The Snow White Christmas Cookie

looking woman with a strong jaw and long, beautiful black hair streaked with silver. Also a tight-lipped, controlled woman who seemed to be under a great deal of strain. Worry lines furrowed her brow. Casey was her twenty- eight-year-old son from a marriage that had ended in divorce long ago. Paulette had wangled him a part-time job as a weekend carrier. He lived in the basement of the house she shared with Hank.

“I’m not being nasty,” insisted Hank, who was evidently well into the high-octane eggnog. “Just saying Casey and Kylie would make a nice couple. Am I right or am I right?” he asked Lem.

“Totally right,” Lem assured him with a big grin.

Lem liked Hank. Everyone liked Hank. He was a goofy, amiable and extremely active fellow around Dorset. In addition to his duties on the fire department, he coached the girls’ high school basketball team and played tuba in the Dorset town band. Most Saturdays, he could be found working the second chair for John the Barber. Hank was lanky and splay footed with thinning sandy-colored hair and an extremely large, busy Adam’s apple. He had the wheezy laugh of a longtime smoker. He also had a habit of sucking on his teeth, which were crooked and rather horsy.

“Casey ought to find himself a nice girl,” Hank went on, pausing to take another gulp of his eggnog. “Not to mention a full-time job and his own place to live. He spends all day in our basement stuffing his face and watching TV. And all night at the Rustic drinking beer and watching TV. That kid must spend eighteen hours a day in front of the TV.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mitch said. “I’d take that deal.”

“So would I,” Hank agreed. “I’d like to know how he got so lucky.”

“Casey has issues,” Paulette said to him in a distinctly cool voice.

“He’s not the only one,” Bella interjected, wagging a stubby finger at Hank. “I have an issue with you. I have gotten no mail for the past two days, mister. Not so much as a single Chanukah card. And I still haven’t received my three-month supply of Lipitor. My online pharmacy mailed it to me from Dayton, Ohio, ten days ago.”

“It’s the snow, Mrs. Tillis,” Paulette explained. “Our out-of-state-mail isn’t coming in at Bradley Airport because the planes can’t land. And our trucks can’t make it here from Norwich because the governor keeps closing the highways.”

“That part I understand.” Bella turned her piercing gaze back at Hank. “But how come you didn’t say one word about the marble cake I left in my box for you? I baked it for you special.”

Hank’s mouth opened but no sound came out. He looked totally thrown.

Paulette stepped into the awkward silence. “Lem, all of this snow must be good for your business.”

“You’d think so,” he acknowledged, scratching at his beard with a thumbnail the size of a clamshell. It wasn’t a very clean-looking thumbnail. It wasn’t a very clean-looking beard either. “Only, I’ve been working harder than I ever have, plowing day and night, and I’m practically going broke. They keep jacking up the price of road salt for one thing. And, well, this is Dorset. People don’t pay their bills.” He glanced over in the direction of First Selectman Paffin. “Especially the rich ones. Keep telling me they left my money out in their mailbox. Except, guess what? The money’s not there.”

“How do you explain that?” Des asked.

He shrugged his big shoulders. “Easy. They got no problem lying to people like me.”

“Get out, my next door neighbors decided to show,” Mitch exclaimed as Bryce Peck and Josie Cantro started across the parlor toward them.

Bryce Peck was the black sheep of Dorset’s blue-blooded founding family. An aging wild child who’d spent his entire adult life running away from his life of privilege only to return home this past August as a gaunt, weathered burnout case. Bryce’s extremely tight-assed older brother, Preston, was allowing him to winter over in the family’s prized eight-bedroom summer house out on Big Sister in exchange for Bryce serving as the island’s caretaker. Des imagined that Bryce had been quite dashing in his youth. He was tall and broad shouldered, with deep-set dark eyes and high, hard cheekbones. But now, at age forty-six, he was a haunted shell of a man, his face ravaged by decades of hard living. Word was he’d been a heavy drinker. Heavy into any drugs, legal and illegal, that made you numb. Those deep-set eyes of his had a frightened look in them. And his work-roughened hands never stopped trembling. Mitch got along well with him. Mitch was gifted that way. But Bryce stayed away from most people. He was a moody, withdrawn man who was uneasy in social settings.

Especially now that he was clean and sober thanks to Josie Cantro, a blonde who was fifteen years younger than Bryce. Josie didn’t come from money. Didn’t come from Dorset. She was from somewhere up in Maine. But she’d built herself a thriving little business as Dorset’s resident life coach. Josie was one of those relentlessly upbeat women who helped other people do things like lose weight. She’d helped Bryce wean himself off of booze and pills. And in the process they’d fallen in love. She’d moved in with him just before Thanksgiving. Josie was always perky, always smiling that sunny smile of hers. She practically glowed. Not exactly a beauty. Her face was too round. And she had a turned-up little pug nose. But she was definitely a honey, with big blue eyes, a long mane of creamy blond hair and a slammin’ bod. A health food junkie and fitness freak who’d taken to dragging neighbor Mitch out for morning beach runs in the snow. Also to rummaging through his kitchen for evil junk food. Josie’s heart was in the right place. Des had no doubt it was because of her that Bryce had shown up here to pay his respects to his cousin Rut. She also had no doubt that Josie had done many people around Dorset a lot of good. And yet, Des couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the woman was wrong. It was not, repeat not, a jealousy thing. Des didn’t worry about Mitch. But her cop instincts kept telling her that nobody was as unfailingly smiley faced as Josie Cantro was-not unless they were fronting.

“Hey, naybs, are you up for a snow run tomorrow morning?” Josie asked Mitch brightly when she and Bryce reached them.

“Absolutely, naybs,” Mitch answered just as brightly.

Or maybe I’m just being bitchy because I hate the stupid nickname that he and his vanilla blonde neighbor have for each other.

Bryce, meanwhile, stood there looking as if he wanted to flee through the nearest exit. When Mitch put a hand on his shoulder the poor man practically jumped out of his skin.

“Easy there, pardner,” Mitch said. “You’re among friends.”

Bryce nodded his head, shuddering. “For a second I–I just couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t what, Bryce?”

“Remember what I was doing here.”

Josie turned her attention to Hank. “Dude, how are you doing?”

“Doing great.” Hank patted his shirt pocket. “Got my nicotine gum right here if I need it. So far I haven’t.”

“And he hasn’t had a cigarette in two months,” Paulette put in proudly. “All thanks to you, Josie.”

“It wasn’t me. It was all Hank. Hank’s the man.” Now Josie’s blue-eyed gaze fell on Des. “I am so totally hating you right this second.”

“And this would be because?…”

She was staring longingly at Des’s skinny jeans. “I exercise two hours a day. I subsist on wild greens and tree bark. And when I tried on a pair of those I looked like I ought to be playing left tackle for the New England Patriots.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe, Trooper Des. These thighs are seriously chunky. And we won’t even discuss my butt.”

Old Rut waddled his way over toward them, his face aglow. “Thanks again, young lady,” he said to Tina. “This is a wonderful evening.”

“My pleasure, Mr. Peck.”

“Everybody enjoying that eggnog?”

“You bet,” Lem said.

Rut raised an eyebrow at Mitch. “There’s, um, something I want to show you down in the cellar, young fella.”

“Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?”

Rut nodded. “I saved one last case for a special occasion. And this here is it.” Clearly, they were talking