Read Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery) Online

Authors: Heather Webber

Tags: #mystery, #murder mystery, #humor, #christmas, #cozy mystery, #cozy, #humorous mystery, #heather webber, #nina quinn

Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery) (5 page)

BOOK: Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery)
13.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

I smiled. More like he wanted to reminisce
about the good ol’ days with some young fellas who’d be willing to
swap war stories. He headed off to stand in line.

I caught Brickhouse looking at Mr. Cabrera
again.

“I don’t miss him!” she insisted.

“If you say so.”

She clucked and strode off.

I looked around for Jean-Claude, but he’d
wandered off as well—probably to buy his coveted stockings.

Kit and Kevin were nowhere to be seen.

Benny pushed through the crowd and headed
straight for me, walking pretty fast considering the limp. It was
the only outward indication of his accident. “Have you seen Mrs.
Claus? Fairlane?” he corrected.

“Last I saw of her, Jenny had fired her and
she was going to find you to get her job back. She didn’t find you,
I take it?”

He heaved a world-weary sigh. “No. Why did
Jenny fire her?”

“I believe Fairlane might have groped Santa
one too many times.”

His brown eyes widened then he asked, “When
was this?”

“About an hour and a half ago. But Lele was
supposed to be filling in as Mrs. Claus. She should be around here
somewhere.”

“Well, she’s not,” he said. “And now I don’t
have a Mrs. Claus.” He sized me up.

“Don’t even think about it.”

He frowned and limped off.

Ten minutes later, he and Jenny made a
welcome announcement and started counting down the Christmas tree
lighting.

I grabbed a good spot by the low granite wall
that circled wide around the spruce. The wall had been put in place
to keep people from getting too close—and hopefully discourage kids
from trying to climb the tree. A giant custom-made Christmas tree
skirt blanketed the space beneath the tree, and large empty boxes
that had been fancily-wrapped like presents dotted the skirt.

Across from me, Nancy Davidson snapped
pictures of the crowd. Newspaper photographers also took plenty of
shots. Flashbulbs flickered all around me. The excitement in the
room was palpable.

Someone bumped into me, and I turned and
found Flash scowling. “Dang whippersnappers didn’t even know who
Bobo Newsom was.”

I was afraid to admit that I didn’t
either.

“Ten, nine, eight,” Jenny called out.

“I’m sorry.” I patted his hand and the
baseball he held loosely popped out and rolled toward the tree.
Flash started after it.

I held him back. “You can’t go in there.”

“Six, five, four,” Benny said.

“I dare you to stop me, young lady. That
there’s my ball, and I mean to get it back.”

“Two, one!” Benny made a grand show of
flipping a giant switch.

Nothing happened.

The Christmas tree stayed dark.

The crowd booed.

I glanced over at Jenny and Benny, who both
wore looks of sheer panic. Several elves hustled over to the power
box and started tinkering.

Flash tried to lift his leg over the
wall.

I grabbed onto him. I couldn’t have him
crawling under the tree. With his arthritis, it might take hours.
“Wait here. I’ll get it.”

He patted my cheek. “You’re a good girl, Nina
Quinn.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled, sliding over the
granite ledge.

The crowd’s boos grew louder as I carefully
crawled across the tree skirt. I hoped that if anyone saw me,
they’d think I was trying to fix the lights.

I carefully avoided the large boxes. As I
neared the ball, which had settled against the trunk of the tree, I
scooted around one last present and stopped short when I saw a shoe
laying next to the box. It was a sensible red pump.

Odd.

Then I noticed a clump of gray curls poking
out from under the box as well, and I started to get a bad feeling.
A very bad feeling.

I gulped and oh-so-casually lifted the
box.

Oh no. Oh. No. Ohnoohnoohnoohnoohno!

“Nina!” Jenny yelled in a harsh whisper as
she crawled toward me. “What are you doing?”

“We have a problem,” I said, leaning back
into a crouch.

“No kidding. Did you figure out what’s wrong
with the lights?”

“It’s a bigger problem.”

Impatiently, she snapped, “What could
possibly be a bigger problem right now?”

My gaze met hers as she reached my side. “I
found Mrs. Claus.”

“Oh, thank God. Now Benny can stop freaking
out. Where?” she looked around the room.

I pointed under the box.

“Why would she be in there? I can just kick
myself for hiring those McCorkle sisters. Nothing but trouble. Is
she sleeping?”

“Kind of,” I said. “She’s dead.”

