Holidays Can Be Murder: A Charlie Parker Christmas Mystery by Connie Shelton

okay. It’s over now.”
“I just . . . I can’t figure out why someone did this.”
    “Like robbery? Did you check the rest of the house? Maybe they broke in to steal something.” Aside from the fact that Paula was a real pain in the neck, I couldn’t think of any motives.
    “We glanced around a little. We really didn’t have much chance. The police were here so quickly. I didn’t notice anything missing, though, and they said there was no evidence of a break-in.” She glanced nervously at the back door. “I think I’ll just check everything one more time. What if we interrupted them when we came home? They might decide to come back.”
    I went around the house with her and checked all windows and doors. Everything looked secure, and I didn’t notice anything major out of place—no missing TV set, no drawers left open with clothing hanging out. Wilbur was locked in the master bath with the shower running, but that was the only window we didn’t test. I left a few minutes later, both of us trying to convince the other to sleep well.
    I slid into bed beside Drake a few minutes later but didn’t actually close my eyes until gray dawn began to show at the windows.
    The day after Christmas here in Albuquerque has become nearly the biggest shopping day of the year. Everybody has to rush out to exchange all the stuff they didn’t really want for the stuff they could have just bought for themselves if they hadn’t spent all their money buying other people stuff they really didn’t want either. Knowing this, the last places I’d want to be were the malls or downtown. However, curiosity was going to get the best of me and I knew I’d end up in Kent Taylor’s office at the main APD downtown station.
    I sat in a straight wooden chair across from him, having cruised a four-block area three times to get a parking place. My excuse for coming was that Wilbur and Judy were too upset to ask about the autopsy report and had sent me to do it. My real reason was my usual one—I wanted to know the skinny on what the police were doing.
    “Pretty much what we knew at the scene,” Kent was saying. “Blow to the head with the fireplace tool. The indent matches the hook on the Garfield’s poker. Beyond that, let’s see . . . blood alcohol level pretty high. Way more than is legal for driving. But then, she wasn’t driving, was she? Other drugs—pretty good amount of cocaine. The combination isn’t a good one. But she’d probably been mixing them for quite awhile and it wasn’t enough to kill her. That’s not the full, final report, but it’s the important stuff.”
    “Was there a struggle at the scene?” I hadn’t noticed much out of place, but there’d been time to straighten everything by the time I’d arrived last night.
    “Not much, if any. Couple of chair cushions on the floor. The son told us he wasn’t sure if the front door was locked when they got home.”
    “How could he not be sure?”
    “Said he approached the door, used his key, went on in. Didn’t really pay attention to whether the lock was actually engaged or not.”
“So, Paula could have opened the door to her killer?”
“Or it could have been someone with a key.”
“Who else would have a key but Wilbur or Judy?”
“Exactly. That, coupled with a few other things are pointing to her as the main suspect.”
“Really, Kent. Judy?”
    He ticked off points on his fingers. “One, she made no secret of it that she wouldn’t mind seeing her mother-in-law dead. Two, she disappeared from the dinner party she was at for—let’s see, the hostess told us--well over an hour. Three, there were more sets of tire tracks in the snow at the front of their driveway than they can account for. Said they went out twice all day; there are three sets of tracks.”
    “All those tracks are from their car? For sure?”
    “Looks that way. And, four, the only prints on the weapon belong to your neighbor, Judy.”
    “Well, whoever used it obviously either