Naughty Nine Tales of Christmas Crime (21 page)

"I'm afraid this was no accident," Mrs. Claus announced. "Someone here has been very, very naughty."

The gasps turned to shrieks. A reindeer-handler named Holly fainted into the arms of her brother Jolly. Rumpity-Tump the Icicle Man became so frozen with fear he fell over and shattered, and his pieces had to be swept up and placed outside in the snow so he could pull himself together.

"A killer! A killer loose in the workshop!" Jingle wailed.

"And Shanta won't be back for hoursh!" cried Jangle, who'd been trying to steady his nerves with several long swigs from a flask he'd pulled from his vest pocket.

"Yes," said Mrs. Claus, nodding sadly. "It looks as though the borscht will have to wait." She stepped out from under the branches and cleared her throat with dainty dignity. "Could everyone hush now, please?"

Her voice never rose more than a half-step above a soothing whisper, ever, yet somehow her words carried further and penetrated deeper than if she'd screamed every word. The elves' lamentations and gnashing of teeth died away quickly, leaving only the sound of the wind outside and a quiet jingling somewhere high in the Christmas tree.

"Thank you. Now . . . is there anyone here who saw Gumdrop this evening?"

An elf toward the back of the room raised his hand.

"Yes, Snowflake?"

"Gumdrop was working with us in Nice Management this year. We finished the list a little early and went to get some . . . uhhh, eggnog at Carol's place."

Mrs. Claus picked Carol out of the throng. "Carol?"

"Yeah, Gumdrop was there for a while. But he and my sister Noël had a little too much eggnog, and they went off to . . . ummmm . . . make some mulled cider."

Mrs. Claus scanned the still-growing crowd for Noël's blushing face. "Noël?"

"Over here, Mrs. C. When we got to the bedro . . . I mean, the
kitchen
, Gumdrop realized he didn't have a...well...a...bag of mulling spices. There was one in his wallet, but he'd left it in his jacket at work. I might have had a bit too much 'eggnog,' but I'm not stupid—I told him no spice, no cider. So Gumdrop went back to work to get his jacket." Noël wiped away a tear. "He never came back."

"He went back to Nice Management?"

"Yes."

"And no one else saw him after that?"

The room was still.

"I see." Mrs. Claus folded her arms and shook her head. "'Eggnog' and 'cider-making' and 'mulling spices'? My oh my."

The assembled elves hung their heads in shame.

"Well, you've been working so hard this year . . . I don't think we need to mention any of that to Santa."

The elves peeked back up at her sheepishly.

"But this business with poor Gumdrop . . . ."

Something rustled high up in the tree, and a single ornament dropped from branch to branch to branch, finally shattering on the floor just a few yards from Mrs. Claus. Everyone looked up.

At the top of the tree, tinkering with the brightly glowing star perched there, was a single elf.

"Hello," Mrs. Claus said to him.

The elf peered down at her. "Greetingz." Then he went back to working on the star.

"Aren't you interested in what's going on down here?"

"Oh, it iz a zertainty. But I am having verk to do here, yez?"

"I think that can wait. Why don't you come down and talk to me?"

Mrs. Claus's tone was as sweet and lilting as ever, yet it was clear this was no request. It was a command.

"No," the elf said, not bothering to even look at her this time. "I think I finish my verk firzt, yez?"

"Oh. Well, then."

Mrs. Claus took a deep breath and twiddled her thumbs for a moment. Disobedient elves were as rare at the North Pole as murders. There were no precedents for dealing with either one.

"Jingle, Jangle, everybody—stand back please," Mrs. Claus finally said.

She reached into the lowest branches of the Christmas tree and began pulling off a long strand of shimmering garland. Once she had about thirty feet of it, she tied one end into a hoop and began twirling it over her head. When she let it go, the makeshift lasso sailed to the top of the tree and landed around the obstinate elf's right foot. With one quick, hard pull, Mrs. Claus closed the loop tight and jerked the little man into the air.

"Blahhhhhhhh!" he squawked as he cartwheeled downward.

"Ooooooooooh!" the elves cooed as they watched him fall.

"I'm so sorry," said Mrs. Claus after she'd caught him by the fluffy white collar of his green tunic, snatching him out of the air half a second before he could splatter at her feet. "But I really do think it's awfully important that we talk."

She loosened the garland and set her tiny prisoner down. He was chubbier than most of his kin, and a little taller too. He bent back and stared up at the top of the tree.

