by Darci Hannah
The crowd cheered. I looked up from my work just in time to see one of the jolliest, best-looking Santas I had ever seen walking through the ballroom doors with a giant sack of presents slung on his back. When I realized that Santa was really Dr. Bob Riggles, the town medical examiner and Betty’s current heartthrob, I laughed. It was a great surprise. I started clapping too!
“Linds! Over here!”
The familiar voice startled me. Pulling my attention from Santa, I saw that this time it was Kennedy who was hailing me from the edge of the stage. Noting that everyone else was distracted, too, I went over to join her. “Santa’s just arrived. This better be good.”
She cast me a cheeky grin. “It is, darling. Rory and I found our woman in question. And guess what? She and Mr. Chambers were having a private conversation as well. Cookie-napper number two isn’t quite the looker number one is, but she sure had his attention.”
“But how can that be? Chevy’s been here the whole time,” I explained, gesturing to the stage. I realized that Kennedy was correct. Chevy was nowhere to be seen.
“You’ve been busy decorating, Linds, which is a good thing. Your gingerbread lighthouse is looking grand.” She gave a slight nod of her head toward my half-decorated lighthouse. Then she was back to the matter at hand. “Chevy comes and goes as he pleases,” she explained. “I honestly don’t know what’s going on here, but these cookie-napping women are shifty. The moment number two spied us coming, she gave us the slip. I went after her while Rory questioned Chevy.”
“That’s right.” Rory, weaving through the crowd, suddenly appeared beside Kennedy. He was breathing a bit heavily, I noted, as he pointed down the stage to the steps. Chevy had returned. Once again, he looked flustered. “I take it you didn’t catch her?” he asked Kennedy. She shook her head in dismay.
“What did Chevy say?”
Rory, disappointed, shrugged his broad shoulders. “Absolutely nothing. The smug bastard just smiled and said she was a fan as well. Claims it happens all the time.”
“Oooo!” I cried in frustration. “Clearly, he’s lying! I mean, if they hadn’t stolen my cookies, I might give him a pass on this one, but clearly something is going on.”
We were all in agreement but couldn’t figure out the point of it. What were Chevy and the cookie-nappers up to?
“Look, I have a lighthouse to decorate. Will you two keep an eye on Mrs. Nichols and let me know if cookie-napper number three shows up?”
“Will do, boss,” Rory teased, but then his smile faded. “If we can find her.”
I looked out over the crowd. For the first time since the bake-off began, Mrs. Nichols was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER 17
There were some real Christmas shenanigans going on in the ballroom, but it appeared that only my friends and I were aware of them. Chevy was as slippery as a watermelon seed, I thought, watching him bound around the stage, going from Felicity, to Bradley, to Ginger, then to me, before disappearing to parts unknown. Chevy was a big boy. I wasn’t concerned about him, but I was concerned for Mrs. Nichols. At first, we thought that she might have joined the crowd over at the North Pole where Santa was entertaining the kids. Mrs. Nichols was clearly a fan of the big guy, but Rory didn’t find her there.
I kept decorating as my friends kept searching. Finally, Kennedy appeared with Mrs. Nichols on her arm. She was escorting her back to her spot near the stage. “She was in the ladies’ room,” Kennedy mouthed to me. I breathed a sigh of relief. Of course! How stupid of us. She was an elderly woman and had been standing on her feet for quite some time. She had also made several trips to the cookie and punch table. With a little wave in greeting, I picked up my icing bag and set to work finishing my gingerbread showstopper. I didn’t know why, but I felt that the cookie-nappers might pose a threat to dear Mrs. Nichols.
As we continued to decorate our gingerbread structures, Betty and Chevy visited each station with the camera crew, offering a little commentary and color on each of our showstoppers.
“This is the yummiest lighthouse I have ever seen,” Betty remarked, watching me decorate. “If I was a captain of a ship, I’d drive it onto the rocks just to take a nibble.” She made a face that caused the audience to break out in laughter. “How remarkable. It looks so much like the Beacon Bakeshop!”
