Murder on the First Day of Christmas (Chloe Carstairs Mysteries)

Murder on the First Day of Christmas

A Chloe Carstairs Mystery

By

Billie Thomas

©2012 Annie Acorn Publishing LLC

Silver Spring, MD 20906

annieacornpublishing.com

By Permission of Annie Acorn

annieacorn.com

Cover Art by Angel Nichols

[email protected]

http://www.angelwingsdesigner.com/bookcovers.htm

To my sweet, funny mom.

     The story,
Murder on the First Day of Christmas,
is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to real people or events is completely accidental.  A few literary liberties may have been taken when it comes to some geographic locations in the interest of creating great literature.

CHAPTER 1

    “Chloe, Lady Chablis has taken the Baby Jesus again.” Mom’s voice crackled on my cell phone. “Get the Vaseline.”

    
The annoyance in Mom’s tone didn’t bode well for Lady Chablis or for me, and even the Baby Jesus would have probably done well to tread lightly. Four weeks before Christmas, I did not want to be the one causing chaos in Amanda Carstairs’ perfectly ordered world.

    “Has the Baby Jesus been located?” I said into the phone as I pulled my Austen Healy under the portico of Saul Taylor’s Birmingham mini-mansion, at which my mother and I were supposed to spend the day decorating for Christmas. With only a glance at my lipstick in the rearview mirror, I grabbed the Vaseline jar from my tool kit and headed, not up Saul’s front steps, but across the street to the scene of the crime. We had decorated Tom Madison’s house the week before, complete with a nativity scene on the front lawn.

    
“Still MIA, I’m afraid, and Lady Chablis’s not talking.” Mom said.

    
No surprise there. Like most chocolate labs, Lady Chablis wasn’t known for his witty discourse. I couldn’t fault him for his sense of theater, though. Starting life as Lady Marmalade, the discovery of an un-dropped testicle had resulted in one of the few documented cases of canine sexual reassignment and his name change to Lady Chablis, as in the drag queen from
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
.

    
Trust me, the name suited. His latest transgression? Faced with all the statues in the life-sized nativity on the Madison’s front lawn, the ditsy dog invariably chose the Baby Jesus to clamp his teeth into and go streaking though the neighborhood, as if he knew that this would cause the biggest uproar.

    
Mom took this affront personally. She had commissioned the gorgeous hand-carved, hand-painted nativity scene for LC’s owners, the Madisons, and considered every member of the fifteen-piece ensemble, from the kneeling shepherds to the solemn-eyed camel, to be a valuable work of art. A slightly chomped Baby Jesus or, even worse, a crèche with no Baby Jesus at all would seriously undermine said value. It would also compromise Mom’s standing as one of the premier interior designers in Birmingham, maybe even her place in heaven.

    
But not if she had anything to say about it.

    
“For heaven’s sakes, Chloe. What took you so long?” Mom abandoned her search of the Madisons’ flowerbed as I walked up.

    
“I’m not that late.” I clipped my phone to the waistband of my skirt. “Chill.”

    
I’m not sure at what age a daughter stops being cowed by that scary Mom look, let’s just say it isn’t thirty. Apparently, when constant crises at one home you’ve decorated prevent you from finishing up at another home - this just three days before the first holiday party of the season - it’s physically impossible to “chill” and physically risky to tell someone to do so. (I was still pretty new to the decorating game, and not yet hip to all the trade secrets.)

    
I did know enough, though, not to point out that my slim DKNY optic print skirt and sleeveless black turtleneck were hardly appropriate for a search and recovery mission. Mom would spare even less sympathy for my favorite strappy black wedges, shoes she said made me limp around like a flamingo with bricks strapped to its feet.

    
“Gold, frankincense, myrrh and Vaseline,” Mom sighed. “Not exactly the greatest story ever told.”

    
We fanned out, each keeping our eyes open for a glimpse of swaddling clothes under bushes, behind garages or on front porches. There were just six mini-mansions, the smallest seven-thousand-square feet, in Arbor Farms and Lady Chablis had complete access to all of them. He had taken the Baby Jesus before and seemed to favor dark, moist hiding places. The statue was only slightly worse for wear for being relegated to chew-toy status by the world’s dumbest dog, but it was time to break the cycle of abuse, hence the Vaseline.

    
A skim coat, when mixed with cayenne pepper, is a sure-fire way to keep teeth marks off everything from Chippendale chair legs to Kate Spade sling backs. We had hoped we wouldn’t have to subject the Baby Jesus to such undignified treatment, but Lady Chablis left us no choice. I, for one, did not envy the poor dog his fate, having years ago confused the Vaseline-and–cayenne concoction Mom meant for her miniature Schnauzer, Josie, with a cranberry glaze meant for the ham she had thawing in the sink. Torture. But just as I had learned to look before I licked, so too would Lady Chablis have to mend his cradle robbing ways.

    
After twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Mom and I met back in front of the Madisons’, where Lady Chablis watched us from the front porch. I swear he was grinning at the sight of my limp curls and sweat mustache. November in Birmingham, and you’re still only as good as your deodorant. True, this was an unseasonably warm year, but as usual, the only white we saw in Alabama at Christmas were streaks of un-rubbed-in sunscreen or someone gutsy enough to wear an ivory skirt suit this side of Labor Day.

    
“I’m going to kill that dog,” Mom said. “And Tom Madison, too, for not having an invisible fence.” She looked down at my feet. “What’s that on your shoe?”

    
I rolled my eyes. “Wedge heels. They’re very popular this season.”

