The holidays are sweet in Bellweather. The secrets are deadly.
Nora Bell has enough trouble trying to save her beloved candy shop without finding herself tangled in a Christmas murder. When her disagreeable landlord turns up dead behind the town gazebo, a mysterious note points to a tragedy buried twenty-eight years in the past.
With Christmas approaching, a town full of suspects, and someone determined to keep old secrets hidden, Nora must follow a trail of peppermint-scented clues before another life is lost.
Because in Bellweather, murder is the one Christmas surprise nobody wants!
Voice, speed & continuous listeningUses the voices already available on your device. Narration starts only when you press Play or enable continuous listening.
CHAPTER ONE
The trouble with Christmas in Bellweather was that everybody expected a miracle, and most of them wanted one before lunch.
By nine on the first Saturday in December, Nora Bell had already found a lost mitten, untangled six strands of lights, and talked a woman out of suing the town over the placement of a wooden reindeer. She was beginning to think the Christmas spirit would be more convincing if it came with a flask.
“Your bow is crooked,” said her best friend, Louise Mercer.
“So is the town budget. I can only fix one of them.”
Nora stepped back from the evergreen garland stretched across the front of Sweet Treats. A red ribbon hung over the striped awning, its long tails fluttering in the chilly breeze. Behind the display window, a mountain of wrapped peppermint sticks gleamed beside a miniature village made entirely of candy. The village had taken Nora eighteen hours to assemble and twenty minutes for the mayor’s grandson to knock over on Thursday.
She had rebuilt it with stronger icing and a firmer opinion of children.
Louise tipped her knitted hat farther down over her ears. “You heard about Calvin?”
Nora kept her attention on the ribbon. When Louise used that tone, she usually had news she was dying to share and wanted to pretend she wasn’t.
“Which Calvin?”
“Calvin Price. Unless you know another Calvin who’s managed to make half the town angry before breakfast.”
“That would be a remarkable achievement. It’s only nine.”
“He’s selling the building.”
Nora caught the ladder before it slid on a patch of hard snow. “What building?”
Louise looked at her.
“No,” Nora said.
“I saw the listing notice at the real estate office.”
“He can’t sell the shop. I have a lease.”
“Until February.”
“Until February of next year.”
“It’s December, Nora.”
Nora looked up at the hand-painted sign above the window. SWEET TREATS had stood on Maple Street for forty-three years. She had worked in the place for twenty-six of them and owned the business for the last six. The building, unfortunately, still belonged to Calvin Price, a man whose chief talent was finding new ways to make an ordinary Tuesday unpleasant.
Six months earlier, he had offered to sell it to her. They had shaken hands in this very doorway. Nora had spent the summer working on financing, and Calvin had spent the summer refusing to put any agreement in writing.
“He promised me first chance to buy,” she said.
“Then you’d better remind him.”
The bell above the shop door jingled. Nora’s part-time assistant, Beth Daley, appeared with a tray of sugar cookies tucked under one arm.
“Mrs. Bell, the delivery from Winter Farms is here, but they sent nine boxes of peppermint oil instead of six. And somebody left this under the door.”
She held out a folded sheet of blue paper.
Nora took it. There was no envelope and no signature, only a message printed in thick black letters.
ASK CALVIN WHAT HAPPENED THE CHRISTMAS THE LIGHTS WENT OUT.
Louise leaned close enough to read it. “Well. That’s cheerful.”
“Where did you find this?” Nora asked.
“Right inside the door. I thought it might be a coupon at first.” Beth lowered her voice. “Is it a threat?”
“I think it’s someone with too much time and a dramatic streak.” Nora folded the page and tucked it into her coat pocket. “Take the oil into the storeroom. I’ll deal with the invoice.”
Beth hesitated. At twenty-three, she had the bright, hopeful expression of someone who still believed grown-ups were naturally qualified to solve problems.
“Did you want me to lock the back door?”
“Only if it’s unlocked.”
Beth disappeared inside. Louise waited until the bell stopped ringing.
“You’re going to show that note to the sheriff.”
“Not until I know whether it means anything.”
“It means someone wants Calvin frightened.”
“Louise, someone wants Calvin frightened every December. Last year the garden club sent him an invoice for the poinsettias he stole from the church steps.”
“He called them abandoned.”
“They were still in pots.”
Nora pulled off her gloves. The blue paper had left a faint smear of black ink on her thumb. The lettering looked hand-stamped, not written. She rubbed the smear away, surprised by how stubbornly it clung.
Across Maple Street, the big clock above the town hall chimed nine thirty. A little crowd moved toward the square, where volunteers were arranging booths for the evening’s Peppermint Parade. Snow covered the parked cars, the benches, and the roofs of the gingerbread-colored shops. Bells rang on the harness of a carriage horse. Somebody was playing “Jingle Bells” over a loudspeaker with the enthusiasm of a person who had never been forced to hear it fourteen times in one morning.
It should have been a perfect December day.
Nora could not stop thinking about February.
“I’m going to Calvin’s office,” she said.
“Want company?”
“Not unless you intend to hold him down.”
Louise considered it. “I could clear my afternoon.”
Nora laughed despite herself and went inside to put the spare peppermint oil away. The familiar smells of chocolate, butter, and warm sugar greeted her. In the glass cases, peppermint creams and chocolate-dipped cherries sat in neat rows. A small table by the window held paper cups for the free hot cocoa she gave children during the parade. She would rather lose money on the cocoa than see a cold little face turned away.
In the storeroom, Beth was stacking cartons beside the cooling racks. Nora reached for the delivery slip and stopped.
One carton had been opened. The sealing tape lay in a clean strip along the floor, and a dark glass bottle stood on the worktable. The cap was loose.
“Did you open that?” Nora asked.
“No, ma’am. It was like that when I brought it in. I thought you were checking the shipment.”
Nora lifted the bottle by its neck. The label said PEPPERMINT OIL in green block letters, but underneath was a second, narrower label she had never seen from Winter Farms before. It carried only a batch number and yesterday’s date.
“Did the driver say anything?”
“Just that he was running late.”
Nora smelled the bottle without putting it close to her nose. The familiar clean sting of peppermint met her, along with something sharper she could not place.
She screwed the cap down tightly. “Set this one apart. I want to check with the supplier before we use it.”
Beth nodded, then glanced toward the front room. “Mr. Price was here before you arrived.”
Nora turned. “Calvin came into the shop?”
“He let himself in. Said he had a key because he owned the building.”
Of course he had. Calvin considered a key permission to ignore every other boundary human civilization had invented.
“What did he want?”
“He asked if you’d received a message. I told him I hadn’t seen you yet. Then he went out through the front.”
Nora pictured the blue note in her pocket. “Was he carrying anything?”
“A red folder. He looked upset.”
“Calvin always looks upset.”
“More than usual.”
