Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery)

“Heavens, no. Not unless there are some old-timers here! Men who truly knew how to play the game.” His out-of-control bushy gray and white eyebrows rose. “I just want to show it off. They don’t make balls like this anymore.”

  I smiled. More like he wanted to reminisce about the good ol’ days with some young fellas who’d be willing to swap war stories. He headed off to stand in line.

  I caught Brickhouse looking at Mr. Cabrera again.

  “I don’t miss him!” she insisted.

  “If you say so.”

  She clucked and strode off.

  I looked around for Jean-Claude, but he’d wandered off as well—probably to buy his coveted stockings.

  Kit and Kevin were nowhere to be seen.

  Benny pushed through the crowd and headed straight for me, walking pretty fast considering the limp. It was the only outward indication of his accident. “Have you seen Mrs. Claus? Fairlane?” he corrected.

  “Last I saw of her, Jenny had fired her and she was going to find you to get her job back. She didn’t find you, I take it?”

  He heaved a world-weary sigh. “No. Why did Jenny fire her?”

  “I believe Fairlane might have groped Santa one too many times.”

  His brown eyes widened then he asked, “When was this?”

  “About an hour and a half ago. But Lele was supposed to be filling in as Mrs. Claus. She should be around here somewhere.”

  “Well, she’s not,” he said. “And now I don’t have a Mrs. Claus.” He sized me up.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  He frowned and limped off.

  Ten minutes later, he and Jenny made a welcome announcement and started counting down the Christmas tree lighting.

  I grabbed a good spot by the low granite wall that circled wide around the spruce. The wall had been put in place to keep people from getting too close—and hopefully discourage kids from trying to climb the tree. A giant custom-made Christmas tree skirt blanketed the space beneath the tree, and large empty boxes that had been fancily-wrapped like presents dotted the skirt.

  Across from me, Nancy Davidson snapped pictures of the crowd. Newspaper photographers also took plenty of shots. Flashbulbs flickered all around me. The excitement in the room was palpable.

  Someone bumped into me, and I turned and found Flash scowling. “Dang whippersnappers didn’t even know who Bobo Newsom was.”

  I was afraid to admit that I didn’t either.

  “Ten, nine, eight,” Jenny called out.

  “I’m sorry.” I patted his hand and the baseball he held loosely popped out and rolled toward the tree. Flash started after it.

  I held him back. “You can’t go in there.”

  “Six, five, four,” Benny said.

  “I dare you to stop me, young lady. That there’s my ball, and I mean to get it back.”

  “Two, one!” Benny made a grand show of flipping a giant switch.

  Nothing happened.

  The Christmas tree stayed dark.

  The crowd booed.

  I glanced over at Jenny and Benny, who both wore looks of sheer panic. Several elves hustled over to the power box and started tinkering.

  Flash tried to lift his leg over the wall.

  I grabbed onto him. I couldn’t have him crawling under the tree. With his arthritis, it might take hours. “Wait here. I’ll get it.”

  He patted my cheek. “You’re a good girl, Nina Quinn.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, sliding over the granite ledge.

  The crowd’s boos grew louder as I carefully crawled across the tree skirt. I hoped that if anyone saw me, they’d think I was trying to fix the lights.

  I carefully avoided the large boxes. As I neared the ball, which had settled against the trunk of the tree, I scooted around one last present and stopped short when I saw a shoe laying next to the box. It was a sensible red pump.

  Odd.

  Then I noticed a clump of gray curls poking out from under the box as well, and I started to get a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.

  I gulped and oh-so-casually lifted the box.

  Oh no. Oh. No. Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohno!

  “Nina!” Jenny yelled in a harsh whisper as she crawled toward me. “What are you doing?”

  “We have a problem,” I said, leaning back into a crouch.

  “No kidding. Did you figure out what’s wrong with the lights?”

  “It’s a bigger problem.”

  Impatiently, she snapped, “What could possibly be a bigger problem right now?”

  My gaze met hers as she reached my side. “I found Mrs. Claus.”

