Cozy Christmas Shorts

by Halliday, Gemma

  Tate would say that the very idea that Kolya might be the Gingerbread Man was ridiculous, and she was just looking for something to enliven her day. Even though the shoe company was small, it had been in existence for many years, and there had to be thousands, probably tens of thousands of customers wearing their shoes. A good portion of them probably lived in Massachusetts where a customer could make an easy day trip to the headquarters for a personal fitting.

  Besides, the Gingerbread Man apparently wooed his victims over a stretch of several weeks at a time before they handed over their cash. Mr. Wharton couldn't manage without Kolya for ten minutes, let alone ten or twenty days. If Helen wanted to pin the crime on someone here in Wharton, Edie was a much more likely suspect, with her frequent, long vacations and her lack of any visible means of support.

  Helen knew she was just giving in to her own dislike of the woman. There was no real reason to think Edie was a grifter. A politician, yes, but that was a legal confidence game and didn't necessarily lead to out-and-out fraud. Or to murder, if it was true that the Gingerbread Man had killed one of his victims. Edie was a superficial, sycophantic wannabe, but there was no real reason to think she was a criminal. There certainly wasn't enough evidence to suggest that Hank Peterson investigate either Edie, because of her suspicious vacation schedule and ridiculous threat to keep Helen from entering local politics, or Kolya, because of the running shoes. The police would never get any real work done if they had to question every one of the vast number of people who either wore custom running shoes or did things that annoyed Helen.

  Just as the chair-moving exercise was winding down, Edie raced into the dining room. Mr. Wharton finished up a whispered conversation with Kolya that involved both of them looking at the emergency exit door that led to the back yard, while Edie glared at Helen, promising retribution for the wild goose chase.

  As soon as Kolya stepped away from his patient, Edie pasted a big, fake smile on her face and assumed a tone so saccharine it put the icing on the gingerbread houses to shame. "Martha wants a word with you now, Helen."

  Helen was sure she did. Martha was practical, and she would have been quick to forgive if distracting Edie had at least led to an agreement with Mr. Wharton that would finally establish the winners of the contest. He hadn't come around to reason, however, so they were no better off than before. Worse off, perhaps, since Edie was likely to be even more entrenched in her position now, out of spite.

  If none of the judges would budge, there weren't going to be any winners at all. That might be worse than choosing the wrong winners. Taking a break to talk to Martha might actually be a good idea even if it meant Edie could gloat a little. Martha would know if the gingerbread house contest meant as much to the residents as Helen thought it did. After all, a good number of the residents had significant dementia and probably didn't even remember entering the contest. Perhaps—and Helen really hated to admit it—but perhaps Edie was right, and the makers of the barn dance would be perfectly happy with an Honorable Mention award. Helen doubted it, given how many people had come to hear the results of the judging, but Martha would know for sure.

  "You're right," she told Edie, which had the added advantage of defying the other woman's expectations and leaving her at a loss for words. "I'd better go have a word with Martha. I won't be long."

  * * *

  Helen had thought the activity room was full two hours earlier when she’d first arrived, but now it was packed. All the seats were filled, including a couple dozen folding chairs that had been added since she'd last spoken to Betty and Josie. Five couples danced in front of the Christmas tree, and about thirty people were leaning against the walls. A woman in scrubs was trying, with little success, to get through the crowd to break up another pair of over-enthusiastic kissers beneath a mistletoe ball in a corner of the room.

  With all the visitors, it took a few minutes for Helen to conclude that Martha wasn't in the room. Neither was Tate, who'd apparently escaped Betty's and Josie's clutches.

  Helen made her way through the crowd to the chairs by the fireplace. Betty had finished the letters on the crime scene tape scarf and was adding fringe, while Josie was down to the last few short rows on the pointy elf hat.

  "Where's Martha?"

  Betty looked up from her knitting. "There was some emergency. It sounded like she might be tied up for a while."

