Chapter Two
I was giving myself a final once-over in the mirror at my dressing table the next morning when someone pounded on the thick arched door to our bedroom. I barely said “come in” before Butterbean the footman tumbled through the doorway, followed by the castle steward, Jingles, bearing a coffee tray. Both were dressed in the new castle livery—red-and-green tunics and caps. Jingles, who was half elf, half human, towered several inches over his elf minion, but Butterbean’s rubber ball exuberance could overpower anyone.
If Butterbean’s red face was anything to go by, something big had happened.
“There’s been a—”
“I’ll tell it,” Jingles insisted. But he didn’t get the chance.
“Murder!” Butterbean punctuated the exclamation with an emphatic hop.
Jingles banged the coffee tray down on the cleared space of my dressing table, somehow managing not to spill a drop despite his annoyance at being beaten to the punch, gossip-wise. “No one knows it’s murder yet.”
No amount of warning not to jump to conclusions would sink through Butterbean’s elf cap. “Killed by candy corn!”
“What?” Nick, my husband, strode out from his dressing room.
In his everyday red wool suit with white trim, he appeared impressively Santalike. I’d met Nick several years ago while he was on vacation in Oregon, staying at the inn I ran there in a coastal town called Cloudberry Bay. I’d had no idea of his true identity until, after a whirlwind holiday romance, he proposed marriage. His transformation into Father Christmas would never be something I took for granted.
The sight of the revered suit quieted Butterbean more effectively than any scolding from Jingles could have.
“Who died?” Nick asked.
“Wink Jollyflake,” Jingles answered, standing at attention.
“The elf from the Silver Bell Bakery?” I asked.
“Wink started working at Chestnut’s Cake Emporium,” Butterbean said.
“Chestnut and Wink both defected from the Silver Bell Bakery? No wonder Bell was glaring across the street yesterday at Chestnut’s Cake Emporium.”
Jingles didn’t miss the significance of the remark. “Was she?”
Butterbean gasped. “Rival bakery murder!”
Nick shot a cautionary look at us all. “You just said no one was sure it was murder.”
Jingles opened his mouth, but Butterbean, emboldened, piped up, “What else could it have been? Wink was found lying on the floor of the bakery when Chestnut opened the shop early this morning, and on the table next to him was a half-eaten candy corn cupcake.” The little round elf lifted on his toes. “Elves are saying the candy corn itself was poisoned.”
“This is all hearsay and speculation,” Jingles said.
It was hard not to laugh. If hearsay and speculation had a king, Jingles would wear the crown.
“I’ll need to visit the Jollyflakes.” Nick frowned thoughtfully. “Wink used to have a job at the Candy Cane Factory.”
Interesting. The Candy Cane Factory was considered one of the best places to work in Santaland. Elves hired there tended to stay on from youth till retirement. Apparently Wink was an elf with a mind to follow his own ambitions.
Was. Now Wink was gone. I’d only glimpsed him a few times when I’d stopped at the Silver Bell Bakery, but Wink had always seemed friendly. “I should visit the Jollyflake family, too,” I said.
Nick put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll stop by the new cake shop first and speak with Constable Crinkles. He’ll probably still be there.”
I looked over at Jingles, expecting him to regret not being able to go, or at least for him to insist that I tell him what I discovered as soon as I got back. But he was already hustling Butterbean out of the room as if he had better things to do than investigate a possible murder.
* * *
The first thing that struck me about Chestnut’s Cake Emporium was the heavenly smell. Combined aromas of butter, sugar, chocolate, and vanilla hung in the air as I stepped across the threshold into the sparkling interior. The freshly painted red walls contrasted with the white stone counter where a cash register and a glass case stood ready to greet customers. Or at least, they would have on a normal day. The glass case was empty.
Three white bistro tables sat between the plate glass window looking onto Festival Boulevard and the white service counter, but most of the shop’s square footage was dedicated to the business of cake baking. Beyond the cash register counter, gleaming stainless-steel tables held stand mixers and milky white glass mixing bowls at the ready. Utensil holders the size of Ming vases blossomed with spatulas, wooden spoons, and whisks. Most impressively, on one side of the work space, massive metal hoppers marked Flour, Sugar, and Icing Sugar hung overhead like space satellites. I gaped up at them, amazed. Chestnut could store enough ingredients in those bins to last through Armageddon.
