Killing Santa Read online

  Killing Santa

  A Bakery Detectives Cozy Mystery

  Stacey Alabaster

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2017 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Message to Readers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Thank you so much for buying my book. I am excited to share my stories with you and hope that you are just as thrilled to read them.

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  FairfieldPublishing.com/cozy-newsletter

  Chapter 1

  I know it sounds crazy, but I could smell that snow was coming. I paused outside my bakery and held my breath for just a moment, feeling the frost on my face. My stomach fluttered a little. Christmas was just three weeks away, and I wasn’t ready for it.

  Speaking of scents, the smell of a forest hit me as soon as I walked through the door, overpowering the smell of ginger and nutmeg. Don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of fir trees, fir cones, and fir needles. I just didn’t love the sight of them all over my bakery floor. Little green needles were everywhere and as I slowly looked up, my mouth fell open as I stared at the ten-foot tree that my best friend Pippa was trying to cram into the shop. We were still three weeks from Christmas and at best, I thought it was a little early to start decorating. At worst, this was a disaster. She had made a mess of the entire shop.

  “Pippa, what happened?” I stared in disbelief at the floor, which looked less like the that of a bakery and more like a forest. There were needles everywhere, and a cone rolled past my foot, almost causing me to trip. I gasped when I turned my head and saw that a bunch of fir needles had fallen on top of the display of banana and salted caramel cupcakes and gotten stuck in the wet frosting! Pippa had told me that we needed more festive treats in the bakery, but this was just ridiculous.

  “The tree was too big for the door!” she said by way of explanation. “That’s why there was so much shedding.”

  Well, I could see that the tree was far too big—what I didn’t understand was why we needed a tree in the first place. In the bakery? This wasn’t a home. This was a place of business. We couldn’t have people spraining their ankles on cones and ingesting wayward fir needles. What was Pippa thinking?

  I groaned as I ducked under the tree branches to check the rest of the baked goods and hit my head. Not only had half the tree dropped onto the floor, and the cupcakes, and the table tops, but now they were dropping on top of the pies. It was a health hazard!

  “Pippa…” I said slowly, my earlier glow from the impending snow having all melted away. “What is this tree doing here?”

  “Because there was no room in my living room!” Pippa said as though that made perfect sense. She explained that she needed a Christmas tree—obviously—but her farmhouse, with its low slanted roofs, could not accommodate this monstrosity.

  “So you thought the best place for it was in the middle of a bakery?” I exclaimed. “Where there is food and coffee?”

  Pippa just stared at me dumbfounded. She was still wearing her puffy jacket and knitted beanie like a forest worker who’d just cut the tree herself. She was looking at me like I was the Grinch that stole Christmas and was personally stealing it from her. “I have to have a Christmas tree,” she said, her voice growing squeaky. Panicked. “And Lolly needs to have a Christmas tree. This is her first Christmas, Rachael!”

  “Second,” I pointed out. Pippa’s daughter Lolly had been born a few months before the Christmas of the previous year.

  “Yes, but this is the first year where she’ll understand what’s going on!” Pippa stomped her foot. She was right about that. Last year, Lolly had only been a few months old, and certainly wouldn’t have understood what a Santa Claus was. This year, she was walking, and excited any time anyone handed her a gift—she loved tearing the paper off presents.

  But this wasn’t on me. It wasn’t my fault that she had chosen the largest tree in the world to try and jam into the bakery. It would have to go. Immediately.

  “Pippa, the tree cannot stay here,” I said firmly, ducking underneath it again to grab my apron and put it on.

  Pippa stomped over to the tree, pushed it over, grabbed it, and began to drag it back out through the front door.

  “Well, Rachael, if you are going to ruin Christmas, then I don’t need you anymore. And I don’t need this job!”

  I just stared after her. “What are you talking about, Pippa?” She might not have needed this job, but I needed her. It was Christmas, our busiest time of year, and she was my co-manager. Not to mention my best friend.

  “I quit!”

  One Week later.

  I was the only person waiting in line who didn’t have a child with them. I glanced around a little self-consciously as “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” played on the loud speakers and an elf approached me.

  Well, not a real elf. Just a short woman with pointy ears and a clipboard and a name tag that said “Ashley.” She wanted to know what I was there for that day.

  “Um. Photos,” I said, still looking around. Where is she?

  “Are you here on your own?” she asked, tilting her head, trying to hide the pity on her face.

  “Hey, I’m still a big kid at heart,” I said, smiling. “Is it okay if I sit on Santa’s lap?”

  Ashley laughed and said of course, but warned me that it was at least a half hour wait at Christmas Village that day. That was okay. I had time. I wasn’t purely there to get my Santa shots taken.

  I was there to find Pippa.

