Nutty as a Fruitcake by Mary Daheim

Author:Mary Daheim [Daheim, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: mystery, holiday, cozy, women sleuths
ISBN: 9780380778799
Google: QArnOPdcM9QC
Amazon: B000OI0ETA
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1996-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

“SCREW FORENSICS,” JOE growled as he came in the back door shortly after six o’clock. “Screw all those nitpicking nerds who sit around the lab all day on their fat butts and squint through microscopes. Now they tell me the guy who got whacked couldn’t have fired the gun that killed the Shazris. Okay, I can buy that, but why did it take them two days to figure it out? My weekend just fell into a big, black hole.” Joe slammed his fist into the wall by the refrigerator.

Judith swallowed hard. She hoped that her assembled guests in the living room hadn’t heard her husband’s rantings. She hoped he would recover quickly from his work-related pique. She hoped she had the nerve to tell him about his ex-wife’s Christmas plans. She began to hope that she could find Joe’s big, black hole and crawl into it.

“I got a tree today,” Judith said in an unusually meek voice. “Did you see it out back?”

“What?” Joe was removing his shoulder holster. “A tree? No, I didn’t see it. It’s raining too damned hard. You know what really drives me nuts? We bring these foreign goons in for questioning and suddenly they can’t speak English. Not one frigging word. Woody and I spent four hours today trying to get a couple of these bozos with rap sheets as long as your arm to admit they’d ever seen the inside of a station house. Then we let them call their lawyers and damned if they can’t be reached. Out on the golf course, I’ll bet, with some poor paralegal holding an umbrella over their heads. I hate voice mail, I hate e-mail, I think I hate the U.S. mail!” Joe paused long enough in his tirade to glance at the kitchen counter by the phone. “Did we get anything today?”

“No,” Judith replied, still meek. “It’s Sunday, remember?”

“Oh. Right.” Joe began to simmer down. “I guess I’ll have a drink. What’s for dinner?”

“Lamb chops,” Judith replied, not daring to look up from the cornmeal muffins she’d just finished mixing. “I already warned Mother we’d be eating a bit late. I had no idea what time you’d be home.”

Pouring out a hefty measure of scotch, Joe snorted. “Neither did I. By the way, Woody and Sondra are looking forward to dinner here next Saturday. If we’re not working until midnight, of course.”

Involuntarily, Judith glanced at the calendar that hung next to the phone. “Renie and Bill can come, too.” Her eyes were drawn back to the month of December. This was the fifth, and Judith had to put the wooden shoes on the front porch for the sixth, St. Nicholas’s Day. But it was the twenty-third that loomed larger than the other numbers. That was the day Vivian Flynn planned to arrive in town. She would land at the airport in the early evening; Caitlin was due in from Switzerland that morning at eleven-thirty. Judith hadn’t yet written down Herself’s arrival time. She was still hoping it was all a hallucination.

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