I headed toward the small guesthouse where I’d unloaded my things from the moving truck. The building had once been the tree farm’s offices, but for the last fifteen years, it had housed guests. There was something sad about the fact that after a lifetime in Mistletoe, I was the visitor.
I slogged through the snow with my bags until Mr. Fleece and the reindeer came into view. He combed the animals with great care, dragging a nearly invisible brush over their fluffy manes and backs.
According to Cookie, Mr. Fleece had argued with Margaret last night. Much as I hated to think anyone in Reindeer Games’ employ was capable of murder, I had to be fair. I couldn’t discount anyone based on my love for the farm.
I changed direction when he looked up. “Hi, Mr. Fleece.”
“Hello, Holly. Been shopping, I see.” He wiggled his bushy eyebrows as I approached. Mr. Fleece and the reindeer were one of the newer additions to Reindeer Games. We’d gotten to know each other two days ago when he was kind enough to offer his assistance unloading my earthly belongings from the moving truck. Thanks to the added set of hands, plus Mom and Dad, it had only taken about an hour.
“It’s good to be home.” I smiled. “Thanks again for your help with the boxes. How are things going for you and the reindeer?”
He brushed the animal’s back. “Not bad.” Gentle as he was with the animals, it was hard to imagine him wielding a three-foot stake at an old woman. Though my recent breakup suggested I might not be the keenest judge of people.
I adjusted the shopping bags over the crook of one arm so I could get my hands on the soft reindeer before me. “Hello, you.” I ran my mittens down his back and fluffed his pretty mane. “What’s your name?” I asked, lifting his chin and making kissy faces at his nose.
“That’s Kevin,” Mr. Fleece said, “or as I like to call him, Mr. Personality. He’s the team showboat.” He pointed to the other two. “The one on the right is Chrissy, short for Christmas. The other is Noel. They’re my babies.”
Chrissy and Noel wore matching red bridles, a festive contrast to Kevin’s green one.
I stroked Kevin’s side. “No fun holiday name for this guy?”
“Wasn’t up to me,” Mr. Fleece said. “He was almost three years old when I rescued him, too old to change the name.”
“He’s a rescue?” My heart went out to Kevin, and I warmed immediately to Mr. Fleece. Cindy Lou Who was nearly feral when I’d taken her in.
“You betcha. They were with an abusive owner up north. Chrissy and Noel were just calves then. I took the lot of them and gave the girls their names. I didn’t ask what they were called before, and they were too young to remember.” He heaved a sigh. “Not that the old coot paid them a lick of attention. He probably didn’t call them anything I could say in front of my mother.”
“Sad.”
“It was awful.” He pulled a carrot from his coat pocket and offered it to Kevin, who greedily munched it down. “I never fancied myself a reindeer keeper, but it’s been good for me. These guys have taught me a lot about healing.” Emotion swelled in his deep-brown eyes. I’d guessed Mr. Fleece to be my dad’s age, though time had worn on him in ways that Dad seemed to have escaped.
“I’m glad,” I whispered, concentrating on each stroke of the reindeer’s fur. “I’m sorry about what happened to Margaret. I heard you argued with her last night. That stinks, huh?”
He dipped his chin. “Yeah.”
“What did you argue about?”
He turned cautious eyes on me. “Why? What have you heard?”
“Nothing more than that. I’m just trying to process what’s happened. I’ve never known anyone who died like that before. It doesn’t feel real, and everyone’s carrying on today as if nothing happened.”
“No,” he disagreed. “We’re all hurting, but life’s like that. The living have to live. Some say that’s the hardest part about loss.”
I didn’t disagree. “I’ve been talking to everyone who spoke with her last night. Do you know what had her so up in arms lately?”
A sense of debate hung over him. “No.”
“Will you tell me what the two of you fought about?” I turned to the animals while he decided. “Cookie said something about livestock licensing.”
“I lease the stable space here,” he said. “Did you know that?”
“I assumed. It’s the way we handled the horses until we had our own.”
