A Mayfair Christmas Carol a Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery Novella Read online

  A Mayfair Christmas Carol

  A Marcia Banks and Buddy Mystery Novella

  Kassandra Lamb

  misterio press, LLC

  Published by misterio press LLC

  Cover art by Melinda VanLone, Book Cover Corner

  Photo credit: silhouette of woman and dog by Majivecka (right to use purchased through Dreamstime.com)

  Copyright © 2017 by Kassandra Lamb

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used, transmitted, stored, distributed or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the writer’s written permission, except very short excerpts for reviews. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the publisher’s/author’s express permission is illegal and punishable by law.

  A Mayfair Christmas Carol is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and most places are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Some real places may be used fictitiously. The towns of Mayfair, Florida, and Collinsville, Florida are fictitious as is Collins County, Florida.

  The publisher does not have control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites and their content.

  Contents

  BOOKS BY KASSANDRA LAMB

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR NOTES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS by KASSANDRA LAMB

  The Kate Huntington Mystery Series:

  MULTIPLE MOTIVES

  ILL-TIMED ENTANGLEMENTS

  FAMILY FALLACIES

  CELEBRITY STATUS

  COLLATERAL CASUALTIES

  ZERO HERO

  FATAL FORTY-EIGHT

  SUICIDAL SUSPICIONS

  ANXIETY ATTACK

  POLICE PROTECTION

  The Kate on Vacation Novellas:

  An Unsaintly Season in St. Augustine

  Cruel Capers on the Caribbean

  Ten-Gallon Tensions in Texas

  Missing on Maui

  The Marcia Banks and Buddy Mysteries:

  To Kill A Labrador

  Arsenic and Young Lacy

  The Call of the Woof

  A Mayfair Christmas Carol (novella)

  Patches in the Rye

  The Legend of Sleepy Mayfair

  The Sound and the Furry

  A Star-Spangled Mayfair

  Lord of the Fleas

  My Funny Mayfair Valentine

  Unintended Consequences Romantic Suspense:

  (written under the pen name, Jessica Dale)

  Payback

  Backlash

  Backfire

  (coming 2021)

  ~

  Bartered Innocence

  (coming 2020)

  CHAPTER ONE

  This is crazy!

  Yeah, it had been my idea to begin with. But it was still crazy.

  I’d suggested we call a meeting to discuss ways we could promote our small Florida town of Mayfair as a tourist destination. The first few people I’d approached seemed skeptical, but the tide turned when I’d gotten the two matriarchs of the town invested in the idea.

  Now one of those matriarchs—the saner of the two, I had thought—was right in the middle of the craziness. And the other, the one who normally thrived on crazy ideas, was alternating between staring at the toes of her moccasins and plucking lint from her old brown sweater. The sweater and the footwear were Edna Mayfair’s only concessions to the cool evening. Otherwise, she was attired in one of her usual brightly colored and shapeless muumuus.

  Even Edna’s black and white Springer Spaniels, Bennie and Bo, were subdued, lying quietly at her feet instead of pestering the people around them for head pats and ear scratches.

  My own four-legged companion, Buddy, a Black Lab and Rottie mix, sat beside my chair. My favorite two-legged companion, Will Haines, had the good sense to stay home.

  Where I now fervently wished I was. Unfortunately, the prominent position of my seat—aisle end of the second row of the Methodist church’s parish hall—would make it difficult for me to unobtrusively slip out. That, and the fact that the woman leading the meeting had ridden to the church with me, kept me in said seat.

  The noise level in the large room rose a couple of decibels. Warm bodies and heated discussions made the air stuffy. I lifted the weight of my auburn hair off of my neck for a moment.

  Buddy rested his black chin on my knee and gave me a soulful look. I suspected he wanted to whine but was too well-behaved to do so. Surely the noise was hurting his ears.

  I was trying to decide how to rein in the chaos when a sharp series of cracks split the air.

  We all jumped and the competing conversations died away. Heads turned toward the front of the room, where Sherie Wells had improvised a gavel with a large metal spoon.

  She smacked it against the wooden table in front of her one more time and silence reigned.

  “Before we go any further,” she said in a loud, schoolmarm voice, “we should vote.”

  Nods and affirmative rumbles around me.

  “All those in favor of establishing the Mayfair Chamber of Commerce, raise your hand.” She raised her own hand and made a come-on gesture with the other. Her silky cream-colored blouse sleeve fell away from her wrist, revealing a clump of gold bracelets sparkling against her mahogany-brown skin.

  Despite having been retired for as long as I’d known her, Sherie did not let her appearance slide, not even for a minute. Since she lived next door to me, I’d caught glimpses of her in her mint green terrycloth robe on occasion. She looked regal even in that attire.

  Every hand in the place was raised, best I could tell, including Edna’s.

  Sherie nodded briskly, the smooth, still mostly black chignon on the back of her head bobbing. “Good.” She glanced at the other woman seated at the table.

