A Catered Christmas. Isis Crawford

chief nodded. Bernie coughed. The chief turned his gaze to her.

      “Are you at least going to tell us how Hortense was killed?” Bernie asked.

      The chief nodded. “I can do that.”

      He was almost done explaining when the production assistant came by. “Five minutes to airtime,” he said.

      “Oh my God,” Libby squealed. “I have to put my make-up on.”

      One thing you could say about Hortense’s homicide, she thought as she ran to get her purse, it had certainly taken her mind off of being on television.

       Chapter 7

      Sean turned his wheelchair away from the television and studied his two daughters. They looked slightly out of breath, and their cheeks were still red from the cold. The weatherman had said it was going down to ten degrees tonight. Looks as if he’d been right, Sean thought as he glanced at his watch. It was early. Libby and Bernie had come right home after the show. He was happy but surprised. Somehow he’d expected they’d be meeting their boyfriends at R.J.'s.

      “You two made your old man proud,” he told them. “You really did. But what happened to your hostess, if you don’t mind my asking? Why wasn’t Hortense on the show?”

      Not that he’d admit this to anyone, but he was disappointed. He’d been looking forward to seeing how she was going to make the meringue mushrooms she’d talked about yesterday. He watched Bernie and Libby look at each other.

      “Well?” he said after a moment had elapsed. “Did she choke on a piece of fruitcake?”

      “Close,” Bernie said.

      Sean snorted. “I was kidding.”

      “Well, I wasn’t.”

      Damn, Sean thought. Trouble followed his girls around like lambs followed Little Bo Peep.

      “Go on,” he told her.

      Bernie clasped her hands together and brought them up to her chin. “Someone killed her. At least that’s what Lucy is saying.”

      For a moment Sean was silent. Things rarely shocked him. He’d been a cop too long for that. But he had to say that this did.

      “What happened?” he asked.

      “There was an explosion,” Libby explained.

      Bernie put her hands back down. “We all ran in to the test kitchen and found Hortense covered with fruitcake, cookie dough, and blood. Not a good mix; not a good mix at all, colorwise. Hortense would not have been happy.”

      Libby opened her mouth to say something and closed it again.

      Sean noticed his eldest daughter was wringing her hands, something she did when she was extremely perturbed. Libby was the sensitive one in the family. Always had been and, despite his best efforts to toughen her up, always would be.

      “Of course,” Bernie continued, “no one would be happy in Hortense’s situation.” She moved her silver and onyx ring up and down her finger. “Anyway, someone rigged the oven so it would explode when Hortense opened it,” she explained. “The oven in the test kitchen,” Bernie clarified before Sean could ask.

      “How strange,” Sean mused. “Death by fruitcake. I always knew they were lethal, except for your mother’s of course, but I thought it was more of a digestive thing.”

      “What a horrible thing to say,” Libby cried.

      Sean sighed. His eldest daughter was tending toward developing a terminal case of sincerity.

      He was about to tell her that when Bernie said, “It’s not horrible, Libby. You shouldn’t misuse words like that. It dilutes them. The word horrible comes from the Latin word horrere and means to be terrified. For that matter, awful really isn’t correct either. How about the word nauseous?”

      Libby jutted her chin out.

      “I couldn’t help it, okay?”

      Bernie rolled her eyes.

      “You could have turned your head away from me.”

      “Couldn’t help what?” Sean asked.

      Bernie pointed at her sister. “She threw up on my shoes.”

      “At least she didn’t contaminate the crime scene,” Sean observed.

      “I wish she had. They were Jimmy Choos.”

      “Is that some new form of the flu?”

      “Very funny, Dad.”

      “I thought it was.”

      Libby put her hands on her hips.

      “It happened so fast I didn’t have the time to do anything else,” she explained to him. “And I already apologized about ten times and offered to buy Bernie a new pair of shoes.”

      “And I already told you, you can’t afford to buy me a new pair of those,” Bernie retorted.

      Sean watched Libby turn to him.

      “I don’t know how much they cost, because she refuses to tell me.”

      Sean noted that Bernie was tapping her foot, never a good sign.

      “For the record, they were five hundred. On sale. Satisfied?”

      Libby looked shocked. Just like his wife would have been, Sean reflected.

      “That’s obscene,” Libby cried. “No one should spend five hundred on a pair of shoes.”

      “See. I told you, you weren’t going to get a new pair for me.”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      “Well, are you?”

      Sean decided it was time to intervene.

      “Girls, girls,” he said before Bernie could reply. “Have pity on your old man.” Their bickering always drove him nuts.

      Bernie inspected her nails. “Fine.”

      Libby drew herself up. “Fine with me too. I’d just like to point out for the sake of accuracy—a trait I know Bernie values—that it was the glass from the Christmas tree ornaments that killed Hortense, not the fruitcake.”

      Libby always has to have the last word, Sean thought. Just like his wife.

      “Don’t be so literal,” Bernie retorted.

      “Like you’re not,” Libby replied.

      Sean glared at both of them. “That is enough,” he said, using the tone he’d used on them when they were six and eight.

      “Okay by me,” Bernie said.

      Libby began picking at her cuticle. “Ditto,” she said. She turned to Bernie. “And don’t tell me the etymology of that word,” she snapped at her.

      “I wasn’t going to,” Bernie responded as the doorbell downstairs rang.

      Libby excused herself and went to get it.

      “She gets like that when she’s upset,” Sean said.

      “I know,” Bernie replied.

      “So why don’t you ease up on her?”

      “I guess I should.”

      “There’s no should about it.”

      A moment later, Sean heard the clomp of footsteps coming up the stairs.

      “Clyde,” both he and Bernie said together as Clyde stuck his head in the door.

      “How ya doin', Cap?” he