Candy Cane Murder (Hannah Swensen #9.5)(82)

“I think you must’ve told me,” said Toby. “To tell the truth, it just popped in my head this morning when Patrick woke up and I went into his room to get him.”

Lucy smiled fondly at her grandson, who looked so much like his father at that age. Things had certainly changed since that awful winter of 1983… .





Chapter


! One #

December 1983

Only a week until Christmas. Not that it felt like Christmas. Lucy Stone was crouched awkwardly on the cracked linoleum kitchen floor in front of an elderly gas range, trying to reach all the way back inside the broiler despite her six-month pregnant belly to relight the oven pilot light that was always going out. No wonder, considering how drafty the old house was.

The flame finally caught and she sat back on her heels, gathering up the collection of wooden matches she’d used and groaning a bit as she hauled herself to her feet. She tossed the matches in the trash and washed her hands in cold water—it took a while for the balky hot water heater to produce anything remotely warm, much less hot—before returning to the cookie batter she was mixing. Spritz cookies, just like her mother always made. Except this year she had to make them because she wouldn’t be seeing her mother, or her father, this Christmas. They were staying in New York City because Dad was making a poor recovery from heart surgery and was lingering in the hospital, needing all Mom’s attention. That left Lucy, who could use some attention herself, out in the cold.

Literally out in the cold, she thought, switching on the CANDY CANES OF CHRISTMAS PAST

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mixer to cream the butter and sugar together. It didn’t get much colder than coastal Maine and that’s where she was, in the nowhere town of Tinker’s Cove. It was certainly a far cry from the Upper West Side of New York City, where she and Bill and Toby, who was almost two, had lived in a tight threeand-a-half rooms overlooking Central Park. But what did space matter when you had the entire park with playgrounds and a zoo and even a carousel, and the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art just steps away? When you could hop the subway to Battery Park for a breath of sea air and a walk along the water? Or a night out at a Broadway show? Or a quick trip to Bloomingdale’s where they sprayed you with the newest fragrances and you could find the cutest little outfits for Toby?

Lucy switched off the mixer and set it on the kitchen table, then began adding the flour by hand. It was hard work but she was glad to have something to occupy her, something that would make it seem more like Christmas. Which was weird, she thought, because Tinker’s Cove was one of those picture-perfect New England towns that looked as if it could be on a Christmas card. But even though the air smelled piney and the houses all had wreaths with red bows and the big fir tree in the center of town was decked with colored lights, it wasn’t nearly as festive as Rockefeller Center where they set up a proper Christmas tree above the skating rink and played Christmas carols on loudspeakers and Fifth Avenue was filled with shoppers carrying bags that bulged with presents.

Just the thought of presents made Lucy groan. There weren’t going to be presents this year, at least not the lavish presents of Christmases past. She and Bill had agreed to exchange one modest gift apiece, reserving the rest of their limited budget for toys for Toby. Limited being the operative word here, thought Lucy, who had a fifty-dollar bill folded in the back of her wallet and was keeping an eye on the assortment of trucks and stuffed animals at the IGA, anxiously hoping they 282

Leslie Meier

held out until Christmas Eve when Dot, the friendly cashier, promised her prices would be cut by half.

Somehow she hadn’t expected it would come to this when she agreed to Bill’s plan to dramatically change direction, exchanging a well-paying job as a stockbroker and their comfortable life in the city to realize his longtime dream of living in the country and working with his hands. Back then he’d just gotten a fat bonus and it seemed that they could easily afford the fixer-upper farmhouse they’d found in Tinker’s Cove. He’d learn by doing, he said, gaining the skills of a restoration carpenter by refurbishing the big nineteenthcentury house room by room. But everything was more expensive than they anticipated and the fat bonus shrank rapidly, going to the hardware store and the lumber yard and the electric company and the grocery store and the oil company.

Especially the oil company. When Bill tore out the old, rotted plaster and lath he discovered there was no insulation, and sometimes not even proper studs, in the walls. Which meant it was always cold even though the furnace ran constantly, burning oil at a ferocious rate.

Even worse, Bill’s career change had alienated him from his parents. Bill Sr. and Edna had seemed so jolly, so easygoing when Lucy first met them but that had all changed when Bill announced his plan to give up corporate life. Bill Sr. had listened stony faced as Bill explained his reasons for quitting the brokerage firm he bitterly referred to as “Dewey, Cheatham and Howe.”

“They don’t care about the clients, Dad, all they care about is making a big profit. There’s so much pressure to churn accounts to generate commissions, to sell limited partnerships and other products that aren’t going to produce a dime until most of my clients are long gone. And there’s the insider trading. I tell you, it’s just a matter of time before the SEC gets on to these guys.”

“You have a responsibility to your employer, son,” said his father, looking grim. “They’re paying you handsomely to CANDY CANES OF CHRISTMAS PAST