A Wee Christmas Homicide

by Kaitlyn Dunnett

  A small bell above the door tinkled merrily and more melodiously than the one at the Emporium. Once inside the consignment shop, Liss waited a moment, then called out a greeting: “Anybody home?”

  “Hang on a sec!” The sound of a disembodied voice was followed by a flush. Sherri and Liss exchanged a rueful grin. When you owned a small shop there was rarely anyone available to cover for you when you needed to use the facilities.

  Marcia emerged through a door behind the small desk she used as a sales counter. She was a tall, angular woman in her forties with a pale complexion and wheat-colored hair. Unlike Liss, she did not wear her store’s stock. She was comfortably dressed in well-worn jeans and a cable-knit sweater. She needed the latter. Marcia kept the temperature in her building at a frugal sixty-two degrees.

  “Liss. Sherri. Hi. What brings you out on this nippy morning?”

  “Have you seen this?” Liss thrust the newspaper at her.

  Marcia’s eyes widened as she read. “Those dumb little bears? Get out of here!”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Two dozen. I didn’t buy them to sell. I’m using them for Christmas decorations.”

  Liss started to explain her plan but Marcia didn’t let her get very far.

  “eBay.”

  “What?”

  “Online auction. That’s the best way to sell them. Put the bears up one at a time. Set a nice high minimum bid for each one.”

  If this were a cartoon, Sherri thought, the artist would draw dollar signs in place of Marcia’s eyes.

  Liss looked horrified. “You can’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we have a chance to do something good for this whole town. Gavin Thorne has some of these Tiny Teddies, too. We need to go talk to him. If we work together, I know we can pull this off.”

  Marcia looked doubtful. “Are you sure you want to deal with Thorne? I can’t say as I like him much. I stopped by to welcome him to town when he first opened The Toy Box and he gave me such a chilly reception that I haven’t been back since.”

  “He’s recently divorced,” Sherri put in. “That tends to make folks sour.” She gave herself a mental kick when she realized Marcia might take that comment personally, but the consignment shop owner simply nodded in agreement.

  “He and his wife had a toy store in Fallstown,” Marcia said. “The wife got the building. Thorne got the contents.”

  Sherri tried to think if she’d heard anything else about Gavin Thorne, but the local grapevine had been remarkably quiet on the subject.

  “He did join the Moosetookalook Small Business Association,” Liss said, “but he hasn’t been to any meetings.” Quickly and concisely, she filled Marcia in on Thorne’s visit to the Emporium.

  “He tried to con you and you still want to work with him?” Marcia’s outrage showed plainly on her long, thin face.

  The show of temper surprised Sherri. Until now, Marcia had never struck her as one of those people with a short fuse. Then again, she didn’t know the woman well. Marcia was a relative newcomer to Moosetookalook. She hadn’t grown up in the village, as Sherri and Liss had.

  “It couldn’t hurt to talk to Thorne,” Liss insisted. “For one thing, he’s the closest thing we have to a local expert on toys.”

  A short time later, Marcia in tow, Sherri and Liss retraced their steps past Stu’s Ski shop and the Emporium. They passed Liss’s house—one of only two surrounding the square that was still used exclusively as a residence—and turned onto Ash Street. The Toy Box was located in the center of that short block, between the post office and Preston’s Mortuary.

  Thorne’s shop had no bell over the entrance. The door closed, however, with a resounding thunk that echoed in every corner of the small store.

  “With you in a minute,” Thorne bellowed from behind a sales counter built so high that a child would have to reach above his head to pay for a purchase. It was also an awkward height for Sherri, whose friends universally described her as a petite blonde. It hit the taller Liss squarely at bosom-level.

  The minute stretched into several. Sherri and Marcia wandered off to inspect the shop’s offerings, leaving Liss to inch closer to its surly proprietor.

