“Peabody. Norman D. Peabody.”

  “Norman D. Peabody it is. He’s a private investigator who’s come bearing sad news on this joyous day.”

  “Violet,” Mom said, half-rising, her expression lined with concern. “You’re frightening me with that face. Please stop smiling.”

  “I’m just trying to remain positive, Mother. Nobody likes a Negative Nelly, especially on Christmas.”

  Dad caught my mom’s hand and pulled her back to her seat. His expression matched Mom’s. “What sad news, Goldilocks?”

  I held up the envelope with my name and focused on my sister. “Apparently, my husband has died.”

  To her credit, Susan didn’t even flinch.

  My mother, on the other hand, swooned. She would have fallen out of her chair if Dad hadn’t caught her. She’d definitely earn an Emmy at this year’s awards ceremony for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Drama Series.

  It took a second—or five—for everyone else to pick their jaws up off the table.

  “Husband?” Aunt Zoe repeated. Apparently, she was struggling with that word the same as I had.

  “Holy wedlock!” Harvey said through a mouthful of dinner roll.

  “When did Mom get married?” Addy asked her brother.

  Layne frowned at me. “Was he our real dad?”

  “Is this some kind of practical joke?” Natalie looked back and forth between Peabody and me and then toward the front door. “Is Quint hiding in the foyer?”

  “It’s no joke,” Mr. Peabody said. “I’ve been trying to get hold of Violet Parker for a couple of weeks, but she wouldn’t return my calls from the number listed or reply to my letters sent to the post office box I’d been given. I figured Christmas Day would be my best chance to catch her in person at her parents’ known address.”

  “And he was right.” I shot Cooper a smirk. “Maybe the Deadwood Police Department should hire him to replace your barking partner.”

  Reid crossed his arms. “What’s the cause of death?”

  Good question. I hadn’t even gotten that far yet what with still trying to digest that I had somehow gotten married.

  “I hope you have an alibi for this one, Parker,” Cooper said, aiming a smirk right back at me.

  “This can’t be happening,” my mom said, her voice wavering.

  “Denial is the first stage of grief,” Cornelius pointed out. “Will somebody pass me the mushroom caps?”

  “Oh, hell. Here we go again.” Dad pushed away from the table. “Anyone else need a drink?”

  “Violet.” Doc stood and pulled out my chair. “Maybe you should come sit down.”

  I shook my head at him. There was no way I could think about eating at the moment with the way my gut was burning. It was all I could do not to open my mouth and blast my sister with a fireball of rage. “If you all would please make our guest feel welcome, I’d appreciate it. You know, ‘tis the season and all that Christmas spirit shit.”

  Before I said something I’d regret later, I left the room and made a beeline for the front door, grabbing my snow boots on the way. I didn’t even bother with a coat. I was so hot under the collar that I’d probably melt all of the snow in a one-block radius.

  Once outside, I tore open the envelope and scanned the contents. My hands trembled as I read, and then my vision turned red. Huffing like I was heading into labor, I looked up and saw the snowwoman Addy had made decorated with Susan’s scarf and hat.

  “Perfect!”

  After yanking on my boots, I grabbed the snow shovel from where it leaned against the porch railing and tromped across the yard.

  How could she? Married in my name, hiding behind my fucking Social Security number.

  I wanted to kill her.

  No, wait. Death would be too quick. Maiming would be better after several rounds of torture first.

  With a growl at the sky, I raised the snow shovel and swung, knocking the snowman’s head clear off in one blow. Susan’s hat went with it. The second blow took a big chunk out of the chest cavity. The third finished the job on the middle.

  When I raised the shovel for a fourth whack at it, someone grabbed the handle.

  “Violet!” Doc’s voice cut through my raging torrent of cursing. “Stop!”

  I turned, my breath coming hard and fast. “She …” I swallowed a blazing ball of fury. “She stole my identity and married some guy.” I let him take the shovel from me. “Married, Doc. What kind of twisted, mentally fucked-up person does that to her own flesh and blood?”

