by Liz Ireland
“I’m more worried about spiders than weasels.”
“You think . . . ?” He sucked in a breath. “Not Lucia, surely.”
“Then the person who intercepted the package, maybe.”
“That could have been anyone.” He frowned again. “Oh, dear. I never imagined I couldn’t trust my own castle staff.”
“We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I said, channeling Nick.
“All the same, I’ll ask. Anything else?”
“We need to find out if Giblet had any particular enemies, so if you know anybody in Tinkertown . . .” I doubted he would. Jingles didn’t seem to hobnob much with the hoi polloi outside the castle. A fine pair of detectives we would make: a stranger in town and a persnickety snob.
But Jingles surprised me. “Oh, yes I do. A very important someone. I’m a not-too-distant cousin of Punch, the elf who beat Giblet in the ice-sculpting contest.”
Chapter 8
Jingles arranged for me to meet Punch at the Tinkertown Tavern, but he wasn’t able to accompany me there. When she heard where I was headed, Juniper had insisted on tagging along. “You don’t want to go to the tavern by yourself,” she warned.
“Rough?” I asked.
“People vape there,” she’d said with an anxious quaver in her voice.
The Tinkertown Tavern was a dive bar in the same way Applebee’s could be considered a greasy spoon. The low-ceilinged room had bare board walls and lighting partially supplied by candles in mason jars on all the tables. The only holiday decorations were old bulb lights strung around the doorframe, and corner speakers were playing a Glenn Campbell Christmas album. The patrons were mostly factory elves in their off-hours, but they weren’t exactly intimidating. In fact, the barkeep was a jolly bald elf with a substantial paunch beneath his snowy apron. His relentlessly cheery manner made me suspect that he took regular nips of his special house grog.
As I sipped at the grog I’d felt obliged to order, I could understand the temptation. The syrupy concoction was made with rum and warmed to just the right temperature to defrost your bones after coming in from the cold. I could have slurped down the entire mug in a few swallows, but I was mindful that this was my second outing as an investigator. I needed to stay on my toes.
At Juniper’s suggestion, I was wearing one of her elf caps, slightly tight on me, and a traditional embroidered elf tunic. The outfit made me feel slightly ridiculous, but even though I had to scrunch up to fit in the booth that was just slightly too small for me, I did seem to blend in better with the clientele.
A few elves across the bar playing darts looked over at me, gazes assessing. I looked away. “Don’t stare,” I told Juniper under my breath, “but there are a bunch of guys over there looking at us.”
She angled a glance at them and then looked back at me. “You don’t know them?”
I shook my head.
They were coming over. As a group. Their dead serious, purposeful demeanors as they approached made me wonder if they were Hollyberrys coming over to tell me I was married to a killer Santa . . . and not in an admiring way.
The four of them stopped right by the table. They didn’t seem thuggish, exactly, but why were they staring at me so intently?
“Hey, guys,” Juniper chirped.
One, the shortest, cleared his throat. And then he began to sing “Good King Wenceslas.” The others joined him in a tight four-part harmony. Their singing battled with Glenn Campbell singing “Pretty Paper” until the barkeep turned the sound down. The rest of the bar went silent, watching as I sat trapped with a smile frozen on my face.
So much for feeling as if I blended in.
The impromptu barbershop quartet serenade continued for another three verses—who knew the song had so many?— before Juniper nudged me and nodded to someone coming in the door.
Even for an elf, Punch the sculptor was short, but he walked with a swagger of someone certain of his worth. At Juniper’s wave he nodded and headed over to us, frowning at the quartet. He didn’t wait for them to finish.
“What is this? Amateur night?”
The singers broke off, and I awkwardly tried to thank them, and they even more awkwardly tried to hint that their group would be perfect to perform at the Peppermint Pond Skate-a-Palooza. I jotted down their names on a coaster advertising Winkie’s Hard Sauce Ale.