“I yelled at her,” he said after a long silence. “I shouldn’t have. I flew off the handle—it’s a bad habit of mine.” He clicked his tongue, coaxing Chrissy to his side. He turned the soft bristled brush on her. “I should’ve taken the time to explain things more clearly. Maybe she didn’t understand the trouble she was causing.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Listing these guys as livestock would make me a farmer, and I can’t afford to pay the agricultural taxes. I’m not farming; I’m raising pets. Besides, reindeer aren’t livestock; they’re wildlife, and my deer aren’t wild. They’ve been in captivity all their lives. Fed. Bathed. Groomed. What if I registered them as livestock and managed to pay the added taxes only to have some yahoo up at the state level come down on me with orders to release them? They’d never survive in the wild, and registering the reindeer as livestock would’ve put a spotlight on their backs.” His voice had ratcheted up with each new sentence, and he’d traded brushing his pet for pulling his own thin ponytail over one shoulder with undue force.
“Did you tell her that?”
“She didn’t care!”
I started. “I’m sorry.” A pool of unease circled in my stomach. I didn’t like his tone or his fevered expression. I stepped away from the reindeer and freed my phone from my pocket. “I have to take this call.”
He locked his heated gaze on me as I hurried away, silent phone pressed to one ear. “Hello?” I carried on a fake conversation with the quiet device until I was out of earshot, then returned it to my pocket.
I hated to see the sheriff spend any more time at the farm than necessary, and adding Mr. Fleece to the suspect pool would probably keep the farm closed longer, but it wouldn’t hurt for Sheriff Gray to talk to him one more time. Mr. Fleece’s temper was quick and hot, and protecting the animals he’d rescued seemed a reasonable motive for lashing out. I wasn’t sure if what he’d said about taxes and wildlife was accurate, but he certainly believed it was, and it only took a second to do something rash that couldn’t be taken back.
I hadn’t known Margaret Fenwick, but someone had taken her life, and she deserved justice. I’d been so determined to find an off-site suspect for Sheriff Gray that I’d failed to let the weight of her loss truly register. Margaret was a local woman, exactly like Cookie or my mom, and someone had killed her.
Someone in Mistletoe was a murderer. And I might have spoken with them today.
A sudden shiver rocked down my spine, and it had nothing to do with the temperatures.
* * *
I climbed the guesthouse steps and stomped snow from my boots, then pressed the door shut behind me. Cindy Lou Who met me with a look of expectancy.
“Hello, gorgeous.” I bent to pet her, but she walked away, nosing through my bags before exiting the room completely. Thus was our relationship. I fawned over her, and she was satisfied to know I was still alive. An assurance the meals she pretended to hate would continue uninterrupted.
I sloughed off my winter gear and stowed my bags in the corner. “I’m going to build a fire,” I called after her, hoping she’d rejoin me. The thermostat said sixty-seven, which in Maine at Christmas was practically subtropic, but I’d been outdoors so long, the cold had settled in my bones. I needed a crackling wood fire and a hot cup of tea to truly get warm.
The logs flamed to life with little effort, and I went in search of a kettle. The guesthouse kitchen was galley style, a long, narrow addition from my early childhood after Mom decided the farm needed a guesthouse. The renovation came, coincidentally, on the heels of her father’s retirement, shortly after my grandparents began making routine trips to Mistletoe.
“What do you think?” I asked Cindy when she poked her head around the counter. “Peppermint or cinnamon?” I set the boxes on the counter before her. She leapt onto the white Formica and stalked closer, crouching lower and wiping the area with her bushy calico fur as she moved.
I freed a mug from the rack and righted it on the counter. “Well?”
The boxes of tea hit the floor behind me. Cindy squinted at them.
“Gee. Thanks.” I scooped them up and put the peppermint away.
I dropped a cinnamon packet into the mug and covered it in hot water. The sweet steam lifted my spirits.
Cindy was on the couch in front of the fireplace when I returned. I curled onto the cushion beside her and pulled Mom’s favorite afghan over my lap. Colorful tassels danced against my legs, and nostalgia nearly overwhelmed me. The wood smoke and cinnamon in the air. Mom’s blanket. The roaring fire. Snow piled on the windowsill. I rested my head back, and my eyes drifted shut.
My phone buzzed with an unheard voice mail, promptly ruining the moment. I dialed in to see what I’d missed, and Ben’s voice echoed over the line. “Hey, babe, it’s me.”
My grip tightened on the little phone.
“So I know you probably don’t want to hear from me.”
