Claus for Celebration

by Laura Durham

  "Sure," I said. "I'm willing to bet that the guys tied up in our alley have a record or an outstanding arrest warrant or something. Everyone who's been tied up and turned in to the police dressed in Santa getup has turned out to be guilty as sin."

  "So someone's cleaning up the city for Christmas?" he said, his voice sounding less shaky.

  "Fern thinks that someone is Kris Kringle Jingle," Leatrice added.

  I opened the round tin of Moravian Ginger Spice cookies and arranged a few on a plate, inhaling the sweet aroma of the thin cookies shaped like bells, snowmen, and stockings.

  "What does Reese think?" Sidney Allen asked.

  "You know him," I said, looking over the divider at my two elderly neighbors. "He doesn't want to say anything until he's positive."

  "And he doesn't want to give Annabelle any more reason to get involved in his case," Leatrice said in a stage whisper.

  I decided not to argue with her on that because I knew she was probably right. "Like I told Reese, I haven't been meddling this time. We seem to be stumbling into connections to Kris and all the Santa crimes."

  I made a point not to mention talking to Stanley dressed as Santa. Not only would Leatrice read too much into it, nothing he’d said made sense. It was one of the main reasons I hadn’t mentioned it to my fiancé. That, and he’d never believe Kate and I had run into the man by chance.

  Leatrice flushed. "I suppose it was a Santa Claus who tipped me off to the stolen flowers in the dumpster, but how is Kris managing to do all these things?"

  I decided it wouldn't hurt to tell Leatrice what I knew about the singing Santa. "Since he's lived on the streets for a while, he clearly knows how to get around without being seen. Plus, he served in Vietnam. Naval intelligence."

  Leatrice gasped. "He's a veteran and he's homeless?"

  "I'm afraid there are quite a few homeless vets in the city," I told her.

  She shook her head. "I don't like that one bit."

  "I don't think anyone does." I plucked the kettle off the burner as it started to whistle. "I had no idea he'd served until Fern told me."

  "Well, we have to find him," Leatrice said, slapping the side of the chair and making both her fiancé and Hermès jump.

  Stifling a laugh, I poured steaming hot water into the mugs and watched the chocolate shavings dissolve. "That's what we've been trying to do, but he's been pretty good at hiding so far."

  "There must be a reason he's hiding," Sidney Allen said.

  "Well, if he’s the Santa vigilante, he’s ticking off a bunch of pretty dangerous people." I carried two mugs out to the living room and handed one each to Leatrice and Sidney Allen. "I might be hiding too if I were him."

  "Just think, sugar pie." Leatrice nudged Sidney Allen. "We've got our own crime-fighting Santa."

  I returned to the kitchen for my mug and the cookies, walking back to the living room and sinking onto the couch next to Hermès, who gave me a disdainful look out of one eye before rearranging himself and going back to sleep. Taking a sip of the rich chocolate, I thought how much better it would be with milk. And maybe whipped cream on the top.

  "You don't think he takes requests, do you?" Leatrice asked, her eyes sparkling over the rim of her mug. "I'm still convinced the guy in 2B is a sleeper agent for some foreign government."

  I thought about Brianna slashing Kate's tires and stealing our flower order. "If he does, get in line."

  Chapter 32

  “Who knew you'd have a more exciting night than me?" Kate said the next day as we stood side by side in the Four Seasons ballroom and watched as large icicle lights were hung from the ceiling.

  "It might be a first." I turned to take in the room, feeling pleased by the transformation of the room from hotel chic to winter wonderland.

  The walls had been draped from floor to ceiling in white gossamer fabric with blue twinkle lights strung behind the layers of fabric. The dance floor was transparent and blinked with blue pinprick lights every time someone stepped on it. Clusters of birch branches ringed the room and were uplit so shadows of the branches crisscrossed the ceiling. Long, rectangular tables were draped in a sparkly white linen, and tall arrangements of branches cuffed with white hydrangea--successfully rehydrated by Buster and Mack--ran the length of each table. Silver base plates sat at each place, and round mirrored menus fit perfectly in the center, the words written in swirling white calligraphy. The ladder-backed chairs were clear, and large snowflake tags hung off each one with a guest’s name written in silver ink—our creative alternative to a place card.

