Mrs. Claus and the Santaland Slayings

by Liz Ireland

  A somber group had gathered in the west parlor. Jingles came through with a pitcher of eggnog and set it down without a word, but with a mournful look at me. Lucia leaned against Quasar, who was staring into the fire. There was something odd about his appearance, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I chalked it up to his subdued demeanor. He knew better than to chew on decorations during this time of crisis, or fall into a snoring sleep. Even his fizzling nose had gone respectfully dormant.

  Martin sat upright in his favorite chair, uncharacteristically somber. I couldn’t help noticing he was dressed in what he’d probably intended to be skating attire—a plaid sweater, corduroy pants that hugged his legs below the calves, and a deep red scarf. He must have been on his way out the door to go to Peppermint Pond when he’d heard about Christopher. And Juniper was probably still waiting for him. I hadn’t felt at liberty to divulge what Nick had told me, just that Tiffany and I needed to return to the castle. I hoped she didn’t think that Martin was standing her up and that her unlucky romantic streak was continuing.

  The only sounds around us were the muted crackling of the fire behind its great screen and the clicking of Pamela’s knitting needles.

  I hadn’t seen my mother-in-law since this morning. The croquembouche caper seemed an eon ago. I settled next to her and looked around me. “Where’s Nick?”

  Click, click. “In his office, talking to that loathsome detective.”

  She had to mean Jake Frost. Nobody would have called Constable Crinkles loathsome. Or a detective.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Martin looked surprised I hadn’t heard. “I was about to take Christopher down to Peppermint Pond when he felt violently ill. He said he’d eaten a gumdrop or two.”

  “Where did the gumdrops come from?” I asked, but I already knew.

  “Nick’s office,” Lucia said. “Nick always kept some out because he knew Christopher liked them. Especially the licorice ones.”

  I shut my eyes for a moment, wanting to block out how bad that sounded for Nick. No wonder Jake Frost was interrogating him. I thought I’d convinced Tiffany that Nick had no motive to poison her son, but in the face of damning evidence it might be harder to persuade the law of his innocence. Yet that wasn’t what really mattered now.

  “You seem worried, April,” Lucia said.

  Martin sent her a withering look. “Of course she’s worried. Christopher’s fighting for his life. We’re all worried.”

  “But is April worried about Christopher, or Nick?”

  He rose up. “Isn’t it bad enough that we have detectives crawling around the place without you doing their speculating for them?”

  She blinked, surprised by the vehemence of the attack. “What did I say? That April is worried about Nick? Why shouldn’t she be?”

  “It was what you were implying,” Martin said.

  “I was just talking,” she argued.

  “You were being a snake in the grass,” he shot back.

  “ENOUGH!”

  The room fell silent again, and we all stared at Pamela in shock. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her hands were trembling around those knitting needles. Her unflappable matriarch demeanor had fallen away, leaving the worried grandmother raw and exposed. “Will you two stop bickering for once in your lives? At least until Christopher gets better. Now more than ever, we need to stand together as a family.”

  The siblings glared at each other, but Lucia retreated back to her place by the fireside.

  The knitting needles resumed their clicking. “April, why don’t you pour everyone some eggnog,” Pamela suggested, her voice returning to a determined calm.

  The thought of drinking eggnog now of all times nauseated me, but it would be something to do with myself for a minute. Any distraction was welcome. How long would we all be sitting here like this, I wondered. I was willing to sit forever if that’s how long it took Christopher to recover, but how long would it be until we knew if he was out of danger or not?

  On the tray, there were more glasses than people present in the room. Who else had Jingles expected to be here?

  “Has anyone sent word of what’s happened up to the lodge?” I asked.

  Pamela stilled, thinking. “Oh dear, I didn’t think to.”

  “Amory and Midge were just here, weren’t they?” Lucia asked.

  “Midge was here.” Pamela frowned. “I didn’t see Amory.”