Outside, a gust of wind rattled the window. Nora told Beth to mind the counter and crossed the street toward Price Properties, passing the window of the florist’s shop where artificial snow drifted around a display of glittering wreaths. Calvin’s office occupied the narrow brick building beside the post office. Its front door was locked.
A handwritten sign announced BACK AT TEN.
It was nine forty-eight.
Nora tried the door once more, partly from habit and partly because Calvin had been known to hang that sign and take a three-hour lunch. Through the glass she could see his desk, a bare coat tree, and a framed picture of a sailboat. There was a white coffee mug near the telephone. No red folder.
Someone called her name.
She turned to see Deputy Eric Walsh coming up the sidewalk with a paper bag from the bakery. He was a broad-shouldered man in his thirties who had the courteous expression of someone who had spent too many years helping strangers push cars out of ditches.
“Morning, Mrs. Bell. Everything all right?”
“Ask me again when my landlord comes back.”
Eric smiled. “Mr. Price?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“He’s at the square. Saw him heading toward the gazebo a few minutes ago.”
“With a red folder?”
“I didn’t notice.” Eric shifted the bakery bag to his other hand. “But he was arguing with somebody near the hardware store.”
“Who?”
“Couldn’t tell from where I was.”
Nora glanced toward the square. The gazebo rose above the market booths, its white railings wound with green garland. Volunteers were testing strings of gold lights while children dragged sleds down the shallow bank behind the bandstand.
“Thanks, Eric.”
“Don't let him spoil your parade.”
“That may depend on whether he remembers the difference between a business deal and a hostage situation.”
Eric laughed and continued toward the station.
Nora walked toward the gazebo, pulling her coat more tightly around her. Halfway there, she saw Calvin emerge from behind the temporary stage, his face flushed beneath the brim of his black wool hat. He was speaking to a woman in a cream-colored coat. Nora recognized the woman immediately.
Diane Price, Calvin’s former wife, had moved back to Bellweather in September after fifteen years away. She managed the Christmas craft market now and had become unexpectedly popular, possibly because she was the only person in town who could make Calvin fall silent with one raised eyebrow.
“You said you destroyed it,” Diane told him.
Calvin looked around. “Keep your voice down.”
“You promised me.”
Nora stopped behind a market booth. She had no intention of eavesdropping, but barging into that conversation seemed a poor way to begin a negotiation over real estate.
Calvin gripped the red folder against his chest. “I’ll handle it.”
“You had twenty-eight years to handle it.”
Diane walked away so quickly that she nearly collided with a volunteer carrying a crate of ornaments.
Calvin watched her go. Then he spotted Nora.
“If you’ve come about the building, don’t bother,” he said before she could speak.
“You gave me your word.”
“I gave you an opportunity. You took too long.”
“The bank approved my loan in August.”
“That was August.”
Nora stared at him. His narrow face was gray with fatigue. A small red scratch marked the back of his right hand. For once, he seemed less interested in winning an argument than in getting away from it.
“Who are you selling to?” she asked.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“I own the business inside that building.”
“And you can take it somewhere else.”
He tried to walk past. Nora stepped aside, then remembered the note.
“Calvin, what happened the Christmas the lights went out?”
He stopped so abruptly that the folder slipped in his hands.
For a moment his expression emptied. Then a look of unmistakable fear crossed his face.
“Who told you that?”
“Someone left a message at my shop.”
“What message?”
“A question. That question.”
Calvin seized her wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to shock her. “Did you tell anyone?”
“Let go.”
He did. He looked over his shoulder toward the gazebo.
“If anybody asks, you haven't seen me today.”
“Calvin, I was talking to you thirty seconds ago.”
“Please, Nora.”
She had known him for nearly thirty years. She had heard him complain, threaten, accuse, and wheedle. She could not remember him saying please.
Before she could answer, he hurried toward the rear of the square, where a narrow service lane ran between the gazebo and the old library. He kept his head down, one hand clamped around the red folder.
Nora watched until he disappeared.
The mayor called for volunteers to help carry boxes, and the church choir began an enthusiastic but badly synchronized rehearsal. Somewhere near the market entrance a child shouted that someone had stolen the head off the snowman.
Christmas in Bellweather continued without the slightest concern for Calvin Price’s nerves.
Nora returned to Sweet Treats with an uncomfortable feeling settling behind her ribs. She told herself it was the building sale. It had to be. She had spent too many years working for the shop to picture it standing empty or turned into a boutique selling candles nobody could afford.
At eleven fifteen, she found a second blue paper beneath the shop’s back door.
This one had only five words.
HE NEVER LEARNED TO LISTEN.
She stood in the back hall, reading them twice. The ink was the same heavy black. A faint scent of peppermint rose from the fold.
Then the church bells began ringing.
Not the measured notes that called people to services. These came in an uneven, frantic peal. Nora went out front and saw a stream of people running toward the square.
Louise came around the corner at a pace that would have surprised anyone who knew how much she complained about her knees.
“Nora,” she said, breathless. “It's Calvin.”
“What about him?”
“They found him behind the gazebo.”
Nora looked across the street at the garlands, the candy-striped market stalls, the paper snowflakes turning in the breeze.
Louise caught her arm.
“He's dead.”
In Nora’s pocket, the first blue note crackled beneath her fingers.
And for the first time that morning, she wondered whether someone had meant those words as a warning rather than a question.
CHAPTER TWO
The parade had not begun, but someone had already switched on its music. “Joy to the World” drifted over the square while Sheriff Dan Whitcomb asked everyone to move behind the yellow tape. The music kept playing until a volunteer pulled a plug, and the silence that followed felt much worse.
Nora stood beside Louise, who had lost her usual desire to explain things. Deputy Walsh was speaking to the mayor under the gazebo. A medic carried a black case toward the ambulance and then returned without it. That was when Nora understood that the doctor was no longer needed.
“You spoke to him,” Louise said.
“Less than two hours ago.”
“Don't say that to anybody but Dan.”
“I've no intention of announcing it to the choir.”
Sheriff Whitcomb approached them. He had grown up two houses from Nora and still looked faintly embarrassed whenever he had to ask her an official question. Today he didn't look embarrassed. He looked tired.
“Calvin was found in the service passage,” he said. “Have either of you seen him today?”
Nora told him about the red folder, the argument with Diane, and the message under her shop door. She handed him both blue notes from her pocket. Dan laid each carefully into a separate evidence envelope.
“Why didn't you call when you got the first?”
“Because it looked like a foolish prank. You may find that hard to believe in this town, where people put a petition together if somebody changes the bunting, but foolish pranks are hardly rare.”
He didn't smile. “What did he say when you asked about the blackout?”
“That I should tell anyone asking that I hadn't seen him.”
“And you thought that was strange?”
“I thought it was Calvin.”
Behind Dan, a woman pushed through the spectators. Diane Price's cream coat stood out against all the red parkas. She halted when she saw the tape.
“No,” she said. “Calvin told me he'd meet me at noon.”