  “Oh, thank God. Now Benny can stop freaking out. Where?” she looked around the room.

  I pointed under the box.

  “Why would she be in there? I can just kick myself for hiring those McCorkle sisters. Nothing but trouble. Is she sleeping?”

  “Kind of,” I said. “She’s dead.”

  Chapter Four

  “Dead?” Jenny gasped.

  Suddenly, the tree lit up over our heads and the crowd cheered, a raucous roar. They were oblivious to the trouble brewing under the tree, which was probably a good thing.

  Jenny had gone pale, and the colored lights on her face made her look polka-dotted. “Are you sure she’s dead? Maybe she’s just sick or something?”

  “Not one hundred percent, but I’ve seen a few dead bodies and she looks pretty dead. The bulging eyes, the puffed out lips...”

  “Oh dear God, stop. I think I’m going to be sick.”

  I clamped my lips together and looked around at the crowd. They’d launched into “Jingle Bells” and were swaying together like they were at a Bon Jovi concert. I expected lighters to be held up any second now.

  “We need to call the police,” I said. Wait. The police were here. “We need to find Kevin.”

  She clamped down on my arm. “Now?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, drawing the word out into four syllables. “They need to know what’s happened.”

  Jenny glanced around. “Can’t we wait until later? Until after we close?”

  I stared at her.

  “What?” she said. “She’s already dead! What’s a few more hours?”

  I forgave her thinking because she’d been under a lot of stress lately, but there was no way I was leaving Fairlane under that box all day.

  “We have to,” I said firmly, in my best stepmother tone.

  “Oh my.” She began to rock.

  I felt movement to my left and saw Flash belly-crawling over to us, slow as an inchworm. “Nina, where’s my ball?”

  I reached over, grabbed the ball, and handed it to him as he wriggled up to us.

  “Whatcha got there?” he asked, nodding to the box.

  I was still holding the corner of it off the ground.

  “A dead Mrs. Claus,” I said softly, still not quite believing what I was seeing.

  Jenny wailed.

  Flash looked at me, gauged my sincerity, then peeked under the box. He came up shouting, “Call 9-1-1! We need an ambulance!”

  He could shout amazingly loud for an old guy.

  “Jingle Bells” immediately silenced, and Flash flipped the giant present over, revealing the body beneath.

  Gasps went through the crowd in an echoing wave. Mothers covered their children’s eyes. Gawkers moved in for a closer look.

  Flash leaned over Fairlane to check for a pulse but drew his hand back. A pair of elf tights was wrapped around her throat, looking like a red- and green-striped scarf.

  My stomach flipped, then flopped. For as many dead bodies as I’d seen, it never got easier. I didn’t know how Kevin handled his job.

  “Ohhhh,” Jenny moaned.

  Flash reached for a wrist instead. He looked back at me, shaking his head. “She’s a goner.”

  No kidding.

  Benny jumped the knee-high wall around the tree and gimped toward us. As he neared, he stopped short, his arms wind-milling to regain his balance. His gaze
immediately went to Jenny, who had squeezed her eyes shut.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking between all of us, his horrified gaze landing on Mrs. Claus.

  “She’s a goner,” Flash said again. “Dead as a doornail.”

  Jenny whimpered.

  “I didn’t know lips could turn so blue,” Flash said, leaning in for a closer look.

  Flashbulbs popped left and right. Reporters inched in, climbing over the wall like ants headed for a picnic.

  I pulled Flash back. “Why don’t you go hold off the press? Keep them as far away as you can.”

  His rheumy eyes lit. “Done!”

  As if in slow motion, he set his prized baseball next to me, moaned as he stood up, and trundled off to the reporters. He held his arms out wide and said, “Nothing to see here, folks! Well, there is a dead body, but this is a time to honor the dead and keep back.”

  I groaned as a fresh wave of gasps went through the crowd. I heard rapid jingling and looked up to find Kevin running toward us. It was a sight, let me tell you, what with the cotton puff on his elf hat bobbing up and down with each step.

