Holly and Homicide Read online

  PRAISE FOR LESLIE CAINE’S

  DOMESTIC BLISS MYSTERY SERIES

  POISONED BY GILT

  “Fans of charming interior cozies and trips to Home Depot will appreciate this tragic twist on the challenges of ecofriendly innovations.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Erin Gilbert and her business partner Steve Sullivan are back in action…. With each installment, Caine devises the most charmingly written mystery filled with choice interior design morsels that make reading her books an absolute delight.”

  —FreshFiction.com

  FATAL FENG SHUI

  “I love this series. Leslie Caine has a knack for cracking-good plotting and character development, with a touch of humor, and for giving readers something beyond standard cozy fare. She integrates the story with bits and pieces of design wisdom without getting the plot too far off-track…. All-in-all, it’s a fun series cozy fans should give a whirl.”

  —Mystery News

  “This is Nancy Drew all grown up, armed with a tape measure and fabric swatches.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Caine, a certified interior decorator, adds helpful decorating tips to her well-constructed mystery, making this a stylish, satisfying cozy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  KILLED BY CLUTTER

  “Sympathy for the hoarder’s obsession and compassion for the elderly add appeal to the puzzle.”

  —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  “Erin Gilbert is someone I’d like to hire.”

  —Deadly Pleasures

  MANOR OF DEATH

  “A blueprint for murder.”

  —Mystery Scene

  “Caine delivers another top-notch Domestic Bliss whodunit…. Everyone in Maple Hills has something to hide, and that ‘something’ has to do with the decades-old death of Abby, the young girl who is rumored to haunt the Victorian mansion next door to interior designer Erin Gilbert. Can Erin unravel the truth before she becomes the next victim? Nifty decorating tips complete the package.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Manor of Death by Leslie Caine is a blueprint for murder as the third Domestic Bliss mystery unfolds…. Tips abound in this delightful package.”

  —Mystery Lovers Bookshop News

  FALSE PREMISES

  “False Premises is a pleasant mystery that readers caught up in the current redecorating craze will not want to miss.”

  —Mystery Reader

  “Replete with interior decorating, antique furnishings, not to mention floor plan and clothing critiques.”

  —I Love a Mystery

  “Humor is never in short supply in this fun, engaging mystery, which is certain to delight fans of cozies.”

  —Romantic Times

  DEATH BY INFERIOR DESIGN

  “What a delight! A mystery within a mystery, a winning heroine, a yummy love interest, some laugh-out-loud lines … and as if that weren’t enough, some terrifically useful decorating tips.”

  —CYNTHIA BAXTER, author of Dead Canaries Don’t Sing

  “Mystery lovers who love Trading Spaces will adore Death by Inferior Design, a tale of dueling designers. In this stylish debut, Leslie Caine paints a winsome heroine with family woes, furnishes a well-upholstered murder, and accessorizes with well-patterned wit and a finishing touch of romance. Open the door, step inside, and enjoy!”

  —DEBORAH DONNELLY

  “Leslie Caine deftly merges hate-fueled homicide with household hints in her ‘how-to/whodunit’ mystery.”

  —MARY DAHEIM

  “Witty and smart, with home decorating tips to die for!”

  —SARAH GRAVES, bestselling author of the Home Repair Is Homicide series

  “Leslie Caine’s Death by Inferior Design sparkles with charm, design lore, and a sleuth with a great mantra. Cozy fans will embrace the Domestic Bliss series.”

  —CAROLYN HART, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards winner

  “Trading Spaces meets Murder, She Wrote! Talk about extreme makeovers! Dueling designers Gilbert and Sullivan might want to kill each other, but no one expected anyone to try it. Who will hang the trendiest curtains? Who will choose the poshest paint? Who will come out alive? I’m not tellin’.”

  —PARNELL HALL

  “[An] appealing heroine and warm, genuinely winning voice.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Interior designer/sleuth Erin Gilbert is wonderfully appealing and reading all the lovely details of her latest decorating job will make you feel like you’ve stumbled across the deadly side of HGTV.”

  —JERRILYN FARMER, bestselling author of the Madeline Bean mysteries

  “An elegant and witty mystery that satisfies in every way. A surefire winner!”

  —TAMAR MYERS, author of Statue of Limitations

  “Caine has created a cozy with an edge, and its twists and turns keep the reader guessing until the end.”

  —Romantic Times (3 stars)

  “For killer decorating tips, pick up Death by Inferior Design, a murder mystery by decorator Leslie Caine. Advice is woven into this whodunit featuring rival designers as sleuths.”

  —House & Garden

  “An interesting book, with lots of insider information on the interior design business … I’ll look forward to the next in the series.”

