The Worst Noel Read online

  THE WORST NOEL

  The Juniper Junction Holiday Mystery Series: Book One

  Amy M. Reade

  Pau Hana Publishing

  Contents

  Books by Amy M. Reade

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Recipes

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  About the Author

  Books by Amy M. Reade

  Standalone books

  Secrets of Hallstead House

  The Ghosts of Peppernell Manor

  House of the Hanging Jade

  The Malice series

  The House on Candlewick Lane

  Highland Peril

  Murder in Thistlecross

  Copyright © 2018 by Amy M. Reade.

  Cover design by http://www.StunningBookCovers.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Pau Hana Publishing

  Print ISBN: 978-1-7326907-0-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7326907-1-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Nana, who loved Christmas

  Chapter 1

  Lilly awoke hours before dawn to the sound of her alarm clock going off. She flung her hand in the general direction of the nightstand to find the snooze button and stop the incessant ringing, but only succeeded in knocking the clock to the floor.

  “Ugh,” she groaned. She leaned over the side of the bed and clawed the floor, trying to reach the clock. When she found it, she turned it off and sat up groggily, wiping sleep from her eyes and yawning. Barney, the family’s Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier, lifted his shaggy, brindle-hued head and stretched across the foot of the bed.

  “I hate Black Friday,” she said to Barney. The biggest shopping day of the year brought a level of anxiety that gave her nightmares the other three hundred sixty-four days. She peered into the bathroom mirror before heading downstairs. Her brown hair was tangled from sleep and her eyes, normally bright hazel, were hooded and sported bags.

  She needed coffee and lots of it. She went downstairs to find that the kids had left the kitchen light on all night again. “Good,” she muttered to herself. “I was hoping to give the electric company a nice fat check for Christmas.” She switched off all the lights but one and started the coffeemaker. Before long the kitchen was filled with the aroma of ground Arabica beans and Lilly’s senses started coming alive.

  After showering, dressing, and grabbing a quick breakfast, Lilly poured herself a travel mug of coffee and slipped out the side door without making a sound. Normally Barney followed her downstairs for breakfast, but it was too early for him.

  The car didn’t even have time to warm up during the short drive to Juniper Junction Jewels. Lilly drove along Main Street, smiling at the Christmas lights that hung from the shop fronts and the street lamps. She loved this festive time of year. And since this was Colorado, there were several inches of freshly-fallen snow on the ground to make the lights seem even prettier. At the end of the block, she swung her car around the back of the row of shops and pulled into one of the parking spots allocated for her jewelry store. Each store got two parking spots so employees wouldn’t have to go searching for spots when Main Street got really busy, as was often the case in the upscale Rocky Mountain resort town.

  It was so early the plows hadn’t even been out yet, so Lilly stepped carefully when she got out of the car. Shifting her shoulder bag from one arm to the other and holding her coffee, she reached for the doorknob at the back of the shop.

  It was unlocked.

  Lilly’s stomach lurched; her body stiffened. This was a shop owner’s worst nightmare, made even more horrible when the shop sold precious stones, expensive gems, and custom jewelry. Lilly turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open, peering around it to make sure there was no one waiting for her in the back room.

  She didn’t see anyone, so she closed the door softly behind her and set her bag and coffee down on her desk. She had been the last one to leave Wednesday afternoon and the shop had been closed for Thanksgiving Day; she shuddered to think that the shop had been unlocked for thirty-six hours. She wracked her brain trying to remember locking the door behind her on Wednesday, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t remember setting the alarm, either, but that obviously hadn’t gone off because the alarm company had her home number and her cell number.

  Quickly walking over to the vault where she kept her inventory when the store was closed, she stopped short when she saw that the door to the vault was slightly ajar. She put out one finger to push the door open a bit farther; wave after wave of nausea swept over her when she saw that one of the sliding shelves that held the jewelry had been moved. She stepped into the tiny vault and pulled the shelf out a bit further—there was a necklace missing. A pearl necklace. She frantically pulled out all the other shelves in turn, not daring to breath until she satisfied herself that nothing else had been taken. She backed out of the vault and strode to her desk, where she leafed quickly through the papers littering the top. Nothing else seemed to be missing.