  Charlene Woodward, blonde, fortyish, and built like a stick, had apparently been assigned a new role, recording secretary of the about-to-be-minted Chamber of Commerce. She was already Mayfair’s part-time postmistress, our sole mail carrier, and during the months of our prolonged summer—from mid-April through October—she and her husband ran a snow cone stand in one corner of the church parking lot. The snow cones probably had more to do with high Sunday school attendance than the curriculum did.

  Charlene mumbled, “Chamber of Commerce unanimously passed,” as she scribbled on the yellow lined pad in front of her.

  “Now,” Sherie said, “who is in favor of holding a Christmas event?”

  Hands waved in the air again, Edna Mayfair’s conspicuously missing. But her great nephew Dexter, sitting beside her, was waving his arm back and forth as if asking permission to go to the restroom. A big grin split his boyish face, attached to a man’s body.

  Sherie gave him a small smile, then glanced at Edna with worry in her eyes. Nonetheless, she forged ahead. “How many in favor of a Victorian theme?”

  Fewer hands this time, although still clearly a majority, and pandemonium erupted again.

  I tuned out at that point. Later I would wish I hadn’t.

  It was almost ten by the time the meeting adjourned. I was glad about two things. One, that everyone seemed enthusiastic about the idea of attempting to attract tourists. And two, that Sherie had ta
ken the lead.

  I’d hoped that she and/or Edna would do so. Even though the Chamber of Commerce had been my idea, I was enough of a newcomer—having lived in Mayfair for just under three years—that I felt weird taking on a leadership role.

  Edna had been gung-ho until the Christmas festivities discussion had taken over the agenda. Then she’d let Sherie take the lead.

  Was the octogenarian a closet Scrooge?

  She always decorated the Mayfair Motel for Christmas, with fake garlands of greens and holly berries wrapped around anything upright and skinny that didn’t move. But I wasn’t real sure to what degree she actually celebrated the holiday, because I usually left around December twentieth to drive north to visit my family in Maryland.

  Now that I thought about it, whenever I’d asked how her holidays had been, she usually answered with words like peaceful and relaxing and then changed the subject.

  As I drove us home, Sherie was quiet, staring out her side window. Nearing the town’s only street light—Edna paid for the electricity to light it—she sat up straighter.

  Ahead were Dexter and Edna, walking up the sidewalk to the wide verandah that adorned the front of the new motel, erected on the site of the old one that had been burned down by a crazy person the previous spring.

  I tapped my horn and they both turned and waved. We waved back, although I doubted they could see us inside the dark car. Then I rounded the curve and pointed us toward our cottages at the end of a longish stretch of road with no development on either side. At least no recent development. The skeletons of several old shacks were slowly being consumed by termites and the rampant foliage of tropical plants.

  During the heyday of Mayfair in the 1960s, the black maintenance staff of the Mayfair Alligator Farm had lived along this stretch, segregated from the white residents of the town. Sherie’s father-in-law had been the maintenance supervisor.

  “Wish I knew what got into Edna tonight,” Sherie suddenly piped up, as I pulled to the curb in front of our houses.

  “Me too. I suggested the Chamber of Commerce idea as a way to make her motel more successful, so she could hire some staff and not work so hard.”

  Sherie turned her head and studied me. Her porch light shone on her face. “Edna doesn’t know how to not work so hard. Her brother was like that too. One time, Mr. Mayfair decided to expand the alligator farm. Daddy Wells got the men working on clearing the land, my daddy among them.” Her Southern accent thickened as she waxed nostalgic.

  “Jason and I were in high school then. We’d just started dating…” She paused, a slight smile on her lips. Jason Wells had been the love of her life, her only love—high school sweetheart and later husband of twenty-some years, sadly now deceased for at least ten. “They had plenty of workers then to do the work. The gator farm was still doing well. But Mr. Mayfair, he wasn’t the type to stand by and watch others labor. He rolled up his sleeves, literally, and worked right along side of them.”

  She pointed off to her right, away from the houses. “That area right there across from us, behind the old shacks, where they’re going to build the skating rink.”

  “Wha’? A skating rink!” I shook my head, sure I had misheard her. “As in ice skating? In Florida?” My voice ended on a bit of a squeak.

  She turned back to me. “Yes, ice skating, with some kind of freon tubes underneath the ice to keep it frozen.” She shook her finger in mock outrage. “I thought you looked a little glazed over, toward the end of things this evening. You weren’t paying attention, were you? They voted to build the rink as part of our winter extravaganza. And some of the ladies are making Victorian costumes for the skaters to wear.”

  I hoped the inside of the car was dark enough that Sherie couldn’t tell I was rolling my eyes.

  The rumble of machinery woke me for the third morning in a row. As I pulled my pillow up over my head, I once again wondered at the connections either Sherie or Edna must have with the county development office in order to score a building permit so quickly.

  Yes, Edna had climbed aboard the insanity train once several folks had pointed out how lucrative the whole venture could be. After all, crazy money-making schemes were the lifeblood of the Mayfair clan.