  He buried the shovelhead in the snow.

  I covered my face with my cold palms, dragging my fingers down my cheeks. “I feel so … so … so violated.”

  Without saying a word, Doc wrapped his coat around my shoulders and pulled me into his arms.

  I bounced my forehead against his sternum, wishing I could snap my fingers and make this mess go away. “I knew she was up to something. Mom said I was just being a pessimist again and looking for problems where none existed, but I knew deep in my gut.”

  “Susan came clean to your parents after you left,” he said, stroking my hair. “Your mom left the table in tears. Your dad is consoling her in their room.”

  Turning my head, I rested my cheek against his warm chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart. “Are the kids okay?”

  “They’re confused, but Natalie is helping them understand the situation.”

  “What about everyone else?”

  “Harvey told them to eat while the food was hot, so they are, including Mr. Peabody.”

  “Good. I didn’t want to ruin Christmas.”

  His chest vibrated. “I think your sister took the top prize for that today, sweetheart. But your daughter might be a bit hurt about the damage you inflicted on her poor snowman.”

  I leaned back and looked at the aftermath of my storm of rage. All that was left was the bottom ball. Susan’s scarf was half-buried under the snow. I grimaced. “Good thing snowmen don’t bleed.”

  “Remind me never to piss you off when there’s a shovel within reach.”

  I turned back to him. “What am I going to do, Doc?”

  He blew out a breath. “One way or another, we’re going to figure out how to unravel you from this spider web.”

  “I could go to the police and claim identity fraud, but that hurts my parents more than Susan.” I didn’t even want to think about how much of a mess this would be with the IRS.

  “Lucky for you, we know a certain detective who might be able to give us some advice on where to start.”

  “Oh, God.” I groaned and dropped onto the bottom of the annihilated snowman. “This is so embarrassing.”

  “You shouldn’t feel embarrassed, sweetheart. You did nothing wrong.”

  “Yes, I did. I dragged everyone inside of that house into my sordid family drama. I’m sure witnessing the mushroom cloud spurred by my non-wedding to a complete stranger is not how they wanted to spend their holiday.”

  He squatted in front of me, holding my knees. “Violet, you need to understand something about the people in that house. They are your family. Some may not be related by blood, but they would put their lives on the line to help you just the same. Hell, most of them already have in one way or another over the last few months.” When I frowned in the direction of my parents’ place, he added, “Even Cooper.”

  Doc was right. I was fortunate to have each and every one of them by my side. But I wasn’t going to admit that to Cooper unless he said it first.

  I looked down at my palms. They were red from the cold. I covered his hands with mine. “And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  I met his dark eyes. “I’m spoiled goods.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This could get ugly, Doc. There’s a will. That’s why Mr. Peabody had to find me. There’s money involved here. Susan didn’t marry some beach bum down in the Caribbean. She found herself a rich old guy and apparently convinced him to add her—or rather me—to his will.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “Enough that the lawyer hired a private investigator to hunt me down.”

  He cursed under his breath.

  “Exactly. I don’t want to drag you into this.”

  His gaze narrowed. “It’s not your choice, it’s mine.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Listen, Killer. I’m not sure if you’ve been taking notes, but you and I are a team. Where you go, I go. When you fight, I fight. Nothing short of death is going to change that between us.”

  His words made my heart thud hard against my ribcage. I laced my fingers with his. “As in ’til death do us part?” I jested. Sort of.

  A grin crept onto his face. “Even after death if I go first, because I’m coming back to haunt you.”

  “Deal.” I sighed, easing some of the pressure in my chest. “I wonder how long I’ve been married to this guy.”

  He stood and plucked the sprig of mistletoe from the broken pieces of the head, pocketing it. “I wonder how long I’ve been fooling around with a married woman.”

