The Christmas Clause Read online

  “Storms peter out all the time,” Ruthie added.

  “That’s true,” Mom said. “And the weather app is only right about half the time. I’m sure things will be fine.”

  I could tell by the tone of her voice that she didn’t believe that, but I had to hand it to her for at least trying to keep it together.

  Sisters’ Diner was my last stop of the day, so after I did what I could to comfort Mom, I headed home. I loved the fact that Tony was waiting there for me. The thought of him busy in the kitchen brought a smile to my face even on a difficult day. Of course, he wasn’t always there waiting for me. His job took him away for long periods of time. In the beginning, I hadn’t minded it, but now that we were basically living together, I found it harder and harder to say goodbye.

  “What smells so good?” I asked as I walked in through the front door.

  “Lasagna. It’ll be about thirty more minutes. Do you want a glass of wine?”

  “Yes, please. I’m going to change first.” I greeted Titan, Tang, and Tinder, and then headed toward my bedroom.

  “You fixed the lights on the tree,” I called back as I noticed that the lights that had been flickering last night shone bright and steady this evening.

  “I just replaced the string.”

  I accepted the wine from Tony as I emerged from the bedroom.

  “So, how was your day?” he asked.

  “Okay. When I dropped off the mail at the police station, Mike actually talked to me. I consider that progress.”

  “I agree. That is progress.”

  “He mentioned that the two of you had talked, and he asked me what I might have observed while I was following Star around.”

  “Did you remember anything?” Tony asked.

  “Not really. Did you make any headway today?”

  Tony shook his head. “I did some research on the desk that Star and Colton purchased. I was able to confirm the year it was made, as well as the name of the artist who made it. It does look as if he was known for adding hidden drawers or compartments in his pieces. I’ve been thinking about our conversation about the possible contents of the desk, and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that you might have been on to something when you suggested that the contents of the desk could be the motive for the killings.”

  “So we just need to find the desk and then find the hidden drawer and open it. If we do all that, we could have our motive for murder.”

  “If we are correct in our assumptions and if whatever was in the desk is still there.”

  “You think that Star and Colton might have figured out the hiding place and taken out whatever was inside?”

  “I think that is a possibility.”

  “Okay, so if there was something in the desk that someone wanted badly enough to kill for it was moved, where would it be now?”

  Tony lifted a shoulder. “Maybe in either Star or Colton’s home? Or perhaps one of their places of business?”

  “Star died a week before Colton. If she had whatever it is that someone is after, it seems like Colton would have gone to get it. I think we should call Mike to suggest that we go out to Colton’s to take another look around.”

  After a discussion between Mike and Tony, it was decided that we’d all take a second look together. Tony turned off the oven and left the lasagna to cool. We’d either eat it when we got home or reheat it tomorrow.

  When we arrived at Colton’s house, I realized that not only was Mike waiting for us but Bree as well. I greeted her warmly, but her greeting in response was barely more than a grunt. Yep, this was going to take some time.

  Mike handed pairs of gloves to each of us. He suggested that we break up, and each pair take a floor of Colton’s two-story house. The plan was to search the house for the desk or any documents that looked old or important, then the workshop, and then Star’s house, and finally, both Star’s antique shop and Colton’s furniture store.

  Mike and Bree took the first floor, and Tony and I went up to the second floor. Colton’s home office was on the first floor, which seemed to me to be the best location to find documents if there were any, but his bedroom was upstairs, which I supposed was equally as likely a place for Colton to stash documents, perhaps in his closet.

  “I wonder if either Star or Colton had a safe,” I mused to Tony as he dug through the closet, while I searched through the nightstand and dresser.

  “I suppose they might have. It seems like a safe would be built into the wall or the floor of either the office or the bedroom. I’ll look for something in here.”

  I dumped the contents of the nightstand onto the bed. A flashlight, a half-read novel, a pad and pencil, hand lotion, lip balm, and a pair of glasses. I carefully ran my hand around the drawer of the nightstand in search of a hidden bottom, but there didn’t appear to be one, so I began putting everything away. Before I returned the notepad, I noticed that the first page had something written on it.

  “‘LD1492 – SM1019,’” I said aloud. I had no idea what it meant, but I tore off the sheet of paper and put it in my pocket.

  I headed toward the dresser and found the clothing I expected, along with an envelope containing miscellaneous receipts. You’d think Colton would keep his receipts in his office, but maybe he liked to balance his checkbook while sitting in bed.

  “Did you find anything?” I asked Tony when he emerged from the closet.

  “Just this file box with old customer records. I thumbed through and didn’t find anything current or anything that looked like it was worth killing for. How about you?”

  I handed Tony the numbers and letters I found on the first sheet of the notepad. “What do you make of this?”

  “I have no idea. Let’s show it to Mike. We’ll take a look in the bathroom and guest room and then head downstairs.”

  The guest room contained a bed, a television, and a small dresser but was otherwise empty. The bathroom had all the usual things you’d find in a bathroom, plus a prescription for blood pressure medication and antifungal cream. Nothing that would explain why someone would shoot the guy. Tony and I headed down to join Mike and Bree. Maybe they’d had more luck in the office.