  Keeping her six-year-old son’s belief in Santa Claus in mind, Sherri browsed. Thorne had a great selection of action figures and shelves filled with board games and jigsaw puzzles, but the store seemed a trifle thin on miniature trucks and cars. Video games took up another significant section of shelving. So did toys for very young children. In a far corner she came upon two Tiny Teddies, one dressed as a ballerina, the other as a clown.

  Marcia joined her there. “There are ten more on a table on the other side of the shop. All different.”

  As one, they headed for the front of the store, arriving just in time to see Liss go up on her toes to prop her elbows on the polished wooden surface of the sales counter in order to thrust her face into Thorne’s peripheral vision. He gave a start and looked up from his computer screen with a glower.

  “We need to talk,” Liss said. When he stood, she stepped back and held out the newspaper.

  Thorne leaned over the sales counter, his expression still thunderous. The floor on his side was a good foot higher than the area where Liss stood, so that he loomed over her. Nobody, not Liss or Marcia and Sherri, who had formed ranks behind Liss, was impressed.

  Thorne did a double take at the sight of Sherri’s uniform. “You planning to arrest me?”

  His sneer faded when she just stared at him, her gaze level and no hint of a smile on her face. Holding her head at that awkward angle was giving her a kink in her neck—another black mark against the surly toy seller.

  “Come out of there!” Liss snapped the command in a no-nonsense voice.

  Thorne blinked hard behind his Harry Potter glasses and obeyed, descending the two little steps from the office area. He led them to a small seating area at the back corner of the store. Small was the operative word, since the chairs were designed for children. While Thorne leaned against the wall, Marcia dropped into a beanbag chair, joking that she’d probably need a forklift to get her up again. Sherri was small enough to ease into one of the child-size rockers but she still had to stretch her legs out in front of her to avoid a collision between knees and chest. Following Thorne’s example, Liss opted to remain on her feet.

  “How many Tiny Teddies you have?” she asked him.

  “Two crates. Mixed.”

  “Two hundred?”

  Sherri felt a slow grin spread across her face.

  “It looks as though the three of us may have the only supply of Tiny Teddies in New England. There are people everywhere who want them. If we work together, we all increase our profits.” Liss rubbed her fingers together in the universal gesture for money.

  “What do you have in mind?” Thorne’s aggression had vanished. He looked harmless again, even amiable, a short, middle-aged man with a sagging midsection and weak eyesight.

  “We make the customers come to us. That way the whole town benefits.”

  Thorne looked skeptical, but he kept listening.

  Liss took out the lists she’d tucked into her coat pocket and ticked off each point in turn. “One: get hold of the rest of the members of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association and tell them what’s going on. Two: attend the board of selectmen’s next meeting, which just happens to be scheduled for tonight. Both groups are a potential source of seed money. The selectmen know business has been slow, even with the boost Moosetookalook got when the hotel reopened last summer. So, when we ask for assistance to get the word out about our supply of Tiny Teddies—the financial wherewithal to run ads—I think they’ll go along with our request.”

  “Newspaper, television, or radio?” Thorne asked.

  “All three if we can swing it. The thing is, we want to do more than just attract customers to our own stores. We want to encourage shoppers to stick around long enough to spend money at all the local busin
esses. It’s short notice, but I think I can pull together a Christmas pageant—I’ve been thinking of it as The Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas.” She gave a self-conscious little laugh. “Maybe we could be a tad more subtle than that, so any suggestions for alternate names are welcome.”

  Sherri repressed a snort of laughter. Subtlety was not Liss’s strong suit, but Sherri had to give her friend credit for ingenuity. As Liss expanded on her idea—twelve days of special ceremonies, one for each stanza in the Christmas carol, culminating in a pageant on the last day that included them all—she could see how the events might encourage tourists to come to town.

  “I can find the ten ladies to dance and the eleven pipers,” Liss said, “but I may need some help recruiting leaping lords and milkmaids. And drummers. We’ll need twelve of them.”