 

 

Chapter Four

 

“Dead?” Jenny gasped.

Suddenly, the tree lit up over our heads and
the crowd cheered, a raucous roar. They were oblivious to the
trouble brewing under the tree, which was probably a good
thing.

Jenny had gone pale, and the colored lights
on her face made her look polka-dotted. “Are you sure she’s dead?
Maybe she’s just sick or something?”

“Not one hundred percent, but I’ve seen a few
dead bodies and she looks pretty dead. The bulging eyes, the puffed
out lips...”

“Oh dear God, stop. I think I’m going to be
sick.”

I clamped my lips together and looked around
at the crowd. They’d launched into “Jingle Bells” and were swaying
together like they were at a Bon Jovi concert. I expected lighters
to be held up any second now.

“We need to call the police,” I said. Wait.
The police were here. “We need to find Kevin.”

She clamped down on my arm. “Now?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, drawing the word out
into four syllables. “They need to know what’s happened.”

Jenny glanced around. “Can’t we wait until
later? Until after we close?”

I stared at her.

“What?” she said. “She’s already dead! What’s
a few more hours?”

I forgave her thinking because she’d been
under a lot of stress lately, but there was no way I was leaving
Fairlane under that box all day.

“We have to,” I said firmly, in my best
stepmother tone.

“Oh my.” She began to rock.

I felt movement to my left and saw Flash
belly-crawling over to us, slow as an inchworm. “Nina, where’s my
ball?”

I reached over, grabbed the ball, and handed
it to him as he wriggled up to us.

“Whatcha got there?” he asked, nodding to the
box.

I was still holding the corner of it off the
ground.

“A dead Mrs. Claus,” I said softly, still not
quite believing what I was seeing.

Jenny wailed.

Flash looked at me, gauged my sincerity, then
peeked under the box. He came up shouting, “Call 9-1-1! We need an
ambulance!”

He could shout amazingly loud for an old
guy.

“Jingle Bells” immediately silenced, and
Flash flipped the giant present over, revealing the body
beneath.

Gasps went through the crowd in an echoing
wave. Mothers covered their children’s eyes. Gawkers moved in for a
closer look.

Flash leaned over Fairlane to check for a
pulse but drew his hand back. A pair of elf tights was wrapped
around her throat, looking like a red- and green-striped scarf.

My stomach flipped, then flopped. For as many
dead bodies as I’d seen, it never got easier. I didn’t know how
Kevin handled his job.


Ohhhh
,” Jenny moaned.

Flash reached for a wrist instead. He looked
back at me, shaking his head. “She’s a goner.”

No kidding.

Benny jumped the knee-high wall around the
tree and gimped toward us. As he neared, he stopped short, his arms
wind-milling to regain his balance. His gaze immediately went to
Jenny, who had squeezed her eyes shut.

“What happened?” he asked, looking between
all of us, his horrified gaze landing on Mrs. Claus.

“She’s a goner,” Flash said again. “Dead as a
doornail.”

Jenny whimpered.

“I didn’t know lips could turn so blue,”
Flash said, leaning in for a closer look.

Flashbulbs popped left and right. Reporters
inched in, climbing over the wall like ants headed for a
picnic.

I pulled Flash back. “Why don’t you go hold
off the press? Keep them as far away as you can.”

His rheumy eyes lit. “Done!”

As if in slow motion, he set his prized
baseball next to me, moaned as he stood up, and trundled off to the
reporters. He held his arms out wide and said, “Nothing to see
here, folks! Well, there is a dead body, but this is a time to
honor the dead and keep back.”

I groaned as a fresh wave of gasps went
through the crowd. I heard rapid jingling and looked up to find
Kevin running toward us. It was a sight, let me tell you, what with
the cotton puff on his elf hat bobbing up and down with each
step.

Benny had sat next to Jenny and gathered her
in his arms. She was still moaning.

Kevin spoke into his cell phone, and when he
finished the call, he looked at me and said, “Just another ordinary
day on the job for you.”

I shrugged. “It’s really not my fault I keep
finding dead bodies.”

Benny’s eyes widened. “How many have you
found?”

“A couple,” I murmured. Truth was, I might be
just as cursed at Mr. Cabrera.

Oh my gosh—Mr. Cabrera.

Maybe his curse extended to
potential
girlfriends, as well. The poor guy.

I searched the crowd for my neighbor and
found him not too far away, his dark eyes wide. And not two feet
behind him stood Brickhouse, looking rather smug. As if saying, “I
told you so.” She wasn’t a fool, that Brickhouse.

