(11/40) A Little Yuletide Murder Page 20

Jill stepped close to me. “The reason I wanted to come here was to ask Santa for something for Christmas.”

  “Oh?”

  “I wanted to ask Santa that he—I guess Santa is a she this year—that she pay a little extra attention to a little girl in Salem, Maine, named Samantha. At least I assume she’s still there.”

  I fought to hold back the tears.

  “I just know she’s with a wonderful family who’s giving her a special Christmas. But I thought that maybe Santa would put in an extra good word for her.”

  “You can count on it, Jill,” I said. “And I’m sure you’re right. Samantha is having a wonderful Christmas with a family that loves her very much.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  It occurred to me that there was a wonderful, meaningful story in what had transpired with Jill Walther, a story she could write from the heart. As fiction, of course. Maybe I’d suggest it to her at another time.

  “Well,” I said, “time for me to get back into my civilian clothes. I’m going to a party at Dr. Hazlitt’s house.”

  “Don’t want to hold you up,” Jake said. “Much obliged for how you’ve helped Jill with college and all.”

  “It’s been my pleasure, Jake. Where are you going now?”

  “Back home, I reckon,” he said.

  I was certain they didn’t have a Christmas tree, or any other vestiges of the holiday season. I wondered if they even had any festive food.

  “Would the two of you like to come to Dr. Hazlitt’s Christmas Eve party?” I asked.

  Father and daughter looked at each other.

  “Please,” I said. “As my special guests.”

  “I don’t figure I’d be welcome there,” said Jake.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I’ll see to it that you’re made to feel very much at home. After all, this is Christmas.”

  An hour later, my Santa uniform having been shed, and dressed in my holiday finery, I went with Jake and Jill Walther to Seth’s house, where the Christmas Eve party had begun. When we first walked through the door, the expression on people’s faces was of surprise, even shock. But Seth broke the tension by coming to Jake and Jill, extending his hand, and saying, “Welcome, Jake. Hello, Jill. Merry Christmas. Help yourselves. There’s plenty ’a food for everyone.”

  The party broke up at eleven, and most guests headed for their homes to spend the remainder of Christmas Eve around their own trees with family. Mort Metzger, his wife, Jim and Susan Shevlin, and Seth and I handled the clean-up chores. Once the house had been put back into some semblance of order, we sat in the living room.

  “It was a nice thing you did, Mrs. F., bringing Jake Walther and his daughter here,” Mort said.

  “They seemed to enjoy themselves,” I said. “No matter what Mary did, they shouldn’t have to pay for it. How is she holding up in jail, Mort?”

  “Pretty well. Prays a lot. Gives us no trouble. She’ll be off to the county lockup in a few days. Better facilities there. Jake and Jill visited her this afternoon. Brought a Christmas wreath and some cookies to cheer her up. I feel bad for Jake. He really wanted to be in that cell instead of his wife. Was willing to take the rap for her, and would have, if you hadn’t intervened, Mrs. F.”

  “The festival was a success,” our mayor, Jim Shevlin, said. “Best ever.”

  “You always say that, Jimmy,” said Seth.

  “But it was the best,” Susan Shevlin said, “thanks to you, Jessica.”

  I waved her compliment off and said, “Actually, being Santa Claus wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I kind of enjoyed it.”

  “I wasn’t talking about playing Santa,” Susan said. “What saved the festival was having Rory Brent’s murder solved before the festival. Having it hanging over the town as an unsolved crime would have put quite a damper on things.”

  “What do you think will happen to Robert Brent?” Seth asked our sheriff.

  “About breaking into Mrs. F.’s house? Up to her if she wants to press charges.” They looked at me.

  “I don’t intend to press any charges,” I said. “Actually, it was somewhat touching the reason he broke in and left that note. He’d gotten wind that I knew about Jill’s pregnancy and wanted to help her keep the secret. As he told you, Mort, he was looking for any papers I might have had concerning it. In some ways he’s nicer than his father was.”

  “I still have trouble knowing that Rory wasn’t as nice a guy as everybody thought,” Seth said. “Sort ’a challenges your faith in mankind.”

