Killing Santa

by Stacey Alabaster

  I thought Pippa was still too sick to do anything?

  “It isn’t a date,” I said, correcting her and glancing over my shoulder, where there was smoke floating up into the frosty air. “It’s like I said. I’m investigating the case. Jarod is having money problems. No one wants to buy his art. And he was having trouble even getting a gig as a Santa…probably because he looks nothing like one. I mean, he is far too young and tall and…” I was rambling.

  Pippa coughed and cut me off. “Ahem. Are you done justifying your little date there? Look, I’ve got some real investigation work that we can do right now, but you are going to have to cut your date short. So, are you in or not?”

  I was in. I rushed off while apologizing that something important had come up. At least I had his number now. In case I needed to give it to Sue, of course. For the gallery. That was the only reason.

  We were back at the Belldale mall. It was almost eleven. I wasn’t sure I had ever been to the mall that late before, not even for Christmas Eve shopping, which we were still a week and a half away from. “The caves are all shut and locked up for the night,” Pippa said as we rode the elevator to the second floor.

  “How long do we have until the mall is closed, though?” I asked. Surely that had to be our bigger concern. Getting locked in overnight. We’d had that trouble before.

  “It’s open until midnight in the weeks leading up to Christmas,” Pippa said. “So, we’ve still got an hour before we’d be trapped here for the night.”

  She patted her breast pocket and grinned at me. “It’s all under control. Trust me.”

  I still couldn’t believe she had stolen the key from Ellon before she’d clocked out. “I just had a hunch,” she said. “Usually Ellon is here a while after we close, packing up all the discarded garbage in the caves and making sure that all the computers have been turned off properly so that none of the photos are lost, so I wasn’t sure taking the key would even be any use to us. But then I saw a post on his Instagram tonight, showing him down at the local taco joint. Taco Tuesday. So, we’re in the clear.”

  It seemed like Pippa had had a productive evening stalking her boss on social media.

  “Well, as long as you’re sure he isn’t going to catch us,” I said, checking over my shoulder. Maybe he was only taking a break to get tacos and he’d be right back.

  The toy department was still pretty heavily populated, but Christmas Village was dark and there was no one else around as we crept toward it.

  “This is the key to the kingdom,” she said, bringing the silver key out of her pocket with a devilish little grin. Pippa did have this naughty, childlike side to her and she always perked up when she got to revel in it a little bit—something she’d had less of an opportunity to do since having a baby.

  However, even if it made her happy, I couldn’t believe she was willing to risk her beloved job at Christmas Village by stealing a key from her boss. “What if Ellon finds out what you’re doing?” I asked as we stepped over the velvet rope. “What if there are cameras?”

  “There are no cameras around here,” she said, following me over the rope. “Well, aside from the ones we take the Santa photos with of course.”

  “Still, isn’t this risky?” I whispered.

  She shrugged. “There’s only a week of the job left. Besides, I’m the only elf still showing up for work. He couldn’t fire me now even if he wanted to.”

  We were outside Cave Number Two. Finally, we would be able to go inside and look at the computer, to find out who had been in the room getting their shots taken at the time Santa was killed. But there was still something bugging me. Pippa seemed way too alive, and not like someone recovering from an illness.

  I stopped and looked Pippa up and down. She didn’t look in the least bit pale, or green. In fact, she looked pink and rosy, the picture of perfect health. So, I had to wonder… Why exactly had I taken time away from my own business the previous day to be tortured by a bunch of screaming babies and toddlers, who thought that I was trying to terrorize them?

  “Pippa,” I said. “Before we go in here, I need to ask you something. And I want you to be honest with me, okay?”

  She hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  “You weren’t really sick yesterday, were you?”

  “Of course I was.“

  “Pippa, I said that you needed to tell me the truth.”

  She pouted a little now that she had clearly been caught. “Okay,” she said quietly. “I wasn’t sick. Not exactly, anyway. I was upset.”

  I frowned and leaned against the wall of the cave. “Upset about what?”

  Pippa bit her lip and took a moment to compose herself. It was hard to see in the dark, but it looked like her eyes were starting to well up. “Marcello’s nonna is visiting, but she’s only in New York. She doesn’t want to come to Belldale, so he took Lolly up there for the week because his nonna has never met her. It was all really last-minute and caught me off guard.”

  My heart sank a little. “Oh. That must be really hard. Especially at this time of year. Did he really take off that suddenly, though? It seems a little unfair to you.”

  She shook her head. “I understand why he went, but I wanted us all to be together at Christmas. Not just on the day, but in the time leading up to the day. And I didn’t want you to know why I was so upset. I felt so silly about it. But I just couldn’t face coming in to work yesterday, Rachael.”

  Suddenly, I felt really bad about the Christmas tree incident at the bakery. And it certainly explained why Pippa had sounded so stuffed up on the phone—because she had been crying, not because she had a cold.

  I gave her a hug. “I’m sorry this happened,” I said. “You should have just told me.” I leaned back and she wiped her tears away.

  I gave her a second to compose herself. We needed to get into Cave Number Two and out again before the mall closed.