"Very imprezzive, Mrz. Clauz," he said.

"Why, thank you," Mrs. Claus replied humbly. "I've always been handy with decorations. Now tell me—what is your name?"

"I em Geeftrep."

"'Giftwrap,' you say?"

"Yez. Bruther of Scotchtape."

"Hmmm. I don't believe I've ever heard you or your brother mentioned before, Giftwrap."

The other elves shook their heads and squinted at Giftwrap with growing suspicion.

"Ve are new thiz year," he said. "Before this ve are . . . how do you say? Ve cobble the shoez, yez?"

"I see. But this year you decided to become toy-making elves?"

"Yez. The shoemaker ve verk for, he moved hiz factory to Indonezia."

"How terribly disappointing. Well, let me take this opportunity to welcome you to Santa's workshop."

Mrs. Claus held her hand out to Giftwrap. He hesitated just a fraction of a second, then grasped her hand and gave it a limp shake.

"Thank you, Mrz. Clauz."

Mrs. Claus smiled, then glanced down as she let go of his hand.

"Goodness—is that ink on your sleeve?"

Giftwrap didn't answer directly. Instead, he spat out a word no one had ever dared utter in the presence of Mrs. Claus.

"Oh, now surely that kind of language isn't going to help matters any," she began to say.

She didn't get a chance to finish. The "Oh" was still on her lips when Giftwrap pulled a candy cane from his tunic and lunged at her with it. She barely managed to dodge away in time, and the razor-sharp candy sliced off a corner of her white lace apron.

"Oh, Giftwrap," Mrs. Claus said. "My niece made that for me."

Giftwrap lunged again.

"Mrs. C!" Jingle called out, tossing her the ladle she'd handed him a minute before.

Mrs. Claus reached out and let the handle slap into her palm. Then she swung the ladle down just in time to parry Giftwrap's thrust. Giftwrap tried again and again, but each time Mrs. Claus turned the sugary blade aside.

"Really, Giftwrap, is this helpful?" Mrs. Claus asked, raising her voice just a bit to be heard above the
clink-clank
of their duel. "You can't escape. Why not stop fighting and tell me what you've been up to? I bet you'll feel a lot better if you do."

"Bah!" Giftwrap snarled. With a dramatic flourish, he hurled his candy cane into the floorboards, where it stuck with a loud, vibrating
spronnnng
. Then he reached into his tunic and pulled out something brown and log-like.

"Look out!" Jingle yelped. "He's got a fruitcake!"

"Yez! And I em not afraid to uze it!"

Giftwrap brought the fruitcake to his lips and took a savage bite.

"Daz vedanya, zuckerz!" he shouted, crumbs and bits of candied orange peel spraying from his furiously chewing mouth. He took a big, gulping swallow, and almost immediately his face turned blue. He collapsed, writhing and gurgling. After a few seconds, he stopped moving.

Jingle slowly approached and gave Giftwrap a poke with the curled toe of his elf shoe. There was no response.

"I think he's dead."

"Dead? Deary deary dear." Mrs. Claus moved to Jingle's side and kneeled down to examine the body. "Hmm. I thought so."

She reached out and plucked the pointy ears right off Giftwrap's head.

There was more gasping and fainting from the elves gathered around.

"Don't anyone fret now. They're not real ears," Mrs. Claus said. "Giftwrap—or whatever his name truly is—was no elf."

"A man?" Jingle asked.

Mrs. Claus nodded. "Yes. A midget."

"Why would a midget come all the way to the North Pole just to kill Gumdrop?"

"Oh, I don't think he would. Not just to kill poor Gumdrop, I mean."

"I don't understand."

"I don't either, Jingle. But I do know this: We haven't seen the last of the naughtiness tonight."

Mrs. Claus put a pair of elves named Mistletoe and Poinsettia in charge of guarding the bodies, then hustled out of the room, Jingle at her heels. Jangle started to follow too, but the glogg had turned his legs to rubber, and the only way to stiffen them up again was to curl up under a bench and take a nap.

Nice Management was deserted when Jingle and Mrs. Claus arrived. They found Gumdrop's jacket at his desk, lying atop a pile of statistics, graphs and pie charts analyzing the Naughty-to-Nice ratio of little boys who own albums by KISS.

"Maybe Gumdrop never made it back to the office," Jingle said. "He could have been murdered anywhere between here and Carol's place."