  “I don’t feel that way,” I said. “Yes, it is disillusioning that he was part of a group that preys on people like the Walthers. Hundreds of others like them all over the country. But it hasn’t destroyed my faith—in anything. Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”

  “And women,” Susan said.

  “All living things,” Mort’s wife said.

  “Yes, all living things,” I repeated.

  “Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la, la la.”

  We went to the window and looked out at the dozen men, women, and children making the rounds singing Christmas carols. They waved; we returned the greeting. A few flakes of snow could be seen in the flickering flames of the candles they carried.

  Eventually, the others left, leaving me alone with Seth. Vaughan and Olga Buckley had planned to be there, but canceled at the last minute. I wasn’t disappointed, although I always love to see them. But it was nice having some quiet time for myself, shared at that moment with my good friend, Seth.

  At a few minutes before midnight, he handed me a small glass of sherry, raised his glass to touch rims with me, and said, “Merry Christmas, Jessica.”

  “Yes, Seth, Merry Christmas.”

  To all.

  Here’s a preview

  of the next

  Murder, She Wrote

  Mystery

  Murder at the Powderhorn Ranch

  When I announced to my friends in Cabot Cove that I intended to spend a week at a Colorado dude ranch, their response was one of incredulity.

  “You don’t know how to ride a horse, Mrs. F.,” Sheriff Mort Metzger said. “Might fall off and hurt yourself.”

  Another friend, Dr. Seth Hazlitt, said, “You write murder mysteries, Jessica, not cowboy books. Better off spendin’ a week at a place you can use in your next novel.”

  They meant well, but their reactions didn’t dissuade me. I’d already accepted an invitation from old friends, Jim and Bonnie Cook, who’d left Maine years ago to fulfill their dream of owning and operating a guest ranch in Colorado. They’d called me last week. “It’s time you came out here for a visit,” Jim said. “Bonnie and I have a horse all picked out for you, the trout are jumping, and one of our best cabins has your name on it. Besides, we’re always looking for another square dance partner.”

  “Please come,” Bonnie added. “It’s been years. We miss you.”

  I decided on the spot to accept. I’d just finished a book and didn’t intend to start the next for a few months. A relaxing week at their ranch, The Powderhom, in Powderhom, Colorado, forty-five minutes outside of the town of Gunnison, was exactly the break I needed.

  Three weeks later, on a lovely late August day, I boarded a flight from Boston to Denver and connected with a flight to Gunnison. Jim Cook met me at the airport. Soon, I was sipping tea with my good friends in their spacious log home.

  Now, with a solid night’s sleep, and a hearty breakfast in the lodge under my belt—and some basic riding instruction from one of the ranch’s four young wranglers—I mounted my horse for the week, a splendid chestnut trail horse named Rebel, and joined a string of other guests on horseback for our first trail ride into the spectacular, rugged hills and mountains surrounding the ranch.

  Accompanying us were Jim and Bonnie’s two dogs—Socks, a border collie who earned his keep by herding the ranch’s horses at feeding time, and Holly, a mixed breed with a sweet disposition and a penchant for crashing
through bushes and brush in search of small animals.

  It had been a chilly forty degrees when I got up. Now, with the sun rising high into the deep blue sky, it had warmed up to sixty, a typical pristine day on tap in Western Colorado.

  Initially, when we left the corral, I was tentative being so high off the ground. I hadn’t been on a horse in years, and Rebel was a big one, the largest of the ranch’s forty-two steeds. But after an hour, I settled into a comfortable synergy with his gait and felt as though I’d been riding him all my life. Adding to the pleasure of having become one with my horse was the sheer joy of being there: the views became increasingly breathtaking as we continued our ascent, the horses were sure-footed on the narrow, twisting rutted trails winding through groves of aspen trees and ponderosa pines. A hawk circled overhead; chipmunks scurried across the trail; and deer watched impassively from a safe distance.