Dan excused himself to speak with her. Louise took Nora by the elbow and steered her toward the shop. In the back room Beth had put the peppermint oil cartons in a tidy wall against the shelves. Nora saw that the opened bottle stood apart from the others, just as she'd requested.
“Don't touch anything back here,” Nora said.
Beth's eyes widened. “Do you think the candy is poisoned?”
“No. I think somebody's trying to make me think so. That's different, but not better.”
On the worktable lay the delivery invoice. The extra three boxes had been checked in a neat unfamiliar hand. Nora knew her own handwriting and Beth's. Neither of them made sevens with a crossbar.
“Who signed this?” she asked.
“Mr. Grant, I think. He was helping the driver unload when I arrived.”
“Oliver Grant from the hardware store?”
Beth nodded. “He said he was just being neighborly.”
Oliver had run Grant Hardware for nearly three decades. He was the fellow people called when snow clogged a gutter or a heater quit the night before Christmas. He had also argued with Calvin Price at last week's town meeting over the sale of the old library building. Nora put the invoice down. Helping a delivery driver was not a felony, but it seemed worth remembering.
The telephone rang. Nora expected a customer asking whether the parade would go on. Instead a man said, “Mrs. Bell? This is Gordon Fitch. Don't ask anyone about the Christmas blackout. Not yet.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Because Calvin was supposed to bring me something tonight.”
“What?”
“A copy of the report I wrote twenty-eight years ago.”
The line went dead before she could ask which report.
CHAPTER THREE
By Sunday morning, the news had achieved the impossible: it had shut down Bellweather's annual argument about outdoor decorations. The sheriff confirmed that Calvin's death was being investigated as a homicide. He did not say how Calvin had died. By breakfast, however, the town had invented three poisons, two knives, and a mysterious stranger in a Santa suit.
Nora refused to choose among them. She made hot chocolate for the deputies stationed at the square, then marched across town to see Gordon Fitch.
Fitch lived above a former watchmaker's shop, on a street where the snowplow never came quite far enough. He opened the door on the chain and peered at her through thick glasses.
“I told you not to ask,” he said.
“And you didn't give me a very persuasive reason.”
“I called because I thought you might have the report. The police will have it by now.”
“They don't have the red folder. At least, Dan wouldn't tell me they did.”
Fitch removed the chain. His apartment smelled of old books and burnt toast. On the mantel stood a photograph of a high school Christmas dance. Nora recognized a younger Calvin, a smiling Diane, and a girl wearing a paper crown.
“Molly Keene,” Fitch said when he caught her looking. “She died the night the power failed at the holiday fair in ninety-eight.”
Nora remembered the story. An electrical fault had shut down the square. A fire had started in the pump room behind the old library. Molly, a sixteen-year-old volunteer, had been found there after smoke filled the building. Bellweather had built a memorial bench, then gradually stopped talking about her.
“You were the electrical inspector?” Nora asked.
“For the old library, yes. My report said the wiring needed replacing before the fair. Calvin chaired the property committee. He overruled me.”
“Did he cause Molly's death?”
Fitch looked toward the photograph. “I thought so for years. Then Calvin came to me on Friday and said the lights hadn't gone out because of an electrical fault. Someone had deliberately cut the power.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn't say. He was waiting for a person to pay him for his silence.”
Nora held her coat closed even though the room was warm. “Blackmail.”
“He said he'd been foolish enough to make one last deal.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway. Fitch moved to the door, listened, and drew the chain again. Nora walked down the stairs feeling more troubled than when she had arrived.
Outside, an elderly man was sweeping the sidewalk. He paused as she stepped over the slush.
“Your friend from the hardware store came by early,” he said.
“Oliver?”
“Carried a long cardboard tube. Said he was fixing Mr. Fitch's window latch.”
She thanked him. What bothered her wasn't that Oliver had visited. It was that Fitch's windows looked perfectly secure. He had double-checked the chain while speaking with her, as though he had reason to fear someone might come back.
CHAPTER FOUR
At Monday's emergency merchants' meeting, Mayor Miriam Cole announced that the parade would be rescheduled for Christmas Eve. Bellweather had already lost one resident, she said, and would not lose Christmas too.
“That's a peculiar way of making it sound like a contest,” Louise whispered.
Nora sat next to the florist, who had brought a notebook and seemed determined to record anything anybody said about Calvin. Across the room Diane Price held a folded handkerchief in her lap. Oliver Grant stood against the door wearing the same gray work jacket he wore in his hardware store.
The mayor asked for volunteers to repair the gazebo lights. Oliver raised his hand immediately. “I installed the temporary circuit,” he said. “I know how it works.”
The words were harmless. Nora still wrote them down.
When the meeting ended, Diane stopped her in the hallway. “Dan told me you saw Calvin on Saturday.”
“I did.”
“Was he frightened?”
“Yes.”
Diane pressed her handkerchief to her mouth. “I should have listened to him.”
“You argued about something he should have destroyed.”
Diane went still. “You heard that?”
“Enough to know it mattered.”
“It was a letter. One he wrote after Molly died. He said it would ruin a boy's life if anybody read it.”
“Which boy?”
“He never told me. I believed him when he said he'd burned it. Then he called last week and said he'd found the original in his mother's papers.”
Nora thought of the red folder. “Was he carrying it?”
“Probably. He wanted to sell the letter, just as he's always wanted to sell everything.”
Diane's bitterness might have sounded like motive to an investigator. To Nora it sounded like years of disappointment packed into a single sentence.
“Did you send the blue notes?” Nora asked.
Diane glanced toward the meeting-room door. “What notes?”
Before Nora could answer, a loud crash came from the square. Someone had knocked over a ladder against the gazebo. The mayor ran outside; half the volunteers followed. Oliver was already moving toward the open door, his keys rattling.
Nora remained with Diane. “If you know something, please tell Dan.”
Diane's voice dropped to a whisper. “If the letter is real, it could destroy someone who has spent his whole life making us believe he's good.”
Then she went after the others, leaving Nora to wonder whether Diane was describing Calvin or somebody else.
CHAPTER FIVE
The flowers arrived on Tuesday, a week early for the memorial service. Beth set the vase of red carnations on the shop counter and picked up the card. It read, FOR NORA, WHO ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH.
“That's sweet,” Beth said.
“It's also unsigned,” Nora replied.
The delivery boy said the arrangement had been paid for in cash. No name had been entered in the florist's order book. Louise, who owned the florist shop, was irritated enough to telephone her assistant at once. The assistant remembered the customer only as a man in a dark knitted cap.
“Half the men in this town own a dark knitted cap,” Louise observed. “Including the mayor's husband, and he hasn't come out of his cellar since Thanksgiving.”
Nora put the card beside the blue notes she'd photographed before giving them to the sheriff. Its block letters had a different slant. She did not tell Beth about the connection. The young woman was already nervous enough.