  —MAGGIE MASON

  “This story is delightful in every way, and author Leslie Caine packs a solid punch as a writer…. Entertaining, humorous, serious, and totally engrossing from the first page to last … This tidy murder mystery has everything, from witty repartee to sorrow, from strong characters to a thrilling plot.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “A promising debut … Caine writes with a passion that reveals a vision and a sense of style that should attract readers the way HGTV attracts viewers.”

  —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

  “Caine puts her experience as a certified interior decorator to good use in her debut…. If only all professionals had her discerning eye and sense of humor, there’d be fewer crimes against fashion and fiction.”

  —Peninsula (CA) Post

  Also by Leslie Caine

  Death by Inferior Design

  False Premises

  Manor of Death

  Killed by Clutter

  Fatal Feng Shui

  Poisoned by Gilt

  For my fabulous agent, Nancy Yost, to whom I and every

  fictional character I’ve ever created give a resounding

  and much-deserved standing ovation

  Chapter 1

  The article about a grave robbery caught my attention. It was a short piece, only three or four column inches, on the second page of the Snowcap Village Gazette, which quoted a haughty wisecrack made by the local sheriff: “Probably another case of yuppie skiers robbing us of our ancestry, like the way they’re turning the Goodwin estate into the Wendell Barton B-and-B.” My heart started racing, and I thought: Here we go again.

  Sullivan handed me a cup of coffee. Although he’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt before heading downstairs to the kitchen of the aforementioned Goodwin estate, he slipped back under the covers beside me, his own cup in hand.

  “Thanks, sweetie.” I took a tentative sip. Perfection. “Did you see the story about the grave robbery in this week’s Gazette?”

  “Yeah. Annoying potshot about the inn. Sheriff Mackey sounds like a major jerk.”

  “No kidding.” Wendell Barton, who owned the ski resort a few miles from here, was just one of the partners who’d purchased this fabulous Victorian mansion from Henry Goodwin, a direct descendent of its original owner. Steve’s and my two-person company—Sullivan & Gilbert Designs—was in charge of the remodel. “I sup
pose by ‘yuppie skiers’ turning this place into a ‘Wendell Barton B-and-B,’ he means you and me.”

  “Not if he’s ever seen you try to ski,” Sullivan teased.

  I considered swatting him, but didn’t want to risk his spilling coffee on our divine gold-and-burgundy silk duvet. I settled for narrowing my eyes at him. He laughed and kissed my forehead.

  I felt the warm glow that I’d grown so wonderfully accustomed to during the nine-plus months since we’d started dating in earnest. “I’m getting better at skiing, you know. You said so yourself.”

  “Yes, you are, Gilbert. If you make good use of our last three weeks here, you might even be able to stop without grabbing onto a tree.”

  His snide remark called for a comeback, but my worry about the grave robbery nagged at me. Why would somebody steal a person’s bones? I took a couple of sips of coffee and reread the article.

  “I’m sure the incident at the cemetery was just a prank,” Sullivan said. “Drunken frat boys on a ski trip, blowing off some steam, maybe.”

  “Their timing’s odd, if that’s all it was. They had to dig through snow and frozen ground, just for a dumb joke. You’d think they’d get maybe two inches down and decide to go TP some trees instead.”

  “Yeah, but it has to be a prank. What sensible motive could there possibly be? It’s idiotic to dig up a random fifty-year-old grave. Wasn’t there a really common name on the tombstone?”

  “‘R. Garcia,’ and the cemetery records are inadequate, so they don’t even know how to track down Garcia’s relatives.” My imagination started to run wild in spite of myself. “Maybe that’s why this particular grave was chosen … so as to ruffle the fewest feathers. I hope I’m just being paranoid, but this could be the handiwork of one of the hundred or so townspeople trying to prevent the Snowcap Inn from opening.”

  Sullivan stared at me, his gorgeous hazel eyes incredulous. “Seriously, Erin? You think someone’s going to … what? Plant a skeleton in a closet here? Stick some bones underneath the gazebo to freak out the building inspector this morning?”

  “Yes. That’s precisely what I’m afraid someone wants to do.”

  He took a sip of coffee, appearing to ponder my words. “No way.”

  “All I know is, every time Henry Goodwin, or anyone else, puts up a sign about the Snowcap Inn, someone covers it in graffiti.”

  “Still, Erin. That’s a gigantic leap … from scribbling four-letter words on a sign to digging up a grave and planting someone’s remains here. Don’t you think?”

  How could I answer that? His point was valid, but my counterargument was a combination of women’s intuition and past experience. A string of terrible past experiences, to be more precise. The police department in Crestview—our hometown some seventy miles away—had undoubtedly been on the verge of assigning a homicide task force to follow me around. In the last three years, client after client had dragged Designs by Gilbert into a string of luck so bad that Job himself might have offered me a sympathetic shoulder. My gloomy run of catastrophes had magically lifted on Valentine’s Day, when Steve and I finally gave in to our mutual attraction. Since then, we’d become the proverbial happy couple. And yet, even as a young child, I’d known there was no such thing as happily ever after. We were long overdue for a stumbling block.

