Curses and Candy Canes: A Paranormal Mystery Christmas Anthology

by Tegan Maher

  I blinked in surprise. “Great! Thanks.”

  “So first things first, let me show you the breakroom and set you up with some videos you have to watch about the store, public relations, all that good stuff.”

  As we walked toward the back of the store, two women emerged and greeted us. One looked to be around my age, while the other was around forty.

  “Lexi, this is Trixie Carlisle and Sandra Spooner. Sandra works cash register while Trixie is upstairs in gift wrapping.”

  The two ladies waved hello and headed out to the floor. As we stepped through a door marked EMPLOYEES, six other people turned to look at us. There were two rows of lockers, two couches, a round table that sat six, and a couple vending machines.

  “Five minutes until opening, people,” Jessie said. “Let’s make sure we’re on the floor and ready to greet each customer with a smile! Only three more days until Christmas!”

  A couple employees rolled their eyes, but most just laughed at Jessie’s exuberance. I followed her down a narrow hallway and into another smaller room with a small big-box TV on a table, a plastic chair, and a video tape.

  “I’m just going to pop in this VHS tape, and I need you to watch it all. It’s about forty-five minutes, so when it’s done I’ll come back and get you. Okay?”

  I set my backpack on the table. “You bet.”

  “There’s soda in the machines out front. You can pause the tape and take a break if you need to.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m good for now. Eager to start.”

  Jessie clapped her hands in excitement and bounced out the door. The minute the door latched, Rex jumped out of the backpack.

  “I needed out of that thing,” Rex said. “There’s some sort of hairy beast in there.”

  “Get a lay of the toy store for me. I have to sit here in front of this monstrous contraption and watch videos on how not to act in the workplace.”

  “Aye aye, captain!” Rex saluted, vaulted off the table, then wiggled under the door and out into the store.

  Forty minutes later, I pried my eyes open and tried to remember what I’d just viewed while sleeping. I was about to rewind the tape when Rex came scrambling in.

  “We got a problem. Our DB was supposed to clock in at eight. Jessie is mad.”

  “DB?” I asked.

  “Dead body. Been watching thriller crime shows in my downtime.”

  “Talk like a regular rat, please.”

  The door burst open, and a visibly upset Jessie strode in.

  “Everything okay?” I asked innocently, breathing a sigh of relief when Rex dove behind a table leg.

  “No. One of my stockers didn’t show this morning, and I don’t have time for this. We’re already packed out there.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” I offered.

  She sighed and looked at her watch. “I know it’s irregular, but I’m going to take you with me. Kill two birds with one stone. I’m going to drag Stewart Anton down to work his job, and show you where you can stay until you get on your feet.”

  “Great.” I picked up my backpack, which Rex had wiggled into, and followed after her.

  A few seconds later we were standing in the back alley of the store. A set of wooden stairs leading upstairs was in front of me.

  “There are two tiny apartments above the store,” Jessie explained. “Since we are a small, local company, the owner of the store lets us rent out the apartments overhead if someone needs them.”

  We were halfway up the stairs when I realized with some excitement that I was going to be living in the attic of a toy store. It was like my childhood dream come true.

  “Let me just bang on Stewart’s door real quick and wake him up.”

  I bit my lip to refrain from telling her all the banging in the world probably wouldn’t get him up.

  Jessie pounded three times on the door. “Stewart, it’s Jessie. Get dressed and get downstairs, now!”

  We waited a couple seconds then more banging. “Stewart?”

  “Do you think everything is okay?” I asked.

  “I’m going with no,” Rex tittered.

  “Let me show you your place,” Jessie said, “then I’ll use my key and open his apartment. I hate to do that, but now I’m worried. I mean, I’ve pounded loud enough, right? You’d wake up if you were sleeping?” She bit her lip and looked at me. “Should I do that, you think? Or just let it go? Maybe he got drunk or something and is sleeping it off?”

  “Does that sound like him?” I asked.

  I didn’t want to jump on her question with a resounding yes she should definitely open the door, in case I had her questioning my motives. But I needed her to open that door.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think it does. But I don’t know him all that well. He’s been working for us for six months now. But…”

  She looked away.

  “But what?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to speak out of turn, but I know our manager, Collin, is probably going to let him go after Christmas.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  The more I knew about Stewart the more information I’d have to solve this case.

  “Let me show you your place real quick.” She moved farther down the narrow balcony and withdrew a keyring with numerous keys. After a few seconds she pushed the door open and turned on the light. “Here you go. This is pretty much the whole apartment right here. It’s not much, but until you can find something, it should do.”

  It actually wasn’t bad. It was small, probably only four hundred square feet, but my apartment back home wasn’t more than six hundred, so it didn’t bother me. There was a tiny kitchenette immediately to my left with a two-burner stove and miniature refrigerator. Directly in front of me was the living room/bedroom. The turret from the front of the store overlooked the third story across the street.

  “Right through here is your bathroom. Again, small. Only a tiny shower stall, toilet, and sink. What do you think?”

  “It’s perfect,” I said. “How much?”

