Chapter Twelve
The jail at the Christmastown Constabulary had never been so crowded. Fir and Chuckle were in the cell with Chestnut. Dandy was squeezed into the small spare bedroom that was currently being used as a storeroom. It made for quite a crush, and knowing that Ollie would be busy putting the finishing touches on his bake-off entry, I took it upon myself to carry a pot of stew down from the castle on my way to the Halloween carnival.
The constabulary had been transformed. White, gauzy webbing stretched across doorways, and a stuffed spider with pipe cleaner legs hung from the ceiling. Orange and black candles glowed everywhere, including from a carved pumpkin on the mantel. At the dining table, which was covered in several layers of old newspapers, Dandy, Fir, and Chuckle leaned over pumpkins in various stages of having their entrails scooped out and faces carved into their flesh. The newest prisoners were so busy, they almost didn’t notice me. It was understandable. I’d frozen at the sight of the elves I’d helped collar just yesterday wielding very lethal-looking carving knives.
Dandy caught sight of me first. “Looking for Crinkles?”
I nodded.
A round figure in a red wool jacket, black jodhpurs, and a brown felt hat bustled toward me. Crinkles in a Canadian Mountie costume. He looked like a shrunken, apple-shaped Dudley Do-Right. “I hope you haven’t brought me any more prisoners.” He chuckled. “We’re all full up.”
“I can see that. You’re looking snappy, by the way.” I couldn’t snark too much over how goofy he looked, given that I was dressed in my band uniform, complete with braided wool jacket with ridiculously large brass buttons and a plumed shako hat.
He rocked back on his heels. “I decided to get in the spirit of the holiday, since we’ve got so much company here right now. Ollie and I spent most of last night decorating and planning activities for everybody. We’re going to be decorating sugar cookies to look like ghosts later. You’re welcome to join us.”
Only the Christmastown Constabulary would worry about prisoners needing holiday-appropriate activities.
“Thanks, but I just brought some stew from the castle for everyone. Felice sent over a couple of bread loaves, too.”
Crinkles beamed. “Gee wiggles, that was nice of her. Let me take that off your hands.”
He took the covered dish and led me into the kitchen. I couldn’t help pausing as I caught another glimpse of a butcher knife flashing in the pumpkin lights Crinkles and Ollie had strung around the chandelier.
“Where’s Ollie?” I asked.
“He’s delivering his candy corn pie to the bake-off booth.”
“Candy corn pie?”
“Don’t they make that where you come from?”
“Uh, no.” Poor Nick, I thought.
He looked puzzled. “That surprises me—it’s awfully good. But between you and me, I think Chestnut’s candy corn cake would be a shoo-in. Look here . . .”
He removed aluminum foil from a platter containing a large cake in the triangular shape of a humongous candy corn niblet. The icing was perfectly colored and smooth like glass.
“Wow,” I said.
“It’s got a little marzipan layer between the icing and the cake.” Crinkles lowered his voice. “Ollie’s going to ask if Chestnut’s cake is eligible even if he’s in jail. Winning that blue ribbon might lift his spirits. Chestnut’s sulking in his room right now. He still denies having anything to do with Wink’s death.”
I frowned. “It seems odd that he never mentioned Wink was his partner, then.”
“He says he didn’t think it was relevant.”
I wasn’t an expert in murder investigations, but “Who benefits?” is always a good question to ask. So far, I couldn’t see anyone else besides Chestnut who benefited from Wink’s death.
“I hate to think that anyone I know would commit a murder.” Crinkles shook his head.
It had been a disillusioning two days for the constable. Dandy, Fir, and Chuckle swore that they hadn’t meant any real harm to anyone at the constabulary when they delivered the glass-covered candy corn. Their goal had been to stop people buying the candy from the big stores, so that people desperate for candy corn would turn to their black-market product. The fastest way they could think of to have word spread that candy stores weren’t safe to buy from was by sending the tainted candy to somewhere public, like the constabulary. Chuckle said they’d even considered sending a batch to the castle.
Later, as I was having a coffee at We Three Beans with Juniper, before heading to the bandstand to play our part in the Halloween festivities, I felt my own spirits flagging. Just as the last few days had upset Crinkles, they had made me doubt my instincts. “I misjudged everything,” I confessed to Juniper. “I trusted Chestnut and Dandy.”
“Dandy didn’t kill anyone, though.”
Not technically, maybe. “I’m not as inclined to give those three the benefit of a doubt when they say that the glass-covered candy corn was just sent to the constabulary as a warning.”
Juniper finished her eggnog latte. “I’m just glad that the culprits are all in jail—and in time for the Halloween carnival.”
I hoped they were all the right culprits.