  I’d forgotten about the reception. Good grief, a herd of people had paraded through the castle today. I found that news strangely comforting in terms of Nick—the list of possible suspects besides him had just grown by at least a hundred—though daunting for what it meant to the investigation into who had poisoned those gumdrops.

  As I was passing around glasses—no one seemed any more interested in the eggnog than I was—the door swung open and Nick came in. He crossed the room and lowered himself onto the sofa next to his mother.

  “Have you heard anything?” I asked.

  “The doctor said Christopher’s condition is the same,” he announced.

  Disappointment made the rounds on everyone’s expressions, followed quickly by a shadow of relief. The same meant no worse, at least.

  As I handed Nick a glass, he told me, “You’d better go to my office. Jake Frost wants to talk to you.”

  I studied Nick’s face for any indication of how he felt about this, but his expression betrayed no specific worry, or warning.

  As I entered the study, Jake Frost stood with his hands in his pockets in front of the large map on the wall. I cleared my throat and he pivoted.

  “They told me you were watching the skating at the pond.” He said it almost as if I were somehow callous to be away while Nick’s nephew was being poisoned.

  “I had a hand in planning the event,” I said. “I was expected to be there.”

  “And you missed the luncheon here at the castle.”

  “I couldn’t be two places at once.” I crossed my arms, already impatient with circling around the heart of the matter. “I’m not sure what my being at the pond has to do with what happened to Christopher.” I nodded to the desk, where a now-empty candy dish sat. The gumdrops were gone. Seized as evidence, I expected. “Is it true he was poisoned?”

  “We are still checking the gumdrops—Dr. Honeytree will be able to tell us—but according to the boy himself, it was the gumdrops that made him sick. Specifically the gumdrops that always sat on your husband’s desk.”

  “Lots of people knew Nick kept them there.”

  “Yes, I was told he kept them because Christopher liked them.”

  “Nick did not poison Christopher. The suggestion that he would do such a thing makes me ill. Your trying to connect my husband to Giblet’s and Old Charlie’s deaths seemed absurd to me, but somewhat understandable, given the circumstances. Still wrong, mind you. But Nick loves Christopher. He wouldn’t harm a hair on his head.” I took a deep breath. Having told Tiffany, I might as well explain it to the law. “We can’t have children. I can’t,” I specified. “Christopher is the closest Nick will ever come to having children, unless Martin and Lucia also have children someday.”

  Jake Frost took all this in. His solemn silence stood in for his condolences to me. I preferred that, to be honest.

  “It’s not just for an heir that your husband might want to do away with his nephew,” he said.

  Those words made my heart sink. Of course I’d known he suspected Nick, but he’d obviously thought this through very hard.

  “Why then?” I asked.

  “So he could be Santa himself, for life.”

  That idea had never occurred to me. Maybe because I knew Nick didn’t relish his position as, say, Chris had. Santa was never a title he craved, and as far as I knew, he’d never resented his older brother having it in the way that, say, Amory had.

  I shook my head. “If you knew Nick, you wouldn’t say that. He’s not ambitious.”

  “You’re right,” Jake said. “I d
on’t know your husband. I’m just a detective, looking at the evidence from two murders and one attempted murder. And all that evidence points heavily to your husband.”

  “Just circumstantially.”

  “Circumstantial evidence is evidence,” Jake said. “What’s more, this homicidal cluster paints a picture of ambition—the ambition of one man who is busily getting rid of any impediment.”

  I gaped at him. “Nick?”

  “Yes, Nick. First, there was his brother’s death.”

  “Nick didn’t cause that,” I pointed out.

  “No—we’re still unsure about the circumstances surrounding Chris Claus’s death. And why are we unsure?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Because at the time, your husband issued an edict to all the men on Mount Myrrh not to talk about what happened that day. If more had been known about the suspicious circumstances, maybe there could have been a more thorough investigation.

