by Vicki Delany
“If you want those earrings, you should buy them today. That’s the last pair I have in stock and they’re popular.” As long as I was lying, I might as well keep it up.
“Okay,” she said. She headed for the jewelry display, but before she could reach it, her eye was caught by the arrangement on the center table. She studied the boxes of ornaments and picked one up. Then another. “I haven’t even had time . . .” she said under her breath. Then, “I’ll take all of these. One box of each.”
“What?”
“A fresh start. A new home needs a new tree, don’t you agree, Merry? You’d think it would be hard to forget that Christmas is coming in Christmas Town, but I seem to have been able to do that. My daughter’s ten. If I can get home in time tonight, we should go out and get our tree. What’s the best place for real trees?”
“The fire hall raises funds by selling them,” I said. “As well as wreaths and greenery. They get everything fresh from Norman Casey’s tree farm.”
“A relative of Vicky Casey?”
“Her uncle. Pretty much everyone in Rudolph is related in some way or another to the Caseys.”
“I’ll remember that. I don’t think one box of these will be enough. Not if we get a big tree. Do you have more?”
“Yes.”
“Three boxes of each, then. And four of the lights.”
I ran into the storage room and found the desired items. I carried them out and rang up the purchases. All the decorations, as well as the earrings, came to a tidy sum. Simmonds handed me her credit card. “Thanks, Merry. My ex-husband broke every single ornament in our house when I kicked him out.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I had some beautiful Christmas things. My grandmother’s ornaments; the tea set her mother had brought from England.”
“That’s terrible,” I said.
“They were lovely, but they were only things and can be replaced. As I’m doing right now. The only thing that matters is that I have Charlotte, my daughter. I can now start a collection for her to pass on to her children one day.”
I put the boxes into paper bags marked with the Mrs. Claus’s Treasures logo, and Simmonds gathered them in both hands. “As pleasant as it’s been shopping here, I have to remind you once again, Merry, to keep your nose where it belongs.” She gave me a long look. “This is a small town. Even people who aren’t related know each other well. But that will not stop me from doing my job to the best of my ability.”
I had absolutely no doubt about that.
* * *
After that hearty breakfast, I didn’t need much for lunch, so I popped into the Cranberry Coffee Bar for a latte and a take-out salad, which I ate standing at the counter while waiting for more eager customers to knock down my doors. They did not, and I finished my lunch in peace. I then set about rearranging the displays.
Now that all the tree ornaments had been scooped off the main table, I put back the children’s things. I knew my dad wasn’t Santa Claus. But sometimes I did wonder.
I was stepping back to admire my handiwork when my phone buzzed. Mom.
“Merry! The most dreadful thing has happened.”
I would guess people in most families upon hearing those words would immediately assume the worst: a tragedy involving their siblings, perhaps. But my mom could be almost as dramatic over an unraveling hem as a death in the family.
“What now?” I said, wondering if perhaps the porcelain Mr. and Mrs. Claus dolls would look better in the front window than the toy soldiers I had there now.
“Your father has been arrested!”
That got my attention, and all thought of painted dolls fled. “Are you sure? Calm down, Mom. Tell me what happened.”
“I had a call from Tom Casey.” Vicky’s dad was a lawyer. “Noel used his one phone call to call Tom. He’s gone down to the police station. Merry, what is happening?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Detective Simmonds was in here a short while ago.” Surely she couldn’t be that cold, to buy my ornaments and tell me about vengeful ex-husbands and great-grandmother’s tea sets while she was planning to arrest my own father as soon as she finished her lunch. “She didn’t say anything about Dad.”
“Go to the police station and find out what’s happening. I have a class arriving in ten minutes. We have to prepare for Saturday’s concert.”
“Jackie’s not working today. I can’t just close the store.”
“Of course you can. If this isn’t a family emergency, I don’t know what is.”
“Okay, Mom. I’ll do what I can.”
By the time I hung up, my voice mailbox was already full.
