3 Requiem at Christmas by Melanie Jackson

looking forward to it very much. Mr. Peters
has been kind enough to give us tickets.”
    Juliet beamed.
    “Harrison is just wonderful,” she gushed. “I wanted to send
some gifts to friends who are here for the performance, but don’t want to
duplicate either what Harrison—or maybe his friend, Darby O’Hara—has ordered
for the party. Or what Jeremiah Holtz gave the singers earlier this week. Is
there any way to check these orders so I can choose something different?”
    There was no reaction to Holtz’s name, so obviously the
police hadn’t been in to question anyone. That was a little strange. But then
there had been nothing in the newspapers either. Maybe someone was once again
hushing things up, making unpleasant facts disappear.
    “Certainly. I know that Mr. Peters
selected caramel sea-salt and lavender-mint wafers for the reception and Mr.
Holtz….” He went to a computer and began typing. “Mr. Holtz did five boxes of
lemon drops, a one-pound box of mocha truffles, and two one-pound boxes of our
sea-salt wafers.”
    “Wonderful. Thank you so much for looking that up.”
    “Not a problem. So what can I do for you?”
    Juliet looked in the case at the prices and tried not to
gulp. She did need to bring a thank-you gift back to Garret and decided to
start there. White peach, golden peach,
persimmon rind, white tea, black tea …. The list seemed endless.
    “What do you have that is less sweet? Perhaps
just dark chocolate?”
    “We have some dark chocolate wafers that have been stenciled
with various designs. They are part of our beaux
arts collection. Our chipotle chocolate is delicious and an excellent
choice for someone with more sophisticated tastes.”
    “Oh!” Juliet said in surprise. “You have cats! Can you do a
small gift box—maybe one of those pretty gold ones—with
a variety of the cat wafers? Those will be perfect for Garret,” she said,
smiling at Esteban who had been silent. “I need a thank-you gift for him.”
    “Mrs. Johnson will be happy to help you,” Mr. Newscombe said and then turned toward his office. He was
abandoning the heathen who was choosing chocolate by design and not by flavor.
    “Thank you.” Juliet was relieved that the manager had
departed. She wouldn’t have to place any gigantic orders to make her story
believable. She smiled at Mrs. Johnson and began pointing out chocolate cats.

 
    *   *   *

 
    Juliet chose to let Esteban drive to the bypass. She wanted
to be able to pay attention to their surroundings and not have to concentrate
on the weather and the car.
    They came at the GPS’s proposed workaround from the opposite
direction and Juliet found it a little disconcerting. It looked quite different—for
one thing, the cabin was gone. Only blackened snow and part of the foundation remained.
It was also noon and not blowing a gale. There were boot prints everywhere,
crisscrossing and overlaying each other until making sense of the tracks was
impossible.
    Esteban drove slowly and Juliet studied everything with
what, on another day, would be agonizing slowness. Finally she had him stop and
they got out of the car. The view didn’t improve.
    The cold was tightening its grip on the mountain, squeezing
the feeling out of them, as though it wanted what had happened to stay buried
in its drifts and for all the humans to leave it alone.
    A cutthroat wind straight from the pole picked up the loose
snow and made it dance over the edge of the ravine. Juliet stayed away from the
brink of the cliff where the car had spun out, but Esteban bravely peered over
the side at the vertiginous view after he had wiggled out to the drop, one
cautious, sliding step at a time. It wasn’t the Grand Canyon down there but it
was far enough and rough enough to make him shudder.
    “ Madre
de Dios . Not for any amount of money would I climb down there,” he
muttered. “If anything is down that ravine, it can stay there.”
    Juliet was frustrated and tired of the alternating