by Amy Vansant
“The legs,” he muttered.
“What?” asked Two.
“The legs. He must have sucked down those long legs and choked.”
Two put his hands on his head. “No. No, no, no, no…This isn’t happening. I didn’t kill him.”
“What are we going to do now?” asked Four.
“Do we still open up the chest?” asked Three.
“Who cares about the chest now?” screeched Two.
Four shrugged. “Well, it’s done now. We might as well take our time and get what we can. We don’t have to worry about him starting to scream.”
“Can we cover his face or something?” asked Three. She picked up the gingerbread man head and slipped it back over Kris’s.
Two gaped at Kris’s motionless form, his hands on his cheeks, doing his best imitation of Munch’s The Scream, if the tortured soul in that famous painting happened to be wearing the body of a gingerbread man costume. His bare hand dragged down the skin of his cheek, distorting his expression on one side.
He turned to the others. “What are you talking about? We can’t stay here. I killed a man. What am I going to do?”
Three patted him on the shoulder. “I don’t think anyone should die, but if anyone deserved it, it was this piece of dog poop—”
“Let’s go look at the chest and get out of here,” said One.
Two flopped into the stuffed chair across from Kris. “What am I going to do?” he asked no one in particular.
The others watched him mumble the phrase over and over to himself until One broke the spell.
“Chest. Let’s go.”
“Leave him,” said Four. He patted Two on the head. “We’ll be back in a sec. You stay here. Take it easy.”
One, Three and Four marched toward the back of the house. They pulled the chest of drawers away from the wall and then One returned to the front room in search of tools. “Randy, we’re going to need some tools. At least a Phillips-head screwdriver. Help me look—” He stopped in his tracks. The front room appeared smoky. Through the haze, he spotted Two, crouched at the bottom of the Christmas tree.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m burning the evidence.”
Flames rose from the packages beneath the tree and Two stumbled back, grabbing for the head of his nearby costume to keep it from burning.
One raised his arms. “Are you crazy?”
Two whirled on him, his eyes wild. “We have to burn the evidence. We have to make it look like an accident.”
“You lit the tree on fire while we’re in the back of the house wearing a flammable costume? Have you lost your mind?”
Two rubbed at his face. “I can’t go to jail. I have a family.”
“We all have families, you jackass!”
The flames grew higher.
One turned and ran back down the hall.
“Everyone out!”
Three and Four looked up at him from their position around the bureau. “Why?”
“Randy’s burning down the house.”
“What?”
“He thinks he’s covering evidence and he’s burning down the house. We have to get out of here.”
“But we haven’t opened the chest yet,” said Four.
“Do you want to burn to death in a gingerbread man costume? Get out of the house! Now!”
Three and Four straightened to follow One as he galloped down the hallway.
Three stopped at the bathroom door. “The dog!”
She opened the door and snatched the pet into her arms before heading for the front door. The animal’s thin red leash dragged behind her as she ran.
The front room had filled with smoke. Flames raged beneath the tree, consuming the packages and licking at the leg of Kris’s costume as the four gingerbreads burst out of the house.
Two struggled to put his head back on as they ran for the car. Three stopped at the curb.
“What are you doing?” asked Four, pausing as the other two flopped foamy feet toward the vehicle, their legs cocked out at stiff, unnatural angles as they ran.
“The dog. It belongs to someone here. You know how he works.”
Three used the leash to tie the tiny dog to the white lamppost sitting curbside of Kris’s house.
“They’ll find it here.”
Four tried to grab her arm as best he could with his cookie mitt. “Great, let’s go.”
They scrambled to the truck and wrestled their bulky bodies inside, peeling off just as one of the neighbors appeared at their window, staring at the flickering glow in Kris’s living room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Charlotte pulled into the sheriff’s office parking lot and sprang out of her car to run inside. The reception area sat empty except for Linda’s goldfish that silently circled its bowl.
“Frank?” she called.
“In here.”
Charlotte jogged down the hall and popped her head into Frank’s office. He sat behind his desk facing a man sitting in the chair she usually occupied when visiting. The man twisted to look at her. She didn’t recognize him.
“She was at the pawn shop,” he said to Frank before turning his attention back to her. “Sorry about that.”
She scowled before realizing what he meant. “You were one of the gingerbreads?”
The man’s expression darkened. “Twenty years as a master electrician, father of two, local bowling champion—and now I’ll be remembered as a gingerbread man for the rest of my life.”
“You’re someone Kris cheated,” she said, sitting in another chair against the wall.
He nodded.
“Randy Dobbins here just told me the whole story of how he accidentally killed Kris trying to shut him up with an elf.”
“It was an accident?” asked Charlotte.
Randy nodded. “Absolutely.”
“And you tried to set the house on fire to hide your mistake?”
He nodded again. “I panicked. It was stupid.”
“But you saved the dog.”
Randy sighed. “Maybe they’ll shave off a few years for that.”