  “Now I have two sure murders and one attempted homicide on my hands. And we know that Giblet Hollyberry was pointing the finger at Nick, implicating him in Chris’s death.”

  “Giblet didn’t know what he was talking about.”

  “Yet the very next day someone went out of his way to silence him. And just hours later an old snowman, who many believe had witnessed something unusual at Giblet’s cottage, was melted into a puddle of ice.”

  “I know. I saw it.”

  “And that’s when we start to have a very real connection to your husband.”

  “The button,” I said. “A button that could be found on any number of garments in this castle, or even on hand-me-downs that the Clauses have given away over the years.”

  “Could have, but we know the same buttons were used on Nick Claus’s clothes. And now, having gotten rid of his brother, the man who knew he killed his brother, and the witness to the second murder, he has also tried to do away with the boy who would take his position away from him.”

  “Ten years from now,” I said, incredulous. “Why on earth would Nick go on a homicidal spree now when he could sit back for the next decade and see what happens?”

  “See if something else befell his nephew, you mean?”

  “No—of course not. I just mean he gets to be Santa for ten years and then he can retire. He has the best of both worlds. I have an inn in Oregon. We’re going to return there and run it and let Christopher take the reins. Nick can’t wait to move to Cloudberry Bay.”

  “He never once mentioned that to me.”

  I was brought up short. “He didn’t?”

  The detective shook his head. The grand bargain I’d made with my husband obviously was more prominent in my mind than Nick’s. I searched for the most likely reason. “Well, it’s December.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s the busiest time of year for the Clauses. Oregon’s probably the farthest thing from Nick’s mind right now. He’s got a world of children to deliver packages to.”

  Jake nodded, but I could see something in his expression. You poor deluded fool, that look said. He hadn’t pitied me when I told him about my inability to have children, but it was clear he thought I was a sad creature now.

  “Are you going to arrest Nick?”

  “As you say, everything at the moment is circumstantial. And we’re still testing the gumdrops found in this room. It could be tomorrow before we discover if they were really what poisoned Christopher.”

  If Christopher said they were, I held out little hope that it could be otherwise.

  “One question,” Jake said, turning and picking something off the floor. “Can you tell me where this might have come from?”

  The jagged object in his hand looked like a branch at first until I realized it was an antler. And then I remembered why Quasar had appeared so odd to me in the parlor. He’d lost his lopsided look. He’d shed his remaining antler.

  “Where did you find it?” I asked.

  “Right here,” he said, pointing to the carpet. “On the floor by the desk where the bowl of gumdrops sat.” He scrutinized my face closely. “I repeat, do you know where this could have come from?”

  I shrugged. “Some reindeer, I guess.”

  Chapter 20

  “How should I know how his antler got there?” Lucia said when I sought her out in her room. “Ask Quasar.”

  An old NSYNC poster was pinned to the wall, which never failed to make me do a double take. Hard to imagine Lucia at any age mooning over Justin Timberlake in Tiger Beat, but apparently that was a thing that happened. The poster still held pride of place next to a “Best Fishing Lakes of Alaska” pullout from Field & Stream. Teen dreams die hard.

  I stayed close to the door. Quasar was fairly clean for a reindeer, but there was still a strong musky whang in the air.

  “I-I can tell you how it got there,” Quasar said, not waiting for me to ask. “I was looking for Lucia this afternoon. I thought she might be in the study napping.”

  “And your antler just happened to fall off there?”

  “I guess,” he said. “I’m glad it’s gone. It kept bumping into things.”

  “I can’t believe that stupid detective can’t find anything better to ask questions about than Quasar’s antler,” Lucia said.

  “It was right in the room, next to the gumdrops,” I explained. Why I felt compelled to jump to Jake Frost’s defense I had no idea.

  “All right, so it was there—it doesn’t mean Quasar was guilty of spiking the gumdrops with poison. I’m not even sure he could. He’s not the most dexterous creature, if you haven’t noticed. The smarter thing to ask would be if Quasar saw anybody in there.”