  "She left right after Tate did. Maybe he was the emergency," Josie said, dropping her needle work into her lap. "He's cute enough to inspire Martha to get a life outside her work. You'd better make sure she doesn't snap him up right from under your nose."

  "Tate can take care of himself," Helen said. "Forget about him for a minute. What do you know about Kolya Zubov?"

  "Are you planning to dump Tate for Kolya?" Betty asked.

  Helen couldn't explain her suspicion that the Gingerbread Man might be in the building, not without causing a widespread panic among the nursing home residents. "I'm not dumping or picking up anyone. I'm just curious about Kolya."

  "He's a hottie, isn't he?" Josie pulled the yarn through the final stitch in her elf hat. "And such a nice person. He comes here a few times a year to lead a fitness class, without getting paid or anything. You should definitely flirt with him, although you should be warned that the rumor is that he's gay. Women are always hitting on him and getting rebuffed.

  "The rumor about his sexual orientation is ridiculous," Betty said. "Sour grapes on the part of the unsuccessful women. I've seen how he looks at some of the female nurses here. You have too, Josie."

  "Yeah. I think either he's waiting for the right woman or he's got an unrequited passion for his one true love, and he takes a lot of vacation time to go visit her, trying to win her over."

  "I'm surprised Mr. Wharton can spare Kolya for more than two minutes."

  "It isn't easy," Josie said. "When Kolya's gone, poor Mr. Wharton has to go live with relatives out-of-state. Nice as this nursing home is, it just doesn't live up to his standards, and he comes down with a respiratory infection every time he stays in a hotel. Before he hired Kolya, none of the nurses ever lasted more than a couple of months, so now he doesn't even bother trying to hire a substitute. I guess someone in his extended family has medical training, so he goes and stays with them whenever Kolya's on vacation."

  If Kolya wasn't, in fact, tied to Mr. Wharton every single day of the year, then it was at least theoretically possible for the nurse to be the Gingerbread Man. In fact, it made a certain amount of sense. He would certainly know how to kill his victims in a way that wouldn't immediately be viewed as anything other than an accident or natural causes. He might even be waiting for the right moment to knock off his current patient or simply waiting for him to die, if it was true that Mr. Wharton was fading fast. In the meantime, with a sufficiently generous vacation schedule, Kolya could use his time off to undertake other, shorter and smaller cons. He could even target people he met through Mr. Wharton, using that connection to appear trustworthy, which would shorten the amount of time he needed to gain the victims' confidence.

  "Any idea how often he goes on those vacations?"

  Josie was busy digging through her bag for a new skein of yarn, so Betty answered. "Kolya usually teaches his class here right before he leaves. I think there were three classes in the last year or so. Maybe four."

  That fit with the Gingerbread Man's reported pattern of fleecing three or four victims a year, but Kolya wasn't the only person who took three or four vacations a year. There might be an easy way to rule him out as a suspect. If Kolya had been providing round-the-clock care for his patient during Thanksgiving week when the Gingerbread Man had been reported to have fleeced a victim in Springfield, then he couldn't be the Gingerbread Man.

  "Do you know when Kolya's last vacation was?"

  "It's hard for me to remember dates," Betty said. "One day is pretty much the same as the next here."

  "I know." Josie looked up from her yarn bag. "He was gone the week of Thanksg
iving. The class must have been the Friday before the holiday, because he said something about making sure we worked out extra hard to make up for all the food we'd be eating in just under a week."

  So he could have been in Springfield when the Gingerbread Man was there. That didn't mean he was guilty, but it was at least a possibility. It wouldn't hurt to compare the rest of Kolya's vacations with the dates of the Gingerbread Man's crimes. Detective Peterson would never consider doing even that much on her say-so alone. He might listen to Mr. Wharton though. Everyone in town thought Mr. Wharton was some sort of god, and his requests were treated like the Ten Commandments.

  All Helen needed to do was convince Mr. Wharton to issue a new proclamation that she could carry to the Gingerbread Man task force: Thou Shalt Investigate My Nurse.

