Holidays Can Be Murder: A Charlie Parker Christmas Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

over the number of luminarias lining the sidewalks and driveways. “I can’t imagine how much work went into all this,” she said. “And the lights, look how beautiful they are!”
    “Oops!” cried Paula. “I sure didn’t see that crack in the street.”
    Wilbur reached out and grasped his mother’s arm, steadying her. I wondered how many martinis she’d made for herself after the one Drake had given her. I reined Rusty in and held him back until Drake caught up with us. He slipped his arm around my shoulders.
    “Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” I whispered to him. No matter how crazy the rest of the holiday got, I was glad we had each other.
    “Hey, look,” he said. “Told you it looked like snow.”
    A big, fat white flake drifted in front of me and landed on Rusty’s back. Soon, there were thousands of them and the street had a thin white cover. I smiled, remembering Drake’s and my first Christmas together last year at the Taos Ski Valley. There’d certainly been no shortage of snow there. I tilted my face up to the sky and let the flakes land on my eyelids. I would ignore Paula and do my best not to get involved with my neighbors’ problems.
    Well it was a good intention, anyway.

6

    I awoke to gray light filtering around the edges of the drapes and utter silence outside. My first thought was: the buses have gone away. I rolled toward Drake and he pulled me into his arms. The next thing I knew he was planting little nibbles along my neck and shoulder and the rest became a pleasant blur of sensation as we pulled the covers over ourselves and enjoyed each other.
    I awoke for the second time to a brighter gray light. I reached for Drake again, but he wasn’t there.
    “Snowed about three inches,” he whispered, emerging from the bathroom.
    “Really?” I was instantly awake and wanting to go out and play in it. He pulled me back into his arms and wrapped the comforter around both of us.
    Rusty sat by the edge of the bed, signaling that he’d soon require attention. We ignored him.
    “I’ll make breakfast if you want to go out there and build a snowman or something,” Drake said. “I can tell you’re itching to get up.”
    “Well . . . if you’re sure.” I was up and rummaging in the closet for my ski pants almost before he’d finished the offer.
    He laughed out loud and tossed a pillow at me. I dashed into the bathroom and brushed my teeth in record time, then slipped into ski pants and boots.
    “C’mon, Rust, we’re gonna have some fun.”
    I heard water running in the guest bath, so I opened Catherine’s bedroom door and let Kinsey dash out. “You too,” I told her. “We’re gonna play!”
    The two dogs beat me to the back door by a longshot and bounded ahead of me. Kinsey leaped through the fresh powder, her stubby little tail pointing straight up. Rusty made his usual rounds of all the trees and sniffed to make sure intruder dogs hadn’t used them during the night. I packed a bit of the powder and tried for a snowball, but it was pretty hopeless. The stuff was dry as shredded cotton. I had to be happy with running around the yard, tossing handfuls of white powder at the two dogs and watching them try to bite at it as it hit their heads.
    “Breakfast!” Drake called from the doorway. He batted at the dogs’ fur with an old towel, knocking the powdery white off them. Kinsey had loads of it imbedded in the long blond hair around her legs and belly and in her long, curly ears.
    “Your cheeks are red,” he said to me.
    “Umm, feels good. Don’t worry about the dogs—they can’t hurt the kitchen tile too badly.”
    An hour later, we’d finished a fabulous breakfast of eggs Benedict and fresh fruit and were well into the loot under the tree in the living room. Catherine had given us matching robes and Drake gave me a heart-shaped diamond pendant and my very own .380 automatic. He’d been teaching me to shoot at our local range where I usually used his 9 mm Beretta. This would