The Mystery Before Christmas

Chapter 6

My next appointment was with Connie Denton. Secret Santa had given her a down payment on the diner where she’d worked as an employee for twenty years. I assumed the down payment on a diner would be a considerable amount of money, which made it seem even less likely that the transaction had been handled anonymously. Connie had suggested I come to the diner during the brief lull between the breakfast and lunch crowd, so timing my visit was important if I wanted her to have time to chat.

The Foxtail Diner had been in Foxtail Lake since there had been a town. I wasn’t sure exactly how long the diner had been around, but I was pretty sure that Connie was at least the fourth or fifth owner. It was nice that she’d been able to buy the diner where she’d worked for so long. Cass had told me that she planned to leave the diner exactly as it had always been, menu and all. Everyone in town was happy that Connie had gotten the help she needed to buy the diner. An out of town buyer might have felt the need to change everything, and that wouldn’t have gone over well with the town’s residents, who seemed to appreciate tradition.

“Callie,” Connie hugged me when I walked through the door. “I was so happy to hear that you were back.”

“It’s good to be back.” I’d hung out at the diner, eating burgers and drinking shakes for most of my high school years. I’d meant to come in before this but somehow had never gotten around to it. “And congratulations on buying the diner.”

Connie grinned. “Can you believe that Santa just gave me the down payment on this place? I mean, who would do something like that? When the loan officer, who by the way, had just turned me down for not having a down payment, called and told me that a down payment had been provided by an anonymous donor, I didn’t believe him. I actually thought he was pulling my leg, and the whole thing was just some cruel joke. But he insisted that he was telling the truth and suggested I come down to discuss the loan now that the down payment obligation had been met. I was totally in shock. I’m still in shock. Very, very grateful, but utterly and completely in shock.” She took me by the hand. “It’s pretty slow right now. Let’s grab a booth in the back, and we’ll chat.”

I let the woman, who I estimated to be in her early to mid-forties, drag me toward the back of the diner.

“It seems as if the Secret Santa gift was really a gift to the town as well as to you personally,” I pointed out. “This place has a lot of history. Tradition. I understand business owners wanting to retire and move off the mountain, so I understand that businesses must trade hands from time to time, but if the diner had been sold to someone from out of the area, the history and tradition that is so important to the town could very well have been lost.”

She raised her brow. “That’s true. Personally, I don’t plan to change a thing other than to add a special of the day, which I’ll describe on the chalkboard near the front counter. That will allow me to experiment a bit with new dishes without having to change the menu.”

“I think that is a wonderful idea.” I looked around at the brightly decorated space. Carols played in the background, garland lined the counter, and the same train and miniature village that had graced the place when Gracie was a girl were still displayed. “So it sounds as if the money for the down payment was delivered directly to the bank.”

She nodded. “I knew that buying this place was a longshot, but I also knew I had to try in spite of the fact I have about ten dollars in my savings account. I filled out an application for a loan, and quite frankly, I was assuming they would turn it down right away, but much to my surprise, I was assigned a loan officer. Randy Trainer. He is actually the only loan officer at the local bank, but he still took the time to help me through the process. He told me right up front that the odds of the bank giving me a loan with no down payment were slim to none, but he also reminded me that there was really nothing to be lost by trying. He got creative and assigned a value to my personal possessions, including my old clunker of a car. He figured that if we assigned a value and then used the value as collateral that might get the board to approve at my application, but it didn’t work. Randy really did the best he could, but I had nothing to work with. He called and let me know that he’d done what he could, but that the bank wasn’t going to bite. I’d accepted that, and then he called back to let me know that an anonymous donor had put up the down payment, and we were back in business.”

“And he didn’t tell you who put up the money?”

“He didn’t tell me because he didn’t know. Someone simply mailed in a cashier’s check for the down payment along with specific instructions for its use.”

“So, if you had to guess, who donated the money?” I asked as the song in the background changed from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to Frosty the Snowman.

She narrowed her gaze. “I’m really not sure. I have thought about it. I mean, someone just gave me what amounts to a fortune in my book. There aren’t a lot of people in the area with the means to do that. I figure the person who sent the money has to be local. Otherwise, how would they even know about my desire to buy the diner?”

“That’s true. The donor is probably a local, and he or she is most likely someone who is known to you. I don’t suppose you’d want to take a guess at who he or she might be?”

“Dean and Martin Simpson come in sometimes,” Connie continued. “They certainly have the means to put up a down payment for this place if they wanted to, and they do seem to enjoy the food and the atmosphere. I suppose if I had to guess, I would say that the donor might have been them. As brilliant as they are, they are sort of set in their ways, and they did make a comment at one point about not wanting anything to change after it was sold.”

Dean and Martin had been on my original list as well. Perhaps a conversation with the men was in order. I knew the pair were pretty reclusive, and I really didn’t know them at all, but Cass was friends with the brothers, so perhaps I’d have him set up a meeting.

My other idea, in terms of identifying the guy, was to try to speak to Randy or someone at the bank. I understood that the cashier’s check had been an anonymous donation, but there had been other Secret Santa gifts that had gone through the bank. Grover Wood had received cash on his behalf to bring his overdue mortgage current. Surely, someone at the bank had to have been in on the whole thing.

