Murder With All the Trimmings (11 page)

Nate’s red rental car was still squealing down the street when Josie’s phone rang. Alyce whispered, “You’re busy. I’d better go.”

Josie waved good-bye as Alyce let herself out the front door, then turned her attention to the phone.

“Ms. Marcus?” a woman asked. “I’m calling about your Visa account.”

“On a Sunday?” Josie said, and swallowed hard.

“There’s been some unusual activity and we wanted to alert you. You are more than two thousand dollars over your credit limit.”

“I’m what?” Josie shrieked into the phone. “I haven’t charged anything recently.”

“You didn’t order a new RAZR phone, a laptop, and a sixty-dollar hooded sweatshirt?”

“No!” Josie said. “When did this happen?”

“About an hour ago,” the company said. “The purchases were made from your home phone. Are you in possession of your card?”

“Yes. No. Let me check.”

Josie usually left her credit card on her dresser when she went mystery-shopping. She ran into her bedroom and saw the card still sitting there. If I fingerprint this card, Josie wondered, whose prints will I find on it?

“I have the card, but I didn’t make those purchases,” Josie said. “I wasn’t home at the time.”

“Someone may have obtained your account information illegally. Would you like us to prosecute?”

“No,” Josie said. “I’ll handle the situation.”

Josie marched to Amelia’s bedroom and opened the door, careful not to slam it into the broken plaster wall. She’d have to fix that hole later.

Amelia was sitting on her bed, sulking. Her closet door was open, and Josie could see her daughter’s childhood games stacked on the upper shelves—Chutes and Ladders, Go Fish, and Candy Land. How many games of Candy Land had they played at the kitchen table? The sweet days of the Candy Cane Forest and Gum Drop Mountain were gone. Now Josie was mired in a molasses swamp, with no way out.

“Amelia Marcus, did you order a new laptop, a hoodie, and a RAZR cell phone and charge them to my credit card?” Josie asked.

“No!” Amelia’s eyes shifted left, then right. Josie could watch the struggle on her daughter’s face. Amelia would never make a good poker player. The kid practically had a flashing sign on her forehead that said, “I’m lying!”

“Then your father did,” Josie said. “The calls were made from this phone with my card, so it had to be one of you. If it’s him, I’ll have him arrested for theft.”

Amelia took a deep breath. “Daddy didn’t do anything,” she said. “But he wanted me to have the gifts you’re returning. He said he’d give me money for them before the credit-card bill arrived.”

“No, he won’t,” Josie said. “They’re being returned the minute they arrive at this house.”

“You can’t. They’re mine,” Amelia said.

“They’re mine,” Josie said. “Unless you want to pay for them with your own money.”

Amelia had three hundred and six dollars squirreled away from gifts from her grandmother—more money than Josie had managed to save this year. But the kid would never touch her precious cash stash, not even for the coveted hoodie.

Amelia’s face took on the same stubborn look her grandmother Jane had perfected. “I’m going to run away and live with my father,” Amelia said. “You don’t want me here. You just want Mike.”

Josie wondered if aliens had taken control of her daughter. Amelia had always been well-behaved—before her father showed up. Now she didn’t recognize her own child.

“You’re grounded for a month, young lady,” Josie said. “No visits to Emma, no computer except for school assignments, no IM-ing your friends. On the way to school, I choose the radio station.”

Josie wasn’t sure that last punishment would have any effect. The Barrington girls talked about what they heard on The Point on the way to school, but they got their music these days from their computers. In high school, Josie’s station had been The River, and she’d listened to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and that great St. Louis band, the Urge. But she suspected the Internet had ruined radio’s influence.

Amelia reacted as if she’d been severely punished. “You’re mean. You’re mean and a liar and I hate you. I want to live with Daddy and never see you again.”

Welcome to tween hell, Josie thought. It’s going to be a rough ride from now on.

It took all Josie’s strength to keep from saying something hurtful. She knew what it was like to want something all the other kids had. Josie would have sold her young soul for a white fake fur coat, but Jane couldn’t afford it and Josie had blown her spare cash on magazines. Now, with some years’ distance, Josie knew she would have looked like a polar bear in that furry monstrosity. She was too short for that style. But when she was ten, Josie had yearned for the coat as much as Amelia wanted the pink hoodie.

