Mrs. Claus and the Santaland Slayings. Liz Ireland

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      The chief law enforcement officer of Christmastown, like most elves, was short of stature, but he was also more stout than average. His dark blue wool uniform bulged at the seams, and both his thick black belt and brass buttons were doing double duty. On his head perched a blue hat much like bobbies wore in old British films, right down to the chin strap. Also the Keystone Cops, although I tried to put that thought out of my mind. He peered up at me beneath the hat’s shallow bill, smiling. “Well, hello there! Welcome to Christmastown!”

      It was hard to know how to respond to so much chirpiness at a crime scene. I’d half expected to be shooed away, but Constable Crinkles didn’t care that I had no purpose there. “How do you like it?”

      Confused, I tried not to glance at the dead elf on the floor. “Like . . . ?”

      “Christmastown! Santaland!”

      “Oh . . . it’s nice.”

      He beamed. “Best time to be here—Christmas! Of course, December is our busiest time. You—”

      Lucia cleared her throat. “We were talking about cause of death.”

      Crinkles’ face collapsed. “Oh. Right.” He bobbed on his heels, sobering. “I’m sure it’s natural causes.”

      Lucia, ever blunt, toed the elf’s curled-up corpse. “You can’t tell me that this elf died peacefully.”

      “Death is rarely peaceful.” Crinkles jiggled in discomfort. “What else could it be, though?”

      “Homicide?” I asked.

      The word caused the others to gape at me.

      “Santaland doesn’t have murders,” the constable said.

      Everyone in the room except Lucia and me nodded, as if this pronouncement were just a given.

      “How long will it take the coroner to reach a conclusion about the cause of death?” I asked.

      The others looked incredulous.

      Was the question so outrageous? It’s what any character on any iteration of CSI would’ve asked under the circumstances.

      “She’s still new here,” Lucia reminded everyone.

      “We don’t have a coroner,” Nick told me.

      “Nothing wrong with having Doc Honeytree take a look at him, though,” Constable Crinkles said. “I’m sure he’ll agree with me, though. Natural causes.” He scratched his chin. “Or maybe accidental death.”

      “Baloney!”

      At the shouted word, we all turned to the door. A short elf dressed in a dark green velvet tunic and breeches stood with his hands planted on his hips, quaking in his pointy black boots.

      Nick, stooping under the low ceiling, moved toward him. “I’m sorry about your cousin, Noggin.”

      “Baloney!” the elf repeated, in case we’d missed it.

      Crinkles was between them in two hops. “Now, there’s no need for that kind of language, Noggin. We all understand that you Hollyberrys are upset.”

      “Not yet, we aren’t. But if you’re going to ask us to believe that Giblet had a very public argument with Santa one day and then just happened to die mysteriously the next, when we all know he was as hardy as a bear . . . well, that reindeer just won’t fly. No sir.”

      “How can anyone know what happened to him? ” Crinkles put his hands on his pillowy hips. “He lived out here alone, and there were no witnesses, as far as I know. Unless you’ve heard of one?”

      “Well . . . no,” Noggin was forced to admit. “Though someone said Old Charlie stayed hereabouts.”

      Crinkles sighed impatiently. “That old snowman’s only got one eye left, and even if he is around here, chances are he isn’t facing in the direction of this cottage. You can’t let your imagination get the better of you. Witnesses!” He shook his head in disgust and gave Nick a sidewise glance. “Told you there’d be trouble if we didn’t confiscate those pirated copies of The Wire,” he muttered.

      “We all witnessed what he said to Santa,” Noggin said, avoiding Nick’s eye. “Everyone heard the word Giblet said. Murderer. And the next morning he’s dead.”

      Lucia stepped forward. “We also all saw that Giblet was apoplectic. He was about to have a coronary on the spot over losing that stupid ice sculpture competition.”

      Noggin vibrated with anger. “It wasn’t stupid to him! He planned his design for months!”

      “And he lost,” Lucia said. “Then he freaked out and died. Nobody’s fault.”

      “Then how do you explain the spider?”

      A moment of silence followed the question. Perplexed, Lucia turned to Nick, then Crinkles. “What’s he talking about? ”

      Nick and the constable exchanged a glance that set my stomach churning again. Something was afoot.

      Noggin Hollyberry rocked back on his heels. “Don’t think you can hide the truth for long. It’s already out about the spider. My nephew was there when your deputy found it.”

      The deputy, who had a patch on his blue wool coat reading Ollie, stepped forward, displaying a zipper-sealed plastic bag containing what appeared to be a long red-and-white-striped elf stocking. In the bag there was also a shiny black spider. Half its body was squished, but from what remained I could make out a red dot on its once-hourglass-shaped abdomen. A black widow.

      “Seems that he probably stepped on it puttin’ on his stocking,” the deputy said. “Squashed it to death, but not before the spider got its revenge.”

      “We don’t need dramatics, Ollie.” Crinkles frowned and then wondered aloud, “Now where would that creature have come from, I wonder.”

      I didn’t understand. “Are spiders so rare here?”

      The glances of the others told me all I needed to know, even before the sheriff spoke. “Strictly speaking, we don’t have many bugs, especially not poisonous spiders like that one there. We elves aren’t used to the venom, so they’re deadly to us.”

      So Santaland had no homicides and no spiders. Except now it had both.

      A VENOMOUS ELF. COAL IN HIS STOCKING?

      The echo of those words in my mind gave me a jolt. The black widow found in the stocking was coal black—venom for the venomous elf. I clenched my hands so tight my nails pressed into my palms through my gloves.

      “By itself, it proves nothing,” Crinkles insisted.

      “Somebody must have brought that creature”—Noggin Hollyberry pointed at the plastic bag—“to Santaland. Who? Somebody from the outside, that’s who.”

      It was as if a celestial being with a giant straw sucked all the air out of the cabin. Who was the most СКАЧАТЬ