by Liz Ireland
“All right,” I said as soon as I’d had a few reviving swallows of muffin and caffeine. The baked goods at We Three Beans were to die for. Butter, sugar, ginger. Heaven. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I want to know what you think you’re going to achieve.”
I took another swallow. “There’s a killer loose in Santaland. I intend to find him.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d rather not live with a murderer on the loose.”
His face registered barely restrained impatience. “But why you? You might have noticed that I’m here. I’m an experienced investigator.”
“I’ve also noticed that my husband is a suspect. The Claus family isn’t taking that seriously because, well, they’re Clauses and they seem to think that everything will come up gumdrops and peppermint sticks no matter what, but I do take the accusations seriously. And personally. I’m sorry if you believe that we’re working at cross-purposes, but I have every right as a citizen to talk to people and see what I can find out.”
“You seem to believe absolutely in Nick Claus’s innocence. Were you this trusting of your first husband?”
I put my cup down. “I suppose you’ve found out all about that. No doubt Therese sent you down that rabbit trail.”
“A false trail—that became clear as soon as I contacted your old hometown for the records detailing your husband’s car accident. His girlfriend at the time accused you of tampering with the car, but there was no evidence.”
“I didn’t even know she existed before the accident. I thought Keith and I were just going through a rough patch . . . for a lot of reasons. I was naïve then.”
“And now?”
How could I use my gut feeling as proof when my gut had failed me before? Simple. Belief was all I had until I could gather better evidence. “Nick has a good heart. He loved his brother, and he doesn’t swat a fly without feeling remorse, so I know he wouldn’t go on a murder spree.”
“Okay.” He took a sip of coffee. “Then why not share information?”
Meaning he wanted me to tell him everything I knew, and he would probably tell me next to nothing about his investigation in return.
“If you’re as experienced as you say you are,” I said, “you’ll probably find out what I’ve discovered on my own and then some.”
“But why duplicate our efforts? Why not share?”
Why not? I didn’t have an answer, except that there was something about the official investigation I didn’t trust.
Or was it that I worried I’d incriminate someone I didn’t want to be under the spotlight?
That note was on my mind again now. A VENOMOUS ELF. . . . Why had I burned it? I’d done so impulsively, almost reflexively, without considering whether it really had been written by Nick. An amateur mistake.
I was an amateur. How could I possibly find a killer on my own?
In any case, it wouldn’t hurt to throw Jake Frost a bone and see what happened.
“This morning I’ve been looking into the snow monster hunt Chris Claus died on.”
“I knew that.”
I gaped at him. “You did?”
“Pretty obvious when you go to the trouble to hunt down old Boots Bayleaf.”
“How did you find out about that? Did you follow me?”
“I didn’t have to. I have sources.”
Those sources again. Sources inside the castle? “Jingles?”
His lip curled up. “That’s the thing about sources. You don’t give them up.”
Maybe it was Jingles. My mind raced through all my recent dealings with him.
That conversation I’d had with Lucia was making me mistrustful. I frowned. Maybe that was what she’d intended. In which case she was making me doubtful about her, too. Pretty soon I was going to be a mass of paranoia and they’d find me babbling to myself in the castle basement.
Maybe it was time to trust someone. Jake was there as an objective investigator, to find the truth.
I took a breath. “There’ve been rumors that Nick was responsible for his brother Chris’s death. Giblet Hollyberry all but accused him of fratricide, and so did Chris’s widow, Tiffany. But from what Boots Bayleaf told me, Nick wasn’t anywhere near Chris when he died. The hunting team on Mount Myrrh had a snow leopard stalking them, and Chris and Amory backtracked to kill it.”
Jake took a slow drink of coffee.
I leaned forward. He’d found something odd in what I’d said. “What?”
He shrugged. “Snow leopards are pretty stealthy.”
“They must make some noise. Someone heard it cry, or call.” Off the top of my head, I didn’t know the appellation for a leopard sound. “You didn’t talk about this with Amory?”
He shook his head. “Not in any detail.”
So I knew things he didn’t. “What did you talk about?”
“Where he was the morning Giblet died.”
“Where was he?”
“In bed.” Jake took another sip of coffee. “Who heard the snow leopard call?”
“No one’s sure. Chris, and maybe one other of the party. But both Boots and Amory mentioned Chris.”
“Any other sign? Prints, scat?”
“I don’t think so. Chris fell—and then the snow leopard seems to have been forgotten.”
“Understandably.” I could see him mentally recapping our conversation. “So Amory was with Chris. And then . . .”
I explained the circumstances as Amory had told them to me. About his refusing to continue on with Chris right at the end and about his frantic search for him and how when he realized what had happened he’d gone back for the others. I also mentioned the frayed rope. It seemed the most damning element—I worried I was tossing poor Amory under the bus. But that wasn’t the detail Jake zeroed in on.
“Your husband didn’t want the details of Chris’s death to get out?”
“No. He asked the others not to mention anything about it.”
“Odd.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “This all should have been told to the constable as part of the facts of the case.”