  “Try the high school,” Sherri suggested. “Convince one of the teachers to offer extra credit to those who participate.”

  “When will you hold the final pageant?” Thorne asked. Whatever his earlier reservations, he sounded as if he’d now come around to Liss’s way of thinking. Although he still propped up the back wall of his shop, his stance had changed from studied indifference to rapt attention.

  “If we call Saturday the first day of Christmas, then the twelfth day will fall on Christmas Eve.” Liss frowned. “That’s wrong, of course. Twelfth Night is actually after Christmas, but since celebrations in the U.S. center on the twenty-fifth of December, we’ll just have to take a little poetic license. I—”

  “Christmas Eve is too late,” Thorne cut in. “You need to schedule things so that the final pageant falls on the weekend before Christmas.”

  Liss’s face fell as she mentally subtracted days. “That would mean we’d have to have to hold the first day’s ceremony tomorrow!”

  “Partridge in a pear tree, right?” Marcia asked.

  At Liss’s nod, Marcia gave a dismissive shrug.

  “No big deal if people miss that one. Or the next six, either.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Two doves, three hens, four calling birds, five gold rings, six swans, and seven geese. All poultry except for the rings, Liss—and boring! Until you start counting people, there won’t be anything interesting to see.”

  “Okay. Okay, you’re right. But on the twelfth day we can make a terrific spectacle out of all of them.” Her enthusiasm only momentarily dimmed, she rummaged in another pocket for a pencil and started making notes on the back of one of her lists. “We’ll put a pear tree up in the town square next to the municipal Christmas tree. I know a taxidermist who can supply a stuffed partridge. Jump ahead to—”

  “Jump ahead to customers arriving in droves to spend money,” Thorne interrupted, “and to the prices we’re going to charge. People will pay a heck of a lot more than ten bucks for these babies now.”

  Liss looked as if she wanted to object, but held her tongue when she saw Marcia’s eyes light up.

  After Thorne and Marcia had agreed to attend the selectmen’s meeting that evening with Liss, Liss and Sherri left the two of them engrossed in a discussion of the best wording for their ads.

  “Time to get back to the P.D.,” Sherri said. “You won’t need my help dealing with the MSBA. You’ve already got an in with the top man.” Dan Ruskin, newly elected as president by the other small businesspeople in town, was one of the two men Liss had been dating since she’d returned to Moosetookalook seventeen months earlier.

  Sherri started to cross the square, then paused to look back over her shoulder. “By the way—thanks, Liss.”

  “For?”

  “Salvaging my morning. I was bored to tears.” She grinned. “And if this plan of yours actually works, it will also be thanks for all the overtime I’m going to earn working crowd control.”

  Chapter Two

  Liss’s mouth kept moving but Dan Ruskin couldn’t hear a single word she said. So much for squeezing in an hour or two of woodworking between helping out at The Spruces, the hotel his father owned, and his regular job with Ruskin Construction. Resigned, he turned off the scroll saw and removed his safety glasses and ear protectors.

  “Say again,” he instructed.

  As the story tumbled out, Dan collected the blanks he’d just cut in various shapes and sizes and carried them to his worktable. Everything was a “blank” until it was finished. With a little work these would become small boxes, each one unique. They sold reasonably well at Angie’s Books, as did his small battery operated clocks. Like the boxes, no two were exactly the same. Sometimes he also supplied Angie Hogencamp with cherrywood walking sticks and wooden back-scratchers to sell in her shop.

  He didn’t usually have so much trouble finding time to turn out these small projects. He used scrap lumber, so they didn’t cost him anything to make. If he figured by the time involved—a couple of hours for each box—he wasn’t making much profit, but every little bit helped. Besides, it all went to building his reputation as a custom woodworker. One day, with luck before he was too old and gray to appreciate it, he’d be able to strike out on his own and make things from wood full time.

