Candy Cane Murder by Laura Levine & Joanne Fluke & Leslie Meier

Author:Laura Levine & Joanne Fluke & Leslie Meier [Levine, Laura & Fluke, Joanne & Meier, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Short Stories, Women Sleuths, Women Detectives, Christmas Stories; American, Swensen; Hannah (Fictitious Character), Bakers and Bakeries, Detective and Mystery Stories; American, Austen; Jaine (Fictitious Character), Stone; Lucy (Fictitious character), Candy Canes
ISBN: 9780758221995
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2007-09-30T14:00:00+00:00

I made my way past the frolicking reindeer on the Coxes’s front lawn and rang the bell.

Ethel came to the door, still in her nightgown. A far cry from the happy hausfrau I’d met the other day, her gray curls had lost their bounce and her once rosy cheeks were drained of color.

“Ethel,” I asked, in what had to be one of the Top Ten World’s Most Rhetorical Questions, “are you okay?”

“Willard’s gone!” she cried, her eyes wide with fear. “The police took him away for questioning!”

“Try not to worry, Ethel. They’ll probably release him in a few hours. Let me come in and make you some tea.”

She nodded numbly and allowed me to lead her down the hallway to her kitchen.

Minutes later, we were seated across from each other with steaming cups of tea, laced with lemon and plenty of sugar. The warmth from the tea seemed to calm her a bit.

“Oh, Ms. Austen,” she said, taking a grateful sip. “It’s just awful. The police found a Fiedler on the Roof cap in Willard’s toolbox out in the garage. They think he was the one who loosened those shingles on Garth’s roof.”

So that was the evidence Seymour had been talking about.

“I don’t know how it could’ve gotten there,” she said, bewildered.

Clearly this woman didn’t have a suspicious bone in her body.

“Somebody may have put it there, Ethel. To frame Willard for Garth’s murder.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Did any of the neighbors have access to the garage?”

“Actually, they all did. There’s a little door on the side of the garage we never lock. In case the gardener wants to get in.

“To think,” she said, the color rushing back to her cheeks, “that some awful person would try to blame Garth’s death on Willard. Who would do such a terrible thing?”

The first person who sprang to my mind was my lead suspect, Libby Brecker. Hadn’t she said she’d been watching the roofers work? What if she’d seen one of them leave his cap behind? How easy to snatch it up, disguise herself as a roofer, and clamber up the roof to set Garth’s deathtrap. And how easy to slip over when the Coxes were away and plant the cap in Willard’s toolbox.

My musings were interrupted by the shrill ring of a phone.

“Oh, dear!” Ethel said, jumping up. “Maybe that’s Willard!”

She hurried out of the room, her granny gown billowing behind her.

I sat there, stirring my tea, wondering whether Libby Brecker was indeed Garth’s killer and/or whether Ethel had any brownies left over from the other day.

I know. I’m impossible, thinking about food at a time like this. I bet Sherlock Holmes never sat around wondering if Dr. Watson had any brownies in his kitchen.

I was in the midst of giving myself a stern lecture when Ethel came bursting through the door.

“Willard’s in jail!” she cried.

“They arrested him?”

She nodded miserably. “He got into a fight with one of the police officers and threatened to ‘punch his lights out.’ Now they’re holding him without bail.”

She sank into a kitchen chair, dazed.

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