Holly and Homicide (30 page)

Mikara rushed beside Audrey and peered out. “She has
to be carrying the ladder
back
to the shed. Oh, God! That’s a spray can in her other hand!”

“Let’s hope she was just touching up the paint on the cardboard M-and-M’s,” I offered hopefully, though I knew full well that Chiffon’s it’s-all-about-me mentality would never allow her to focus on something so wholesome when her feelings had recently been injured.

Mikara bolted toward the front door and I followed, while Audrey dashed to the back door, probably to try to speak with Chiffon.

Mikara trotted halfway down the walkway, then turned to look at the gingerbread façade. She grabbed her head in shock and glared at the house. I whirled around and looked at the still-wet red paint graffiti. Mikara’s face contorted and she cried, “Look what that spoiled little princess painted on our house!”

C
hiffon had painted in enormous block letters that “Henry G” was a crude term for part of the male anatomy.

Hoping to inject some humor, I said, “She’s got really legible print, for using a spray can freehand.”

“This isn’t funny, Erin!”

“Maybe not, but it
is
the best thing she possibly could have done for us. Now we can take down that idiotic façade.”

Mikara was having none of my very rational response. She balled her fists and started to march toward the driveway.
Chiffon’s cute little powder blue Prius was heading toward us.

Mikara broke into a run, determined to block her exit. Chiffon stepped on the accelerator, and for a terrible moment, I thought I was going to be witness to a hideous collision.

“Let her go!” I hollered to Mikara, racing toward her for all I was worth. I grabbed the back of her blouse, but by then she had pulled up short anyway. Chiffon flew past us, barreling onto the street without slowing, let alone stopping, for possible traffic.

“You idiot maniac!” Mikara screamed at her, shaking her fist in fury. “You’re never setting foot in this house again!” She was panting in rage as Chiffon drove away.

For my part, I was immensely grateful that there was no squeal of brakes, followed by a crash. “Seriously, Mikara, it’s
just
graffiti,” I said as we watched Chiffon’s car disappear down the hill.

“I know that! This house is historical! It represents all of what’s good and solid and decent about the old Snowcap! And that little twerp is the epitome of what’s gone wrong with this town!”

“She
didn’t
mark up the house itself, though. She ruined her tacky Masonite gingerbread!”

Audrey was trotting toward us but stopped to examine the house. “Oh, my!” she cried. She turned back to us as we made our way up the front walk. She beamed at us. “Hallelujah! We get to take down the god-awful gingerbread!”

Several minutes later, when Henry arrived home, he threw a dozen “I told you so’s” at all of us, then settled into
the task of moving tonight’s meeting up to five-thirty, in the hopes that Chiffon would miss it entirely.

He kept grumbling about wanting Chiffon to be arrested. Ben, however, pointed out that the inn would be much better served by taking down the Masonite board immediately than by having the graffiti on display for another hour or two, while the sheriff investigated and the townspeople came by to see for themselves what was causing yet another fuss. Ben said he would store the offensive boards in the garage so that Henry could show them to Sheriff Mackey later. Sure enough, in less than two hours, Ben had restored the inn’s beautiful siding, which lifted my mood considerably.

At around four o’clock that afternoon, the doorbell
rang. Steve and I were checking the paint job in Audrey’s room. He grinned at me. “I know what this is. Meet me in our bedroom.” He trotted downstairs to get the front door.

Much as I’d have liked to think that he was about to present me with something so intensely romantic that the privacy of our bedroom was required, I knew he was strictly in work mode; we were moving the ten lords a-leaping from our bedroom into Audrey’s. (He’d sung: “Six crows Erin’s eating …” while, instead of the panels, we placed a lovely oak highboy against the aubergine accent wall.) I sat on the Queen Anne bench at the foot of our bed and waited for him.

A minute later, Steve entered our room, exclaimed, “Tah-dah!” and presented me with a long, skinny package.
He sat next to me and proceeded to open a second, larger box.

“What’s this?”

“It’s the eleven pipers piping.” Steve handed me his pocketknife.

“It’s heavy …but I’m surprised you can fit eleven pipers into one long box like this.” I started to open it. “Wait. Didn’t we agree on eleven candlestick holders?”

