The Snow White Christmas Cookie (3 page)

“So would I,” Hank agreed. “I’d like to know how he got so lucky.”

“Casey has issues,” Paulette said to him in a distinctly cool voice.

“He’s not the only one,” Bella interjected, wagging a stubby finger at Hank. “I have an issue with
you.
I have gotten no mail for the past two days, mister. Not so much as a single Chanukah card. And I still haven’t received my three-month supply of Lipitor. My online pharmacy mailed it to me from Dayton, Ohio, ten days ago.”

“It’s the snow, Mrs. Tillis,” Paulette explained. “Our out-of-state-mail isn’t coming in at Bradley Airport because the planes can’t land. And our trucks can’t make it here from Norwich because the governor keeps closing the highways.”

“That part I understand.” Bella turned her piercing gaze back at Hank. “But how come you didn’t say one word about the marble cake I left in my box for you? I baked it for you special.”

Hank’s mouth opened but no sound came out. He looked totally thrown.

Paulette stepped into the awkward silence. “Lem, all of this snow must be good for
your
business.”

“You’d think so,” he acknowledged, scratching at his beard with a thumbnail the size of a clamshell. It wasn’t a very clean-looking thumbnail. It wasn’t a very clean-looking beard either. “Only, I’ve been working harder than I ever have, plowing day and night, and I’m practically going broke. They keep jacking up the price of road salt for one thing. And, well, this is Dorset. People don’t pay their bills.” He glanced over in the direction of First Selectman Paffin. “Especially the rich ones. Keep telling me they left my money out in their mailbox. Except, guess what? The money’s not there.”

“How do you explain that?” Des asked.

He shrugged his big shoulders. “Easy. They got no problem lying to people like me.”

“Get out, my next door neighbors decided to show,” Mitch exclaimed as Bryce Peck and Josie Cantro started across the parlor toward them.

Bryce Peck was the black sheep of Dorset’s blue-blooded founding family. An aging wild child who’d spent his entire adult life running away from his life of privilege only to return home this past August as a gaunt, weathered burnout case. Bryce’s extremely tight-assed older brother, Preston, was allowing him to winter over in the family’s prized eight-bedroom summer house out on Big Sister in exchange for Bryce serving as the island’s caretaker. Des imagined that Bryce had been quite dashing in his youth. He was tall and broad shouldered, with deep-set dark eyes and high, hard cheekbones. But now, at age forty-six, he was a haunted shell of a man, his face ravaged by decades of hard living. Word was he’d been a heavy drinker. Heavy into any drugs, legal and illegal, that made you numb. Those deep-set eyes of his had a frightened look in them. And his work-roughened hands never stopped trembling. Mitch got along well with him. Mitch was gifted that way. But Bryce stayed away from most people. He was a moody, withdrawn man who was uneasy in social settings.

Especially now that he was clean and sober thanks to Josie Cantro, a blonde who was fifteen years younger than Bryce. Josie didn’t come from money. Didn’t come from Dorset. She was from somewhere up in Maine. But she’d built herself a thriving little business as Dorset’s resident life coach. Josie was one of those relentlessly upbeat women who helped other people do things like lose weight. She’d helped Bryce wean himself off of booze and pills. And in the process they’d fallen in love. She’d moved in with him just before Thanksgiving. Josie was always perky, always smiling that sunny smile of hers. She practically glowed. Not exactly a beauty. Her face was too round. And she had a turned-up little pug nose. But she was definitely a honey, with big blue eyes, a long mane of creamy blond hair and a slammin’ bod. A health food junkie and fitness freak who’d taken to dragging neighbor Mitch out for morning beach runs in the snow. Also to rummaging through his kitchen for evil junk food. Josie’s heart was in the right place. Des had no doubt it was because of her that Bryce had shown up here to pay his respects to his cousin Rut. She also had no doubt that Josie had done many people around Dorset a lot of good. And yet, Des couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the woman was wrong. It was not, repeat not, a jealousy thing. Des didn’t worry about Mitch. But her cop instincts kept telling her that nobody was as unfailingly smiley faced as Josie Cantro was—not unless they were fronting.

“Hey, naybs, are you up for a snow run tomorrow morning?” Josie asked Mitch brightly when she and Bryce reached them.

“Absolutely, naybs,” Mitch answered just as brightly.

Or maybe I’m just being bitchy because I hate the stupid nickname that he and his vanilla blonde neighbor have for each other.

