* * * * *

 

 

Helen Binney refused to be afraid of winter.

She might look frail, but that was just because of her short height, small bone structure, and the cane she needed because of some lupus-related joint damage. She was tougher than she looked, and she wasn't ready to give up the activities she enjoyed simply because of a cold spell.

"Seriously," her visiting nurse, Rebecca Grainger, said as she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Helen's arm. The redheaded Rebecca was only a couple inches taller than Helen, and twenty years younger, but worry lines were already etched into her forehead. She was shy and quiet, except when she thought a patient was doing something dangerous. Then she could be implacable. "You've got to bundle up before you go outside. More people die in the winter than any other time of year, and the risk increases as you age."

"I'm only forty-six," Helen said. "Barely. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. I'm not going to suddenly drop dead from a little chill in the air."

"It's not just a little. This December is already the coldest on record. Pipes are bursting everywhere, school's been closed due to the risk of kids getting hypothermia waiting for the bus, and even lower temperatures are expected over the next few days."

"I'm just going to the nursing home and back." Her usual driver, Jack Clary, was too busy to take her anywhere these days while he filled the Christmas orders for the clay figures he made for video gamers, but he'd found a couple of back-up drivers who met his exacting standards. They'd be here in about half an hour to take her to the nursing home where she would be judging a gingerbread house contest. Assuming she could convince Rebecca the brief trip wouldn't kill her. "That place is always overheated, and I'm sure the car will be fully warmed up before I get into it."

"You still need to bundle up," Rebecca said. "Blood changes with exposure to cold. It gets thicker, more concentrated. Almost half of the excess winter deaths each year are due to a clot in the heart."

"I don't have a heart condition," Helen said. "Or a heart, if you ask my nieces."

She did pull on her bulky parka, though, once Rebecca was gone and it was time to leave the comfortable little cottage. Beneath it she wore a businesslike black pants suit with a red silk blouse, left over from her days in the governor's mansion. The suit was wool but lightweight enough for wearing in a heated office. Not for going outside, even in a milder winter. She'd considered wearing thermal underwear with it but opted not to, since the nursing home was always too warm for her in the winter.

Helen headed over to the garage workshop to check on Tate, her tenant, and… She wasn't entirely sure what else he was. He used to be her lawyer, but recently he'd taken to insisting they didn't have a lawyer-client relationship.

Inside the garage Tate was standing at his workbench, the lathe running. Tate was tall and lean, but he looked a bit pudgy today with all the layers he was wearing. She could only see the down vest, wool plaid shirt, and the tips of the sleeves of a thermal shirt, but he probably had thermal long johns beneath his sawdust-covered jeans.

She'd barely closed the door behind her when, despite his eye and ear protection, he turned to look at her, removing the ear plugs as he did. His safety glasses still hid his expression. Although she knew what his eyes were likely to contain: a mixture of both annoyance and anticipation.

She beat him to the attack. "It's freezing in here. According to Rebecca, you're likely to drop dead any minute now."

"If I do die unexpectedly, I'm counting on you to get to the bottom of the mystery."

Helen stayed near the door where she could keep an eye out for the arrival of her driver.

"I appreciate your confidence, but I'm done with dead bodies." Getting mixed up in previous homicide investigations and almost getting killed each time was plenty.

He took off his safety glasses, letting her see the skepticism in his eyes. "You've finally found something more interesting to do with your retirement days?"

Helen shrugged. "Not for the long term, but today I'm going to be a judge of the nursing home's gingerbread house contest."

"You never know," Tate said. "People can get competitive, even in the most minor of events. Maybe one of the contestants will kill a rival, and you'll have to figure out whodunnit. Just remember, I can't be your lawyer anymore. If you get arrested, I won't be able to do anything about it."

"That's okay," Helen said. "I'm not planning on getting arrested, and if I end up in jail over the holidays, it won't matter much. I don't have any plans after today. Normally my nieces would be whisking me away to their homes whether I wanted to go or not, but Laura has already gone into nesting mode, refusing to leave her house even though the baby isn't due until the spring, and Lily's leaving with your nephew in a few days, so they can be somewhere warm for Christmas."

"Sounds like you've got the holiday blues."

"Don't let my nurse hear you say that." There might be a kernel of truth to the diagnosis, but she'd never admit it out loud. This was going to be her first Christmas alone. Last year, while her divorce was still pending, she'd been living near her nieces, and she hadn't had time to be lonely or nostalgic for her days running the governor's mansion. She'd been too busy with her plans to move to Wharton. "I barely escaped Rebecca's protective clutches when all she had to worry about was the cold weather. I'd be locked up for observation faster than you can go through exotic wood if she thought I was depressed."