Frank tilted back in his chair. “I was telling Mr. Dobbins here that there’s one problem with his story.”
“What’s that?”
“He said he worked alone.”
Charlotte shook her head. “There were three gingerbread men at the store. And there may be a fourth. A woman.”
Frank nodded and raised a piece of paper from his desk. “And then there’s the little issue of the truck he arrived in being owned by a Carl Stussy.”
Randy looked away and shrugged. “I borrowed the truck.”
“Are you from Beaver City, Nebraska by any chance?” asked Charlotte.
Frank laughed and Charlotte looked at him. “What are you laughing about?”
“Randy isn’t, but Carl is. How’d you know that?”
“I was right.” Charlotte shook her fist in the air to celebrate. “Did the owner of the truck build the chest of drawers?”
Randy’s cheek twitched. “I worked alone.”
“Are you saying the other two gingerbreads are robots?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You just said you remembered me from the pawn shop and there were three gingerbreads.”
Randy made a grunting noise. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Charlotte sighed and sat back in her chair. “It’s nice of you to try and cover for your friends. They didn’t have anything to do with Kris’s death after all. Right?”
Randy glanced at her and then looked at Frank. “Shouldn’t you take me to jail or something?”
A voice called from the reception area.
“Hello?”
Frank stood and pulled his cuffs from his belt. He cuffed Randy to the chair.
“Keep an eye on him,” he said, walking into the hall.
Randy’s eyes flicked in the direction of the hallway and Charlotte thought he appeared more nervous th
an he had a moment before. She heard voices and stood to peer into the reception area. Two men, one older and one a middle-aged redhead, stood with a brown-haired woman talking with Frank. The sheriff motioned for them to follow him down the hall and Charlotte ducked back to her seat. She looked up as they entered as if she had no idea they were on their way.
“I believe you all know Randy Dobbins,” said Frank, making his way back to his chair.
“I don’t know who these people are,” mumbled Randy, refusing to look.
The smaller, red-headed man put his hand on Randy’s shoulder. “We couldn’t let you do it. We couldn’t let you take all the blame.”
The gray-haired, mustachioed man nodded in agreement. “Coming here to teach him a lesson was my crackpot idea.”
“I started the Facebook page,” added the woman.
Charlotte perked. “The Facebook page?”
“Victims of the Christmas Con Man.”
“There’s a Facebook page for people Kristopher Rudolph conned?”
The three newcomers nodded.
“Yeah, though he wasn’t Kris when I met him. My town knew him as Jack Jingle,” said the red-head.
Frank waved his hands in the air. “Hold on, hold on. Let me get all of your names first.”
He picked up a pen and started writing. “I’ve got Randy Dobbins of Lemons, Missouri.”
“The lemon was somewhere near the middle on the right,” said Charlotte, remembering the lemon-shaped knob on the chest of drawers.
“Carl Timchell of Beaver City, Nebraska.”
The gray-haired main raised his hand.
“Ah, you’re Beaver City. First place hit,” said Charlotte.
“It was. Lucky me,” said Carl.
“Thirty years ago? Are you the one who knew about the bureau?”
“I helped build it. Friend of mine Joe Farkus was the true craftsman. It was his pride and joy. Never guessed why Kringle asked him to make it—though we figured it out fast enough when he disappeared on Christmas with fifteen thousand dollars of our hard-earned cash and a list of donated items that would break your heart.”
“His name was Kringle then?”
“Kris Kringle. Year one he didn’t have to get so creative.”
“Think he was from nearby?”
“Probably. Who knows if anything he ever said was true. He showed up in June and left us in December.”
“Same as everyone,” said the woman.
Charlotte’s head filled with more questions. “Did—”
“Hold on,” barked Frank. “I’m not done with roll call.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay, we got Randy, Carl...that means you’re...?” Frank turned to the redhead.
“Cole Harper from Rising Fawn, Georgia.”
“Ah, I thought that was a reindeer knob. I bet it was a deer,” mumbled Charlotte.
Frank eyeballed Charlotte and pantomimed zipping his lips.
“Sorry,” she mumbled from the side of her mouth as if the other side had already been zipped.
Frank read his notepad and looked up. “Which leaves us with you.”
The woman nodded as he motioned to her. “Karen Hatchett of Hot Coffee, Mississippi.”
Charlotte laughed out loud. “Hot Coffee?”
Karen nodded. “Third row down, fourth knob in. The fancy china coffee cup—not that there’s anything fancy about Hot Coffee.”
“So you all met through the Facebook page?”
Carl nodded. “I suggested we come and get him when Karen found a mention of Pineapple Port online.”
Cole interrupted. “Carl knew the last knob on the chest was a pineapple, but we’d lost hope when no one in Pine Apple, Alabama knew anything about a Christmas charity.”
“Then I saw a thing online about a big shootout at an old folks’ disco down here. It mentioned the lady who owned the place lived in Pineapple Port,” said Karen.
Charlotte gaped. She knew all about that shootout to which Karen referred—she’d been involved.