Russ Durham telling me the police had arrived at the council chambers and ordered Noel to come with them.
A councillor with the same story as Russ.
A woman who worked at the library saying she was looking out the back window and had seen my dad being escorted out of the town offices and into the police station.
Even Mrs. D’Angelo chimed in, apparently unable to wait until I got home to start digging for dirt.
I locked the shop door behind me and galloped the short distance down the street to the complex containing the library, town offices, and police station.
I needn’t have bothered hurrying as I wasn’t allowed to talk to my dad or Mr. Casey. Sue-Anne Morrow and Ralph Dickerson, the town’s budget chief, came running in, and they were also told to take a chair and wait.
“What on earth happened?” I said.
“We were finishing our planning meeting for Saturday,” Sue-Anne said, “when two uniformed officers came into the room. They said Noel was to come with them. Now.”
“Did they actually arrest him? Like read him his rights or something?”
“I don’t know,” Sue-Anne said. “I was so upset. It was quite dreadful.”
“No,” Ralph said. “They didn’t.”
“That’s good, then,” I said.
“Good!” Sue-Anne shrieked. “Our town’s Santa Claus has been dragged off to the police station like a common criminal and you think that’s good.”
“Keep your voice down, Sue-Anne,” Ralph said.
“Don’t you tell me to keep my voice down, Ralph Dickerson,” she snapped back. Although she did stop shrieking. “We do not need this publicity, not days before the children’s party weekend.”
“We don’t need the publicity at any time,” he said. “But we have it.”
“The children’s party makes it worse,” Sue-Anne said. “Noel cannot be allowed to play Santa this weekend.”
“Hey,” I said. “That’s not fair. What about innocent until proven guilty?”
She turned on me. “I am not talking legally, but morally. We can’t ask visitors to our town to put their children on the knee of a man accused of murder!”
“My father has not been accused of murder or anything else.” I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince more, myself or Sue-Anne. “They simply had a few more questions, and . . . well, as the police station is right next to town hall they didn’t bother to phone and ask him to come on in for a little chat.”
Even Ralph looked dubious at my logic. “Then why,” he said, “is Tom Casey here?”
“Why indeed.” Sue-Anne threw me a smirk before turning and heading for the door. The three-inch heels on her black leather boots rapped on the muddy linoleum floor. “You can stand around all day, Ralph, waiting for something to happen, but the voters of this town expect me to be proactive. I’m going back to the office to order them to begin the search for a new Santa.”
“You can’t . . .” I said.
The door slammed shut behind her. I looked at Ralph. He raised his bushy eyebrows and gave me a shrug. Ralph was a good money manager, my dad always said, but when it came to making a decision he’d go whichever way the wind blew. In a hurricane,
such as the one that seemed to be descending on our town at this very moment, Ralph was totally useless. “Now that you’re here, Merry,” he said, scurrying for the door, “I have to get back to work. Let us know what . . . uh . . . happens.”
I dropped into the plastic chair welded to the floor. Behind the Plexiglas wall the dispatcher pretended not to be watching me. In a nod to the season, a vase of red and white chrysanthemums, a few days past their prime, and seasonal greenery sat on her desk. I got up again and rapped on the window. She struggled to her feet, making sure I knew she was doing me an enormous favor, and came to the counter. “Yes?”
“Can you please tell my dad and Mr. Casey that I’m here?”
“Your name?” she said.
“What do you mean, my name? Nancy, you know my name as well as yours.”
“Name?” she repeated.
I almost said “Mrs. Claus,” but I bit my tongue. Nancy was not smiling. In fact, she was not looking at all like the woman who was a regular patron of my shop and whose daughter had been taking vocal lessons from my mom for ten years or more. Nancy used to be a receptionist at the hospital, and I knew she’d only been working here for a short while. She’d probably been told not to act friendly with her neighbors and had taken those instructions to heart.
“I am Merry—spelled M-e-r-r-y—Wilkinson—and my father is named Noel, and he will be with Detective Simmonds.”
