Silent Knife (A Celebration Bay Mystery) (3 page)

“The hell you will,” Santa growled. He turned on Grace. “You can’t fire me. I turned down other work for this job.”

“Make him an elf,” Ted suggested.

“I’ll do no such thing. I paid a fortune for that suit. Is the town going to reimburse me?”

“Not until her plastic hula girls grow white beards,” Ted said sotto voce in Liv’s ear.

“I heard that.” Grace glared at Ted.

Just as Ted had intended, Liv thought.

“Lose the Santa, Grace,” Ted said.

“Tomorrow morning. I’ll just drop by to see how you’re doing.” Liv didn’t wait for an answer but turned on her heel. Ted rushed to open the door for her, as if he were an office lackey instead of her right-hand man. She stepped over the threshold.

Over the mechanical greeting, Liv heard the hired Santa say, “You’re crazy if you think you can get rid of me.” The door shut on the rest of the sentence.

Ted and Liv made it outside before he burst out laughing. “Have you ever? They should x-out Trim a Tree and call it Nightmare Before Christmas.”

“She is the absolute worst,” Liv said. “Please tell me she’s going to get rid of that awful Santa without us having to call in the sheriff. If we can even do that.”

Ted grinned. “I need dessert. Let’s stop by Dolly’s.”

“We just finished lunch. Where do you put it? And how do you stay so thin?”

“Am I hearing an unspoken ‘and at your age’?”

“I don’t know how old you are.”

“And a gentleman never tells. Shall we repair to The Apple of My Eye?” He grinned at her. Even in the heavy down jacket he wore, he was still lean and lanky. The cold brought out the color in his normally pale face.
Hmm.
Thick white hair, twinkling blue eyes . . . a hundred more pounds and a beard he’d make a great Santa—a couple of decades younger and she’d be tempted to ask him out.

“Okay. I could use another latte from the Buttercup. Maybe Dolly has something low cal and low fat.”

“Dolly? Never. But I have it on good authority that she made her first batch of Christmas stollen this morning. I bet it goes great with coffee.”

“I’m sure, but I’m not a real fan of candied fruitcake.”

“But you haven’t tasted Dolly’s stollen.”

As they passed the pedestrian walkway that ran between the Bookworm and Bay-Berry Candles, Ted nudged her and pointed to the far end where Santa leaned against the wall, smoking a cigarette and talking into his cell phone. Liv couldn’t hear what he was saying but from his expression, she knew that Santa wasn’t happy about losing his throne.

“Maybe he’s looking for a new job,” Liv said hopefully. As she watched, he pulled a little black book from his Santa pants pocket and opened it while he talked.

“Or looking for a date,” Ted added.

Santa ended the call, returned the book to his pocket, dropped the cigarette butt to the ground, and disappeared around the corner of the candle store.

“Ugh,” Liv said as they crossed the walkway. She stopped to look in the window of the Bookworm, where copies of
’Twas the Night Before Christmas
,
A Christmas Carol
, and
The Polar Express
were surrounded by miniature figures and houses portraying a Victorian village.

Behind the display, Quincy Hinks, the owner of the bookstore, waved his feather duster in greeting and went back to cleaning. The atmosphere was so lovely and quaint that it made Liv even angrier at Grace Thornsby and her disregard for custom.

The Apple of My Eye Bakery was toasty, and the air swirled with good smells. The pink tablecloths that usually topped the few inside tables had been replaced with green ones for the season. The pink cupcake wall clock was topped by a pair of felt reindeer antlers sporting a red felt Santa hat, the white pom-pom jauntily covering one o’clock.

Dolly Hunnicutt, plump and friendly, looked festive in a red checked apron with a row of candy canes embroidered across the top. She smiled at them from behind a display case of all things yummy and befitting the season. Stacks of red and green cookies, cinnamon rolls with white frosty icing, cupcakes, and turnovers. Several loaves of Dolly’s Christmas stollen, dusted with powdered sugar and resembling a winter landscape, sat on top of the counter. Several more trays were waiting on a rolling baker’s rack.

“Knew you’d be in this afternoon.” Dolly slid two thick slices of stollen dotted with raisins and candied fruit into a bag and handed them to Ted.

She added several peppermint pinwheels and almond spritzes to another bag. “Did Hank Ousterhout talk to you this morning?”