  "So the bad guys got hauled off to jail, and Kris is still on the loose?" Kate asked, walking over and straightening a white linen napkin on the nearest table. “Along with Santa Stanley?”

  "We don't know that Kris did it," I said. "We just know that the guys were wearing Santa hats."

  "Come on." Kate narrowed her eyes at me. "Who else would be doing this? Who else is obsessed with Santa Claus?"

  "Aside from millions of children? Besides, these deliveries or reports of criminals in Santa gear started before Kris disappeared."

  "But not long before, and maybe that's why he staged his own murder and went into hiding." Kate shifted from one ridiculously high heel to the other. “Of course, it could be Stanley. We saw him dressed as Santa and he seemed pretty wired. I wouldn’t put vigilante past him.”

  "I don't know why either man doesn't come out of hiding now. It's not like they'd be in trouble for helping the police lock up a bunch of bad guys."

  "Maybe Kris can't," Kate said with a shrug. "Maybe he feels like he's still in danger. I doubt he's rounded up all the criminals in town, and some of the big guys might be a little upset that their colleagues have been arrested. Stanley seemed to think it wasn’t safe."

  “Stanley said a lot of strange stuff,” I reminded her.

  "Is this spacing good?" Our lighting guy, John, called down from the top of a tall ladder.

  I gave him a thumbs-up. "Perfect. These will be on a dimmer, right?"

  He nodded and went back to hanging the icicle lights.

  "At least the weather finally fits our theme," I said, waving for Kate to follow me out of the ballroom. "We won't have to crank up the AC to make people think it's winter."

  Kate rubbed her hands together. "Finally my boots won't look ridiculous."

  "It wasn't so much the boots that looked ridiculous. It was that they were paired with shorts. Really short shorts."

  "Because it was really hot. If I'd worn boots and pants, I'd have been baking." She shook her head at me. "Don't blame me for the heat wave."

  We walked into the foyer and across to the Dumbarton room, where Buster and Mack were setting up cocktail hour. Instead of white decor with touches of blue, this room was all ice blue with accents of white. The linens on the scattered high-top tables were a frosty blue, and the round bar in the center of the room was white acrylic lit from inside with blue LEDs. A curtain of white lights hung from the ceiling, filling it from end to end.

  I spotted Mack installing a massive arrangement of white branches in the middle of the bar, his plus-sized leather pants and jacket a sharp contrast to the pale colors around him.

  He waved at us. "What do you think?"

  "The bride will love it," Kate called back.

  Mack grinned then dropped a branch. “Elf on the shelf!” He ducked behind the bar to retrieve it, mumbling more sanitized holiday curses.

  Buster walked up behind us, holding a pair of small square bowls jammed with fluffy white hydrangea. "Thanks to you. I don't know what we would have done without our flowers."

  "All in a day's work." I patted his thick arm.

  "One of our days, at least," Kate said. "Probably not your normal wedding planner's day."

  I tried not to take offense since she was right. I liked to think Kate and I were a few levels above average, and our crew was definitely not your typical wedding planning team.

  Buster laughed. "I delivered the bouquets. The
bride loved them."

  "How's she doing?" Kate asked. "When we left her to check on the ballroom, breakfast for her and the bridesmaids had just arrived."

  As planned, Kate and I had arrived when hair and makeup had started, checking in on a tired bride still bubbling about the ski lodge rehearsal dinner the night before. Richard's food had been a huge success, as had his "to go" s'mores favors tied with miniature ski poles. The bridesmaids were still munching on the chocolate bars this morning, while they walked around the spacious suite in powder blue bathrobes with their names embroidered on the back. As we'd ducked out to check on setup, a waiter had been wheeling in a cart filled with bagels, muffins, and plates of sliced fruit.

  Buster bit the corner of his bottom lip. "She seemed happy. Fern was making all the orange juice into mimosas."

