Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery)

by Heather Webber

  He nodded vigorously. “Right now.”

  “You’re right, honey.” She patted his muscled arm, her eyes going round with appreciation. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Take your time,” I called after her. To Kit, I said, “Ana would rip her hair out.”

  Kit grinned. “I’m used to women fighting over me. Happens all the time.”

  “Sure it does.”

  I went for more rum. I was going to regret it in the morning, but right now I didn’t care.

  “What’s a guy got to do to get a kiss around here?” a voice said from the kitchen doorway.

  My head snapped up. “I thought you said you couldn’t make it tonight?”

  “I never could resist a little mistletoe.” Kevin Quinn, Riley’s dad (and my ex-husband), made smooching noises in my direction.

  I hoped and prayed Fairlane would happen by and grab him. He deserved it.

  “Keep dreaming,” I said.

  He laughed. “I brought you this,” he said, thrusting a holly plant at me.

  This was just like Kevin. I hated holly. Ever since I was six and my brother Peter convinced me that its berries were delicious. I was sick for days. He was lucky I ever forgave him.

  “You know I don’t like holly bushes,” I accused. Kevin and I had been married for seven years before splitting last May. Every year of which I told him that holly story.

  “Oh.” He blinked not-so-innocent green eyes. “You don’t? Oops.”

  And this was one of the many reasons we were divorced. I set the plant on the counter. “Really,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Riley called.”

  “He did?”

  Even though Riley lived with his dad now, he still spent every other weekend with me. And this was one of those weekends. I tried not to feel hurt. “Does he want to go home already?”

  “No, not at all,” Kevin said, reading me perfectly. “He said he wanted to talk to me about Christmastowne.” The lines on his forehead dipped. “About something weird going on there?”

  “Weird how?” Strange things had been happening there. The fire alarm sounding every couple of hours, keys missing, power outages, refrigerators unplugged at the food court so all the food spoiled, sand sprinkled on the ice skating rink... Which did he refer to?

  Shrugging, Kevin said, “Haven’t got the scoop yet.” He looked around. “Where is Ry?”

  “Upstairs,” I murmured and he turned and threaded through the crowd.

  Weird. I wondered what Riley had noticed that he’d want to talk to his dad, a homicide detective, about.

  It had me worried.

  Kit unscrewed his flask and poured a little of the liquid into my cup. “Stop worrying so much.”

  “You think you know me so well.”

  “I do.” He poured in a little more of the liquor. “Drink. That whole place is freaking weird. Christmas all year? Those people should be committed.”

  I smiled and sipped my drink. At this point it was more rum than eggnog. Old high school friends Jenny and Benny Christmas (honest-to-goodness, those are their real names) had sunk their life savings into opening Christmastowne, an indoor, year-round Christmas village. It was supposed to have opened in early November, but it had been plagued by delays. It finally opened its doors two weeks ago, a soft open, to work out any kinks, but the kinks kept on coming.

  With the grand opening tomorrow, the place was bound to be packed. Benny, a former pro football player, had called in favors from local sports celebrities who promised to make appearances. There was going to be plenty of media coverage, prize giveaways, and the lighting of the thirty-foot-tall live Christmas tree.

  Jenny and Benny had hired me to deck the halls. And even though it wasn’t a job I would normally take on, the money was too good to pass up. Plus, they were old friends. How could I say no? Taken by Surprise only had a few last minute touches before the village opened its doors tomorrow morning.

  “I just hope there’s no more trouble brewing,” I said.

  But unfortunately, I was suddenly feeling that something was bound to go wrong.

  Horribly wrong.

  Chapter Two

  If I never planted another poinsettia again in my life, it would be too soon.

  Slowly, I rose from my kneeling position and took off my gloves. I looked around in wonder. Christmastowne was a sight to behold. Jenny and Benny had done the impossible. They’d created an enormous retail space—three floors of shops and restaurants—without sacrificing the cozy warmth and spirit of Christmas. The halls were decked with boughs of holly (including sprigs from the plant Kevin had given me) and twinkling lights, soft carols played, and the scent of fir, peppermint, and gingerbread mingled in the air.