  I tried to employ my “confidence and optimism” mantra, but it was too late. With my penchant for stumbling across dead bodies, I knew with unshakeable certainty that “R. Garcia” was sure to turn up in my van or my laundry basket. Our idyllic job would devolve into a disaster. This wonderful three-story house had been built eighty years ago, as commissioned by the current owner’s grandfather—the founder of Snowcap Village—but in these last couple of months, it had come to represent how far I’d grown in my career and in my life. Now this grand home, with its cupolas, curved turrets, festive stained-glass accent sidelights and transoms, and all its countless handcrafted details, was somehow going to turn dark and ugly. And so was my life.

  “Erin? You’re shaking. Are you cold?”

  “A little.”

  He set down his cup and pulled me close. “Let me warm you up again.” He kissed me, and for a time, my fears melted away.

  An hour later, I trotted down the stairs. Our bedroom was on the third floor of Henry’s house—soon to be the Snowcap Inn. When the inn officially opened on Christmas Eve, Henry, too, would live elsewhere; he planned to rent a condo in town and then, once his mayoral duties officially ended next November, to travel. As I entered the central hall, which we were converting into a hotel lobby, I spotted Sullivan’s notepad on the newly built receptionist’s desk. He’d probably left his pad there by mistake; it contained measurements for the perfect Christmas tree to grace this space. Sullivan and Henry had headed out several minutes ago to cut down one of the large spruce trees on Henry’s enormous parcel of land.

  When I entered the kitchen through the double doors, a tall, angular, fortyish woman was peering into the knotty-pine cabinets and compiling an inventory of kitchenware. I waited till she’d completed her count of serving spoons, then said, “Hi. I’m Erin Gilbert, an interior designer here at the inn.”

  She peered at me a little too imperiously for my liking. I got the feeling that she was tabulating the cost of my Icelandic cardigan (a gift from Steve) and designer slacks. She was wearing a crisp white shirt with pleats and piping, black pants, and loafers. She had limp brown hair in a blunt cut just above the nape of her long neck. She would have been pretty, except for her permanent-looking scowl. “Mikara Woolf. Manager-to-be of the Snowcap Inn.” Her voice was confident, yet flat.

  “Nice to meet you. Henry Goodwin said that you’d be starting sometime this week. My partner, Steve Sullivan, is here, too, and he—”

  “Yeah, he’s out back with Henry. Something about Christmas decorations … chopping down a tree, I think. Quite a hunk, that Mr. Sullivan.” She raised an eyebrow. “You two are sleeping together, right? And you’re not married?”

  “Um, much as I hate to get us off on the wrong foot, frankly, I don’t see why you’re asking, or why I should answer.”

  She gave me a slight smile. “Oh, I realize it’s none of my business … even though you did give me my answer just now. I’m simply checking the accuracy of the local rumor mill. I’m a native … back from when everybody knew one another. The town went to pot ten years ago, when Snowcap Village was turned into the ‘New Mini-Vail.’ Back when Wendell Barton bought the mountain … along with everything and everyone else.”

  “If part of small-town life means everyone discussing who’s sleeping with whom, there’s something to be said for tourist towns and anonymity.”

  She crossed her arms and gave me another visual once-over. “Spoken like a city girl. Where are you from originally? New York? Philadelphia?”

  “No, I grew up in the suburbs. Of the Albany area.” She cocked an eyebrow as if she doubted me, and for the purposes of full disclosure, I conceded, “But I went to college and trained in New York.”

  She smirked and nodded. “Another New Yorker. Figured as much.”

  I bristled and found myself adding defensively, “Steve’s a native Coloradoan.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out, too.”

  “Huh. I’ll have to remind him to stop wearing his ‘Colorado Native’ sweatshirt so often.”

  To her credit, she laughed. Maybe she wasn’t quite as standoffish as all that. “Guess I’m coming off as a little judgmental. My apologies. It’s been a rough week. You wouldn’t believe the flak I’m getting from my sister and former neighbors for accepting this job. They think I’ve sold my soul to the devil by agreeing to work here …considering it now belongs to Barton.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! Henry Goodwin has the final say in everything regarding the remodel, not Wendell Barton. Henry has control over just about everything for a full year. Furthermore, the inn doesn’t belong to Wendell. He’s just one of three partners, including Audrey Munroe, my friend an
d landlady back in Crestview. She’s got more integrity than anyone I know. She’s not about to cede full control to Barton, or to anyone else, for that matter.”

  “I assume you mean Audrey Munroe of the Domestic Bliss television show.” Mikara gave me a smug smile. “She’s currently dating Wendell Barton.”

  “What?!” Apparently the Small-Town Gossip Express was way ahead of me.