That afternoon, Sheriff Whitcomb came to inspect the storeroom. A laboratory had identified the opened bottle's contents as ordinary peppermint oil, but the batch label had been placed over the original one. The supplier confirmed that it had sent six cartons, not nine. Someone had added three to the delivery using an altered invoice.
“Why make a fuss over peppermint oil?” Dan asked.
“To make sure the police search my shop,” Nora said. “Or to make somebody believe Calvin had been poisoned here.”
“Did he drink anything at Sweet Treats?”
“Beth says he came through on Saturday morning, but he didn't stay for cocoa.”
Dan folded his arms. “The medical examiner says he died from a blow to the back of the head. No poison. Likely between ten and eleven.”
Nora remembered Calvin hurrying down the lane at a few minutes before ten. The killer had been waiting, or had followed him.
“Where was Oliver Grant?” she asked.
“Why Oliver?”
“He helped unload those extra cartons. He was also working on the gazebo circuit.”
“Oliver says he was at the hardware store fixing a heater until ten thirty.”
“Who saw him?”
“His employee, Peter Lott. Peter left for coffee at ten.”
“So there are thirty minutes nobody can account for.”
Dan's expression warned her she had approached the border between helpful citizen and nuisance.
“Stay out of the investigation, Nora.”
“Gladly. Ask whoever is sending me flowers to do the same.”
When he left, she found Beth staring at the shelf of delivery receipts. The young woman's eyes were wet.
“My mother knew Molly Keene,” she said. “She told me nobody in Bellweather ever says what really happened that night.”
Nora closed the door to the busy shop. “Then perhaps it's time somebody did.”
CHAPTER SIX
Ruth Daley lived in a narrow yellow house where the front steps were lined with ceramic snowmen. The tallest had lost its nose. Nora wondered whether a person could judge the state of a household by its holiday decorations, then decided that would be a dangerous theory in Bellweather.
Ruth answered the door wearing a floury apron. She had once organized the church suppers and still carried herself like a woman who expected six unexpected guests at any minute.
“Beth said you knew Molly Keene,” Nora began.
“I did. So did half the town.” Ruth led her into the kitchen. “Molly was a good girl. A bit nosy. She worked at the fair to earn money for a school trip.”
“Beth says people don't tell the truth about her death.”
Ruth put down the kettle. “Her brother Owen never believed she went into the pump room by herself. Molly was frightened of that place. The door stuck. Everyone knew it.”
Nora remembered Owen Keene: a quiet man who sold carved wooden ornaments at the Christmas market. He had returned to town only the previous spring, after twenty years working as a carpenter in Vermont.
“What did Owen believe happened?”
“That somebody shut her in.”
Ruth said it plainly, without lowering her voice. She had clearly lived with the suspicion for decades.
“Did she tell anyone who?”
“She told me she caught a young man taking money from the holiday relief collection. She didn't tell me his name. I was helping with refreshments. She said she'd talk to the committee chairman after the lights came back.”
“Calvin.”
“Yes.” Ruth's hands tightened on the teapot. “I told the investigators. The report said there was no evidence of theft. Then it was all forgotten.”
Outside, a delivery van passed and rattled the windows. Nora pictured Molly, sixteen and earnest, waiting to report something serious while the town celebrated. She had been old enough to understand right and wrong, and young enough to believe the adults would listen.
“Who collected the donation money?” Nora asked.
“Back then? A committee of volunteers. Calvin, Diane, a boy from the hardware store, and several others.”
A boy from the hardware store. Nora felt the words settle into place. She thanked Ruth and stepped outside into the cold. The snowmen grinned at her from the steps, blissfully unaware that Bellweather's neat version of its past was beginning to crack.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Owen Keene was repairing a wooden angel in the market's temporary shed. He held the figure against his knee and rubbed sandpaper across its damaged wing.
“You're Nora Bell,” he said without looking up. “I remember your mother giving Molly free fudge.”
“My mother believed candy could mend most things.”
“Did it?”
“Not the important ones.”
Owen put the angel aside. He was in his late forties, broad-faced, with deep lines at the corners of his eyes. Twenty-eight years had passed since his sister died, but Nora could hear the sixteen-year-old sister in the way he said her name.
He had come back because the town planned to demolish the old library. When he learned the site would become luxury retail space, he petitioned to save the memorial bench.
“Calvin was handling the sale,” Owen said. “He told me the past was none of my business.”
“Did you threaten him?”
“I told him I'd stand in front of the bulldozer. If he called that a threat, he hadn't seen me angry.”
Nora asked about the donation collection. Owen listened carefully, then produced a newspaper clipping from his wallet. The headline concerned the blackout and fire. Beneath it was a blurred photograph of volunteers carrying lanterns. Owen pointed to a figure on the edge of the frame.
“Oliver Grant. Nineteen, wearing his father's work uniform. He helped with the electrical work that night.”
“You think Oliver stole the money?”
“I think Molly recognized somebody. I have never known who.”
Nora looked closer. Oliver's work jacket had a wide white stripe above the pocket. He was holding a small, square metal cashbox.
“Calvin told me last Friday he had proof about Molly,” Owen continued. “He wanted ten thousand dollars to give it to me. Ten thousand. I told him I couldn't buy my own sister's death certificate all over again.”
“Did you meet him Saturday?”
“No. I went to the county records office. You can ask the clerk.”
He picked up the wooden angel again, but did not work on it.
“Mrs. Bell, if you find out what happened, tell the truth even if it makes somebody you know look ugly.”
Nora promised. Later she wondered how many people over the years had made Owen that same promise, and how many had kept it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On Wednesday morning, the shop's cash register refused to open. Beth tried the key, the release catch, and a technique involving a firm tap on the side that Nora had never approved.
“Don't hit it again,” Nora said. “It's older than you and considerably more expensive.”
Oliver Grant arrived within twenty minutes, carrying a tool bag and an expression of practiced usefulness. He examined the drawer, found a screw wedged behind the track, and freed it.
“Someone's been careless,” he said.
“Or someone put it there.”
Oliver raised an eyebrow. “Why would anybody bother?”
Nora studied his hands. A small red mark ran across the knuckle of his right index finger. Calvin had had a similar scratch, though that alone proved nothing in a town full of thorny decorations.
“Because people have been doing strange things here,” she answered.
He laughed. “Christmas nerves. Every year somebody thinks a neighbor's stealing their wreath.”
He turned to leave, and Nora noticed white dust caught in the seam of his work jacket. Not snow. It looked like plaster, or old paint. She thought of the service passage behind the gazebo, where the walls had been patched recently.
“Oliver, did you see Calvin on Saturday?”
“Not since Friday. He wanted me to replace some faulty wiring at the library. I told him I had better things to do than work for a man who never paid on time.”
“Did you work at the fair the night Molly Keene died?”
The smile left his face. “Half the town worked that fair.”
“I heard you were responsible for the power.”
