Murder on the First Day of Christmas (Chloe Carstairs Mysteries) (3 page)

    
“I wonder what conditioner these guys use?” Cassie still pretended to swoon over the pipers as she attached holly boutonnieres to their smocks. “Something with chamomile, I’m thinking. Brings out their highlights.”

    
“I like their boots. Would you say a size seven?” I measured one against my own shoe.

    
“A pathetic attempt to get your own hideous shoes noticed.” Mom eyed my platform sandals, then turned to Cassie. “Chloe wants me to comment on them, so she can act like the long-suffering hipster oppressed by her oh-so-square mother. But really, dear, if you want to hobble around in those shoes, far be it from me to comment.”

    
“Girls! This place looks amazing!” Robin Woodall stood in the doorway, looking about sixteen in her tennis whites and high ponytail.

    
Saul’s girlfriend was in her mid-thirties, but weekly spa appointments, private Pilates lessons and tennis every other day kept her looking showroom new. Her appeal to fifty-something Saul Taylor was obvious: long legs, brilliant blue eyes and the dewy innocence that men slay dragons to protect.

    
More mystifying was what she saw in Saul who was loud, sly, bald and so out of shape he got winded jogging his memory. Money wasn’t a factor. She had plenty of her own, and he refused to let her anywhere near his.

    
The two had met while Saul was researching a book on black widows, women who kill their mates for their money. Woodall was twice widowed herself, losing one husband to an allergic reaction and the other to insulin shock, both deaths long on speculation and innuendo, short on evidence to even indict Robin, much less convict her. After a few martinis, Saul often joked that they would never marry, because Robin might think he was worth more to her dead than alive. That kind of talk made for a stormy relationship.

    
Mom thanked Robin for her compliment. “It’s really starting to take shape, isn’t it?”

    “All the loose greenery everywhere will be cleaned up, right?” Robin took her role as supervisor seriously.

    “Of course,” Mom assured her. “Most of it will be done today. We’ve got two more rooms tomorrow, and then finishing touches on Friday.”

    
“And you’ll be back on Saturday to help the caterer set up.”

    
“Eloise.” Mom smiled. “Yes, she’s excellent. We’ve worked together often.”

    
“And outside? You think we have enough lights?”

    
“More than enough.”

    
Mom’s outside guys, Carlos and Juan, had spent three days on ladders and the roof draping the three-story house in white lights. Saul’s electricity meter would be whirling like a propeller.

    
“I know Saul wants a lot of lights to make a statement from the road.”

    
“He’ll make a statement from the moon,” Mom promised.

    
“And the lights are on timers?”

    
Mom threw Robin a bone. “Naturally. Six o’clock on the dot.”

    
“Six? You don’t think five-thirty would be better? It starts getting dark around five-thirty.”

    
“So it does. I’ll take care of it.” Mom matched Robin’s satisfied smile with one of her own that said rookie.

    
Robin gave a nod - her work here was done.  “Good. Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Great job, Amanda. Really great. Have fun, you guys.” And she was gone.

    
“Lovely girl,” Mom said as the front door closed. “Just lovely.”

    
Cassie and I exchanged looks. Mom’s Southern good manners weren’t fooling us for a second.

    
Over the next couple of hours, we finished the study and moved on to the dining room, where we threaded a red pepper berry garland into the Baccarat crystal chandelier.

    
We had just stepped away from the window to see if three small pepper-berry kissing balls looked better than one large one, when Saul’s phone rang and the answering machine picked up. Since the large foyer was all that separated the dining room from the study, we could easily identify the caller - Bunny Beaumont.

    
What can one say about Bunny Beaumont that hasn’t already been scrawled onto the bathroom walls of some of Birmingham’s finest restaurants?  You know the type. Skin always a little too tan, teeth a little too white, laugh a little too loud and bras just a little too ambitious, lifting and separating till her breasts looked like two semaphores positioned to say “Howdy, Sailor.”

    
The effect wasn’t cheap, necessarily, though it could have been and probably should have been. A lot of money had been spent to obliterate Bunny’s backwater upbringing, and handlers on Louisiana’s local pageant circuit had taught her to get the most bang out of every buck.

    
It was a near perfect façade. Her tendency to wear sequins in broad daylight and skinny dip with her friends’ husbands at the country club Christmas party? Well, honey, that was just stuff that seeped occasionally around the edges.

    
On the Arts Council, Mom was president, and Bunny was vice president. In the Garden Club, it was vice versa. Despite these common interests, they weren’t exactly what you would call friends.

    
“Saul, sweetie,” Bunny said to his machine, using her slopping-sugar voice. “Where have you gotten off to? Gavin and I just this minute got back into town and were delighted to get your invitation. I wanted to let you know we’d love to come to your party, wouldn’t miss it for the world. Word on the street is you’ve had Amanda there for weeks doing up the place. I always get such a kick out of her cute little designs.”

    
Cassie and I checked Mom’s reaction, but she didn’t seem fazed. Guess it wasn’t Bunny’s best work.

    
Mom signaled for me to hold up the smaller kissing balls as Bunny continued.

    
“You tell that Robin I plan on cornering her Saturday night about joining the Arts Council and Garden Club.”

    
Mom motioned me out of the way and sent Cassie in with the big ball.

    
“Amanda probably hasn’t mentioned it,” Bunny blathered on, “but I think we’re desperate for some new blood, new blue blood anyway, and I think Robin would be a terrific addition. It’d be great to bring some more youth to the Council. I get lonely hanging out with those old gals.”

    
Mom cut her eyes at me. Forty-eight-and-a-half is what Bunny told people. Forty-nine-and-seven-sixths would be more accurate.