  “Find anything?” I asked when we found them in the office.

  “Not much. Bree found a pad with handwritten notes on it in the kitchen near the phone. They don’t appear to have anything to do with the desk or something that might have been found in it, but I am going to take it with us anyway. How about you guys?”

  I handed Mike the page I’d torn from the pad by the bed. “I have no idea what this means, but it could be something. You didn’t find a safe?”

  “No. It doesn’t appear that Colton had one, although he must have had one somewhere. I doubt he kept his cash receipts just lying around, and I doubt he went to the bank every day. It’s possible he might have, but he didn’t seem to do the volume of business that would require it.”

  “I imagine he might have a safe in the office at the furniture store,” Tony responded.

  “That was my thought as well,” Mike agreed. “I don’t think there are any documents here in the house. Bree and I will check out the workshop, and you and Tess can look around in the barn.”

  I didn’t think we’d find anything in the barn, but following Mike’s dictates seemed like a good idea, so I nodded, took Tony’s hand, and headed in that direction.

  “I wonder what happened to the horses,” I said when we entered the barn and found it empty.

  “Someone must have come by to pick them up. Perhaps a neighbor.”

  “I guess that makes sense. They’d need to be cared for.” I stood in the middle of the barn and looked around. “Do you think there could be anything to find in here? This isn’t even a secure building. I don’t see Colton stashing anything of value in here.”

  “I agreed it is unlikely that we will find anything, but Mike asked us to take a look, so we’ll take a look. There is that little storage room in the back. Let’s start there.” />
  We looked through the storage room, looked in each stall, checked all the walls, and even stomped around on the floor, looking for a hidden space beneath it. We were about to leave when something told me to pull up the tarp covering the sleigh. “Well, would you look at that?” I pulled away the rest of the tarp to reveal a large desk sitting next to the sleigh. I slid one of the drawers open. As expected, it was empty.

  “If there were ever any documents in this desk worth killing for, I doubt they are still there,” Tony said. “Let’s tell Mike what we found and see what he wants to do.”

  Mike and Tony loaded the desk into his truck and then transported it down to the police station. Mike felt the desk should be locked up in the evidence room until he could decide what should be done with it. Once it was covered and secured, we headed to Star’s home and then we headed into town to take a looked around Colton’s furniture store and Star’s antique store. We didn’t find any documents, but visiting Star’s home and store did make me wonder what would happen to all her stuff. Her adoptive parents were dead, and she didn’t have any siblings. She’d also never married nor had children. I supposed next of kin was something the courts would need to figure out, but it made me sad that at the time of her death, she was seemingly alone in the world.

  Chapter 12

  Thursday, December 19

  With Christmas at Main starting the next day, local gossip had segued from the shooting deaths of Star and Colton to the carnival that had rolled into town and begun to set up. So far, the storm that was threating to ruin everyone’s fun had remained to the south of us, but I knew how unpredictable storms could be. If the storm did remain to the south, I was sure the locals would get a kick out of the merry-go-round, tilt-a-whirl, and Ferris wheel. But if the storm veered north from its current course even a tiny bit, there was no way any of those rides could run.

  I really hoped for Mom’s sake that things went off without a hitch. There had been enough stress in the Thomas family this week already. Mike still hadn’t found the documents we suspected had been hidden in the secret compartment of the desk, nor had he been able to narrow down who might have shot and killed these popular White Eagle residents. Of course, there might never have been any documents inside the desk, and even if there had been, we were just assuming that Star and Colton had been able to open the secret compartment to retrieve them. I supposed if there had been any documents, they were still as hidden as they’d always been, although it was Austin Wade’s opinion that if they hadn’t found and opened the secret drawer, Star would have kept calling him, and after the last set of hints he’d provided, the calls had stopped altogether, which, in his mind, indicated that she’d been successful.

  Tony was still helping Mike, as was I, to the extent he allowed me to do so. It did seem as if Mike’s mood toward me had softened, and he’d actually greeted me with a smile and enthusiasm in his voice when I’d dropped off his mail yesterday. Bree was still acting as icily as ever. I’d tried to give her time, but I knew that if she was going to forgive me for lying to her husband, it was going to take more than time.

  “Morning, Hattie,” I greeted her as I walked in through the front door of her bakeshop. “Something smells good.”

  “I’m baking the gingerbread men I signed up to sell at Christmas on Main this morning. I’m afraid I got a late start, but this is the last batch.”

  “Late start? The event doesn’t even begin until tomorrow evening.”

  “True, but the baking is the easy part. Once they are made, I still have to decorate several hundred cookies.”

  I could see how that would be time-consuming. Hattie explained that each cookie would be decorated to be somewhat different from all the others. Not that there were several hundred combinations, but some were smiling, some frowning, and others were given an “O” of surprise where the mouth ought to be. In addition, some had hats, others jackets, a few boots, and there were even some with overalls.

  “I don’t suppose you would sell me one early,” I said.