“Speaking of the Halloween carnival.” She stood up and secured the chin strap under her ridiculous hat—the same drum majorette monstrosity that I was wearing. “We’d better get going. I told Smudge I’d meet him at the band shell.”
Interesting. Maybe “better than Algid” wasn’t such a bad starting point for a relationship after all.
We bussed our coffee cups and then headed toward the park. On Festival Boulevard, a cluster of elves had gathered. Everyone was looking up.
“What is that?” an elf dressed as a devil asked, pointing his plastic pitchfork at the rooftop directly above us.
Juniper and I craned to see an outline of a large bird crouched on the eave.
“Isn’t that Butterbean’s vulture?” Juniper asked.
“Grimstock,” I said.
At least we knew where he was. I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to coax him back to the castle—or why we’d want to. Still, I whipped out my phone and took a picture so I could at least provide evidence that I’d seen him here.
As Juniper and I were starting off again, someone let out a startled cry.
“Mrs. Claus—watch out!”
Thinking fast, Juniper grabbed my arm and tugged us both out of the way just as a chunk of ice the size of a microwave oven crashed to the sidewalk next to us, shattering a jack-o’-lantern.
“Golly doodle!” Juniper cried, staring at the mess on the sidewalk. “That thing could have killed us.”
I looked at the ice chunk, then at the top of the building overhead. The roofs of tall buildings in Santaland mostly had ice guards—spikes that kept ice from slipping down. Occasionally, though, spikes bent or ice built up and slid off roofs despite the best precautions.
“Are you okay?” Juniper asked me.
“Fine,” I lied. The near miss had not only rattled my nerves, it had rattled something in my brain. Ice.
“You go ahead,” I told Juniper. “I’m going to text Jingles and Butterbean that I’ve found Grimstock.”
She sent me a worried look, but relented. “I’ll see you at the band shell. Don’t be late.”
After she was gone, I looked around for a warm place to duck into to text Jingles and Butterbean. The lights were on in Chestnut’s Cake Emporium, so I went inside.
When the tinkle bell above the door heralded my entrance, Sugar moved from one of the back worktables to the customer counter, where a few racks of cupcakes stood. Thin inventory, but Sugar probably wasn’t expecting many customers. Most of the foot traffic this evening would be around Peppermint Pond.
She cradled a large bowl of red icing she’d been stirring. “Can I get you something, Mrs. Claus?”
“A glass of water?” My pulse was still racing from my near miss. “I just barely escaped getting crushed by falling ice.”
She hurried to pour me some water. “Was it this building?”
“Next door, but it’s left a big chunk of ice on the sidewalk.” I tilted my head. “Do you have anything to clear that up with?”
“I do, as a matter of fact.” She disappeared briefly into the back and returned wielding a large pair of ice tongs. It looked like the kind of implement that in the old days the iceman would use when delivering ice for primitive refrigerators.
“That’s right, I saw you hefting ice with that at Peppermint Pond a few days ago. The day before—”
I shut my mouth abruptly. The day before Wink died.
As the truth clicked into place, I lifted the water glass to my lips to cover my awkwardness. Unfortunately, my hand trembled.
Her eyes narrowed up at me. But she didn’t have to look up too far.
She would have been on the tall side, Algid had said. Tall for an elf.
“It’s cold out there,” I said, trying to hide my discomfort.
Her lips thinned into a tight smile. “Sure you don’t want some hot tea, or warm eggnog?”
My stomach turned at that last suggestion—and not just because I didn’t like eggnog. I was starting to feel queasy, period. “I’m thawing out now.” Thawing like a chunk of ice that’s just been used as a murder weapon. All Sugar had had to do was whack Wink on the back of the head with a solid chunk of ice, then leave it on the floor. By the time he was discovered, the murder weapon would have melted away into a puzzling pool of water.
I looked down at my phone again. “I’ll just send this message to the castle and be on my way.”
I texted Jingles the picture of Grimstock. Then, trying to keep my hands steady, I typed out, Ice was the murder weapon. The murderer was
Before I could finish, Sugar’s hand clamped down on mine.
My thumb hit the Send button and the phone let out a little mechanical burp. Not that it would help me. There wasn’t enough information there to alert Jingles that I was in danger.
Nothing to do now but to try to brazen this out. “Something wrong?” I asked.
Sugar let go of my hand and marched to the front door. She flipped the lock. The sound of that deadbolt shot a cold arrow of fear through me. Her pulling down the shade over the window was even worse.
“Closing up already?” I asked, feigning obliviousness to the peril I was in. “Maybe you’re going to the carnival, too. I’m due on the bandstand now. I’ll be missed if I’m not there on the downbeat.”
She snorted. “I’ve heard you play with the Santaland Concert Band. You won’t be missed.”