    
“I mean seriously, sugar, some of those girls on the Council aren’t so much ‘art’ as they are ‘artifact,’ if you know what I mean.”

    
“Says the woman who puts the ‘hor’ in ‘horticulture,’” Mom murmured, again eyeing the smaller kissing balls.

    
Cassie and I laughed, and I knew that if Bunny had heard Mom she would have laughed, too. Bunny accepted catty remarks and scandalized double-takes as her due. We were meant to be jealous, shocked, outraged and intimidated - anything less would’ve been a waste of good collagen.

    
“Well, gotta run, hon. Saturday night. We’ll be there with silver bells on.” She gave her fake tinkling little laugh, classic Bunny, and rang off.

    
“Lovely woman.” Mom smiled.  “Just lovely.”

    
“I bet she knew you might hear,” I fumed.

    
“Bunny performs for the audience whether she has one or not,” Mom said absently. “I’m thinking two and one. One big kissing ball flanked by two smaller ones.”

    
“Oh, Amanda, I do love your cute little designs,” I gushed - a perfect imitation of Bunny.

    
Mom rolled her eyes - a perfect imitation of me.

    
We spent some time tidying up and readying the house for tomorrow’s last big push. The outside lights snapped on as they always had at five-thirty p.m. on the dot, and we pulled away in the ’56 Austin Healey that Dad had restored as a thirtieth birthday present for me.

    
I was exhausted, but in a good way. The day had been a productive one, and when you’re decorating other people’s houses during the holidays, that’s the most you can ask for.

    
Mom looked tired, too. Leaning her head back onto the black leather seat, she closed her eyes. “Now Chloe. About those shoes.”

CHAPTER 3

    
“Well, well. You certainly went all out,” my mother greeted me, giving my ivory Nanette Lepore skirt suit the once over.

    
“I’m a single woman these days. Thought I’d look the part.” I accepted champagne from a passing waiter.

    
Saul’s party was in full swing, and despite my dateless status, I was determined to eat, drink and make merry if it killed me.

    
“Where did you get the outfit?”

    
“Saks. You like?” I stepped back to give her the full effect.

    
“Gorgeous. And the accessories?” Mom nodded to my chest, which was making quite a showing beneath the deep V-neckline.

    
I feigned shock. “Are you implying I look enhanced?” Everyone knows I’m slightly obsessed with breasts in general and my lack thereof specifically. When your nicknamed Niblet in high school, you tend to develop an unnatural preoccupation with these things.

    
“I’m just saying it takes a village to raise that kind of cleavage.”

    
“Speaking of villages, looks like this one’s lost its idiot.” I gestured across Saul’s crowded living room to where Trevor, the veterinarian from my last disastrous blind date, was chatting up Kendra Daniels. One look at Kendra’s glowing face, which resembled that of a slightly bewildered Pekingese, and I knew I’d be purchasing a gravy boat for the happy couple within six months.

    
“Daniels rhymes with spaniels.” Mom sighed and toasted my champagne flute with hers. “You never stood a chance.”

    
I consoled myself by taking in the beauty of Mom’s handiwork.

    
The foyer, where a black velvet partridge nestled in the scarlet and purple leaves of a silk Bradford pear tree, was a stunning introduction to the theme. Two blown glass turtledoves cuddled in a nest of sticks and straw that draped the foyer table, while three French hens peeked from the greenery that adorned the stair rails.

    
In the great room beyond the stairs, four calling birds, a.k.a starlings, lined the mantle, over which hung five giant gilded wreaths. Six silk geese made their nests on the hearth, and for the bar, seven ice swans swam in a giant ice bowl of champagne punch.

     O
ur eight Waterford crystal maids-a-milking sparkled by candlelight on Saul’s exquisite Biedermeier pedestal table in the dining room. The pipers stood guard in the study. Drummers drummed, ladies danced and lords leapt in the keeping room, kitchen and sun porch, respectively.

    “Mrs. Carstairs, you outdid yourself on this one.” Cassie had beamed that afternoon after doing her final walk-through before Margie Vaughn, owner of Flower Fantasy, had come to approve her work.

    
“I couldn’t have done it without you girls,” Mom had said fervently. “Or you either, Marco. Stunning. Some of your best work ever.”

    
Marco Bruno, the brawny ice sculptor, and his son had just dropped off the seven swans punch bowl, a true work of art. (As was the equally brawny Marco Jr., I might add.)

    
Now, just six hours later, I found myself wishing Cassie, Marco and the others could be there to see how enthusiastically people were responding to their hard work. Ol’ Scrooge himself couldn’t have resisted getting his holiday groove on in this place.

    
In the basement game room, a Dixieland Jazz band scorched through every up-tempo Christmas carol they could think of, while braver guests burned up the dance floor. Music and laughter drifted upstairs where people were swooning over Eloise’s lobster puffs and wasabi-dressed asparagus, while making plans they had no intention of keeping for the upcoming year.

    
Since those plans would include fitness related-resolutions and I was working part-time as a personal trainer, I expected my bookings to pick up at the same rate the tiny Gruyere quiches were disappearing.

    God, I love Christmas!

    
“Twelve days was my idea,” Saul crowed as he accepted a drink from his neighbor, Oscar Browley, and the two of them moved toward us. “Amanda just wanted to do twinkle lights and ribbon, but I said, ‘No, this year I’m going all out.’”

    
What Saul lacked in height he made up for in volume, with a voice that made you wince when it boomed. “Amanda! Did I call it, or did I call it?”

    
“You called it.” Mom glued on a smile.