  I sighed. "How long until the mimosas become straight glasses of champagne?"

  "And how long after that until Fern starts teasing everyone's hair too high?" Kate asked.

  Knowing Fern when the bubbly and his creative juices got flowing, he could decide to make all the bridesmaids' hair resemble Christmas trees complete with blinking lights.

  "We'd better get up there," I said. "You know how peeved he gets when we make him redo hair."

  "Go." Buster shooed us away. "We've got everything under control down here."

  We thanked him, waved to Mack, and headed out of the room. I paused at the large round table at the bottom of the stairs and touched a hand to the fake snow that covered it. Tucked into the faux snowdrift was a guest book and family photos in silver frames.

  “You don’t seem stressed about Brianna anymore,” I said to Kate. “All I’m picking up is normal wedding day stress.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” She twisted to face me. “I texted one of Brianna’s assistants. The one who comes to the assistant happy hours. She told me they don’t have cameras in the office.”

  “And you waited all this time to tell me?” I shook my head. “Did the assistant think your question was strange?”

  “I doubt it. I told her we were considering a security camera system and asked if they had one she could recommend.”

  I nodded at her. “Not bad.”

  Kate kept walking and glanced back over her shoulder, winking at me. “Does this mean I can get out of doing escort cards?”

  “Nice try.” I looked at the towering frosted Christmas tree positioned next to the table. "Don't you mean escort ornaments? And we have to wait until Buster and Mack add the silver ribbon garland to the tree first."

  Instead of traditional cards to let guests know at which table they were seated, we'd come up with the idea of glass Christmas ornaments with names written on them in shiny silver calligraphy. It had seemed like a fun idea when we'd thought of it, but now we were tasked with hanging over a hundred breakable balls on a tree in some semblance of alphabetical order.

  Kate groaned. "Setting them out might be my least favorite part of the wedding day. After lining up the bridal party for the processional."

  "What about loading people onto shuttle buses?"

  She snapped her fingers. "I almost forgot how much I loathe that. That's still number three after the processional and place cards. Thank you for reminding me, Annabelle."

  I grinned at her as I joined her at the base of the stairs. "Anytime."

  Kate's mouth dropped open, and she grabbed my arm. "Did you just see that?"

  "See what?" I followed her gaze out the glass walls to the canal terrace.

  "Santa." She touched a hand to the side of her head. "I could have sworn I just saw Santa Claus run by."

  Chapter 33

  “Doesn't the hotel have a Santa?" I asked as we reached the hotel's lobby, which was filled with at least a dozen towering Christmas trees, each one uniquely decorated. The hotel went all out for the holiday, so a roaming Santa didn't seem out of the realm of possibility.

  "Only for special parties." Kate paused as a group of tourists passed us, so distracted by the ornately decorated trees that they almost ran into us. "And why would Santa be running around the outside of the hotel?"

  We'd rushed to the glass walls that overlooked the C&O Canal, but there had been no sign of a Santa. We'd even ducked outside and looked up and down the canal. Nothing.

  "Is it possible you're imagining Santa since so many have been popping up?" I asked, inhaling the heady scent of Christmas tree and leading the way through the busy lobby toward the elevator bank.

  "Like PTSD?" she said. "Post Traumatic Santa Disorder?"

  I gave her a withering look. "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a real thing. This is not."

  As we passed a pair of upholstered chairs tucked against one wall, a deep throat clearing made me turn my head. "Daniel? Is that you?"

  My fiancé's older brother stood. He had the same dark hair as Reese, although it was flecked with gray at the temples, and was only a fraction taller. Both men were handsome enough to turn heads, and I saw a woman near us do a quick double take.

  "What a coincidence," I said, glancing around. "Are you working?"

  Daniel Reese had been a DC cop before leaving to open his own private security firm. He now worked with an elite clientele, so it was easy to imagine his client would be staying at The Four Seasons.

  Daniel looked at Kate. "You could say that."

  "He's our bodyguard," Kate said, sidling up next to him. "I thought with everything going on with Brianna, we could use some extra muscle."