  Benny had sat next to Jenny and gathered her in his arms. She was still moaning.

  Kevin spoke into his cell phone, and when he finished the call, he looked at me and said, “Just another ordinary day on the job for you.”

  I shrugged. “It’s really not my fault I keep finding dead bodies.”

  Benny’s eyes widened. “How many have you found?”

  “A couple,” I murmured. Truth was, I might be just as cursed at Mr. Cabrera.

  Oh my gosh—Mr. Cabrera.

  Maybe his curse extended to potential girlfriends, as well. The poor guy.

  I searched the crowd for my neighbor and found him not too far away, his dark eyes wide. And not two feet behind him stood Brickhouse, looking rather smug. As if saying, “I told you so.” She wasn’t a fool, that Brickhouse.

  Kevin crouched and checked the body for a pulse as well. Then he looked at us, and said, “You need to clear this area.” He muttered something about tainted evidence and stood up. Or tried to. He’d stepped on Flash’s baseball, and his feet went flying out beneath him. He landed flat on his ass in a cacophony of angry jingles.

  The crowd ooohed.

  “Don’t say a word,” he said to me from his prone position.

  I pressed my lips together—tight— and offered him a hand up.

  I couldn’t help my inner glee, however, when I spotted Kit, still filming. He’d caught the fall on video. I foresaw a popcorn and movie night in my future.

  Flash basked in the press limelight, answering every question thrown at him, as I followed Benny and Jenny away from the scene.

  Benny had his arm around his wife, supporting her as she wobbled. I heard Jenny say to him, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?”

  ***

  Brickhouse said, “And he keeps telling me he’s not cursed.” She clucked loudly enough that it echoed in the almost-empty atrium.

  The police had funneled all the customers out, but wanted me to stay behind to answer a few questions.

  Brickhouse, being her bossy self, had claimed she was with me, and stayed put. She liked to be in the know.

  “He might be a little cursed,” I said.

  She gave me a dubious look. “And you might be a little nosy.”

  Point taken.

  “To think that Benjamin Christmas asked me to be Mrs. Claus.” She clucked again.

  “He did?” I asked in amazement. I always thought Mrs. Krauss’s face looked a lot like Mrs. Claus, but her temperament was a far cry from the benevolent character. Then again, so was Fairlane’s.

  “Right after I arrived here. You do not have to sound so amazed. I’d be a good Mrs. Claus.”

  “Yet you obviously turned down the job.”

  “I taught school for thirty-five years. I’ve had enough of whiny little kids.”

  “You taught high school.”

  “Your point being?”

  I smiled.

  She shivered. “It could have been me under that box. And don’t you dare crack any jokes, Nina Ceceri.”

  Way back when, Brickhouse had been my tenth grade English teacher. We hadn’t gotten along then, but these days we tolerated each other fairly well. She still liked to call me by my maiden name, though, as if chastising me in front of the whole class.

  Which she had done a lot.

  “He never liked me, that Benjamin Christmas.” Brickhouse had also been Jenny and Benny’s teacher. “Once I caught him making faces behind my back.”

  “Everyone made faces behind your back.”

  She clucked and gave me the evil eye again.

  Suddenly, a scream rent the air. “Lele!”

  Brickhouse and I gaped at each other as Fairlane barreled through the front doors. Two patrol officers caught her by the arms and held her back.

  My gaze shifted from her to the box, back and forth.

  Oh. My. It hadn’t been Fairlane under there?

  “Lele!” Fairlane shouted, her voice cracking.

  Kevin, who’d unfortunately changed his clothes, walked over to the officers, whispered something to them, and took Fairlane’s arm. She crumpled against him, putting one hand around his waist, the other on his chest, and it looked to me like her fingers were searching for nipples.

  I rolled my eyes. Even in grief, she couldn’t help herself.

  “Hussy,” Brickhouse mumbled.

  I couldn’t argue with that, though I didn’t agree aloud because I understood the pain Fairlane must be experiencing. I could cut her some slack. For now.

