Mrs. Claus and the Santaland Slayings Page 26

  “No, but you have. You play in the band and hang out at elf bars, and you even started a flirtation with an elf recently. A real man of the people.”

  He lifted his shoulders in a modest shrug. “Santaland’s had a traumatic year. I wanted them to feel good about the person who finally ended up as Santa.”

  Even though he’d been the one inflicting all the trauma.

  “I don’t know where you got that spider, but you killed Giblet. You fired him once from working here. Maybe you bumped into him at the Tinkertown Tavern, made sure the whispers about Nick reached his ears. My guess is that you visited his house to discuss hiring him back at the factory. And that’s when you slipped the spider into his stocking in his room. And then, when you were sure he was gone—after the messenger arrived at the castle—you slipped an incriminating note onto Nick’s desk. It was written in Nick’s handwriting, which puzzled me until Lucia told me that you’d all been forging each other’s writing since childhood.”

  “What happened to the note?” he asked.

  “Jingles and I destroyed it.”

  Judging from the understanding that flashed in his eyes, I’d just given him the answer to something that had been puzzling him for days. He made a tsking sound. “Destroying evidence in a murder investigation. Not very law-abiding of you, April.”

  “I shouldn’t have,” I agreed. “And I shouldn’t have been so suspicious of Nick at first when they found Old Charlie with that button of Nick’s next to him. You killed the poor old snowman because he saw you at Giblet’s. As soon as you heard he’d been in the vicinity, you took a blowtorch and ended his life.” My gut twisted at the memory of that sad, frozen puddle. “It’s my everlasting shame that I was the one who told you about Old Charlie that day after rehearsal.”

  Martin crossed his arms and sat back against the edge of his desk. “I gather you’ve told our venerable Constable Crinkles any of this? Or maybe you told Jake Frost. You and that detective seem awfully chatty. Maybe when they put Nick away, you can become Mrs. Frost.”

  I didn’t let his mockery distract me. “Chris, an elf, and an innocent snowman. It all seemed disconnected, but then you poisoned Christopher, and your motive became clear. The police thought that Nick killed his brother, then the elf who suspected him in that killing, and the snowman who witnessed him killing the elf, and then his nephew, clearing the way for himself to be Santa forever. But his getting caught cleared the way for you.”

  “With no evidence, you’ll have a hard time proving any of this. Who’s going to believe you? You’re just a wife desperate to exonerate her husband, the serial-killer Santa.”

  I smiled. “But I do have evidence. You see, you had me so worried about Nick that I left a nanny cam device in his office. I have video of you going into Nick’s study and switching out the gumdrops. I have a recording of you, just before you were to head out to Peppermint Pond, telling Christopher that a fresh batch of licorice ones was on the table.”

  His expression darkened. “Then let’s see this evidence. Let’s hear it.”

  “I transferred it to my phone.”

  He held out his arm and snapped his fingers. “Hand it over. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “My mother didn’t raise a nitwit. I’m not going to bring my phone here with you, alone. Anyway, I intend to let the police see it first. Unless . . .”

  His face froze momentarily, but in the next instant he smiled. “I get it. Blackmail, is it?”

  “Your mother’s right. I really should go back to Oregon, but I wouldn’t like to go empty-handed. I ought to deserve something after spending months in the freezing cold.”

  “Aren’t you clever,” he said flatly.

  “Not as clever as you, pretending to be my ally all these months.”

  “I am your ally, April. You’re clearly not fit for the position you’ve found yourself in, just as I’m wasted here as a glorified factory foreman. Look at me.” He stuck out his ample belly and gave it an affectionate pat. “Can you honestly say I wasn’t made to be Santa Claus?”

  “You look the part.”

  He drew up. “I am the part. Born to don the suit—as opposed to that serious stick, Nick. He’s just not up to the role; we all know that.”

  “You think the spirit of Saint Nicholas lives on in you, a man who frames his brother for multiple murders?”

  “Are you worrying about Nick?” he asked. “Don’t. The North Pole doesn’t have the death penalty. Yes, he’ll just be kept in that jail forever, but it’s a cozy cottage. He can live out his life there reading, or studying languages if he wants, or doing the constabulary’s books. That’s more his speed anyway. Nick’ll be fine. Happier, in fact. And I’ll be doing what I was born to do.”

  “What about Christopher? Wasn’t he born to be Santa, too?”

  A shadow—maybe the last vestige of Martin’s conscience—crossed his face. “I’m sorry about him. Truly.”

  I’d witnessed how sorry he was earlier. The kind of sorry that Snoopy dances with joy after hearing that his nephew’s died.

  He rubbed his hands together. “The question now is, what do you want, April?”

  I arched a brow. “What do you think?”

  “Ah! Money.” A smile quirked his lips. “Then follow me. There’s gold in our vaults, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.” I really didn’t.