“When the detective’s free,” Nancy said, “I’ll pass on your message.” She scurried back to her console. I returned to my plastic chair. We pointedly avoided looking at each other from then on.
I pulled out my phone and, ignoring a once-again full voice mailbox, checked Twitter, searching for any mention of Rudolph. I found only the usual pre-Christmas excitement and our town’s tourist information. That was good. The people over in Muddle Harbor had been known to spread bad news coming out of Rudolph far and wide, in the mistaken impression that bad news for us was good news for them. What the people of Muddle Harbor failed to understand was that Rudolph was popular because it was Christmas Town. If people didn’t bring their kids to meet Santa and his elves, to shop in our themed stores, or stay in our B&Bs and inns, they weren’t going to head ten miles down the road to a street of boarded-up shops and run-down motels, where the only decent restaurant served up oversized platters of eggs and bacon all day.
I debated how long I could sit here twiddling my thumbs and tapping my toes. I did have a business to run. I tried to call Jackie to ask her to go into the shop, but got no answer. Mom’s class would be over soon and she could come down, but I didn’t want to ask her. She’d never learned when not to act as though she was projecting high drama to the farther reaches of the upper balcony.
I hadn’t brought a book and there were no magazines laid out for my enjoyment. I assumed that was probably because they didn’t exactly want people to make themselves comfortable at a police station.
My dilemma was resolved when I heard voices and footsteps coming down the hall. I leapt to my feet at the sight of my dad with John Casey. Detective Simmonds walked beside them. Simmonds and Mr. Casey’s faces were set into professional giving-nothing-away expressions, but Dad smiled broadly when he saw me.
“Merry,” he said as the door swung open to let them out. “You didn’t need to come down and wait for me.”
My eyes flicked to Simmonds. She remained in the inner room, standing beside the dispatch desk. She did not smile. She was dressed in a budget-priced gray trouser suit and white blouse. Her jacket was open and I could see the weapon at her hip and the badge pinned to her belt. Hard to believe this was the same woman who had recently gushed over Christmas tree ornaments and planned to take her daughter out to get their tree tonight.
“Let’s go,” Mr. Casey said.
Dad turned around. He waved to the watching women. Nancy half lifted her arm to return the greeting, but realized she wasn’t supposed to do that. She fluffed her hair instead. Simmonds stood still, her face empty of expression.
We walked outside into a sharp, biting wind. I wrapped my scarf around my neck and pulled on my gloves.
“Thanks for coming down, John,” Dad said. “We’ll talk later. I guess I’ve missed the end of the meeting, but I need to pop in and see what, if anything, has been decided in case the weather gets worse.”
“The weather,” Mr. Casey said, “will wait. Noel, we have to talk.”
“About what?” Dad said.
“About what!” I yelled. A couple of cops crossing the parking lot glanced at us. Sometimes I do take after my mother, as much as I try to avoid it. “You’ve been arrested for murder, for goodness’ sake.”
“Not arrested,” Mr. Casey said. “Brought in for questioning.”
Dad waved his hand. “Nothing to worry about, honeybunch. They wanted my help with their inquiries.”
I groaned.
Mr. Casey kept his voice low, but every word was crisp and concise. “Mr. Olsen was killed with a steak knife matching the ones used in the restaurant at the Yuletide Inn. The inn reports they are one short. It came to Detective Simmonds’s attention that Noel ate a steak that night.”
“I bet a lot of people had steak,” I said. “That night and many other nights. I also bet they don’t lock the cutlery in a safe. They’re trying to intimidate you, Dad. Don’t let them.”
“My point exactly.” The edges of Mr. Casey’s mouth turned up slightly. “You should consider going into law, Merry.” It was no secret he had wanted Vicky to follow him into a legal career, and he’d been highly disappointed when she chose her mother’s path instead and became a baker.
“I know it’s your job, Tom,” Dad said. “But I’m glad you came down. It was good of you. There’s no need to get too worked up. I’m happy to help the police.”