“Go peddle it somewhere else,” Punch growled at them. He slammed into the bench seat opposite Juniper and me. He had a bulbous nose, small eyes, and rough hands. Ice-chiseling hands.
The quartet retreated to their corner.
“You the lady that wanted to talk to me?”
I nodded. “I know your cousin, Jingles.”
His lips turned down. “Jingles. He always thought he was better than everybody else because his ma married a man from up by the castle.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Jingles hadn’t mentioned animosity between them—maybe he didn’t realize there was any. Or perhaps he did know and that’s why he hadn’t come with me.
“Would you like something to drink?” I asked.
“You buying?”
Juniper hopped up. “I’ll get it. What would you like?”
“Grog.”
What else?
“Make it a double,” he said.
Juniper hurried away. I faced my interviewee. Now that I had him here, I didn’t know quite how to start. Obviously bringing up the cousin connection hadn’t helped. I fell back on etiquette.
“Thank you for coming to talk.”
He snorted. “You’re not the first who’s wanted to speak to me, but this time I figured I’d at least get a tankard out of it.”
“You’ve spoken to the detective?” I guessed.
“Sure.” He sat up straighter, proud of being a person of interest. “I won the prize over Giblet, and everybody saw how upset he was.”
“Did you and Giblet have words after the prizes were awarded?”
“Sure. He came up to say congratulations.”
“And?”
Punch looked at me with a combination of amusement and pity. “See, it’s like what I told that spooky detective. Giblet and I were . . . well, I wouldn’t say friends, exactly. We were two artists, and we admired each other’s work.”
Juniper hurried back and set down the oversized metal tankard in front of him. He nodded at us both and took a healthy swallow. He didn’t seem too worried about keeping his wits about him, which was fine with me.
“Sure, Giblet was angry about the contest result,” the elf continued, “but he wasn’t mad at me. All of his rage was for your husband, the new Santa.”
“Why?”
Punch lifted his rounded shoulders. “He seemed to have a real fixation on Nick Claus—seemed to want to needle him for some reason. Back when he told me what he was planning for the contest, I thought it was a bad idea. The North Pole’s King. A depiction of the late Santa? Right off, I told him that idea couldn’t win.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Think about it. Even if he liked what Giblet did, your husband’s a quiet, modest guy, and he wouldn’t want to appear biased by the subject matter. On the other hand, if what some people are saying is true—”
“Of course it isn’t.”
“I said if. In that case, he wouldn’t want to be reminded of how much more everybody loved his brother than him.”
I tried to put my own bias aside and consider the matter logically. “Not necessarily. If Nick really had a guilty conscience, he would want to cover his resentment—and what better way than by awarding Giblet first prize?”
Punch shrugged. “Well, I’m a sculptor, not a psychologist.”
Maybe so, but I wasn’t ready to stop picking his brain. “If you told Giblet his sculpture would lose, why did he persist?”
He took a deep drink. “Cussedness. That was Giblet all over. He never did believe in doing things the easy way. And when he lost, he planned to go down spitting in the eye of the powers t
hat be.”
“That’s a terrible attitude,” Juniper said. Cussedness and spitting in someone’s eye were foreign concepts to her.
But I’d noticed something else in what Punch had said. “You said ‘when he lost,’ as if it were a foregone conclusion.”
“Of course it was,” he said. “He was never going to win, no matter what he made.”
“Why not? Because of the reasons you gave before?” I asked.
“No, because I’m the better sculptor.” He drained his tankard, smacked his lips, and smiled with egotistical gusto. “You see, Mrs. C., you’re skidding down the wrong sled path. At least if you’re looking for people who had problems with Giblet. He and I were friendly rivals. If you want to find someone who really didn’t like him, you should talk to Starla Winters at the Wrapping Works.”
I glanced at Juniper, who indicated with a subtle nod that the name was familiar.