“Yeah, but eleven separate candles didn’t feel right to me.”

Concerned, I met his gaze. “So you put them all together into one candelabra? Isn’t that going to be sort of
Phantom of the Opera
-ish?”

“Reserve your judgment till you at least look at it, okay?”

I worked my way through the protective packaging and removed the bronze sculpture/candelabra. The base was three feet long and loosely resembled a flute, or rather, a flute that had been adapted into a candlestick holder, with eleven holders projecting from the holes in the flute. The middle candleholder was the tallest at six inches, with each of the surrounding holders progressively shorter; the ones at both ends were only an inch tall. “So there are ten finger holes, plus one blow hole for the flautist?”

“Which have all been converted into candleholders.”

“You realize your ‘piper’ had to have twelve fingers? He’d need two thumbs to hold onto this instrument.”

He shrugged. “Artistic license. Did you notice my eleven pipers?”

The tiny figurines were molded into the front side of each of the candleholders. I grinned as I studied them. “They’re cute.”

“Some of them could probably have used a little more detail,” Steve said, peering over my shoulder.

“The four littlest ones on the ends are a bit generic. But the seven bigger ones on the taller candleholders all look great.”

Steve smiled and unpacked eleven cream-colored, elegant, tapered candles and put them in place while I stared at his creation. By the time he’d inserted the eleventh candle I decided I liked it very much.

“Were you going to put this on our mantelpiece?”

“Originally. But I think we should center it on the wall over the bed. Ben is going to build us an eight-inch-deep shelf this afternoon.” He knelt on the edge of the king-sized bed and held the candelabra against the wall so I could get a feel for how it would look there. “You’ve got to imagine this with the candles lit. And a crackling fire in the fireplace directly opposite.”

“Yes. It will work wonderfully,” I told him honestly.

He grinned at me. “Thanks.”

“So now you’ve got one thirty-six-by-eight-inch shelf to install, while I finally hang the leaping-lords panels. Then I’ve got to hang two pictures depicting four drummers, and tactfully distribute eight drummer figurines in Henry’s bedroom. Which, by the way, makes me feel a bit like the Easter bunny, hiding drummer boys instead of eggs.”

Steve crossed his arms and arched an eyebrow. “Looks
like this time my man-hours were more efficient than your woman-hours.”

“That’s only because I’ve been a slacker this past week.”

“My point exactly.”

I was on the verge of suggesting that we engage in some truly enjoyable slacking together, but I heard heavy footsteps ascending the staircase and correctly guessed that this would be Ben, reporting for duty. He leaned in the doorway and knocked on the lintel. “I got that shelf ready to install.”

“Excellent,” Steve replied.

“I’m going to go creatively place my dozen drummers in …” I let my voice fade as my imagination wandered. “A dozen drummers. A dozen eggs. Damn! Why didn’t I think of this before! I could have had a dozen Faberge-egglike creations made up for this! The interior of each one could have revealed a different drummer figurine. That would have been fantastic!”

“And it would have blown our entire budget on one room,” Sullivan replied.

“Oh, and
then
some, but it would have been amazing!”

“Next time we get a twelve-plus room mansion to decorate for Christmas, using a limitless budget, you’ll be ready.”

“I will, indeed. And you’ll already have a premade mold for a bronze candlestick holder.”

With one small, square painting of a drummer boy, one
long photograph of three drummers emerging from the
mist and the dark background, and eight figurines to blend in with the existing décor and accessories, this was a design challenge. Because of the relatively small, short dimensions of the pictures, I had to spatially treat them more like figurines than wall hangings. I had to move personal effects, accessories, lamps, and paintings accordingly to achieve visual balance and harmony in the room. This was more an art than a science, and I had plenty of false starts.

I knew I would need to place one figurine on each of the two nightstands. I was thrown off guard, though, when I discovered a five-by-seven picture frame facedown, pushed off to the side on the left nightstand. I flipped it over and saw to my dismay that it was a photograph of a much younger Angie Woolf and Henry embracing.