  “Then let me show you.” He led the way out of the office, holding the door for me like a perfect gentleman. He was still wearing his Santa coat. I followed him out of the office wing and up three flights of stairs. We were both slightly winded when we reached the top. He pushed two industrial double doors open, and suddenly we were on a kind of catwalk over the Candy Cane Factory floor.

  “What is this?”

  “The syrup room,” he said.

  I leaned over the railing, peering into one of the massive tubs below. The syrup bubbled gently. “You keep it boiling all night?”

  “Just warmed so it won’t be hardened solid when the elves come back in the morning.”

  I wondered how long I needed to go on with this charade. Certainly I had enough on Martin now to show that he was responsible for every major crime that had occurred in Santaland this year. What more did I need?

  One thing I didn’t need was what happened next: The “Fa-la-la-la-la” sound of a text arriving on my phone, which was hidden inside my coat.

  My heart sank. I thought I’d turned off my notifications.

  Martin froze in alarm. “Your phone. You do have the evidence on you.”

  Not the evidence he thought. Everything I’d told him had been a bluff. But now there actually was something on my phone I needed to preserve. I tried to keep my face neutral, but he saw right through me.

  “You’ve been recording.”

  “No,” I lied. “Why would I? I’m blackmailing you, remember? Do you think I want proof of that floating around?”

  Martin was vain, he was rapacious, but he wasn’t stupid. In a split second he closed the gap between us. His hands closed around my throat. “Give me that phone,” he said.

  I couldn’t shake my head. This was the second time in as many weeks that I’d been choked, and the feeling wasn’t any more pleasant the second time around.

  “Give it to me!” His grip tightened. “Or I’ll drop you in the syrup along with the damn phone.”

  Before I knew what was happening, he’d grabbed me around the waist and was hoisting me up and over. I grabbed the edge but felt myself dangling over five hundred gallons of peppermint syrup. I had to hang on for dear life, or else some kids would get a big surprise this Christmas: life-sized peppermint-coated Mrs. Claus.

  Under these circumstances, I didn’t have much choice. “In my coat pocket,” I gasped.

  He reached into my coat and grabbed it.

  “All right, Claus!” Jake Frost yelled from the door. He held something at his shoulder—the harpoon from Martin’s own office. Behind him stood Constable Crinkles
, trembling like a uniformed jelly. “Hands up, and step away from the rail.”

  I looked back at Martin as his predicament dawned on his face. And then he looked at the phone. The phone with the evidence against him. He held out his arm, dangling the phone over my head. Now it, like me, was suspended over a vat of hot peppermint syrup.

  I saw what he would do. “No,” I said.

  He grinned at me, opened his hand, and the phone slipped from his grip.

  I shot out one hand, grabbing it. My reflexes shocked him.

  “Handball,” I grunted.

  He was still smiling. “Value your hands, do you?”

  In the next instant, his foot sank down on my other hand, the one that was around the rail.

  I yelled and looped my elbow with the phone around the pole.

  I heard Nick yell, “Let her go!”

  Nick?

  Above me, Martin fell backward, but I was too relieved to have the pressure off my hand to care what happened to him. I struggled to pull myself up. Upper-body strength was never my strong suit, and my Mrs. Claus pounds weren’t helping any. If I lived till January, I was definitely going on a diet.

  Luckily, in the next instant I felt two hands hoisting me up. Jake held one hand, Nick the other.

  Jake glanced over at him. “We thought you might like to see a friendly face.”

  Back on my feet, I stumbled toward Nick and threw my arms around him. “It’s over,” I said.

  But he was looking at Martin, who was moaning on the floor and gripping his leg, which had a walrus harpoon sticking out of it. His whimpering echoed around the empty factory. “Help me!”

  No one seemed in a hurry to.

  Nick let me go just long enough to shake the detective’s hand. “Thank you for believing in me.”

  “Not you, Santa,” he said. “Mostly I believed in your wife’s belief in your innocence.”

  “Someone help me,” Martin whined again.

  “I’ll help you,” I said. “You only have three murders on your hands instead of four. We lied to you. Christopher survived your attack on him.”

  His eyes rolled back in his head. “I’m glad. I never felt right about those gumdrops.”

  “You’re an idiot,” I said. “An evil idiot. Did it never occur to you that someone would eventually realize that the person who poisoned the candy was the man in charge of making it?”

  Chapter 23

  My gray sweater with the little tinkle bells sewn in made me resemble a jangling lady Sasquatch, but I was too happy to care. Nick was back from his first Christmas trip, and he was relaxed and happy now that the big event was over. Also that the troubles of the pre-Christmas weeks were concluded.

  It was a subdued celebration. Nick was free, but I doubted the Clauses or Santaland would ever be the same place again. Still, on the night after Christmas we gathered in the big parlor to sing carols, open gifts, and sample all the goodies the kitchen elves had made for us. As Pamela said, in times of crisis, customs take on more importance than ever.

