The Fruitcake Murders. Ace Collins
During that time, many of the Marines Lane had fought beside aged a couple of decades. Worse yet, more friends than he cared to remember were buried on those islands and would never age at all. So, emerging from the war with a few minor scrapes and some mental baggage meant he was lucky. Yet, if he were so lucky, then why did he feel so guilty for making it home alive, and why did his good fortune eat at his gut and cost him sleep? Why did surviving carry such a huge cost?
Checking his watch for the tenth time in the last fifteen minutes, Lane adjusted the Windsor knot on his blue-striped tie and smoothed the lapels of his gray suit before turning away to study something you wouldn’t find in his cramped apartment—a six-foot cedar tree standing proudly in the room’s far corner. On this night, no one had plugged in the lights, so the tinsel didn’t shine the way it should and the blue and red balls looked less colorful, but, even in its darkened state the evergreen still clearly spelled out that the holidays were on their way. Smiling grimly, Lane noted that under the fir’s bottom branches were a half dozen carefully wrapped presents each decorated with red bows that blended perfectly with the green-striped paper hiding their contents. It didn’t take a cop’s keen observation skills to deduce someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make this holiday special. Yet, some things just don’t work out the way they are planned and that was a crying shame. This holiday was going to be anything but bright for the family who lived in this Windy City mansion. Death had a way of stealing the light even from Christmas.
Just to the festive tree’s right was a console radio. The Zenith was almost four feet tall and at least thirty inches wide. The front veneer featured a half dozen different types of wood including maple, white oak, and mahogany, but the cabinet was mainly walnut. Strolling over to the impressive radio, Walker flipped the set on and waited for the unit’s seven tubes to warm up. Forty-five seconds later the strains of Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” filled the eight-hundred-square-foot room and, at least for a moment, it not only looked like the holidays, but sounded like them as well. As the modern carol’s lyrics spoke of hopes that the coming days would be bright, the visitor leaned against the unit’s cabinet and closed his eyes. In a matter of moments, he was transported to a better time and a much happier place when he still believed in Santa Claus and the holidays were filled with wonder, hope, and excitement. Whatever happened to the innocent days of his youth surrounded by family and friends? How had they so quickly evaporated into little more than faded memories? If only his parents were still alive to once more welcome him home with a hug, a cup of hot chocolate, and a cheery Merry Christmas.
Lane became so lost in thoughts of Christmases from long ago, he almost didn’t hear the doorbell’s chime, now just barely audible over Crosby’s sincere crooning. Snapping out of a dream centering on his mother’s pumpkin pie, he shook the fifteen-year-old memory from his head, quickly crossed the room, and marched out the open, ten-foot pocket doors leading to a hall. Turning left, he made his way to the towering front door. Glancing through the oval leaded glass set into the walnut entry, he saw a face he knew all too well. In an instant, for a reason that really made no sense, a very bad day had just gotten worse. Against his better judgment, he twisted the knob allowing a personal ghost of Christmas past to enter.
“It’s freezing out there!” Tiffany Clayton grumbled as she pushed through the entry. “By the way, that’s the strongest, coldest wind I’ve felt since . . .” When the visitor unwrapped the red scarf from her neck and took a moment to look up at Lane’s face, her jaw dropped. Frowning, she studied her unexpected host for several seconds before taking a quick inventory of the room, and, after setting her duffle-bag-size purse on a table just to the right of the entry, demanded, in a tone harsher than the frigid breeze, “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same thing of you,” he shot back.
Her angry blue eyes once again locked onto the unhappy doorman and, after sweeping her wavy blonde hair from her shoulder, she snapped, “As if I have to tell a dumb cop anything I’m doing. But just to keep you from putting me under a hot lamp and grilling me for five hours, I’m here to interview Mr. Ethan Elrod. I was supposed to meet him about thirty minutes ago, but the snow and all the Christmas shoppers created one long traffic jam from downtown until about a block south of my final turn. Where are the city services when you need them? The plows need to be clearing those streets! If the streets become impassable, the merchants are going to lose money.”
“You always have an excuse for being late,” Lane groaned. “It’s as much a part of you as those blue eyes and that red lipstick you always slap on.”
Glaring, the guest shot back, “You don’t slap on lipstick. It is applied. Besides, I wasn’t the one who missed the Independence Day fireworks show. In fact, I was there early and watched it all by myself. You arrived just as everyone was leaving and you still owe me for the tickets.”
“That was five years ago,” he sighed. “As I remember, that same summer you weren’t just late, but completely missed a play, two movies, and three dinner dates.”
Tiffany set her jaw, locked her knees, and roared, “You gave me the wrong address and time on two of those.” Shaking her finger in his face, she added spitefully, “It was your fault.”
“I gave you the right address and times,” he argued, “you just couldn’t remember them. I’ve noticed that information pours from your mind like salt out of a Morton’s box. You need a little Dutch boy to follow you around and plug up that hole in your head.”
“Fine,” she almost growled, “twist the facts any way you want. That’s what cops do. Now I’m here for a legitimate reason, so why don’t you let me go to work rather than harassing me. Oh, that’s right, that’s what cops do—they harass people . . . especially reporters!”
Leaning closer to her face he barked, “Yeah, I live for it. Nothing I like better than making your life miserable.”
“Well,” she jabbed, “at least you’re very good at something. Isn’t there a donut shop you could be haunting? Now where are you hiding the district attorney?”
In the light of what had happened earlier tonight, the sparring session had been mildly amusing. Yet, as the cold reality of life pushed its ugly truth back into one of life’s lighter moments, it was time to end the war of words that had been going on for years and spell out the hard, cold facts to the misguided member of the fourth estate. Rather than level her with a verbal left hook from out of nowhere, Lane uncharacteristically opted to employ a bit of tact. “Tiffany, why don’t you shake the snow off your shoes and head into the living room.”
Digging her high heels into the carpet, she demanded, “Where’s Elrod?”
Lane shook his head. So much for kid gloves. It was time to blow the impertinent woman out of the water. “You’re not going to be talking to the district attorney tonight or any other time.”
“You can’t keep the press away from him,” she shot back, pushing her five-foot-two-inch frame as high as it would go by lifting her heels off the floor and perching on her tiptoes. “I have my rights guaranteed by the constitution.”
Lane leaned forward to a point where they were nose-to-nose and forcefully quipped, “I’m not trying to deny you the opportunity to interview an elected official. It’s just that it’s pretty hard to get quotes from a dead man.”
“What?” As she pushed the word between her lips, the color drained from her beautiful face and her heels once more met the carpet. The news had deflated her ego as well as taken her voice. In another place and another time, that would have been something to celebrate, but not now.
“That’s the sad fact,” the cop quickly explained, his tone lower and softer. “Now, if you’ll pick up that steamer trunk you call a purse and join me in the living room, I’ll give you what I know.”
He didn’t wait for a response but turned on the heels of his brown wingtips and made his way across the hall through the pocket doors and into the home’s largest room. He waited in front of a dark green, velvet-covered reading chair as the woman removed her coat, laid it over the arm of the couch, dropped her bag on the cushion, and folded her arms.