Mrs. Claus and the Santaland Slayings Page 22

  Meanwhile, Gert’s Pretzels and Hoppie’s Hot Drinks argued over the placement of their stalls.

  “Gert’s has had this spot for three generations,” Gert said.

  Hoppie was having none of it. “How can that be? You’re Gert and you’re only thirty-two.”

  Hands on her hips, she stood inches away from him, red-faced. “My grandmother was Gert, too, and my mother should have been called Gert, but she changed her name to Rainbow because she was a hippie. But it’s the same stall and you know it, and it’s always been right there, by the entrance to Peppermint Pond.”

  I was supposed to be mediating, but for a moment I was too distracted. “There were hippies in Christmastown?” Somehow all this snow didn’t seem conducive to Summer of Love type situations.

  “Not many,” Gert admitted. “It’s hard to let it all hang out when the temperature never gets above freezing.”

  It took a good half hour to convince Gert and Hoppie to coexist peacefully—each moving ten feet away from what they considered the optimal spot.

  As soon as that fire was put out, I had to deal with a tilting bandstand, bands badgering me about the lineup, and Tiny Sparkletoe of the Christmastown Community Guild, who was concerned about the number of trash receptacles on hand. By the time I’d run to the hardware store and come back with two additional cans, the ever-popular Swingin’ Santas, the first band slated after the little elf girl, were already playing and skaters had taken to the ice.

  The tunes they played provided a jaunty counterpoint to the drumming and chanting approaching slowly from the other side of town.

  No sooner had I directed elves where to set up the cans than I spotted Juniper gliding around on the pond. She was doing figure eights with an ease I envied. I was still awkward on skates.

  She waved at me and sped over. “Guess who’s meeting me here this evening.”

  “Martin?”

  She turned pink. “It’s like a dream come true! I never thought he’d ever look twice at me. I think I owe some of this to you.”

  I didn’t get it. “Me?”

  “He only started noticing me after you and I became friends, even though we’ve been in the band together for two years.”

  “Maybe you seemed more approachable to him when you became the friend of someone he knew.”

  She nodded. “That’s what I mean. I owe that to you. You’d laugh if I told you all the ways I used to try to capture his attention—even self-defeating things like dressing funny or playing bad notes in rehearsal. I thought, if he just looked at me, maybe I’d have a chance.” She shook her head. “I even did some things I’m ashamed of now.”

  One minute I was listening to what she was saying, and the next my attention was totally riveted on the pond.

  Juniper followed my gaze. “What is it?”

  “Tiffany,” I said.

  My sister-in-law had donned one of her old exhibition outfits, which made her look like a red, sparkly slash across the ice. All eyes were on her, and not only for her sudden transformation from woman in widow’s weeds to merry widow. I’d never witnessed anyone doing the things she was doing outside of televised skating competitions: jumps, and one-legged glides, and dizzying spins. My mouth dropped in astonishment.

  She executed a leap I’d only seen attempted by skaters on television. “Holy flip!” Juniper exclaimed. “That was a triple Salchow!”

  The people around the pond clapped and cheered, and more ice was cleared to make way for her. I’d known she was a onetime medal winner, of course, but I’d never seen her in action. And what was even more surprising was the outfit she was wearing—a bright red flirty version of a Santa suit. The band—the Swingin’ Santas—was doing an upbeat version of “Santa Baby” and she was hamming and vamping it up as if they’d practiced the routine for months. Hard to believe that this was the same woman I’d known since coming to Christmastown.

  What had come over her?

  “I’ve never seen her like this,” I said, having to speak loudly over the beating of drums from the Giblet march, which was growing closer.

  “She’s a natural!” Juniper said.

  She was, and the crowd was eating it up, whooping and clapping with each move she made. But her talent and star quality weren’t foremost in my mind. Her mental state was what concerned me.