Carl picked up the story. “I made a few phone calls, found out he was here, and knew he was ready to rob you all blind.”
Frank grimaced. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“You don’t know how tricky he was. We wanted proof. We wanted to make him admit it on tape,” said Karen.
“By torturing him?”
Karen scowled. “No. We were just going to scare him. We certainly didn’t mean—”
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” said Randy, finishing his sentence with a great sigh of what sounded like relief.
Frank cocked an eyebrow. “You just stuffed the elf in his mouth—”
A flash of anger crossed Randy’s face. “To shut him up. I didn’t realize the legs—”
“And the fire? Was that an accident?”
“I told you. I panicked.”
Charlotte leaned forward. “The thing I can’t understand is why you stayed in town. Why didn’t you go back to your homes where you’d probably never have been found?”
“That’s my fault too,” said Carl. “I wanted the stuff in that chest of drawers back. I was going to give it back to the people he robbed. I hoped maybe we’d find a little money I could give Farkus’s widow. It would have been something. Figured maybe there was a little something left for each town he robbed.”
Frank stood and put his hands on his hips. “Well, the good news is there was something in each of those hidden drawers.”
Karen’s eyes lit up. “There was?”
“Yep.” Frank sighed. “The bad news is I’m going to have to arrest you all for murder.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I’m going to kill him.”
Stephanie weighed the pros and cons of confronting Jason with the video Charlotte sent her. She had to admit, Declan’s little angel had done her job. The evidence was undeniable. She could present it to Jason and have something to hold over him forever...or she could take it to the judge and ruin his career.
Tough call.
She idly spun her phone on her desk, deliberating. The phone chimed and she stopped it.
A text from Jason.
Speak of the devil.
She lifted the phone and read the message.
We need to talk. Meet me at the abandoned rug warehouse. Fifteen minutes.
Stephanie frowned. She knew the building he meant. She drove by it every day. The enormous metal warehouse had been abandoned after its owner went bankrupt. It wasn’t the sort of spot people held business meetings in.
Why would Jason want to meet her in an abandoned warehouse? Why the cloak and dagger?
She smiled.
He knows.
He must have seen Charlotte talking to the witness after he left. He put two and two together and figured she was pulling the strings. Now he was coming crawling, begging her not to ruin him, in a location she couldn’t possibly have rigged with sound or cameras in time to capture their meeting.
Oh I like this.
It would be fun to hear him beg.
She texted him back.
See you soon.
She grabbed her purse and drove the mile and a half to the warehouse, running through the things she might want to ask for in return for her mercy.
I might never lose another case again.
She pulled into the parking lot. Weeds sprouted from every fissure in the blacktop. She stepped out of her car to head towards the front door, doing her best to keep the rocks from tearing the leather from her heels.
The entrance had been left cracked open.
Stephanie patted her soft-bodied purse and felt for her gun inside. Jason was a rich-kid dirtball but he didn’t seem like the kind of person who would draw her to an abandoned warehouse to kill her.
Still...it didn’t hurt to be safe.
Heaven help him if he does try something.
He has no idea who he’s messing with.
She passed Jason’s car and glanced inside. No one hiding in the
back. If he’d brought backup they were inside with him.
Stephanie pushed open the door and walked inside. The only light filtered through rusted holes in the ceiling, shining to the floor like lasers, dust swirling in their centers.
She squinted, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light.
“Hello?”
As her vision improved, she spotted several large rolls of carpet piled in the far corner of the room. Beside them sat a man in a chair.
“Jason?”
Something was wrong with his position. He looked awkward. Slumpy.
Why is he just sitting there?
Something moved in the murky darkness behind the man in the chair. A hand appeared, almost ghostly, glowing as it entered a thin beam of light to Jason’s left.
The hand wasn’t empty.
Stephanie saw the flash of a gun. Bolting to the right, she scrambled to find the weapon in her bag, pulling it as a shot echoed through the tin can of a building. She lunged sideways and fired into the dark corner, landing hard on her shoulder.
Her head hit something hard and the world went black.
~~~
Stephanie reached up, her fingers touching something rough and crunchy. She opened her eyes.
Carpet.
Her fingers recoiled from the rug. She coughed and sat up, hand rising to touch the tender spot on the side of her head. She looked at her fingers and found them red with blood.
Ow.
She remembered rolling behind the stacks of carpet. Dove there.
Why did I dive—?
There was a gunshot.
Looking to her left she spotted her gun lying in the ground.
I’m alive. That’s a step in the right direction.
She peeked from behind her hiding place, careful not to touch the dusty carpet again.
A man sitting in a chair.
She remembered it now.
Jason.
She’d had trouble seeing him before. She remembered being unsure it was him. Now a beam of light that hadn’t been there before illuminated his features.
Where did that come from?
She glanced up at the source. A new hole in the roof.
Bullet-sized.
“Jason?”
No answer.
Stephanie pulled herself to her feet and retrieved her weapon.