by Liz Ireland
“I hope there aren’t any skeletons in your cellar,” I muttered.
“No, just root vegetables and figs.” He was fine with my thinking that he might have had a skeleton down there, though. “Got anything you want stuffed?”
I shook my head and burrowed deeper into my coat. How was it colder inside than outside? Although, given that there was a peculiar odor coming from that walrus, perhaps it was just as well that the heat wasn’t cranked up.
“So you really came all this way just to ask about the snow monster hunt?”
“That’s right. I heard you led the expedition, and I wanted to know—”
He held his hand up to stop me. “Just a minute, Mrs. Claus—”
“April,” I said.
“Okay, April. I should let you know. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.”
I drew back. “Sworn by whom?”
“Nick Claus,” he said. “Your husband.”
My old friend anxiety clogged my thoughts. Why had Nick sworn Boots to secrecy? It might not be an answer I wanted to hear.
“So before we get started and I agree to go back on my word, I got a question for you,” Boots said. “Namely, what’s in it for me?”
I blinked. Was this a shakedown?
“Boots Bayleaf wasn’t born yesterday. Think he just runs his mouth for nothing? You think I built all this”—he gestured grandly about the room and its eerie display of lifeless wildlife—“by running some kind of charity outfit?”
“You mean . . . you want money?” Foolishly, I hadn’t even brought any money with me.
He scratched his thick gray beard, which had a streak in it. A brown streak. Either it was a remnant of his real color or he’d dribbled coffee down himself. Repeatedly. I tended to think it was the latter.
He studied me intently. “It doesn’t have to be money. There are other ways to pay.”
A wave of heat crashed over me. “Now listen here—”
“Like a ride on that sweet, sweet Snow Devil 1100,” he finished.
“Oh.” My outrage, punctured, deflated. “I see.”
What would Jingles think of this creature riding his beloved snowmobile? I knew the answer to that—he would probably just as soon Quasar take the controls. That wasn’t the answer I needed at the moment, though.
“I could pay you,” I said. “I’d have to go to town and come back, or if there’s any way to send it to you by post . . .”
He spat on his floor, which was probably not the first time those wood boards had received a gob of expectoration. “Corn nuts! Money I got enough of at the moment. But not much opportunity to try out a Snow Devil.”
That was really all he wanted? Just to test-drive the snowmobile? That didn’t seem like much.
Except, again, it wasn’t my snowmobile.
Noting my hesitation, Boots added enticingly, “I just might be able to tell you something about that snow monster hunt that nobody else knows.”
What did he know? Temptation was an evil beast.
Jingles would kill me, though.
If he found out.
But he’d only find out if something happened to the Snow Devil 1100, so . . .
No. The pride with which Jingles had showed off his vehicle came back to me anew. “I just can’t,” I said. “It’s not my—”
“Five minutes,” Boots said.
“Deal.”
* * *
Pop quiz: When can five minutes feel like an eon?
Answer: When you’re watching a grizzled mountain elf climb aboard the expensive snowmobile you borrowed from your persnickety steward and tear off into the white void, whooping with glee.
I didn’t want to look. But I couldn’t not look.
Vehicle and rider raced up and down in front of the barn, then flew off-road, slaloming between trees, hot-dogging over hills, popping wheelies on the snowmobile’s back tread, skimming in sharp turns that churned up curtains of snow. The engine faced each trick and hill with a sickly whine, like an overheated vacuum cleaner in its death throes. As I stood in horror, I could witness it all because the bright lights on the snowmobile lit every foolhardy maneuver.
My hands clenched into tight fists. At some point, Boots drove over a hill and out of my view, but I heard the Snow Devil shrieking like a giant strangled mosquito, in unison with its rider’s cry of terror and glee. Fool sounded like he was on a roller coaster.
Then there was a crash, accompanied by branches snapping.
And then nothing.
Heart in mouth, I went running out in the snow, which sometimes drifted up to my knees. “Mr. Bayleaf!” I yelled, struggling up the hill I’d last seen him fly over. Cresting the top, I saw that he had simply flown, Evel Knievel–style, over a stand of snow-covered bushes. Only he hadn’t cleared it. The snowmobile’s skis and treads had landed on branches, wobbled off sideways, and then turned upside down in the snow.
I ran, fell, and rolled down the hill to the rescue. With my luck, the man would be dead, I wouldn’t get my information, and I would have to explain to Jingles why his vehicle was wrecked.
But there was my luck and then there was the luck of Boots Bayleaf. When I dug into the snow, I found his coat and yanked him out by his shoulders. To my surprise, after he was pulled free he popped to his feet, shook snow off himself like a dog shaking off water, then let out another heartfelt whoop of glee.
“Son of a nutcracker! Now that’s what I call a sweet ride!”
I groaned, and set about putting the Snow Devil upright.
“I gotta get me one of those,” he said.
“I hope it’s not damaged beyond repair.” I attempted to brush snow off the comfort seat with my snow-encrusted glove.
“Damaged? After a little floopti-do like that?” He snorted. “This thing’s a monster. Toss it off Calling Bird Cliff and it’d come out sparkling.”
Sure it would.
