The Killer Wore Cranberry: Room for Thirds

Year

The Killer Wore Cranberry: Room for Thirds

J. Alan Hartman, Editor

Cover Copyright 2013 by Dara England and Untreed Reads Publishing

The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

Copyright 2013 by

Lisa Wagner: Lisa’s Pumpkin Cranberry Pancakes

Toni Goodyear: Stuffed

Lesley A. Diehl: A Saucy Kind of Holiday

Elizabeth Hosang: The Corner Suite

Barb Goffman: Operation Knock Her Down a Peg

Herschel Cozine: A Pig in a Poke

Barbara Metzger: Mama Made Kugel

Lisa Wagner: Lisa’s Cranberry Chutney

Big Jim Williams: The Mashed Potato/Cranberry Thanksgiving Murder Case

Randall DeWitt: The Bells of Saint Marie

Sarafina Gravagno: You Say Potato

Laird Long: Vegetables Aren’t Good For You

Rhett Shepard: Blame It on the Chef

Lisa Wagner: Lisa’s Apple Cranberry Pie

Warren Bull: It’s All in the Timing

Lee Hammerschmidt: Diminishing Returns

Sharon Daynard: Cheese It, The Cops

Mary Mackey: Fowl Play

Mary Patterson Thornburg: Next Year, the Lotus Garden

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Also in The Killer Wore Cranberry Series by Untreed Reads Publishing

The Killer Wore Cranberry

The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Second Helping

http://www.untreedreads.com

Introduction

When my sister and I were little kids in the mid through late 1970s, time and seasons weren’t tracked by a calendar. Instead, we followed when a Charlie Brown special would suddenly appear as A CBS Special Presentation and sponsored by Dolly Madison (Maker of neat-to-eat treats). Together we’d each grab a pillow and curl up with shows such as It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It gave us something to look forward to, and if the show was on the air we knew there was something special about to arrive in the form of decorations, family get-togethers and the wonderful smells of cooking.

Today, I look at The Killer Wore Cranberry in much the same fashion. This is the third outing for this incredibly popular series, and each year I receive more and more submissions than the previous year. The pattern is always the same. I start receiving emails asking when the window will open to accept stories, the submission process then opens up for the same dates as the year before and the finished project arrives almost always at the same time as the last installment. I may not have a pillow to curl up with when it happens, no fancy logo swirling on the television screen and no Raspberry Zingers in my hands, but I can pretty much set a calendar by The Killer Wore Cranberry. I know that when the book comes out, it’s time for that very special time of year that fills me with as much happiness as it did when I was a child.

I’m hoping that the feel of humor and mystery help create the same feeling of coziness for readers of this series. I’d like to think that they get just as excited as I do when this hilarious anthology comes out, and that it inspires them to get ready for the fun of the holiday season. And, hopefully provides them with some good alibis should they choose to whack someone over the Thanksgiving turkey. Hey, it happens.

If there’s one great lesson to be learned from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, it’s that sometimes it’s not about the family you’re given but about the family you make. Just as Charlie Brown is surrounded by his friends, The Killer Wore Cranberry: Room for Thirds allows me to sit down at a virtual table with mine. Barbara Metzger is one of those legends in the writing world who I can’t imagine not working with at this point, having released over twenty titles by her. Barb Goffman and Lesley A. Diehl have appeared in both of the other installments in this series, as has Laird Long in the first book and Herschel Cozine in the second. There’s Warren Bull, Lee Hammerschmidt and Elizabeth Hosang who I’ve had the pleasure to work with on other Untreed Reads projects. And then there are the new guests: Randall DeWitt, Sharon Daynard, Big Jim Williams, Sarafina Gravagno, Rhett Shepard, Mary Mackey, Toni Goodyear and Mary Patterson Thornburg. I’m so glad you’re here with us!

The other guest this year is Lisa Wagner, who I asked to come to dinner and bring some of her favorite Thanksgiving recipes to share with all of you. Killing people and stealing turkeys and all that is fine, but you really need to do it on a full stomach. Preferably, one that’s full of healthy and nutritious food. I hope Lisa’s recipes inspire you to try something new with your families. The other reason why Lisa’s appearance here is so special for me? She’s the sister that watched those Charlie Brown specials with me. We may be thousands of miles apart for Thanksgiving, but her recipes and her place in this book immediately take me back to when we were just kids watching cartoons and looking forward to the wonder of the holiday season.