  Christopher, who’d bounced back from his lethal gumdrop ordeal, was excited about his latest toy—a new sled and a team of four huskies who were creating canine chaos in Pamela’s well-ordered castle. And what was Pamela saying about it? Not a word. Nor was Tiffany, who had already agreed to let her son go driving into town to meet some of his friends who also had sleds. They were going to be the new town terrors, probably, but I couldn’t help being happy for him. He deserved a little fun. And who could resist a small pack of rambunctious young dogs and puppies?

  The little huskies seemed unable to leave Quasar alone. They had herded him into a corner, where he nervously munched on a pile of lichen, my and Nick’s gift to him. Occasionally he would butt the head of the smallest dog, still a puppy, who was a little too pushy.

  “They are cute little things,” Pamela was forced to admit.

  Lucia’s eyes brightened, and she saw her opening. “Not as cute as a kitten. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a kitten, too?”

  Unsaid was that the kitten in question was a forty-pound half-wild hellcat.

  “No,” Pamela said. “Absolutely not.”

  Wisely, Lucia deferred the bad news till later.

  On the whole, we were as happy as a family could be after it had lost two of its members. For Tiffany and Christopher, we drank a toast to Chris’s memory, and for all our sakes, none of us mentioned Martin’s name. The less said of him the better. He was in the Christmastown jail awaiting trial, but Jake Frost had informed me that, if convicted, Martin could be sent to live out the rest of his life in a facility in the Farthest Frozen Reaches. That idea comforted me. I wanted him as far away from the rest of the Clauses and myself as possible.

  After Jake told me this, he’d whisked himself off toward home, somewhere in the Farthest Frozen Reaches. I wondered whether we’d ever see him again. Now that the Christmastown crime spree was under control, I hoped his services wouldn’t be needed again for a long, long time.

  Amory had been promoted from sewers to candy canes and couldn’t have been happier with the change. Therese was spending her first Christmas at a spa in Arizona. And my friend Juniper, heartsore but relieved at her near miss, was joining me for a post-Christmas tavern visit tomorrow.

  After a while, Nick and I bundled up and strolled outside. All around the castle grounds the ice sculptures were lit like fountains at night. Decorated trees dotted the landscape most of the way down the mountain into Christmastown, which was ablaze with holiday spirit once again. I treasured every twinkle.

  Overhead, the northern lights put on their own show, trailing wisps and swirls of green, yellow, and orange across the sky. During the past week and a half, I’d almost forgotten what a magical place this really was.

  “Look,” Nick said, nudging me.

  Down the hill, a ribbon of torches came toward us, slowly. I could just make out the sounds of elves singing “The Holly and the Ivy.”

  “Finally,” I said, “a musical event I didn’t have to arrange.”

  He laughed. “They do this every year—going through town and then coming up here to serenade us. It marks the beginning of the post-Christmas season.”

  “One Christmas down,” I said. “I survived.”

  He put an arm around me. “Next Christmas will be a little less hectic.”

  “Less homicidal, I hope.”

  “That, too.” He drew me closer. “And now we can begin planning our summer in Cloudberry Bay.”

  I turned to him, thrilled. “You still want to go? Really?”

  “Did you think I was leading you on?” He shook his head. “I intend to lounge on the beach for four months and decompress.”

  “But there’s so much to do,” I said. “Wait till you see our Fourth of July celebrations. It makes Christmas look tame. We have all sorts of displays, and parades, and music shows, cloudberry recipe competitions, and watermelon-eating contests—”

  “How will I survive so much excitement?”

  I gave him a gentle poke in the stomach. “Just don’t think you’ll be napping on the beach the whole time. Summer at the inn is like December here. We’re busy.”

  The caroling grew louder as the elves neared. They’d switched to “I Saw Three Ships,” but they were drowned out periodically by a loud pop-pop-pop, like a Harley-Davidson. I smiled.

  Nick, on the other hand, wasn’t amused. “What’s that racket?”

  “Jingles,” I said. “I got him a souped-up muffler for his Snow Devil.”

  Just then, Jingles roared by on his sleek machine and let out a whoop of happiness. “Merry Christmas, Santa!”

  “Merry Christmas!” Nick bellowed back, with such feeling, such authenticity, that it gave me shivers.

  He looked down at me, concerned. “Cold again?”

  “Nope.” I nestled closer into that warm red coat of his. “Just right.”

  Acknowledgments

  For this book I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my wonderful
editor, John Scognamiglio, who, not too long ago, asked me if I’d ever thought of writing a holiday mystery.

  Special thanks to my agent, Annelise Robey, for her advice and also her steady calm during my panic attacks.

  And to Joe Newman, my fellow misfit, thank you for proofreading, making all the dinners, and listening to me drone on about reindeer.