  Awhile later, I was awakened again, this time by the lack of machinery noises. My enjoyment of the peaceful silence was short-lived.

  A fist pounding on wood, followed by a frantic voice—male, I think, although I couldn’t be sure since it shrilled with desperation. I made out only “Señora Wells,” followed by several incoherent screeches.

  I climbed out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s shirt and jeans, then went to the kitchen to make coffee. One might wonder why I wasn’t more curious or anxious, but the reality is that few things go as planned in Mayfair—alligators come calling, crazies burn down motels, and termites manage to invade cement-block houses.

  Once the coffee was brewing, I headed for the front door to find out what all the ruckus was about.

  My blasé attitude evaporated when I stepped out on my front porch and turned to where Sherie Wells was standing on her own porch twenty feet away. Her eyes were wide and her brown skin had a grayish tinge to it. “Where’s Will?” she demanded.

  “Home, I guess,” I stammered. “He’s been working a big case, long hours.”

  “Get him!” Sherie drew the belt of her pale green terrycloth robe snug and, still wearing her bedroom slippers, marched off toward the lot across the street.

  My chin dropped at the sight—she normally wouldn’t go as far as her mailbox in robe and slippers. But I quickly recovered enough to call after her, “What’s going on?”

  Without looking back, she yelled, “They’ve found bones, and a skull.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  I hadn’t had to lie to Sherie, thank heavens, since last night was one of the rare occasions when Will actually did sleep in his own bed. More often than not, he was in mine. After all, it’s not like we’re blushing virgins. We’ve both been married and divorced.

  Will would love to make an honest woman of me. I’m the resistant one, for several reasons, the greatest of which is the lying, two-timing concert violinist back in Baltimore who used to be my husband. So to appease my need to go slow, Will bought the fixer-upper cottage next to mine as an interim step to living together.

  Ted had often used the excuse of not wanting to disturb me when he slept in the downstairs TV/guest room on nights he had late rehearsals. It had taken an anonymous phone call for me to catch on that he and one of the symphony’s cello players had been rehearsing something other than music during those late nights. And that Ted’s reason for sleeping elsewhere was so I wouldn’t smell another woman’s perfume on him.

  Thus, when Will didn’t answer my knock, a tiny seed of mistrust—which he did not deserve—had me tiptoeing through his house after letting myself in with my key. He had to have come home at some point last night. His unmarked sedan was parked out front.

  But what if he isn’t alone?

  I knew the thought was stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. I eased open his slightly ajar bedroom door and froze.

  Crapola!

  He was standing beside his bed in nothing but his boxers, pointing a Glock at my chest.

  “Mar-see-a,” he emphasized each syllable of my name, “sneaking into the house of a law enforcement officer is a really bad idea.” Under his grumpy tone, his voice sounded as tired as he looked. Normally rugged cheeks were sagging, and his baby blues were bloodshot.

  He sat down on the side of the bed and dropped the gun on the covers beside him.

  “But you knew it was me,” I said.

  “I suspected it was, but I couldn’t be sure. I’m dealing with some nasty dudes with this case.”

  “Um, I wouldn’t have bothered you this early, but…”

  Banging from the front of his house. A loud voice. This time I could make out the words, and the Spanish accent. “Señor Haines. Señora Wells, she say tell yo
u come quick.”

  “What the devil?” Will said.

  “That’s Jorge. He’s the foreman of the crew the Chamber of Commerce hired to build the skating rink.”

  A hard shake of his head. “Run that by me again.”

  “Remember I told you that we were going to form a Chamber of Commerce for Mayfair? Well, they decided to build an ice skating rink to use during their Christmas extravaganza.”

  “In Florida?” His voice rose a couple of octaves.

  “Yeah, well, that wasn’t my idea. I just wanted us to promote the town more as a tourist destination.”

  Will stood and grabbed a crumpled pair of khaki slacks from the floor. “So now they’re having some kind of Christmas thing?” he said as he pulled them on.

  “Yeah.” I extracted a chambray shirt from his closet and handed it to him. “But there’s been a new development.”

  Renewed banging on Will’s front door. “¡Señor, por favor!” Jorge sounded like he might burst into tears at any moment.

  Will pushed an arm into one shirt sleeve. “This new development seems to have your foreman a little worked up.”

  “Yeah, they seem to have found a skeleton.”

  “Marcia, get back behind the tape.”

  I’d slipped up behind Will, twisting to the side to see past his broad shoulders. “I only wanted to see if I knew him.”

  “Unlikely. He’s been in the ground at least a decade.”

  “Any ID on him?”

  “Marcia, get back!” Somehow Will managed to sound authoritative and long-suffering at the same time.

  I retreated to the yellow crime scene tape he’d strung around the perimeter of palmettos, shrubs and saplings that Jorge’s backhoe driver hadn’t yet uprooted. But I didn’t duck under the tape.