  She pushed open the sliding barn door that led to the interior of the shop.

  Lilly prided herself on making Juniper Junction Jewels a homey, rustic place that looked like someone’s living room. As such, the lighting inside the store was provided mostly by lamps set strategically around the shop rather than cold, sterile fluorescent lights.

  She turned on the lamp closest to the office. She didn’t notice the body lying on the floor behind one of the glass cases until she tripped over it.

  Chapte
r 2

  Lilly recoiled in terror. She fled to the back room where she called the police with fingers trembling so that she could barely push the numbers. At the dispatcher’s urging, she went out and sat in her car while she waited for the police to arrive.

  They were there in just a few minutes, this being a day when most murderers stayed home. The Black Friday pickpockets and petty thieves didn’t get started until a bit later in the morning.

  Lilly got out of the car and stood shivering in the cold, dark alley when she heard the police came roaring down Main Street, sirens blaring and lights flashing. She wondered what good the lights and sirens did now that the person in the shop was already dead.

  The police cars pulled to a stop in the alley, blocking the entrance on each end. The first officer at Lilly’s side was her brother, Bill. He ran up and put his hand on her shoulder. “You all right?” he asked. Bill was just a few years older than Lilly and looked just like her—brown hair, though his was in a buzz cut, and hazel eyes. He wore glasses, while Lilly preferred contacts.

  She nodded grimly. “I don’t know who’s in there,” she said.

  “We should know soon.” As he spoke other officers, guns drawn, fanned out along the length of the alley and around the corner onto Main Street. At the signal from the officer closest to the shop door, they all moved forward. Bill joined them, following the lead officer into the back of the shop.

  Lilly waited, her body tense and cold, for the all-clear from the police before going back into the shop. The signal came within just a minute or two; it was a small shop and there was nowhere to hide except the vault. Besides, she had already told them there was no one else inside the shop—no one living, that is. She shuddered, wondering what had possessed her to go inside alone once she realized the back door was unlocked.

  Lilly went in and found an officer there waiting to talk to her. She wondered where Bill was. “The deceased is Eden Barclay. You know her, don’t you?”

  Eden Barclay. Just hearing the name gave Lilly the jitters. She was a troublemaker who owned JJ’s General Store, the shop kitty-corner from hers.

  “I know her, yes,” Lilly answered, sitting down hard on the edge of her desk. “What happened? Why is she in here?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. Interestingly, her husband reported her missing just yesterday.”

  “Has she been in here since then? How did she die?”

  The officer fixed Lilly with a hard stare. “We’ve got a call out to the medical examiner. She should be here soon. But it looks like Ms. Barclay was strangled with a strand of pearls.”

  “What?!” she exclaimed. “How do you know that?”

  “There’s a string of pearls lying on the floor under her.”

  Lilly was speechless. The missing pearl necklace.

  What had Eden been doing inside the jewelry store?

  “I don’t believe this.” A murder in her store on Black Friday was going to put a damper on the day’s sales, to say the least. She shook her head as if to dislodge such a heinous thought—Eden Barclay’s dead body was lying on the floor of her shop and all she could think about was how much money she was going to lose that day. Thank God the police officer couldn’t read her mind.

  Eden Barclay. Lilly couldn’t honestly say she’d miss the woman, though she didn’t think Eden deserved to die for all the chaos she enjoyed creating.

  “Lilly?” Bill broke into her thoughts. “The medical examiner is going to be here soon and Officer Vasquez is going to take you down to the station.”

  “For what?”

  “To get a statement from you.”

  “Can’t we do that here? I’m opening in a little while.” Bill gave her a look that said Are you really that dumb? “Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  “You can’t open the store. We’ll be in here all day.”

  “You have got to be kidding me. You know this is the biggest shopping day of the year, right? I can’t afford to lose my Black Friday profits.”

