Mrs. Claus and the Santaland Slayings. Liz Ireland

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      Chapter 4

      By the time I arrived on the scene, Charlie’s melted remains had frozen solid. His vest, his stick arm, and his one eye and button nose were all preserved in an icy puddle.

      Constable Crinkles stared at the sad sight in disbelief. The befuddled lawman was in shock. Everybody had liked Charlie, and it was difficult to keep away the scores of elves and people who had trekked out to witness the scene after hearing the news. In a rare show of model police work, Deputy Ollie had roped off the area, hoping to preserve what evidence there was.

      Only Claus privilege had allowed me through.

      Two deaths in one day couldn’t be a coincidence, and that thought gave me a little relief—mixed with guilt at my relief. Whatever suspicions I had concerning Nick were completely unfounded if Christmastown had a psycho killer on the loose. Entertaining the notion that Nick had a grudge against an angry elf had been a stretch for me; imagining my husband on a killing spree, however, was impossible. He’d never harm a helpless old snowman. And I even knew where Nick had been when Charlie was killed. He’d just dropped me off at rehearsal and then gone . . .

      Where? I frowned. Where had Nick gone?

      Crinkles tugged at his chin strap. “It must have been a powerful blast of heat to melt him like that, so fast. Some kind of blowtorch, maybe.”

      Everyone within hearing range shuddered in horror.

      “Were there any footprints?” I asked.

      The constable’s eyes blinked at the question, and then, belatedly, he glanced around.

      Nick pointed to a swath of sweeping marks in the snow. “Looks like someone cleared them away, probably with a branch.”

      “Whaddaya know,” Crinkles said. “That’s what it looks like, all right.”

      I despaired. “Maybe you should start canvassing people to see if anyone owns a blowtorch.”

      A light dawned in Deputy Ollie’s eyes, as if he’d never thought of this angle before. “And then we could ask those folks where they were when all this happened.”

      “But we can’t say for sure when Charlie was melted,” Crinkles argued.

      “Of course we can,” I said. “Nick and I saw him moving along the road just a few hours ago. It had to have happened sometime soon after, especially given that he’s frozen solid now.”

      Nick draped his arm over my shoulder. “We should get going and let the constable and deputy do their job.”

      Had I been getting in their way? I thought I was helping.

      Ollie went to his sleigh and returned with a pickax. He hefted it with the handle over his shoulder, like a soldier with a musket.

      “What do you intend to do with that?” Crinkles asked.

      “You said we needed to remove the body.”

      “I didn’t say we were going to hack poor Charlie into ice cubes. Have you gone crackers? Folks are watching.”

      Ollie’s face scrunched in confusion. “So what do we do?”

      “We’re going to lift him off the snow—gently and respectfully—and carry him back to the office.”

      Ollie sighed, and I could see why. That was quite a chunk of ice to haul away. Nevertheless, he returned to the constabulary’s motorized sleigh and backed it closer. Ollie, Crinkles, and Nick wedged the block of ice off the ground and hefted it into the back of the sleigh. No easy feat.

      When they were done, Ollie leaned over, puffing out an exhausted breath. Staring at the indentation the snowman’s remains had left in the snow, he squinted. Then he leaned in and picked something off the ground.

      “That’s funny,” he said. “Charlie just had the one eye, right?”

      “Of course. It was coal. He lost the other one in the blizzard of 2012.”

      “Huh.” The deputy turned over the item in his hand, which on closer inspection turned out to be a button. “We found his button nose frozen in the ice . . . so where’d this one come from?”

      We all stepped in closer to examine the brass button.

      “That’s not the type of button a snowman would have for an eyeball,” Crinkles said. “Even if he needed a spare.”

      “Maybe it came off his vest,” Nick said.

      Ollie wiped it off and inspected it more closely. He glanced up at Nick, more nervously now. “More likely it fell off yours.”

      Dread roiled in the pit of my stomach. Minutes before I’d been appalled at how bad the constables were at their jobs. Now that they seemed to be picking up on clues, I wished they’d stop.

      Still, I wanted to know. I had to know. I leaned in to inspect the button. It was large and perfectly round, with the same waving Santa emblem I’d seen on the box of chocolates Nick had given me last summer. The same kind of button was on many of Nick’s clothes, including the coat he was wearing now.

      Strained silence ensued. “Did you just lose it, maybe, when we were picking up Charlie?” Crinkles asked hopefully.

      Nick stared numbly at the button. It was obvious he hadn’t just lost it. We had only to look at his coat to see all its buttons were accounted for. Was that the same coat he’d been wearing this morning, though? I honestly couldn’t remember.

      “Could be you lost it a while ago and it just happened to be here,” the constable said.

      “What are the chances of that?” Ollie asked.

      The constable shot him a look.

      “It would be quite a coincidence,” Nick said in the deputy’s defense. “And I haven’t lost a button—at least, not that I recall.”

      I СКАЧАТЬ