"No," Mrs. Claus said. "I think it's much more likely he was killed right here."

She headed for the far end of the room, where Santa kept the tilted worktable he slaved over so many long hours each year. It was where he compiled The List—the massive scroll on which he kept the names of well-behaved children who'd earned a visit come Christmas Eve.

Mrs. Claus peered down at the worktable a moment.

"Oh, goodness deary goodness," she said. "It's just as I feared."

She moved to the nearest garbage can, shook her head and pulled out two twisted, broken, ink-smeared feathers.

"What a shame. Santa loved these," she said. "Griffin feathers. So hard to come by these days. Oh, well. We have more to worry about now than Santa's favorite pens."

"That we do," Jingle said, nodding. "Uhhh . . . and what is it that we need to be worrying about, exactly?"

"Why, the name Giftwrap added to Santa's list, of course."

Jingle looked from Mrs. Claus to the feathers to Santa's worktable to Gumdrop's desk, blinking blankly. Mrs. Claus took mercy on him and explained.

"There were ink stains on the box Gumdrop was in, and on Giftwrap's sleeves, as well. And if you'll look at the table there . . . ."

Jingle followed Mrs. Claus' gaze. A black smudge marred one corner of Santa's worktable.

"Southerners aren't accustomed to quill pens and ink bottles anymore," Mrs. Claus said. ("Southerners" meant anyone who didn't live at the North Pole.) "So Giftwrap made a bit of a mess. And I can only think of one thing he might have been trying to do with a pen at Santa's worktable. Poor, unfortunate Gumdrop saw what he was up to when he came back for his jacket. And Giftwrap couldn't have that."

"Oh," Jingle said. "I see. Then Giftwrap had to make sure Gumdrop's body wasn't found until after Santa took off."

"That's right. Yet he wanted the body to be found eventually. That message on the card—it must have some special significance."

Jingle shook his head, bewildered and disgusted. "Sending a spy into the workshop, killing an elf, all just to get some kid on the Nice List. It's beyond naughty. It's nuts."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps this isn't about a child."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe someone wants to make sure Santa goes down a certain chimney tonight."

Jingle gaped at her, amazed that a woman who'd devoted her life to making children happy and hanging out with elves would have such a natural affinity for the workings of devious minds.

"You think it could be a trap?" he said.

Mrs. Claus shrugged. "You know how those toy company people feel about Santa. And the religious fundamentalists. And the Elf Liberation Front. And the Ayatollah. And Mrs. Thatcher. She still hasn't forgiven us for all those lumps of coal she received as a child. And—"

The longer the list grew, the wider Jingle's eyes became. "I never realized Mr. C had so many enemies."

Mrs. Claus's lips pulled into a small smile, sad but proud.

"The good ones always do, dear," she said.

"Well, if it's a trap, we've got to warn Santa right away!"

Mrs. Claus sighed. "I wish we could. But you know as well as I do how hard that would be."

Santa always took the fastest reindeer, naturally, so catching him by following his delivery route would be next to impossible. On top of that, he didn't really
have
a set delivery route. If children were still awake inside a house when he landed on the roof, he had to move on and come back later. As a result, the longer the evening wore on, the more he ended up criss-crossing the globe, perhaps alternating a drop-off in Kenya with a stop in Kentucky. That always increased the odds that he'd get lost somewhere in between. Santa would never, ever, under any circumstances stop to ask for directions, and as a result he could end up hovering confused over Antarctica or looking for Des Moines in the Amazon rainforest.

"Plus," Jingle said after they'd both ruminated on all this for a quiet moment, "maybe he's already been captured or . . . ." Jingle gulped. "Or whatever. He's been gone over an hour now."

Mrs. Claus grew pale, and an expression came to her face Jingle had never seen there before: a frown. It only lasted a second.

"Now don't you worry, Jingle," she said, the rosy glow returning to her round cheeks. "Santa's going to be just fine. In fact, I think I know how we can help him. You run and find Ribbons and Bows. I want to meet them in their office."

Jingle straightened up and saluted. "Yes, ma'am!" And off he went.

He found Ribbons and Bows downing shots of glogg at a hastily organized wake for Gumdrop. They were gruff, gnarled old elves who ran Request Processing with two little iron fists.

"Frank! Hank!" Jingle called out to them. Only the Clauses could get away with calling them "Ribbons" and "Bows." Anyone else who tried it got a punch in the nose. "Mrs. C needs you! Quick!"