“Starla pitched a fit when Giblet was promoted over her as the Wrapping Works Director of Operations—said it was the worst miscarriage of justice in the whole history of Santaland. There were times when it was so bad between those two that Giblet told me he thought he might quit the works entirely and move out to the Farthest Frozen Reaches and become a full-time freelance sculptor.”
I frowned, wondering whether Jake Frost had already gone down this investigative trail.
“You go ask Starla Winters what she was doing the night Giblet died,” Punch said. “I’ll bet you get closer to the truth of the matter than you have talking to me.”
He left us to go visit with a friend at another table.
“Did you believe what he told us?” I asked Juniper.
“About Starla?”
“About everything.”
Juniper considered the question for a moment before a strange transformation came over her. Disbelief and barely concealed pleasure flushed across her face, making me pivot to follow her gaze. Hunched at the bar, Martin smiled and waved. In the next moment, he muttered something to his elf companions and came over to our table with his drink.
“I thought I was the only Claus who ever hung out in Tinkertown,” he said, sliding easily onto the bench seat Punch had just vacated. He nodded at my cap with puzzled amusement. “You are a Claus, aren’t you? Looks like you’ve gone native.”
“Juniper loaned me some things for our night on the town.”
He smiled at Juniper, who’d been struck dumb. “That was a good idea,” he said. “Get April out of the Claus comfort zone.”
She didn’t respond except to turn the color of a boiled lobster.
Martin leaned in and peered into her mug. “Your drink’s almost gone. Can I get you another?”
She blinked. “For me?”
As an afterthought, Martin looked at mine, too. “I’ll get you both refreshers.”
He dislodged himself from the too-small booth and hurried to the bar. For a large man, he moved very easily.
The moment he was out of earshot, Juniper sank against the bench. “I’m acting like an idiot, aren’t I? Do you think he thinks I’m an idiot?”
“Why would he? You’ve barely said anything.”
“I know! I’m tongue-tied. All sorts of things are going through my head, but then I look into those eyes of his and I just go numb. And then I want to kick myself because it’s all so stupid—he’s Martin Claus and what am I?”
I laughed. “You’re Christmastown’s favorite librarian, and a damn fine euphonium player. And you’re pretty foxy, too, in your going-out finery.” Her tunic was purple and green, with sequins making her look sparklier than usual.
“Foxy? Me?” She snorted. “Right.”
“Smudge thinks so,” I said.
She drew back, startled, and not in a good way. “That’s all over. He hates me.”
“That’s right. I keep forgetting, because he watches the back of your head during rehearsal more than he watches the conductor.”
“Staring daggers.”
“No, daggers is the way he looks at me,” I said. “The way he looks at you is more smoldery.”
Juniper absorbed this, then shook her head, tossing a glance at Martin, who was taking both our drinks from the barkeep. “Smudge isn’t my type. He’s not at all dapper, you know what I mean?”
Only in Santaland, where potbellies and double chins were in, would Martin be considered anyone’s dream lover.
He came back, smiling as he sat down as if he knew he’d been the topic of conversation. “Get your stories straight?”
In unison, Juniper and I piped up guiltily, “What?”
“You were deep in conversation about something, and I can only imagine it was how to explain your meeting the illustrious ice sculpture artist.”
How much could I tell Martin about what I was doing? I trusted him—somewhat. He was my ally, I knew that, but he loved to gab with people, and I didn’t want everyone at the castle to know I was running a shadow investigation. Also, I didn’t trust him not to tease me about my sleuthing at inconvenient moments, when others would overhear.
“Are you thinking of getting a statue of your own winter hero done?” he asked. “Maybe Nick would like that for a Christmas present.”
“He wouldn’t like anything less, and you know it.”
“So you were talking to Punch about . . . ?”
“Giblet,” I admitted.
Understanding dawned. “I see. You’re trying to figure out who Giblet’s enemies were and outwit the detectives. Not that it would be difficult to outwit Constable Crinkles, but that other fellow . . .”