  It should have been too much. Christmas overload. But somehow it wasn’t. It felt magical.

  In the grand atrium, I backed up to get a better look at the tree in all its glory and almost knocked over a toy donation bin. I set it right and looked upward. The spruce was a live tree and stood thirty feet tall. The floor around the tree had been specially crafted to be removed in a few years when the tree grew too large for the building. An intricate watering system was in place as well. It had been an incredible design feat by landscaping engineers and architects to get it done.

  Above the tree was a glass snow globe-type dome that gave the tree plenty of headroom and light to thrive. The dome’s construction was one of the main reasons the opening of Christmastowne had been delayed—it had been a snowy year, especially for this part of Ohio.

  “It looks lovely, Nina. What a wonderful job you did.”

  I turned and found Jenny Christmas at my side. “The whole place is gorgeous.”

  Jenny and I had been friends all through high school at St. Valentine’s, mostly because our names put her alphabetically behind me in homeroom, hers being Chester and mine being Ceceri. Somewhere during junior year, she’d started paying more attention to who was behind her, football star Benjamin (Benny) Christmas, than me. Later that year, he’d asked her to prom and they’ve been together ever since. She’d followed him to Ohio State where he’d been chosen for the All-America team twice, through the draft process, and finally into the NFL, where he played for the hometown Bengals. When a car accident that broke nearly every bone in Benny’s body ended his career two years ago, they decided it was time to follow Jenny’s dream—ever since she met Benny she’d wanted to open a retail Christmas village one day. They used his accident settlement as startup money and Christmastowne was born.

  Her bright blue eyes glistened. “It’s been a dream come true.”

  I looked around, soaked in the atmosphere. “I have a feeling this place is going to be very successful.”

  She linked arms with me. “From your ears...”

  Her dark hair cascaded down her back in waves, and I was happy to note that she didn’t have Mr. Cabrera’s taste in Christmas fashion. She wore a deep green v-necked wrap dress that cinched her tiny waist for today’s big celebration.

  “Are you nervous?” I asked.

  “I’m just glad all the little bugs have been worked out. I swear if one more thing went wrong, I would think this place was cursed.”

  Personally, I thought it might be, even if one more thing didn’t go wrong. I wanted to ask if she’d ever looked into the history of the land the building sat on. If it had been a sacred burial ground at some point—or something along those cursed lines—but I didn’t think now was the best time to approach that subject.

  Beneath heavily layered makeup, I could see her anxiety in the unsuccessfully hidden dark circles under her eyes and the lines creasing her eyes. In the past few weeks, she looked to have aged ten years.

  “Everything will work out just—”

  My voice was cut off by the shrieking fire alarm. Sniffing, I picked up another scent in the air. Something burning.

  “Oh no,” Jenny mumbled. “Not again. Glory Vonderberg might be the best gingerbread artist in the Midwest
, but she has the worst memory. She keeps putting gingerbread in the oven and forgetting to take them out. This is the third time she set off the fire alarms this week.”

  Ah. So that explained the fire alarms going off—but not all the other strange stuff happening.

  Jenny grabbed my arm. “Come with me, Nina. I might need someone to hold me back when I talk to her.” Gazing deeply into my eyes, she said, “Seriously. Can you do that?”

  “Hold you back?”

  She nodded, her eyes filled with intensity.

  “I think I can manage.” I was fairly sure I’d lifted bags of mulch heavier than her. She was a tiny thing, maybe one hundred pounds. Wet. If that.

  I followed her upstairs, her stilettos clicking on the curved faux-stone tiled stairs. I’d met Glory a few times already, and my first impression of her was that she was a complete ditz. It had been my second and third impressions as well.

  As we passed the Magic Reindeer Food kiosk on the second floor, I waved to Lele McCorkle, who shyly waved back. I couldn’t believe how different, personality-wise, she was from her sister.

  “How come the sprinklers don’t go off every time the fire alarm does?” I asked Jenny.