“I was an apprentice. I didn't run anything.”
He snapped his bag shut. “If you're going to talk about that old fire, talk to Fitch. He signed off on the wiring.”
After he left, Beth emerged from behind the swinging door.
“He was here again on Sunday,” she said quietly. “I forgot to tell you.”
“Doing what?”
“He said he was checking the rear exit lock. I thought you'd asked him.”
Nora looked toward the back hall. It opened onto a service alley used by the delivery vans. The same passage had been accessible to anyone who worked in the square.
“Next time,” she told Beth, “don't let anybody repair anything unless I ask for it myself.”
Beth nodded. “Including the mayor's Christmas lights?”
“Especially those. They're a hazard to anybody with eyesight.”
CHAPTER NINE
A steady snowfall began after lunch. Bellweather disappeared behind a white curtain, leaving only the shop lights and red bows visible through the window. The Christmas crowd came in wet and cheerful, stomping their boots and ordering peppermint cocoa.
The busiest hour of the day saved Nora from worrying. She wrapped truffles, reminded a customer that chocolate was not an appropriate food for her dachshund, and separated two brothers who both wanted the final gingerbread snowman.
At four, a woman wearing a green hat asked for a private word. It was Diane.
“I sent the notes,” she said.
Nora brought her into the back office and shut the door. “Why didn't you tell Dan?”
“Because I was ashamed. I knew Calvin was using the letter to blackmail somebody. I wanted him frightened enough to stop.”
“Why send the notes to me?”
“Because he cared about that building more than he cared about me. He'd see a threat coming through your shop as something he couldn't ignore.”
Nora felt anger rise, not only for herself. Diane had put Beth and the shop into a dangerous situation without asking permission.
“I didn't want anyone hurt,” Diane said.
“Intentions don't scrub away consequences. Did you send the flowers?”
Diane produced a small photograph from her purse. It showed Calvin at a town banquet many years ago, smiling beside Oliver Grant. Between them stood a silver trophy with a bell-shaped handle.
“Calvin gave Oliver the Community Service Award in 2001,” she said. “It was Calvin's idea. I never knew why. I thought it was strange, after all the trouble with the fire.”
“Why is it strange?”
“Because Oliver had been questioned that night. About the missing money.”
Nora examined the photograph. Oliver looked ten years older than the teenager in Owen's clipping. Calvin's arm rested heavily on his shoulder.
The image captured no threats, no secret deal. Yet Nora could see a different possibility from the one Bellweather had always accepted: Calvin wasn't rewarding a generous young man. He was showing him what he could take away.
“I'll give this to Dan,” Nora said.
Diane rose. “Good. Tell him I sent the notes too. I'd rather be embarrassed in public than afraid in private.”
It was the first sensible thing Nora had heard all week.
CHAPTER TEN
On Thursday, Dan called Nora to the station. The meeting room smelled of coffee and a radiator that needed bleeding. Gordon Fitch sat at one end of the table, wringing a cloth cap in his hands.
“I gave the sheriff my original inspection notes,” he said. “I never destroyed them.”
Dan laid a photocopy in front of Nora. A handwritten entry recorded that the main power feed had been disconnected at 7:12 on the night of Molly's death. The town had always reported an electrical short at 7:20. The difference was eight minutes.
“Eight minutes,” Nora said.
“The backup generator didn't start until 7:26,” Fitch answered. “Molly was trapped by then.”
Dan showed her another page. “There's a request to inspect the generator room after a report that the lock was broken. Somebody canceled the request.”
“Who?”
“The signature looks like Calvin's. But it doesn't match any of his known signatures.”
Nora leaned in. It had a hurried, square style, with an odd crossbar through each seven in the dates. The same kind of seven she had seen on the altered peppermint invoice.
“Oliver wrote numbers that way on a shop bill once,” she said. “My mother thought it looked European.”
Dan made a note. “That's worth checking, not proof.”
“Of course.”
Fitch explained that the electric switch had been behind a service panel in the old library. Only a few workers had known the location. Oliver, as apprentice, had installed part of the temporary feed. Gordon had inspected it. Calvin had supervised the committee.
“Could someone have locked Molly in?” Nora asked.
“Yes,” Fitch said. “The door had a spring latch. Once it caught, you needed a key outside, unless the release handle inside was working. It wasn't.”
“Was that in your report?”
“I listed the defective release. The committee postponed the repair.”
Nora thought of Molly's final minutes and clenched her hands in her lap.
Dan watched her. “Now you understand why I want you away from the person who did this.”
“I understand why you want to catch him,” she said. “I don't think those are the same thing.”
As she left the station, a familiar gray truck rolled past. OLIVER GRANT HARDWARE was painted in blue letters across its door. The back was loaded with boxes of replacement Christmas lights.
Nora waited until the truck had turned the corner. Then she went to find Louise.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Louise kept her florist shop at a temperature suitable for orchids and completely unsuitable for people wearing wool coats. Nora peeled hers off, accepted a cup of tea, and explained what she had learned.
“You're going to get yourself into trouble,” Louise said.
“I've been in trouble since the building went up for sale.”
“That was ordinary trouble. The kind people can argue about over muffins.”
Nora spread the photograph and her copies of the notes across the counter. “Diane sent the blue notes. Fitch confirmed the blackout was deliberate. Someone forged an inspection cancellation. Oliver's handwriting may match.”
“Or somebody copied his writing. You can't convict a man because he writes sevens like a French tourist.”
“I'm not trying to convict him.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
Nora stared through the window. Snowflakes gathered on a display of red roses and evergreen branches. A little girl in a purple coat stopped to admire the arrangements, leaving the shape of her mitten on the glass.
“Find the letter,” Nora said.
Louise, who had known her for thirty-six years, recognized the change in her voice. “Where would Calvin hide something he didn't want people to find?”
“He had an office, a house, and a safe at the bank.”
“The police will search those.”
“But he was carrying the folder when I saw him. If the killer took it, we won't find it in any of those places.”
Louise went to the cash register and rummaged through a drawer. She returned with a receipt. “Calvin ordered funeral flowers for himself in June. No, don't look at me like that. He said he was getting a discount while he could. I insisted he pay in advance.”
“Louise.”
“There's a note on the back. He wanted the old red rose arrangement sent to the library memorial bench if anything happened to him. I thought he was being theatrical.”
Nora took the receipt. Beneath the instructions, Calvin had written, ASK ABOUT THE SECOND BELL.
“What second bell?” Louise asked.
“The gazebo has one bell over the clock,” Nora said. “Unless Calvin was thinking of the church.”
“Or unless he was thinking of something no one else remembers.”
Outside, the little girl waved goodbye to the flowers. Nora waved back. Then she called Dan and read him the message. This time, she did not wait for someone to tell her it was worth reporting.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The gazebo was closed to the public while deputies searched the service passage. Dan met Nora and Louise beside its snow-covered steps, wearing rubber-soled boots that squeaked on the boards.
