by Vicki Delany
“I suppose that’s good,” Rachel said. If the cops were wondering cui bono in the robbery they need look no further than the shopkeepers and hoteliers of Rudolph, New York. “I was thinking maybe we could give the police a bit of a nudge. Hurry their investigation along.”
“What kind of a nudge?”
She leaned forward. Her coat fell open to display the outfit she and her assistants wore in the store. A long, white apron decorated with a bold pattern of traditional red and white candy canes, over a red T-shirt and black slacks. A necklace of real candy canes, strung together with red string, hung around her neck.
“You were there, Merry, all the time, weren’t you? I left the community center when the candy I’d provided ran out. All I can say is I’m glad they didn’t find the drugs in my goods. Did you notice anyone in particular hanging around the kitchen? Looking furtive?”
“I’m not quite sure what furtive looks like.”
“Oh, you know. Someone like, well, like Maria Lopez. She was angry, I heard, that Pearce didn’t take any pictures in her shop.” Rachel sniffed. “Not Christmassy enough, I assume.”
Now I got it. Rachel’s archrival owned the North Pole Ice Cream Parlor. The shop had a nice location overlooking the lake, near the beach, but it didn’t exactly do a roaring trade in ice cream in December. I’d heard Maria was considering branching out into candy and hot drinks.
“Can’t say I noticed Maria acting particularly furtive. Sorry.”
“Not that I’d suspect her of anything like that,” Rachel hastened to assure me. “Just a thought. Gotta run.”
She dashed off. I eyed my phone. If I told the police my suspicions of Sue-Anne or Kyle, would I look to them like Rachel looked to me? Trying to cast suspicion on someone just because I didn’t like them? Or worse, because I was an interfering busybody.
I went back to my computer. I decided to be optimistic, and sent a quick e-mail to Alan, asking if I could order another box of his toy soldiers. And some of those gorgeous wooden balls that looked so good on a Christmas tree decorated in farmhouse style.
He must have been at his own computer, because the answer came back almost immediately.
Balls are ready now. Drop off tomorrow? Soldiers by the weekend?
He said nothing about last night’s dinner, nor did I. I wanted to. I wanted to ask if we could do it again. And soon.
But I held back. We had been close once, when we were young. We were friends now. Did Alan want to be more than friends?
Did I?
“Hey, Merry!” Jackie shouted from the front of the shop. “You are gonna wanna see this.”
I hurried to see what she was fussing about. Jackie was standing at the window, clapping her hands in delight. I could see people coming out of shops, pointing, and calling. Cars were pulling off the road into parking spots, or if they weren’t near a spot, in front of fire hydrants or onto the sidewalks. It was snowing again, lovely light fluffy flakes drifting out of a pewter sky.
Jackie and I ran out of the shop, laughing.
George’s tractor was coming slowly down the street, pulling a float. And not just any float, but Santa Claus’s float. My dad was there, dressed in the full regalia. Fergus Cartwright, the mayor, sported an elf hat pilfered from the pile of children’s costumes at Mom’s studio.
Dad lifted a bullhorn. “Ho, ho, ho,” he shouted.
All along the street, people had stopped whatever they were doing to watch. Everyone clapped, and some cheered. iPhones came out of pockets and people began snapping. On the other side of the street, in front of A Touch of Holly, a woman dressed in a camel coat, red leather boots, and red gloves took pictures with an expensive-looking camera with a long lens.
Fergus took the bullhorn from Dad. “It’s Christmas in Christmas Town!”
George blew into a trumpet. More cheers.
“Crafty old guys.” Russ Durham had slipped up beside me. He snapped away with his own camera. The tractor shuddered to a halt as if at a signal. Dad and Fergus turned and waved at the camera. Even George waved.
A man ran into the street. He lifted a little boy and passed him to Dad, aka Santa. The child, all red hair and freckles, screamed in delight and Santa stroked his beard and looked serious. Fergus handed the boy a candy cane and patted him on the head. The camel-coated woman took more pictures and then the boy was passed back to his parent. Who happened, I knew, to be the owner of the Carolers Motel. Russ’s camera clicked rapidly.
“Where,” Fergus shouted to the onlookers, “do you want to be at Christmas?”
“Christmas Town!” people shouted back.
“And where is Christmas Town?”
“Rudolph!”
Then, with a cough and burst of thick black smoke from its rear end, the tractor shuddered into motion and the procession sailed slowly down the street to repeat the whole performance on the next block.
“It’s all well and good,” I said to Russ, “getting the people here pumped up and having pictures in the Gazette. But we need to get the word out to all those tourists who are not here, the ones who are thinking of changing their shopping plans and going to New York or Rochester instead.”
“Fabulous show, Russ.” The camel-coated woman ran up to us. “Thanks for the tip. I love the spontaneity.” She looked right through me. “Nice shop. I’ll check it out when I’m done.” With that she headed off down the street in pursuit of the impromptu one-float parade.
“Who,” I said, “was that?”
“Renee Spencer. She’s just started at the New York Times as an editor for the style section. Renee and I dated for a while back when I worked in the city. I called her last night, asked for a big favor.”