  “Don’t tell, but we had to disconnect the system because of Glory.” Her cheeks reddened. “I’ve just about had it with her.”

  “Isn’t that...dangerous?” Hello, understatement.

  “Very,” Jenny said. “It has to stop, or else I have to fire her, and I really don’t want to do that. Early surveys from the soft open indicate Glory’s shop is a customer favorite.” She glanced at me again, the intensity back. “You don’t know how to bake gingerbread, do you?”

  I shook my head. It was easier than admitting that I could, in fact, bake a mean gingerbread man, but the scent of molasses made me gag. It wasn’t pretty, trust me.

  She groaned.

  “Have you had your blood pressure checked recently, Jenny?”

  “I don’t want to know, Nina. I really don’t want to know.” She smiled and nudged me. “You don’t happen to know CPR, do you?”

  Actually, I’d learned after one of my surprise makeovers had gone terribly, terribly wrong. “I do, but I don’t think it will help if you have yourself a stroke.”

  “I’ll be fine after Christmas is over and things settle into a steady rhythm around here.”

  I watched the way she marched and had the feeling she was deluding herself. I hadn’t seen her often since graduating high school, but whenever I did, she exuded such high-intensity it was hard to be around her for any great length of time. She was the type that could find stress in any situation, whether it was running out of creamer for her coffee or a speck on her expensive shoes.

  Hazy smoke filled the area in front of The Gingerbread Oven, but as soon as we reached the doorway, the fire alarms stopped blaring. Jenny stormed inside the shop. I followed, wondering just how serious she’d been about holding her back.

  The Gingerbread Oven was divided into two parts. One was retail-oriented, where a shopper could buy all the supplies she needed to make a gingerbread house on her own—or purchase one ready-made (to pass off as her own—not that I’d ever done that. Not me, Nina Colette Phony-Baloney Gingerbread House Maker Ceceri Quinn). The other half of the space was set up as a demonstration kitchen. Here, shoppers (adults and kids alike) could create their own gingerbread house under Glory’s expert guidance.

  Benny was already in the kitchen with a fire extinguisher when we arrived. Glory stood waving her oven-mitted hands as the smoke slowly cleared. A tray of charred gingerbread men sat on one of the stainless steel counters. Poor little guys were burnt almost beyond recognition.

  “I’ve got it under control,” Benny said, putting the extinguisher down.

  I didn’t see any foam, so it didn’t look like he had needed to use it.

  “What happened? I thought you were going to set the timer from now on?” Jenny asked Glory.

  Glory tittered and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. She was a tall woman, and her Marge Simpson hairdo gave her even more height. Long wild curls tilted precariously atop her head, secured with a clip that looked like it could pop off at any moment and take out a bystander’s eye.

  I backed up a step. I liked my eyes.

  “I forgot?” she said.

  Jenny scowled. “I might forget to pay you next time this happens, got it? In fact, I might forget you work here and ask security to escort you out. Get my drift?”

  I was pretty sure the place had no security yet but that was beside the point.

  I’d never seen Jenny angry, but she was furious now. I stepped closer to her in case I did, in fact, have to hold her back.

  Glory crossed her arms over her enormous chest. “I dare you to find someone better than me.”

  Okay, maybe I’d been wrong. The biggest part of her might be her ego. But she did have a point. At fifty-three, she was the best gingerbread artist within a five-hundred-mile radius. What she could do with gingerbread houses was astounding. And her cookies (maybe with the exception of the scorched little men on the table) were the best I’d ever tasted.

  Jenny lunged. I made a grab for her and pulled her back. She was tiny, but strong as she struggled against me.

  Glory was up for the fight. She jumped forward, her oven-mitted hands looking like boxing gloves. “You’re playin’ with fire, Jenny Christmas.”

  Benny stepped in between the two of them. “Now, now, even though I love a good cat fight, let’s not get carried away, ladies.”

  I thought he might have a death wish.

  “Obviously, you like fire,” Jenny snapped back, ignoring Benny completely. She snatched a crispy gingerbread man and hurled it. It smacked Glory in the forehead just as she peeked around Benny’s big form. “You like things so hot they burn!”

