A Cold Christmas Read online

  A blessing upon your new home,

  A blessing upon your new hearth,

  Upon your newly kindled fire.

  “My grandmother made that,” Pauline said. “I hung that up when I moved in as a young bride sixty years ago. If you don’t like cats, just push him off,” she added.

  The cat tightened its upper lip to reveal long sharp fangs. Susan decided she’d just sit down right here on the other end of the sofa.

  “Another tragedy at the Ellendorfer place, I see,” Pauline said. “Who died? Not Caley, or one of the children? They’re all right, aren’t they?”

  “They’re fine. Why do you think someone died?”

  Pauline looked exasperated. “I may be old, young lady. And I may totter, but I still have a brain. I saw the body being put in the ambulance. They aren’t completely covered up unless they’re no longer breathing.”

  Susan smiled. “Yes, someone died.”

  “Who?”

  “His name was Tim Holiday. Did you know him?”

  Pauline thought a moment, then shook her head. “No. Who is he?”

  “He came to repair the furnace.”

  “Oh, yes, he was there many times. I was beginning to think she was sweet on him. How did he die?”

  “He was shot.” Susan kept the business with the burned face and hands to herself. “When did you see him?”

  “Because it’s so painful for me to get around I spend a lot of time right here in this chair.” She patted the arm of the rocker. “And I look out the window. You probably think I’m a nosy old lady.”

  Susan loved nosy old ladies. They saw things nobody else noticed and were a font of information. “Of course not,” she said.

  Pauline grinned. “Yes, you do, dear, but that’s all right, it’s true. At this stage in my life I feel it’s my right to be nosy. I saw this young man five or six times, maybe more. I didn’t count.”

  “When?”

  “Well, let me see. Two nights last week, I mean fairly late, after the lights were out for quite some time. That’s why I thought young Caley was seeing him. I said to myself, I hope that ex-husband of hers isn’t the jealous type. I know they were divorced, but it’s one thing for a man to run away from his wife and another to let some other man have her. Not that I approve of affairs, but things are different now and I don’t approve of that ex-husband of hers either. A good man stays with his wife and children and provides for them.”

  “What nights did you see Tim Holiday?”

  “Thursday and Friday for sure.”

  “Did Mrs. James let him in?”

  “I don’t know about that. He went in and out the basement door. She’s a nice young woman,” Pauline said, in case Susan should judge her harshly.

  “I agree,” Susan said.

  “She gave me this outfit.” Pauline looked down at her sweatshirt. “She said it was stunning and I did not look like a silly old lady. It would be just the thing to keep me warm. She’s right about the warm part.”

  Susan smiled, understanding why Pauline liked Caley James even though Caley might be carrying on with the furnace man. “What other times did you see this man?”

  “Saturday afternoon, and I thought, Good, they’re no longer being sly about it. Then he came back again Saturday evening.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  Pauline hesitated for the blink of an eyelid. “Sunday afternoon is the day I play bridge, so I wasn’t watching between four and seven. Starting at four gives the others time to have Sunday dinner and get it cleared away. Of course, it doesn’t matter with me because I no longer have a family to see to. There’s just Ollie and me and he doesn’t require a full Sunday dinner. Is that when he was killed?”

  “Did you see him at all last night?”

  Pauline frowned. “Here, you’re not thinking she had anything to do with it, are you?”

  “We need to check everything,” Susan said as though there were some tedious rule she had to follow. She gave Ollie a pat, rose to leave, and thanked Pauline, adding that if she had more questions she’d be back.

  As Susan jogged across the street to the James house, she could feel Pauline’s eyes on her back.

  Pauline turned from the window and frowned at the cat. “Oh for goodness sakes, Ollie, I’m getting so forgetful. I did see something. I was so worried about that sweet Caley I didn’t even give it a thought. Do you think I should tell that nice young policewoman?”

  Ollie didn’t have an opinion.