So, Lisa’s about to make some pancakes for you and then Toni Goodyear is going to start off this Thanksgiving storytelling event. After that, please pass the mashed potatoes to your left, the stuffing to the right and get ready to be entertained by some truly hilarious crimes.

Meanwhile, I’m going to hunt down my remote and a box of Zingers. I’m pretty sure I hear the opening music of a certain Charlie Brown special.

J. Alan Hartman

October 2013

Lisa’s Pumpkin Cranberry Pancakes

Lisa Wagner

3 cups oat flour (use a coffee grinder, 1/2 cup at a time, to grind rolled or quick oats)

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup ground flaxseeds (use a coffee grinder)

2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice

1/2 tsp. salt

3 Tbsp. sugar

3 cups rice milk

15 ounces canned pumpkin

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup light olive oil

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups fresh/frozen cranberries, or chopped apples, or a combination of the two (optional)

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. One by one, add wet ingredients, then stir to combine. Add fresh/frozen cranberries/apples to batter. Spoon batter onto 350F electric griddle.

Yields 24 pancakes

Serves 8, 3 pancakes each

Stuffed

By Toni Goodyear

The listening device stood in the eastern corner of my study. From there it was a straight shot to the Wellings’ house, which, according to the gizmo, put exactly two hundred and fifty-seven feet between me and the home photography studio where Brian Wellings enjoyed weekly carnal relations with my wife.

I slipped on the headset, propped my feet on my desk, and sipped my coffee. From what I could hear, surveillance was not uppermost on their minds, though half an hour earlier I had gotten a brief mention.

Does George suspect? Brian had asked.

No, Sharon said.

Are you sure?

Positive.

How do you know?

George doesn’t notice things.

Doesn’t notice…what?

Anything. That’s the problem, you see.

I didn’t think that was the problem. I thought the fact that she was a lying, sneaking bitch was the problem. And Brian? Well, what could I say? When we last played golf, I beat his slick, GQ arse by twelve strokes. As we clomped through bushes to find his personalized, neon-yellow golf balls, he’d told me about his other current affair, the one with Donna Carlton, wife of the sawed-off little banker one block west on Hinton. She was getting uppity, Brian said. She wanted him to leave his wife, could I imagine that? He was going to have to cut her off, send her back to her old man.

And you back to your wife, I said.

He smirked. Never have just one on the side, man, it muddles the brain. Wouldn’t be fair to Emma.

Ah, a man of principle, I thought, as I whacked the ball with the tip of my club and sent it whizzing past his left ear. He dove sideways, tripped into a patch of nettles, and came up swearing. On the seventeenth hole I hit the green in one with a line drive over the pond and he threw his full bag of clubs into the water. Brian, I decided, was not a good sport.

I, on the other hand, was a magnificent sport. I’d listened to this guy bang my wife for ten weeks now, and I hadn’t wired his Range Rover or poisoned his two black Labs. I’d flattened one of his tires once, and doused his ornate bronze mailbox with fluorescent paint one dark, drunken night. On balance, I’d call that a measured response. Not that I was being noble. When I finally did go after the SOB I intended for it to be him, not me, that did the paying.

I refreshed my coffee from the electric pot on my desk and turned up the volume on the receiver. Someone was moaning…Sharon? Yes, Sharon. I’d recognize that phony moan anywhere. Which raised the question: If you were already faking orgasms with your husband, why would you take on a lover to do the same thing? It was an existential question worthy of Sartre.

Or Oprah.

There were many existential questions in this gated community of high property values, low morals, and allegedly upscale tastes. Buying a house here had been Sharon’s idea, not mine. The house reflected her to a T. Now, the day before Thanksgiving, the front lawn was bedecked with picture-perfect hayscapes of pumpkin, apple, and gourd, with five life-size scarecrows (four hundred bucks apiece) arrayed in strategic poses. All the front-facing windows of our house—just like the neighbors’ houses—sported candles. Lavish garlands of cranberry and pine straw festooned all the front entries, up and down the street.

A few days from now, Sharon would hire workers to remove the scarecrows, hoist up the Christmas lights, and assemble a ceramic tableau of a Victorian St. Nick kneeling in a group of children, his arms open in welcome. Sculpted by a local artist, the piece was the envy of the neighborhood. To my mind, it looked like a monument to pedophilia. The nicest thing I could say about it was that the wide base killed weeds along with the grass.

Actually, the nicest thing I did say about it when it arrived was nothing at all, which was how it became one of the many things Sharon said I never noticed.