  A married woman. That was me, only the guy was all wrong. I groaned. “Criminy. Why me? Why couldn’t Susan use her own damned identity?”

  He held out his hand. “Let’s go find out.”

  I took it. “Doc?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you for coming after me.”

  He pulled me to my feet. “For you, cara mia, I’d ride a tornado bareback.”

  I laughed, still holding his hand. “Ah, Gomez. You’re dearer to me than all of the bats in all of the caves in the world,” I said, quoting Morticia Addams. Make that all of the bats except for the giant man-eating kind. Those I’d leave for Cornelius to handle.

  Doc squeezed my cold knuckles. “Prove it, Killer.” Hooking his arm around my shoulders, he led me toward the house.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Other than a dead husband, Christmas dinner went off without a hitch.

  Upon my return from beating the hell out of Addy’s snowman, I learned that Susan had escaped to her room in the basement, which left the table full of my “family.” Well, except for Mr. Peabody, but he fit right in, bantering with Cornelius, who appeared to be vetting him to find some ghosts that had gone missing.

  My parents came back midway through the meal. My mom graced us all with a smile. “I apologize for my emotional outburst. It’s not every day that my little girl gets married.”

  That surprised a laugh out of me. Several others, too.

  “Hell,” Dad added, “I always thought Violet’s wedding would drain my bank account.” He raised his glass in my direction. “Thanks for saving me money, Goldilocks. I only wish I could have been there to walk you down the aisle.”

  I raised my glass in return. “I wish I’d been there, too.” I would have run fast and far the other way.

  By the time the dishes were cleared and the multitude of pies and other desserts were brought to the table, I was ready to find out the exact depth of Susan’s betrayal. I excused myself from the table, squeezing Doc’s shoulder when he looked up at me.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” I told him.

  “Violet?” My mother’s brow furrowed. “Where are you going?”

  She knew where I was heading. “I’ll be good, Mom. I promise.”

  “Do you want help?” she asked.

  “No, thanks. This is something I need to do alone.”

  I grabbed two plates, loaded them with cherry pie, and headed downstairs.

  Susan didn’t answer on the first knock, but I heard something thump on the other side of the door.

  “I know you’re in there. You might have a skinny ass, but it’s not small enough to squeeze through the window.”

  The lock clicked and the door opened.

  Susan had changed into a black sweater and leggings, reminding me of a black widow spider with her long, thin limbs. She was twice as deadly, I knew for a fact.

  I held out the pie. “I brought you a piece of your favorite.” I glanced down at her gazelle body. “That is, if you eat anything besides grass these days.”

  She eyed the pie suspiciously. “Did you poison it?”

  I harrumphed. “I thought about it, but Mom hid the hemlock from me.”

  “Thanks.” She took the plate and stood back, making room for me to enter.

  I stepped into her lair, noting the open luggage on her bed. “You going somewhere?”

  She shrugged and dug her fork into the pie. “I’ve worn out my welcome here.”

  That was one way of putting it. “Heading any place in particular?”

  “Maybe.”

  I didn’t blame her for holding her cards close to her vest. I always did around her. “I hear the moon has a few openings, but we might need to weigh you down so you don’t float back to Earth.”

  “Funny,” she said with a straight face.

  Moving to the dresser, I leaned against it and took a bite of pie. I had a feeling I’d need every last sweet crumb to keep my bitterness at bay. “So, who was he?” When she looked at me with her perfectly shaped eyebrows arched, I added, “The man we married.”

  She set her plate down on the bookshelf full of our childhood favorites. I shoved another piece of pie in my mouth as she crossed the room and stared out the narrow basement window.

  “Hey.” She leaned closer to the glass, scowling. “Is that my scarf out there in the snow?”

  And her hat, too. “We’ll have to ask Frosty later.”

  She hit me with a glare. “That’s an expensive scarf.”

  I smiled, my positivity gushing. “That’s too bad. Now quit stalling and tell me about our husband.”