  “You need a password to get in and this system is set up so that only Ashley can access it,” Pippa told me as she turned on the computer and waited for it to start up. “But I have her passcode because she asked me to cover for her one night last week.”

  The computer took a few moments to load. Of course. It always did.

  “It’s kind of creepy being in here at night, don’t you think?” I asked Pippa as I looked up and realized we were surrounded by fake plastic Christmas trees in the dark. There was also the outline of the Santa throne…the last place that Santa had been sitting before a large blunt object had been brought down on his head. So far, the best guess from the police was that he had been hit by a large block of wood. I wasn’t so sure.

  Pippa shook her head. “I would never find Christmas spooky, not even at night. It is the most magical time of the year.”

  “Not even in the room where someone was just murdered?” I asked her in disbelief.

  The computer had finally loaded. It didn’t take Pippa long to get into the photo folders, she had done it a hundred times before by that point. “We just need to look at the last lot of photos in the system,” I said. “That will reveal which family was in here.”

  I was standing at the doorway, watching to make sure that the coast was clear and that Ellon wasn’t about to catch us, so I couldn’t quite make out the computer monitor. But by squinting, I could make out that the most recent lot of photos contained Santa—of course—and a young man holding a baby about one to two years old.

  All I could hear from Pippa was a gasp and a long stretched out, “Nooo.”

  “I-I can’t believe this,” Pippa said as she scanned through the photos. “No, no, there must be some kind of mistake.”

  I left my spot as guard and walked over, my stomach falling to my ankles as I saw a familiar face—two familiar faces—staring back at me from the computer screen.

  I gulped. Pippa was right—there had to be some kind of mistake.

  Didn’t there?

  Chapter 5

  I stirred the milk over the stovetop and added
the cocoa mix to it until it turned a light brown and the sweet scent hit my nose. The night was growing longer and longer. It was almost one in the morning, and still no snow. I stared out the window forlornly as I stirred the cocoa. So far, it hadn’t been a picture-perfect Christmas. First, Santa had been killed. And now, as it turned out, someone very close to us might be the killer.

  “There has to be some other explanation for this, Pippa. A perfectly innocent one.” I turned around and tried to look bright as I handed her the hot drink. Her hands were weak as she took it from me, shaking so much that the cocoa barely made it to her mouth.

  And even though I had told her that—and I still believed it deep down—I still couldn’t figure out how the last people to get their picture taken were Marcello and Lolly.

  And why would Marcello run out of there without telling anyone?

  “So, this explains why he left town so quickly,” she said glumly. “I wonder if his nonna even really is in New York. He could be lying about everything for all I know.”

  I sat at the kitchen table. “I hate to scare you, Pippa, but do you think he has run away with Lolly? Are you sure she is okay?”

  She shook her head. “Lolly is safe. I just skyped with her this afternoon.” She buried her head in her hands. “He would never do anything to hurt her. He’s just panicked, that’s all. Gone into hiding.”

  Well, maybe that was true enough. I thought it was important that neither of us panicked, if that was the case.

  “And I thought this was going to be the best Christmas ever,” Pippa said dejectedly as she pushed the mug away. “It just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “You don’t know anything yet. Not for certain,” I said.

  “I just have to prepare myself for the worst, Rachael. And that is that my husband killed Santa.”

  The previous day, there had been only frost. But I opened the door that morning to a thick layer of snow. “Finally,” I said, taking a deep breath as I stepped out into the cold, feeling the snow fall onto my cheeks and melt away.

  Maybe this signaled the start of something new. A fresh start. After a good night’s sleep, I had decided that Marcello couldn’t possibly be responsible for Santa’s death, and I was going to prove it.

  However, there was one little thing slowing me down. The several inches of snow on the ground, which was going to make getting to work difficult. And make solving the case difficult.

  I had to call Simona and Bronson. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it in today.” The bakery was on the other side of town and the roads hadn’t been cleaned yet. I could drive a little way, on my side of town, in the direction of the lake and the art gallery, but that was it. Until the roads were plowed, I was snowed in.

  My phone chirped when I hung up with Bronson. I was expecting it to be an annoyed text from Simona, but I was shocked to find it was from Jarod instead. My heart skipped a beat.

  Are you trapped in this snow too?

  I texted him straight back. Haha. Afraid I am. A good excuse for a day off though.

  Pippa’s farm was on the same side of town as the mall, so she’d be able to get to work, but Jarod was apparently on my side of town.

  I’ll have to miss work today too, he texted back.

  I hadn’t realized our houses were so close to each other—just a few blocks away, as a matter of fact. He told me he’d put his boots on and walk over.

  Since our date got cut a little short last night, I thought, why not? he texted.

  Why not indeed.

  “Is this safe?” I asked, glancing over the lake. I knew that it was officially an ice rink that operated for the entire winter, but because the snow had only started to fall, I feared the ice might be a little precarious.

  Jarod laughed and tied his skates. “Yeah, don’t worry. This place runs every year and there has never been a fatality.”

  I didn’t want to tell him about my terrible track record with fatalities occurring whenever I was in the area. Instead, I just put on my skates and decided to trust him as he held out his hand for me. “You ready?”