"You can always tell Rebecca that you're spending Christmas with my family. Between my three siblings, all their kids, and any strays they've taken in, they'd never notice an extra person or six." He adjusted something on his lathe before adding, "You should be warned that they're a rambunctious crowd, and there's bound to be at least one or two who annoy you. They are my family, though, so if you do join us, I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from threatening to kill anyone."

"That's asking a lot," she said.

He put his eye goggles back on, preparing to get back to work. "You should be able to curb your annoyance, just for the one day. In the spirit of Christmas and all."

Helen glanced out the window in the door, as if she'd heard her drivers arriving, but she was just buying time to think. She wasn't sure what to make of the invitation. It could be read at least two different ways too. He could either be acting like the lawyer he couldn't help being, taking her in so he could keep an eye on her and prevent her from getting into trouble. Or he could be taking a major step in a traditional courtship by introducing her to his family. Her ex-husband had done the formal introduction to family shortly after they'd met, although they'd already indulged in a few passionate nights together by then, so there hadn't been any ambiguity in their relationship.

It was different with Tate. His experience as a trial lawyer, and as a tough negotiator, meant that he had complete control over which emotions he expressed, in both words and body language. Helen had learned some of his non-verbal cues, but right now, with his goggles on, it was impossible to tell whether he was thinking business or romance.

Her hesitation must have convinced him she wasn't interested in his offer. He turned back to the lamp stem affixed to his lathe. "It's an open invitation, so you don't have to make up your mind right now. Just let me know if you want a ride. No point in dragging Jack away from his family."

"I'll think about it."

"Good." He tucked his ear plugs into place, the dangling strings adding another complication to reading his expression, but she thought the corners of his mouth had risen into the tiniest hint of a pleased smile. "I'll give you a ride home from the nursing home this afternoon, and you can tell me your decision."

 

* * *

 

Wharton's nursing home had once been a mansion, built by a millionaire during the Golden Age of the early 1800s in the same style and luxury as the "summer cottages" of Newport but on a slightly smaller scale. The public areas on the first floor retained much of the grandiose architectural features, like the massive fireplace in the ballroom that was now the activity room for ambulatory patients.

The nursing home had been off-limits to Helen for the past two weeks while the residents were working on their gingerbread houses, so she could judge the contest without knowing who had made which entry. She'd missed visiting her friends, Betty Seese and Josie Todd, and she had a few minutes now before she was supposed to meet up with the other judges. Just enough time to peek into the activity room and check on the two women.

Betty and Josie were seated in their usual wingback chairs near the fireplace. For once there was even a roaring fire in the hearth. Even so, the seventy-something Betty wore a white turtleneck and a thick black sweater. Josie, older and thinner than her friend, was apparently wearing several layers to bulk herself up almost to Betty's size, but only the top layer of a red-and-white-striped sweatshirt and red leather pants were visible.

Christmas music played in the background. The songs were all oldies, presumably to appeal to the residents' sense of nostalgia, like the current song, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." An eighty-something-year-old couple was jitterbugging in front of the ten-foot-tall tree near the grandiose windows overlooking the driveway. Dozens of mistletoe balls hung from the high ceilings on long cords, so that anyone over six feet tall risked running into them. Lined up on tables beneath the windows were some of the gingerbread houses that hadn't made the semi-finals.

Helen hurried in the other direction toward the fireplace, undoing her parka and slipping out of it as she went. Despite the brutally cold weather, she was more at risk of heat stroke in here than the hypothermia that Rebecca worried about.

Josie was crocheting a pointy, green elf's hat to go with the red Santa hat draped across the arm of her chair. Betty, for once, wasn't making a hat, and her yarn wasn't a typical holiday color, although it contrasted sharply with her dark clothes. It was a long strip of bright yellow with black accents. Probably a scarf for a Bruins fan.

At Helen's inquiring glance, Betty held up her work to reveal "CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS" knitted in black on the yellow background. "I thought you should have your own crime scene tape. It can hide in plain sight as a scarf in case Hank Peterson gives you any grief."

Hank Peterson was the local homicide detective and Helen's nemesis. He was naturally dismissive of laypersons, and he was particularly galled that one insignificant, little amateur—an outsider, to boot—had solved three crimes that he and his department had gotten wrong. If Helen wore the scarf in front of him, it was likely to finally get her arrested, as Tate kept fearing.