  She crossed her arms. “He was rich.”

  “I figured that based on the amount of money he left us according to the letter.”

  “And alone.”

  That made sense, too. Why else would he have left gobs of cash to a woman hiding behind a false identity?

  “Did you love him?” I asked.

  She scoffed. “There’s only been one man I loved.”

  Right, Rex. I gagged a little on Mom’s pie. What Susan saw in that pompous prick was beyond me. Sure, he was handsome, but below the surface everything was slimy and bloated, oozing with maggots.

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?” She gave me a brittle smile. “Marry him or use your identity?”

  “Both.”

  “Why not?” she said, hiding behind flippancy.

  “Don’t play games with me, Susan. Not here, not now. It’s just the two of us, and I deserve answers.”

  With an exaggerated sigh, she left the window and dropped onto the edge of the bed. “Back in May, I met a man in an airport bar. I was on my way to Florida for a job with a gallery down in Key West. He was waiting for a flight to go meet with a client in St. Barts.”

  “That’s an island in the Caribbean, right?”

  She nodded. “We spent an interesting few hours during our layovers.”

  I tried extra hard not to roll my eyes. “You had wild monkey sex, I get it.”

  “Actually, we didn’t. There was some flirting, but we spent the time talking about our jobs. He was an attorney who specialized in estate taxes. The conversation was actually quite mundane. Shortly before it was time for him to board, he gave me his business card and told me that if the Florida job didn’t work out and I was interested in earning a lot of money in a short time, to give him a call.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “No, of course not. I went to Key West, but within a week, I was bored out of my mind. One night, after a couple of drinks, I found his number in my purse. When I called, he told me the job was still available and offered to pay for my flight down to St. Barts.”

  “Let me guess. High-paid call girl?”

  She tried to look offended, but I wasn’t buying it. “I asked if sex was involved and he said he didn’t think it would be necessary to seal the deal, but that I needed to bring some of my more alluring outfits and a fake identity.”

  A Caribbean island, an estate lawyer, quick money. All of this seemed so unreal. Like something out of a James Bond movie. “Why my name?”

  “I didn’t have time to get a fake ID. I knew your details, including your Social Security number from when you had it taped to your wall in your bedroom.”

  I’d been sixteen at the time and trying to memorize it for job applications.

  “To be honest, I never figured this so-called job of his would amount to much, or I would have chosen a better cover than hiding behind you.”

  “I wish you had. What happened next?”

  “The lawyer met me at the airport, took me shopping at some very pricey boutiques, and then dropped me off at a hotel, promising to return to take me to dinner in the evening. Later, I dressed the part and dined with him at a posh club. During the meal, he took me over and introduced me to one of his clients, an old man who was eating alone. Only instead of claiming I was his date, he said I was his sister and had come down there to heal after losing my husband to a long, ugly battle with lung cancer.”

  She shifted, crossing her legs on the bed as though she was practicing yoga. “I caught onto the game and within the hour was sharing drinks with the old guy in the club bar, listening to him go on and on about his life.” She groaned. “And trust me, Hooch could talk about himself until my ears bled.”

  “Hooch? That’s the name of the man we married?” It sounded like something Harvey would name a dog.

  “It was his nickname. His real name was Herman Oleander Osmond Winchester, Jr., but he preferred Hooch for short.”

  Okay, Hooch it was. “Was the lawyer there with you?”

  “No, he left us so we could get to know each other. The next night, I went to dinner with Hooch on my own. This went on for over a week, me flirting and listening to the old geezer drone about his long life—he was ninety-two, so he had plenty of boring stories to tell. By the end of the week, I’d learned two things—Hooch was lonely for a companion and he had lung cancer, same as my fictitious dead husband.”

  I moved over to the dressing chair, pushed her clothes aside, and settled in to see how this tale ended up with Mr. Peabody showing up on our doorstep on Christmas Day. “So, how long did it take for Hooch to change his will?”