The Snow White Christmas Cookie

“He liked his beer.”

“How about bourbon?”

“Not real often. Why?”

“He smelled strongly of it when we found him.”

Paulette furrowed her brow. “There’s a half-bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the kitchen cupboard, I think. It’s been in there for at least a year.”

“Would you mind checking to see if it’s still there?”

Paulette got up out of her recliner and went into the kitchen. “Still here,” she called out, returning with it. “I guess … he must have bought a bottle somewhere.”

“Must have.”

Paulette put the bottle of Jack Daniel’s down on the kitchen table and retrieved her wineglass, swaying slightly as she stood there. “Hank was the grinch, wasn’t he? That’s why he did himself in-because you were closing in on him. That text he sent me, when he said, ‘It’s all my fault. I messed up.’ That was him confessing.”

“It’s too soon to know at this point. Anything I say would be speculation, and I don’t like to speculate. May I see the text message?”

Paulette fetched her cell from the arm of her recliner, found Hank’s text message and held it out to her. Des studied it carefully. It was just as Paulette had reported it, word for word. “It’s all my fault. I messed up. Sorry for everything. Take care of yourself.” All very neat and correct. No typos. No text speak. And she’d received it when she’d said she had-at 7:13.

“You said you left him a voice message?”

Paulette nodded. “It should be on my call log. There it is, see? I called him at 7:07.”

“Paulette, I’m going to need to borrow your phone for a day or two.”

“Fine.” She sat back down in her recliner, sighing morosely. “It’s not much to grab on to, is it? He didn’t say he loved me or he’d miss me. He just said ‘Take care.’ Like I was one of his firehouse buddies.” Paulette gulped down some more wine. “What happens now?”

“The postal inspectors will be contacting you in the morning, I imagine. They’ll no doubt want to look into what’s been happening on Hank’s route. Try to determine if, say, he had money troubles.”

“Tell them to talk to his bitch of an ex-wife,” Paulette said angrily. “Her and that lawyer of hers. They tormented the poor man constantly about money. All because his mother committed the cardinal sin of dying. He sold her house and made a few dollars. Worked day and night and made a few dollars more. And for that they hounded him and hounded him.…”

“Paulette, do you think Hank was stealing his own mail?”

Dorset’s postmaster considered her reply for a long moment. “It wasn’t like him to pull something sneaky. Hank was the ultimate Boy Scout. His friends and neighbors felt safe having him coach their teenaged daughters. That’s saying something, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“But it sure looks like he was up to no good,” Paulette admitted. “I’d have to be an idiot not to see that. I just find it hard to believe, that’s all.”

“If Hank was stealing prescription meds then he must have had a buyer. Do you have any idea who he might have been dealing with? Did he make regular trips to New Haven or New London during the course of the week? Mention a friend who he visited? Anything like that?”

Paulette shook her head. “Nothing like that. But he did know a lot of people here in town. Maybe one of his firehouse or marching-band buddies put him in touch with someone. And he worked at John’s barber shop every Saturday. God only knows what sort of riffraff slithers in and out of there.” She heaved a pained sigh. “We could have licked it together. Taken out a second mortgage on this place. Sold one of our cars. Who cares? It’s only money. But Hank wouldn’t let me help him. He just kept saying, ‘It’s my baggage, not yours.’ He was a stubborn bastard. They’re all stubborn bastards.”

“Paulette, are you positive you don’t want me to call Casey for you? I’m sure he’ll want to come straight home.”

“The Rustic is his home. This is just where he sleeps.”

“Is there anybody I can call for you?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“So someone can be with you. You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

“I am alone,” she said, reaching for her wineglass. “I’m going to be alone for the whole rest of my life. I may as well start getting used to it.”

“So how’s my good friend Yolie Snipes?”

“She’s been happier. An entire boxed set of Feds will be swarming all over this by tomorrow morning. Yolie doesn’t play well with others.”

“Is she still partnered with Toni the Tiger?”

“She is.”

“Which one of them has started wearing patchouli?”

“Mitch, how on earth did?…”

“You reeked of it when you walked in that door. And I happen to know that there are no head shops in Dorset.”

Des shook her head at him. “I swear, sometimes you terrify me.”

All she’d wanted to do when she walked in that door was shuck her wet uni, jump into a hot shower and then into Mitch’s nice, warm bed. But Mitch, who was seven-tenths Jewish mother, had insisted she eat a late supper after her shower. So now she was seated on a blanket in front of the fire stuffing herself on the world’s most gigantic, delicious meat loaf sandwich. Clemmie and Quirt were crouched next to her, sniffing at her plate with keen, busy-nosed interest. Outside, the rain was still coming down. It was good to be warm and dry in front of this fire with Mitch and the cats. It was good to be Des Mitry tonight-as opposed to Paulette Zander, who was sitting in that dingy house with only a gallon jug of cheap Chablis and her dead boyfriend’s electric train set for company.

“You’re positive that Hank’s death wasn’t a suicide?”

“Couldn’t be more positive.” Des set aside the remains of her sandwich and took a sip from her glass of milk. “Someone staged the suicide scene, sent Paulette that text message and then took off in a second car. Whoever did it had a partner. We’re looking for two people.”

Mitch gazed thoughtfully into the fire for a long moment before he said, “Are you going to finish that sandwich?”

“It’s all yours.”

He dove in, continuing to stare into the fire. She knew that stare. His wheels were turning.

“What are you thinking, doughboy?”

“That I should have put some of Sheila Enman’s bread-and-butter pickles on this. Also something truly crazy. What if Bryce’s suicide was staged, too?”

“That’s not crazy at all. Yolie’s already fast-tracking Bryce’s autopsy. Although I don’t understand why someone would want to kill Bryce.”

“Why Josie would want to kill him, you mean.”

She frowned at him. “Josie?”

“No one else was out here this morning when he died. There were no tire tracks in the snow, no footprints.”

“Okay, let’s say you’re right about that.…”

“Oh, I’m right.”

“Why would Josie do it?”

“I can help you when it comes to a motive,” he said, shoving the last of her sandwich into his mouth. “Mighty big one, too.”

“Well, don’t be bashful. Let’s hear it.”

“Josie showed up here not long after you left with some very interesting news-Bryce asked Glynis Fairchild-