Of course, if someone had simply sent in a cashier’s check with instructions as to where to apply it, then I supposed the staff at the bank might have been as clueless as anyone. I wondered if there was a way to track down the source of a cashier’s check. Both the down payment for the diner and the paydown of the mortgage would have been large amounts. Surely, there would be a paper trail somewhere. I wasn’t a financial wizard by any means, so maybe I’d ask Cass to help me find the information I was looking for.

“I guess you heard about Dennis Felton,” Connie said after I’d let the conversation lull.

“Dennis Felton? Did he receive a gift from Secret Santa?”

“No. He was arrested.”

I raised a brow. “Arrested?” I’d estimate Dennis was a man in his late sixties, who like Tom, tended to hang out at the lodge. He’d owned a local paint store for as long as I could remember. He was a nice guy whom everyone seemed to really like. I couldn’t imagine what he’d done to get himself arrested. “What did he do?”

“I guess he punched Vern Tidwell in the face after Vern had a few too many drinks and started spouting off about the fact that Dennis and Buford had argued on the day Buford died, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Dennis hadn’t been the one to hit him over the head, causing him to pass out in the snow.”

“So is the fact that Buford was hit in the head public knowledge?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if it is public knowledge, but Vern seemed to know about it. I guess now everyone knows about it. It makes sense that there was a reason that Buford froze to death. It never sat right with me that he simply drank too much and then passed out and froze to death. The man can pretty much drink anyone in town under the table. It would take a whole lot of alcohol to bring him to the point where he didn’t even realize he was lying in the snow.”

“Do you know what Dennis and Buford were arguing about on the day Buford died?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Everything I know, I learned from folks who’d heard about Dennis’s arrest and were chatting about it during breakfast. I suppose you can ask Cass if you are really interested.”

“I will. I wonder if Cass plans to keep Dennis locked up, or if he plans to process and release him.”

“I imagine it will be a catch and release situation. Dennis does drink too much at times, and he has punched a few faces, but all in all, he is a pretty good guy. I doubt Cass will keep him longer than he needs to in order to bring home the point that the guy needs to get help for his drinking and anger issues.”

“I remember Dennis from when I lived here before. I know he was an adult, and I was a kid, but I don’t remember him being a drunk.”

“He wasn’t,” Connie informed me. “He didn’t start drinking until after his wife died. I guess he never recovered from that.”

Just about the time I figured I had the information I needed for my article, the lunch crowd began to arrive, so I thanked Connie and said my goodbyes. My last appointment of the day before I had to go and pick Paisley up from school was with Billy Prescott and his mother, Janice. Billy, who was a paraplegic, had received a new wheelchair after his mother had backed over his old one. The new one was not only a replacement but an upgraded model as well.

I’d never met either Billy or Janice, but Janice seemed willing to chat with me when I’d called and introduced myself. Like Gilda Frederickson, she’d read my columns and was excited about being featured in the next issue of the local newspaper and possibly even The Denver Post. Billy was homeschooled due to his difficulty getting around in the winter, so we agreed to meet at their home, which thankfully was not all that far from the elementary school where I would pick up Paisley.

After a brief introduction at the door when I arrived, Janice showed me to a room in the back of the house with windows that overlooked both the mountain and the valley.

“Wow. What a great view,” I said, as I stood in front of the window.

“It is really exceptional, especially considering we are so close to town. Please have a seat on the sofa. Billy is in the den. I’ll go get him and bring him in here. This is a much nicer room for us to have our chat.”

I did as Janice suggested and took a seat looking out the large picture window. The view from the house I lived in with Gracie was pretty spectacular given the fact that it was right on the lake, but this view was so expansive as to take your breath away. There was something about a sky view that really opened things up. I could imagine sitting on this sofa and watching the storms roll in.

The interview with Janice and Billy lasted exactly thirty minutes. I learned that the new wheelchair had been delivered by an out of town service and that their records showed the shipper as being the store the new wheelchair had been ordered from. Janice informed me that she’d called the store that sold the wheelchair in an effort to find out who she should thank for their generosity, but was told that the purchase was made anonymously and they were not at liberty to provide her with any additional information.

So, in other words, I was back to square one. I did manage to get photos, quotes, and anecdotes for my story, so my interviews today were not a complete waste of time. Both Janice and Billy had been completely drawn in by the magic and the mystery of Secret Santa. When Billy’s wheelchair had been damaged, they figured they’d need to use their savings to put a down payment on another one, which would make for a pretty bleak Christmas, but with the gift of the new chair, they shared that now they would be able to embrace the Christmas season as they always had. This year, Billy and his mom were busy making sweaters for the animals at the shelter. The sweaters, like the animals, came in all shapes and sizes, and each was unique. Janice shared that she’d taught Billy to knit when he was a small child stuck in a chair with nowhere to expend his energy. Both mother and son were really very good at their craft, and I was sure the animals at the shelter would enjoy the sweaters designed specifically for warmth.

While I was happy for Billy and his mother, I was disappointed they couldn’t direct me to the person behind the gift. I had others to speak to, however. I figured I’d try to track down Donnie and Grover tomorrow, and then write my column over the weekend. I’d also start setting up interviews with prospective Secret Santas over the weekend. Maybe I’d even start my interviews this weekend. I wanted to speak to as many people as I could before my deadline for the second article in the series, so I’d have as many anecdotes to draw from as possible as I wrote it. Assuming, of course, that Dex liked my article about the recipients and let me continue with the series rather than turning it over to Brock.