"It's beautiful." That much was true. Betty's knitting was always exquisite. Helen dropped into one of the last empty chairs in this end of the room. "So, tell me what I've missed during the last couple weeks."

"Nothing much," Betty said. "It's that time of year when everyone's on their best behavior. It's like they're all four years old again and think they need to behave themselves for the last six weeks of the year or Santa will leave them a lump of coal."

"Nah," Josie said. "The good behavior is because they won't let us have anything good to drink. Just fake eggnog. I bet if we could sneak in some rum, there'd be quite a few folks on the naughty list then, and things would be a lot more exciting."

"A little too interesting," Betty said. "Defibrillators and ambulances interesting. We don't need that. But it would be nice to have more visitors between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone's too busy with holiday stuff. Except today, of course. Friends and families of anyone who worked on a gingerbread house will be here to find out who won. Everyone makes time for that."

"This room will be super packed by the time you make your announcement." Josie nodded at the five people entering the room as she spoke, two thirty-something adults and their pre-teen kids. "Lots of drama, for sure. Much better than the stories on the news."

"Don't forget about the Gingerbread Man," Betty said. "That was on the news, and it's pretty dramatic."

"The gingerbread man?" Helen said. "You mean like the kids' story with the cookie that ran away from its makers, claiming that no matter how fast they ran, they'd never catch him?"

"That's where the nickname came from," Josie said, "but we're talking about a real person. A grifter who calls himself the Gingerbread Man. He takes all of his victim's money, and then he emails the police with the line about never being able to catch him superimposed over the image of his feet running away from the scene of the crime. The pictures are pretty cool."

"Some people never grow up," Betty said, and it wasn't clear whether she was referring to the so-called Gingerbread Man or Josie. "It's not cool at all. He targets elderly people who are on the verge of going into a nursing home, and he promises them he can hide their assets so they can qualify for Medicaid to pay their nursing home expenses."

"He hides the assets all right," Josie said. "In his own pockets."

"I think I read about that," Helen said. "It was a while ago, though."

"That's the thing," Josie said eagerly. "He usually pulls off three or four cons in a year, and he's only done two this year. We think he's due for another one any day now."

"Unless the police just haven't tied him to his latest victim," Betty said. "He may have finally figured out that daring the police to catch him wasn't a good idea."

"You can think whatever you want," Josie said. "I think he's planning something big. One of his messages to the police suggested he was working on a really big score. They think he might be targeting a whole nursing home, so they put the administrators on notice. Martha told us so we can be prepared. I can think of several people here who really resent the idea that there may be a lien against their house for reimbursement of what Medicaid pays for their stay at the nursing home. They'd be ripe for one of his cons."

Another version of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" started up, and the jitterbugging couple were now glaring at another elderly couple who'd stood up to dance.

"What's that all about?" Helen asked, nodding at the feuding couples.

"The music," Betty said. "The administration chose 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' as the theme for this year's gingerbread contest, and they've been playing about twenty different versions, almost non-stop, as inspiration. People started choosing favorites, and it's been narrowed down to two: the original by Peggy Lee and a cover by Dion."

"They're all wrong," Josie said. "The cast of Glee did the Best. Version. Ever."

Betty shook her head. "Some people are taking it personally."

"Not me," Josie said cheerfully. "I know I'm right, but I don't need to convince anyone else. Live and let live, I say. Except for the Gingerbread Man. He's got to die."

 

* * *

 

"There you are." The nursing home's assistant administrator, Martha Waddell, swooped down on Helen. The tall, dark-skinned woman was an excellent administrator, but she could be a bit abrasive, with no apparent sense of humor. She was carrying a stack of clipboards today instead of her laptop. "It's time to start the judging. The rest of the panel is already in the dining room waiting for you, and poor Mr. Wharton can't stay too long."

"Mr. Wharton?" Helen said, following the implacable administrator into the hallway. "Named after the town?"

"The other way around, sort of." Martha glanced at the smartphone she was so attached to that she probably slept with it in her hand. Apparently the latest message wasn't important, because she continued talking as they walked to the dining room. "One of his ancestors, his namesake in fact, founded Wharton. The current Samuel Wharton is the only descendant who still lives here, so he's always asked to participate in town events, like this gingerbread contest. We're lucky to have him as a judge this year. His health isn't good at all."

"Maybe next year he'll qualify to make a gingerbread house instead of judging them. Betty and Josie would love having a real, live celebrity living here in the nursing home."