  “So, it was Fairlee under the box?” I said. Strangled. I was even more confused now. Because for as much as Fairlane wasn’t likeable, Lele was. She was quiet and sweet. Who would want to kill her?

  “You were never one to see the obvious,” she said.

  I made a face. It wasn’t behind her back.

  She clucked again.

  “What does this mean for Mr. Cabrera’s curse?” I asked Brickhouse.

  “Ach,” she said dismissively. “It doesn’t change anything. Not a whit. The two sisters were practically the same person. Looks-wise, at least. What goes for one, goes for the other.”

  I thought she was in a bit of denial, but didn’t say so.

  See, I had a strong sense of self-preservation as well.

  Looking around, I tried to find Riley in the employees milling about, but he was nowhere to be found. I saw Glory peering down from the second floor balcony, her hair threatening to topple over the railing. I hoped she hadn’t left her gingerbread in the oven without a timer again—the last thing we needed right now was another fire alarm.

  I wondered where Kit had gotten off to and finally spotted him chatting with Nancy Davidson across the atrium. She was showing him her camera, pointing out different features. Seeing them together gave me a great idea for Kit’s Christmas present. A camera would be perfect for him and his newfound interest in taking pictures—and video. I made a mental note to talk to Nancy in hopes she’d have a recommendation for a good brand. Then I saw Jenny standing in a corner, looking like her world had crumbled in on her.

  I supposed it had.

  I told Brickhouse I’d be right back, and walked over to Jenny. Her right eye twitched as she looked at me. “How are we going to recover from this, Nina?”

  “The shock will wear off,” I said, optimistically. “The curiosity-seekers will come in droves.”

  “Maybe,” she said, sniffling.

  Her words earlier, about there being no bad publicity wove through my thoughts. For a split second I considered she might have had something to do with the murder, but then dismissed it.

  No one could have known I’d find the body when I did. It was put under that box to be hidden—and remain that way for as long as possible.

  Which had me thinking about how someone could have possibly placed a body under there with no one seeing.
r />   Sure, we’d all been busy, but by my calculations, the murder had to have taken place between the fire alarm going off (when I’d waved to Lele at the reindeer food kiosk) and after Fairlane had been fired (because Lele had been wearing a Mrs. Claus costume). That was only a two-hour window.

  “How did the police know it was Lele?” I asked.

  “An officer was sent to the McCorkle house and Fairlane answered the door. It’s remarkable how identical they are. Were,” she clarified in a whisper.

  Identical.

  Brickhouse’s words rang in my ears.

  The two sisters were practically the same person. Looks-wise, at least. What goes for one, goes for the other.

  Which suddenly had me wondering if the killer had murdered the right sister. After all, it was Fairlane who was supposed to play Mrs. Claus today, not Lele.

  What if this murder had been a case of mistaken identity?

  I looked over at Fairlane, who was still draped across Kevin, and thought about the repercussions if what I suspected was true.

  If the killer realized the wrong sister was killed, Fairlane was in very real danger.

  Grave danger.

  Chapter Five

  It was late afternoon by the time I pulled my truck into my mother’s driveway. She was waiting for me at the front door.

  “What’s this I hear about a murder at Christmastowne? It’s been on the news. Nina Colette Ceceri, why did I have to hear about it on the news?” she demanded, her voice rising to new decibels. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Hi, Mom.” I kissed her cheek.

  The house smelled of baking bread and old books—two of my favorite scents. My dad sat in his favorite recliner, reading a magazine. I gave him a kiss, too, and tousled what was left of his hair.

  “Nina!” my mother stamped her foot.

  “What?” I blinked innocently. It was a look I had trouble pulling off even when I was, in fact, innocent.

  She let out a frustrated breath. “Do not tell me you were the one to find the body.”

  I sat on my dad’s ottoman. “Okay.”

  “Neeee-na!” My mother threw her hands in the air. “What am I supposed to tell my friends who wonder why my daughter keeps finding dead bodies?”