David Handler - The Snow White Christmas Cookie

Des squared her big Smokey hat on her head and got out. Headed through the garage past two stacks of firewood and into the house’s mudroom, stamping the snow from her black lace-up boots. The kitchen was spotless and smelled of fresh brewed coffee. It was eerily quiet. Her footsteps resounded like a kettle drum as she strode down the hall into the den, where it didn’t look so much like Christmas in Connecticut as it did Christmas in Miami Beach. The sofa where Josie Cantro sat slumped next to Mitch, huge-eyed with grief, was white wicker with pale blue cushions. Same as the armchairs. The coffee table was white wicker, too. There were no rugs. Just a bare wooden floor that had been painted blue ages ago and become gently worn by thousands of sandy footprints. The summery decor clashed sharply with the snow that was falling outside of the windows that looked out over the sound. Also with the spindly little Christmas tree that stood there in the corner. There was a fireplace but no fire was going. There was a flat screen TV. There was a bookcase that was stocked with old-time rainy day diversions like jigsaw puzzles and Monopoly.

Mitch wore a pair of jeans and a heavy turtleneck sweater. Josie was still dressed in snow-dampened running clothes. Mitch was talking to her in a soft, comforting voice. She barely seemed to hear him.

He glanced up at Des and said, “I made coffee. Want some?”

She shook her head. “Where is he?”

“Through there.” He gestured toward a doorway next to the bookcase.

It led to a bedroom that was right off of the den. A bedroom that was so tiny that Des guessed it was a converted sunporch. There was barely enough room for a chest of drawers, a pair of nightstands and the double bed where the late Bryce Peck lay propped up against a couple of pillows, his head flopped over to one side like a Raggedy Andy doll. His eyes were closed, his complexion already faintly bluish. The Jewett girls were attending to him in their usual quiet, efficient manner. Bryce’s stringy hair was uncombed, his gaunt, weathered face unshaven. He wore a ratty old tie-dyed T-shirt over a long-sleeved thermal undershirt. His hands lay open on the bed, palms up. Next to his right hand there were three empty prescription pill bottles. Next to his left lay an empty fifth of Jose Cuervo Gold tequila.

A hand-scrawled note on a yellow Post-it was affixed to Bryce’s chest. Des read it, frowning, before she said, “Good morning, girls.”

“Oh, it’s a lovely one,” Marge responded.

“What did he take?”

“Quite some cocktail,” Mary said. “We’re looking at twenty-four Xanax, thirty Vicodin and another thirty Ambien sleep aids.”

“Were they his pills?”

Mary nodded. “Prescribed by Ed Swibold, that country club shrink up in Essex. The prescriptions were filled in November.”

“Mind you, we have no way of knowing if all three pill bottles were full,” Marge pointed out. “But Josie swears that they were. Also that the fifth of Cuervo had never been opened. She told us Bryce was alive when she left to go running with Mitch. She was gone for an hour and change. By the time she got back here, he was dead.”

“Say those pill bottles were full. Would they be enough to kill him within the time frame we’re talking about?”

“Him and a good-sized herd of elephants,” Marge affirmed.

Des glanced around the room. No furniture was overturned, no lamps or windows broken. She moved in more closely and examined Bryce’s skull, throat and hands. Saw no head wounds. No bruising around his throat. No fresh scratches on his hands. No skin, blood or other foreign matter under his nails. There was no reason to think that Bryce’s death was anything other than what it appeared to be-a straight suicide by a man who had a long history of emotional problems and drug dependency. As resident trooper her job now was to report her preliminary observations to the Troop F barracks in Westbrook and obtain contact information for the victim’s next of kin. A detective would take over from there. And a death investigator from the Medical Examiner’s office in Farmington would slog his way down to photograph the body and take Josie’s statement. After that, Bryce’s body would be delivered by hearse to Farmington for an autopsy. The M.E.’s people no longer transported bodies in their own fleet of vans. The job had been outsourced to undertakers.

Des studied that hand-scrawled Post-it on Bryce’s chest again, which read: Just an awkward stage. “What do you suppose that means?” she wondered aloud.

“Bryce used to say that to me whenever he went off into one of his dark places,” Josie answered softly, standing there in the doorway with Mitch. “He’d shrug his shoulders and say ‘It’s just an awkward stage.’ I ought to have those words carved on his headstone except…”

“Except what, Josie?”

“He told me he wanted to be cremated.”

“So his death was something that you two had talked about?”

“He talked about it all of the time. I kept telling the gnarly doofus that I intended to keep him around for a good thirty years. But he … he didn’t expect to be around for long.”

Des nodded, glancing around at the cramped little room.

“We’ve been sleeping down here to save on the fuel bill,” Josie explained. “It costs a fortune to heat this big old place. We don’t go upstairs at all.”

“About those pill bottles,” Des said. “You’re sure they were full?”

“Positive. I count them every morning to make sure. He wasn’t taking any of that stuff anymore. Their presence in our medicine chest was entirely totemic.”

“Entirely what?”

“They were symbolic. They represented what he didn’t need anymore.”

“Was that your idea or Bryce’s?”

“It was something we both agreed to.”

The tiny room fell silent as all of them stood there trying not to look at her dead boyfriend.

“Josie, why don’t we continue this conversation in the kitchen?”

Mitch joined them, topping off Josie’s coffee mug and his own before he sat with them at the round oak table.

“I don’t happen to believe in pills,” Josie stated firmly. “I don’t think they make you healthy-just drug dependent. I’m strictly about self-healing that utilizes energy-based modalities and mind-body practices.”

“Forgive me, but I don’t understand what you just said.”

“I’m saying that we concentrated on harnessing the vast power of Bryce’s mind to return his body to its natural state of being. We detoxified his system of artificial chemicals. We reduced his stress levels. We placed him on a…” She trailed off, staring at Des accusingly. “You think I’m full of crap, don’t you?”

“That’s not true at all, Josie,” Des said.

“Yes, it is. I can see it in your eyes. I happen to be a fully accredited life coach, you know. People value what I do. You would, too, if you needed me. You don’t. You’re someone who has tremendous personal discipline. You exercise, eat right, don’t smoke or do drugs. You’ve got it together.”

Des glanced down at the graphite stick residue that was always there underneath the middle fingernail of her right hand. Yeah, I’ve got it together. I just see dead people is all.

“But most people aren’t like you, Des. They’re weak. And an amazing number of them don’t like themselves very much. I have one client who pays me seventy-five dollars an hour just to go grocery shopping with her twice a week. She says she’d be lost without me. This is an affluent, well-educated career woman. You wouldn’t think she’d need me, but she does. Most of my clients do.”

“Bryce was more than a client to you.”

“Much more,” Josie acknowledged, lowering her blue eyes. “That … never happened before. I’ve never fallen in love with a client. I can’t explain it.”