“We've looked through the clock,” he said. “The bell is attached to a mechanical striker. There's no second bell.”
“Calvin said ask about it, not look for it,” Nora replied.
The clock was an old-fashioned ornament installed for the town's centennial. It had a brass face and a decorative bell that never rang on time. Oliver maintained the electrical lights; the town historical society handled the clock mechanism.
“Who is in the historical society?” Nora asked.
“Fitch. Louise. Diane was president once. Calvin donated money when it was repaired.”
Louise snapped her fingers. “There were two bells at first. The original was cracked during a storm. They put a replacement up, but I helped carry the old one into storage.”
“Where?”
“Library basement. Right beside the pump room.”
Dan went still. “That's a crime scene from the old investigation. It was sealed after the building closed.”
“Was it searched when Calvin died?”
“Not yet. We were getting a warrant.”
A deputy hurried up the steps, carrying a folded scrap of red cardboard inside a clear bag. He had found it behind a loose panel beneath the gazebo's back rail. On one side was part of a hardware-store invoice; on the other were handwritten numbers and an initial.
Nora recognized the numbers as a series of dates, each with a crossed seven. The most recent was Friday's date. Beside it someone had written FIVE THOUSAND NOW, FIVE CHRISTMAS.
“A payment plan,” Louise murmured.
“Or extortion,” Dan said.
The scrap was dirty and torn. It could not prove who had written it. But its location, in the passage where Calvin died, suggested he had been negotiating with someone when the argument turned violent.
“Where's the murder weapon?” Nora asked.
Dan hesitated. “We believe it was something heavy and rounded. A piece of brass is possible.”
“The bell,” Louise said.
“An old bell would be too heavy.”
Nora looked up at the clock. “What about the striking weight?”
Dan's eyes narrowed. He asked the deputy to photograph the mechanism again. When the little panel at its base came open, an empty hook was plainly visible.
Someone had taken a brass weight from the gazebo. The question was whether it had disappeared before or after Calvin Price walked into the service passage.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bellweather's Christmas pageant rehearsals continued despite everything. Nora had promised to bring candy canes for the children, and a promise to a seven-year-old was more binding than most contracts.
The school gym smelled of wet mittens and floor polish. At one end, a shepherd argued with an angel about whose line came first. The choir director solved the dispute by moving both children farther apart.
Nora handed over the candy. When she turned, Beth stood beside the exit holding a stack of donation envelopes.
“I didn't know you were helping here,” Nora said.
“My mother runs the fundraiser. She asked me to count the cash.”
The words made Nora pause. “Who manages the Christmas relief money now?”
“Mr. Grant. He always volunteers. Everybody says he's reliable.”
“Does he still use a metal cashbox?”
“An old gray one. Why?”
“Because some things in this town have survived longer than they should.”
Beth showed her the box. It had a dent near one hinge and two scratches shaped like a narrow V. In Owen's newspaper clipping, the metal box had been held at an angle, but Nora could just make out the dent.
She borrowed Beth's phone to photograph it. In doing so she noticed an envelope wedged beneath the felt lining. It contained a handwritten inventory of the replacement Christmas lights for the gazebo. On the back, someone had scribbled a list: GARLAND, SOCKETS, BRASS WEIGHT, NEW HOOK.
“Why would the donation box have a hardware list?” she asked.
Beth shrugged. “Mr. Grant says he can't keep scraps of paper out of his pockets.”
Nora returned the envelope without disturbing the money. The list might be perfectly innocent. Yet the missing brass weight had just become more than a theory.
When she stepped outside, Peter Lott, Oliver's employee, was standing beside the school dumpster smoking a cigarette.
“I hear you're asking about the boss,” he said.
“I hear you weren't at the store all Saturday morning.”
Peter flicked ash into the snow. “I went for coffee at ten. Came back before eleven. The boss wasn't there when I returned.”
“But Oliver told Dan he was fixing a heater until ten thirty.”
“He left that heater sitting on the bench. I finished it myself.”
“Did you tell the sheriff?”
Peter looked embarrassed. “Oliver gave me a job when nobody else would. I wasn't going to make him look bad.”
“Molly Keene's brother has spent twenty-eight years waiting for someone not to make the wrong person look good,” Nora said.
Peter crushed out his cigarette. “Then I'll go talk to Dan.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next morning, a reporter arrived from the county paper. She wore boots with polished buckles and asked questions as if she were tossing darts.
“Is it true the victim was blackmailing a local business owner?”
“Ask the sheriff,” Nora said.
“Did Calvin threaten to evict you?”
“Yes, but that doesn't make the whole town a suspect.”
“Did you know him well?”
“Well enough to know he'd have charged you for standing on his sidewalk.”
The reporter smiled at that and wrote it down. Nora immediately regretted being amusing. By lunch, the county paper's website displayed her quotation beneath a photograph of Sweet Treats.
Dan visited just after three. “The good news is that Peter has made a statement. The bad news is that Oliver has hired an attorney.”
“Is that bad? I'd want one if the sheriff were questioning me.”
“It's his right. But we've learned he paid Calvin regularly over the years. Several checks were written for consulting work that nobody can identify.”
“Blackmail.”
“Probably. We haven't found the original letter.”
He explained that Calvin's home safe contained a thin notebook of amounts and dates, but the latest entries had been cut out. The torn page fit the scrap found behind the gazebo rail.
Nora remembered the red folder and Diane's story. “Why would Calvin carry proof of the old crime to a meeting with the person it incriminated?”
“Because he expected to get paid,” Dan said. “He got greedy. Maybe he underestimated the danger.”
“Calvin underestimated many things. But not his ability to make people miserable.”
Dan looked at the counter display, where Nora had placed a wreath of peppermint sticks around a glass bowl. “Did Oliver ever order an unusually large amount of peppermint oil from your supplier?”
“No. What did you find?”
“The altered invoice was paid with a business card attached to an account registered under Grant Hardware.”
Nora exhaled slowly. “Then why haven't you arrested him?”
“Because buying peppermint oil isn't murder. Because he may have helped the delivery driver without knowing what the boxes contained. And because we still need proof that connects him to the attack.”
After Dan left, Louise called to say someone had broken the lock on the florist's storage shed. Nothing valuable was missing. Only the box of old town photographs had been opened.
Nora closed the shop early. She no longer believed the killer was merely frightened. She believed he was searching for something, and he had no intention of letting anyone find it first.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They met in Louise's kitchen over a casserole that had been reheated twice and eaten not at all. Diane brought photographs from the old fair. Owen brought a map of the library. Fitch brought his inspection notes and, with obvious reluctance, an old brass key.
“I should have turned this over years ago,” he said. “The pump-room door was replaced after the fire. But the padlock on its storage cupboard is original.”
Nora laid the newspaper clipping beside the map. The old power switch was marked near the boiler corridor. A dotted line showed a passage to the rear of the library. Molly could have entered the pump room from either direction.