“These things were meant to take abuse.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to abuse them,” I said, unable to keep the scolding tone out of my voice.
He muttered something about prissy women who didn’t deserve to drive sleek vehicles.
“Or crash them,” I retorted.
But once the machine was de-snowed, it appeared to have come through its ordeal relatively unscathed. I pored over the surface for scratches—because God knows Jingles would—but I found not a flaw in the paint. And when I got on and turned the key, the engine jumped to life.
I drove us back to Boots’ place—carefully. When we reached the barn again, I turned to him. “All right. You’ve had your ride. What do you know?”
“You’d better come have some cider. You might not like what I have to tell you.”
Just that quickly, my stomach started gnawing again.
He poured cider out of a small barrel that had a rudimentary spigot poking out. The first sip made me choke. It was like apple juice crossed with ethanol.
“Good, right?” He laughed. “Got a kick!”
I coughed. “It’s potent.”
For what he was about to tell me, I needed something bracing.
“This isn’t something most folks are supposed to know about,” he said, “but I guess you’re special, since you married one of them.”
“A Claus, you mean?”
He nodded, then leaned back in his chair, which stood next to the stuffed wolf. He put his hand on the animal’s scruff and petted it as though it were alive. “I never saw the monster we were hunting—didn’t even know for sure if one had been sighted.”
“You mean you don’t know if there was a point to the trip?”
“All’s I know is that someone reported spotting a snow monster track by Angel Lake. We can’t have abominables making incursions that far into Santaland.”
“You don’t know who reported the track?”
“No, ma’am. And like I said, I never saw it myself. But I was gung ho to find the creature, and so were the other men. So off we went. We took sleighs halfway u
p Mount Myrrh, then started climbing. Treacherous terrain. We hunters say Mount Myrrh is the beast that contains beasts. You have to go careful. Everybody knows that. Most of the time, we were a rope team. But then Santa said he heard a snow leopard calling, and Amory and Santa—the old Santa, that is—went back to hunt it down, in case it was stalking us.”
My eyes narrowed. Midge hadn’t mentioned that Amory had backtracked with Chris. “Why Chris and Amory?” Although what I really meant was, Why Amory?
“Chris, because that’s who he was. He insisted on going back himself—he loved danger, loved shooting. Nick volunteered to go with him, but Amory said no, they both couldn’t go on account of both being Claus brothers. Sort of like they don’t let all the royal family fly in one plane, he said. So Chris asked who would go with him, besides me, because he said I was needed to lead the monster hunt. Then, before anybody could pipe up, he sort of voluntold Amory to go.”
“Chris made Amory accompany him?”
“Not in so many words, but there was a little dare in it.”
“Surely Chris wasn’t suggesting Amory was too much of a coward to go?”
“Nah, he was just razzing him a little. Chris loved to joke with people, and up on a mountain, in tough conditions, you need a little humor.” Boots took a long swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Anyway, that’s when the party split up. And that was the last anyone besides Amory saw of Chris. They were supposed to catch up with us at our next camp, but Amory showed up alone, in a state. Said Chris had fallen. We backtracked to find him, but of course he wasn’t there—just a yawning crevasse where Chris’s tracks ended, and lots of Amory’s tracks, too. Thing was, Amory had told us he didn’t know where Chris had disappeared—said he couldn’t find him.”
“But Chris’s footprints were in the ice by the crevasse. And Amory’s.”
“Plain as day.”
One other thing didn’t make sense to me. “How could Amory have lost Chris? You said the team was tied together—hooked together with a rope.”
He scratched his beard. “Amory told us Chris thought that was a bad idea—for just the eventuality that happened. If two people are tied and one falls, it’s easy for the other to get pulled down, too. There’ve been cases where the one above has to cut the rope and let the other drop to avoid falling himself.” He stopped for emphasis. “The end of Amory’s rope was frayed.”
I froze at the implication.
“That’s what your husband didn’t want to get out, why he made us all swear not to talk, and so far’s I know, nobody’s uttered a peep about Amory.”
“Because . . .?”
“To save Amory’s reputation, I guess. It’s a helluva thing for a man to have to live with, letting his cousin—Santa Claus, no less—fall into the icy depths of Mount Myrrh.”
It was hard to feel sorry for Amory just then. Suspicion crowded out my compassion.
Noting the gears turning in my head, Boots grinned. “Now, wasn’t that worth a ride on your fancy vehicle?”
I didn’t respond to that, but he wasn’t expecting an answer. “You’ve told me this,” I said, “but there’s no reason to tell anyone else. Not if Nick asked you not to.”
He drew back in offense. “Boots Bayleaf knows how to keep his lip buttoned.”
Given that he’d just spilled the story to me in exchange for a joyride, I took those words with a whole block of salt. I stood, preparing to leave.
“Wait!”
“Do you have anything else?”
“Do I ever.”
He hurried across the room and picked up something silver. Another clue?
“What . . . ?”
He turned, striking a pose. “Is there still a spot left for the Skate-a-Palooza? My mama always said I had the best voice she ever heard.”
And he proceeded to demonstrate how wrong Ma Bayleaf had been, by singing “Winter Wonderland” and accompanying himself on spoons.