  Pauline shook her head. “I’m sure it was nothing, just the door being opened to let him in, and anyway it was in the afternoon.”

  Ollie vigorously washed a paw.

  “Quite right, it’s of no importance. I’ll see what Ida Ruth thinks.”

  * * *

  Zach answered the door. In his black and silver boots, he was two inches taller than Susan.

  “I need to see your mom,” she said.

  “You were just here,” he said. “She’s in bed. She’s sick.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s important.”

  “Zach?” Caley called. “Who is it?”

  “Police,” he said.

  Caley, wrapped in a fleecy robe, came up behind him. Shivering, hair tangled, eyes unfocused.

  “Only a few questions,” Susan said.

  Caley nodded, told Zach to let her in, and padded in stockinged feet to the kitchen. “Coffee?” Caley asked.

  “No thanks.” Susan sat down at the table.

  Caley filled a mug from the carafe and, holding it in both hands, sat at the table. She looked like she wanted to put her head down and go to sleep. She took a sip and looked at Susan, struggling to keep her eyes open. “What now?” she asked wearily, and then went into a coughing fit.

  Susan waited until it was over. “How many times was Tim Holiday here?”

  “I told you. Twice. And he wouldn’t have been here the second time if he’d done it right the first time.” She put her elbows on the table and propped her head in her hands.

  “Mrs. Frankens said he was here six times or more.”

  Caley shook her head. “Twice,” she insisted. She sneezed and got up to search a shelf for tissues. When she found the box, she sat back down.

  “Why would she say that if it weren’t true?”

  Caley blew her nose. “Mistaken. She’s old. Her eyes aren’t too good.”

  “Were you having an affair with Tim Holiday?”

  Caley threw the soggy tissue toward the trash basket, missed, and got up to drop it in. She plopped back into the chair and rubbed her eyes. “Did you see the movie Psycho?”

  Susan nodded.

  “Well, I wouldn’t any more have had an affair with Tim Whatever than I would with that guy.” Snatching another tissue from the box, now on the table, she dabbed at her nose.

  “Why would he have been here when no one else was here?”

  Caley started to get angry, then let it go, as though it required more energy than it was worth.

  Susan threw questions at her and Caley simply let them hang in the air. She stuck with her story that Holiday had been in the house only twice.

  Zach came to the kitchen door and glared at Susan. She told Caley to go back to bed, smiled at Zach and said, “I’m afraid you might see a lot of me until this is cleared up.”

  In the pickup, Susan got out her notebook. Shanky’s Furnace and Air Conditioning was located at Tenth and Harvest. She buckled the seat belt and turned the key in the ignition. Caley claimed the victim had been in her house twice and Pauline Frankens said she’d seen him go in at least six times. Somebody was lying, and Susan didn’t think it was Pauline.

  * * *

  Even furnace repair wasn’t immune to seasonal decorations. Silvery garland trailed around the door and licentious elves danced across the glass.

  A bell tinkled as she went inside. It was dim and cramped, with cluttered shelves of odd-looking things that she assumed were either furnace or air-conditioning parts. The pl
ace smelled dusty, as though last summer’s air still hung around. In the rear was a Dutch door with the top half open and the bottom half topped by a counter. In the lighted office behind, an overweight man puddled over the edges of the desk chair he sat on. He struggled up, waddled over, and propped himself on the counter. “What can I do for you?”

  “Are you Mr. Shanky?”

  “Nope. Name’s Johnson, Fred Johnson. Bought the place from Shanky when he decided to retire and move to Florida. That’ll be twenty-five years come March. Never bothered to change the name. Would have had to change the sign too. It’s an old business. Customers like to come back to a place they know.”

  “How many employees do you have, Mr. Johnson?”

  “Got me five. All good men. One of them been up to something I should know about?”

  “You had a call on Saturday from Caley James. She wanted someone to fix her furnace.”