Lucky for me, I had noticed that she only used meaningful dates for computer passwords. And, lucky for me, after twelve years of marriage I knew all of her meaningful dates. Which was how, after watching her and Brian together at the Welcome Autumn dance at the club back in September, I was able to sneak a look at her computer files. I had to admit, the photos he’d taken of them in flagrante were stunners.

* * *

Sharon came home at four, way ahead of Brian’s wife and way ahead of me on days I wasn’t working at home, which was supposed to have been today. I heard her Lexus pull into the driveway, retrieved from wherever she stashed it on Brian days. I met her at the front door and flashed her a big welcoming smile.

You’re home, she said, her eyes widening.

Yes.

I thought…um, never mind. Fix us a drink, will you? I’ll be right down.

She slid past me, blew me a sideways kiss, and hustled upstairs to shower and change. I caught a whiff of Brian’s obnoxious cologne as she went by.

Sharon didn’t know how often I’d been working from home for the last two-plus months, firing up the parabolic eavesdropper for her matinee performances. I always left the house before she got home. I’d take a drive in the country or drop in at a bar in another town, reappearing around six forty-five. Today I didn’t bother. This was a holiday weekend; things changed on holiday weekends.

I had the martinis waiting when she came downstairs twenty minutes later. I smiled and held out a glass. Even after all this time, I marveled at the sight of her. A well-stacked brunette with green eyes and head-turner cheekbones, smelling like an English garden.

She put her arms around my neck. I missed you today. Bridge and shopping—dull, dull, dull.

Well, maybe we can think of something more stimulating to do tonight.

Maybe we can, she said coyly.

We sat on bar stools at the kitchen island and picked at a plate of garlic hummus and rice crackers.

Her voice was casual as she sipped her drink. I thought you said you had an important meeting today.

I opted to phone in at the last minute. Spent the day in my underwear. Like you, I thought. Two hundred and fifty-seven feet apart. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, the office would have been a tomb by noon anyway. Everyone’s put in a lot of hours.

The holiday season was the busiest time of year for SweetStuff, Inc., where I was executive VP. We were purveyors of honey from around the world—400 kinds to be precise. Honeybees had come to America with the Pilgrims, they were here for the first feast. Sharon’s bow to tradition was her signature phyllo stack, layered with sautéed walnuts, pecans, and pine nuts rolled in fine sourwood honey and coated with ricotta, then topped with chocolate slivers and the perfect drizzle of amaretto. To die for.

Did you remember to bring the honey? she asked.

Of course. We wouldn’t want to disappoint Cousin Lena. Or Emma Wellings, for that matter. Last year she scarfed down all but the plate.

Sharon hesitated a beat too long at the mention of Brian’s wife. I remember.

Yes, it was true; Brian and Emma Wellings came to our Thanksgiving dinner every year. We typically invited a dozen guests, friends and a few family who lived within driving distance. In our late forties, we were already creatures of habit, Sharon and I. We’d get up early Thanksgiving morning, make cappuccino, turn on the parade for background, and cook. Guests would arrive around four to songs about autumn leaves and the joys of being home with loved ones. There would be glimpses of football, casual hands of rummy. Drinks, talk, happy.

I wonder if we should keep doing this every year, Sharon said, rubbing the back of her neck, as if the mention of Emma Wellings had karate-chopped it. It’s a lot of work.

Tired?

She looked at me with a tinge of sadness. Weary.

I decided to let that lie.

After dinner we moved chairs around to get things ready for the next day. When we spread the dining table to add a third leaf, I faked a pulled muscle and begged off on the extracurricular stimulation I had earlier proposed. Sharon cocked her head at me curiously, but said only, I’ll go to bed early, then, so I can get up and face the bird.

I kissed her on the forehead. I’ll be up soon. Don’t wait for me.

* * *

I went to my study and locked the door. I loved this room, this man-cave I’d claimed from a portion of my former three-car garage. The rich warmth of polished wood evoked kinder, gentler times; my desk gleamed like the bridge of a yacht.

The bookcases behind the desk were built-ins, an entire wall of them, designed and constructed, like everything else in the room, by yours truly. I’d run extra molding vertically at each corner of the wall to emphasize the design. The bookcases looked like they’d been framed, like a painting.

I moved to the right-hand corner and groped with my fingers for a thin seam on the molding. I found it, and flipped up a two-inch section of the wood like it was a panel cover. I tugged the release lever behind it. When I heard the click, I moved to