  I craned my neck trying to see her. Was she also an elf like Ashley or did she have another task down at Christmas Village? We hadn’t spoken since she’d stormed out of the bakery in a flurry of fir droppings the week before. The only reason I knew that she had taken a job as a Santa’s Helper was because Marcello, her husband, had told me when I’d bumped into him at the bank. And then he’d made me promise to keep it a secret and scurried off like we’d never even spoken.

  Still no sign of her. Maybe she wasn’t working this shift. Or this day. Or maybe she had already been fired. The job at my bakery was the longest she had ever managed to hold down a job in her life. Before, she had switched jobs like outfits.

  I sighed and kept shuffling forward in the line. Oh well, I was there now, so I may as well get my photo with Santa and have something to send my grandparents in a Christmas Card.

  Finally, it was my turn. Ashley called my name and waved me through into the inner sanctum of Christmas Village.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised as I was ushered into a hallway and then one of three rooms. But she guided me so quickly that I barely had time to notice the other doors—almost as though I wasn’t supposed to see them.

  “What are those other two doors?” I asked as I almost tripped with Ashley’s hand on my back pushing me forward. Every ‘door’ was covered by a black curtain to make them look even more secretive and inconspicuous.

  Ashley stopped and looked around to make sure there was no one else in the hallway. “Look, we don’t normally give this away. But seeing as you are all alone and
have no children, I can tell you.”

  I tried not to take offense to that comment, even though there was a hint of judgement to her tone. It was only possible to hear when the hallway was completely silent, but if you listened closely enough, you could hear voices coming from behind each door. Was that the sound of someone saying ‘say cheese’ from further down the hall?

  Ashley lowered her voice and leaned forward a little, causing the bells on her hat to jingle a sad little sound. “There are three Santas,” she said, sounding proud and excited to make the big reveal. Then leaned back and raised her eyebrows like she had just given me the secret to all of life.

  “All at the same time?” I asked, spinning around. So that was why there were three different people saying ‘Say cheese.’ Three rooms, three Santas, three photographers.

  “Yep. Demand for photos and visits with Santa was so large that one Santa just wasn’t cutting it. So we came up with the genius idea of having more than one Santa working the shift at the same time.”

  “And it works?” I asked, wondering how they got away with it without any of the kids cluing into the fact that there were multiple Santas.

  “Of course. But the official line is that there is only one real Santa, of course. We don’t ever want the children to come out of one room and peek into one of the other rooms. It would kind of ruin Christmas for them.”

  Pippa’s words echoed in my head. I had already ruined Christmas for one family. Apparently. I’d better not do it to any others.

  “I understand,” I replied as Ashley ushered me inside. “I’ll be careful. And I won’t give away the secret.”

  I blinked a few times as I stepped through the dark corner into a brightly lit ‘cave.’ That was what the rooms were called, and with their cylinder walls and ceilings, it was a little like stepping into a cave at the North Pole.

  I was greeted by a different elf, with a camera slung around her neck. “Hello there, Merry Christmas! Now, which package would you like today?”

  The elf in front of me stopped talking, the tiny bell on her hat going limp and flopping forward. Pippa.

  Suddenly, all the joy drained from her face. “What are you doing here?” she started to ask me aggressively, then caught Santa giving her a cautionary gaze. Not very elf-like behavior. She quickly brightened up and gave me a thin grin, giving me a shot of Christmas cheer before she nodded to Santa and told me to take a seat. It was a little awkward sitting directly on his lap, so I perched on the edge of the seat while she took a few short snaps.

  “Is that it?” I asked, standing up when she turned to the computer screen to look at the digital copies. “That was quick.”

  “Uh huh.” She had her back to me while she selected the best shot and hit ‘print.’ Was she actually going to talk to me or just keep her back to me the whole time?

  Once the photos had been spat out, she shoved the package into my hands and nodded toward the exit.

  “Pippa, come on. Aren’t we even going to say hello?”

  She pulled my arm so that we were out of Santa’s earshot

  “What are you doing here, Rachael?”

  “I just want to get my photo taken with Santa,” I said innocently. “Is that a crime?”

  She placed both hands on her hips. “You’re stalking me…”

  “I didn’t even know you were working here!” I exclaimed convincingly. Or so I hoped.

  Pippa shook her head. “I am going to kill Marcello.”

  I looked in the envelope she’d given me. “Just one photo?” I asked.

  “Oh, you want more?” She turned back to the computer and selected the most expensive package.

  “Oh, that’s okay, I don’t need that many photos…” I started to say, but she’d already jabbed the screen and pressed ‘purchase.’

  “Oops.” She smiled slyly.

  Right. She’d done that on purpose.

  “Pippa, why are you working here?” I asked quietly while the photos were printing. This time, it was no quick task. “Surely this job can’t pay very well.” I looked her up and down in her green leggings and jingly hat. “And isn’t the costume a little corny?”

  “At least I am treated well here,” she said, sticking her nose in the air.

