Have Yourself a Deadly Little Christmas (Year Round Christmas 06) by Vicki Delany

Author:Vicki Delany [Delany, Vicki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“We’ve seen that one,” I said to Vicky.

“We have? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. About six months ago. We both hated it.”

“Which,” she said, “is why it’s suitable for bad movie night.”

“Too suitable. Find something else.”

She pointed the control at the TV and flicked rapidly through the available offerings displayed on the screen. “How about this one?”

“No. It’s supposed to be good.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It is for bad movie night.”

Vicky threw the control at me. “You choose something.” She leaned back into the couch cushions, tucked her long legs under her, and picked up her glass of wine. Mattie snoozed in his bed on the floor, and Sandbanks, Vicky’s ancient golden lab, rested his head on her lap.

I scrolled idly through the movie offerings on the various streaming services. “How’s the old guy doing?”

“You mean Mark?”

“No, I mean Sandbanks and you know it.”

She rubbed his ears. He grunted. “He keeps going. He’s happy. He eats well, and sometimes he can summon enough energy to chase a bird out of the yard. If the bird’s not too big and not too determined to keep his place.”

I kept scrolling. The downstairs doorbell rang and I went to get it. As expected, it was the pizza delivery guy. He handed me the enormous cardboard box, warm from the food inside. I said, “Thank you,” gave him a handsome tip, and skipped back upstairs. I got plates and paper towels from the kitchen and dropped the box onto the coffee table. Vicky and I dug in, pulling long strands of gooey hot cheese onto our plates.

“Yummy.” Vicky said. “You don’t want to watch a movie tonight, do you?”

“Not really.”

“Things on your mind, I’d assume.”

“Can’t stop thinking about what happened.”

When Vicky first arrived, she’d told me the latest gossip as related by her customers to her staff and from them to her.

In short, nothing new. No one knew of any reason why someone would want to do away with Paula Monahan. She wasn’t a popular teacher, but there were worse, and no one had killed Mr. Saunderson, the math teacher. Not yet anyway. Paula and Kevin’s marriage was on the skids, but people generally liked Kevin more than Paula so his innocence was predetermined. A customer had mentioned that it was too bad young Eddie Monahan hadn’t been taken out instead of his mother and the abrupt silence falling over their table indicated the speaker had gone too far.

“Okay,” Vicky said around a mouthful of pizza piled high with the things she liked: mushrooms, onions, red peppers, hot peppers, pepperoni, and sausage. “As you can’t stop thinking about it, let’s talk about it. Have you considered it might not have mattered who the victim was? Could it have been a random thing?”

“You mean we have a deranged killer running loose in Rudolph? They attacked a woman in broad daylight in a Christmas-themed store on the main street of your Year-Round Christmas Destination in the weeks leading up to Christmas? No, I have not considered

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