Josie was grateful when she heard a knock on her front door. She peeked out the miniblinds, in case Nate had come back. Jane, in her pale lavender church coat, was on the doorstep, impatiently tapping one black heel.

Uh-oh, Josie thought. Trouble.

Josie opened the door and her mother barged in. “What’s going on here?” Jane demanded. “I could hear you shouting halfway down the street. Do you have to let the whole neighborhood know our family business?”

“I’m disciplining my daughter,” Josie said.

“Then do it a little more quietly,” Jane said. “I’d like to take a nap.”

“You’ll have lots of peace and quiet when Nate steals your granddaughter and takes her to Canada,” Josie said. “He was here while you were at church.”

“I can’t be everywhere at once,” Jane said. “I’ll go see Mrs. Mueller right now. We’ll work out a schedule to protect Amelia.” Though they had been friends for years, Jane always called the woman Mrs. Mueller.

Jane’s back was rigid with anger as she tip-tapped her way to Mrs. M’s house. If anyone would watch Josie’s home, it would be Mrs. Mueller.

Josie shut the door and sighed. Could her life get any worse?

There was a pinging sound on the windows. The promised winter storm was growing worse. The sky was the color of old sheet metal and the temperature felt like it was dropping. The cars were still making it up the steep hill on Josie’s street without fishtailing. That was a good sign. But she’d better get moving, or the roads would be impassable.

Josie shivered and turned up the heat, then went to her room to write the mystery-shopping report for Harry the Horrible. Her heart felt like lead. She knew this report would probably destroy her romance with Mike.

She gave Elsie’s Elf House a nearly perfect score for the quality of its service, merchandise presentation, and friendly staff.

Naughty or Nice got the lowest marks possible. Josie also noted that the store was not selling franchise-approved merchandise. She gingerly examined the South Pole elf she’d bought that morning, as if it were diseased. It was an ordinary china elf ornament, the kind sold at craft stores. The tumescent South Pole had been glued on and the elf had been hand-painted. It was a crude job, in more ways than one. Josie wondered if Doreen made the thing in her home. So much for Christmas crafts.

Josie finished her report and faxed it off to Harry, wishing she could warn Mike. The fun would hit the fan tomorrow.

Outside, the ice was pinging harder on the porch and sidewalk, as if someone were firing a BB gun. Josie saw snowflakes in the mix, but they hadn’t started to stick yet. Judging by the trail of footsteps on the sidewalk, Jane was back home again. Josie called her.

“Mom, I have to run an errand. Can I pick you up anything at the store?”

“Soup would be nice,” her mother said. “This weather calls for chicken noodle soup.”

Josie thought it called for a roaring fire, mulled wine, and a hot man.

“Do you want me to watch Amelia?” Jane said. “I can sleep on your couch as well as mine.”

“I’ll leave the phone by the couch if you need to call 911.”

“Never mind. I have my pepper spray,” Jane said. “That man comes near my granddaughter, and he’ll regret it. I don’t know why you didn’t get Nate to sign away his rights ten years ago.”

“He was in jail, Mom.”

“Exactly the time a man wouldn’t want to worry about supporting a new baby. You had a golden opportunity and you lost it.” Josie heard the rest of her mother’s unspoken sentence: “the way you lost so many others.”

Jane knocked at her front door, wearing a red sweater with leaping brown reindeer. Josie waited until her mother was comfortably settled in with magazines, hot tea, and the TV clicker before she left.

“I have my cell on if there’s a problem,” Josie said.

“There will be no problems I can’t handle,” Jane said.

The sleet was quickly turning into snow. Josie picked her way gingerly to the car and drove slowly down the slippery streets. The supermarket was in the usual pre-storm panic, with frantic shoppers crashing carts into one another and pushing their way into checkout lines. Fights broke out as irritated shoppers discovered fourteen or fifteen items lurking in baskets in the “twelve items or less” line.

Josie would never understand why St. Louisans rushed to the store at the first hint of a snowstorm and stripped the shelves of milk, bread, and toilet paper. Okay, milk and bread made sense. But toilet paper? What were they expecting, a citywide attack of diarrhea?