Bryce, meanwhile, stood there looking as if he wanted to flee through the nearest exit. When Mitch put a hand on his shoulder the poor man practically jumped out of his skin.

“Easy there, pardner,” Mitch said. “You’re among friends.”

Bryce nodded his head, shuddering. “For a second I-I just couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t what, Bryce?”

“Remember what I was doing here.”

Josie turned her attention to Hank. “Dude, how are
you
doing?”

“Doing great.” Hank patted his shirt pocket. “Got my nicotine gum right here if I need it. So far I haven’t.”

“
And
he hasn’t had a cigarette in two months,” Paulette put in proudly. “All thanks to you, Josie.”

“It wasn’t me. It was all Hank. Hank’s the man.” Now Josie’s blue-eyed gaze fell on Des. “I am so totally hating you right this second.”

“And this would be because?…”

She was staring longingly at Des’s skinny jeans. “I exercise two hours a day. I subsist on wild greens and tree bark. And when I tried on a pair of those I looked like I ought to be playing left tackle for the New England Patriots.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe, Trooper Des. These thighs are seriously chunky. And we won’t even discuss my butt.”

Old Rut waddled his way over toward them, his face aglow. “Thanks again, young lady,” he said to Tina. “This is a wonderful evening.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Peck.”

“Everybody enjoying that eggnog?”

“You bet,” Lem said.

Rut raised an eyebrow at Mitch. “There’s, um, something I want to show you down in the cellar, young fella.”

“Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?”

Rut nodded. “I saved one last case for a special occasion. And this here is it.” Clearly, they were talking about a case of the old postmaster’s home-brewed stout. “Would you mind lugging it upstairs for me?”

“You are on,” Mitch assured him.

“Fine and dandy. I’ll meet you down there in half a tick. Just have to stop off and take a pee. Or try. I may be a while, if you catch my drift.”

Nonetheless, Mitch headed off toward the kitchen with him.

Des watched them go, then turned to discover Josie was smiling at her. “You and Mitch are so fortunate that you found each other,” she said.

“Yes, we are,” Des said politely, all the while thinking:
I really don’t like Josie Cantro.

C
HAPTER
2

I
REALLY LIKE
J
OSIE
Cantro
, Mitch reflected as he made his way down the steep stairs into Rut Peck’s dimly lit cellar. True, his new neighbor could get a bit overzealous when it came to dietary matters. She’d uncovered his secret caches of Cocoa Puffs three times so far and hurled them into the trash. But in the world of positive energy Josie was what’s known as a carrier. Ever since Mitch had lost his beloved wife, Maisie, to ovarian cancer he’d had very little use for the company of his fellow New York critics, a blasé breed who were unremittingly sarcastic, sour and smug. Mitch vastly preferred people like Josie, enthusiastic people who embraced the joy of being alive.

And she’d sure worked miracles with Bryce. The man who’d shown up next door to Mitch at summer’s end had been a lost soul who had nowhere else to go. Mitch had been glad when Bryce’s older brother, Preston, an uber-rich Chicago commodities trader, permitted him to stay on as Big Sister’s winter caretaker. Winters were rugged out on Big Sister, the forty acres of Yankee paradise that Mitch was lucky enough to call home. There were five precious old Peck family houses on the island, not counting Mitch’s two hundred-year-old post-and-beam caretaker’s cottage and the decommissioned lighthouse that was the second tallest in New England. Last winter there’d been a ton of storm damage to the rickety wooden causeway that connected the private island to the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve. Also to the Peck family houses. But until Josie came along, Bryce had to qualify as New England’s most hands-off caretaker. All he did was drink beer, pop Vicodin and watch the Cartoon Network. Did no chores. Rarely left the island. Spoke to no one. It was the Peck family’s attorney, Glynis Fairchild-Forniaux, who’d gently urged him to contact Josie. Unexpectedly, the two of them had fallen in love. Once she moved in, Bryce was transformed into a dutiful caretaker from dawn until dusk. He took a chainsaw to the trees that had come down when Tropical Storm Gail brushed past them in October. Replaced several rotting planks and railings in the causeway. And when the blizzards started coming, one after another, he kept the causeway clear with the Pecks’ mammoth John Deere snow thrower. Mitch liked having Bryce and Josie around. They’d invited him over a few times for her three-alarm Thai vegan dinners. Josie would chatter away gaily. Sometimes Bryce would even stir from his remote silence and join the conversation. She was working wonders with the guy.