  He consulted a ledger on his desk. “Right as rain. Any problem?”

  “Tim Holiday went to fix it. Why did you send him and not someone else?”

  Fred scratched his head. “Yeah, I remember. He said she was a friend and she’d be calling and give it to him.”

  “How did he know she’d call?”

  “Can’t help you there. Cold as it is, we’ve been having a lot of calls.”

  “I need Holiday’s address.”

  Fred closed the ledger, came back to the counter, and rested his arms on it. “You mind telling me what this is all about?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you, Holiday is dead.”

  “Goldarn!” Johnson shook his head. “What a terrible thing, and right at Christmas. What happened?”

  “His address, Mr. Johnson.”

  Johnson consulted another ledger and read the address out to her. She jotted it down. “How long has he been working for you?”

  “Two months.”

  “Where had he been before?”

  “That I can’t tell you right off. Got it filed away with his references.”

  “Did you check the references?”

  “Naw. I know a good man when I see one. A cold winter like we been having, I hired him right up and glad to have him.”

  “Was he a good worker?”

  “One of my best. Never griped about after-hours jobs or weekends. Never wanted time off for this and that.”

  “Ms. James said he was incompetent.”

  Johnson looked defensive. “I ain’t had no complaints from anybody else. I stand by my work. She got a complaint, she can call me. I’ll put it right. Been in this business a long time. Folks around here know me. Just ask anybody, they’ll tell you Fred Johnson does the job right.” Fred scratched his belly.

  “What do you know about Holiday?”

  “Well, I can’t say that I know much of anything, as a matter of fact.”

  “I need a list of the people he made repairs for.”

  “For the whole two months?”

  “Every one.”

  He gave a long-suffering sigh, then laboriously wrote out names and addresses in a spiral notebook, tore the page out, and handed it to her. “You ask ’em. See if I don’t stand by my work.”

  “Who were Holiday’s friends?”

  “Friends?” Fred looked completely perplexed, as though friends were some odd item that only the peculiar had.

  “People he was close to.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. He never had much to say. Kind of kept to himself like.”

  Susan thanked him and started to leave.

  “You want his post office box number?”

  “Sure,” she said, wondering what might be in the post office box of a homicide victim who found a snake in a customer’s basement.

  8

  The wind was sharp enough to peel the skin off Susan’s face as she trudged back to the pickup, parked around the corner. A sparrow pecking at frozen dead grasses cocked its head and peered at her with one shiny black eye.

  “Right,” she said. “It’s all part of the job.”

  When she got to the shop, Hazel said, “Everything under control.”

  “What did the mayor want?” Coming in from cold air to warm air made her face tingle.

  “He thinks you should ride on one of the floats in the parade on Christmas Eve day.”

  “You wouldn’t be kidding me?”

  Hazel grinned, exposing a slightly crooked front tooth. “Not about a thing like that.”

  “I hope you told him I’m leaving on the twenty-fourth for the first vacation I’ve taken since I got here.”

  “I pointed that out to him. He said you couldn’t leave with this murder hanging over the town.”

  Yeah, there was that. It was only the thirteenth. Clear this homicide, wait for the flu epidemic to pass, have stricken cops jumping back to work, and make a decision about Captain Reardon’s offer. Piece of cake.

  She needed the job offer decision firm in her mind; if she didn’t, her father would pounce like a mountain lion and tear her to shreds. If only it weren’t limited to two years— She sighed. Ah yes, the if-onlys she had in her life.

  At the courthouse, another beautiful old building made from the local limestone, she fought the wind for the heavy door. Once she got it open, the wind blew her inside and slammed it shut behind her. She searched for a judge to sign the warrant and found Judge Hansen was in his chambers reading yesterday’s Hampstead Herald. She got his signature and set off for the post office at a good clip.

  Two overworked employees were handling a long line of people mailing packages. “O Holy Night” came from a speaker somewhere.