“Oh,” I said. “I was supposed to ask you to contact some of your reporter friends. I was going to phone you last night, but I got . . . distracted. I guess I forgot.”
“Fergus gave me a call. I suspect your dad was standing over his shoulder ordering him to do something. He said we had to get the good news about Rudolph back in the public eye. And fast. I agreed, and called Renee.” He gave me his slow, sexy grin. “Think it worked?”
“If those pictures get into the Times, either in print or online, it will. Thanks, Russ.”
“You can thank me later. Say, dinner tonight?”
“That’d be great,” Jackie said. “Merry would love to, wouldn’t you, Merry? Oh, gosh, she said she’d be back to look at the shop. My hair!” Jackie disappeared into Mrs. Claus’s Treasures.
“Great, I’ll call you later, Merry.” Russ set off at a quick clip after the disappearing parade. He turned around and began running backward. “Oh, and check out Twitter.”
I pulled out my phone and clicked a button. I typed in Rudolph and the screen began to fill up with tweets such as:
#Christmastown! NY shopping and fun destination. Meet Santa on Main Street.
A link led to the town’s tourist promotion page.
Another click on #Christmastown brought up a page of similar stuff, all of it about Rudolph.
Someone had been busy last night.
* * *
“It was Fergus’s idea,” Dad said later when he popped into the shop. “I didn’t even know what Twitter was. He called us last night, needing council approval for the cost.”
“The cost? It doesn’t cost anything to tweet. It’s free.”
“It may be free, but the people who know how to create the buzz aren’t.”
“How does Fergus know this? He’s about as high-tech as you are.”
“His daughter, the one who lives in California, is up on all this social media stuff. She told us that one or two people here in Rudolph tweeting wouldn’t be enough to get any momentum going. We hired a company that specializes in that sort of thing.”
“Let’s hope it’s worth it, then.”
“It will be, “J
ackie said, for once using her phone with my permission. “#Christmastown is trending.”
“I dare not ask,” Dad said, “what ‘trending’ means. I hope it’s something good.” He’d come straight from returning the float to the back of the community center, and was still in costume.
“Oh, oh!” Jackie said. “Two can play at this game.”
“What?”
“Here’s one that just popped up.”
#Christmastown. Death by gingerbread in Rudolph. Come to Muddle Harbor, NY for #safeXMASbaking
“The nerve,” I said. “They can’t say that, can they?”
“Anyone can say anything on social media,” Jackie said.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Dad said. “Never mind counter-productive. People will stay away from this whole area if that sort of talk gets out.” His white beard shook in indignation.
“Tell it to the politicians,” I muttered.
Wonder of wonders, a group of customers came in. Four women, all short, all plump, all gray haired. Jackie shut down her phone and hurried to serve them.
“Can we have a picture, Santa?” one of the women giggled.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Dad said.
“Let me take it,” Jackie said, “so you can all be in the shot.”
They scooted over to the corner so the big Douglas fir would be in the background, and Dad put his arms around two of the women’s shoulders. They crowded together and beamed identical smiles, identical brown eyes sparkling. Jackie told them to say “cheese” and clicked. Then the women shifted places, additional phones were handed to Jackie, and more pictures taken.
“Imagine,” one of them said, “actually meeting Santa himself.” They giggled identical giggles.
“What brings you lovely ladies to town?” Santa, I mean Dad, asked.
“These are my sisters,” the first one said. “We live so far apart now, and we all have kids and those kids have kids . . .”
“. . . and ex-husbands, and second husbands, and in-laws of their own . . .”
“. . . that we can’t get together anymore for Christmas. So we always have a sisters’ day . . .”
“. . . in early December. We usually go to the city, but this year we thought we’d do something . . .”
“. . . different . . .”
“. . . and we’re so glad we did. At first we thought the town’s awful quiet . . .”
“. . . but then the parade started . . .”
“. . . and Santa was there. . .”
“. . . and it was perfect.”
Four identical smiles beamed at me again.
The first one said, “We’re quadruplets.”
I’d guessed.
As they shopped, the women fussed and exclaimed and continuously called out things like, “June, you have to see this!”
“Friday and Saturday we’re open till midnight,” I said as I rang up the steady stream of purchases. “As will be the rest of the shops. The butcher’ll be grilling hot dogs on the street, Victoria’s Bake Shoppe will be selling its gingerbread, and . . .”
“I don’t know if I’d like that,” one of the women said. “Isn’t that the gingerbread that killed that man?”
“No,” I said. Technically, I was right. Vicky’s cookie hadn’t killed Nigel. The drugs someone had added after it was baked had.
“Stuff and nonsense, Rose,” one of her sisters said. “It was one of those mob things.”
“Mob things?” I asked.
“The English mob followed him here and executed him because he was going to do an exposé on them moving into New York. It could have happened anywhere.”
“There’s an English mob?” I said.
“Don’t you read the newspapers?” she said to me. “It was in the Empire State Enquirer.” Not exactly a reputable paper, but if this woman wanted to believe that, I was happy to go along with it.