“He did,” Liv said. “We just came from the Trim a Tree shop.”

“I don’t guess Grace Thornsby got huffy and decided to close that eyesore.”

“No,” said Liv. “But we did tell her she must comply with the town’s ordinances.”

“That’s something, I guess. I know it’s not very charitable of me to feel this way, but I just don’t think half-naked hula girls are in keeping with the spirit of a Celebration Bay Christmas. And it’s driving Fred crazy.” Dolly smiled. “He’s so concerned about the children growing old too soon.”

Liv knew Dolly and Fred had one son who lived in New York City whom she’d never seen. He was a big corporate executive, and somehow Liv couldn’t imagine that he had much in common with his parents, both good-natured, always ready to volunteer, and content with each other and with their way of life. To Liv, they were the perfect couple.

“I couldn’t agree with you more.” Liv took the bag of cookies. “Hopefully, we can find a permanent business, one without hula girls, to take over the space when TAT leaves.”

“I just wish the Newlands could have hung on a little longer. Since you’ve been here, business has already started to climb.”

“Thank you, Dolly. But the town just needed some organization and efficiency.”

They said good-bye and stopped next door at the Buttercup Coffee Exchange.

“Saw you pass by,” BeBe Ford told them. BeBe was about Liv’s age, with lush curves and a dry wit, and was still considered a newcomer even after living in Celebration Bay for twelve years. If Liv had a best friend in town, it was BeBe.

“Figured you wouldn’t stop by Dolly’s for pastry without stopping here, too.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Ted said, reaching for the cardboard tray with their tea and coffee.

“Did you get rid of the Rat from TAT yet?”

“Not completely,” Liv said, trying not to laugh. “But we told her she had to deep-six the Santa.”

“That’s a start,” BeBe said. “Why on earth would a woman like that want to run a Christmas store?”

“That’s the question of the day.” And Liv didn’t have a clue.

*

“I’m not liking this situation at all,” Liv said as she and Ted walked back to the office. “You don’t think anything bad will happen, do you?” She fervently hoped that Christmas wouldn’t be a repeat of the recent Harvest by the Bay Festival that had plunged the whole town into suspicion, intrigue, and finally, murder. Fortunately, not many people were aware of the events of the Turkey Trot.

“Nothing would surprise me,” Ted said.

“That’s pretty jaded coming from you.”

“A side of me that only you see.”

“And how did you learn to be so jaded?” she asked. “In the big city, like me?”

“In the school of life.” He took her elbow as they crossed the street.

Liv knew when to quit. She’d learned what she needed to know to stay on top of the current situation, and she had to be content with that. No matter how subtly she tried, in the months she’d worked with Ted, she’d learned everything she needed to know about the town and its inhabitants, but she’d never learned much about him.

In Liv’s former life as event planner to the movers and shakers of New York City, she’d gotten to know way too much about her clients and coworkers. There was something nice about working with someone whose life wasn’t an open book. She had to admit, however, she’d like to get just a little peek.

They spent the rest of the afternoon finalizing plans for the parade, checking with Fred about the parking situation, and making sure the trolleys they’d hired for transporting visitors to and from perimeter parking lots were clean and properly decorated.

Ted called each store owner, including Grace Thornsby, with a reminder of the Celebration of Lights the following evening. The last week had been a flurry of activity as businesses trimmed their windows in white lights that would be turned on simultaneously with the tree lighting. Even the few empty storefronts had been decorated and would have someone to throw the lights on cue.

Liv hung up from talking to the head of the new security firm she’d hired for crowd control. “I’m getting excited,” she called out to Ted, who was whistling along with Mannheim Steamroller on the radio.

“Yeah, wear something red and green tomorrow and prove it.”

“I will.” Now that the situation with the TAT Santa had been dealt with, Liv was ready to enjoy a little Christmas cheer herself.

She left the office at four forty-five, which would give her just enough time to pick up Whiskey at the Woofery. Sharise was just closing when Liv arrived.

“Sorry, am I late?”

“Not at all. Just getting ready to run out when the clock strikes. A million things to do before tomorrow.”

Liv wrote out a check for the bath and brush-out.

Sharise took the check and slipped it into a drawer. “He looks good as new. I’ll just go get him.”