“There was another person who saw the money box that night,” Owen said. “A janitor named Walter Grady. He died a few years ago, but his wife still lives in the county.”
“Could she remember anything?”
“Walter kept a notebook about everything he repaired. She gave it to the historical society when she moved.”
Louise went to her pantry and returned with a dusty archive carton. The town's historical society stored its overflow wherever someone had an empty shelf. She sorted through photographs, postcards, and receipts until a narrow blue notebook appeared.
Under December 19, 1998, Walter had written: 7:10 P.M. O.G. REQUESTED SPARE KEY TO PUMP ROOM. CLAIMED MAIN LIGHTS TEST. RETURNED 7:32. SMELLED OF SMOKE. RED BOX WITH HIM.
Owen stared at the words. His mouth worked, but no sound emerged.
“Oliver Grant,” Nora said.
Diane sat down heavily. “Calvin knew. He must have known.”
A second note recorded that Walter had reported the suspicious request to Calvin the next morning. It also recorded, in a different hand, that the report had been deemed unnecessary for the official inquiry. Beneath the instruction was Calvin's signature.
“That's why Calvin gave him the award,” Diane whispered. “It wasn't gratitude. It was leverage.”
Nora photographed every page and called Dan. Owen stood by the window, looking into the dark garden.
“I spent most of my life believing there was nothing I could prove,” he said quietly. “Molly would be forty-four now.”
Nora did not tell him that at least the truth was coming. The truth was late, and it could not return a single hour to his sister. She simply stood beside him until the headlights from a patrol car crossed the garden wall.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The old library smelled of damp plaster and cold stone. Dan had obtained a warrant to search the sealed basement, and Nora had arrived to identify items from the historical collection. Louise remained outside with Owen, who had decided he could not bear to see the pump room.
A deputy pried open the storage cupboard with the key Fitch supplied. Inside were old extension cords, a broken lantern, a cardboard box of rusted fasteners, and one heavy brass bell mounted on a wooden bracket.
“That's the first gazebo bell,” Nora said.
The bell was cracked across the lip, but its striker assembly remained intact. On the floor beneath it lay a smaller brass cylinder, wrapped in a cloth that had been folded and unfolded recently.
Dan examined it without touching. “Could be the missing weight.”
Nora knew the sheriff would have it photographed, swabbed, and examined properly. She stepped away, then noticed that the cloth had a repeated printed pattern: tiny green hammers and red nails.
“That's Grant Hardware's holiday wrapping paper,” she said. “Oliver gives away rolls every December.”
Dan bent nearer. “It isn't paper. It's a cotton promotional towel.”
The same towels had been stacked beside Oliver's register for years. Anyone could have taken one, but the combination was unsettling.
In the back of the cupboard, a red folder had slipped behind the bottom shelf. It was empty except for an old receipt and a photograph of the charity cashbox. Calvin's neat handwriting ran across the envelope: IF I DON'T GET PAID, ASK ABOUT THE SECOND BELL.
“Why put it here?” Nora said.
“Maybe Calvin hid it before the meeting.”
“Or Oliver hid it after. He knew Calvin's message and knew the place. But if he was trying to conceal the letter, why leave the folder?”
Dan pointed toward the shelf. “Because whoever hid it may have been interrupted.”
The deputy took photographs while Nora inspected the cupboard door. The wood was scarred near the hinges. There had been a repair, perhaps weeks ago, with two new screws that shone among the rusted ones.
“Can you identify those?” she asked.
“Standard screws,” Dan said.
“Bought anywhere?”
“Anywhere.”
Nora nodded. She was learning that the difference between a clue and an accusation could be as small as a brass screw. It was the larger pattern that mattered, and that pattern was beginning to look very ugly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Oliver Grant closed his hardware store without warning on Friday. A sheet of white paper taped to the door read FAMILY EMERGENCY. The Christmas lights around his sign remained lit, blinking cheerfully against the glass.
Peter Lott was sitting in his car across the street. He told Nora that Oliver had come in before dawn, taken a box from his private office, and left without explaining where he was going.
“What kind of box?”
“Small. Heavy enough that he used both hands.”
“Have you told Dan?”
“He knows. Everybody knows. The sheriff's looking for him.”
Nora glanced toward the shop. Behind its window, brass doorbells hung on pegs over rows of locks. There were dozens of ways a hardware store owner might obtain a rounded weight. But only Oliver had maintained the gazebo and known of the old cupboard.
When she returned to Sweet Treats, Beth had found another unsigned message. This one was not on blue paper. It was typed on a white card slipped into the candy display.
STOP ASKING ABOUT CHRISTMAS NIGHT OR YOU WILL LOSE MORE THAN YOUR SHOP.
Nora gave it to Dan immediately. His deputy came to take fingerprints from the display while Beth stared at the counter with fierce, wounded eyes.
“I'm sorry,” Nora told her. “You didn't sign up for any of this.”
“I signed up to work with you,” Beth said. “That's the same as signing up for trouble most days.”
Her voice trembled, but she managed a smile. Nora sent her home early.
In the quiet shop, she finally understood the purpose of the altered peppermint delivery. Someone wanted police attention focused on her place of business. If investigators found the suspicious oil, they might believe the death happened after a visit to Sweet Treats. That would confuse the time of the attack and draw Nora into the center of the case. The plan hadn't worked because the medical examiner found blunt-force trauma.
It was a clumsy diversion. Oliver might have been a skilled handyman, but he had never been much of a criminal mastermind. Perhaps Calvin had survived twenty-eight years by knowing that the fellow he blackmailed was more frightened than clever.
Nora locked the back door, set the alarm, and went home. She did not notice the gray truck parked two streets away, its lights off, until it rolled past her front porch after midnight. By then she had already called the sheriff.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A windstorm blew in overnight, scattering snow across Maple Street and shaking ornaments loose from the gazebo. The Christmas Eve parade was scheduled for the following evening. Mayor Cole refused to cancel again, though the sheriff had stationed deputies at both entrances to the square.
Oliver was found at a motel outside the county. He denied killing Calvin and insisted he had left town because people were threatening him. His lawyer claimed the old notebook was unreliable and that the brass weight could have been planted.
“None of that is impossible,” Dan told Nora. “But the medical examiner found a trace of green enamel on Calvin's coat. The missing weight was painted green at the top.”
“Did the weight have blood?”
“Too early for that result.”
Nora accepted that he would not tell her more. She had seen enough detective work to understand that a believable answer was not necessarily a provable one.
Then she remembered the first photograph of Calvin and Oliver. The award trophy between them had a bell-shaped handle. She went to the historical society website and enlarged a picture of the ceremony. The trophy stood on a black wooden base with a brass plate.
“Louise,” Nora said over the telephone, “was there a record of who made the Community Service Award?”
“Grant Hardware donated it,” Louise replied. “Why?”
