed on me in my crib, when I was a baby, right in this house,” said Toby. “Right, Mom?”

“He’s making that up,” declared Sara.

“And how could he remember, if he was a baby?” asked Elizabeth.

“That’s silly,” said Zoe. “It can’t snow in the house!”

Lucy looked around the room, at the strong walls and the tight windows, the carpeted floor, and the brick fireplace where the fire crackled merrily, and then her eyes met Bill’s.

“We-e-ll,” she said, “this house was in pretty bad shape when we first moved here.”

“It was a nor’easter,” said Bill, exaggerating. “The wind blew the snow through a crack. It was easy to fix, the window just needed some caulking.”

“See, I was right,” declared Toby.

“It was Christmas Eve,” said Lucy. “Toby was two. I found him in his crib, with a little dusting of snow. But how did you remember?”