Rut Peck’s cellar reeked of damp concrete, mold and something else that smelled vaguely like decaying potatoes. There wasn’t much headroom down there. Mitch’s curly hair very nearly brushed the floor joists over his head. Cardboard boxes, suitcases and old steamer trunks were piled everywhere. There was a workbench against one wall, built-in cupboards against another. The only light came from one naked bulb in the stairwell.

Mitch heard footsteps on the stairs behind him almost as soon as he got down there. “That didn’t take you long at all,” he said. Only it wasn’t the old postmaster. “Oh, hey, I thought you were Rut.”

“Nope, still me,” Bryce Peck said, dragging deeply on a cigarette. “For now, anyhow. Just an awkward stage.” Bryce had a strange, elliptical way of talking. He often seemed to be not all there—not all there as in part of him was somewhere else that was far away and incredibly scary. “If Josie catches me smoking she’ll skin me alive. But I’m desperate, man. Cigarettes are the only vice I have left.” His eyes flicked warily into the cellar’s darkened corners. “Damn, I haven’t been down in a basement this small since I left Bozeman.”

“What were you doing there?” Mitch asked. Bryce had never mentioned Bozeman before.

“Working construction,” he replied. “Until I fell off a roof. Broke my collarbone. Learned a valuable lesson though.”

“What was that, Bryce?”

“Stay off of roofs.”

Mitch knew that Bryce had cracked up a motorcycle in his youth and that it still caused him a lot of back pain. Hence the Vicodin. He hadn’t known about the roofing accident. Bryce never talked about his past—until he suddenly chose to.

Upstairs, the partygoers erupted into raucous laughter.

Bryce shot a worried glance at the stairway. “I hate parties. Hate having to
pretend
. Especially clean and sober. It ain’t easy, man.” He stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. “I have to remember to breathe. That’s what Josie’s always telling me.”

“I know,” said Mitch, who’d suffered from panic attacks after Maisie died. The attacks didn’t go away until he rented his cottage on Big Sister and met Des. “Parties have always given me the jim-jams.”

“Other people seem to enjoy them.”

“Don’t kid yourself. They’re just here for Rut,” Mitch said, hearing footsteps on the cellar stairs again.

This time it was Rut, puffing and wheezing as he came slowly down. “Have you taken up smoking cigareets, Mitch?”

“That would be me, sir,” Bryce said.

The old man smiled at him genially. “How are you, young fella?”

“Doing okay, sir.”

“Sure you are. We’re all doing okay. And you don’t have to ‘sir’ me. Your dad was my second cousin. And a Peck is a Peck. Good to have you back in town, son. You belong here.”

Bryce looked at him curiously. “Do I?”

“Yes, you do. My young friend and I are about to tear into the last of my home-brewed stout. Can I interest you in a bottle?”

“None for me, thanks. I’d better head back up. Josie worries about me.”

“Treat her right, son. That one’s a keeper.”

Bryce smiled faintly. “Yes, she is.” He stubbed his cigarette out under his heel, carefully picked up both butts and carried them upstairs with him.

Rut watched him go, shaking his head sadly. “That boy could have done anything he wanted to—if he’d just learned how to like himself a little bit. But he never figured out how.”

“Any idea why?”

Rut peered at him through his thick glasses. “You don’t know the story?”

“I know he has a rich older brother.”

“Preston’s his half-brother, actually.”

“Beyond that he doesn’t talk much.”

“Me, I like to talk. Makes me awful thirsty though. You’ll find what we’re looking for in that jelly cupboard over there.”

Mitch opened the cupboard and pulled out a heavy, old-fashioned wooden case that held twenty-four brown bottles of Rut’s prized stout. He set it down gently on the workbench.

Rut opened two bottles and handed Mitch one. Then he settled himself down on a steamer trunk with his and took a long gulp. “Ahh, that’s the good stuff. Just the right temperature, too. If it’s too cold you can’t taste it.” He took another gulp before he said, “Bryce never had a chance. Wasn’t his fault. That’s why I feel so sorry for him. His father, old Lucas, must have been close to sixty when Bryce was born. Lucas was an investment banker in the city. He and his wife, Libby, had themselves a big apartment on Park Avenue. Their boy Preston was in his senior year at Cornell when Lucas fell head over you-know-what for a twenty-three-year-old lingerie model. He divorced Libby, married the girl and had Bryce with her. Less than a year after Bryce was born she took off with some tennis player. Abandoned Lucas and her baby.”