While the sisters shopped, Dad helped them select gifts and posed for more pictures. He stood at the door waving good-bye as they left, laden with parcels and bags. He went into the back of the shop while Jackie and I rearranged the shelves to fill the holes the women had left.
Dad came out a few minutes later, carrying a large box.
“I found these on the floor. You should put them out.” They were glass sculptures: Santa in his sleigh being pulled by his reindeer, led by Rudolph the Electric-Nosed Reindeer. Perfectly tacky, thus absolutely perfect for Christmas.
“Not right now, Dad,” I said. “Those women decimated the toy section and the tree ornaments. We need to replace those.”
“This should go in pride of place.” Dad began arranging space on the main display table in the center of the room.
He had just finished and was stepping back to admire his handiwork when the bell over the door tinkled and Russ came in with the woman from the Times. Jackie squealed and hurried over to offer her assistance.
“Renee got some good shots,” Russ said.
“Thanks to you, Santa,” she said, giving Dad a smile. “This really is Christmas Town. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to run.” She smiled at Russ. He smiled back. “We spent more time,” she said, “catching up than I expected, and I have to get going. I’d love to stay and shop, but . . . oh, look at that.”
She hurried over to the main table and ran a well-manicured, red-tipped finger across Rudolph’s nose. “Russell, this is perfect. My mom will absolutely love it. She collects tacky Christmas things.”
“If you want tacky,” Jackie mumbled, “there’s always the Nook.”
Chapter 13
Later that afternoon, Sue-Anne Morrow bustled into the shop. “How marvelous of Fergus to get people talking about Rudolph in a good way,” she said.
“It was,” I agreed.
“And how convenient that Russell happened to have a sympathetic New York Times reporter ready to pop down and do a feature.”
“We’re all supporters of the town,” I said.
She peeled off her gloves. “And that’s the wonderful thing about Rudolph, isn’t it, Marie?”
“Merry.”
She tittered in embarrassment. “How silly of me to forget. It was, I’m sure, your father who talked Fergus into getting out the float. And that Twitter campaign. Such a marvelous idea. Fergus would never have come up with something so clever, so modern, on his own.”
“It was his daughter’s idea, I was told.”
She waved her left hand. The giant square-cut diamond caught the lights from the Douglas fir and threw off sparks of green and red. “Noel, being modest again, I suspect. Everyone knows that Fergus couldn’t come up with an original idea if his life depended on it.”
“Can I help you with anything?” Jackie said.
Sue-Anne glanced around the shop. All my beautiful things, beautifully displayed. I liked to think my shop embodied the spirit of Christmas in one room.
Christmas doesn’t mean things—decorations and toys, no matter how lovely they might be—it’s about family and community, about hope for the return of the sun and the eventual arrival of spring, and celebration of the arrival of the Christ child. But what’s a celebration without showing off a little? Without trying to make your house and home as pretty and welcoming as it can be? At Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, we allowed people to do that.
“This is such a lovely store.” Sue-Anne ran her fingers lightly over a display of glass balls. “Too bad you don’t have any customers.”
“We were busy earlier,” Jackie said.
“As busy as you’d expect to be, this close to Christmas?” she asked.
Jackie and I exchanged glances. I had to admit, not.
“Fergus’s stunt today was too little, too late,” Sue-Anne said. “Reservations are down at the hotels and inns. People are cancelling at the restaurants. What do you expect after a guest to our to
wn, a prominent guest, died after eating a piece of gingerbread at a Santa Claus party?”
“Vicky didn’t . . .”
“Yes, yes. I am well aware that Victoria didn’t deliberately poison that cookie. Or, at least, that’s what the police have concluded. But it doesn’t matter, Merry, don’t you see? Not once the news got spread far and wide. We needed strong leadership the minute the news got out. A powerful response in defense of our town. And what did we get? Fergus Cartwright cowering behind his curtains, waiting for the storm to pass.
“A strong mayor would have made an immediate show of calling the media. He should have done something the very next day. He should have invited reporters from all the local and state papers to Rudolph. A strong mayor would have served them all gingerbread cookies. After taking a big bite for the cameras first.” She snorted. “But we all know that Fergus is not, and never has been, a strong mayor.”
“He’s doing stuff now,” Jackie said.
“Like I said, too little, too late. But don’t give up hope yet. Your father, Merry, has some more tricks up his sleeve, I’ve no doubt.” She sighed heavily. “I only hope Fergus knows what an invaluable resource he has in Noel. Although I doubt it. Fergus can be too fond of doing things his own way, if you know what I mean, and too quick to disregard advice, no matter how good, if it doesn’t align with his thinking. Oh, well, I must be off. I’ll come back next week to do some of my own shopping.”
“You should get what you like now,” Jackie said. “Most of our stock is individual artisan pieces, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.”
What I think of as The Look settled over Sue-Anne’s carefully made-up face. The look of someone finding themselves trapped by their own words. In retail we know that I’ll come back later means get me the heck out of here. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’ve come out without my pocketbook. Silly of me.”
“I’m sure Merry will be happy to extend you credit, Sue-Anne,” Jackie said. Her own face was set into serious lines, but nothing could hide the twinkle in her eyes. Jackie was having fun. She was an expert at turning The Look into a sale.