“Noel, we are going to my office to discuss this,” Mr. Casey said. “Now. Simmonds isn’t playing around. You were heard to threaten Gord Olsen.”
Dad shrugged. “I was angry at him. People say things all the time they don’t mean.” He looked at me. “I should call Aline. She might have heard something about this and got concerned. You know your mother.”
“I think,” I said, “that qualifies as the understatement of the year. You go with Mr. Casey. I’ll call Mom.”
Dad glanced toward the town hall. People were standing at the windows watching us. Dad smiled and waved. I groaned, and Mr. Casey shook his head.
We walked down the passageway between the library and a row of shops to Jingle Bell Lane. Dad and Mr. Casey turned right and I went left, heading back to work. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed as if every group of people I passed stopped talking when I approached, and an inordinate number of shop owners had nothing better to do than peer out their windows to watch me go by.
I stood in the doorway of Mrs. Claus’s for a moment, taking it all in. The lights on the Douglas fir glowed, the jewelry displays sparkled, the toys waited to be played with, and the linens and dishes were ready to be part of someone’s holiday feast. The row of two-foot-tall wooden nutcrackers stood at attention behind the cash register and the cheeks of the porcelain Mr. and Mrs. Clauses were ruddy and welcoming.
My shop. I loved it and everything in it so much. All was as I’d left it, but while I’d been out the Christmas magic seemed to have faded. Some of the shine was gone.
If my dad couldn’t be Santa, it would just about kill him.
Never mind if he was arrested for murder.
I called my mom, relieved when it went to voice mail. Easier to leave a message than to try to explain. I assured her that Dad had not been arrested, but simply brought in because the police had some further questions. Very routine. I said nothing about Sue-Anne’s threat to find a new Santa Claus. I then went into the back to get rid of my coat and boots and splash some water on my face. The bells over the door chimed; I pasted on my professiona
l smile and went out to greet customers.
* * *
I heard a hammering on the door as I was going through the shop’s closing-up routine. I looked up to see Alan Anderson balancing the weight of a large box. I hurried to let him in and help him put it on the counter.
“The trains you asked for,” he said.
“Great, thanks. They’re my most popular children’s item, and I’m expecting them to do well over the weekend.”
“If there is a kids’ weekend,” he said.
I was about to make some glib comment about rain not getting Rudolph down, when I read the look on his face. “What have you heard?”
“The town sent out an e-mail, asking someone to step into Noel’s, and I quote, ‘big shoes,’ for the weekend.”
“Did the message say why?”
“It didn’t have to. Everyone heard your dad’s being questioned about the death of Gord Olsen, Merry.”
“Surely, they don’t believe . . .”
He lifted one hand. “Not a single soul gives the idea of your dad as a brutal murderer a moment’s serious thought. But, as we all know, impressions are everything. If word gets out that Rudolph’s own Santa was arrested for murder and released for lack of evidence . . .”
“He was not arrested. He was simply questioned.” I felt my blood beginning to boil.
“I know that, Merry. I’m not arguing with you.”
“That means nothing. I was questioned,” I said. “You were questioned, right?”
“Yes, I was. But I was not marched out of the council offices with two uniformed cops on either side of me. Noel was.”
I put my elbows on the counter and my head into my hands. “This is such a mess.”
He touched my back. I felt the delicious warmth of his fingers through my sweater. Then he abruptly pulled his hand away. He cleared his throat and his footsteps crossed the floor.
“Has anyone volunteered for this supposedly available Santa Claus gig?” I asked.
“Not that I heard.” He picked up one of his nutcracker soldiers and turned it over. Alan’s hands were those of a man who used them to make his living. He had calluses on his thumbs, the nails were short and torn, a deep scar marked the back of his right hand, and a fresh but healing cut crossed the pad of the left thumb. A small bit of the right index finger, so tiny it was almost unnoticeable unless you looked, was missing. The result, he told me, of an inattentive moment at the circular saw when he was first learning his trade. From then on, he made sure that when he was working, he never allowed himself to get distracted.