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

wore gloves or wiped it clean. Of course, there would be some partial prints of Judy’s. The poker’s in her home.”
    His look told me I was getting a little too argumentative.
    “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up. But are you at least looking for other suspects too? Kent, I can’t believe this quiet, mild-mannered woman is a killer. She just isn’t the type.”
    “She’s pregnant, you know. Hormones and all.”
    “Kent! Oh, please!”
    “Hey, I’m just saying there’s a case right now where this woman’s using raging hormones as a defense. Doesn’t deny she did the crime.” He shrugged and gave me a raised eyebrow.
    I gritted my teeth and suggested I better get going. He didn’t contradict me.
    Outside, the sky was a clear, pale blue and the wind was sharp. I pulled on my knitted mittens and zipped my parka up to my chin. I race-walked around the block to dissipate a little energy. Back at the car, I fumbled with the key twice before getting the door open.
    We’d be lucky if she killed herself . Hadn’t Judy grumbled those very words to me at the cookie swap?
    I could just kill her . Didn’t she once say that to me, too? She must have said it to other neighbors too, because the police had obviously gotten some pretty strong ammunition in their queries among the crowd last night.
    This wasn’t looking good. I didn’t have any idea how long it would take Kent to put together enough evidence to arrest her, but that sure looked like the track he was taking.

9

    I cranked the Jeep’s engine to life and cruised the downtown streets before turning west on Central. Although we weren’t officially open all this week, on an impulse I decided to stop at the office before heading home.
    The gray and white Victorian sits in a neighborhood that’s partly commercial and partly residential, and has been that way for many years. We like being on the quiet side street and the fact that there are some full-time neighbors around who keep an eye on the place. I pulled my Jeep into the driveway that follows the left hand side of the property to the back, where a one-time carriage house serves as storage and the yard as parking area.
    The old house was cool and echoey, lonely feeling in its holiday abandonment. The linoleum on the kitchen floor creaked as I walked across it, switching on lights, heading for the hallway to turn up the thermostat. A pile of mail sprawled on the floor inside the front door and I scooped it up and deposited it on Sally’s desk. Absently, I picked up each piece and sorted them into piles—for Sally, Ron and myself. I’d become so engrossed in the mindless flipping of envelopes that I nearly jumped out of my skin when the phone rang.
Patting myself on the chest, I let it go four times so the answering machine would pick up.
“Charlie, are you there?” Drake’s voice came through the tinny little speaker.
I reached for Sally’s handset. “I’m here. How did you know?”
“Just a wild guess. I tried your cell, but it’s turned off. So I took a chance that you’d stopped at the office.”
I reached into my purse as he spoke and checked my little phone. The battery had gone dead sometime in the past few days.
“. . . taking her away right now,” he was saying.
“What? I missed the first part of that.”
“The police have just taken Judy Garfield.”
    A ball of lead settled in my stomach. “Damn that Kent Taylor,” I railed. “I just saw him and he knew this was happening. Didn’t say a word about it to me.”
“Wilbur’s over here now, out in the kitchen with Mom. He doesn’t know what to do next.”
“Has he called a lawyer?”
“I don’t think so. They don’t know many people here. Can you recommend anyone?”
“Let me put you on hold. I’ll check Ron’s Rolodex.” I pressed the red button and trotted up the stairs.
    Ron’s office is on the left, with mine across the hall. His desk, as usual, was a hodgepodge of paper—piles of unopened mail mixed in with telephone