  “Argh!” Glory’s hands reached around Benny’s back, clawing air.

  “Let me go, Nina!” Jenny cried, arms flailing.

  Jeez. Thank goodness for Duke, my scary personal trainer, or I might have been flat on my ass by now. “No!”

  “It was an accident,” Benny said loudly. “They happen.”

  Jenny immediately stopped struggling at the word “accident,” and I imagined she was thinking of his accident—the one that nearly killed him.

  Despite his injuries, Benny was as big and strong as ever. His clothes strained to fit his muscular body. He didn’t seem to mind Jenny’s anger—which was probably a good thing for their marriage.

  I let her go.

  She straightened her dress. “Fine.”

  Glory brushed crumbs from her face as she peered around Benny. “Fine.” She smoothed back a strand of hair that had escaped from the straining clip.

  “Just so long as it doesn’t happen again,” Jenny said, reaching out and cupping Benny’s jaw. She squeezed his cheeks and narrowed her intense eyes. “I’ve got enough to deal with right now thanks to a drunken Santa and a horny Mrs. Claus. Get a handle on this, Benny. Hear me?” She spun around and stormed off.

  I held back a smile at the Mrs. Claus comment—I recognized a reference to Fairlane when I heard one.

  “Good riddance,” Glory exclaimed when Jenny was out of earshot, then dumped the rest of the gingerbread men in a trash can.

  Benny dragged a hand down his face. His looks hadn’t changed at all since high school. Big, tall, beefy. A blond-haired, brown-eyed boy next door—but one who knew how good-looking he was and used it to his every advantage. “Glory, you’ve got to stop setting those alarms off. I’m reconnecting the sprinkler system this afternoon.”

  She lifted a thinly plucked eyebrow. “Maybe if I didn’t have so many distractions.”

  Distractions? What distractions? “What distractions?” I asked.

  They both looked at me as if wondering why I was still there.

  “Never you mind, Nina. How about a cookie?” Glory plucked a frosted gingerbread man from a rack nearby.

  My mouth watered, and I bit off his h
ead (and didn’t feel so much as a blip on my guilt-o-meter). “Delicious.”

  Glory smiled like a proud mama.

  One thing Jenny said on her way out was bothering me. “Is Santa really drunk?” Was an inebriated Santa why Riley had called Kevin? After all, Riley worked closely with Santa yesterday—had he picked up on it?

  Benny gave me a weak smile. “Shades of Miracle on 34th Street, don’t you think?”

  Glory tittered as if his comment was the funniest she’d ever heard.

  “Why not fire him?” I asked.

  “No backup. Besides, Santa is Jenny’s uncle Dave. Drunk Dave as we call him in the family. If Jenny fired her aunt Olive’s husband, holidays would be really awkward.”

  Glory tipped her head. “I thought his name was Kris Kringle?”

  Oh boy. “I’ve got to go check on my crew and make sure everything’s set for the opening.”

  As I walked out, I heard Glory say, “Really, isn’t it Kris Kringle?”

  I went in search of Riley. I wanted to find out what he had told Kevin last night. Curiosity was killing me.

  Crossing over the Santa Express train tracks that circled the bottom floor of Christmastowne, I headed for Santa’s Cottage. I was halfway there when my cell phone rang. I checked the readout and wavered on whether to answer.

  It was my mother. Again.

  It was the sixth call this morning. I’d ignored all the others—and she hadn’t left any messages. There was only so far I could push my luck—ignoring a seventh call might prove hazardous to my health.

  I decided to finally find out what she wanted. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Don’t ‘Hi Mom,’ me, young lady. You’ve been ignoring my calls.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. I ignored her calls a lot. “I’m working.”

  “Something terrible has happened!”

  My chest tightened. “Is Dad okay?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “Maria? Nate?” Maria was my baby sister—the drama queen of the family. Nate was her husband—they were still newlyweds.

  “Fine. Just fine. Though, now that you mention it Maria has been acting strangely lately.”