Josie grabbed the last loaf of sandwich bread in the bakery section, picked up a gallon of milk, then stood in line at the deli department for a pound of sliced ham and chicken soup for her mother. She got through the checkout line in less than ten minutes and wheeled her cart to her car.

The snow was falling faster, nearly doubling in intensity in the half hour she’d been in the store. Josie scraped her windshield, cracking the sleet glaze and getting ice crystals inside her gloves. By the time the car was loaded and started, Josie was afraid she’d have to scrape the windshield again.

It was only three o’clock, but the sky was so dark, Josie turned on her headlights. Her small car skidded in the snow. Impatient drivers passed her, going too fast for the road conditions. Josie needed twice as much time to crawl home around the multiple fender benders.

By the time she pulled in front of her flat, the snow was serious. Her lawn was completely covered in a thick white coat. Mrs. Mueller was shoveling off her sidewalk and spreading rock salt on the concrete.

Stan the Man Next Door was shoveling Josie’s sidewalk. Stan was hidden inside a hideous down parka that made him look like the Unabomber. Stan put down his shovel and helped Josie carry in her sacks of groceries. He even wiped his feet before stepping inside. His nose was red from the cold.

“Want to come in for some hot cocoa?” Josie asked.

“Thanks,” Stan said, “but I’m having dinner at Mom’s and I don’t want to be late.” He went back outside to finish her sidewalk.

Stan was kind, loyal, and hopelessly dull. He’d rather have dinner with his mother than cocoa with the woman he worshiped from afar. Josie wished she could love Stan back, but she seemed fatally attracted to men with serious flaws. Stan didn’t make her heart beat faster the way Mike did.

She had a date with Mike tonight. Josie looked forward to spending the night at Mike’s place and possibly getting snowed in with him. Jane had promised to sleep over and watch Amelia if that happened.

“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,” Josie sang, as she unpacked the groceries.

Jane was huddled under a knit throw on the couch, watching television.

“You’re going to get your wish,” Jane said. “The TV says they’ve closed the airport already. It’s early in the winter for a storm this bad. We’re supposed to have more than a foot of snow by nightfall.”

Josie added another sweater for warmth. She didn’t want to turn up the thermostat on the ancient furnace. The heating bills were already outrageous.

The snow kept piling up as night approached. Josie figured there was nearly twelve inches on the ground already. She checked the clock. Another hour before she left for Mike’s. She showered, shaved her legs, put on her best underwear and her new black wool pants.

She was deciding between the pink or the beige sweater when her phone rang.

“Josie?” Mike said. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t see you tonight. There’s trouble at Doreen’s store, and Heather is involved.”

“What’s wrong?” Josie said, trying to sound concerned and hide her disappointment at the same time.

“Everything,” Mike said. “Doreen left Heather alone at the store all day, and those nuts were still picketing outside. Plus, the place has cockroaches, and one of them wound up in the gingerbread.”

Josie had to stop herself from saying
I know.

“Maybe she needs to keep the kitchen cleaner,” Josie said.

“It’s not Doreen’s fault,” Mike said. “Elsie gave her the roaches.”

“Elsie?”

“The Elf House lady. Heather says she saw Elsie turn a box of the bugs loose near the back door. Doreen thinks Elsie is trying to ruin her business.”

Doreen’s doing a terrific job of that all by herself, Josie wanted to say.

“Doreen also found mice in the storage room. Mice come inside when the weather turns cold, but Doreen doesn’t believe that. She says her rival Elsie introduced the critters to her store.”

“How?”

“There’s a gap between the door and the threshold. Mice can squeeze through a space that small. But Doreen swears Elsie let the mice and roaches in that way. Doreen’s business has been dropping off.”

Dropping off? Josie thought. She never had any.

“Doreen is worried she may lose her franchise. The picketers won’t go away, and the more TV time they get, the longer they stay and the louder they chant.”

“I’m sorry, Mike.” Josie tried to sound sincere.

“But that isn’t the worst,” Mike said. “When the storm intensified, some snow and ice slid off the roof and seriously injured a picketer. A church lady was nearly killed. She’s in intensive care.”