I bristled. But this was not the time to argue over my percussion skills. “Look, I just want to be on my way.”
“On your way to the constabulary to snitch to Constable Crinkles?”
My trill of laughter was a shade too bright. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She snatched the phone out of my hand and snapped it open. My text to Jingles would still be on the screen. She scanned the text bubbles and then glanced up at me. “ ‘The murderer was—’?”
Smiling, she typed, hit Send, and faced the screen to me. Chestnut.
My sense of justice couldn’t let that pass. “Chestnut didn’t kill Wink. He valued Wink’s skill.”
Her face turned the color of a red velvet cake. “Have you ever heard anyone with a functioning taste bud in their head praise anything Wink Jollyflake baked?”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t. Except for Chestnut, who needed his money, and Wink’s mother, who doted on him.
Her hands fisted at her sides. “Wink could barely crack an egg when he started working at the Silver Bell Bakery. I was Chestnut’s right hand for years. Years! We worked side by side.” Though the shade was closed, she nodded at the window, toward the bakery across the street. “Together we kept that place solvent—Chestnut and me. When Chestnut used to tell me his dreams of opening his own cake shop, it was always understood that I’d go with him.”
Understood by her, maybe. That word Algid had overheard—cheated. It hadn’t referred to a love affair, as I assumed. Sugar must have been referring to what she perceived as Chestnut’s betrayal of her. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because Wink weaseled his way in—and he had the money. Who knows where it came from.”
I thought of Dandy’s ring. How much else had he hocked or cashed in to raise money? I was willing to bet that Mrs. Jollyflake chipped in something, too.
“If you let Chestnut go to jail for killing Wink, your dream of sharing this shop with him will fizzle,” I pointed out. “He’ll be baking cakes over campfires in the Farthest Frozen Reaches.”
“Not if I tell Constable Crinkles that I was with him the night Wink died.”
“Chestnut will know that’s a lie.”
She laughed. “Do you think he’ll care? I’ve talked to him in that jail cell. All he wants to do is return here. He’d sell his soul for this place.”
I didn’t know about Chestnut’s soul, but clearly Sugar’s was already bought and paid for—in blood. All it had cost her was the life of one elf who stood in her way.
Correction: one elf’s life—and mine. My life wasn’t worth a bag of peppermints now. Sugar couldn’t let me walk out of here now that she’d confessed.
“You might be able to get away with killing a lone baker,” I warned, “but my death will pose a lot more problems. I’m Mrs. Claus. I’ll be missed.”
“During the Halloween carnival? Everyone’s at Peppermint Pond, or headed that way. Distractions galore.”
“But they will come looking for me.”
“Here? Why?”
I struggled to find a good answer. “I texted Jingles.”
Her lips turned up in a smirk. “I don’t think some moose-brained theory about melting ice is going to bring the authorities rushing over. Besides, I’ll have moved you by then.”
Cold fear grabbed me. “Where?” I assumed I would be dead, but I still was curious about which frozen corner of my adopted homeland I would end up in.
“Don’t get your stockings in a twist about that. In Santaland, there are places remote enough that a body could be buried in snow for decades without anyone finding them.”
Buried in snow. I really didn’t deal well with cold. I turned and made a dash for the door. I had desperation on my side, and longer legs. But Sugar was both muscular and agile. She caught me by my uniform’s sash belt and dragged me toward the back. I wasn’t going down without a fight, though. I twisted and yanked off her chef cap and pulled at her hair. With a roar, she grabbed the heavy ceramic mixing bowl off the counter and brained me with it.
I stumbled to one knee. Mercilessly, she whacked me over the head again. Red splattered everywhere. As I collapsed onto all fours I thought it was probably my own blood, but when I fell onto my side I realized it was too sticky and bright red even for blood. I’d been attacked with cake icing.
I lay on the floor, looking at those blobs of red, barely conscious as hands grabbed hold of my ankles. Grunting and swearing, Sugar dragged me across the floor toward the back of the store. I let myself go limp and heavy, trying to think, hoping to buy time.
Finally we stopped and she let go of my ankles. Startlingly, she loomed over my face and lifted one of my eyelids. It took every ounce of control I had left to remain still.
“Hmph—not quite dead yet.”
She pushed back to her feet. What did she have up her sleeve now? This was a kitchen. Even bakers used sharp utensils. When I heard her walk a few steps away, I tried to gather my forces to make an escape.
But I waited too long. Sugar didn’t grab a knife, she just pulled a lever. At the strange metallic sound, I looked up into the maw of the door of one of the massive hoppers overhead opening up. Before I could react, an avalanche of icing sugar fell on me, burying me alive in deadly powdery sweetness.