  I squealed a little as my skates gave way underneath me and I ended up on my backside, cringing a little as my wrist took the brunt of the fall.

  “Ow,” I cried, rolling over but laughing at the same time.

  “You’re going to feel that tomorrow,” Jarod said, giving me a hand and lifting me to my feet where I slipped and slid again. “And you’ll probably have a good bruise too.”

  “I’ve had worse injuries,” I said.

  This time, he held my hand as we skated so I wouldn’t go over again. He pulled me toward him, took both of my hands, and we started to go around and around until I was a little dizzy, staring up into his blue eyes. As we spun around, I had to wonder if Pippa was wrong about him. Jarod wasn’t a bad guy, not at all. I mean, if he was bad, then why was he making me feel this way? He’d only ever been kind and attentive to me. Sure, maybe he had his problems, but who didn’t?

  We stopped spinning and I thought he was going to pull me into him, but something over my shoulder seemed to have distracted him. I glanced back to see what had caught his attention.

  A blue car, a sedan with tinted windows, pulled up and a man wearing dark glasses that matched the windows hopped out. He had a closely shaved head and even though he was walking toward the ice, he didn’t look like he was there to skate. I thought I saw a change in Jarod’s demeanor. Usually, he was so laidback and relaxed, nothing ever seemed to rattle him, but the muscles in his arms tensed up and I almost fell over again.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly, bringing his focus back to me and giving his head a quick shake.

  He tried to shake it off and keep skating, but he had one eye on the man with the shades and now he was pulling me across the ice, rather than just leading me. And we were going faster and faster. “I think maybe we should take a break,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. Were we being followed?

  The man with the shades laced up a pair of skates and got on the ice, which relaxed me at first, but it was short-lived. I’d thought maybe I was imagining it at first, but the man was approaching us, sliding a little on the ice, about as steady as I was but still going fast enough to close in on us. Jarod was a far better skater than I was. I was the weaker link, dragging us down; the man was going to reach us.

  Jarod was far from relaxed now. Maybe he was trying to hide it, but his eyes were darting around and he was skating way too fast. “Shoot. We need to get out of here.”

  Jarod put his head down and started to move to the edge of the barrier, dropping my hand when I wasn’t quick enough to let go. I had to quickly steady myself to keep up with him. I crashed again, hitting the same side and groaning as I added a bruise on top of a bruise.

  “Rachael! Are you okay?” Jarod quickly skated back to me, keeping one eye on the man in the dark shades.

  He pulled me by the hand and we skated toward the edge of the park, getting off the ice and racing across the parking lot with our skates in our hands. My heart started racing when I realized the man wasn’t alone—he had backup, a taller man with dark hair who had joined him. They met at the edge of the rink and exchanged words, nodding in our direction before they decided to come after us.

  “Who were those guys?” I asked, breathless as we tried to run across the ground that had been grassy the day before, but now was wet and slippery with ice. My foot sunk in too far and I almost got stuck again. Jarod gabbed me and pulled me out. Finally, we reached the parking lot.

  Luckily, I had my car, so we were able to drive away rather than skate away down the street. But there wasn’t too far we could go; we had to stick to the west side of town since the roads beyond that weren’t cleared yet. Jarod kept glancing over his shoulder to check if the blue station wagon was following us, but the man with the shades would have had to cross the lake again to get his car, so I knew we had a decent head start. Still, we—Jarod—couldn’t hide forever.

  He was tel
ling me to hurry up…but it was hard to make a quick getaway with the roads so heavy with snow.

  “You haven’t answered me,” I said, turning my car down a road that looked unfamiliar now that there was snow. I could see a cafe up ahead that looked like a cabin with its wooden planks and porch covered with pine trees.

  “Just some guys that I owe money,” he said, gulping.

  I gripped the steering wheel and groaned, fighting the instinct to close my eyes. Pippa was right. Why did I have to have such terrible taste in men? He was a bad boy. And not the good kind. The actual bad kind who had gambling debt and trouble with the law and people trying to kill him. I shook my head. This was a big mistake. I should have just climbed through the snow that morning and gone into the bakery. It would have been a less perilous journey.

  “Maybe we can stop here,” he said, nodding toward the Wooden Cabin Cafe. They were advertising wood-fired pizzas on the board out front—the house special was mushroom, chicken, and pesto. I had to admit that I was starving, making a quick getaway did that to me. I could see a roaring fire though the window and it was pulling me inside, even though all I really wanted to do was take Jarod back to his house and dump him there.

  I decided to at least hear him out. What if those guys were super dangerous and were after me now? I needed to know how much trouble I might be in as well.

  “Is it gambling debts?” I asked him once I had ordered a pizza. “It’s okay, you can tell me. I just want to hear it straight.”

  Jarod looked mildly offended and straightened up, but then he gulped down a full glass of water. “What? Gosh, no, nothing like that, Rachael,” he said, laughing a little.

  But I didn’t find it funny in the slightest. “Come on, this is serious,” I said. “There are guys after you that you owe money to! They could show up at this cafe and break your legs…” I glanced around. Maybe I should have parked the car around the back, not right out the front.