  When she explained what she needed, the young woman looked at her in dismay. “I was supposed to be off at one.”

  Everybody, including Susan, looked up at the clock on the wall. Five minutes until two.

  “Go.” The middle-aged man, thinning hair and a pot belly, gave a long-suffering sigh. “Get yourself all dolled up for your boyfriend.”

  “Thanks.” The young woman planted a kiss on his cheek and danced off.

  “Turn that thing off on your way out!”

  The radio went silent. “Sorry, folks,” he said. “There’s rules. I’ll get to you as soon as I can. Just be patient.”

  “‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ all day long. It’s enough to make you want to smash every colored bulb in town. What was that number?” he asked Susan.

  “One three eight.”

  He looked through files, isolated one, tracked down the key, and showed her a file card. Name Tim Holiday, address 364 Poplar, no phone number listed. Box 138 had an ad for mail order CDs, another for free cable installation, one for a long-distance phone service, and a brochure for Schneider Monument Company: Special and personalized designs for markers and headstones in granite, marble, or bronze. A man who chose his own headstone before he died?

  “When did this come, do you recall?”

  “A few days ago. Isn’t that just something?” He shook his head. “Hardly any mail ever comes to this one, but he got that. Spooky, huh?”

  “Did anyone else get this brochure?”

  “Nope.”

  “Was there ever anything important?”

  “Not that I recall. Just junk mail, like you see.” He broke off, scratched the balding spot on the back of his head. “Although seems to me there was one letter one time…”

  She felt a flicker of hope. A letter coming to a post office box that usually just got ads was likely to be noticed at a small-town post office.

  “It had a Texas postmark, but no return address.”

  That didn’t help her any that she could see.

  * * *

  Holiday had lived in an apartment above Graham’s rare book and sewing machine repair shop. It wasn’t open on Mondays, for either books or sewing machines. What kind of man handled both?

  When Osey arrived, he handed her the key taken from Holiday’s pants pocket. Just as Susan opened the door, Gunny came dashing up, cameras
in tow.

  “It hasn’t been tossed,” Osey said. “That’s for sure.”

  At first glance the place looked unlived in, but a closer look showed that the occupier had been scrupulously tidy, owned very little, and lived like a monk. Living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom with an old-fashioned claw-footed bathtub. In the early days of the business downstairs, whatever that had started out as, this space was probably lived in by the proprietor.

  Susan pulled on latex gloves and waited for Osey to take prints and Gunny to get pictures.

  The front window looked out on the street. She could see a man and woman coming to the shop below, whether to seek out rare books or repair a sewing machine was hard to guess. Finding the place closed, the pair turned around and went back to their car.

  “Okay,” Gunny said.

  She thanked him and told him he could leave. When Osey told her he couldn’t think of a single other place that might hold prints, she sent him to search the kitchen while she took the bedroom.

  There was a double bed, tightly made up; a four-drawer chest; and a straight-backed chair. The furniture looked like it came with the apartment.

  Starting with the bed, she stripped it, checked underneath, and made sure there was nothing attached to the underside of the mattress and springs. There wasn’t even any dust under the bed. The chest was nearly empty. Four pairs of socks, jockey shorts ditto, two unmarked handkerchiefs. That was it.

  The closet, narrow, with a bar for hanging clothes and a shelf above. The shelf was empty, not even dusty. Two brown work shirts with “Tim” in a patch on the pocket and two pairs of work pants on hangers. Two flannel shirts, one solid blue and one red plaid, two pairs of jeans and a down jacket. One pair of shoes, two pairs of boots, one well worn, the other nearly new.

  Who lives like this? Someone hiding—or running.

  An artist friend who lived very sparely had once told her, “If you don’t need it, it’s a burden.” Holiday apparently lived by that rule.

  The living room had a threadbare brown tweed couch, a matching overstuffed chair, and a small television set, new. Probably the sole item Holiday had bought when he took up residence.