  Even though it was widely known that Kate had a special talent for determining if people were dating with a single glance, it didn't take a relationship guru to know that something more was going on. Was this the older man she'd been talking about? I never would have called him "older," but I suppose he was older than Kate by about a decade. I decided to leave that topic for later.

  "You hired security for our wedding without mentioning it to me?"

  She smiled up at Daniel. "I wouldn't say hired."

  "I'm doing this pro bono," Daniel said, pushing up the sleeves of his black blazer.

  "And it's not for the wedding as much as it's for us," Kate said. "You said yourself that Brianna's obsession with us was turning violent. She knows we have a wedding here today. She might know we got the flowers back. She could know we snuck into her place.“

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  She flapped a hand in the air. "The long and short of it is that we need someone watching our backs.”

  She might have a point. Things with Brianna had gotten ugly, despite my initial efforts to make peace. If the planner really was behind the damage to Kate's car and the pilfering of our flowers, she was out of control. I wouldn't put it past her to show up and try to sabotage our wedding or even hurt one of us.

  "Fine," I said. "You might be right."

  Kate looped her arm through Daniel's. "I sent him a photo of Brianna, so he can keep an eye out for her while we focus on the wedding."

  "I'll be discreet," he said.

  In his black suit, I knew he'd look just like a wedding guest. A handsome, muscular wedding guest. Our bigger problem might be keeping the bridesmaids off him once they'd had a few drinks.

  "Thanks." Since Daniel and I would be family one day, I wasn't sure if I should hug him or what, so I squeezed his arm. I still hadn't gotten used to the idea that I would have a brother-in-law. I'd barely adjusted to the concept of a fiancé.

  We left him in the lobby while we proceeded to the bride's suite. As we rode the elevator up, I tapped the toe of my black flat.

  "So you and Daniel?"

  Kate swung her head to me, her cheeks splotched with pink. "Maybe. Why? Do you think he's too old for me?"

  I held up both palms as the elevator doors pinged open. "Not at all. I think he's great. I'm marrying the slightly younger version, remember?"

  She laughed nervously. "Right. Of course. He's a lot more laid-back when he's not working, you know."

  "You don't need to convince me.
As long as you're not just playing around with him. I doubt he's the kind of guy who's casual about anything."

  "That's the weird thing." She nibbled the edge of her thumbnail as we walked down the hallway toward the bride's suite. "I've lost my urge to date around since I started seeing him."

  I fought the urge to check if she had a fever. "That's a good thing. It shows you may be ready to stick with one guy and maybe settle down in the near future."

  She didn't say anything else, and a few seconds later, we'd reached the propped-open door to the bridal suite. A haze of hairspray had drifted out into the hall, making me cough as we approached. I could hear the din of hip-hop music along with lots of female voices and one very distinct male voice.

  "All right, tramps," he called out over the music. "Who's next to get bedazzled?"

  I glanced at Kate. "That's not a good sign."

  Pushing the door open, I spotted a blond bridesmaid dancing by in her monogrammed robe. As she turned around, I clutched Kate's arm for support. "Is that...?"

  "A braid around the back of her head that looks like a Christmas wreath?" Kate patted my hand. "Sure is."

  Fern had woven green ribbon through the circular braid and tied a red bow at the bottom. It would have been ideal for a flower girl, but looked silly on a grown woman. I suspected that everyone in the room had imbibed too much champagne to realize that a wreath on the back of their heads was not a style that would age well in photos. A French twist? Classic. A wreath made of hair? Not so much.

  I led the way through the room, dodging a conga line of bridesmaids and passing the picked-over breakfast cart along with multiple bottles of champagne on end tables, coffee tables, and ice buckets. One look at the dancing bridesmaids told me they were all empty.

  I saw Fern set up by the windows with the bride sitting in front of him on a stool. He wore a red velvet suit with white piping and his favorite black Ferragamo belt.

  "Maybe this is who I mistook for Santa," Kate said.

  "You're back." Fern beamed when he saw us, waving with the hand holding a champagne flute. "What do you think of the bridesmaids?"