Nineteen

I flipped on the radio on my way back to Normal. Christmas tunes were playing, and I was singing along to Here Comes Santa Claus just as the snow started to tumble out of the sky. It was going to be a wonderful Christmas now that Nadine White’s killer had been taken into custody.

I’d checked my phone messages before I’d hit the road. The text that’d come through earlier that I didn’t read was from Christine at the Cookie Crumble Bakery. She said she was ready to start on the candy cane donuts for the Christmas Dinner at the Campground that was in a couple of days.

Today Dottie had planned to get all the decorations and paperware for the dinner before she had to come to work. With Mary Elizabeth at the office, I gave her a quick call to make sure she was okay and to let her know that I was going to run by the Milkery to get the ingredients Christine needed before I came back to finish my day at the office. I also gave her a brief rundown of what had happened at the airport.

I knew by the time I ran my errand, news about what had taken place at the airport would be all over Normal and I’d be fielding calls left and right.

Since salt had been put on the roads, the big falling flakes were melting on impact, making it a perfect time for me to visit the Milkery. There were large silos around the property with the dairy’s name printed on each of them. The cows were all huddled together on one side of the Kentucky post fence up the drive and the other side looked to be enclosed chicken houses where the free-range chickens lived.

“What on earth are you doing out here?” I heard someone call out to me when I got out of my car.

“Laura,” I was happy to see her. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here.” She held a metal pail with chicken eggs stacked to the top. “My aunt and uncle own the farm and I work it.”

“That’s so cool. I’ve never been here.” I looked around and tried to picture just how colorful it was during the warmer months. Currently, the trees that surrounded the farm were bare and the white snow covered everything. “I’m here to get some ingredients for Christine over at the Cookie Crumble Bakery to make her candy cane donuts for my Christmas Dinner at the Campground.” I smiled. “Say, you and your aunt and uncle should come.”

“I’ll see. They take Christmas around her pretty seriously.” She nodded towards the farm house sitting off into the distance. “Come on, I’ll show you around.” She set the basket of eggs on the picnic table along the way. “Christine called and said someone would be by to get enough ingredients for over one-hundred donuts, but she didn’t say it was you. Those eggs are part of your order.”

“Wow. It fascinates me how this place works and how our community really supports each other.” It was such a great feeling to have at this time of the year and it really enhanced the season of giving.

“I’m pretty fortunate that my aunt and uncle really believe in my writing. You know it’s hard to be a writer.” She didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t figured out over the past few days.

“Speaking of writers.” I had to tell her about Valerie. “They’ve have Valerie in custody for killing Nadine.”

“Really?” She asked with big eyes right before we took off our boots to head into the farm house. “What happened?”

I told her all about how Mary Elizabeth had given me the idea that Valerie was the ghost writer and how I vaguely remembered her saying the publisher or someone from the publishing house was going to be meeting them at the airport.

“He was wired? She confessed?” Laura seemed to be a little stunned. “That’s so wild.”

We had some chit-chat about the process Valerie would go through with murder charges while she showed me the house and her typewriter where she did her work.

“I did break down and ask for a laptop for Christmas to write on.” She’d finally given in to technology.

“Good for you.” I looked around the office. The view from the window was amazing. Off in the distance were the mountains of the Daniel Boone National Park. Somewhere in there was Happy Trails Campground. “This is really an inspiring view to write to,” I said louder than normal after Laura had excused herself to go to the bathroom.

I leaned on the desk to see what was below the window and my foot knocked over a trash can full of papers.

I bent down to pick them up and noticed the red ink all over them.

“There is way too much dialogue in this. You’ll never get to be a writer if you don’t start adding descriptions,” I read out loud.

I put that paper down and picked up a fistful. All of them had red writing on them. Each comment was worse than the one before. The last page I picked up had a longer paragraph.

“You cannot be a writer at this time. I will not be able to mentor you until you get some writing classes under your belt. You are going to waste your time and mine until you figure out the structure of sentences and the proper usage of verbs, pronouns, and emotions. Your characters have the emotions of a white Saltine cracker. And you didn’t bring me along with the plot.  Each chapter has to have something to do with the romance. Your lovers go for pages without a kiss. Good luck, you’re going to need it. Nadine,” my voiced trailed. I blinked several times to make sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing.

“What did you say?” Laura came back into the room. Her eyes focused on my hands where I was holding the manuscript she told me that Nadine had and she hadn’t gotten back. “You weren’t supposed to find that.”

“I thought you said. . .” Images of the eggs, donuts, and the idea of poison appeared in my head. “You have access to the ingredients.”

“Oh, now you’re going to figure it out?” She let out a spurt of evil laughs. “I really should’ve tried my hand at crime fiction, because in real life, I’ve definitely pulled it off.”

“You?” I asked confused as to why.

“Yeah, me. I don’t know how I lucked out with Valerie showing up and stabbing Nadine in the neck after she was already dead from the poison I had put in her special milk she had asked for to bake with.” She unhooked the belt from around her waistband and snapped the straps together, making me jump. “It was perfect, really. Nadine whatever her name is deserved to die. She was so jealous of my talent that she wrote those terrible words, so I wouldn’t take away her readers.”

Now I knew Laura was delusional and it looked like she would have no problem killing me with that belt. I put my hands up to my neck as she walked closer and closer to me.

“She gave me the manuscript with all the writing on it. She knew I couldn’t send it off to publishers like that. I am going to have to retype it all, but without her around, it leaves the door wide open for me to claim my destiny.” She inhaled with a big smile on her face. A look of satisfaction in her eyes. “She gave it to me that afternoon then asked me if I could supply her with the special milk. Oh, yeah. I sure did. I even delivered the milk to her at the Normal Diner and waited. I didn’t realize she was going to go to the library, but it was perfect because I followed her there and when she was in the office I watched as the poison took her life. It was so satisfying.”

She stopped when she got a foot closer to me.

“Do you want me to tell you how she convulsed, falling into the chair, and I stood over her spouting off her lies about my book?” She grinned, bringing the belt level with my neck. “I’d been there a little white, making sure I would see her take her last breath. Then, I heard the front doors of the library open and hid behind the office desk. “Nadine’s back was to the door as she sat there dead in the chair. I heard Valerie call her name and before I knew it, Nadine’s body had dropped to the ground. Her face pointed at me while her eyes were open with a knife sticking straight out of her neck.”

As the faint sounds of sirens swirled in the air outside, my head told me help was on the way, letting me take a few deep breaths to regain my senses. When Laura turned her head toward the sirens, I jumped on her, tackling her to the ground.

She grabbed a fistful of my hair, sending my head back. She karate chopped my neck, making me gag and stumble to my knees. She lunged, wrapping her fingers around my neck and squeezing as tight as she could.

There was pressure on my esophagus. My lungs gasped for air, but a raspy wheeze escaped me. I tugged on both of her wrists to try to pry her hands off of me. Her mouth was open. Her teeth were clenched. Her eyes looked dead. She was a killer.

“Let her go!” Hank yelled. My eyes caught sight of him standing behind her with his gun pointed at her.

“Shoooooooot,” I tried to say in a last-ditch effort to save myself.

A shot rang out. Ringing in my ears forced my eyes closed. Laura’s hands fell away from my neck as she fell to the ground, grabbing her leg. Before I could even recover a full breath, Hank had her on the ground with her hands cuffed behind her back.