A Wee Christmas Homicide. Kaitlyn Dunnett
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Thorne had a great selection of action figures and shelves filled with board games and jigsaw puzzles, but the store seemed a trifle thin on miniature trucks and cars. Video games took up another significant section of shelving. So did toys for very young children. In a far corner she came upon two Tiny Teddies, one dressed as a ballerina, the other as a clown.
Marcia joined her there. “There are ten more on a table on the other side of the shop. All different.”
As one, they headed for the front of the store, arriving just in time to see Liss go up on her toes to prop her elbows on the polished wooden surface of the sales counter in order to thrust her face into Thorne’s peripheral vision. He gave a start and looked up from his computer screen with a glower.
“We need to talk,” Liss said. When he stood, she stepped back and held out the newspaper.
Thorne leaned over the sales counter, his expression still thunderous. The floor on his side was a good foot higher than the area where Liss stood, so that he loomed over her. Nobody, not Liss or Marcia and Sherri, who had formed ranks behind Liss, was impressed.
Thorne did a double take at the sight of Sherri’s uniform. “You planning to arrest me?”
His sneer faded when she just stared at him, her gaze level and no hint of a smile on her face. Holding her head at that awkward angle was giving her a kink in her neck—another black mark against the surly toy seller.
“Come out of there!” Liss snapped the command in a no-nonsense voice.
Thorne blinked hard behind his Harry Potter glasses and obeyed, descending the two little steps from the office area. He led them to a small seating area at the back corner of the store. Small was the operative word, since the chairs were designed for children. While Thorne leaned against the wall, Marcia dropped into a beanbag chair, joking that she’d probably need a forklift to get her up again. Sherri was small enough to ease into one of the child-size rockers but she still had to stretch her legs out in front of her to avoid a collision between knees and chest. Following Thorne’s example, Liss opted to remain on her feet.
“How many Tiny Teddies do you have?” she asked him.
“Two crates. Mixed.”
“Two hundred?”
Sherri felt a slow grin spread across her face.
“It looks as though the three of us may have the only supply of Tiny Teddies in New England. There are people everywhere who want them. If we work together, we all increase our profits.” Liss rubbed her fingers together in the universal gesture for money.
“What do you have in mind?” Thorne’s aggression had vanished. He looked harmless again, even amiable, a short, middle-aged man with a sagging midsection and weak eyesight.
“We make the customers come to us. That way the whole town benefits.”
Thorne looked skeptical, but he kept listening.
Liss took out the lists she’d tucked into her coat pocket and ticked off each point in turn. “One: get hold of the rest of the members of the Moosetookalook Small Business Association and tell them what’s going on. Two: attend the board of selectmen’s next meeting, which just happens to be scheduled for tonight. Both groups are a potential source of seed money. The selectmen know business has been slow, even with the boost Moosetookalook got when the hotel reopened last summer. So, when we ask for assistance to get the word out about our supply of Tiny Teddies—the financial wherewithal to run ads—I think they’ll go along with our request.”
“Newspaper, television, or radio?” Thorne asked.
“All three if we can swing it. The thing is, we want to do more than just attract customers to our own stores. We want to encourage shoppers to stick around long enough to spend money at all the local businesses. It’s short notice, but I think I can pull together a Christmas pageant—I’ve been thinking of it as The Twelve Shopping Days of Christmas.” She gave a self-conscious little laugh. “Maybe we could be a tad more subtle than that, so any suggestions for alternate names are welcome.”
Sherri repressed a snort of laughter. Subtlety was not Liss’s strong suit, but Sherri had to give her friend credit for ingenuity. As Liss expanded on her idea—twelve days of special ceremonies, one for each stanza in the Christmas carol, culminating in a pageant on the last day that included them all—she could see how the events might encourage tourists to come to town.
“I can find the ten ladies to dance and the eleven pipers,” Liss said, “but I may need some help recruiting leaping lords and milkmaids. And drummers. We’ll need twelve of them.”
“Try the high school,” Sherri suggested. “Convince one of the teachers to offer extra credit to those who participate.”
“When will you hold the final pageant?” Thorne asked. Whatever his earlier reservations, he sounded as if he’d now come around to Liss’s way of thinking. Although he still propped up the back wall of his shop, his stance had changed from studied indifference to rapt attention.
“If we call Saturday the first day of Christmas, then the twelfth day will fall on Christmas Eve.” Liss frowned. “That’s wrong, of course. Twelfth Night is actually after Christmas, but since celebrations in the U.S. center on the twenty-fifth of December, we’ll just have to take a little poetic license. I—”
“Christmas Eve is too late,” Thorne cut in. “You need to schedule things so that the final pageant falls on the weekend before Christmas.”
Liss’s face fell as she mentally subtracted days. “That would mean we’d have to have to hold the first day’s ceremony tomorrow!”
“Partridge in a pear tree, right?” Marcia asked.
At Liss’s nod, Marcia gave a dismissive shrug.
“No big deal if people miss that one. Or the next six, either.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Two doves, three hens, four calling birds, five gold rings, six swans, and seven geese. All poultry except for the rings, Liss—and boring! Until you start counting people, there won’t be anything interesting to see.”
“Okay. Okay, you’re right. But on the twelfth day we can make a terrific spectacle out of all of them.” Her enthusiasm only momentarily dimmed, she rummaged in another pocket for a pencil and started making notes on the back of one of her lists. “We’ll put a pear tree up in the town square next to the municipal Christmas tree. I know a taxidermist who can supply a stuffed partridge. Jump ahead to—”
“Jump ahead to customers arriving in droves to spend money,” Thorne interrupted, “and to the prices we’re going to charge. People will pay a heck of a lot more than ten bucks for these babies now.”
Liss looked as if she wanted to object, but held her tongue when she saw Marcia’s eyes light up.
After Thorne and Marcia had agreed to attend the selectmen’s meeting that evening with Liss, Liss and Sherri left the two of them engrossed in a discussion of the best wording for their ads.
“Time to get back to the P.D.,” Sherri said. “You won’t need my help dealing with the MSBA. You’ve already got an in with the top man.” Dan Ruskin, newly elected as president by the other small businesspeople in town, was one of the two men Liss had been dating since she’d returned to Moosetookalook seventeen months earlier.
Sherri started to cross the square, then paused to look back over her shoulder. “By the way—thanks, Liss.”
“For?”
“Salvaging my morning. I was bored to tears.” She grinned. “And if this plan of yours actually works, it will also be thanks for all the overtime I’m going to earn working crowd control.”
Chapter Two
Liss’s mouth kept moving but Dan Ruskin couldn’t hear a single word she said. So much for squeezing in an hour or two of woodworking between helping out at The Spruces, the