Christmas Carol Murder (A Lucy Stone Mystery) Read Online Free Page B

let me know. We want to choose someone at the next meeting.”
    “Ted did put an announcement in the paper,” Lucy said. “Maybe you’ll get some volunteers.”
    “It’s a bad time of year to recruit a new member,” Pam said. “Everybody’s busy with Christmas.”
    “That’s true,” Lucy said, remembering that her husband, Bill, had recently expressed a desire to become more active in town affairs. Maybe this was something he’d be interested in doing. She filed that thought for later and turned her attention to her friends.
    “Don’t forget the auditions tonight,” Rachel was saying. “At the Community Church. Can I count on you, Lucy?”
    “Okay,” Lucy agreed. The audition would make a nice human interest story and she was certain there was no way she was going to get a role. She was no Mrs. Cratchit, for sure.
    After leaving Jake’s, Lucy spent a few hours at the Pennysaver, filing news releases and typing up events for the Things to Do This Week column. As Phyllis had pointed out, there were more listings than usual, because of Christmas. All of the churches were holding bazaars, the Historical Society was having a cookie sale, and the high school was giving a holiday concert. Going beyond Tinker’s Cove, the Gilead Artists were having a small works sale, the South Coast Horticultural Society was holding a gala Festival of Trees and the Coastal Chorale invited one and all to join them in singing Handel’s Messiah .
    “If you did all these things you wouldn’t have any time to shop or wrap presents or send Christmas cards,” Lucy observed.
    “Nobody sends Christmas cards anymore,” said Phyllis, who ought to know because her husband, Wilf, was a mail carrier. “They e-mail holiday greetings.”
    “I never thought of that,” Lucy said.
    “Well, don’t,” Phyllis said. “The postal service is having enough problems. They need the business.”
    “They can count on me,” Lucy said. “I always send cards and I like getting them. I put them up around the kitchen door.”
    She was typing the listing for the preschool story hour when she had an unsettling thought. “Phyllis, did Wilf deliver that postal bomb they think killed Jake Marlowe?”
    Phyllis wrapped her fuzzy purple sweater tightly across her ample bosom and blinked behind her pink and black harlequin reading glasses. “I think he must have,” she said in a very small voice. “I know the state police have questioned him.”
    “They don’t think . . .” Lucy began.
    “I certainly hope not!” Phyllis exclaimed. “He was just doing his job, delivering the mail. He doesn’t know what’s in the packages—how could he?”
    “Of course not,” Lucy said. But she was thinking how terrible it would have been if the bomb had exploded early. And seeing Phyllis’s bleak expression, Lucy knew her coworker was thinking the very same thing.
    When Lucy left the office she checked her list of errands. She needed to cash a check at the bank, the wreaths she’d ordered from the high school cheerleaders were awaiting pickup, and she had to do her weekly grocery shopping. First stop, she decided, was the drive-through at the bank, which was at one end of Main Street. Then she’d zip down Parallel Street to the school, avoiding traffic, and get the wreaths. From there she could sneak into the IGA parking lot from the back, missing the traffic light on Main Street.
    She hadn’t forgotten about the fire, but she was distracted, making plans for Christmas as she drove along Parallel Street, so it was quite a shock when Marlowe’s burned house came into view. She immediately slowed the car, taking in the scorched chimneys, the flame-scarred walls, and the stinking, blackened pile of debris surrounded by a fluttering yellow ribbon of DO NOT CROSS tape that was all that remained of the once magnificent house. She’d seen fires before, of course. Fires were big news and she’d had to cover quite a few in her career, but she’d rarely seen