  For a moment I was reminded of myself in my first year of widowhood. I’d been miserable for so long, locked up alone in my house, binge-watching TV shows without actually seeing them. I watched one British mystery show twice in a month and didn’t remember whodunit the second time through. My brain had been incapable of holding information—just that Keith was dead and he had cheated on me; that fact took up most of the space in my head so that nothing else could get through.

  But then one day I’d been passing by an outlet mall and stopped. Two hours later, I drove home with the loot I’d purchased in a mad shopping spree. When I came down from this manic episode I had to take most of the stuff back. My spree had been a release.

  That’s what Tiffany’s mad skate struck me as—someone pushing a release valve. I looked around for Christopher, worrying about what he’d make of this. I couldn’t spot him in the crowd, which was huge and growing. Some of the people watching by the pond were leaning on Justice for Giblet signs. They’d trickled away from the march to watch the last Mrs. Claus’s exhibition skate.

  “The worst moment was when I went to the Candy Cane Factory after his brother died,” Juniper said.

  It took me a few moments to realize that we were back to talking about Martin. “Why did you do that?”

  “To offer my condolences, nominally.” She shook her head. “But really it was just a pretext for talking to him. Isn’t that terrible?”

  “I’m sure he was glad to accept your sympathy,” I said.

  “Maybe he would have been, but I never got a chance to find out. When I got to his office, right after I’d heard about the hunting accident, they said he’d taken the day off.”

  “Well then, you certainly have nothing to feel ashamed about. You didn’t even say anything to him.”

  “Yes, but if it’s the thought that counts when it comes to good things, shouldn’t bad thoughts be black marks on our conscience?”

  Someone tapped on my elbow. “April Claus?”

  I turned and looked down into the red face of Noggin Hollyberry. “Hello, Mr. Hollyberry.”

  “I knew you Clauses had gall, but this beats everything.” He pointed toward Tiffany. “Having that sparkly lady making a spectacle of herself while we’re trying to have a solemn march. As if the noise from the band wasn’t bad enough!”

  “The Skate-a-Palooza was on the calendar all year, long before the march. It’s not my fault your trying to disrupt our event backfired.”

  He quivered. “We aren’t disrupting anything!”

  Tiny Sparkletoe hurried over to us in a flutter. “What’s the matter?”

  “That music and that skater!” Noggin said. “It’s making our marchers peel away to watch.”

  “Well,” Tiny observed, “they seem to be enjoying themselves.”

  “They’re not supposed to enjoy anything! This is for Giblet!”

  My phone rang, and I took the call without looking, worried that there would be another problem to troubleshoot. “Hello?” I said.

  “April.”

  It was Nick. He sounded relieved to hear my voice. Who else did he expect to answer my phone? “What’s wrong?”

  “Is Tiffany there?” he asked.

  “Um, yes.” I cupped my hand before speaking into the phone again. “She’s skating.”

  “Get her away from there and back up to the road as quickly and quietly as possible. There’s a sleigh coming to pick you both up.”

  I frowned into the middle distance, watching as Tiffany executed an elaborate spin to ahs from the audience. She looked like a sparkly top. “I’m not sure she’ll want to go.” I wasn’t keen to leave, either, but something impor
tant must have come up if Nick had gone to all the trouble to send transportation for us. “Why the sleigh?”

  “There’s been an accident. Christopher is very ill. The doctor’s here.”

  “Oh my god. What’s happened?” How could it be both illness and accident? There was something Nick wasn’t telling me. Blistering cold swept through me. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “We’re not sure. Christopher—” His voice broke, and he had to stop, take a breath, and start again. “He seems to be unconscious now. The doctor says the success of his recovery will depend on the poison that was used.”

  My heart slammed against my ribs. “Poison?”

  “We think Christopher ate a poisoned gumdrop.”

  Chapter 19

  “I never should have left him,” Tiffany said. “I knew he was in danger.”

  We were burrowed under blankets in the back of the sleigh Nick had sent for us. Despite the fact that she’d been skating, spinning, and jumping until just ten minutes ago, my sister-in-law’s face was pale as chalk. I didn’t know what to say to her. I’d already told her the bare facts that Nick had given me over the phone.