“You heard about Jake Frost?” I asked.
Martin laughed. “You think that guy can blow into town without everybody noticing? He’s been famous since solving the toy heist ten years ago.” I frowned and he explained, “There was a greedy elf stealing toys from Santa’s Workshop and selling them on eBay from his cottage basement. Took calling in Jake Frost to find the toy embezzler.”
“I hadn’t heard of that,” I said.
Martin smiled at Juniper. “We’re not supposed to talk about crime in Christmastown. It’s like the old Soviet Union—crime is anti-Christmas, so we pretend it doesn’t exist. Until an elf is killed.”
“And poor Charlie,” Juniper said.
Martin nodded at her reminder. “Now that a killing spree is underway, we all have to own up that maybe Santaland isn’t the idyllic place we try to tell ourselves it is.”
“It’s still pretty darn nice,” Juniper said loyally.
“And probably one of the safest places on earth,” Martin agreed. “Except for during the past two days. We can’t kid ourselves that none of this happened. Who’s to say we might not all still be in danger?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the killer wasn’t caught. Maybe there’s a pattern to the violence that we haven’t made out yet. Any one of us might be next.”
Juniper shivered. “That’s a terrible thought.”
“Just be careful,” Martin said. “Don’t go out alone if you can help it. And if you don’t mind my saying, maybe you shouldn’t be visiting odd places like the Tinkertown Tavern.”
“You’re here,” I said.
“I work in Tinkertown—the Candy Cane Factory isn’t far from here. I come here occasionally and rub elbows. I like getting away from the castle sometimes.”
“So taverns are fine for you, but not for me?”
“It’s not the tavern that’s dangerous; it’s the traveling back and forth. In fact, I should escort you two back.”
Juniper looked as if she might expire. “There’s no reason for you to go to any trouble for me,” she said, ignoring my pointed glare. “I don’t live far—and no one would want to kill me.”
“Sure about that?” he asked. “No broken hearts in your wake, or angry second-chair euphoniumists?”
She laughed. “Not that I know of.”
“We’ll drive you home, just in case. You’re on our way back.”
�
�How do you know where I live?” she asked.
He leaned in and confessed, “You’re in the directory and I’m the nosiest person in Christmastown—at least about people I like.”
And with that, my friend’s soul left her body. R.I.P., Juniper.
On the way home, Juniper sat between me and Martin on his sleigh’s bench seat. His was a more modest model than the one Nick traveled around in—it was less ornate and less comfortable—but he clearly enjoyed driving it. He kept the reindeer at a brisk gait, and he and Juniper gossiped about band members. I knew most of the people they were talking about, but my mind was already wandering to my next interviewee. I wondered how best to approach Starla Winters—at home or at work? I liked the fact that she hadn’t spoken to the constable or the detective yet. Maybe I could catch her off guard. Not that I knew she had anything to be on guard about.
The sleigh slowed and then stopped in front of a modest Tudor-style house. I was going to hop off to let Juniper out, but Martin beat me to it, handing her down and bidding her a good night in a way I had no doubt made her go weak in the knees. I’d be hearing about this tomorrow, and probably for weeks to come.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” I said. “About that other thing.”
For a moment her expression fogged; she’d forgotten all about the investigation and Starla Winters. Finally, it dawned on her. “Oh, right. Good night!”
When we got underway again, Martin said, “She’s talkative once you get her going.”
“She’s wonderful—the best friend I’ve made here.”
He glanced at me, his eyes merry in the moonlight. “Is that a warning to me to stay away from her?”
“Not at all,” I said, hunching into my coat. “Though she is probably too good for you.”
His laughter echoed along with the jingling reindeer harness as we crossed through the quiet evening streets of Christmastown. “You’re probably right. Well . . . we’ll see what develops.”
“You’re not going to lead her on, I hope.”
“Of course not. And don’t worry—I won’t take her away from your investigation.”