  Bill was shaking his head as she spoke. “Sorry, Lil. This takes precedence.”

  “One more reason to hate Eden Barclay,” Lilly said with a loud sigh, then clamped her hand over her mouth when Bill shot her a dark look.

  “Why do you hate Eden Barclay?” asked an officer, walking into the back room at just that moment. Lilly closed her eyes, not believing she had said something so stupid. Bill just shook his head.

  “She is a thorn in the side of every shopkeeper on Main Street,” Lilly answered. “She’s vindictive, she hates everyone, and she’s done nothing but complain to the city council about the other store owners since she came to town.” Out of the corner of her eye Lilly could tell Bill was cringing as she spoke. She could practically read his mind. It was screaming, Call your lawyer! But the truth would come out sooner or later—might as well get it out in the open now so she could get back to work.

  The police officer held up a plastic bag he was holding. There was a string of pearls inside. “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

  Lilly looked closely at the bag for a moment, then said, “I assume that’s the one missing from the vault, but I can’t tell for sure without looking at it under the light and feeling it.”

  “That’s not gonna happen,” he said. “Not here, at least.” He turned to Bill. “I’m taking her down now.”

  “But—” Lilly began.

  “Come on,” he said, putting his hand on her elbow.

  Does that guy even know Bill is my brother? Lilly wondered. If so, he was being awfully rude. And if not, someone needed to tell him.

  It was still dark as the police car made its way up Main Street and toward the police station. As they passed Juniper Junction Jewels Lilly craned her neck to see if she could tell what was going on inside. Several police officers stood conferring near the front window. Another was taking pictures. No one else was about on Main Street, though some shop lights had been turned on. She noticed a few shopkeepers staring out their front windows in the direction of her store, no doubt wondering what on earth was going on.

  Chapter 3

  When Lilly arrived at the police station Officer Vasquez led her inside and to a room furnished with only a table and a few chairs. The walls were painted an industrial mint green and the room smelled of stale coffee and bad breath.

  Officer Vasquez sat down across from her at the table and pulled out a notebook. Lilly looked at the table with distaste. It had an ancient wooden top and graffiti from years of witnesses being left alone in the room criss-crossed the grain. She was careful to keep her hands to herself. God only knew what disease a person might catch from the germs living in the crud on the table.

  “So tell me again what you know about Eden Barclay,” Officer Vasquez began.

  “She owns JJ’s General Store,” Lilly said. “She bought it from the old owner when he retired a few years ago.” Her eyes strayed toward one of the lines of graffiti that read Born to lose.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You mentioned that no one liked her. Why is that?”

  “She was always complaining about something, whether it was because someone parked in her parking spot behind the store or she didn’t like the color of the flowers the town planted along the sidewalk in the summertime or someone in the Memorial Day parade threw candy from a float and it landed in front of her store. I mean, she was always unhappy. I don’t think she was happy unless there was something to complain about.”

  “Did she ever complain to you?”

  “Sure. She would bitch to anyone who would listen. Not that I wanted to listen—sometimes she didn’t give you a choice.”

  “Did she ever complain about you?”

  “Not to my face. I don’t know if she complained about me to any of the other shop owners. It seems like I would have found out about it if she had.”

  “Do you get along with the other shopkeepers in town?”

  “Yes,
very well. You probably know I’m the president of the Chamber of Commerce and I know a lot about what goes on along Main Street. I suppose that’s part of the reason Eden zeroed in on me when she was up in arms about something.”

  “She figured you could do something about it?”

  Lilly shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “You mentioned that she complained about someone parking in her parking spot. Did she complain about that directly to you?”

  “Yes. She wanted me to ask the City Council for money to have special parking signs made for each store owner. She wanted people’s names on the signs and everything.”

  “And did you do it?”

  “Of course not. That’s a ridiculous request. Besides, there are already signs posted in the back of all the stores saying that the parking spots back there are for store employees only. For the most part people heed what the signs say and don’t park there.”

  “And her other complaints? Did she approach you directly about them?”