me. I was thinking of the note. “Seen what?”
“What happened back there. The violence.”
“How did the spider get here, do you think?”
I watched him closely, but he just shrugged. “No idea. It’s certainly not normal.”
A laugh escaped me. “In a world of elves and talking reindeer, what’s normal?”
“I don’t see anything to laugh about.”
Of course not. He’d grown up in this world. He didn’t have to shake himself occasionally to verify he wasn’t dreaming. “It’s all so just different than what I’m used to.”
“I did warn you.”
“Sure, but being told that Santaland is real is one thing; actually experiencing it is a different matter entirely.” We were crossing a section of the Christmas tree forest, but I spotted a snowman drifting down a bank, a fat gauge in the snow marking his slow progress.
“Is that Old Charlie?” I said, pointing.
Nick barely glanced in that direction. “Could be.”
“Looks as if he’s on the move. Is that safe for him?”
“A snowman as old as he is knows what he’s doing.”
He certainly looked old. He wore a stovepipe hat, like Abe Lincoln, and a red vest that had faded to a salmon pink. He wasn’t just missing an eye; he’d also lost a stick arm somewhere.
“Shouldn’t we stop to help him?” I asked. The snowman seemed to be going our way—headed toward town—but Nick didn’t even slow down.
“You can’t move snowmen in a sleigh, April. You’d just end up with a heap of snow. They have to move on their own volition.”
“Okay, but maybe we should go back to see if he needs anything.” Or if he saw anything.
“I have to get back to the castle. There are scads of Santa letters to get through in the next few days and a few problems in production. The Workshop’s been texting me all morning.”
“I guess I can come back later,” I said.
“I don’t want you driving into the Christmas tree forest by yourself. I’ll send someone to take care of Charlie.”
We continued in silence. Nick wasn’t usually this rigid. But I’d never seen him juggling so many responsibilities at the busiest time of the year. And now there was Giblet’s suspicious death....
“Strange how coal in a stocking means something negative,” I mused, watching Nick closely. “But a lump of coal can be vital to snowmen.”
Nick’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “What are you talking about?”
“Coal in a stocking.”
He shot me a sidewise glance, smiling a little as if he worried about my soundness of mind. “I’m not sure I get your drift.”
The bells on the reindeer harnesses were loud enough that I wasn’t too worried about being overheard, but I lowered my voice anyway. “Giblet’s death was an accident, wasn’t it?”
His face swung toward me, startled. “Why ask me?”
Because of words you wrote on a sheet of paper in your office. Had they been a prophecy, or a plan? Worried it was evidence, I’d burned the paper so no one would ever be able to use it against him. But I hesitated to explain what I’d done. It was hard to confess to your husband of just a few months that you worried he’d murdered an elf.
“How would you have described Giblet?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Irritating?”
“Are there other people in town who might have wanted to kill him?”
His eyes narrowed. “Other than who?”
Oops. “Well, his family think you did it.”
“They’re upset, naturally. Constable Crinkles doesn’t suspect me.”
“No.” In fact, he’d almost seemed to be on Nick’s side, just as Noggin Hollyberry had claimed. Of course, having Constable Crinkles as an ally probably wasn’t much better than having Constable Crinkles as your lead investigator.
“You can’t let all this get to you, April. We’re supposed to be cheerful and jolly.”
I laughed, but not exactly in a jolly way.
He glanced at me. “Well, you know what I mean. Until we hear more we should just go on as normal. It’s not as if there’s any lack of things to do this time of year.”
“No.” I looked at my watch; then I did a double take. Almost eleven already. “Just drop me off at the community center,” I said.
Murder or no murder, Luther Partridge, the conductor of the Christmastown Concert Band, frowned on us showing up late for rehearsals.
Chapter 3
My first clear memory of Nick was on a warm day in June in Cloudberry Bay. The sun was shining on the Oregon coast, giving tourists and even natives the illusion that we were a real surfing-and-suntan oil kind of place. He was standing at the edge of the beach, contemplating the expanse of gray-blue surf and flexing as if preparing to dive in.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
During warm summer days, lots of visitors were one plunge away from being disabused of the notion that Cloudberry Bay was Miami Beach. This man showed all the earmarks of being our next casualty. Something about the body pointed bird dog–like toward all that beautiful water. That beautiful, frigid water.
He’d registered at the Coast Inn the day before as Nick Kringle, saying as little as possible as he’d swiped his card and taken his key. He hadn’t come down to breakfast. It all gave him a mysterious air, and nothing taunts me like a mystery. Youngish men on their own didn’t wander into my cozy establishment often. Nick had brown hair, brown eyes, and a rather pale complexion that didn’t seem to go with his muscular build, but the parts all added up to a dreamy whole. Like Laurence Olivier in Rebecca, only without the fake gray streaks and with a neatly trimmed beard instead of Olivier’s pencil mustache.
His only response to my warning was to turn his gaze turned toward me. I’d been on an early afternoon walk and was togged out in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. I usually took advantage of the post-breakfast/checkout, pre-check-in break to get a little exercise. Otherwise it was easy to become chained to the inn round the clock, a mistake I’d made when I’d first bought the Coast Inn after my husband died. Owning a small hotel can be a hamster wheel existence if you don’t fence off time for yourself.
“The water’s cold,” I warned my guest.
“I’m used to cold.”
Those were the first words I remember him saying to me. I’m used to cold. Understatement of the century, but how was I to know? I assumed he meant he was from Wisconsin or something. Part polar bear was more like it. I watched in amazement as he took a few steps into the fifty-something-degree water and dived in. Most tourists who did that popped right back up shrieking and streaking back to shore and the nearest towel. When Nick surfaced, he sliced through the surf in an Australian crawl without missing a beat.
There was another reason I’d been a little anxious that Mr. Kringle stay out of the water. One I couldn’t exactly voice to a stranger. Until that moment on the beach, the few times our paths had crossed he’d exhibited a brooding, preoccupied air. The quiet ones worried me. I’d had a guest check in and take an overdose of sleeping pills once. I didn’t want another visitor to my inn to end their stay with an ambulance ride.
That evening, the mysterious Mr. Kringle sought me out after dinner.
“Thanks for the warning