  * * *

  As Helen headed back to the dining room, she tried to think of a way to get Kolya out of the room long enough to question Mr. Wharton about the possibility that his nurse was a grifter and a killer.

  She needn't have bothered. As soon as she arrived, Mr. Wharton sent Kolya off to retrieve Edie, who'd left for another cigarette break.

  "One way or another," Mr. Wharton told Helen, "we must make a decision in the next few minutes before I'm completely exhausted. If we can't agree, we need to step aside and let them find new judges."

  "I'm sure we can reach a decision." Helen dropped into a straight-backed chair next to his recliner. "But first there's something else I need to ask you."

  "I'm far too tired to think about anything new," Mr. Wharton said, closing his eyes. "Can't it wait until my dear Kolya returns? He has more answers than I do."

  "Actually, it's Kolya I want to talk about," Helen said. "How well do you know him?"

  "He's been my nurse for the past five years, caring for me 24/7. I'm still alive, and that's all I need to know about him."

  "Do you know where he goes on his vacations?"

  "That's his business." Mr. Wharton's eyes were still closed, but his hands tensed on the arms of the chair, the way they had when Kolya had carried it from one end of the table to the other. Perhaps he was afraid Helen planned to hire Kolya away from him.

  "Don't worry. I'm not looking for a full-time nurse." Helen glanced toward the hallway and listened for any approaching footsteps. All she heard was yet another version of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," this time by Toby Keith. She had at least a couple minutes left. "This is about something else altogether. I know it's a long shot, but have you heard of the Gingerbread Man? Not the kids' story, but the grifter with that nickname. He wears the same custom-made shoes as Kolya does, and he was working his scam in Springfield during Kolya's vacation. Plus, a nurse would have the expertise to identify vulnerable targets and then kill them in ways that initially fooled the police into thinking they were accidents."

  "Not my dear Kolya." He shook his head slowly, as if the effort of being more emphatic was beyond his remaining energy level. "He would never hurt anyone."

  "Are you sure?" Helen said. "Grifters can be charming, and they know how to get you to ignore your doubts. You could be at serious personal risk yourself if he is the Gingerbread Man. Apparently some of his victims weren't just robbed but also murdered. If there's any chance at all that I'm right, you should have him checked out for your own safety."

  "Oh, my." Mr. Wharton fanned himself and painstakingly pushed himself out of his chair and onto his feet. He clutched his lower back and stumbled in the direction of the emergency exit.

  Helen experienced sympathy pangs in her own joints. Perhaps she should go get Kolya and worry about having him investigated some other day, after Mr. Wharton was stabilized.

  She got to her own feet as quickly as she could. "Are you all right?"

  "I'll be fine in a moment. Just need a quick bit of fresh air. All this stress, it's got me overheating." He smiled wanly. "It's like this sometimes with my condition. One minute I'm freezing and the next I'm roasting. Something to do with glands. I don't understand it at all. Kolya could explain."

  He didn't need to tell Helen about the unpredictability of autoimmune disorders. She was still fighting her way out of the lupus fog that had descended on her a few weeks ago.

  Helen followed him to the exit, afraid he might topple over or else trip on the blanket he was absently dragging beside him. Not that she could catch him the way Kolya probably could, but perhaps she could offer a steadying hand.

  "Would you mind opening it for me?" he asked, gesturing at the door. "I crave fresh air when I have one of my little episodes."

  Helen pushed the door open just enough to let in a cooling draft without turning the entire dining room into a walk-in freezer.

  "How's that?" She looked over her shoulder just in time to see Mr. Wharton place his leather-gloved hands on her shoulder blades and shove her into the door. It flew open, and she stumbled over the threshold onto the patio. Her cane saved her from falling flat on her face, but she couldn't turn around fast enough to get back inside the heated building before Mr. Wharton caught up to her and closed the door behind them both. She heard the automatic lock click into place.