  “Oh, come on.” That wasn’t fair.

  “And there are Christmas trees. Dozens of them, in fact.”

  Well, she was right about that. Christmas Village, the hallway, and the caves were all lined with fir trees, perfectly decorated in the most expensive ball-balls and tinsel that the mall had.

  My photos had finished and my card had been charged a hundred bucks. Pippa made it clear that it was now time for me to leave. For real. “Please, Pippa…”

  I still couldn’t figure out why she had taken me banning the Christmas tree so personally. Was she really never going to talk to me again because I had refused to decorate the bakery or put up a Christmas tree?

  “You’ve got your photos. Now it’s time for you to leave.”

  I nodded and thanked Santa, backing out of the room into the dark hallway. It took me a few moments to get my bearings. But I thought I could hear shouting—screaming—coming from the cave further down the hallway. Cave Number Two. I moved closer to the curtain.

  Ashley was screaming from the other side. Screaming like it was a matter of life and death.

  I spun around and saw that Pippa was leading a new group of children into her cave. If I opened the curtain to Cave Number Two, it would reveal two Santas at once. I didn’t have much time to decide.

  “Rachael, you can’t open that door!” Pippa cried out. “We can’t have two doors open at the same time!”

  But this was an emergency.

  Pippa gasped as I pulled the door back and the two sets of Santas were exposed at the same time and the young children both gasped and started to cry. “So, I suppose this is just what you do now, is it? You go around ruining Christmas for everyone!” Pippa pulled her curtain back and stomped back inside.

  But the children hadn’t seen the second Santa. They had just been upset when they saw the first one. I quickly realized the second one wasn’t in view. He was limp, laying on the floor, on the other side of the curtain as I crept into Cave Number Two and held my breath.

  I quickly saw what Ashley had been screaming about.

  Santa was dead.

  Chapter 2

  “I love my new job, okay!” Pippa said the next morning, pacing in the kitchen of the bakery. The bells on her cap were going crazy. “It’s so much better than working in a boring, non-Christmas-themed bakery—” I tried not to take offense. “—and now it has all been put at risk!” She stared down at me as though I was the sole person to blame for this.

  Hey, at least she was talking to me again. I was perched on a stool, waiting for a batch of cookies to finish baking, trying to calm her down while she paced.

  “Pippa, I’m not to blame for what happened…” I said, trying to reason with her. “I’m not the one who killed Santa.” The person who killed Santa was the one who put Christmas at risk, not me. I couldn’t help but think that Pippa was still annoyed about the tree incident and was projecting a little.

  “But you can be the one to fix it!” she snapped at me, throwing her hat to the ground.

  Okay. I wasn’t sure how I was going to bring Santa back to life, exactly. “I know you are after a Christmas miracle, but that might be a little too much to ask for,” I said, standing up when I heard the oven ding. I slipped on an oven mitt and pulled out the tray of cookies that were still gooey in the middle, chocolate chips oozing out of them.

  They were all in the shapes of Christmas trees. I showed them to Pippa, hoping that might cheer her, but she only scowled down the batch.

  “You can fix it by finding out who killed Santa,” she said, still staring at me, the whites of her eyes showing.

  “Pippa…”

  “If this mystery remains unsolved, then it’s not just Santa who is dead. The whole spirit of Chr
istmas in this town will die.”

  I gulped. She was right. A dead Santa was very bad for business. Bad for the morale of the whole town actually.

  I started to move the still hot cookies from the tray onto the cooling rack, burning my fingers.

  “So, are you going to help me save Christmas or not?” Pippa asked.

  Ellon, the manager of Christmas Village, was a short man with a receding hairline that made him look a bit like an egg. He looked frantic as we approached Christmas Village the following day, but he was pretty much the only one. The lines certainly weren’t. Christmas Village looked completely different to the day before—some of the magic had gone, along with the crowds.

  Pippa walked up to the entryway, which was cut off with a velvet rope to stop people from cutting the line and also from discovering just how many Santas lay beyond.

  “Oh! I didn’t recognize you without your elf ears on!” he said with a manic little laugh as he flipped through some pages in front of him. Pippa didn’t seem that impressed. “I didn’t think I had you scheduled to work today, Pippa?”

  The lines were almost non-existent—maybe they didn’t need any elves on that day. Maybe the whole place could just shut down and we could go home.

  But after a few minutes, a petite woman in her thirties, pushing a stroller almost twice her size, entered the village. Once she had joined the line, a few other customers, after glancing around to make sure it was safe, joined her. I supposed Santa portraits didn’t stop for anything, not even murder.

  The woman pushing the stroller looked a little nervous, but committed to her spot in line. She put the brakes on the stroller and leaned over to talk to me. She must have mistaken me for an employee, even though I wasn’t wearing elf ears. I was wearing a red coat, but that had nothing to do with Christmas—red just happened to be my color.