Chevy agreed and congratulated me on my unique design, and my clever use of pretzels for windows and white Chiclets gum for painted bricks.
The duo next went to visit Felicity. She was overly cheerful as she explained her design to the judges. Like me, Felicity had chosen to make a mini replica of her business. I had to admit that her Bavarian-style Christmas shop was adorable. She had used a lot of fondant to cover her gingerbread, red on the roof and white fondant to simulate the stucco walls of the building. The windows had been meticulously piped on, as had the door. She had used Kit Kats for the dark wood beams and molded chocolate for the shutters and window caps. She had even made window boxes out of the molded chocolate but had piped on the brightly colored flowers that hung over the sides. Most of the candy had been used on landscaping or for decorating her cookie-cutout Christmas trees. I was impressed, but Chevy, unfortunately, was not.
“Fondant goes on cakes, not on gingerbread houses. I thought you of all people would know that!” He crossed his arms and cast her a look of displeasure. “That just looks lazy.”
I sucked in my breath when I heard that. Felicity, the smile wiped from her face, blew a gasket. As Betty tried to soften the blow with compliments, Felicity turned on Chevy. She slapped him with her icing bag while uttering a profanity that should never be uttered at a Christmas festival. Chevy laughed, which infuriated Felicity to new heights. She picked up a sheet of fondant and threw it at him. Chevy was still laughing as he pulled it away. He ducked but wasn’t quick enough to evade her flailing fist. Yet before Felicity could land another punch on the laughing food critic, she was lifted by a man and carried off the stage.
At first, I thought he was from Security. But then I realized that the man was Stanley Stewart, Felicity’s embarrassed husband. Apparently, he was used to dealing with such tantrums and was attempting to calm her down. Who knew that baking cookies could cause so much drama?
Musing over cookies and drama, I had just put the last gumdrop on my showstopper lighthouse when Mrs. Nichols hailed me for the third time. One look at her and I knew she had spotted cookie-napper number three. Dear heavens, had they all come to the Christmas Festival?
I announced to Betty that I was done with my gingerbread lighthouse and set down my icing bag. Looking around, I realized that I was the only one left on stage. Betty consoled me by telling me that the others had finished early and that the judging wouldn’t begin for another fifteen minutes.
“Over there.” Mrs. Nichols pointed at a woman who was less than twenty feet away. “That’s the woman who wanted vegan baked goods. She just walked up a minute ago.”
The woman in question had a pretty face with well-balanced features, a little upturned nose, and soft brown eyes rimmed with thick black eyelashes. I put her to be somewhere in her early fifties. Her shoulder-length brown hair had been layered with highlights. She was slender, well-dressed, and her makeup had been expertly applied. Like the other two ladies whom Mrs. Nichols had pointed out to us, this woman didn’t look like she needed to steal Christmas cookies. She looked affluent and well cared for. In short, she looked like a woman who could buy as many Christmas cookies as she wanted. So, what was she doing in my bakery stealing mine? What was her connection to Chevy, or Felicity? Maybe she was connected to them both? I didn’t know what her deal was, but I knew that I was going to find out.
It only took a few seconds to size her up, but in that short time, cookie-napper number three had locked eyes with me. Realizing Mrs. Nichols had spied her, and that I was on to her, too, she spun around and began weaving through crowd of festivalgoers.
“I got her!” I said to Mrs. Nichols and jumped off the stage. I called ba
ck over my shoulder, “Tell Rory and Kennedy when you see them.”
I wove though the crowd in pursuit of the woman, never taking my eyes off her. She was a slippery one, I thought as I followed her. She dashed around the refreshment table, then turned and skirted the giant Christmas tree in the center of the ballroom. I ran around it, too, and thought I had lost her. Stumped, I walked halfway around it again. That’s when I spied her highlighted hair bobbing through a sea of crazy Christmas hats and light-up headbands. I ran after her and watched as she disappeared in the small gap between two of the little German-style Christmas booths.