  “Two hundred a week,” Jessie said. “Trust me, that’s a fabulous deal for rent in New York City in this day and age.”

  “Done.”

  “Great. Let’s go see if we can’t wake Stewart up and get him to work. I can’t have him out all day, we’re swamped down there!” She clapped and jumped up and down. “Only three more days until Christmas!”

  I laughed and followed her outside. She placed the key to my apartment in my palm, and I seriously hated what was about to happen. Jessie was a perky, young girl who was probably going to see her first dead body. But if I offered to go in and check, she might get suspicious or think that’s strange. I had to let it play out. But I was going to do my darndest to cushion the blow.

  I also couldn’t think of a way to not have her grab the doorknob in case there were already fingerprints on it. But I guess that’s why I was here. To solve the crime that never got solved.

  She knocked three more times then grabbed the knob to unlock it. The minute she grabbed hold, the door popped open about four inches.

  “It’s showtime!” Rex said.

  “That doesn’t seem good,” I said. “Maybe we should just—”

  “This is very irresponsible of Stewart,” Jessie said. “He needs to keep better track of what he’s doing. This isn’t his place, it belongs to the toy store.”

  With a sigh, she swung the door all the way open. “Merry Christmas, Stewart! It’s Jessie. I need you to come to work. You’re already an hour late.”

  I crept in behind her, trying to take in everything. The room was a mess, and the putrid smell permeating throughout the room made me want to vomit. It was almost the exact same setup as my place next door, except his kitchen was on the right. Takeout boxes, VHS tapes, empty booze bottles, trash, knickknacks, overflowing ashtrays, sticky notes stuck everywhere. It was like a cyclone tore through the room.

  Taking up most of the room was a massive TV—one of those late 70s models where i
t was more furniture than TV—a three-person sofa that had seen better days, and what I assumed was once a completely put together glass coffee table. Now it wasn’t so put together, and the body lying face down in the center of it didn’t appear to be breathing.

  The scream Jessie let out would have made the scream queens of B-rated movies proud. I was almost sure she’d busted an eardrum. I wiggled my pointer finger back and forth across my ear to try and erase her scream from my head.

  “I hope she pulls herself together soon,” Rex said. “Things to do. Things to do.”

  “Jessie?” I asked, wrapping my arms around her. “You okay?”

  She shook her head and slammed into my chest, sobbing and clinging tightly to me. I let her cry for a few more minutes before I pushed her away.

  “We need to call 911,” I said.

  She leaned back, quiet sobs and hiccups making her body shake violently. “Okay. All right. 911?”

  “Yes. The police need to come.”

  “Right.” She walked woodenly toward the kitchen. “I think the phone is on the wall in here.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her not to touch it, but we’d already contaminated the crime scene. Even if they dusted for fingerprints, by the time the results came back—if they even did—I’d have this case solved.

  I could hear her talking in the kitchen, but I tuned her out. I needed to look at everything in the room. I had no idea what I was looking for that would give me a clue as to who killed Stewart, but I took note of everything anyway.

  I felt Rex jump out of my backpack. “Want me to look in the bathroom?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Yes, what?” Jessie asked.

  I turned around and saw her staring quizzically at me. “Sorry. I was just thinking in my head that this was bad. I didn’t realize I’d answered myself.”

  The girl burst out laughing. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “This has been a stressful morning.”

  “Oh no,” Jessie gasped. “Do you think they’ll shut down the store?”

  “Probably not. The…incident happened up here in the apartments.” I didn’t know what to call this. I couldn’t say accident, but I also couldn’t say murder. But Jessie was too stressed to pick up on my poor word choice. “Let’s wait outside. We don’t want to contaminate the scene any more than we already have.”

  Jessie stared at me. “You’re so cool about all this. I’m over here freaking out and you are using words like ‘contaminate the scene.’ Were you ever a cop or something?”

  “My dad,” I said quickly. “He was a cop. I guess I just picked up stuff from him.”

  “Cool. Well, thanks for making me feel better.” We headed out the door, and I figured Rex would follow when he could. “I don’t know what to do. Part of me feels like I need to stay here, but I also can’t leave the store alone without a manager of some kind.”

  “How about this?” I said. “Let’s go wait downstairs, and I’ll stand in the back alley while you go inside and work. When the police get here, I’ll run and get you.”

  Jessie leaned over and hugged me. “Thank you. I’m so glad I met you today.”

  “Jessie, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Anything.”

  “You said something earlier about Stewart and how he can’t afford to get in trouble because he’s already in trouble. What did you mean?”

  Jessie bit her lip and looked behind her. “It’s nothing.”

  “It might be something,” I prompted.

  Jessie sighed. “I think our manager, Collin, was going to let Stewart go after the holidays. Stewart has been knowingly doing something we aren’t allowed to do.”

  “What?”

  Jessie brightened. “Oh, I guess it’s okay to tell you, because you need to know we aren’t supposed to do it. See, we can’t hold back toys…especially the popular ones. Our owner is very strict on that. Customers first when buying toys from Toyland and Treasures.”