Chapter 13
Boots Bayleaf knew how to keep his lip buttoned. Unfortunately, I wasn’t endowed with that skill.
As the snowmobile droned me back toward Christmastown, I mulled over what I’d learned. Had Amory killed his cousin, or merely covered up a dreadful deed necessitated by an accident? If he’d truly cut that rope and let Chris fall, that wasn’t murder, necessarily, but something murkier. It would account for that PTSD Midge had mentioned.
One thing I was sure of: If Boots’ account could be believed, it exonerated Nick. He clearly hadn’t killed his brother. So why had he insisted on silence from everyone in the team, even as rumors about his own involvement flurried around Santaland?
This puzzled me, but like the old saying went: Marry an enigmatic, overworked Santa in haste, spend the rest of your life’s leisure moments in a frustrating guessing game.
Okay, there was no old saying like that. But maybe there should have been.
The more I chewed over the situation, the more muddled I was over what my next step should be. The hum of nervousness in the back of my mind over bringing the snowmobile back to Jingles didn’t help. I kept reliving that moment of seeing the machine overturned in the snow. I wanted to get it refueled and professionally cleaned before returning it to its finicky owner. There was a fuel depot past the Plumbing Works. And while I was in the neighborhood . . .
Getting answers out of Nick, especially on the subject of Chris’s death, was like pulling teeth. I was pretty sure Amory would be an easier mark, even if he had something to hide.
The Plumbing Works office was housed in an industrial building partially hidden by a stand of trees. The concrete had been painted in cheery red, green, and white, but there was no disguising the charmless boxy shape of the hulking edifice. Poor Amory—having to leave his cozy lodge to come here every day.
The interior was more inviting than the exterior. I was led to a top-floor corner office with wraparound windows. The drapes were all drawn, shutting out what little natural light was available this time of year. When Amory’s secretary ushered me in, it seemed strange to me that the one possibility of beauty—a view—was shut off. Unlike almost every other square inch of the Christmastown region, there were no decorations hung in Amory’s office. No lights, wreaths, garlands. No banners wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, or cards or presents on display. No tree.
“April!” A long mahogany desk was centered close to the back wall, and Amory was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up, a pen nestled behind his ear.
“No one could accuse you of overdoing the Christmas fervor,” I said by way of greeting.
His lips turned down. “I have a hard time feeling merry and bright about the sewer work your husband forced me into.” He eyed me curiously. “So what are you doing here? Slumming?”
“This office isn’t so bad.”
He sniffed. “Not exactly Castle Kringle, though.”
No, no one would mistake it for the castle. After standing awkwardly for a few moments, I sat myself down in one of the pair of leather chairs facing Amory’s desk. “I have something serious to speak to you about, Amory.”
He uncrossed his legs and took his feet off the top of his desk, and his lips turned down in an expression of mock seriousness. “Something wrong in your world? One of your elf choristers have laryngitis? Band lost a tuba?”
“It’s nothing to do with musical events.” I decided the best strategy would be to plunge right into the unpleasant truth. “I found out what happened on Mount Myrrh.”
Amory’s eyes bulged, and for a moment he looked as if he would profess ignorance of what I was talking about. But in quick succession he sagged in resignation and then stiffened again. “Nick told you, I suppose. Of course he did. I knew his noble silence was all an act.”
“Nick said nothing. Someone else told me.”
“Who?”
“Does it matter? Someone who was in a position to know what happened up there.”
“Nobody knows what happened up there. Even I don’t know. T
here was that damned snow leopard, or that’s what Chris said. I’m not like my crazy cousins—I don’t know one animal sound from another. So we formed a separate hunting party, away from the others. Big mistake.”
“This person—my source—said Chris dragooned you into it.”
He laughed mirthlessly. “That’s a good way of putting it. Ever since we were kids he was that way with me. Oh, he was too jolly to be a real bully; he knew exactly how much teasing and pressure to exert to get you to do what he wanted. And I was never an excellent sportsman like the others.”
That surprised me. “You mean Nick and Martin?”
“Sure. And Lucia, of course. She was better at sports than all of us. Better at shooting, bow and arrow, harpoon, all those things. Though Martin was really good, too. He went out with Chris a lot when they were younger, after Lucia decided she was against killing anything.”
“She’s not against poisoning rats.” I frowned. “But I think that has something to do with them passing fleas to the reindeer.”
He nodded, and I realized I’d veered away from my purpose. “So you didn’t want to go with Chris to find the snow leopard?”
“Of course not. We were almost to camp, where we could build a fire and eat, and rest a little. I volunteered to hunt a snow monster, not a stupid leopard. Who cared? Chris just wanted a pelt.”
“Did anyone else volunteer?”
“Nick did, right away. Nick should have gone, but then Chris had said both of them couldn’t because they were so close in line in the Santa succession. Well, what about me? I was fifth in line.”
“So you went reluctantly.” And probably resented every step that took him in the opposite direction of that campfire, and food and rest. In his place, I would have, too.
“I sucked it up,” he said. “I’m good at that, thanks to a lifetime of having to do what I’m told. The orphan cousin, a minor Claus.”