"Oh, that will never happen. The Whartons aren't as well known as the Rockefellers, but they were peers back in the Golden Age. In fact," Martha said, gesturing at the elaborate architectural details in the hallway, "it was a Wharton who owned this building originally, back when it was his summer vacation home. The current Mr. Wharton lives in another of the family's mansions, with a full-time, live-in nurse and the kind of advanced medical equipment we can only dream about."

Just inside the dining room's entrance stood Geoff Loring, the Wharton Times reporter who specialized in human interest stories. He was twenty-something, with boyish, blond good looks, and despite the record-setting cold weather, he wore his usual reporter's uniform: khaki pants and a lightweight, short-sleeved sport shirt.

Beside him, leaning on a cane, was a slight man in his sixties, with wispy white hair and a sort of wilted posture. Helen assumed he was the sickly Sam Wharton. Standing behind him, and slightly to one side, was a solemn, gray-haired but obviously muscular man in tight-fitting jeans, an equally tight-fitting sweater, and a loose bomber jacket, who had to be the nurse. And finally, there was a black-haired, chubby woman of average height, wearing a red jacket and a Santa hat and sporting a tan that was incongruous given how long it had been since the skies in New England had been anything but overcast or whited-out with snow. She had jingle bell earrings that tinkled out of beat with the Christmas music in the background.

Martha distributed her clipboards with a list of the contest entries' titles and a few blank sheets for making notes. Helen and the other female judge each took theirs, while the frail man waved his off to the nurse, explaining he was unable to manage both his cane and the clipboard. More likely, Helen thought, he'd just grown accustomed to having someone nearby at all times, doing every little thing for him. She didn't have any trouble holding the lightweight clipboard in one hand and the cane in the other. She could have carried far more and frequently did, when she remembered to bring her yarn bag with her.

Martha suddenly stared at her phone. Then she rushed off without a word, presumably responding to a true life-or-death crisis.

Geoff Loring took on the responsibility for introductions. Helen had correctly identified the town royalty, Sam Wharton, and his nurse, whose name was Nikolai Zubov, but who preferred the title of "personal assistant" and the nickname Kolya.

Mr. Wharton—apparently no one used his first name, let alone a nickname—declined to shake Helen's hand, citing his weakened immune system and the particularly virulent strain of flu this year. Kolya, however, made up for his patient's standoffishness, squeezing Helen's hand and then shaking it as if he were testing her physical fitness.

The last judge was Edith Avila, a member of the town's Board of Selectmen. "Board of Selectpersons," she corrected Geoff with a giggle. She barely brushed her fingertips against Helen's in lieu of a traditional handshake. "You can call me Edie."

"Nice to meet you," Helen lied. The woman showed every sign of being as saccharine as Helen's first visiting nurse, and that hadn't ended well at all. It wouldn't be good if yet another Suzy Sunshine type ended up dead in Helen's vicinity, especially with Tate insisting he couldn't represent her any longer.

"Mr. Wharton and Edie know the rules already, but for the record here's how the judging works." Geoff encouraged everyone further into the dining room, which could seat in excess of a hundred patients and visitors. The smaller tables had been pushed against a wall to the right of the entrance, and five longer, banquet-sized tables had been rearranged so that instead of being laid out in parallel rows, they formed an inverted U shape. Each side of the U was made up of two tables, and there were five gingerbread houses on each side. The head table at the far end of the room was empty, presumably reserved to hold the three winners after the judging.

Geoff continued, "The nursing home residents have voted for their favorites, narrowing the entries down to the ten finalists. All you have to do now is choose, in a unanimous vote, five that will get ribbons. Then I'll take pictures, you'll announce the results, and everyone will be happy."

"Except for the losers," Helen said.

"Oh, no one's really a loser," Edie said. "Just making it to the finals is quite an honor among the nursing home residents. Plus, the finalists all get mentioned in the newspaper, thanks to Geoff, and everyone likes seeing his or her name in the paper."

"Not me," Helen said.

Edie blinked and then pretended not to have heard. "You're new at this, so just follow my lead. It's usually obvious which three will get the top rankings and which aren't even in the running."

That was the best news she'd heard so far. Helen hadn't really wanted to be one of the judges. It felt a bit too much like the kind of things she'd done as the state's First Lady. All show and no substance, no real effect on anyone's lives. But Martha Waddell had known exactly how to get Helen to agree; she'd delegated the job of convincing her to Betty and Josie.