  I nodded. “And Stewart was buying popular toys from the store?”

  Jessie averted her gaze and shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.”

  Only I thought she did.

  “Okay, Jessie, I’ll wait out here and come in and get you when the police arrive.”

  “Thanks!” she said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  Chapter Three

  “Thank you for your time,” the detective said. “If I have any more questions, I know where to find you.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” I said. “But like I said, today’s my first day.”

  “No problem,” he said. “You can go on back inside. I’ll be in shortly to start asking questions of employees.”

  I nodded and jogged around to the front of the store.

  I worked the floor as best I could. Seeing as how I had no training in retail, I just tried to point customers where they needed to go.

  By the time the police and detective made it downstairs to the toy store to talk with employees, it was nearly twelve. I was due to have a lunch break, but since we were short-staffed every time an officer came to question an employee, lunch wasn’t happening.

  “Psst!” Rex hissed. “Lexi, over here!”

  I looked around. I was in the stuffed animal department. I saw blinking eyes and nearly screamed. Rex was standing next to Splinter. I giggled inside at the irony.

  “Who’s this wanna-be rat?” Rex asked.

  “That’s Splinter, the leader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

  “Leader, huh? I guess that makes him cool enough to stand by me.”

  “Great, now I’m going to have that song stuck in my head all day.”

  “What song?” Rex asked.

  “Never mind. What did you find out?”

  “Breakroom gossip! Manager was going to fire Stewart for putting aside hard-to-get toys and then passing them to friends to buy and then selling them on something called a black market for a profit.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Girl named Trixie dated him until recently. But she told the cop she hadn’t seen or spoken to him in days.”

  “I met Trixie. I’ll be sure to feel her out when I get a chance.”

  “Went to basement where stockers work. Guy named Ralph something, can’t miss him! No, you can’t! No, you can’t! Short, big muscles, walks funny, like his legs are heavy.”

  I snorted as Rex strutted and swaggered on the shelf.

  “He’s saying Stewart got what was coming to him. And that’s what happens when a small potato tries to encroach.”

  “Great! I have another name. Anything else?”

  “Another stocker asked some guy named Troy if he knew his bro Stewart was dead.”

  I nodded. “Maybe this Troy is an accomplice. I’ll ferret him out.”

  “Ferrets don’t like it when you do that to their name.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Anything else?”

  “Who’re you talking to?” a tiny voice demanded.

  I spun around, and at the same time, using my magic, I waved my hand so Rex would get pushed back into the stuffed animals. I could hear him cursing at me, but I didn’t care.

  “Myself,” I said, staring down at a girl around six. “I talk to myself a lot.”

  “Do you have Tickle My Tummy?” she asked.

  I looked around. “Where’s your mom?”

  “Over there.” She pointed to a lady yelling at a cashier. “She’s mad because you don’t have a Tickle My Tummy in stock. She says we should be ashamed and that she should sue.”

  I rolled my eyes and led the girl back to the counter where her mom was raking Sandra over the coals. “I found your kid.”

  The belligerent mother snatched her daughter. “Well, I guess this store can find something! Now, how about you go run to the back of the store or wherever you keep your stash of hidden Tickle My Tummys and give me one!”


  “Sorry, we don’t have any,” I said, my voice an obvious fake syrupy sweet. “But you have yourself a merry little Christmas. Okay?”

  The woman huffed, snatched her daughter’s arm, and marched out of the store…the whole time cursing under her breath about what a lousy store we were.

  “Dang,” I said. “These people mean business!”

  “It’s the Tickle My Tummy,” Sandra said. “He’s so popular this year, parents are literally fist fighting over the toy.”

  “Lexi, there you are,” Jessie said. “I’ve been looking for you. Why don’t you take your lunch now? I think the detective just left or is leaving.”

  “Thanks, Jessie.”

  I didn’t have anything to eat, but I hoped there might be some employees in the lunchroom I could chat with. I pushed open the door and immediately saw two women about my age sitting at the round table.

  “Can I sit with you?” I asked.

  The redhead shrugged. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot. “My name’s Rhonda, and this here’s Tylesha.”

  I nodded to Tylesha and sat down beside her.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No,” Rhonda said. “The guy that was upstairs was my boyfriend.”

  “Ex,” Tylesha said. “Remember, girl, you kicked him to the curb.”

  I frowned. “I thought he’d been seeing Trixie in gift wrapping?”

  “Please!” Rhonda said. “She wished she had my man.”

  “He always thought he was all that and a bag of chips,” Tylesha added.

  “Would you two stop your bellyaching,” a thirty-something dark-haired man growled. “That wanna-be thug, Stewart, got what was coming to him.”

  “That’s Ralph! Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie!” Rex chanted.

  I stood and thrust out my hand. “You must be Ralph.”

  He looked at my hand, then leisurely looked me up and down. “What’s a nice piece like you doing here?”

  “Lemme at him! Lemme at him!” Rex exclaimed.

  “I’m working. Same as you.” I lowered my hand. “Did you know the guy who died upstairs?”

  Ralph snorted. “Yeah. What about him?”