  I had hurriedly pulled her off the ice, telling her to stay mum about the reason. Nick didn’t want news of what had happened to Christopher to cause a panic. The Hollyberrys thought I had capitulated to their request that we not outshine their Justice for Giblet march, but it was probably only a matter of time before word of what had happened at the castle filtered out to the population at large.

  “I’ve been worried for months. Ever since Chris—” Tiffany’s throat choked off her words.

  Please let Christopher be okay. A gumdrop. It sounded so insignificant. How much poison could be put in a little piece of candy? And why would anyone do such a thing? Perhaps the poison hadn’t even been meant for Christopher. Whoever had done this could have been trying to kill someone else—or just creating mayhem at random.

  “Christopher’s strong,” I said, trying to reassure her.

  She was in no frame of mind to receive comfort, least of all from me. “Of course he’s strong—that’s why he was targeted. Chris was strong, too, and look what happened to him.”

  As much as I told myself not to jump to conclusions, I couldn’t help thinking about Amory. I’d let my natural sympathy for what he’d been through in his childhood color my view of the story he’d told me about what had happened on the monster hunt. Maybe he really did lie about what had happened. Now I imagined him on that mountain, cold, exhausted, and eaten up with decades-long resentment, seeing the opportunity to push Chris into the abyss.

  But did he resent Chris so much that he would try to kill Christopher, too? And how would he have gotten those deadly gumdrops in the house?

  “We don’t know what happened,” I said aloud, an admonishment to myself as much as to Tiffany.

  “I do.” Her eyes flashed as she turned to me. “I was on guard, watching my boy for all those months, and then you came along. Telling me I was smothering him. ‘Ease up,’ you said. ‘Freedom.’ I should never have listened to you. Especially given who you’re married to.”

  Anger rose in me at the unfairness of her accusations, and where she was placing the blame. She’d already convicted Nick. At the same time, while her son’s life hung in the balance I couldn’t fault her for lashing out. She was living the mother’s nightmare.

  “Nick had nothing to do with this. He’s distraught over Christopher.”

  She sent me a withering look. “Sure he is.”

  “If you could have heard how worried he sounded when I spoke to him on the phone . . .”

  Suspicion flickered in her eyes. She straightened. “Maybe he has reason to worry. Maybe he realizes that you’re the poisoner.”

  I knew she harbored bitterness toward me, but I hadn’t expected this.

  “Look what’s happened in Christmastown since you arrived here,” she said. “Two murders. And now my son.”

  My mouth dropped open. But then I remembered what Nick had said to me just before I left: I swear to you, April, this was a peaceful place before you got here. He’d been joking, though.

  He had been joking, right?

  Nothing about any of this seemed funny now.

  “I promise you, I had nothing to do with what’s happened to Christopher.” Or to Giblet or Old Charlie, but I doubted she cared about them.

  I might as well not have spoken at all.

  “You think I don’t see your endgame?” she asked. “I was in your position, you know. I married Chris and he whisked me away to his grand castle in the north, where I was treated like a queen.”

  I couldn’t say that I ever felt like a queen in Santaland, but I was too curious to see where she was headed with this argument to stop her.

  “And I gave Santaland a prince,” she continued, “a perfect little boy who was going to be Santa someday. But then Chris died, and you came here to displace me.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “You might be queen now, April, but Christopher will take his rightful place, and then you and Nick will be out of power, a footnote in Santaland’s history.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s what Nick and I both want.”

  She was too busy speculating about my motives to hear me. “Maybe you didn’t realize this until it was too late. So you decided to do something about it. Make your own children the heirs.”

  I shook my head. “Nick and I have no children.”

  “Yet.”

  “We won’t have.” I hesitated. This was really no one’s business but mine and Nick’s, but perhaps by divulging our secret I could put her mind at ease . . . at least about this. “I can’t have children, Tiffany. It caused my last marriage to crack up, even before my husband died.”