    
“Not that.” She gestured. “That.”

    
I looked down. “I’m going to kill that dog.”

    
I limped over to the Madisons’ curb for some serious scraping.

    “Maybe if we just…” Mom broke off.

    
I followed her gaze to the Madisons’ front porch. Lady Chablis was on the move, headed over to Saul Taylor’s house, where we were supposed to be finishing up the Twelve Days of Christmas theme he had requested.

    
Christmas houses were the only projects that could lure Mom out of retirement, since she had closed the doors of Amanda C. Interiors two years before. Her clients spent $30,000 and up—way up—on their holiday décor, and Saul Taylor’s house was one of her most lavish projects. I knew she was anxious to get back to it with my help, of course, and apprenticing under her was the perfect way to launch my own budding decorating career.

    
“We’re not following you,” I sang to LC, although we  were.

    
Not that he was paying us any attention. He was on a mission, trotting across Saul’s yard without a backward glance. Whining in the back of his throat, he let out a little yip.

    
Guilty conscience? I hoped so. Taking out the Baby Jesus and a pair of $200 shoes (after double markdowns) did not reflect well on his character.

    
The temperature dropped about twenty degrees as Mom and I rounded the back of Saul’s house. The canopy of trees and wind off the man-made lake beyond them hinted at a winter we were weeks away from actually getting.

   
“What’s wrong with him?” I whispered, because something was clearly amiss. The dog was whining and sniffing the air, his attention focused on something near the back door of Saul’s house.

    “We do not have time for this,” Mom grumbled.

    
LC barked, and we both jumped. His anxiety was contagious. We couldn’t see what was making him so edgy, but it was clear he was totally fixated on whatever he was looking at - moving first forward, then back, hackles raised.

    “What is it, boy?” I said, my tone soothing. “What is it?”

    
Mom pulled me a little behind her, keeping her hand on my arm as we edged forward. Lady Chablis let out another bark, then another. Finally he was barking, full out - loud snarling barks, completely out of character for him. We were about three feet in front of the door before we fully understood why.

    “Oh, Jesus God,” Mom said. “Oh, my good Lord. Is that a…?”

    
It was.

    
On the stoop under Saul’s back door was a hand. A man’s hand, by the size of it, completely unattached to anything else and nestled into the “O” of the red-and-green Noel doormat.

    
Someone sounding a lot like me let out a scream, which made Lady Chablis bark louder. Mom was squeezing my arm painfully, but I didn’t mind a bit. It was good to have an arm. Two of them in fact, both with firmly attached perfectly working hands.

    
But, except for the Vaseline jar, my hands were empty. The hand on the stoop was not. Its stiff, fat fingers curled around an equally stiff, even fatter, very dead rat.

    
“Police.” Mom’s voice shook as she stumbled backward. “We need the police.”

    “Whose is it? How did it get there?” I looked around, but didn’t see anything else out of place. No other body parts, no hand-less man shambling toward us, waving his bloody stump.  There was only a dense, dark line of trees.

    
Mom started hustling me towards the side of the house. Lady Chablis barked on and on.

    “God bless it! I’m going to kill that damn dog!” Saul Taylor tore open the back door. “I’m trying to work in here.” He looked down. “Holy shit.”

    “We were just about to call the police,” Mom assured him.

    “Where in hell did that come from?” Saul looked to make sure all our appendages were present and accounted for.

    “We just found it,” I explained. “It was there when we got here.”

    “Get back, Lady! Get!” Saul shouted.

    
For the second time, Mom and I jumped, but Saul was talking to LC, who was still going crazy. The dog whimpered and slunk back down the driveway. The silence was creepy.

    
Saul hitched his pants and knelt down. He wasn’t much taller than my five-foot-three-inches and had a body like a toothpaste tube, all his weight squeezed from the bottom to a bulging middle - not a figure that looks good in a squat.

     He peered closely at the hand.

     “Don’t touch it!” I said, far more interested in keeping down this morning’s cranberry muffin than in preserving evidence.

    
“That’s my ring,” Saul said. “The bastard’s wearing my ring.”

    
“What?” Mom craned in his direction, but didn’t seem any more interested in going over there than I was. Cowardice is an inherited trait.

    
“Right there. My ruby pinkie ring.”

    
My mother and I exchanged queasy looks. Men’s pinkie rings have that effect on us.

    
“Look, we’ve got to call the police,” Mom said. “We’ll meet you around front.”

    
Saul stood up and yelled toward the trees. “It’s not going to work, you know. If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not going to work.”

    
Well, it had worked on us.

   
 
Mom and I scurried around to the front of the house, where we encountered our second dismemberment of the day. Only Lady Chablis’ version involved a very muddy, very valuable Baby Jesus.

CHAPTER 2

     “I’m going to kill Saul!”

    Both Mom and I took a step backwards. Given yesterday’s ordeal with the hand, it was only natural for us to be on edge back at Saul’s house, but Angela Jannings, Saul’s research assistant, could give even the Dalai Lama a nervous twitch. If she wasn’t sneaking right up on you - like she just had, she was saying creepy, off-the-wall things - like she just did.

    
Yesterday had been a nightmare - wailing sirens, endless questions and flashbulbs going off in every direction. Not exactly conducive to good decorating.

    
Our plan had been to install nine pipers piping in Saul’s study, maybe even get started on the drummers drumming in the keeping room. Instead, we had told our story to the police again and again: Baby Jesus, Noel doormat, and pinkie ring. Constant repetition, even in real time, made the scene no less surreal.