Viewing all of the work area from the front of the store, I was in awe. But when, following Nick, I stepped around the white customer counter to the back, my enchantment died. Next to the first stainless-steel table, Wink lay facedown on the white tile floor. A large pool of liquid surrounded the body, and the sight caused me to suck in a shocked breath. Was that blood?
On second glance, the liquid on the floor appeared to be cocoa and, curiously, water. Only a few drops of blood were visible. The cocoa could be explained by a broken mug on the ground. Wink must have been fortifying himself with a cup of cocoa as he worked late. But where did all that water come from?
Constable Crinkles greeted Nick and me in his usual tight blue uniform that stretched across his substantial belly like a woolen sausage casing. He scratched the place where the strap of his tall policeman’s hat dug into his multiple chins.
“We’re waiting on Doc Honeytree,” he informed us.
As Christmastown’s oldest physician, Doc also served as coroner when needed. But who was the “we” Crinkles referred to? Ollie didn’t seem to be with him.
“Where’s Ollie?” I asked.
Crinkles sighed. “He’s recused himself from the investigation.”
I’d never heard of a deputy constable recusing himself. “What for?”
“Too much conflict of interest,” the constable explained, “what with the bake-off and all. It wouldn’t be fair if he discovered too much about what Chestnut was planning for his entry.”
So a murder case was taking a backseat to the candy corn bake-off?
Not that I should jump to the conclusion that this was murder. After all, maybe there was no mystery here. Though elves were generally long-lived, coronaries weren’t unheard of. Wink could have just died while he was working late. That water, though . . .
“Why would all this water be here?” I asked the constable.
He looked as baffled as I was. “Maybe he spilled something?”
The sinks were nowhere near where Wink had fallen, and I didn’t see any container on the counter that would have held water. Just one partially eaten cupcake on a plate—that already infamous candy corn cupcake Butterbean had mentioned.
“There’s no broken glass nearby,” I said. “Did Chestnut pick up anything at all when he came in, like a pitcher or broken glass that this water could have spilled from?”
Crinkles shook his head. “He swore it was just like this when he came in this morning. I haven’t moved anything, either. I don’t want to disturb the scene before Doc arrives to examine the body. He was assisting at a reindeer birth this morning.”
“The water might have been from making cocoa,” I said, “but I don’t see a kettle sitting out.”
Crinkles and Nick gaped at me as if I’d just said something bizarre.
“What?” I asked.
“Who makes cocoa with water?” Crinkles asked.
“Instant cocoa?” I blurted out before I could think twice. From the horror on Crinkles’ face, I’d just spoken sacrilege.
“Elves don’t use water with cocoa,” he said. “Milk’s what makes cocoa nutritious.” His lips turned down in a frown. “Well, that and the chocolate.”
Chestnut came in from the back, tucking his phone into the pocket of his apron. Nick and I hadn’t realized the shop owner was on the premises, and his appearance was startling. Chestnut was a changed elf. Normally he looked starched and immaculate in a white coat—more like a doctor of cake-ology than a mere baker. Today his dark eyes were filled with worry, his white coat looked stained and wrinkly, and his white chef’s hat drooped like a collapsed soufflé.
“I just called Wink’s family,” he said despondently. “He has a widowed mother and a brother. I told them I’d lost the best assistant a baker could hope for.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He lifted his arms and dropped them again. “Wink seemed fine yesterday.” I got a sense from his tone that this was not the first time he’d spoken those words aloud. “Last night he said he was going to stay late and work on the Halloween bake-off cupcake.” He nodded toward the plate on the counter.
The cupcake in question was a tricolored sponge cake—yellow, orange, and white—covered with chocolate icing and sprinkled with traditional candy corn.
Not from Dash’s, I registered with relief. If this was a case of candy corn poisoning, I didn’t want my favorite confectioner implicated.
“We argued about the chocolate icing.” As Chestnut studied the half-eaten specimen, he spoke in a voice heavy with regret. “I thought it should be vanilla icing dyed orange. I should have trusted Wink’s instinct—maybe he wouldn’t have felt the need to stay late and make a cupcake to convince me he was right.” He sank onto a stool. “If only I’d been more open to frosting options, he might still be alive.”