  What on earth was he doing? Didn't he know they could freeze to death out here? Helen rubbed her arms, wishing she had her bulky parka instead of the thin wool suit that offered about as much protection from the weather as a bikini. Mr. Wharton, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice the freezing temperature or the brisk wind. Of course he was wearing several layers of clothing, including leather gloves he must have kept in his pants pockets. He'd also wrapped the wool blanket around his upper body like a poncho. It was almost like he'd been prepared to be locked outside in this brutal weather.

  That was ridiculous. He was an invalid. At least, that was what everyone thought. Except he'd moved a lot faster just now than it was possible for someone as ill as he was supposed to be, and the hands that had shoved her outside had been as strong as Kolya's were.

  Why had Mr. Wharton been pretending to be so frail? The answer flashed through Helen's brain: so no one would suspect him of being the Gingerbread Man.

  He'd intentionally cultivated the reputation of "poor Mr. Wharton," unable to do anything for himself, completely dependent on his nurse, except when he was supposedly spending weeks with relatives who took care of him. In reality, though, he'd been off charming some unsuspected person out of his life's savings and then killing the mark for good measure.

  How had the victims been killed, anyway? By freezing them to death?

  Maybe she should have paid more attention to Rebecca's warnings about the dangers of winter, although the medical journals probably hadn't mentioned the risk of running afoul of a serial killer.

  * * *

  Helen couldn't get back into the dining room. Even if she could out-run Mr. Wharton in the ten inches of snow covering the patio, she was trapped with nowhere safe to go. To her left was a high fence and a locked gate that kept her from the front driveway. In front of her was a cliff-like drop-off along the side property line where a stone wall warned of the danger. Finally, to her right there was the fence between the patio and the smoking area.

  The fence with the secret opening.

  Maybe she wasn't trapped, after all. Not if she could find the opening in the fence before she froze to death or Mr. Wharton decided to kill her some other way.

  Her only chance was to keep him from assaulting her while she made her way to the far end of the patio and searched, unobtrusively, for the secret opening in the fence.

  Mr. Wharton advanced on her. "When I heard you'd been invited to be a judge, I was so excited. Finally a worthy adversary instead of the dimwitted chumps I usually deal with. It would have been better if I'd found a way to profit from killing you, but the challenge of outwitting you will have to do. I must say, I didn't expect you to catch on so quickly. I was just testing you to see if you were as good as everyone says you are."

  "I'm too old for IQ tests." All that mattered right now was that she knew enough to
handle a narcissist like him. He seemed to have a lot in common with the worst of Helen's ex-husband's cronies. For them it wasn't enough to simply play the game and succeed; they needed their opponents to know and even acknowledge just how thoroughly they'd been trounced.

  Only a ten-foot-square area immediately outside the emergency exit had been shoveled since the last storm, leaving the better part of forty feet of snow-covered patio between Helen and the fence beside the smoking area. Getting there wasn't going to be fast, not if she wanted to stay on her feet instead of involuntarily making snow angels on the ground. She needed to keep Mr. Wharton bragging about his crimes while she forged a path through the snow. At least no one had used the secret smoking area since the latest snowfall, so there weren't any tracks that would clue her stalker in to the existence of an exit from his trap.

  "Let's see if I got it right," she said. "I'm guessing you ran out of money a few years ago, and that's when you started grifting and found you had a knack for it."

  "The cops still don't know the full extent of my activities," he said with a note of irritation. "I only told them about a few of the victims, but more often than not I took three or four people's money each time I went to stay with 'my relatives.' I kept expecting the police to tie the rest of the cons to me, but they never did. I guess I'll just have to make it easier for them in the future. Maybe when I fleece half the residents here they'll take me seriously."

  "If you figure out how to make Detective Peterson listen, you'll have to share the secret with me," Helen said. "The only thing I don't understand is why you had to kill your victims. A good con artist leaves his victims alive but too humiliated or confused to report him."