team onto a ragged path that circled around Tinkertown. I’d never been out here before. It felt deserted.
“Isn’t it odd for him to be living out by himself ? ” I always thought of elves as social creatures.
“Giblet said he got enough of other elves just being at the Wrapping Works all day.”
A VENOMOUS ELF. Why had those words struck such an ominous note inside me? Coal in his stocking was just a general Santa term of disapproval. I doubted Nick would ever actually give a child—or anyone—a lump of coal for Christmas. He might not be the jolliest, most naturally Santa-like Kris Kringle who’d ever carried the title, but he certainly wasn’t malicious.
The rest of the drive, Lucia and I didn’t speak anymore, just watched the path ahead and listened to the jangling bells and hooves of the reindeer against the packed snow. Pleasant sounds. After a while, Quasar’s nose blinked. “There,” he said.
Giblet’s unassuming abode was a rustic log cabin. Three sleighs were parked outside it—Nick’s big one with a team of six, like Lucia’s, and two smaller ones each pulled by a single reindeer. There were also a couple of snowmobiles bearing the Santaland logo, with the word Constabulary stenciled below it. In addition, sets of cross-country skis and poles leaned against the cabin next to the front door. A group of elves were gathered in the snowy yard.
“It’s like a Hollyberry summit meeting,” Lucia muttered.
“I’ll stay outside,” Quasar said.
Lucia nodded. “Good idea.” As if his coming in had even been a question. I doubted a reindeer could have fit through Giblet’s front door. To be honest, I wondered if Lucia would fit.
She turned to me. “I assume you’re coming.”
“Yes, of course.” I hopped off the sleigh, stamping my feet to coax some circulation back into them. It was said that even when a person was used to winter weather—and I definitely was not—the cold here could sneak up on you and make you as sluggish as a snowman if you weren’t careful.
My sister-in-law strode across the snow, vigor personified. I trailed after her in my fluttering skirt, feeling inadequate and unsteady, yet blazing with curiosity about what I’d find inside the cabin. A tiny voice in my head taunted me: Are you sure you want to know?
The Hollyberrys tracked us with silent gazes as we passed, but Lucia didn’t let this bother her. “Sorry about Giblet!” she called out to them. Then she rapped perfunctorily at the door and, ducking her head, barged in.
The Hollyberrys turned their stares toward me. “I’m also very sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know Giblet, of course, but he seemed . . .” I struggled to find an appropriate word.
Lucia poked her head out the front door. “Come on, April.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated awkwardly and hurried after her.
I entered the low-ceilinged cottage eager to see Nick, to receive reassurance by a glance or a word that the slim suspicion scratching at the back of my mind was nonsense. I’d made mistakes over the years, goodness knows, but when it came to bad life choices, marrying an elficidal Santa would put me in a league of my own.
We followed sounds of talking to the bedroom in the back—the cabin only had two rooms, and Giblet had died in the smaller one, beside a bed that looked child sized. The coverlet was still in a pile on the mattress, as if he’d just gotten up and hadn’t made the bed yet. Giblet lay on the floor, curled up almost with his knees to his chest. It was clear he’d been in agony.
I looked away.
“What’s the verdict?” Lucia asked by way of greeting.
“We don’t know,” Nick said. Seeing me behind her, he frowned. So much for reassurance. He took a breath. “Constable Crinkles, I don’t believe you’ve met my wife yet. This is April.”
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