  “Maybe that was your husband’s fault.”

  I shook my head. “I discovered Keith had gotten a girlfriend pregnant before he died. She came to the funeral.”

  “And you didn’t know this before then? What did you do?”

  “I retreated like a wounded animal, cursed and broke a few things in the house, and then put part of the insurance settlement into a trust fund for the kid. After all, it wasn’t the baby’s fault.”

  Her eyes widened. “Does Nick know about all this? About your not being able to conceive, I mean?”

  Did she think I would marry him without telling him? “Of course. I told him the whole story last summer, even before he proposed.” Before he told me who he was, actually. “I reminded him of it after he asked me to marry him, and he said it didn’t matter to him. And when I asked him how he could be so sure, you know what he said? ‘Because I have a nephew, and he’s like a son to me.’ ”

  Tiffany absorbed what I’d told her but said nothing for a long time. That was okay. I hadn’t been looking for sympathy, and if it put thoughts of Nick as a serial killer out of her mind, so much the better.

  Finally, she huffed impatiently. “Why are we going so slow? What’s the point of having these special reindeer if they’re going to be so pokey?” She leaned forward and yelled at the two pulling us, “We’re in a hurry! Can’t you make this thing fly?”

  They were already running.

  The animal on the right shook his head, sending a jangling of bells ringing through the still night. “We have orders not to be conspicuous.”

  “Orders from whom?”

  “Santa.”

  She turned to me with a glare. “Do something, Mrs. Claus.”

  I hesitated. Nick would have urged caution to avoid talk about the emergency at the castle spreading and possibly starting a panic. A fear of poisoned candy around Christmas would cast a pall over the season.

  On the other hand, Nick wasn’t a mother worried about getting to her son’s sickbed.

  I thought I remembered seeing a blaze on one of the reindeer’s flanks. “On, Comet. Fly us home!”

  I was unsure if that’s all I had to say. I barely knew how to drive a sleigh, much less h
ow to command reindeer to fly.

  There was a hesitation, and then the gait of the animals in front of us changed from a trot to a loping, surging bound. With a stomach-turning lurch, the sleigh left the earth and climbed over the treetops. Was I really flying?

  The speed at which we seemed to be rushing up at the eerie northern lights told me I was. Terror, along with a strange, sharp jubilation, surged through me.

  Still holding the reins, I pushed myself against the side of the sleigh for dear life. We had no seat belts, and the sleigh was hardly a jetliner. We caught every breeze and bump in the air, wafting about like a kite. Or so it seemed to me.

  I hazarded a glance over the side of the sleigh at the world below. The lights of Christmastown blazed behind us, especially around the pond. The sound of Figgie and the Nutcrackers carried on the wind from here, and some of the skaters on the pond were carrying candle torches, creating a shimmering light show. It was probably striking on the ground, but from here it was breathtaking.

  Not that I had much breath. Sleigh flying is swift and rough, and I couldn’t quite dislodge my heart from my throat. Did Nick actually intend to go around the world in one of these contraptions? I was going to have to sit him down between now and Christmas and have a serious talk about safety belts.

  We closed in on the castle fast, and the sleigh began to plunge toward the earth much too fast for my liking.

  “Careful, Comet!” I couldn’t help calling out as we seemed to be on a collision course with the castle’s side portico.

  I expected a crash, but the sleigh came to a magically peaceful landing and abrupt stop.

  Tiffany was ready to hop out but turned back to me, I assumed to thank me for countermanding Nick’s orders.

  Instead, she said in a low voice, “Those are Dashers, not Comets. You really haven’t learned much about this place, have you?”

  * * *

  From the wind and stars and dizzying flight, we entered a castle that was still, dark, and silent. The west wing living quarters were as still as poor Christopher himself, lying across his bed in his room, the walls of which were decorated with stencils of airplanes, rocket ships, and—oddly, yet appropriately—reindeer-pulled sleighs. I only took a quick peek at his duvet-covered form before retreating to the family quarters.