“Correct,” I told the recording.
“But a wedding present was delivered to the apartment today, and I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do with it. You’ve been taking care of all this, so I thought you’d want to call my aunt Karen and let her know about the split. She doesn’t speak to my mom, so I guess she hasn’t heard. If you don’t feel comfortable calling my aunt, you could probably call my mom and ask her to relay the message.”
My jaw dropped. “Unbelievable.”
“What should I do with the gift, though?” he continued.
I had a few suggestions.
“It’s that espresso machine we both wanted. Should I keep it? I mean, I hate to see it wasted.” The line went silent, and I nearly hung up, assuming the message had ended. “Really,” Ben’s voice returned in a sullen whisper, “I wish you’d just come home and share it with me like we’d planned. Things aren’t working out for me. I screwed up big time by letting you go, and I think we should talk. Maybe we can still go on that honeymoon together, work out our problems in Hawaii. Sun. Sand . . .”
I pressed the disconnect button until my fingertip was sore, then deleted the message and rubbed my temple. “Idiot,” I muttered, only slightly unsure of who I meant exactly, Ben or me.
Cindy slunk across the back of the couch and batted my earring.
I caught her and pulled her onto my legs in a forced snuggle. At least one good thing came from my doomed relationship. Ben had failed to clean up after making salmon one night, and the next day I’d come home to find Cindy on the patio licking the grill. She’d looked like a mean old alley cat with her unruly fur and chipped ear, but I took her in anyway, certain that all she needed was love and security. She was so grateful for the warm bed and food that she stopped hissing when I looked at her after only a few weeks. Eighteen months later, she only hissed at bath time.
She rolled on my lap, extending her invisible claws toward my ears. I’d made a lot of jewelry lately. Maybe I subconsciously knew it was time to come home long before Ben broke the engagement. The jewelry reminded me of better days, when I knew the neighbors and didn’t eat alone every night.
Cindy took an interest in chewing my feet through the blanket, and I hoisted the tackle box turned craft supply kit from the coffee table. I sorted through the small glass discs in search of the perfect lollipop tops. “People here like my jewelry,” I told her.
Ben had thought my candy jewelry was juvenile. He never understood me or this town and hated visiting, which was why I’d come alone for Christmas every year at first, making excuses to my family for his absence and apologies to his family for mine. Later, I’d chosen Christmas with him over my parents. “I figured it out, Cindy. I was definitely the idiot.”
I sipped my tea and mentally replayed the day while I wound silver wire into jingle bells and holly shapes. I didn’t like the way Paula had grouched about Margaret even after her death. Was her attitude symptomatic of an awful habit? Incessant negativity nurtured over several decades or something more? I also didn’t like Mr. Fleece’s temper or his understandable anger. Lots of things made me mad, but I didn’t scream about them, especially not to someone who was practically a stranger.
I pried myself off the couch when the tea was gone. Comfy as I was, the sheriff needed to know what I knew, and his cruiser was still at the gates. “I’ll be back in time for your dinner,” I told Cindy as I returned my supplies to the plastic chest for safekeeping. “Enjoy the nice warm fire.”
I pulled a fresh coat and boots from the closet and stuffed my toasty arms and feet into them. An elegant navy number with a wide collar and belt, the classic wool pea coat had been in my family for three generations. My mom’s mom had purchased it on her honeymoon in 1962. I always felt a little like Jackie O when I wore it. I especially loved the big black buttons, reminiscent of another time. The boots, unfortunately, were the sort of mud-soaked, calf-high rubber ordeals only found in the wilderness. I doubted the sheriff would notice or appreciate the collision of style and practicality. All he needed to know was that I’d been out on reconnaissance all morning and that I had at least two solid leads for his team.
I adjusted matching mittens over my fingers and tugged the front door open. A gust of snow swirled in, temporarily stealing my breath before vanishing into the cozy room. A line of red-and-white-striped stakes were arranged on the porch before me. My tummy dropped as the message settled in. These stakes matched the one used to kill Margaret Fenwick, and the pointed ends were aimed at my door. One word was spray-painted on each of the four tree markers:
STOP OR YOU’RE NEXT
I slammed the door shut and pressed my back against it. Someone knew I’d been asking about Margaret’s death, and they didn’t like it.