Edie kept chattering. "We sometimes disagree briefly over the placement of the top three winners, but not for long, and the two honorable mentions are always obvious. It's never taken more than about ten minutes to reach a unanimous decision about all five. Mr. Wharton has impeccable taste, of course, and I like to think I'm not bad myself. Jason sometimes had different ideas, but he came around pretty quickly last year."

"Why isn't he judging this year?"

"He died," Edie said with a big smile. "He'd been ill for a long time, so I'm sure it was a great relief when he went to his reward."

Helen couldn't help wondering if she'd been tapped as a judge because of her perceived decrepitude, making her an apt replacement for the terminally ill Jason and a presumed push-over like the wilting Mr. Wharton, rather than someone who would rock the judging boat.

"Let's get started." Edie led the way to the where the first five gingerbread houses were set up on the table closest to the inner wall of the dining room. Fluorescent lights in the high ceilings were on, since the mid-day skies were gray, and even the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of the outer wall couldn't let in enough light to view the details of the entries. "We always work around the room in a clockwise direction."

Even from the doorway, Helen had been able to tell that all of the basic houses were identical little structures, each one a 14" cube with a pointed roof. Betty and Josie had said the kitchen staff had worked overtime during the first week of November, baking the gingerbread sheets and building a hundred of the unadorned little houses. After that, the residents, either as individuals or as teams, could claim a house and decorate it for the competition. A few opted to eat them instead, although that was generally discouraged since the gingerbread was baked hard enough to crack even Edie's good cheer. The decorations weren't restricted to traditional frosting and gum drops, but everything had to be edible, or the house was disqualified from the final round.

As the three judges and Geoff approached the first entry, Mr. Wharton sniffed. "I smell cloves, Kolya. They know I'm allergic to cloves. They promised they wouldn't use it in the recipe."

"Do not worry," Kolya said, with only a hint of a Russian accent. "I will wrestle the cloves to the ground if necessary. I also have your epi pen. I will not let anything happen to you."

"Are you sure?"

"You are safe as houses," Kolya said in a tone so serious that it seemed unlikely he even recognized the pun.

The first entry consisted of a dozen gingerbread men clustered—or, presumably, rocking—around the Christmas tree in the front yard of a basic house decorated for the holidays. Helen could see why it had been voted one of the ten finalists. The details on the display were exquisite, from the tiny icicles along the roof and the candles in the windows, to the strings of popcorn and cranberries on the Christmas tree. There were even miniature marzipan birds alighting on the branches. Unfortunately, something had gone wrong, probably while the entry was transported into the dining room, and the tree had fallen over onto its side.

Helen looked closer and realized that the legs and feet of a miniature gingerbread man stuck out from beneath the tree, and around him was a pool of something dark red and sticky, like seedless raspberry jam.

The fallen tree was intentional, she realized, and the gingerbread men weren't rocking around the tree. They were peering at a fatally crushed gingerbread corpse.

 

* * *

 

A moment later, Edie gasped. "I can't believe the staff allowed that entry to be included in the finalists. The residents here don't need any more reminders of death."

"One of those residents—or perhaps a whole team of them, considering how much work this must have taken—built the house, so I don't think it bothered them," Helen said.

"Well." Edie huffed and pointedly moved on to the next entry. "That makes the judging easier, at least. We can eliminate one finalist right away."

Based on Betty's and Josie's expressed desire to see the conman known as the Gingerbread Man get his comeuppance, Helen had a feeling the remaining entries weren't going to be any less morbid. At first, it looked like she was wrong. The next gingerbread house had been turned into a confectionary store. In its front yard was a cylindrical vat fashioned out of white chocolate and filled with dark chocolate pudding. A tiny spiral hose cut out of a cherry Twizzler led from the vat to a conveyor belt for filling wreath-shaped candy forms with the chocolate. A crew of gingerbread men worked to sort the chocolates, a couple of them resorting to the I Love Lucy trick of eating the candies that moved past them too quickly. All very sweet and nostalgic, entirely appropriate for the nursing home crowd.

"Awww, how cute," Edie said. "Look, there's a gingerbread man swimming in the vat of chocolate."

Helen looked closer. He wasn't swimming. He was floating, face down. She suspected he was supposed to be dead. She glanced at the title of the entry: Drowning in Chocolate.

She had to laugh. This was going to be a lot more fun than she'd anticipated.

"What?" Edie said.

"Never mind," Helen said. "We might as well move on to the next one. I'm afraid we'll need to disqualify this one for not meeting the theme of 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.'"