The Fruitcake Murders

The Fruitcake Murders

As Christmas 1946 draws near, thirty-something marine officer-turned-homicide detective Lane Walker has his hands full. Three men with seemingly no relationship to each other have been murdered, including the powerful District Attorney. The only connection between the crimes? The weapons: twenty-year-old unopened fruitcake tins manufactured by a company that is no longer in business. While some foods may be to die for, fruitcake isn't one of them! This heaping helping of murder will be no easy task for Walker, and he certainly doesn't need the determined and feisty Tiffany Clayton, the political reporter for The Chicago Star , getting in the way. Employing witty dialogue and historical accuracy, The Fruitcake Murders offers equal parts murder, mystery, and mayhem in a perplexing whodunit set in the days just after World War II. Fruitcakes never die…but people do! Ace Collins defines himself as a storyteller. He has authored more than sixty books that have sold more than 2.5 million copies. His catalog includes novels, biographies, children’s works as well as books on history, culture and faith. He has also been the featured speaker at the National Archives Distinguished Lecture Series, hosted a network television special and does college basketball play-by-play. Ace lives in Arkansas. Learn more about him by visiting AceCollins.com.  The Fruitcake Murders By Ace Collins Abingdon Press Copyright © 2015 Ace Collins All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4267-7189-7 CHAPTER 1 Thursday, December 23, 1926 9:15 P.M. It was just past seven, the temperature was in the teens, the north wind gusting to thirty and the spitting snow flurries hinting at a storm that would soon assure every child in Chicago a white Christmas. Though he wanted to stay home with his elderly mother and two children, love had driven fifty-six-year-old Jan Lewandowski out into the cold to make the twenty-block walk through the city's Little Italy to the small candy factory he'd started when he'd emigrated from Poland in 1905. While his teenage son, Szymon, was too mentally disturbed to care about the weather or the upcoming holidays, Lewandowski's eight-year-old daughter had been praying for snow for weeks and today's forecast thrilled her. Thus, to make Alicija's joy even greater, Lewandowski was braving the increasingly harsh conditions to retrieve the small, red sled he'd hidden in the back of his office. Tomorrow he was going to place that outdoor toy under the tree and pretend Santa had brought it all the way from the North Pole. If only his little blonde angel could know the truth. If only he could tell the always-smiling child the sled was not a gift from St. Nick, but a labor of love created by his own hands. Maybe someday he would let her know the time it took him to build it and how much love went into every facet of that job, but for the moment the credit would go solely to the jolly elf who lived above the Arctic Circle. After all, that was a part of the magic and innocence of Christmas that even a middle-aged man like Lewandowski treasured as well as the magic and innocence he felt every child needed to hang onto for as long as possible. As the short, stocky candy maker crossed onto Taylor Street, a heavyset, finely dressed man, wearing a long overcoat and wide-brimmed hat and hugging two large paper sacks tightly against his chest, stepped out of Lombardi's Grocery and Produce and casually ambled toward a Cadillac sedan parked on the curb. A young man, tall and thin and outfitted in a beaver coat and green wool scarf to fight off the wind's bitter chill, stood by the vehicle's back door waiting. Arriving at the curb, the big man turned back toward the store, and, as he did, a street lamp revealed a deep, nasty scar on his fleshy cheek. Standing in the shadows, under the grocery's awning, Lewandowski watched the heavyset man intently study Lombardi's showcase window before the shopper slowly spun and stepped through the large, green sedan's rear door. After the door was shut and secured, the younger man hustled around to the driver's side, got in, slid the car into first, and eased forward. As the Caddy made a sweeping U-turn, its twenty-one inch wooden wheels crunching on the fresh snow, Lewandowski stepped forward and stood under a street lamp. For a moment, his eyes met the driver's. The men briefly studied each other before the car roared out of sight and the candy maker turned and made his way on down the sidewalk. Momentarily stopping to pull up his collar in an effort to gain a bit more protection against the unforgiving north wind, Lewandowski glanced at the tiny store the big man had just exited. The candy maker smiled at the festive holiday display Geno Lombardi had created in his front window. Illuminated by blinking, electric lights were a half dozen children's toys, a few canned hams, a small evergreen tree, four boxes of Noma Christmas lights, a basket of fruit, a can of nuts, and several rolls of wr