When she returned a few minutes later, a white and fluffy Westie terrier was prancing alongside her, a bright red bow tie around his neck.

“Don’t you look debonair,” Liv said as much to Sharise as to Whiskey, who immediately began dancing at her feet. The bow tie would last two seconds after they left, Liv thought. Whiskey had hated every sweater, grooming accessory, or Halloween costume she’d attempted to put on him.

“He’s just cute as a button,” Sharise said. “And so handsome—yes, you are.” She leaned over and adjusted the tie, which was already sitting askew in his fur.

“He is. Let’s just hope he stays this way for a few days,” Liv agreed and said good night.

Whiskey trotted happily next to her. Even though it was cold, he didn’t seem to mind, and he absolutely stopped to preen whenever they passed someone on their way home.

“You are such a show-off,” she told him.

As soon as she got home, she took off his bow tie and went into the kitchen to feed her dog and herself; then they both curled up on the couch with a doggie treat, a bowl of popcorn, and the television remote. One of the channels had started its twenty-five-days-of-Christmas movies, and Liv watched as she ate popcorn and wrote last-minute notes to herself on a yellow legal pad. She took herself to bed, feeling as excited as a kid waiting for Santa.

*

The sun was barely up when Liv rolled out of bed the next morning. She’d slept like a log in spite of it being her first Christmas in Celebration Bay. She planned to spend the day making final checks of everything she and Ted had checked the day before. Timing was everything in coordinating successful simultaneous events, and the citizens of Celebration Bay had packed a lot of stuff into a very few minutes.

She fed Whiskey and let him out for a run in the Zimmerman sisters’ backyard. It had snowed again during the night, and she watched from the door as he disappeared into a drift of snow and reappeared a second later shaking off fresh snow and chasing his tail.

So much for his brush-out. But it didn’t matter. She had one happy dog. She was pretty happy herself. “Five minutes,” she said and waited until that intrepid Westie plowed a path through the snow, no doubt heading for the Zimmermans’ back door, where he hoped to get a treat.

Liv quickly dressed in sweater, jacket, scarf, hat, and gloves, and after adding a pair of moccasins to her canvas carryall, she sat down to pull on her snow boots. She heard a bark at the door and hopped on one foot to open it. Whiskey shot in, shook a few times, took one look at her boots, and dashed into the bedroom.

He returned two seconds later, his red bow tie held delicately between his teeth.

“Well, this is a first,” Liv told him. She really shouldn’t take him to work with her. Today was bound to be hectic. But he looked so pleased with himself that she didn’t have the heart to leave him at home.

He dropped the bow tie at her feet and she caved. “All right, but you have to keep a low profile today. I’m going to be very busy.” She clipped the bow tie around his neck and Velcro’ed the plaid doggie sweater she’d bought him for cold weather. He immediately tried to bite it off.

“I bet if Sharise had put it on you, you’d wear it,” Liv said and took it off again. She added it to her carryall in case the temperature dropped even more.

Liv liked Christmas with its music and smells and food and lights and decorations. But it was her busiest time of the year, and she spent the season juggling events and seeing they all ran smoothly, so that by the time she was ready to sit back and enjoy the festivities, they were over.

This year she planned to have some fun. After tonight’s big celebration, the activities would be run individually, like the reindeer corral at Dexter’s Nursery, the
Messiah
sing-along at the Presbyterian church, the inn’s Dickens Dinner, the Tour of Homes, and Breakfast with Santa, which was run by the Jaycees. And of course, shopping and dining from dawn until midnight.

Once the lights were lit and Santa was ensconced on his throne in the chalet on the green, Liv’s job would pretty much be done.

The thought of Santa reminded her to check in at the Trim a Tree shop and make sure there was no Santa in residence.

She grabbed a banana, a nod to healthy eating since stopping by Dolly’s for breakfast had become a way of life and her daily run had been seriously curtailed by several feet of snow. She gathered up her legal pad and laptop, clipped on Whiskey’s leash, and headed to town.

It took Liv extra time to get to work since everybody was out shoveling or blowing snow, and they all stopped to say hello or call out holiday greetings. Dolly’s, which was usually quiet this early in the morning, was crammed with people, and there was a line at the Buttercup. Everyone was talking and excited about the evening’s events, discussing the best way to make sure all their lights came on at once, reminding each other not to use chasing or blinking lights.