“Nice try,” I growled under my breath, and followed her.
The booths she had chosen looked to be the most popular ones in the Christmas market, one selling warm spiced nuts and the other slabs of Mackinac Island fudge. Although I’d been baking cookies all morning and working with gingerbread, the scent of the warm, sugared almonds and mouthwatering fudge was intoxicating. With the mantra, “Excuse me. Excuse me!” I elbowed my way to the front of the crowd and tried to follow cookie-napper number three, squeezing my body between the narrow gap between the booths. A sign on the side post read Do Not Enter, and yet I did, all in the name of cookies.
Once through, I thought the woman had shaken me. The three-foot gap between the back of the booths and the wall was void of people. But then I spied a door and knew she had used it to evade me. I ran past three more booths and opened the lone door, stepping into a large, nearly empty hallway in the hotel. The woman I was chasing was at the far end of the hallway. Hearing me, she dashed to the right and disappeared once again down another hallway. The woman was fast, sneaky, and didn’t want to be caught. My stolen cookies aside, the thought intrigued me. What was this woman hiding?
“Stop,” I cried, running after her. “I just want to ask you some questions.”
Obviously, she didn’t want to speak to me. She ran to the end of the hallway and threw open a door with an Exit sign above it. Yet instead of leaving the hotel through another door, she ran down a set of stairs. I was catching up to her fast and she knew it.
I followed her to the hotel basement, where again she disappeared through another door.
I realized her mistake immediately. She had gone into a storage room of some type, and I doubted that there was another way out. Steeling myself for a confrontation, I opened the door.
The lights had been turned on, but all that confronted me were tall rows of boxes. A quick look told me that the boxes contained extra linens, dishware, silverware, chafing dishes for the buffet, and other dry goods for the kitchen.
I proceeded with caution. “Look, I know you’re in here,” I said, walking farther into the room. “I don’t mean to cause you any harm.” I looked behind a row of boxes. Finding it empty, I added, “I just want to talk with you.”
“Too bad,” a voice behind me said. Yet before I could spin around, an entire stack of boxes came crashing down on my head. The weight of them knocked me to the ground. Then the lights went off, and the door clicked shut. Trapped under the boxes, I let out a cry of frustration. She was gone, and I had been left in the dark.
CHAPTER 18
The boxes on top of me were heavy, but I was angry enough to wiggle my way free. Once on my feet, I pulled out my iPhone and flipped on the flashlight app. I had never been comfortable in utter darkness and was instantly grateful for the amazing technology at my fingertips. I gingerly made my way to the door, but when I turned the knob, I found that it had been locked.
“What?” I cried, growing infuriated. “No way!” The nerve of the woman. Leading me on a wild goose chase, only to be locked in a storage closet. My inner New Yorker was fit to be tied. Who was she? Stupidly, I began pounding on the door, hoping someone would hear me. But even I knew that the hotel basement was empty. Then, regaining my composure, I called Rory.
“Where are you?” he said through the crackling connection. The cell service wasn’t the best, but at least it was working. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’m locked in a storage closet somewhere in the basement of the hotel. You’re going to need a key. And please hurry. The judges will be announcing the bake-off winner any minute.”
It took Rory a while to find Chad, the hotel kitchen manager, and a few minutes longer to locate the correct storage room I’d been locked in.
“Damn,” I heard Chad utter as yet another key was forced into the lock. “Wrong key again.”
“Try that one,” Rory’s impatient voice suggested.
“How many keys do you have with you?” I asked through the door.
“I have them all,” Chad replied. “It’s the master key ring from the front desk. The problem is, we have a lot of storage rooms in the hotel, and most of the keys aren’t marked.”
“Not a great system,” I called back, trying to be as patient as I could. A good minute later, however, the right key had been found, and I was freed.
The first thing I saw was a look of relief on Rory’s face right before he wrapped me up in a hug. I needed that hug and didn’t mind hugging him back just as tightly. “You okay?” he asked.