“Because Oliver knew how to work with brass long before the gazebo mechanism was repaired.”
“That's not much of a discovery.”
“No. But it's reminding me not to mistake something familiar for something harmless.”
At the station, Diane arrived with the last piece of the mystery. She had found a sealed letter inside an old recipe box Calvin had returned to her after their divorce. It was addressed to Oliver in Calvin's handwriting, but never mailed.
In it Calvin claimed to have witnessed Oliver lock Molly in the pump room after she discovered the theft. Calvin admitted that he had taken a portion of the stolen money in exchange for silence. He threatened to expose Oliver if another payment failed.
Dan read the letter twice. “Calvin kept evidence against himself,” he said.
“Blackmailers are sentimental about their proof,” Diane replied.
She sat with her hands folded as the sheriff arranged to authenticate the letter. “I could have stopped him years ago if I'd known. I thought I was keeping the peace.”
Nora remembered the girl in the paper crown. The dead deserved more than peace kept by silence. She hoped that at last Bellweather might learn the difference.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The sheriff arrested Oliver Grant just after noon on Christmas Eve. The laboratory matched blood recovered from the brass weight to Calvin Price, and investigators found a small fiber from Oliver's jacket caught in the clock mechanism where the weight had hung. Oliver's lawyer objected to the evidence and promised to challenge the old allegations, but the sheriff had enough to charge him with Calvin's murder.
Nora learned the news while making the final batch of peppermint bark. She set down her spatula and turned off the mixer. For several seconds she heard only the soft crackle of cooling chocolate.
At the station, Dan explained what Oliver had admitted after the arrest. He had been stealing Christmas relief donations in 1998 to pay debts he was ashamed to confess. Molly caught him. He cut the power, hoping the dark would let him slip away with the cashbox. When she followed him to the pump room, he shut her inside and threatened her to keep quiet. He claimed he had intended to release her. The generator started a fire before he returned.
“Calvin found out the next morning,” Dan said. “He took a share of the money and kept the secret.”
For decades, Calvin had demanded payments. When Owen returned and the library sale threatened to expose the old records, Calvin decided to demand a final large sum. Oliver agreed to meet him behind the gazebo. He removed the brass striking weight from the mechanism beforehand, intending to frighten Calvin into surrendering the letter. When Calvin refused, Oliver struck him.
“He hid the weight in the library cupboard and took the folder,” Dan said. “Then he started scrambling to make your shop look involved.”
“The invoice,” Nora said.
“His supplier account paid for the extra cartons. The warning card came from a printer in his office. We believe the flowers were intended to unsettle you.”
“What about the red folder?”
“He searched it and found nothing worth destroying. He dumped it with the weight. He never knew Diane had another letter.”
Nora asked about the old theft and Molly's death. Dan said those matters would be reviewed separately, with the prosecutor deciding what charges the evidence and the passage of time allowed. Oliver's confession would have to be scrutinized. It could not bring Molly back, and it did not erase Calvin's role.
She found Owen outside the station, staring at the courthouse steps across the street.
“I wanted him to say her name,” Owen said. “All those years, that's what I wanted. To hear somebody admit she mattered.”
“She mattered,” Nora answered.
Owen nodded once. He looked exhausted rather than triumphant. Nora offered him a place at the shop's Christmas Eve supper. After a long pause, he accepted.
When she returned to Sweet Treats, Louise was rearranging the window display. The little candy village had suffered another minor collapse. This time the church tower had fallen on the post office.
“You'll have to rebuild it,” Louise said.
Nora surveyed the damage. “Not until after Christmas. Even a village made of sugar deserves a day off.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Peppermint Parade started at dusk beneath a sky clear enough to show the first stars. Bellweather's snowbanks glowed blue under the streetlamps. Children gathered along Maple Street wearing scarves so large they looked like walking parcels, while their parents balanced paper cups of cocoa and shouted reminders about mittens.
Nora stood outside Sweet Treats beside Louise and Beth. In the window, the damaged candy village remained exactly as it had been, with the post office tilted against the church. Nora had put a tiny paper sign in front of it: REPAIRS AFTER THE HOLIDAYS.
The customers loved it. Even the mayor laughed.
There would be other repairs. The police investigation was not finished. A town that had refused to talk about Molly Keene would have to face the past in public. Diane had agreed to speak at a memorial gathering after the new year. Gordon Fitch wanted the old library preserved, at least until the historical society could establish a permanent display about the fire. Owen had offered to help build it.
Nora had no idea how Bellweather would manage any of that without arguing. She suspected arguments were inevitable and perhaps necessary. The old habit of silence had cost too much.
Dan appeared at the shop door just before the parade reached the square.
“I have news about the building,” he said. “Calvin's estate is going through probate. The executor called to say the sale is on hold. Your lease is valid through February, and the bank is willing to revisit your purchase application when things settle.”
Nora put a hand against the doorframe. She had spent the past week so worried about a murder that she had almost forgotten how close she had come to losing the place she loved.
“That's not a guarantee,” Dan warned.
“It's more than I had.”
He accepted a cup of peppermint cocoa and stepped aside for a woman carrying a sleeping toddler. The bells began to ring from the church, their warm notes rolling over the square. The gazebo's ornamental bell remained silent until the historical society could repair it properly. Nora found that silence comforting. Some things deserved attention before they were made to ring again.
Inside the shop, Beth brought out a tray of fresh peppermint bark. Louise claimed the largest piece, explaining that emotional support came in many forms. Owen arrived with a small wooden angel, its broken wing repaired and painted white. He asked Nora if she would put it beside the candy village.
“Until the memorial is ready,” he said.
Nora set it in the window where the children could see it. The angel looked ordinary against the gingerbread houses and peppermint trees, which was exactly right. Molly had been an ordinary girl with plans, a family, and the courage to speak when something was wrong. She should have been remembered for more than the manner of her death.
The parade passed: a brass band, two carolers in enormous wool capes, a team of volunteers carrying a papier-mâché reindeer, and finally Santa in a red truck that had once belonged to the fire department. Somebody's inflatable snowman escaped from a rooftop and rolled down the street, scattering spectators in a wave of laughter.
“Only in Bellweather,” Louise said.
“Anywhere else they'd have better knots,” Nora replied.
They watched the snowman come to rest against a bench. A boy scrambled after it, proud to be the first one to catch a runaway Christmas decoration.
As the music drifted away, Nora turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED. The shop was warm; supper was waiting in the back room; her friends had gathered around the long table. For tonight there would be no threatening notes, no frightened phone calls, no desperate search through a past that refused to stay buried.
Tomorrow she would make a plan for the building, help Owen with his memorial, and argue with the bank if that was what it took. Tonight she cut another plate of peppermint bark into generous squares and carried it toward the laughter.
Outside, the lights of Bellweather shone steadily through the falling snow.
And this Christmas, nobody had to be afraid of the dark. Lantern reader.
End of Episode 1
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