  The other guests that week were from one family, the Morrisons, and a couple who’d arrived at the last minute, Paul and Geraldine Molloy. Jim and Bonnie had explained that each year the Morrison clan gathered for a family reunion at the Powderhom, the annual event arranged by Craig Morrison, the oldest of four brothers and a wealthy real estate developer from Denver. Nine Morrisons attended this year’s reunion, including Craig. But only six were on the ride this morning. Craig was working in his cabin, according to another brother, Chris, whose wife, Marisa, joined us on horseback that morning. Craig’s teenage son and daughter were also part of the riding group, as was an unmarried cousin, Willy, and the family matriarch, Evelyn Morrison, a patrician woman who looked younger than her years, and whose youthful figure nicely filled out the jeans, designer plaid shirt, and down vest she wore. She rode tall and erect in the saddle, her hair perfectly coifed beneath a black Stetson studded with rhinestones. An impressive group, I thought upon meeting them at breakfast, proud of what was obviously a staunch and successful family. Mrs. Molloy rounded out our group.

  We stopped on the ridge of the mountain we’d climbed to stretch our legs and take in the vistas. Our wrangler, a young woman named Amber, pointed out various mountain peaks in the far distance, and identified some of the wildflowers that painted the countryside with bursts of color.

  “Ready to head back?” Amber asked.

  “Whenever you are,” Chris Morrison said.

  The teenagers had wandered off, and we had to round them up before mounting our horses and starting back down the series of trails that had led us to the top.

  “Enjoying yourself, Mrs. Fletcher?” Evelyn Morrison asked as we slowly retraced our steps.

  “Immensely so,” I said. “This is paradise.”

  “Will you be setting one of your mysteries on a guest ranch?”

  “Goodness, no. This is vacation time for me. No books, no plots, no nefarious characters, and certainly no murders. Especially no murders, at least for a week.”

  She laughed.

  “Can’t we go faster?” one of the teens asked. “This is boring.”

  “We go as fast as our guide allows us to go,” the family matriarch said haughtily.

  “Grandma looks like a cowboy,” his sister said, laughing.

  “Cowgirl is more appropriate,” Evelyn said. “And I have told you countless times not to call me Grandma. I am not old enough to be your grandmother. I am Evelyn.”

  I kept my smile to myself. Evelyn Morrison was obviously as vain as she was beautiful.

  It was a little past noon when we turned onto the final trail leading to the ranch. We rode in single file; I’d ended up first in line directly behind Amber. Evelyn was directly behind me, followed by the rest of her family.

  It was when we reached flat ground and were on a dirt road, the ranch looming in the distance, that Holly tore off into the bushes and barked.

  Amber brought us to a halt and said, laughing, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard her bark.”

  The dog continued to sound off, barking at one moment, whining the next. Socks, her canine step-sibling, joined her.

  Amber signaled us to resume the ride, and slowly headed down the road. I started to follow, but as I passed where the dogs were making a ruckus, I saw something out of the comer of my eye. I pulled on the reins, bringing Rebel to a halt. The others halted behind me.

  “What is it?” Evelyn Morrison asked.

  I pointed to the bushes.

  “What?” she repeated.

  “That,” I said, referring to the lower portion of a human leg that had been uncovered by the dogs’ thrashing about.

  “It’s a leg,” Chris Morrison said.

  “Ugh,” the teenage girl said.

  Amber got down off her horse, handed the reins to me, and went to where the dogs waited, tails wagging. She parted the bushes with her boot and leaned over to see better.

  “What is it?” Evelyn Morrison said in a voice she undoubtedly used when demanding answers from underlings in boardrooms.

  “It’s—”

  Amber stepped back as though physically pushed, and returned to us.

  “It’s—it’s Mr. Molloy,” she said.

  “Molloy?” Evelyn said.

  “My husband?” Geraldine Molloy said.

  “Yes,” said Amber.

  “Oh, boy,” Cousin Willy said.

  Evelyn turned to face her son, Chris. “Get back to the ranch and call Walter in Denver. The phone is in the laundry room.”

  “Walter?” I said.

  “Our attorney,” Evelyn replied.

  “It must have been an accident,” Cousin Willy said.

  I climbed down from Rebel, handed the reins to Amber and stepped closer to the body. Amber was right. It was Paul Molloy. After observing his bloody face, I straightened up, turned and said, “This was no accident. This was murder.”

  “So much for your idyllic vacation, Mrs. Fletcher,” Evelyn Morrison said. To the others: “Stop gawking and follow me. We have things to do.”