“I am now,” I assured him. “I’m a little sore, and there might be a box or two of broken dishes. The woman I was chasing pushed a whole stack of them on me before locking me in there.”
Neither man liked the sound of that. Chad, frowning, peered into the room. “I’m a little unclear. What where you doing in the storage closet in the first place?”
I had met Chad shortly after moving to Beacon Harbor. As the manager of one of the best restaurants in town, he knew most of the locals. Forty, unmarried, and with a distinguished air about him, Chad also had a reputation as a bit of a playboy, charming the bored wives of wealthy guests staying at the Harbor Hotel. His exploits were often the town’s favorite topic of gossip. It was usually harmless stuff, but for reasons of her own, Betty loved sticking her nose in Chad’s business. I thought, given his reputation and his eye for the ladies, that maybe he’d be able to identify our mysterious cookie-nappers if I described them. Still a bit shaken, I explained to both men what had happened.
Chad, listening thoughtfully, finally shook his head. “I’d love to help you, Lindsey, but unfortunately your description is rather generic. As you know, it costs a few shekels to stay at the hotel. You’ve just described a good chunk of our clientele. Handsome, fit, well-dressed women who might even be bored enough to steal Christmas cookies. I’ll keep a lookout and check with Ludlow at the reservation desk.” He jingled his key ring and stuffed it into the pocket of his Christmas plaid pants. He turned to leave but stopped short. “It just dawned on me. You said that you followed a woman into this storage room. It might have been left open. That does happen from time to time, but she would have needed a key to lock you in.”
Rory cast Chad a penetrating look. “Are you saying that this woman planned on locking Lindsey in this closet?”
Chad shrugged. “I’m saying that she would have needed a key. But she doesn’t sound like anyone I know who works here. Very strange. Would there have been a purpose in luring you down here and locking you away?” His light hazel eyes held on to mine as he asked this.
“The bake-off!” I blurted, looking at Rory for support. “I wasn’t at the Beacon Bakeshop when the women stole our cookies, but Mrs. Nichols was. She was the only one who could identify them. Throughout the course of the live bake-off, all three women came near enough to Mrs. Nichols for her to recognize them. Rory, you and Kennedy chased after the first two, but maybe they were trying to lure me off the stage.”
Rory considered this. “In the middle of a bake-off?” he questioned. “That doesn’t sound right. And anyhow, you had finished both your challenges when the last woman showed up.”
“True. So, why would they want me off the stage? Could it be that somebody didn’t want me up there when they announced the winner? Honestly, I don’t see what difference that would make. And anyhow, I’ve already missed it.” I could fe
el my mood plummeting at the thought.
Chad offered a look of sympathy. “Sorry about that. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”
As Chad headed back toward the stairwell, Rory decided to take another way back to the ballroom.
“I’ve chased two women through this hotel today. I’m getting to know this place like the back of my hand,” he explained with a grin. “I found a little something I wanted to show you.”
“What did you find?” I asked, filling with curiosity.
“If I tell you, it’ll spoil the surprise.” The playful grin was still on his face as he took my hand.
Honestly, I wasn’t in any hurry to get back to the Christmas Festival. Thanks to the crazy woman who had locked me in the closet, I had missed the bake-off judging. By now I knew I hadn’t won. Kennedy or Mom would have called me immediately, congratulating me and wondering why I wasn’t on stage to accept my award. No call meant no award. I hated to admit it, but being locked in the storage closet wasn’t nearly as depressing as the thought of losing the Christmas cookie bake-off. The way my luck was running, I was convinced Felicity Stewart had taken the prize.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied glumly.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” he teased as we walked up a set of stairs. We had traveled an empty corridor and were now on the opposite end of the large hotel. “Do you realize that this is the first time we’ve been truly alone since this Christmas cookie bake-off began?”
The thought had barely occurred to me. I looked into his bright blue eyes. “You might be right.”