  Liss was still talking. As some of what she had already said sank in, Dan sent an incredulous look in her direction. That single glance was enough to tell him she was completely serious.

  He went back to loosening the clamps on a box he’d glued together the day before. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. Liss appeared to have everything worked out already. As usual. He wondered when he’d started to resent that quality.

  “They call them the Daft Days in Scotland,” Liss concluded, “instead of the twelve days of Christmas, but I think we’d better stick with what most Americans will find familiar.”

  “Whatever works,” he mumbled, and crossed back to the scroll saw. His workshop was almost the way he wanted it. He’d acquired a table saw, a miter saw, and a band saw. Next time he had a little extra saved, it was going for a drill press. “Liss, I’m sorry to give you the bum’s rush, but I need to finish cutting these before my lunch break is over.”

  He flipped a switch. Immediately, the workshop was filled with a loud hum that drowned out every other sound. He’d just dropped his ear protectors back into place when Liss jabbed him in the ribs. She kept her fingernails cut short but put enough force behind the poke to make it hurt like blazes.

  “Not while I’m cutting!” he yelled.

  “You’re not cutting yet!” she shouted back. “Turn off the saw! This is important!”

  Swallowing his irritation, he obeyed. “Okay. You’ve got my attention.” He turned to her with arms folded across his chest and a look of annoyance on his face. He’d give her five more minutes.

  “Did you hear a single word I said?” He heard frustration in her voice, but what he saw in her expressive blue-green eyes was disappointment.

  Dan suddenly felt ashamed of himself. So they hadn’t progressed to the point he’d thought they would in their personal relationship. They were still friends. They had been since they were kids. It was a given that if Liss needed him, he would be there for her.

  With a sigh, he raked his fingers through his hair. Sending her a sheepish, apologetic look, he asked her to explain the situation to him again.

  The second time around it still didn’t make a lot of sense, but Dan was willing to take Liss’s word for it that a rare opportunity had just fallen into their laps. She had a better head for business than he did.

  “So, can we tap into funds from the Moosetookalook Small Business Association for this?” she asked.

  “Not without calling an MSBA meeting and taking a vote, but I think they’ll go for it.”

  His father was certainly desperate enough.

  Five months earlier, on Fourth of July weekend, Moosetookalook’s venerable old grand hotel, The Spruces, had reopened. Joe Ruskin had poured heart, soul, and every penny he had to spare—and some he didn’t—into renovating the place. He was convinced getting the hotel up and running was the key to putting Mooseto
okalook back on the map.

  Dan had to admit that things had started off well. Most of the rooms had been full during the summer and the hotel had held its own during leaf-peeper season. But ever since the trees went bare, they’d struggled to fill even half the rooms, and heating the place cost a small fortune. With no snow on the ground to support winter sports, they’d started to accumulate canceled reservations. With each passing day, the hotel sank deeper into debt.

  “That it?” Dan asked when they’d settled on a time for the members of the MSBA to gather at Liss’s house.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d attend the selectmen’s meeting with me tonight,” Liss said. “Lend support to the cause. It starts at seven.”

  “No problem, but I’m not sure how much help I’ll be.”

  “You know the selectmen better than I do. They may take some persuading to support us, especially since it involves spending money.” She gave a small, humorless laugh. “I expect the whole scheme will sound crazy to them at first.”

  “No more than some of your Scottish heritage stuff.” Dan quickly threw both arms up to shield his face as Liss raised her fists. “Kidding, Liss. Just kidding!”

  A wicked grin overspread her face. “You’d better be.” Eyes sparkling with mischief, she added: “Daft Days’ is also the title of a poem by Robert Fergusson.”

  “Who?”

  “He was a Scot born in 1750. He inspired Robert Burns to become a poet.”

  The snicker that escaped her warned Dan she was up to no good. Besides, he recognized Burns’s name as the guy who wrote “Auld Lang Syne.” “I assume you’re using the word ‘poet’ in its broadest sense?”