This photograph being here was so odd that I didn’t know what to do with it, and, frankly, I didn’t feel fond enough of Henry at the moment to ask him. Mikara had hired her maid-service staff to begin work on December 23, one day before the inn’s grand opening gala on Christmas Eve. Till then, she was responsible for dropping off fresh linens to our rooms. She would come in here eventually and would be hurt at seeing this picture next to Henry’s bed. I immediately suspected Chiffon of planting it here, but then, she wouldn’t have had access to such an old photograph. It had to have been taken in high school, before Chiffon was even born.

While I was still staring at the picture, Ben did his usual knock on the open doorway. “Need my help with anything?” he asked.

Could Ben have put it here to cause trouble?
I wondered.
I showed him the photograph. “You wouldn’t know anything about this picture, would you?”

He came closer and smiled wryly. “That’s from our senior prom. It was in the yearbook. Angie and Henry were chosen as king and queen.” He glanced around. “You found that in here?”

“On the nightstand, lying facedown. I guess I’ll keep it there and work around it.”

“I guess,” Ben replied, taking a long, sad look at the image before handing it back to me. I returned it, faceup, to its place on the nightstand. “If you don’t need me for—”

“Give me just a minute. Let me just set out my drummers at random so I can get an idea of what’s left to be done.” I arranged the final three drummers on Henry’s large mahogany dresser. “I might want to duplicate Sullivan’s design of putting objects on a small shelf. It works with the three of them here on the dresser, but the balance of the twelve within the one room might be wrong.”

I glanced back at Ben for his opinion, but he was staring at the photograph with sad eyes.

Ultimately, I liked having the three drummers on the
dresser and was pleased with how nicely all twelve blended in. When five-thirty rolled around, Wendell, Audrey, Mikara, Steve, and I took seats around the fireplace in the main hall. I deliberately positioned my chair so I could gaze at the breathtaking gilded partridge in the pear tree. Henry held court, marching back and forth across the hearth, chomping down Tic Tacs as he enumerated the
reasons why we should back his decision to return Chiffon’s money and allow himself to be a thirty-percent owner.

“No,” Wendell said firmly the instant Henry had stopped talking. “There’s no way that’s ever going to happen.” I heard a noise in the kitchen as Wendell continued. “If you want to discuss Audrey and me assuming Chiffon’s shares of the inn, that’s one thing. But, Henry, you are not going to buy her out.”

Chiffon burst through the double doors, leaving them flapping in her wake. “I heard that! Nobody is buying me out! This place is almost one-third mine, and it’s going to stay that way!”

“You can’t be here,” Mikara declared, pointing at Chiffon. “You have no right to ever set foot inside this place again after what you did this morning!”

“Oh, puh-shaw. I got a little emotional.” She flicked her wrist in Mikara’s direction. “I’m an artist. That sort of thing goes with the territory. Get over yourself.”

“I’m
not the one who has to do that.
You
are!”

“But I already
am
over myself.” She looked at Henry. “And I’m over you, too. You’re older than my dad, for God’s sake. It’s all behind us now, so let’s just move on. You already got your revenge by taking down my gingerbread display. We’re even.”

“For one thing, it’s not that easy,” Henry said, “and for another, I don’t believe you. You’ll be doing real damage to my house the very next time you’re off your meds. I’m writing you a check and buying you out.”

Chiffon narrowed her eyes. “First of all, my ‘meds’ are for my allergies. To dust and all sorts of furry animals.
And, second, if you try to give me a check, I’ll rip it up. And, by the way, my lawyer is from Hollywood! He’s used to dealing with all kinds of important people. Famous people, with lots of fans. He’ll run right over you in court.”

“Just like you nearly ran me over with your car!” Mikara snarled.

“Get serious. You’d have had time to jump out of my way,” Chiffon said. “Besides, I was crying. I could barely see. It’s amazing you’ve reached your age when you don’t even know not to step in front of a car of a woman who’s just been jilted!”

“Reached my age?! How—”

“This is all beside the point!” Henry interrupted. “One of the owners of this establishment painted dirty words on the front of the house! That
owner
thereby forfeits all ownership rights!”

“Says who? Our contract doesn’t say anything about forfeiting our rights and voiding our contracts because of a minor bit of damage to a Christmas display. I checked!”