Free A Little Yuletide Murder by Jessica Fletcher

Cynthia Curtis’s office at the library, Tony, and spoke with Mort Metzger from there. He questioned Jake, but released him. Frankly, I hate to hear this kind of rumor circulating. The man is innocent until a court of law proves him guilty. At least that’s the way the Constitution says it’s supposed to be.”
    “Rinse,” Tony said, indicating the basin next to the chair. I did as I was told.
    “That’s the problem when people create a negative reputation, like Jake. Easy to think the worst of somebody like that.”
    “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “Still ...”
    “I hear Jake has a good alibi.”
    I sat up a little straighter in my chair. “Who did you hear that from?”
    “Susan Shevlin. She was in first thing this morning to have a filling replaced.”
    Susan Shevlin was married to Cabot Cove’s mayor, Jim Shevlin, and operated the town’s leading travel agency.
    I shook my head as Tony removed the bib from around my neck. “My, how news gets around. She’s right, though. Jake told Mort he spent the morning of Rory’s murder fixing a stone wall with Mary Walther’s brother, Dennis.”
    Tony’s eyebrows went up. I knew what he was thinking, that Dennis Solten—Solten was Mary Walther’s maiden name—might not be the best source of an alibi for someone accused of murder. Anyone who’d spent any time with Dennis knew that he was someone who agreed with anything and everything said, siding with totally opposing views as fast as they were proffered. Unlike his brother-in-law, Jake, who argued with everyone about everything , you never heard a word of disagreement from Dennis. The word “sweet” was most often applied to him. I sometimes wondered whether labeling him mildly retarded accurately reflected his situation. He had the look of a beaten puppy, someone who’d been put down so often in his life that it became second nature for him to be so malleable that he came off as intellectually slow, even dim-witted. Dennis Solten was as small as his sister was big. But he was a hard worker; no one would debate that. When he wasn’t helping Jake on the farm, he hired out for yard work, snow shoveling, and other odd jobs. I’d hired him last fall to split two cords of wood from an ash that had died and fallen on my property. He attacked the task with vigor and dedication, swinging the heavy sledgehammer into the wedge he’d driven into each log with such energy that it tired me out just watching him.
    “Are you saying that Dennis might be providing Jake with an alibi because Jake told him to?”
    “Possibility, isn’t it?” said Tony, stripping off latex gloves and tossing them into a special trash container. “Seems to me it wouldn’t be hard to get Dennis to say almost anything.”
    I thought for a moment about what he said, then offered, “If that’s true, then the opposite could occur. He could be persuaded to say something about Jake that would be incriminating.”
    “I guess it’s a matter of who gets to him first with the most persuasive argument.”
    I left Dr. Colarusso’s office, realizing how accurate his final comment had been. I also recognized that I, too, was feeding the Cabot Cove grapevine. I wasn’t doing it for the sake of gossip. At least I hoped it wouldn’t be perceived that way. I made a few more stops before heading home for lunch, including the post office, the bookstore, where I’d promised to sign copies of my latest novel, and our local fish market to pick up a bushel of clams for steaming. Everywhere I went, the conversation quickly turned to Rory Brent’s murder and the suspicion that Jake Walther had done the evil deed.
    Happy to be home and away from the subject of murder and murderers, I placed water, two bay leaves, and a splash of white wine in the bottom of a very large lobster pot and put it on the stove. When it started to send up steam, I dumped in the clams. In the ten minutes it took for them to open, I melted some butter, cut off two