“Maybe Nick did tell Constable Crinkles, in confidence.”
“Old Crinkles would’ve spilled that to me.”
Didn’t it just go to show . . . I’d worried about making Amory look guilty, yet whom was the investigator laser focused on? Nick.
“If you’re just going to twist everything I tell you into a way to zero in on Nick, I’m done sharing. What else have you and the constable discovered?”
“There’s the question of the button from Old Charlie’s death. Madame Neige, the head of the Order of Elven Seamstresses, said that it was one that they used on the clothes made for the Claus family. But you knew that.”
As I’d suspected, sharing information was a lopsided deal.
“Would you tell me if you knew more?” I asked. “If, say, you found something damning against my husband?”
“If I can count on your secrecy, certainly.”
“I don’t have any secrets from Nick.”
Except that he knows nothing about my investigating and wouldn’t approve if he did.
“That might be a problem, then.”
“I won’t narc on my spouse.”
“Even if you began to suspect he could be a killer?”
I remembered Nick’s having been out of bed half the night of Giblet’s death and felt a flush. “Nick isn’t guilty of anything.”
“You just told me he covered up a possible murder.”
“I don’t know what his motives were for swearing the others to silence.”
“You haven’t asked him?”
“He doesn’t know I’m—” At Jake’s knowing smile, my throat cut off my words. “I just found all that out this morning. There hasn’t been time to talk to him.”
“I’ll be interested to hear what he says when you do find time.”
I pushed my mug away. “You won’t hear it from me.”
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“Then I’ll have to ask him myself.”
And no doubt Nick would find out about my visit to Amory.
I scowled. “All right. I will talk to him. But I can promise you won’t get the answers you’re hoping for.”
“I just want the truth, April.” He slugged down the dregs of his coffee. “I wonder what it is you want.”
Chapter 15
Jingles examined his snowmobile as closely as possible without the aid of a magnifying glass. Even though I’d taken it through Walnut’s Sleigh Wash by the fuel depot and had even sprung for the hand wax, I held my breath as Jingles pored over every square inch. If anything, his inspection became more meticulous once he’d twigged to the fact that I’d gotten it professionally cleaned.
When he finally nodded his approval, I let out a breath.
“Walnut’s did a good job.” He placed a hand lovingly on a handlebar. “Almost as good as I would have done myself.”
“I wanted to save you the trouble. Not that there was anything wrong with it,” I added quickly. “But Boots’ place was a long drive. I hit a little muddy slush.”
He winced at the thought of anything but pristine snow touching his beloved Snow Devil. “Did you learn anything?”
“Not much.” After Lucia’s warning not to trust Jingles, I hesitated to reveal more to him.
He scrunched his lips. “I’m surprised old Boots didn’t try to extract some kind of quid pro quo to get something from you in exchange for information. It’s about that crazy coot’s speed.”
I kept my gaze off the snowmobile that the crazy coot had been popping wheelies on. “He’s a character, all right.”
I left Jingles putting his vehicle to rest under plastic sheeting in his storage shed.
One person I could think of who would benefit from learning what I’d heard today was Tiffany. Familial relations in the castle could only improve when she found out her brother-in-law wasn’t responsible for her being a widow. The testimony from both Boots and Amory about the snow monster hunt confirmed Nick could not have been responsible for Chris falling into that crevasse. Learning that she wasn’t living under the same roof as her husband’s murderer was bound to ease her mental distress.
I entered the castle through the side entrance to the lower west wing where Tiffany and Christopher had their quarters.
It was late afternoon and the hallway lights hadn’t been turned on yet. One of the contradictory facts of life at the castle was that during winter afternoons, when there actually was a little natural light, the interior of the castle could seem darker than at night when all the chandeliers, lamps, decorated trees, and strings of lights chased out the winter gloom.
This part of the castle, the newest, had plaster walls, but Tiffany had had them all painted a gray shade called Stately Granite, which pretty much replicated the Frankenstein’s castle dreariness of the Old Keep, only with a glossier finish.
Down the hall, Christopher was having a cello lesson. He complained about practicing, but listening to him and his professor playing a Bach Contrapunctus, I was impressed. Maybe he should be playing at the skate night.
I knocked at Tiffany’s door but didn’t hear an answer, so I rapped my knuckles a little louder. A few moments passed before the knob turned and the door swung open.
Tiffany was standing in a floor-length black velvet dressing robe, fitted to her torso like a corseted Victorian lady’s dress. She wore four-inch mule slippers that brought her up to my height and she gripped a silver hairbrush in one hand like a weapon.
“I said come in,” she huffed.
“Sorry—I didn’t hear you.”
Her steady gaze held mine. “What did you want?”
“To talk . . . if you have time?”
“I’m brushing my hair, but sure, come in.”