  We both turned to him.

  “I-I didn’t see anybody. But I was looking for you, Lucia,” he reiterated. “I don’t know why you wanted to exercise in the middle of the night?”

  “I wondered that myself,” I said.

  She sighed and answered as though I were dragging it out of her. “All right, I’ll tell you. Quasar snores.”

  I gaped at her. “Quasar snores?”

  She nodded and then turned to him apologetically. “I’m sorry, friend, but it’s true. Some nights you saw away so hard I can’t get a wink of sleep.”

  It was surprising that the two of them sleeping in the same room didn’t set off tsunamis.

  I was afraid I was going to laugh, which would antagonize her more than she already was. So I waited for Quasar to point out the obvious, but that didn’t seem to occur to him. Instead, he was mortified. “I’m sorry! I-I should probably be put out in the barn, I guess. I never knew I was that bad.”

  “So there’s your answer,” Lucia said impatiently. “Quasar dropped his antler in the study, and I went walking because I couldn’t sleep. Nothing particularly noteworthy or suspicious in any of that, is there?”

  “No.” Except that I doubted she was telling the truth. I remembered what Quasar had told me about how her behavior had changed recently. How she’d become secretive . . . how she even smelled different. She was hiding something. “There’s the matter of a package that came here for you. Live animals. A SPEX agent told me about it.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with Christopher,” Lucia declared, as if her denial should be the last word. But her agitation at the mere mention of the package convinced me I was on the right track.

  “So you did receive a package like that.”

  Fear showed in her eyes. “It’s none of your business.”

  “It is if it had anything to do with Giblet’s death.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Giblet! That’s crazy. Lynxie wasn’t—”

  Her mouth clamped shut. Both Quasar and I were riveted now. “Lynxie?” I asked. “Who—or what—is Lynxie?”

  Her face reddened. She crossed her arms and huffed out a breath. “What do you think? He’s just a pet. He had nothing to do with Giblet’s death.”

  “A pet lynx?” I asked.

  “A cat-lynx cross,” she corrected. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. I can’
t even get him to kill the ice rats. I’ve been trying to train him for over a week.” She shook her head dolefully. “It’s just not working.”

  Quasar and I looked at each other. “Where is this . . . Lynxie?” I asked.

  She kicked her toe, angry that her secret was out. “In the old stables.”

  “Why are you keeping him out there?”

  “You heard Mother—she said she didn’t want any more animals in the house. But I already had Lynxie. I ordered him special from a place that responsibly breeds lynx crosses. I thought it would be best to have a cat that’s used to the cold. Poor guy. For a night or two I tried keeping him in the castle on the QT, but he was a little destructive . . . to everything but rodents.”

  “Let me guess. You had him in the doll cellar.”

  Her eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “He shredded a few dolls.”

  “Lethal to inanimate objects, but terrified of rats.” She shook her head again. “He’s in the old stables until I can civilize him a little, and train him up. Then Mother will appreciate him.”

  I doubted that.

  “Th-that’s why I smelled danger,” Quasar said. “Do lynx kill reindeer?”

  “No! That is . . .” Lucia sent me an uncomfortable sidewise look, then repeated, “No! Of course not. He’s very sweet.” She added in a lower voice, “When he’s in a good mood.”

  “Is that what we heard outside last night?”

  She nodded. “He lets out yowls sometimes, just like a housecat. I really think Mother will like him once she gets to know him. I even thought about asking if we could bring him into Christopher’s room. The purring of cats is supposed to be very beneficial in healing.”

  “I might hold off on that,” I said. “You said you were home this afternoon during the big luncheon today. Did you see any of the guests around Nick’s study?”

  “No, but I’m not sure I would have paid much heed to someone loitering there. Nick’s study is a natural place for visitors to be curious about, and if I had seen someone near the door I would’ve assumed that Nick would be in there welcoming them.”