Kevin crouched and checked the body for a
pulse as well. Then he looked at us, and said, “You need to clear
this area.” He muttered something about tainted evidence and stood
up. Or tried to. He’d stepped on Flash’s baseball, and his feet
went flying out beneath him. He landed flat on his ass in a
cacophony of angry jingles.

The crowd
oooh
ed.

“Don’t say a word,” he said to me from his
prone position.

I pressed my lips together—tight— and offered
him a hand up.

I couldn’t help my inner glee, however, when
I spotted Kit, still filming. He’d caught the fall on video. I
foresaw a popcorn and movie night in my future.

Flash basked in the press limelight,
answering every question thrown at him, as I followed Benny and
Jenny away from the scene.

Benny had his arm around his wife, supporting
her as she wobbled. I heard Jenny say to him, “There’s no such
thing as bad publicity, right?”

 

***

 

Brickhouse said, “And he keeps telling me
he’s not cursed.” She clucked loudly enough that it echoed in the
almost-empty atrium.

The police had funneled all the customers
out, but wanted me to stay behind to answer a few questions.

Brickhouse, being her bossy self, had claimed
she was with me, and stayed put. She liked to be in the know.

“He might be a little cursed,” I said.

She gave me a dubious look. “And you might be
a little nosy.”

Point taken.

“To think that Benjamin Christmas asked me to
be Mrs. Claus.” She clucked again.

“He did?” I asked in amazement. I always
thought Mrs. Krauss’s face looked a lot like Mrs. Claus, but her
temperament was a far cry from the benevolent character. Then
again, so was Fairlane’s.

“Right after I arrived here. You do not have
to sound so amazed. I’d be a good Mrs. Claus.”

“Yet you obviously turned down the job.”

“I taught school for thirty-five years. I’ve
had enough of whiny little kids.”

“You taught high school.”

“Your point being?”

I smiled.

She shivered. “It could have been me under
that box. And don’t you dare crack any jokes, Nina Ceceri.”

Way back when, Brickhouse had been my tenth
grade English teacher. We hadn’t gotten along then, but these days
we tolerated each other fairly well. She still liked to call me by
my maiden name, though, as if chastising me in front of the whole
class.

Which she had done a lot.

“He never liked me, that Benjamin Christmas.”
Brickhouse had also been Jenny and Benny’s teacher. “Once I caught
him making faces behind my back.”

“Everyone made faces behind your back.”

She clucked and gave me the evil eye
again.

Suddenly, a scream rent the air. “Lele!”

Brickhouse and I gaped at each other as
Fairlane barreled through the front doors. Two patrol officers
caught her by the arms and held her back.

My gaze shifted from her to the box, back and
forth.

Oh. My. It hadn’t been Fairlane under
there?

“Lele!” Fairlane shouted, her voice
cracking.

Kevin, who’d unfortunately changed his
clothes, walked over to the officers, whispered something to them,
and took Fairlane’s arm. She crumpled against him, putting one hand
around his waist, the other on his chest, and it looked to me like
her fingers were searching for nipples.

I rolled my eyes. Even in grief, she couldn’t
help herself.

“Hussy,” Brickhouse mumbled.

I couldn’t argue with that, though I didn’t
agree aloud because I understood the pain Fairlane must be
experiencing. I could cut her some slack. For now.

“So, it was
Fairlee
under the box?” I
said. Strangled. I was even more confused now. Because for as much
as Fairlane wasn’t likeable, Lele was. She was quiet and sweet. Who
would want to kill her?

“You were never one to see the obvious,” she
said.

I made a face. It wasn’t behind her back.

She clucked again.

“What does this mean for Mr. Cabrera’s
curse?” I asked Brickhouse.


Ach
,” she said dismissively. “It
doesn’t change anything. Not a whit. The two sisters were
practically the same person. Looks-wise, at least. What goes for
one, goes for the other.”

I thought she was in a bit of denial, but
didn’t say so.

BOOK: Trouble Under the Tree (A Nina Quinn Mystery)
13.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

One in a Million by Abby Gaines
The Last Secret by Mary Mcgarry Morris
A Reluctant Empress by Nora Weaving
Fear of the Dark by Gar Anthony Haywood
The Gates of Zion by Bodie Thoene, Brock Thoene
Pivot Point by Kasie West
Kansas Courtship by Victoria Bylin