She turned and crossed the cavernous bedroom to her dressing table, an ornate three-mirrored rosewood affair that was as wide as a classic Cadillac. The taste for modern decor—even modern vintage—hadn’t reached Santaland. The castle was still packed with all the too-heavy, too-tall furnishings that had gone out of favor everywhere else: towering wardrobes that could crush a reindeer like a bug, dressers that required four elves to budge a few feet, and cabinets and tables so ornately carved that it took the better part of an hour to dust all the nooks and crannies.
One change had been made fairly recently in this room: The doors of a tall wardrobe had been replaced with glass, which created an oversized trophy case dedicated to Tiffany’s figure-skating career. One of her costumes, dripping with blue and white sequins, hung in the center, surrounded by programs, skates, trophies, and clippings. Discreet yet focused lighting made everything visible—unmissable—in the dark room.
Of course I wandered over to look at the artifacts of Tiffany’s former life. No one else I knew created shrines to themselves, but I hadn’t met many people who’d been competitive on a world stage, as Tiffany had been.
Through the mirror, she saw me perusing the relics of her glorious past. “That’s the dress I wore when I won bronze at Junior World.”
“It’s gorgeous—and so elaborate. I can just see you shimmering across the ice.”
“I skated to a medley from Beauty and the Beast.”
Looking at her seated on her cushioned, low-back chair in front of her vanity, petite but regal, I understood for the first time how she must have felt she’d found a perfect place for herself here. A princess of the ice became an ice princess for real—the center of attention, next to her handsome, charismatic prince. All the ceremonial duties that chafed at me probably seemed just right for her. And then, this year, her happiness had turned to sorrow.
Maybe I could take a scrap of that sorrow away.
I sat on the corner of the bed and watched her through the mirror. I’d never considered brushing one’s hair to be an activity requiring much concentration, but Tiffany ran the fine-haired brush over her long dark locks as if it were an Olympian skill requiring as much dedication as perfecting a triple axel.
“I didn’t dismiss what you were telling me that day we were on the roof,” I said.
Her reflection showed no change of expression. “Why would you? You should know the man you married.”
“I do. That’s why I couldn’t account for the disconnect between the good man I know and the terrible things you were insinuating.”
Her hand dropped to her side and she twisted to face me. “Something happened on that mountain.”
“Yes. Chris fell into a crevasse.”
“He was an expert climber. A sportsman.”
A reckless daredevil. I didn’t say it, though—she was still holding that lethal hairbrush. “Anyone can have an accident, Tiffany. Chris did that day. I’ve talked to two men who were on the mountain, and they both confirmed that Nick was nowhere near the place where the tragedy occurred.”
“Who did you talk to?” she asked sharply, as if this person had betrayed her.
“Does it matter? They were there and we weren’t.”
“Exactly.”
I frowned. “Exactly what?”
“Those people can concoct any old story and according to you we’d just have to take their word for it.”
“Because they were eyewitnesses to what happened that day. That’s only logical.”
Her eyes narrowed to withering slits. “Thank you, Mrs. Spock. It’s also logical that you would coerce people to say anything to exonerate Nick.”
“I didn’t coerce anyone. And both people told me this independently of each other.”
“Who were they?” she asked again.
I thought of Amory holed up in his office with the windows closed on the mountain that had borne witness to his lapse of either courage or stamina, which had resulted in his not being there to help Chris. If Chris could have been helped.
I decided to leave him out of it.
“One of them was Boots Bayleaf,” I said.
She stared at me for a moment, then l
aughed. “That drunken geezer?”
“According to someone I spoke to, he’s the best elf to have on a snow monster hunt.”
“He didn’t do my husband much good, did he?”
Unfortunately, I was unable to contradict her.
“Who was this other so-called witness?” Tiffany asked. “Nick, maybe?”
“I haven’t said a word about this to Nick.”
“Why not?” She studied me before a sly smile came over her. “Is the bride a little suspicious?”
“No,” I bit out. “I was just trying to find out the truth, but you apparently don’t want to know it.”
“Three deaths.” She held up three fingers. “Chris, Giblet, and Old Charlie. And believe me, there will be another. And if you keep poking around, it might be yours.”
Was that a prediction or a threat? I got off the bed. “I don’t know why I bothered,” I said in disgust. “I felt sorry for you.”
“Save your pity for yourself. I married a man who was killed. You married a man I wouldn’t trust for all the gumdrops in Sugarplum Mountain.”
As if she put any value on gumdrops. I doubted one had ever passed her lips.
“If you’re determined to be wrong and miserable, I can’t stop you,” I said. “But at least let Christopher be free of your delusions. He’s a happy kid, except his worries about you. He loves his family, but he wants more freedom, a life outside the castle. Don’t you remember what that was like?”
She rose now, too, like a panther ready to pounce. “Don’t I? You have no idea what my life was like—oh, sure, it was hard, but have you ever skated across the ice, twirling, leaping, with the eyes of an entire arena on you?”
“No, of course not.”
“That’s real freedom, but it only comes after laying the groundwork. After dedicating your life to an avocation and putting in the effort. That’s the kind of freedom I want for my son, in whatever he chooses to do.” She gave me a dismissive head-to-toe scowl. “You wouldn’t know anything about it.”