Just then, the bell over the door tinkled and old, wizened Doc Honeytree shuffled in. The long-tailed black suit the elderly elf always wore made him look like an undertaker, but the stethoscope around his neck and the worn black leather bag in his hand spoke to his real profession.
“Sorry to be so late, but I had to help deliver a new Cupid youngster,” he said, adjusting the Coke bottle glasses that made me wonder how he managed to see anything. “Even for a late-year birth, the newborn seems like a future sleigh puller. I hurried back as—” Just then, his gaze fell on Wink. “Oh dear. What happened here?”
“That’s what I was wondering,” Crinkles said.
“All the elves at the castle are saying Wink was poisoned,” I told them.
Chestnut sputtered in protest at the idea, while Doc Honeytree harrumphed. “Tittle-tattle,” Doc said. “I never heed it.”
“What else could have killed him if not poison?” I asked.
With effort, the doctor crouched down to the floor and examined Wink more closely. “Big bump on the head here. He might have slipped in that puddle of water and hit his head right there on that steel counter. Or someone could have delivered a fatal blow with a pipe or some such thing. Or maybe the elves are right and he ate that cupcake and fell because it had poison in it. In that case the bump would just be by-the-by.”
“The cupcake wasn’t poisoned,” Chestnut asserted. “How could it have been? Wink made it himself.”
Crinkles sucked in a breath. “Suicide by cupcake!”
That sounded crazy, but I supposed even the unlikeliest scenarios couldn’t be dismissed out of hand. “Wink made the entire cupcake by himself?” I asked Chestnut.
He bit his lip before confessing, “I prepared the batter last night.”
“Where did you get the candy corn?” I asked.
“At the Santaland Sweet Shop.”
I didn’t like that candy maker as well as Dash’s Candy and Nut Shoppe, but I never suspected them of being killers.
“If word gets around that there was a cupcake poisoning here,” Chestnut said plaintively, “my business will die before it’s had a chance to get off the ground.”
So much for his grief over losing the best cake assistant ever. Self-interest and financial survival were already kicking in.
Not that I blamed him for worrying about the fiscal prospects of his new business. The only elves lined up outside Chestnut’s Cake Emporium now were curious rubberneckers. Meanwhile, across the street elves were heading into the Silver Bell Bakery.
Doc Honeytree creaked back up to his feet. “I’ll have to take samples of the cupcake and everything else and run tests,” he said. “Results should take a day—I’ll put my nephew on it right away.”
“Your nephew?” I’d never heard of Doc’s having a nephew.
“He just finished his medical training in the Farthest Frozen Reaches,” Doc explained. “His father, my youngest brother, was the black sheep of the Honeytree family. As a youth my brother turned rebellious, ran away to the Farthest Frozen Reaches, and fell in love with a wild elf. Algid’s mother.”
Algid? What kind of name was that?
A wild elf name, I guessed. The Farthest Frozen Reaches was the wilderness to the north, beyond the boundaries of the Christmas Tree Forest that ribboned through and around Santaland. The Reaches was a wild land—the only part visible from the Christmastown environs were the formidable, craggy peaks of Mount Myrrh. Inhospitable, unbelievably cold, and dangerous, it was a place of ferocious beasts—abominable snow monsters, snow leopards, and polar bears. A lawless land of renegade elves, lone miners, and exiled criminals. And, occasionally, just normal elves like Doc’s brother, who wanted to take a walk on the very wild side. Wild elves were elves that were born and raised in that cold, forbidding land.
“Algid prefers microscopes and test tubes to house calls,” Doc said. “This poison investigation will be right up his alley.”
“It couldn’t have been poison,” Chestnut insisted, growing more agitated. “Like Doc said, it was probably just an accident. He slipped and fell. You have to explain that to everyone, or I’ll be ruined.”
Nick put a calming hand on the elf’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. The truth will come out.”
The assurance didn’t seem to pacify the baker.
I hoped this was just a tragic accident, too. But in case it wasn’t, I wanted to lend a hand to find out who did this. Halloween was a holiday I’d introduced to Santaland, and candy corn was the theme ingredient I’d personally picked. If there really was a crazed candy corn killer on the loose, we needed to find him, fast, before he could strike again.