  “I have some broken pieces you can have if you’re just hungry.”

  “No, it’s not that. What I really need is an ‘I’m sorry’ cookie to bring to Bree.”

  “Ah.” She nodded. “I heard the two of you had a spat.”

  “I think this has been more than a spat. I’ve apologized a bunch of times, but I think I need to make a grand gesture.”

  “Come on back in an hour. I’ll have something special for you to give to Bree.”

  I reached forward and hugged Hattie. “Thank you so much. This means a lot.”

  “Seems like it has been a tough week for the whole Thomas family. How is Mike doing with his investigation?”

  “He’s pretty much got nothing. Well, maybe not nothing. I know he has some leads he is tracking down, and Tony is following up on some things for him, but so far, every lead has led to a dead end. Still, I’m sure he’ll figure it out given enough time. With the two deaths being treated as a single event in terms of killer and motive, it narrows things down, but maybe too much. If things don’t start to come together soon, I think he may need to widen the search parameters.”

  “Mike will figure it out. Sometimes these things take time.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “So, how is your mom holding up?” Hattie asked.

  “She is pretty stressed. I’m helping her as much as I can, but I’ve been busy, and the event planner left her with a huge mess. Not only does she have the regular Christmas on Main events to keep track of, but with the added carnival and the impending storm, I’m afraid she is about to go over the edge.”

  “Sounds like she might need a cookie as well.”

  I smiled. “Actually, if you have time, that would be great. Sometimes a small gesture that lets you know that you’re not alone really helps.”

  I promised to be back in an hour, and Tilly and I continued on our way. It was overcast but dry, and the wind had yet to kick up, so maybe the storm would miss us, as we hoped. I decided to alter my route a bit to catch Mom, Mike, and Bree after I picked up the treats from Hattie. I still needed to go by to drop off the mail for Sue Wade, Austin’s niece and the owner of the local sewing store, so I headed there next. Her shop wasn’t far from Colton’s furniture store, and although I had no mail to deliver to the now permanently closed business, I decided to take a detour and walk past the shop anyway.

  It made me feel sad that the business that Colton had poured so much of his energy into could simply go away. Unlike Star, Colton did have children, although they lived out of the area, and I assumed that at some point, they’d come around to clear out his possessions.

  As I stood looking in through the front window, I noticed that something seemed different than it had when Mike, Bree, Tony, and I had been here on Monday evening. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but then I realized that the large painting of the town back in the fifties, which Colton had hung on the back wall, had been taken down and set on the floor. I supposed Mike might have moved it for some reason, but in the event he hadn’t, I figured I should call him about it.

  “Hey, Mike,” I said after calling his cell. “I was passing by Colton’s furniture store on my way to deliver Sue’s mail when I noticed that large painting Colton had hanging on the back wall is now on the floor. I wanted to make sure you moved it, and that the place hadn’t been broken in to.”

  “You were passing by Colton’s place on the way to drop off mail for Sue?”

  I should have known that Mike would realize that I actually would have had to walk a block out of the way to pass by Colton’s store, but I didn’t think that was the point. “So, did you move the painting?” I asked, deciding to avoid his question.

  “No, I didn’t move it. Are you there now?”

  “I am.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Mike had a key to the store, so he let us in when he arrived. It became obvious as we walked around that someo
ne had been inside and had moved things around. It also seemed as if they had tried to put things back. Chances were they’d managed to lift the large painting down off the wall but then found it too heavy to lift back up and so had left it leaning against a wall. They’d done a good enough job replacing the other furniture that they’d moved; I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if not for the painting.

  “Someone has definitely been in here. I’m going to have Frank come by to take some prints.” Mike had brought gloves for both of us, and I’d had Tilly wait by the front door so as not to contaminate things. “Can you tell if anything is missing?”

  I looked around. “I’m not sure. It’s not like I memorized the inventory when we were here. I realized that the painting had been moved; otherwise, I wouldn’t have noticed the rest. But there are scrape marks on the floor that disturbed the dust, so it does seem that someone was in here looking around. I sure don’t remember any of us moving the furniture when we were here on Monday.”

  “No. We were careful. It does look like someone has been inside the store since then. Good job noticing the painting. Maybe if we can find a print, we can figure out who was here.”

  I smiled when Mike complimented me but didn’t make a big deal about it. I simply told him that I was happy to help and was going to continue on my way, and if he had any more questions for me, I’d be by his office in a couple of hours with the mail. With that, I continued on toward Sue’s Sewing Nook.

  Sue had lived in White Eagle her entire life, and she was a Wade, so folks tended to talk to her. Maybe she had some insight into the events of the past couple of weeks.

  “Tess, Tilly,” Sue greeted us. “It’s so nice to see you. It’s been a few weeks.”

  “You haven’t had mail for a few weeks.” I set an envelope on her counter. “I think even this may just be an ad, but it is my job to deliver it, so here it is.”

  She picked it up, looked at it, and tossed it in the trash. “It is true that I have most of my mail sent to the house, but every now and then something shows up here. I hear that you were the one who found poor Colton’s body.”